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CHAPTER ELEVEN

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Han walked into the library in Luke's apartment, where the kid was alone, lying on his back on the long polished table, his eyes on the high ceiling, a red-wrapped spice-stick in his mouth. About him were a scattering of datapads showing various images of planets and what looked like military installations from their dour grey colors, though Han didn't recognize any.

"Solo!" Luke didn't look to Han, but grinned as he entered the room. "Perfect timing!"

"Yeah, why's that?"

"You got a stylus?"

"…Yeah." Han's tone was instantly wary.

Still without looking, Luke held out his hand. "Gimme."

"Sure, what the hell, I always like to start my days by getting my ass kicked by Indo."

"Seriously, this is work."

The spice-stick bobbing in the kid's mouth as he spoke, didn't fill Han with confidence. "You don't do work."

Luke sat up, letting the datapads scatter as he did so, his hand still out. "Just give me the damn stylo."

Han loosened the asymmetric fastening of his military jacket to pull his stylus from an internal pocket and hand it reticently over. "I'm gonna be wanting that back…"

"Whatever." As the kid snatched it, he pulled a piece of flimsiplast out from behind him with a flourish.

"Are you supposed to have flimsiplast?" Han asked doubtfully.

"Nope." The kid grinned disarmingly, his words coming out in a haze of red smoke. "But I'm betting that if Indo's coming in here to take something off me, it's not gonna be the flimsiplast."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that." The room was already tinged with that familiar, bitter smell.

"I'm thinking…free association."

Han wasn't impressed. He bobbed down to retrieve one of the datapads that had slipped from the desk, unheeded. "Little early in the morning for free association, isn't it?"

"Nah, this is still late last night for me." The kid was leaning over the piece of flimsiplast, writing in aurebesh. He ripped a strip off the sheet and lifted it up to show Han, speaking aloud what he'd written. "Skyhook."

"Skyhook?"

"That's what the dead spy was trying to protect: Skyhook."

"Which is?"

"I don't know—he didn't know."

"Well then why was he protecting it?"

"He'd heard it somewhere, presumably. Maybe from the right person, but not in context… Which brings us neatly back to our suspect new friend Leia Skywalker's thoughts, when she slipped."

Han's mind went momentarily back to the petite woman with the big brown eyes and the memorable curves. She didn't even vaguely fit with his perceptions of what a Jedi should be… Then again, the kid wasn't exactly his idea of a Sith, either. "You sure she was a Rebel?"

The kid was already writing again. He lifted a second piece of flimsyplast for Han to see. On it was written, 'Leia Skywalker: Rebel.'

Han rolled his eyes. "Oh, well, it must be right if you've underlined it."

"Really?" the kid asked sardonically, hunching over again to add, 'Definitely!'

"So…" Luke took to rearranging the slips of flimsy again, sliding the various datapads about to sit under one or another of the written headers. "We have a dead Rebel protecting Skyhook, we have a Jedi turning up to find him, and we have the Maw Installation EP's…connect the dots."

Han reached out to tear off a piece of the flimsyplast and scribe quickly on it. Lifting it up, he licked the back and stuck it on his own forehead. It was a question mark. "This is me having no idea what you're talking about."

Luke let out a brief laugh in a twist of crimson smoke as he took the stylus back. "Okay, there's a research center in the middle of the Maw Cluster in the Kessel system called—imaginatively—the Maw Installation. It's where Tarkin keeps all his pet scientists. The Maw Installation's remit is to design and perfect top secret and experimental weapons for the Empire. There's a lot of information that goes between the Maw Installation and the Imperial Palace on Coruscant and even encoded, everything that's sent utilizes an EP."

"A what?"

"An echo pip. It's a security measure. With every packet of information you send, in the last five hundredth of a second you send a single-bit pip, on a partial-degree variation. The pip and the end of the message should arrive simultaneously. If they don't—if they're even a fraction of a second out—something's wrong. If they arrive at their destination out of sync, then someone somewhere is intercepting that packet of information—but they won't get the pip because it's a fractal variation, it's impossible to detect. If you have the right buffer, it only takes a fraction of a second to intercept, redirect and duplicate a message, but that still puts the EP out slightly. And guess what—the pips aren't coming in on-sync from the Maw Installation. Surprise, surprise."

The kid was bent over as he said this, agile enough that even though he was sitting cross-legged on the table, he could rest his elbows on it as he wrote out another strip of flimsyplast: 'Maw Installation intercepts.'

He sat back up, arranging the three pieces of flimsyplast before him. "So, we have Leia Skywalker, we have the Maw installation security breach—subtle, mind you, and ongoing—and we have the elusive Skyhook." He looked up at Han. "You can take the question mark off your head now."

"I dunno, I think it may have to stay for a while yet."

