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anyone near her.”
    “Of course, Captain Solo.” C-3PO clanged into the ring corridor behind him. “But how am I to stop them?”
    “Comm
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 notmean 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 display, they remained on course to Commenor, so any hidden diversions the Arcona might have sneaked past Han had not yet occurred.
    Han slipped into the pilot’s chair. “Everything okay up here?”
    “What could go wrong in ten minutes?” Izal continued to stare out the viewport, his color-hungry Arconan eyes mesmerized by the gray void of hyperspace. “You seem distressed.”
    “Distressed?” Han checked their position, reached up, and disengaged the hyperdrive. Then, as the sudden dazzle of starlight disoriented Izal, he drew his blaster and swiveled around to face the Arcona. “I’m not distressed. I’m mad. Furious, even.”
    Izal did not even seem all that surprised. He merely blinked the blindness from his eyes and gestured at the blaster. “That’s not necessary. I can explain.”
    “You’d better hope so.” Han opened his other hand and laid the black flakes and disassembled transmitters on a console between their seats. “When it comes to protecting my wife, I have a short temper.”
    Izal grinned and did not look at the items. “So I noticed in the isolation ward.”
    “You were the one in the bacta parlor?”
    Izal nodded eagerly. “I helped.”
    When Han did not lower the blaster, a furrow appeared in Izal’s brow, and he flicked his hand almost casually. Had Han been just any freighter captain concerned he was about to be hijacked by a rogue Jedi and his stowaway partners, the trick might have worked. As it was, Han had fought at Luke Skywalker’s side often enough to anticipate such maneuvers, and his free hand was already clamped over the barrel, holding the weapon in his grasp.
    “If it’s going to come down to using it or losing it,” Han warned, “I’ll use it.”
    The blaster settled back into Han’s hand.
    “You’re as short on gratitude as you are on temper,” the Arcona complained. “Or maybe you just don’t know how to trust.”
    “I’ll trust you when I know who you are.” Han set the blaster to stun, less to spare Izal than to avoid burning a hole through a crucial circuit board. “You own a lightsaber and you know a few Force tricks, but so did Darth Vader. As far as I’m concerned, you still look more like a bounty hunter than a Jedi Knight.”
    Izal sank into the copilot’s seat like he had been punched.
    “It’s the salt habit, isn’t it?” he asked. “You think no real Jedi would let himself come to this.”
    “If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re on the wrong ship,” Han said. The truth was he felt a certain empathy for the troubled Arcona, but now was not the time to share shortcomings. “You must know I’m no stranger to the Jedi. If you were a Jedi, I’d know you.”
    “You do.” Izal’s gaze slipped away from Han’s, and his face darkened to charcoal. “There’s a reason you recognized my name, I had some trouble at the academy. One bite of Kenth’s nerfloaf—”
    “Of course,” Han said, recalling the incident. A three-month supply of salt had vanished in the space of a few days, and then so had the student who choked it all down. “But you were only there a few months.”
    Han cast a meaningful glance at Izal’s belt.
    Izal nodded.