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It had been a hearty, deep, almost choking laugh. Lando had thought Jarril was going to laugh himself to death the day he smuggled Lando out of Smuggler’s Run. Right under Nandreeson’s nose.

I owe you, Lando had said.

Jarril grinned. I know, pal. And someday I’ll collect. Big.

But he never had. And now it was too late. Ever since he’d seen Han Solo slide into the carbon freeze in Cloud City, Lando had placed a higher priority on old debts and friendship.

The old Lando would have walked away, sent the Spicy Lady back where he had found her, and forgotten the whole thing.

The new Lando sighed, bypassed the main hatch, and walked to the cockpit.

The cockpit on the Spicy Lady was an exact replica of the Millennium Falcon’s. It comfortably fit four humanoids, and was tall enough to accommodate a Wookiee. Blaster scars had left rips in the seats and had charred one of the viewports. When Lando turned on life support, Jarril’s body had fallen between the pilot’s seat and the wall, crumping like discarded clothing.

Lando bent over the body. Blaster at close range, just as he had thought. Jarril’s eyes were open, and filled with terror. Lando gently closed them. Too many times he had been afraid he would die that way, alone, attacked in space by someone he’d crossed. Or someone he hadn’t.

“Let’s see what we can do for you, Jarril,” Lando said. He sat in the copilot’s chair, as far from Jarril’s body as he could get. Then he logged on to the Spicy Lady’s computer. This part of the computer was not tied to the slave system.

When Lando logged on, a cargo manifest floated on the screen. It had been left there by whoever had gone before. The manifest was dated for a week before—and it was empty.

It had clearly been erased.

Lando searched the backups, but whoever had erased the manifest had been thorough. There were no backups of any of the manifests. In fact, all he could find were the ghosts of the files: the names and the dates of issue.

Jarril’s cargo had been so secret, he hadn’t even kept personal records of it.

Lando left the cargo manifests and went to the address files. The hailing codes for all of Jarril’s contacts had to be here. With a few keystrokes, Lando opened the files.

He recognized all the names as smuggling contacts except for three. One was on Fwatna and hadn’t been used in more than three years. Another was on Dathomir, and the third was on Almania. He looked up the Fwatna address first. It was for a contact named Dolph, and Jarril had noted [NAME RETIRED] in the hidden-words section. From Lando’s cursory examination of Jarril’s system, it seemed that Jarril deleted unusable information. Lando made a note of the name, the out-of-date address, and continued searching.

The address on Dathomir had no name attached to it. Instead, it had notes that appeared to be directions, along with stars marking it as a Big Find. The address was new enough that Lando suspected Jarril hadn’t had a chance to exploit the Big Find, hence its continuation in the records.

He opened the file on Almania to find that Jarril had sent a message there on the day the manifest was erased. The message had been deleted as well, but Jarril had based the Spicy Lady on the Falcon. He had followed all the schematics for the cockpit—the schematics that Lando had—and had bragged about it. Which meant that he had put in all of Lando’s back doors.

Once erased, not always erased.

Jarril had never been a brilliant man. He not only put in Lando’s back doors, he had used the same codes. Or perhaps that was bright. Who would think that two such diverse ships had the same coding system?

Except, of course, Lando.

It only took a moment for Lando to find the message. He put it on speaker, only to have the computer tell him the message was coded.

And written.

Stranger and stranger.

Lando uncoded the message and brought it onscreen. The message had no addressee and it was unsigned. Typical smuggler. That way no one who intercepted it would know who it was for.

CARGO DELIVERED. FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR.

It was followed shortly thereafter