Luke grinned, looking back down as he pushed one of the scraps forward, the spice stick bobbing in his mouth again. "Okay…Skyhook." He reached to take one of the datapads and slid it across the table to Han, who swivelled it about to look as Luke continued to speak. "What could Skyhook be?"

"A skyhook's a spacehook—a high-orbit repulsor craft with full life-support, generally nanofiber tethered."

"Think wider—outside the box."

"Skyhook's also the name of a tapcafé in spitting distance of the main barracks on Carida."

"Used by Imperial military?" As he spoke, Luke wrote, 'Carida tapcafé.'

"Pretty much exclusively."

"There are also a total of just under five thousand military skyhooks on Imperial worlds, serving as navy and supply depots."

"How many in private hands?"

"Just short of a thousand on Coruscant alone—mostly rich boys' toys."

"None linked with any past unrest?"

"Six. They're all under surveillance, as of today." Luke glanced up. "The Emperor also has a skyhook. It's huge…massive. Has an environmental bionetwork, a central structure with a gallery and a very valuable museum, storerooms…a Throne Room."

"I didn't know."

"He's probably been twice, that I can remember. Too obvious anyway. I'm guessing that the name doesn't have anything to do with actual skyhooks."

"So why were you asking?"

"Just bouncing ideas. Remember the spy on Sinto station? Most of the codes on the datacards he had were very specific…ones which pertain only to the Maw Installation. No actual information—none. Just codes. You know what was at the Maw Installation until recently? The Emperor's shiny new Death Star."

"I thought it was Tarkin's?" Han said dryly.

"It's the Emperor's," Luke said distantly without looking up. "Everything everywhere is the Emperor's. Everyone else just does as they're ordered." He said this without even considering, sliding another datapad with Death Star schematics on it over to sit underneath the 'Skyhook' header. "Given that the majority of information regarding it comes to Coruscant through Sinto Barracks, Skyhook could conceivably relate to the Death Star…the question is, how." Luke had leaned forward again, the smoke from the slim, red-papered spice stick curling up through his hair as he wrote, 'Connection?'

"You just said the connection—the spy at Sinto was passing on codes for the Maw Installation."

"That's what they're doing. What's important is why they need those codes, because if they do, it means they already have information regarding the Death Star, otherwise they wouldn't be looking for specific codes—not yet. The question is, how have they gotten information from a research installation that doesn't officially exist? How could they know where to look? I need to know that, otherwise we can't shut it down."

"You've already shut it down—the spy is dead. Just change the codes."

"That doesn't tell us how much the Rebels already know, and about what precisely. Or stop the method by which they're intercepting information coming from the Maw Installation. The Sinto spy was only collecting codes, not information, which means they already had that. If we simply change the codes, their method of gaining information remains intact. They just need to get their hands on the new codes. And it doesn't tell me what Skyhook is—because that's what's important. It could be their information retrieval method, how they're processing it, or what they're intending to do with the information they have. You know what else we have?" Luke leaned forward again to write. When he brought up the new scrap of flimsyplast, Han leaned in.

"Auril Sector?"

"Leia Skywalker said it. She had to go there, remember?" The kid was dragging one of the datapads back to him to key it in. When it showed the page, he switched to holo, and a small 3-D map of the sector floated above the datapad. There wasn't much there—just thirteen thinly-spread systems, a single marked deep space port, and the wide span of the Cron Drift asteroid field. Which seemed to Han like just the kind of place you'd be looking to hide out in, should you need to lie low.

"You think there's a Rebel base there?"

"I certainly hope so. Otherwise the three-day trip to get there on a Destroyer will have been a monumental waste of time."

Han straightened. "We're going?"

Luke grinned like a kid as he took the spent stub of the spice stick from his mouth and flicked it across the room. "Field trip!"

"Seriously? We're actually going?"

"I told you, my job is to see any mission through to its conclusion…and this one is only just starting. I want to know why Skyhook is important enough that Kern Derrig was prepared to die to protect it, and they sent a Rebel Jedi to try to pick up the pieces when he did. I've called in the SD Immortal. We're hitching a ride out tomorrow."

"You called in a Star Destroyer?"

"Yeah."

"You can do that?"

"Ubiqtorate," the kid said of himself, as if that were answer enough in itself.

He climbed off the table, abandoning the pile of datapads where they lay as he walked towards the door.

"Woah, woah, woah," Han said, realizing. "Where's my stylus?"

"I'll tell you what, if you can find it you can have it back."

"That wasn't the deal," Han glanced to the kid's hands, then back to the big library table he'd been sitting on. The stylus was nowhere to be seen.

"That's because there was no deal," Luke said, winking as he passed Han. "There is now."

"C'mon, don't make me go get Indo."

"To tell him that you actually voluntarily gave me a stylus? Go ahead, his dressing you down will give me an hour's entertainment, at least."

"Where's the stylus?" Han tried his serious voice when the kid reached the door.

"You're not even looking in the right room."

Han turned to set forward after the kid. "You got it on you, right?"

