Ambush at Corellia Read online

  UNWELCOME VISITOR

  Out of the corner of his eye, Han could see the ventral laser cannon pop out of its recess and blaze away. The cannon swept along the cases from starboard to port, herding their visitor toward Han. The cases blew apart under the withering fire.

  And suddenly, in the flashing strobelike bursts of the laser cannon, it was bright enough for Han to see the thing he was chasing.

  A probe droid, an old-style Imperial probot, floated in midair not ten meters from him, its eight cruel-looking sensor arms hanging down from its rounded central body. The laser cannon stopped firing and darkness returned. No doubt Chewie didn’t want to risk shooting Han. Thoughtful of him.

  Even without the laser fire, the packing cases were burning bright enough for Han to see his adversary. But if Han could see the probe droid, the probe droid could see him. One of its arms swung around, aiming a built-in blaster dead at him.

  AMBUSH AT CORELLIA

  A Bantam Spectra Book / March 1995

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  TM ® and Copyright © 1995 by Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

  Used under authorization.

  Cover art by Drew Struzan.

  Copyright © 1995 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79614-1

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  To Kathei and Taylor,

  as they start their own adventure

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One - Visible Secrets

  Chapter Two - Breakage and Repairs

  Chapter Three - Family

  Chapter Four - The Dangers of Peace

  Chapter Five - Rough Welcome

  Chapter Six - Farewell and Hail

  Chapter Seven - Proposal Accepted

  Chapter Eight - Homeward Bound

  Chapter Nine - Courting Disaster

  Chapter Ten - Showtime

  Chapter Eleven - Message Intercepted

  Chapter Twelve - Learning Curve

  Chapter Thirteen - Conversation by Torchlight

  Chapter Fourteen - Sightseer

  Chapter Fifteen - In Transit

  Chapter Sixteen - Hail and Farewell

  Chapter Seventeen - News Travels Slowly

  Chapter Eighteen - Uprising

  Chapter Nineteen - Circle Unbroken

  About the Author

  Also by this Author

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy: Assault at Selonia

  Introduction to the Old Republic Era

  Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

  Introduction to the Rebellion Era

  Introduction to the New Republic Era

  Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

  Introduction to the Legacy Era

  Star Wars Novels Timeline

  Author’s Note

  I would like to thank Betsy Mitchell for thinking of me for this project, and I’d like to thank Tom Dupree for sticking with me. I would also like to thank all the good people of Lucasfilm, but most especially Sue Rostoni, who inundated me with helpful information. I would also like to thank Star Wars colleagues Kevin Anderson, Kathy Tyers, Dave Wolverton, Vonda McIntyre, and Tim Zahn severally and individually. I received much sage advice, and borrowed a character or two. Likewise a nod to Heather McConnell, whose suggestions led me straight to Q9-X2.

  On a more personal level, I would like to thank my wife, Eleanore Maury Fox, for putting up with a great deal of writing in the midst of a spring and summer that were already rather crowded with events. For example, somewhere in the middle of our travels through the list of places below, we got married. Her notes on the manuscript vastly improved the book you hold in your hands. In a similar vein, I would like to thank my parents, Tom and Scottie Allen, and my brand-new in-laws, David Fox and Elizabeth Maury, for incredible generosity and tolerance above and beyond the call of duty.

  Just for the record, this book was written, somehow, between April 1, 1994, and September 20, 1994, and it was written in the following places, in this approximate order: Lisbon, Portugal; the train from Lisbon to Coimbra; in flight, Lisbon to London; in London; in the London Underground; in flight, Washington, D.C. to London; in flight, London to Washington, D.C.; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Tyson’s Corner, Virginia; Arlington, Virginia; Bethesda, Maryland; Border’s Bookshop, McLean, Virginia; Fresno, California; Ashland, Oregon; Nordstrom Department Store, Portland, Oregon; Winnipeg, Canada; the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Arlington, Virginia; and Charlottesville, Virginia.

  As the song says: “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

  ROGER MACBRIDE ALLEN

  September 1994

  Arlington, Virginia

  CHAPTER ONE

  Visible Secrets

  All right, Chewie, try it now.” Han Solo stuffed the comlink back in his pocket and stepped back a bit from the Millennium Falcon, an anxious look on his face. It ought to work this time. But that was what they had figured the time before, and the time before that. He could see into the Falcon’s cockpit viewports from where he stood, and Chewbacca didn’t look all that confident, either. He saw Chewbacca reach for the lift controls. Han realized that he had been holding his breath, and forced himself to exhale.

  The Millennium Falcon shifted slightly on her hard stand, then rose slowly into the evening air. Chewie took her up until the landing pads were at Han’s eye level, and held her there.

  Han pulled out the comlink again and spoke into it. “That’s good,” he said. “Good. Now engage the shields.” The air all around the Falcon seemed to shimmer a bit, and then steadied down.

  Han stepped back just a bit farther, not wishing to be all that close when Chewie cut the repulsors. “All right, Chewie, repulsors—off!”

