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“The sector is being invaded.” Han spoke slowly, trying to hold down his temper, knowing that this was an officer who would meet shouting with an icy stone wall.

“Then why have I not been contacted by either the Chief of State or the Senate Inner Council?” When she said “Chief of State” she fixed him with a beady dark eye—she knew perfectly well who he was married to.

Because the Council is deadlocked over the appointment of a successor, and nobody’s going to risk starting a war they may have to repudiate when Leia shows up again, if Leia shows up.

Han drew a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right,” he said. Leia always started negotiations by saying, You’re right. He’d frequently told her that such untruth would eventually cause her tongue to turn black and fall out of her mouth. “Maybe I’d better see if I can contact the Chief of State on the private channel—it sometimes works better than the military ones.”

Lando and Chewbacca were crowded together with the single clerk in the outer office—because of the outbreak of the Death Seed plague in its lower quarters the entire orbital base was short staffed—every screen around them covered with readouts.

“This’s bad, old buddy.” Lando turned in his chair. “We got two more scouts missing. There’s a whole corridor right down the center of the sector blacked out. I’ll bet you any money it’s those little whatever-they-are missiles, coming out of hyperspace shooting …”

“Come on.” Han grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of his chair and out of the room, Chewbacca striding like a giant, fungus-covered tree at their heels.

“What the …?”

The corridor was deserted. Quarantine signs and barriers were everywhere, at every gateway to the lower levels. Han’s skin prickled at the thought of being in the same installation with the Death Seed. He wondered how soon anyone would know of infection. How was it transmitted? How long an incubation period did it have? Months? Minutes?

“Does Wing Tip Theel still operate out of Algar?”

“Wing Tip?” Calrissian looked confused at the sudden introduction of one of their less-reputable computer-slicer colleagues into a military operation. “I think so. He did last time I talked to him.”

“How soon can you get there? And can he still slice into the Algar Pleasure Dome’s central computer core?”

“Hell, Wing Tip could slice into Fleet Central and forge the personnel records of any corporation in the galaxy back to the Old Republic without anybody being the wiser. But what …?”

Han shoved his friend against the wall and frisked him for his pocket recorder. “Get the first ship you can out of here and get there. Take the emergency cash from behind the Falcon’s starboard bulkhead …”

“But what about fixing the stabilizer? What about …?”

“Just do it, okay? Tell Wing Tip I need the best holo fake of Leia he can make, absolutely top class, narrowest bands, latest recordings, background perfect, the whole nine meters. Give him the emergency cash as a down and tell him I’ll give him thirty thousand in two weeks—swear anything, sign anything.”

“Thirty thousand? And you’re planning to rob which bank to pay for this?”

“Let me worry about that.” He checked the pocket recorder, glanced around to make sure they were unheard, though the corridor outside the Comptroller’s office was deserted. The whole quadrant of the base was deserted, the crew and guards of the two cruisers still on base confined to their ships in the hope of avoiding infection, those few not in sick bay—or the morgue—keeping to their rooms.

“Best and latest scrap of Leia, understand?” he said softly. “Tell him to futz it up with a little interference so the join lines don’t show. I want him to gimmick up the broadcast so it looks like it’s being relayed in on the main line from Coruscant. And this is what I want her to be saying.”

“You’re the brother, aren’t you?” After long silence, in which he seemed to have sunk into sleep or death, Liegeus stirred. His voice was barely a thread, and Luke, shivering uncontrollably in the night’s bitter cold, wondered