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Chewbacca looked back at Lumpawarrump. [This is your hrrtayyk.]

[I am ready.]

Chewbacca gestured, and Lumpawarrump stood up into the hatchway, bringing the bowcaster up to chest height as he rose. The first explosive quarrel was away before he was fully erect, the second before Chewbacca had taken his first long stride out onto the flight deck.

The twin explosions that came an instant later were compact and focused. One shield was driven violently backward, knocking two of the Yevetha off their feet. The other shield simply shattered, pelting the deck, the bulkhead, and the guards with sharp-edged fragments.

Tracking his targets through the smoke as though they were shadows in the underbrush, Lumpawarrump kept firing. One quarrel burned out the thorax of a Yevethan guard, and the next spun his nearest companion around like a ragdoll.

Just then, Chewbacca loosed a blood-chilling howl and began spraying the flight deck with his blaster. The howl contained all of Chewbacca’s grief over Shoran and his fury over Han, and it riveted the attention of the surviving guards. With Chewbacca’s hunger for vengeance driving his long legs, he crossed the open deck with stunning speed. None of the few blaster bolts directed his way came anywhere near him.

By the time Chewbacca reached what was left of the guard station, the return fire had ceased. Every one of the guards had fallen victim to Lumpawarrump’s steady hand and hunter’s eye. True, three guards still had some fight left in them, despite massive bowcaster wounds—but Chewbacca did not object to that.

He crushed the chest of one who was trying to rise from the deck, then threw himself on the back of another and broke his neck with a savage twist. Spinning away from the toppling corpse, Chewbacca found himself face-to-face with the last guard.

The Yevetha was bleeding profusely from gaping shrapnel wounds in the shoulder and right cheek, and his thorax plates were scorched and bubbled. He slashed the air with his claws, and Chewbacca roared a challenge. They charged each other, meeting in a collision that would have leveled lesser creatures.

Their short struggle ended with Chewbacca hoisting his huge attacker overhead and hurling him against a structural column. The Yevetha slid heavily to the deck and never moved again, his back broken. Standing over the body, Chewbacca tipped back his head and made the Wookiee triumph-cry echo to the farthest corners of the flight deck.

Then he turned away and waved Lumpawarrump across to join him.

Only then did Chewbacca see that his son was injured, dragging his right leg as he ran. When and how seriously Lumpawarrump had been wounded, Chewbacca did not know—he only knew that his son had not uttered a sound in complaint, and that when the moment had come, he had faced the katarn without flinching, and his aim had been true.

The woman called Enara crouched beside where Han Solo lay dozing and lightly touched an unbruised spot on his forearm.

“There is fighting on the ship,” she whispered. “Your friends have come for you.”

Moving awakened a thousand pains and brought a sharp wince to Han’s face, but he struggled to a sitting position nevertheless. “For me? How do you know?”

“I know,” she said, her face drawn. “I have called them to us, and they have finally heard me. Come, we must move you. It is not safe to be close to the walls.”

“I don’t understand,” Han said. But he allowed Enara to help him limp to the center of the hold. The effort left him weak, making it necessary for him to lay himself out once more on the uncomfortably hard surface. “I don’t hear anything.”

“They are a long way from here. I cannot hide them—it is too much for me. But I will try to help them find you.” Enara sat down beside him, arranging the folds of her scorched brown caftan around her as though it were a fine gown and she was expecting to receive guests. Then she cupped her hands lightly around one of his and looked away toward the locked loading doors that sealed them in.

Han did not question her words. She was a puzzling woman, given to curious