“Threepio, tell me where they are!”

“Quite nearby, actually—no more than fifteen meters away, directly outward along the planetary radius.”

“They’re right above us?”

“Oh, yes. Their attackers have located you precisely—they’ve been discussing whether to, ah—the phrase translates roughly as imprison, or sequester, but it’s clearly some form of attack—whether to attack you now, or if they should pursue the Half-One, whoever that may be.”

Luke was no longer listening; he frowned dubiously up at the ceiling of smooth black stone above the cockpit. “Fifteen meters—that’s an awful lot of rock to cut through, even with a lightsaber.”

“That’s not ordinary rock,” Aeona said. “It’s meltmassif.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Then your friends are lucky I’m around, because I do. Which is something I hope you’ll explain to them when we find them, because I have a feeling they might be a little cranky with me.”

She reached over to the antipersonnel system and triggered the hull chargers. “Take it up,” she said. “Nice and slow.”

“Oh,” Luke said, understanding as the stun charge crackled over the Falcon’s skin. “I would have figured that out. Eventually.”

“Sure, I know,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve had kind of a tough day.”

“That’s one way to put it.” The ship rose to touch the meltmassif overhead. The stone instantly liquefied, sluicing down over the hull armor to pool in the small closed-off section of tunnel below. “How long does this stuff take to reharden?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“TIE fighters don’t have antipersonnel systems, and laser cannons can’t be set for stun.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “So we don’t have to worry a lot about unwelcome company. How much farther?”

Luke searched the Force. “Right … about … here.”

The Falcon breached the surface of the now-liquid stone like an Aquarian demonsquid hunting a leaping gnooroop. Rivers of meltmassif drained off the hull, as well as off and around a filthy human who clung fiercely to the only part of the ship that wasn’t sparking with several thousand volts of stun charge: the cockpit window.

Luke … Though inaudible, the words were clear on Han’s lips. He took her, Luke. She’s gone.


- Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Chapter 15