"Admit it and I'll go easy on you for the rest of the game." C-3PO summoned as much indignation as his protocol programming allowed.

"You have my a.s.surance that I've no need to emerge victorious from each engagement. Whereas you, on the other hand-" Han laughed sharply, startling the droid to silence.

"Threepio, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times: you always have to be ready for surprises."

"Pompous man," C-3PO said. When Cakhmaim and Meewalh added their gravelly comments and guttural laughs to the merriment, he threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

"Oh, what's the use!" Abruptly, a warning tone sounded from the engineering station across the hold. The Noghri shot to their feet, but Leia propelled herself from the dejarik table's arc of padded bench and beat both of them to the communications display. Han watched expectantly from the game board.

"A surprise?" he asked when Leia turned from the displays. She shook her head.

"The signal we've been waiting for." Han rushed from the table and followed Leia into the starboard ring corridor, where he nearly tripped over a pair of knee-high boots he had left on the step. Early in his career as a smuggler, the Falcon had been the only home he knew, and now-this past year especially-it had become the only home Han and Leia knew.

Whether in their living quarters or in the forward hold, personal items were strewn about, waiting to be picked up and put away. The mess was just that, in desperate need of cleaning-maybe even fumigating. And indeed the dented and bruised exterior of the old freighter, with its mishmash of primers and fuse-welded borrowed parts, was beginning to resemble that of a house, well loved and lived in but too long neglected.

Han slid to a halt just short of the connector that accessed the c.o.c.kpit, and swung to the Noghri.

"Cakhmaim, get to the dorsal gun turret. And this time remember to lead your targets-even though I know it goes against your grain. Meewalh, I'm going to need you here to help our packages get safely aboard." In the outrigger c.o.c.kpit, with its claustrophobic surround of blinking instruments, Leia was already cinched into the copilot's chair, both hands busy activating the Falcon's startup systems and console displays.

Han slid into the pilot's seat, strapping in with one hand and throwing overhead toggles with the other.

"Can we locate them yet?"

"They're on the move," Leia said.

"But I've got a fix on them." Han leaned over to study one of the display screens.

"Lock their coordinates into the tracking computer, and let's get the topographic sensors on-line." Leia swiveled to the comm board, her hands moving rapidly over the controls. "Take her up," she said a moment later. Awakened from what amounted to a nap, the YT-1300's engines powered up. Han clamped his hands on the control yoke and lifted the ship out of its hiding place, an impact crater on the dark side of Selvaris's puny moon. He fed power to the sublight drives and steered a course around the misshapen orb. Green, blue, and white Selvaris filled the wraparound viewport. Han watched Leia out of the corner of his eye.

"Hope you remembered to look both ways." Leia shut her eyes briefly.

"We're safe." Han smiled to himself. The Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be sensed through the Force, but Leia had never had any problem sensing trouble.

"I just don't want to be accused of making any more illegal moves."

She looked at him.

"Only daring ones." Han continued to watch her secretly. Through all the rough-and-tumble years, her face had not lost its n.o.ble beauty.

Her skin was as flawless now as it had been when Han had first set eyes on her, in a detention cell, of all places. Her long hair retained its sheen; her eyes, their deep, inviting warmth. Han and Leia had experienced some troubled months following Chewbacca's death. But she had waited him out; and wherever they traveled now, no matter how much danger they put themselves in-mostly at Han's instigation-they were completely at home with each other. To Han, each and every action felt right. He had no yearning to be anywhere but where he was-with his beloved partner. It was a sappy thought, he told himself. But undeniably true. As if reading his thoughts, Leia turned slightly in his direction, lifting her chin a bit to show him a dubious look.

"You're in a good mood for someone setting out on a dangerous rescue mission." Han made light of the moment.

"Beating Threepio at dejarik has made a new man of me." Leia tilted her head.

"Not too new, I hope." She placed one hand atop his, on the yoke, and with the other traced the raised scar on his chin.

"It's taken me thirty years to get used to the old you."

"Me, too," he said, without humor. Exhaust ports ablaze, the Falcon rolled through a sweeping turn and raced for Selvaris's binary brightened transitor.

