Lando looked up. “That’s it?”
Florx shook his head and placed the three Vazaveer fichas they’d nicked from Poppy Delu on the counter. “Sprikatz.”
“What’s his problem?” Kaasha asked.
“I had him run a microfiber and organic compound analysis on those little divination pieces and he didn’t come up with much.”
“Well?” Han came over and sat by the Ugnaught. “What’d you get?”
“Fratz fratz Tarabba mzrak,” Florx explained somberly. “Meka fratz fratz peepolak Kallea.” Then he shrugged.
“Well, there’s soil traces from the Tarabba sector,” Lando translated.
“Figured that much when the Toydarian mentioned a land of plains and gorges,” Han said. “Isn’t Utapau in Tarabba?”
Lando nodded. “Fyzen Gor’s home planet. And same. But he also said there’s dirt from the Kallea sector.”
Kaasha raised an eyebrow. “Kallea? That’s outer Outer Rim.”
“Mhm,” Lando said. “Not much there but a couple of gas ball planets and mostly empty moons.”
“Good place to hide out though,” Han said. “No?”
“We’re coming out of hyperspace,” Taka’s voice said over the comm. “Please fasten your restraining belts and make sure you’ve retrieved all your personal items. Local time is—” A series of Wookiee-like growls and roars sounded, followed by Taka chuckling.
Han shook his head.
* * *
—
Night was falling on the giant, twisty wroshyr trees of the Black Forest as Taka brought the Vermillion down onto the rickety landing bay the Wookiees had set up just outside their fortress village. Torches speckled the darkness up ahead, and mountains rose against the darkening sky. A team of fully armed Wookiees stood waiting for them, and they didn’t look pleased.
“That’s odd,” Han said. “They’re usually a little happier to see me.”
“You told ’em we were coming,” Lando said. “Right?”
“Of course. Sent the transmission yesterday. Chewie messaged back to come, and that he needed to talk to me anyway.”
“Angry Wookiees and your buddy said he wants to talk,” Taka said. “Sounds ominous. You guys got this. I’ma take a nap in the cargo hold hammock. If you need me, tell the Ugnaught.”
“Real hero,” Han muttered, throwing his jacket on and ducking out of the cockpit.
“Hey,” Taka called. “You hired a pilot, not an appetizer plate for Wookiees. And anyway, you’ll be glad I’m alive and well rested when you need to make fast tracks out of here.”
“You may have a point there,” Lando conceded, following Han out into the main hold of the ship.
“This looks a little dicey,” Han said to Peekpa. Florx was already snoring away contentedly in the cargo hold hammock, but probably not for long. “So Lando and I are going to go out there alone and see what’s going on.”
“Freepa!” Peekpa squealed.
Han frowned. “Does anyone speak Ewok?”
“Freepa kapatreebo pratzbar!”
Lando just shrugged.
“Great,” Han said. “This is gonna be a long trip.”
* * *
—
Han and Lando walked down the gangplank into the muggy Kashyyyk twilight. Scatterbugs and sriflies flitted through the purple-streaked sky and danced in and out of the torches lighting the somber Wookiee procession. Han couldn’t make out their faces clearly enough to see if Chewie was with them. He waved, fumbled through a greeting in his stumbling, accented Shyriiwook, and then stood there awkwardly as a huge gray-haired male stepped forward and roared a welcome.
“Sounds like there’s been some trouble,” Han translated. “They apologize for the chilly greeting. They’ve had to stay on high alert at all times.”
“So I see,” Lando whispered.
The towering warriors kept glancing out into the darkening woods around them. Far off in the trees, something howled. Han shuddered, thanked the Wookiee for the explanation, and asked where Chewie was.
Come, the Wookiee roared, beckoning with a shaggy arm. Han recognized the same body language his best friend would use when he was doing his best not to seem threatening to a being he could easily destroy. We will take you to him.
“Here we go,” Han said. “Look alive.”
