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“Yes, it killed several, including the shift boss and my assistant—the ones I told you about. How many bodies have you found so far?” Doole asked the guard.

“Three fresh ones and two old ones, and we think it killed a bunch more. There’s a big Wookiee and some other prisoners still unaccounted for.”

Doole scowled at the guard, but quickly regained his false smile.

Luke felt cold upon hearing the news. Of course, there was no way of knowing whether the Wookiee in question was Chewbacca—the Empire had taken a great many slaves from the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, and many survivors could well have been shipped off to Kessel. Luke met Lando’s gaze, and the other man shook his head ever so slightly. “Very interesting,” Lando said.

“Come on, there’s more to see,” Doole said as he strode back to the floating cars. “I hope all this is impressing you.”

“Certainly is,” Lando said. “You have an amazing operation here, Moruth.”

Luke remained silent. All day long he had been straining his senses, searching for some echo of Han or Chewbacca, but he had found nothing. Plenty of others wallowed in pain and misery here, but Luke found no hint of the ones he sought.

Han Solo might never have reached Kessel, and he was certainly no longer there. At least not alive.

19

The admiral’s quarters on an Imperial-class Star Destroyer were spacious and functional, and they had been Daala’s only home for more than a decade.

Year after year she operated in a vacuum, alone as always, following Tarkin’s parting instructions with no further input from the Grand Moff. The great distortion of the Maw itself blacked out all external holonet transmissions. Her fleet had been isolated, and the crew on her four Star Destroyers had fallen into a routine, but Daala did not relax her grip. She was afraid to wonder about events outside in the galaxy, confident at least that she could count on the Empire with its unbending rules, sometimes cruel but always clear-cut.

But now, in her turmoil, she was glad her quarters were sealed and locked, quiet and empty, so no one could see her like this. It would ruin her image entirely. Everything had been cut-and-dried before the interrogation of the new prisoners.…

Daala punched up the recording and watched it again, though she had already replayed the sequence a dozen times. She could mouth the words as the prisoner spoke them, but this tiny image could not convey the impact she had felt when watching him firsthand.

The man, Han Solo, sat strapped in a nightmarish, convoluted chair with steel tubes and wires and piping tangled around him. The gadgetry looked sharp and ominous—most of it served no purpose other than to increase the prisoner’s terror, and in that it proved effective.

On the recording, Daala stood by Commander Kratas, the captain of her flagship, the Gorgon. She could smell the prisoner’s fear, but his demeanor was full of bluster and sarcasm. He would crack easily.

“Tell us where you come from,” Daala said. “Is the Rebel Alliance crushed yet? What has happened in the Empire?”

“Go kiss a Hutt!” Solo snapped.

Daala stared woodenly at him for a moment, then shrugged, nodding to Kratas. The commander punched a control pad, and one of the metal bars across the restraining chair hummed.

The muscles in Solo’s left thigh began to spasm, jittering. His leg bounced up and down. The spasms grew worse. He had a puzzled, confused look on his face, as if he couldn’t understand why his own body was suddenly behaving so strangely. The involuntary seizure clenched the muscles under his skin.

Daala smiled.

Kratas adjusted one of the controls, and Solo flinched as the muscles along the left side of his rib cage also began spasming, tightening his body, but the chair would not let him move. Solo fought back an outcry.

The seizures were not so painful as they were maddening. Daala had found that a most effective interrogation technique was simply to induce an unrelenting facial tick that made the eyes blink over and over and over again for hours without end.

“Tell us about the