• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“You think an Imperial base is there now?” Leia asked.

“I found a stormtrooper helmet on that ship. And some odd Imperial equipment. But this doesn’t seem like the Empire’s style. They always destroyed first, asked questions later.”

“The Empire isn’t run by Palpatine anymore. Or Vader.” Or Thrawn or any of the other pretenders who had arisen in the last seventeen years. “Someone new might have a new style.”

A subtler style. One that blended better with the politics of the present. Destroy the belief in the New Republic. Implant some of your own people in the Senate—and take over, as Palpatine had done all those years before.

Leia shuddered. “We have to reach Han. We have to warn him.”

Lando nodded. “You send him a message, if you can. I’ll go after him. Where’d he go?”

“Smuggler’s Run.”

Lando sank into the couch beside her.

“What’s the matter, Lando?”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t go to the Run. A rather nasty character named Nandreeson has a price on my head.”

Leia felt the air leave her body. If Lando couldn’t go, she’d have to send someone else. But whom? From Han’s description of the Run, no one but a select few people knew how to find it.

Then Lando pushed off the couch, his cape flying behind him. He almost looked as if he were flying. “But that shouldn’t stop me, should it?” he said as he reached the door. “What’s a few credits between friends?”

“It’s not necessary, Lando,” she said softly. “We can find someone else.”

“Not quickly enough,” he said. “And not someone I’d trust to help Han. No. I have to go.”

“Lando—”

He held up his hand to stop her from saying any more. “You can’t change my mind, Leia,” he said. “On Bespin I nearly killed Han through my own greed and recklessness. I’ll never forget that.”

“You helped rescue Han. You’ve worked well for the New Republic. I think you’ve more than made up for that moment.”

“I’ll never make up for it, Leia,” he said, looking more serious than she had ever seen him. Then he grinned, the wide rogue’s grin that someone must have taught every shady character who once visited Smuggler’s Run. “But no one can stop me from trying.”

Cole Fardreamer had never reassembled an old X-wing before. And he certainly had never done it while supervised by an outdated R2 unit. This little unit seemed to have a mind of its own. It bleeped at him every time he moved away from the X-wing. If it had had arms, they would have been crossed in front of its silver-and-blue barrel-like chest.

He had tried to bring in a Kloperian to help, but the little R2 unit had rocked on its wheels and squealed so loudly that Cole rethought the idea. Skywalker had said the R2 unit had been “imprisoned” by the Kloperians. An odd choice of words, but the R2 unit’s very human reaction gave them credence.

This part of the bay was empty. Whenever coworkers approached, the R2 unit would whistle. Cole would greet them, and if they were curious about what he was doing, he would report that he was working on a special project. No one questioned him further—except his supervisor, who, upon learning that the project and the X-wing belonged to Luke Skywalker, left Cole alone.

He was glad Skywalker hadn’t waited. This job had already taken longer than Cole had expected. The R2 unit had commented on that—at least, Cole thought that was what the R2 unit was giving the raspberry to when Cole mentioned his difficulty with reassembling the X-wing. Cole couldn’t really understand the R2 unit, but the unit was so expressive that at times he felt he didn’t have to.

What had Skywalker called it? Artoo. As if the designation of type were a nickname. Thinking of the droid as the R2 unit seemed like a mindful. Cole grinned at it.

“Now we get to work on the socket for the astromech unit, Artoo.”

The droid whistled and rocked, but Cole didn’t know if that was in response to Skywalker’s nickname for it, or to the action Cole had just outlined. He thought it might be both.

He climbed behind the small cockpit and removed the bolts holding in the upgraded