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The gamma-class assault shuttle took up a good portion of the Gorgon’s lower hangar bay. Chewbacca had a small databoard listing the configurations for the tractor-beam projector and the deflector-shield generators. He had worked on other ships before, and he knew the Falcon inside out thanks to the many on-the-spot repairs he and Han had been forced to make. With the specs on the databoard he could easily service decades-old Imperial technology.

On the rear of the assault shuttle Chewbacca checked the exhaust nozzles of the thrust reactors and grudgingly tested the blaster-cannon mountings. In the front of the vessel a convenient boarding hatch allowed access for the command crew, but Chewbacca opted for the more rigorous method of popping open and climbing through one of the foldaway launch doors used to disgorge zero-G stormtroopers during a space assault.

Inside, he had access to the engineering level, where he tinkered with the power modulators and the life-support systems. He restrained his urge to rip out circuits and damage the equipment—the keeper would execute him immediately, and such a minor sabotage would accomplish nothing. Even subtle damage was likely to be discovered in the initial checkout procedure.

The assault shuttle’s spartan passenger section held only benches for its complement of spacetroopers, as well as power-coupled storage compartments for their bulky zero-G armor. Up front Chewbacca powered up and checked out the command console, did a test run of the twin-tandem flight computers … and thought about uprooting the chairs on which the five members of the command crew would sit.

Outside in the Gorgon’s hangar bay the fat keeper shouted and lashed at the air. Chewbacca felt a surge of anger upon hearing cries of agony from the other cowed Wookiee slaves. He knew nothing about his fellow captives; he had been held in a separate cell, and they were not allowed to speak to each other. Chewbacca wondered how long it had been since these exhausted slaves had touched the branches of their home trees.

“Get working!” the keeper yelled. “We have a lot that needs to be done today! Three hundred ships on the Gorgon alone!” And Chewbacca knew the three other star destroyers had an equal number of TIE fighters, blastboats, and assault shuttles.

Chewbacca clenched his fist around an upraised storage lid, bending it noticeably. He wanted to know why Admiral Daala insisted on such desperate speed.

Qwi Xux did not like to be muscled around by stormtroopers. In her years at the Maw Installation, she had learned to ignore the rigid troopers marching around the corridors in white armor, in endless robotic training and formations that made no sense at all. Did they all have faulty memories, or what? Once she learned something, she didn’t need to keep drilling, drilling, drilling. Qwi paid little attention to them anymore—until a squad marched into her laboratory and insisted that she follow them.

Only moments earlier Qwi had shut down her illicit database searches, and she had disengaged the privacy lock on her lab’s entryway. She had no reason to think the stormtroopers suspected anything, but she still felt unreasoning terror.

The troopers folded around her in a protective bubble as they marched her along the tiled corridors. “Where are you taking me?” Qwi finally managed to ask.

“Admiral Daala wishes to see you,” the captain said through the filtered speaker on his helmet.

“Oh. Why?”

“She’ll have to tell you that herself.”

Qwi swallowed a cold lump in her throat and put a haughty tone in her voice. “Why couldn’t she come to me herself?”

“Because Admiral Daala is a busy person.”

“I’m a busy person, too.”

“She is our commanding officer. You aren’t.”

Qwi asked no further questions but followed in silence as they took her across an access tube to another asteroid in the main conglomeration, then aboard a small shuttle in the landing bay.

When they arrived aboard the Star Destroyer Gorgon, Qwi could not keep herself