Fera whispered, “Solo!” and held up a small metal ball. Another stun grenade. Han nodded, set his blaster aside, and made a throw-it gesture. Fera tossed it to him. Terae lunged dangerously close to the kill zone to cover him, but ducked back as more blasterfire splashed off the bulkhead just above her head. Then the barrage cut off abruptly with the distinctive sound of bowcaster fire and a triumphant Wookiee howl.
Han armed the grenade, leaned around the corner, and tossed it down the corridor.
Leia scrambled back with the others. The grenade went off and the thump shook the deck plates.
Terae yelled, “Come on!” and surged into the corridor with the others behind her. Leia shoved to her feet and followed Han. Three groaning Imperials slumped in a heap near the blast door to the bridge. A curved blast shield lay nearby, the transparent surface still glowing from the blaster bolts it had deflected. Chewbacca stepped out of the doorway on the far end of the corridor and started toward them.
Terae motioned Fera forward to deal with the sealed blast door controls and stood with Han in the center of the corridor. She listened to her comlink a moment, then reported, “They had to cut through the blast door into the last engine bay, but the astromech droid was able to shut off any control access from the bridge and they're almostâ”
Leia spotted movement down the corridor, where an open blast door gave way to another passage. She snapped, “Down!”
She fired just as the Imperial stepped out and lifted his blast rifle. Chewbacca, Fera, and the other two crew members dropped to the deck. Terae tried to turn and fire, but Han tackled her down and out of the way. The rifle's energy bolt came so close that the light of it whited out Leia's vision, but she squeezed off two more shots. She blinked away the dazzle in time to see the Imperial fall, the blast rifle clattering to the deck beside him.
Terae shoved upright, and snapped, “Merith, get down there and clear that junction!”
As the crew member hurried to comply, Terae said, a trace of shakiness in her voice, “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“You're welcome,” Leia said, and was glad her voice came out in the normal range.
Han rolled to his feet, frowning suspiciously at her. “You okay?”
“I'm fine,” Leia told him. Her left cheek felt hot. As Han stepped over to take up a position beside the blast door to the bridge, she moved a short way back down the corridor to stand beside Chewbacca. She put a hand on the braids wrapping the left side of her head. They felt just on the edge of crackly, singed by the blast. Chewie sniffed, obviously detecting the burned-hair odor, then looked down at her and growled in concern.
“No, it's fine,” Leia told him. Putting aside the image of herself lying in the corridor with her head blasted off, she lifted her blaster as Fera jimmied the door controls into the bridge.
The door slid open and Terae shouted, “You're pinned down, we have your shipânow surrender, or we'll use a concussion grenade! We don't need you alive.”
When there was no answer, Terae said loudly, “Toss it in!”
Someone inside called out, “Don't! We surrender!” Han and the two other crew members slammed through the door.
Leia stepped in to see three Imperials dragged out of their station chairs, disarmed, and forced to lie down on the floor. As the
Aegis
crew covered them, Han dropped into the pilot's station and started bringing up schematics of the ship. Leia heard a triumphant yell over the comlink, and a moment later an
Aegis
crew member's voice, “Captain Kelvan, Lieutenant Terae, we've secured engineering!”
Leia stepped around the prisoners to look over Han's shoulder. “We need to account for every member of the crew.”
And find out what they did with General Willard and the others from the
Gamble. Her worst fear was that the Imperials had killed them back on Arnot Station. Her grip on the shoulder of the station chair tightened. She didn't want to start the interrogation until they had more information. Terae was slowly circling the prisoners, looking thoughtful and dangerous.
Han brought up a roster on the console's display and sent it to the
Aegis
comlink frequency so all the crew would receive it. “Yeah, they've got way more crew than a freighter like this needs. Imperial communication codes, too.”
“Several of them must have gone off on the shuttle,” Leia said. From Terae's comlink, she could hear reports coming in of sporadic fighting in the corridors and more surrenders.
Han continued, “And the cargo space has been converted to weapons and a tractor â¦Â Huh, this ship has a brig.”
