The creature had stopped whimpering. It was snuffling its way toward Luke. It must have gotten the splinter out of its pad. Luke lined his splinters around him. All they would do was buy him time, but time was what he needed.

He wasn't going to die at the paws of this hairy beast.

He wouldn't give Kueller the satisfaction.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Kueller watched the skies through the observatory. He had modified this, the Great Dome of the Je'har, into a Command Central when he was fighting his conventional war against the Je'har. After he had killed their leaders, he systematically destroyed their followers, and watched it all on the screens around him. The screens were now showing him various readings from s.p.a.ce. The screens on his right magnified the same darkness a hundredfold. The screens to his left showed a fleet of ships coming out of hyperdrive into Almanian s.p.a.ce.

A dozen of his best employees were scattered throughout the room. Yanne stood beside him. "Milord, I think we should send our own people up there. Those are New Republic battleships. They could destroy Almania."

"They won't," Kueller said.

"Still," Yanne said. "I think we should be cautious."

"And let them know we've seen them?"

"They're too far away. They won't know." Kueller sighed. His a.s.sistants were always worried about failure first, instead of expecting success. He had learned that preparing for both success and failure served him best.

"Fine," he said. "Send out three Star Destroyers, and the attendant support vehicles. And Yanne?"

"Yes, milord?"

"If they fail, you will have failed also." Yanne's gray skin whitened, but his voice remained calm. "Yes, milord." He turned and softly gave the order to one of the guards. The guard nodded, clicked his heels together, and left the room.

The New Republic's fleet was not yet visible in the sky overhead. It wouldn't be, until it was debris floating through s.p.a.ce. Even then, all he would see would be an occasional flare breaking through the atmosphere.

On the screens to his left, he watched a tiny ship break away from the pack. "Bravo, President," he said. "Soon you'll be able to talk with your wretched brother all you want."

"Sir?" Yanne said.

Kueller ignored him. He was concentrating, not just on the visuals around him, but on his feelings. The dark side had its strengths. He knew that the fleet was uncertain about what it would find.

He smiled.

It would find nothing.

"Yanne."

"Yes, milord?"

"Are my plans in place?"

"Of course, milord."

"Then you can execute them. Now." Yanne hurried to comply with his order.

Kueller rocked back on his heels, and patted the remote under his cape.

If Yanne failed to follow orders, Kueller would do the deed himself. He had been telling the truth when he spoke to President Leia Organa Solo.

He preferred elegant, refined weapons.

She would learn just how elegant, and how refined, shortly.

No one had taken anything off the Falcon, although the wedged-open doors, and a scorch mark from Han's personally designed security system near the support, suggested that someone had tried. The Lady Luck wasn't as fortunate. Most of its interior was gone, including some of the easy-to-remove hardware.

To say that Lando was furious was, in Han's opinion, a bit of an understatement.

Han remained on the Lady Luck, repairing the engine systems with all the pieces he could find. The c.o.c.kpit was already functional, but had lost all its fancy gadgetry. Lando and Chewbacca were searching Skip 1 for the rest of the equipment, and Lando's missing droids. Han insisted that if they didn't find enough materials to rebuild the Luck, they should leave within the day. He felt a sense of urgency he didn't quite understand.

Blue had offered to help, but Han had turned her down. She had proven to be the most loyal of his old friends, but that no longer meant much.

Perhaps Lando had been right. Perhaps they all had resented him. But he didn't like recasting all those memories. They had been friends once.

That time had simply pa.s.sed. There was no going back, much as he wanted to.

And he wasn't even sure he wanted to anymore. The longing for the good old days that came during moments of quiet on Corus-cant seemed to be longing for romanticized versions of his past, not his real past.

Han had just rea.s.sembled the hyperdrive when the hair on the back of his neck rose. He grabbed it with his left hand, and a shudder ran down his spine. The feeling made him nervous. It was too close to the stuff Leia and Luke described about the Force. The stuff his children experienced but he never had.

Something had happened, was about to happen, could have happened. He crawled out of the maintenance tube and into the Luck's stripped corridor.

Then a series of booms echoed throughout the Skip. The Luck rocked, and Han slid to the other side of the corridor. More explosions occurred, and still more. He lay still, his arms over his head, but nothing happened inside the Luck.

Nothing at all.

Just like the moment when the Senate Hall exploded. Only panic around him, and no injuries inside the casino.

But Leia had been injured.

Han pushed to his feet. "Chewie!" he shouted. "Lando?" Of course, there was no reply. He had been alone in the Luck. He grabbed his blaster and let himself out the doors and walked--into a scene of devastation.

The Skip landing bay was in ruins. It looked as if someone had dropped a series of bombs from above. But the bay was a huge cavern carved in stone, and the ceiling hadn't been touched. Whatever had happened, happened inside.

Small fires burned near many of the ships. A pile of exploded metal had welded itself onto the Falcon's side, but no fire burned below her.

Nothing burned near the Luck, either.

Smugglers lay on their sides, on their backs, body parts strewn all over.

Several ships had holes in their sides the size of boulders, but those holes had been blown outward. Over the crackle of flames, Han could hear moaning and wailing from the survivors. Black, thick smoke was filling the bay, making it difficult to breathe.

He went back into the Luck and grabbed a breath mask that, fortunately, had not been taken. No telling what he would find in the rest of the Skip. No telling what the damage would do to the asteroid. They were shaky things at best. This might destroy the entire place.

He left the Luck, calling for Chewbacca and Lando. He had no idea where they'd gone. They were going after the parts, but they hadn't said who they were chasing, although Han had said he had seen stuff in Kid's and Zeen's possessions. They probably had gone to their rooms first, and then deeper into the Skip.

