I shrugged my shoulders and shook my hands out. "Any time you care to make me."

Laanars looked right and left, disbelief on his face. "How stupid can you be?" His right hand dropped to the b.u.t.t of his blaster as he stared me right in the eyes. "You're dead."

Using the Force, I filled his mind with the image of his blaster being drawn and pointing straight at my forehead. I painted a look of terror on my face, but gave him the impres-sion that I'd been concealing a hold-out blaster up my right sleeve. He saw it appear in my hand and swing into line with his body. He had no choice. He pulled the trigger three times.

But his blaster hadn't yet slid even halfway from its holster.

All three shots struck him in the right thigh, collapsing the leg. He went down screaming and thrashed in the aisle. Biril ran toward him and crouched down, taking him out of Keevy's attack range. The larger man looked at his stricken comrade, then at me. "You're dead."

"Not likely." The Halcyon line might not have been strong in the ways of telekinesis, but it's never required much of an effort to slip the latch on an overstuffed cargo compartment. The panel snapped open and the Kuati's bundle came crashing down to hit Biril across the back of his shoulders. He angrily spun toward it, slashing with his vibroblade, then turned back toward me. By that time, however, I'd vaulted myself across the central seats and caught him in the chest with both feet.

He flew back, tripping and stumbling over the Kuati's satchel, just as Keevy came charging blindly in from the Premier cabin. Keevy's forehead caught Biril square on the chin. The bigger man went limp and crashed down while Keevy caromed off him and landed sprawled across the laps of two young women.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up Laanars' blaster, flicked it to stun and pumped a shot into him. I fired two more into Biril. I turned and tossed the weapon to the flight attendant. "Can you retract the gangway?"

She caught the gun and nodded hesitantly. "I can, but only on the captain's order."

I glanced at her nametag. "Okay, Annissya, you've got the order."

"Sir, I know you are qualified to fly one of these shuttles, but . . ."

I opened my hands. "There's more pirates coming, and your pilot likely isn't. I'd just as soon be out of here. We might as well make a run, because waiting here isn't going to do us any good."

She thought for a second, then nodded. "As ordered, Captain Idanian."

I grabbed Keevy by his collar and hauled him from the laps of the two women who, from the looks on their faces, were convinced he'd saved them from certain death. "You really know how to work an AP127 whatever?"

"The AP127CP?" His larynx bounced up and down as his voice cracked. "Yes, sir."

"You aren't lying, are you? Lives are at stake here."

He straightened up and a.s.sumed a pose he clearly thought of as military.

"I can do it."

I smiled. "To the c.o.c.kpit then, my boy. You wanted to fly in combat? This is gonna be it."

Keevv rubbed at the b.u.mp on his forehead. "We're going to try to outrun an Imperial Star Destroyer?"

"That a problem for you?" I narrowed my eyes.

"Well, it won't be easy."

"Yeah, well, if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing." I gave him a shove toward the front of the shuttle. "You just plot me a course and get me an exit vector. I'll get us on it and we'll all get out of here."

He glanced back at me. "Sir, even a Rogue Squadron pilot couldn't get us out of here. I know."

"And after this, you'll know some more." I patted him on the back. "Strap in, son, you're in for the ride of your life."

I dropped into the c.o.c.kpit com-mand chair, pulled on the communications headset and started hitting switches. The layout hadn't been modified much from that of the shuttle I'd flown to Yavin. I noticed the weapons-control panel had been replaced with something labeled "Entertainment system." Shrugging, I punched a b.u.t.ton and started some holodrama playing in the back.

Keevy sat across from me in the navigator's position. He strapped in and sat there for a moment, then looked up and froze.

The Invidious hung out there in s.p.a.ce, its dagger shape de-emphasized since we were looking at a profile shot of the ship. Its deck plane lay slightly below ours-if we took off in a straight line we'd pa.s.s a good hundred meters over the top of the ship's main decks. I eyed the ship the way I would have were I sitting in an X-wing's c.o.c.kpit, checking the guns, loca-ing the shield generators. On a secondary monitor I brought up a scan of the Invidious and saw it didn't have shields up.

Just one proton torpedo and you'd pay for that arrogance, Tarira. I glanced over at Keevy, but he'd not moved. "Problem, Keevy?"

He blinked and shivered. "No, sorry."

"You can use the navicomp?"

"Yeah, sure." He started punching b.u.t.tons. "Where to?"

"Short hop out to the edge of the system, then double back across it.

From there we head out." I frowned and thought for a second. "Get us into the Quence Sector, Elshandruu Pica. I have friends there."

"Okay. Courses being plotted now."

My console beeped and I saw the gangway had been re-tracted. "Keevy, hit the green b.u.t.ton over there."

