Vision of the future

'Mm,' Wedge said. 'Sorry about that. Maybe Mirax will be able to calm him down.'

'Oh, I'm sure she will,' Corran said. 'Come to think of it, though, I'm not sure Booster even has any interests on Bothawui. The planet's got so many other smuggling groups crawling all over it that he may have decided to leave it alone.'

'Oh, that's handy,' Wedge grumbled.

'Hey, you're the one who wanted to get back to the exciting life of an X-wing pilot, remember,' Corran reminded him. 'You could have been safely flying a computer somewhere on Coruscant if you'd wanted.'

Wedge made a face. 'No, thanks. Tried it, didn't like it. So you're not expecting us to find any help down there at all?'

There was a brief silence. 'That's an interesting question,' Corran murmured at last, his voice sounding odd. 'Actually... I think I am.'

Wedge threw him a frown. 'You are what? Expecting to find help?'

'I think so, yes,' Corran said, that same strange tone in his voice. 'Don't ask how or where. I just... I think so.'

'Let me guess,' Wedge said. 'Jedi hunch?'

Corran nodded. 'Jedi hunch.'

Wedge smiled. 'Good,' he said, already feeling better about this whole mission. 'In that case, we don't have anything to worry about.'

'Well, no,' Corran said slowly. 'I don't think I'd go so far as to say that.'

CHAPTER

4

[Beware to the starboard,] the Togorian female at the Wild Karrde's sensor station called, her normally fluid mewling speech now clipped and harsh. [At the two-five by fourteen angle.]

'I'm on it,' another tight voice came over the bridge comm unit. The edges of a hundred asteroids rolling sedately past the viewport flickered with reflected light as one of the Wild Karrde's turbolasers flashed, then blazed even more brightly as the target asteroid shattered into dust and fire. Seated in the back of the bridge out of the way, Shada D'ukal mentally shook her head. Negotiating an asteroid field was never an easy task, but it seemed to her the Togorian and at least one of the turbolaser gunners were getting themselves far too worked up over the whole operation. Either they were naturally excitable, or else young and inexperienced. Neither possibility exactly filled her with confidence; both made her wonder about their captain's wisdom in bringing the two of them along in the first place.

Perhaps the captain was feeling the same way. 'Calm down, H'sishi,' Talon Karrde cautioned the Togorian from his seat behind the helm and copilot stations. 'You, too, Chal. Just because this asteroid field is larger than others you've encountered doesn't mean it has to be treated any differently. A light touch, blast only the rocks that are of immediate danger to us, and let Dankin maneuver the ship around the others.'

The Togorian's ears twitched. [I obey, Chieftain,] she said.

'Yes, sir,' the gunner's voice added.

Not that the admonition made any appreciable difference, at least not that Shada could see. H'sishi still continued to snap out her targeting locks, and Chal still fired full-power turbolaser blasts whether the target warranted that much of a kick or not.

But then, maybe it wasn't just them. Maybe they were merely sensing and reacting to the nervousness Karrde himself was feeling.

Shada shifted her gaze to focus on his profile. He was hiding it well, actually, with only cheek and jaw muscles betraying the tension there. But Mistryl training included the reading of faces and body language, and to her eyes Karrde's steadily growing apprehension was as obvious as a navigational beacon.

And the upcoming stopover at Pembric 2 was only the first leg of their trip. What would he be like, she wondered uneasily, by the time they actually reached Exocron?

There was a particularly bright flash outside as a particularly large asteroid was blown to dust.

'Oh, my,' a gloomy, metallic voice murmured from Shada's right. She turned to look at the C-3PO protocol droid strapped into the seat next to her. He was staring at the viewport, wincing with every turbolaser blast. 'Trouble?' she asked.