THREE.

Bent low over the swoopbike's high handgrips, Thorsh threaded the rocketing vessel through concentrations of saplings and opportunistic Yuuzhan Vong plants, under looping vines, and over the thick trunks of toppled trees. He hugged the fern-covered ground when and where he could, as much for safety's sake as to spare his spindly pa.s.senger any further torture from thorned vines, sharp twigs, and the easily disturbed hives of barbflies and other bloodsuckers. But Thorsh's best efforts weren't enough.

"When do we get to switch places?" the Bith asked over the howl of the repulsorlift. Thorsh knew that the question had been asked in jest, and so replied in kind.

"Hands at your sides and no standing on the seat!" Taking into account only the difference in heights, the Bith should have been the one in the saddle, with Thorsh scrunched down behind him, fingers clasped on the underside of the long seat. But Thorsh was the more experienced pilot, having flown swoops on several reconnaissance missions where speeders hadn't been available. His large wedge-shaped feet weren't well suited to the footpegs, and he had to extend his arms fully to grasp the handgrip controls, but his keen eyes more than made up for those shortcomings, even when streaming with tears, as they were now. Thorsh kept to the thick of the large island, where the branches of the tallest trees intertwined overhead and provided cover. The swoop was still running smoothly, except when he leaned it hard to the right, which for some reason caused the repulsorlift to sputter and strain. He could hear the other swoop-to the east and somewhat behind him-weaving a path through equally dense growth. The four escapees would have made better progress out over the estuary, but without the tree cover they would be easy prey for coralskippers. One skip had already completed two return pa.s.ses, paying out plasma missiles at random, and hoping for a lucky strike. The morning air was thick with the smell of burning foliage. Flat out, the swoop tore from the underbrush into a treeless expanse of salt flats, pink and blinding white, the nighttime sleeping grounds for flocks of Selvaris's long-legged wading birds. Determined to reach cover before the coralskipper showed up again, Thorsh gave the accelerator a hard twist and banked the swoop for the nearest stand of trees. Thorsh had just reentered the jungle when a clamor began to build in the canopy. His first thought was that another coralskipper had joined the pursuit. But there was a different quality to the sound-an eagerness absent in the deadly sibilance of a coralskipper. Thorsh felt his rider sit up straighter on the seat, in defiance of the hazards posed by overhanging branches.

"Is that what I think it is?" the humanoid asked.

"We'll know soon enough," Thorsh yelled back. Again he twisted the accelerator. Wind screamed over the swoop's inadequate fairing, forcing another flood of tears from his eyes. But his actions were in vain. The objects responsible for the escalating tumult pa.s.sed directly overhead, silencing the racket of the swoop, then outracing it.

"Lav peq!" the Bith screamed. Thorsh knew the term; it was the Yuuzhan Vong name for netting beetles, voracious and meticulous versions of the winged sentinels that had roused the prison guards. Lav peq were capable of creating webs between trees, bushes, or just about any type of barked foliage. Typically the beetles arrived in successive fronts, the first fashioning anchor lines, and those that followed feeding on bark and other organics to replenish the fibers needed to complete the filigree. A well-constructed web could ensnare or at least slow down a human-sized being. The strands themselves were tenaciously sticky, though not as adhesive as the enemy's blorash jelly. The Bith's hunch was verified as the swoop raced through the vanguard wave of the swarm.

