Return to Ord Mantell

4

Though Han fought to keep a calm expression on his face, Jacen sensed the sudden wave of apprehension rippling through his father.

The guards looked tense, ready to fire.

Han had long since stopped carrying a blaster at his hip—a good thing, Jacen supposed; otherwise they’d probably be in the middle of a shoot-out right now. His father had been hoping for a calm family outing while he did a bit of official work for the New Republic as a special guest at the famous race. They hadn’t been prepared for anything like this.

Then Czethros stepped forward and surprised them all by extending his thickly gloved hand. The skin on his face rippled as his lips twisted in a smile. “Welcome back to Ord Mantell, Solo. A lot has changed since you and I were… opponents those many-years ago.”

Eyes narrowing just a fraction, Han Solo reluctantly slid his hand into the former smuggler and bounty hunter’s grip. “Uh, yes… that’s right,” he said, still cautious. Jacen felt the thick uneasiness in the air.

He, Jaina, and Anakin looked at each other in confusion.

“Back then, I was an officially licensed bounty hunter. You were a posted Imperial target,” Czethros said. “Nothing personal, of course. No hard feelings.”

“Of course.” Han flashed the metal-visored man one of his most charming lopsided grins. “I thought after all those years in the spice mines you might, uh, hold a grudge.”

“It’s the nature of the bounty-hunting business,” Czethros said. His laser-red cyber-eye drifted left and then right. “I used every trick to apprehend you, and you used every trick to get away. You just happened to have one more trick in your repertoire than I did—at the time, at least.” He stepped back toward the gathered guards. “But I!m no longer in that line of work. I have a thriving business here on Ord Mantell. In fact, I pulled a few strings to get you selected as Grand Marshal for the Blockade Runners Derby. Since you’d settled down and weren’t likely to be one of our contestants this year, I thought you might want to participate in some small way… if only to see what you’re missing.”

“Thanks, Czethros,” Han said, polite but uncertain. “I appreciate the gesture.” Moving in unison, the formal guards spun about on their heels.

Their machine precision reminded Jacen eerily of trained stormtroopers.

“I’ve assigned this honor guard to escort you to your quarters, Solo. Tomorrow is the big opening rally, and the Millennium Falcon will be the ‘pace craft.’ ” You’ll run through the course before any of the actual contestants. The honor is always given to a pilot who has demonstrated great bravery and skill… in the past.” Shoulders back, head held high, Han walked close to the former bounty hunter.

“Well, it’s all just a bunch of show, if you ask me. Limp gundark noodles.”

“But the spectators love it,” Czethros said, without looking at him.

“Remember your old glory days, when you were one of those hotshot pilots … a long time ago?”

Han stiffened, but said nothing as Czethros continued. “The course changes each year due to orbital mechanics, and we’ve mapped out a particularly convoluted obstacle path. I think it will make this year’s Derby the most exciting ever.”

“I’m familiar with the routine,” Han said in a clipped voice. “I’ve won the race three times, remember.”

Jaina and Han Solo spent the next morning in the docking bay facilities fully reconditioning the Falcon’s hyperdrive and coolant systems, as well as its maneuvering jets.

When Jaina assured her brothers that the repairs were under control, they retired to a corner of the docking bay. Jacen produced a programmable holoprojector puzzle and tried to concoct intricate designs to stump the younger boy, but Anakin managed to solve each 3-D maze before Jacen could come up with a new one.

Han stubbornly resisted most of his daughter’s attempts to recalibrate the systems, but she won out eventually, after demonstrating to him that the ship really would be safer and would fly more precisely.

<...> didn’t quite manage to conceal his proud smile.

Finally, when the time had come for their exhibition run through the space course, Jaina signaled for her brothers to join them in the ship.

In less than a minute, Jacen and Anakin were fastening themselves in with crash restraints as Jaina sealed the boarding ramp and Han powered up the repulsor engines. From the Falcon’s cockpit, Han informed the Derby officials they were ready.

“Hang on, kids,” Han said. He was clearly not comfortable to be the center of so much attention as Grand Marshal of the Blockade Runners Derby, but he was also just cocky enough to want to show off for all the spectators.

“It’s just a little practice trip,” Jacen said. “No big deal.” Both Jaina and Han turned to look at him with mischievous glints in their eyes.

“We might have to execute a few fast turns,” Jaina said.

“Just to make it more realistic,” Han added.

“ ‘Execute,’ ” Jacen said. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

Anakin gave his brother a teasing look. “Nervous?”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control,” Jaina assured her twin.

Together, she and her father worked the Falcon’s systems, moving like an experienced team. Jaina could sense what her father intended to do, and she realized she might indeed have the makings of a great copilot.

“Hey, where does a fullgrown bantha sit?” Jacen asked.

