She didn't have the most beautiful voice on Coruscant, but it was sultry, mournful, and honest and Han Solo genuinely enjoyed that. He could buy anything these days, but he couldn't buy honesty, and in his business, he sure as hell couldn't get it free. When the song ended, he had the bartender send her a glass of the finest T'iil-T'iil wine and an invitation to his table. She came and slid into the high-backed chair, arranging her shimmersilk skirts that were the colour of Ithorian saffron so that one knee was bare. Her carefully shaped eyebrows arched gently and her lips were lightly painted with transparent gloss. She wore white Jade roses tucked into the loose pile of hair and the heady floral scent trailed her.

"Captain Solo," she said.

No one had called him 'captain' in a long time. "Does my reputation precede me?"

"Which one?"

He wondered if they call him a womanizer or a tycoon.

She took a cautious sip of her wine and sat close enough that her right thigh almost grazed his. "You're the Solo in Calrissian-Solo Munitions Inc."

"We're one and the same."

"Then I should warn you that I'm terribly difficult," she declared.

"So am I."

"I've actually been called 'stubborn' in thirty languages."

"I've been called 'offensive' in fifty."

"I have nothing to my name."

"I own more than you can imagine."

"I hope you're prepared to give it all up," she said plainly. "People close to me tend to lose more than they bargained for."

"I'll take my chances." Han dropped his voice a notch so that patrons at nearby tables couldn't hear them. "What about you?"

"Me?" With the countenance of royalty, she turned and eyed the small corner stage, chin held high. "I have no need to take chances. I merely maintain the illusion of a life. They prefer that."

He wasn't not sure who 'they' was, but the dare, or the challenge, was out in the open and he couldn't resist a challenge. "Let's add to the illusion then," he coaxed. "Have dinner with me."

"Here?" She gazed past the hanging strips of hylaian marsh bamboo toward the restaurant side of the Manarai. The Manarai was one of Coruscant's finest restaurants, built into the wall of the Umate, the highest peak of the Manarai Mountain. Unfortunately, it was co-owned by Prince Xizor, and at the moment, Prince Xizor and his entourage were in the process of evicting several customers from his favourite table so that they did not have to wait. "This may be my place of employment," she said, "But often I find the clientele here rather coarse."

"Hey." Han winked. "I was planning to have dinner in there."

"Exactly."

Amused, Han grinned. He didn't care for the Falleen either. He and Lando had been doing their utmost to avoid dealings that linked them with Xizor's Black Sun criminal syndicate. "I happen to own a suite upstairs," he said, pretending to sound pragmatic.

"Yes, I know." She flirted back carelessly, shifted the bare knee purposely again. "But you see, we've already established that your reputation precedes you?"

"Then I know a decent dive seventeen levels down."

"No thank you." She leaned in to him, her voice low and husky. "For the record, I prefer Alderaanian or Andoan ale." With that, she abandoned the expensive drink, barely touched, on his table.

"She's trouble," Lando Calrissian said, slipping back into his seat.

"I believe I lost that round," Han said idly. "Do you know her?"

"I know of her. Her name is Leia Skywalker and she's a very classy player if you catch my drift."

"She goes for credits?"

"No. Not the kind you put in a bank." Lando snipped the end off a cigarro made of rolled rashallo leaves and dropped it in the table's snuff pot. "She runs in circles too close to the Emperor for my tastes."

"She turned you down, huh?"

"I've never been able to resist trouble." Lando lit the end of his cigar and the air filled with the spicy-sweet scent of rashallo. "Especially when it's that beautiful."

"What happened to Miliang? Is he meeting us for dinner or not?"

"Oh that. Cancelled. Said his wife was in a minor skyline accident today." Lando pointed to the glass of T'iil-T'iil wine. "Did she leave it?"

"Drink it."

"I cancelled our table and rescheduled for later next week."

Han rolled his eyes. "Great."

"I hope you're going to be more charming than that."

"Oh, I can be charming. My charming side is off-duty."

"He loves you, though for the life of me, I don't know why." Lando savoured a long draught of wine. "Tell him a few spine-tingling smuggling stories and he'll be signing an exclusivity contract with us before the main course arrives."

"It's never that easy."

"Sure it is."

"No it isn't."

"See, I'm an eternal optimist and you're so cynical you could sour blue milk by scowling at it. This is why we're good business partners." Lando jerked a thumb toward the stage. "What about her?"

Leia Skywalker was in the midst of an animated conversation with the slitherhorn player. She faced away from them and Han absorbed the view appreciatively. The back of her saffron-red gown was cutaway to the waist and her pale skin glowed in the lounge's ambient lighting. "What about her?" he asked.

"You should send her an ale." Lando took a deep breath and gulped down another few swallows of wine. "Otherwise you're going to be sitting here all alone."

