by Rae Carson
“How did you end up with the White Worms?” she asked. Time to put him on the spot for once.
Han ran a hand through his mussed brown hair. “I…I was on the street for a long time, running with gangs, doing odd jobs. I was glad when the White Worms took me in.”
“Parents?” she prodded. “A secret education, like Tsuulo?”
He opened his mouth, closed it. Then: “My old man was a lost prince, seventh in line to the throne of Hovea Nuket IV. He ran away when his family refused to bless his marriage to a dancing girl.”
Qi’ra blinked. “Liar.”
Han just grinned.
“How old are you?” Qi’ra asked.
He shrugged. “How should I know? When you’re on the streets, the time sort of blends together.”
Qi’ra laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I have no idea how old I am either. Eighteen-ish? Maybe? I’ve stopped growing, is all I can say.”
“That’s my best guess too,” he said. “Eighteen-ish.”
“So, back to your father. I take it you didn’t get along?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. I remember one night after he’d been drinking, he took me back to the freighter factory where he worked. We just sat on the fence, staring at the shipyard full of fancy new ships. He sipped his bottle of ale and kicked at the fence, and I remember it was getting really cold. So I asked him why he’d dragged me all the way out there, and he said, ‘I wanted you to see this. These ships. This is what I build. What I give to the galaxy. But no matter how many hours I put in, I’m nothing, a nobody.’” Han paused in the telling and looked her straight in the eye. “Then he said, ‘Han, my boy, when you grow up, don’t build ships like me. You’re meant for better. You’re meant to fly them.’”
Qi’ra didn’t know what to say. “That’s…that’s really…Wait. Are you lying again?”
“I guess you’ll never know.” At her frown he added hastily: “I’ll tell you one true thing, Qi’ra, something I haven’t told anyone, just because you told me about the Silo.”
“I’m listening.”
“The reason I want my own speeder, the reason I work so hard on it, risk so much for it.” He took a deep breath. “It’s the closest I’ll ever get to flying a starship.”
At last, something rang true. “I guess I can understand that. But did you or did you not run away from your parents?” she pressed.
Han avoided looking at her. “Actually, I’d rather not talk about that.”
She waited the space of three heartbeats. “Han,” she said softly, and his gaze snapped to hers. “It’s okay to have things you never want to talk about. Like I do.”
Some kind of understanding passed between them. It wasn’t a practical feeling, but she felt it the same way she would feel a fist in the gut. Or maybe a whispered breath on her ear.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “It’s okay.”
After another moment of comfortable silence, he added, “You know, I think I’ll be able to sleep now.”
“Me too,” she said.
She had two tattered, stained blankets on the shelf. She gave one to Han, who stretched out on the table and pillowed his head on his bent arm. Within moments, his chest fell and rose with the deep, even breathing of sleep.
Qi’ra laid down on her cot and pulled the other blanket up to her chin. Her last thought was that a boy she hardly knew had come into this place she never shared with anyone, was in fact sleeping beside her, and she was glad he was here.
It felt like only moments had passed when Tsuulo woke Han to take a watch shift, and a few hours after that, when the sun was rising in an uncharacteristically clear sky, Han finally woke Qi’ra.
“Already?” she said, yawning and stretching.
“It’s daytime out there,” he whispered so as not to wake Tsuulo, who was curled up on the table, the blanket kicked down to his feet. “Maybe we should get going?”
“No, get some sleep,” Qi’ra said, rising. “We’re safe here for a while. Rest while you can. I’ll keep watch and come up with a plan.”
So that’s what they did. Han was asleep again as soon as his head hit the cot, and he didn’t stir until someone shook him awake.
“Han, get up, you lazy gwerp,” Tsuulo said in Huttese. “Qi’ra needs our help.”
Through sheer force of will, Han got to his feet. His muscles were stiff and sore, and his very bones ached. No surprise, since they’d been running all day and night with very little sleep or food.
