'So am I,' Han said, squeezing her hand. 'You think I
Leia took a deep breath, stretching out to the Force. No, she didn't like it at all. But at the same time, paradoxically, it somehow felt right. Not pleasant, certainly not safe, but right. 'You aren't going alone, are you?' she sighed. 'I mean someone besides Carib?'
'Yeah, I've got someone in mind,' Han said, his voice an odd mixture of relief and regret. Relief, she suspected, because his Jedi wife wasn't going to insist he not go; regret for exactly the same reason.
Leia managed a smile. 'Lando?'
'How'd you guess?' Han said, managing an answering smile. 'Yeah. Him and a couple others.' He half turned to look at Sakhisakh. 'Not you, in case you were going to ask.'
'I would advise you reconsider,' Sakhisakh said. 'A Noghri guard disguised as your slaves could be unobtrusive even on an Imperial world.' His eyes flicked to Leia. 'We have already failed you twice, Lady Vader, first on Bothawui and now here. We could not endure the shame and disgrace of a third such failure.'
'Disgrace isn't going to matter much if you get us picked up ten steps off the ramp,' Han pointed out. 'Sorry, but Lando and me can do this ourselves. You just keep an eye on Leia, all right?'
'Do not fear,' Sakhisakh said, a dark menace in his voice. 'We will.' Under the table, Leia caught Han's hand. 'So much for our little vacation,' she said, forcing a smile that probably looked as unconvincing as it felt.
The look that flickered across Han's face made her wish she hadn't said that. 'I'm sorry, Leia,' he said in a low voice. 'We never seem to get a break from all this, do we?'
'Not very often,' she agreed with a sigh. 'If I'd realized at the beginning how much all of this was going to cost... I don't know.'
'I do,' Han said. 'You'd have died on Alderaan, Palpatine would still be running the Empire, and I'd still be shipping spice for slimetails like Jabba. All that by itself makes it worth it.'
'You're right,' Leia said, feeling slightly ashamed of her moment of self-pity. 'When were you and Carib planning to leave?'
'Well, let's see,' Han said consideringly, an unexpected glint of roguishness touching the somber tone of his emotions. 'I've got to get a transmission across to Lando, and Carib's got to roll their freighter out and run a check on it. And he's a family man, too, so he's going to need time to say good-bye to his wife and kids. So let's say... tomorrow morning?'
Translation: he'd told Carib they weren't leaving till morning, with whatever excuses he'd needed to make it stick. 'Thank you,' she said quietly, squeezing his hand and trying the smile again. It felt much better this time.
'It's not what I was looking for,' Han said. 'But I guess it's better than nothing.'
'Much better,' she assured him. 'But do you think all these crises can wait an extra night?'
'I don't know,' Han said, sliding out of his seat and offering her his arm in one of those old Royal Alderaanian gestures he too rarely used. 'But I guess they'll have to.'
CHAPTER
9
Outside the curved transparisteel canopy came one last burst of bubbles from the blue-veined rock formation rising from the ocean floor. As if that had been a signal, the blazelights illuminating the area began to dim. The quiet buzz of conversation in the observation gallery stopped in anticipation. Standing against the back wall, Lando Calrissian smiled in some private anticipation of his own. When he and Tendra Risant had first proposed this undersea mining operation, her family had been less than enthusiastic; but they had been openly critical of his idea to add an observation gallery so that paying customers could watch. Ridiculous, they had said—no one pays good money to watch miners mining, even aquatic miners in the admittedly unusual locale of the Varn ocean floor. But Lando had insisted, and Tendra had backed him up, and the family's financiers had grudgingly forked over the extra money.
Which made it that much more of a pleasure to watch packed galleries like this one waiting eagerly for the show.
The blazelights finished their fade, leaving the rock formation just barely visible as a dark shape against the slightly lighter seawater around it. Someone in the gallery murmured to a friend... And suddenly there was a single point of blue-green fire at one edge of the rock. The point grew rapidly, becoming a line and then a pair of branches, and finally an arachnid-web of light as the blue veins of fraca ignited and burned.
