He licks his lips and says: "Yes. Of course, Grand Admiral. It is a pleasure." The truth is, G5-623 is one of those Imperial territories that has not yet properly fallen in line with the rest. Like Anoat, they're still telling the myth that Palpatine is alive and well-that he's not merely some demonic ghost commanding an Empire from beyond the grave, but he escaped the exploding Death Star by improbable, even miraculous means. They remain fairly self-sufficient-so much so that this remnant has holed up there, protecting itself overmuch from outside influence.

"What is it, Urian?"

"I was wondering about the prison."

"What prison would that be?"

"Ashmead's Lock. Here on G5-623."

"I'm not familiar with it."

His nose twitches. "Are you quite sure?"

"Do you think me a fool or a liar?"

"I do not. Of course. It's just-we had two ships. We turned them away, but they insisted they had code clearance from, well, you."

"Describe these ships to me."

He does, sending rudimentary schematics to her screen.

Two light freighters-a YT-1300, and an SS-54. The latter is really a gunship misdiagnosed as a freighter. It's not for carrying parts.

She's dealt with two ships of those models before. It's an unusual combination-too unlikely to be a coincidence.

Could it be? The Millennium Falcon and the ship belonging to the bounty hunter-the Halo, is it? That's the same crew that slipped from her grip on Akiva. The same crew, in fact, that's been hunting down Imperials, often getting to them before she could. (At least Mercurial dispatched that last one right out from under them.) And the Falcon belongs to General Solo. Robbing the New Republic of someone like him isn't militarily significant, but the damage it would do to their morale...though, it could also provoke them into a fight for which they aren't yet ready.

Whatever the case, the incursion cannot stand.

"Sir?" Admiral Orlan asks.

"Send a team to investigate," she tells him. "Report back."

He hesitates. The chain of command is no longer what it used to be. Orlan is a man of different masters. Why even call her, then? Perhaps to stay just enough on her good side in case he's forced to make a choice.

"I'll have to check with Grand Moff Tolruck. If he approves-"

"Tell him he will approve or he will see a visit from me."

"Yes. Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

And then Admiral Urian Orlan is gone.

She turns around- And finds she's not alone.

Admiral Rax stands there. Silent as a specter. His black-gloved hands are clasped in front of him.

"Everything all right?" he asks.

She might as well tell him. He probably already knows. So Sloane spills the story. His face registers no surprise.

"Call Orlan back," Rax says. "Tell him we did approve the repairs on the prison."

"But we did no such thing."

"No, but we're doing it now."

"The two ships? I believe they belong to known New Republic malefactors-the crew of Imperial hunters seems to have joined ranks with one of the Rebellion's cultural heroes, General Solo. Taking them out-"

"...Is the wrong fight."

"How is that, exactly?"

He rests a gentle hand on her shoulder-though it feels to her like it weighs a thousand kilograms. A light touch that could crush her. Placating and condescending, to boot. "Admiral Sloane, we do not want to goad them into a fight right now. We are on the cusp of making our attack on Chandrila. We don't want to give them any sign that it's coming-no preemptive attacks. We must appear weak. They must be bloated with overconfidence."

"This is wrong."

"Trust me. I have it all in hand. Which reminds me, the instruments are nearly all lined up and the music has been written. It is time to perform the song. Chandrila must fall, but first, I need your help."

She hesitates. It feels like she's getting into bed with a viper. "How?"

"I have a task."

He tells her what it is.

And when he does, she cannot help feeling like she's being ushered toward another test-or worse, a trap.

"I'll do it," she says. "And I'll make sure Admiral Orlan knows that we did, in fact, approve of the work on G5-623."

"Good," he says, and reaches forward and kisses her brow. His lips are cold. Her whole body tenses up as he performs the gesture-a gesture made as if he is blessing her, somehow. She wants to vomit.

When he's gone, she does indeed call Orlan.

