Star Wars: Millennium Falcon

by James Luceno

  “What does Taunt have to gain by sabotaging my case?”

  “We're working on it,” Quire said with a note of impatience.

  “Is there any word on the witness?”

  “A ship launched soon after the abduction. We have evidence that links it to Taunt. We're trying to determine where it was headed when it jumped to hyperspace.”

  “Can't we—”

  “Stop for moment,” Quire said, holding up a hand, then pulling a holoimage from her satchel and showing it to Oxic. “Recognize him?”

  “I don't think much of the outfit, but of course I do.” He cut his eyes to her. “You found him?”

  “You might say that he found us. The image was captured yesterday—on Holess.”

  Oxic looked as if she were speaking an unknown language.

  She laughed. “It's not often I get to see you speechless.”

  “How …,” Oxic stuttered.

  “Jadak and Poste—the kid he partnered with on Nar Shaddaa— were the two that infiltrated the media platform and put the hueche image onscreen. There's every reason to believe that they also had something to do with transporting the Colicoid to the spaceport. And perhaps worse for you, I suspect that Jadak may have recognized me.”

  Oxic felt behind him for a seat and dropped into it. “Jadak is in league with Rej Taunt? How would they even know each other?” He looked numb. “Didn't you tell me that Jadak was busy searching for his old ship?”

  “I continue to believe that,” Quire said.

  Oxic waited.

  “Suppose for a moment that Taunt knows where the Stellar Envoy can be found.”

  Oxic frowned. “If we're going to deal in theories, then suppose for a moment that Taunt is trying to send me the message that he knows the location of the treasure.” The veins in Oxic's temples bulged. “If he beats me to the prize after all these years—”

  “We've managed to reach out to someone inside Carcel,” Quire said. “Taunt practically runs the show, but our man has promised to keep an eye out for Jadak and Poste.”

  Oxic shook his head in disbelief. “We're looking for Jadak and he comes to us … Stranger things have happened, I'm sure, though none occur to me.”

  “It is an unexpected and unparalleled honor to speak to you, Captain Han Solo,” Dax Doogun said through the engineering station's enunciators. Onscreen the pachydermoid's velvety blue face was spotted and his snout was shriveled. “I've followed your heroic exploits for forty years.”

  “Another adoring fan,” Leia sighed. Allana laughed quietly alongside her.

  Han shot them a glance, then returned his attention to the comm. “Thanks, Dax. Sorry I never got to see your circus. Vistal Purn made it sound like a real barrel of taurill.”

  “More fun I never had,” the Ortolan said. “But the best things in life come with an expiration date, is it not so?”

  “No arguing with it, Dax,” Han said with sudden seriousness. “Like we said in our message, we're wondering if you can tell us anything about how Molpol acquired the Millennium Falcon.”

  “I most certainly can, Han Solo. I purchased her myself from an itinerant doctor named Parlay Thorp. Visited many a remote world, enacting many a medical miracle, Parlay Thorp did. An ‘unshod physician,’ as they're known here on Agora.”

  “Thorp's still alive?”

  “Oh, yes, and probably will be for some time to come.”

  Han traded big grins with Leia and Allana. Even C-3PO was visibly thrilled by the news.

  “Do you know where we can find him, Dax?”

  “Her,” Doogun corrected. “Dr. Thorp is a human female.”

  “Wow!” Leia and Allana said in unison.

  “She did quite well for herself with the credits I paid for the Millennium Falcon. Opened a research facility on Hijado, then a clinic on Enferm. Subsequent to that, Dr. Thorp became a noted expert in aging, rejuvenation, and longevity.”

  “And nowadays?”

  “Currently she heads up research at the Aurora Medical Facility on Obroa-skai.”

  During the long years of struggles to defeat the last of the Imperial warlords, the Falcon spent as much time grounded as she did in flight, and Han was spending as much to repair her as it might have cost him to purchase a newer ship. On those rare occasions when Han and Chewbacca turned to outside help, some old-hand mechanic would invariably remark that the Falcon's parts were in fine working order but that she was unhappy being a military ship and needed to get back to her roots.

