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heart ache to see her suffer so even in her sleep.
    â€œLooks like I better put our patient to bed.” Han unbuckled his crash webbing. “We’ll talk more in a few minutes.”
    â€œGood,” Izal Waz said. “I’ve always been curious about your years in the Corporate Sector.”
    That was hardly the discussion Han had in mind, but he left the pilot’s chair and took Leia back to the first-aid bay. She did not stir, even when he lifted her into the bunk and connected her to the medical data banks. He knew she needed her rest, but he wished she would open her eyes just for a minute and give him a smile, some indication that she would recover—that
they
would. He had needed to mourn Chewbacca’s death, he knew that, and maybe he had even needed to crisscross the galaxy helping Droma search for his clan. But only now was Han beginning to see how he had surrendered to his grief, or to understand that there had been a cost.
    â€œGet well, Princess.” He kissed Leia on the brow. “Don’t give up on me yet.”
    The monitors showed no indication that she heard.
    Han buckled the last safety strap across her chest and magnoclamped the repulsor chair to the deck beside her bunk, then went aft to check on the other patient aboard the
Falcon
. Her gurney was clamped to the floor of the crew quarters, a pair of data umbilicals connecting the portable bacta tank to an auxiliary medical socket. C-3PO stood in a corner, his photoreceptors darkened and his metallic head canted slightly forward in his shutdown posture. The covers on the three bunks were rumpled.
    Han did a quick check to make certain the bacta tank was still functioning, then reached behind C-3PO’s head and reset his primary circuit breaker.
    The droid’s head rose. “. . . can’t leave her in the middle of . . .” The sentence trailed off as his photoreceptors blinked to life. “Captain Solo! What happened?”
    â€œGood question.” Han glanced around. “I thought Izal turned you back on.”
    â€œIf you are referring to that salt-happy Arcona whom Mistress Leia asked you to bring aboard, absolutely not!” He gestured at the portable bacta tank. “I was instructing him where to secure the gurney when . . . well, someone must have tripped my breaker.”
    â€œYou didn’t cross the medical bank data feeds?”
    â€œCaptain Solo, you know I don’t relish memory wipes,” C-3PO said. “And I assure you, I know the proper way to access a data feed. I wasn’t even near it.”
    â€œThat’s what I was afraid of.”
    Han stepped over to a bunk and found what looked like a large black toenail on the covers. There were similar flakes on the other bunks, and, on the third, a pair of disassembled transmitters—the really small kind, such as a CorSec agent might hide on a portable bacta tank. Han placed his hand in the center of the rumpled covers. The bed was still warm.
    â€œGo to the first-aid bay and stay with Leia.” Han folded the flakes and transmitters into his hand, then started for the door. “Don’t let anyone near her.”
    â€œOf course, Captain Solo.” C-3PO clanged into the ring corridor behind him. “But how am I to stop them?”
    â€œComm
me
.”
    Han was already crossing the main hold toward the cockpit access tunnel. He was not at all surprised to discover that CorSec or the spy or maybe both had planted eavesdropping devices on the bacta tank—he had intended to check for them himself—but
someone
had disassembled the transmitters. That in itself did not mean Izal Waz had sneaked stowaways aboard, or even if he had, that they were Peace Brigade collaborators or bounty hunters or agents hired by whoever had sent Roxi Barl. But it did raise a few questions.
    Doing his best to appear nonchalant, Han stepped onto the flight deck and paused to glance at the navicomputer. According to the