15

They managed to steal the second shuttle.

Han and Chewbacca wasted precious time in the first cargo ship on the atmosphere factory’s landing pad, trying to cross-circuit the controls as Kyp Durron kept watch in the open hatch. The air was cold on their exposed skin, and they didn’t know how much stray radiation from the Maw actually penetrated the atmospheric shield; the sounds of breathing hissed behind their breath masks. No one had seen them. Yet.

After only a few minutes, Han accidentally triggered the shuttle’s automatic lockout systems. He slammed his hand on the panel. “Should have known I couldn’t beat the high-level security interlocks!”

Chewbacca pulled off an access plate and tossed it into the back compartment with the sound of a crashing landspeeder. Roaring in his Wookiee language, he began yanking wires out of the controls and jamming them into override ports, but the few lights still functioning on the panels continued to burn red.

“Forget it, Chewie. We’ll try the other ship,” Han said. “I think I know what I did wrong last time.”

Kyp kept watch on the tiny doors of the atmosphere factory’s massive stack. “Still no movement from inside. We’re clear.”

They raced across the open spaces of the landing field to the second cargo shuttle, an old Imperial model with scarred armor and long planar wings that made it look like a mechanical flying fish. Han and Chewbacca had flown a similar Lambda-class shuttle on their guerrilla mission to Endor; but this model looked even older. Prison facilities must have low priority for new equipment acquisitions, he thought.

Chewbacca opened the hatch, and Han ducked inside, moving straight to the controls. The Wookiee clambered after him as four guards marched into view around the perimeter of the atmosphere stack. The squad wore cobbled-together uniforms of old stormtrooper armor and thermal suits from the mines.

Kyp plastered himself to the wall just inside the open hatch. Looking across the landing field, he saw that they had forgotten to close the doorway on the first shuttle, and now their tampering was painfully obvious. He swallowed. “Better hurry, Han. We’ve got company, but they haven’t seen us yet.”

“If this doesn’t work, we’re in deep bantha dung,” Han muttered, punching up the command screens and removing the access plate to the security override.

The squad of guards marched on what was probably a routine patrol. Han glanced up to see them through the shuttle’s windowport, but the reflectorized transparisteel would prevent them from observing the pilot’s compartment. He wondered how many times a day the guards walked around the circular perimeter of the atmosphere stack. He hoped they were sleepwalking by now.

He tried to fire up the shuttle’s engines. The control panel gave him an ERROR message. “Bantha dung it is, then,” he said. But he had one more thing to try.

The lead guard suddenly stopped and gestured toward the open hatch in the first shuttle. He tilted his head to speak into his helmet comlink, then went cautiously forward. He took another guard with him, while the remaining two drew their weapons and spread out, looking from side to side.

“Oh boy,” Kyp said.

Han rewired the security circuit, feeding the password-checking mechanisms back into themselves; then he snapped the plate back on. “Let’s try it. Kyp, get ready to close the hatch. If this works, those guards are going to be upset. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to be upset.”

The two guards poked their heads out of the first shuttle, gesturing wildly. They had seen the sabotage. The other two jabbered into their helmet radios, then sprinted toward the second shuttle, drawing their weapons.

Kyp slapped the button that slammed the hatch shut. All the guards began running, pointing their blasters at the shuttle.

Han punched the start controls. With a merciful whine and hum, the engines ignited. Power surged through the shuttle. Han gave a whoop of triumph, but Chewbacca knocked him back into the pilot’s seat as he furiously worked the controls with his big hairy hands to lift them off the pad.

The guards fired blasters at the shuttle. Han heard the sizzling thumps as the beams struck, but the ship’s armor could withstand attack from minor hand weapons.

At the base of the atmosphere stack, doors opened and an entire squad of guards boiled out like Anoat lizard-ants in mating season. One bright laser bolt splashed across the transparisteel directly in front of Han’s eyes, dazzling him. “Time to leave this party,” he said.

Chewbacca raised them off the ground, maneuvering the shuttle away from the other vehicles on the landing pad.

