The Old Republic Series

by Sean Williams

  Chewbacca growled again.

  “Sure we’re worth it,” Han agreed. “Shooting those TIEs off Luke alone should have doubled the reward. But you saw the look on Dodonna’s face—he wasn’t all that happy about giving us the first batch. If Her Royal Highness hadn’t been standing right there saying good-bye, I’m pretty sure he would have tried to talk us down.”

  He glared into his mug. Besides, he didn’t add, asking Princess Leia for a replacement reward would mean he’d have to tell her how he’d lost the first stack. Not in gambling or bad investments or even drinking, but to a kriffing pirate.

  And then she would give him one of those looks.

  There were, he decided, worse things than being on Jabba’s hit list.

  On the other hand, if this offer of a job he’d picked up at the Ord Mantell drop was for real, there was a good chance Leia would never have to know.

  “Hello there, Solo.” The raspy voice came from Han’s right. “Eyes front, hands flat on the table. You, too, Wookiee.”

  Han set his teeth firmly together as he let go of his mug and laid his hands palms-down on the table. So much for the job offer being legit. “That you Falsta?”

  “Hey—good memory,” Falsta said approvingly as he sidled around into Han’s view and sat down on the chair across the table. He was just as Han remembered him: short and scrawny, wearing a four-day stubble and his usual wraparound leather jacket over yet another from his collection of flame-bird shirts. His blaster was even uglier than his shirt: a heavily modified Clone Wars–era DT-57.

  Falsta liked to claim the weapon had once been owned by General Grievous himself. Han didn’t believe that any more than anyone else did.

  “I hear Jabba’s mad at you,” Falsta continued, resting his elbow on the table and leveling the barrel of his blaster squarely at Han’s face. “Again.”

  “I hear you’ve branched out into assassinations,” Han countered, eyeing the blaster and carefully repositioning his leg underneath the table. He would have just one shot at this.

  Falsta shrugged. “Hey, if that’s what the customer wants, that’s what the customer gets. I can tell you this much: Black Sun pays a whole lot better for a kill than Jabba does for a grab.” He wiggled the barrel of his blaster a little. “Not that I don’t mind picking up a little free money. As long as I just happen to be here anyway.”

  “Sure, why not?” Han agreed, frowning. That was a strange comment. Was Falsta saying that he wasn’t the one who’d sent Han that message?

  No—ridiculous. The galaxy was a huge place. There was no possible way that a bounty hunter could have just happened to drop in on a random cantina in a random city on a random world at the same time Han was there. No, Falsta was just being cute.

  That was fine. Han could be cute, too. “So you’re saying that if I gave you double what Jabba’s offering, you’d get up and walk away?” he asked.

  Falsta smiled evilly. “You got it on you?”

  Han inclined his head toward Chewbacca. “Third power pack down from the shoulder.”

  Falsta’s eyes flicked to Chewbacca’s bandoleer—

  And in a single contorted motion Han banged his knee up, slamming the table into Falsta’s elbow and knocking his blaster out of line, as he grabbed his mug and hurled the Corellian spiced ale into Falsta’s eyes. There was a brief flash of heat as the bounty hunter’s reflexive shot sizzled past Han’s left ear.

  One shot was all Falsta got. An instant later his blaster was pointed harmlessly at the ceiling, frozen in place by Chewbacca’s iron grip around both the weapon and the hand holding it.

  That should have been the end of it. Falsta should have conceded defeat, surrendered his blaster, and walked out of the cantina, a little humiliated but still alive.

  But Falsta had never been the type to concede anything. Even as he blinked furiously at the ale still running down into his eyes, his left hand jabbed like a knife inside his jacket and emerged with a small hold-out blaster.

  He was in the process of lining up the weapon when Han shot him under the table. Falsta fell forward, his right arm still raised in Chewbacca’s grip, his hold-out blaster clattering across the tabletop before it came to a halt. Chewbacca held that pose another moment, then lowered Falsta’s arm to the table, deftly removing the blaster from the dead man’s hand as he did so.

