Han set his drink down. "The Millennium Falcon." The daughter grinned. "The galaxy's most famous vessel. Or is that infamous?"

"A bit of both," Leia said.

Doon shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Our father was so proud to have once owned the Falcon.'''' He turned to Han. "He followed all of your exploits as though some small part of the ship still belonged to him. In fact, we have images of our father with the Falcon, if you'd care..."

"Yes!" Allana said, hurrying over to them.

Everyone adjusted their chairs to face a small holoprojector. Doon activated it with a remote and navigated through a menu of options. All at once there was the Falcon, in one-meter 3-D, almost as Han remembered the ship from the day Lando showed it to him.

"Here's one of Dad in the c.o.c.kpit," Doon said.

Han leaned forward, a big smile plastered on his face. "Look at that. Only one pair of chairs." He squinted. "The instrument panel was so simple. And the same Rubicon navicomputer."

"No dice hanging in the viewport," Leia said.

Han made a face at her.

"Here's another, with Dad fixing something or other."

"The port-side braking thruster," Han said. "I can't tell you the number of times I've had to repair that jet."

"Here, he's inside the ship ..."

"The main hold," Han said. "And a dejarik table was already there! Your father must have removed it at some point, because it wasn't onboard when Lando won the Falcon. I installed a new one to appease my copilot, Chewbacca."

"The celebrated Wookiee," Doon said.

Han gazed at the floor and nodded.

Leia spoke up. "Lando said that he won the ship from your father in a sabacc tournament at Bespin."

"That's true," Doon's brother said.

Han looked up. "Did he ever explain why he offered the Falcon as a marker?"

The siblings burst out laughing.

"He most certainly did," Doon said finally. "And it's quite an interesting tale, if you have time."

Han relaxed into his chair. "We have nothing but."

Chapter fifteen.

In what he often claimed was an homage to his father, Cix Trouvee was a confirmed and incorrigible gambler. He had learned to play the odds at an early age, and by eighteen had left prosperous Corulag to embark on a career as a professional player. Where his father had bet on swoop races exclusively, Cix was all over the board, and as he approached midlife he would bet on just about anything: Podraces, Chin-Bret matches, rounds of laro, pazaak, Point 5 and sabacc, the roll of a jubilee wheel ball or a cupful of dice, the weather, the population curve, or the fluctuating value of salthia beans. Fortunes pa.s.sed through his hands, slipped through his fingers. As fast as the credits rolled in he would spend them-on wine, women, luxury hotel suites, suits of shimmersilk and chromasheath. More often his spending outpaced his winnings, and in his wake he left a string of bad debts, splintered friendships, and broken hearts.

For a brief period the one constant in his life was a quirky YT-1300 freighter someone had named the Millennium Falcon and others had seen fit to equip with a Cla.s.s One hyperdrive, a dejarik hologame table, and a dorsal-mounted laser cannon. But when you're the owner of a fifty-five-year-old starship hosting as many retrofits as original parts, you had better be good with your hands, and Cix simply wasn't, except when it came to dealing cards, gathering winnings, or scrawling his name on markers. Cix loved the Falcon, but she was slowly bleeding him dry. The hyperdrive one day, the droid brain the next, a hundred little parts that needed to be tightened, torqued, repaired, or replaced. Even so, he'd never once given serious thought to selling the freighter or trading it in on a more customary vessel, at least until the Falcon broke down unexpectedly, causing him to miss out on a high-stakes Outlander match on Coruscant. Cix realized he was in desperate need of a big score-one that would continue to finance not only the lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed, but also a complete overhaul of the credit pit the Millennium Falcon had become. So when a Rodian told him that the Hutts were taking action on a one-of-a-kind contest, Cix knew he wanted in even before he knew the details.

"What's the game?" he finally got around to asking the Rodian.

"The contest," the Rodian had emphasized. "Between Imperial forces and a band of would-be insurgents. At Yag'Dhul, a standard month from now."

Just how the Hutts had gotten wind of the imminent showdown, Cix would never learn. But according to the Rodian and other gamblers in the know, the Empire had learned that the insurgents were constructing a s.p.a.ce station at Yag'Dhul, and had decided to make the installation the first target of a newly inaugurated Star Destroyer called the Desolator. The insurgents, however, had learned of the Empire's plans and were hoping to add the Desolator to their short list of victories.