Jaina groaned and rolled her eyes, but Anakin played along. He answered in a serious voice, as if this topic had been of a lifelong concern to him. “I’ve always wondered about that—where does a fullgrown bantha sit?”

Jacen chortled. “Anywhere he wants to!”

Jaina reached behind her seat to give her twin a good-natured swat as the comm speakers crackled to life.

“This is Ord Mantell docking control to Millennium Falcon,” a voice announced. “We are ready for you to begin.”

“We’re coming,” Han said as the Falcon drifted up through the rooftop hatches. The bright sunlight in Ord Mantell’s open sky splashed across the hull, gleaming through the cockpit windowports.

As Jaina’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the blocky, drab buildings were now festooned with colorful banners. Bobbing repulsorspheres floated in the air, trailing narrow metallic streamers. Rainbow-hued tassels, like levitating balls of tangled ribbon, flitted about in flocks.

Jacen cried out with delight. “Hey, they’re alive! I’ve heard of them—Ord Mantellian flutterplumes.”

Jaina could see that the tiny ribbons were indeed alive, drifting like clusters of colorful worms in the air.

The voice over the cockpit speakers grew louder, as if shouting to millions of other listeners. “The Ninety-Third Annual Blockade Runners Derby is about to begin! Please welcome the Millennium Falcon, piloted by General Han Solo, three-time winner of the Derby!”

The cheers drifting up from the rooftops below sounded like a distant avalanche. Small one-person fliers drew close to the Falcon, shoving holocams to the viewports and taking pictures as the ship cruised along. Han grinned and waved at the nearest HoloNet news reporter.

“Didn’t expect such a big send-off,” Jaina muttered.

Han grinned at her. “Guess we’d better give them a show worth watching.” He punched the sublight engines, and a blue-white glow flared from the rear of the Millennium Falcon, pushing them forward.

They arrowed up into the sky, leaving the holocams and the crowds behind. Their journey would be broadcast, though, by remote observer cams planted in buoys all along the route to record the race.

Jaina called up the course diagram and displayed it in three dimensions so that Anakin and Jacen could study it to find any potential points of difficulty Han and Jaina might have missed. The Blockade Runners Derby ran up out of the orbital plane into the tangled, diffuse cometary cloud that surrounded the Ord Mantell system like a distant bubble made up of mountains of ice and rock.

Frequently, gravitational perturbations from nearby star systems or planetary alignments would knock some of these tenuously held comets loose from their holding patterns, and the comets would fall down toward the sun. As they heated up, the gases would evaporate, stretching out into wispy tails of dust and ionized gas, making beautiful sights in the Ord Mantellian sky. But out here, in the deep cold of space, the comet chunks were dark, erratic navigational hazards, as dangerous as a swarm of piranha beetles.

During the Blockade Runners Derby, ships weaved through the tumbling ice cloud, ducking around and through protocomets. Speed and skill counted for everything… including a ship’s survival, of course.

Leaving the planet’s atmosphere, Han Solo increased the Falcon’s speed.

He roared up at full acceleration, straight out of the ecliptic and into the cometary cloud. Jaina felt the skin on her cheeks pulled back by gravitational force as the engines labored. She was glad they had just tuned them up.

“Why so fast, Dad?” Jacen said from his seat in the rear. “We’re just a slow, sedate pace craft, not an official contestant.”

Anakin said in a level voice, “I think Dad’s just trying to get some of the frustration out of his system.”

“Not exactly,” Han said to his sons. “We’re running through the course, but”—he raised his forefinger—“they’re also recording our time. So wouldn’t it be wonderful if the old Falcon happened to do better than any of the actual contestants? How could the real winner ever live down his shame?”

“Or her shame,” Jaina said.

“Or its shame,” Jacen added.

“I get the point,” Han said. “I intend to beat even my last speed record, when I actually won this thing.”

“Is that breaking the rules?” Anakin asked.

“Naw. But it’ll give the crowds something to talk about for years.”

Han worked the controls, increasing speed again. “Hang on, everybody. Comet cloud ahead.”

Jaina adjusted the controls, activating the newly installed windowport filters. “I’m increasing infrared pickup,” she said. “There’s not much reflected sunlight out here, but this way we’ll be able to detect the comets a little better.”

Suddenly the view changed color as they hurtled forward. Glinting, tumbling specks became visible like a cloud of sparks drifting toward them. In the holographic projection of the cometary cloud, a dotted line wove like a needle and thread through the loosely packed cluster of ice fragments.

“All right,” Han said. “Get ready for some tricky maneuvers.”

Almost before Jaina realized it, they exploded into the blizzard of ice chunks. Some were nearly round, some blocky and geometric, others spiny with crystalline formations.

Han gave a howl of delight as he spun the Falcon around. Jaina watched the engines while Anakin monitored their course. They skimmed low over one ice field, then looped around. The comets were so small and light that their weak gravity had little effect on the ship’s navigation.