He looked up and punched the b.u.t.ton that released our docking claws and retracted them. "Done."

Good. On your right, the inertial compensation unit. For the c.o.c.kpit, dial it back to .95. For the pa.s.sengers, keep it at full." I glanced around. "We have to have shields here some-where, don't we?"

Keevy smiled. "Over here, I've got them. Hey, these are Chepat Supreme Defender models. Very nice."

"I hope we don't need them." I punched the ignition switch, powering up the main drive unit and shunted power to the repulsorlift coils. I hit the b.u.t.ton for the ship's intercom and tried to keep my voice light.

"We're on our way. Sit tight and you shouldn't feel a thing."

I hit a b.u.t.ton on the comm unit to try to make a call for help, but a hideous screeching filled the headset's earpieces. "They're jamming the comm channels." I snapped the comm unit's jamming filter on, which killed the screech.

Keevy's eyes widened. "We can't summon help."

"Nope, we're really on our own." Of course, if help was close enough to summon, Tarira would be out of here rely fast. The fact that she's actually here means there's no rescue coming.

Annissya came into the c.o.c.kpit and strapped herself into the jumpseat I'd been offered earlier. "Everyone is seated and braced."

"Okay." I took a moment, concentrated, then nodded.

"Keevy, first heading."

"Course two two three, angle three one five."

"I copy. Power to shields."

"Shields full."

"Annissya, can you hit the scan-recorder? I want to pull in as much data as I can while we head out."

I settled my hands on the steering yoke and stared out at the Inv'idious.

"Here we go."

I nudged the throttle forward and pulled back on the yoke, lifting the nose. As it came up and the Palette slipped away beneath us, I hit the switch to lower the wings and lock them into place. I knew that if our raising the shields had not alerted the Invidious to the fact that something was wrong, lowering our wings certainly would. A glance at my tactical screen showed three Tri-fighters breaking off a patrol and beginning to vector in on us.

The wings locked down, so I shoved the throttle to full, then pitched the ship forward into a dive.

Our comm unit crackled as the jamming faded on the emer-gency comm frequency. "Shuttle Tinta Blue, this is the Invidi-ous. Stop now and we won't destroy you."

Keevy stared at me, horrified. "Shouldn't you say something to them?"

I nodded toward the comm headset at Keevy's side. "You talk to them."

"Me?"

"I'm busy here." I rolled the shuttle and pulled back on the yoke, curling us up and out away from our dive. An old Corellian corvette had moved to block our course, and filled s.p.a.ce around us with ruby shafts of light. I saw two blue ion bolts shoot past, so I hit the etheric rudder and rolled to starboard, breaking us off the glide path we'd been on. I broke back to port again with a snaproll, pulled the nose up for a second, then jammed the yoke forward again.

This left us with theInvidious filling our viewscreens. The ship's heavy turbolasers turned inward, trying to shoot at us, but we'd gotten in close enough that the side-mounted guns had trouble tracking us. Better yet, the light show they created in trying to shoot us had caused the clutches to break off for a moment.

Keevy donned the headset. "This is Tinta Blue Seven, Invidious."

"Lovely," I muttered. "Gonna ask if their intentions are honorable?"

He shrugged. "Are your intentions honorable?"

"Tinta Blue, are you insane, or trying to commit suicide?"

Keevy frowned. "A rather tautological question, isn't it?" The blubbered sounds of confusion from the Invidious' corem officer prompted me to smile. "Way to keep them guessing, Keevy."

The smile growing on his face died abruptly as an angry female voice came onto the frequency. "This is Admiral Tavira, Tinta Blue. We are not playing games."

I held a hand up to quiet Keevy. "Sorry, Admiral, we are. Catch us if you can." I punched the comm unit's power b.u.t.ton, shutting it down, then rolled the shuttle so we skimmed along belly to belly with the Invidious.

I yanked back on the yoke to get us pointed away from the Star Destroyer, then cranked the controls slightly to port, starting the ship in a flailing spiral that made stars into white circles before us.

When we could see them between scarlet sheets of turbo-laserfire, that was.

Keevy braced himself as if the convergence of the ship's port and starboard beams were a wall we were going to slam into. "We're going to die!"

"Not even half way." I chopped the throttle back, reversed thrust for two seconds, then kicked it full again and straightened our flight. Ship's turbolasers flashed in at us and the Chepat shields crackled as some of them grazed us, but we sailed on through with our hull intact. Once past the point of convergence, I started the shuttle weaving again. "Engage the hyperdrive when we're clear, Keevy."

The young man stared at me. "How did we . . . ?"

