Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (38 page)

The remnant of the Empire rose up against the New
Republic, and was defeated; Luke Skywalker fell to the dark side of the Force—and returned, as few Jedi ever had in all the thousands of generations preceding him.

Leia Organa married Han Solo; and together they had three children.

On Tatooine, a drunk Devaronian named Labria killed four mercenaries, and vanished.

Boba Fett grew older.

On the planet of Coruscant, the world that had been the capitol of the Old Republic, the capitol of the Empire, and was now the capitol of the New Republic, in the Imperial Palace, in the quarters he shared with his wife, Han Solo sat on the edge of their bed with his mouth set in an obstinate line.

“No. I won’t go. Treaty signings bore me, and besides that worthless son of a slorth Gareth tried to cheat me at Laro last time we were there.”

Leia stood with her arms folded, her exasperation showing plainly. “You cheated him back!”

“I cheated him
better
. Anyway that fool should feel lucky all he had to deal with was
me
,” Han pointed out. “When I was a kid, getting caught dealing seconds was a felony and they hung you for it.”

“That’s not true,” Leia said—but a touch doubtfully, Han thought; he had known her long enough to know that cheating at cards, and the consequences of it, wasn’t among the things they taught princesses.

“It is too true,” said Han righteously. “Anyway King Gareth was
lucky
nothing worse happened to him than losing to me, that’s the point here. So I don’t know what you expect me to do, go up to the fellow and say, ‘I’m sorry, your scummy Royal Highlessness, that I cheat better than you do’?”

Leia sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t use the word ‘royal’ as though it were an insult.
I’m
—”

“You’re
adopted,” Han
said quickly.

It brought a reluctant smile to her. “You’re not going to come, are you?”

“You’d wish two weeks of diplomatic boredom on me?”

“You’re sure you’d
be
bored?”

“I was bored last time, except that one night.”

“I don’t think Gareth will play cards with you again.”

“So I’ll be bored
every
night.”

Leia sighed. “You’re not coming.”

“I’m not going.”

“I was thinking of taking the children with me. They’re old enough and it would give them some useful experience in dealing with—”

“It’s certainly safe enough,” Han conceded. “If they don’t die of boredom.”

“I could leave Threepio with you to keep—”

“You’d leave me here with Threepio? What did I do to deserve
that?
”

Leia Organa worked hard at keeping the smile off her face. “All right, I’ll take him with me, too.”

Han Solo looked up at her and grinned. “Deal.”

She leaned in on him and whispered, “You better not be in jail when I come back.”

“Hey, hey,” he objected. “This is
me.
”

He called Luke.

When Luke’s image appeared in the hologram, Han said, “Hey, buddy. You busy tonight?”

A smile lit Luke’s features. “Han! How are you?”

“Fine. Look, Chewie’s gone home and won’t be back for another few weeks, my wife and kids are off—”

“—the Shalamite trip,” Luke nodded. “Right. Why didn’t you go?”

“—and I was thinking,” said Han doggedly, refusing to get sidetracked, “we might go and see if we could dig up some trouble tonight.”

Luke shook his head. “I can’t, Han. I’ve invited a
group of the Senators to dinner … you are welcome to join us, though.”

“Trouble sounds more attractive,” Han growled.

Luke grinned. “C’mon, Han. You know I can’t cancel my own dinner. Besides, this is Coruscant. We’re two of the best known people on the whole planet. Where are we going to find trouble?”

“I’ve managed it before.”

“And you sat in jail for two days before you convinced them you were really you. Leia was worried sick.”

“Yeah,” Han pointed out, “but Leia’s off-planet right now. By the time she gets back,
this
stay in jail will be nothing but a pleasant memory.”

Luke laughed. “Han, come to dinner with me. You’ll enjoy yourself.”

“With half a dozen Senators? I’d rather have a tooth pulled.”

“You know,” said Luke quietly, “you might think about
joining
the Senate.”

“Without
anesthetic
I’d rather—”

“They’d elect you in a heartbeat.”

“And impeach me in a month.”

