"Trust me," Luke said.

Kessel swelled in front of them, pockmarked and wreathed in a cottony halo of escaping air. "We're getting close."

Luke held the back of the pilot chair, his eyes half-closed. He breathed regularly, reaching out, sensing the pulsing power generated as a protective blanket by the garrison moon.

"Don't fall asleep on me, Luke!"

"Keep flying."

The Headhunters swooped after, flanked by the remaining pair of Ywings.

"The aft deflector shield is starting to feel the pounding," Lando said. "If these guys get any closer, they're going to fly up my exhaust ports!"

"Get ready," Luke said.

Kessel filled their entire viewport now, boiling with its turbulent thin-air storms, tiny plumes from the numerous atmosphere factories tracing lines above the landscape.

"I'm ready, I'm ready! Just say the word and I--"

"Pull up, now!"

Lando's tension helped him react like a spring-loaded catapult. He hauled up on the controls, ripping the Falcon straight up in a tight cartwheel. Taken by surprise, all four of the attacking ships splattered into clouds of ignited fuel and ionized metal as they slammed into the invisible energy shield.

"Missed it by a couple of meters at least," Luke said. "Relax, Lando."

Artoo bleeped, and Luke answered him after looking at the expression on Lando's face. "No, Artoo, I don't think he's interested in an exact measurement."

They soared just above the atmosphere on a tight orbit that took them around Kessel's poles. The curtain of stars rolled out from the edge of the planet as the landscape sped beneath them; then they looped back into s.p.a.ce in a mad dash to escape.

They ran straight into the wave of fighters belching out of the garrison moon.

Yelling in surprise, Lando launched a pair of Arakyd concussion missiles from the front tubes. The density of approaching ships was so great that even the wild shots scored twice, taking out a TIE fighter and a blast boat, while the hot debris cloud destroyed a heavily armed B-wing.

"Let's not get c.o.c.ky because we took care of a couple of ships.

I've got only six more missiles."

"We will not surrender now," Luke said.

"No, I just mean we're running, not fighting. At least the engines are in tip-top condition," Lando said. "The Falcon hasn't been this pampered since I owned her."

"How fast can we get out of here?" Luke asked.

Jacked next to the copilot's chair, Artoo chittered and bleeped.

Luke glanced down and saw rows of flickering red lights on the navigation panel. "Uh oh."

"What is he saying?" Lando said. He flicked his gaze from the ships swarming by the front viewport to the little astromech droid. "What's wrong with him?"

"The navicomp's not working," Luke said.

"Well, fix it!"

Luke had already dashed around the bend in the corridor to pry off the access panel to the Falcon's navicomputer. He glanced at the boards, feeling his heart sink into a black hole as deep as the Maw. "They've pulled the coordinate module. It's not here."

Lando groaned. "Now what are we going to do?"

In response to Lando's concussion missiles, the Kessel fighters formed into tighter battle groups, striking at the Falcon with a firestorm of blaster bolts. Luke had to shield his eyes from the blinding flashes of near misses and deflected hits.

"I don't know, but we'd better do it as fast as we can."

"They're from the New Republic!" Moruth Doole fumed in his rage, stomping up and down. "They'll go back and report everything!" He straightened his mussed yellow cravat to regain his composure, but it didn't work. He wanted to squash the escapees like a pair of bugs to eat.

Spies and traitors! They had led him along, lied to him, taunted him.

"Send out every ship we have!" he screamed into the open channel that broadcast to his forces. He had managed to make it to the command center on the garrison moon. "Surround them, crush them, smash into them.

I don't care what it takes!"

"Sending out every ship might not be a good strategy," responded one of the captains. "The pilots don't know the formations, and they'll just get in each other's way."

Doole's mechanical eye lay in pieces scattered about the top of the console, and he could not see well enough to put it back together. With the blurry focus of his one half-blind eye, Doole could not identify the dissenting mercenary.

"I don't care! I don't want to lose these like we lost Han Solo!"

He pounded his soft fist on the console, jarring the pieces of his mechanical eye. The primary lens bounced, then slid off the edge to shatter on the floor.

The Falcon ran straight toward the Maw, leaving Kessel behind.

"We'll be all right," Luke said. "I can use the Force to guide us through on a safe path."

"If there is a safe path," Lando muttered.

