Chapter Twenty-Five:
The XI jumped once it cleared Sluis Van's gravity well. Han watched it disappear and blew out a breath. He felt drained. Maybe a little weak. The adrenaline from disabling the Dreadnaught's drive seemed to be wearing off and the spark of rage and fear inspired by Thrawn's subspace chat session left him anxious and worried. He would do this, he would get them safely in and out of the interdiction zone. But the constant game of trying to outsmart the grand admiral was taking its toll.
Leia brought up the sensor suite to full power and sat back. He knew she was running through their plan, flipping through the obvious flaws and calculating the risks they faced. A microjump just outside the Aggregator's interdiction radius would take milliseconds. Had the Falcon required him to bring her out of hyperspace manually, he would have overshot it by lightyears. Human reflexes were just too slow and the distance between the Falcon and Thrawn was too short. The navicompter was programmed for a longer jump through the exact location of the Interdictor and they were relying on the Aggregator to pull them out of it.
By Han's closest estimate, they had just fifty seconds until they cleared the planet's gravity well and could jump. He needed to get something off his chest. Now. Before they tried to survive this little maneuver.
"Leia," he said, looking at the matte black starfield in front of him.
In his peripheral vision he could see her turn to him, dwarfed by Chewie's custom seat. The image triggered a wave of emotion he couldn't fully name. One of the first things he'd learned about Leia is that she inspired a wide range of emotions in him, everything from blind rage to blind devotion and often at the exact same time. It had always been that way. Even in the early days he had been capable of simultaneously adoring her and wanting to toss her out an airlock. Something about that constant dichotomy had always intrigued him.
"Thank you," he said, uncomfortable despite his better nature.
Leia waited. When he didn't elaborate, she arched an eyebrow at him. "You're welcome. What did I do?"
He shook his head. "Not shooting me when I took you on this crazy trip with me in the first place?"
"Ah, of course." She smiled. "I considered it."
"I know you did," he said. "And, uh, thanks for coming back for me, too."
Her smile faded. She looked almost angry now. "You knew I would."
He closed his eyes, embarrassed. He wanted to be able to tell Leia, in clear Basic, that it meant more to him than simply saving his skin. He had thirty-five seconds. Maybe the deadline would help him spit out what he needed to say. Racing against the clock seemed to be their usual pattern. "That goes both ways, you know," he said, opening his eyes. "You are everything to me. I don't tell you that enough."
Han felt a flicker of pride at her expression. He couldn't tell if she was about to check him for a concussion or jump him. Her shock could swing either way. Honestly he probably could stand to time these things better but they just didn't do proper declarations. He'd always loved that Leia lived in the same fundamental reality as he did: they both knew words were useless. Action was better.
Sometimes, though, he needed to say it. Sometimes she needed to hear it. And while he knew they could very well pull out of this situation just fine, he also didn't want to risk it. He felt better knowing his cards were all on the table.
She recovered quickly, anger erased in a second. "Yes," she replied with a soft smile. "You do. You absolutely do."
"Right," he said, sarcastic. She looked beautiful there in Chewie's seat. Simultaneously tiny and bigger than he could handle. She was also blatantly lying to him. "I'm glad you think so."
"Hey," she said, and reached over to grip his arm. "I don't need the words. Why the insecurity?"
He made a face at the word insecurity but thought about it. "You've done a lot in the past few weeks for me."
Not shooting him at the offset was just the first thing. Staking out the khedive, hitting up the Imp in the bar, taking a blaster bolt to the arm during a high-velocity speeder chase, checking out Storinal, going to the Provisional Council on his behalf. She'd gone up against Cracken on her own to save his neck, and then she'd married him. It wasn't like any of those things were in her best interest.
"Captain Solo," he heard. He turned to look at her again; her knowing smile was already in place. "You should know by now that I do what I want to do. You can't force me into anything. Period."
"Fine," he said and made a dismissive gesture. "See if I try to be romantic in deadly situations ever again."
