by Greg Rucka
© & TM 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd.
Designed by Jason Wojtowicz
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.
ISBN 978-1-4847-2499-6
Visit the official Star Wars website: www.starwars.com
Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 01: Waiting to Hurry
Chapter 02: The Pride of the ISB
Chapter 03: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Chapter 04: Pressing Questions
Part Two
Chapter 05: Misfortune
Chapter 06: Captivating
Chapter 07: Desperate Means, in Full Measure
Chapter 08: Wookiee Powered, Rebellion Approved
Part Three
Chapter 09: No Mistakes, No Escapes
Chapter 10: A Little Hope
Chapter 11: Vehement’s Grip
Chapter 12: Trying to Be Noble
Epilogue
About the Author
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…
It is a period of civil war. The heroic freedom fighters of the REBEL ALLIANCE have won their most important victory thus far with the destruction of the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR.
But the Rebellion has no time to savor its victory. The evil Galactic Empire has recognized the threat the rebels pose, and is now searching the galaxy for any and all information that will lead to the final destruction of the freedom fighters.
For the MILLENNIUM FALCON’s crew, who saved the life of Luke Skywalker during the Battle of Yavin, their involvement with the rebels is at an end. Now HAN SOLO and CHEWBACCA hope to take their reward and settle some old debts.…
THE OLD MAN at the cantina had many years of practice keeping his head down and his ears open, and he’d been doing both for a couple of hours now.
The bar was called Serendipity, and the conversations taking place around him were quiet, respectful of the space and the other patrons both. He could catch bits and pieces, odd words that reached him, spoken in any smattering of the galaxy’s languages. Some of them he knew well, others not at all. There was an Ithorian who had come in shortly after he had, now sitting at a table with a Dug and speaking animatedly, his voice a low bass rumble the old man could feel in his chest; a Bith, a Neimoidian, and an Advosze, all apparently talking business they didn’t want overheard; a Twi’lek male whispering sweet nothings in a Devaronian’s ear.
And three humans, two male and one female, who’d arrived in the past half hour like they owned the place, were now seated maybe two meters from the old man’s back. They were already on their third round and getting loud. From his stool at the bar, he could see them clearly reflected in the mirror behind the bartender’s shelves of liquors rare and common.
“Speed,” one of the men said. This was the burly one, maybe early forties in standard years. He was dressed like the other two, in a combination of mismatched Imperial uniforms, bits of salvaged armor, and a heavy blast vest. They all wore blast vests—same colors, same insignia.
Mercenaries, the old man thought, or perhaps a gang, swoop or otherwise.
“That’s what it all comes down to,” the burly one continued. “Speed, nothing more.”
“Garbage.” This was the woman, youngest of the group and, by the looks of her, the meanest, too. All three were armed, but she had the shaft of a vibro-axe strapped to her back in addition to the heavy blaster holstered along the left side of her torso. She was blond, and perhaps because of that she reminded the old man at the bar of someone he’d dealt with years before. Not the same woman, of course—this one was far too young—but the memory came back all the same, as if it were yesterday.
“You remember Rigger?” the woman said. “You remember what happened to him? You remember the Streak?”
“I remember,” said the other male, who was somewhere between the ages of the burly one and the woman. He was big and broad shouldered, and his scalp was shaved to reveal a tattoo of a Twi’lek female sprawled on her belly, her face near his forehead, blowing a kiss. To the old man watching the three reflected in the mirror, it looked like the tattoo was flirting with him.
“So not speed,” the woman said.
“Streak was fast,” said the burly one.
“Sure, it was fast.” The man with the tattoo said, finishing his drink. “It slammed right into the side of that canyon going like it was fire.”
“Don’t mean nothing if it won’t maneuver,” the woman said. “You want a ship like the Nebula Wisp, or maybe…what was its name? You know the one I’m talking about?”
The burly one said, “The Black Box?”
“No, no.…” The woman trailed off, picking at a fingernail that, even from that distance, the old man could see was filth-encrusted. She brightened suddenly. “The Fourth Pass! That’s the one! They say she’d stop on a credit and give you change.”
The tattooed one grunted and looked into his empty glass. At the bar, the old man caught the bartender’s eye, then indicated his own drink with a finger, asking for a refill. The bartender grinned.
“Defense,” the tattooed one said. “You can be fast, you can be maneuverable, but sooner or later, you’re gonna get hit. You can’t take the hit, that’s it—show’s over.”
“They can’t hit what they can’t catch,” the woman said.
“They’ll hit it eventually,” the tattooed man persisted. “You got enough guns pointing at you, you’re gonna be nothing but scrap floating in a vacuum. Doesn’t matter how fast you are, doesn’t matter if you twist and turn. Eventually, you’re gonna get hit.”
“That’s what we need,” the burly one said. “We need a ship that can do all three. We need a triple threat.”
The woman laughed. “Good luck. Doesn’t exist.”