A tiny fragment of ice too small to be detected on their sensors evaporated against their deflector screen in a sparkle of light. More bright flashes appeared as the Falcon continued without slowing.

“Hey, it’s like we’re in a snowstorm,” Jacen said.

“More like a hailstorm,” Jaina said. “Those little bits of ice would poke holes right through us at our speed if the deflector shields weren’t working.”

“You did tune them up, didn’t you?” Jacen asked.

“Naturally. Nothing to worry about.”

Han focused ahead and plowed through a gaping cave in a fragile ice latticework, a comet that looked like crystal straws melted together.

One of the tiny shafts struck the deflector shield and snapped. The entire cave opening began to collapse as the Falcon soared through and burst out the other side. But the comet’s gravity was so low that it would take well over an hour for the avalanche to complete itself “I’m increasing speed,” Han said.

“Dad, you’re already close to the red lines,” Jaina warned.

“And close to beating my record, too. Let’s keep on with it, but keep your Jedi senses alert for anything unexpected.”

“We will,” Jacen said with conviction.

“We always do,” Anakin added.

The ice boulders spun around as they whipped through a denser orbit.

Jaina spotted holocam buoys mounted on some of the ice chunks, and she knew that thousands of spectators on Ord Mantell were even now watching their flight. By now everyone would see that Han Solo was recklessly trying to break his speed record, and that his kids were helping him.

Jaina smiled to herself. She would just have to make sure her father didn’t get embarrassed.

“Let’s tighten the course,” she said, looking at the projection.

“Gravity calculations show we could come even closer to that next comet, make a sharper turn to shave off a bit of distance here and increase our speed, whip around this hazard, come out in a backward spiral, and pull up.”

“Yeah. That might make just enough difference,” Han said with a grin.

They soared so close to the rotating ball of ice that Jaina could have extended the landing ramp and scraped a long gouge across the ice field.

“This is just like when we ran through the rubble field of Alderaan,” Jacen said.

Ahead, four large fragments drifted close together where one comet had broken into loosely attached boulders. Han narrowed his eyes, and Jaina scanned the motion of the chunks.

Anakin watched them intently. “I see the patterns” he said. “We can go straight through—if you time it right.”

“At full speed?” Han said.

“You’re going to have to,” Anakin answered.

Han roared ahead, straight toward the apparent blockade, but Jaina could see the comets moving, opening up. She saw the gap spreading and wondered if it would be wide enough to allow their ship to pass through.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jacen said. Jaina thought her brother was making a joke with their father’s oft-used phrase, but as they approached the broken comet, she felt uneasiness herself.

“Yes, something’s wrong,” Anakin said.

Jaina watched the fragments moving, plotted their course again. It would be tight, but it seemed clear they would make it. The ship entered the slowly opening gap between rocky mountains of snow. Their deflector shield sizzled, vaporizing some of the snow and ice away from the broken comet.

“If you’re worried about something, kids, tell me now.”

“It’s not the comet, Dad,” Jaina said. “It’s…” Then she looked up at the enhanced infrared filter and saw an array of small artificial objects, a matrix of tiny spheres, hovering just outside of the broken cometary hulk.

“Hey, what are those?” Jacen said.

“Space mines,” Anakin answered in a maddeningly calm voice.

“Punch it, Dad!” Jaina cried. Han Solo reacted instantly, hammering at the emergency thrusters. The Falcon was already sailing at twice the expected speed for the pace craft, and now it went into an overdrive launch.

Jaina grabbed the navigation controls herself and yanked the ship to one side, putting the Falcon into a tight corkscrew that plowed through the array of space mines like a drill bit. They zoomed by so fast Jaina barely caught a glimpse of the deadly explosive devices as the cluster detonated.

The Falcon roared away as fast as the shock wave accelerated toward them. Fourteen of the space mines blew up behind them. Jaina could count them through the rear sensor screens. When it struck, the shock wave knocked them about, but they were already tumbling. The Falcon narrowly missed another large comet as Jaina regained control in the copilot’s seat.

“Space mines!” Han cried. “How did they get out here? This is the Derby course! It’s supposed to be completely mapped and checked out before anyone ever flies it.”

The Falcon slowed, recovering, and Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin all looked at each other. Han gasped, “If we hadn’t been traveling so fast, and you kids hadn’t warned me in time, we would’ve been right in the middle of that cluster when it exploded. But you dodged it, Jaina. Good piloting. And our speed helped us outrun most of the shock wave.”

“But the course should have been clear and safe,” Jacen insisted.

“That’s why they have a pace craft, isn’t it, Dad?” Anakin said suddenly. “To prove that the course is safe for the contestants?”

“Sure… but it’s always been just a formality. Until now.”

Jaina shivered and gripped her crash restraints tightly. “You mean maybe somebody put the explosives there on purpose—knowing the Falcon would be the first ship to fly through.”