Two guards wrestled a blaster cannon into place, erecting it on its tripod and cranking up the aim point. Chewbacca growled, and Han took over the controls. “I know. That thing could be real trouble if we don’t get some altitude fast.”

A flurry of hand-blaster bolts pinged against the lower hull. Han flew the ship higher, adjacent to the gigantic stack, spiraling upward and using the curving walls as a shield. The guards managed to fire only one shot from the blaster-cannon, but the beam scattered wide as Han corkscrewed up, keeping the stack between him and the troops. Below, the guards ran around the perimeter to keep within firing range, but Han flew the shuttle beyond the reach of small weapons fire.

“We’re out of here!” Han said. “Punch it, Chewie!”

Then the massive laser turrets mounted on the atmosphere tower began firing at them.

“What!” Han cried. “What are they doing with weapons on an atmosphere stack? It’s a factory, not a garrison!”

One brilliant green bolt struck the starboard planar wing of the shuttle, sending the vessel into a roll. Han and Chewbacca grappled with the controls as they spun, and Kyp clung to the supports of the pilot’s chair.

They careened into the gushing white updraft from the stack, knocked from side to side by manufactured air dumping into Kessel’s atmosphere. “Hang on!” Han yelled. He did not want to crash on the planet again.

At the shuttle’s top acceleration, he took them along the stream of air, roaring upward like a boat riding the rapids. Green blasts from the turret lasers continued to streak up, but by riding the center stream, Han kept the shuttle in the blind spot of their targeting mechanisms.

They zoomed toward the fringes of the atmosphere. Han looked at both Kyp and Chewbacca. “Well, so much for sneaking out of here. Now Moruth Doole is going to know we escaped.”

As if on cue the shuttle’s comm crackled, and they could hear Doole’s croaking voice in the background. “Is this it? Did you get the right override channel this time?”

“Yes, Commissioner.”

“Solo! Han Solo, can you hear me?”

“Why, it sounds like my old friend Moruth Doole!” Han said. “How are you doing, buddy? I hope you feel better than your assistant Skynxnex.”

“Solo, you have caused me more grief than any other life-form in the galaxy—including Jabba the Hutt! I should have squashed you when I had you in my office.”

Han rolled his eyes. “Well, you missed your chance, and I don’t plan on giving you another one.”

Doole chuckled, a hissing heh-heh-heh laugh like a fat man choking on sand. “You won’t get away. I’ll mobilize everything against you. Better start thinking about the afterlife now.”

Kyp squinted out the port, as if deep in concentration. The atmosphere thinned around the fleeing ship at the far limit of where Kessel’s gravity could keep hold. He saw Kessel’s moon and suddenly shivered uncontrollably. He blinked in confusion.

Chewbacca bellowed into the speaker mesh. “You tell him, Chewie,” Han said, then switched off the radio.

Kyp scrambled forward and grabbed the controls, activating the maneuvering rockets and making the shuttle lurch forward with enough force to slam Han and Chewbacca against their seats. Kyp tumbled backward, unable to keep his balance in the acceleration.

“What did you do that for?” Han demanded, glaring at Kyp.

But Chewbacca made an alarmed noise and dragged Han back to the console. Just below them the atmosphere shimmered and crinkled as an impenetrable ionized screen appeared, blanketing the planet.

“They’ve got their energy shield operational!” Han said. The workers on Kessel’s moonbase had repaired the protective screen that blocked off the prison planet. If Kyp hadn’t punched their acceleration exactly when he did, they would have been sizzled in the bath of power or trapped beneath the shield, unable to escape.

“How did you know?” Han said, looking over his shoulder at Kyp. Kyp picked himself up off the floor, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “Never mind. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just get us away from Kessel.”

Han spun around to the shuttle’s controls. “Chewie, contact the New Republic. No waiting this time. They’ve got to learn what’s going on here, just in case we don’t make it back.”

The Wookiee bent over the comm controls as Han struggled with the navicomputer. Han gawked at the task in front of him. “Damn! This thing’s an old five-hundred-X model! Haven’t seen one of these outside a museum. I hope they gave us a scratchpad to do backup calculations. That might be faster and more accurate!”

