Free Star by Star by Troy Denning Page B

exactly surrendering?” Leia double-checked the hatch seal, then started for the main hold. “What are you talking about?”
    “Sensors are showing two escape pod deployments.”
    “
Here
?”
    Leia reached the main hold and went straight to the engineering station, where she saw the image of two escape pods arcing away from the
Star Roamer
. At escape pod speeds, it would have taken them over three years to reach the nearest habitable environment. But that was not going to be a problem. From the way it looked to Leia, both pods were already well down the white dwarf’s gravity well.
    Izal Waz’s breathless voice came over the speaker. “
Star Roamer
secure,” he said. “With enough bacta to fill a lake.”
    “Izal,” Leia asked, patching through the intercom. “What about the crew?”
    “You mean survivors?”
    “Yes, survivors,” Leia said.
    There was a moment of silence, then Izal Waz’s voice fell to a whisper. “Well, what would
you
do if you saw three angry Barabels coming your way?”

SIX
    Impossible as it was to ignore the stunning cascade of liquid metal outside the transparisteel walls of the Cinnabar Moon Retreat, Han tried. He sat in the natatorium of the abandoned spa the Wild Knights were using as a base, trying to concentrate on the two datapads before him, listening to Leia’s leg braces whir and clunk as she walked circuits around the empty pool. C-3PO was standing behind the covered bar, using a portable HoloNet hookup to access databases across the galaxy and add yet more entries to the catalog Han was studying. It was maddening work, if only because CorDuro had so many employees, and so many of them had at one time or another been affiliated with illicit organizations. Han wondered what his own dossier would have looked like in this light, or even Leia’s. Smugglers, insurrectionists, Hutt-killers …
    The name of a woman who had once served as a clerk in Thrackan Sal-Solo’s Human League appeared on a display. Han transferred it to the scrutiny list on the second datapad, then used an electronic stylus to bring up the next entry. Somewhere on this list he would find someone who knew Roxi Barl, and that would give him a thread he could follow to the person who wanted his wife dead. Or so he hoped. In the week since their capture of the
Star Roamer
, it was the best plan they had devised, and time was running out to develop a new one. The Wild Knights had spotted a mysterious task force sniffing around a nearby system; like the flotilla that had jumped the
Falcon
outside Corellia, this one operated with deactivated transponders and included
Lancer
-class customs frigates.
    Leia’s clunking grew louder. Han looked up to see herapproaching, arms swinging wide to balance the cybernetic exercise braces that kept her legs from collapsing.
    “That’s all.” She stopped in front of her repulsor chair and turned her back toward it, arms extended for Han to take when he lowered her into the seat. “These braces still aren’t adjusted. I can’t even cock my ankle.”
    “Give it some time.” Han did not rise. Leia had only completed six of the twenty-five laps that Cilghal—the Jedi’s most accomplished healer—had prescribed, and today was the first day she had gone beyond four laps. “You just need to get used to them.”
    “Thanks for your opinion, Dr. Solo,” Leia said dryly. She continued to stand with her arms out. “Now, would you please help me into my chair and take these things off?”
    Han slapped the stylus on the table. “Sure.”
    Though thrice-daily bacta treatments had finally chased the infection from Leia’s legs, it seemed to Han another infection had been festering in a place bacta could not reach. There was a sadness in her that had been growing since Corellia. Any effort to encourage her invariably met a sharp-tongued riposte, any bid to urge her on only resulted in a sullen retreat. This was not the Leia he had married all those years ago,