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Except Anakin had felt “something bad.” The destruction on the Run? Or something even worse?

The children had been very upset by the explosion in the Senate Hall. Luke had told him of the extent of their distress. He had been too distressed himself to see it.

Chewie howled at him.

“Yeah, I will check up on him,” Han said. “But first I want to know what’s happening on Coruscant. I can’t very well comfort the kid if—”

Han stopped himself from saying anything about Leia. He couldn’t make assumptions about Coruscant. Just because the droids were meant for the center of government didn’t mean they had exploded there too.

But the chances were that they had.

He swiveled back toward the console, and hailed Leia on Coruscant. Almost immediately, Mon Mothma’s face appeared on his small screen.

“Han,” she said. “We’d almost given up on you.”

His hands were shaking. Chewie moaned softly. “I was looking for Leia, Mon Mothma.”

Mon Mothma nodded. “Apparently you haven’t gotten her messages, then. She’s not here.”

“She’s not?” Han’s mouth was dry. “Is she all right?”

“As far as I know,” Mon Mothma said. “We’ve just discovered that she and Wedge took a fleet to Almania.”

“Almania?” That was where those mysterious messages had come from. Where the man that Blue had talked about lived. Kueller seemed to be everywhere. “Why?”

“The ruler there threatened the New Republic, and Leia in particular. He has Luke there as a prisoner.”

“Luke?” Blue’s voice echoed in Han’s ear: He wants her and Skywalker gone. “She went after him?”

“Until she got Wedge to go with her, what she did was her business, Han,” Mon Mothma said in her calm way. “She resigned.”

“She resigned?” Each announcement hit him harder. How long had he been gone? Leia loved her post. She would never resign.

Mon Mothma nodded. “She believes that Kueller—the Almanian ruler—is Force-sensitive. She thinks he has no real interest in the Republic. Instead his interest is in her and her family. She may be right. Would you like me to download his message to her?”

“Yes,” Han said.

Mon Mothma was about to sign off when Chewie moaned again.

“Oh, right,” Han said. The degree of his upset showed when he couldn’t remember his initial fears. “Mon Mothma, is everything all right on Coruscant?”

“The Imperials in the Council are in an uproar about Leia’s departure. They want you for treason, Han, because there is some evidence linking you with the Senate Hall bombing, and the local garbage workers have just gone on strike because of some confusion in their last three credit payments.” She grinned. “Business as usual, I would say.”

He didn’t even want to think about the treason claim. It probably had to do with those messages Lando had told him about. “Anything with droids?”

She frowned. “Now that you mention it, we got an odd message from Luke. He must have sent it before his capture or maybe just after since it was in code. It warned us to shut off all the new droids. I trusted the source and did. That’s started a whole new level of complaints. You should hear—”

“You shut them down.” Han closed his eyes and let relief flood him. If Luke hadn’t warned them, all of Coruscant would be in the same kind of ruin that the Run was in.

“Yes,” Mon Mothma said. “Is that significant? I was thinking of reactivating them. I simply can’t deal with that crisis on top of all the others.”

“Don’t,” Han said.

Chewie was yowling at the same time, saying the same thing in Wookiee.

“We have a ship full of injured smugglers. The droids they had stolen from Coruscant exploded. In fact, Chewie will send you the signatures of several smuggling ships. They’ll need help finding medical facilities.”

Mon Mothma’s normally calm features had gone a deadly pale. “They exploded? Is this what happened in the Senate Hall?”

“I think so,” Han said.

She took a deep breath, obviously settling herself. “Well, then, I guess we won’t reactivate them until we find the source of the problem. Thank you, Han.”

“I wish I could say it was my pleasure. But I’ve got hundreds of dead and injured colleagues that