DEBRIEFING
Han Solo had no idea why he'd agreed to this.
If there was one thing he was hated it was being asked questions, particularly when they concerned himself and his past. So why had he agreed to submit himself to an official Alliance debriefing?
Han didn't like the direction that things were clearly headed in. Interfering in the attack on the Death Star had obviously set a dangerous precedent and agreeing to help the evacuation from Yavin to Drongar had only exacerbated it. The Alliance higher-ups must have gotten it into their heads that he'd been all talk when he'd insisted that he didn't want to join up and Han couldn't say that he blamed them; every time he tried to leave, he instead found himself doing something else in service of the rebellion.
And now he'd agreed to let them interrogate him.
Han knew what the Alliance were thinking; this was all part of their little recruitment drive. They wanted a measure of the type of man he was, where he'd come from and what he might be able to offer their revolution against the Empire.
Apparently, him helping to blow up a planet-destroying battle station and then assisting a last-ditch escape from Imperial retribution on Yavin hadn't been enough to tell them whatever it was they wanted to know.
Not that any of it mattered.
Han Solo was not joining the Rebel Alliance. There was no room for negotiation on that; he'd done his bit, helped out even when it was against his better judgement. But he drew the line at taking the oath, tying his fate to that of the Alliance and their cause. Moral crusades were of no interest to him, the quicker everyone else understood that the better.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It had to have been nearly fifteen minutes since he'd been summoned into the briefing room and he'd been left to wait while the four Alliance officers conducting the debriefing pored over the datapads in front of them. Han felt as though he was under intense examination, being judged by a group of strangers who would never be able to understand his reasoning for some of the things he'd done in the past because they saw the galaxy as black-and-white, sought to categorise everything in brackets of good and evil.
Han's outlook was not as simplistic or naive.
He was not a bad person but he'd freely admit to having been in situations throughout his life where he'd had to do bad things. And he could justify every single of them, though he doubted that the others around the table would be able to comprehend that given that they all seemed to have placed themselves and their cause upon a righteous pedestal.
He glanced at Leia. Her attention was fixed too intently on whatever she was reading on her own datapad to notice that he was looking her way. It bothered Han that she was here, participating in this; if anyone in the Rebellion had seen enough to know what kind of guy he was, it was the princess. And he got the impression that she liked what she did know about him but wondered if the intelligence that the Alliance had managed to gather on him might change that.
Seated on either side of her were the two generals, Rieekan and Draven. Han had had a contentious run in with the latter back on Yavin and some tense words had been exchanged. Han could sympathise with the stress that every officer in the Alliance had to have been operating under at the time but he nonetheless wouldn't soon forget the way that Draven had so casually dismissed him as a common criminal, one who was not worthy of induction into the Rebellion in spite of Leia and Luke's protestations otherwise.
Rieekan, who'd led the establishment of this new base on Drongar, was different. Han staked a lot on first impressions and he'd liked Rieekan almost immediately when the two had met the previous day. They hadn't had much of an opportunity to interact since; Rieekan was from Alderaan and had known Leia for a long time so the two had stuck together since being reunited, seeming to have found some strength in sharing the burden of grief that both were so clearly struggling with.
What had really resonated with Han had been the way that Rieekan had gone out of his way to shake Chewie's hand when they'd arrived on Drongar, to thank him for everything he'd done to help Leia and the Rebellion. Luke and Han had been inundated with gratitude themselves since they'd first touched down on Yavin but Chewie had been largely ignored, shunted to the background while his two human cohorts were basked in praise. Chewie hadn't once complained or seemed bothered by any of it but the way he'd been treated had touched a nerve with Han and so he was grateful that Rieekan had been so genuine and earnest in his recognition and acknowledgment of Chewie's contributions.
Had he been open to the idea of sticking around, Han thought that he might have gotten along with Rieekan, maybe even taken orders from him. But such lines of thought were dangerous and Han quickly banished them to the back of his mind; he wasn't staying, he was doing this debriefing because Chewie had nagged him into it and then it was time to go.
