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“Hey, Solo, it’s a chance to hurt the Imperials,” the magician said. “How could I refuse?”

When Han and Chewie arrived for the promised big briefing of their combat pilots, they found most of the smuggler pilots and crews assembled in the auditorium of The Chance Castle. Mako was already onstage, exchanging jokes and jibes with his audience. When he saw Han and Chewie, the senior smuggler rapped his knuckles on the rostrum to get his audience’s attention.

“Okay, all of you, listen up!” he shouted.

Silence descended. “Listen good, you spacebums,” Mako said, the pride and affection in his voice as he regarded his troops taking away any possible sting from his words. “ ’cause your lives, and the lives of those you’re flyin’ with, may be at stake here.”

Mako paused, surveying them all, seeing that he did, indeed, have their full attention.

“Here’s how we’re gonna pull this little trick off. We can’t be sure when the Imps are going to attack, but we’ve got a pretty good idea of the battle plan they’ll follow. That’s ’cause the Imperial Navy has standard battle plans for just about any situation, and they’re trained to follow them, no matter what. Old Han here used to be an Imp officer, and he’ll back me up on this. Right, Han?”

Han walked out onto the stage and nodded exaggeratedly. “Mako’s right!” he shouted, because his voice wasn’t amplified the way Mako’s was. The senior smuggler motioned to the Corellian to come over and share the podium. Han did so.

“So, the standard plan for this kind of operation has them rendezvous and deploy fairly far out. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick them up on our sensors. If not, we may have to scramble to get to our ships. Everyone prepared to do that?”

All the smugglers agreed, with a shout, that they were prepared.

“Good,” Han said. “So they’re gonna deploy, maybe fix any last-minute problems. Then the Imps should make a microjump through hyperspace, so they’ll arrive pretty close to the far side of Nar Shaddaa, but well out of weapons range. By that time, we’ll be in our ships and launched. Each ship is gonna go to its hiding place among the debris, or lose itself in regular space traffic. A couple of smaller fighters, like Roa in his Lwyll, are gonna do recon. The bigger ships will fly false transponder codes, and the fighters will be either in cargo bays of the big freighters or clamped on to their hulls. The rest of us will just be innocent little spacers, and properly panicked when the Imps zoom into view. Right, gang?”

“Yeah! Right!” they yelled, loving the idea of getting the drop on the arrogant Imperial Navy.

Mako took over again. “Okay, at that point the Imps will send in their pickets for a quick look around.”

One of the captains in the front row waved a taloned paw. “What’s a picket, Mako?”

Han and Mako looked at each other and sighed.

“Sorry,” Mako said. “Pickets are the bigger recon ships and their recon TIE fighters, okay? We expect there will probably be two bigger recon ships, probably Carrack-class light cruisers. Each can carry four recon TIE fighters. Taken together, they’re called the pickets. Okay?”

“Okay!” yelled the smuggler.

Mako grinned evilly. “Now, the Imps aren’t expecting us to put up any kind of organized resistance, and we don’t want to disappoint them, do we, fellow sentients?”

“No!” shouted the smugglers.

“Okay, then. We want to keep the Imps where we want them, right?”

“Right!”

“Okay, then. To do that, we’ve got to show them exactly what they expect to see. That way we can predict what they’ll do, because they’ll follow those Imp guidelines I told you about. When the Imp Admiral sends in his recon ships and then the skirmish vessels, which will follow a few minutes behind the recon ships, he’ll be expecting us to think that this is the big attack.

“He’s going to sit back with his big Capital-class ships in their nice little regulation wedge, and he’ll expect this disorganized band of bozos to come out fighting with everything we’ve got, since we’re not smart enough to