Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [69]
“That’s an interesting interpretation … anyway, charm signing is sort of like that. It’s confined to the social class of Imperial officer trainees from wealthy families and their circles. It came out of Coruscant long before the rise of the Empire, but it’s mostly confined to the Empire these days; most of the former Imperial officers serving with the New Republic weren’t of that social order. Anyway, she gave him the correct sign for ‘I’d accept a kiss.’ He just didn’t know what it meant.”
“Is that a reason for you to be so startled?”
“Well, yes. Lara keeps saying ‘Coruscant’ to me, without meaning to. When she’s distracted, when she’s upset … not when she’s in control. Sometimes she’ll walk like a native throneworlder—you know the sort of hunched-in, ‘don’t touch me’ body language?”
She nodded.
Face thought back. “And then, things she knew about Coruscant commerce. Pretty elaborate for someone who’d been employed there only for a few weeks. And that incident at the Galactic Museum. The old man who thought she was—what was the name he called her?”
“Edallia Monotheer.”
Face looked at her with real surprise. “How did you remember that?”
“A trick of the trade. When you’re a slave dancer, you remember the name of everyone you are introduced to by your owner. If you fail, you’re beaten … or worse.”
“I’m sorry.” He pulled her to him, an embrace of apology. “I always seem to do something to remind you of those times.”
“It’s not your fault.” Her voice was a whisper. “I can’t seem to give up on it. Sometimes I think I say things like that to remind other people of what I used to be—when I’m the only one who needs to remember.” She sighed, as if releasing some sorrow into the air. “What are you going to do about Lara? Ask her how she knows this charm signing?”
He shook his head, brushing his cheek against hers. “I’m going to put in a request for information. To New Republic Intelligence.”
“But later,” she said.
“Later.”
A couple of hundred meters away, Wedge trotted up the access ramp to the YT-1300 freighter hidden away in one of Mon Remonda’s hangar bays. Crashing and clanking noises drifted down from the freighter’s upper hull, accompanied by the deep rumbling of Chewbacca’s complaints. But no human words accompanied the rumbling.
He found Han Solo in the vessel’s cockpit. He dropped into the copilot’s seat beside the general.
“I thought you’d be at your pilots’s welcome-back party,” Solo said. He didn’t turn his attention from the forward viewport. Across the floor of the hangar, cluttered with tools and repair carts, was the rectangle of lights outlining the hangar’s magnetic containment field. Beyond that, dim because of the hangar’s light, were stars.
“I stopped in,” Wedge said. “I didn’t stay too long. It tends to make the children nervous.”
Solo managed a faint smile. “I know what you mean. I used to be one of the guys. Now I walk into a room and all conversation stops. I didn’t imagine, when I accepted this job, that I’d become some other thing. An outsider.”
“Sometimes that’s what an officer is. Someone who’s ‘one of the guys’ can’t maintain discipline.”
“I suppose.”
A furious hail of metallic banging made conversation impossible for a moment. It was followed by an unusually lengthy and articulate stretch of grumbling from Chewbacca.
Solo said, “He hates this wreck almost as much as I do.”
“Why do you hate it more?”
“Because, despite everything I said, it’s just enough like the Falcon to make me homesick.”
“For the Falcon? Or for Leia?”
Solo rubbed his face, easing away some of the lines of tiredness. “Yeah.”
“I never really understood why you left the Falcon on Rebel Dream when she went on her mission. You could have stored her on Mon Remonda.”
“It’s just … I’m not sure.” Solo stared off into the distance of space. “The Falcon is the thing I value most. Not the person I value most, but the thing. I think I left her with Leia so Leia would know.”
“That you trusted her with what you valued most.”
“Something like that.