“Sure it does.” The burly one leaned forward. “You know it does. I know it does. Even Strater knows it does.”
The tattooed one—presumably Strater—shook his empty glass, as if hoping that would magically refill it, then nodded.
“The Millennium Falcon,” Strater said.
“The Millennium Falcon,” the others agreed.
The old man sighed loudly—loudly enough to grab all three humans’ attention. He heard chairs scrape as they turned to look at him. The bartender set a refill in front of the old man and took his almost-empty glass away.
“You got something you want to add, grandpa?” the woman asked.
The old man sipped his drink. “You’ll never catch her.”
The tattooed one, Strater, leaned back in his chair. “Think we’ve got a better chance of that than you, old man.”
“And even if you did catch her, you’d never be able to fly her,” the old man said, as if he hadn’t heard.
“If it’s got engines, we can fly it.” The woman was getting annoyed; he could see it in her face, reflected over the bartender’s shoulder.
The bartender gave the old man a warning look that clearly said she did not want to have to clean up a mess.
“A ship is more than engines
, more than shields or armor or maneuver jets or its hyperdrive or anything else.” The old man picked up his drink, ignoring the bartender, then turned and stood. “A ship is all those things, but it’s nothing if it doesn’t have the right crew.”
“I told you, we can fly it.” The woman was looking him over suspiciously. Again, the old man found himself thinking of someone else from long ago—someone with one eye that had viewed everything suspiciously.
The old man pulled out the empty chair and sat down between Strater and the woman, facing the burly one. He grinned, rubbed the scar on his chin with one hand, then raised his glass in the other and drained it.
“Nah,” the old man said.
“And you’re so certain?” the burly one asked.
“Pretty certain, yeah.”
“How’s that?”
The old man tilted his chair onto its back legs and looked around the bar. No one else was listening. No one else was paying attention. At the door, the bouncer had turned away and was watching the entrance while scratching behind one ear with a paw. The old man turned the empty glass in his hand, as if considering its potential, or at least lamenting its emptiness.
“You buy me a drink,” the old man said, “and I’ll tell you a story about the Millennium Falcon.”
They bought him a drink and listened.
THE WOOKIEE SIGHED, a low rumble, and gazed at the medal in his palm. On the humans it looked substantial and solid, fit to be worn around the neck. In his hand the scale was altered, and if he brought his fingers together he could conceal it entirely. A pretty thing, hastily engraved in a stylized flower meant perhaps to recall the emblem of the Republic. At its heart a rising sun, halfway above the horizon, both symbolized the dawn of a new hope in the wake of this victory over the Galactic Empire and recalled the Death Star’s destruction.
He sighed a second time, tucked the award into the satchel that hung from the bandolier of bowcaster ammunition slung over his left shoulder, and leaned forward in his seat to peer out the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Outside, rebels ran back and forth across the hangar, hastily preparing their evacuation. The base on Yavin 4 was, to put it mildly, compromised. With the destruction of the Death Star, it would be a day at most—perhaps even less—before the Imperial fleet arrived to reduce anything they found to rubble and dust. While they might still have been flushed with their victory, the Rebellion’s high command knew better than to believe they could repel, or even withstand, such an assault. They had been lucky with the Death Star, and it had cost them all the same. They wouldn’t get lucky twice. The plan, as the Wookiee understood it, was for the band of freedom fighters to scatter across the galaxy in as many directions as they could manage at once, with the goal of meeting up again at a later date, and preferably in a much safer place.
He huffed to himself, wondering how the rebels hoped to survive. Their own fleet—and he used the word generously—was already scattered. All that remained on the fourth moon of Yavin were the three snub fighters—two X-wings and a single Y-wing—that had made it through the battle, plus some three dozen or so transports of various shapes, makes, and sizes, all of which had been past their prime even before the fall of the Republic.
The Wookiee didn’t fancy their chances.
That said, he understood their fire. He was a Wookiee, after all, and he knew passion. His were a proud people, a people who had lived for hundreds of years peacefully on their wooded homeworld of Kashyyyk until the Clone Wars. He had been younger then, just one hundred and eighty, and he had fought the Separatist battle droids. He had witnessed the betrayal of the clones and the beginning of the Empire. He had seen his people, his brothers and sisters, his family, put in chains and sold as slaves throughout the galaxy. He had been put in chains himself, and just the memory of it made a growl rise in his throat.
So he understood the Rebellion. In truth, he would be standing with them if it weren’t for two things: the Corellian and the ship. He wouldn’t abandon either of them. He was bound to both, as they were to him.
Han Solo had not been a man to inspire trust when they’d first met. He’d been a fast-talker, smug, even arrogant. He had seemed more interested in looking out for himself than in looking out for others. “Enlightened self-interest” was how Solo himself had described it.
“I don’t take an interest in my own well-being in this galaxy, nobody else is gonna do it for me, pal,” he had said.