"Nope."

"Well, I sure as hell haven't got it on me."

"You know, I'm constantly amazed by the fact that if I tell you something, you just automatically assume it would be the truth."

"It's back in the library."

"No."

"I'll buy it back off you."

"Please—I just fenced Moff Terto's Order of the Imperial Star last week. The real one, not the fake pavé one he wears at functions." Luke half-turned conspiratorially as they set off down that long, dark hallway. "He doesn't know that yet—I switched the pavé and the real one whilst I was there, so he's still all relieved that he didn't lose the real one."

Han was barely listening, still patting down his own uniform. "I liked that stylus…it was a gift from a friend."

"You don't have any friends on Coruscant, and it was standard military issue."

"How would you know?"

"You think I don't know what standard military issue looks like?"

"Friends—that I don't have friends here. I've got friends."

"Please, you hate everyone in the palace. That's the one thing I like about you—in fact, I damn nearly respect you for it."

"I have friends outside of the palace."

"In those cantinas you go to? I'll bet you do."

"I happen to like those cantinas…and how do you know where I go?"

"I follow you."

"I knew it!"

The kid turned, but continued walking backwards, voice deadpan. "Seriously…you seriously think I have nothing better to do with my time than follow you?"

"Well then, how do you know?"

"Because someone follows you and reports it in," the kid said casually. "I've told you before, everyone's watching someone here. And anyway, I've been in the Blue Lekku a few times when you've walked in the door. You know it's a spice den in the back, right?"

Han shrugged. "I think that's the least of its vices. And where's my stylus?"

"That why it's your local?"

"Let's just say I feel right at home there."

"You enjoy things too much," Luke laughed.

"Damn straight."

"You shouldn't… You especially shouldn't admit it. Anything can be taken away so easily."

It was the underlying certainty of the kid's words which turned Han's head. Luke frowned, instantly uncomfortable beneath Han's scrutiny, and Han looked away, seeking to dispel the kid's unease at his accidental admission. "This from the kid who has more spice in his possession than your average Hutt."

"You think I enjoy spice?"

Han's step almost broke, but he kept walking, kept his tone light. "Well then why keep using it?"

The kid turned about to walk forwards again, jaw clenched tight.

"Luke?"

He turned back, grinning as if the last moments had never happened. "Time's up."

"What?"

"Time's up. I get to keep the stylus."

Han blinked at the abrupt change of subject. "How d'you work that out?"

"Those were the rules."

"I didn't know the rules."

"Then you shouldn't have played the game."

"…Fine, you know what, you can keep the damn stylus. Happy? Now where the hell is it?"

"Look up."

Han frowned, uncertain, then lifted his head to look up… Hovering above him, hanging impossibly mid-air just a few inches overhead and defying any concept of gravity, reality, and just plain common sense that Han had ever clung to, was the stylus. Han stared for several seconds, then gingerly lifted his hand. It floated smoothly up away from his reach.

Luke turned casually away as Han stared, wondering if it was worth making a jump to grab for it… Probably not.

"Come on," the kid said over his shoulder. "We need to get to stellar cartography to get a breakdown of what's officially in the Auril Sector. Then we need to stop in at Intel—get a breakdown of what's actually in the Auril Sector."

They were out of the apartment before Han risked another glance up…the stylus was still there, just above his head. "You gonna get that down?"

"Eventually…why?"

"It bothers me. What if it falls?"

Luke half-turned, voice light. "Or what if I spin it about and gouge it into your carotid artery? If I was gonna worry about something, I'd worry about that."

"Nah, you won't do that," Han said in similar dry tones. "It'd stop your stylus working."

"That's alright," the kid replied gamely. "You have another one in your inside breast pocket."

"No way did you see that."

"No, but you've thought about it several times."

Han glanced to the kid, then briefly to the stylus, still floating just above him, keeping pace with them as they walked. Finally, he shook his head slowly. "Damn, I hate this job…"

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There was something about being back onboard a Star Destroyer that felt so intrinsically right to Han. The proportions of the corridors, the rumble underfoot that transferred up through his soles and into his bones, the sense of being in artificially pressurized space, which never quite fooled the inner ear, the combined noise of air exchanges and temperature regulators and door releases, and the hundred other grinds and clicks and ticks that any craft of this size played out every minute of every day.

And he had a private cabin that was way bigger than any he'd ever been assigned as a TIE pilot—hell, the 'fresher was bigger than his old pilot's cabin! He threw his bag down on the plasteel floor plates and flopped down onto his bunk—his bunk in a separate sleeping room, no less…with an actual outside viewport! Knitting his fingers behind his head, Han grinned at the ceiling; yeah, he could see how a guy could get used to this…

Not so much the hours. It was almost midnight before they'd finally checked everything and received permission to have the Immortal's course changed yet again, to pass close to the Cron Drift. After the nightly ritual of the tablets, with Luke's reluctance and Indo's fastidious check, Indo had taken the standard issue ream of flimsiplast and the two styluses, which had been neatly placed along with other customary equipment on the officer's desk in Luke's supplied quarters, and had retired. And another routine—one that Han had no intention of getting used to, as everyone else apparently had—reared its head, as the kid rummaged in his unpacked holdall and pulled out a small copper box.