Chewbacca moaned and pounded his hairy fist on the console with enough force to buckle the panels. Han flashed a sidelong look at him. “What do you mean we’re being jammed? Who’s jamming us?”

Kyp turned to the side viewport, said in a low voice, “Here they come.”

The garrison on Kessel’s moon spewed fighters, dozens of rejuvenated battle craft, armored freighters, slim and heavily armed X-wings, and TIE fighters. Many of the ships must have been damaged during the recent war and then salvaged. Now Doole had also gotten his planetary defense shield running again. Kessel would be a veritable stronghold against any attack.

Streams of X-wings and Y-wings coursed out, flanked on either side by a squadron of TIE fighters. They roared through the wispy tail of atmosphere in Kessel’s orbital wake, leaving a glowing window of ionized gas from their sublight engines.

“Strap yourselves in,” Han said. “This is going to be a hell of a ride.” He reached for the controls, preparing to fight, then felt a boulder drop in his stomach. “What? This ship is unarmed!” He frantically scanned the console. “Nothing! Not a single laser! Not even a slingshot!”

Kyp held the back of Han’s pilot chair, bracing himself. “We stole a supply ship, not a fighter. What did you expect?”

“Chewie, pump everything into our shields—and I mean everything, including life support. We’ve got enough air in here to last longer than this ship is likely to hold. Boost shields until they’re off the scale. We’re going to have to outrun them.”

The first wave of TIE fighters soared in, their Twin Ion Engines howling over the cockpit’s feedback speakers. Laser spears shot out, pummeling the shuttle, but the shields held. X-wings attacked from the rear.

“Can’t this ship go any faster?” Kyp asked. The lights dimmed as Chewbacca reinforced the shields.

“Like you said, kid, we stole a cargo shuttle. This isn’t a racing ship, and it sure isn’t the Falcon. Get ready for a jump to hyperspace as soon as this fossilized navicomputer gives an answer.” He stared at the readout, then pounded on the panel. “It’ll be another ten minutes before it coughs up a safe trajectory. Damn! The black hole cluster is screwing up the calculations.”

Chewbacca interjected a loud, bleating comment.

“What did he say?” Kyp asked.

“He said our shields are going to fail in about two minutes. I wish I had weapons—I’d even settle for a rock to throw out the window!” His eyes were wide and suddenly empty of hope. “There’s no way we can last long enough, and Doole sure won’t take prisoners a second time. Sorry I got you into this, kid.”

Kyp bit his lip, then turned to point out the front windowport. “Go there.”

The Maw.

Swirling clouds of gas looped into the bottomless pits of black holes, making space look like a tangled skein of incandescent yarn. Gravity waited to tear apart any ship that came too close. The inexorable Maw cluster was destined to swallow up the Kessel system itself in only another thousand years—but Han didn’t want to feed its appetite any sooner than that.

Chewbacca roared something that needed no translation. “Are you crazy?” Han asked.

“You said we’re dead anyway.”

Four Y-wings fired simultaneously on the port side of the shuttle, rocking it. A shower of sparks blasted from the comm unit, and Chewbacca struggled to reroute the circuits.

“There are supposed to be safe paths through it,” Kyp said. “There must be.”

“Yeah, and about a million paths that are sudden death!”

“It’ll be flying a razor’s edge all the way through.” Kyp’s young eyes looked immeasurably old as he stared at Han. “Do we have a better chance staying here and fighting?”

The enormous gravity wells of the Maw made a maze of all the hyperspace and normal space paths through the cluster. Most of the routes were either dead ends or went right down the gullet of a black hole. “We’d never find the right course,” Han said. “It’d be suicide.”

Kyp gripped Han’s shoulder. “I can show you the way.”

“What? How?”

A TIE fighter looped overhead, rotating in flight and firing at the hijacked shuttle. Cruisers from the moonbase approached, closing the gap. Against the capital-ships’ turbolasers, the escapees would be vaporized within moments. Chewbacca groaned as their rear shields weakened and failed.