Leia laughed. "I think the most romantic thing you could do right now is to not get us killed." She tapped the turbolaser cannon charge, readying it for immediate fire upon entry to realspace. Just in case. "Do you think you can manage that?"
He rolled his eyes, reached over and grabbed her arm. "I'll consider it," he said, and kissed her. He was half out of his chair and she was hanging off hers, too, but her lips were sweet and soft beneath his. She wrapped her free hand around the back of his head and into his hair. Han slid his hand from her bicep to her palm, pushing his fingers through hers until he could twist that all-important ring around her finger.
She pulled away first. "Please do," she said against his lips. "I have plans for after that I think you'll like."
He kissed her again, quickly, because they didn't have time for this. But if their insane relationship had taught him anything, it was that there was never a good excuse not to kiss Leia thoroughly before they jumped into a dangerous situation. When he broke the kiss, she was smiling. He brought up the hand he was holding and pressed a kiss against her knuckles, then leaned back and let go. "Right back at you," he said with a grin.
She shook her head, a little breathless as she turned back to the console and said: "Five seconds."
He settled back into his seat. At least he'd tried to say what he felt like he needed to say. It wasn't enough, it never was, but he'd tried. Maybe that was still worth something.
With one hand resting on the proton torpedo launch trigger and sending up a quick prayer to the gods of luck, Han waited until Leia muttered a quiet we're clear and then pulled the hyperdrive lever.
Microjumps were surreal on the best of days. An overwhelming sensation of physical unreality descended on living beings when matter shot through distance with such speed and then stopped cold. He always felt like his body was being stretched too thin, and the feeling lasted just long enough to question if it had existed at all. He'd made microjumping into an art form, first as a smuggler and then with the Alliance, and every time he felt like his senses were marginally shifted. Like the universe operated on billions of different tracks of time and he'd just jumped from one to another.
This jump felt the same, made even worse by being intentionally pulled out by the Aggregator's interdictor drives.
The Falcon jerked wildly just as Han began to pull the lever. Before he'd even let go they were nestled in the heart of an Imperial fleet. His brain couldn't quite stop his right hand from finishing the ingrained sequence of the lever pull. Even though he'd anticipated the slowness of his reactions, Han felt sluggish, his nervous system racing to catch up as the brief hyperspace suspension was violently ripped apart.
But simply being pulled out of hyperspace wasn't the only part of their plan. At the same moment he'd begun pulling the lever, Han's left hand had depressed the proton torpedo launch.
This was the definition of a calculated risk. Han and Leia had reasoned that the launch system was the tiniest bit slower than the hyperdrive capacitor. While the lever was wired directly into the hyperdrive itself, the launch trigger went through three different checkpoints before the torpedoes were released. The checkpoints normally meant a delay in the direct ignition of the torpedo's propulsion system. The delay measured at just thirty milliseconds the last time Chewie and Han had done a systems check. There was no logical reason to worry that the Falcon would somehow, this one time, manage to launch a torpedo faster than she could engage the hyperdrive and be brought out by an Interdictor at such a short distance.
But.
He would be lying if he didn't admit to a brief sigh of relief once he'd realized they hadn't rammed into their own torpedo. There had been a chance, a very small chance, that Thrawn had already jumped his fleet to another location. Without the Interdictor, this trip would be over approximately thirty milliseconds later than they'd planned and result in the famous Millennium Falcon being taken out by … herself.
At the very least, he'd thought with some acerbic pride, no one could claim our kill except us.
The Falcon buckled and alarms blared. After a moment of adjustment, Han's eyes were able to discern the boxy shape of the Aggregator's drive nacelles. Next he separated the different piercing strains of the Falcon's alarm systems. Of utmost importance to him was the warbling identification of a tractor beam lock.
It'd been maybe a second since they'd reverted from hyperspace. Clearly, Thrawn had expected them to follow the XI and had waited for them to appear.