But then she makes another call, because someone is going to go to the Kashyyyk system on her behalf. She will not let this opportunity escape her-it is her life preserver, and she will hold on tight.

Jas has a bad feeling about this.

She eases the Halo along, following the path set by the Falcon just ahead. It's night, but even in the half dark, it's easy to see: This planet is sick.

The trees here are some of the biggest she's ever seen. Bigger than some of the skytowers and complexes of Coruscant. But the trees are dead. Their massive trunks are splintering, and in those fissures shine the kaleidoscopic bioluminescence of spores and fungus, painting the trees in a diseased glow. The branches are skeletal things, reaching for the sky as if to drag the stars down to the ground and bury them in grave-dirt.

The Falcon winds through those dry, decrepit branches. The Halo follows close. It's Jom who says it: "There's nothing here. Nothing and no one."

He's right. No other ships. No lights beneath the dead canopies. Just that swimmy, contaminated glow.

The others gather behind her in the cockpit. She grunts at them to back up and back off, but of course, nobody listens to her.

They're all too busy gaping.

Where are the Wookiees? The Imperials? Anything?

This is just one part of the planet, she knows-and Kashyyyk is a big planet. It has cities. This is as far flung from any of those cities as they'll get, according to her (admittedly outdated) maps, but just the same- This is where they're supposed to be, and it is a lifeless place. What could the rest of the world look like?

"There," Temmin says, pointing over her shoulder. She swats his hand away but follows his finger regardless.

Jas can barely make it out, but way down on the surface she sees it: a faint shape of something big. A structure. Ashmead's Lock. It must be. The coordinates Aram gave them are right on, then.

Solo and Norra must see it, too, because the Falcon swoops low. Jas turns the gunship's engines vertical, bringing it in to hover.

As they descend, they move past crooked, busted platforms and rotten structures barely hanging on to the side of the trees. Jas flips on a narrow-band spotlight so they can see what they're looking at. Ahead is an old gun emplacement: a massive bolt-thrower hanging loose from its mooring, swinging gently from tangled vines. It's a Wookiee weapon. Like a bowcaster, but big enough to take down a craft or a small ship.

Then they pass another structure-not big enough to be a house. A guard station, maybe. It clings to the side of the tree, lashed there with fraying rope. A corpse hangs out of the doorway. A desiccated carcass, the hair on it gone dry as broom bristles. Mostly it's just a pelt stuck to bones. A dead Wookiee, she thinks. A gun still dangling from its shoulder strap.

The ground is a long way down. They see more dilapidated structures. More bodies. More rot and more ruin.

And then the ground eases up to meet them. The Falcon finds a proper landing platform-a concrete abutment jutting up out of a tangle of twisting thorn. Jas finds a clear spot of ground and settles the Halo into it. The engines burn and blast away some of that unruly underbrush.

Ahead, by a quarter kilometer, is the prison.

Or, rather, prison ship.

It looks like what Aram told them is true: Ashmead's Lock is not a prison he built. It's a prison ship from the Old Republic days. A ship run by some rogue empire-an enemy of the Republic, he said. The Predori, he called them. Whoever they were, they're gone now.

The ship once held captives of the Old Republic and sat in the center of some massive gravity well-how better to keep prisoners from escaping than by sticking them into a ship capable of resisting the crushing, implosive force of a gravitational hollow? Easy to get in. Impossible to escape. But one day, everything fell apart. Aram said that well must've fallen in onto itself, sending the ship plunging to the world below- And it crashed into the surface of Kashyyyk, where it sat for hundreds, even thousands of years. The Wookiees believed it cursed: a place haunted by bad spirits. They made it forbidden to come here. They stood vigil in case anything ever came out of it.

And then, one day, the Empire came.

The Imperials found no such fear of the artifact, and were instead more than happy to refurbish the old ship into performing its task once more-and who better to turn it into a black-site prison than Golas Aram?

