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Leia said, guiding her chair into the access ring. “This is …”
    She turned to the Arcona.
    “A friend of your doctor’s.” He plucked an eavesdropping device off the portable bacta tank and crushed it under his boot, then added, “There are more.”
    Leia nodded and turned back to C-3PO. “Help our guest secure the gurney for launch.”
    Seeing that her chair would prevent the bulky bacta tank fromentering the access ring, Leia moved ahead. She was feeling terribly tired and weak, and her first instinct was to turn toward the main deck and stay out of the way. But she had been alone too much over the last year, and the thought of sitting by herself while Han and his new copilot solved their problems was more than she could bear. She needed to be with her husband—even if she was no longer quite sure he wanted her.
    The repulsor chair was fairly compact, and once she had lowered the telescoping pole on which the IV bags hung, there was no trouble guiding it up the outrigger corridor. But the cockpit itself already had four seats, so she had to settle for magno-clamping her chair in place just outside the door. To his credit, Han did not ask what she was doing there. He was so busy toggling switches and checking dials that Leia was not even sure he knew.
    The Arcona squeezed past and, taking the copilot’s seat, slipped into the start-up routine so smoothly that it was obvious he had been telling the truth about flying his own YT-1300. There were a few glitches as he encountered some of the
Falcon
’s modifications, but Leia could tell by Han’s patience how impressed he was. She tried not to be jealous.
    They were within thirty seconds of launch when the inevitable glitch finally came.
    “The ramp light’s still on.” Han pointed at a panel on the Arcona’s side of the cockpit. “That should have been checked off a minute ago.”
    “I thought I had.”
    The Arcona hit the reset. The light blinked off, then instantly relit.
    Han cursed, then activated the intercom. “Threepio, I think the ramp’s stuck again. Give it a check.”
    No acknowledgment came.
    “Threepio?”
    Han cursed. Leia began to unclamp her chair.
    “No, I’ll go.” The Arcona unbuckled his harness and rose. “You shouldn’t be back there alone. This could be trouble.”
    “Thanks.” Han unbuckled his crash webbing and loosened his blaster, then turned to Leia and said, “I’m glad you’re up here.”
    Leia smiled. “Me, too.”
    They waited in silence for nearly a minute before the ramp light finally went out and the Arcona returned.
    “It was just stuck,” he said. “I banged the control panel, and it came up the rest of the way.”
    “Always works for me,” Han said, starting the repulsor drives.
    “What about Threepio?” Leia asked. She had an uneasy feeling—not danger sense, but of something that was not quite right. “Why didn’t he answer?”
    “I think he crossed some feeds connecting the bacta tank to the medical bank.” The Arcona slipped smoothly back into his seat. “His circuit breaker was tripped. I reset it.”
    “That’s a new one.” Han shook his head, then opened a channel to the spaceport traffic center. “Control, this is
Shadow Bird
requesting launch clearance.”
    Shadow Bird
was the name under which they had berthed the
Falcon
.
    “Negative,
Shadow Bird,
” came the reply. “Stand by.”
    Han closed the channel. “What now?”
    He activated the external security monitors, and they all waited in tense silence, expecting to see a CorSec boarding party or a mob of bounty hunters come rushing out of the access locks.
    A few moments later, Control’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Corellian Security informs us there is no such vessel as
Shadow Bird.
” The message came over an open channel. “However, the
Millennium Falcon
is cleared for immediate departure.”
    “Acknowledged.” Han wasted no time engaging the repulsor drives and leaving the docking bay; someone had just made