"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 gun dark
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.
't quite manage to conceal his proud smile.
inally, 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 full-grown 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 Alderean,"
Jacen said.
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 Fa
lcon 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."
After the "accident," Han Solo circled back to collect debris from the
space mines and deactivate two unexploded duds. The pieces would serve
as evidence of the explosions and help them to find out who had set the
trap.
"I guess this ruined your chance at a record-breaking time," Jacen said
as the ship headed back toward Ord Mantell. Jaina and Anakin