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Han turned to the defectors. “You two are coming with me. Any trouble and I’ll stick you in a locker for the rest of the voyage, understand?”

The woman bristled, but the little alien nodded. “We’re in your hands.”

Han raised his index finger. “Remember that.”

They hadn’t gone ten meters when he heard Droma ask, “Han?”

“My code name,” Han said over his shoulder.

“You’re an intelligence agent?”

Han came to a halt and whirled around. “Stay out of this, Droma. We’re not playing cards now.”

Droma tilted his head. “Where are you planning to hide them—in your cabin? I know this ship better than you do. The only safe place is down below, where you can lose them in the crowd.”

Han mulled it over, then nodded curtly. “All right. Let’s go.”

They set out for the nearest turbolift and were just shy of them when the Queen sustained an unexpected jolt, powerful enough to send Elan off her feet. While Droma helped her up, Han hastened to a nearby observation blister. In place of the purplish-white chaos of lightspeed, local space was fracturing into elongating lines of light. Han watched the lines compress to pinpoints, only to disappear and elongate once more. Finally, the pinpoints spun and arranged themselves into a starfield. In the middle distance a large, heavily pitted planetoid was revealed by a distant red-orange sun.

“We’ve been decanted,” he said, not without puzzlement.

Droma glanced at a time display on the corridor wall. “It’s too soon for Bilbringi—”

Howling sirens silenced him, and the PA annunciators came alive.

“Attention, all passengers,” someone began in standard Basic. “This is the captain speaking. We have been forcibly reverted to realspace by unknown raiders. Onboard confederates of the raiders are already assaulting the bridge.”

“Raiders,” Han sniggered. “They’re not raiders, they’re after someone in particular.”

“Are you sure?” Droma asked warily.

Han thought back to another time he’d been separated from Chewie and the Falcon, booking commercial passage aboard the luxury liner Lady of Mindor with Fiolla, a companion far more enjoyable than the Ryn beside him. That ship, too, had suffered a phony pirate attack—led by Fiolla’s traitorous right-hand man, Magg.

“Pretty sure,” Han deadpanned.

“It’s my people!” Elan said, stricken with fear. “They’ve brought a dovin basal to bear on the ship.” She dug short nails into Han’s biceps. “Please don’t let them find us—please!”

“Our shields have been rendered useless,” the captain continued, “and our pursuers are coming alongside to board. Distress calls have been dispatched. I’m certain that someone will come to our aid. But in the meantime I request that everyone remain calm. I repeat, I urge everyone to remain calm.”

“The nerve of him,” Leia said, venting to Luke and Mara as she paced the tile floor of their apartment on Coruscant. “Telling me I’m incapable of understanding his grief, then running off to who knows where.”

“You can take the boy out of Corellia, but you can’t take Corellia out of the boy,” Mara remarked from the couch.

Luke smiled faintly. “Leia, this isn’t the first time Han’s done something like this. Remember when he and I went to Crseih Research Station?”

“That was different,” Leia said, shaking her head. “All right, he might have been yearning for the good old days, but that trip was more about his resignation from the military.” She took a seat opposite her brother and his wife. “What he’s doing now has nothing to do with nostalgia or his feeling hemmed in by an honorific. It’s all about Chewie.”

“But that’s natural,” Mara offered carefully.

“The grief and confusion, yes,” Leia said. “But I think he’s bent on vengeance.” She sighed with purpose. “An old friend came to see him—a man named Roa. And off they went to Ord Mantell. Why would they venture so close to enemy-held space unless Roa had information of some sort?”

“But of what sort?” Luke asked. “The Yuuzhan Vong directly responsible for what happened on Sernpidal are dead. Han helped see to that himself at Helska 4.”

“Luke, if that was any consolation, he wouldn