Speaking of food…something smelled delicious. Qi’ra was at the table, and as he sat beside her, she handed him an eel skewer dripping with sauce. “I picked up some food for us this afternoon.”
“It’s afternoon?” he said. He grabbed his skewer and bit down. Sauce dripped down his chin, and he caught it with a finger, not wanting to waste a single drop. It didn’t taste particularly good, but it was better than the White Worm breakfast sludge, and he needed the energy it would provide. “With what money?” he asked with his mouth full.
“I always keep a few credits hidden here,” she said. “When I can.”
Light trickled into the space around the sorry excuse for a door and through an air vent above their heads. A few things about Qi’ra’s safe house had escaped his notice in the dark. Like the dried flowers sticking out of an old soup can on the shelf. The ratty cargo blanket that someone had embroidered with swirls of blue thread. And hanging above the head of the cot, a chandelier of sorts, made of old wire and bits of colored glass.
Qi’ra loved this place, and she loved beautiful things.
Gruffly, he said, “Tsuulo said you needed our help.”
“I’ve figured out how we can get back into town,” she said. “But I’m not sure where to go next or what we should do. I need your help deciding our next move.”
“I know what we should do,” Han said. “Run away to Kor Vella. We could get lost in that city, easy. No one there knows us.”
“Is running away your answer to everything?” Qi’ra said.
Han frowned. “I never run away from a fight. Well,” he amended, “unless I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.”
“Anyway, I’ve no doubt our descriptions are all over Kor Vella too,” she said. “They might not know about Tsuulo yet.” She indicated the Rodian with a lift of her chin. He sat at the other end of the table, fiddling with something he’d yanked off the speeder. “But you and I are made the moment we’re out in the open.”
“So what do you suggest?” Han asked.
“We need more information before we can decide anything. About that datacube. About why everyone wants it so badly. Your friend Tool tossed it to you, said to run for your life. That means he trusts you.”
“He might not be functional anymore,” Han pointed out. He didn’t like the way saying that made him feel. “Last I saw him, he was getting blasted.”
“What about the people he worked for? I think if we contacted them, let them know that Tool entrusted the datacube to you for a reason, they’d be forced to listen to us. They might extend some trust to us too.”
The same wind that had blown the clouds from the Corellian skies rattled the fuselage scrap that covered their doorway. Icy air gusted against Han’s cheeks. Tsuulo looked up from his project and said, “Finding the Droid Gotra is a better idea than tangling with a smuggling syndicate or the Empire. And even though none of them are looking for me, Lady Proxima has figured out by now that I’m helping you. So my vote is to contact Tool or his employer.”
“What did he say?” asked Qi’ra
“He votes we contact the Droid Gator.”
“Fine. How?”
Han rubbed at his chin. “Tool might still be alive.”
“Even if he’s not,” Tsuulo said, “I might be able to pull something from his memory banks or salvage his comm, find out who he communicated with last.”
The thought of sifting through the dead metal shell that used to be his friend mad
e the eel skewer sit poorly in Han’s belly. “I guess,” he said, and relayed Tsuulo’s words to Qi’ra.
“It would be a huge risk, going back to the Foundry,” she said.
Han shrugged, “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“I’ll ask the Force for its blessing,” Tsuulo said.
Han took the last bite of skewer, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and said, “You sure that’s how the Force works?”
Tsuulo slumped in his chair. “No.”
“Then why—?”
The spines on his head fluttered. “I don’t know anything, okay? No one will tell me anything about it! No one knows….” He swallowed hard, as if collecting himself. “There was this fellow who always loitered at a street corner near where I lived. Wore dirty robes, long beard; he was always preaching, handing out pamphlets. One day I finally took one. It led me to an underground museum in Coruscant. Everything there was illegal, and I shouldn’t have gone, but I was just a kid, barely twelve years old. I looked around. They had this book—well, an ancient manuscript—called the Annals of Light and Being. I read every page that was on display, and it just…made sense. It was like my eyes were opened, and I knew the Force was real.”