  Even if Han had no such desire.

  He'd been a pauper, a pirate, a pilot, a smuggler, an Imp, and a thief, and had achieved a contentment he never would have thought possible. Leia completed him, and the twins, then Anakin brought him immense joy.

  And just what were the Falcon's roots, in any case? Serving the needs of smugglers and traders by carrying cargo to remote areas of the galaxy?

  Twice Han had started out on journeys to discover the ship's ancestry, and twice he had allowed himself to become sidetracked. The first time was shortly before he and Leia had embarked on a trip to Tatooine, which had ended up filling in many of the most important blanks in Leia's past. The second time was shortly before his trip to the Koornacht Cluster, from which he had returned with physical scars that had never entirely healed.

  After that he asked himself how much he really wanted to know about the ship's past. Already she had been stolen on Dathomir, drafted into serving in a Kessel mercenary fleet, repaired by R2-D2, and rebuilt and upgraded by a New Republic tech team. She'd answered to the aliases Sunfighter Franchise, Sweet Surprise, and Shadow Bird, among others … Maybe he wanted to convince himself that the Falcon's real life had begun and would end with him. Suppose he should learn that the ship had been used for evil purposes—by the Empire or by a Jedi Knight who had strayed from the light side of the Force? Unconditional love had never been his strong suit, and sometimes history and love just weren't enough to warrant forgiveness.

  He drew a hard line, Leia always said.

  Over the years, he had armored himself in the same way he had added alloy to the Falcon. He was as suspicious of outsiders as the Falcon's sensors were, and sometimes as conflicted as were the ship's trio of droid brains. He was every bit as jumpy and restless as the YT, if not as prone to enigmatic breakdowns.

  So maybe his uneasiness about learning the full truth of the Falcon's ancestry had owed to apprehension regarding what he might discover about himself.

  “WE'RE LOOKING FOR A HAIRSTYLIST.”

  “Guess you've been looking for your entire life.”

  Keeping a straight face, the Balosar planted his hands on his hips and rocked back and forth on his feet, as if awaiting Jadak's comeback.

  “I think he wants to be helpful,” Poste said, appraising the humanoid. “Just try not to feed him another straight line.”

  Jadak nodded dubiously. “This being's a specialist—”

  “You don't need a specialist, you need an expert.”

  Antenepalps quivering slightly, the Balosar took stock of Jadak's mood. Sensing frustration rather than anger, he grinned.

  “Once more,” Poste said. “Skip to the gist.”

  “Her name is Zenn Bien.”

  The Balosar's grin blossomed into a smile. “You should have said so to begin with.” He gestured for them to turn left at the corner. “Four blocks down from there.”

  Jadak watched the colorfully dressed humanoid saunter off. As un-governed as Holess was law abiding, New Balosar seemed to have attracted every joker in the galaxy. A holosign at the spaceport welcoming new arrivals read: NATASI DAALA IS CHIEF OF STATE, SO WHY GIVE A POODOO?

  It was the last place Jadak would have expected to find a former owner of the Stellar Envoy—or the Second Chance—but Rej Taunt had assured him and Poste that Zenn Bien was here. Taunt's underlings had dropped them off on the way to wherever it was they were delivering their Colicoid cargo. Taunt had made a point of saying that while Zenn Bien had never actually ow
ned the ship, she could probably tell them where it had ended up. Jadak took in stride the fact that the YT had had a female pilot, but he had been surprised to learn that Bien was Sullustan.

  “Someone must've installed a smaller pilot's chair,” Poste had remarked.

  Jadak had also been surprised to learn that his opponent in the race for whatever treasure the Republic Group had buried was a high-powered human attorney named Lestra Oxic. The HoloNet listed millions of references to Oxic, but Jadak had found as much as he needed in the first entry he'd called up. Oxic's face had been among the distinguished dozens of holoimages on display in Sompa's office at Aurora Medical. The lawyer had been celebrated even as far back as the Clone Wars, and had associated with some of the same members of the Republic Group whom Jadak had answered to. One of those members had to have told Oxic about the treasure and about Jadak as well, since it was likely that Oxic, hiding behind Core Health and Life, had been covering the costs of Jadak's prolonged reawakening. What Oxic didn't seem to realize was that the genuine key to finding the treasure was the YT-1300.