He hadn't yet spoken to the last person at the table, a colonel named Delto, who was sitting to the left of Draven. Delto was apparently in Alliance intelligence and whenever Han had seen him back on Yavin or here on Drongar, he'd been shadowing Draven.
Finally, blessedly, the uncomfortable silence was brought to an end when Draven cleared his throat.
"So...Captain Solo," he said, casually skimming back through the information before him. "It would seem that you've led quite the life. It's quite remarkable that you aren't rotting in an Imperial prison or labour camp."
"Or dead," spoke up Delto.
Han smirked. That was one thing he couldn't argue with.
"So you're born on Corellia," continued Draven, "though we have been unable to gather anything on when or on your family. There's quite a gap in your story after that but then you turn up on Carida, make the rank of lieutenant in the Imperial Navy and get yourself court-martialled. You disappear again, attain a Wookie as your co-pilot at some point and become a smuggler."
"That's about the sum of it, yeah," replied Han. "Not really all that interesting."
"Your criminal record suggests otherwise," said Draven. He picked up his datapad and held it close to his face as he read. "You have quite the list of aliases...I must admit to being impressed by how you somehow managed to get yourself out of your situation on Mygeeto...convincingly impersonating a priest must have quite the test of your dramatic abilities."
Though he'd obviously tried, Rieekan couldn't suppress a grin at that while Han thought Leia also looked quite amused. There was a good story behind that particular incident but he was in no mood to tell it.
"There are a concerning number of gaps in your story, however," continued Draven. "Indeed, there are long stretches of time in which you've somehow managed to disappear completely."
"That's what good smugglers do" replied Han simply.
"Would you mind filling in some of those gaps?" asked Delto. He scrolled down his datapad until he found what he was searching for. "Your association with Rovan Zadasso, for example...let's start there."
Han shrugged. "I was associated with him for a while and then I wasn't," he answered. "There's really nothing to tell."
"Zadasso is actually a person of some interest to the Rebellion," said Draven. "So any information you can offer us on him and his organisation would be greatly appreciated."
Now Han was intrigued. Why would Zadasso be a person of interest to the Rebellion?
"Like I said, there's nothing to tell," he insisted. He was lying and he got the impression that Draven and Delto knew it, but Han had made a point of avoiding getting involved in anything to do with Rovan Zadasso in recent years and that wasn't about to change. "I worked for him for a while, and then we went our separate ways."
"Why?" asked Delto. "At whose instigation was your association ended?"
Han wondered whether they'd managed to dig up something on that before the debriefing, whether they were trying to con him into telling them something that he didn't want to share.
"It was a mutual decision," he answered placidly. "He wasn't prepared to pay me what I thought I deserved so I moved on. That was a few years ago and I haven't seen or spoken to him since so, again, I can't help you."
Draven and Delto exchanged a meaningful look. Neither was stupid; there was clearly more to the story than Han was willing to share but they seemed to have silently agreed that trying to prise it out of him was pointless. Draven consulted his datapad again, searching out his next point of interest.
"Let's move on then," he said in a grudging tone. "Let's go back to the beginning...Corellia. Have you ever been involved with the Resistance movement?"
"Nope" replied Han.
"Do you know anyone who is?" spoke up Rieekan. "Obviously, the Corellian Resistance shares some common ground with the Alliance and we're attempted to reach out to them several times but they've been...resistant to us." The general smiled at Leia who seemed to appreciate the pun.
"I left before all of that got started," replied Han. "And the people I knew on Corellia weren't exactly the revolutionary type."
"What about family?" interjected Draven. "We couldn't find any record of yours...is Solo just not a very common name on Corellia?"
Leia could almost see the walls close behind Han's eyes. His face had become expressionless. Family was clearly a sore subject, one that was a non-starter here as far as Han was concerned.
Rieekan sought to break the tense silence that had descended.
"What about Chewbacca?" he asked. "How did you two meet?"
Han might have liked Rieekan but he was growing tired of the conversation. What did his family matter to the Alliance? Why was it relevant when and how he'd met Chewie? The questions about Zadasso had put him on edge from the start, forced him to put up his defences and now they were looking to dig into things that were off-limits.