Han hoped they hadn't gone too deep. Some of those corridors were narrow, and made of rock. That rock would be very fragile in explosions like this.

As he stepped onto the ground, hands groped at his legs. People he didn't know called out to him. He stopped several times to move debris off trapped smugglers, then helped them to a place away from the fires. The smoke was getting so thick, it was impossible to see. If he wanted to save the Falcon and the Luck, he would have to work in the bay.

But that meant leaving Chewie and Lando to their own devices. He could mentally picture Chewie, trapped beneath a rock, Lando crushed beside him. Yet Han knew that the odds of finding them at all were small.

He had to try.

He stepped over debris and flaming metal. This devastation looked similar to the devastation on Coruscant. Only there, he had heard one explosion.

Here he had heard several.

The cries were growing more and more pitiful. He seemed to be one of the few uninjured people in the entire area. He couldn't pa.s.s these people by. He had to start helping, and hope that Chewie and Lando were getting equal consideration from someone else.

He wound his way around several flaming piles to the Falcon. Then he went inside, grabbed the fire extinguishers, and came out blasting. The foam put out the fires nearby, leaving charred bits of metal, and several charred bodies.

Han gagged, but kept going. Fires first, because if he didn't do that, the oxygen would disappear, the smoke would get worse, and people would die. Or at least that was what he told himself, what he had to tell himself, as he heard more and more cries for help.

Tentacles, hands, fingers, all manner of beings were reaching for him. He almost felt ashamed for being so healthy. He was working faster and faster, trying to put out more and more fires. The smoke was clearing, at least in the area he was working in, and as he looked up, he saw Blue doing the same work near him, using extinguishers from her Skipper.

She was covered in soot and ash, just as he was, but unlike him, she also had bruises, and her arms were bleeding. The back of her runic had torn, and he saw burns running along her skin. Her lips were moving as she worked, and tears were streaming down her face.

He had never seen Blue so upset.

He left her to her fires, and started on another set. More smugglers hurried out of ships. One Sull.u.s.tan vessel poured extinguisher out of its nozzle, and slowly, slowly, the fires died.

Leaving only smoking remains, and bodies.

And the wounded, staggering through the mess like the walking dead.

Han wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his arm. He was already exhausted, overwhelmed by the magnitude of cleaning the Run.

Of saving all the lives.

He grabbed a Ssty that was digging through a pile of smoking rubble.

Except for a few small burned patches on the Ssty's fur, it looked all right, as stunned as Han was, but all right.

"Get the medical droids. All of them," he said. "We'll make an aid station on the Lady Luck."

"Droids?" The Ssty swiveled its small head. Its eyes were red-rimmed.

"That's a sick joke, mister." It wrenched itself out of his grip and kept digging.

Han frowned. "Come on. We need to help these folks."

"Not with droids," the Ssty said.

"I don't understand." The Ssty stopped digging again, sighed, and wiped its claws on its fur. "Where were you when this happened?"

"In my ship." The Ssty nodded. Its little face was somber, its red-rimmed eyes filling with a blue gooey substance. "The droids did this," it said, and turned back to its digging.

Han frowned, picturing droids on attack, firing weapons. But that made no sense. It wasn't possible. He had fought beside droids before, and while they were clever, they never turned on their masters.

Ever.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

"My mate," the Ssty said.

Han felt his heart stop for a moment, remembering Leia in the bombed-out wreck of the Senate building, that horrible feeling he had had as he ran there, that feeling that he had just lost the most important thing in his life. Without hesitating, he dug into the hot metal, wincing as it burned his fingers, pulling pieces away that the Ssty wasn't strong enough to lift. "The droids attacked us?"

"They-" the Ssty's voice broke. "They exploded." All those pops, those explosions, were droids. "All the droids?"

"Some of them." The Ssty was digging faster. "Enough." Han pulled a huge chunk of metal away. Beneath it was another Ssty, arms over its head, claws extended.

Eyes open.

With a yowl, the Ssty pulled its mate free. The lower half of its body was crushed flat. It was clearly dead.

"I'm sorry," Han said. The words were not enough, and the Ssty didn't hear him. Its yowls had risen to blend with the other cries, and the blue stuff was staining its white fur. It kept brushing the hair away from its mate's lifeless eyes, and rocking, as if the motion would bring the mate back.

Han backed away, unable to watch the little creature's pain. The droids exploded. And the bombed interior looked like the Senate Hall.

All those senators with their protocol droids, their translator droids, their a.s.sistant droids. Several explosions at once would feel like one big a.s.sault.

And leave no trace, because the sources of the bombs would be destroyed along with the bombs themselves.

He made his way toward the Falcon, not quite able to think. No medical droids. So they would have to rely on whatever medical talent was on the Run. No one would come here to help. No one would be able to navigate the entrance without a map.

What a disaster.

"Han!" The voice was rea.s.suringly familiar. At the base of the Falcon's ramp, Lando stood with Chewbacca. Lando's shirt was singed, and the fur on Chewbacca's chest was nearly gone, but they were all right.

Han had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. "I thought you were dead," he said.

"We thought the same about you."

"What are we going to do?" Lando shook his head. "There are a few ancient FX-7's around, but they're already overworked. And most of the medical personnel were killed when their new medical droids exploded." Chewbacca growled.

"I thought of the same thing, Chewie," Han said. "This is exactly what happened on Coruscant, but somehow they kept it isolated to one building.

I don't know how they thought to target the Run."

"They didn't," Lando said. "Most of the droids here are stolen." Han felt cold. "You mean this attack was meant for someone else?"