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The Jedi Master was circling the craft while Wraw and Sasso inspected the cockpit. Page, Ferfer, and Meloque were scouting the forest to the north, in the direction of Caluula City. The timbus were grazing contentedly nearby.

Han stood up, put the edge of his hand to his brow, and gazed at the splintered trees. “Came in from that direction.” He pointed to a depression some distance away. “Hit the ground there, plowed its way through those bushes, and came to a stop here.”

Kyp completed his circle of the craft, nodding his head. “Only question is, what brought it down?”

“Caluula Orbital. What else?”

Kyp regarded the coralskipper. “No signs of laserfire from batteries or starfighter cannons.”

Han’s forehead wrinkled. “Can’t be.” He ducked down to appraise what he could of the underside, then stood up. “Must have caught a bolt straight through the canopy.”

“No signs of that either,” Sasso said, jumping down to the ground.

Han looked at Kyp. “Could have been stunned by an ion cannon …” He let his words trail off when he realized the impossibility of it. “No craft comes down the gravity well at terminal velocity and ends up looking like this one.”

Kyp nodded in agreement. “From the way the trees are sheared off and the depth of the initial impact crater, the skip couldn’t have been higher than three hundred meters.”

“A patrol craft,” Sasso said.

“That would explain why there’s no heat damage.” Han turned to the Rodian. “Could one of your people have shot it down? Someone in the resistance?”

Sasso shook his head. “We don’t have the weapons for that.”

Wraw leapt down from the cockpit. “So what happened, it suffered heart failure?”

Han made his lips a thin line and shrugged. “Maybe with the Yuuzhan Vong devoting almost everything they have to the armada, they’ve exiled their shoddiest biots and least experienced warriors to worlds like Caluula.” He laughed ruefully. “They’re in even worse shape than we are.”

“No,” Kyp said. “Only here are they in worse shape.”

Leia listened to them trying to convince themselves that there was a reasonable explanation for the crashed craft and the inept warriors they had ambushed. But, in fact, lack of genuine explanations had everyone on edge.

Worried that the team was under surveillance, no one had slept the previous night. In the morning they had made a decision to abandon the trail and bushwhack through the thick forest, in the hope of avoiding detection. That they hadn’t seen any reconnaissance biots or evidence of foot patrols had only added to the suspicion that they were being led into a trap.

Then their purposefully meandering path had brought them to the coralskipper.

“You know what could have happened,” Han was saying. “The yammosk could have steered it wrong.”

“I can see that,” Sasso said. “I can even see that a crash like this could take out the pilot and the dovin basal. But why would the cognition hood die? Do the hoods feed off the basals?” He stared at the coralskipper. “I’ve spent more time trying to avoid them than study them.”

“Our daughter could explain it,” Han said. “She’s actually piloted a vessel like this.”

Jaina!

A sense of deep concern flooded through Leia. But before she could begin to make sense of it, Han was yelling something at Wraw. Leia saw that the Bothan had clambered back to the cockpit and was making sketches of the interior.

“Something to show the grandchildren,” Wraw said when Han demanded to know what he was doing.

“Grandchildren? You’ll be lucky to even have kids of your own.”

Wraw closed the sketch pad. “If I do, I know I’ll have sense enough to keep them out of the war.”

Han advanced on the Bothan with menacing familiarity. “I’m going to have to teach you the ways of the world before this is over.”

Leia could see that Kyp was ready to step between them, but the confrontation went no further. “He’s Corellian,” Kyp said quietly to Wraw while Han was walking away. “They don’t make idle threats.”

Wraw only sniggered.

Sasso left to find Meloque, Page, and Ferfer. Han, Leia, and Kyp were gathering the timbus when Han said,