From the seat behind him came a sound that might have been a stifled laugh. "You say something?" he asked over his shoulder.
"No," Leia said innocently. "Just remembering the past."
"Right," Han growled. He remembered, too; and Bespin wasn't on his list of fond memories. "Look, just give Lando a call, will you?" he suggested to the B-wing. "Tell him that an old friend is here, and thought we might play a hand of sabacc for my choice of his stock. Lando will understand."
"We want to what?" Leia asked, leaning forward around his chair to give him a startled look.
Han muted the transmitter. "The Imperials might have spies here, too," he reminded her. "If they do, announcing our names to the whole Athega system wouldn't be very smart."
"Point," Leia conceded reluctantly. "That's a pretty strange message, though."
"Not to Lando," Han assured her. "He'll know it's me-provided that middle-level button pusher out there loosens up and sends it in."
Beside him, Chewbacca growled a warning: something big was approaching from aft-starboard. "Any make on it?" Han asked, craning his neck to try to get a look.
The transmitter crackled back to life before the Wookiee could answer. "Unidentified ship, General Calrissian has authorized a special transit waiver for you," the B-wing said, his tone sounding a little disappointed. He'd probably been looking forward to personally kicking the troublemakers out of his system. "Your escort is moving to intercept; hold your current position until he arrives."
"Acknowledged," Han said, not quite able to bring himself to thank the man.
"Escort?" Leia asked cautiously. "Why an escort?"
"That's what you get for going off and doing politics stuff when Lando drops by the Palace for a visit," Han admonished her, still craning his neck. There it was . . . "Nkllon's a superhot planet-way too close to its sun for any normal ship to get to without getting part of its hull peeled off. Hence-" he waved Leia's attention to the right "-the escort."
There was a sharp intake of air from behind him, and even Han, who'd seen Lando's holos of these things, had to admit it was an impressive sight. More than anything else the shieldship resembled a monstrous flying umbrella, a curved dish fully half as big across as an Imperial Star Destroyer. The underside of the dish was ridged with tubes and fins-pumping and storage equipment for the coolant that helped keep the dish from burning up during the trip inward. Where the umbrella's handle would have been was a thick cylindrical pylon, reaching half as far back as the umbrella dish was wide, its far end bristling with huge radiator fins. In the center of the pylon, looking almost like an afterthought, was the tug ship that drove the thing.
"Good skies," Leia murmured, sounding stunned. "And it actually flies?"
"Yeah, but not easily," Han told her, watching with a slight trickle of apprehension as the monstrosity moved ever closer to his ship. It didn't have to move all that close-the Falcon was considerably smaller than the huge container ships the shieldships normally escorted. "Lando told me they had all sorts of trouble getting the things designed properly in the first place, and almost as much trouble teaching people how to fly them."
Leia nodded. "I believe it."
The transmitter crackled again. "Unidentified ship, this is Shieldship Nine. Ready to lock; please transmit your slave circuit code."
"Right," Han muttered under his breath, touching the transmit switch. "Shieldship Nine, we don't have a slave circuit. Just give me your course and we'll stay with you."
There was a moment of silence. "Very well, unidentified ship," the voice said at last-reluctantly, Han thought. "Set your course at two-eight-four; speed, point six sublight."
Without waiting for an acknowledgment, the huge umbrella began to drift off. "Stay with him, Chewie," Han told the copilot. Not that that would be a problem; the Falcon was faster and infinitely more maneuverable than anything that size. "Shieldship Nine, what's our ETA for Nkllon?"
"You in a hurry, unidentified ship?"
"How could we be in a hurry, with this wonderful view?" Han asked sarcastically, looking at the underside of the dish that filled pretty much the entire sky. "Yeah, we're in kind of a hurry."
"Sorry to hear that," the other said. "You see, if you had a slave circuit, we could do a quick hyperspace hop inward together and be at Nkllon in maybe an hour. Doing it this way-well, it'll take us about ten."
Han grimaced. "Great."
"We could probably set up a temporary slave circuit," Leia suggested. "Threepio knows the Falcon's computer well enough to do that."
Chewbacca half turned toward her, growling a refusal that left no room for argument, even if Han had been inclined to argue. Which he wasn't. "Chewie's right," he told Leia firmly. "We don't slave this ship to anything. Ever. You copy that, shieldship?"
"Okay by me, unidentified ship," the other said. They all seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in using that phrase. "I get paid by the hour anyway."
"Fine," Han said. "Let's get to it."
"Sure"
The transmission cut off, and Han poised his hands over the controls. The umbrella was still drifting, but nothing more. "Chewie, has he got his engines off standby yet?"
