Chapter 21

"Excuse me, General." Leia stood, and the eyes of the conference room were immediately on her.

"Yes, Your Highness?" General Dodonna smiled at her, but his brow was furrowed in concern. "Is everything all right?" He flipped a switch on the holoprojector, and the image – a tactical diagram for the reconnaissance mission they were gathered here to be briefed on – froze.

Leia felt her face grow red. She hadn't really been listening to the presentation. "I'm fine," she lied. "I just…it's so hot in here. Would you mind if I…if I stepped outside for a few minutes?"

Dodonna's smile faded and became a frown. "Princess Leia," he said, "if you need to take some time…."

"Just a moment, General," Leia said. "Just let me get some air."

She excused herself into the hallway and leaned against the opposite wall. She could still hear the muffled voices of her colleagues through the briefing room door, and she closed her eyes, trying in vain to shut them out. How could they do it, just go about their business, planning insignificant intelligence-gathering missions and raids on minor Imperial outposts, when Han and Luke were out there, somewhere, alone and in danger?

Leia was jumpy, restless, full of the need to do something but plagued by the helpless knowledge that there was nothing she could do. She paced from one end of the corridor to the other, and when that did nothing to calm her nerves, she left. She wandered down to the control room, through the hangar, into the medical bay and then the main storage area. Everyone around her seemed to have somewhere to go, something to take care of, and Leia was just there, wandering through the base like an oddly-shaped bolt rattling around in the Millennium Falcon's innards.

The thought of the Falcon took her back to the hangar, and Chewie, in what was probably as much an act of loneliness as of compassion, offered her a tool and a panel full of worn-out power couplings. Leia shook her head; she was no mechanic and Chewbacca knew it, but she sat and watched him for awhile, unable to decide if she was trying to see Han in the tangled connections, or trying just as desperately not to see him.

A couple of pilots called out to her, and she left the Falcon to take a look at what they were working on. They were newer recruits, mostly, young kids who hadn't yet seen the worst of what this war had to offer. They reminded her of a younger version of herself – full of hope and idealism, and sure that they would still be around to see the future for which they were fighting. Any one of these kids could have been Luke, three years ago, and it bothered her a little to think that three years from now, they would probably be more like Luke as he was now.

One of them called out to his wingman, not by his name but by his designation. "Hey, Red Five!"

Leia turned away. It was a coincidence, she knew, and not even a very meaningful one. That hadn't been Luke's callsign in years, and there were at least two or three other pilots who had used it since. But she didn't want to be in the hangar any longer. She excused herself as eloquently as she could, and made a hasty retreat to the command center.

Everyone she met, it seemed, had something for her to do, and none of it would have made any difference. General Rieekan handed her a datapad full of tactical information, and she returned it with a couple of comments that were anything but insightful. Mon Mothma asked for her opinion on a diplomatic issue, but she was forced to admit that she hadn't really been keeping up with the negotiations in question. Leia saw Han and Luke in everything that she did, and she moved from one empty task to another, looking for something that she couldn't put her finger on, telling herself that she was doing all that she could.

In the end, she went to talk to Lando. She found him on one of the lower levels, in an old storage room full of salvaged equipment. "No, that's not the one. Let me see it," she heard him say, and the technician he'd been talking to gave him something that looked like a bulky, oversized datapad. "I don't think this piece of junk is…. Leia."

He handed whatever it was back to the surprised tech and stepped through the maze of cables on the floor to meet her. "How are you doing?" Lando lowered his voice, taking one of her hands and grasping it with both of his in a gesture that would once have seemed showy if not inappropriate, but was now simply comforting.

Leia shook her head. "I…."

Lando glanced over his shoulder at the techs. "Excuse me for a moment while I escort the princess back to her quarters. Now," he said to Leia, as soon as they were out of earshot, "what's wrong?"

"I can't stop thinking of them. I just keep thinking that…there must be something we can do."

"Don't worry about Han. He's the luckiest crook in the galaxy." Lando smiled, but the joke – if that was what it was supposed to be – was lost on Leia.

"This isn't a card game, Lando." His face fell, and Leia felt a twinge of guilt. "I just…. We should have sent ships, or men, or…we could have done something."

"I'd send my ships in a heartbeat, if I thought it would do any good."

"You're making excuses!"

Lando shook his head. "There's nothing I can do. We don't even know where they went."

"I do."

"They told you?"

Leia nodded. "Maybe Han was right. We shouldn't be sitting around here, waiting for someone else to fight our battles for us. I think we should go. Something terrible is going to happen." She hadn't been sure of that until the words were out of her mouth, but she heard her own voice and it felt true. "They're on Vanir."

"Vanir?" Lando furrowed his brow. "That's on the Cor Mannar trade route. The Empire's trying to lure us there."

"Or keep us away."

"Or keep us away." Lando nodded, and a look of stunned realization spread over his face. "Reverse psychology. They made it look like they wanted us in the Core, and now we haven't got a single ship in range."

Leia's heart was racing. "We should inform Command."

"It'll take time to deploy the fleet. And we don't know what they'd have waiting for us."

"Han and Luke are still alive," she pleaded, and Lando gave her a long, thoughtful look.

"You think you can find them?"

"We have to."

"I didn't ask if you had to, I asked if you could."

"Yes," she lied. She had no idea if she could repeat whatever trick had helped her to find Luke on Bespin, but it didn't matter. There was nothing to be gained by staying here, and if she failed, at least she'd know that she had tried. "We'll find them. Lando, will you take me?"

"My smallest ships are bulk freighters. We're gonna need a crew," he said, but she could tell that he was considering it.

"What about Chewie? He's just as worried as we are."

"Forget about it. He'd never leave –"

"The Falcon." Leia's eyes grew wide. "It's privately owned. The Alliance couldn't stop us."

"They'll try to stop you."

He was right. But Leia's mind was made up. She had spent her entire life putting her personal needs, her desires, her feelings on hold for the good of the planet. The good of the galaxy. The good of the Alliance. Well, she didn't see what good any of those things would be without Han and Luke in them.

She took a deep breath. "Not if we don't give them the chance."

"Leia…"

"This is what we all want, isn't it? Vader dead, the Empire destroyed. Luke and Han are doing what every person here has only dreamed of, and if we can help them, we should."

Lando nodded slowly. "A princess, a Wookiee, and a not-so-legitimate businessman. We'll be the best strike team in the galaxy." There was only a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"I'll go talk to Chewie. Gather what supplies you can, and Lando?"

"Yes?"

"Don't let anyone else know what you're up to."

It was only a matter of hours until the princess found herself seated behind the Wookiee and the businessman in the cockpit of the Falcon, with the Alliance all but forgotten behind her and the brilliance of the Galactic Core ahead. She leaned forward to get a better look as the ship made the final preparations for the jump to lightspeed. Vanir. It had the dubious distinction of being one of the few Core worlds that she had never visited before, and with the minimal information that her search of the base's computer system had turned up, she didn't have much of an idea of what to expect. It didn't really matter, though; Han and Luke were there.

Leia felt like she should have been afraid, or at the very least nervous, but the best she could manage at the moment was a vague sense of guilt about the Alliance she had left behind. She hadn't really expected to get away without some sort of argument, but Command had accepted whatever Lando had come up with to explain his and Chewie's departure. They wouldn't know that their princess had also been onboard until they found the brief, apologetic holo she had left with Artoo, and by then it wouldn't matter anymore.

She had left behind almost everything that she knew, but Leia – just Leia, with no titles or airs – felt more like herself than she had in years. For the first time since the Death Star had destroyed Alderaan, she was going home.