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“Sure—as prisoners,” said Lando. “I’ve visited enough prisons, thank you. I don’t intend to be captured.”

“All right, then,” Lobot said. “Let’s think about how to fight them and win. Let’s use our advantage. Forget Threepio. What he did is a distraction, and raging over it is a waste of time.”

With a growl, Lando twisted and pointed the cutting blaster at the forward entry portal. Its beam lit the chamber briefly and harshly, leaving a meter-wide hole that did not close.

“She’s really hurting,” Lando said, shaking his head. “All right—Lobot, Artoo, let’s go. We have to move quickly.” He pointed toward Threepio. “Golden Boy stays here.”

“Lando—” Lobot began.

“He’ll just slow us down.”

“Lando—”

“But if we leave him here, maybe he’ll slow them down. A diversion. Who knows—maybe they won’t even blow him to bits,” said Lando. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Chamber twenty-one.” Lando jetted toward the hole he had blasted, and the others followed him through.

So did Threepio’s plaintive voice. “You can’t abandon me here in the dark—Artoo—please—”

Artoo whimpered sympathetically, but he did not turn back.

Nearly five light-years Rimside from the pulsar 2GS-91E20, the powerful external worklights on the under curve of Lady Luck’s bow stabbed out into the ebony void toward the target Colonel Pakkpekatt was tracking.

“It’s too small by half,” said Colonel Hammax, looking up from the displays and out through the viewports, straining to pick out what the NRI deep-contact list called Anomaly 2249.

“Or it is now only half what it was. We will continue,” said Pakkpekatt, bobbing his head.

Hammax glanced back down. “Target is now sixty-one thousand meters dead ahead.”

“Tell me, Colonel—how is it that a personal yacht has a sensor system that appears to have resolution comparable to a front-line intelligence picket and better range—far superior to that on a cruiser like Glorious?”

“Shorter procurement cycle,” Hammax said. “He buys what he needs, without having to get the permission of anyone who sits in an office far from the consequences of saying no.”

“And what is his need?”

Hammax shrugged. “Considering that this ship mounts only a single low-grade laser cannon, sensors like that might help keep you out of a lot of trouble.”

“That does not answer my question,” Pakkpekatt said. “Who is this Lando Calrissian? This bridge belongs to a meticulous professional, someone who insists on the best tools and on knowing how to use them. The storage holds belong to a mercenary or a brigand, a man who respects no rule but expediency. The personal quarters belong to a sybarite, a self-indulgent hedonist who surrounds himself with soft pleasures. Which one is Calrissian?”

“I didn’t know the baron before he came aboard Glorious,” Hammax said. “But by reputation, Colonel, he’s all three.”

“They could not abide each other,” Pakkpekatt stated firmly. “Such a man would never be content in any of his pursuits. He would always be drawn elsewhere—the hedonist to purpose, the brigand to security, the perfectionist to impulsiveness, and on. You understand?”

“Humans are contradictory creatures,” said Hammax. “Forty thousand meters.”

“That I know, Colonel—but can you tell me why they think it a strength?” Pakkpekatt asked.

“I think that’s the first of the contradictions,” Hammax said with a grin.

“You are no help to me,” the Hortek said, annoyed. “Go and wake the others. It is time.”

Before Lady Luck had closed another five thousand meters on the unknown object tagged by NRI trackers as Anomaly 2249, all four members of the team were at their stations.

On the bridge, Pakkpekatt was handling the piloting duties, Taisden was monitoring the sensor matrix, and Hammax was controlling the laser cannon by means of a lightweight targeting headset. Aft on the enclosed observation deck, Pleck tended the bank of NRI-issue tracking and holo imagers he and Taisden had installed.

It was becoming a familiar drill, but Pakkpekatt did not