A dangling rope bridge led away from the landing pad into the torchlit treetop village. Han hadn’t been here since he’d helped fight off an Imperial occupation just before the Battle of Jakku, two years ago. The place had smelled of endless destruction and rotting corpses. Half the forest had been leveled, a once safe haven turned into a dizzying industrial nightmare, powered by the slave labor of its own people. Now the forest seemed to have made an impressive comeback. Off in the distance, Han glimpsed a fallen AT-ACT walker covered in fern and flowers, with plant stalks and small trees sprouting from its blown-open metal belly.
The Wookiee up front yelped something and raised his hand. They’d come to a circular dangling catwalk with a bonfire in the center. Several tall figures stood on the other side of the fire, but Han couldn’t make out their faces.
“Cheeeesaaaaboookaaaaaah!” A high-pitched scream came from behind them. Eight high-powered bowcasters turned back toward the rope bridge, where Han could make out a short figure barreling toward them.
“Peekpa?” Han sighed.
“The Ewok is going to get us blown the hell up,” Lando grunted under his breath.
The Wookiees blinked down at the tiny furry form bustling past them. A few curious growls rose, but no one seemed too sure what to do. Then someone stepped out from the other side of the fire pit, his face lit up by the dancing flames.
“Chewie,” Han said, relief flooding through him.
“Chewfandoola macheeeeego!” Peekpa screeched, dive-bombing the Wookiee’s knees and then wrapping her little arms around them and nuzzling her face against his fur.
“We brought an old friend, I guess?” Han said, gritting his teeth. “Sorry?”
Chewie cocked his head at the Ewok and made a Rooh? noise.
“I don’t know her, either,” Han said. “I figured you would, the way she’s been going on about you. At least, I think she has. Can’t be too sure.”
Chewie shrugged, then reached down and took her little paw in his huge furry hand. Krashhkrah, he growled, and led them deeper into the compound, hand in hand with Peekpa.
More and more armed guards lined the hanging bridges as they moved deeper into the forest. Night had fallen completely around them now. Glimpses of an orange moon peeked out between the fluttering wroshyr leaves overhead.
Chewie roared, guiding Han and Lando to seats in front of another bonfire. A hunched-over, silver-haired Wookiee nodded at them as they sat.
“Rrrraashrayykk,” the elder greeted them with a raspy growl. “Brraashyyyn Karassshhki.”
“Her name is Karasshki,” Han translated. “And she welcomes us.”
In a near-whisper, Karasshki again apologized for the formalities and cold welcome, especially considering the pivotal role Han had played in the liberation of Kashyyyk. There had been disappearances, she explained. Young Wookiees gone missing from nearby cities and villages. Only a few, at the moment, but enough to have everyone spooked. Pieces of them were discovered, often set up in what appeared to be some kind of ritualistic way, but only pieces. Families of the disappeared spoke of a figure lurking in the woods at dusk in the days before their loved ones vanished. The Long Man, they called him. He had elements about him that spoke of being a droid, but he was too stealthy to be a machine, the experts thought, and they’d picked up a scent, though it was none that any of them could identify. Then, two weeks ago, the disappearances ceased. Still…the communities had remained on high alert.
Han and Lando traded a worried look. “It’s possi
ble,” Han said, “that we are on the trail of the same creature that has been stealing your children.”
Karasshki nodded. This was her guess as well, she rasped, based on what she’d heard about what they were facing. It was suspected that this Long Man had left and taken several pieces of the young Wookiees he’d snatched with him. They were dead, this was known, but their souls would not rest as long as parts of them were being carried all over the galaxy for who-knew-what nefarious purpose. Proper funeral rites were necessary, and so whatever parts of them could be found had to be retrieved.
They would send Chewbacca on this mission. He would help Han and Lando track down this Long Man, and he would collect what parts of his murdered fellow Wookiees he could find, even though in truth he should be staying home with his family after all the time he’d had to spend away from them. Peekpa put her head on Chewie’s knee and squeezed. Chewie roared, nodding. He had already bid his family goodbye and packed his bags.