In the next moment, though, Han's eye caught a brilliant flash. The Falcon's proton torpedo, launched thirty milliseconds after they'd entered hyperspace and picked up by the tractor beam that held the Falcon herself, had flown true. It detonated brilliantly inside the nearest Imperial-II class Star Destroyer's awaiting hangar bay. The tractor beam's generator, situated quite clumsily inside the hangar deck, flickered out and Han, just five seconds after being pulled out of hyperspace, gunned the sublight engines and broke through the beam during its brief outage.
The Destroyer. and even the tractor beam, wouldn't be out of this fight for long, Han reckoned. Backup systems would engage soon after the hangar's fire suppression protocol ran its course. But their little gambit had gone better than he'd honestly hoped it would. Han allowed himself another quick grin. "What are we playing with?" he asked Leia.
"The two Destroyers, the Aggregator, the Dreadnaught and the XI."
"Any of the first station's freighters still in vacuum?"
"No," she said. "They've all docked in the Destroyers' bays while we were at the second station."
So much for an accurate count, he thought. Another tractor beam indicator alarm sounded, drawing his attention away from the size of Thrawn's newly-acquired fleet. He threw the Falcon into a quick dive to avoid the tractor beam and then fled through the mess of capital ships. From here it looked to him that the fleet was in a sort of two-dimensional oval ring, the Aggregator sitting below the others. Odd.
"Any fighters?" he asked.
"No," Leia replied. "The Dreadnaught and the XI are still piloted by droids. Life-form scans are negative and they're the only ones without active tractor beams. My bet is that Thrawn wants to pull us in and then jump before our reinforcements come in."
"Our reinforcements," he repeated. "Wouldn't that be nice?"
Leia laughed, a bitter edge cutting beneath the usual warmth. "Who needs them?"
Han nodded absently. Another indicator alarm screeched at him; he twisted to port and then climbed. Tractor beams were great when the prey was destabilized because of interdiction, or on a direct path to the ship itself, like when the Falcon had been snagged by the first Death Star. But that beam had been a monster compared to these. Standard Imperial tractor beams were weaker, meant to pick up disabled fighters for repair in the aftermath of an engagement. He wasn't particularly concerned about individual beams holding the Falcon for long.
"Well, Sweetheart," he said, boosting power to the thrusters. "What chaos are we creating now?"
She didn't hesitate. "I want the XI. There's no way we can destroy the Dreadnaught with concussion missiles or proton torpedoes and we can't pull the drive apparatus trick again with the thrusters burning."
"Not without getting a little crispy," he joked.
Leia didn't crack a smile. "But the XI's shield generators should be a viable target. We can punch through the viewport after that."
"Right," Han said. He toggled the controls absently. "Right. Okay."
With a deep breath he engaged full thrusters and flew straight to the XI. The Falcon was obviously the nimblest of the ships in this engagement: without smaller craft out here, there wasn't much to worry about defensively. The trick wouldn't necessarily be hitting the XI; most capital ship shield generators weren't any more difficult to target than a tiny fuse box. Leia had already done some serious artwork shooting today. He supposed he was getting spoiled with all these Force-sensitive gunners around.
The trick would be sidestepping the tractor beams of the two Destroyers and the Aggregator while still pooling power into the cannons and giving Leia enough stability to lock the missiles onto those shield generators. He was fairly confident he could break through the tractor beams with full sublight power, but it would waste time. He wanted to get out of here as quickly as he could. Something about this whole setup felt strange to him.
Han flew into the oval and made a lofty pass around the XI. "Do you see the generators?" he asked Leia.
"Of course," she said. She paused, and then turned a confused look to him. "Don't you?"
Han shrugged. "Never worked on a Sluissi ship. How do you know where the generators are?"
She turned back to the viewport. "Research," she said, with such naked superiority that Han nearly laughed. "You'd think the professional spy in this group would have read the intel briefings."
He scowled at the viewport. "You'd think."