The Battle of Yavin wouldn't be fought for another five years, and the Empire thought of the insurgents as more of a nuisance than a real threat. Most actions by disaffected militia groups had been limited to hara.s.sment, widely scattered bands, and runs against supply convoys and Imperial installations. If the Rebels had scored any significant victories, the news had been suppressed by the Empire-controlled HoloNet, though word on Nar Shaddaa was that a nascent insurgent alliance was growing in numbers and in strength. The underground was rife with rumors of impending action at Ylesia, and of successful militia raids raids in a cl.u.s.ter of black holes known as the Maw, where the Empire was thought to he completing work on a ma.s.sive warship fifteen years in the making.

The terms of the wager couldn't have been more straightforward Clearly the Hutts had no faith in the insurgents' ability to destroy the Desolator; but neither would they allow themselves to be drawn into murky definitions of victory. They were offering action based solely on the number of Imperial and insurgent fighters that would be destroyed during the engagement.

Impartial but intent on taking a percentage from both winners and losers, the Hutts had fixed the line at forty-five fighters. How that c.u.mulative number was reached-whether mostly at the cost of Imperial fighters or insurgent fighters, or the outcome of a close-to-even split-was unimportant. At identical odds bettors had the option of wagering whether the combined total would exceed forty-five or come in at fewer. Ideally, the Hutts would get an equal number of bets on both sides. If not, they were likely to adjust the line up or down to be certain of clearing a profit.

Cix wrestled with the ethics of betting on a battle, but that didn't stop him from doing his research. In the process he hoped he would discover a way to rationalize getting in on the action. He went to ground, talking to as many contacts as possible. Smugglers, arms dealers, information brokers. Beings he suspected were militia members or sympathizers. Bartenders, musicians, and waitresses in sleazy cantinas and tapcafs, and Imperial officers who had had one too many drinks in those same places. If the Yag'Dhul wager was going to be the score of his lifetime, he wanted to go into it with as much solid information as possible, because the Hutts wouldn't have set the odds as they did unless they had already done their homework.

The Desolator was typical of the new ships of the line: a sixteen hundred-meter-long Dreadnaught bristling with laser cannons and carrying a complement of ground a.s.sault troops, war machines, and TIE fighters. A successor to the old V-wing fighters, TIEs didn't so much maneuver as swarm. Frequently their victories owed to superior odds. Outfitted with a pair of powerful laser cannons, the sinister black-and-gray fighters lacked hyperdrives, life-support systems, and defensive shielding. Mention a TIE to a seasoned combat pilot and nine out of ten times you'd get a sneer in response. Many a.s.serted that TIEs were as easy to eradicate as bugs if you knew how to target them.

The insurgents, on the other hand, were making do with Z-95 Headhunters retrofitted with better weaponry and hyperdrive units. If lightly armored and difficult to maneuver, the Headhunter was dependable and easy to fly. More important, the majority of insurgent pi-lots had spent time in the Imperial Academies or the navy itself before jumping ship, and the rest were said to have heart, whereas a lot of the Imp fliers had been drafted into service and saw no way out.

Notwithstanding the rumors of victories in the Maw, Cix took the fact that the Empire kept spitting out ships as a sign that the militia groups were being taken seriously. And at Yag'Dhul the insurgents had the equivalent of a home-field advantage. Finally, the insurgents knew an attack was forthcoming.

As word of the wager spread, Cix learned that Coruscant's notorious Baath Brothers had opted to take a stand on the outcome of the contest. Convinced that the Imperials would win, they were offering a spread of ten fighters, regardless of the Hutts' combined total of forty-five. Cix's inclination was to give the points and bet on the favorite. By doing so he was essentially counting on the fact that the tally of destroyed insurgent fighters minus ten would be greater than the number of destroyed Imperial fighters. Still he wanted to be sure.

With enough facts and stats to fill a data card, he hired an outlaw slicer to load everything into a protocol droid that had been programmed to serve as a handicapper and had a good record of predicting the outcome of swoop races.

"There are many variables you have neglected to include," the droid told Cix in an officious way.

"Such as?"

"The commander of the Imperial Star Destroyer."

"I tried."

"The commander of the insurgent forces at Yag'Dhul."

"No luck there, either."

"It helps that you saw fit to provide me with a date for the engagement, as I was then able to calculate the possible effects of tidal forces from Yag'Dhul trio of moons. But you failed to provide data on the hypers.p.a.ce origin coordinates of the Star Destroyer."