  The glow of the repulsors dimmed, and the Falcon dropped abruptly—and stopped, suspended in midair, with the landing pads waist-high off the ground. Sparks and scintillations flared and flickered here and there on the hard stand as the shields’ energy webs shifted under stress.

  “Good,” Han said. “Very good.” Short of firing a turbo-laser at the ship from point-blank range, it was about as good a field test of overall shield strength as you could ask for. If the shields could support the weight of the ship, then they could—

  Suddenly the sparking grew brighter, fiercer, just under the number-two landing pad. “Chewie! Repulsors on! It’s going to—”

  With a shuddering flash of light, the rear shields blew out. The aft landing pads slammed into the hard stand with a bone-rattling impact that sent Han sprawling. The forward end of the ship hung in midair as the rear half bounced on its jacks, back up into the air.

  Just as the rear of the ship was at the peak of its travel, the forward shields died. In the same instant the forward repulsors flared to life. The rear repulsors came on, lighting a split second after the forward units, and flickering a
bit. Getting slammed into the pavement like that hadn’t done the rear repulsor coils any good, that was for sure. Still, Chewie had timed the recovery nicely. Han had seen ships flipped onto their backs trying to recover from a failed shield hover.

  Chewie brought the Falcon back down to a gentle landing and cut the repulsors. A moment later the gangway lowered itself and Chewie came out, clearly none too happy with the situation. He made a loud bugling noise, turned back up the gangway, and returned a moment later carrying a shield-tuning set.

  That was not good. After all the years Han had spent with Chewie, he knew better than to let a frustrated Wookiee vent his feelings on a repair job. He was just as likely to tear the shield generator out by the roots as he was to retune it. “Ah, maybe that’s not such a good idea, Chewie. Leave it for now. We’ll come back to it tomorrow.”

  Chewbacca roared and threw the tool kit down.

  “I know, I know, I know,” Han said. “It’s taking longer than it should, and you’re tired of tweaking up subsystems that we optimized last week. But that’s the way it is on a ship like the Falcon. She’s a finely tuned instrument. Everything affects everything else. Adjust one system and everything else reacts. The only way not to go through this would be to scrap her and start over—and you don’t want to scrap the Falcon, do you?”

  Chewie looked back toward the ship with an expression that told Han not to press his luck on that point. The Wookiee had never felt as deeply for the Falcon as Han had, and even Han knew the old girl would have to be retired someday. Sooner or later it would be the scrap heap for her—or a museum, more likely. That was an odd thought, but after all, the Falcon had made more than her share of history.

  But just now the key thing was to get Chewbacca calmed down, or away from the shield system—or, preferably, both.

  “Tomorrow,” Han said. “Back at it tomorrow. For now, let’s leave it, all right? Leia’s probably waiting dinner on us, anyway.”

  The mention of food seemed to brighten Chewbacca up—as Han had intended that it do. Wookiee management was a full-time chore, and then some. Now and then Han wondered just how much effort Chewbacca put into Han management. But that was another point to consider later. It was time to knock off for the day.

  Amazing, how times changed, how time changed life. After all the close calls, all the battles, all the captures and rescues and risks and victories Han had been through, now it came down to getting home to dinner. I’m a family man now, Han told himself, still a bit amazed by the fact. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all was how much he liked being one.

  Han Solo looked up into the evening sky of Coruscant. What was it now? Eighteen years? Eighteen years since he had hired on to fly a crazy old man named Ben Kenobi and a kid named Luke Skywalker out of Tatooine. Taking on that job had changed his life forever—and changed the course of galactic history, if you wanted to get grandiose about it.

  It was nine years since the defeat of Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Dark Jedi Master. Nine years since the birth of the twins, and just over seven since Anakin was born.

  “Captain Solo?”

  It was a female voice that pulled him out of his reverie. The voice was low and throaty, and came from behind him. Han did not recognize it. The unknown voice sounded dangerous, somehow. It was a little too quiet, too calm, too cool.

  “Yeah,” Han replied, turning around slowly. “My name is Solo.” A small, slight, dark-skinned human, a woman, stepped out of the shadows by the hangar entrance. She wore a dark blue uniform that might be one of the Republic Navy branches, but then it might not. Han was not up-to-date on what the navy was wearing these days. “Who might you be?” he asked.

  She came toward him, smiling calmly. He could see her a bit better now. She was young, maybe twenty-five standard years at most. Her eyes were set a bit wide apart, and a trifle glassy. Her gaze seemed to be a bit off-kilter, as if she were almost, but not quite, cross-eyed. She was looking right at Han, and yet he had the distinct impression that she was looking over his shoulder, into the middle distance—or into the next galaxy over. Her jet-black hair was done up in an elaborate braid that was coiled on top of her head.

  She walked toward him with an easy confidence that seemed to brook no discussion. “Glad to meet you,” she said. “You can call me Kalenda.”