"Thirty-seven degrees to starboard," she ordered, flipping open the concussion missile lock. He rotated the ship, but found himself eyeing the alarm system. All power was boosted to the thrusters; if Thrawn decided to start firing his turbolasers, the Falcon might actually be in some trouble. "Let's do this quick," he said. "We're running hot without shields."
"Hold steady," Leia muttered.
Han tapped a finger on the console in front of him, unease running up his spine. "Any day now, Princess."
"Now you're twitchy?" She didn't look up from the targeting computer. "You were dead calm while we were sitting inside a Dreadnaught burn thruster half an hour ago."
"We're in the middle of a ring of capital ships that want to kill us." Han looked at her incredulously.
"Then don't let them," Leia said, enunciating each word in her occasional clipped Core accent, and launched a pair of concussion missiles. Han immediately flipped them around, belly to the XI, trying to gauge how far away he needed to go. If she hadn't hit the shield generators he needed to stay close to the XI. And if she had hit them he didn't want any debris in his hull.
He had a brief flash of insight. If, say, the Aggregator activated her tractor beam and aimed for them as the Falcon flew next to the XI, Thrawn risked a lock on the XI, not the Falcon. The oval formation may have been ideal for nabbing a ship, or a fleet of ships, but since the Falcon avoided the immediate tractor lock upon interdiction, the Imperial's formation was now ridiculous. They couldn't fire without hitting themselves.
Since they hadn't broken rank yet, he could only conclude that Thrawn still anticipated New Republic reinforcements. An oval was only really meant for pulling a fleet from hyperspace and destroying them cleanly within its sphere. Ambush tactics: a strategy older than the Empire itself.
The revelation lasted just as long as it took the missiles to detonate against an odd hub on the XI's stern hull. He flipped the Falcon on her side and flew beneath the XI, out of the ring of ships and hopefully out of the way of their turbolasers. He didn't like relying on Imperials to be patient and afraid of collateral damage. Once he cleared the ring, he asked: "Are we good to kill this thing now?"
"Let's find out," she said, and locked two more concussion missiles onto the forward viewports. She released them and Han, a little jumpy, took the Falcon into a long arc away from the oval. If this didn't work, he wanted to get out of here. Leia had called him twitchy. She wasn't wrong, but it felt a little more like they were pushing their luck. Bravado was fine, but this silent Imperial act was freaking him out. Imps didn't just sit around while an enemy picked off their fleet. Not in his experience, at least.
He caught another flash and a plume of white-hot fire erupting from the bridge of the XI. "Got it," Leia said, unfazed as ever, indomitable even in the face of battle. "Take me to the other side."
Into the ring? "Like hell I will," he said. "The plan was the XI. Your plan. Remember?"
Her tone was sharp and had a dangerous edge he recognized as pure, Leia Organa stubbornness. "The droid could patch the one breach before the group jumps. Two breaches and she's dead in the water."
"No," he argued. "No. This is crazy, Leia. They aren't firing."
"Because if they fire they destroy their own fleet. You're overthinking this."
He laughed in disbelief and pointed to his chest. His bad feeling had erupted into full-on panic. He knew where Leia's singular focus came from: he knew she was hardwired to accrue personal responsibilities where no one expected her to. But if there was one thing he'd learned in the past six years, it was that if something didn't feel right, there was a good reason for it. This didn't feel right.
Unfortunately he also knew he didn't have a hope in hell of keeping Leia away from finishing something she felt she needed to finish.
He didn't bother with a reply, just reoriented the Falcon and looped back under the hull of the XI. Back inside the oval, Han drew power from the sublight engines into the shields, very aware that they were now in the crosshairs of three functioning capital ships. Pulling around to the other side of the XI, Han kept his shields at full power and lined Leia up for one last shot. He didn't look at her, still angry, still worried, but kept his eyes on the alarm panels.
She didn't waste any time. Without bothering to engage the targeting computer, Leia released the last of the Falcon's concussion missiles into the XI's forward viewport. A second later another white flash lit up the cockpit.