  For a half-dozen seconds Han didn’t move, gripping his blaster under the table, his eyes darting around the cantina. The place had gone quiet, with practically every eye now focused on him. As far as he could tell, no one had drawn a weapon, but most of the patrons at the nearest tables had their hands on or near their holsters.

  Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “You all saw it,” Han called, though he doubted more than a few of them actually had. “He shot first.”

  There was another moment of silence. Then, almost casually, hands lifted from blasters, heads turned away, and the low conversation resumed.

  Maybe this sort of thing happened all the time in Reggilio’s. Or maybe they all knew Falsta well enough that no one was going to miss him.

  Still, it was definitely time to move on. “Come on,” Han muttered, holstering his blaster and sliding around the side of the table. They would go back to the spaceport area, he decided, poke around the cantinas there and see if they could snag a pick-up cargo. It almost certainly wouldn’t net them enough to pay off Jabba, but it would at least get them off Wukkar. He stood up, giving the cantina one final check—

  “Excuse me?”

  Han spun around, reflexively dropping his hand back to the grip of his blaster. But it was just an ordinary human man hurrying toward him.

  Or rather, most of a man. Much of the other’s face was covered in a flesh-colored medseal that had been stretched across the skin and hair, with a prosthetic eye bobbing along at the spot where his right eye would normally be.

  It wasn’t just any eye, either. It was something alien-designed, glittering like a smaller version of an Arconian multifaceted eye. Even in the cantina’s dim light the effect was striking, unsettling, and strangely hypnotic.

  With a jolt, Han realized he’d been staring and forced his gaze away. Not only was it rude, but a visual grab like that was exactly the sort of trick a clever assassin might use to draw his victim’s attention at a critical moment.

  But the man’s hands were empty, with no blaster or blade in sight. In fact, his right hand wouldn’t have been of any use anyway. Twisted and misshapen, it was wrapped tightly in the same medseal as the man’s face. Either it had been seriously damaged or else there was a prosthetic under there that had come from the same aliens who’d supplied him with that eye. “You might want to see about getting a different eye,” Han suggested, relaxing a bit.

  “I need to see about a great many things,” the man said, stopping a couple of meters back. His remaining eye flicked to Han’s blaster, then rose with an effort back to his face. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he continued. “My name is Eanjer—well, my surname isn’t important. What is important is that I’ve been robbed of a great deal of money.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Han said, backing toward the door. “You need to talk to Iltarr City Security.”

  “They can’t help me,” Eanjer said, taking one step forward with each backward one Han took. “I want my money back, and I need someone who can handle himself and doesn’t mind working outside law or custom. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping I could find someone who fit both those criteria.” His eye flicked to Falsta’s body. “Having seen you in action, it’s clear that you’re exactly the type of person I’m looking for.”

  “It was self-defense,” Han countered, picking up his pace. The man’s problem was probably some petty gambling debt, and he had no intention of getting tangled up in something like that.

  But whatever else Eanjer might be, the man was determined. He picked up his pace to match Han’s, staying right with him. “I don’t want you to do it for free,” he said. “I can pay. I can pay very, ver
y well.”

  Han slowed to a reluctant halt. It was probably still something petty, and hearing the man out would be a complete waste of time. But sitting around a spaceport cantina probably would be, too.

  And if he didn’t listen, there was a fair chance the pest would follow him all the way to the spaceport. “How much are we talking about?” he asked.

  “At a minimum, all your expenses,” Eanjer said. “At a maximum—” He glanced around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “The criminals stole over a hundred and sixty-three million credits. If you get it back, I’ll split it with you and whoever else you call in to help you.”

  Han felt his throat tighten. This could still be nothing. Eanjer might just be spinning cobwebs.

  But if he was telling the truth …

  “Fine,” Han said. “Let’s talk. But not here.”

  Eanjer looked back at Falsta’s body, a shiver running through him. “No,” he agreed softly. “Any place but here.”