“Rrashrakrrykah karaaa arrarakkyysh,” the elder Wookiee commanded, after Han thanked her. Rid us of this menace.
“LOOK, EVERYONE CALM DOWN,” SANA said, both hands raised.
Han had taken out his blaster and swirled around in his chair so its business end faced her directly. Behind him, the stars swooshed past in their long shining streaks. “Me?” He blinked at her. “I’m calm. This is me being calm, what you’re seeing. Chewie, you calm?”
Chewie muttered something at a low growl and pulled out his bowcaster.
“See?” Han said. “Chewie’s calm, too. Now, why don’t you tell us exactly what it is we’re all dealing with.”
“That part didn’t sound so calm, just now,” Sana pointed out.
“Because it seems like a number of very powerful and unforgiving people with extremely destructive weapons are suddenly very interested in us being dead.”
“About that—”
“And I don’t know about you, but Chewie and I, we like not being dead. We’re very interested, you could say, in not being dead.” Han leaned back, face bemused. “And if we are going to be facing people who want us to be dead, we’d like to be very clear why it is we have put our lives on the line.”
Chewie agreed with a roar.
“See…”
“For example,” Han continued. “A whole lot of money.”
“About that…”
“For another example: a whole lot of money. Am I making myself clear?”
Sana rolled her eyes and pulled out a datapad. “Crystal,” she grumbled. “That part was already a given, Solo.” She tapped a couple of keys and the device bleeped excitedly. “Boom. You’ve got half your cut and you’re considerably richer than you were five seconds ago, which probably just means you’re that much of a fraction less in insurmountable debt. Congrats.”
“Hey now.”
“Are you done being the coy space cadet and ready to have an adult conversation or do you feel like continuing to play cute?”
“Look, sister”—Han waved an unimpressed hand in the air—“I can’t help it if I’m cu—”
Sana turned to go, shaking her head. “All right, let me know…”
“Hold up, hold up,” Han said. “Let me see that datapad. Anyone can push a bunch of buttons and make a machine go bleep. And then we talk about what that thing you stole is.”
Sana held up the pad face-out, and Han’s eyebrows went to the top of his forehead. That was a lot of zeros. Chewie barked his approval.
“All right,” Han said. “Let’s talk.”
Lando hadn’t taken good care of the Falcon’s main sitting area. Which was to say, he had taken too-good care of it. The guy was meticulous. When Han had won it fair and square(ish) in that fateful sabacc game a while back, he’d found the entire ship spotless, souped up, sparkling. Who could live in those conditions? Unacceptable. Han had immediately gotten to work scuffing it up, making it a place where a regular person could kick back and enjoy themself, not some maniac’s immaculate cape museum.
And it remained a damn mess, to Han’s deep contentment. It took work to keep things that messy, especially with Chewie constantly picking up after himself.
Sana shoved a rotary engine fan off the bench with a scowl and sat. Chewie stretched out on the reclining spin chair they’d picked up on a spice run in Pantora. Han preferred to stand. He had a feeling this conversation would require pacing. Plenty of pacing.
“I don’t know exactly what it is,” Sana admitted.
“Well, that’s a great start.”
She shot him a look. “Are you going to let me talk or are you going to interrupt me with annoying quips every other sentence?”
“I’ll try to keep it to every three sentences, in the interest of time.”
“How thoughtful. Anyway, it’s called the Phylanx Redux Transmitter, and best I can tell—”
Chewie roared and Han raised a hand, shaking his head. “Wait, hold up. The what now?”
Sana said it again, very slowly this time. “Do you want me to write it down for you or would that make it more confusing?”
“Just keep going. It doesn’t matter what it’s called.”
