“Well, that is different,” Lando admitted. “Still, I thought—”
“Here,” Poppy said, picking up the stack of credits and handing Lando half. “For you. This?” He tapped the other half. “For me.”
“Thanks?” Lando said.
“You are reading with the Neuronaught,” Poppy explained, counting his money. “And that’s what you get when you read with the Neuronaught. If you decide to make better choices, then perhaps you can one day have it all.”
“Well, damn,” Lando said. Then he put his half back down and tripled it.
Poppy blinked at the stack. “You wish for to try your luck again?”
“No,” Lando said. “I want the set.”
Poppy’s mouth dropped open. “This is not done, no! A Vazaveer set is not something one just buys, hm?” He shuffled the fichas and rusted metal screw bolts into a little pile. “It is crafted!” Shoved the pile into its sack. “Fine-tuned!” Put the sack in a little shelf next to him. “Hm? It is a sacred relic, shard of the droid divinity, yes? The Original Dozen! One does not buy an artifact! One earns it!”
“All right, all right, all right,” Lando said, shaking his head as he pocketed the credits. “Just thought I’d ask. I’m an aficionado, you could say, of gambling variations throughout the galaxy.”
“Hmph. Svindar, pack up. We are done for the day, yes.” Svindar started gathering various containers and rucksacks.
Lando and Han rose. “Come on, Varto,” Han said. “We’ve got places to be.”
“Wait,” Lando said, stepping over the divining tablet. “Svindar, man, get your hands off my bag!”
“What’s this?” Poppy demanded.
Svindar turned, the same pale, blank expression on his face, and stared at Lando.
“That’s my bag, man,” Lando said, fists clenched.
“Easy,” Han said, putting a hand on Lando’s shoulder. “You didn’t bring a bag, remember?”
“Get out of here!” Poppy yelled. “Leave this place!”
“All right, all right,” Lando chuckled, suddenly magnanimous. “Just a simple mistake, is all.”
“Mmhmm, be gone now!” the Toydarian called as they walked away.
“Get it?” Lando asked, once they’d rounded the corner.
Han flipped the little cloth sack up into the air. “Got it.”
Lando caught it without losing stride and shoved it in his pocket.
HUGE VENT FANS RATTLED OVER the barters, curses, and bellowing on the main floor of Frander’s Bay. At tables lining either side of the room, barkers in elaborate, swirly outfits extolled the various exploits and skills of the unaffiliated pilots they repped.
“Ooh,” Lando said, studying the exhibit hall listing plastered to the wall.
“Hm?” Han kept eyes on the swarming crowd around them.
“I didn’t know you were hocking your skills as an unaffiliated, Captain Solo.”
“What?” Han glanced over. There indeed was his name, right beside a ship designation. “How in the—”
“And doesn’t the New Republic use ZV-9 freighters for prison transports? How perfect!”
“I…hey, slow down!”
But Lando had already bustled off into the crowd.
“Brantis Mo Fresk!” one of the barkers hollered into Han’s ear as he passed. “Unparalleled in his flight artistry! His ship the Vorantis beat the Brightfox in the Karee Blockade Clutch this year! That’s correct, ladies and gents, you heard me right!”
“How could we not.” Han scowled.
“Praz Fateer!” another yelled. “Fastest flier on Alzoc III!”
“Well, that’s not really saying much,” Han snorted.
Lando shook his head. “Must you?”
“Just being true to who I am, old buddy.”
“Fine time to do it when we’re in disguise.”
“The best time to do it, if you ask me.”
“Ah, here we go.” A lone pilot sat behind table 746b, fingers laced behind a dark-brown, clean-shaven head, long skinny legs stretched across the table. They wore an ancient-looking leather jacket and pants with a thousand pockets. Their eyes were closed, lips moving in triple time to whatever loudness was blasting through the extra-large headphones cupping either ear.
“The likeness to you is actually uncanny,” Lando marveled.
“I’m certainly convinced.”
They approached the table.
