Mercy Kill

by Aaron Allston

  Chewie looked back toward the ship with an expression that told Han not to press his luck on that point. The Wookiee had never felt as deeply for the Falcon as Han had, and even Han knew the old girl would have to be retired someday. Sooner or later it would be the scrap heap for her—or a museum, more likely. That was an odd thought, but after all, the Falcon had made more than her share of history.

  But just now the key thing was to get Chewbacca calmed down, or away from the shield system—or, preferably, both.

  “Tomorrow,” Han said. “Back at it tomorrow. For now, let’s leave it, all right? Leia’s probably waiting dinner on us, anyway.”

  The mention of food seemed to brighten Chewbacca up—as Han had intended that it do. Wookiee management was a full-time chore, and then some. Now and then Han wondered just how much effort Chewbacca put into Han management. But that was another point to consider later. It was time to knock off for the day.

  Amazing, how times changed, how time changed life. After all the close calls, all the battles, all the captures and rescues and risks and victories Han had been through, now it came down to getting home to dinner. I’m a family man now, Han told himself, still a bit amazed by the fact. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all was how much he liked being one.

  Han Solo looked up into the evening sky of Coruscant. What was it now? Eighteen years? Eighteen years since he had hired on to fly a crazy old man named Ben Kenobi and a kid named Luke Skywalker out of Tatooine. Taking on that job had changed his life forever—and changed the course of galactic history, if you wanted to get grandiose about it.

  It was nine years since the defeat of Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Dark Jedi Master. Nine years since the birth of the twins, and just over seven since Anakin was born.

  “Captain Solo?”

  It was a female voice that pulled him out of his reverie. The voice was low and throaty, and came from behind him. Han did not recognize it. The unknown voice sounded dangerous, somehow. It was a little too quiet, too calm, too cool.

  “Yeah,” Han replied, turning around slowly. “My name is Solo.” A small, slight, dark-skinned human, a woman, stepped out of the shadows by the hangar entrance. She wore a dark blue uniform that might be one of the Republic Navy branches, but then it might not. Han was not up-to-date on what the navy was wearing these days. “Who might you be?” he asked.

  She came toward him, smiling calmly. He could see her a bit better now. She was young, maybe twenty-five standard years at most. Her eyes were set a bit wide apart, and a trifle glassy. Her gaze seemed to be a bit off-kilter, as if she were almost, but not quite, cross-eyed. She was looking right at Han, and yet he had the distinct impression that she was looking over his shoulder, into the middle distance—or into the next galaxy over. Her jet-black hair was done up in an elaborate braid that was coiled on top of her head.

  She walked toward him with an easy confidence that seemed to brook no discussion. “Glad to meet you,” she said. “You can call me Kalenda.”

  “All right,” Han said. “I can call you Kalenda. So what?”

  “So I have a job for you,” she said.

  That brought Han up short. A job? He was about to reply with some sort of flip remark, but then he stopped. That didn’t make sense. She obviously knew who Han was—which was not much of an accomplishment, as Han and Leia and Luke were famous throughout the Republic. But if she knew who he was, she would have to know he was no longer available for casual hire. Something wasn’t right. “Go on,” Han said, careful to keep his voice neutral.

  Kalenda shifted that strange gaze of hers so she was looking almost, but not quite, in the direction of Chewbacca. “Perhaps we should talk alone,” she said quietly.

  There was a low growl from Chewie, and Han did not even bother to glance over his shoulder at the Wookiee. He knew what he would see. Let Kalenda get a look at Chewie’s fangs. “Perhaps we shouldn’t,” he said. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say that Chewbacca can’t hear.”

  “Very well,” she said. “But perhaps, at least, the three of us could talk in private?”

  “Fine,” Han said. “Come on aboard the Falcon.”

  Kalenda frowned. Clearly, she didn’t like that idea either. The Falcon was Han’s turf. “Very well,” she said.

