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Right, Lando thought. They’re going to restore order … sure they are.… The gambler glanced at Bria, and she looked at him and shrugged slightly.

They reached the door, and Fett gestured to Lando. “Open it.”

The corridor was pure chaos. They had to wait in the doorway until a mob of screaming passengers, most of them dressed only in nightgowns and robes, fled past. Fett glanced at a small, palm-sized device he held. “Turn right,” he instructed.

Lando and Bria obeyed. The gambler found it surprisingly difficult to walk with his arms bound behind him. It affected his balance.

Several times they had to step into doorways to allow shrieking hordes of passengers to run past. The sounds of blaster fire were closer, now, as they neared the boat decks.

They left the passenger cabins behind, and took a series of glidewalks that Fett directed them to. From the sounds, most of the pitched fighting was going on near the docking areas. Sounds of battle grew louder, closer. As they neared the shuttle deck, they saw sprawled bodies littering the corridor, most of them wearing uniforms marking them as the liner’s crew. A number of the bodies belonged to passengers, but none wore Imperial uniforms. Bria glanced at Lando as they stumbled along. He was surprised at her composure in the face of carnage—dead bodies made most citizens sick.

Lando strained his eyes for a glimpse of the attackers, but so far they hadn’t encountered any. He licked dry lips, knowing that, even with bound arms, he had to try to make some move before the three of them climbed into a shuttle together. In a shuttle, they had no chance. He glanced sideways at his fellow captive, assessing her ability to possibly back him if he tried something.

For a moment it occurred to him to wonder just why this lovely young woman—she couldn’t have been much over twenty-five—had Boba Fett after her. She must be more than what she seemed, and his observations of her so far backed that up. Most citizens, faced with the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, would be reduced to quivering lumps of protoplasm. But Bria was plainly not your ordinary citizen.…

They rounded a corner that led to the shuttle deck, only to run smack into a boarding party. Lando froze, Bria beside him, faced with twelve or thirteen unsavory characters dressed in loud, gaudy, mismatched clothes that gravely offended Lando’s fashion sense. They were festooned with garish jewelry.

Bria whispered, “Pirates!”

Suddenly things fell into place and Lando realized exactly what had happened to the Queen. He’d seen this trick before. These pirates had brought the Queen out of hyperspace by towing a good-sized asteroid into the realspace analog of her hyperspace coordinates. Then the gravity “shadow” of the asteroid’s gravity well had caused the hyperdrive failsafes to cut in, abruptly reverting the Queen to realspace. An audacious and cunning plan—and it took big ships to implement it. Big ships and a daring leader. For the first time, Lando felt a surge of hope. It’s got to be. Nobody else would dare to attack a cruise ship this big.…

“Back the other way!” Boba Fett shouted, and his captives obediently reversed course. Lando and Bria tried to run, but if Lando had thought that walking with bound arms was tough, he’d never imagined that running would be so much worse. At every moment he imagined himself falling down, then being summarily shot by Boba Fett for his clumsiness.

The two captives managed a clumsy jog, and Boba Fett urged them on. But as they approached another curve in the corridor, Lando caught a flash of bright color. More pirates!

“Stop!” Boba Fett barked, his voice sounding doubly harsh because of the mechanical speakers.

Quickly the bounty hunter pushed Bria into a doorway, then yanked Lando over to stand in front of her as a shield. “Don’t move, Calrissian,” Fett hissed, and moved out until he was in full view.

The pound of running feet approached, and then, more or less at the same time, both