The Wookiee rumbled a negative.
"What's wrong?" Leia asked, leaning forward again.
"I don't know," Han said, looking around. With the umbrella in the way, there wasn't a lot to see. "I don't like it, though." He tapped the transmitter. "Shieldship Nine, what's the holdup?"
"Not to worry, unidentified ship," the voice came back soothingly. "We've got another craft coming in that also doesn't have a slave circuit, so we're going to take you both in together. No point in tying up two of us, right?"
The hairs on the back of Han's neck began to tingle. Another ship that just happened to be coming into Nkllon the same time they were. "You have an ID on that other ship?" he asked.
The other snorted. "Hey, friend, we don't even have an ID on you."
"You're a big help," Han said, muting the transmitter again. "Chewie, you got an approach yet on this guy?"
The Wookiee's reply was short and succinct. And disturbing. "Cute," Han growled. "Real cute."
"I missed that," Leia murmured, looking over his shoulder.
"He's coming in from the far side of the shieldship's central pylon," Han told her grimly, pointing to the inference brackets on the scanner scope. "Keeping it between him and us where we can't see him."
"Is he doing it on purpose?"
"Probably," Han nodded, hitting his restraint release. "Chewie, take over; I'm going to fire up the quads."
He ran back along the cockpit corridor to the central core and headed up the ladder. "Captain Solo," a nervous mechanical voice called after him from the direction of the lounge. "Is something wrong?"
"Probably, Threepio," Han shouted back. "Better strap in."
He got up the ladder, passed through the right-angle gravity discontinuity at the gun well, and dropped himself into the seat. The control board went on with satisfying quickness, as he keyed for power with one hand and grabbed the headset with the other. "Anything yet, Chewie?" he called into his mike.
The other growled a negative: the approaching craft was still completely hidden by the shieldship's pylon. But the inference scope was now giving a distance reading, and from that the Wookiee had been able to compute an upper size limit for the craft. It wasn't very big. "Well, that's something," Han told him, running through his mental list of starship types and trying to figure out what the Empire might be throwing at them that would be that small. Some variety of TIE fighter, maybe? "Stay sharp-this might be a decoy."
The inference scope pinged: the unknown ship was starting to come around the pylon. Han braced himself, fingers resting lightly on the fire controls . . .
And with a suddenness that surprised him, the ship burst into sight, rounding the pylon in a twisting spiral. It steadied slightly-
"It's an X-wing," Leia identified it, sounding greatly relieved. "With Republi
c markings-"
"Hello, strangers," Luke's voice crackled into Han's ear. "Good to see you."
"Uh . . . hi," Han said, stifling the automatic urge to greet Luke by name. Theoretically, they were on a secure frequency, but it was easy enough for anyone with sufficient motivation to get around such formalities. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see Lando," Luke told him. "Sorry if I startled you. When they told me I'd be going in with an unidentified ship I thought it might be a trap. I wasn't completely sure it was you until a minute ago."
"Ah," Han said, watching as the other ship settled into a parallel course. It was Luke's X-wing, all right.
Or at least, it looked like Luke's X-wing. "So," he said casually, swiveling the laser cannons around to target the other. Situated the way it was, the X-wing would have to yaw 90 degrees around before it could fire at them. Unless, of course, it had been modified. "This just a social call, or what?"
"Not really. I found an old gadget that . . . well, I thought Lando might be able to identify it." He hesitated. "I don't think we ought to discuss it out in the open like this. How about you?"
"I don't think we should talk about that, either," Han told him, mind racing. It sounded like Luke, too; but after that near-disastrous decoy attempt on Bpfassh, he wasn't about to take anything for granted. Somehow, they needed to make a positive identification, and fast.
He tapped a switch, cutting himself out of the radio circuit. "Leia, can you tell whether or not that's really Luke out there?"
"I think so," she said slowly. "I'm almost positive it is."
" 'Almost positive' won't cut it, sweetheart," he warned her.
"I know," she said. "Hang on; I've got an idea."
Han cut himself back into the radio circuit. "-said that if I had a slave circuit they could get me in a lot faster," Luke was saying. "A hyperspace jump as close to Nkllon as the gravity well will permit, and then just a few minutes of cover before I'd be in the planetary umbra and could go the rest of the way in on my own."
"Except that X-wings don't come equipped with slave circuits?" Han suggested.
"Right," Luke said, a little dryly. "Some oversight in the design phase, no doubt."