“I don’t even I can’t even how they even what the even,” the young pilot sang, eyes still closed.
Han and Lando exchanged a glance, then sat in the two chairs provided. A cheap plastic cloth hung draped over the table, and on top of that a bowl of chewable candies had been set out with a sign saying TAKE 1. Han lifted the bowl and dropped it on the table.
“Whoa!” The pilot’s eyes shot open and they sprang forward in the chair.
“We’re looking for a ship,” Lando said.
“What?”
“A ship!”
“Can you take the headgear off maybe?” Han suggested.
“Ah!” With a wink and a grin, the alternative Han Solo pulled off their headphones. “What’s good, gentlemen? How may I help you today?”
“You’re the only pilot here without a barker,” Han said.
A shrug. “Who needs a barker when you got a name?”
“Han Solo, huh,” Lando mused. “Famed war hero of the Rebellion.”
“Captain of the ship that made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs,” Han added.
“It was the ship that made the run, not the captain,” Lando smirked. “Not for nothing.”
“A fast ship is only as fast as its captain,” Han countered.
“Is it, though? The same ship destroyed the second Death Star, as I recall. Who was captaining it then?”
“Uh, gentlemen?”
Han and Lando turned back to the pilot. “What are you, like twelve?” Han demanded.
“Twenty-one.”
Lando shook his head. “You were barely born when that run happened. What’s your real name?”
The pilot slid a credentials card across the table. Lando picked it up, scanned it into his datapad.
“Why the ruse?” Han asked. “Why not just use your real name?”
“My name doesn’t get people to sit at the table. With a name like Han Solo, folks come by outta sheer curiosity.”
“That works?”
“Here you sit.”
“Taka Jamoreesa,” Lando said. He passed the datapad to Han as a digital pic of the young pilot with a big ridiculous grin flashed over a reel of enthusiastically fonted text: TAKA JAMOREESA PILOT EXTRAORDINAIRE THEIR COURAGE AND SPEED KNOW NO BOUNDS THEY HAVE ACED EVERY PILOT IN THIS ROOM AND ARE WANTED IN ABOUT EIGHTEEN GALAXIES THEY NEED NO INTRODUCTION THE OTHER PILOTS DON’T EVEN TALK TO TAKA THAT’S HOW SERIOUS THIS IS. A whirlwind of wanted listings, bounties, and various intergalactic pirating infractions scrolled past. Han squinted through the blurry, vision-depleting face guard. Did this kid know who he was? Could this be some kind of setup? He glanced around, hand wrapping around the blaster on his hip.
“Anyway,” Taka said, taking their credentials back and pocketing them. “If you’re here on Frander’s Bay, it’s because you’re doing something on the low. And if you’re here at table 746b, it’s because you’re looking for a ZV-9, which means you’re probably planning to soup it up and make an incognito-type run posing as an NR transport of some kind…either a delivery or perhaps”—they arched both eyebrows—“a personnel carrier.”
Lando and Han just stared at Taka. Han was liking this less and less by the second.
“What’s the cargo?” Taka asked, dropping one brow but keeping the other perfectly poised.
“Only passengers,” Lando said. “Myself. This guy. A Twi�
��lek and an Ewok and a busted-up droid.”
“Sounds like a bad joke,” Taka mused.
“It very well might end up that way,” Lando acknowledged, “if we don’t stay under the radar.”
“I don’t like any of this!” Han declared. He’d nudged his blaster out of its holster and had it under the table pointed directly at Taka.
Lando was staring at him. “What’s the matter, man?”
Taka seemed unbothered.
“Who are you really?” Han demanded. “How…ugh!” Something wet and slimy had wrapped around his gun hand, gooing it up entirely. “What in the—” Two bulging yellow eyes peered up at him from under the table. Han tried to tug his hand out of the sticky mire but it was stuck fast. A wide, slobbery smile opened across the creature’s lumpy, green-brown face. “What is that?”
