She never did get to answer. Just then klaxons went off, sirens began to warble at deafening levels, and the public-address horns started paging her to the base's command post. Everywhere in the hangar, outlaw-techs dropped their tools in a ringing barrage and dashed off frantically for emergency stations. Jessa sprinted away instantly. Han took off after her, yelling back for Chewbacca to stay with their ship.

The two crossed the complex. Humans, nonhumans, and machines charged in every direction, necessitating a good deal of dodging and swerving. The command post was a simple bunker, but at the bottom of the steps leading to it, Jessa and Han entered a well-equipped, fully manned operations room. A giant holo-tank dominated the room with its phantom light, an a.n.a.logue of the solar system around them. Sun, planets, and other major astronomical bodies were picked out in keyed colors.

"Sensors have painted an unidentified blip, Jessa," said one of the duty officers, pointing out a yellow speck at the edge of the system. "We're awaiting positive ID."

She bit her lip, eyes fastened to the tank along with those of all the others in the bunker. Han moved up next to her. The speck was moving toward the center of the holotank, which would be, Han knew, the planet on which he was standing, represented by a bead of white light. The bogie's speed decreased, and sensors painted a cl.u.s.ter of smaller blips breaking away from it. Then the original object accelerated, kept on accelerating, and faded from the tank a moment later.

"It was an Authority fleet ship, a corvette," the officer said. "It launched a flight of fighters, four of them, then ducked back into hypers.p.a.ce. It must've detected us and gone for help, leaving the fighters to hara.s.s and keep us busy until it can return. I don't see how they happened to be searching this system."

Han realized the officer was looking directly at him. In fact, everybody in the command post was, and hands had gone to side arms. "Whoa, Jess," he protested, meeting her eyes, "when did I ever stooge for the Espos?"

For a moment an expression of uncertainty crossed her face, but only for a moment. "I guess if you'd tipped them you wouldn't have stuck around while they dropped in," she admitted. "Besides, they would have shown up in full strength if they'd known we were here. You've got to concede, though, Solo, it's some coincidence."

He changed the subject. "Why didn't the corvette just put through a hypers.p.a.ce transmission? They must be close enough to a base to call for support."

"This area's full of stellar anomalies," she said absently, focusing back on those ominous blips. "It fouls up hypers.p.a.ce commo; that's why we picked it, partly. What's the fighters' estimated time of arrival?" she asked the officer.

"ETA less than twenty minutes," was the reply.

She blew her breath out. "And we haven't got anything combatworthy except fighters ourselves. No use ducking it; get ready to scramble. Order evacuation to start in the meantime."

She looked to Han. "Those are probably IRDs'; they'll eat up anything I can send up right now except for some old snubs I have here. I need to buy time, and I have almost n.o.body who's done any combat flying. Will you help?"

He saw all the grave faces still staring at him. He led Jessa to one side, caressed her cheek, but spoke in a low tone. "My darling Jess, this definitely was not in our deal. I'm for the Old s.p.a.cemen's Home, remember? I have no intention of ever plunking my rear into one of those suicide sleds again."

Her voice was eloquent. "There are lives at stake! We can't evacuate in time, even if we leave everything behind. I'll send up inexperienced pilots if it comes to that, but they'll be cold meat for those Espo flyers. You've got more experience than all the rest of us put together!"

"All of which cries out to me that there's no percentage fighting the good fight," he parried, but he burned from the look she gave him. He nearly spoke again but held his tongue, unable to untangle his own nagging ambiguities.

"Then go hide," she said so low he could barely hear, "but you can forget your precious Millennium Falcon, Solo, because there's no power in the universe that can make her s.p.a.ceworthy before those raiders. .h.i.t us and pin us down. And once their reinforcements arrive, they'll carve this base and everything in it to atoms!"

His ship, of course; that's what must have been biting at the back of my mind, Han told himself. Must have been. The turbo-laser cannon would never stop fast, evasive fighters, and the raiders would indeed take the base apart. He and Chewbacca might possibly escape with their lives, but without their ship they'd be just two nameless, homeless pieces of interstellar flotsam.

In the confusion of the command post, with the giving and receiving of frantic messages, she still heard his voice among all the others.

