Chapter Twenty-Four:
"Well, now," Han said. "Grand Admiral Thrawn, in the flesh."
"So to speak," the voice said.
Leia moved slowly back to the copilot chair. She suddenly felt like she was in a spotlight for which she was totally unprepared. Her brain froze completely. She had no idea what to do. All she could think was: Why is he hailing us? What is he after?
Han, ever the consummate opportunist, leaned back in his chair and interlocked his hands behind his head. She envied him his show of carelessness, even if no one else was there to see it. "What can I do for you? We're a little busy here."
"Yes, I can see that. Are you enjoying yourself?"
"It's like target practice," Han said, his voice quick and edged with dark insolence. "All fun and no risk."
Leia's admiration took a hard right turn into unease. She loved Han. She thought his confidence was attractive and his general efficaciousness downright filthy in all the best ways. But baiting the enemy like this? Was there a warning against this kind of cocksuredness anywhere in Corellian culture? Or did that particular character flaw appear so often that Corellians just assumed it was genetic?
Thrawn didn't appear too nonplussed. "Disabling the drive on the Dreadnaught was a fine choice. Jamming the signals even more so."
"My copilot sure is something," Han said. When Leia threw him a look, he shrugged. She reached over and softly backhanded his right arm in silent reprimand. He grinned and shrugged.
"So I've heard," Thrawn said. "I look forward to one day meeting the great Chewbacca."
Leia frowned. When Han opened his mouth to speak, she waved her hand and shook her head. Her unease spiralled deeper into her stomach, roiling dark with unacknowledged fear. She was becoming terribly concerned about Thrawn's intent with this comm call. The Empire didn't engage in battlefield chats with their enemies. There had to be a strategic reason for hailing the Falcon like this, and that made her nervous. Very nervous.
She tried to focus on the positives. The fact that Thrawn seemed to think Chewie was copiloting the Falcon meant the Empire wasn't privy to everything about them yet. And to Leia that felt like they had another ten concussion missiles all trained on Thrawn. It was obvious that the grand admiral, like Cracken, functioned on intelligence. Whatever tidbit they could deny him was a point in their favor.
Leia tried to ignore that she was equating their adversary with their commanding officer. That bespoke far too much grey morality in the NRI and was a disturbing thought.
She shuddered and tried to backtrack. Thrawn clearly didn't know they'd gone to Kashyyyk and left without Chewie. At the very least it confirmed that they'd managed to free the Falcon of all the Imperial surveillance devices they'd picked up on Sluis Van. At least one small component of this trip had gone their way.
Thank the Force for small favors.
"Sure," Han drawled, still looking at her. "We should do lunch sometime."
Leia scowled out the viewport. That cockiness again. She swore it would be the death of him, and her, and every single person they knew.
"It's interesting," Thrawn said in the same lilting tone. "My research into your past leads me to question your sincerity in that proposal."
Han threw a baffled look at the comm speaker. The unease in Leia's stomach rolled higher until she felt like she was being choked by her own nerves.
Thrawn continued. "Lord Vader made a note in his official log about an unfortunate dinner party on a planet called Bespin some years ago."
Leia shut her eyes. Bespin.
"Not my favorite kind of party," Han allowed. Leia opened her eyes and looked up to find him staring at her.
"Interrogation does have that effect," Thrawn agreed. "And while we're on the subject, I have a question for you, Captain Solo."
Han threw up his hands in frustration. Leia could feel his bafflement in the air around them. "Ask away," he said, voice much calmer than the man himself appeared. "I'm an open book."
"I very much doubt that," Thrawn said. "You don't strike me as the transparent type. But I was specifically interested in your time in carbonite."
Leia dropped her hand from the scanners and instead focused entirely on Han. His shoulders hunched forward just a fraction, a line of tension running up his spine. As she watched, his right hand curled into a fist. His face was suddenly stony, unreadable. Her heart spasmed for him. If Alderaan was her hinge, Bespin was Han's: Lando's betrayal, Han's fear for her and his utter hatred of helplessness. And then the embodiment of that fear in the form of inanimate statis in carbonite. All of it had come grossly into play on that awful day five years ago. Bringing it up was an emotional hailstorm pointed directly at Han. She couldn't imagine a worse one. "Are you now?" he answered, feigning nonchalance. Leia could see the lines around his mouth draw back into a kind of snarl.
