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Han unsealed the pack, and the agent quickly located the blaster, its large scope and conically shaped flash suppressor stowed in a separate case.

“Is this a DL-44?” he asked incredulously.

“More or less,” Han said. “I’ve made some special modifications—”

The agent laughed and got the attention of a human coworker. “Boz, does this classify as a weapon or an antique?”

“Antique,” Boz answered around a broad smile.

“Laugh it up, fellas,” Han said, refraining from boasting about the blaster’s capabilities.

The agent glanced at Han’s identity documents. “Either way, Laamu, I’ve got to drain the power pack.”

Han put his tongue in his cheek, then shrugged. “Long as you’ve done that with the other weapons that have come through.”

“All the ones we’ve discovered,” the agent said.

“That’s comforting.”

“We’re looking for the Bet’s Off?” Roa asked while the agent was fitting a depletor to the power pack.

“Assuming you two have normal-spectrum vision, Red route to the Yellow tram to White Two, then all the way down the Shaft. You can’t miss it.”

“What do you tell the color-blind?” Han said nastily.

The agent placed the depleted blaster in the travel pack and resealed it. “I tell them to take a cab.”

Roa insisted on taking a cab. Their Sullustan driver was a former ambassador to Ithor, marooned on the Jubilee Wheel waiting for transit documents to arrive from his homeworld.

“It’s the same story over and over,” Roa told Han when the cab had dropped them off in White Two. “Some trying to get home, some fleeing their homes, some without homes—and rarely the required documentation to get them off station, let alone transport to their desired destinations. So you find diplomats working as drivers, university professors tending bar, important types from you-name-it waiting tables or risking their savings on sabacc games—most of which are rigged.”

In the Shaft, they made their way through a mixed-species crowd of hopeless folks—Ithorians, Saheelindeeli, Brigians, Ruurians, Bimms, Dellaltians—refugees from up and down the Hydian Way, clutching meager possessions to their torsos or holding tight to their children, shuffling aimlessly, in search of the miracle that was going to get them off the Wheel, as many referred to the station. People huddled in the shadows, hungry, trapped, and wary. Elsewhere prowled the ones the war had elevated: uniformed soldiers, reclamation and salvage experts, document forgers, scavengers, scammers, relief flyers, and the rest.

Han recalled what Leia had said about the refugee situation, about the lack of food and shelter, the diseases, the separation of families, and it began to dawn on him that he wasn’t the only one in a bad way.

He was still mulling it over a short time later, while he and Roa sipped Gizers in the Bet’s Off, a crowded and somewhat elegant tapcaf, with a back room devoted to sabacc and other games of chance.

“Time I started making some inquiries,” Roa announced when he’d finished his drink. He stood up and squared his shoulders. “I won’t be long.”

Han watched him move off in the direction of the circular bar, then returned his attention to the pale-blue ale. Movement caught his eye, however, and when he glanced up, two Ryn males were standing at the table, darker and better dressed than the ones he had met in the docking bay.

“You’ll pardon the intrusion,” the taller one said in a trilling voice, “but you’re off the recently arrived Soro-Suub 3000?”

Han extended his arms over the backs of the chairs adjacent to his. “Word gets around fast. What of it?”

“Well, kind sir,” the other took over, “we were wondering—that is, Cisgat and myself—if your onward travels might be taking you in the vicinity of Rhinnal, or perhaps if you could be induced, for an equitable sum, to carry some passengers there.”

“Sorry, boys, but we’re not Core bound.”

The two exchanged concerned glances.

“Perhaps if we explained,” Cisgat said. “You see, this is a matter of some urgency. We were to rendezvous here with other members of our extended family, but there seems