"Jess?" She stared, confused, at his lopsided smirk. "Got a flight helmet for me?" He pretended not to see the sudden softening of her expression. "Something sporty, in my size, Jess, with a hole in it to match the one in my head."

IV.

HAN tagged after Jessa in another quick run across the base. They entered one of the lesser hangar domes where the air was filled with the whine of high-performance engines. Six fighters were parked there, their ground crews attending them, checking out power levels, armaments, deflectors, and control systems.

The fighters were primarily for interceptor service-or rather, Han corrected himself, had been a generation ago. They were early production snubships; Z-95 Headhunters; compact, twin-engined swing-wing craft. Their fuselages, wings and forked tails were daubed with the drab spots, smears, and spray-splotches of general camouflage coats. Their external hardpoints, where rockets and bomb pylons had once been mounted, were now bare.

Indicating the snubs, Han asked Jessa, "What'd you do, knock over a museum?"

"Picked them up from a planetary constabulary; they were using them for antismuggling operations, matter of fact. We worked them over for resale, but hung on to them because they're the only combat craft we've got right now. And don't be so condescending, Solo; you've spent your share of time in snubs."

That he had. Han dashed over to one of the Headhunters as a ground crewman finished fueling it. He took a high leap and chinned himself on the lip of the c.o.c.kpit to eyeball it. Most of its console panels had been removed in the course of years of repair, leaving linkages and wiring exposed. The c.o.c.kpit was just as cramped as he remembered.

But with that, the Z-95 Headhunter was still a good little ship, legendary for the amount of punishment it could soak up. Its pilot's seat-the "easy chair," in parlance-was set back at a thirty-degree angle to help offset gee-forces, the control stick built into its armrest. He let himself back down.

Several pilots had already gathered there, and another, a humanoid, showed up just then. There was little enough worry on their faces that Han concluded they hadn't flown combat before. Jessa came up beside him and pressed an old, l.u.s.terless bowl of a flight helmet into his hands.

"Who's flown one of these beasts before?" he asked as he tried the helmet on. It was a bad fit, too tight. He began pulling at the webbing adjustment tabs in its sweat-stained interior.

"We've all been up," one pilot answered, "to practice basic tactics."

"Oh, fine," he muttered, trying the helmet on again. "We'll rip 'em apart up there." The headgear was still too tight. With an impatient click of her tongue, Jessa took it from him and began working on it herself.

He addressed his temporary command. "The Authority's got newer ships; they can afford to buy whatever they want. That fighter spread coming in at us is probably made up of IRD ships straight off the government inventory, maybe prototypes, maybe production models. And the guys flying those IRDs learned how at an academy. I suppose it'd be too much to hope that anybody here has ever been to one?"

It was. Han went on, raising his voice over the increasing engine noise. "IRD fighters have an edge in speed, but these old Headhunters can make a tighter turn and take a real beating, which is why they're still around. IRDs aren't very aerodynamic, that's their nature. Their pilots hate to come down and lock horns in a planetary atmosphere; they call it goo. These boys'll have to, though, to hit the base, but we can't wait until they get down here to hit them, or some might get through.

"We've got six ships. That's three two-ship elements. If you've got anything worth protecting with those flight helmets, you'll remember this: stay with your wing man. Without him, you're dead. Two ships together are five times as effective as they would be alone, and they're ten times safer."

The Z-95s were ready now, and the IRDs' arrival not far off. Han had a thousand things to tell these green flyers, but how could he give them a training course in minutes? He knew he couldn't.

"I'll make this simple. Keep your eyes open and make sure it's your guns, not your tail, that's pointed at the enemy. since we're protecting a ground installation, we'll have to ride our kills. That means if you're not sure whether the opposition is. .h.i.t or faking, you sit on his tail and make sure he goes down and stays down. Don't think just because he's nosediving and leaving a vapor trail that he's out of it. That's an old trick. If you get an explosion from him, fine. If you get a flamer, let him go; he's finished. But otherwise you ride your kill all the way down to the cellar. We've got too much to lose here."