  “The thief’s name is Avrak Villachor,” Eanjer said, his single eye darting around the diner Han had chosen, a more upscale place than the cantina and a prudent three blocks away. “More precisely, he’s the leader of the particular group involved. I understand he’s also affiliated with some large criminal organization—I don’t know which one.”

  Han looked across the table at Chewbacca and raised his eyebrows. The Wookiee gave a little shrug and shook his head. Apparently, he’d never heard of Villachor, either. “Yeah, there are lots to choose from,” he told Eanjer.

  “Indeed.” Eanjer looked down at his drink as if noticing it for the first time, then continued his nervous scanning of the room. “My father is—was—a very successful goods importer. Three weeks ago, Villachor came to our home with a group of thugs and demanded he sign over his business to Villachor’s organization. When he refused—” A barely perceptible shudder ran through his body. “They killed him,” he said, his voice almost too low to hear. “They just … they didn’t even use blasters. It was some kind of fragmentation grenade. It just tore him …” He trailed off.

  “That what happened to your face?” Han asked.

  Eanjer blinked and looked up. “What? Oh.” He lifted his medsealed hand to gently touch his medsealed face. “Yes, I caught the edge of the blast. There was so much blood. They must have thought I was dead …” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away the memory. “Anyway, they took everything from his safe and left. All the corporate records, the data on our transport network, the lists of subcontractors—everything.”

  “Including a hundred and sixty-three million credits?” Han asked. “Must have been a pretty big safe.”

  “Not really,” Eanjer said. “Walk-in, but nothing special. The money was in credit tabs, a million credits per. A hip pouch would hold them all.” He hitched his chair a little closer to the table. “But here’s the thing. Credit tabs are keyed to the owner and the owner’s designated agents. With my father now dead, I’m the only one who can get the full value out of them. For anyone else, they’re worth no more than a quarter, maybe half a percent of the face value. And that’s only if Villachor can find a slicer who can get through the security coding.”

  “That still leaves him eight hundred thousand,” Han pointed out. “Not bad for a night’s work.”

  “Which is why I have no doubt that he’s currently hunting for a slicer to do the job.” Eanjer took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. The business records Villachor stole don’t matter. All the people who worked for us were there specifically and personally because of my father, and without him they’re going to fade away into the mist. Especially since the credit tabs were on hand because we were preparing to pay out for services received. You don’t pay a shipper, he doesn’t work for you anymore.”

  Especially if that shipper was actually a smuggler, which was what Han strongly suspected was behind the family’s so-called import business. He still wasn’t sure if Eanjer himself knew that, suspected it, or was completely oblivious. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want us to break into Villachor’s place—you know where that is, by the way?”

  “Oh, yes,” Eanjer said, nodding. “It’s right here in Iltarr City. It’s an estate called Marblewood, nearly a square kilometer worth of grounds surrounding a big mansion.”

  “Ah,” Han said. Probably the big open space in the northern part of the city that he’d spotted as he was bringing the Falcon in. At the time, he’d guessed it was a park. “You want us to go there, break into wherever he’s keeping the credit tabs, steal them, and get out again. That about cover it?”

  “Yes,” Eanjer said. “And I’m very grateful—”

  “No.”

  Eanjer’s single eye blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve got the wrong man,” Han told him. “We’re shippers, like your father. We don’t know the first thing about breaking into vaults.”

  “But surely you know people who do,” Eanjer said. “You could call them. I’ll split the money with them, too. Everyone can have an equal share.”

  “You can call them yourself.”

  “But I don’t know any such people,” Eanjer protested, his voice pleading now. “I can’t just pick up a comlink and ask for the nearest thief. And without you—” He broke off, visibly forcing himself back under control. “I saw how you handled that man in the cantina,” he said. “You think fast and you act decisively. More important, you didn’t kill him until you had no choice. That means I can trust you to get the job done, and to deal fairly with me when it’s over.”

  Han sighed. “Look—”

  “No, you look,” Eanjer bit out, a hint of anger peeking through the frustration. “I’ve been sitting in cantinas for two solid weeks. You’re the first person I’ve found who gives me any hope at all. Villachor’s already had three weeks to find a slicer for those credit tabs. If I don’t get them out before he does, he’ll win. He’ll win everything.”

