by James Luceno
Taunt worked his jaw. “Even if they did, they're not going to find any evidence of it.”
The pilot touched the earphones of his headset. “They're comming us. They want us to power down and submit to an inspection.” He glanced at the viewport. “The escort's vectoring for intercept.”
Heet squeezed into the cockpit behind Taunt. “The droids are jettisoned.”
“Good,” Taunt started to say, then stopped himself, all color draining from his face. “Decree had us retask the droids to their original programming.”
Heet stared blankly.
“Their original programming is to disable Republic vessels!”
The three of them swung as one to the viewport.
A choice epithet flew from the pilot. “The escort's flying right into their midst!”
“Warn them away!” Taunt said. “Tell them we have a radiation leak!”
“Overseer, this is Second Chance,” the pilot said into the mike. “It would be better if we came to you—But—But—No, that's not the case—It's—” Turning to Taunt, he said: “They suspect a trick. They're threatening to open fire.”
For a moment, Taunt couldn't get his vocal cords to work. “How much time until the escort reaches the droids?”
The pilot brought a magnified view of the ship to one of the displays. You didn't have to be a technical wiz to grasp that the spherical sabotage droids were already maneuvering toward the escort.
“They're penetrating the deflector shield. Attaching!”
Taunt stumbled backward into the copilot's chair, which nearly collapsed beneath him.
The cockpit fell eerily silent, except for deliberate tones issuing from the communications suite. Then, without warning, an explosion blossomed in front of the YT and nova-bright light flooded through the viewport.
In the early days, there wasn't a sacrifice he wouldn't make for the Falcon—even if that meant flying halfway across the galaxy risking his and Chewbacca's lives to rescue a man from prison in exchange for equipping the YT with an upgraded guidance system, a new rectenna, and a hyperdrive that would allow the ship to make 0.5 past lightspeed.
The trip to the Corporate Sector was the first real voyage he and the Wookiee had made with the Falcon, shortly after he had won it from Lando at Cloud City. The first of their grand adventures. The idea had been to visit Klaus “Doc” Vandangante, an outlaw tech who knew better than just about anyone how to get the most out of a ship. The problem was that Doc had gone and gotten himself arrested and imprisoned in Stars' End on Orron III, and Doc's gorgeous blond daughter, Jessa, had made Doc's rescue part and parcel of the agreement to upgrade the Falcon.
Doing that had required having the Falcon masquerade as the brain of an ungainly barge, which had so slowed the jump to Orron III that he and Chewie were practically at each other's throats by the time the cumbersome vessel emerged from hyperspace. But the tedious journey had left him feeling proud of the fact that he was in some way responsible for having rescued the old freighter from a life of such duties. In the same way the Falcon had saved him from a life of having to pilot gaudy ships for the Hutts and other degenerates.
Over the years, as the sacrifices he made for the ship had mounted up, he came to think of himself as bound to the Falcon as surely as he was bound to Chewie and, later, to Leia. All the chances they had taken together, all the danger they had put themselves through, all the sacrifices they had made for each other.
ZAMAEL ARCHIPELAGO, DEEP CORE
43 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
ALLANA SOLO SAT ON THE RIM OF THE MAIN HOLD MAINTENANCE access, her thin legs dangling over the edge of the open hatch.
“Tell her to try it now,” Han called from somewhere deep in the innards of the ship.
Allana cupped her hands to her mouth and turned toward the cockpit. “Grandma, he says to try it now.”
A moment later the Falcon's sublight engine loosed a whining groan but failed to come to life. In the compartment Han muttered a barely inaudible, truncated curse.
“One hundred and eighteen,” C-3PO said from behind Allana, who shifted slightly to look at him. “This is the one hundred and eighteenth time since it has been my privilege to serve aboard the Millennium Falcon that this very same event has occurred. Or events of a similar nature, I should say.”
Allana smiled. “That's a good thing.”
