• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“There’s less money in playing it safe.”

“There’s longer to live and spend that money in playing it safe.”

“You’re the boss.”

The bearded man eyed his companion. In his experience, You’re the boss always meant, I’ll shut up for now, then put a vibroblade in your back when the profit is highest. He mentally crossed his companion off his “useful” list and moved him to “expendable.” “I’ll get things started,” he said. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Anytime.”

The bearded man moved off toward his personal transport, a late-model landspeeder paid for by information he’d furnished to the Peace Brigade. If these were the Solos, he might be able to afford a personal spacecraft now—even factoring in the sum his companion’s elimination would cost.

On the balcony of their rented quarters, Leia sat, her ankles crossed on the railing before her, and entered notes.

Things were going well … mostly. The Talon Karrde organization had already led her to a pair of retired—semiretired—smugglers who were trusted by Karrde and whose enthusiasm for hunkering down in anticipation of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion matched hers. With their experience, they could find their own bases of operations, could even help with the acquisition of some vehicles and other equipment. What Han and Leia had to do now was help them set up a communications system, a combination holocomm and comlink that could transmit and receive the short, hard-to-track data packets that were the essence of resistance communications.

But Leia set her notes aside for a moment, distracted by the view. Below the balcony, a small lake stretched into the distance; its far shore was at the base of a low line of hills, and Aphran, the planet’s sun, was now setting beyond them. It was a red-gold orb, distorted by distance and atmosphere. The hills cast shadows over the distant part of the lake, while sunbeams illuminated the nearer portions, turning the water from green-blue to a brilliant gold.

It was only a sunset. She’d seen lovely sunsets all over the galaxy. But it had been some time since she’d paid attention to one, appreciated one.

This sunset meant nothing in the face of Yuuzhan Vong invasions, the death of Anakin, the disappearance of Jacen, her long separations from the rest of her family. But just for this moment, those sacrifices didn’t dig pain into her, and she could appreciate what she was seeing, its simple beauty.

“Bottle that and sell it, and we could make a fortune.”

Leia started. She looked up to where Han stood behind her. The energy field that kept the cooler air inside their quarters also muffled sound, so it hadn’t been too difficult for him to sneak up on her. He stared into the distance, watching the golden rays retreating as the sun continued its descent, and for once there was no self-deprecating humor, no expression of suspicion or cynicism on his face. Just contemplation.

Leia reached up to take his hand. He settled into the chair next to hers. “How were your errands?” she asked.

“Pretty good. The inventory is about half done, and the locals haven’t found any irregularities.” His last words were private code, agreed upon before the Falcon had set out on this series of missions. Irregularities meant the smuggling compartments and the shielded escape pod; those secrets remained intact. “And I was able to make some purchases. Cabinets. I need to arrange for their delivery.” So he’d been able to find the comm gear he needed, but delivery to wait until the new resistance leaders locally had a place for it. “You?”

“Oh, I may have made some new friends.”

“That’s good. You know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk about work anymore today.”

“Me, either.”

Borleias

Tam and Wolam sat in the pilot’s seats of Wolam’s shuttle. Once a military blastboat, it had been stolen from the Empire early in Wolam’s career and gradually converted to a lightly armed mobile office. Now it sat in the kill zone in front of the biotics building, one of the few vehicles internally lit at this nighttime hour.

In the absence of true