Within seconds the downsloping front cowling was spattered with smashed beetle corpses. Thorsh plucked several from his fur-covered forehead and threw them aside. Just ahead, thousands of lav peq were plummeting into the jungle, tearing through the leafy canopy like hailstones. Thorsh ground his teeth and lowered his head. As strong as the strands were, they were no match for a swoop in the right hands. Fifty meters away the first web was already taking shape. Thorsh squinted in misgiving. More tightly woven than any he had seen on other worlds, the web actually obscured the trees. It took only a moment to realize that Selvaris's species of netting beetle was special. While half the swarm was flying horizontally at various levels, the other half was flying in vertical rows. The result was a warp-and-weft weave-a veritable curtain that, for all Thorsh knew, could snare the swoop as easily as a spiderweb might a nightfly. Extending his legs behind him, he flattened himself over the surging engine. With a distressed cry, the Bith followed suit, pressing himself to Thorsh's back. Thorsh cranked the accelerator for all it was worth, aiming for what he thought might be an area of relatively few trees. The swoop ripped through the webs at better than two hundred kilometers per hour, each successive curtain parting with loud cleaving sounds that sometimes resembled screams. Rear-guard beetles struck the cowling with the force of malleable bullets, and the Bith yelped in pain time and again. The swoop wobbled and the repulsorlift began to howl in protest. Thorsh fought to hold on to the handgrips as they were yanked from side to side by the viscous strands. He risked an ascent, only to learn the hard way that the situation was even more perilous in the upper reaches of the trees, where the branches fanned out and the leaves were home to clouds of insatiable needle fliers. Refusing to give a centimeter, he demanded every last bit of power from the struggling machine. Then, all at once, the swoop tore through the final web. Sticky strands cooked on the superheated engine, sending out an acrid smell.

Thorsh coughed strands from his throat and pawed others away from his stinging eyes.He brought the swoop to a halt just long enough to clear the exhaust ports and fan housing. His swearing pa.s.senger might have been wearing a long white wig. Thorsh had his right hand back on the accelerator when a pained shriek erupted from the jungle, punctuating the cacophony of birdcalls. He heard a familiar roar, and not a moment later the second swoop bobbed into view, bearing only the pilot.

"The nets got him!" the Bith pilot shouted over the irregular throb of a choked engine. He twisted the accelerator to keep the swoop idling.

"I'm going back for him!" Thorsh spit web from his mouth and scowled.

"Don't be a fool."

"He's alive-"

"Better that you are," Thorsh interrupted. He jerked his bearded chin to the west.

"The estuary. Get going!" Thorsh spurred the swoop through a quick circle and darted off into the trees, the Bith hanging on to what was left of the Jenet's flight jacket. Punching through the dense jungle that grew along the sh.o.r.e of the island, they found themselves back in the blinding light of Selvaris's double suns. Coaxing more speed from the rapidly failing engine, pilot and pa.s.senger leaned the swoop through a sweeping turn that carried them out over brackish water, inky with organics leached from the trees. They soared at top speed a few meters above the calm surface, racing past narrow, meandering channels of pellucid fresh water, bubbled up from the planet's underground and teeming with brilliantly colored fish. From the far sh.o.r.e came the urgent woofing and snarling of bissop hounds, galloping through swamps and across berms of scalpel gra.s.s. The harsh barks were accompanied by the war cries of Yuuzhan Vong chase teams, running behind the pack. Thorsh banked just in time to avoid a horde of thud and razor bugs that whirled out of the trees, pa.s.sing within centimeters of the swoop and tearing into the opposite sh.o.r.eline. Drawn by the commotion, schools of sharp-toothed predators, showing multifinned backs and serrated tails, leapt from the water to gorge on the airborne weapon bugs. Wide-winged raptors with huge wingspans left the fungus-filled cavities of dying trees to glide down and grab whatever bugs the aquatic behemoths missed. Thorsh pulled at the handgrips and sent the swoop into a steep climb. The saline water grew more agitated beneath them as the mouth of the estuary came into view, a line of white where curling waves broke against the marshy sh.o.r.e. Hundreds of white-cliffed islets, straight as towers and draped with vegetation, rose from out of the aquamarine ocean. On the horizon a volcano mounded from the water, great clouds of smoke billowing from its crater and bleeding a thick river of lava that turned part of the sea to steam. Thorsh scanned the otherwise clear sky for signs of the coralskipper. A kilometer away to the east, the other swoop was paralleling him. Gaining alt.i.tude, the two machines sped out over the breaking waves, making for the narrow channel that separated the islets closest to sh.o.r.e.

