Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 12_ Return to Ord Mantell - Kevin J. Anderson [22]
"My name is Anja," she said, her voice cold and even. "Anja Gallandro.
" Jacen watched his father flinch and draw back. His expression fell, and he swallowed hard. Jacen blinked, surprised at the guilty reaction his father had shown. Was there something to what this young woman had -
said?
"You... you're Gallandro's daughter?"
"In the flesh," Anja said. "I was just an infant when you murdered my father."
"Wait a minute." Han held up a hand. "I didn't kill Gallandro."
"I'm surprised you even remember him," Anja said bitterly. "With a career like yours, the way you stepped on your competition, cheated people, dumped your spice loads at the first sign of Imperial patrols, no wonder you've had a price on your head for most of your life."
"Of course I remember Gallandro," Han spluttered. He looked around nervously at the Ord Mantell security troops who had come with him to investigate the alarm, at the dead chameleon creatures that lay strewn on the floor. Han didn't seem to notice that the space mines had been stolen.
He said to the troops, "Clean up this mess and... report everything to the authorities. I want to file an official complaint." He tossed his dark hair back. "My kids were threatened. They could have been hurt."
"How touching," Anja said.
Han marched briskly toward the Millennium Falcon with a strong gesture.
"Come with me. We'll talk inside the Falcon, where we can have a bit of privacy." He strode up the boarding ramp and did not look back.
Jacen turned to his sister, and they shared a hard glance. Then all the young Jedi Knights quickly followed Han into his beloved, battered ship.
Anja sniffed, drew a deep breath, and switched off her lightsaber.
She clipped it at her side. After waiting for them all to board the Falcon ahead of her, she followed them up, wary, as if suspecting a trap.
Han slumped heavily into a seat in the small recreation lounge, with its scratched and dented hologame table in the center. Equipment, spare parts, and leftovers from various cargo trips hung in the supply bins and nets. The ship looked lived in, comfortable and messy, like a familiar bedroom that wasn't cleaned up any more than it had to be.
Jacen knew that their mother Leia never made any demands on Han Solo's upkeep of the Falcon. This was his private area, and he could do what he wanted here, so long as it was safe.
"You can't lie to me, Solo," Anja said, preferring to stand despite the empty seats available. Instead, she watched him, then paced around the room looking at Han's mementos and trophies of missions he had flown.
"I've spent my life learningabout my father. My mother told me some stories before she died, and there are plenty of records in the Corporate Sector Authority archives."
"Well, your father was a hard one to forget," Han Solo admitted.
"He was reputed to be the fastest draw in the galaxy. Challenged the clan leader to a duel on the planet Ammuud, but when I was picked as his opponent, Gallandro declined to fight me."
Anja snorted in disbelief "There was more to it than that. My father was working for the Corporate Sector Authority to break a slaving ring.
Slavers you were involved with, Solo."
"I didn't know!" Han said. "Anyway, I'm the one that got all the records the Corporate Sector needed to convict the ringleaders."
"But then you overwhelmed my father, humiliated him, and fled justice so you couldn't be charged for the crimes you had committed."
Han looked at his children, who stared back with questions in their eyes.
"Hey, that was a long time ago-and I didn't really do anything wrong."
Anja laughed bitterly. "Nothing wrong? How about when you killed my father?"
"But," Han insisted, "I didn't kill him. I wasn't even there. He had stunned me, and then went off-"
"Hah. You were in the buried derelict Queen of Rangoon, searching for the lost treasure of Xim the Despot.
My father and you had agreed to work together to find the hoard that had been hidden thousands