The Millennium Falcon was back on Buteral, without the Princess.
Just a ship, Dr. Renzatl thought, not remarkable except for the bad impression it gave upon first glance.
Commander Skywalker had thought so, as had Princess Leia. And her crew hadn't fared any better judgment. They were a con man and a walking carpet according to those two, but somehow that's not what they became at all.
The window was open, and Albrina was unprejudiced but decidedly curious. She had a view of the landing pad from her office, and she could see Captain Solo and Chewbacca supervising the loading crew.
It would soon no longer be her office. The desk was still here, and the chairs, but she'd made sure the kaf machine was packed and the shelves emptied.
The room echoed a little now.
From afar, the Wookiee was massive, intimidating. Captain Solo looked lean and rangy. Dr. Renzatl couldn't make out finer details from this distance.
Now that the time was here, she was looking forward to the trip. She tried not to be excited about a transfer, because she had a job to do, but she was interested in seeing new places.
She'd made her farewell to her clients, to Jaf; told him she would touch base and asked him to, too, but it was war and they both knew it might happen once. After midmeal, which she planned to eat by herself, she was to board the shuttle for Home and await a transport there.
Her time left on Buteral was idle; a wait.
Albrina closed the window, palmed the lights, and picked up the small bag of personal things. She left the door open.
There was something about the wind. It had moods, or maybe just enhanced what one already was feeling. Sometimes its grabbing quality was irritating, and all you wanted was a moment's peace.
Other times it was bold, and... and right, fueling resolve and rightful purpose, making you march through it sheltered, blurred: from afar everyone looked the same in it. Today it was playful. It chased and circled, teased.
Albrina stood at the bridge rail and watched the designs the wind made on the sea's surface. It stroked the water, causing fleeting, racing ripples. It rode the waves, shaping water into white crests. She glanced at her chrono. Still an hour until the mid meal. She would walk some more; there was a long stretch of space travel ahead for her and she might as well start it with a tired body. Too, she would use the time to commit the water, wind, and humps of land to memory.
When she got down to the shoal wind and water were percussive and visual together, great splashes of water separated into spheres of droplets, scattered away. Such power, she thought. The land rising out of the sea stood mute and helpless as humans moulded it to their needs but the sea was unchanged. The wind pushed at her back, suggesting the path to the landing pad.
Mist swirled in the bright lights and the Millennium Falcon stood stark against the backdrop of black sky. Down here it was the only place of activity besides the relentless waves.
Albrina thought of Princess Leia's rescue from the Death Star and her escape on that very freighter. It must have been so unexpected to her. She knew the Alliance would disavow any knowledge of her activities, and she must have felt forsaken, suffering from torture, witnessing the destruction of her homeworld, and awaiting execution. And then to discover that Luke Skywalker had undertaken her rescue because he wanted to! It was no mark against him that it hadn't gone well, or that he needed her help. But he had breathed a little bit of life back into the Princess.
Because he wanted to: yes, that was very important. Luke Skywalker was now part of the Alliance, and Albrina hoped he hadn't surrendered his instincts or sense of larger justice. What had Princess Leia said? that sometimes she wanted to grab Skywalker and Solo and fight this war herself.
What a contrast, that a farmer and a smuggler would undertake to accomplish something the Alliance pretended hadn't happened. No wonder the Princess chose them, Albrina thought. They hadn't just saved her, they saved the entire rebellion. All by accident, Luke Skywalker would eagerly admit.
The freighter stored all of that, like precious cargo. The coincidence of fate, the bond of survival. Freedom, hope, haven and memory. Luke Skywalker showed Princess Leia she still had these, and Captain Solo kept them for her.
Albrina squinted into the lights, seeking the crew of the freighter as she walked. The captain was a restless silhouette, hungry and active. That was all she could see from her vantage point; droids, crates, and parts of his own ship served to block her view.
But the Wookiee was easy to spot. Chewbacca, Albrina decided to use his name. He was still massive but up close Albrina's perspective of him was colored by Princess Leia, who thought he was one of the most gentle beings she'd ever met.
Albrina was familiar with Wookiees. She remembered them on Corellia from her childhood, how they would follow some of her classmates on the walk to school. They wore clothing.