The protocol droid cocked his head to one side, as if he hadn't quite heard her. “I'm not certain I take your meaning, mistress.”
“ 'Cause Grandpa has always fixed it.”
A pained yowl erupted from the compartment.
“Perhaps,” C-3PO said. “Though not without requisite contributions of Captain Solo's flesh and blood.”
Leia appeared from the cockpit connector, smiling at Allana, then stroking the seven-year-old's long red hair as she settled down beside her on the rim of the hatch.
“Grandpa and his shortcuts.”
“I heard that,” Han said. “You're going to blame me for an uncharted gravity sink?”
“I can't very well blame the sink, Han.”
“Yeah, well, it could be worse. We could have been drawn directly into it.”
Leia had learned long ago that things could always be worse. Still, the sink had yanked the Falcon from hyperspace with such force that the power core had shut down, leaving the ship in danger of being drawn ineluctably into the sink, and certain catastrophe.
“That seems to be exactly what's happening, darling.”
Han's head and shoulders emerged from the hatch, a lopsided, mirthless smile on his face. “Always looking on the bright side. That's why I've kept you around all these years.”
She returned the look in kind. “I love you, too.”
Han scowled and disappeared back into the compartment.
Sighing, Allana stood up and walked to the dejarik table's semicircular bench, humming to herself and gazing around. “Grandma, how long do you think we'll be here?” she said finally.
“Not long.” Leia stood up and joined her at the hologame table. “What's a family outing without an unexpected twist or two?”
Allana nodded, mostly for Leia's sake, and Leia watched her go into self-entertainment mode, humming once more and touching this and that.
She was a remarkable child; precocious to be sure, but adventurous and infinitely patient, and Leia felt as close to her as she had to Anakin and Jacen, and continued to feel to her and Han's surviving child, Jaina. Allana was actually the daughter of Jacen and the Hapan Queen Mother, Tenel Ka, but that was a secret known only to a select few. Allana was known to most as Amelia, a Hapan foundling adopted by the Solos following the tragic death of Jacen, who by then had assumed the Sith title Darth Caedus. Or the tragedy that Jacen had become. Which was it? Leia frequently wondered. That he had died at the hand of his twin sister made it all the more unbearable. But try as she might, Leia could not purge her memory of those dreadful years.
I will always miss you, despite what you became.
As Tenel Ka's daughter, Allana was Chume'da—heir to the throne—of the Hapes Consortium. But after what Jacen had put the child through, and out of fear that her true paternity might one day be discovered, Tenel Ka wanted her removed from danger, as well as from political intrigue of the sort that was commonplace in the Consortium. And so Allana's death by a strain of targeted nanovirus had been faked, and Han and Leia had assumed custody of her. More, they had embraced her, and felt blessed by every moment she spent in their company.
The original plan had called for the Force-sensitive Allana to attend the Jedi academy, which had been relocated to Shedu Maad, near Terephon in the Transitory Mists, but thus far the plan wasn't working out. Tenel Ka felt Allana would be safer with the Solos than off at the academy. And Allana and the academy were hardly a perfect fit. Free-spirited and kinetic, Allana had trouble sitting still for lessons and seemed less interested in honing her abilities in the Force than in following her instincts and investigating li
fe's mysteries in her own fashion.
You were like that as a child. Sometimes it pains me to see so much of you in her. Pains me, and yet fills my heart to overflowing.
Allana rarely spoke of the father she had scarcely known. At the height of Jacen's misguided attempts to control the destiny of the galaxy, he had abducted her in an effort to force Tenel Ka to support his evil machinations, and Han and Leia had been instrumental in rescuing her, learning only then that Jacen was her father. The child had known danger all her life—from Hapan conspirators, members of a Killik nest, and hired assassins alike. But Jacen's treachery was the deepest cut, and his actions had put a premature end to her childhood. Gone was the button-nosed toddler who had once pronounced Jedi Yedi and who had named a stuffed tauntaun for the kind man who would later be revealed as her father.
