“No. Let’s get those supplies on the ground so they can be distributed.”

“Yes, my lord.”

ARYN AND ZEERID BOTH HUNCHED in their seats and said nothing, as if their silence within the cockpit would somehow assist Fatman in passing through the blockade. Zeerid radiated both apprehension and excitement. The angle at which Fatman had connected to the freighter restricted their field of vision to seventy or eighty degrees. The system moved into and out of their view, one small slice at a time. The convoy was on an approach vector and moving at less than one-half. Aryn could see the tail end of the starboard side of another freighter fifteen kilometers away.

“Can anyone see us?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

“Not at that distance,” Zeerid said. “We just look like part of the line of the ship. We’ll cut loose during atmospheric entry. Their sensors will be blacked out and we’ll be gone before they’re wise to us. I think we’re going to make it, Aryn.”

She nodded. She thought so, too.

Seconds slogged by, stretched into minutes.

“We have to be getting close,” Zeerid said.

Motion near the tail end of the nearby freighter drew Aryn’s eye. A small ship moved slowly around the freighter. Its tri-winged configuration told her it was an Imperial shuttle. She watched it for a time, unconcerned, until another came into view, this one cruising underneath the freighter.

“What are those shuttles doing?” she asked.

He frowned. “I have no idea.”

They watched the shuttles move methodically along the length and breadth of the tail section of the freighter.

“They’re checking its exterior,” Aryn said, and she felt Zeerid’s level of apprehension rise as he realized the same thing.

“Maybe it suffered damage in hyperspace,” Zeerid said. “Could be they’re just checking the one.”

“Could be,” Aryn said, and knew that neither of them believed it.

Zeerid cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his neck. “If we get seen, we either make a dash for the atmosphere and try to get lost under it, or we jump into hyperspace.”

“I need to get to the planet.”

Zeerid nodded. “Me, too. It’s unanimous then. We’ll make a dash.”

MALGUS SAT IN HIS CHAIR and watched his shuttles slide around the freighters, sand flies to banthas. None had reported seeing anything unusual.

One of the junior officers on a scanner called Commander Jard to him. The two conferred briefly, and Jard returned to his command lectern near Malgus.

“What is it?” Malgus asked.

“An anomalous reading from the Dromo,” Jard said. “An unusual magnetic signature.”

Malgus saw Vrath tense and lean toward them.

“Halt them and send the shuttles over.”

“My lord, it could just be an engine malfunction, scanner noise.”

Malgus thought not. “Do it, Commander.”

Jard raised the Dromo on the ship-to-ship. “Freighter Dromo, come to a full stop immediately.”