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“The game is effectively over,” C-3PO told Han Solo. “I suggest that you surrender the rest of your players now, rather than risk further humiliation.”

“Surrender?” Han jerked his thumb at the golden protocol droid. “Who’s he think he’s talking to?”

Leia Organa Solo raised her brown eyes from the game table to glance at her husband. “I have to admit, things do look pretty bad.”

C-3PO agreed. “I’m afraid you can’t win, Captain Solo.”

Han scratched his head absently, and continued to study the playing field. “That’s not the first time someone’s told me that.”

The three of them were seated at the circular dejarik table in the forward hold of Millennium Falcon. The table was in fact a hologram projector, with a checkered surface etched in concentric circles of green and gold. At the moment it was displaying six holomonster pieces, some legendary, some modeled after actual creatures, with names that sounded more like sneezes than words.

Squatting on the grated portion of the compartment deck sat Cakhmaim and Meewalh, Leia’s Noghri protectors. Agile bipeds with hairless gray skin and pronounced cranial ridges, they were unnervingly predatory in appearance, but their loyalty to Leia knew no bounds. In the long war against the Yuuzhan Vong, several Noghri had already given their lives to safeguard the woman they still sometimes referred to as “Lady Vader.”

“Don’t tell me that you are actually contemplating a move?” C-3PO said.

Han looked at him askance. “What do I look like I’m doing—stargazing?”

“But, Captain Solo—”

“Quit rushing me, I tell you.”

“Really, Threepio,” Leia intervened in false sincerity. “You have to give him time to think.”

“But Princess Leia, the game timer is nearing the end of its cycle.”

Leia shrugged. “You know how he is.”

“Yes, Princess, I know how he is.”

Han glared at the two of them. “What is this, some kind of tag-team match?”

C-3PO started. “Certainly not. I’m merely—”

“Remember,” Han said, thrusting his finger out, “it’s not over till the Hutt squeals.”

C-3PO looked to Leia for explanation. “The Hutt squeals?”

Han cupped his scarred chin in his hand and took in the board. Early on he had lost a broad-shouldered Kintan strider to C-3PO’s venomous, corrugated k’lor’slug; then a pincer-handed ng’ok to the droid’s lance-wielding Socorran monnok.

Han’s quadrant of the board still showed a hunchbacked, knuckle-dragging, green-hided Mantellian savrip, and a bulbous-bodied ghhhk. But his alloy opponent had not only a claw-handed, trumpet-snouted grimtassh and a four-legged, sharp-toothed houjix, but also two rainbow-skinned Alderaanian molators waiting in the wings. Unless Han could do something to prevent it, C-3PO was going to send the grimtassh to the board’s center space and win the game.

Then it hit him.

A sinister laugh escaped his closed lips and his eyes sparkled.

Leia regarded him for a moment. “Uh-oh, Threepio. I don’t like the sound of that laugh.”

Han shot her a look. “Since when?”

“I understand completely, Princess,” C-3PO said, on alert. “But, really, I don’t see that there’s anything he can do at this point.”

Han’s fingers activated a series of control buttons built into the rim of the table. With Leia and C-3PO gazing intently at the board, the hulking Mantellian savrip sidestepped to the left, took hold of the ghhhk—Han’s other remaining piece—and held the suddenly screeching creature high overhead.

C-3PO might have blinked if he had eyes in place of photoreceptors. “But … but you’ve attacked your own piece.” He turned to Han. “Captain Solo, if this is some kind of trick to distract me, or some attempt to instill compassion—”

“Save your compassion for someone who needs it,” Han cut in. “Like it or not, that’s my move.”

C-3PO watched the squealing, seemingly betrayed ghhhk struggle in the savrip’s viselike grip. “Most infuriating creature,” he said. “Still, a victory is a victory.”

The droid lowered his hands to the control panel and commanded the grimtassh to advance to the center. But no sooner did the snouted creature take a step than Han