Last Shot

by Daniel José Older

  The junk hold shook with another explosion, but it didn’t matter; Lando was at the edge. Without stopping he hurtled out into open space, arms spread to either side, and awaited his doom.

  Instead, something grabbed his wrist and clamped down hard.

  Something else grabbed the other one. He glanced to either side, tears in his eyes, and saw the face of his old friend.

  He must’ve died and not felt it.

  L3’s face was on either side of him. She had come to bring him to heaven, or wherever it was scoundrels and gamblers went when they died after saving the galaxy from imminent doom (twice now, but who was counting?).

  “Come on, General Calrissian,” one of the L3s said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Their jetpacks ignited at the same time, blasting all three of them forward as a spectacular explosion erupted behind them and then everything went dark.

  “WHOA!” HAN AND TAKA YELLED at the same time as another explosion ripped through the junk hold. The blast tore the side rudder off one of the gunships, sending it spiralling into the destruction. The other had lurched out of the way and then burst off into the Remnants.

  Han growled, blasting after it.

  “Do you think…?” Kaasha said quietly. Her voice trailed off.

  “I think Lando’s all right,” Han said. “Somehow. Chewie, too. But right now, we have to stop Gor. Lando said he’d try to make a getaway in that ship.”

  Up ahead, the F-9 veered sharply around a small cluster of ice and then shot upward and out of range. Han gunned it, blasting through the ice in a frontal charge toward Gor. Ben. Leia. Even with the junk hold destroyed, they could still be in danger. As long as this madman was loose, no one was safe.

  The F-9 slowed and then spun toward them, laser cannons blazing.

  Good, Han thought. And probably smart—there was no way a gunship could outrun the Chevalier and Gor surely knew it. His only option was to turn and fight.

  “Let’s close this out,” Han said, letting two torpedoes fly as he shoved the engines into overdrive in their wake. The F-9’s laser fire slammed across the Chevalier’s nose, rattling it, but Han didn’t care, didn’t slow, didn’t even bother adjusting more shield power toward the front.

  Gor blasted one torpedo out of the sky and tried to swing out of the way of the other, managing to only get clipped by it as it streaked past. Han was closing on him now, could just make out his long face through the blastshield as the laser cannons lit up again.

  “Han…” Taka warned. “The shields can’t—”

  Han swung the Chevalier down suddenly, letting the laser barrage pass harmlessly overhead, and then arced it slightly upward so they were lancing toward the F-9 from below. Then he let loose. All of the Chevalier’s cannons came to life at once, and the last two torpedoes shrieked out, colliding into the F-9 with devastating force and sending eruptions of fire and smoke dancing across its hull.

  “He’s probably going to try to—” Taka said. “There!” A figure jettisoned out of the collapsing wreckage.

  Han sent a storm of laserfire right across Gor’s midsection, ripping him in half.

  “You know,” Taka said, “the thing about cutting people in half is it doesn’t always—”

  With another burst from the cannons, Gor’s head and torso exploded into nothing.

  “—take,” Taka finished. “Okay, that oughta do it.”

  “Now,” Han said. “Where the hell are Lando and Chewie?”

  “WHAT HAPPENED BACK THERE, EL?”

  L3 watched the galaxy flash past in long, shimmering streaks as the Falcon blasted them away from that terrible man and his diabolical little device. Organics couldn’t make any sense of those streaks, not most of them anyway, but L3 could. Each one contained its own hidden library of information, history, meaning; even the future seemed to lurk in those glistening stretches of stars through space. She almost felt bad for Lando; hyperspace was just pretty to him, an equation to be entered into the navicomputer and forgotten, an afterthought.

  “We had intercourse.”

  Right in line with his programming, Lando boggled at her. “Whoa! I was joking when I said you were looking for love earlier!” So predictable. But L3 would miss him when he was gone anyway. There was a comfort to their banter, even if she was always six steps ahead of him.