"Oh, indeed I am. Did you know you are the only human to survive prolonged carbonite exposure? Other species have been successfully reanimated but humans have failed every attempt."
Han loosened his fist and ran his palm over his eyes, not looking at Leia. His discomfort was tangible to her. She could read it in the space around him. He didn't talk about his time in carbonite and because he didn't talk about it, Leia assumed it had been truly terrifying.
Her protective instincts kicked in and she reached for the comm switch. She wanted this conversation over. There was no reason for it. She didn't want Han to have to talk to this monster, to relive his worst moments with anyone. Not Thrawn, not her. No one.
But Han had other ideas. His right hand shot out and brushed hers away so quickly she wasn't sure at first what had happened. He still didn't look at her, but instead leaned in to the speaker. "That's right," he said. "I'm tougher than I look."
"Oh, I'm sure," Thrawn said. "I wonder if the others are, as well?"
Leia knew where this was headed. Any politician worth her salt could see a key manipulation from a klick away. It was as clear to her as the starlight outside the Falcon's viewport. She just couldn't find a way to warn Han without giving away her presence. And based on the way he was sitting, casual and cool, Han was about to be torn to pieces.
"What others?" he asked.
"Your others. Your copilot. The young Jedi. Your wife."
Han's hand jerked but he didn't say a word. Leia pressed her lips together and desperately tried to send him all the warmth she could. She was no Jedi, but maybe if she pushed it toward him hard enough, he would feel it, absorb it, let it help him ...
But no. Who was she kidding, commanding the Force at will? She didn't have the first clue about sending telepathic messages to her husband. And he had no way to receive them. He was left without her comforting, foolish thoughts. She felt utterly helpless to help him.
"How would she fare in a similar experiment?" Thrawn continued. Han's cheek twitched. "I suspect that she would surprise us. Lord Vader had many admiring things to say about her … stamina."
Leia closed her eyes again, a chill running through her.
"That a threat?" Han said, his voice like steel. Leia shivered but worked hard to not let it show. The last thing anyone needed was for her to lose her wits right now.
"It's a promise." The conversational tone of Thrawn's voice suddenly dropped into menace. Into cold, hard command. Threat, Leia thought. He's a living, breathing threat. He continued: "You made a mistake in making yourself known to me, Captain Solo."
Such a dark thing to say. So much intent in the way Thrawn's voice held his own brand of confidence and danger. The sharp notes of an analytical mind descending deep into subarctic emotion. Leia couldn't mistake that voice or its deadly design.
But she smiled.
Thrawn had overplayed his hand.
"Did I?" Han asked and suddenly all signs of his anxiety disappeared. He slouched in his chair, turned the corner of his lips up and drawled, "That's a goddamn shame."
Han turned his head to Leia and sent her his best devilish grin, a throwaway to his scoundrel ways, indefatigable and unscrupulous. And now, promptly, his cocksure attitude was the most welcome thing in the world. Thrawn hadn't realized it but he'd just made a critical error. He'd inadvertently appealed to Han Solo's sense of challenge. And that, as Leia herself well knew, was a fatal mistake.
She winked at him, her stomach a little fluttery. Get rid of him, Flyboy, she mouthed.
He winked back and turned to the comm speaker. "Look," Han said. "I don't know what you're after, bringing up all sorts of ancient history. But if it's all the same to you I'd like to get back to ruining your day."
"History is important, Captain."
"So is the here-and-now," Han said. "And I've got all sorts of damage to do. So if you don't mind - ?"
"By all means," the voice said. "Continue your target practice. Have a pleasant day, Captain Solo."
The comm went silent and Han's cockiness deflated in an instant. The depth of his fear and worry showed in the way he seemed intent on assessing her safety, though she'd been sitting in the cockpit with him for the duration of the communique. His ran a quick circuit over her body before he bit out: "What the hell was that?"
Leia shook her head. "I have no idea."