“What’s he talking about, Han?” Qi’ra asked.
“Converting to some religion.”
“Then, a couple years later, Imperials found out about the museum. They raided the place. The owner disappeared. The street preacher disappeared. The Annals disappeared. No one would tell me what happened to them, and no one could answer my questions about the Force. But I know it’s real. I don’t know how it works, but it helps me. Every day. I can feel it.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s talking about his feelings.”
“Ew,” she said.
“Listen, pal, I don’t care if you pray to a Force or a god or whatever. Can’t hurt, right?” Han expected a look of gratitude or something for his being so gracious.
Instead, Tsuulo’s one good antenna drooped with disappointment. “Sure,” he said. “Can’t hurt.”
“So about the Foundry,” Qi’ra said. “It’s a risk, but not so risky as continuing to fly blind. I say we go for it. See if we can find Tool, make contact with the Droid Gotra.”
There were so many reasons not to do it. The Kaldana thugs could be waiting for him. He could be faced with Tool’s nonfunctioning carcass. It was too near White Worm territory.
But Qi’ra was right; they were flying blind, and that was going to get them killed faster than anything.
“I agree. Tsuulo?”
“I agree.”
Han looked to Qi’ra. “You have a plan for getting us there?”
“I do. I thought about it all night.”
This ought to be good. “So let’s hear it.”
Qi’ra smiled, that enormous smile that was like the sun bursting through Corellian clouds. “We take the speeder.”
Han and Tsuulo gaped at her. “That’s it? All night, and that’s what you came up with?”
“Hey, a big part of figuring out the perfect plan is eliminating all the bad plans,” she said. “And I can assure you, I thoroughly examined and discarded at least ten alternate possibilities.”
“But that speeder is bright green!” he protested. “With Rodian antennae! Not exactly the best way to lay low. Everyone who sees that thing is going to remember it.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to take off the antennae. For now!” she added hastily when Tsuulo started to rise from the table. “We can reattach them later. You can do that, right?”
Tsuulo mumbled that he could.
“Reezo is probably looking everywhere for his speeder,” Han said. “Bee has freed him from the engine compartment by now, and it’s a good bet he’s mad as hell. And out for revenge.”
She shrugged. “It’s not like he’ll go to CorSec for help locating an illegal vehicle, right? And he’s looking for his Rodian speeder, driven by his Rodian brother. Now that most of the customizations have been stripped, we’ll be in a normal speeder, driven by you. Well, almost normal. It will still be bright green. But this is Corellia. Everyone customizes their speeder a little. We’ll blend right in.”
Han considered this and found a flaw in her reasoning. “You said descriptions of us are planetwide now, even as far as Kor Vella. We’re sure to be recognized.”
“We’ll have to wear hoods,” she conceded. “I was going to send Tsuulo into the Bottoms’ market to pick up a few cloaks. We’ll wear driving goggles too.”
“How will we pay for the cloaks and goggles?”
Tsuulo held up the project he was working on. “Bounce package,” the Rodian said. “I’ve modified it to work on droids and personal lifts as well as speeders. I’ll sell it in the market and buy some cloaks.”
Han was a little sorry to see the bounce package go. It had really saved their necks the night before, not to mention made him feel, if only for a moment, like he was flying. “You’ve thought this through,” he said.
“I have.”
They could keep running, but everything would eventually catch up to them. They needed to fix this, and in order to do that, they had to know more. “All right. Fine,” he said. “We’ll just drive right up to the Foundry like we belong there. When in doubt, brazen it out, right?”
A few hours later they were cloaked and goggled and speeding toward the Foundry. The sun was already low in the sky; they’d let Han sleep in a bit, and gathering their new clothes had taken some time. It would have been nice if they could have afforded some fresh water for bathing too, but you couldn’t have everything.
“We’ll get there right on time for shift change,” Qi’ra explained.
