“Good skies,” Leia murmured, sounding stunned. “And it actually flies?”
“Yeah, but not easily,” Han told her, watching with a slight trickle of apprehension as the monstrosity moved ever closer to his ship. It didn’t have to move all that close—the Falcon was considerably smaller than the huge container ships the shieldships normally escorted. “Lando told me they had all sorts of trouble getting the things designed properly in the first place, and almost as much trouble teaching people how to fly them.”
Leia nodded. “I believe it.”
The transmitter crackled again. “Unidentified ship, this is Shieldship Nine. Ready to lock; please transmit your slave circuit code.”
“Right,” Han muttered under his breath, touching the transmit switch. “Shieldship Nine, we don’t have a slave circuit. Just give me your course and we’ll stay with you.”
There was a moment of silence. “Very well, unidentified ship,” the voice said at last—reluctantly, Han thought. “Set your course at two-eight-four; speed, point six sublight.”
Without waiting for an acknowledgment, the huge umbrella began to drift off. “Stay with him, Chewie,” Han told the copilot. Not that that would be a problem; the Falcon was faster and infinitely more maneuverable than anything that size. “Shieldship Nine, what’s our ETA for Nkllon?”
“You in a hurry, unidentified ship?”
“How could we be in a hurry, with this wonderful view?” Han asked sarcastically, looking at the underside of the dish that filled pretty much the entire sky. “Yeah, we’re in kind of a hurry.”
“Sorry to hear that,” the other said. “You see, if you had a slave circuit, we could do a quick hyperspace hop inward together and be at Nkllon in maybe an hour. Doing it this way—well, it’ll take us about ten.”
Han grimaced. “Great.”
“We could probably set up a temporary slave circuit,” Leia suggested. “Threepio knows the Falcon’s computer well enough to do that.”
Chewbacca half turned toward her, growling a refusal that left no room for argument, even if Han had been inclined to argue. Which he wasn’t. “Chewie’s right,” he told Leia firmly. “We don’t slave this ship to anything. Ever. You copy that, shieldship?”
“Okay by me, unidentified ship,” the other said. They all seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in using that phrase. “I get paid by the hour anyway.”
“Fine,” Han said. “Let’s get to it.”
“Sure.”
The transmission cut off, and Han poised his hands over the controls. The umbrella was still drifting, but nothing more. “Chewie, has he got his engines off standby yet?”
The Wookiee rumbled a negative.
“What’s wrong?” Leia asked, leaning forward again.
“I don’t know,” Han said, looking around. With the umbrella in the way, there wasn’t a lot to see. “I don’t like it, though.” He tapped the transmitter. “Shieldship Nine, what’s the holdup?”
“Not to worry, unidentified ship,” the voice came back soothingly. “We’ve got another craft coming in that also doesn’t have a slave circuit, so we’re going to take you both in together. No point in tying up two of us, right?”
The hairs on the back of Han’s neck began to tingle. Another ship that just happened to be coming into Nkllon the same time they were. “You have an ID on that other ship?” he asked.
The other snorted. “Hey, friend, we don’t even have an ID on you.”
“You’re a big help,” Han said, muting the transmitter again. “Chewie, you got an approach yet on this guy?”
The Wookiee’s reply was short and succinct. And disturbing. “Cute,” Han growled. “Real cute”
“I missed that,” Leia murmured, looking over his shoulder.
“He’s coming in from the far side of the shieldship’s central pylon,” Han told her grimly, pointing to the inference brackets on the scanner scope. “Keeping it between him and us where we can’t see him.”
“Is he doing it on purpose?”
“Probably.” Han nodded, hitting his restraint release. “Chewie, take over; I’m going to fire up the quads.”
He ran back along the cockpit corridor to the central core and headed up the ladder. “Captain Solo,” a nervous mechanical voice called after him from the direction of the lounge. “Is something wrong?”
“Probably, Threepio,” Han shouted back. “Better strap in.”
He got up the ladder, passed through the right-angle gravity discontinuity at the gun well, and dropped himself into the seat.2 The control board went on with satisfying quickness, as he keyed for power with one hand and grabbed the headset with the other. “Anything yet, Chewie?” he called into his mike.
The other growled a negative: the approaching craft was still completely hidden by the shieldship’s pylon. But the inference scope was now giving a distance reading, and from that the Wookiee had been able to compute an upper size limit for the craft. It wasn’t very big. “Well, that’s something,” Han told him, running through his mental list of starship types and trying to figure out what the Empire might be throwing at them that would be that small. Some variety of TIE fighter, maybe? “Stay sharp—this might be a decoy.”
The inference scope pinged: the unknown ship was starting to come around the pylon. Han braced himself, fingers resting lightly on the fire controls …
And with a suddenness that surprised him, the ship burst into sight, rounding the pylon in a twisting spiral. It steadied slightly—
“It’s an X-wing,” Leia identified it, sounding greatly relieved. “With Republic markings—”
“Hello, strangers,” Luke’s voice crackled into Han’s ear. “Good to see you.”
“Uh … hi,” Han said, stifling the automatic urge to greet Luke by name. Theoretically, they were on a secure frequency, but it was easy enough for anyone with sufficient motivation to get around such formalities. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Lando,” Luke told him. “Sorry if I startled you. When they told me I’d be going in with an unidentified ship I thought it might be a trap. I wasn’t completely sure it was you until a minute ago.”
“Ah,” Han said, watching as the other ship settled into a parallel course. It was Luke’s X-wing, all right.
Or at least, it looked like Luke’s X-wing. “So,” he said casually, swiveling the laser cannons around to target the other. Situated the way it was, the X-wing would have to yaw 90 degrees around before it could fire at them. Unless, of course, it had been modified. “This just a social call, or what?”
“Not really. I found an old gadget that … well, I thought Lando might be able to identify it.” He hesitated. “I don’t think we ought to discuss it out in the open like this. How about you?”
“I don’t think we should talk about that, either,” Han told him, mind racing. It sounded like Luke, too; but after that near-disastrous decoy attempt on Bpfassh, he wasn’t about to take anything for granted. Somehow, they needed to make a positive identification, and fast.
He tapped a switch, cutting himself out of the radio circuit. “Leia, can you tell whether or not that’s really Luke out there?”
“I think so,” she said slowly. “I’m almost positive it is.”