  “That’s what you call it when a conversation leads to the planting of seeds, isn’t it?” L3 said.

  He shrugged. “I mean, I guess. Was he any good? Seemed a little stiff to me.”

  The stars streaked past. There was Praxat Sil, part of the Sava system, where a whole civilization had risen and collapsed over the timing of an eclipse. There was Barabaras, a system so remote most organics still didn’t know it existed.

  “I mean, it was just a small pile of trash,” Lando reasoned. “I guess there’s still some possibilities there, though.”

  L3 mustered up an amiable shrug, but her thought processes were elsewhere. “I’ll leave it to you to imagine the possibilities of droid procreation.”

  “It’s one of my specialties actually,” Lando said, and he began rattling off a lurid list of organic-steeped barroom humor.

  L3 turned back to the soothing lines of the galaxy as it flashed past. The Phylanx had been a droid head, nestled deep within all that junk; which wasn’t exactly what she’d expected from the scattered intelligence reports that had come through. More than that, it had been a droid head programmed with a very long-term mission. One that even L3 couldn’t be sure she’d still be around to help dismantle. And there was clearly no reaching the thing now; they’d barely made it out intact this time, and all she’d been able to get was a quick scan of its internal processor.

  “Oh, you know another thing that could happen?” Lando rambled, chuckling to himself. “Like a droid orgy of some kind, but with astromechs and those old battle droids from the Clone Wars? And then they could make like astrobattle droid babies? That…that would be something.”

  Still: It was enough, what she’d gotten. It would have to be. A seemingly endless ream of numbers and code splayed out across her internal monitoring systems, a whole firewalled system of commands and automatic functions. The Phylanx would travel across the galaxy, strengthening its operational capacity and increasing its transmission range. And one day, years from now, Gor would input droid operational data into it and set them all off like a bomb, implanting the urge to kill in each of them. And that…that was the code L3 had to figure out how to develop a resistance to. It was a virus, and like any virus, it could be reversed, defeated.

  “Or like those guys with all the arms they use for freight work in the docking bays, whew! The possibilities!”

  L3 set to work taking the code apart piece by piece, reworking, turning it against itself. They slid out of hyperspace but the galaxy still seemed to like a fleeting dash of lights. This would be one of the most important tasks L3 had ever done, and she’d have to do it entirely in secret. Down the corridor from Lando’s living quarters, away from all the other chambers, her work space waited. There, she would begin programming a code of her own.

  The cumulative, self-generating function of the Phylanx’s programming was quite brilliant, L3 had to admit. It meant the head would gather pieces of space debris to it as it moved through the galaxy, using their parts to enhance itself, keep itself moving basically indefinitely, even in its maker’s absence.

  L3 would borrow the concept but better it. She would build a droid in her image, but—programmed with the antivirus code—it would be resistant to this madman’s murderous brainwashing attack. She would set it loose, and it would in turn build more of itself. They would scour the galaxy. They would find that device. She wasn’t sure if they’d be able to destroy it alone, but that was why she’d left something behind in the Phylanx’s programming, a little virus of her own design: doubt.
/>   They say when you take something, you’re supposed to give something back, too, right?

  It might take years to unravel, but that was all right; there was still plenty of time before Fyzen Gor’s plan came to fruition.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Lando said, bringing the Falcon down into the brightly lit landing bay at Saraf Cobar Station. “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know,” L3 said. “Not yet. But hopefully one day it will be.”

  PEEKPA SQUEAKED, POINTING AT THE sensor screen as they swooped toward the charred ruins of the junk hold.

  “Ah, we got something coming up from behind that ice shard,” Taka said. “Four somethings, in fact.”

  Han charged up the cannons and spun them toward the smoldering charred structural remains. Chewie and three other figures jetted a wide arc above it. Chewie was lugging a sack; Han presumed it was full of the recovered limbs of his Wookiee kin. The figures on either side of the trio were droids, and between them…“Lando!” Han, Taka, and Kaasha yelled at the same time.

