Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [73]
Generis was far removed from the effects of Imperial rule, but guests at the ranch kept my family well informed of galactic developments. I knew that the quickest route to earning a starship pilot's license was through one of the Imperial Academies, but I didn't want to spend years of compulsory service in the navy and had no interest in learning to fly TIE fighters. So I took a civilian approach, apprenticing with several shipping companies and commercial enterprises before striking out on my own as a freelance pilot. Ultimately I was hired by the Molpol Circus to pilot one of their light freighters.
By then Molpol had been in existence for about one hundred standard years. It wasn't a big operation, but it was a profitable and popular one, especially on the remote worlds on which the arrival of the circus became an annual reason for celebration. On civilized worlds, we would lampoon everyone. HoloNet celebrities, sports figures, politicians—even Palpatine, until we received a warning from the Imperial Palace to remove him from our repertoire or face the consequences. On remote worlds, we would research local myths and legends beforehand and tailor our acts accordingly. And by remote I mean planets where the indigenes were still burning fossil fuels for energy, suffering through spells of unpredictable weather, and dying of diseases that had been eradicated on the Core Worlds millennia earlier. Planets on which the mere act of defying gravity was still thought of as magical. To most of the populations, the fact that we had arrived from the far side of the galaxy meant next to nothing; we could just as easily have arrived from the far side of their own planet. The important thing was that we brought with us everything one could wish for in a circus: exotic animals, live music, and a host of skilled performers, from sideshow oddities to Ryn acrobats to master illusionists on the order of the Great Xaverri.
Molpol liked to think of itself as the antithesis of Circus Horrificus, with its ferocious arqets, akk dogs, and gladiatorial contests. As an alternative to inciting the kind of chaos Horrificus once did on Nar Shaddaa, Molpol delivered wonder and pure entertainment. Although, like Horrificus, we had a rancor—an albino mutant named Snowmass—and the usual assortment of carnivorous felines, herd animals, cameloids, and simians. Our beastmasters and handlers had scoured the galaxy to find the most interesting creatures—dianoga, nexu, mynock, and lava flea—but for the younglings in the audience we also had taurill, hawk-bats, energy spiders, and kyntix. Molpol's owner at the time, an Ortolan named Dax Doogun, dreamed of adding a sarlacc to the menagerie, but could never come up with an efficient way to transport it.
To move the animals we relied on an old Haor Chall C-9979 landing ship, reconfigured to be piloted by a flesh-and-blood crew—since Molpol owned few droids—and retrofitted with a bulky, Class Six hyperdrive. The cargo areas, racks, and massive turntables the Neimoidians had created to deploy their tanks and battle droid transports were redesigned to carry and reposition our banthas, acklays, and gun-darks—and, of course, Snowmass.
The Millennium Falcon was already a part of Molpol's fleet when I joined. It struck me as odd that such a powerful ship should be the property of a circus. Earlier owners had equipped the freighter with a military-grade hyperdrive and a dorsal turbolaser turret. But the more time I spent at the controls of the Falcon, the more I came to appreciate what a perfect fit she was for Molpol, being as agile as our acrobats and as motley as our sideshow performers. She was also long past her glory days as a ship of any sort—battle-scarred, held together with spit and wire, in sore need of body work, and about as capricious a vessel as I'd ever piloted.
In time I grew very fond of the Falcon, but for me Molpol's chief attraction