"Where are you going?"

"To meet Shasheva at the Opera House."

"Last minute?"

Lando shrugged helplessly. "What can I say? She owns a box." He patted him on the back. "Have a good night, my friend. Put that charming side of yours to practice."

Han waited until Leia had sung her last set of the evening before he followed his partner's unsolicited advice. As a rule, he tried not to take any advice Lando Calrissian doled out that didn't have to do with investments, but it wasn't in his nature to give up on a woman so easily.

This time, Leia slid into Lando's empty chair with air of purpose. "Do you have a ship?" she asked.

"Yes."

"More than one?"

Han shrugged. "Yes."

"My. Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but unless you've cloned yourself, you can only fly one at a time. Unless of course," she intoned, "You can't fly them and merely hire out pilots."

"Oh, I can fly them, Sweetheart," he said.

"Then tell me." She cupped her chin in the heel of her hand and peered at him inquiringly. "What does traveling at lightspeed feel like?"

"It's a rush. No matter how precise a pilot you are or how advanced your navigational system is, there's always a risk that you've miscalculated, that you're gonna hit a gravity well or black hole or fly yourself through the heart of a sun. It's all about beating the odds." Han finished, surprised he's said that much. The truth was he missed flying for a living. He expected her to mock him, but instead her face grew intensely inquisitive.

She peered at him curiously. "Flying is your passion then?"

It wasn't how he would put it. It was an overly emotional way to put it, but he said, "You could call it that."

"Sounds like you're in the wrong business."

"Probably."

"Maybe next week," she suggested coolly, sipping from the beer tumbler now that the foam had settled. "We can arrange a trade."

"What kind of trade?"

"It so happens that I need someone to teach me how to pilot a starship."

"Well, it's not like learning how to fly a hovercraft," he insisted. "First you need to know all the technical stuff. Know how to calculate jumps, everyday physics, astrophysics, basic system maintenance and upkeep."

"I know all that."

Han started shaking his head. Maybe she was younger than he thought – a kid with delusions of grandeur and a dead serious expression.

She clinked her glass down so hard the table rattled. "Test me," she demanded.

"On what?"

"Anything."

"Ahh…" Han thought for a moment, and then asked, "What's the function of a null quantum field generator?"

"It stabilizes the vessel and keeps it from prematurely emerging from hyperspace. Otherwise most spacecraft would drop out of hyperspace whenever a piece of debris came within ten meters of it." She leaned in. "That's textbook. That's first year astrophysics. You're mocking me."

"I'm not mocking you."

"But anyone could answer that."

"Fine. What do you need if you want to modify the hyperdrive on a YT-series freighter from a Class 2 to a Class 0.5?"

"Besides a death-wish?"

"That's never what I called it."

"A way to keep your ship from falling apart?"

It wasn't a question so much as an exclamation.

"You're not thinking off your feet."

"Fine." Leia pursed her lips in concentration. "Presuming you've overcome the small but annoying problem of your ship's structural integrity being incapable of withstanding the initial jump, you need larger thruster ports. You also need to recalibrate the alluvial dampers and override them to alter the thrust output of ion particles from the hyperdrive generator. And if you're going to that, you need to make sure you've rebalanced the motivator so that your navigational system doesn't drop you in the middle of traffic along the Permelian Trade Route." She furrowed her brow and focused on the table's milk-stone marble surface. "You… well you'd also require a more powerful acceleration compensator and need to reinforce the containment shielding to prevent a radiation leak. And upgrade the heating shunts." She looked up. "And lastly, I suppose if you plan on flying anywhere near a civilized system where her transponder can be read, you've got to crack into your master system and alter the security configurations."

Han shrugged and refused to let on that she'd impressed him. "You can learn a hell of a lot from datareaders."

"I don't think there's a regulator or an acceleration compensator that can protect a ship as small as the YT-series. How did you do it?" She widened her eyes with keen understanding. "You managed it, didn't you?"

"If you increase your power by about fifty percent and add supplementary shift shields you can make 0.5 and come out of hyper in perfect shape." Han stopped himself. As a matter of personal habit, he didn't talk about the Millennium Falcon. Or Chewbacca. The past was meaningless and their memories were better off left in the Corporate Sector with their remains. Still, this was the most scintillating conversation he'd had with a woman in years. "You really want to learn how to fly?"

"Yes."

"What exactly are we trading for?"

The expression on the rest of her face was strictly innocent. "Dinner."

He smiled in a way that he knew made him look both cocky and charming. "Dinner?"

"Yes, dinner."

Crooked beneath the table on the plush seat between them, resting face-up, lay her hand. The invitation was discreet and invisible to the overhead holocameras. Han wondered if by 'dinner' she meant 'sex,' and reached down and ran his index finger across the crease of her lifeline. "Deal."