• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Nobody home,” he told her as he gave her a hand up. Together they squeezed into the cramped cockpit. Han trained the macrobinoculars on his first mate across the way, and when the Wookiee chanced to look in his general direction, flashed the cargo lifter’s running lights. Chewbacca took no notice.

It took four more tries to get the Wookiee’s attention. Han saw his first mate’s long, shaggy arm go to the console and the Falcon’s running lights blinked twice in acknowledgment.

Fiolla kept an eye on those individuals watching the Falcon to ensure that they hadn’t noticed what was going on. In so doing she spotted at least four more idlers mounting an inconspicuous guard on the freighter. Chewbacca pretended to be running a warmup while Han sent him a series of longs and shorts explaining their predicament and what the revised plan was. Throughout the process, Han was very aware of Fiolla pressed up against him in the confining cockpit; her perfume, he found, had a tendency to distract him.

When Han was finished, the Falcon’s lights blinked twice again. As he helped Fiolla down from the cargo lifter’s cockpit hatch, a tech came up. “What were you people doing up there?”

Fiolla turned a scathing, imperious glare on the tech. “Is it now required that Port Safety overseers answer to ground crew? Well? Who’s your supervisor?”

The tech murmured something apologetic, shuffling her feet and saying that she’d only been asking. Fiolla gave her one more haughty glare and departed with Han at her elbow. “And now we book passage out?” she asked once they had passed out of the tech’s earshot.

“Yeah, I’ll teach you all about getting offworld under a phony name. Chewie’s going to stay put till we’re clear, then lift off. They won’t be expecting him to leave without us, so he shouldn’t have any trouble. We will meet him on Ammuud.”

* * *

“We’re in luck,” Fiolla said as she and Han stood studying the soaring holos that listed departures in the main passenger terminal. “There’s a ship that goes straight to Ammuud, leaving this evening.”

Han shook his head. “No, there’s the one we want, departure 714, the shuttle.”

Her brow furrowed. “But it’s not even leaving this solar system.”

“Which is why no one will be covering it,” he countered. “They’re likely to have watchers on the through-ships. We can change ships and book passage for Ammuud at the first stop, it says in the index. Besides, the shuttle’s leaving now, which appeals to me a whole lot more. We’ll have to hurry.”

They tried not to appear too anxious as they bought tickets and barely made it to the departure gate in time. Since the ship was only an inter-system shuttle, it offered no sleeping accommodations beyond big, comfortable acceleration chairs. Han buckled himself in and let his chair back, sighing and preparing to drop off to sleep.

Fiolla had grabbed the window seat with no objections from Han. “Why did you make me pay for the tickets in cash?”

He opened one eye and studied her. “You want to go around passing out Authority cash vouchers from an open expense account? Good, go ahead; you might as well hang a sign around you neck: AUTHORITY EXEC—WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE SHOOT ME?”

Her voice suddenly held a tremor. “Do, do you think that’s what’s happened to Magg?”

He shut his eye again, lips tightening. “Absolutely not; they’ll hang on to him as a bargaining piece. All I meant was that we don’t want to leave a trail. Don’t pay any attention to me; sometimes I talk too much.”

He could hear attempted cheer in her tone. “Or you don’t talk enough, Solo. I haven’t decided which.” She settled herself to watch their liftoff. Han, who had seen more of them than he’d ever be able to count, was asleep before they left the troposphere.

At their destination, Roonadan, fifth planet out from the same sun that warmed Bonadan, they discovered they had missed their starship connection. The shuttle had been slightly delayed en route by injector problems, but of course starships on interstellar jump schedules are never held