“Oh,” Taka said, tossing a lackadaisical glance in Han’s direction. “You met Korrg.”
“Korrg?”
“Korrg the worrt. My worrt.”
“Well, tell it to untongue me!” Han demanded.
“Korrg hates it when people pull blasters on me. It’s terrible, really. He had a bad experience with blasters as a pup and now he gets really overprotective.”
Lando peered over Han’s lap and let out a chuckle. “You’re all mucked up, buddy-o!”
“Get this slime bucket to free up my hand or it’ll have a brand-new bad experience with a blaster to remember me by.”
“Wild thing is,” Taka explained, leaning in, “that won’t work. Worrt saliva jams blasters. It’s like an…evolutionary mechanism they developed, I guess, living in the various badlands across the galaxy and whatnot. Most folks don’t even bother hunting with ’em because they just gum up all their tech. Isn’t that right, Korrgy-boy?” They reached down and gave the bulbous creature a loving scratch on the scruff of the neck.
The worrt purred a flatulent, burbling song and retracted his tongue.
“I think we’ve found our pilot,” Lando said.
Han shook his head. “I need a washroom and a new blaster and then we’ll talk.”
* * *
—
“I don’t want to know,” Leia said once again, squeezing Han’s hand. Their speeder worked its way through the midday Hanna City traffic toward the central docking station. “Just tell me you’ll be all right.”
“All I do is be all right,” Han said, pushing his lips out and squinting like that was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Stop,” Leia said, suddenly serious. “Just cut the smart-ass routine for a second and just be with me, this last time. Let’s be us.”
Han looked sideways at her. “What do you mean, last time?”
“Nothing.” Leia sighed, shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that. Last time before you leave, is all.”
Han nodded. It hadn’t felt like that was what she meant. “You’re not having some kind of…vision, are you? Is there something you want to tell me?”
She shot him a sharp look, and for a minute he thought she might tear into him. He’d been dead serious when he said it, but he almost never managed to sound that way when he wanted to—always came out sarcastic or mocking somehow.
But Leia just shook her head, face downcast. Then she scooted across the seat toward him, took Han’s face in her hands, and pressed her lips against his.
Snarky comebacks swirled through his mind but he managed to discard them unsaid and then allowed the feeling of her body close to his to overtake him. It seemed like they never stopped moving anymore, and just held each other. It was this and that and the other, and if it wasn’t one of those things, it was Ben.
Ben who was back home being minded by LC.
Ben who would wonder where his father was in the morning.
Ben whom Han had no idea how to be a father to.
“What is it?” Leia asked, her face still close.
And there it was. Even without the boy there, Han had let him slip in between them somehow. Maybe he should add being a husband next to being a father on the list of things Han didn’t know how to do.
“Nothing,” he said. “Got lost in my head again.”
“I’ll be on the holo when I can,” Leia said. “You know there’s a lot going on over here.”
“Do I ever.”
“And anyway, you’ll have your hands plenty full, from the look of it.” They’d rolled up to an open loading dock, where the Vermillion, a clunky medium-sized transport freighter, stood on its landing gear. Steam rose around it, and sparks flew from somewhere over the topside, where Taka must’ve been making last-minute fixes with Florx Biggles. Lando, Kaasha Bateen, and Peekpa stood talking in front of the gangplank.
Leia eyed the Vermillion. “That looks like the kind of freighters we use for prisoner transpo—”
“You don’t want to know,” Han said. “Believe me.”
“I really don’t. And listen,” Leia said as they stepped out of the speeder. “Keep an eye on Lando.”
“You think he’s kidding himself, about this thing with the Twi’lek being something serious for him?”
“No,” Leia said. “Even worse: I think he might be right.”
“Ooh.”
“We thought Forever-Player Lando was bad. Head-Over-Heels Lando might be ten times worse.”
“Yikes. Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Hey.” She wrapped her arms around Han and put her head on his chest. “Careful out there.”
