• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

[Are you afraid I will not return?]

[Yes.]

[Then are you not afraid that you will not return?]

[I am more afraid to fail than to die,] Lumpawarrump said. [Much is expected from the son of Chewbacca—he cannot be a coward.]

[You need not fear that now. By offering yourself, you have shown your mettle.]

[That is not what they will see. They will say that it was only words, that I knew you would not take me, that I knew Malla would forbid it,] said Lumpawarrump. [They will see that even you did not have faith in me—that Jowdrrl and Shoran and Dryanta were good enough for you, but I was not.]

Chewbacca shook his head. [It is not a matter of faith. I have a full crew. What skills do you bring to this hunt?]

[Everything of you that is in me, and everything that you can teach me,] Lumpawarrump said. [Father, please—I have accepted your long absences, the duties that take you away from us. But I must have a chance to prove my worth to you. I want my baldric and my new name. Give me a chance to earn them beside you, and know that you are proud of me.]

Chewbacca cast a sideways glance at Mallatobuck, who was watching anxiously but keeping her distance. He doubted she could have heard much of the conversation over the noise from the Falcon.

[Go,] Chewbacca said, seizing Lumpawarrump by the arm and sending him toward the ship with a push. Malla raised a sharp wail of protest, but Chewbacca moved quickly to block her from reaching their son.

[You can’t take him—he’s not ready,] Malla insisted.

[If I let you tell him that, if I tell him that, it will destroy him,] said Chewbacca. [That is why I must take him. Now step back and let him see a mother’s fierce pride, not her fear.]

Her eyes sad but resigned, Malla cuffed him across the face, and he returned the kiss with equal tenderness and affection. Then he turned and bounded up the boarding ramp while Malla retreated into the growing crowd drawn to the platform by the sound of the Falcon’s engines.

Moments later, the ship lifted and wheeled toward the sky.

INTERLUDE I:

Vagabond

The Teljkon vagabond had finally ceased shuddering and groaning around its prisoners. With the starship once again hurtling through hyperspace, at last there was silence.

“Attagirl,” Lando said, patting the wall of the chamber in which he and the others floated. “It’ll take a lot more than one rusty old escort frigate to run you down.”

“But Master Lando, this is terrible, simply terrible,” said Threepio, his damaged arm jerking spastically as he gestured animatedly. “That ship could have rescued us, and now we’ve run away from it. We may even have destroyed it.”

“I hope we did,” Lando said. “Trust me on this—any rescue offered by an Imperial warlord in the Core is going to be no rescue worth having. There’s probably still a price on my head, maybe on you two droids, too. War hero or war criminal—it’s all a matter of your point of view. Chances are we’d find ourselves traded around until we were in the hands of whoever was willing to pay the most for the pleasure of killing us.”

“I see what you mean, sir.”

Artoo-Detoo burbled a terse comment.

“I’m quite sure he’s not interested in your linguistic pretensions, Artoo,” Threepio said haughtily. “And neither am I.” The droid’s tone suddenly changed to a melodramatic melancholy. “Killed or deactivated or disintegrated to atoms, it’s all the same to me. Oblivion, the final cessation of awareness—”

Then annoyance suddenly took over Threepio’s voice. “Not that it means anything to a random jumble of circuits such as yourself,” he added, clanging a golden fist against Artoo’s dome. “If you want to do something useful, you might see about fixing those sensors Master Lando placed on the hull. Why you let them be damaged just when we needed them most, I’ll never understand.”

Artoo’s shrill reply needed no translation, even for Lando.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Threepio sniffed.

“If you two keep wasting your power cells on bickering, you’ll visit oblivion a lot faster than you were planning