Han was already scowling as Luke thumbed his strike lighter and lit the scarlet spice stick. "How come you never do this in front of Indo?" he asked knowingly.

Luke shrugged as he walked over to the wide desk, sitting to open the drawer and lift out four sheets of flimsiplast that he'd clearly hidden from the main pile at some point, before Indo had taken it. "I dunno, habit I guess. I don't know if you've noticed, but he likes it to be known that he officially disapproves."

Remembering the kid's proxy-soaked admission from a week ago—that he took the spice to dull his abilities—Han tried again. "You're not at the palace any more—you don't need it."

The kid looked up sharply. "Who told you that?"

"You did, when you were on proxyn—one more reason not to take it, I might add."

"Well don't you just know everything," the kid said dryly, undoing the fastener of his own jacket to pull Han's stylus from his inner pocket.

"Does Palpatine know?"

"I would imagine so—he knows most things. He doesn't know why though, and neither does Indo." The kid's reply was casually conversational, though the implied warning was still clear; if only Han knew, then if it got out, Luke would know who was responsible.

Han glanced down. "How could Palpatine not know why—I thought you Sith could read minds?"

"We can, but we can block our thoughts from other Force-users, if we choose. Lock things away." He paused, eyeing Han closely. "Speaking of which, it seems like this week away is a good time to teach you how to do a basic mental sidestep—hide what you're thinking about."

Han leaned forward. "So I can do this kinda stuff too?"

"No. It won't stop a Sith from forcing your mind open and reading anything they want. It's more of a general avoidance, so they won't bother to look. Just a mental discipline about assigning thoughts, more than hiding them—you can't hide them, not from a Sith. Not if they choose to look."

"Or you could just stop smoking the damn spice."

The kid leaned back again, amused. "Why do you even care? If you get that transfer you're still thinking of requesting from Indo, you'll be out of here inside of a month." Han glared as the kid tapped his own forehead with the stylus, his inference obvious as he nodded knowingly, more amused than accusing. "Oh, so that's how this works. You want to know everything about me, but I can't know anything about you? Yeah, I know this kind of one-way street."

Han pursed his lips. "I thought I was an open book to you Sith?"

Luke shrugged, eyes on the flimsiplast as he began to sketch light lines at its edge. "I like to hear the audio version."

He could have sidestepped, Han knew—the kid probably wouldn't even call him on it, having made his point...but if he wanted in… "What d'you want to know?"

Luke settled, eyes still on the flimsiplast, voice distant. "I dunno…anything."

"Well…I grew up an orphan." He glanced immediately to the kid, looking for some kind of reaction to their shared past, but Luke didn't look up. "I was picked up off the streets by a guy named Shrike—Garris Shrike. He kept his own little army of kids like me, and used us to run all kindsa' scams, mostly round Corellia. Begging, when we were young, then pick-pocketing, then stealing to order, then more organized stuff—big con jobs, smuggling and the like. There were a lot of us, all ages, and Shrike ruled with an iron rod. You never messed with him—ever. Put me out cold a good few times when I was a kid…and older. But you know, you get to the point when you start to think for yourself, and you reali—"

"No, not interested in Shrike."

Han scowled, aware of the truth about why the kid didn't want to hear about Shrike; it struck too close to home, and he knew damn well that it was the reason that Han wanted to pry him away from Palpatine. Han's memories of his childhood with Shrike were hard enough; seeing someone else growing up under a similar heavy hand only made him more and more determined to break the chain. But the kid didn't want to know, of course. Palpatine had gotten his claws in too deep for that.

Han folded his arms. "You wanna know who I am, that's who I am…and why I'm still here."

"I don't need help, and I don't need protection."

"I never said you do."

Unexpectedly, Luke loosed an easy grin as he settled again, tapping the nib of the stylus onto the sheet of flimsiplast. "I have got to teach you how to hide what you're thinking, this journey. You're a liability. And anyway, Shrike's not the reason you don't want me to touch spice."

"Why can't I not want you to use the stuff 'cos it takes over your life, makes crap that you'd otherwise want to change tolerable, and wastes your abilities."

"You can." The kid kept his eyes on the blank sheet of flimsiplast. "But that's not the reason, is it?"

"Yes, it's that. It's exactly that. I've seen it before—watched someone who should have been smart and sharp and spirited just…just slowly drift away because they'd gotten themselves onto a course that only went darker."

"…Who was it?"

"Bria…her name was Bria Tharen."

The kid settled his weight on one elbow, drawn out a little. "You knew her well?"