That's why Chewbacca looked so fierce; her understanding came in a flash. His fur and muscles were not hidden under fabric, or diminished under cloth. As a girl, she had not thought then the Wookiees she was familiar with were intimidating. To be honest, and she hoped it was the innocence of childhood but suspected children already assimilated that sense of human superiority and indifference toward other life forms, she hadn't thought about them much at all. They were part of her friends' households, that was all. Her own family never owned one. They could afford it, she was pretty sure, and she suspected that her father found the idea distasteful, but he was careful not to express it, and in so doing allowed his daughter to think nothing of it.
Part of a household, but not employed or taken in as one of the family. A status symbol. Her father should have said something.
This Wookiee looked amused, and he made noises; the sounds were growls but Albrina was certain it was speech. She couldn't recall a single time with her friends that she heard a Wookiee speak.
Captain Solo's eyes flicked to his partner after a growl but he only waved a hand or didn't bother to respond; no one else understood and the Wookie didn't seem to care.
Albrina suddenly rued this part of her childhood. A Wookiee installed in a Corellian household was probably treated better than the labor camps- she certainly hoped so, but as she stood on the landing pad, her hand on the side of her head to keep her hair still in the wind- she knew some probably weren't. But the idea of clothing- in the manner of humans, for their humanoid body shape was similar- was suddenly... sickening. And their silence... were they prohibited from speech? Because it wasn't the Corellian language? And since Wookiees lived so much longer than a human, they were passed down from father to son, bequeathed in a will.
She felt a shame. Corellians collected Wookiees long before the Empire was created. Her friends' families probably complained bitterly how the Empire seized their property for the slave labor camps. And was that the reason Corellia's politics leaned toward the Rebellion? So they could go back to owning Wookiees? Gods, how twisted and mixed up everything was!
Chewbacca patrolled around the freighter, and when he saw her he stalked openly, his bowcaster ready and relaxed, his face undeniably entertained.
"Hello," Albrina said. The wind didn't bring him her voice, but evidently he decided she was harmless, for he lifted the tip of his bowcaster in greeting and showed his teeth.
The gesture was friendly, and yet it still imparted a confidence in his own power. He was protective, Albrina realized. Of the freighter, his captain, himself. And it seemed not only that his role was very important to him, but that he was also very good at it.
Albrina thought back to the silent and clothed Wookiees walking behind her friends. Her memory of the scene gave her no indication they were protecting their charges. They were merely walking behind, performing a chore.
"If you're looking for the transport shuttle," a deep voice drawled off to the side of her vision, "this is not it. I don't do passengers."
Albrina smiled. Sometimes you do, she thought to herself. She put a hand to her head to stop her hair blowing so she could see him better. "No, I'm just out for a walk."
Captain Solo looked like he doubted she had anything to add, ever. His eyes roved from her hand on her head to her Alliance rank pinned to her chest, down to the skirt hem flapping in the wind and back to her face. There was a jaded quality to his posture, as if he'd been through a ship's lade a million times, but also an alertness to chance. Her earlier impression of hungry was correct; he was tall and his body didn't waste time with nonessentials; he was lean and tight. To her familiar eye he was recognizably Corellian, not classically handsome, yet it was impossible to not register the fact that he was.
He probably liked having the upper hand, Albrina thought, and it was fun that she knew more about him then he did of her.
"You must be Captain Solo," she told him.
"If I must be then I guess I am," he said, doubting and suspicious.
She smiled again. He was politely rude, completely what she expected. She was enjoying herself. "I recognize the ship. I was at Yavin." That was enough explanation for him to lose interest, but she cast another line. "How is Princess Leia?"
His head gave a sharp jerk. "Transferred."
"Yes, I suppose that's one way to describe her," Albrina said. She found him somewhat closed off and resisted the urge to poke."I was one who arranged for the boy Jargist to move in with family. I happen to know he and the Princess went on your ship."
He scowled at her unspoken insinuation about passengers. "Jargist got there alright. It's a nice apartment."
Albrina widened her eyes. "You sound sarcastic."
"I always am. Look," Solo's eyes targeted her chest insignia again, "Major. I'm supposed to lift off in twenty and I still got a bay to load-"
His rush of speech helped her locate his accent. "I can tell you're from the City," she observed. "I've met so many people in my years with the Alliance from all over, that it's just nice to meet a homeworlder, and especially so one who knows the same neighborhood." She switched to Corellian. "I put you as eastside?"