"Later." I gave him a rea.s.suring smile, and felt a lot of relief inside as well. I'd been treating the shuttle as I would a fighter-albeit a big, slow, wallowing monster of a fighter. Its handling reminded me of that of a Y-wing, actually, but slower and more clumsy. It wasn't an elegant craft, and was never meant to be.

The fact was, though, that it was a big craft with huge shield generators. Surviving a direct hit by a Star Destroyer salvo would have been impossible, but the reverse-thrust flutter there threw off the Invidious' gunners enough that their shots didn't all arrive at the same time. We lost a lot of shield power, but they didn't collapse, so we got away. While big and slow, the one advantage the shuttle had over a fighter was its ability to survive damage.

Keevy threw the hyperdrive lever and the stars lengthened into a tunnel for a couple of seconds, then snapped back to pinpoints as we reverted to reals.p.a.ce. "New heading is Course one three seven, angle zero four five."

"I copy." I pulled back on the yoke and brought the ship around to starboard. I glanced at my tactical screen. "We're clear and good to go.

Keevy, if you will do the honors."

Keevy threw the lever again and we were off. At the far side of the system we made another course correction, then settled in for the journey to Elshandruu Pica. I'd been there once before, back when the squadron was off on its own, fighting Ysanne Isard for control of the bacta cartel. Keevy, with his interest in Rogue Squadron, knew all about Elshandruu Pica, and regaled Annissya and me with the story of Rogue Squadron's adventure there.

His recounting of the story actually took longer than the whole operation, but we had time to kill. And by the end of it, of course, Annissya wanted to kill poor Keevy.

We reverted to reals.p.a.ce and I set us on a course for the Emant Ventttre.

I had gambled on its being here and was happy to see it in-system. Kina Margath owns a resort complex on Elshandruu Pica and is a connoisseur of all things fine and exotic, which means Booster finds her almost as charming as the money she pays him. The 27th Hour Club at her resort has a standing challenge to patrons to name a drink the staff cannot mix, and if they can, the patron's bar tab is on the house. Booster regularly supplies her with recipes of new drinks and the liquor used to make them up. I also think Booster has a thing for Kina, but Mirax thinks she's too young for her father, so I don't bring that subject up very often.

During Keevy's long recitation of the Elshandruu Pica mission, I keyed in and prepared to shoot to the Errant Venture a report on why we were there and what I wanted out of Booster. I shot it off as we made a slow approach, waited about fifteen minutes for Booster to have read it and set preparations in motion, and then called in for permission to dock on the Fen-Illre.

The Tinta Blue obtained immediate clearance to land and I set the shuttle down within a hundred meters of the Head-hunter. Booster himself emerged from his office, resplendent in some very flashy and stylish, though hideously bright, clothes. He greeted each of the pa.s.sengers warmly himself, promising them the finest of accommodations after their frightful ordeal. He had some of his people take the pa.s.sengers immediately up to the Diamond Level, and Annissya with them, leaving Keevy and me at the shuttle.

Booster introduced himself to Keevy and the younger man's eyes lit up.

"You're Corran Horn's father-in-law!"

"He's married to my daughter, yes." Booster managed to keep a smile on his face. "I have a report from Idanian here that you know your way around astronavigational equipment. Is that true?"

Keevy blinked once, then nodded. "A ship like this uses the Seinar Starpath system, doesn't it?"

"It does indeed." Booster smiled in my direction. "He's a genius, clearly."

"I thought you might think so." I patted Keevy on the shoulder. "Got us out of a nasty sc.r.a.pe with the Invids. I was thinking, if the Tinta Line does not offer him a job, you might have work for him here."

"Here, on the Errant Ventura?! Me? Here? On this ship that won the battle of Thyferra?" Keevy clung by his fingertips to his lower lip. "That wouldn't be possible, would it? I mean, this ship's history and its history with Rogue Squadron, and all the things you've done with it since then, this would be like being in a museum or a fantasy or both, a fantasy museum."

Booster's eyes narrowed, but he kept the smile on his face.

"We shall talk about this, but for now, Keevy, you are my guest.

Ha.s.sla'tak, conduct Keevy Spart here to our Emerald Suite."

Ha.s.sla'tak, a Twi'lek whose lekku were twitching like needle-stuck snakes, waved Keevy toward the turbolifts. I heard Keevy begin to pepper him with questions, but the Twi'lek just answered in his own tongue.

Booster winced. "Haven't heard Ha.s.sla'tak use that kind of language since the last Sull.u.s.tan gambling junket came through."

"Keevy can be a bit much. Thanks for not letting him know who I am."

"You owe me."

"Put it on my tab." I jerked a thumb back at the shuttle. "I need your people to pull the scanner memory and see if any of the Invid ships can tip us to where they're hiding."