  Han looked at Chewbacca. But the other was sitting quietly, with no hint as to what he was thinking or feeling. Clearly, he was leaving this one totally up to Han. “Is it the money you really want?” he asked Eanjer. “Or are you looking for vengeance?”

  Eanjer looked down at his hand. “A little of both,” he admitted.

  Han lifted his mug and took a long swallow. He was right, of course. He and Chewbacca really weren’t the ones for this job.

  But Eanjer was also right. They knew plenty of people who were.

  And with a hundred and sixty-three million credits on the line …

  “I need to make a call,” he said, lowering his mug and pulling out his comlink.

  Eanjer nodded, making no move to leave. “Right.”

  Han paused. “A private call.”

  For another second Eanjer still didn’t move. Then, abruptly, his eye widened. “Oh,” he said, getting hastily to his feet. “Right. I’ll, uh, I’ll be back.”

  Chewbacca warbled a question. “It can’t hurt to ask around,” Han told him, keying in a number and trying to keep his voice calm. A hundred and sixty-three million. Even a small slice of that would pay off Jabba a dozen times over. And not just Jabba, but everyone else who wanted a piece of Han’s head surrounded by onions on a serving dish. He could pay them all off his back, and still have enough for him and Chewie to run free and clear wherever they wanted. Maybe for the rest of their lives. “I just hope Rachele Ree’s at home and not off on a trip somewhere.”

  To his mild surprise, she was home.

  “Well, hello, Han,” she said cheerfully when Han had identified himself. “Nice to hear from you, for a change. Are you on Wukkar? Oh, yes—I see you are. Iltarr City, eh? Best Corellian food on the planet.”

  Chewbacca rumbled a comment under his breath. Han nodded sourly. His comlink was supposedly set up to prevent location backtracks, but electronic safeguards never seemed to even slow Rachele down. “Got a question,” he said. “Two questions. First, have you heard anything about a high-level break-in
and murder over the last month or so? It would have been at an import company.”

  “You talking about Polestar Imports?” Rachele asked. “Sure—it was the talk of the lounges about three weeks ago. The owner was killed, and his son apparently went underground.”

  “Well, he’s bobbed back up again,” Han said. “Is the son’s name Eanjer, and was he hurt in the attack?”

  “Let me check … yes—Eanjer Kunarazti. As to whether he was hurt … the article doesn’t say. Let me check one of my other sources … yes, looks like it. His blood was found at the scene, anyway.”

  “Good enough,” Han said. He hadn’t really thought Eanjer was pulling a scam, but it never hurt to check. “I mean, not good, but—”

  “I know what you mean,” Rachele said, with what Han could imagine was a sly smile. “Second question?”

  “Can you run a few names and see if any of them is in spitting distance of Wukkar right now?” Han asked. “Eanjer’s offered me the job of getting back the money that was stolen.”

  “Really,” Rachele said, sounding bemused. “You been branching out since I saw you last?”

  “Not really,” Han said. Fighting a battle or two for the Rebel Alliance didn’t qualify as branching out, he told himself firmly. “He just likes the way I do things.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Rachele countered dryly. “No problem. Who are you looking for?”

  Han ran down all the names he could think of, people who were both competent and reasonably trustworthy. Considering how many years he’d spent swimming through the galaxy’s fringe, it was a surprisingly short list. He added three more names at Chewbacca’s suggestion, and pointedly ignored the Wookiee’s fourth offering. “That’s it,” he told Rachele. “If I think of anyone else I’ll call you back.”

  “Sure,” Rachele said. “Did your new friend mention the potential take? Some of these people will want to know that up front.”

  Han smiled tightly, wishing he were there to see her expression. “If we get it all, we’ll be splitting a hundred and sixty-three million.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence at the other end. “Really,” Rachele said at last. “Wow. You could practically hire Jabba himself for that amount.”