"He thought he'd just call, rile me up a bit, threaten you, and then go his merry way?"
It had certainly seemed like it.
"Well," she exhaled. "It sounded like he was telling you he knew who you were."
Either that or Thrawn had been trying to size Han up. Whatever the motivation,Thrawn had proven himself every bit the manipulator that Cracken was. The similarities were piling high. She didn't feel quite so traitorous for thinking it now.
Han chuckled. "If he knew who I was then he'd also know that I don't do well with threats."
Or casual conversation about torture and carbonite, Leia thought and queued the scanners to full range. She'd been so distracted by the voice over the speaker that she'd barely spared a glance to the telemetry array. Part of her was relieved she had been witness to Thrawn's questioning so that she could help take Han out of it. Though, to be fair, if it had been Chewie sitting in this chair instead of her, Han might not have reacted with quite so much heat.
Perhaps that had been Thrawn's gambit? To make Han lose focus?
Han interrupted her train of thought. "Was he calling from the Dreadnaught?" he asked.
She shook her head. "The signal was relayed through the Dreadnaught, but it didn't originate there."
"So he's still out-system?"
That was certainly what it looked like. The scanners swept over the Dreadnaught first. The enormous ship lumbered gracelessly in it's slow spin, one thruster firing but the ship still useless without serious repair. She added a lifeform scan to her analysis just to be certain Thrawn wasn't somehow aboard. Was it possible that he'd managed to install a live pilot before Han and Leia had even finished with the first station?
It seemed unlikely. A living pilot would have fired the thrusters when Han and Leia flew into the tube to disable it. As far as ways to kill an annoying enemy combatant were concerned, firing one's thrusters wasn't much of an energy expenditure. There wasn't a pilot alive who would have struggled with that decision, let alone the tactical genius Thrawn was supposed to be.
The lifeform scan beeped at her: negative.
How else could the Dreadnaught have started up again after being jammed and disabled? And without living beings aboard? Perhaps the Falcon's jamming equipment was malfunctioning and the Dreadnaught simply returned to its last set of directives? But that was odd, too. Why would the equipment work so well against the mole miners and droid pilots at the first station but fail them here? It wouldn't. There was no reason for the Falcon's equipment to suddenly fail without reason. Or, well, to fail without warning, at least.
So the Dreadnaught had broken through their jamming equipment. Perhaps the droid pilot had been ordered to switch comm channels before the Falcon began jamming them? Perhaps Thrawn's Interdictor - the Aggregator, she reminded herself - had found another frequency to use?
Or perhaps there was another reason for the goliath ship to be functional again.
"You're absolutely sure we got all the mole miners back there?" she asked, glancing sidewise. "Because all of this makes a lot more sense if there's another one around here, using a different comm channel and flying roughshod all over the place."
Han rolled his eyes. "No. I guess I forgot how to count."
"Don't be an idiot," she snapped. "I'm trying to figure this out."
"You and me both," he replied, though his tone was a little softer. "But I'm more concerned about destroying the giant fucking ship out there than questioning everyone's basic math skills."
She turned to the viewport. She understood his desire to cut straight to the chase, but something about this didn't make sense. If they had destroyed all the mole miners at the first station, plus the two that had escaped to work on the Dreadnaughts here, then how could communications suddenly resume? And, too, communications recommenced just before Thrawn made contact ...
"I suppose I could go EV through the quick-patch on the Dreadnaught and shoot the comm array myself - "
Leia whipped her head to look at Han so fast her neck spasmed. "Like hell you are."
"It'd be easy," he said, shrugging.
"It'd be suicidal," she argued.
"Nah," he said. The word had a musical note to it that irritated Leia. "It'd be fun."
"Fun," Leia tilted her head. "Fun. You're - "
She stopped suddenly as a quick flashing light on the scanner display caught her eye. Without a word she toggled the visual display to its highest resolution and narrowed the scanners to the place of most concern to her. She blinked and ran the scanners by the same area again, unsure whether or not the equipment was failing them.
But no. System checks concluded one hundred percent accuracy.
"Han," she barked. "Seventy-five degrees to port. Behind the Dreadnaught."
