Han remembered Leia at her conference on Kiamurr, and the factions that were going to be there. It was a secret meeting of the enemies of the Empire, but Baasen was right. There were going to be plenty of them who would have been just as opposed to the Republic. Trust the wrong one, and they’d all be fed straight to the Empire. Leia. Luke. All of them. It was the nature of the game.
The door hissed open, and Chewbacca hung his head, pretending to be lost in dejection. The Wookiee could be astonishingly good at looking meek when he wanted to. Garet stepped in, keeping carefully out of range of Han’s cuffed wrists. Behind him, the freighter’s engines were the pale blue of hot standby, and there was no sign of the pilot. That wasn’t good. The door hissed closed, and Han bit his lip. This was getting a lot closer to too late than he liked.
“Tower puts us ten minutes from out,” Garet said, looking back at Chewbacca.
“What flight path?” Baasen asked.
“Commercial five,” Garet said. “It was the best I could do. They could have gotten us commercial two, but it would have meant another hour.”
“Commercial two is much better, though,” Han said. “I don’t mind waiting.”
Baasen sighed and hauled himself to his feet. He looked old. Worse than that, he looked mean. There had been a joy in him once, and the universe had pressed it all out of him until this was left. In other circumstances, Han might have felt a little sorry for him.
“Get the cell ready,” Baasen said. Garet nodded. The door opened, then closed behind him. “Time to go, old friend.”
“There’s another way,” Han said. “Rebellion has a fair amount of money in it, one way and another. I have some friends in very, very high places. And this isn’t a mission they want to see fail. Talk to the right people, they’ll match Jabba’s price. Maybe beat it.”
Simm looked to Baasen, and the expression on the tough’s face told Han it wasn’t the first time that idea had been brought up. Baasen shook his head. Another engine roared and faded.
“Pretty thought, but it can’t happen.”
“Why not? You were never one to leave money on the table.”
“Well, you see, I’ve already taken payment from Jabba. Not the full amount. A third, say. And most of that’s spent, so even if I wanted to—”
“Wait,” Han said, and for a moment, the blasters and ship and Empire faded to the back of his mind. “You spent Jabba’s money while we’ve been sitting in here? How does that work?”
“Not while we were here, no. Before. Getting ready.”
“Jabba paid in advance?”
“Well,” Baasen said, “I might have given the impression that you were a bird in hand. There was some overhead needed paying for. Anyway, no harm’s done. Present company excepted.”
Han’s jaw opened a centimeter in real shock. Everything else was forgotten for the moment. He looked at Baasen again, and it was like seeing him for the first time. The redness in his eyes, the angry set of his softening jowls under his facial tattoos. The Baasen Ray he’d known before wouldn’t have lied to the Hutt about having merchandise. And he would never have taken money for it.
Han laughed. “You’re an idiot. Didn’t you see what happened to me? I dropped cargo because we were about to get caught, and my life’s been three kinds of hell for it. And you thought you’d scam a Hutt?”
“It was a risk,” Baasen said. “Calculated, but it paid off. And, all respect, but you’re going to be five nights of unpleasant floor show at Jabba’s place before you’re food for a sarlacc. So I think the time for Captain Han Solo to be lecturing me’s pretty near its end.”
“Simm,” Han said. “Did you know he was crossing Jabba?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Simm said.
“Then you are as stupid as he is. Maybe worse, because you let him call the shots. Oh, I know, he plays the friendly, world-weary part pretty well. But he’s tying you to a cherfer and lighting its tail on fire.”
“Not your business how I run my crew,” Baasen said. “Not anymore.”
“Simm,” Han said, “if you get me to a communications array that can reach the Rim, I will see that you get enough money to retire for the rest of your life.”