  Regrettably, Jadak was no closer to solving the ship's place in the puzzle than he had been before recalling that the code phrase the Senators had given him was a mnemonic device. He had spent most of the jump from Holess with Poste's wand and notepad in hand in a futile effort to decipher the phrase. He had run the words restore Republic honor to the galaxy through the few simple decryption methods he knew, and dozens more he was able to access through the HoloNet. He dismissed that the phrase was an anagram, but he had toyed with possibilities nevertheless.

  Senators Zar, Des'sein, and Largetto had said that the Antarian Ranger on Toprawa who was to accept delivery of the YT was expecting Jadak, and that the phrase had been designed as a memory aid for her. So she must have known in advance what was expected of her, if and when a time should arrive to retrieve the treasure.

  The mnemonic phrase told her how to do it.

  Then there was the modification the Jedi had made to the Stellar Envoy. Were the modification and the mnemonic phrase linked in some way, or did the modification assure that the Envoy would be able to execute her task? Was that what Senator Largetto meant when she said that the Envoy would handle the rest of it?

  Perhaps the answer would have to wait until he found the ship.

  Closing on The Kindest Cut, as Zenn Bien's salon was called, they passed half a dozen café-emporiums stocked with balo mushrooms, ryll spice, and a host of other mind-altering organics outlawed on other worlds. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists dressed as vibrantly as the indigenous humanoids, and many of them were sporting earbeads that allowed them to hear in the Balosars' natural subsonic range.

  The planet's polluted namesake world in the Core had by the end of the Republic era become a haven for criminals and death stick addicts, but the new iteration was unspoiled and arguably the most tolerant and crime-free planet in its sector of the galaxy. Some of that was due to the soporific substances that drew visitors from across the galaxy. But the planet's youth culture was equally responsible. Many of the young who came were artists, whose dreams of success often wound up taking a backseat to languor. Why strive to create when New Balosar's pleasant climate, toothsome inexpensive cuisine, plethora of sensual entertainments, and continuous pulse of subsonic music were more than just about anyone could ask for from life?

  “There's a story on Nar Shaddaa about a Hutt crime lord who wanted to open a death stick processing plant on New Balosar,” Poste said as they walked. “The Hutt figured that the Balosars' immunity to toxins would make them ideal workers. What happened, though, was that the Balosars kept consuming all the balo mushrooms he delivered without turning a single batch into death stick extract.”

  If the planet was a veritable melting pot for sentients, then The Kindest Cut was a kind of saucepan for the galaxy's most diminutive species. Scarcely through the door Jadak spied several Chadra-Fan, a pair of Ugnaughts, three Squibs, and an entire warren-clan of Sullustans. In chairs of varying sizes, hirsute beings of larger stature were having their coats combed, their fur oiled, their claws filed and lacquered, beards and mustaches waxed, manes cut and styled. In one chair sat the first Wookiee whom Jadak had seen in, well, sixty-two years. New Balosar's most industrious enterprise, The Kindest Cut was tonsorial beautification on a grand scale, with fuzz and fleece as thick in the air as spring pollen on Taanab.

  Jadak asked to see Zenn Bien, and he and Poste sat down to wait. A Bimm served them steaming cups of herbal tea, and a Jawa set a basket of cookies on the table they shared. The salon's Sullustan owner wasn't long in arriving. Judging by the droop in her dewflaps, Jadak put her age at seventy-five standard years. But she was otherwise spry, clear-eyed, and pink-skinned, with a tattooed forehead and lustrous plaits that spilled from the back of a stylish bonnet.

  “You must be the ones Rej Taunt told me to expect,” she said in staccato Basic.

  Jadak supplied the same aliases they had given the crime boss on Carcel.

  “He told you that I never actually owned the Second Chance?”

  “He told us.”

  “He said you're seeking the ship for nostalgic reasons.”