He made that last remark thinking of the Falcon, shutting out human factors, telling himself his ship was the reason he was about to hang his hide out in the air. Strictly business.

Jessa had thrust his helmet into his hands. He tried it on again; it was a perfect fit. He turned to say thanks and noticed for the first time that she was carrying a flight helmet, too.

"Jess, no. Absolutely not."

She sniffed. "They're my ships, in the first place. Doc taught me everything; I've been flying since I was five. And who d'you think taught these others the basics? Besides, there's no one else even nearly qualified."

"Training exercises are different!" Of all things, he didn't want to have to worry about her up there. "I'll get Chewie; he's done some-"

"Oh, brilliant, Solo! We can just build a dormer onto the canopy bubble and that hyperthyroid dust-mop of yours can fly the ship with his kneecaps!"

Han resigned himself to the fact that she was the logical one to fly. She turned to her other pilots. "Solo's right; this one'll be a toughie. We don't want to engage them out in s.p.a.ce, because all the advantages out there are theirs, but we don't want to let them get too close to the surface, either. Our ground defenses couldn't cope with a fighter spread. So somewhere in the middle we'll have to draw the line, depending on how they play it when they come at us. If we can buy time, the ground personnel will have a chance to complete evacuation."

She turned to Han. "Including the Falcon. I gave orders to finish her and close her up as soon as possible. I had to divert men to do it, but a deal's a deal. And I sent word to Chewie what's happened."

She pulled her helmet on. "Han's flight leader. I'll a.s.sign wing men. Let's move."

With high screeches the six Z-95 Headhunters, like so many mottled arrowheads, sped off into the sky. Han pulled down and adjusted his tinted visor. He checked his weapons again, three blaster cannons in each wing. Satisfied, he maneuvered so that his wing man was above and behind him, relative to the plane of ascent. Seated in his sloped-back easy chair, situated high in the canopy bubble, he had something near 360-degrees' visibility, one of the things he liked most about these old Z-95s.

His wing man was a lanky, soft-spoken young man. Han hoped the guy wouldn't forget to stick close when The Show started.

He thought, The Show-fighter-pilot jargon. He'd never thought he'd be using it again, with his blood up and a million things to keep track of, including allies, enemies, and his own ship. And anything that went wrong could blow him out of The Show for good.

Besides, The Show was the province of youth. A fighter could hold only so much gee-compensation equipment, enough to lessen simple linear stress and get to a target or sc.r.a.p in a hurry, but not enough to offset the punishment of tight maneuvering and sudden acceleration. Dogfighting remained the testing ground of young reflexes, resilience, and coordination.

Once, Han had lived, eaten, and slept high-speed flying. He'd trained under men who thought of little else. Even off-duty life had revolved around hand-eye skills, control, balance. Drunk, he'd stood on his head and played ring-toss, and been flung aloft from a blanket with a handful of darts to twist in midair and throw bull's-eyes time and again. He'd flown ships like this one, and ships a good deal faster, through every conceivable maneuver.

Once. Han was by no means old, but he hadn't been in this particular type of contest for a long time. The flight of Headhunters was pulling itself into two-ship elements, and he found his hands had steadied.

They drew their ships' wings back to minimize drag, wing camber adjusting automatically, and rose at high boost. They would meet their opposition at the edge of s.p.a.ce.

"Headhunter leader," he announced over the commo net, "to Headhunter flight. Commo check."

"Headhunter two to leader, in." That was Han's wing man.

"Headhunter three, check," sang Jessa's clear alto.

"Headhunter four, all correct." That had been Jessa's wing man, the gray-skinned humanoid from Lafra who, Han had noticed, had vestiges of soaring membranes, suggesting that he had superior flying instincts and a fine grasp of s.p.a.cial relationships. The Lafrarian, it had turned out, had over four minutes' actual combat time, which was a good sign. A good many fighter pilots were weeded out in the first minute or so of combat.

Headhunters five and six chimed in, two of Jessa's grease slingers who were brothers to boot. It had been inevitable that they'd be wing men; they'd tend to stick together, and if paired with anyone else, would have been distracted anyway.

Ground control came up. "Headhunter flight, you should have a visual on your opposition within two minutes."

