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“Sithspit, you’re obnoxious.” Forge fixed Elassar with an amused glance. “But you’re on the right track. I was thinking we ought to offer him General Han Solo.”

“Don’t do that,” said Hobbie from his stool at the bar. His voice was more mournful than ever. “If Zsinj kills Solo, Wedge might be appointed to fill the vacancy.”

“Good point,” Forge said. “But bear with me a minute. Kell, didn’t you say that General Solo had gone gallivanting around in the Millennium Falcon two, three months ago, delivering some high-security messages for the Inner Council?”

Kell, sharing a couch with Tyria, nodded. “That’s right.”

“There was no secret to the fact that he was moving about. And you used his trip to pull a fast one on Admiral Trigit. To distract him from his primary objective over Commenor’s moon. You made him think Solo was still around, a viable target.”

“Show due respect,” said Runt. A member of a species whose representatives were usually too tall to fit in a starfighter cockpit, Runt was, by their standards, a midget, though he and Kell were the tallest of the Wraiths. His hairy body, his elongated face with flaring nostrils and large, square teeth, and his wide-eyed look all suggested that his kind were closer to being draft animals than intelligent humanoids, but his squadmates had found him to be a wise and capable being.

And somewhat odd. “You speak,” he continued, “of the only flight of Dinner Squadron. The one X-wing squadron with an undefeated record and no losses.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Forge smiled. “But what I’m saying is that we have a track record of General Solo occasionally embarking on special missions even while commanding the Zsinj task force, and if there’s anyone Zsinj might change his plans to nab, it’s Han Solo. A chance for revenge is a powerful motivator.”

“I like it.” The voice came from another of the egg-chairs against the wall. It was turned away from the room, so the other pilots present had presumed it was unoccupied or that anyone there was engrossed in his terminal.

Now the chair turned around to face the room. Its occupant was Han Solo—not decked out in the uncomfortable-looking uniform that was apparently his bane, but wearing the comfortable trousers, shirt, and vest that were his preferred dress. His clothes were spotted with sweat stains; obviously he hadn’t changed since his recent time on the bridge. But his expression was amused. “But there are two problems with this plan.”

Forge cleared her throat, concealing any surprise she might have felt. “And what are they, sir?”

“No ‘sir.’ No decor, remember? Problem number one is that the Millennium Falcon is currently stowed on Princess Leia’s flagship, the Rebel Dream, and there’s no telling when I’ll see her again.”

Donos privately wondered which “her” he was referring to.

“Problem number two,” Solo continued, “is that we still don’t know what Zsinj is up to. And you Wraiths are largely to blame for that.”

The pilots under his command looked around for someone bearing a mark of guilt.

“By which I mean,” Solo said, “since you figured out that he was planning to steal a second Super Star Destroyer, Razor’s Kiss, from Kuat, and since you figured out how to determine where it would be so we could all blow it up, you’ve forced Zsinj to revert to his backup plan. Which is what?”

Forge shook her head. “We don’t know.”

Face said, “Though we have one lead. Saffalore.”

That was an Imperial-held world in the Corporate Sector, home to a large corporation called Binring Biomedical. It was there that Piggy had been altered—had, in a sense, been created. A manufacturing facility owned by Zsinj on another world had fabricated the exact sort of transparisteel cages Piggy had been reared within, suggesting that Binring, too, might have a surreptitious relationship with the warlord.

“I’m as tired as you are of chasing down vague hints and leads and only dropping in after Zsinj is long gone,” Solo said. “So Mon Remonda is leaving the fleet for a while. Saffalore is our next port of