"You can't expect me to have contacts in Imperial central command."

"And you can't expect me to return an a.s.sured prediction."

"Then I'll settle for your best estimate."

"Be forewarned that I refuse to be held accountable."

"All right, I'm forewarned. Now just tell me the odds!"

The droid did.

His own hunches reinforced, Cix next went about the business of borrowing credits enough to lay down a wager that would leave him sitting pretty-even after paying the juri juice commissions the Baath Brothers would add to the bet and the lenders had added to the loans. He never even considered that he might lose.

Yag'Dhul was the homeworld of an exoskeletoned species of humanoids known as Givin, who had contributed their mathematical skills to the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone-Wars. Located near the intersection of the Rimma Trade Route and Corellian Trade Spine, the planet was a major reversion point and the site of skirmishes going back millennia. At certain times of the year especially, the same three moons that wreaked havoc with Yag'Dhul's seas and atmosphere conspired to extend the time required for ships to revert from hypers.p.a.ce and navigate to new coordinates before returning to lightspeed. The perilous tidal conditions left the ships vulnerable to attacks from pirates that operated from a base on the outermost of Yag'Dhul's moons. Shortly after the conclusion of the Clone Wars, the pirates had been killed or driven away, but the base had become a way station for travelers, then a sports resort catering to gamblers and spectators who attended Yag'Dhul's starship races. The local militia put an end to the races when construction of the s.p.a.ce station began, but the Givin-owned and -operated sports resort had remained open and ultimately served as the gathering place for many of the high rollers involved in the Yag'Dhul wager.

A droid-piloted vessel in stationary orbit between the planet's two inner moons transmitted live feeds of the battle to an enormous holo-screen in the resort's gaming room, around which a mixed-species crowd of rowdy bettors had gathered for near continuous drinking and impromptu wagering on whether the s.p.a.ce station itself would survive. The remote vessel captured the moment of the Desolator's reversion from hypers.p.a.ce in what was to have been a sneak attack on anti-Imperial forces, as well as the insurgents' swift counterstrike, which not only caught the Imperials off-guard but drove the TIE fighter kill count to twenty in a matter of minutes. Cix was relieved that he hadn't wagered on the over-under of forty-five, but suddenly found himself having to root for a rally by the Imperials lest the insurgents ruin the spread by destroying too many TIEs.

Gnawing at a fingernail, he studied the updates on the screen, shutting his ears to the game room's caterwaul of energized voices.

The insurgents had scored thirteen kills; the Imperials, five. But TIEs were still buzzing from the Desolator's launch bays and the Star Destroyer itself, safe within its combat shields, was beginning to bring its turbolaser arrays to bear on the flights of Headhunters and ARC-170s.

Cix kept his eyes riveted to the Scoreboard. The Imperials were be-ginning to score, driving the number of insurgent kills into the teens. But the Imps were going to have to do a whole lot better in order for Cix to collect on his bet.

Evading individual engagements with the TIEs, the foolhardy militia pilots were actually going after the big ship, flinging at it everything they had in their limited a.r.s.enal, and disappearing one after another in short-lived blossoms of roiling fire.

The crowd was in an uproar, clearly split down the middle in terms of those who had bet the spread and others who had wagered with the Hutts -the over-under number already closing on forty-five with a lot of fight left in both sides.

All at once the holoimages grew noisy with static then vanished altogether, with the score standing at insurgents with nineteen kills; Imperials with twenty-eight. A deafening shout rose from the bettors, many of whom were clambering onto the tables and waving balled fists at the club's Givin proprietors.

"The remote has been destroyed!" one of the owners finally announced. Receiving an update from somewhere, he added: "The Desolator intercepted the coded feed from the remote. The Imperials believe that we're furnishing intelligence to the militia. The Star Destroyer is coining around . . . We're being targeted!"

"To the ships!" someone in the crowd yelled, and twenty beings leapt from their seats and raced for the corridors that led to the moon's small s.p.a.ceport. Chaos gripped the room as bettors began to scurry every which way, colliding into one another, tripping, slipping, on sloshed drinks and going head over heels. Wading into the turmoil, Cix located his copilot and the two of them managed to squeeze into one of the crammed corridors and run for where the Falcon was docked-all the while Cix asking everyone he pa.s.sed for an update on the score.

The Imperials were still leading the kill count, a Rodian said; the insurgents had evened the score, said another; the Hutts' over-under number had already been superseded.

