Star Wars_ The Han Solo Trilogy 02_ The Hutt Gambit - A. C. Crispin [33]
Guiding his repulsor sled with minuscule touches from his thick fingers, Aruk glided from the room, in search of food and companionship …
Five months and six bounty hunters later, Han and Chewbacca had settled down into life on Nar Shaddaa. Han found them a little apartment in the Corellian sector, a megablock or so from Mako’s place, and only one level below it. The little flat was set up like a small suite, with two tiny bedrooms with foldout beds, a minuscule kitchen/living area, and refresher unit. But they didn’t spend much time at home. As soon as Mako had introduced Han to his associates, the young Corellian found steady work. Good pilots were always valued on Nar Shaddaa.
During his first month, Han filled in as a shift pilot on the Nar Shaddaa to Nal Hutta shuttle, ferrying Hutts and their underlings back and forth from the Smuggler’s Moon to the Hutt homeworld. Han had hoped to meet either Jabba or Jiliac that way, but the two top Hutt Lords of the Desilijic clan had their own private shuttles and didn’t need to take public ones. Han hung on to the referral Tagta had given him, but decided he’d better learn his way around before he applied for jobs piloting for the Hutts. They were tough masters to please.
Just about the time Han’s temporary job ended, the young Corellian went out with Mako on several runs, hauling loads of spice from the Twi’lek homeworld, Ryloth, to a staging area on Roon. There Han met up with an old acquaintance of Mako’s, a craggy-faced, aging smuggler named Zeen Afit. Zeen was heading off to Smuggler’s Run with a shipment of food, and when he mentioned that he’d like company, Han and Chewbacca offered to ride along.
Smuggler’s Run was a hideout for sentients on the lam who were even “hotter” than the denizens of Nar Shaddaa. Smuggler’s Run was a series of hideouts—actually, artificial environments whittled out of several large asteroids located in the middle of a huge asteroid field. The main one was a smelly hole bored into a large asteroid that was known as Skip 1.
Zeen Afit showed Han the way into the Run, through the treacherous, constantly changing asteroid field, though he wouldn’t let him pilot his clunky old freighter, the Corona. “Next time, kid,” he promised, in his breathless, wheezy voice, as his fingers flew over the controls. “I promise you. This time, just watch old Uncle Zeen and enjoy the ride.”
Han gulped as Corona narrowly missed colliding with a jagged, hurtling rock that would have reduced them and their ship to molecules. “If I’m still alive when the next time comes,” he pointed out, involuntarily ducking as another asteroid nearly grazed their viewscreen. “Blast it, Zeen, slow down! Are you crazy?”
“Only way to fly an asteroid field is fast and by the seat of your pants, kid,” Zeen Afit said, never taking his eyes from his instruments. “If you try and tiptoe in, chances are you’ll get smashed before you can wipe your nose. I always just fly right in, keepin’ my eyes open, and I’m still here.”
When they reached the fabled Smuggler’s Run, Han and Chewbacca warily followed Zeen Afit into Skip 1, to meet “the gang,” as he called his friends. Han was introduced to a sallow, thin man with scars on his face named Jarril, and another, older man with a receding hairline who incongruously went by the name “Kid DXo’ln.”
Skip 1 was a regular warren of rooms, dining halls, gambling dens, bars, and drug hideaways. Han was frankly nervous, as he realized that here, even more than on Nar Shaddaa, there was no law. None.
He could die here, and no one but Chewie (presuming the Wookiee was still alive himself, an unlikely assumption) would ever know or care. Han was careful not to let any of his nervousness show. He had grown up with lawless people, had seen plenty of degenerate spirits by the time he was ten. He’d just never encountered quite so many bloodthirsty, desperate lost beings in one place before.