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“Well, Dael, it was lovely of you to drop by. Perhaps we can all get together for lunch someday. Who are you seeing these days?” As she spoke, she moved toward Dael, and in one smooth motion took his arm and started him moving toward the door. Han smiled inwardly. Slick, Bria, honey … nicely done.

“Sulen Belos,” Dael said. “She’d love to meet Tallus, too. She’s quite a swoop racing fan.”

“Tal—” Bria caught herself immediately, and laughed. “Well, she always was!” She cast a flirtatious glance at Han. “I’ll have to watch you, won’t I, Tallus? Sulen Belos is gorgeous, and she’s never been able to resist a swoop racer.”

Han smiled at her good-naturedly. Great. Just great. From bad to worse. “You gotta watch us swoop racers, too. We live for danger.”

Half out the door, Dael Levare laughed, as though Han had said something clever. “Well, I’ll call you. Nice meeting you, Tallus!”

“Nice meeting you, too,” Han said.

“Don’t forget to call,” Bria urged, and then she shut the door behind Levare and leaned against it.

Silence ensued.

Han had never heard such a profound silence, even inside a spacesuit in vacuum. He glanced quickly from Bria, to Pavik, to Sera. All three were staring at him grimly. Han cleared his throat. “Think I’ll take a little walk,” he announced. “Get some air.”

Not meeting anyone’s eyes, he left.

Bria felt like screaming, then sobbing, but she struggled to control herself. The situation was bad enough without her dissolving into hysterics. She was pacing back and forth in her mother’s dressing room. Pavik was sitting on the couch, waving his arms and raising his voice, and her mother was sitting in a pink brocade chair, alternating between gasped exclamations of “Oh, dear!” and “Bria, your brother is right, we must do something!”

“You heard him last night!” Pavik shouted. “He denied having swoop-raced, and he gave us a fake name! Han Solo—right! Who knows what his real name is?”

“Stop it!” Bria cried. “Han Solo is his real name!”

“Then why is ‘Tallus Bryne’ listed as the swoop racing champion of Corellia last year?” Pavik said. “He can’t be both, Bria. Face it, the guy’s using an alias, and the only reason to do that is that he’s got stuff to hide! And this is the guy you want us to accept with open arms, just because you say so?”

“Oh, dear!” Sera wrung her hands.

Bria bit her lip to keep from shrieking.

“And another thing,” Pavik said. “My memory is starting to come back on this, and ‘Tallus Bryne’ wasn’t Solo’s only alias. The time I remembered was about three years earlier. He was just a kid, eating barbecue after a swoop race. That time, ‘Solo’ was ‘Keil Garris,’ the son of Venadar Garris. Remember him? That guy who went around one summer selling shares in that duralloy asteroid, and the whole thing turned out to be bogus? A scam?”

Bria did remember. “But even if this Garris man was a con artist, that doesn’t mean that Han—”

Pavik threw up his arms in exasperation. “Sis, don’t you remember how a couple of our friends’ parents were nearly wiped out from buying worthless shares in that nonexistent asteroid?” He snorted. “That whole Garris family was nothing but a bunch of con artists—and that includes your new boyfriend, Bria!”

“This is terrible!” Sera Tharen said. “Perhaps we should do something!”

Both Bria and Pavik ignored their mother.

“But Han was just a kid then,” she pointed out, fighting not to give in to tears. “You admitted that. He can’t be held responsible for what you say his parents did.”

“But he doesn’t have any parents—or so he told us!”

Bria glared at him. “Well, maybe they were his parents, and he’s disowned them because they were crooked,” she said. “Pavik, Han is a good person! He’s had a tough life and wound up having to do things he didn’t like to survive, I already know that. But he’s turned around now! He’s trying to make something of himself, and you won’t give him that chance!”

Pavik snorted derisively. “If they even were his parents,” he said. “Sis … don’t be blinded