Sweat stood out on Luke's forehead. "What other choice do we have?

We can't hide anyplace else, we can't outrun all those fighters, and we can't go into hypers.p.a.ce without a navicomp."

"What a great selection of options," Lando said.

Finally mobilized, the capital ships came after them, firing ion cannon blasts powerful enough to clear a path through an asteroid field.

The two big Lancer frigates made a deadly web in front of the Falcon with their twenty quad-firing laser cannons; but the Lancers were sluggish, and the Falcon increased its lead.

Somehow the other capital ships antic.i.p.ated their run to the black hole cl.u.s.ter and converged ahead of them as Lando pushed the Falcon's engines. "Come on, come on! Just squeeze a little more speed out."

Ten system patrol craft, originally designed for maximum speed to combat smugglers and pirates, surged past the Falcon and lined up in a blockade. But in the three-dimensional vastness of s.p.a.ce, Lando managed to slip under their grasp. Laser blasts erupted all around them.

"Our shields are edging the redlines," Lando said.

Three Carrack-cla.s.s light cruisers--midway in size between the Lancer frigates and the larger Dreadnaughts such as the ones in Bel Iblis's lost Dark Force--formed a triple-p.r.o.nged pincer, right, left, and top.

In hot pursuit behind the Falcon came the jagged ovoid of a Loronar strike cruiser, the largest ship in the Kessel fleet. As the chase plowed through the net of system patrol craft, the strike cruiser harmlessly took stray fire meant for the Falcon.

Lando stared out the viewport windows at the horrifying spectacle of the Maw and the giant battleships moving to meet them. Artoo bleeped something that even Luke could not translate.

"Only a complete idiot would go into a place like that," Lando said. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Then let's just hope they're not idiots, too," Luke said.

Admiral Daala stood in the bridge tower of the Star Destroyer Gorgon, looking out at her fleet and feeling the energy build inside her.

The time was at hand! The Empire might have fallen, but with it went all the people who had squashed her. Now she could show her worth. Daala could fight her own battle.

She gazed at the misty colors of the Maw and the clump of strung-together rocks that had sp.a.w.ned the weapons for her a.s.sault. In formation the Hydra, the Basilisk, and the Manticore powered up, waiting to spring out upon the galaxy with swift and deadly precision. The New Republic would fall to its knees.

She had no interest in ruling the former Empire herself--Daala never had any such aspirations. Her main intent right now was just to cause them pain. She licked her lips, and her hair hung heavy down her back, serpentine like the demon for whom her flagship had been named.

Grand Moff Tarkin would have been proud.

Commander Kratas, the man who ran the subsystems of the Gorgon, spoke to her from a communication terminal. "Admiral Daala, I have a priority message from the detention level!"

"Detention level? What is it?"

"The prisoners Han Solo and Kyp Durron have escaped! One guard was found stunned in Solo's detention chamber, and another is dead in Durron's cell. Both were stripped of their armor. We are attempting to question the survivor now."

Daala felt a jolt of anger disrupt the eagerness singing through her veins. She drew herself up taller, raising her eyebrows and focusing intently on Kratas. "Track the service numbers of the stolen uniforms.

Maybe they've logged in somewhere." Her orders came like staccato laser blasts.

Kratas consulted his terminal, spoke into the comlink. Daala clasped her hands behind her back and paced, barking orders to the bridge personnel. "Put together a search party immediately. We'll comb every deck of the Gorgon. They can't have gotten off the ship. There's no place else they could have gone."

"Admiral!" Commander Kratas said. "The surviving guard claims that one of the scientists from the Installation came to see Solo. Qwi Xux.

The guard insists that Dr. Xux had an authorization directly from you."

Daala's jaw dropped; then she clamped her lips together in a bloodless, iron line. "Check on the Wookiee! See what's happened to him."

Kratas queried the database. "The keeper says that the new Wookiee prisoner has been requisitioned and taken to a higher-priority a.s.signment." He swallowed. "Qwi Xux was the one who requisitioned him.

She used your authorization code again."

Daala's nostrils flared, but then another thought struck her like a crashing asteroid. "Oh no!" she said. "They're after the Sun Crusher!"

Alone in the guarded hangar holding the Sun Crusher, Han clambered into the hatch. "Can't remember the last time I had to use a ladder to get inside a ship! Pretty primitive for such a sophisticated weapon."

