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The black outline of Exar Kun rippled in an unseen breeze. As the shadow vanished, Kun’s last words were, “We shall see!”

14

Standoff.

Han Solo felt cold sweat spring from his forehead as he looked out from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. In front of him the Sun Crusher powered up its supernova torpedo launcher.

Han pounded his fist on the console. “Hold it, kid!” he shouted. “Just hold it. I thought you were my friend.”

“If you were my friend,” Kyp’s voice croaked through the speaker, “you wouldn’t try to stop me. You know what the Empire did to my life, to my family. The Empire lied to me one last time—and now even my brother is dead.”

At the copilot’s station Lando scrambled at the controls. His big eyes flicked back and forth, and he turned to Han, waving frantically for him to shut off the voice pickup.

“Han,” he whispered, “remember when you and Kyp took the Sun Crusher away from Maw Installation? And Luke and I were there waiting to intercept you?”

Han nodded, not sure what Lando was getting at. “Sure.”

“Back then we linked the ships together because the Falcon’s navicomputer wouldn’t work.” He raised his eyebrows and spoke very slowly. “Listen … we’ve still got the Sun Crusher’s control codes in here.”

Suddenly Han understood. “Can you do anything with that? You’re not even familiar with the Sun Crusher’s systems.”

“Don’t have much choice, do we, buddy?”

“All right,” Han said in a needlessly low voice, because the voice pickup was switched off. “I’ll keep him talking—you work to deactivate the Sun Crusher.” Lando, with a skeptical but determined frown, continued his programming.

Han toggled on the comm system again. “Kyp, don’t you remember when we went turbo-skiing at the poles of Coruscant? You led me down one of the dangerous paths, but I went after you because I thought you were going to fall on your face. Don’t you remember that?”

Kyp didn’t answer, but Han knew he had struck home.

“Kid, who got you out of the spice mines of Kessel?” he said. “Who broke you out of the detention cell on the Gorgon? Who was with you during the escape from the Maw? Who promised to do everything he could to make your life worth living again after your years of misery?”

Kyp answered in a halting voice. “It didn’t work.”

“But why not, kid? What went wrong? What happened on Yavin 4? I know you and Luke didn’t get along—”

“It had nothing to do with Luke Skywalker,” Kyp snapped so defensively that Han knew it wasn’t true. “There in the temples I learned things Master Skywalker would never teach. I learned how to be strong. I learned how to fight the Empire, to turn my own anger into a weapon.”

“Look, kid,” Han said, “I don’t claim to understand anything about the Force. In fact I once said it was a hokey religion full of mumbo jumbo. But I do know that what you’re saying sounds dangerously close to the dark side.”

After a deep pause Kyp said haltingly, “Han … I—”

“Got it!” Lando whispered.

Han nodded, and Lando punched in the control sequence.

A rapid succession of lights twinkled on the control panel as the override command was transmitted across the narrow bridge of space. In the black gulf lit only by a backwash of dull light from the exploded red-dwarf star, the Sun Crusher suddenly went dark: the lights in its cockpit, the aiming beacons on its laser cannons, and the blaze of plasma at the end of its toroidal torpedo generator.

“Yes!” Lando shouted. Han gave a whoop of triumph, and the two of them reached out to slap their hands together.

“Let me talk to him,” Han said. “Does he still have power to his comm system?”

“Channel open,” Lando said. “But I don’t think he’s very happy—”

“You tricked me!” Kyp’s voice screamed through the speaker panel. “You claimed to be my friend—and now you’ve betrayed me. It’s just like Exar Kun said. Friends betray you. A Jedi has no time for friendship. You should all die.”

Astonishingly, the power in the Sun Crusher surged back to life again, despite Lando’s overrides. The lights came