“We don’t have employee identichips,” Tsuulo pointed out. “We can’t just walk right in.”
“Sure we can,” Han said, steering into a busy thoroughfare. No one gave them a second glance. So far, so good. “I’ve walked into the Foundry plenty of times. You just stand in the employment line. Each day they pick a bunch of people to do some work under the table. Mostly cleanup, sometimes testing. The pay is terrible, and if you’re injured or killed, too bad for you. But it’s a way in.”
“How do we make sure we get picked?” Qi’ra asked.
Han smiled at her. “Trust me.”
“Something’s wrong,” Tsuulo said.
“What do you mean?” Han asked.
Tsuulo pointed to a group of stormtroopers marching through a fish market. “And there.” He pointed to a droid walking into an apartment building. “That’s a maintenance droid, and it’s carrying a gun.”
Qi’ra smacked Tsuulo’s hand down. “Don’t point,” she said. “It will draw attention.”
“But do you see?” he persisted. “There are more beings packing firepower today than I’ve ever seen since my family arrived on this awful planet.”
“I see it,” Qi’ra said. “I’ve been noticing it too.” Han couldn’t tell if she actually understood Tsuulo or if she put it together on a hunch. “We need to watch each other’s backs going into the Foundry.”
It took them less than an hour to get past Old Town and into the manufacturing district. The Foundry was a huge complex of buildings. Smokestacks that stretched as high as skyscrapers belched dirty smoke. Freighters took off and landed in the distance, hauling recently manufactured components through the Foundry’s small, dedicated spaceport. Other components were hauled out on freight speeders; a line of them headed toward the outskirts of the city to the shipyards, where component parts would be assembled into all sorts of starships, but mostly light freighters.
Han parked their speeder in the designated area. Tsuulo pulled out his datapad and encrypted the console controls. A good encryption wasn’t a guarantee against theft, but it would make amateurs and street thieves think twice.
The three of them kept their hoods up and their goggles on as they strode toward the massive metal gate and the line of ragged hopefuls waiting outside. There were hundreds of the
m, waiting to see if they’d get picked for work.
“You sure you can get us in?” Qi’ra asked.
“There are a lot more people than I expected,” he admitted.
“Han!”
“Hey, we might get lucky,” he said with a shrug.
Tsuulo began praying to the Force.
The sun was setting beyond the spaceport, taking the day’s little warmth with it. Hopeful workers huddled close, hands stuffed in sleeves and pockets, hoods up, threadbare jackets clipped tight. Everyone was weathered and wrinkled, hungry and cold.
“See, we’ve had some luck already,” Han whispered as they got in line. “This cold snap gives us a good reason to keep these cloaks on. And our driving goggles look like safety eyewear.”
Qi’ra gave him a look that could curdle milk.
A klaxon sounded, signaling end of shift. A moment later, the gate slid open and exhausted workers poured out, anxious to get home for the night. After the flood of beings became a mere trickle, it was followed by a group of humans in stiff blue uniforms. One woman held a datapad; a man carried a portable loudhailer.
The fellow with the loudhailer held it up and shouted, “We’re looking for some duct rats tonight. Volunteers please step forward.”
A murmur rose from the crowd and everyone shifted in place. Fully a third of the supplicants turned and left.
“I take it no one wants to be a ‘duct rat’?” Qi’ra whispered to Han.
“It’s the worst job in the Foundry,” he whispered back. Then he stepped forward, and Qi’ra and Tsuulo followed.
Over a hundred volunteers remained. The woman with the datapad pointed at a few and told them to go home. “Too big,” she said. “We need small bodies for small spaces.”
Han pushed his friends forward. “I’ve got some small bodies right here,” he called out. Then he bent his knees and hunched a little, trying to look slighter. “We’re experienced crawlers. We’ll get those ducts clean for you.”
The man with the loudhailer waved them through.
They hurried toward the entrance before anyone could change their minds or get a better look at them.