  “All right,” Han said. “I can call you Kalenda. So what?”

  “So I have a job for you,” she said.

  That brought Han up short. A job? He was about to reply with some sort of flip remark, but then he stopped. That didn’t make sense. She obviously knew who Han was—which was not much of an accomplishment, as Han and Leia and Luke were famous throughout the Republic. But if she knew who he was, she would have to know he was no longer available for casual hire. Something wasn’t right. “Go on,” Han said, careful to keep his voice neutral.

  Kalenda shifted that strange gaze of hers so she was looking almost, but not quite, in the direction of Chewbacca. “Perhaps we should talk alone,” she said quietly.

  There was a low growl from Chewie, and Han did not even bother to glance over his shoulder at the Wookiee. He knew what he would see. Let Kalenda get a look at Chewie’s fangs. “Perhaps we shouldn’t,” he said. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say that Chewbacca can’t hear.”

  “Very well,” she said. “But perhaps, at least, the three of us could talk in private?”

  “Fine,” Han said. “Come on aboard the Falcon.”

  Kalenda frowned. Clearly, she didn’t like that idea either. The Falcon was Han’s turf. “Very well,” she said.

  Han gestured toward the ship with a sweep of his arm, and bowed very slightly, just enough to make it clear the gesture was sarcastic. “Right this way,” he said.

  * * *

  The probe droid hovered silently up into position, coming up over the wall of the hard stand area, then dropping in behind packing cases to keep out of sight. It was painted matte black, and was all but invisible in the deepening shadows. It watched the two humans and the Wookiee head up into the ship.

  It extended an audio monitor probe and aimed it at the Millennium Falcon. After a moment’s hesitation, it moved in closer to the ship. Doing so exposed it to a greater risk of detection, but the probe droid’s masters had programmed it to place a high priority on eavesdropping on just this sort of meeting. The droid decided it would be worth the risk if its masters were able to get a good recording of the conversation that was about to happen.

  * * *

  Kalenda walked up the ramp and into the ship, Han and Chewie following. It might have been more polite to lead her aboard, but Han wanted to annoy her and he had the hunch she wasn’t the sort who liked people behind her. Han could not pass up the chance to make her a bit edgy. She reached the top of the ramp and walked smoothly and confidently toward the lounge.

  It took Han a moment or two to realize that she had never been aboard the ship before. She should have stopped at the top of the ramp, uncertain of where to go next. Instead she was sitting back in the cushiest seat in the lounge almost before Han and Chewie got to the compartment. She must have pulled up some set of plans from somewhere and memorized the ship’s layout. She had just demonstrated how much research she had done on him, how much she knew.

  All right then, fair was fair. If Han wanted to play games with her, it was only to be expected that she would play a few right back at him. “Fine,” Han said as he sat down. Chewie remained standing, and just happened to be blocking the exit to the compartment. “You know everything about me, down to the blueprints of my ship,” Han went on. “You have resources. You did your homework. It doesn’t impress me.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Kalenda said. “You’re probably pretty hard to impress.”

  “I try to be,” Han said. “And right now, I’d like to get home to my wife and family. What is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Your wife and family,” Kalenda replied, not so much as batting an eye. Now her odd, ne
ar-off-kilter gaze seemed to lock and track perfectly, and she looked right at Han, her expression flat and hard.

  Han stiffened and leaned in toward her, and Chewie bared his fangs. His family had been exposed to too many dangers, too many times, for him to take even the hint of threat less than seriously. “Threats don’t impress me either,” Han said, his voice as hard as her face. “With Chewbacca around, the people who make them don’t live very long. So you just pick your next words very, very carefully.”

  The compartment was silent for a moment, and Kalenda stared hard at Han. Their eyes locked. “I am not threatening your family,” she said, her voice still expressionless. “But New Republic Intelligence would like to—make use—of them. And you.”

  New Republic Intelligence? What the devil was NRI doing coming to him? If Han was too well-known a person to do smuggling work, he was definitely too well-known to be much use as a spy. Beyond which, he didn’t much like government spies, no matter who the government was. “You’re not improving your survival odds,” Han said. “Just how are you going to ‘use’ us?”

  “We know you’re going to Corellia,” Kalenda said.

  “Nice work,” Han said. “You must have a crack team of researchers that check the news every single day. Our trip to Corellia is not exactly top secret.” If anything, it was what passed for headline news in these quiet times. Leia was part of the Coruscant delegation to a major trade conference on the planet Corellia.

  It was supposed to be the first step in reopening the whole Corellian Sector. The sector had always been an inward-looking part of the Empire, and of the Old Republic before that. By the time Han had left, Corellia had gone past inward looking to downright secretive and hermetic.

  By all accounts, things hadn’t improved much since the New Republic had taken over. It was rare indeed to see a mention of the Corellian Sector without words like “insular” or “paranoid” or “distrustful” popping up as well. Leia had counted it as a triumph just to get the Corellians to host the conference in the first place.