“Don’t talk to him,” Baasen snapped. Dark blooms appeared on his yellow-green cheeks. “If you talk to anyone, you talk to me, and you don’t talk to me. You just march yourself to the ship. I’ve been kind not to break you. Jabba don’t care if you still got knees when you reach him. So don’t—”
“Really, Simm? Are you listening to this? Is this the kind of brilliant business acumen that says long-term career to—”
Baasen’s blaster muzzle poked Han’s throat. The Mirialan’s face was a deep and unhealthy green. The avuncular mask was gone, and all that was left was an angry smuggler, past his prime, over his head, stinking of desperation. And dangerous beyond words. Han swallowed and hoped Baasen remembered what they’d said earlier about blasterfire bringing down the stormtroopers.
“My crew is my crew,” Baasen said. “You say aught against me to them … well, that’s being insulting. You didn’t want to insult me, did you now?”
“I didn’t,” Han said.
Baasen smiled cruelly, stepped back, and lowered his blaster.
“What I really wanted was for both of you to keep looking at me,” Han said as Chewbacca rose up behind Simm like a mountain made of long brown fur and rage.
“OH” WAS ALL SIMM had time to say before Chewbacca threw him across the room. The thug went headlong through a pile of crates and disappeared in the collapse. His blaster spun across the floor, stopping a few strides from Han and Baasen.
They looked down at it, then back up at each other at the same moment. Han knew Baasen was reading his face as he calculated his odds of reaching it before the Mirialan shot him. Baasen’s hard half grin dared him to try. Neither of them moved until Chewbacca grabbed Garet and lifted him off the ground by the forearms.
Chewbacca’s growls were almost drowned out by Garet’s panicked shrieks. Baasen kept his blaster aimed at Han’s face. “I’ll shoot him, Chewbacca. Don’t test me.”
“Chewie is saying he’ll tear your friend’s arms off if you do, and he’d love for you to test him,” Han replied. They stared at each other for another long, tense moment.
The door to the bay snapped open, and an Imperial officer walked in holding a datapad. “I just need to check one—” He stopped when he looked up and saw the scene. His face went white. Han could see the realization that none of them was walking away from this play across Baasen’s face.
“Well, blast,” the older smuggler said, and his shoulders dropped. Chewbacca roared and threw Garet at the officer. The mercenary flew across the room like a rag doll and slammed into the Imperial with a meaty thud. Both men went down in a heap. Baasen turned toward the Wookiee, raising his blaster, but Han launched himself in a full-body tackle that took them both to the ground and sent Baasen’s blaster sliding across the floor. Baasen slammed a knee into Han’s stomach, knocking the air out of him, and pushed him away. The old smuggler started crawling across the floor to the blaster he’d dropped, and Han rolled toward Simm’s weapon as fast as he could.
Chewbacca was striding toward Baasen, fury in his eyes, spitting threats of grievous bodily harm at the old smuggler. Baasen reached his weapon first and sprang up to his knees, pointing the blaster at Chewbacca’s head. “Sorry about this,” he said as he pulled the trigger.
His weapon hand disappeared from the wrist down, his sleeve catching fire from the heat of the blast. Han didn’t remember picking Simm’s blaster up, but it was in his hand, the barrel smoking with the discharge. He climbed to his feet, keeping the weapon aimed at Baasen.
Chewbacca growled out his thanks and crossed the room to remove Han’s cuffs.
“Anytime, pal,” Han said, lifting his hands to let the Wookiee work on them, but keeping the blaster pointed at Baasen. The Mirialan’s eyes were wide. “You just sit still, old friend, and maybe
I’ll forget how angry I am right now.”
“You shot my hand off,” Baasen said. He sounded more surprised than hurt.
“I was aiming at your head. It was kind of a rushed shot.”
The cuffs hissed and popped when Chewbacca shorted them out, and a few seconds later they fell to Han’s feet with a clank.
“Time to go,” Han said to Chewbacca. Every Imperial alert system in the city would be blaring alarms at the unauthorized blasterfire.
The weapons Baasen had taken from them were laid out on a nearby crate, and Chewbacca stopped long enough to grab his bowcaster and Han’s blaster. Han pushed Baasen over onto his back with one foot. “You don’t want to try and follow us,” he said. “The Imperials will throw you in prison, but if I see you again, I’ll let Chewie pull you apart.”
Baasen stared up at him with amusement and open hatred. “Oh, we’ll meet again, boyo.”