"Yeah. We met on Ylesia, not long after I'd left Shrike. She was…she was this delicate, graceful, serious thing. Damndest big brown eyes. But she was already wasting away. For a while, she wouldn't see it…and when she did, she still couldn't break it. Exultation, they called it. It was a front for a cult which used its members for slave labor and used the Exultation to keep 'em there." He glanced to the kid. "It's surprising what you'll do—what you'll tolerate."

Luke had rested his spice stick on the edge of the table to doodle idly on the flimsiplast sheet as he listened, his attention on Han, though he wasn't looking. He paused at Han's last words, but he didn't lift his head.

Han sighed, thoughts on Bria—on all that she'd meant to him, all that he'd lost. "I got her away—and we seriously thought it'd be okay. We thought it'd be that simple. But addiction's a strange thing, because it creeps up on you, and your own brain does its damndest to try to hide it. That's what addiction is…everyone knows but you, and you still don't want to admit it, because you don't want to be that person. You think you're the only one who's different. You're not. Bria…she couldn't forget the Exultation, couldn't step back. She just faded away from me a little bit at a time…faded away from herself. All that life and intellect and elegance…it all withered and wasted, and all I could do was watch. Then, one morning, she was gone. She'd packed her stuff and was gone, like she'd never been there. She left a note. It was nothing that we didn't both already know." Han glanced down, scowling to cover deeper emotions. "And now I've got nothing, not even a picture. I've not a damn thing left of her at all, because that damn addiction took away everything that she was. Took her from me. She meant everything to me, but I've got not one thing left to prove that she was ever in my life. Not one thing. She just…faded away."

He looked up, and the kid was watching him intently.

"I'm sorry." It was blunt and it was guilty and it was heartfelt.

"Sorry's not enough. Sorry doesn't change it. It didn't change it for Bria, and it won't change it for you. And I know you're thinking that you're not her, and maybe you're not…but you soon will be. That's how it works." Han rose, not wanting to push the matter any more tonight, his thoughts tangled up in Bria—on the empty void she'd left inside him. "You may think you've got your reasons...hell, you might even be right, but everything that it gains you, it takes twice as much away. Think on that…'cos trust me when I say that you may believe you've got all the time in the worlds, but let me tell you, I'm here on the outside…and I know what I'm looking at."

The kid almost spoke, but instead nodded quietly and stood. Halfway to the bedroom he paused to murmur, "Goodnight, Han."

It wasn't agreement, it wasn't even close—but the remnant of the spice stick was still balanced on the edge of the desk where the kid had abandoned it, and it gave Han a kind of quiet pride to see that whilst he'd spoken, it had been left to burn to a long line of cold ash, unsmoked. One down, the rest of the kid's whole life to go. He'd take the victories one at a time, if he had to—with the spice and with Palpatine.

Rising to start for the door, Han's eyes were drawn to the sheet of flimsiplast that the kid had been idly doodling on as they'd been talking. He frowned and lifted it.

It was Bria. Lightly drawn, with the barest of detail. But the essence of her: her smile, her eyes…the gentle seriousness that was always a part of her—all those memories and moments that had coalesced in Han's thoughts as he'd spoken tonight were somehow encapsulated in the quickly sketched lines. Too close to have been a guess; the kid must have been reading his mind as Han had described her, picking the details right out.

Han realized, staring at it, that it was the first good thing he'd ever seen the kid use his abilities for—and he knew why Luke had left it. Smiling, he folded it carefully up, and put it in his breast pocket.

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He made it two nights before he went down to one of the TIE bays to sit on the upper gantry floor, and just watch. Stared at the fighters, contemplating that this was the longest he'd kept two feet on the ground—metaphorically speaking—since he'd first gone to Carida, to train as a pilot. He'd had such a clear line for himself then—a place he was heading, an idea as to how to get there. Lieutenant Commander by thirty, Wing Commander by thirty-five. He'd known exactly who he was and where he was heading in life. There were no palaces which made him feel he should tip-toe and whisper. No high and mighty viscounts or screwed up, wise-ass kids. No Emperor—not up close and personal. He remembered exactly standing in front of a huge portrait of the man, edged with two perfectly draped Imperial flags, to recite the Oath of Allegiance on his first day at Carida. It had been easy to say back then…so easy to make a pledge to a man he'd never met. A distant figurehead he had no chance of meeting in his entire life. He'd made a vow to the principle, the ideal…

Everything had been so clear and so measured, living in the bowels of a ship just like this. You got up when they told you to get up, you ate when they told you to eat, you flew when they told you to fly…and you fought whoever they told you to fight.