Leia could see that the security controls were active in that section, the red outlines showing sealed doors. “I'll check it out.”
Chewbacca turned to follow her and Terae said, “Fera, go with them.”
They made it down to the lower deck without much incident, Chewbacca flushing one lone Imperial out of a compartment so Leia could stun him. They reached the brig area, a secured junction with a containment field over the doorway and four sealed blast doors leading off it. Fera tried the control panel and grimaced. “It's code-locked. Should I burn it?”
Leia's heart pounded in hope. She lifted her comlink. “Han, can you open the security field to the brig section from there?”
The field fizzled and the hum died away. Leia stepped through to the first door, tapped the comm pad, and said, “Is anyone in there?”
An incredulous voice answered, “WhatâPrincess Leia?”
Chewbacca stepped up beside her, lowing worriedly. Leia hit the release, and the door slid upward. She found herself staring at a small, crowded compartment filled with ragged
Gamble
crew members, their faces drawn with exhaustion, alight with startled hope.
“It's good to see you all again,” Leia said. “Is General Willard with you?”
A woman struggled to her feet. “He's here somewhere; we know they brought everyone.”
Leia heard Fera reporting to Terae, saying, “We have an unknown number of survivors and may need medical assistance.” She sounded as if she had reverted to her Alderaanian gunship crew training.
Leia stepped past her to hit the release on the next blast door, and Chewbacca turned to do the two against the far wall. As the third door went up, Leia heard Jerell call out, “Princess Leia!”
Inside the little cell, General Willard was sitting up, leaning back against the wall, battered but alive. She stepped into the cell and crouched beside him, taking his hand. “Are you all right?”
“I'm better now,” he told her, smiling. He looked up at Chewbacca, who leaned in the doorway. “I knew you'd find her.”
Chewbacca grumbled a triumphant acknowledgment. Leia asked “What happened?”
The general grimaced. “They had the right codes, and we let them onboard. They killed the two crewmen on guard duty and took me hostage. It was not our finest moment. But Ilen managed to purge the comps just before they broke into auxiliary control, so they weren't able to use any secure data in our systems.”
Jerell shifted uncomfortably, his expression caught between guilt and humiliation. “It was my fault. I checked their codes and let them in. I thought they were from a transport crew, sent to evacuate us.”
“We can go over it once we get back to the fleet,” Leia said, though the two additional casualties on the
Gamble
made her stomach twist. “For now, let's get you out of hereâ”
Her comlink beeped urgently, and Han's voice said, “Princess, we got a problem. I tried to hail the
Falcon
and I'm not getting any response.”
Luke became gradually aware that he was sitting up, slumped over in an acceleration seat, with sand all down the back of his shirt. His body felt heavy and numb, and his head ached, a tight pain right between his eyes.
I was stunned,
he thought, trying to remember how and why. Then things swam into focus and the numbness receded enough for him to realize he had binders locked around his wrists. He thought,
Luke, you idiot.
He opened his eyes to see Kifar Itran seated across from him. They were on a ship, probably a small shuttle. Narrow ports farther forward showed the darkness of space, and Luke could just glimpse a cockpit through the open hatch. There was another human seated against the far wall, and eight more in jumpseats closer to the cockpit. They were all dressed in ordinary dark spacer clothes and there was nothing about them that said they were Imperial, except that their hair was cropped tightly and there was just something about them that was at odds with the spacer look.
Seated nearest Luke was a green Duros, casually holding a drawn blaster. A Duros whom Luke recognized. He groaned under his breath. It was the Duros who had tried to jump them at Arnot Station. He had been an Imperial agent, not a pirate.
“Your droid is stubborn,” Kifar said. “It wouldn't let me back into the ship. Said you'd ordered it not to open the hatch to anyone but you.”
Good work, C-3PO,
Luke thought. At least the Imperials hadn't gotten the
Falcon.
“So you're an Imperial agent,” he said. “The Princess thought you were just a coward who betrayed the mission the first time things got rough.” Leia hadn't said anything of the kind, but there wasn't much Luke could do at the moment except provoke Kifar.
