Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry Page B

rich man to see an empty space when he’d waited months for a chance to dine there, a place was always kept open for Prince Xizor. If he took it upon himself to drop in, he was ushered to his private booth without delay. To most of the diners, Xizor would be simply another wealthy shipping magnate, no more important than a thousand other rich beings in the Imperial Center. They would wonder why he deserved such treatment when they did not—given that many of the patrons had more credits in their accounts than Xizor, at least in his guise of shipper.
    None of them had more money than Black Sun.
    Besides, Xizor was one of the place’s owners, though that was not common knowledge, and word had filtered down from the top: If Prince Xizor has to wait to be seated, the manager who allows such stupidity to occur will be looking for another job before he can stammer an apology. If he is lucky.
    Xizor smiled as the coach looped away from the central nexus toward the mountain. He did not often flaunt his power, but good food was one of his small pleasures, and there was no cuisine better than that of the Menarai.
    The rain had stopped, and now the shadows of night condensed and intensified. Soon Coruscant would be ablaze with its own light, quite a view from a ship as it approached from space. Nowhere else in the galaxy had nearly the entire surface of a world been covered with the building blocks of civilization. To live here was truly an experience, to be at the center of everything. Coruscant was the Empire’s acme; the head of Black Sun could hardly live anywhere else.
    Now. What should he have for dinner? The fleek-eelwas good. Kept alive until the moment of being dipped in boiling pepper oil, the eels would have been light-years away and swimming in the Hocekureem Sea that same morning. Also, the stuffed yam and plicto steak was excellent, as was the Giant Ithorian snail in flounut butter. Or perhaps the Kashyyyk land shrimp?
    So many choices, none of them bad. Well. Rather than order in advance, perhaps he would just wait until he arrived at the restaurant and decide then. True, he would have to wait for it to be prepared, but then, patience was one of his virtues, after all.
    Yes. That was what he would do. He would be … spontaneous.
    It would be refreshing.
    “H eads up, boys, another wave coming in,” Luke said into his comm.
    “Copy that, Rogue Leader,” came a chorus in return.
    “Uh-oh, I see a couple of TIE interceptors in this squad,” Wedge said.
    “I got ’em, Wedge,” Luke said. He leaned on the stick and put the X-wing into a sharp turn to port. Interceptors were faster, and the newer ones wore heavier guns. He hoped the Force would stay with him. This was getting trickier by the moment. He couldn’t afford to fail; Han’s rescue depended on his keeping things going—not to mention the Rogues and his own life.
    He hoped Leia and Lando were doing okay wherever they were.
    L ando flew past jagged outcroppings of reddish rock that looked like giant fangs. The
Falcon
zipped through a three-sided tunnel with what seemed like very littleclearance below and to both sides. The sky above was like the surface of a river, blue and serene.
    Threepio said, “I think perhaps one of my circuits is overheating. I really ought to sit down and power off.” But the droid didn’t move. Like the rest of them, he seemed hypnotized by the flight through the canyon.
    There was a long-range Imperial sensor post at the edge of the great plateau into which these deep canyons had been carved by time and water, Dash had said. The only way to avoid being spotted was to sneak in below the sensor scan.
    It reminded Leia of Han’s desperate flight into the asteroid field after they’d fled Hoth, and the hiding place into which they’d scurried to avoid being captured by Vader—a place that had turned out to be something other than what it had first seemed.
    Ahead of them, the
Outrider
flew. As Leia watched, the ship rolled,