"Why does that matter?" he snapped.
"I think General Rieekan is simply curious as to how a Corellian and a Wookie came to be...business partners," interrupted Draven delicately, all too obvious in his attempts to avoid using a term he might normally have so as not to antagonise Han further. "It is something of a strange arrangement, particularly given the subjugation of Wookies under Imperial rule."
"I needed a partner, Chewie needed a job," said Han in a tone that made clear that further explanation was not forthcoming.
The four individuals opposite him all exchanged glances. The debriefing wasn't going the way that they'd hoped it would but Han thought that Leia must have gotten to know him enough by now to have had the presence of mind to warn her colleagues that he wasn't the most reticent when it came to questions about him; Leia had learned that for herself very early on in their journey to Yavin aboard the Falcon.
"Is there any point asking about your military career?" asked Draven, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. "Obviously we're curious as to what you did to be court-martialled."
"I realised that I wasn't cut out for taking orders," answered Han, mirroring Draven's stance.
"It's not as though you and the Empire shook hands and parted ways amicably, is it?" said Delto. "According to your records you were dishonourably discharged so there must be more to it than you deciding that you didn't want to follow their orders."
Han sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. Silently, he cursed Chewie for needling him into agreeing to do this; the argument had been that it made sense from a business standpoint to leave the Alliance on good terms, that if they were desperate for work in the future then maybe the Rebels would be good enough to send some supply runs their way. Han thought that he would have to be destitute and completely out of other options to ever go crawling to the Alliance for a favour but he'd agreed, if only to placate Chewie.
Now he thought that it might take a miracle to stop him punching either Draven or Delto in the mouth before this was over.
"You should find my commanding officer and ask him about it," he replied in a snarky tone. "His name was Dyett. Short guy, kind of scrawny, the type who got a commission handed to him because his family had money rather than because he actually knew the first thing about the military. Liked to push the younger guys around because they knew they couldn't push back and I didn't like that; treated non-humans like they were worthless and I really, really didn't like that. So he and I had what you might call a frank exchange of opinions that ended with me getting thrown in the brig and him having to get his nose rebuilt. And that was the end of my military career."
There was silence again. Delto took out a pen and old-fashioned notepad and began scribbling in it; Han had to resist the urge to leap across the table and ram both the pen and pad down the colonel's throat.
Han watched as Leia turned in her seat and whispered something in Rieekan's ear. The general nodded and muttered quietly in reply, his eyes fixed on Han. Her worship had kept strangely quiet throughout the discussion so far, seemingly happy to let her colleagues ask the questions. Han wondered to himself whether there was any point in her being in the room if she were to be nothing more than a silent observer but he had a feeling that she would have insisted on sitting in on both his and Luke's debriefings.
After quickly consulting with her datapad once more, Leia finally spoke up.
"What about the bloodstripes?" she asked. "What did you to be awarded them?"
So, she'd done her research. Either that or she knew of Corellian military customs. Which, Han supposed, was possible; as a politician, she must have made some effort to learn the different traditions and ceremonies of planets beside her own for no professional reasons. That seemed the most plausible scenario to Han.
But, for reasons he didn't want think too deeply about, he liked the idea that she was curious enough about him to have made the effort to research the bloodstripes herself.
He affected a purposely-smug look, leaning forward slightly in his seat with his focus directed solely on the princess.
"Something that was incredibly brave," he answered.
Han thought he caught the briefest hint of a smirk on Leia's face, the slightest upturn in the corners of her mouth.
"Would you care to go into any further detail than that?" she asked. "From what I understand it takes exceedingly incredible bravery to be deemed worthy of them."
So that was her game.
She was still stuck on this idea that he was some kind of hero, that were hidden depths to him. She hadn't been the first woman to make that mistake and probably wouldn't be the last. Granted, Han could understand why Leia might have gotten that idea of him given some of the things he'd done since they'd met but he knew that, in the end, the princess would be just as disappointed as all the other women in his past had been when she realised that what you saw with Han Solo was what you got; he was no hero.