Her voice cut through the air like lightning. Han immediately swung the Falcon to the designated heading. "What'd you see?"
"There's something moving over there."
"Something?" he yelled back and jerked the Falcon into a tight climb. "What?"
Leia cut her eyes back to the scanners. "SDS Class-XI. Roughly equivalent in size to an Imperial-II class Star Destroyer."
Han cursed under his breath. "And you're just now seeing it?"
She was already annoyed; his stupid questions weren't helping the situation. "I'm just now seeing it move."
A pause, then the inevitable explosion. "He distracted us again," Han's voice was loud, furious. "Sithspawn. The bastard did it again!"
Leia nodded angrily. Her fingertips were burning and the first wave of rage blew over her. She hated being outsmarted. And worse: they'd been emotionally manipulated. Then, to add insult to injury, he'd distracted Han by bringing up Bespin. Bespin! Of all the terrible things to bring up, Bespin was by far the worst. Thrawn had determined the exact trigger needed to distract Han in the same way he'd anticipated Han's obsession with the Clawcraft down on Sluis Van.
No matter what they did, no matter how hard they struck, Thrawn found a way to parry them back.
"The XI .. it was docked at the station earlier?"
"Yes," she said, sifting through the scanners' input, watching line after line of statistics and specs roll by. "It looks like - " she trailed off.
After a moment, Han's impatience won out. "Like what?"
She shook her head. "It was docked to the station. I don't understand how it initiated start-up sequences without a droid pilot."
"The Dreadnaught started up, too."
"That's why I'm worried," she muttered as the Falcon cleared the far edge of the Dreadnaught. "If there's not a mole miner around then the jamming equipment must be offline - oh."
The Dreadnaught was now to their aft and Leia could clearly see the smooth lines of an SDS Class XI warship. Without the hard, angular lines so definitive to the Imperial-II Star Destroyers, the XI seemed to take up less space than it's equivalent ship. The one in front of them reminded her more of the organic designs of the Mon Calamari: oval and without frill, but with a softness, too. Despite this, she was chagrined to see the tell-tale lights and thruster burn of a fully-operational ship.
She also saw, clearly visible against the backdrop of the XI, a lone mole miner surrounded in a familiar maroon light.
Han swore. "Where did he come from?"
Leia opened her mouth to reply then shut it. Han's question was rhetorical. And though they were in mortal danger, though it could very well be the last thing she ever said to him, she just couldn't help herself. "What were you saying about knowing how to count?"
He glared at her. She smiled sweetly at him.
"There were seven miners," he muttered. "I know there were seven."
"Apparently not." Leia quickly flipped the switch to bring up the quad cannons. "Because we missed one."
He made a wide circle around the XI. With the scanners at full capacity, Leia could discern that the hull breach was complete and that the miner was preparing to disengage. It made total sense: the droid pilot had flipped comm channels and already begun the ignition sequence before the Falcon had brought up the scanners. This was why Thrawn had tried to distract them. To give this droid pilot the chance to finish it's mission.
As she watched, the maroon light surrounding the miner grew brighter and she gripped the firing control with both hands.
Immediately the Falcon dove toward the mole miner. The maroon light winked in and out twice before the light disappeared entirely and the miner quickly disengaged from the XI. Leia got a burst of cannon fire out before the miner sped away.
Han followed close behind. Within moments, Leia fired again. She struck one of the extended solar plating arms but missed the main body of the ship. She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. The miner banked hard to starboard and the Falcon overshot her. Han grumbled under his breath and Leia nodded to him. "Having trouble keeping up with the droids, Solo?"
He threw her an incredulous look. "Having trouble shooting the droids, Organa?"
Oh, but it felt so right. Flying and shooting, throwing sarcasm around like it was another weapon in their arsenal. Why had she denied this for so long? Whoever she was, she was good at this. She was made for this.
She grinned at him. "Organa Solo."
His incredulity melted into her favorite expression of his: outright, bald trouble. "Hell yes, you are," he said, then threw the Falcon into a corkscrew dive. With a surprised yelp, she gripped the firing controls and tried to find a point of focus in the maelstrom of stars and docked ships that suddenly blurred past the viewport in stunning disarray.
