by James Luceno
Leia felt no jealousy at all in that moment of revelation. Just sadness, wishing there was some way she could help Mara rid herself of the dreaded disease and get all that she desired—and deserved.
“You’ll get it,” Leia said quietly.
Mara stared at her curiously.
“All that you want,” Leia clarified. “That disease, or whatever it is afflicting you, won’t slow you down.”
Mara’s smile showed contentment and courage. “I know.”
“Watch my back,” Han said to Chewie as they entered Riebold’s Foam and Sizzle, a notorious drinking hole known for murder, mischief, and mayhem. The place was loud and rowdy, with thugs from several worlds—human, Bothan, Rodian, Tervig, Vuvrian, Snivvian—milling about, cutting deals and cutting each other. If you killed a rival in the Foam and Sizzle bloodlessly, and disposed of the body, nobody noticed or cared; if you made a mess in the process, you had to flip over a few coins to cover the cost of cleaning.
Han glanced up at his Wookiee friend as he spoke, and took comfort in that old fire in Chewie’s eyes, the eager light that he and his hairy friend had shared so many times in their earlier years. He and Chewie weren’t strangers to places such as this, certainly, but it had been a while, and they were getting older.
A drunken Gamorrean staggered over and bumped the pair, rebounding off Han to slam against Chewie, who didn’t budge a centimeter. The Wookiee looked down at the porcine creature and growled, and the Gamorrean stumbled away, tripping to the floor and not even bothering to try to get back up, just crawling away from the huge and imposing Wookiee with all speed.
Han liked having a Wookiee beside him.
Chewie looked down at him and issued a series of protesting grunts and groans.
“I know, I know,” Han conceded, for he didn’t like being in this place any more than his big hairy friend. “But I’m not going out to see Lando without learning a bit more about what he’s got going on out there. It’s got to be more than mining—with his connections, he could get mining rights to a thousand lucrative sites near the Core. No, he’s up to something, and before I come bouncing in on him with my family along, I want to know what it is.”
Han snapped his fingers, ending in a wide smile. “Bagy,” he said, pointing to a Sullustan across the way.
Chewie recognized the target, a notorious con artist named Dugo Bagy, and gave another less-than-enthusiastic groan.
The pair bumped their way through the establishment, through the crowd, and when they finally had a straight line of sight to Dugo Bagy, and Dugo Bagy to them, the Sullustan scoffed down his drink and started to move away.
Han signaled left, and Chewie circled that way, while Han went right. Dugo Bagy, apparently focusing on Han, started right, but skidded to a stop and darted back to the left—to thud into Chewie, Dugo Bagy’s face barely reaching the Wookiee’s belly, and the Sullustan’s momentum not budging huge and powerful Chewie a centimeter.
“Ah, Han Solo,” Dugo Bagy said, when Han moved up behind him. “So good to see you.”
“Sit down, Dugo,” Han replied, pulling a chair out from a nearby table.
“You be buying, I be sitting,” Dugo Bagy said with an obviously nervous chuckle, and he moved to the seat even as he spoke, Han taking a chair on one side of him, Chewie on the other.
“Why are you so nervous?” Han asked after all three were in place.
“Nervous?” Dugo Bagy echoed skeptically.
Han shot him “the stare,” as his kids had come to call it, that look of complete disregard for the obvious lie coming out of Dugo Bagy’s mouth that shut up the Sullustan and made him glance around nervously for a waitress.
“Hey,” Han prompted, pulling him back around.
“Forgive me,” Dugo Bagy said somewhat calmly. “I am surprised to see you in here, as many others are. Just to talk with you makes me suspect.”
“I haven’t gone that far over,” Han assured the smuggler. “And I haven’t been giving any of these guys any trouble at all. In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to intervene on behalf of a few over the last couple of years.” He said the last part loudly, a reminder that he wanted all the nefarious characters who knew him to clearly hear.
“And I’m not in here to give you any trouble, either,” he said seriously. “I just want a little information about an old friend.”
