The rumble of the Falcon's hyperdrive engine was reassuring. Proof, for one, that they were moving.
Leia needed the proof. Capture had been a risk when the stolen Death Star plans were transmitted aboard the Tantive IV. She had known that going in. This was different. She had no intention of letting the Emperor win this round.
Still, the small personal triumph of Imperial City needed to be tempered. She hadn't thought he could win so easily, or at least this quickly.
And she had learned that while a personal triumph might be small, risk never was.
The Death Star plans were traded for Alderaan. She thought this knowledge would always sicken her, no matter where she was in life.
It was a weakness now too. She recognized it, but it was hard to get away from.
Goddesses. Leia pressed her fingertips into her forehead and berated herself. How could it be a weakness? It was the Empire that destroyed those lives, not one Princess. And those lives provided a strength, because the Alliance for the New Republic grew from it. She was not alone in this.
I didn't do this.
It felt like she had, though.
Leia jerked her thoughts away. Not now, she told herself. Not again. Not ever would be nice.
She forced herself to feel the rumble.
At least in hyperspace, it was harder to hit a target. She wouldn't be found just yet, and she could regroup, compose her attitude. In hyperspace, she could disappear and re-emerge.
Han liked it, too. For different reasons, probably, he escaped his own reality. Debts and bounties and his conscience.
For some reason, that calmed the swirl of thoughts in her head and she eyed him almost fondly. She wouldn't want to trade places with him, but she'd be willing to help him. He felt the same about her, when his conscience let him. He'd demonstrated so, hadn't he.
She sat back in her seat and let the vibrations of the engine settle into her spine.
In the past, traveling through hyperspace was downtime to Leia. There was nothing to distract. On her family's yacht, she might have used the time to prepare a speech or study the customs of her place of destination.
But also, since it was in between real time and space, Leia saw it as a suspension of reality. If it was just her and her family- the maidens, of course accompanied, but they had their own lounge space- it was almost like removing an outfit too tight. Leia never let go the Princess part of her, but the role had external constraints she sometimes chafed against. In hyperspace, she could drag a blanket and pillow off a cot and lie on the floor if it so suited her. She could sing, she could indulge in a romance holodrama, she could lick her fingers when she ate.
Had that been her true self? Would Lennist's surprise at seeing her licking barbarberry sauce away from her fingers turn to delight?
She shot targets now during the downtime, she thought. Lennist would disapprove of that. Most Alderaani would. Too bad. You're not here.
She hadn't left the cockpit yet. Their current course was phony, and she wanted to know if anything was going to happen, if the lack of communication from the Imperials that boarded the Falcon had raised an alarm to the cruiser that stopped them outside of Buteral. The only one talking in the cockpit was Chewie, and he had a lot to say. Naturally, Leia had no idea what, but the arrangement of his speech pattern reminded her of persuasive arguments commonly heard in the Senate. He jabbed his finger on the console, slammed his fist on the arm of Han's chair, and jabbed twice on Han's shoulder, who wouldn't look at him and only muttered in Corellian. Again, Leia was left out, but she didn't ask for a translation because something told her- it was that jabbing finger- whatever Chewie had to say was for Han. He looked like he didn't want to listen; his face was stony and he sounded sullen.
There was a tension in the cockpit. Leia was by now used to being on edge but it wasn't a feeling she enjoyed. The broken seat hitched her torso at an uncomfortable angle and there was a smudge of blood on it. Her clothes had soaked up her sweat. A part of her wondered if Han's mood- and Chewie's insistence- was because she had sidetracked them yet again, but there was no way she was going to offer excuses. He'd been right there, step for step, and if he didn't see that than he had a bigger problem than she did, and she had lost a planet.
In a shorter amount of time than he'd originally said and after the second jab of Chewie's finger on Han's shoulder, he decided to drop out of hyper and pull out of the course to Ansion.
"Don't be impatient," Leia said. "You said thirty clicks."
Chewie seemed to take her side.
"We lost 'em." He was confident of the fact.
"How can you know?"
"When you stop and they're not there. So I'm gonna stop."
"You're only testing you're right. You don't know."
"I know enough, Your Heightness."
The return to sublights came with a lurch, and the navigator seat Leia was using wobbled on its stem. Han lifted himself out of his own seat. She hadn't understood before how the cockpit was so tight getting out was routine acrobatics. His long legs swung high and the toe of his boot kicked her.
He didn't beg her pardon. "Watch the scopes, Chewie." He busied himself at the nav'puter again. "And make sure we're still jamming communications."
