As Zekk jockeyed into position to cut off Boba Fett’s ship, he looked grimly at the Lightning Rod’s weapons systems. He had shot at and chased the masked bounty hunter before, but in each case Zekk had had the element of surprise, and he had fled before the firefight could get too intense. Fett outgunned him by a significant margin.
“Get the tractor beam on that escape pod,” he said to Raynar. “We don’t have much time.”
“Which is the tractor beam?” Raynar said, looking frantically at the control panels. “We haven’t covered that one yet.”
Zekk dodged and rolled the Lightning Rod, skimming past a volley of laser fire from Boba Fett.
“That one!” he said, jabbing quickly at a control panel in front of the copilot’s chair. He fought his impatience with Raynar’s lack of training. The blond-haired young man was just as interested in rescuing his father as Zekk was in surviving this encounter. Slave IV came in shooting. Bornan Thul’s voice came over the comm system.
“If you’re going to rescue me, you’d better do it quickly.”
“I got him!” Raynar yelled as he successfully locked on the tractor beam. Boba Fett cruised toward them, ready to snatch the escape pod directly from their grip. At that moment, without warning, Bornan Thul’s ship exploded in a nightmare of blinding white that washed across space in an expanding sphere.
“Hang on!” Zekk swung the Lightning Rod around to shield the escape pod just as the shock wave struck. Fett’s ship was knocked into a dizzying spiral. Zekk barely held position, nudging his thrusters to keep the Lightning Rod balanced.
“We’re still here. We’re still intact,” he said.
“So am I,” Bornan Thul shouted over the comm system. “But I won’t be for long unless you get me aboard.”
Fett recovered quickly and came after them again, angry now. Zekk fired, but his weapons were much weaker than the bounty hunter’s. He fed all available power to his shields but still felt the pounding of Boba Fett’s blasts. He checked to see if Raynar had drawn the escape pod into the cargo bay yet.
“What’s this alarm light mean?” Raynar asked.
“It means our shields are failing!” Zekk said. Suddenly, another ship soared out of hyperspace, emerging from the glare of Bornan Thul’s self-destructed vessel. Without pausing to take aim, the new ship fired immediately upon Boba Fett. Bright streaks of fire sprayed space and struck Slave IV.
“Yee-ha!” Jaina Solo’s voice crowed over the comet system. “Take that, Boba Fett—and don’t mess with our friends!”
Zekk fired his own weapons again in tandem with the Rock Dragon’s second full-powered volley. Fett, seeing himself clearly at a tactical disadvantage and not knowing if other ships might soon arrive, broke off his attack. He sent one brief comm burst as he wheeled about.
“I have what I need.” Then he vanished into hyperspace.
“Nice turnabout, Jaina,” Zekk said, with a tense smile. “About time you came to rescue me for a change!”
The Rock Dragon pulled alongside, and Jaina’s chuckle came through the comm system.
“Kind of a family tradition. Dad did the same thing for Uncle Luke at the Death Star, you know. Anyway, couldn’t let you keep thinking you’re the only one who can pull off a surprise rescue.”
Raynar was relieved, nervous, and exhilarated all at the same time. At the moment, nothing was more important to him than getting down to the cargo hold, where the retrieved lifepod rested. He ran to be reunited—at last—with his father.
5
The sharp scent of ozone and metal drifted up from the escape pod, along with a crackle of static electricity from the recently disengaged tractor beam. Raynar could hear the chugging of the pod’s life-support systems mixed with the whine of the Lightning Rod’s sublight engines as Zekk maneuvered to dock with the Rock Dragon. He had never heard or smelled anything so wonderful. The harsh glare of the cargo hold’s glowpanels was cheering, welcoming. Everything seemed brighter, sweeter, fresher to him than it had for nearly a year. The galaxy would soon be set to rights. His father had returned. With shaking fingers Raynar pressed the hatch release, and the heavy top panel popped open with a whoosh of depressurization. Giving a joyful cry of welcome, Raynar leaned into the pod—only to find a blaster aimed straight at his heart.
Jaina was the first to stumble through the airlock from the Rock Dragon. Setting his external sensors to full alert to keep an eye out for unwanted visitors, Zekk threw aside his crash webbing and bounded out of the Lightning Rod’s cockpit and into the crew cabin. He twirled Jaina in a happy hug while they both laughed with relief, but then he growled,
“I thought I told you you couldn’t come with me!”
Jaina knew he was trying hard to sound stern, but she could hear the pleasure in his voice. She pulled back and favored him with a Solo grin. “Since when have you ever done anything I wanted you to do?” She gave an unladylike snort. “I’m just as worried about your safety as you are about mine, you know.”
“All right,” Zekk admitted, “I’m glad you came. But I still don’t know how you found us.”
Jaina shrugged and grinned again. “Trade secret.”
“Hah!” Jacen said, appearing in the airlock with Tenel Ka behind him. “Some trade secret. More like a sneaky droid, if you ask me.”
Lowie also emerged from the airlock in a flurry of ginger fur and full-throated Wookiee bellows.
“Why, if you’re referring to me, Master Jacen, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Em Teedee said, zipping past him into the crew cabin on his microrepulsor jets.
“This is a fact,” Tenel Ka said. “You are an excellent ‘sneaky’ droid.”
Zekk looked accusingly at Jaina. “What did Em Teedee do?”
“When we were helping you with your preflights,” she stammered, “I kind of, um, had Em Teedee download the frequency and encoding for the tracer you used on Bornan Thul’s ship.”
“Hey, it was a good thing, too,” Jacen picked up where his sister left off. “After we saw the delegation off to Ryloth, we all had this feeling that something was about to go wrong.”
Lowie woofed and brushed at the back of his neck to indicate the tingle of danger they had sensed.
“Mom must have felt it too,” Jaina said, “because when I told her you were going to need our help, she didn’t even try to argue. She was glad she had some Jedi she could send on such an important mission—even if two of them were her own kids.”
Tenel Ka nodded.
“Her one stipulation was that we send her a message if we required reinforcements.” She raised an eyebrow and looked around at her friends. “Do we require reinforcements?”
“Not if Bornan Thul made it out intact with his navicomputer.”
“Or managed to destroy it,” Zekk added. “We’d better go down to the hold and find out.”
“Don’t shoot, Dad—it’s me!” Raynar said. His father, looking haggard and wary, glanced around but did not lower his blaster. “Are you a hostage? Have you been coerced into helping a bounty hunter or the Diversity Alliance?”
“No, Dad. Zekk may have worked as a bounty hunter, but he’s a … a friend.” Raynar was surprised to note as he said it that this was true. Zekk was a friend, and the dark-haired young man had risked his life more than once for each of them. “He believes what you told him about all humans being in danger. He wanted to help you, so he came to get me—he figured you wouldn’t trust him alone.”
Bornan Thul’s haunted eyes closed for a moment, and he nodded.