"Heads up!" the Bith said into Thorsh's right ear. His long-fingered hand shot out, indicating an object in the western sky. Thorsh tracked it and nodded, muttering a curse. The Yuuzhan Vong called it a tsik vai. Reminiscent of a seabird, it was an atmospheric search craft, its neck sac inflated and bright red as a signal to other craft in the area. Powered by a gravity-sensitive dovin basal, the monstrosity had a transparent blister c.o.c.kpit, flexible wings, and gill a.n.a.logs that made it whine in flight. Thorsh threw his weight against the handgrips and leaned hard against the steering auxiliaries, slewing the swoop toward the closest island, intent on keeping as close to the white cliffs as he dared. The tsik vai was not unnerved. It dived for its small prey, whining and releasing several thin, cablelike grasping tendrils. Thorsh dropped back to the turbulent surface, swerved, and cut across the channel for the neighboring islet, running full out, a meter above the waves. The search craft was following him down, prepared to make another grab, when something nailed it from behind. Thorsh and the Bith watched in bafflement as the tsik vai veered off course, one wing blown off, and spiraled out of control. It struck the sea with a loud splash, skipped twice on the waves, then crashed nose-first and began to sink. Out of the eastern sky, dazzled by sunlight, something large and dull-black was approaching at supersonic speed. Another Yuuzhan Vong vessel, Thorsh decided, whose pilot had just shot down one of his own craft to get to the swoop. Twitching the braking thrusters, he spun the swoop around in midair, hoping to race away from the mystery vessel before it could draw a bead on him. Even so, he waited for the fireb.a.l.l.s to start falling.

When they didn't, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see a twin-mandibled old freighter come streaking out of the cloudless sky. Thorsh felt crackling heat wash over him as the ship made a low, earsplitting, teeth-rattling pa.s.s, its dorsal laser cannon loosing green hyphens of energy at a trio of pursuing coralskippers. The freighter signaled the swoops with a rocking motion, then banked into a long sweeping turn to the south.

"Looks like our ride's here!" Thorsh said.

"And in worse trouble than we are!" A flurry of well-placed bursts from the freighter's top gunner caught the lead coralskipper head-on and sent it boiling into the sea. The other two enemy craft continued to pummel the freighter with plasma missiles. Perhaps frustrated by the ship's seemingly impenetrable shields, one of the skip pilots took aim on the Bith-piloted swoop. Caught in midair by a single lava-hot projectile, the machine disappeared without a trace. Thorsh clenched his jaws and steered the swoop for deeper water. The swoop was grazing the white crests of five-meter waves when something enormous rose from beneath the heaving surface.

"Cakhmaim's getting to be a pretty good shot," Han said over the sound of the reciprocating quad laser cannon.

"Remind me to up his pay-or at least promote him." Leia glanced at him from the copilot's chair.

"From bodyguard to what-butler?" Han pictured the Noghri in formal attire, setting meals in front of Han and Leia in the Falcon's forward cabin. His upper lip curled in delight, and he laughed shortly.

"Maybe we should see how he does with the rest of these skips." The YT-1300 was just coming out of her long turn, with Selvaris's double suns off to starboard and an active volcano dominating the forward view.

Below, green-capped, sheer-sided islands reached up into the planet's deep blue sky, and the aquamarine sea seemed to go on forever. Two coralskippers were still glued to the Falcon's tail, chopping at it and holding position through all the insane turns and evasions, but so far the deflector shields were holding. His large hands gripped on the control yoke, Han glanced at the console's locator display, where only one bezel was pulsing.

"Where'd the other swoop go?"

"We lost it," Leia said. Han leaned toward the viewport to survey the undulating sea.

"How could we lose-"

"No, I mean it's gone. One of the coralskippers took it out." Han's eyes blazed.

"Why, that-which one of 'em?" Before Leia could answer, two plasma missiles streaked past the c.o.c.kpit, bright as meteors and barely missing the starboard mandible.

"Does it matter?" Han shook his head.

"Where's the other swoop?" Leia studied the locator display, then called up a map from the terrain sensor, which showed everything from the mouth of the estuary clear to the volcano. Her left forefinger tapped the screen.

"Far side of that island."

"Any skips after it?" A loud explosion buffeted the Falcon from behind.

