The University of Galadan was quite renowned despite its planet's peripheral involvement in matters galactic and despite its natives' very backward culture. Somehow the two had blended, though not entirely successfully, leaving Galadan with modern cities and virtually untouched rainforests.
Officially, Galadan's primary export was graduates. In particular, medical, bio and genetic graduates. The planet's amazingly diverse wealth of poisons, plant and animal life made it a perfect natural, if somewhat hazardous, laboratory.
Unofficially, it was the major supplier of narcotics and poisons to the underworld. And not only native varieties. Many outworld drugs were grown or synthesised on Galadan, and it was almost a commonplace way to pay for a very expensive education.
As a result, the spaceports were usually crawling with thinly disguised smugglers and even more thinly disguised Imperials. Which is why Han Solo had chosen to land where he did.
But the Empire had been taking a great deal of interest in Galadan of late. The Rebel Alliance, suspicious of some new genetic or bacterial weapon, had 'planted' a student and waited for the information to start rolling in. And roll in it had. Steadily. Interesting, informative and a lot of it downright useful, but none of it what they were looking for. Then it had stopped. Abruptly.
And so the 'Millennium Falcon team', as they had become jokingly known in the Rebellion's higher circles, had been sent to investigate the sudden silence. The princess, of course, had agreed immediately. Skywalker had been flabbergasted and honoured, and Solo had flatly refused. Prepared for just such a contingency, the Rebellion's hierarchy blatantly and unashamedly bribed him. With a fully repaired and operating ship.
….
The student's name was Treis Lowmon. Well liked by his teachers and fellow students, his application for and disappearance into a solo field study was considered a little loony; but then, as far as his peers were concerned, Treis Lowmon was long overdue to do something crazy. His whole approach to date had been agonisingly average and it cheered them all to find out that, deep down, he was as silly as the rest of them.
But solo studies were considered stupid and foolhardy for good reason; on Galadan they had a high mortality rate. If the flora or fauna didn't get you, the natives probably would. And the natives had been particularly pissed off since the Empire's sudden interest.
When Lowmon failed to return, a cursory search was mounted, but no one seriously expected to find anything and he was finally relegated into the 'missing and presumed dead' file.
In fact, the truth was far more insidious. But only the Imperial agent who had found him 'slicing' into restricted Imperial research knew the truth. And, although one other person suspected, she had too deep a sense for self-preservation to say anything.