But, given that there was so little time left for him to do so before he left, Han was content to play along.
"Well sweetheart, why don't you think of some things that I might have been brave enough to do and I'll let you know whether your close to being right.
"I'm beginning to get a good idea of why the Empire thought that you were not cut out for their military," cut in Draven dryly. "Given that you're apparently incapable of addressing someone by their proper title."
The interruption distracted her colleagues, so Han was the only person to see that this time she hadn't been unable to conceal her smile.
Annoyed that the moment had broken, Han turned his attention on Draven.
"Well the princess and I are friends and she doesn't mind me being a bit less formal around her than the rest of you." He grinned at Leia. "Isn't that right, your worshipfulness?"
Delto shook his head, his disapproval and exasperation apparent. Rieekan, however, looked as though he had been enjoying the exchange between Han and Leia.
"Be that as it may," went on Draven, "there are social norms here that you are nonetheless expected to adhere to, as are the rest of us. Commander Skywalker seems to enjoy a similar friendship with Her Highness as you and yet has no problems in addressing her using her proper titles."
"That's cause the kid ain't clever or charming enough to come up with the nicknames that I do," replied Han in jest. "And speaking of Luke, his interrogation barely lasted two minutes; how much longer is this going to take?"
"This is not an interrogation, Captain Solo," replied Draven. "This is a formal debriefing that is standard Alliance procedure and which you voluntarily agreed to attend; no one had forced you to be here. And the reason why Commander Skywalker's debriefing was so brief is because he's spent his entire life on a moisture farm in the middle of a desert. Beyond agricultural practices and cautionary stories about the dangers of running into...what was it again, Delto?"
Delto consulted his notepad before answering. "Sand People."
"Sand People," continued Draven as though his little speech hadn't had to be briefly stymied, "there was very little of value that he could tell us. You, on the other hand, are another matter entirely."
This Draven was beginning to remind Han of a port authority supervisor he and Chewie had encountered on Coruscant a couple of years earlier. That guy had been a completely by-the-books sort too, entirely lacking in a discernible personality. The similarities between him and Draven were uncanny; if Han's memory was right, the two even looked something alike.
"Well can we get a move on?" Han asked. "There are places I need to be and things I need to get done so if we could just wrap this up, that would be great."
Draven studied him intently for a moment and Han's unease set in again. He could sense the wheels turning in the general's head and knew instinctively that he wasn't going to like whatever question came next. He watched as Draven slid his datapad along the table to Delto, indicating something on it. Delto read, glanced at Han and then looked to Draven, nodding his head agreeably.
Draven looked Han straight in the eye, as though sizing him up.
"The price on your head," he said finally. "Tell us about it."
Han's stomach twisted. How the hell did Draven know about that? It wasn't exactly something that Han ran his mouth about and he was certain that he hadn't mentioned in Draven's company, nor of anyone else in the Rebellion; they might be a bunch of self-righteous revolutionaries but that didn't discount the possibility in Han's mind that one of them might be tempted to take a shot at him if they knew that doing so would earn them a tidy sum of money from Jabba.
No, he definitely hadn't mentioned it on either on Yavin or Drongar and Chewie wouldn't have said anything either. He'd told the kid about it but, given that Luke knew all about the Hutts having grown up on Tatooine, knew the kid was smarter than to go spouting off around his new pals in the Rebellion.
And then it dawned on him.
Someone else had sat in on the conversation in which Han had explained to Luke all about his problems with Jabba. And that person was sitting at this very table.
He glared at Leia whose eyes were fixed on the table in front of her. Well, at least she had the decency to look guilty for breaking his confidence. Han was seething; if this was some twisted play she was making as part of her efforts to recruit him into the Rebellion then, clearly, he had underestimated her.
"Captain Solo?" said Draven, drawing Han's attention back to the matter at hand. Still, Leia refused to raise her gaze from the tabletop to meet his.
