Star Wars_ The Han Solo Trilogy 02_ The Hutt Gambit - A. C. Crispin [23]
As Han stared out at the fabled Smuggler’s Moon, he found himself remembering his dream again. In the dream he’d been looking up at another, very different moon. He frowned. Funny thing—that stuff about the mascot moon, that had actually happened. Han had stood in ranks with the other cadets and watched the little moon explode violently in Carida’s nighttime sky.
Perhaps his subconscious had sent him that dream to remind him of something important that he’d forgotten. Han hoisted his knapsack higher on his shoulder. “Mako,” he mumbled.
Chewbacca gave him an inquiring glance. Han shrugged. “I was just thinkin’ that maybe we should look up Mako.”
Chewie cocked his head and mhrrrrnnnnned a question.
“Mako Spince. I knew him when he was an upperclassman cadet. Mako and me go back a long ways,” Han explained.
Mako Spince was an old friend, and last Han had heard, he’d had ties to Nar Shaddaa. They said he even lived here at times. It wouldn’t hurt to look up Mako, see if he could help his old buddy Han find work …
Mako Spince was ten years older than Han, and they couldn’t have had more opposite childhoods. Han had been a child of the streets until the cruel, sadistic Garris Shrike had taken him in and introduced him to a life of crime. Mako was the son of an important Imperial Senator. He’d been brought up with every advantage—but he’d lacked Han’s determination. Mako’s main interest while at the Imperial Academy had been in having fun.
Mako had been an upperclassman, two years ahead of Han. Despite their disparate backgrounds, the two had become good friends, racing swoops, hosting clandestine wild parties, playing practical jokes on stodgy instructors. Mako was always the instigator in their mischief. Han had been the cautious one, never forgetting how hard he’d had to work to get into the Academy. The younger cadet was careful never to get caught—but Mako, confident that his father’s connections would protect him from consequences, had dared anything and everything in his pursuit of the perfect joke, the most daring escapade.
Destroying the Academy’s mascot moon had been his biggest—and last—prank as an Imperial cadet.
Han had known at the time that something was up, something big. Mako had tried to induce him to come along when he’d planned the break-in to the physics lab. But Han had had a test to study for, so he’d refused. If he’d known what Mako was planning, he’d have tried to talk his friend out of it.
That night, while Han plotted orbits and worked on his “Economics of Hyperspace Troop Movement” presentation, Mako broke into Professor Cal-Meg’s physics lab. He stole a gram of antimatter, then a small, one-man shuttle and a spacesuit from the Academy shuttle hangar, and took off.
Landing on the small planetoid that was Carida’s nearest of three satellites, Mako planted the antimatter capsule in the middle of the huge Academy Seal that had been laser-carved into the satellite decades ago, back when Carida was still a training planet for the troops of the now-vanished Republic. Mako triggered the antimatter explosion from a safe distance in space, intending to blast the seal right off the face of the little moon.
But Mako had underestimated the power of the antimatter he’d stolen. The entire satellite blew up in a cataclysmic display that Han and the other cadets witnessed from the planet’s surface.
Mako was immediately one of the prime suspects. He’d pulled so many pranks in his time, caused so much mayhem, that the officers began checking on him almost before the debris from the shattered satellite had either plunged planetward or drifted into alignment, forming a disjointed ring around Carida.
Han was also a suspect, but fortunately for him, a friend had come over to see him for some astrophysics coaching right at the time of the break-in. Han’s alibi was