Leia knew that Allana's silence about Jacen didn't mean that she had put him entirely from her mind, only that she had buried her dark memories of him where no one could find them. What worried Leia most was that those memories would fester and seep like a stain into Allana's psyche. It was all too close to what Leia had gone through on learning that Darth Vader had been her actual father, and for years carrying within her a fear that her children would inherit the same weakness for the dark side of the Force that Anakin Skywalker had evinced.
In Jacen, those fears had been realized.
Jacen, who for so long had represented a new hope for the Jedi Order. One who had ventured so profoundly into the Force and had traveled so widely in the galaxy. In the end only to fall victim to the same lust for power that had crippled Anakin Skywalker; to become so overwhelmed and mastered by power, he became unrecognizable to Han and Leia long before his necessary death.
His necessary death.
Leia supported Han whenever he said as much. But as a mother she was less efficient at distancing herself from Jacen. Yes, he had become a monster, but it was Leia who had given birth to him, nursed and nurtured and loved him unconditionally, and his death would haunt her for the rest of her life.
As you failed us, we failed you; failed to find a way to redeem you.
“Would a game of dejarik interest you, mistress?” C-3PO asked Allana.
“Not now, Threepio,” she told him.
Leia watched. The two of them were still sorting out their relationship—but better 3PO than the angel-faced defender droid that had been Allana's companion and bodyguard for the early part of her life.
“Grandma, why does Grandpa keep this old ship?” Allana asked suddenly.
Leia's smile appeared almost as a reflex, in recollection of too many things to name.
“He's had this ship a long time, sweetheart. You know how some people keep albums of holoimages to refresh their memories of where they've been, what they've done, and who they've met along the way? The Falcon does that for Grandpa. It's filled with memories.”
Allana mulled it over. “That's why he never changes anything in here? Because he wants to remember everything just as it was?”
“I think so.” Leia lowered her voice to add: “He's also pretty tight with credits, in case you haven't noticed.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Yep.”
“All fixed,” Han called, clambering like a much younger man from the engine compartment. “Threepio, get us going while I finish cleaning up down here.”
C-3PO froze in place. “Must I, Captain Solo? You know how—”
“Don't give me any vocoder, Goldenrod. I'm going make a pilot of you if it kills me.”
“But, sir, what would be the point of that?”
“Just get the engines started and set her on autofunction. I won't be long.” Han turned his attention to Leia and Allana while the droid was clattering toward the cockpit. “What have you two been chatting about?”
“Just girl talk,” Leia said pleasantly.
Allana nodded. “Yep. Girl talk.”
Leia took note of Han's suspicious look and glanced at Allana. “Actually, Allana asked me why you prefer traveling in the Falcon, and I was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation.”
“Yeah, Grandpa, how come we never use our new ship—the one that my mother gave us?”
Han made a sour face. “That fully automatic marvel of modern technology that's supposed to take all the stress out of flying? Why don't we just hire a chauffeur to fly us around?”
Abruptly, the Falcon came to life and began to move.
“Good work, Threepio!” Han hollered toward the cockpit.
“What Grandpa means,” Leia interjected, “is that he loves to flip switches and toggles and pull and push levers.”
Allana studied him. “It that the real reason? 'Cause you like to flip switches and … levers?”
“And let's not forget about pounding his hand against the navicomputer,” Leia said, restraining a smile.
“Or banging his fist on the ceiling,” Allana said, clearly enjoying herself.
Han planted his hands on his hips. “Hey, that's part of real piloting. Not voice-commanding some computer to do the work.”
“Fixing things every time we travel. That's part of it, too?”
Han opened his mouth but no words emerged. The kid was right. Each trip lately had cost them something. Rust was taking hold, parts were wearing out; the superstructure itself was deteriorating. Han so identified with the ship, he lost sleep when she was ailing. But he wasn't about to try to explain that to a seven-year-old kid who'd grown up wearing an opalescent electrotex nanoweave flight suit.