"There's nothing to tell," said Han shortly. "I owe someone some money and as soon as I get out here I'm headed to do that. I'm handling it."
"From the information we have, I'd gathered that the situation is a lot more serious than you're implying," replied Draven.
"Like I said, I'm handling it," snarled Han. "I've got the money now, all I need to do is get to Tatooine with it and I'm in the clear."
Draven smirked. "I can't believe that you'd be so naive as to think that it is going to be that simple to settle a debt with Jabba the Hutt." He sighed dramatically, apparently satisfied to have the upper hand on Han in this little battle of wits. "Gods, if I was in your position I would be long gone by now."
Han had had enough. Without a word he stood up, knocking his chair to the ground, and stormed out of the room.
Once the door had slid shut behind him, Leia finally let out the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. It was almost a relief now to not be in Han's presence; the anger that had radiated off him and toward herself had been palpable. But she found herself torn between chasing after him in the hope that she might be able to explain why she'd told High Command about the debt he owed that gangster on Tatooine, and hiding from him so that she would never have to deal with the inevitable diatribe that Han would have in store for her.
Leia had to admit to herself, grudgingly, that Han was well within his right to be furious with her. She'd broken the trust he'd placed in her and Luke by confiding the seriousness of his situation. She hadn't expected Draven to address it so nonchalantly in the debriefing but part of her had hoped that if High Command knew that Han was in trouble then they might be able to convince him to stay with the Alliance by offering a safe haven where the gangster couldn't reach him. Perhaps she'd been naive to think that, it wouldn't be the first time, but Han hadn't shown any signs of being swayed by her and Luke's attempts to convince him to stay and so she'd gambled on the possibility that someone like Rieekan might been able to have more luck, offer a more compelling pitch.
Any chance of that happening was gone now.
Next to her, Rieekan sighed. "Was that really necessary, Davits?" He asked. "Did you really have to antagonise him like that?"
Draven rose from the table, stowing away his datapad in a pocket of his tan-coloured jacket. Delto followed suit.
"I tried it your way," he answered. "Like I told you when I arrived here, that man is beyond reasonable discussion."
"You haven't really given him a chance though, have you?" argued Rieekan. "You made up your mind about him back on Yavin and now you've done your best to chase him off for good. We need people like him, Davits, we need good men, good leaders."
"And you think Solo is either?" Draven shook his head in exasperation. "He's scum, Rieekan, a lowlife. He's in the situation he is because he was stupid enough to let his ship get boarded by the Empire while he was smuggling drugs across the galaxy; is that really the type of person you want to rebuild the Rebellion with? He did us a favour at Yavin and got every penny he asked for as his reward. That's the measure of the man; he cares more about himself than anything else."
"I think you're wrong," replied Rieekan defiantly.
Draven chuckled. "I'm not," he insisted. "If Jabba the Hutt doesn't kill Solo then he'll go and get himself in trouble with some other gangster or crime lord; it's what men like that do, lurch from one disaster to another. He can't offer the Alliance anything we need so just let him go."
By now the general and Delto had reached the door. Before they left, Draven turned to Leia.
"A word of advice, Your Highness: if you want to be taken seriously as a leader in this organisation, you'll steer clear of men like Han Solo." He nodded to her and Rieekan. "I'll see you both at the command briefing later."
He left with Delto and Rieekan swore angrily as soon as the door closed behind them.
"I don't know who that man thinks he is!" he growled. "There were a lot of complaints about him back on Yavin, you know, that he threw out too many orders without thinking them through properly; sometimes I think he's under the impression that he's overseeing a militancy rather than a political movement. Mon Mothma likes him though, believes that he'll get results more than often than not because he's supposedly more emotionally detached than the rest of us."
Leia didn't know Draven. In the few times she'd been to the base on Yavin prior to her capture by the Empire, he and the rest of the intelligence unit seemed to always be in a classified meeting or caught up in some kind of crisis situation. From the little she'd seen of him over the past few days, she suspected that he was someone that she might struggle to get along with.