But everything had changed in the last year, starting from the moment that Han had been ordered to go into the derelict slave ship, put a blaster to an injured Wookiee's head, do what he'd been ordered, and ignore absolutely that it wasn't right…it wasn't right. And it was Commander Nyklas, a senior officer who didn't even have the backbone to go in there himself, who had ordered Han to do it. He'd known, even as he'd entered the hold, regulation blaster in his hand, that he couldn't do it. He had a keen sense of being on the wrong side of an unequal situation, when the Wookiee had only been looking to free his own kind from slavery. He wasn't fighting the Empire, he was freeing his own people—his own young. It was wrong. Not just the order to kill the Wookiee, but…everything. Slavery. In the Empire's name. He'd grown up at the mercy of someone else's temper, grown up as a commodity, and he knew absolutely, firsthand, that it was wrong.

But even having been given the command, he'd still managed to convince himself that it was the officer himself who was at fault. That it wasn't the Empire; that it all somehow went on behind the hierarchy's back and without their knowledge—or that of the man whose image he'd stood before when he'd made that pledge.

But now…now, having met him, having stood up close and personal with the man who made his skin crawl and his scalp itch and his stomach twist in distaste…

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Han was beginning to wonder…was the Empire wrong because the Emperor was?

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Just two years out of drydock, the SD Immortal was a Class II Destroyer, boasting the new, much-improved bridge with a wide sweep of command walkways which ran to either side and down the center of the oval bridge, surrounding two lower-level crew pits. Its wide run of large, triangular viewpanes ranged across the front half of the bridge, presently offering a panoramic view over the staggered, drifting chaos of the Cron Drift asteroid field.

Despite the fact that he hadn't worn a uniform since they'd stepped foot on the Immortal, Han hadn't missed the fact that Luke was standing without challenge on the command walkway, an area generally reserved only for senior officers. Han, as well as Indo, it seemed, were accorded the same politely distant respect from the Immortal's command crew—only the second time in his entire career that Han had been standing on a Destroyer's bridge…and even the first time, he'd been in the crew pit.

Presently they were gathered in one of the two tech alcoves which were placed to either side of the curved bridge, studying early readouts from the Drift as the massive Destroyer hung to the edge of the extensive asteroid field, its captain, Roth, unwilling to take the Immortal in without good reason. Unlike the screens to the front of the bridge, which were clear, explosion-rated viewports, the screens within these two small side alcoves actually held artificially generated images, capable of displaying either a real-time feed of what the viewer would have seen, had the rear of the bridge not been set back within the main tower of the Destroyer, or technical information, as the viewscreen did now. Luke had stepped forward to scrutinize it, overlaid with the data presently being processed from the Destroyer's two massive scanning domes.

Nothing—not a thing—looked out of place. Captain Roth was making his own way to the tech screen now, though Ops had already reported the absence of anything unusual in preliminary scans.

"Perhaps your source was unreliable, sir," Roth said calmly as he studied the data. He was a big man who came over as immensely capable, if a little straightforward in his approach. The kind of effective if unimaginative officer you saw everywhere in the fleet, who could be relied on to get a job done, exactly as ordered and to the letter.

Still, he was imaginative enough to know that when someone had the power to interrupt the regular duty route of a Star Destroyer, you called them 'sir' whether they wore a uniform or not. Even if they stood shoulder-height to you and were less than half your age.

Han hadn't yet really worked out their status here, on a standard military ship of the line. Clearly Roth remained in charge, and it was his orders which directed the crew, but he seemed willing to give his passengers a hell of a lot of leeway. And Indo, a perpetual presence at the kid's shoulder, was constantly pushing Luke to take all that was offered.

"Luke?" he prompted quietly now.

The kid didn't look round, continuing to study the data as it came in, eyes narrowed in concentration. "What's this?"

Commander Isman, Roth's second-in-command, leaned in. "Power signature, sir."

"I know that. I want to know what it's doing floating inside the edge of an asteroid field."

Isman glanced into the crew pit, and the Ops officer nodded, working to clarify the data. "It's very low. Residual, in fact…"

A larger asteroid passed before the source—and when it cleared the point, the power signature was gone. Everyone straightened, and Luke reached out to rest his finger on the viewscreen, keeping it on the point at which the signal had emitted. "Triangulate it. Pinpoint the source, based on existing data."

The Ops officer stood to catch Isman's eye. "Sir, we didn't have sufficient signal to lock it down—the high metal content in the asteroids has a scattering effect, and it's interfering with scans. We can narrow it down to an area of one hundred twenty clicks, which holds five asteroids, but their positions are already changing."

"Tag them," Captain Roth said briskly.

Luke stared at the triangulated area, marked out on the viewscreen. "Bring us head on to the area. I want to see it."

"See it?" Han murmured. What exactly did the kid think he could see from this range, that a full-range scan couldn't pick up?

Luke didn't reply, but walked quickly to the front of the bridge as the Destroyer maneuvered its massive bulk ponderously about to sit nose-in towards the wide expanse of the Drift… He stood for ten minutes, staring into the asteroid field, eyes moving constantly.