“You’d better hope not.”
“Where do they get all those guys?” Han muttered. Chewie huffed a sarcastic reply.
They were hiding in the shadow of a loading crane, about twenty meters off the ground. What looked like a thousand stormtroopers milled around the warehouses and docking bays below. Garet and Simm were both cuffed and kneeling on the ground outside their docking bay while a black-clad Imperial officer questioned them. Han couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could read the sullen expressions on their faces.
So far Baasen hadn’t made an appearance. Han kept waiting for the old Mirialan to show up, led out in cuffs by Imperial troops, but it kept not happening. And the more time that passed without Baasen in custody, the more worried Han got. Maybe they were trying to modify the cuffs for a missing hand. That was probably too much to hope for.
“Think he slipped out before the troops arrived?” he asked Chewbacca.
The Wookiee growled.
“He always was a slippery old ghodstag,” Han said. “You don’t think he’d come after us, do you?”
Chewbacca looked at him out of the side of his eye and grunted.
“Well, looks like the boys in white aren’t going to be leaving anytime soon, so we need to slip quietly away now.”
Chewbacca chuffed a question.
“No, not the Falcon. Not yet. We still need to find our rebel spy, or this was all just a waste of time.”
The Wookiee growled out a long response, and Han raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, ease down, pal. Yes, I fired the blaster, and so it might seem like our current predicament is my fault. But Baasen was about to shoot you. Should I have let him do that? So, in a way, this is your fault.”
Chewbacca’s low howl was brief and philosophical.
“I mean, you could argue that.”
Before Chewbacca could warm up to his rebuttal, Han slid down the crane’s ladder to the ground and slipped into the alley between two warehouses. Old, worn-out packing crates littered the space, but there was no sign of any other garbage. For some reason, the utter lack of loose trash in the city was as chilling a sign of Imperial dominance as anything else. Han wondered what happened to people who littered. Whatever it was, clearly it was bad enough that no one did.
At the end of the alley, they hid behind an empty crate while a squad of four stormtroopers walked by on patrol. Chewbacca fingered his bowcaster and looked a question at Han.
“No,” Han whispered. “No more shooting.”
Chewbacca quietly huffed back at him.
“No, I did not ‘start it.’ ”
The troopers went around a corner, and Han headed off down the street in the opposite direction. They needed a place to hole up for a while, wait for the manhunt to die down before they picked up their search for Scarlet Hark. Holing up and hiding from the law were two of Han’s specialties, but that was out on the Rim, where the Imperial presence was light and the populace cooperative. Cioran was the kind of place where hundreds of stormtroopers responded to a single blaster shot, and Han was willing to bet a lot of credits that there were hundreds more in reserve just waiting for the go signal. And the locals were used to being ground under the Imperial boot heel. They wouldn’t dare risk their own safety by hiding fugitives from the law. There wouldn’t be seedy bars where a man could slip into the shadows and a few credits in the right hands would keep anyone from asking questions.
Overhead, the traffic of speeders and personal fliers cast fast-moving shadows across gray and glass buildings that reached up so high, they appeared to lean in over the walkways below. Massive structures in a flat institutional style designed to be both functional and oppressive. And everywhere, at every intersection and building corner, the omnipresent eyes of the Empire. Sensor arrays and guard posts dotted the walls of every building. Sleek Imperial speeders cruised overhead, while squads of stormtroopers in urban pacification armor roamed the walkways.
“We may be in a lot of trouble here, Chewie,” Han said. He took off his weapons belt and put it and his blaster into Chewbacca’s satchel. He pointed at the Wookiee’s bowcaster. “Might have to leave that behind, pal.”
The Wookiee growled menacingly and clutched the weapon tighter.
“All right, here.” Han took off his long coat and handed it to him. Chewbacca wrapped the bowcaster in it until it was just a long cloth parcel that only looked a little bit like a hidden weapon. “Guess that’ll have to do.”
Chewbacca hefted the wrapped weapon over one shoulder and growled out a question.
“Japet. We’ll start with him,” Han replied. “He’s the one who rolled on her, so maybe he knows where she’s hiding. Besides which, we haven’t got anything else to go on.”