"We seem to be the popular target," Leia said.

"Just the way you like it." Han narrowed his eyes.

"You bet I do." Determined to lure their pair of pursuers away from the swoop, he threw the freighter into a sudden ascent. When they had climbed halfway to the stars, he dropped the ship into a stomach-churning corkscrew. Pulling out sharply, he twisted the ship through a looping rollover, emerging from the combo headed in the opposite direction, with the two coralskippers in front of him. He grinned at Leia.

"Now who's in charge?" She blew out her breath.

"Was there ever any doubt?" Han focused his attention on the two enemy craft. Over the long years, Yuuzhan Vong pilots faced with impossible odds had surrendered some of the suicidal resolve they had displayed during the early days of the war. Maybe word had come down from Supreme Overlord Shimrra or someone that discretion really was the better part of valor. Whatever the case, the pilots of the two skips Han was stalking apparently saw some advantage to fleeing rather than re-engaging the ship their plasma missiles had failed to bring down. But Han wasn't content to send them home with their tails tucked between their legs-especially not after they had killed an unarmed swoop pilot he had come halfway across the galaxy to rescue.

"Cakhmaim, listen up," he said into his headset mike.

"I'll fire the belly gun from here. We'll put 'em in the Money Lane and be done with them." Money Lane was Han's term for the area where the quad lasers' firing fields overlapped. In emergency situations, both cannons could be fired from the c.o.c.kpit, but the present situation didn't call for that. What's more, Han wanted to give Cakhmaim the chance to hone his firing technique. All Han and Leia had to do was help line up the shots. From the way the coralskippers reacted to the Falcon's sudden turnabout, Han could almost believe that the enemy pilots had been eavesdropping on his communication with the Noghri. The first skip-the more battered of the pair, showing charred blotches and deep pockmarks-poured on all speed, separating from his wingmate at a sharp angle.

Smaller and faster, and seemingly helmed by a better pilot, the second skip shed velocity in an attempt to trick the Falcon into coming across his vector. That was the skip that had taken out the swoop, Han decided, sentencing the pilot to be the first to feel the Falcon's wrath. Leia guessed as much, and immediately plotted an intercept course.Exposed, the skip pilot went evasive, moving into the gunsights and out again, but with mounting panic as the Falcon settled calmly into kill position. The dorsal laser cannon was programmed to fire three-beam bursts that, all these years later, still had the ability to outwit the dovin basals of the older, perhaps more dim-witted coralskippers. While the enemy craft was quick to deploy a gravitic anomaly that engulfed the first and second beams, the third got through, blowing a huge chunk of yorik coral from the vessel's fantail. Han tweaked the yoke to place the skip in the Money Lane, and his left hand tightened on the trigger of the belly gun's remote firing mechanism. Sustained bursts from the twin cannons whittled the skip to half its size; then it blew, throwing pieces of coral wreckage in every direction.

"That's for the swoop pilot," Han said soberly. He turned his attention to the second skip, which, desperate to avoid a similar fate, was jinking and juking all over the sky. Zipping through the showering remains of the first kill, the Falcon quickened up and pounced on the wildly maneuvering skip from above. The targeting reticle went red, and a target-lock tone filled the c.o.c.kpit. Again the quad lasers rallied, catching the vessel with burst after burst until it disappeared in a nimbus of coral dust and white-hot gas. Han and Leia hooted.

"Nice shooting, Cakhmaim!" he said into the headset.

"Score two more for the good guys." Leia watched him for a moment.

"Happy now?" Instead of replying, Han pushed the yoke away from him, dropping the Falcon to within meters of the surging waves.

"Where's the swoop?" he asked finally. Leia was ready with the answer.

"Come around sixty degrees, and it should be right in front of us."

Han adjusted course, and the swoop came into view, streaking over the surface, bearing two seriously dissimilar riders. In pursuit, and just visible beneath the surface, moved an enormous olive-drab triangle, trailing what appeared to be a lengthy tail. Han's jaw dropped.

"What is that thing?" Leia said.