“As you command,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“Whoa, is that Princess Leia?” Taka called, standing up on the top of the Vermillion and raising a pair of goggles. “Hi, Princess! I love you!” Korrg’s head appeared, long tongue dangling out as he panted and then barked two burps of appreciation.
Leia raised her eyebrows and waved back. “Quite a crew you’ve found yourself. All right, this is as far as I go. Lando, Kaasha,” she called. “Take care of my husband. He’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Of course, Senator Organa,” Lando said with a gentlemanly bow. “It is our duty and honor.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Leia said.
“We’re good to go,” Taka called as the speeder headed off.
Han, Lando, Kaasha, and Peekpa boarded, and the Vermillion rumbled a blast of exhaust fumes out of its wing pipes and then lifted into the sky over Chandrila and blasted off.
“THIS WAS ALL OCEAN ONCE,” a scratchy voice said as the endless Utapaun plains rolled past. Fyzen Gor turned, his eyes linking with the class 1 medical droid strapped into the transport speeder across from him. Soft green lights glowed from within the droid’s narrow optical slits, which curved down beneath a skull-like dome, making the thing look perpetually worried. A rusty, striated vocabulator box sat between two sunken-in cheeks, tubes dangling from either side to the droid’s chest plate.
Fyzen wanted to reply, but the lump in his throat made him feel like any word he spoke might release it, and then he’d be sobbing, and if he sobbed the killers would know, surely, that he was soft, pathetic really, and they’d kill him and toss him out the back of the transport. Or worse, they’d just toss him out the back of the transport and leave him to die a much worse death: picked apart slowly by a varactyl pack, or captured and tortured by Amani plains pirates.
So instead of replying, he just acknowledged the comment with a nod and went back to gazing through the gunport.
“You are afraid,” the droid said, its dead-eyed stare boring into Fyzen.
“I’m not,” Greesto Ftrak quipped. Fyzen shot his friend a warning look, but no one could ever tell Greesto what to do.
Just hours earlier, the two had been sitting innocently in one of the brightly lit demonstration chambers of the Prasteen Braak, Utapau’s most esteemed medical school. Like most of Pau City, the Braak wa
s nestled deep within the inner bowels of the planet, and Fyzen reveled in the sense of safety afforded by thousands of meters of dirt and concrete between himself and the cruel, wild plains of the surface. The professors had been in the middle of dissecting a sedated Geonosian. Because the patient was still alive, a mechanical voice explained over the loudspeakers, the fluids could be seen pumping away through its circulatory system as layers of exoskeleton were removed. Graduation was only a few weeks away, and Fyzen and Greesto had talked about opening their own offsite surgical center in the Preevow Sector of Pau City. That meant they’d be dealing with any number of species from across the galaxy, so Fyzen had been leaning in, paying extra-close attention (unlike Greesto, who was clacking away on his datapad, arrogantly uninterested as always), and then the doors had burst open and the Pau’an gunners had come in. They were even taller than most Pau’ans, and they wore black cloaks and wide circular hats. Masks covered the bottom half of their long faces.
Everyone screamed when the gunners stomped in, and a few students got up to run. But then more appeared at each of the doorways. Fyzen just stood frozen, watched with his mouth hanging open as a debilitating terror crept over him. His parents had warned him about the Pau’an gangs, but they were always faceless figures lurking in the shadows at the edges of Pau City; no names.
Just stay down and stay quiet and they will leave, Fyzen thought, a trembling kind of prayer. They will leave. They have no reason to care about me; I am no one.
“This is very simple,” the leader said in a slow drawl. He stood on a table, waving his blaster around the room.
Stay down and stay quiet. Stay down and stay quiet.
“Who is the most promising student in the room?”
Fyzen thought he was going to throw up. It was a running joke in the class that he knew more about anatomy than the professors. They called him Dr. Gor whenever he raised his hand to answer a question that had everyone else stumped. It had been a source of pride at first, until he realized the others begrudged him his brilliance, all except Greesto, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other. And now…now it would seal his fate.
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