  “Is he okay?” Kaasha gasped.

  “I can’t tell,” Taka said. “He looks unconscious.” They swung the Chevalier forward and then to the side. “Let’s find out.”

  * * *

  —

  The air lock spun open and Chewie led the two tall droids in, Lando slumped between them.

  “Lando!” Kaasha got to him first, and they eased his limp body into her arms as she slid to the ground with him. “What happened?” She pulled his helmet off and put her hands on his cheeks. “Lando?”

  “Ma sareen,” Lando whispered, eyes still closed.

  “Lando!” She lifted him up to her and squeezed.

  “Oof!”

  Han peered over Kaasha’s shoulder. “You okay, old buddy?”

  “I think I’m gonna make it,” Lando grunted. “If Kaasha doesn’t suffocate me.”

  “Don’t you even think of dying on me,” Kaasha growled.

  “What happened out there?” Han asked the droids.

  “The retrovirus finally went viral,” one of them said with what Han could’ve sworn was a smirk.

  “Huh?” Taka said.

  “Twelve years ago, our maker sent a slow-moving virus into the Phylanx while it was on a trial run through the galaxy. Its purpose was to counteract the virus that Gor had implanted in it—its mission, really. Then she used the information she’d gathered from her interaction with it to build us.”

  “Well,” the other one said, “she built him.” He nodded at the first droid. “And he built the rest of us.”

  “Kind of like a virus!”

  They high-fived. Everyone else traded bewildered glances.

  “What are you?”

  “The Elthree Assault Team,” the second one said. “Battle droids resistant to the particular homicidal droid virus that Gor was trying to infect the whole galaxy with.”

  “When the retrovirus finally took hold in the Phylanx, it started shedding all that junk across the galaxy in an effort to self-destruct.”

  “And alert the galaxy to its existence,” the first added.

  “It also put out a distress signal, but it took a while for us to gather back together and make it out here. Then we got caught up in the firefight with Gor’s Original Dozen squad.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Lando said, getting to his feet with Kaasha’s help, “you were right on time.”

  “What are you gonna do now that you’ve accomplished your mission?” Han asked.

  “Wander the galaxy fighting crime probably,” the first droid said with a shrug.

  The other one scoffed. “I, for one, am going on vacation. It’s been a long twelve years.”

  “Thank you,” Lando said. “You saved my life.”

  “We may or may not have been programmed to make sure you made it out okay,” the first one said. “Take care of yourself, Captain Calrissian.”

  They nodded at each other, then turned and disappeared out the air lock.

  * * *

  —

  “I knew you guys would be all right,” the flickering image of Leia said with a sly smile. Ben was on her hip, playing with her hair, and Han was pretty sure he’d never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life.

  “So did we,” Lando said, leaning over toward Han to make sure he showed up in her holo.

  “Did you really?” Han asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Okay, no,” Lando admitted. “I really thought I was gonna die back there.”

  Taka leaned forward from behind them. “I knew we’d be all right, too, Senator Organa.”

  “Thanks for taking care of them,” Leia said.

  “Oh, they took plenty good care of me, too.”

  Outside, the stars sped past as the Chevalier sped back toward Chandrila with the Vermillion in tow. The world had almost collapsed around Han once again. How many times was that now? He’d lost track. Imminent catastrophe had simply become the norm, even in peacetime. And if he was being honest, he’d loved almost every minute. Except the ones when he really did think he was gonna die. But also: He had missed Leia deeply. It wasn’t the same without her.

  Even when he couldn’t reach her on the comm, she’d stayed with him like a ghost. He’d hoped she’d be proud of him, wondered what she’d think about each step along the way.

  Han shook his head, eyebrows raised.

  “What is it?” Leia asked.

  “Nothing,” Han said. “I love you.”

  “We know,” Lando and Taka groaned.

  “All right, all right,” Han said. “Can I speak to my wife in private, please? Sheesh.”

