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"Directional?" Tenel Ka broke in. "You mean you know where we are?"

"Oh, most assuredly, Mistress Tenel Ka. Didn't I just say so?"

She groaned and shook her head. "All right, Em Teedee, let's go. Lead on."

Tenel Ka's spirits were brighter than the twin beams that shone from Em Teedee's eyes and lit her way along the forest floor. As annoying as the little droid could be, she was glad of his company. Em Teedee seemed genuinely interested in hearing all that had happened to her since the TIE fighter pilot had tried to capture them that afternoon. In turn, she found herself enjoying his descriptions of the T-23 crash and his adventures with the woolamanders. She wondered what had happened to Lowbacca, and to the twins.

They stopped only a few times, so that she could drink or check the dressing on her minor wounds. Using rudimentary first-aid supplies she kept in her belt, she had bound up the claw scratches on her arm and the gash on her leg. The wounds throbbed and burned, but did not slow her down. She jogged much of the way, and kept to a fast-paced march even when she needed to rest.

The distant white sun of the Yavin system was bright in the morning sky when Tenel Ka and Em Teedee finally broke through the last stand of trees into the cleared landing area. The sun-warmed stone of the Great Temple glowed like a welcome beacon in the dis tance.

"Oh, we made it!" Em Teedee said joyfully. Tenel Ka looked around and saw in the center of the clearing a ship that she recog nized well: the Millennium Falcon.

Running toward the modified light freighter at full speed were two Wookiees, one large and one smaller, and Jacen and Jaina's father, Han Solo. She guessed immediately what mission they were on and changed her course toward the Falcon, waving and shouting as she ran.

Overhead, she heard the bone-chilling howl of a fast-approaching TIE

fighter. She put on another burst of speed toward the ship.

But Solo and the Wookiees did not see her. In their hurry to rescue Jacen and Jaina, the three scrambled up the ramp of the Falcon. They must have kept the engines idling to keep them warm, she figured, for she could hear their whine.

Tenel Ka wanted to help rescue the twins; she couldn't let them down again. "Call them, Em Teedee," she said, pouring on a last burst of speed, though her legs already trembled with exhaustion.

Em Teedee mused, "Am I to take it that you wish to communicate with them?"

"This is a fact."

"Certainly, Mistress. I would be delighted, but what shall-"

"Just do it!" She gritted her teeth and sprinted as fast as she could.

Suddenly Em Teedee's voice boomed at top volume through the clearing.

"Attention, Millennium Falcon. Please delay departure mo mentarily to take on two additional passengers."

Tenel Ka didn't even mind the ringing in her ears when she saw the ramp of the Millennium Falcon lower. At full tilt, she ran up the ramp.

"Okay," she gasped, collapsing to the floor in the crew compartment.

"Let's go!"

Han Solo and the two Wookiees looked at her in amazement for an instant, but no one needed any further urging. Even as she spoke, the hatches sealed, and with a surge of defiance the Millennium Falcon took off.

20

Qorl flew his single fighter at top speed over the thick jungle canopy.

The rushing air of Yavin 4 screamed around the TIE fighter's rounded pilot compartment and the rectangular solar arrays. He remembered his days as a trainee. He had been an excellent pilot-one of the best in his squadron-soaring through mock battles and enforcing the Emperor's unbending will.

Air currents buffeted him, and the pilot reveled in the sensation of flight. He had not forgotten, not even after so many years. The vibrating power that pulsed through the fighter's engines, along with a sense of freedom and liberation after so long an exile, buoyed him.

Qorl watched the knotted green crowns of Massassi trees flowing beneath him in the storm of his ship's passage. With his thickly gloved, badly healed arm, he found it difficult to control the Imperial