• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He altered course, swinging around and heading straight toward the seething cluster of black holes. He hoped the shuttle’s weakened shields would last long enough to get them there.

The first of the capital ships reached them and fired, looping overhead, then returning, as if to ram them. The shape of the attacking freighter made Han’s blood turn to water, and he stared in silent dismay for a full second before he managed to cry out. “That’s the Millennium Falcon! That’s my ship!”

The Falcon came straight at them, firing again and again as the shuttle’s forward shields tried to compensate for the pummeling. At the last moment Han wrenched the stolen shuttle into a steep dive so the Falcon scraped by overhead. One of the shots passed through the wavering shields to scar the armor of the shuttle.

“That does it!” Han said. “Now I’m mad. Chewie, at my order drop shields and dump everything into thrust. Pump every last erg into our engines and take us straight into the Maw.” He glanced down at his readouts. “Shields are failing in less than a minute anyway, and the navicomputer needs another six to finish its calculations. Blasted five-hundred-X models!”

Another wing of fighters strafed them, then roared by, leaving a gap to their rear as a huge Lancer frigate closed the distance. A wave of system-patrol craft and Carrack cruisers followed, ready to bring a full armada of turbolasers to bear. Moruth Doole was taking no chances this time.

“Go, Chewie!” Han said.

The Wookiee dropped shields and channeled all power to the sublight engines. The shuttle burst forward in an unexpected spurt of speed, startling the pursuing ships.

“Surprise is only going to help us for a few seconds,” Han said. “Then we’re on our own.”

“By that time we should be in the grip of the Maw,” Kyp whispered.

“If you’re not right about this, kid, we’ll never know it.”

Curtains of incandescent gas blazed in front of them, swirling residue heated by friction as it spiraled in complex orbits through the Roche lobe of one black hole and down the gullet of another. Deadly x-rays filled space, forcing the transparisteel to dim itself to protect the eyes of the passengers.

“Only a complete idiot would try something like this,” Han said. Chewbacca agreed.

The Kessel ships poured on additional acceleration, desperately trying to catch the escapees before Han could reach the Maw cluster. Han hunched over the controls, white-knuckled, as if to increase their speed by sheer force of will.

The fighters unleashed a laser firestorm, but the Maw’s huge gravitational distortions spread out their focus and sent them on long arcs away from the target.

“Let’s just hope these guys aren’t idiots too!” Kyp said. Han drove toward the blazing shreds of hot gas.

The Kessel ships pursued until the last instant, then peeled off at full thrust with their maneuvering engines, letting their prey go to certain death.

Han’s ship plunged into the gravitational jaws of the black hole cluster.

16

Leia suppressed a dignified smile as she led Gantoris into the projection chamber. The dark-haired man stared in his puppetlike way as he tried to gawk at everything at the same time.

Gantoris was resplendent in a new uniform, tailored to match the generations-old pilot suit he had worn as leader on Eol Sha. Leia had loaded a tailor droid with patterns from the archives and presented the uniform to Gantoris as a gift. He had been delighted, puffed with admiration.

Even after getting to know him, Leia felt uncomfortable around Gantoris. Though Luke assured her of the strong Jedi potential in the man, Leia did not like the thought of the deadly “tests” Gantoris had given Luke before he would agree to leave Eol Sha. Gantoris had lived a hellish life, she admitted, but he seemed too intense, his dark eyes fiery pits of contained fury. He had the look of a man accustomed to power suddenly shown how small he is in the grand scheme of things.

But the other side of Gantoris intrigued