  Han gestured toward the ship with a sweep of his arm, and bowed very slightly, just enough to make it clear the gesture was sarcastic. “Right this way,” he said.

  * * *

  The probe droid hovered silently up into position, coming up over the wall of the hard stand area, then dropping in behind packing cases to keep out of sight. It was painted matte black, and was all but invisible in the deepening shadows. It watched the two humans and the Wookiee head up into the ship.

  It extended an audio monitor probe and aimed it at the Millennium Falcon. After a moment’s hesitation, it moved in closer to the ship. Doing so exposed it to a greater risk of detection, but the probe droid’s masters had programmed it to place a high priority on eavesdropping on just this sort of meeting. The droid decided it would be worth the risk if its masters were able to get a good recording of the conversation that was about to happen.

  * * *

  Kalenda walked up the ramp and into the ship, Han and Chewie following. It might have been more polite to lead her aboard, but Han wanted to annoy her and he had the hunch she wasn’t the sort who liked people behind her. Han could not pass up the chance to make her a bit edgy. She reached the top of the ramp and walked smoothly and confidently toward the lounge.

  It took Han a moment or two to realize that she had never been aboard the ship before. She should have stopped at the top of the ramp, uncertain of where to go next. Instead she was sitting back in the cushiest seat in the lounge almost before Han and Chewie got to the compartment. She must have pulled up some set of plans from somewhere and memorized the ship’s layout. She had just demonstrated how much research she had done on him, how much she knew.

  All right then, fair was fair. If Han wanted to play games with her, it was only to be expected that she would play a few right back at him. “Fine,” Han said as he sat down. Chewie remained standing, and just happened to be blocking the exit to the compartment. “You know everything about me, down to the blueprints of my ship,” Han went on. “You have resources. You did your homework. It doesn’t impress me.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Kalenda said. “You’re probably pretty hard to impress.”

  “I try to be,” Han said. “And right now, I’d like to get home to my wife and family. What is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Your wife and family,” Kalenda replied, not so much as batting an eye. Now her odd, near-off-kilter gaze seemed to lock and track perfectly, and she looked right at Han, her expression flat and hard.

  Han stiffened and leaned in toward her, and Chewie bared his fangs. His family had been exposed to too many dangers, too many times, for him to take even the hint of threat less than seriously. “Threats don’t impress me either,” Han said, his voice as hard as her face. “With Chewbacca around, the people who make them don’t live very long. So you just pick your next words very, very carefully.”

  The compartment was silent for a moment, and Kalenda stared hard at Han. Their eyes locked. “I am not threatening your family,” she said, her voice still expressionless. “But New Republic Intelligence would like to—make use—of them. And you.”

  New Republic Intelligence? What the devil was NRI doing coming to him? If Han was too well-known a person to do smuggling work, he was definitely too well-known to be much use as a spy. Beyond which, he didn’t much like government spies, no matter who the government was. “You’re not improving your survival odds,” Han said. “Just how are you going to ‘use’ us?”

  “We know you’re going to Corellia,” Kalenda said.

  “Nice work,” Han said. “You must have a crack team of researchers that check the news every single day. Our trip to Corellia is not exactly top secret.” If an
ything, it was what passed for headline news in these quiet times. Leia was part of the Coruscant delegation to a major trade conference on the planet Corellia.

  It was supposed to be the first step in reopening the whole Corellian Sector. The sector had always been an inward-looking part of the Empire, and of the Old Republic before that. By the time Han had left, Corellia had gone past inward looking to downright secretive and hermetic.

  By all accounts, things hadn’t improved much since the New Republic had taken over. It was rare indeed to see a mention of the Corellian Sector without words like “insular” or “paranoid” or “distrustful” popping up as well. Leia had counted it as a triumph just to get the Corellians to host the conference in the first place.

  “Your wife’s attendance has been reported, yes,” Kalenda said. “But there has been little or no mention of your going along, or your children.”