Han had his flight tighten up their ragged formation. "Stay in pairs. If the bandits offer a head-on pa.s.s, take them up on it; you can pitch just as hard as they can." He thought it better not to mention that the other side had a longer reach, however.

He had Five and Six, the brothers, drop far back to field any enemies that might break through. The two remaining elements spread out as much as they could without risking separation. Their sensors and those of the approaching ships identified one another, and complex countermeasures and distortion systems switched on. Han knew this engagement would be conducted on visual ranging; all the complicated sensor-warfare apparatus tended to cancel out, no longer to be trusted.

Short-range screens painted four blips. "Go to Heads-Up Displays," Han ordered, and they all cut in their holographics. Transparent projections of their instrumentation hung before them in the canopy bubbles, freeing them of the need to divert their eyes and attention from the task of flying in order to take a reading.

"Here they come!" someone shouted. "At one-zero-slash-two-five!"

The enemy ships were IRD models all right, with bulbous fuselages and the distinctive engine package that characterized that latest military design. They were IRD prototypes. As Han watched, the raiders broke formation into two elements of two ships each in perfect precision.

"Elements break!" he called. "Take 'em!" He led his wing man off to starboard to face that brace of IRDs as Jessa and her humanoid wing man banked to port.

The net came alive with cries of warning. The Espo flyers had disdained evasionary tactics, coming head-on, meaning they were out to put some blood on the walls. Their orders, Han thought, must've been to hit the outlaw-techs as hard as they could.

The IRDs began firing from extreme range with yellow-green flashes of the energy cannon in their chin pods. Deflector shields were up. Han ground his teeth, his hand tight on the stick, disciplining himself not to fire until it could do some good. He fought the urge to rubberneck and see how his other element was doing; each two-ship pair was on its own for the moment. He could only hope everybody would hold together, because the pilot who became a straggler in a row like this seldom came out of it.

Han and the opposing wing leader squared off and bore in on each other. Their wing men, keeping out of the way, were too busy holding position and adapting to their leaders' actions to do any shooting.

The IRD's beams began to make hits, rocking the smaller Headhunter. Han came within range and still held his fire; he had a feeling about this one. The IRD pilot might not even be sure about the old Z-95's reach, but Han suspected he knew what the man would do as soon as he returned fire. Riding the jolting Headhunter through the hail of incoming shots, he bided his time and hoped his shields would hold.

He played it for as long as he dared, only a matter of an extra moment or two, but precious time and vital distance. He let one quick burst go. As he'd suspected, the enemy never intended to face off to the very end. The IRD rolled onto its back, still firing, and Han had the snap shot he'd hoped for. But the IRD fighter was into his gunsight ring and out again like a wraith, so although he scored, Han knew he hadn't done it any damage. The Authority ships were even faster than he'd thought.

Then all bets were off because, despite everything taught in cla.s.srooms, the IRDs split up, the wing man peeling away in an abrupt bank. Han's wing man went after him, exclaiming excitedly, "I'm on him!" Han hollered for him to come back and not throw away the security of a two-ship element.

The IRD leader swept by underneath Han. He knew what that meant, too; the enemy was almost certain to split-S, loop under, and try for a tail position-the kill position. What Han should have done with the slower Headhunter was to firewall the throttle and go for clear s.p.a.ce until he knew what was what. But the interchange of chatter between Jessa and her wing mate told him that the other pair of IRDs had split up as well, drawing her and her companion out of their pairing.

Han sent his Headhunter into a maximum-performance climbing turn, trying to look everywhere at once, still yelling to his wing man, "Stick with me! They're baiting you!" But he was ignored.

The IRD leader he'd shot at hadn't split-S. The raiders' whole strategy of drawing the defenders out of formation was clear now, too late. The IRD leader had half rolled again, half looped, and come around onto the tail of Han's wing man. The other IRD, the bait, was already racing on toward the backup element, Headhunters five and six. One of the IRDs Jessa had faced joined that one in a new two-ship element.

The Espos had counted on the inexperienced outlaw-techs' breaking formation, Han thought. If we'd stayed together we'd have mopped the floor with them. "Jess, dammit, we've been robbed," he called as he came around, but Jessa had her own troubles. Because she and her wing mate had become separated, an IRD had found the opportunity to fasten itself on her tail.