The bridge slowly settled from an expectant buzz to a routine boredom as the pit crew settled back into their seats and the officers slowly gathered to one side, talking amongst themselves.

Eventually Indo moved forward to stand beside the kid, who raised his arms to link his fingers across the back of his head as he murmured a retort to unheard words, his whole demeanour expressing frustration. Glancing about, Han stepped closer in time to hear Indo's quiet reply.

"…can't simply expect everyone to wait until…"

"Yes, I can. That's their job."

"But they need to know what exactly they're doing. You need to learn to step in and take control of a situation without…"

"Someone's out there."

Indo stilled, keeping his voice low. "Where?"

Luke stepped closer to the viewpane, eyes narrowing as he stared out. "In the Drift—someone's out there…three, maybe four individuals. I can sense them."

"At the source of the power signature?"

Luke tilted his head, frustrated. "If they could pinpoint the power signature, I might be able to tell you. As it is, we could be looking for ships, we could be looking for a stationary unit…"

"Can you locate them from here?"

"They're spread—in two locations, I think." He turned about, suddenly decisive. "Captain, can we make a slow, close pass at the very edge of the asteroid field—point ten of sublight. Turn all sensors on the Drift, fine-focus."

Luke turned instantly back, but Han watched the Captain stare for a few seconds more, clearly nearing the end of his tether…then he made the order, bringing the Destroyer to the very edge of the Drift.

They spent the next fifteen minutes on a slow crawl, sensors trained just inside the Drift, finding nothing. Han was wondering how long they'd keep going—or, more specifically, how long the Captain would be willing to keep this up, when Luke stepped closer to the viewport. "Full stop—all engines!"

"Luke?" Indo prompted.

"There—he's right there!" Luke stared out into the darkness, his voice dropping for Indo's ears alone. "Near…frustrated…and very nervous, because he's watching us."

"A man?"

The kid nodded. "Human." He turned about, voice rising as he issued an order. "Sensors…what do you have?"

"Sir?"

"About…three-thirty by four-ten by six-six-one…there's something there. Lifesigns?"

"Uh…no lifesigns, sir. I have several small anomalies—maybe sufficient to equate to a very small craft, but there's no power signature, not even residual, and the asteroids' metal content causes dips in..."

"He's faking—he's faking it, covering his lifesigns somehow."

Indo hadn't moved, but he looked down, voice a quiet warning. "Luke."

It took a second longer for Han to realize that Indo was warning the kid against too obvious a display of his abilities. Luke glanced just once, then seemed to rein himself in as he turned back to the Ops pit. "Pull a fine-focus scan across a narrow section through the center of the anomaly you have—go for density of metal; define the edges by distance from the asteroid behind it."

"Information's coming in, sir…possibly a small craft, but the signature's very confused."

"That's why he's there!" Luke said it as if it were obvious, but Han could understand the Ops guy's reluctance.

The man straightened slightly. "Sir, I have a partial match on shadow contours—it could be an Incom X-wing. Completely powered down, with no lifesigns. It's sitting almost on top of one of the asteroids, over a crater with high metal content."

"Got him!" Luke turned instantly to Han. "How's your flying, Solo? Not too rusty?"

Han glanced at him, uncertain for a moment what the kid meant. It was only when Luke turned and headed off the bridge that he realized. "We're going out there?"

"Well, I am, and I need a wingman."

Han stepped closer as they entered the outer vestibule, lowering his voice as Luke keyed for a turbolift. "You're kidding me—a wingman? I'm reduced to wingman now?"

"Flying a TIE Interceptor."

Han grinned. "Excellent!"

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They were in the second TIE bay just off from the smaller forward hold, and Han had just done one of the fastest changes to a full vac-suit he'd ever accomplished. Despite claiming that he had to drop in at the equipment store, the kid was already waiting for him, swinging his scratched and scuffed helmet impatiently. Han looked to it as he neared, noting its obvious wear and tear, though that wasn't the first question in his mind. "Seriously, you wear a standard helmet?"

"What, a standard helmet fits me," the kid defended, tipping his head to one side as he murmured, "The webbing goes pretty small."

Han had a hundred retorts on his lips, but they were at the TIEs now, and they took his attention completely. There were just two Interceptors in the bay, well away from the other TIEs and clearly loaded on specifically for this journey, their power umbilicals trailing from cargo boxes retrofitted with adaptors to enable them to connect to the standard TIE power couplings. Indo had probably set this up on arrival, his usual efficient self, Han figured.

Every pilot worth his salt knew what the new Interceptor looked like, of course—they were the talk of the fleet. Longer and slimmer than a standard TIE, it looked like it was meant for speed, the old hexagonal TIE panels pared down and angled into a double-point at the front, with wide cut-aways to improve view and lower its target profile. Sleek and sexy, it looked dangerous even sitting still.

Han slowed as he approached, noting the small side-fins—something he'd not seen before, even on an Interceptor. "What's with the side-wings?"