"Threepio, get in here!" Han yelled, without taking his eyes from the creature.C-3PO staggered into the c.o.c.kpit, clamping his hands on the high-backed navigator's chair to keep from being thrown off balance, as had too often happened. Han raised his right hand to the viewport and pointed.

"What is that?" he asked, enunciating every word.

"Oh, my," the droid began.

"I believe that what we're looking at is a kind of boat creature.

The Yuuzhan Vong term for it is vangaak which derives from the verb 'to submerge.' Although in this case the verb has been modified to suggest-"

"Skip the language lesson and just tell me how to kill it!"

"Well, I would suggest targeting the flat dome, clearly visible on its dorsal surface."

"A head shot."

"Precisely. A head shot."

"Han," Leia interrupted.

"Four more coralskippers headed our way." Han manipulated levers on the console, and the Falcon accelerated.

"We gotta work fast. Threepio, tell Meewalh to activate the manual release for the landing ramp. I'll be there in a flash." Leia watched him undo the clasps of the crash webbing.

"I take it you're not planning to land." He kissed her on the cheek as he stood up.

"Not if I can help it." The swoop fought to maintain an alt.i.tude of eight meters, but that was enough to keep it from the snapping jaws of the Yuuzhan Vong vangaak that had almost snagged it on surfacing. Thorsh might have opted to head inland if the Yuuzhan Vong search parties and their snarling beasts hadn't reached the marshy sh.o.r.e. Worse, four specks in the northern sky were almost certainly coralskippers, soaring in to reinforce the pair the YT-1300 was chasing. Instead, the Jenet had the swoop aimed for deeper water, out toward the volcano, where the waves mounded to a height of ten meters. Thorsh and his rider could feel the sting of the saline spray on their scratched and bruised faces and hands.

Behind them, the vangaak was rapidly closing the gap, but if it had weapons other than torpedo a.n.a.logs it wasn't bringing them to bear. An unsettling vociferation from the Bith broke Thorsh's concentration.

"The vangaak's gone! It submerged!" Thorsh didn't know whether to worry or celebrate. The vangaak put a quick end to his indecision.

Breaching the surface in front of the swoop, the dull olive triangle spiked straight up out of the waves, venting seawater from blowholes on its dorsal side, and opening its tooth-filled mouth. Thorsh demanded all he could from the swoop, climbing at maximum boost, but there was no escaping the reach of the creature. He heard a surprised scream, then felt his flight jacket rip away. Lightened, the swoop ascended at greater speed, only to stall. Thorsh threw a distraught glance over his shoulder.

The Bith was pinned between the vangaak's teeth, mouth wide in a silent scream, black eyes dull, Thorsh's jacket still clutched in his dexterous hands. But there wasn't time for despair or anger. The repulsorlift came back to life, and Thorsh veered away, even as he was falling. A roar battered his eardrums, and suddenly the YT-1300 was practically alongside him, skimming the waves not fifty meters away. The quartet of coralskippers began firing from extreme range, their plasma projectiles cutting scalding trails through the whitecapped crests. The old freighter's landing ramp was lowered from the starboard docking arm. It was clear what the ship's pilots had in mind. They were expecting him to come alongside and hurl himself onto the narrow incline. But Thorsh faltered. He knew the limitations of the swoop, and-more important-his own. With the coralskippers approaching and the vangaak submerged who-knew-where beneath the waves, it was unlikely that he could even reach the freighter in time. Additionally-and despite what were obviously military-grade deflector shields-the freighter was being forced to make slight vertical and horizontal adjustments, which only decreased Thorsh's chances of clambering aboard. His grimace disappeared, and in its place came a look of sharp attentiveness. As sole bearer of the secret intelligence contained in the holowafer, he had to give it his best try.

Tightening his grip, he banked for the sanctuary of the matte-black ship.

Crouched at the top of the extended ramp, Han peered down at the rushing water not twenty meters below. Wind and salt spray howled through the opening, blowing his hair every which way and making it difficult for him to keep his eyes open.

"Captain Solo," C-3PO said from the ring corridor.

"Princess Leia wishes you to know that the swoop is approaching.