A small grey blob in the eye of the storm helped settle her stomach, though it took her a few seconds to ascertain that it was her intended target. She forced her eyes to focus only on the outline of the miner and exhaled slowly to try and even her aim. She drifted into a kind of tunnel, a focus-tunnel; something Luke had talked about many times but Leia herself had never experienced. She tossed aside her wariness and simply embraced it. Sound faded away and her rapid heartbeat settled into an even rhythm. Her body felt heavier; she felt expanded and larger than the confines of her physical body.
From her periphery she heard Han exclaim something, but she was deep in her focus-tunnel. She took a deep breath, counted two heartbeats, and then exhaled and fired on the mole miner, destroying it cleanly, no mess, a straight shot for the burn thrusters and into the fuel tank. Her focus-tunnel exploded into shards of sound. Suddenly the light of the cockpit grew brighter and the ambient sounds of the Falcon's cockpit at work flooded her ears.
"Nice shot, Sweetheart!" Han yelled, pulling them out of the corkscrew dive and looping back to the XI.
Leia shook her head. "What did you say before? I was focusing on the miner."
"No shit," Han muttered. "I said that I don't think we missed him at the first station."
She frowned. "Then where did he come from?"
"I think he was the one that escaped when we blasted out of here before."
She scrambled to remember. Her memory of those last few moments on Sluis Van was layered with stress, anxiety and paralyzing fear that any number of terrible events had occurred while they tried to escape the khedive residence. Then, too, she remembered that awful moment waiting in the Falcon's cockpit, trying to discern human, Sluissi and Wookiee forms out of a raging dust storm. And then the mad dash down the ramp. Counting Sluissi children as they ran past her. Her flat-out sprint to get to Han before he did something stupid or self-sacrificial.
Kissing him quickly before he ran to the cockpit and got them all out of there.
Leia blinked. "Meaning it left Sluis Van when we did and came back when we came back, too?"
Han looked worried. "Something like that. Yeah."
Leia let that sink in as Han circled the XI. She didn't like the idea that Thrawn had held back the final mole miner on the off-chance that they would be able to foil his plan at the first docking station and his plan here with the larger capital ships. That wasn't simply forward-planning; that was masterful. Artful, really. "We're out of our depth here, Han."
He grimaced but didn't refute her. "This guy's about ready to jump, I'd bet." He nodded to the XI. The ship was moving outside the Sluis Van gravity well at a steady pace. As the last of the ships that the mole miner had captured, it would jump to the conclave of Imperial ships waiting outside the Sluissi system: Teradoc's Interdictor and the two Destroyers.
The choice was whether or not to follow. Their objective was achieved; they had destroyed all the mole miners that they'd ever identified here on Sluis Van. Han's original mission here was complete as well: the New Republic had proof of the Grand Admiral's identity and they had managed to upend the Imperials' carefully-laid plans for the shipyards. In all likelihood, Han and Leia (and Chewie and Luke, Leia had to add) would be expected to do nothing else in this system.
But.
She looked at Han. "We need to follow the XI."
Han rolled his eyes but nodded. "I figured as much. You have a plan for this shindig?"
"I want an accurate count of the ships they managed to commandeer. I want to make sure they don't have any more mole miners. I don't want them to do this to more of our shipyards."
"Alright, alright," Han said. "I got it. You're pissed he's getting even the one XI."
Leia bit the inside of her cheek and nodded. "One XI is more than he should have." She tucked her chin to her chest and looked out the viewport through the wisped ends of her hair. "And I want to beat him. Just once. Really beat him."
Han looked at her, nodded, and set after the XI, awaiting the jump.
Special thanks to those of you who jumped on over and checked out "Dark Corners" a couple weeks ago. I was a little terrified to post that guy, but the response I got was wonderful. You truly made me cry with some of your reviews!
Also, thank you for your patience on this chapter. It's been the ugliest, roughest one to date (that includes the chapter that took me eight years to write, ha). If I take another three weeks to update, then let me wish you happy Rogue One viewings! Disney canon or no, I'm just really excited to see Bail Organa onscreen again. :)