payment with a not-quite sneer, and strolled his way back toward the overhang where the bar was located. 'He's a real gem, isn't he,' Lando grumbled, glaring after him.
'Probably figures M'challa scholars wouldn't know good service if it fell over them, so why bother,' Han said, picking up one of the slices and dipping it into the yellow-swirled miasra sauce, being careful not to let the sleeve of his robe drag into it. Despite the fact they again had no progress to show for their morning's work, he was actually feeling better than he had earlier. Lando, on the other hand, seemed to have caught his bad mood. 'So what, that means our money's no good?' he growled. 'I tell you, Han, they're getting cocky again.'
'Yeah, I know,' Han said, taking a bite as he looked out at the people hurrying along the streets bordering the tapcafe. Hurrying about their business, with a light step and an optimism they probably hadn't had in years. And it didn't take a genius to figure out why.
Grand Admiral Thrawn had returned.
'They have to realize they're still completely overmatched,' he pointed out around his mouthful.
'They've got, what, a thousand systems left?'
'It's not a lot,' Lando agreed, snagging a piece of the trimpian for himself and dabbing it delicately into the miasra sauce. Lobot, Han noted, without the distraction of conversation or moodiness to slow him down, was already on his second slice. 'But you sure wouldn't know it by looking at them.'
'Yeah,' Han said, looking around some more. Happy people, cheerful people, confident that the universe was about to open up and rain wonders down on them again. It was enough to turn a bad mood really rotten...
He paused, the tangy bite of trimpian between his teeth suddenly forgotten. Beyond the pedestrians, the vehicular traffic had come to a momentary halt as a speeder truck halfway down the block maneuvered toward a loading ramp. And in one of the landspeeders a few meters back from the tapcafe—
'Lando—over there,' he hissed, nodding toward the landspeeder. 'That dark green open-top landspeeder. The guy with the thick blond beard?'
Lando pulled back the side of his hood for better visibility. 'I'll be a scruffy nerfherder,' he breathed. 'That's not
'Sure looks like him,' Han agreed grimly, fighting the impulse to pull his own hood a little tighter around his face. Captain Zothip, head of the Cavrilhu Pirates, and one of the nastier forms of semi-intelligent rotscum he'd ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. Considering the bounty on Zothip's head, there shouldn't have been a civilized planet anywhere in the galaxy where he should have been able to show his ugly face.
And yet there he was, crammed into a landspeeder with five equally ugly bodyguards in the middle of the Imperial capital, shouting obscenities at the speeder truck as if he owned the whole town. 'I'd say we've found the pirate- Empire link Luke and me have been looking for,' he muttered.
'Clones and all.'
'I'd say you're right,' Lando said, his robe twitching as he shivered. 'I sure hope you're not going to suggest we follow him and confirm it.'
Han shook his head. 'Not a chance, pal. I tangled with him once a long time ago. I haven't the slightest interest in trying it again.'
'Me, neither.' Lando exhaled audibly. 'You know something, Han? We're getting old.'
'Yeah, tell me about it,' Han said. 'Come on, let's eat up and get back to the library.' He glanced up at the brilliant sunlight and blue, cloudless sky. 'Suddenly this town seems a lot less friendly than it did five minutes ago.'
* * *
The speeder truck finished its maneuvering, the traffic began to move again, and Solo and the others went back to their meal.
And setting a high-denomination coin down beside her own half-finished snack, Karoly left the tapcafe and slipped out into the stream of pedestrians. Suddenly, there was something more interesting than Solo and Calrissian and their library research to attract her attention. Something far more interesting.
The dark green Kakkran landspeeder hadn't made it more than a street away when she found what she was looking for: an old, beat-up Ubrikkian 9000, untended, parked at the side of the street. Palming her Mistryl-issue inciter, she hopped into the driver's seat, taking the control stick with one hand and sliding the inciter beneath the readout panel with the other. The motor coughed reluctantly to life, and with a glance over her shoulder she pulled out into a gap in the vehicular stream. A casual observer would have seen nothing unusual; she could only hope that the owner wouldn't miss his vehicle until she was finished with it.
She wove in and out of traffic until she had trimmed enough off Zothip's lead to be able to catch frequent glimpses of the dark green Kakkran. The more official-looking buildings, including what was obviously the local governor's palace, were situated on the higher ground at the northern edge of the city off to their left. If the Imperial
