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By Root 1357 0

hold and sat dejectedly in the engineering console’s swivel chair. Flashy new carpeting covered both the smooth metal deck plates and port-side grating—another accommodation to family travel. It was from here that he had watched Luke practice lightsaber technique against a stinging remote. He swiveled to face the dejarik hologame board, at which Chewie had spent countless hours, and around which—only a few years earlier—Leia, Admiral Pellaeon, and the late Elegos A’Kla had sat talking about peace.

Han drew his hand down his face, as if to erase the memories that came to mind unbidden, then he pushed himself up, crossed the hold, and stepped up into the circuitry/maintenance bay. Here, he and Leia had shared their first kiss, only to be rudely interrupted by C-3PO, announcing that he had located the reverse power flux coupling or some blasted thing.

A million years ago, Han told himself.

Worming his way aft, he emerged from the bay into the port-side ring corridor, opposite the bunk room where Luke had recuperated after losing his hand to his father’s lightsaber.

The corridor passed under the power core ducting and exhaust vents into the main rear hold, which had seen more alterations than any other portion of the ship. Reduced in size to accommodate the hyperdrive, the hold had been partitioned in any number of arrangements. A would-be slaver named Zlarb had come to a grim end back here.

The location of the escape pods hadn’t changed since the Corporate Sector days, but the original capsule-shaped pods—entered by way of hinged grates—had been replaced by spherical ones equipped with snazzy iris hatches.

Entering the starboard aft corridor and moving forward, Han passed the bunk room he’d often used as his personal quarters, and within which he had nearly had a showdown with Gallandro, then the galaxy’s fastest gun.

Dead now, like so many others from the glory days.

Han spread his arms in a hatchway in the interior wall and leaned into the galley. Laughing to himself, he recalled preparing pudding in cora shells and spiced aric tongue for Leia, when he’d spirited her off to Dathomir during his very wrongheaded courtship of her.

A few more steps brought him full circle to the docking arm. But instead of exiting, Han continued on to the cockpit pod and reluctantly entered. Stepping between the pair of rear chairs, he leaned stiff-armed on the console and gazed through the fan-shaped viewport at the spare-parts shelves he and Chewie had erected on the docking bay wall only the year before.

Ultimately he dropped himself into the outsize copilot’s seat and sat for a long while with his eyes closed and his thoughts shut down.

A month earlier, Chewie had still seemed so alive to him that he could almost hear the sound of the Wookiee’s angry yaups or happy foghorn laughs reverberating in the docking bay. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, Han would glance to his right, and there Chewie would be, regarding him sardonically with arms folded across his chest or paws linked behind his head.

Chewie wasn’t the only alien he’d flown with—there’d been the Togorian Muuurgh in the Ylesia years—but the Wookiee had been his only real partner, and he couldn’t imagine piloting the Falcon with anyone else. So he could either mothball her, as he had his BlasTech side-arm, or donate her to the Alliance War Museum on Coruscant, as persistent curators had been urging him to do for fifteen years.

A museum was probably where he belonged, as well, Han told himself. Like the Falcon, he was part of the past and of little use to anyone now.

He sighed heavily. Life was like a game of sabacc: the cards could change at random, and what you were sure was a winning hand could end up losing you the pot.

Instinctively, he reached under the control console for the metallic flask of vacuum-distilled jet juice he and Chewie had often kept secreted there, but it was gone—placed elsewhere by one of the kids or swiped by some disreputable mechanic.

His minor disappointment quickly turned to bitter anger, and he slammed the edge of his right fist repeatedly