"Let's go," Han said, ready to divert power to the aft shields and speed away until they left the interdiction r shadow. But as he engaged the thrusters a tractor beam alarm screeched through the cockpit.
And then another.
And a third.
His heart thrumming, he scanned the oval ring. Though he knew what was happening from the telltale signs of three alarms sounding at the exact same time, he poured over the sensor data in front of him. "No," he muttered. "No."
The alarms continued to blare through the cockpit. Han pooled power in the sublight engines and gunned the thrust as much as he dared without pulling juice from the shields. The Falcon didn't budge. Then he pulled power from the shields, too, and even some from life support and environmental controls. Everything he had, every jule of power, every wish and hope he'd ever pretended not to have he threw into trying to escape the tractor beams.
And still nothing.
"I knew it," he swore. "I knew it."
He turned to Leia to tell her to power up the remote cannon controls but she was already in motion. The Falcon wasn't going anywhere with three separate tractor beam locks. Eventually two would have to pull back and let the third carry them into its hangar bay. And when that happened the Falcon could break through, pulling all systems to boost power to the laser cannons and drives and try to simultaneously break free and shoot their way out.
That was the best case scenario. That was the scenario where Thrawn wanted them alive.
Thrawn could also order the fleet to jump now and let the inertia of three separate tractor beams hitting lightspeed at the same time tear the Falcon apart. Structurally. Atomically.
"Shit," he said. "Hail the Aggregator."
Leia threw him a surprised look. "What? Why?"
"Open a comm channel to them. Hail them. Now."
She jumped up, hopped onto the seat behind her and began searching comm frequencies. Han could hear her clicking through open channels as he kept an eye out the viewport. He didn't really have a plan. But he was now very, very concerned that Thrawn would come to the conclusion that no Republic reinforcements were on their way. Or that the Falcon was a nuisance or dangerous or just that he was tired of dragging them through the mud.
Knowing Thrawn as Han suspected he did, all three of these thoughts had already occurred to the grand admiral.
A moment later Leia found a live frequency and waved at Han. He cleared his throat and tried to summon his cocksure antipathy. It was harder than usual: he was pissed and terrified in equal measure. "Imperial Destroyer, this is the Millennium Falcon. Do you copy?"
"Stand by, Millennium Falcon," a voice said. Leia slid back into the copilot's chair and eyed him with skepticism. Stalling for time, he mouthed in explanation.
For what? she mouthed back.
He hesitated. Really, he was waiting for a great plan to emerge from his subconscious. Or from Leia's. Hell, he'd take a damned Force-ghost at the moment. Whoever figured out how to get them out of this mess was a friend as far as he was concerned.
The comm crackled again and Han realized this transmission wasn't coming from any of the three ships holding the Falcon. He'd heard this particular crackle before, from the Dreadnaught they'd left pirouetting by the second station. The Imps had been relaying the signal to the Dreadnaught and Han and Leia had assumed the grand admiral had been broadcasting from here, where the Aggregator was lying in wait. But -
"Captain Solo," a crisp voice issued from the speaker.
Han absently tapped a finger on the hyperdrive lever. It figured they would put him through to talk to the man himself. "Hi there, Thrawn. Got a moment for an old friend?"
"Friend? No. It appears that you're in quite the dangerous spot."
"Been in worse ones," Han said.
"I suppose you have," the Chiss replied. The frequency crackled again. "What spectacular display are you preparing now? This call is a misdirect, I assume?"
Leia turned wide eyes on him and he shrugged back. "I'll let it be a surprise."
"Nothing is a surprise, Captain," Thrawn said, "though I admit your particular brand of anarchy has been an interesting foe. I do love the Corellian temper. Predictably unpredictable."
"It's in the whiskey," Han quipped, unsettled. It was no secret to anyone that he was Corellian. The entire galaxy knew Leia was Alderaanian, too, and that Luke came from Tatooine. But the ready way Thrawn referenced it stiffened his spine a bit.
