Recovery by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online

“That’s easy.”
    â€œSo explain.”
    â€œFirst, I wasn’t keeping this a secret,” Izal said. “I was going to tell you when things settled down.”
    â€œQuit stalling,” Han ordered.
    Izal swallowed hard, which was quite a sight given the Arcona’s long neck. “All right.” He picked up one of the black flakes. “This scale—”
    The proximity alarm broke into a shriek. Han glanced at his tactical display and found a wall of blips taking form behind the
Falcon
.
    â€œNice trick,” Han said. He hit the reset, but the alarm resumed its screeching half a second later. The tactical display returned with even more blips. “Now cut it out. You’re testing my patient nature.”
    â€œYou think this is a Force trick?” Izal’s eyes were fixed on the tactical display, and there was enough panic in his voice that Han almost believed him. “I’m not that good.”
    â€œSo they’re real?” Han was starting to worry. There were no transponder codes beneath the blips, and vessels without transponder codes tended to be pirates—or worse. “What are they doing here?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Izal began the ion engine warm-start procedure. “I must have missed a homing beacon.”
    â€œOr planted one,” Han said. Homing beacons could not be used to track a ship through hyperspace, only to locate it once it returned to realspace. For a flotilla to arrive so quickly, it had to have been lying somewhere outside the Corellian system, ready to depart as soon as it learned the
Falcon
’s position. “This seems way too handy.”
    â€œOr desperate.” Izal brought the ion drives on-line. “I’m not the one trying to snatch your wife.”
    â€œI’d like to believe you.” Han fired a stun bolt into the Arcona’s ribs. “But I just can’t take the chance.”
    Leaving Izal to slump over the side of his chair, Han holstered his blaster and hit the throttles. The ambushers’ rate of closure began to slow. Some of the leaders started to fire, but Han did not even raise the
Falcon
’s power-hungry energy shields. The ship’s sensor array computer had identified the newcomers as a motley mix of Y-wings and old T-65 X-wings, and neither of those could fire effectively at such long range.
    C-3PO’s voice came over the intercom. “Captain Solo?”
    â€œHave the stowaways got Leia?” Han asked. There was a time when his thoughts wouldn’t have leapt instantly to the worst scenario, but a lot had changed in the galaxy since then—and in him. “If they’ve got Leia, you tell them—”
    â€œMistress Leia is well and quite alone,” C-3PO said. “Aside from me, of course.”
    â€œKeep it that way.” Han activated the navicomputer and began to punch coordinates; though the course to Commenor remained the same, transit times would have to be recalculated from the new entry point. “And don’t bother me unless that changes.”
    â€œOf course, Captain Solo.” A distant streak of red flashed above the cockpit canopy as a cannon bolt reached maximum range and faded away. “But—”
    â€œThreepio, not now!”
    The starfighters, especially the X-wings, were still closing. Han plotted a course projection and saw what he had known intuitively: they would reach effective firing range only a few seconds before the
Falcon
entered hyperspace.
    Han slammed his palm against the yoke. “Sith spit!”
    He changed the tactical display to a larger scale. Sitting dead ahead, well beyond the range of anything less sensitive than the
Falcon
’s reconnaissance-grade sensor suite, was a fast-freight of 250 meters. Not large, but large enough to carry a tractor beam that would prevent the
Falcon
from jumping to hyperspace.
    Han cursed again and canceled the calculations. He brought