“Oh, it might. Best I can tell, it’s got something to do with droids. It…accesses their programming somehow, but I don’t know how or what it does exactly when it accesses them. Just that it’s a powerful enough form of technology that a number of extremely…shall we say, connected bidders showed up when it went up for auction a few weeks ago.”
Han frowned. “Oh? I didn’t hear about this.”
“Behold my shocked face. My employers sent me to put a bid in. Place was a madhouse. All the major syndicates had people there, and there were more than a few shady unmarked types that probably repped various corporations or the banking houses. Obviously, things were gonna get messy, and indeed they did. In the final round of bidding, a Crimson Dawn agent outbid the closest contenders—an unaffiliated Talz smuggler and some tall hooded fellas I presume had something to do with the Commerce Guild.”
“Who was running it?”
“The Wandering Star. Or, more specifically, some creepy-looking Pau’an.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“Han.”
“Those long skinny faces and sunken eyes, though?” Han shuddered. “And why do they all have messed-up teeth? Utapau has some of the best doctors in the galaxy. They don’t have dentists?”
“You need help, Han. Seriously. Anyway, someone opened fire and all hell broke loose.”
“Is it really a party if that doesn’t happen?”
“A wicked good time. Barely got out of there alive. No one knows where the Phylanx is now, though.”
“Wait, it disappeared? After all that?”
Sana shrugged. “And from what I hear, the Wandering Stars have been in turmoil ever since. Two of their big leaders were capped during the chaos at the auction. I can tell you that every syndicate in the galaxy has a guy on this. Or girl…” She flashed a winning smile.
“And which syndicate has you on it?”
Sana just kept smiling.
“All right, go on then.”
“Thank you, I will. We came up with a plan to flush out some of the…fellow contestants and find out what they know. Basically, a bluff run. Put the word out that I had the Phylanx and was willing to sell and see whose head popped up.”
“And then shoot it?”
“Basically. Or at least some part of the body attached to it. Thing is…”
“You weren’t expecting the head to be Trandoshan and the body the Empire’s.”
“Things got a little out of control. Quick. And let’s just say they didn’t show up to buy.”
Han had been pacing without realizing it. He spun around, the various pieces of the situation rearranging themselves in his mind, and walked straight into a c
able shifter that was dangling from an open part of the ceiling. “Ah! Chewie!” Han growled.
Chewie shot back a snarled reply full of logic and well-thought-out rebuttals that Han swatted away with a gruff wave of his hand. “Anyway, where does all that leave us? If the Empire—”
“It leaves us still needing to get our hands on the Phylanx before anyone else does and also not get hemmed in by the Empire in the process.”
“What could possibly go wrong? Do we have any data on where it might be or are we just supposed to wander out into the galaxy and hope it shows up?”
“Funny you should ask,” Sana said with a mischievous grin. “In a small sort of way, our plan to flush out the competition did actually work.”
Han and Chewie looked at each other. “Oh?”
“Follow me.”
A NARROW CORRIDOR RAN OFF to the side of the cargo hold; it ended in a closet-sized room with a bench and short table equipped with a holoprojector. Han had been standing outside it for ten minutes, trying to figure out what he was going to say to his wife and child.
The sounds of a raucous saigok game drifted in from the main hold, and by the timbre of Chewie’s growls and Kaasha’s laughter, it sounded like things weren’t going well for Team Wookiee.
He would just call and they would chat—no big deal. Leia already knew the basics of what Han was up to, and she herself had said not to key her in to the parts she didn’t need to know. Deniability: the eternal Cover Your Ass game of politics and bureaucracy. Han understood it; not nearly as well as Leia did, of course, but he knew she couldn’t be caught knowing they were about to go off the radar and undercover. Still, something felt off.
Something Han couldn’t put his finger on.
He didn’t like describing things, and he especially didn’t like it when those things were feelings. A blaster was the best negotiating tool he knew; the only one, really. And if he was being honest, that was probably the problem right there: He couldn’t fight his way out of this, whatever this was, and that’s all he really knew how to do.
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