"No doubt," Han echoed, beginning to sweat a little. Whatever Leia was up to, he wished she'd get to it.
"Actually, I'm glad you don't have one," Leia spoke up. "It feels safer traveling in convoy this way. Oh, before I forget, there's someone here who wants to say hello."
"Artoo?" Threepio's prissy voice said tentatively. "Are you there?"
Han's headphone erupted with a blather of electronic beeps and twitters. "Well, I don't know where else you might have been," Threepio said stiffly. "From past experience, there are a considerable variety of difficulties you could have gotten yourself into. Certainly without me along to smooth things out for you."
The headphone made a noise that sounded suspiciously like an electronic snort. "Yes, well, you've always believed that," Threepio countered, even more stiffly. "I suppose you're entitled to your delusions."
Artoo snorted again; and, smiling tightly to himself, Han keyed off his control board and dropped the lasers back into standby status. He'd known a lot of men, back in his smuggling days, who wouldn't have wanted a wife who could sometimes think faster than they could.
Speaking for himself, Han had long ago decided he wouldn't have it any other way.
The shieldship pilot hadn't been exaggerating. It was nearly ten hours later when he finally signaled that they were on their own, made one final not-quite-impolite comment, and pulled off to the side, out of the way.
There wasn't much to see; but then, Han decided, the dark side of an undeveloped planet was seldom very scenic. A homing signal winked at him from one of the scopes, and he made a leisurely turn in the indicated direction.
From behind him came the sound of a footstep. "What's happening?" Leia asked, yawning as she sat down in the copilot's seat.
"We're in Nkllon's shadow," Han told her, nodding toward the starless mass directly ahead of them. "I've got a lock on Lando's mining operation-looks like we'll be there in ten or fifteen minutes."
"Okay." Leia looked off to the side, at the running lights of the X-wing pacing them. "Have you talked with Luke lately?"
"Not for a couple of hours. He said he was going to try and get some sleep. I think Artoo's running the ship at the moment."
"Yes, he is," Leia nodded, with that slightly absent voice she always used when practicing her new Jedi skills. "Luke's not sleeping very well, though. Something's bothering him."
"Something's been bothering him for the past couple of months," Han reminded her. "He'll get over it."
"No, this is something different," Leia shook her head. "Something more-I don't know; more urgent, somehow." She turned back to face him. "Winter thought that maybe he'd be willing to talk to you about it."
"Well, he hasn't yet," Han said. "Look, don't worry. When he's ready to talk, he'll talk."
"I suppose so." She peered out of the cockpit at the edge of the planetary mass they were speeding toward. "Incredible. Do you realize you can actually see part of the solar corona from here?"
"Yeah, well, don't ask me to take you out for a closer look," Han told her. "Those shieldships aren't just for show, you know-the sunlight out there is strong enough to fry every sensor we have in a few seconds and take the Falcon's hull off a couple of minutes later."
She shook her head wonderingly. "First Bespin, now Nkllon. Have you ever known Lando when he wasn't involved in some kind of crazy scheme?"
"Not very often," Han had to admit. "Though at Bespin, at least, he had a known technology to work with-Cloud City had been running for years before he got hold of it. This-" he nodded out the viewport "-they had to think up pretty much from scratch."
Leia leaned forward. "I think I see the city-that group of lights over there."
Han looked where she was pointing. "Too small," he said. "More likely it's an outrider group of mole miners. Last I heard he had just over a hundred of the things digging stuff out of the surface."
"Those are, what, those asteroid ships we helped him get from Stonehill Industries?"
"No, he's using those in the outer system for tug work," Han corrected. "These are little two-man jobs that look like cones with the points chopped off. They've got a set of plasma-jet drills pointing down around the underside hatch-you just land where you want to drill, fire the jets for a minute or two to chop up the ground, then go on down through the hatch and pick up the pieces."
"Oh, right, I remember those now," Leia nodded. "They were originally asteroid miners, too, weren't they?"
"The style was. Lando found this particular batch being used in a smelting complex somewhere. Instead of just removing the plasma jets, the owners had hauled the things up whole and wedged them into place on the line."
"I wonder how Lando got hold of them."
"We probably don't want to know."
The transmitter crackled. "Unidentified ships, this is Nomad City Control," a crisp voice said. "You've been cleared for landing on Platforms Five and Six. Follow the beacon in, and watch out for the bumps."
"Got it," Han said. The Falcon was skimming the ground now, the altimeter reading them as just under fifty meters up. Ahead, a low ridge rose to meet them; giving the controls a tap, Han nudged them over it-
And there, directly ahead, was Nomad City.