The first ground-shaking volley from the Desolator struck the moon base as the Falcon was warming for launch. Half of the docking bay collapsed, and the ceiling aperture froze a few meters short of fully opened. Cix nosed the YT up through rampaging flames and clouds of black smoke and shot for s.p.a.ce even while packets of scarlet energy were continuing to rain down on the hapless moon. Ships to both sides of the Falcon disappeared in fiery explosions.

"Get the deflector shields up!" Cix told his copilot. "Then plot us a way out of this mess!" He pulled the comm headset on with one hand and enabled it with the other. "I gotta find out the score!"

The ship shook and nearly flipped over onto its back.

"Laser cannon," the copilot said when he could. "The Givins' resort is history. The Imps are targeting departing ships!"

Cix took his eyes off the communications suite to glance out the viewport. The Desolator was a few degrees to starboard and employing all its forward batteries to make mincemeat of the moon and every thing close to it. He threw the ship through a barrel roll and accelerated to port, narrowly evading a stream of destruction.

"We can't jump to lightspeed from this side of the second moon," the copilot said. "We need to find a way around the battle."

"Or through it," Cix said. He whipped the headset off and locked his hands on the control yoke. "Listen for a score!"

A globe of explosive light flared in the distance and washed into the c.o.c.kpit.

"The s.p.a.ce station," the copilot said. "That'll set the insurgents back some."

Cix muttered a curse. "I knew I should have taken that bet."

"Comm from the Hole Card outbound from Yag'Dhul. The militia have destroyed twenty-one Imperial fighters and lost thirty of their own. The remaining Headhunters are jumping to lightspeed."

Cix turned to him wide-eyed. Subtracting ten from the number of Imperial kills would put the score at twenty to twenty-one, and mean that he had won the bet. "Is that a final?"

"He didn't say. But with insurgent fighters out of play..."

Cix hooted in celebration. With ten deducted to the Imperials, the spread was a guarantee. "Now we just have to survive this." Nudging the throttle, he sent the Falcon on a corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g course for the second moon; the Desolator was far off to starboard now but several TIEs Were taking a keen interest and dropping into the YT's wake.

The copilot gripped the instrument panel as bolts hammered against the rear deflectors. "What are you trying to do, add us to the tally?"

"That's exactly what I don't want to do," Cix said through clenched teeth. "Just keep your finger away from the laser cannon trig- "Shields are down to sixty percent. Don't take another hit."

"Easy for you to say."

Cix changed course, slipping between two inbound TIEs and lolling into a course change.

"Desolator is coming around, aft batteries traversing." The copilot swallowed hard. "We're not going to make it!" The light-side crescent of the second moon expanded in the viewport. "Even the Falcon's not that fast."

"You want to bet?"

Cix leveled the ship and maxed the throttle. Energy bolts streaming across the bow and whizzing past both mandibles, the Falcon hurtled forward at bone-jarring speed. Something rattled loose from the bulkhead and crashed on the deck.

"Desolator's got a lock on us. Firing..."

Cix twisted the control yoke, following the cratered sweep of the moon into blazing starlight.

Off the fantail, just to port, two fireb.a.l.l.s flashed.

"What was that?"

"Two TIE fighters. Friendly fire from the Desolator."

Cix blew out his breath. "Close, too close." He was swiveling toward the navicomputer when the copilot launched a curse at the ceiling.

"The TIEs count!"

Cix whipped around, slack-jawed. "That's impossible! The battle was over!"

The copilot listened for a long moment, his eyes growing dull "One Headhunter hadn't jumped to hypers.p.a.ce when the TIEs got hit. The officials are ruling that the battle didn't end until the final insurgent Rebel fighter jumped."

Cix continued to stare at him. "The TIEs were in play? The TIEs were in play'?'"

The copilot nodded. "The first TIE kill made for a push, but the second puts us one fighter under the spread!" He blinked. "We lost."

"Big-time," Cix said softly. "Big-time."

"After Yag'Dhul, everyone he had borrowed from was out looking for him," Doon was telling Han, Leia, and Allana. "Dad saw only one way out: the annual Cloud City Sabacc Tournament. He showed up at the Yarith Bespin Hotel with just enough to cover the ten-thousand-credit buy-in and the ante for the few hands he figured he would need to win to remain in the tournament to its end."

"Obviously that didn't happen," Han said.