"These are variants," the kid said, running his hand along the main panel as they reached its nose. "Royal Guard Interceptors."

"RG Interceptors are red."

The kid glanced momentarily to him. "They're red when Royal Guards fly them."

"No one except Royal Guards fly them."

"And Hands," the kid said coolly. "Emperor's Hands. We need fighters with lightspeed sometimes—that's what the side fins are for; they stabilize it in lightspeed."

"Wait, these have lightspeed?"

"And shields." Luke grinned as he popped the small hatch in invitation. "You won't be so excited when you see how much room you've lost in the cockpit, though."

Something kicked in the center of Han's chest as he got inside the Interceptor, forced to hunker down to get past the extra mechanics and into the form-hugging acceleration seat. This was it—he was in an actual Interceptor…a variant, no less! He rested his hands on the yoke, grinning at the blood rush. Probably unhealthy to get this excited about a ship, but hell, any pilot would understand! The kid leaned in to the constricted space behind him, all business.

"Okay, you have six guns…"

"Six!" Han crowed.

"Yeah, but don't fire them all at once unless it's life or death, 'cos if you do sustained bursts with all six, you'll deplete your power way faster than you can generate it. You can dump power over from shields, but obviously if you're in a situation that needs six guns firing you'll also need shields, so shunting power away from them'll make it life or death anyway. Best to stick to your four wing guns."

"Really?" Han asked, disappointed.

Luke raised his eyebrows. "You know we're not actually gonna be shooting anything out there, right? There's one X-wing."

"One X-wing counts."

"Except that we're not destroying it."

Han scowled, feeling that his toys were being taken away one at a time. "Why the hell not?"

"Because I need it in one piece."

"Well then why don't you just tractor it in?"

The kid tilted his head. "You want a practice run in an Interceptor or not?"

Han glanced back to the controls, fingers already tightening possessively about the yoke. "No shooting it, right."

"Okay," Luke said. "Uh…it handles more or less the same as a standard TIE, just a little more jittery. But you've got a lower target profile and better mark-one visibility, because of the bent and cut wing."

Han grinned; kid must have had some regular TIE training somewhere. On every training course he knew, the 'mark-one visibility aid' joke was always rolled out for the cadets: the mark-one was your eyes.

Luke leaned into the cockpit to point at the console as he continued. "All the instruments are in the same place on the yoke. Scans and ops are on the same side panels. You have a new shield panel here—just leave it on standard for now and try not to get shot…or, you know, fly into an asteroid."

Han half turned, insulted. "Thanks, I think I was planning on that anyway."

"Oh, and don't try to adjust your seat with that center front pull…"

"What is it?" Han leaned forward, fumbling to find a simple bar-pull.

"It's your eject. They moved it from the side."

"Why?"

"I dunno. Maybe they like to keep us on our toes in high-pressure situations—if you don't remember it's changed and grab to the side instead of the front, you probably missed your chance." Kid grinned irreverently. "Call it natural selection."

"Great," Han deadpanned.

"When we get out, pull a few turns and loops, and get your throttle back a few times. You have two five-point-six engines, so your top speed's way higher than a standard TIE, plus you'll turn much tighter—you'll turn inside pretty much every craft flying at the moment, even the TIE advanced, and you're still more stable in thrust vectoring. You can angle off tighter and maneuver better at lower speeds, so your course reversal's sharper on any vector, including dead-stop. I've seen a Hoersch-Kessel R-forty-one come close on near-stall maneuverability—not to me, you understand," the kid felt the need to add. "But you can still take them on a spiral dive and force them into a spinout. You can get a degree or two more by manipulating your deflectors, but that's too complicated to explain right now. Just stick with them on auto."

And there it was—there it'd been all along: the kid liked to fly. Han could hear it in his voice, could see it in his every move as he sharpened with adrenaline and enthusiasm—the passion, the draw. Probably the reason why he'd bothered to speak to Han at all, in that cell in the stormtrooper's sector-house that first night. He'd known then that Han was a pilot—enough to name Han's training course from the unit patch on his jacket.

Realizing that he was under scrutiny the kid looked curiously to Han, who turned quickly away, bringing his mind back to the moment. "There'd better be a flight manual waiting on my system when I get back to my quarters," he grumbled, feeling he was missing out here.

"Who says you're ever flying this again?"

"Oh, I'm flying this baby again."

Luke let out a laugh as he pulled back—a genuine laugh, and how often did that happen! And a little bit of that same excitement that had sounded in Han's voice lit the kid's eye as he grinned; the anticipation of getting out there and flying. "I'll see you spaceside."

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When you've finished each chapter, you may want to check them out on my website, where there's a little extra bonus - hope you'll enjoy!

There's a link to my website on my bio page, or the address is all the three w's and a dot, then "alongtimeago . org" (and take out the spaces!)

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