“I'll bet you know every part of this ship by heart,” Allana said, getting up from the dejarik table bench and wandering about the hold.
“Well, maybe not every part, but most of them.”
While Allana moved to the engineering station, Han took a moment to direct a playful smirk at Leia. When he turned back to Allana, she had a small object in her hand.
“What's this part for?”
Han's eyebrows beetled. He accepted the object from her hand, stared at it, and began to scratch the back of his head in puzzlement. “Where did you find this?”
“Right here,” Allana said, pointing to what was now a slight indentation on the curved bulkhead adjacent to the engineering station.
Han kneeled to inspect the divot. The object had been lodged at Allana's eye level into the chamfered edge of an old panel that abutted the station's vertical display board. The divot contained neither relays nor contacts, but Han knew from past repairs that that portion of the bulkhead contained circuitry connecting the engineering station to both the Rubicon navicomputer and the Isu-Sim hyperdrive engine.
“I've never seen this before,” he said at last, laughing in disbelief.
Leia hurried over to peer at the object. “Allana, you've given your grandfather a puzzle.”
“No, seriously,” Han said. “I don't know what the heck this is.”
As he was turning it about in his hand, C-3PO returned from the cockpit. “All systems are nominal. Thank the Maker.” When no one responded, the crestfallen droid added: “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.”
“Threepio, what is this thing?” Han said, holding the device up to the droid's glowing photoreceptors.
C-3PO canted his head. “I'm sorry, Captain Solo, but I fail to recognize it. Although if I had to venture a guess, I would say that it resembles an antiquated transponder or transceiver of some sort.”
Han regarded it. “You're right. It does.”
“Maybe we should put it back, Grandpa,” Allana said uncertainly.
He glanced down at her. “Oh, I doubt it still works or has anything to do with the ship.”
“You never know, Han,” Leia said.
“Come on, this little piece of tech? I know that much.”
Leia extended her right hand. “Can I see it?”
Gently, Han placed it in her palm.
Leia tightened her fingers around the piece. “There's something about this … Did you feel anything special, Allana?”
&
nbsp; She nodded. “I did. That's how come I found it.”
Han looked from Leia to Allana and back again. “Don't you two start going Jedi on me.”
“We're not,” Leia said. “But you can't deny that objects can sometimes have a kind of inherent power.”
“Like you can feel the other people who have touched it,” Allana said.
Han blinked in stupefaction.
“We should find out,” Allana prompted.
“We should, sweetie. It would be like a treasure hunt. Right, Han?”
He gazed at her. “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. Next time we attend the galactic engineers' convention.”
“I'm serious, Han. For all you know it could have been placed here by someone who owned the Falcon long before you got it.”
“I suppose,” Han said. “Or it could have been put there by any of the hundreds of beings who've been in the Falcon since. Some friend or foe, some spy. Like the Imps who tracked us to Yavin Four.”
Leia laughed at the unexpected reference. “Was that really in this lifetime?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Who owned the Falcon before you did, Grandpa?”
“Well, there were lots of owners. The Falcon's over a hundred years old.”
“Uncle Lando used to own her,” Leia said.
“He did?”
Han nodded. “For a couple of years, anyway.”
“Did you buy her from him?”
“Uh, not quite.”
“Grandpa won her from Uncle Lando. In a game of cards.”
Allana's eyes widened in delight. “Wow!”
Leia smiled. The tale of Han's winning hand was well worn—his pure sabacc besting Lando's near idiot's array. When Han had confessed to having bought his way into the Cloud City tournament with stolen property—a golden palador figurine he had taken from a Ylesian high priest and a dragon pearl he had swiped from an Imperial general—Leia knew she had finally found the title for the second volume of the memoir she would someday write. It would be called The Crook, the Wook, and Me.