"I can't believe he did that," she groaned, bracing her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands. "It's a nightmare dealing with Han at the best of times...he's going to kill me when I see him next."
Rieekan patted her shoulder sympathetically. "He'll calm down," he said quietly. "Eventually."
Leia laughed. "I don't know why I'm wasting my time, Carlist," she said quietly. "He's going to leave eventually, whether it's tomorrow or in a month. Maybe we just let him go, let him get on with his life."
"You're not wasting your time," said Rieekan gently. "You want him to stay because you care about him, that much is obvious."
Leia looked at him sceptically. "Care about him? I barely know him, Carlist."
"You barely know Luke but you care about him, don't you." He smiled and squeezed her shoulder consolingly. "It's alright to care, Leia. Even if you don't want to admit it to anyone else, it's okay to admit to yourself that you care about Han and you want him to be safe."
Leia knew that he was right, that she was worried about Han, about what would happen to him if he did leave the Alliance. He'd risked a lot for her and the Rebellion, put aside the bravado he normally swaggered around with to offer her a means of escape from what looked certain to be certain death on Yavin; it would awful if, after everything they'd gone through, his life was forfeited so needlessly because he'd gotten in over his head with a crime lord.
"Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so terrible if he did go," she said. Turning to Rieekan, she shrugged. "He had a tendency to be absolutely infuriating; at times I think he's stayed this long just because he likes to annoy me."
Rieekan laughed quietly. "He challenges you," he replied. "You've always been exceptionally bright and articulate. I remember that you used to run rings around your tutors when you were younger; you'd lure them into some sort of debate about politics and how you thought you could fix all of the galaxy's problems, and then end up teaching them lessons. Your father used to say, even when you were a child, that he got most of his good ideas from you."
He paused and Leia felt that painful twinge in her stomach at the mention of her father. And she could see Rieekan falter, remember all over again just what they'd both lost. But it was a comfort to have him here, to have someone who understood and could empathise with the jarring tangle of emotions she was dealing with.
"You know, from what I've seen of Solo so far, I get the impression you two are more alike than either of you would dare admit," continued Rieekan thoughtfully. "I think he's exceptionally bright too, like you, but he just articulates it differently; he's a challenge in his own way." He shrugged casually. "Maybe now you've both just met your match."
Leia contemplated that for a moment. It made sense, in a way; Han's presence around the bases on Yavin and Drongar had certainly kept her on her toes and, as infuriating as their petty little arguments had been to endure, there was also something strangely exhilarating about them. During the debriefing, Draven had taken Han to task for the way he addressed Leia but Han had been right; she didn't mind that he addressed her like a friend, as an equal. And therein lay the challenge. That was Han's way of finding common ground with her, addressing her in a manner that removed any notion of propriety and set them on a level playing field on which they could verbally spar.
Rieekan was right; Han did challenge her. And, in turn, she liked to think that she challenged him.
"Come on," said Rieekan, rising to her feet. "We have just about time to get something to eat before we should start preparing for the command briefing. This will be your first chance to impress them, really get some of your ideas across."
Leia stood. "I know."
She was ready for it, ready to show Draven and the rest of them that she was not some naive teenager masquerading as a leader in an adult's realm.
"And even if it's a disaster," Rieekan said with a grin as they left the room and stepped into the empty corridor, "at least it will give you somewhere to hide from Solo for a few hours."
Leia laughed.
"True. But I'll only be delaying the inevitable." At Rieekan's enquiring glance, she elaborated. "Chewie has invited Luke and I to join him and Han for dinner on the Falcon tonight. He's quite insistent that he isn't leaving the Alliance until we've had a chance to try his cooking; apparently, he's very talented."
"Ah," replied Rieekan. "Well I hope that by then Solo has calmed down a little."
Leia smiled, knowingly. It didn't matter whether or not Han had calmed down by that night; truthfully, his anger with her was justified and she would let him say his piece when their paths next crossed.
But she wasn't going to give up hope that he could be convinced to stick around. And in Chewie, the closest thing that Han had to a moral compass, she knew that she had found a valuable ally to help her achieve her goal.