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Another jarring impact, and the stars veered wildly as Lando evaded. Against the black of space he saw only a quick gleam through the turret ports. Whatever they were, they were painted matte black and bore no lights at all.

Blast it, they were everywhere! Solo got off a scattering of shots but it was like trying to hit gnats with a smashball club. At the same time his hands jammed the controls before him, ratcheting down to the lowest calibration, trying hard to get a look at the things. “Where are they coming from?” he shouted again into the comm.

“There’s nothing on the scan!” yelled Lando’s voice back. “No base, no ship …”

“Well, they sure couldn’t come through hyperspace at that size! Blast it!” Another hit, and the thin patch in the shield was registering as a hole now. Han tried to get off another couple shots, but Lando was flipping and swerving the ship to cover the open shield. Han hoped those guys in the holds were still strapped in tight. Not that any of them was conscious enough to care.

“Drones?”

“You can’t send a drone through hyperspace! And that’s no drone shooting!”

The methane storms of Damonite fell away behind them, a glowing acid yellow disk against the blackness that whirled past the glassine ports as Lando dropped and cut and dodged. Han wasted another couple of shots and had a quick look at something as the Falcon swept through a little gaggle of the attacking ships.

Were they ships at all? thought Han. Did they have live pilots? He wasn’t sure. They were maybe two and a half meters long and less than a meter through, fulgin cylinders bristling with the knobs of what looked like miniaturized laser cannon. What did they have in there, little guys the size of his thumb?

“Get us outa here!” he yelled, though he knew for a fact that was exactly what Lando was trying to do.

The tiny ships surrounded them like a cloud of piranha-beetles, whipping and following every move and quite effectively impeding any chance of breaking into hyperspace. Another red light went on, meaning another shield had gone. There was a perceptible jar, and from the gun turret Han saw the white flicker of lightning spread across the whole surface of the Falcon below and around him as the shields tried to compensate. At the same moment Lando yelled in his earjack, “They’re not going for the decoy transmissions, so they can’t be drones!”

“I’m gonna clear us a path!” Han yelled back, as a blast of white at the corner of his eye told him the miniature ships had taken out some part of the Falcon’s upper structures. “Straight through seven by six bearing zero, punch it on three!”

“Han, old buddy, what …?”

“Do it!” At the same moment he hit every fore cannon he had, straight columns of white destruction flowing out in an almost continuous burst at seven by six. Like a pittin chasing its shadow, the Falcon followed the path of the light, faster and faster, Han watching the slow-growing flare of destruction ahead of them and calculating by feel rather than by instrumentation when the last possible moment would be to jump without hurling themselves into their own fire. The little bronze toothpick ships came pouring back in the wake of the blast, firing at the now-steady target following the heels of the light.

He counted, “One … two …” (This had better work …) The last of the shields went in a flare of white, and red glare bathed Han’s face from the sides, white from the front as the Falcon dove toward the laser ruin ahead …

“Three!”

Lando hit it—he had reflexes like a tingball set—and the stars stretched into lines of white.

10

“I never thanked you.” Leia stepped through the tall arch that led from her small terrace into the shadowy chamber. Liegeus, who had come in with a synthdroid bearing food and another pitcher of water, paused in the act of setting them down, shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said, and the pain in his voice, the shame, told her a thousand things that he hadn’t meant. Their eyes met for a