Dugo Bagy perked up his ears and leaned forward, his suddenly interested look telling Han beyond doubt that the Sullustan was expecting some reward for his cooperation.
“I’ll owe you one,” Han, who had little money with him, said.
Dugo Bagy leaned back and held up his hands helplessly. “A businessman, I am,” he explained, but then Chewie leaned over him and growled.
“Owing is good,” Dugo Bagy readily agreed.
“I’m going to see Lando,” Han explained. “I just want to know what he’s doing out there.”
Dugo Bagy visibly relaxed—an easy question. “Mining asteroids,” he replied.
Han gave him “the stare” again.
“He is,” Dugo Bagy insisted.
“And …,” Han prompted.
“Why more would there be?” Dugo Bagy asked. “Very profitable.”
“And …,” Han said again.
With a sigh, Dugo Bagy leaned in, and Han and Chewie did likewise, the three going into an informal huddle.
“Lando seeks new techniques,” Dugo Bagy explained. “There’s a lot to be taken, if they can only figure out how.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kerane’s Folly,” Dugo Bagy said.
“The asteroid?” Han asked.
“In the Hoth system,” Dugo Bagy confirmed. “Platinum pure, but too many other asteroids contacting to get to it. Many have died in trying. Lando will see the way.”
“I thought they just couldn’t find the thing anymore,” Han remarked.
Dugo Bagy smiled wryly.
“So Lando’s just using his operation way out there as a testing ground, coming up with better ways and tools to mine the asteroids so that he can franchise them out across the galaxy,” Han reasoned, and that made sense, sounding more like the entrepreneurial Lando he knew.
“Other things, too,” Dugo Bagy said with a wink, a too-cute expression on the face of a Sullustan.
“Running the belt?” Han asked. “Some game, right?”
“To some a game,” Dugo Bagy corrected. “To others …”
“Training,” Han finished, catching on. “So Lando’s working with the smugglers, letting them use his running-the-belt game to perfect their skills at getting away from hunters.”
“Hunters trained by Luke,” Dugo Bagy said, and his tone revealed clearly to Han why he had been so nervous when first confronted. The smugglers were obviously getting a bit edgy about the problems at the Outer Rim concerning these predatory Jedi—and Han’s connection to the Jedi, and the academy, via his brother-in-law, his wife, and even his kids, was undeniable.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Kyp Durron,” Dugo Bagy replied. “And his do-gooder buddies. The Dozen-and-Two Avengers,” he said dramatically, rolling his eyes. “Problems they cause, money they cost.”
Han nodded. He knew all about Kyp, and now it made sense to him. Kyp had always been a bit of a loose ion cannon, and to make matters even worse, Kyp’s parents had been killed due, in part, to the actions of a notorious smuggler, Moruth Doole.
“Why are you going to see Lando?” Dugo Bagy asked.
“A vacation,” Han answered dryly, and he rose, and Chewie did, too, and when Dugo Bagy started to get up, Chewie put a huge paw on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat.
“Well, this should be fun,” Han said to Chewie as they exited Riebold’s Foam and Sizzle.
Chewie gave a great howl in reply, as if to remind Han, “Wasn’t it always?”
With a heavy pack strapped across her back—what she wouldn’t have given for a simple transporter disk—Tee-ubo led a
team of four out of the compound. Normally, they wouldn’t have left ExGal-4, for the sturdy station could handle almost any weather Belkadan could throw at it. Danni’s call had made it clear that this storm was exceptional, though, and one needing some investigation.
Also, though none of the four spoke of it openly, having a mission now helped them get through their grief over the accidental death of Garth Breise. They had all known the risks when they had come out here, of course, into a wild and unexplored land, but still, losing one of the team had hit many of them hard, especially Tee-ubo. She knew that Bensin Tomri would be devastated by the news, if they could find some way to relay it to the now-distant Spacecaster.
