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“Solo, you have caused me more grief than any other life-form in the galaxy—including Jabba the Hutt! I should have squashed you when I had you in my office.”

Han rolled his eyes. “Well, you missed your chance, and I don’t plan on giving you another one.”

Doole chuckled, a hissing heh-heh-heh laugh like a fat man choking on sand. “You won’t get away. I’ll mobilize everything against you. Better start thinking about the afterlife now.”

Kyp squinted out the port, as if deep in concentration. The atmosphere thinned around the fleeing ship at the far limit of where Kessel’s gravity could keep hold. He saw Kessel’s moon and suddenly shivered uncontrollably. He blinked in confusion.

Chewbacca bellowed into the speaker mesh. “You tell him, Chewie,” Han said, then switched off the radio.

Kyp scrambled forward and grabbed the controls, activating the maneuvering rockets and making the shuttle lurch forward with enough force to slam Han and Chewbacca against their seats. Kyp tumbled backward, unable to keep his balance in the acceleration.

“What did you do that for?” Han demanded, glaring at Kyp.

But Chewbacca made an alarmed noise and dragged Han back to the console. Just below them the atmosphere shimmered and crinkled as an impenetrable ionized screen appeared, blanketing the planet.

“They’ve got their energy shield operational!” Han said. The workers on Kessel’s moonbase had repaired the protective screen that blocked off the prison planet. If Kyp hadn’t punched their acceleration exactly when he did, they would have been sizzled in the bath of power or trapped beneath the shield, unable to escape.

“How did you know?” Han said, looking over his shoulder at Kyp. Kyp picked himself up off the floor, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “Never mind. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just get us away from Kessel.”

Han spun around to the shuttle’s controls. “Chewie, contact the New Republic. No waiting this time. They’ve got to learn what’s going on here, just in case we don’t make it back.”

The Wookiee bent over the comm controls as Han struggled with the navicomputer. Han gawked at the task in front of him. “Damn! This thing’s an old five-hundred-X model! Haven’t seen one of these outside a museum. I hope they gave us a scratchpad to do backup calculations. That might be faster and more accurate!”

Chewbacca moaned and pounded his hairy fist on the console with enough force to buckle the panels. Han flashed a sidelong look at him. “What do you mean we’re being jammed? Who’s jamming us?”

Kyp turned to the side viewport, said in a low voice, “Here they come.”

The garrison on Kessel’s moon spewed fighters, dozens of rejuvenated battle craft, armored freighters, slim and heavily armed X-wings, and TIE fighters. Many of the ships must have been damaged during the recent war and then salvaged. Now Doole had also gotten his planetary defense shield running again. Kessel would be a veritable stronghold against any attack.

Streams of X-wings and Y-wings coursed out, flanked on either side by a squadron of TIE fighters. They roared through the wispy tail of atmosphere in Kessel’s orbital wake, leaving a glowing window of ionized gas from their sublight engines.

“Strap yourselves in,” Han said. “This is going to be a hell of a ride.” He reached for the controls, preparing to fight, then felt a boulder drop in his stomach. “What? This ship is unarmed!” He frantically scanned the console. “Nothing! Not a single laser! Not even a slingshot!”

Kyp held the back of Han’s pilot chair, bracing himself. “We stole a supply ship, not a fighter. What did you expect?”

“Chewie, pump everything into our shields—and I mean everything, including life support. We’ve got enough air in here to last longer than this ship is likely to hold. Boost shields until they’re off the scale. We’re going to have to outrun them.”

The first wave of TIE fighters soared in, their Twin Ion Engines howling over the cockpit’s feedback speakers. Laser spears shot out, pummeling