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“Like going through adolescence all over again,” he had muttered to himself after making the cockpit shake violently for the fourth time.

But the last exercise had felt good to him—good enough to allow him to enjoy his break. He paused at the top of the simulator’s ladder to remove his helmet, then swung his leg over and slid down the handrails on his heels. The check pilot, Lieutenant Gulley, met him at the bottom.

“Well?”

“You have a nice touch when you’re not putting holes in the bulkheads,” Gulley said. “I’m going to qualify you for the gig now. Come back offshift and spend a few more hours working the launch, maybe hitchhike with me or One-Eye on a few runs, and I should be able to qualify you for the launch soon enough.” He handed Plat his updated identifier disc.

“We’re done?”

“You’re going on duty,” he said. “Get yourself down to Blue Deck and report to the flight controller. Your first passenger should be there by the time you check in.”

A grin spread across Plat’s face. “Yes, sir,” he said, saluting. “Thank you, sir.”

Plat jogged through the corridors, helmet tucked under his left arm, until he rounded a corner and brushed against a round-bellied major.

“Is there a combat alert, pilot?”

Coming to a sudden stumbling stop, Plat whirled and saluted. “No, sir.”

The dressing-down that followed cost him two minutes but did nothing to dampen his spirits. He showed his ID at the controller’s window and collected the enabler key for fleet gig 021, then ran out across the flight deck to where it was berthed. For a long moment, he stood and stared at it unbelievingly.

“Is there a problem?”

Plat whirled, recognizing the voice. “Colonel Gavin. No problem, sir.”

“Then let’s get going,” Gavin said, moving past Plat and twisting the hatch release. “I’m your passenger—and I’ve got an appointment on board Polaron.”

With all possible care, Plat ran through the preflight checks and eased G-021 forward to the launch area, then out into space. Picking up Polaron’s locator signal, he brought the gig around to the intercept heading and accelerated smoothly to the prescribed velocity.

“This what you wanted, son?” Gavin asked, leaning forward in his couch.

“Yes, sir. Thank you for the chance.”

“No gunsights on a fleet gig. Nothing to fire the blood and feed that hunger for revenge.”

“I know that, sir,” said Plat. “But my being here puts a more experienced pilot in a cockpit that does have gunsights and the firing buttons to go with them. When the time comes, what he does, he’ll be doing for me—if you look at it a certain way.”

Gavin nodded. “That’s right. That’s just the way to look at it.” He settled back against the acceleration cushions, checked the readout on his command comlink, then glanced out the side viewport at Intrepid, rapidly falling away behind them.

“Oh, and there’s one other thing worth remembering,” the colonel said. “You’ll get a lot of cockpit time in this duty—more hours in a single duty shift than most pilots log in a week. Before you know it, you just might find yourself turning into one of those more experienced pilots.” Plat heard Gavin’s grin as he added, “But save the hammer-eights and counterbreaks for the simulator. I don’t want to hear that my gig pilots have been practicing combat maneuvers on intership runs.”

Plat Mallar smiled. “I’ll remember, Colonel.”

Han did not know whether it was a matter of contempt or carelessness, but he was neither blindfolded nor rendered unconscious for the transfer from the dirtside prison to the brig of Pride of Yevetha.

All his captors did was bind his wrists to a bar behind his hips and give him an escort composed of two towering Yevethan nitakka. Then he was walked through a maze of corridors and chambers to a driveway where a three-wheeled, box-bodied transporter awaited.

From the open viewports of the transporter, he saw every detail of his surroundings and tried to memorize everything he saw—the route that led from the complex where he had been held