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Han made a noncommittal sound, simmering with anger. Her words sounded rehearsed, like something that had been drilled into her. She didn’t even seem to think about what she was saying.

Qwi flitted back to her 3-D display panel, tapping on the musical keys and humming to sharpen the long, angular image she had been constructing when Han opened his eyes. “Would you like to see what I’m working on now?” Qwi asked, studiously avoiding any mention of the previous discussion.

“Sure,” Han said, afraid that when she no longer needed to talk to him, Qwi would send him back to his detention cell.

She gestured to the image of the small craft. Four-sided and elongated, it looked like the long shard of a firefacet gem. From the diagram he could see a pilot’s compartment with space enough for six people. Small lasers studded strategic areas; the bottom of the long point carried a strange toroidal transmitting dish.

“Right now we’re working on enhancing the armor,” Qwi said. “Though the craft is not much larger than a single-man fighter, we need it to be completely impervious to attack. By introducing quantum-crystalline armor, where only a few layers of atoms are stacked as densely as physics permits, laminated on top of another thin film just as tough but phase shifted, we can be confident that nothing will harm it. Not so much as a dent.”

Han nodded to the laser emplacements; he couldn’t see well from his vantage chained against a support pillar.

“Then why add the weaponry if the ship is indestructible?” He had visions of a fleet of these things replacing the TIE fighters; a small force of indestructible assault craft could fly into any New Republic fleet and carve the ships up at their leisure.

“This craft is highly maneuverable, and small enough not to be noticed on a systemwide scan, but they still might encounter some resistance. Remember, the Death Star was the size of a small moon. This accomplishes through finesse what the Death Star brought about through brute force.”

With a cold fear inside Han did not want to know the answer to his next question. How could she compare this small ship to the Death Star? But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “And what is it? What does it do?”

Qwi looked at the image with awe, pride, and fear. “Well, we haven’t actually tested it yet, but the first full-scale model is basically completed. We call this concept the Sun Crusher, tiny but immensely powerful. One small, impervious craft launches a modulated resonance projectile into a star, which triggers a chain reaction in the core, igniting a supernova even in low-mass stars. Straightforward and simple.”

In his horror, Han could think of nothing to say. The Death Star destroyed planets, but the Sun Crusher could destroy whole solar systems.

22

Luke and Lando stood with Moruth Doole high inside one of Kessel’s atmosphere stacks. They held the rusted guard railing at the edge of a catwalk, staring down the dizzying drop. Leaning into the stack, they breathed the manufactured air boiling into the sky; it reminded Luke of the great air shaft in Cloud City.

Doole shouted into the roaring background noise. “According to one old Imperial study, there’s only enough raw material in Kessel’s crust to keep the atmosphere in equilibrium for a century or two at our present rate of consumption.” He shrugged, hunching his bumpy shoulders in a sort of seizure. “A few years ago the output was higher so that the slaves could walk around and breathe the air—but what’s the point in allowing that?”

Lando nodded sagely, as if still interested, while Luke said nothing. Doole had been their tour guide for an entire day, talking more than even the long-winded senators on Coruscant. Doole wanted Lando’s half million credits and went about extolling Kessel’s virtues like a representative from the planetary chamber of commerce.

Wherever Doole took them, Luke strained his Jedi senses, reaching out to find some sign of Han or Chewbacca. But Luke could feel no tickle in the Force, no ripple of his friends’ presence. Perhaps they were