Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 04_ Agents of Chaos 01_ Hero's Trial - James Luceno [28]
A new voice crackled from the annunciator.
“Soothfast, this is Gauntlet Three. It’s definitely an escape pod, probably yorik coral. Negative for armaments, but registering life readings. No bigger than a landspeeder. Rudimentary dovin basal retros and attitude control. Faceted but transparent canopy. Like a sheet of mica. Request permission to investigate at close range.”
Graff mulled it over for a moment, then said, “Gauntlet Three, you are green to investigate. But stay sharp.”
“Affirmative, Soothfast, staying sharp.”
No one spoke for a long moment. Then the speaker crackled back to life.
“Soothfast, I got a peek at the interior. Looks to be two, repeat, two occupants. One appears to be female. The other … Well, sir, the other is anyone’s guess.”
SEVEN
On Coruscant, Han stepped apprehensively into Eastport’s Docking Bay 3733 and palmed the wall-mounted illuminator bar. A glow ring concentric to the interior rim of the docking bay’s iris dome powered up, washing the Millennium Falcon in harsh light. Umbilicaled to sundry diagnostic and monitoring devices, the ship looked as if it were a patient on life support. The glow ring hummed loudly, and the air smelled faintly of ozone. The floor was a canvas of lubricant spills, scorch marks, and paint overspray.
Bay 3733 was leased to one Vyyk Drago, but in spite of Han’s attempts to keep a low profile, almost everyone in Coruscant’s administrative district knew that the Falcon was berthed there. In setting the ship down a week earlier, Jaina had bull’s-eyed the permacrete’s faded red landing circle. After what had happened on Kashyyyk, it had taken Han that long to marshal the nerve to visit. Three days aboard a dilapidated freighter hadn’t helped any.
Approaching the Falcon head-on, her boxy mandibles aimed at him, he recalled his first glimpse of the ship on the Hutt world of Nar Shaddaa almost thirty years earlier. She had then been the property of Lando, who had won her—so the story went—in a sabacc game in Bespin’s Cloud City. Though he had seen countless Corellian YT-1300s, it was love at first sight for Han, for there was something singular about the Falcon. Aside from promising amazing speed and maneuverability, the ship was built for adventure and proud of its obviously checkered past. Han had resolved that she would be his, one way or another.
Ironically, the chance came in Cloud City, during a four-day-long elimination-round sabacc tournament that ultimately found Lando and Han pitted against each other, with Han holding a pure sabacc hand to Lando’s bluff of a winning idiot’s array. Short on credits Lando had offered a marker—good for any ship on his lot—which Han had eagerly accepted. Dismayed by Han’s win, Lando had tried to maneuver him into selecting a newer-model light stock YT-2400, but Han had chosen the Falcon.
He still savored memories of his first moments in the pilot’s seat, awed by the power of her sublight engines and the response of her military-grade hyperdrive. She had speed, all right, but she needed muscle and stealth. So had begun a process of retrofitting and upgrading that would continue for twenty years. To Han the Falcon was a work in progress, a work of art, never to be completed.
Throughout those years he had protected her with his life, worrying about her as only a parent would, missing her as only a spouse could. There was the time Egome Fass and J’uoch had made off with her on Dellalt; the time the Falcon had clung to the aft command tower of the Star Destroyer Avenger; the time Lando and Nien Nunb had flown her against the second Death Star …
Mara’s tasking her cherished Jade’s Fire to crash into a fortress on Nirauan some years back was a decision he would never understand.
Circling the ship now, Han could still identify signs of some of the modifications he and others had made. At Shug Ninx’s spacebarn in the Corellian section of Nar Shaddaa,