• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He might not emerge this time.

Lando stood, and paced through the cockpit. He had brought droids with him, half a dozen, all of various uses. Leia had forced credits on him as well so that he could buy information in the Run.

And he had brought a small arsenal, hidden in the secret smuggling compartments of the Lady Luck. The smugglers might find his weapons, and they might not. Lando hadn’t gotten where he was without gambling.

He paused, leaned forward, and looked out the cockpit transparisteel at the Run. From this distance, it looked as if an artist had swept a gutter-filled paintbrush across the blackness of space. The asteroids sparkled in the light of a nearby star. Debris formed a milky trail from asteroid to asteroid.

The Run had existed for a long, long time. The entrance was tricky to anyone who didn’t know the way. More Imperial ships had been marooned in the debris trail than any others. The Emperor had tried to find the Run several times, thinking he could recruit its denizens. Those ships that didn’t slam against rock were blasted out of space.

Smugglers didn’t work for anyone except themselves.

The Emperor had never learned that.

Lando knew that, though.

The chill that had followed him since he had first discovered the Spicy Lady was more pronounced here. For the fifteenth time, he checked the environmental controls. They were working perfectly.

If he backed out now, and something happened to Han, this incident would burn in his memory worse than losing Han to the carbonite. A man couldn’t betray a friend twice. Han, despite the difficulties the two of them had had, would figure out a way into a dangerous situation to save Lando.

Lando had to do the same.

Impressions of the Run rose in him; the dank, smelly chambers in Skip 1, the gambling tables, the constant scams. The duels that had forced him to watch his back, and the friendships that he still had.

Or that he thought he still had. Nandreeson could buy anyone for the right price.

Anyone except Han.

All Lando had to do was find Han, warn him, and get out. The first two might not be difficult. The third would. But Lando’s mission would be accomplished, and that was all that mattered.

Still, a man was foolish if he didn’t allow himself a back door.

He punched in a coded message, sent it to Mara, and sent a duplicate to Leia, with instructions to forward it to Mara. That way, his back door was assured.

Then he sat back in the pilot’s chair, strapped himself in, and aimed the Lady Luck at Smuggler’s Run. He burned the engines high, giving the ship tremendous speed. As it headed toward the Run, he bent under his console, took his all-purpose laser wrench, and removed the panel. He pulled three chips, pocketed them, and watched as the power to all the ship’s vital areas failed.

The Lady Luck was disabled, and hurtling toward the Run.

He punched the communications console, and sent the Run a copy of the Luck’s legitimate cargo manifold—a smuggler’s equivalent of Mayday.

Luke landed the X-wing on a wide metallic strip on the northern face of Telti. Domes rose around, metal domes on a barren, sandblasted landscape. When he had first read about Telti, he had thought it would look like Tatooine, a desert planet, but as he landed he realized he was wrong.

Tatooine was full of life. Creatures lived in the sand. Even the suns had a presence.

But Telti was a moon. It had no atmosphere and no life of its own. The dirt covering the ball floating through space was just that—dirt. And yet the moon was littered with domed buildings and metal landing strips. His computer showed him, as he landed, that a series of tunnels connected each building underground.

He was reaching for his breath mask when the landing strip started to move. He glanced over his shoulder, an old reflex, to see Artoo’s reaction.

But Artoo wasn’t there.

Luke had never felt more alone. He hadn’t spoken to a living being since he had left Brakiss’s mother. She had given him directions to Telti, all the while warning him away from her son.

Luke’s entire