"Is that so? I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure. Is there a reason for this transmission, Captain?"
Leia threw her hands in the air, indicating she was wondering the same thing as Thrawn. Unfortunately, no, there was no reason, no good reason, to chat with one's enemy. Not when you were staring at the muzzle of a blaster, trigger-finger ready. And that was precisely where the Falcon was sitting, helpless, while a grand admiral got ready to pull the trigger.
And then Han remembered something important.
"No, not really. I was just wondering how the air is where you are."
A pause as short as their microjump had been. But still: a pause. "Interesting," the voice said. "Expound."
"You're sitting pretty somewhere else, aren't you, Blue?"
Leia threw him a frantic look, but Thrawn's voice sounded amused. "Good. And?"
Han ran through his calculations quickly, thinking of the parts of Cracken's intel packets he had read. "Your droids - the ones in the vault, the one at the docking bay, the ones on the two interdiction forces at Coruscant - you can relay comm frequencies with them. You're nowhere near here."
"So very far away," Thrawn said. "Any guesses?"
Han opened his mouth but it was Leia's low, confident voice that answered Thrawn. "You're at Storinal. On the Peremptory."
She didn't add the other part, the part Han caught immediately: on the Peremptory and near the Rebel Dream.
He turned to her in alarm. Thrawn hadn't know until that moment that the Falcon's current copilot was a tiny princess and not a Wookiee. Han had liked the idea of keeping that secret from the mastermind at the other end of the table. But Leia was sitting straight in her chair, eyes clear, a calm command lining her tone. He supposed it really didn't matter whether or not Thrawn knew who was on the Falcon; if he wanted her destroyed, she was going to be destroyed. What was the use of pretending any differently?
Oh. Except Leia had just reframed the "destroy or capture" debate. Destroying the Falcon and killing Han Solo and Chewbacca would be a fine thing for any Imperial officer. You add Leia Organa to the mix and now there's an upper-echelon member of the Provisional Council as a game piece, complete with classified information to access. Protocols, military operations, intimate details of the inner workings of the New Republic. Taking her hostage would be worth more to Thrawn than simply killing her. For a being as obsessed with intelligence as the grand admiral seemed to be, Leia was a goldmine.
Han didn't like it. He hated the idea of the Falcon in an Imperial docking bay. He was sick at the thought of either one of them on the business end of Imperial interrogation again. But it was probably the right play for the moment. Better to be alive and suffering than dead.
"I am not often surprised," Thrawn said after a moment. "I admit to it now. I assume I'm speaking to Her Highness?"
"Grand Admiral Thrawn," Leia said. Han was amused to note the presence of that accent again. "It's a pleasure."
"You've lived up to your reputation. Both of you."
Han was a little intrigued: what exactly was their reputation? "We tend to do that," he said, moving past the moment of vanity. "So. You're at Storinal."
"It's an inspired deduction," Thrawn said. "I suppose you will find out soon enough."
That was promising. Thrawn didn't intend to destroy the Falcon if they were going to be alive to find out where he was located. Not immediately, at least. Han felt marginally better. "We're looking forward to it," he said.
"When did you kill Teradoc?" Leia asked. Han realized that while he was still looking at the odds for their survival, Leia had moved on to intelligence-gathering. Maybe he wasn't the professional spy in this operation after all.
"Oh, months ago. Funny how no one noticed."
Han's brain spiraled into timeline critiques. Thrawn came back from wherever he was hiding during the Rebellion, killed Teradoc and assumed command of the warlord's fleet. He then set up shop on Sluis Van with Teradoc's resources to build the droids and the mole miners.
"Why did you use your own ships in the Coruscant campaigns if you already had Teradoc's?" Leia asked, apparently thinking along the same lines.
"Understanding the psychology of the enemy is a fundamental advantage in war. It was an interesting study."