Kifar's expression tightened. “I did my job, and your Princess didn't suspect a thing. I didn't break; I made a deal with Viest. I told her she had a rebel Senator she could sell to the Empire, and in return she let me use her comm to call my commander and tell him the
Gamble
was on Arnot Station.” He smiled. “Worked out pretty well, didn't it?”
“So far,” Luke admitted. He could see that the big-ego part of Kifar's persona wasn't an act put on for the Alliance personnel's benefit. Kifar probably thought of himself as a hotshot agent, and here the Alliance had just shunted him off to transport duty all this time. “So you're the one who told the Imperials where the
Gamble
would come out of hyperspace to receive the transmission.”
Kifar's expression wasn't quite a smirk, but it was definitely in the vicinity. “I just had time for a quick call to my commander, but it did the job.”
That was good to know. At least the Alliance could trust their communication chain again. If Luke could ever get this information to anybody. “So what's the plan now?”
Kifar's face went hard, and he threw a tight glance at the Duros. The Duros laughed, a short bitter exhalation, and said, “That's a good question.”
Kifar sneered. “Shut it, Trehar. If you hadn't lost him and the Wookiee on the stationâ”
Trehar cut him off. “If I hadn't lost them, Degoren wouldn't have had to rely on you, and we wouldn't be in this mess.”
Baffled, Luke looked from Trehan to Kifar. Then he got it.
Han was right, Kifar is a screwup.
“You never had a chance to warn them about the plan to take their ship with the
Aegis,
did you? Not till you stunned me. And then you couldn't use the
Falcon
's comm, and my comlink didn't have the range to reach the ship, so you had to wait for the shuttle to land.”
“I didn't have a chance,” Kifar said. “If I'd taken control of the smugglers' ship on the way down to the planet, they would have known something was wrong when the distress beacon didn't go off, and they would have made a run for it.”
It was Luke's turn to snort derisively. He knew Leia and Han and the others wouldn't have run, and if Kifar actually thought that it was likely, he was a lousy judge of character.
He's a lousy judge of a lot of things.
But if the distress beacon hadn't started broadcasting as planned, Leia would have gotten suspicious and might have sent one of the
Aegis
's shuttles after them.
But his gratification in Kifar's lack of judgment faded as Trehar said, “You're lucky our backup is almost here.”
“Backup?” Luke said.
Leia headed back to the bridge at a run, Chewbacca jogging behind her. “It might be the planet's damping field,” she told him, “interfering with voice transmission.”
Chewbacca's skeptical-sounding snort implied that this was highly unlikely.
Leia had to admit that she really didn't think so, either.
They reached the bridge, and she saw immediately from Han's expression that it was worse. Terae stood at his shoulder, and stepped away to tell Leia, “The shuttle is on its way back and we've received a hail from that Commander Degoren.”
Leia's heart sank.
It didn't workâthey're back too soon.
Degoren would have been able to get a sensor image of his ship as soon as he cleared the planet's field, and seen the
Aegis
locked on. He should have been running, and he wasn't. “Did he say anything about the
Falcon
?”
Terae shook her head. “Not yet. Solo's stalling him, trying to get him to talk, but it's not working. I've got Captain Kelvan patched in on the frequency, but no one's spoken to Degoren except Solo.”
“Good.” Leia went to Han's side. He had the headset on and was saying, “We were just cruising through the system and stumbled on it. If you didn't want somebody to take it, you shouldn't have left it lying around.”
Leia picked up the other headset and held it to her ear. Chewbacca stepped up behind her, looming and breathing heavily, and leaned down to listen in. She recognized Degoren's voice immediately. He said, “Let me speak to your commander. You've made a tactical error, but we can still negotiate.” His voice was smooth, and he sounded far too calm.
Leia muted the comm and asked Han, “Did he admit to being an Imperial agent?”
“No, he's playing for time,” Han said, and she could tell his frustration was hiding deep worry. “I think he's got help on the way.”