Leia preferred the open view out the cockpit. She stood, feeling the sweat-dampened fabric of her clothing, and leaned forward beside Chewie's chair.
Chewie woofed an affirmative to Han, and something else to her. An assurance, it sounded like.
Wherever they were, they appeared to be alone. Leia sat back down and her eyes went to the comm unit Chewie had removed from the dead Imperial's uniform. "How long before the Empire notices we don't arrive on Ansion?"
Han's answer was curt. "We'll be long gone by then."
Chewie asked a question.
"Not yet," Han answered.
"What?"
"Releasing the Imps back there. That's a good word for you, Highness. He teach you that?"
Leia suspected she was being sidetracked. "Imps? I don't like that word."
"Their word for human is... well, it's a coupla words strung together. And an Imp is always a human."
"A compound phrase?"
"I dunno. The generic 'being', or however a Wookiee thinks alien life. But also 'bald' and 'brain', for human. The word for Imperial is all those plus 'home' and 'stealer'."
"Thief?"
"Yeah."
"Bald-brained home-thief being," Leia put together. "Let me hear it, Chewie." The Wookiee obliged and uttered something only several syllables long. "Do they call the Emperor anything? Chief Thief?"
The nav'puter received Han's distracted smile. "I don't hear him use his title much. Mostly an insult. 'Baldest of the Brains'. Calls him the same he calls you, I think." He looked up at Chewie. "Don't ya." Chewie's face grimaced in apology and he shrugged. "He likes you, though," Han said.
"I know you like me, Chewie," Leia said. "Wookiees don't have anything like royalty?"
"They got a word for leader. But lots of Wooks are leaders. The eldest living member of the family," Han listed, "the warrior with the most kills, the one the worshyyrr tree grows for-"
"I'd like to visit Kasshyyk," Leia told Chewie.
"I'll take you someday." Han said it still half-distracted, but it was light and sincere, as if they would always know each other, as if neither would be killed in a war. "Strap back in; we'll hit hyper again in a few."
"And then what?"
"What are you so nervous for?"
Leia took in air. "I don't know. Maybe it's you."
Han humphed.
The second course through hyperspace was only a couple of hours. Han steered them toward a moon and and the ship hung in space, drifting in its orbit.
Chewie looked her in the eye and she understood he said, "I empty," and she smiled at him. She and Han were alone in the cockpit.
"Where are we?" she asked from the crooked navigator's seat.
He shook his head.
"Did you have this place in mind?" she pressed.
He nodded.
"So where is it?" Leia glanced at the console. There were only indicator lights; some red, some green. The soft blue of the log entry unit had a clear screen, showing he hadn't consulted it, and the nav'puter listed just the coordinates, meaningless numbers.
"It's a smuggler's hangout," he said. It was aggravating how he still had not named it.
She glared at him, but in the quiet the profile of his face was handsome. "Are we going down? See some old friends?"
"They're my friends; not yours," he said with a shake of his head.
Leia waited, but he had nothing to add, so she she left him. "Does a smuggler even have a friend?" was on her lips, but she knew her question would backfire and it went unspoken. How would he answer it?
I don't ask for any.
But Luke was one, Chewie. Even Leia. I don't ask either, Captain, and look what I have. What kinds of friends were those in that hangout?
She had a retort: if you asked, you didn't get any. Friendship wasn't an item, like a seasoning for one's meal.
His silence was irritating, Leia realized. She wanted to talk. She wanted someone to talk to, and wished she understood Chewie better.
Her maidens would enjoy this topic. Leia knew exactly which one would say ah, but friendship is a seasoning. It is the taste of the food that enhances one's experience of a meal, just as a friend enriches a life.
You can ask for a seasoning to be passed at the table, but you can't ask for a friend.
You could, another would propose.
You might not get one.
A friend is a seasoning who sprinkles themselves on you without being asked.
Then, at the next meal, the conversation would not go forgotten. With twinkling eyes, they would pass shakers and spice boats to one another, making clever puns and private jokes.
Why didn't he want any, she wondered all of a sudden. Did the thought of bringing a Princess down there, one who carried the price of the Emperor's wrath, to so-called friends make Han uncomfortable? Maybe he worried they'd sell him out.
He had intended to go down, Leia figured. That was his original idea. Find a safe place. But looking at it, looking at her, he thought twice.
