THE SKIES ABOVE CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:

The Millenium Falcon shuddered as a turbolaser blast grazed its upper shield. "Oh my!" C-3PO exclaimed as the sudden wobble, too abrupt for the artificial gravity to compensate for properly, threw him sideways. He clattered into the wall of the ship's narrow hallway, then repeated the cry-with slightly more emphasis-a second time as another blast flung him back the other way.

Past the flailing droid, three of the Solo family and Chewbacca-family himself, although taller and hairier than any of the human Solos would ever be-stared tensely through the viewports as Han and Chewie guided the saucer-shaped craft in a dizzying sequence of evasive maneuvers.

Han-grayer, older, and more lined, but as energetic as ever-kept up a steady stream of complaints and curses as his hands danced across the cockpit instruments. Chewbacca provided counterpoint both in maneuvering technique and in throaty growls and bellows.

"I know, I know, I can see it!" Han shouted, nodding at a throbbing red light on the ship's display board. "What do you think I'm trying to do? Yeah? Well if you don't like it, pal, you can walk home!"

Neither Leia nor Bail reacted to the shouting or the roaring, although their responses couldn't have been more different: Bail, his face pale and his expression the forced-calm of a young Jedi trying to maintain their poise under stress, sat strapped securely into the seat behind Chewbacca, his hands folded in his lap and his lips pressed tight together. Leia was ostensibly sitting in the navigator's chair behind Han, but in reality she was more resting the back of her thighs against it for stability as she stood, hands tight on the arm and headrest of the pilot's chair, and shouted her own advice and observations.

"I thought the point was to avoid the Imperial ships. You've got us going right toward them!"

"It's not like they've set up a blockade," Han retorted. "Flying straight up their nose tends to disorient most Imperials-and besides, I figured they'd be too busy getting vaped by Rogue Squadron to care about some rattletrap freighter!"

"This bucket hasn't been a discreet smuggling vessel in over thirty years," Leia snapped back. Chewbacca roared his approval-of her statement, or of Han's, only the Wookiee himself could say. "You're flying one of the most famous, recognizable ships in the galaxy-"

"I've got a fake identity transponder on," Han protested. "They shouldn't have any idea who we-oh." He paused to look back and catch his son's eye, then nodded at a bank of switches over Bail's head. Bail obediently reached up and flicked two of the switches, a small and rueful smile on his face as he returned to his pose of deliberate calm. "Anyway, now I have a fake identity transponder on," Han continued, as if there had been no interruption.

Leia rolled her eyes but there was no malice in the gesture. "A YT-1300 blasting away from Coruscant minutes after an underhanded Imperial attack on the peace signing?" she said. "They'd have figured us for the Falcon even if you had been using one of your fake IDs."

Han muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "It's not my fault."

Chewie roared a warning just as another bank of lights started blinking on the dashboard.

"We're about to lose the fore deflector," Han announced.

"Time for battle stations, then?" Leia asked. She didn't wait for an answer, but turned and headed for the cockpit door, pausing barely a second to squeeze her husband's shoulder on her way. "Bail, with me."

Bail hurried to unstrap himself and follow his mother. "Remember the point is to get away , not to pull one over on the Imperials, dad," he said blandly.

"Don't tell your old man how to fly," Han retorted. "Go on, listen to your mother!"

Bail left, dodging around Threepio as the hapless protocol droid finally made his way against the bucking, spinning turbulence to the cockpit. "Oh my!" Threepio exclaimed quietly, half-falling into the seat behind Chewbacca as another blast rocked the ship. "We seem to be in something of a situation, Captain Solo!"

"Are we?" Han spat. "I hadn't noticed." He raised his voice in a bellow aimed toward the center of the ship. " Leia-?"

"Keep your pants on, flyboy," came the static-coated reply from the ship's internal comm. A moment later bright red laser blasts tore from the Falcon' s topside guns, followed a few seconds later by matching blasts from the underside guns.

Han muttered again, this time something that was half-compliment and half-insult, as a TIE fighter exploded in a furious ball of light two meters in front of the cockpit viewport. He swung the ship in a hard spin that earned a shrill cry of dismay from C-3PO and an approving roar from Chewbacca.

The Wookiee dropped his voice to something approximating conversational volume-if said conversation was taking place in the middle of a crowded club or a battlefield's trenches, perhaps-and barked a series of inquiring, cautionary interrogatives.

Han shook his head. "I don't know," he said grimly. Suddenly he looked old and tired, his gray hair standing out starkly against the backdrop of the blinking diodes and control switches of the cramped cockpit. "Here, take over while I start the hyperspace calculations. It's too hot to hang around here for long."

Chewie warbled a fervent agreement and swung the Falcon in a twisty loop to throw off Imperial gunners. Turbolaser blasts went wide around the ship, although one struck close enough to make the lights flicker.

"Han-!" Leia snapped from her gunner's station.