Han scrambled with the controls; both he and Chewbacca tried to reinforce weak points by draining the stronger shields up front. Lights in the cabin dimmed as the shields gulped more power.

“I helped you navigate through the dark spice tunnels when we were running from Skynxnex, didn’t I?” Kyp said. “I knew when Doole was going to switch on the energy shield! I can find the right path into the Maw.”

“That still doesn’t tell me how, kid!” Han shouted.

Kyp wore an embarrassed expression for a moment; then he spoke quickly. “This is going to sound like a hokey old religion—but it works! An old woman who spent part of her sentence in the spice tunnels told me I had some sort of tremendous potential. She showed me how to use something called ‘the power’ or ‘the strength’ or something.”

“The Force!” Han cried in relief. He wanted to grab Kyp and hug him. “Why didn’t you say so? Who was this woman?”

“Her name was Vima-Da-Boda. Down in the spice mines she taught me only a few things before the guards hauled her away. I never saw her again, but I’ve been practicing what she taught me. It’s helped a few times, but I don’t really understand how.”

“Vima-Da-Boda!” Han said, remembering the withered fallen Jedi he and Leia had found on Nal Hutta. During her guilt-ridden hiding, Vima-Da-Boda had somehow spent time in the spice mines, long enough to train Kyp in a few essential skills. Han hoped that would be good enough.

“I don’t like this,” Han said. Another pair of fighters soared by, firing repeatedly. “But I like it better than our other options right now.”

He altered course, swinging around and heading straight toward the seething cluster of black holes. He hoped the shuttle’s weakened shields would last long enough to get them there.

The first of the capital ships reached them and fired, looping overhead, then returning, as if to ram them. The shape of the attacking freighter made Han’s blood turn to water, and he stared in silent dismay for a full second before he managed to cry out. “That’s the Millennium Falcon! That’s my ship!”

The Falcon came straight at them, firing again and again as the shuttle’s forward shields tried to compensate for the pummeling. At the last moment Han wrenched the stolen shuttle into a steep dive so the Falcon scraped by overhead. One of the shots passed through the wavering shields to scar the armor of the shuttle.

“That does it!” Han said. “Now I’m mad. Chewie, at my order drop shields and dump everything into thrust. Pump every last erg into our engines and take us straight into the Maw.” He glanced down at his readouts. “Shields are failing in less than a minute anyway, and the navicomputer needs another six to finish its calculations. Blasted five-hundred-X models!”

Another wing of fighters strafed them, then roared by, leaving a gap to their rear as a huge Lancer frigate closed the distance. A wave of system-patrol craft and Carrack cruisers followed, ready to bring a full armada of turbolasers to bear. Moruth Doole was taking no chances this time.

“Go, Chewie!” Han said.

The Wookiee dropped shields and channeled all power to the sublight engines. The shuttle burst forward in an unexpected spurt of speed, startling the pursuing ships.

“Surprise is only going to help us for a few seconds,” Han said. “Then we’re on our own.”

“By that time we should be in the grip of the Maw,” Kyp whispered.

“If you’re not right about this, kid, we’ll never know it.”

Curtains of incandescent gas blazed in front of them, swirling residue heated by friction as it spiraled in complex orbits through the Roche lobe of one black hole and down the gullet of another. Deadly x-rays filled space, forcing the transparisteel to dim itself to protect the eyes of the passengers.

“Only a complete idiot would try something like this,” Han said. Chewbacca agreed.

The Kessel ships poured on additional acceleration, desperately trying to catch the escapees before Han could reach the Maw cluster. Han hunched over the controls, white-knuckled, as if to increase their speed by sheer force of will.

The fighters unleashed a laser firestorm, but the Maw’s huge gravitational distortions spread out their focus and sent them on long arcs away from the target.

“Let’s just hope these guys aren’t idiots too!” Kyp said. Han drove toward the blazing shreds of hot gas.

The Kessel ships pursued until the last instant, then peeled off at full thrust with their maneuvering engines, letting their prey go to certain death.

Han’s ship plunged into the gravitational jaws of the black hole cluster.