  “What is all this about?” Han demanded. “My wife is going to a conference on my homeworld. So what? I’m going, and we’re taking the kids. Be nice to show them where the old man came from. Is that a crime? Is there something suspicious about that?”

  “No,” Kalenda said. “Not yet. But we’d like to make it suspicious.”

  “Now you’ve lost me. Chewie, if the next thing she says doesn’t clear things up, you get to throw her off the ship.”

  Chewie let out a half yelp, half howl that had the intended effect of unnerving their visitor. “That means he’s looking forward to it,” Han said. “So. This is your big chance to tell me, clearly and concisely, what this is all about. No more riddles.”

  Kalenda had lost some—but not all—of her poise. Han had to hand it to her. Even the vague notion of tangling with Chewie was enough to make most people snap. “Something’s going on in the Corellian Sector,” she said. “Something big, and something bad. We don’t know what. All we do know is that we’ve sent in a half-dozen agents—and none of them have come back. None of them have even managed to report.”

  Han was impressed by that news. The NRI was, by all accounts, very, very good at what it did. It was the successor to the old networks of Rebel spies, back during the war against the Empire. Anyone or anything that could kill or capture NRI agents at will was a force to be reckoned with. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But what does it have to do with my family?”

  “We want to send in another team. And we want to provide cover for them. That’s you.”

  “Look, Kalenda, or whatever your name really is. If the Corellians are as paranoid as you’re saying they are, they probably suspect me already. I’m not the espionage type. I wouldn’t even make a good amateur. I’m not a very subtle person. Your files aren’t so good if they didn’t tell you that.”

  “Oh, but they did tell us that,” Kalenda said. “And we didn’t need them to tell us that, because everyone knows it already. The Corellians will be watching you like a hawk. We don’t want you to do anything except act suspiciously.”

  “I don’t get it,” Han said.

  “We want you to act as suspiciously as possible,” Kalenda said. “Give yourself a high profile. Be visible. Ask nosy, awkward questions. Offer bribes to the wrong people at the wrong time. Act like a bad amateur. We want you to draw their attention, distract them while we insert our real teams.”

  “What about my family?” Han asked. “What about my children?”

  “To be frank, your children have a reputation all their own. I doubt we’d even be approaching you if they weren’t in the picture. We’re assuming they’ll cause the opposition headaches all by themselves.”

  “I meant, will my children be safe?” Han asked. “I’m not so sure I should even be taking them if things are as bad as you say.”

  Kalenda hesitated a moment. “The situation on Corellia is unsettled. There is no question about that. However, if our understanding of the situation is correct, the role we are asking you to perform will not expose them to any additional risk. Family is still held in high respect on Corellia. It is considered most dishonorable to involve innocent family members in a quarrel. You should know that.”

  There was something in her tone of voice in that last answer that gave Han pause. As if she were talking about something more than planetary tradition, and something a lot closer to home. The trouble was, he had no idea what. Did the NRI know things about Han’s own past that Han did not? Han looked her straight in those strange eyes of hers, and decided that he did not want to ask. “If I understand what you’re saying,” he said, “you believe the job you are asking me to do will not make Corellia any more dangerous for my children. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Kalenda said.

  That didn’t satisfy Han. He had the feeling that “yes” was a true answer, if not a complete one.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Now, this next question I am asking as a father, as a Corellian who believes it is dishonorable to involve the innocent. Would it be dangerous to take my children to Corellia?”

  Kalenda slumped back and sighed. All the surface smugness went out of her, and Han could see doubt and uncertainty. It was as if the NRI agent had suddenly vanished and the person behind was appearing. “I give up being careful. Not when you put it that way. But I wish to the dark suns you hadn’t asked me that,” she said. “I honestly don’t know. We simply don’t know what’s going on out there. That’s why we need to do anything we can to get agents in place so we can find out. But there are children on Corellia right now. Are they in danger? Is Corellia a riskier place than Coruscant? Almost certainly, though by how much I couldn’t say. On the other hand, travel all by itself is more dangerous than staying home. Maybe you should never travel at all. If avoiding all risk is your only concern, take your children and hide them away in a cave, just to be sure. But is that the way you want to live?”