Han Solo and thinking. Leia remembered Luke with a smile. Well, she didn't have to think. Of course it was obvious; she could have told him so if he asked. Of course they'd sell him out.
"He's thinking," Luke would say, tapping his temple and acting wise. "Let him sit."
Should I be nervous, Luke? Leia wanted to ask him.
Just prepared, he would tell her, wisely giving a non answer.
Leia blinked in loneliness. She missed her maidens, she missed Luke. She thought maybe she was at a crossroads again, but it didn't feel the same as before.
She changed her clothes again and wore the Alliance uniform. It was surprising, the amount of sweat her body had released during her confinement in the smuggling hold. The clothing she wore needed to be laundered.
Not confinement, she reminded herself. Han wasn't punishing her for being Princess Leia; he and Chewie had only moments to react to an Imperial boarding, and apparently she had slept through- or somehow been completely unaware, absorbed with thoughts of death and her mother- that the ship was confronted with an urgent situation.
And the Falcon had been boarded before, and cost Han dearly. Doubtless he and Chewie had raged and stewed and vowed to never let the Empire get the better of the two smugglers again, and probably had drilled what to do if ever confronted with the same situation.
She was back to pacing the circular layout of the freighter. Her nerves gave her a restless energy. What was happening, she wanted to know. What was going to happen. She was anxious to communicate with Buteral.
She worried for the submoon, perhaps a bit too much. She had to keep reminding herself, there's no more Death Star. This time there wouldn't be an approaching orbit where she was forced to watch something blow to smithereens.
Tarkin wanted to use it, she told herself again and again.
Tatooine or Corellia, Dr. Renzatl had said. Those two planets might have been the target of the Death Star if it were Luke or Han on that bridge. Tarkin wanted to use it.
She still felt responsible. All that work with Dr. Renzatl- the blame she assigned Tarkin was slippery. Guilt was returning, caused by the undeniable fact that an Imperial cruiser had stopped the ship on which she was traveling, headed to a destination where she was known to be.
This was different. Wasn't it? Last time, she was undercover and she was caught. Now, she'd made a speech and accused the Emperor, and he had reacted. She hadn't known then how much was at stake. She did now.
Leia looked at the engineering station and wished Dr. Renzatl were in it, sitting with her legs crossed and her eyes patient, watching Leia walk in circles.
Why am I so nervous?
She paced and Han sat, captive to an aggravated Wookiee, both getting nowhere, but when he finally moved to walk through the lounge, she followed his rangy stride.
He led her to the airlock, which was a tiny space, like a closet. Access was double sealed and there was a small window to view the contents. A release hatch opened so the contents would be swept out to litter space. Two evac suits hung on pegs beside her, one extra large.
There wouldn't be one for her, she thought, if something happened.
The two dead Imperials were crammed in there, bodies folded to fit the tiny space. They were to be disposed of, she noted, and felt a margin of pity for them. Her eyes roved over the limp forms, noting only a feature: an ear, a jaw, a hand. Black uniforms, shiny black boots, ankle high. Young men. One had hair lighter than Luke's. The other was darker, and he was very thin. Their hats were crammed low on their heads. Chewie, Leia thought. The hats probably came off as he carried or dragged the men, and every bit of them had to be sent out of the airlock, so he had tugged the hats down low and hard.
Han was regarding the corpses as well.
"Which one did the talking?" Leia asked Han. She didn't know why she wanted to know. Maybe just to assign a body to the voice.
"That one," Han's chin indicated the darker man. He pushed the button and space rushed in, taking the bodies with it.
"Won't that call attention to the smuggler's hangout?" Leia asked.
Han shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe."
Leia's breath chilled a little. He would sell them out.
No different than what they would do to him, she told herself.
"They can handle it." He closed the airlock. "It'll serve as a warning to the Empire."
The two corpses floated in the vacuum of space, and Leia felt odd.
"They were each someone's son," she said.
Han gave her a mixed look. Leia read disbelief, skepticism, and pity, as well as fatigue.
"Someone who raised 'em bad," he said.
Leia shook her head. "No. Only different from us."
"Still had to be killed."
"I know," Leia said. "Differences too large to overcome in a moment." She felt suddenly the weight of an eternal sadness.
There was no such thing as a goddess, was there. Alderaan was no loving creation, no daughter. There was only life, and it struggled on its own.
"You got too much feeling, Princess," Han told her.
"Maybe I do." She lacked the fire to retort, but she had a feeling this went along the lines of what Chewie had been jabbing into his shoulder. "Maybe you don't."
