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Han saw her expression and stopped. “What is it?”

“Come on,” she said. “Before we’re missed. We’re getting out of here. I don’t trust Pavik not to make that call to security behind Daddy’s back.”

Han turned back toward the transport station. “You sneaked out?”

“I left them a note,” she said defensively. “Did you get the money transferred to Coruscant?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Han said.

They walked for a few minutes in silence, then Bria said, “Someday, I’d like to know all the truth. I hate surprises of this sort, Han.”

He sighed. “I should have told you. I will tell you. Everything. I promise. I’m just not in the habit of trusting anyone.”

“I can tell,” she said grimly.

“Nice of your dad to stick up for me.”

“Daddy says you remind him of himself, when he was a young pilot.” She smiled faintly. “I gather he led a rather checkered existence for a few years, out on the Rim.”

Han nodded and, cautiously, reached for her pack. “I’m really sorry about this. Let me carry it?”

She sighed and surrendered her bag. “Okay. It was probably a bad idea to come here, anyway.” After a moment she reached over and took his hand. “Now it’s just the two of us again.”

Han nodded. “That’s the way I like it, sweetheart.”

The trip to Coruscant was uneventful. True to his promise, Han related his history to Bria, in unvarnished detail. It bothered him to have to admit many of the things he’d done in the past, but he took his promise to her seriously, and he was as honest as he could be.

At first, Han worried that Bria might be repelled by all of the things he’d done during his checkered past, but she reassured him, saying that she loved him more, now that she knew the truth.

The five-day voyage to Coruscant was a long one. Han was beginning to suffer from boredom by the time the passenger liner docked at one of the massive space stations that serviced the huge Imperial city-world.

From the space station, the passengers were told, they’d be shuttled down to the spaceport in small ships. Han was surprised to discover that there was almost no place on the giant world where the natural ground could be seen or touched.

“Only in Monument Plaza,” their steward told the assembled passengers who’d traveled on the liner Radiance. “There citizens may touch the top of the only mountain on the planet that still remains. About twenty meters of the peak extends into the air. The remainder is all hidden beneath buildings.”

Coruscant, it seemed, was a warren of buildings, skyscrapers, towers, rooftops, and more buildings, all built one upon the other in a giant, labyrinthine hodgepodge. Han raised his hand when the steward asked whether there were any questions. “You say that the topmost rooftops are more than a kilometer above the lowest-level streets? What’s down there?”

The Radiance’s steward shook his head warningly. “Sir, take my word for it. You do not want to know. The lowest levels never see the sun. They are so far beneath the clean air that they are fetid and damp and have their own weather systems. Foul rain drips down the sides of the buildings. The alleys are infested with granite slugs, duracrete worms, shadow-barnacles … and, worst of all, by the degenerate remnants of what once used to be human beings. These troglodytes are pale carrion and garbage eaters, disgusting in every way.”

“Huh,” Han whispered to Bria, “sounds like my kinda place.”

“Stop it!” she hissed, smothering a grin. “You are such a smart-mouth …”

“I am, I really am.” Han sat back in his seat, chuckling. “I’m impossible. I don’t know how you put up with me.”

“Neither do I,” Bria said, smiling wryly.

The couple made their way over to one of the viewports on the station while they were waiting for a “surface” shuttle down. “It’s like some beautiful golden gem,” Bria whispered. “All those lighted buildings …”

“It looks like a corusca jewel,” Han said, eyeing the planet thoughtfully. “Must be where the world got its name.”

They were standing in line, waiting to enter the shuttle, when an official stepped forward and pointed at Han’s blaster. “Sorry, sir, you’ll