  Han looked deep into those strange eyes that seemed to see things that were not there. In his old days, his reckless days, he wouldn’t even have thought twice about flying straight into the worst sort of danger. But fatherhood did things to a fellow. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to endanger his kids. It went beyond that. He didn’t want to endanger himself needlessly either. Not for fear of death on his own part—but the thought of leaving his children without a father—it was something he had to work into the equation.

  But suppose he did put his children in a cave, and put a round-the-clock guard on them. And suppose there was an underground rock slide? Or what if he did manage to protect them from all danger? What sort of life would they have? And how could they be expected to deal with a world full of risk and danger as adults if they had never faced them growing up?

  There were no good answers, no certainties. Risk was a part of life, and you had to take a slice of it along with everything else. But there were questions of honor, and duty, as well. If there was trouble back home, in the sector that had given him birth, what sort of man would he be if he could help and did not?

  There was yet another factor. Leia was, after all, the Chief of State. She had been getting intelligence reports about Corellia. She had to know about the situation. Very probably she even knew the specific fact that the NRI had agents gone missing. Yet she was willing to bring her children along. And that was good enough for Han.

  “Thank you,” Han said. “I always appreciate a straight answer. But we’ll be going to Corellia—and I’ll do what I can to act suspiciously. I have a feeling it will fit in with my natural talents.”

  “Officially, I’m glad to hear that,” Kalenda said. “But unofficially—very unofficially—I wouldn’t blame you if you decided not to go at all.”

  “We go,” Han said. “We’re not going to be scared away from living our life.”

  “Just like that?” Kalenda asked. “Without even asking any questions? The NRI doesn’t have much information, but shouldn’t you know what we do?”

  Chewie let out a low, throaty rumble, the Wookiee equivalent of a chuckle, and then growled a retort.

 
“What?” Kalenda asked. “What’s funny? What did he say?”

  Han smiled, even if the joke was more or less at his expense. “Something to the effect that I’ve never been one to let facts or information interfere with my decisions. But in all seriousness, it might just be that the less I know the better. If you want me to blunder around like an ignorant fool, maybe I’d do better if I was ignorant.”

  “We half expected you to say that,” Kalenda said.

  “If you know me that well, then the next thing you should be expecting me to say is that it’s dinnertime and the family’s waiting.”

  Kalenda stood up. “Very well.” She turned toward Chewbacca, who was still blocking the exit. “If your friend will excuse me?” she asked, staring straight at Chewie. The Wookiee gave a sort of snort and let her by.

  After she was gone, Chewie looked toward Han. “I know, I know,” he said. “You’re going to say it’s none of my business. But our agents are vanishing on my turf. Is that my people doing that? She said something is going wrong in the Corellian Sector, my home sector. Should I just turn my back? You tell me. What should I have said?”

  Chewie didn’t have an answer for that one. Instead he grunted and turned back toward the cockpit. Han followed behind him to help him power down the ship.

  But the Wookiee stopped dead just inside the entrance to the cockpit, and Han nearly walked up his back. “Hey!” he cried out. “What are you—”

  Chewie moved his left arm slowly back until it was behind his back. He gestured for silence with a wave of his left hand as he stared straight ahead, out the cockpit’s viewport. Han froze, and tried to see around Chewbacca’s looming bulk. He saw nothing, but that told him as much as he needed to know. A probe droid or a living snooper. Chewie had spotted something, some tiny movement or other. Nothing else would explain his reaction.

  “What—what are we going to do about the shields?” Han asked, trying to make it sound smooth and convincing. Chewbacca took the cue, and growled a casual-sounding answer as he plopped down into the copilot’s seat. Han followed Chewie’s gaze as the Wookiee scanned his panels. Han saw Chewie’s eyes flicker toward the packing cases at the edge of the hard stand for just a moment. All right, then.