With an effort, Han turned from the viewport to face him. There was nothing to see out there, anyway—the Lady Luck was long gone. “You know, that’s almost exactly the same thing you said back on Boordii,” he reminded Lando sourly. “That botched dolfrimia run—remember? You said, ‘It’ll be fine; don’t worry about it.’ ”
Lando chuckled. “Yes, but this time I mean it.”
“That’s nice to know. So, what do you have planned for entertainment?”
“Well, the first thing we ought to do is have Threepio send off a message to Coruscant,” Lando said. “Give the impression that Leia’s aboard to any Imperials who might be listening. After that, we could move a couple of systems over and send another message. And after that”—he threw Han a sideways glance—“I thought we might like to do a little sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing?” Han echoed suspiciously. Lando was practically glowing with innocence, a look he almost never used except when he was trying to sucker someone into something. “You mean as in flying all over the galaxy looking for replacement mole miners?”
“Han!” Lando protested, looking hurt now. “Are you suggesting I’d stoop so low as to try and con you into helping me run my business?”
“Forgive me,” Han said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “I forgot—you’re respectable now. So what sights are we going to see?”
“Well …” Casually, Lando leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. “You mentioned earlier that you hadn’t been able to get in touch with Talon Karrde. I thought we might take another crack at it.”
Han frowned at him. “You serious?”
“Why not? You want cargo ships, and you want a good slicer. Karrde can supply both.”
“I don’t need a slicer anymore,” Han said. “Leia’s as safe now as she’s ever likely to be. Remember?”
“Sure—until someone leaks the news that she’s there,” Lando countered. “I don’t think the Wookiees would, but there are non-Wookiee traders flying in and out of Kashyyyk all the time. All it takes is one person spotting her, and you’ll be right back where you were when you first got here.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And Karrde might also have something on this mysterious Imperial commander who’s been running you in circles lately.”
The commander who was almost certainly also the man behind the attacks on Leia … “You know how to make contact with Karrde?”
“Not directly, but I know how to get to his people. And I thought that as long as we had Threepio and his umpteen million languages aboard anyway, we’d just go ahead and cut a new contact path.”
“That’ll take time.”
“Not as much as you might think,” Lando assured him. “Besides, a new path will cover our trail better—yours and mine both.”
Han grimaced, but Lando was right. And with Leia safely hidden away, at least for now, they could afford to play it cautious. “All right,” he said. “Assuming we don’t wind up playing tag with a Star Destroyer or two.”
“Right,” Lando agreed soberly. “The last thing we want is to draw the Imperials onto Karrde’s tail. We’ve got enough enemies out there as it is.” He tapped the ship’s intercom switch. “Threepio? You there?”
“Of course,” Leia’s voice returned.
“Come on up here,” Lando told the droid. “Time for your debut performance.”
The command room was filled with sculptures instead of pictures this time: over a hundred of them, lining the walls in holographic niches as well as scattered around the floor on ornate pedestals.1 The variety, as Pellaeon had come to expect, was astonishing, ranging from human-style chunks of simple stone and wood to others that were more like tethered living creatures than works of art. Each was illuminated by a hazy globe of light, giving sharp contrast to the darkness of the spaces between them. “Admiral?” Pellaeon called uncertainly, trying to see around the artwork and through the gloom.
“Come in, Captain,” Thrawn’s coolly modulated voice beckoned. Over at the command chair, just above the hazy white of the Grand Admiral’s uniform, two glowing red slits appeared. “You have something?”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon told him, walking to the console ring and handing a data card over it. “One of our probes in the outer Athega system has picked up Skywalker. And his companions.”
“And his companions,” Thrawn echoed thoughtfully. He took the data card, inserted it, and for a minute watched the replay in silence. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Interesting, indeed. What’s that third ship—the one maneuvering to link with the Millennium Falcon’s dorsal hatch?”
“We’ve tentatively identified it as the Lady Luck,” Pellaeon said. “Administrator Lando Calrissian’s personal ship. One of the other probes copied a transmission stating that Calrissian was leaving Nkllon on a purchasing trip.”
“Do we know that Calrissian did, in fact, board the ship at Nkllon?”
“Ah … no, sir, not for certain. We can try to get that information, though.”
“Unnecessary,” Thrawn said. “Our enemies are clearly past the stage of such childish tricks.” Thrawn pointed to the display, where the Millennium Falcon and the Lady Luck were now joined together. “Observe, Captain, their strategy. Captain Solo and his wife and probably the Wookiee Chewbacca board their ship on Nkllon, while Calrissian similarly boards his. They fly to the outer Athega system … and there they make a switch.”
Pellaeon frowned. “But we’ve—”
“Shh,” Thrawn cut him off sharply, holding up a finger for silence, his eyes on the display. Pellaeon watched, too, as absolutely nothing happened. After a few minutes the two ships separated, maneuvering carefully away from each other.
“Excellent,” Thrawn said, freezing the frame. “Four minutes fifty-three seconds. They’re in a hurry, of course, locked together so vulnerably. Which means …” His forehead furrowed in concentration, then cleared. “Three people,” he said, a touch of satisfaction in his voice. “Three people transferred, in one direction or the other, between those two ships.”
“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon nodded, wondering how in the Empire the Grand Admiral had figured that one out. “At any rate, we know that Leia Organa Solo remained aboard the Millennium Falcon.”
“Do we?” Thrawn asked, lazily polite. “Do we indeed?”
“I believe we do, sir, yes,” Pellaeon said, quietly insistent. The Grand Admiral hadn’t seen the entire playback, after all. “Right after the Lady Luck and Skywalker’s X-wing left, we intercepted a transmission from her that definitely originated from the Millennium Falcon.”
Thrawn shook his head. “A recording,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. “No; they’re cleverer than that. A voiceprint-doctored droid, then—probably Skywalker’s Threepio protocol droid. Leia Organa Solo, you see, was one of the two people who left with the Lady Luck.”
Pellaeon looked at the display. “I don’t understand.”
“Consider the possibilities,”2 Thrawn said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingertips in front of him. “Three people start out aboard the Millennium Falcon, one aboard the Lady Luck. Three people then transfer. But neither Solo nor Calrissian is the type to turn his ship over to the dubious command of a computer or droid. So each ship must end up with at least one person aboard. You follow so far?”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. “That doesn’t tell us who is where, though.”
“Patience, Captain,” Thrawn interrupted him. “Patience. As you say, the question now is that of the final makeup of the crews. Fortunately, once we know there were three transfers, there are only two possible combinations. Either Solo and Organa Solo are together aboard the Lady Luck, or else Organa Solo and the Wookiee are there.”