Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [17]
At that rendezvous they were met, in a deep space, by a small ship’s gig. When an inboard search by armed, wary men revealed that the Falcon carried no one but her pilot and copilot, the two were led to the second planet of a nearby star system. The gig parted company with them, and they came in for a landing, tracked by the upraised snouts of turbo-laser cannons. The site was a huddle of quickly assembled hanger domes and habitation bubbles. Parked here and there was a wide assortment of ships and other equipment, much of it gutted and decaying, cannibalized for spare parts.
When Han stepped down the starship’s ramp, his face lit with that intense smile that had been known to make men check up and see what their wives were doing. “Hello, Jessa. It’s been too long, doll.”
The woman waiting at the foot of the ramp looked back at him scornfully. She was tall, her hair a mass of heavy blond ringlets, and her shape did extremely pleasant things to the tech’s coveralls she wore. Her upturned nose held a collection of freckles acquired under a variety of suns; Jessa had been on almost as many planets as Han. Just now, her large brown eyes showed him nothing but derision.
“Too long, Solo? No doubt you’ve been busy with religious retreats? Mercantile conferences? Milk deliveries for the Interstellar Childrens’ Aid Fund? Well, it’s no wonder I haven’t heard from you. After all, what’s a Standard Year, more or less, hey?”
“A lifetime, kid,” he answered smoothly. “I missed you.” Coming down to her, he reached for her hand.
Jessa eluded him, and men with drawn guns came into view. They wore coveralls, fusion-welders’ masks, tool belts, and greasy headbands, but they were plainly comfortable with their weapons.
Han shook his head mournfully. “Jess, you’ve really got me wrong, you’ll see.” But he knew he had just received an explicit warning, and decided he’d better turn the conversation to the matter at hand. “Where’s Doc?”
The scorn left Jessa’s features, but she ignored his question. “Come with me, Solo.”
Leaving Chewbacca to watch the Falcon, Han accompanied her across the temporary base. The landing field was a flat expanse of fusion-formed soil (almost any sort of solid material would do for fusion-forming, Han knew; minerals, vegetable matter, or any old enemies for whom you had no further use). Male, female, human, and nonhuman techs scrambled over vehicles and machinery of every category, aided by a wild assortment of ’droids and other automata, engaged in repair, salvage, and modification.
Han admired the operation as he walked. A tech who’d do illegal work could be found almost anywhere, but Doc, Jessa’s father, had an operation that was famous among lawbreakers everywhere. If you wanted your ship repaired without questions as to why you’d been through a firefight, if you needed a vessel’s ID profile and appearance changed for reasons best left unmentioned, or if you had a hot piece of major hardware to buy or sell—the person to contact, if you met his rigorous background check, was Doc. If something could be done with machinery, he and his outlaw-techs could do it.
Several of the modifications done on the Millennium Falcon had been performed through the outlaw-tech’s good offices; he and Han had dealt with each other on a number of occasions. Han admired the shifty old man because held been sought by Authority and other official forces for years but never apprehended. Doc had kept himself well buffered, and piped into as many crooked bureaucrats and scuttlebutt sources as anyone Han knew. More than one strike unit had moved against the outlaw-techs only to capture a target area empty of everything but abandoned buildings and useless junk. Doc had joked that he was the only felon in the galaxy who’d have to set up an employee pension plan.
Threading among disassembled hulks and humming repair docks, Jessa led Han through the largest hangar on the base. At one end, slabs of Permex had been joined into a stark cube of an office. But when its door slid up at her command, Han could see that Doc