Something about that comment chilled Han to the core. He made a mental note to ask Leia about it later. Preferably before they were taken into the Aggregator's brig. "That seems a little irresponsible to me. We wouldn't have known who you were if it wasn't for those ship IDs."
"Calculated risk. The only reason you identified my ships is because you identified me. Predictably unpredictable, as I said."
"I try," Han said, but his nerves suddenly sparked, enflamed. Thrawn had known the New Republic identified his ships because of Han and Leia here on Sluis Van. He'd known.
"Try harder, Captain." Thrawn's tone was ice. "Sooner or later you will realize that each time we speak, I learn more about you. Predictably unpredictable is a temporary advantage."
Han broke into a sweat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leia nervously tap the cannon safety lock and knew she understood, too. The conversation before, the one about carbonite, had been research: Thrawn finding ways to understand him.
It was probably what had made the grand admiral so certain the Falcon would follow the XI into this engagement. Intelligence was the key player here, at all levels and in all tactics. This wasn't a battle for strength any longer. The Empire had lost their military might years ago with the loss of the second Death Star. The age of warlords and superweapons was past.
This was the age of intelligence.
Thrawn posed a unique threat to the burgeoning New Republic. He was, above all, the only kind of threat that could devastate them: insidious, masterful manipulation. He sought to understand. He relied upon strategic engagement. He misdirected.
Han was now certain Lando's "corporate spy" wasn't from a competing company at all: she was Thrawn's, gathering information about mole miners. Perhaps it'd been an effort to steal enough miners to take over the shipyards without having to build them himself.
Han was also convinced Thrawn had an ear in the Imperial palace somewhere. When intelligence had been sent back to Coruscant, like when Han and Leia had identified Thrawn, Thrawn had known about it. When the information had not passed through Coruscant, as when they'd left Chewie on Kashyyyk and Leia had left on the Falcon with Han, Thrawn had been surprised. That only made sense if Thrawn had access to intelligence on Coruscant.
They had to get back. They needed to get back to warn Cracken, to warn the council, to warn everyone. The New Republic was fighting the wrong war and they needed to be told to alter their course. Immediately.
He opened his mouth to tell Leia to cut the transmission. He was disconcerted to see that she was staring ahead, into the black, her mouth open. She had that eerie look, the one that Luke got, too. He checked the viewport: nothing different. What is going on?
"Han," Leia said quietly. "Brace yourself."
He really looked at her, trying to discern the odd pitch of her voice. But before he could figure it out, the Falcon buckled wildly and he was thrown hard into his restraints. For a moment Han's vision blacked out, the image of Leia's concentrated face the last thing he saw.
And then awareness snapped back to him with proximity alarms ringing loudly to his left. Han blinked, first at his lap and then up at the viewport.
Where the ring of Imperial ships was suddenly filled with the incredible sight of Republic ships.
"Han, old buddy," he heard through the comm. "Could you use a hand?"
"Lando!" he shouted in shock. He glanced down at the telemetry, noticed Leia's hands moving over the cannon fire controls. It triggered his finer instincts and he threw the Falcon into a deep dive, suddenly possible without the hold of three tractor beams. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Watch your mouth, Solo," another voice said. Harder, drier and hated, though that last part might be outdated now.
Han's shock doubled. He turned to Leia, noticed dimly that the tractor beam alarms had silenced. She was shaking her head, but loading up telemetry data into the targeting computer and prepping the turbolasers for remote firing capabilities. "Airen," she said, her voice betraying none of the surprise Han saw on her face.
"That's General Cracken to you two," Cracken said. "Hurry up and get control of your ship. We don't have all day."
Leia looked up at Han, turned back to the targeting computer and said, with not a little sarcasm: "Yes, sir."
Note: I'm sorry about the delay! I have no excuse, other than wrapping up this story is really daunting to me. I figure we have maybe two more chapters. Which is both thrilling and just ... sad! Anyway, thank you for hanging with me! -KR