The Twi’lek kept her blaster holstered, but the other three did not; they moved with weapons out and ready, with Luther De’Ono, a rugged man in his mid-twenties, with coal black hair and dark eyes, diligently guarding the left flank; Bendodi Ballow-Reese, the oldest member of ExGal-4 at fifty-three, but a former barnstormer search-and-destroy agent with the Rebel Alliance, guarding the right; and Jerem Cadmir, a Corellian, watching the rear, practically walking backward as the group eased through the thick jungle. Jerem was obviously the least comfortable with his weapon. Not a warrior, the slender, gentle Jerem had been chosen to go out into the dangerous Belkadan jungle because he was the most knowledgeable member of the team with regard to geology and climatology. If the brewing storm Danni Quee had called back to warn about would truly pose a danger to ExGal-4, Jerem Cadmir would be the one to give the most accurate early warning.
“The most dangerous part will be the nights,” Bendodi remarked late that afternoon. The team was making painfully slow progress through the tangles. “Redcrested cougars are night hunters, and they’ll be thick about us, wanting to put a face to our strange scents.” The others looked at Bendodi, at his ruggedly handsome face crossed by several scars he had earned in brutal combat, and found it hard to ignore the warning.
“We can use the flight packs once we clear the jungle,” Tee-ubo offered.
“Then press on,” Jerem urged nervously.
“It’s still going to be two days of walking,” Bendodi told them.
Tee-ubo eyed him unappreciatively. They had already fought out this debate, back at the compound. Bendodi and Luther had wanted to strap on a couple of flight packs and fly off from the compound wall, despite the unarguable calculations that showed they’d fast deplete their fuel in trying to leap over the towering trees, and might have to spend a week of walking after they had left the primary canopy behind.
Tee-ubo’s plan, the sensible one, the one everyone at the station except for the two would-be warriors had agreed upon, called for traversing the jungle on foot, then strapping on the packs at the lip of the great basin about twenty kilometers south of the compound. Given the angle and the calculated winds, they could cross the three hundred kilometers of the basin for roughly the same amount of fuel that would have been used flying over the trees to the lip of the basin.
With such logic on her side, Tee-ubo had won the debate, but she had known from the first grumbling steps out of the compound that Luther, and particularly Bendodi, weren’t about to let the matter rest.
So they pressed on, hot and sweaty in the steamy air, and as night descended, they found a thick nook high in a tree to call a campsite.
They got little sleep, for the jungle resounded with threatening sounds, low growls and hisses that seemed to come from right beside them. Despite the threat, though, they found no open challenge, but so disturbing were those sounds that the team set off early, determined to make the basin lip before the next nightfall. And they did, arriving at the rocky precipice on the edge of the jungle overlooking the huge valley with hours to spare.
Hours they would not waste. They quickly did some last-minute checks on the flight packs—like every other piece of terrain equipment at ExGal-4, the packs weren’t in the best condition—and then lifted away from the precipice, opening wings wide to catch the gusting wind at their backs.
They flew on right through twilight and into the darkness, preferring the cold winds to the sounds emanating from the trees far below. There were no great flying predators on Belkadan, as far as they knew. Tee-ubo measured their progress by the hour, not the kilometer; given the minimum fuel burn gliding with the wind, she figured they could go for about four standard hours before exhausting the first half of their fuel.
When the time came to land, Bendodi fired a portable rocket flare into the canopy below, and the group used its guiding light to put down. They landed without incident, despite some very real and well-grounded fears propagated by the tumult of roars and shrieks in the region. A quick check of their positioning system confirmed that they had nearly crossed the length of the basin. If Danni’s positioning had been correct, they should be able to find this brewing storm within a couple of days’ march. Hopefully, they’d be able to get the needed measurements, mostly concerning wind speed, set their instruments, and be out of there quickly. Heartened, they settled in for a short night’s rest.
It was shorter than expected.
Tee-ubo opened her eyes to the sound of coughing, a thick, mucus-filled hack. At first, she thought a thick ground fog had come up, but as the stench hit her, a noxious, rotten-egg smell, she realized that it was something else.
By the time the Twi’lek managed to sit up, she, too, was hacking and spitting.
“Go to enviro-suits!” she heard Bendodi cry. Hardly able to see, her eyes teary and stinging, Tee-ubo fumbled with her pack, finally pulling out the small hood and tank.