"Working on it, sweetheart!" Han shouted back, leaning back out of his chair to reach the navigator's station. It was funny how, even on those rare occasions when the Millenium Falcon had the recommended four-being crew to fly it, he still ended up pulling double-duty more often than not. He punched at the navicomputer's buttons, trying to goad it to calculate faster from sheer force of will. "Come on, come on," he muttered, his eyes flicking back and forth between the computer and the cockpit's transparisteel viewport.

TIEs were starting to swarm them in earnest now and Chewie was having a hard time keeping the ship on its path away from the planet; he kept having to loop and double-back to avoid the other ships, although Leia and Bail were shooting them as fast as they could. Already Han had seen four ships explode, and another had gone spinning-off in a semi-controlled spiral away from the battle.

The problem was that there were just too many of them, and too few of the people on Han's side. He caught the occasional glimpse of an X-Wing here or there, most of them even more overwhelmed by the deluge of TIEs than was the Falcon , and he tried not to think about his daughter up there in one of those ships. Despite all of his upgrades, Han knew-although he would never admit it out loud to another being-that the Millenium Falcon was a freighter, not a snubfighter. She did a remarkable job of impersonating the later, but in a battle like this his ship was too far out of its element. He had to get out of here before he got vaped and took his wife, son, and best friend with him...but if he thought about how leaving meant leaving his daughter behind to keep fighting without him, he'd never be able to make himself engage the hyperdrive.

An X-Wing scoured by the hot streaks of near-misses shot past the viewport in pursuit of three TIEs, its lasers blazing fiery tracks across Han's vision. There was no way for him to know who was piloting the narrow snubfighter but he whispered, "Watch yourself, Rey," anyway.

Another turbolaser blast struck the ship full-on and the Falcon dropped several relative meters under the punch of the blow. The lights all went out, the engines died, the shields cut off; for a moment, the ship was entirely helpless. Another good blast would finish them-but then with a whine, the Falcon came back to life.

Han resumed breathing. "That's it girl," he murmured, "just a little bit more…" He leaned back to check the status of the navicomputer and swore. That blast had wiped the calculation in progress and now he needed to start over from the beginning.

"Captain Solo," Threepio said prissily from his comfortable seat behind Chewie, "I do believe that that power fluctuation interrupted the navicomputer's processing. You will have to reinitialize the calculation before we can make the jump to lightspeed-"

"Tell me something I don't know!" Han snapped at the droid.

Threepio's glowing eyes flickered, giving the droid an odd impression of a man blinking thoughtfully. Then he said, "The glottal stop is an anthropologically inexplicable addition to the Togrutian-"

"THREEPIO!" Han bellowed. The droid subsided, muttering indignantly about the bewildering rudeness of sentients who asked questions when they didn't actually want answers. One of the insistent lights blinking on the ship's dash started blinking more insistently, joined by a shrill alarm and Leia's warning shout of, "HAN!" from the gunner's station.

Chewbacca's roar dwarfed all other sounds, even the shriek of the alarm, as he twisted the pilot's yoke so sharply that Han was flung from his seat. For a moment, everything was lit with a sickly green glow. Stumbling forward, Han caught his friend's hairy arm and hung on for balance, shouting a complaint for the bad flying-but he fell silent at Chewbacca's bark. The Wookiee jerked his chin toward the cockpit's forward viewport and Han's eyes went wide.

"Sithspit," he swore in a whisper.

The Super Star Destroyer had turned out of line with the other ships and was now facing the Falcon . The TIEs around them were scattering to get away from the aging freighter as quickly as their ion engines would carry them but it wasn't quite fast enough: another massive beam of light lanced out from the Super Star Destroyer, vaporizing one of the TIEs unlucky enough to be caught in its area of effect.

Chewbacca pulled the Falcon into a dive sharp enough to make the ship's joints and seams scream and pop, but the massive turbolaser blast passed narrowly overhead-close enough to make the lights flicker and what was left of the shields evaporate and to make every hair in the cockpit, from the gray mop on top of Han's head to the brown fur that covered every inch of Chewbacca's body, stand on end.

The alarms resumed screaming but it seemed to be coming from a distance now, muffled by the oppressive presence of the Super Star Destroyer.

"We have to get out of here," Han said. He was sweating and his voice sounded uncharacteristically meek. "Chewie, point us out and get ready to engage the hyperdrive." He turned back to the navicomputer and began pressing buttons frantically. "Just need a minute to override the safeties…"

"Captain Solo!" Threepio protested. "The navicomputer hasn't had time to calculate-"

"We don't have time," Han snapped back, pounding a fist on the hull to overcome a sticky button's reluctance.

"But sir!" Threepio exclaimed. "Without precise calculations, we could fly right through a star or-"

"I know!" Han lunged for the pilot's seat again, one hand reaching for the piloting controls. "Punch it, Chewie!"

Another massive laserblast lanced out from the Super Star Destroyer but the Millennium Falcon had already lurched forward, for a moment stretching out and moving impossibly fast before it blinked out of realspace. The immense bolt of green light shot through the empty space where the ship had been a moment before, dazzling the eyes of any watching pilots.