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“Han, can you just—just find out? Try the comm center. The RRTF will be in subspace contact. Just—make sure he’s all right. And tell him to be careful.” Her urgent whisper dropped to a barely audible hush. “Tell him I have a bad feeling about this.”

HAN TROTTED THROUGH THE HUGE ROCK-DOMED docking bay, buckling his blaster belt and tying down his holster as he went. He threaded through deck gangs busily shifting fighters and shuttles into parking slips, sneezing at the thick petrochemical fumes belched out by overstressed dry-tugs. When he reached the Falcon, the shadow of her starboard mandible was littered with a bewildering array of components in various states of disrepair and disassembly, most of which—to his sadly all-too-experienced eye—appeared to belong to the control assembly of her starboard deflector unit. The party responsible for this wanton destruction of property was currently standing down to his knees in the proximal access hatch—all that could be seen of him was a pair of vast russet-shagged feet on top of a coffin-sized toolbox that rested on a rusty, battered scrap of scaffolding that looked like it had once been some kind of picnic table, while the rest of his vast hairy body was jammed way up into the innards of Han’s ship.

“Chewie—hey, Chewie!”

The feet gave back no reaction, which was no surprise. The growl of dry-tug engines and the electronically amplified orders bawled by the deck bosses were so loud Han could barely even hear himself. He swept up a nearby gauss wrench and whanged the Falcon’s hull hard enough to leave a bright new scar. From deep within the access hatch came a thump Han could feel though the hull—Chewbacca’s head was fully hard enough to dent durasteel—and a brief but heartfelt snarl of Wookiee expletive, which would be enough to erode the confidence of almost any human being in the galaxy. Almost. “Get the ship zipped and clipped,” Han said. “I’ll start the launch sequence. Skids up in ten.”

Chewie howled a protest. Han said, “Well, if we could land somewhere for more than twenty minutes before you start taking the ship apart, we wouldn’t have this—”

Chewbacca’s reply of “Geeroargh hroo owwweragh!” translated, roughly, as If I missed any chances to take the ship apart, we wouldn’t have a ship at all, which was so patently true that even Han couldn’t argue, so he changed the subject. “Lando’s escort drops skids in about twelve minutes. The Falcon needs to be ready to go when traffic control drops the particle shields so we can slip out.”

Chewie’s massive brows pulled together, and he grumbled a wary interrogative.

“No, no, no, nothing like that. Nobody’s after us.”

“Garouf?”

“It’s—an errand, that’s all. We need to, uh, drop in on Luke. Pay him a little visit. A, ah, social call.”

“Rhouergh hweroo snngh.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to see Luke? What, you don’t like him anymore?”

“Lowerough. Lowerough garoohnnn?”

“No, she’s not coming.”

“Garouf?”

“Because I said so. Am I still the captain around here?”

“Hnerouggr fnerrolleroo!” Chewbacca’s voice rose, as did one vast finger that waggled in Han’s face. “Sscheroll ghureeohh—”

“All right, all right, keep it down, huh?” Han took a quick glance around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear on the noisy deck. “I was just up at ComOps. Luke’s whole task force has gone dark—they haven’t gotten a peep out of him since insertion—and his reserves went dark about ten minutes ago.” His face darkened. “And Leia’s got a feeling he’s in trouble.”

Chewie began to grumble another question, but Han cut him off. “I don’t know what we can do about it. Maybe nothing. But at least we can find out what’s going on. I can’t—Chewie, you know me. You understand. I can’t just leave him out there …”

“Ghn lowerough?”

“No, she asked me to try to contact him. She doesn’t know we’re actually going. And she’s not gonna know. There is no way I’m gonna let her come along.”

“Howergh?”

“Because …” Han made a face. “Because I have a bad feeling