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By Root 1429 0

just right in Han’s hands. Better than they had felt in a very long time, as a matter of fact. Oh, the coralskippers tried their best. They swooped in close, firing their molten projectiles and skittering away from return fire like a school of particularly ugly fish. The larger craft—about the size of the Falcon itself—kept a steady fire of its own weapons, releasing whole flights of grutchins. But today was not a lucky day for the Yuuzhan Vong, at least not so far.

Han whooped and turned tight, scraping so close to the transport analog that one of the pursuing coralskippers, already singed by laser fire, smacked right into it.

In his peripheral vision, he saw another skip flame out, drilled by turbolasers.

“Kid can shoot,” Han told his copilot.

“He’s your son,” Leia said. Her voice surprised him. For a nanosecond he’d forgotten it was her there, expecting to find Chewie instead.

And the odd thing? He didn’t feel the gullet-sucking sorrow he usually did. A little wistful, maybe, a little melancholy. A little happiness, too, to have his wife beside him. He’d nearly wrecked that, hadn’t he?

He blinked as a volley of Yuuzhan Vong ordnance found his shields when they shouldn’t have.

“Like I said, Han—” Leia sputtered.

He’d built some distance from the largest Yuuzhan Vong vessel. Now he turned and built g’s toward it. “Concussion missiles when I tell you.”

“Han?”

The Yuuzhan Vong ship loomed closer and closer, and Han grinned out of the side of his mouth.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“You’ve noticed we’re going to hit that thing?”

Han held course.

Leia nearly shrieked because the alternating smooth and striated pattern of yorik coral filled nearly the entire viewport. At the last instant Han nosed up slightly to miss by a few tens of centimeters.

“Missiles, now!” Han said.

The missiles detonated just behind them, a full spread. The Yuuzhan Vong ship broke in half.

“Noticed I’m going to hit what thing?” Han asked innocently.

“Have you lost it?” Leia exclaimed. “What do you think, that you’re twenty again?”

“It ain’t the years—”

She smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. “As I’ve said before, you have your moments. I always knew you were a scoundrel at heart.”

“Me?” The exaggerated innocence that had once come so naturally felt suddenly right again.

The rest of the Yuuzhan Vong ships went out like Hapan paper lamps caught in a high wind, and Jacen shot them into star food. Without the yammosk on the larger ship to coordinate them, the skips were less than dexterous.

“Speaking of scoundrels,” Han said, tapping on the comm unit.

“Hailing the freighter Tinmolok.”

The hail was answered immediately. “Yes, yes. Do not shoot! We are unarmed! We are Etti! We are not Yuuzhan Vong!”

“So you say,” Han said easily. “I can see that you’re taking cargo into occupied space.”

“Relief only! Food for the native populace!”

“Oh, really? Well, now, that I’ve got to see. I’m coming alongside.”

“No, no, I …”

“No problem. Just glad to be able to help.”

“Please, Captain, may I ask who you are?”

Han leaned back and clasped the back of his head in his hands. “You, sir, are speaking to the proud captain of the, ah—” He glanced at Leia. “—Princess of Blood. Prepare to be boarded.”

Leia rolled her eyes.

“This is piracy,” the Etti captain—one Swori Mdimu—grumbled as Han and Jacen took possession of the crew’s sidearms.

“That’s good,” Han told him. “I thought I was going to have to write it down for you, so you’d know what happened. Though for the record, it’s actually privateering. See, pirates steal from anyone. They’re greedy, and they just don’t care who they hijack. Privateers, on the other hand, only attack ships allied with a certain fleet. In this case, I’m choosing for my targets any lowlife gutless and stupid enough to supply the Yuuzhan Vong or the Peace Brigade, or any other collaborationist scum, with anything whatever.”

“I told you—”

“Look,” Han said. “In about five minutes, I’m going to see your cargo. If it’s just a bunch of food that the Yuuzhan Vong are buying for their captives out of the goodness of their sweet,