“Why?”

Han thought about it. “Bribe taking,” he said finally.

“You wouldn’t take bribes,” said Luke calmly.

“Well, I admit it would depend on the bribe.”

“Han, what’s bothering you?”

The question startled Han. “Nothing.”

The steadiness of Luke’s gaze was unsettling. “You’re not telling me the truth, Han. Or you’re not telling yourself the truth, I’m not sure which—”

That look was making Han uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just Chewie being gone—”

“That’s not it.”

Han stared at Luke. “No … not really. You know … I don’t know where I’m going anymore, kid. I have a wife and children who love me, and who I love. But
that’s the
problem
. I’m Daddy. I’m Leia’s consort. I tell amusing stories at state dinners—”

“You’re very good at it,” Luke said gently. “There’s a place for those sorts of—”

“—and somebody asked me at one of those blasted dinners a while back what it was like, smuggling I mean, back in the old days. I started to answer and suddenly I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run an Imperial barricade, or what the cargo was, or how it felt.”

Luke grinned at him. “It was me and Ben and the droids.”

Han looked startled. “You’re right—it was, wasn’t it?” He smiled almost unwillingly. “Yeah. All right, let’s say I couldn’t remember the last time I made any
money
at it—”

Luke turned his head, looked off-pickup, and turned back. “Han, my guests are arriving. Are you sure you won’t join us?”

Despite himself Han felt tempted. “… nah. Not tonight.”

Luke nodded. “I’ll come by tomorrow. All right?”

“All right. I’ll talk to you later, kid.”

Luke’s lips quirked in a small smile. “Han—”

“Yeah?”

“Han, I’m older than you were when we met.” The smile did not fade, but it changed quality subtly, in a way Han Solo did not quite understand. “The world
changes
, Han. You can’t stop it and you can’t fight it, and you can’t ever, ever turn it back.” Han had the oddest impression Luke was studying him; and then Luke nodded and said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Hang in there.”

His image vanished.

Han Solo thought,
The kid’s turning into Obi-Wan right in front of my eyes
.

•   •   •

He got a recording when he tried to reach Calrissian.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t be reached right now. Business has taken me on an extended trip; I’ll respond to any messages if I return.

“If this is Han, buddy, you owe me four hundred credits if I get back.”

Well, blast it, Han thought.
Lando
had found some trouble.

Late that evening he found himself down at the launching bay where he kept the
Falcon
.

It was dark, except for the bay lights high above him, and quiet except for the distant sounds of cargo being unloaded, in the commercial bays a good ways down.

Nobody questioned Han when he arrived; nobody asked him what he was doing there; he walked through the darkened bay as though he owned the place.

He very nearly did.

Han Solo stood at the edge of the bay, and laid one hand against the control for the overheads; and four banks of floods came to life.

Beneath the wash of light, the
Millennium Falcon
glowed white. She had never been so clean, in all the years Han had owned her; she had never been so carefully painted and beautifully detailed. Her engines had been rebuilt—the new hyperdrive engines never so much as blinked. The weapons emplacements were almost all new equipment.

There were even spare parts for everything.

Han had ceased to wonder about how much it had all cost; the New Republic had paid for it all. He’d never even seen a bill.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat, in the cockpit, he initiated a launch sequence. He didn’t really intend to take the ship up; he just wanted to look at the sky.

The dome above the
Falcon
split in two, slid slowly apart as the platform the
Falcon
rested on raised itself up, and the sky came out.

Han Solo stared out at the world.

It was amazing how much better it made him feel, just to be sitting here, in the closest thing to a home that he’d ever had. The seat next to him was empty, and that wasn’t right—but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either. He hadn’t met Chewbacca until well into his adult years; and there’d been a time, before that—before Chewie, after the death of his parents—when there had been nobody.

No one except himself.

Han wondered sometimes—rarely, to be sure—what his family would have thought about him, if they could have seen what he had grown into. He’d never had to wonder about it, when he was younger; his family had loved him, but he knew he had been a disappointment to them, and they had not lived to see him grow into anything better.

