• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Seeing that Han was looking up at him, the man squatted down onto his heels, which brought him to only a little above Han’s eye level. “You’re too big to cry in the street, you know that, don’t you?”

Han nodded, still sniffling, but trying to control himself. “Y-yeth … yes.” At first he lisped a little, the way he had when he’d first learned to talk. That was a long, long time ago, Han thought. He’d been talking since the cold season, and it was soon going to be cold season again. He’d been talking since …

SLAM!

The child shuddered again as his mind resolutely shut away all his memories of that beforetime. Something else surfaced, something he’d overlooked at first in his misery. Han’s eyes widened. This man had called him by name! How does he know my name?

“You … who are you?” Han whispered. “How do you know my name?”

The man grinned, showing many teeth. It was meant to be a friendly expression, Han could tell, but there was something about it that made him shudder. It reminded him of the packs of canoids that hunted prey in the alleys. “I know lots of things, kid,” the man replied. “Call me Captain Shrike. Can you say that?”

“Y-yes. Cap-tain Shrike,” Han parroted uncertainly. He hiccuped as his sobbing died away. “But … but how did you know my name? Please?”

The man put out a hand as if to ruffle his hair, then seemed to take in the dirt and scritchies inhabiting his young scalp and think better of it. “You’d be surprised, Han. I know almost everything that goes on here on Corellia. I know who’s lost and who’s found, who’s for sale and who’s sold, and where all the bodies are buried. Matter of fact, I’ve had my eye on you. You seem like a smart lad. Are you smart?”

Han drew himself up, eyed the man levelly. “Yes, Captain,” he said, forcing his voice to be steady. “I’m smart.” He knew he was, too. Anyone who wasn’t didn’t last for months on the streets, the way he had.

“Good, that’s the lad! Well, I could use a smart lad to work for me. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll give you a square meal and a warm place to sleep.” He grinned again. “And I just bet you’d like to see my ship.” He pointed up at the darkening sky.

Han nodded eagerly. Food? A bed? And especially … “A spaceship? Yes, Captain! I want to be a pilot when I grow up!”

The man laughed and held out his hand. “Well come on, then!”

Han let the big hand engulf his, and the two of them walked away together, toward the spaceport …

Han stirred and shook his head. I should never have gone with him that day, he thought. If I hadn’t gone with him, Dewlanna would still be alive …

But if he hadn’t gone with Shrike, he’d probably have awakened some night in the alley to find that vrelts had chewed his ears and nose off, the way they had one of the other “alley urchins” that Garris Shrike had “rescued.”

Han smiled grimly. Captain Shrike didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body. He collected children and used them to turn a profit. Almost every planet the Luck visited, Shrike loaded up a group of his “rescuees” and took them down to the streets in the shuttle. There he left them under the supervision of a droid he’d programmed himself, F8GN. Eight-Gee-Enn assigned them to their “territories” and kept track of their proceeds as the children roamed the streets, begging and pickpocketing.

They used the littlest ones, the skinniest ones, the deformed ones for begging. The vrelt-gnawed girl, Danalis, had always done well. Shrike kept her working hard for years by promising her that when she’d earned enough for him, he’d get her face fixed for her, so she’d look human again.

But he never had. When she was about fourteen, Danalis evidently realized that Shrike was never going to make good on his promises. One “night” she went into the Luck’s airlock and cycled it—without first putting on a suit.

Han had been on the cleanup crew. He shuddered at the memory.

Poor Danalis. He could still picture her in his mind, handing over a day’s begging receipts to Eight-Gee-Enn. The droid was tall and spindly, made from