Recovery by Troy Denning Page A

drifted down from the bridge speakers. “I think it came from—”
    The
Sureshot
became an orange ball, hurling oddly shaped silhouettes and still-glowing drive nacelles in all directions. Even the Barabels gasped, and the comm channels erupted into inquiries and exclamations. Han turned toward Izal Waz and found the Arcona pushed back from his station, wiping the bubbles from his eyes.
    â€œA rescue ship,” Izal said. “It came underneath and ejected something.”
    A wedge of broken sensor dish glanced off the particle shields outside Han’s viewport, drawing an involuntary recoil—and a chorus of sissing from the Barabels.
    â€œVery funny,” Han said. “I’ll bet you guys wouldn’t flinch in a meteor storm.”
    More debris began bouncing off the
Jolly Man
’s shields, and the freighter started to slow. The captain patched a comm channel through the intercom.
    â€œ. . . mine spill,” an official voice was saying. “Cut speed to dead stop, and we’ll tractor you out. Repeat, dead stop.”
    â€œIn a Sarlacc’s eye,” Leia scoffed. She turned to Han. “Could they have seen through our decoy?”
    Han shook his head. “The mine would’ve hit
us
,” he said. “They’re just trying to figure the
Jolly Man
. They might have been watching for a while, or maybe they picked up some of Izal’s signal traffic.”
    â€œWhat do you think?” the
Jolly Man
’s captain asked over the intercom. “Should I call in our backup?”
    â€œNo, we don’t want Viqi to know her assassins failed.” Leia looked over at Han, then added, “We can still pull this off.”
    Han raised his brow, then rose and, waving Leia toward the back of the ship, told the captain, “Just keep your launching bay in the
Jolly
’s sensor shadow.”
    The Barabels’ slit pupils widened to diamonds, and Izal Waz gasped, “You two are getting out
here?
”
    In the
Jolly Man
’s makeshift docking bay, the freighter’s normal complement of primitive starfighters had been replaced by two dozen twin-pod cloud cars. Long ago converted for civilian tours on the Cinnabar Moon, they were a cargo far less likely to draw unwanted attention from Coruscant customs. Han opened the canopy of the vehicle he would fly. The backseat had already been removed, so Tesar used the Force to deposit Leia—chair and all—in the passenger compartment facing aft.
    C-3PO came clunking into the hold. “Captain Solo, Mistress Leia, wait! You’re forgetting me!”
    â€œSorry, Threepio,” Leia said. “You’ll have to stay with Izal and the Barabels until they can send you home.”
    â€œStay?” C-3PO regarded the Barabels for a moment, then asked, “Are you quite sure there’s no room?”
    â€œYou’re a little large for the trunk,” Han said.
    He floated the cloud car out into the launching bay and shut down all non-life-support systems to lower their sensor profile. Then, with Izal and the Barabels waving good-bye through the observation port, he and Leia watched nervously as the outer hatch opened.
    The cloud car lurched sharply as one of the Jedi used the Force to launch it from the bay. There was just enough time to be overwhelmed by the immensity of space compared to the tiny cockpit—and to wonder how much more vast the darkness must have seemed to Jaina when she went EV at Kalarba—before one of the Barabels reached out again. The cloud car began to tumble like an ordinary piece of space flotsam.
    â€œOh—nice touch,” Leia said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
    Fighting to keep his gaze fixed on the
Jolly Man
—and his own stomach down—Han alternated between trying not to watch Coruscant’s sparkling surface slide by and trying not to notice the stars swirling past in ever-widening spirals. Tails of ion efflux appeared