Han saw that his own wing man was in trouble, but just didn't have the speed to intervene. The IRD leader had attached himself to the Headhunter in the kill position, and the lanky young outlaw-tech was pleading, "Help me, somebody! Get him off me!"

Still way out of range, Han fired anyway, hoping to shake up the IRD leader's concentration. But the enemy was steady and undistracted. He waited until he had the Headhunter perfectly set up and hit the firing b.u.t.ton on his control grips in a brief burst. The Z-95 was caught by a yellow-green blast and vanished in a nimbus of white-hot gas and debris.

What Han should have done was draw his remaining ships together in a weaving, mutually protective string or circle. But even as he breathed profanities to himself, he cut a course for the victorious IRD, his blood up, caution forgotten, thinking, n.o.body gets into me for a wing man, pal. n.o.body.

It came to him that he didn't even know that lanky boy's name.

Jessa's wing man, the Lafrarian, shouted, "Scissor right, Headhunter three! Scissor!"

Jessa broke right in a flurry of evasive maneuvers while lines of destruction probed for, her. She poured on all speed as her wing man came in at a sharp angle, decreasing his own velocity so that Jessa and her pursuer came across his vector. The Lafrarian settled calmly into the kill position, quickened up, and opened fire.

Lines of red blaster-cannon fire broke from the trailing Headhunter's wings. The raider ship shuddered as pieces of its fuselage were sheared off. There was an explosion, and the crippled IRD went into a helpless flutter, as if it were dragging a broken wing. It began its long fall toward the planet, sentenced to death by simple gravity.

Far below, Headhunters five and six, the two brothers, had engaged the IRDs that had broken through. Off in the distance Han Solo and the IRD leader swept and wove through the permutations of close combat, making their statements in beams of devastation in red, in green.

But Jessa knew where priorities lay, and Five and Six were her weakest flyers. Even now they were calling for help. She and her humanoid wing man closed and sped off to rejoin the fray.

A raider was glued to Headhunter five's tail, chopping at it and holding position through all the insane turns and evasions, refusing to be unseated. The outlaw-tech shoved his stick up into the corner for a pushover but was too slow. The IRD's beams sliced through his ship, depressurizing it and severing him at the waist. The IRD turned toward the other brother, Headhunter six, as its companion raced on toward the planet and its outlaw base.

Just then Jessa and her wing man arrived, calling for Headhunter six to come under their cover.

"I can't; I'm latched!" the man answered. The IRD that had remained behind had come out of a smooth barrel roll and attached itself to him. Jessa's wing man threw himself in to help and she came right behind. The sliding, jockeying string of four ships plunged toward the planet's surface.

The IRD made its kill a moment later. Headhunter six split apart in a blossom of fire and wreckage just as its killer came under Jessa's wing man's guns.

The Espo flyer applied more of his ship's amazing speed to improve his lead and came up as if he were going into a loop, making the Lafrarian misjudge. The IRD flashed out of the maneuver instead, in a lightning-fast turn, banked, and managed to make a high deflection shot.

The IRD's cannon scored, and her wing man's Headhunter shook as Jessa raised her voice in alarm, sheering off as quickly as she could. She banked and sensed a shadow near. The IRD swooped past. She swerved and shot at it instinctively. The burst scored, penetrating the IRD's shields. As the IRD dropped away in an emergency power dive, its pilot struggling to adjust his craft's thrust bias and avert disaster, Jessa ignored Han's dictum that she ride her kill. She returned to see what she could do for her wing mate.

Exactly nothing. The Lafrarian's ship was damaged but not in danger of crashing. He'd put it into a shallow glide, extending his wings to their fullest.

"Can you make it?"

"Yes, Jessa. But at least one of the IRD has gotten through. The other may manage to rejoin him."

"Nurse your ship back. I've got to get down there."

"Good hunting, Jessa!"

She opened her ship's engines in a power dive.

Han found out right away that the IRD leader was a good pilot. He discovered it by nearly getting his easy chair shot out from underneath him.