You can pinpoint moments when change occurs. Not always; some changes are like the tide, slow and barely perceptible until they have come, or gone.

Sometimes, though—

Han
did
think about this, and with, oddly, increasing frequency, as the event itself grew more distant in time: the Death Star was coming; and it was going to destroy the Rebel base, the Rebels themselves, and their plainly doomed Rebellion. Han had taken Chewie and the
Falcon
, and had gotten out with time to spare—

Chewie was furious; Han could tell. Chewie wanted to fight. They’d sat here, together, in the
Falcon’s
control room, with Chewie not talking to him. Han had made not one, but
two
errors, calculating the jump to hyperspace. Finally he had his trajectory—and he hadn’t been able to run it.

“All right, all ri
ght
, let’s go fight,” he’d yelled at
Chewie finally, almost twenty years ago, convinced they were both heading to their deaths—

He sat in the cockpit of the
Falcon
, almost twenty years later, and wondered what might have been: Leia would have been dead; and so would Luke. His children would never have been born. The Empire would still rule the galaxy, and he and Chewie would be traveling from world to world, one step ahead of the Imperials, one step ahead of the bounty hunters.

No
, thought Han.
Not ‘one step.’ Someone would have caught me. Boba Fett, IG-88
—someone—
and I’d have had no friends to come and rescue me from Jabba
.

Twenty years.

To this day Han could remember with perfect clarity … how close he had come to punching in that trajectory, and leaving Leia and Luke behind. He woke up at night, sometimes, in cold sweats, thinking about it.

How
very
close.

If his parents were still alive, Han thought, they’d be impressed by the man he’d grown into—and not the least bit surprised at how close it had come to not happening.

Mari’ha Andona tapped a stud when the hail came.

“This is Control.”

“
This is General Solo
.” Mari’ha grimaced at the use of the title; Solo was certainly entitled to it, but Mari’ha had been running flight control over this sector of Coruscant long enough that she knew Solo only used it when he was going to be pushy about something.

“
I’m going to take the
Falcon
up for a bit. Any chance I could get you to pipe me a flight path?
”

“Yes, sir. What’s your destination?”

“
Haven’t got one.
”

Mari’ha said calmly, “Excuse me? Sir?”

“
I don’t have one. I don’t know where I’m going yet.
”

Mari’ha sighed, looking across the screens that
showed all the flights in her sector. There were so many of them that it was hard for a human to pick out any single blip as belonging to an individual ship.

She thought,
The flight droid is going to pitch a fit
. The flight droid always pitched a fit; it had acquired a dislike for General Solo many years ago now, when—

“
Which part of this are you having difficulty with, Control?
”

“I’m going to need a couple minutes,” she muttered into the comm unit. “The flight droid doesn’t like you.”

“
You
need,” said Solo, “
to clear a corridor and give me a flight path and do it right now before I have to go down to the tower personally and
charm
you to death. Do you copy
that?”

“I copy you, General.” She finished composing his request for clearance, punched it in, and then sat there punching
Override
, over and over again, at the flight droid’s objections. “And … here you go. Have a nice trip, General. Don’t hurry back.”

“
Try not to miss me too much, sweetheart. A pleasure as usual. Solo out.
”

Not long after that, her supervisor’s holo sprung into existence, one-sixth sized, in the viewing area off to her right.

“This is most irregular,” he said severely. “Did General Solo give you a flight plan?”

“Nope.”

“Estimated time of return?”

“Nope.”

It was almost a shriek. “
Destination?
”

“Couldn’t tell you. Nowhere in-system, though. He entered hyperspace about twenty minutes ago.”

Strange things happen in the course of a lifetime:

When he had started out in his career as a bounty
hunter, Boba Fett had never even heard of the place—Tatooine. But that small and meaningless desert planet, as it turned out, became a part of Fett’s life, and over the course of the years kept intruding back into it. Jabba the Hutt had established headquarters there; Luke Skywalker, Fett learned many years later, had actually grown up on Tatooine.