Chewbacca howled and waved his arms around, pointing out the scale of the city and the size of the Imperial presence.
“Well, we’ll just be careful, won’t we?” Han said, annoyed. “We’ll hit the port bars first.”
Growling to himself, Chewbacca shrugged and started walking alongside Han.
“And if we keep a bright smile and a jaunty step, we’re just two more loyal and happy subjects of the Empire, right? No reason for anyone to stop us.”
If Chewbacca was unconvinced, he kept it to himself.
Han walked back toward the dock district where they’d left the Falcon, using as a landmark a particularly tall building with a copper-colored top that angled up like a spear point. He hoped there weren’t two of them. He kept an eye out for a map or an information kiosk, but this area of the city seemed to be primarily warehouse space; there were far more droids than people, and almost nothing in the way of services for humans. Heavy lifting droids moved massive crates from building to building, and smaller tech droids—R2 and R3 units, for the most part—zipped about on obscure tasks. Occasionally, a squad of stormtroopers moved past in the distance, making Han change course to avoid crossing paths.
A street-sweeping droid rolled by, beeping quietly to itself as it scrubbed a stretch of walkway covered by an oil spill from a malfunctioning lifter. An eye on a long stalk tracked Han and Chewbacca as they walked by it. Han nodded to it as they passed.
“See?” Han began. “You just have to look like you belong—”
“Halt,” the cleaning droid said in a deep mechanical voice. “Present valid identification for foot traffic in warehouse sector eleven-B, or wait for Imperial officers to detain you.”
“Sorry, but we’re pretty busy,” Han said, giving the droid his best smile. “So we’ll just—”
“Halt,” the droid said again. Pieces of its silver shell slid apart, and half a dozen weapons appeared. “Present valid identification for foot traffic in warehouse sector eleven-B, or wait for Imperial officers to detain you.”
A port irised open, and a smaller sensor device protruded from it. It waved at them for a moment, then the droid said, “Weapon detected. Drop all weapons and place your hands or manipulating appendages in the air.”
Chewbacca dropped the coat-wrapped bowcaster and put his arms in the air. One long, multi-jointed arm dart
ed out from the droid and picked up the package. The stalk-mounted eye stayed locked on Han. “Place your hands or manipulating appendages in the air.”
“Yeah,” Han said with sigh. “Already been taken captive once today, so pretty much at my limit.”
“Raise your hands,” the droid insisted stubbornly.
Han took a step toward the droid, and it rolled back an equal distance, its eye never moving.
“I bet you street-sweeping droids aren’t really allowed to kill the citizens for something like not having the right identification.”
“You’d be correct,” a voice said from behind. “But I am.”
Chewbacca growled out an angry rebuke.
“I only have eyes on the front,” Han said, raising his hands and turning around slowly. “You’re supposed to be watching behind.”
Chewbacca shrugged.
A smiling Imperial soldier held a blaster pointed casually at Han. He wore the black uniform of a junior officer, and carried himself with the smug certainty common to his rank.
“You may carry on with your duties,” the officer said, and for a moment Han thought he was being let go. Then he heard the whine of the retreating droid.
“Officer, we’re—”
“Involved in that disturbance at the docks, like as not,” the officer finished for him.
Han took a step back and to the side, trying to get Chewbacca into the trooper’s blind spot. The officer shook his head and stepped back to keep them both in view.
“Please stop,” the trooper said. “I have men on their way, and it really does look better on the reports if I take you alive.”
Chewbacca roared and the officer spun toward him. He was just starting to turn back when Han hit him with a hard, straight kick in the midsection. The officer stumbled back, but he grabbed Han’s boot on the way down, pulling Han with him. The struggle was brief, and afterward Chewbacca helped him drag the dazed trooper into an alley. A few minutes later, Han emerged wearing an Imperial uniform.
Chewbacca eyed him critically and growled.
“Yeah, laugh it up,” Han said, straightening his sleeves and pulling on the officer’s black cap. “At least this way I can wear a blaster. You’re heading back to the ship.”