Star Wars Tatooine Ghost

Tatooine Ghost Chapter 1 Instead of bed, where she usually awoke from her dreams, Leia found herself slumped forward in her crash webbing, ears hissing with static and eyes aching from the glare of two G-class suns. Han and Chewbacca were still busy at their stations, Han plotting approach vectors and Chewbacca setting sensor filters. The planet Tatooine was just drifting into view, its yellow sodium-rich sands glowing so brightly it resembled a small sibling star in orbit around the big twins. A metallic hand tapped Leia's shoulder. She turned to see C-3PO's photoreceptors shining at her from the adjacent passen- ger seat. "Pardon me for asking, Princess Leia, but are you well?" "Don't I look well?" "Oh dear," C-3PO replied, a diplomatic subroutine activating in response to her tone of voice. "Why yes, you do look as splendid as ever, but it seemed for a moment as though you might have overloaded your primary circuits." "My circuits are fine." "I'll need to confirm that later." Han twisted around and glanced over his seat with the same crooked smile that had alternately charmed and worried Leia since their first meeting on the Death Star. "Princess." "Oh, really?" Leia straightened herself in her chair without fully realizing she was doing it. With his tough-guy good looks and eyes sparkling with trouble, Han still made her sit up and take notice. "And you think you can read my schematics?" "Sweetheart, I know your schematics by heart." Han's smile faded, and his expression grew concerned. "Threepio's right. You look like you've seen a ghost." "Something like that. A bad dream." Han looked doubtful. "I've sat in that chair. That chair isn't comfortable enough for dreamsgood or bad." "It's been a long trip," Leia said, perhaps a little too quickly. "I must have nodded off." Han regarded her a moment longer, then shrugged. "Well, see if you can stay awake." He looked forward again, to where the twin suns were slowly being eclipsed by Tatooine's steadily swelling disk. "Until the sensors come up, we need to keep an eye out for other traffic." Leia gazed out the canopy and began to search for the rapidly swelling silhouette of blocked starlight that would mean an approaching vessel. Her thoughts remained focused on the strange dream. It had a similar feel to the Force-vision she had experienced nearly five years earlier at Bakura, when her father had sent an apparition begging for the forgiveness she would nevercould nevergrant. But that had been his doing, not hers. Han's hand rose into view between the pilot and copilot's seats, pointing toward a blocky silhouette floating some distance to one side of Tatooine's yellow disk. The twin suns were now completely hidden behind the planet, and Leia could see that the tiny silhouette was growing larger as they approached. It seemed to be staying in the same place relative to Tatooine, deliberately hanging in the shadow of the planet. "That's too square to be a moon," Han said. "And it's no asteroid, not hanging in one place like that," Leia added. "But at least it doesn't seem to be coming our way." "Yet," Han replied. "How about those filters, Chewie?" An impatient rumble suggested that the Wookiee was still strugglDenning, Troy is the author of 'Star Wars Tatooine Ghost', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345456687 and ISBN 0345456688.