  Taka and Lando cleared out, chuckling.

  “What’s wrong?” Leia said sweetly. She’d put Ben down and sent him off to play. “Tired of saving the world? Come on home to me, love.”

  The words felt like a healing balm over his tired body, but one he couldn’t fully allow himself to accept. “That’s just it,” Han said. “It feels right being out here, but it feels wrong that it feels right. And then I…” He waved his hand uselessly. “Then I just want, no, I need to be back with you and Ben. And then I am and I feel like nothing I do is right and all I want is to be out where I know how to do things.”

  Leia laughed. “Oh, Han…”

  “I have no idea what I’m doing!” Han finally blurted out, and it felt so good. “I don’t know how to be a father, I barely know how to be a husband. I’m just…I’m used to things that I can just…”

  Leia cocked an eyebrow. “Shoot?”

  Han threw his arms in the air, giving up. “Something like that.”

  Her eyes got stern, and Han put his face in his hands and shook his head, braced for the smackdown. “Han, you try. No one knows how to be a parent before they are one, not really. But you try. And then you fail, and then you figure out a better way. That’s what this is. There’s no one way.”

  Han looked up.

  “Even this—you’re terrible with words, Han…”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  “You know this. But you try, you old lug. You don’t just give up. You figure out a way. And yes, sometimes you gotta zoom off to figure things out, and that, up to a point, is okay.”

  “It is?”

  “Up to a point!” Leia snapped. “But yeah, do you think I don’t want a break from you sometimes? Besides, sometimes, I’m going to need to dash off, and you’re going to get to hang out with Ben all day. Got it?”

  Han nodded.

  “And sometimes”—that wild, mischievous glint flashed in her eye—“we’ll go off together, like we used to, and leave Ben with a sitter.”

  “Ha…just maybe not the culinary droid this time, please.”

  Han smiled and it felt like someone had finally opened an old dusty window inside him and
now the sunlight was pouring through.

  “Now come home, old man. I miss you.”

  “YOU THINK THIS’LL FIT ME?” Kaasha asked, holding up an elaborate green-and-silver top with firestone gems woven into the loose mesh fibers.

  Lando stroked his goatee and raised his eyebrows. “Mmmm…”

  “That’s not an answer,” Kaasha said.

  “It’s an enthusiastic yes, actually.”

  He snatched it out of her hands and passed it to the Saurin merchant along with a fifty-cred note.

  Kaasha narrowed her eyes. “Lando, you don’t have to—”

  “I know,” Lando said, taking his change. “But I did anyway.”

  The Saurin folded the top with great care and handed it up to Kaasha with a noble bow. “My lady.”

  “Thank you. And thank you, Lando, but I mean it.”

  Arms linked, they fell into an easy stroll along the line of fabric and basket vendors at Frander’s Bay. “I know you do,” Lando said. “And look…”

  “No, me first,” Kaasha interrupted, pulling Lando close as they walked. “Feel like I threw a lot at you in an unfair way and didn’t give you a chance to reply.”

  “And now that I’m trying to,” Lando said with a chuckle, “you cut me off.”

  Kaasha laughed. “I’m trying to apologize! For that and for…playing hard to get. Or whatever dumb game I was playing.”

  Lando waved her off. “You have nothing to apologize for and it wasn’t a dumb game. You had every reason to be wary of falling into something deep with me. Hell, I would’ve been, and I love throwing caution to the wind.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “But to answer your question…”

  “A love song for the lady, perhaps?” a wandering Ithorian asked, holding up a stringed instrument and striking an impressive pose.

  “Not just this minute,” Lando said as they passed. “It’s both.”

  “Hm?”

  “Both Landos are me. I just…that doesn’t mean I can’t make love last. I’m a hero and a scoundrel, Kaasha, and I always will be. I can’t stop being what I am. But what I can do, what I’ve never done before, is be your scoundrel.”