"It works." Qwi hauled herself up the rungs behind him.

"The sophistication is inside. All the rest is just window dressing."

Han sat down in the pilot's chair in the c.o.c.kpit and looked at the controls. "Everything seems to be labeled the way it should be, though the placement is a little odd. What's this for? Wait a minute, I'll figure it out."

Kyp reached the top of the ladder, paused, then pulled off his stormtrooper helmet. "Those mask filters stink!" he said, then with obvious pleasure tossed the skull-like helmet to the floor of the chamber. It clattered and bounced like a severed head. Kyp's dark hair was curled with sweat and mussed from the confining helmet, but his face shone with a grin.

Chewbacca swung into the compartment, ducking his head and squeezing through the narrow hatch. He looked at the skylights in the chamber's ceiling, then growled at the shape of a Star Destroyer orbiting overhead.

Han dropped his own helmet to the floor of the c.o.c.kpit. Kyp kicked it under the seat and out of the way. Han touched the Sun Crusher's navicomp, switching it on. "This thing is in better shape than the Imperial shuttle we stole. Are all the coordinates burned into the database, Doc?"

Qwi nodded, sitting down primly and strapping herself into her seat. "The Sun Crusher has been ready to go for years. We've just been waiting for orders from the Empire. Good thing n.o.body came back, right?"

Han pursed his lips, scanning the controls. "Everything here looks pretty standard," he said. "I won't have much time for practice."

Chewbacca gave an ear-splitting Wookiee bellow of challenge. Below, Han heard the heavy armored door grind open and then clattering footsteps as a squad of stormtroopers charged into the chamber.

Standing at the door, Kyp stuck his head out of the narrow hatch.

"Here they come!"

"Seal that hatch, kid," Han shouted. "We're in here for the duration now! Chewie, have you found the weapons controls yet?"

In the copilot's chair, Chewbacca ran his huge hands over the b.u.t.tons and dials. Finally finding what he wanted, he let out a yowl.

Defensive laser cannons mounted at different targeting angles swiveled as he tested the aiming mechanisms.

Small thuds banged against the Sun Crusher's hull as the stormtroopers fired their blaster rifles, causing no damage. Han looked at Qwi. "We don't even have the shields on!"

"This armor will hold against anything they can throw against us,"

she said with a smug smile. "It was designed to."

Han grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Well, in that case let's take an extra few seconds and do this right!" He worked the controls, activating the repulsorlift engines. The interior of the Sun Crusher wobbled as the entire craft rose into the air, floating on its repulsor cushion. Outside they could hear the faint screeching of an alarm.

"Chewie, point those laser cannons straight up. Let's give ourselves a twenty-one-gun salute--right through the roof!"

The Wookiee roared to himself; then, without waiting for Han to give the order, he fired all of the Sun Crusher's weaponry at once. Kyp scrambled for his seat, strapping himself in. Qwi stared at the roof of the c.o.c.kpit with wide eyes.

The ceiling of the hangar chamber blasted outward under the barrage of laser energy. Some of the larger chunks of rubble fell downward, clanging against the Sun Crusher's hull, but most of the skylights burst into s.p.a.ce with the outrushing of contained air that spewed into the Maw.

Stormtroopers, flailing their arms and legs, were sucked out through the breach, flotsam among the rock and transparisteel debris in low orbit around the cl.u.s.tered rocks. Their armor might protect them against ma.s.sive decompression for a few minutes, but every one of them was doomed.

Han raised the Sun Crusher up, accelerating through the escape hole they had blown through the top of the chamber. They shot into open s.p.a.ce, and Han felt an exhilaration he had not felt since they had first arrived at Kessel.

"Here goes nothing!" he said. "Now for the fun part."

Staring down at the Installation from the Gorgon's bridge, Admiral Daala felt her stomach knot. For years her entire duty had been to protect that small clump of planetoids, to pamper the scientists. Grand Moff Tarkin had said these people held the future security of the Empire, and she had believed him.

Daala had been stepped on, abused, taken advantage of at the Caridan military academy. Tarkin had rescued her from that. He had given her the responsibility and the power she had earned through her own abilities. She owed Tarkin everything.

She would avenge him by destroying the New Republic as she caused their star systems to go supernova one by one. They could hide nowhere.