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“You could have blown us to bits,” the secretary accused. “You should have consulted the Great God Quay before you acted.”

“I forgot,” said the president.

“Yet the bomb is dead!” said one of the others.

“We are victorious!” said another.

A loud, clear voice came from beyond the bulkhead. “Jabba, this is your last chance! Free us or die!”

The Hutt responded with something in its own language.

“What is happening?” asked a Weequay.

The president turned around quickly. Panic and confusion were taking over the sail barge. A human slave girl was strangling the great Jabba with her own chains. There was the sound of shots being fired from outside. One of the Weequays opened a shutter to peer out, and was grabbed and pulled from the vessel, thrown down to the desert floor below.

Clutching his force pike, the president led the remaining Weequays toward what was now clearly a battle. He jabbed upward with the pike, leading the others on deck. The president arrived to see the black-clad human prisoner using a lightsaber to clear the deck of Weequay guards and other defenders. “Get the gun!” the human cried to the slave girl. “Point it at the deck!”

“For the Great God Quay,” murmured the president softly. Then he advanced. At least they had disarmed the bomb, so the sail barge would be safe.

Before he could attack, the human with the lightsaber put an arm around the slave girl, clutched a heavy rope, and kicked the firing mechanism of the deck gun. Then he and the girl swung from the sail barge to a small repulsor skiff hovering over the dreadful Great Pit of Carkoon, where the Sarlacc dwelt.

The president watched them escape. Around him the sail barge was burning and bursting into ruins, but unfortunately Weequays do not have enough imagination to fear death, either. The president calmly clung to a railing as another tremendous explosion ripped the sail barge to pieces.

The last thing he saw was the glorious sight of the white ball of the quay hurled into the air—the Great God Quay ascending to heaven.

A Bad Feeling: The Tale of EV-9D9

Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Like some great beast lurching toward destruction, Cloud City shuddered, tilted, and began to fall.

Lando Calrissian heard the rising wail of the Ugnaughts and the others of his domain who looked to him for safety and stability, and his heart fell with his dying city. His blaster twisted from his hand as he leaped for a pillar, as if a good grip might save him from that final descent through Bespin’s clouds. The weapon skittered along the wildly angled decking, hit the rimguard, then bounced over its curving lip and vanished into the rush of Tibanna-laden clouds that swirled by. Alarms shrieked. The city pitched again, metal groaning. Calrissian felt his grip weaken. The clouds reached out for him with sinuous, fluttering tendrils. He closed his eyes in the force of the driving wind. And he fell, too.

Lobot caught him.

Calrissian felt sudden, welcome pain as enhanced fingers dug into his shoulder beneath his cloak, holding him in place as securely as if he had been welded to the deck. He turned to see Lobot’s cranial attachments flickering as they probed all the communications channels now in use. The city lurched again, but this time the angle of its fall decreased. The cloud streamers slowed as the howl of the wind diminished.

“Backups online, sir!” The reedy voice was Sarl Random’s—the cheeks of her ghost-white face splotched by red patches of fear, her ill-fitting uniform bunched up and twisted from the struggle she had just been through, stained with hydraulic fluid, reeking of scorched circuitry. She stumbled over to Calrissian under Lobot’s watchful eyes. She held a security display pad in her trembling hands. “She must have planted charges by the main repulsorlift generators.”

Even now, Calrissian still couldn’t believe the nature of the intellect they faced. It was bad enough that the prisoner had circumvented all the failsafes of the Security Tower, but the generators