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“All right, then,” he sighed. “Take your best shot.”

CHAPTER 8

HAN MADE A FACE AND TRIED TO SWALLOW THE TASTE of the wind, bitter and stinging even through his filter mask. “Wasn’t Mindar supposed to be some kind of resort planet, or something?” He kicked loose cinder away from the foot of the Falcon’s cargo ramp and surveyed the blasted landscape of rock and sand that was the last known position of the Justice. “This place would depress a Tusken.”

From topside, Chewie registered a gruff Earough.

“Oh, sure, Mindor, whatever,” Han said. “Who cares, anyway? If I want to call it Mindar, who’s gonna argue? You? How about you, Princess?”

Leia didn’t answer. She was moving slowly, as if she was feeling her way, as she followed a zigzag path up the slope of half-fused lava around the crater, which still emitted a better-than-fair amount of hard radiation.

Han sighed as he walked to the forward access ladder and clambered up onto the Falcon’s dorsal hull to join Chewbacca; he’d had to go forward to avoid the backjets of the Falcon’s sublight engines, which he’d decided to leave hot in case they needed to make a sudden exit. Up on the portside forward mandible, Chewbacca was grumbling mournfully as he sprayed the ship’s innumerable meteor punctures with patchplast. “How long till we’re space-ready?”

“Garhowerarr haroo!”

“Is it my fault they decided to have their battle in the middle of an asteroid field?”

“Meroowargh harrwharrrhf.”

“You do not do all the shipwork! Haven’t I been sweeping out the holds ever since we landed? A lot of that dust is radioactive, too.” Before Chewie could reply, Han turned and waved at Leia. “Getting anything?” he called.

“He was here!” she replied, her voice muffled by her own filter mask. “I mean, I think he was here. I’m pretty sure—well, mostly sure …”

“Got any, y’know, feelings about which way he went?” Han didn’t really care what the answer was, so long as it was in the general direction of food. And drink.

He’d been planning to restock the Falcon’s galley back at the asteroid base, but that had been one more thing forgotten during their hasty exit. And back during the negotiations, Leia had sternly informed him that it would be a serious breach of Mandalorian diplomatic etiquette to break his fast while the central issues were still unresolved, which meant that it had been more than a day since Han had had anything more substantial to eat than the remnants he’d been able to scavenge from the Falcon’s deep freeze, namely some reconstituted pukkha broth and stewed stickli root. Not his favorites, to say the least, which was why they’d still been in the freezer after roughly five years.

And he’d forced those down before Rogue Squadron had joined the Falcon and they’d all set out on what turned out to be basically a running battle as they cut their way through the maze of grav projectors and swarms of TIE interceptors to get here. They came in by microjumping on a jagged course toward the planet; each time a gravity station yanked them out of hyperspace, there’d be another battle in yet another asteroid cluster, which gave them an advantage over their usually surprised enemies, because the X-wings all carried standard repulsorlifts and thus could not only maneuver undetectably through the rock fields, but could also use the Solo Slide.

When Han had outlined the plan, Wedge had said, “You want us to take on interceptors using nothing but repulsorlifts?”

“Sure,” Han had replied. “How much training you think those eyeball-jockeys get in repulsorlift combat?”

“Couldn’t guess,” Wedge had said. “But I sure know how much training we don’t have …”

“Then I guess we better hope their learning curve’s steeper than yours is, huh?”

And it had been—so much so, in fact, that even Han Solo had once or twice found himself shaking his head and giving a low whistle. Those Rogue pilots were good. Maybe as good as he was. Almost. Not that he’d ever say so out loud.

The battle