  Jadak nodded. “That's a good way to put it. My uncle owned it before Taunt.”

  Her round ears twitched, and she sighed. She took a seat opposite Poste, her feet dangling in the air. “Perhaps I should tell you the full story first.”

  “I hope it has a good ending,” Poste said.

  She glanced at him. “Let's just say that it ends.”

  Zenn Bien, whose name meant “tranquil breeze,” didn't realize until she left Sullust that beings had not been created entirely equal. As a member of a bipedal near-human species, she was afforded a bit more respect than insectoids and saurians, but as a member of a diminutive near-human species she was both literally and figuratively looked down on by countless varieties of humanoids, from Falleen to Bith to Duros and Gotals. Despite the fact that each species was blessed with unique talents and abilities, size seemed to matter most. And yet the discrimination she experienced was never enough to send her scurrying back to the safe inclusiveness of Sullust. Not when there were so many worlds to explore and adventures to be had, whether you were 1.3 meters tall or 2.5.

  Tuerto was a world that had attracted intrepid Sullustans before her, although even on Tuerto short beings received short shrift. Jobs were hard to come by, and anonymity was a constant companion. However, when you're a being of natural technical expertise who can see in the dark and memorize a map at a glance, opportunities of an illegal sort present themselves, and it wasn't long before Zenn Bien found her way into one of them.

  Ship theft, she convinced herself after committing the first of many such acts, was not in the same league as shipjacking, in which violence almost always played a part and victims were often injured while trying to hold on to their property. Also, victims of ship theft were usually reimbursed for their loss by insurance companies; so sometimes you were actually doing beings a favor by separating them from vessels they couldn't really afford to own or operate.

  None of the vessels Zenn Bien stole in her first couple of years in business were for her personal use. Nine times out of ten she worked for crime families that filled orders for beings in need of a certain class of ship, or obsessed with one ship in particular. Rarely did she see a ship after she had done her part—overriding security, disabling a wide array of tracking and anti-theft devices, hot-scrambling it. Most stolen vessels were piloted to far-flung worlds where registries were altered and telesponders swapped, and the ships began new lives under new ownership.

  Quip Fargil was one of the few humans on Tuerto she counted as both employer and friend. A notorious joyrider, Quip had learned much of what he knew from Zenn Bien, and on two occasions only had hired her to steal a ship for resale. When he approached her about adding a third to the list, she had to suppress a strong urge to talk him out of it. But Quip was nothing if not persuasive.
/>   “A fifty-year-old YT-Thirteen-hundred,” he told her. “It's been in Imperial impound for so long, no one will even know it's gone.”

  “What do you want with a fifty-year-old freighter?”

  “We're going to jump it to the Tungra sector, strip it, and sell it for parts.”

  “Freighter parts?”

  “It's a YT-Thirteen-hundred, fem. Parts for those ships sell for a small fortune in the Outer Rim.”

  She laughed at the foolhardiness of the idea. “You know how much fuel a trip like that will require?”

  He had an answer for that as well. “We're going to put in at Sriluur on the way. I've got a contact there that can get us fuel at wholesale— without the Imperial tax. He'll ride with us to the Tungra and supervise the dismantling himself. He already has a slew of junkyard owners lined up.”

  “How much are you planning to pay me?”

  “Ten for helping get the ship out of impound, another fifteen for piloting it to Sriluur and the Tungra, plus fifteen percent of what we make on the parts after costs are met.” He paused, then added: “More than enough to pay for that operation on your eyes.”

  As with many Sullustans, her corneas were already showing signs of deterioration. Corrective surgery was certainly preferable to having to wear spectral goggles for the rest of her life.

  “Where's the impound facility?”

  “Practically next door. The Nilash system. I've also got a contact there who's going to make things easy for us.”

  “An Imperial contact?”

  “You know what enlisted-ratings make? You might as well be a stormtrooper the way you're forced to live.”

  “So paying him falls under the category of costs.”

  “Right.”

  “And your friend on Sriluur?”

  “He's satisfied to take a split of the profits.”

  Zenn Bien took a day to decide, and told Quip she'd do it.