The prison ship sits in the distance illuminated with but a single light atop it: a shimmering blue crystal, bathing everything in an eerie radiance. It matches the creepy fungal glow from above, and serves well to further stir the septic feeling roiling around in Jas's stomach.

They all exit the Halo. Beneath them, the ground is hard and dry and cracked-the undergrowth is brittle, snapping like little bones as they walk.

They gather together behind the trunks of one of the gargantuan trees.

"This is it," Solo says.

"Doesn't look like anybody's home," Norra says. "You're sure Chewbacca is in this place?"

He scowls. "He has to be. All the records pointed me here."

"Can we all reach the uncomfortable agreement that this is very likely a trap?" Sinjir says. "I mean, the records 'pointed you' here-some old derelict ghost ship in an obliterated bit of forest-which says to me that we're about to stick our foot into an ill-concealed snare. Yes? Hello?"

"It's not a trap," Solo growls. "Can't be. Chewie's in there. I can feel it. The Empire doesn't have it together enough to put a...a trick together like that anymore. And if they wanted us dead or in shackles, they coulda done it before we ever got down here to the surface. We're doing this."

Jas hesitates. "I don't think we should."

"Then stay out here. I don't care. I'm going in."

With that, Solo steps out from behind the tree and begins his march toward the prison. He ducks his head low and darts forward, blaster in hand.

"Norra," Jas says. "Something's up, and he's blind to it."

"I know. But he needs our help." Norra sighs. "Tem, you and Bones stay out here-"

"Whoa, c'mon, we want in on the action."

"No, you don't. And the action might come up on our tails while we're in there, and if it does? You're our rear guard."

He rolls his eyes. "Fine."

"The rest of us? We're with Solo. But stay frosty. I don't know what we're expecting to find in here. Aram said the prison was automated-but that it had defense mechanisms. Thankfully, his codes are supposed to get us past those mechanisms. Cross your fingers, toes, and tentacles." Norra draws her own blaster. "We're going in."

- It's Bones who opens the door. One of the talon-tipped claws on his hand flips back, and a datalink adapter emerges. He hums to himself as he jams it into the port-the interface mechanism spins right, then left, then buzzes all the way around as the modded B1 battle droid uploads the code.

It works. The door slides open.

Norra tells her son: "Stay here. Use the comlink if you need us."

Temmin wants to go. He's good at this sort of thing. Staying out here will be boring. (And, though he wouldn't admit it out loud, creepy.) But he decides to play nice. He is learning to trust his mother.

He gives a reluctant nod, and then the rest of them go inside as he and Bones wait by the door.

The droid sways back and forth, rocking to some imperceptible tune. He clicks and clacks his talons against his skeletal legs, creating an erratic beat. Temmin shushes him. "We gotta be quiet, Bones."

"ROGER-ROGER, MASTER TEMMIN."

"Just...keep an eye out."

"OKIE-DOKIE."

"And be ready for anything."

"READY TO EVISCERATE ANYTHING."

"That's not exactly what I said." He shrugs. "But close enough."

- Inside: darkness. Complete and total. Norra can't see Solo in front of her, can't see the others behind her. How could a prison like this sit here in the dark for so- Click. Click. Click.

One by one, the lights come on, cascading down a long hall, fixture by fixture. The brightness washes everything out and Norra winces against it. As her eyes adjust, she can start to make out the layout of the ship. The hall ahead. Two sets of stairs going up on each side. Metal walkways above, each illuminated by lines of red light. Beyond that, above, are porthole windows glowing blue.

Everything is shiny and chrome. Walls like black mirrors.

Han blinks, then cocks an eyebrow. "All right. We're in." He keeps his voice low when he says, "We're going to split up. Me and the bounty hunter are going to stay on this floor. Norra, you take the Imperial and the new guy-"

"Hey," Jom protests. Jas snickers.

"-and head to the upper floors. We're looking for...I dunno what. The bridge. A control station. Above all else, we're looking for Chewie and the other prisoners the Empire took that day. Clear?"