Even with that, though, Solo had proven the Wookiee wrong. He’d proven him wrong when the two of them had fled to the Outer Rim to survive amidst bounty hunters, pirates, and fellow smugglers, trying to scratch out a living wage working for the Hutts. He’d proven him wrong time and again, and if the Wookiee had learned one thing about his friend and partner, it was that there was no telling what the Corellian would care about, or why. Despite all his posturing and swagger, there was a core to Han Solo as golden as the medals they’d all received for their part in the recent battle.
The comm on the control console overhead lit up, flashing blue and bleating its odd singsong. On other ships, the comm would just chirp incessantly, calling for attention, but the Falcon was not, and never had been, like other ships. Just another of her idiosyncrasies, another of the things that made him love her so.
That was the second reason, of course: this ship.
When the boy from Tatooine, Skywalker, had seen the Falcon for the first time back in Mos Eisley, he’d described it as “a piece of junk.” Solo had taken it personally, but the Wookiee could understand why Luke had thought so. He didn’t agree, of course, but he understood. The Falcon looked like just another Corellian YT-1300 light freighter, and there had to be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of them in service throughout the galaxy. Her cockpit, for reasons no one but the designers back at Corell Industries could understand, was posted to the starboard side, and jutted at an odd angle instead of being mounted on the center line. Her engines were overpowered for her size, but her controls were so sensitive as to be paranoid, which meant she was temperamental and needed a pilot and copilot to manage her in flight. Even then she was liable to slip out of control if both operators didn’t know exactly what they were doing.
That was just the YT-1300 series as a whole.
But the Falcon took all those characteristics and multiplied them exponentially. She was bruised. She was dented. She needed paint and near-constant maintenance. Easily half the money they pulled in doing runs for Jabba the Hutt or whoever else went to upkeep, new parts, fuel. She drank fuel like she’d been wandering the Dune Sea for weeks without water. Her gravity emulators had an annoying—and, frankly, alarming—tendency to cut out during sharp maneuvering, which would send you across the cabin if you weren’t strapped in when it happened. The multiple computers that worked to keep everything on the ship running in concert not only had developed, over the years, their own dialects, but at times seemed to feud among themselves. And you didn’t want to get the Wookiee started on the state of the ion flux stabilizers, or the way the Duvo-Pek acceleration compensators would not just seek to compensate but would instead do precisely the opposite.
Oh, but she was fast.
She was the fastest ship he’d ever flown—had ever seen. She cut through space and atmosphere alike as if born to it, and seated side by side, he and Solo could make her dance in ways that would’ve made those designers back in the day on Corellia drop their jaws. They had modified almost every single part of the engines—from the bolts to the main drive—coaxing, teasing more power, more speed. They had taken her apart and put her back together more times than the Wookiee could count, and each time the Falcon had rewarded them by giving more in return, by urging them to push her further.
He loved this ship.
Reaching with one long arm, the Wookiee slapped the flashing comm button and snarled a greeting, asking Solo what was taking him so long.
“Oh my! Chewbacca, wherever did you learn such language?”
The Wookiee chuck
led. It wasn’t Solo calling, but the protocol droid.
“Captain Solo asks you to join him in the briefing room.”
The Wookiee frowned and growled his response.
“I’m sure I don’t have the first idea,” C-3PO answered. “He says that you need to join him at once, because the princess won’t take no for an answer and he feels it would be more persuasive coming from you.”
The Wookiee grinned, mostly because he knew there was nobody to see it. Those two had been at each other from the moment they’d met. This explained things. They were supposed to have lifted off more than an hour earlier to make their way back to Tatooine. Between the reward money for rescuing the princess from the Death Star and the fee they’d been promised for the Alderaan run besides, they had more than enough money to square things with Jabba. Enough, even, to get back into his good graces and have him call off the bounty hunters he had already set on their trail. But that would work only if they brought the money to Jabba; if the bounty hunters brought them in first, it would be a different situation entirely.
Jabba didn’t deal kindly with those who owed him money. He’d take their freedom and maybe their lives, and he’d definitely take the Falcon. None of those outcomes appealed to the Wookiee. He knew for a fact that they appealed to Solo even less.
The Wookiee barked a response to C-3PO, slapped the comm button again, and swung up from his seat, ducking out of habit as he stepped out of the cockpit and knocked the pair of novelty chance dice that he’d hung there as a joke some years ago. There was only one thing that would make Han Solo delay their departure, and that was a pretty girl.
He had to admit, he was curious to find out just what the pretty girl wanted.
“I’m not part of this!” Han Solo said. “I’m not a part of your rebellion, I’m not a freedom fighter, and I don’t work for you, Your Highness!”
Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan took two quick steps forward, her face tilting up to glare at the smuggler. If Solo’s nearly half a meter of height over her impressed her at all, it didn’t show. She raised an index finger, directing it at the smuggler as if contemplating poking him in the eye.