“Gloves, too!” Bendodi barked to all of them, his voice muffled by his enviro-suit. “No skin exposed until we know what this is.”
A few moments later, her eyes still burning, the sickening stench still in her mouth, but with clean oxygen flowing, Tee-ubo inched along the limb tangle they had chosen for a campsite to join Bendodi and Luther. Jerem Cadmir had moved off along one branch with a light and seemed to be studying the leaves.
“Probably a volcano,” Luther remarked. “That’s what Danni saw from orbit. A volcano spewing fumes; we’ll have to call back to ExGal and have them lock the compound down tight.”
Bendodi and Tee-ubo nodded, not overly concerned. The compound could be made completely self-sustaining, able to hold back whatever fumes Belkadan could throw at them. Several of the other ExGal stations, with the same equipment as this one, had been situated on worlds far more hostile, one on a spinning lump of barren rock that was completely bereft of any atmosphere. If the cloud was indeed volcano formed, that would be good news, for likely there would be few, if any, potentially damaging winds.
“It’s not a volcano,” came Jerem’s voice, and the three turned to regard him sitting on a branch and holding a leaf. “It’s the tree,” he explained.
That brought surprised expressions, and they moved over, one at a time, at Jerem’s instructions, and lifted their hoods just long enough to take a sniff of the leaf he held.
“Let’s get down from here,” Luther remarked.
“No,” Bendodi unexpectedly replied, even as the other three began to move for the main trunk. They looked to him questioningly.
“I can’t think of a safer place to be,” the scarred old warrior remarked. “We’ll stay up here in our suits, and where no cougars will want to go.”
The logic seemed sound; in the enviro-suits the fumes couldn’t hurt them.
“How long to sunrise?” Luther asked.
Tee-ubo checked her chronometer. “Two more hours.”
“Then sit tight,” Bendodi said.
And they did, and when the sun came up, exploding brilliantly over the eastern horizon, they grew even more alarmed. For all the forest about them seemed to be on fire, sending greenish orange smoke up into the air. And all the green leaves had turned yellow.
It wasn’t fire, they soon understood, but emissions, coming straight from the leaves, filling all the air with the noxious fumes.
“Ho
w is this possible?” Tee-ubo asked, and she, Bendodi, and Luther all looked to Jerem for an answer.
The man stood holding a leaf, staring at it wide-eyed and shaking his head. “A molecular change?” he mused.
“Luther, get up high, while the rest of us go down to the ground,” Bendodi instructed, and he led the way out of the tree.
The air was just as thick and wretched at ground level, for the grasses, even the moss and flowers, were similarly emitting the thick fumes. Jerem quickly went to one small plant and dug it up, roots and all, and as he did, some curious beetles, reddish brown, scampered out of the hole.
On Jerem’s order, Tee-ubo caught one of them and held it up.
“What is it?” Bendodi asked.
“Maybe nothing,” Jerem replied. “Or maybe a clue.”
Before Bendodi could press him further, Luther came scrambling down the tree so quickly that he tumbled to the ground in a heap, and nearly fell over again as he tried to rise.
“It’s gone way past us,” he explained, waving his arm back toward the north. “And it’s rolling on—I could see the trees changing color and starting to smoke!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Tee-ubo suggested, and she popped the beetle into a belt pouch and pulled the lever control for her flight pack forward. Hardly waiting, she fired up the pack.
Or tried to.
It sputtered and coughed, even popped off enough once to jolt Tee-ubo into the air, a short hop and nothing more.
Then it went dead.
“It can’t get enough oxygen,” Bendodi reasoned.
Even as he spoke, they heard a rustle to the side. They all tensed—Luther and Bendodi reached for their blasters—as a redcrested cougar broke through the brush. They didn’t have to shoot, they soon realized, for the great animal was gasping, its sides heaving in and out futilely, and if it even saw them, it showed no reaction. Right before their eyes, the creature staggered a few more steps and then fell to the ground, breathing its last.