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She smiled back at him. “I’m going to order the most expensive thing on the menu just to spite you, Han.”

Han laughed, waved, and they parted to go to their respective ships.

The run to Kessel was uneventful. Han managed to beat Salla in by nearly fifteen minutes, but one of the loader droids assigned to his ship developed a malfunction, and slowed the loading process. Salla’s Rimrunner came swooping down for a reckless landing while he was still loading up, and Han was barely five minutes ahead of her in lifting off.

He was flying with Chewie as copilot and Jarik in the topmost gunner’s mount. Imperial patrols in the Kessel region were becoming more and more prevalent these days.

Han keyed his intercom as they went blasting into the Run. “Look sharp, kid,” he told Jarik. “I don’t want any Imp patrols catching us by surprise.”

“Right, Han. Just keep a lookout on those souped-up sensors of yours, and I’ll blast ’em before they know what hit ’em.”

The first obstacle to be faced once they left Kessel was the Maw—a treacherous, roughly spherical region of space containing black holes, a few neutron stars, and scattered main-sequence stars. From a distance, the Maw appeared in Kessel’s nighttime sky to be a rounded, fuzzy, vari-colored glow, much like a nebula. But as a ship drew closer, the spherical shape became clearer. The Maw glowed with the light from the suns within it, the ionized gas and dust trails snaking throughout in bands of color. And, seemingly looking back at Han, were the accretion disks of the black holes.

The accretion disks resembled white, watching eyes against the dimmer regions of the Maw. Depending on their angle relative to the Falcon, those eyes were slit-ted, narrowed, or wide open. In the middle of each “eye” was a pinprick black “pupil” marking each of the black holes that were sucking in the trails of starstuff.

Almost like the jungle on an Ylesian night, Han thought. Black nights with watching predator eyes.…

Navigating the perimeter of the Maw at normal sublight speeds was a tricky proposition, and racing around it at full throttle was asking for disaster. Han glanced at his sensors, and saw that Salla was gaining on them. He increased speed, pouring it on, until he was going faster than he ever had before on a run.

“She won’t catch us now,” Han said to Chewie. “I’m gonna hold this lead until we’re into the Pit and then we’ll be far enough ahead that we’ll make our jump to hyperspace at least twenty minutes ahead of Rimrunner.”

“The Pit” was a perilous asteroid field encased within a wispy gaseous arm of a nearby nebula. Together, the Maw and the Pit made the Kessel Run the dangerous proposition it was. Hearing Han’s boast, Chewie gave an unhappy moan and made a suggestion.

“Whaddaya mean, let her beat us?” Han demanded indignantly, his gloved fingers flying over the controls as they went screaming past the first cluster of black holes. The gas and dust from nearby stars was being pulled into the accretion disks in long, attenuated streamers of blue-white and rose. “You crazy? I ain’t buying dinner! I’m gonna win a nerf tenderloin with a broiled ladnek tail, surf and turf special, fair and square!”

Chewie eyed the Falcon’s speed indicator nervously, and voiced another suggestion.

“You’ll buy everyone’s dinner if I slow down?” Han gave his copilot an incredulous glance. “Hey pal, marriage must be makin’ you soft these days. I can handle this. The Falcon can handle it. We’re gonna win this one!”

Even as he spoke, his instruments registered a strange sensor signature from the recklessly accelerating Rimrunner. Han stared, eyes wide, at his board. “Oh, no …” he whispered. “Salla, you crazy? Don’t do it!”

Moments later Rimrunner’s mynock-shaped form elongated, then popped out of real space. Chewie howled. “Salla!” Han yelled, uselessly. “You crazy fool! Tryin’ a microjump near the Maw is just asking for trouble!”

Chewie fretted as Han frantically increased speed even more, checking his sensors to try and find the Rimrunner. “Where’d she go?