He continued to scowl down at her, resenting his accent that gave a clue to his background, and it made her smile again. "Been a while for me," he grumbled in his native tongue.
"For me, too," she agreed. She was trying to assess how old he was; it seemed his surliness added years to her guess but in appearance he was still young. "Of course the Bombing interrupted what it meant to live in the City, didn't it. We were eastside, too, but the home doesn't stand anymore."
To speak of the environs had become a euphemism for loss.
"It's rebuilt," Captain Solo grunted unwillingly.
What a telling answer that was, Albrina thought. "Yes, but entirely different than what it was. The trees that met overhead, tunneled you in from the skyway, that's what I think of when I think of my home, walking to and from school." Albrina couldn't stop her eyes from meeting Chewbacca's, and she saw that Captain Solo noticed. "It was stately. Pretty. You're much younger," she added.
He nodded. "The City ain't stately or pretty to me."
"Unfortunately, it's become so for many. The Bombing was an outside event, but it revealed some internal weaknesses, did it not." She was referring to the rise of the orphanages and the lack of social structure that permitted some to profit from others' need.
He switched back to Basic. "If you say so." He reached to stop a droid. Quite a few had trundled past, and though he held the inventory roster he hadn't bothered until now to stop any to double check the cargo.
If her family home still stood, she would have named the street. She would have asked for his address, and mentally walked the map to his own. He was roughly as old as her youngest nephew; they could have talked schools, the park, the name of the proprietor who gave free ices to kids on hot days and then made a thin skating rink by melting the colored ice to refreeze on the pavement behind his shop for kids to slide on.
The Bombing sent shockwaves through all of Corellia. For Albrina, who had been an adult when it happened, there had been an innocence lost, a disappointment in her fellow man. Captain Solo didn't appear to have ever had that innocence, and her disappointment was his truth.
It was plain he didn't want to talk to her. Albrina doubted he knew who she was. Her insignia did not include her name. He might not still know who she was if he learned it. She rather doubted Princess Leia talked much about her therapy sessions.
The wind gusted and pushed her forward two steps. Princess Leia would also not be pleased to know Dr. Renzatl engaged in conversation with someone who occupied so much of her thoughts and time, but she would hold the Princess's confidence. In truth, the Princess had drawn a kind of portrait of Solo, and Albrina was curious to see how accurate it was.
Also the added details of things Albrina had to imagine, like the sound of his voice, was a plus. His handsome face was marred by a scar, a detail she hadn't known, and the blaster holstered at his thigh, worn so familiarly, hinted at a darkness beyond her experience.
His body language told her he wanted her to go away, but his shirt was wide open, and she remembered how the Princess found him frustrating at times.
She kept talking. "But it's helped me here," she said, still talking of the Bombing. "I can relate to the Alderaani. Just as you do with those trapped on the Death Star with you."
His eyes were shrewd on her, suspecting her of a motive. "We weren't trapped," he disagreed. "More like, almost captured."
Her head tipped upward in appreciation. "I like that phrasing."
He spoke with an insistence, looking into the contents of a crate. "And it was so I'd get paid; not out of any bleeding heart nonsense or some sad story."
Ah, is what she would say if she were in session, but he wasn't hers, and he acted like he needed to remind himself he didn't want to be anyone's.
But she was very pleased to meet him, the third part of the equation of two men and a Wookiee. Chewbacca had ambled up and was merely standing, following the conversation with interested eyes.
"You were celebrated as a hero, too," she pointed out. One would think a con man would benefit from looks and charm, but Captain Solo was going out of his way to harden his looks and character. "You were awarded a medal."
"Yeah, but." He waved it away as insignificant, straightened, and allowed the droid to go on its way. "That was the Alliance bragging to the rest of the galaxy."
Albrina raised her brows. "I hadn't thought of it that way."
"Of course," he scoffed. "Never mind it was us on our own on the Death Star. They gave up the Princess, and soon as her feet touched the ground all they wanted was the plans."
"You don't sound very impressed with the Alliance."
"I'm not pro-Empire, either," he growled. "But I don't think they don't have much of a chance."
"So you don't think it's worth the effort," she surmised. "The victory at Yavin was significant. Suddenly the effort looks like it may pay off."
"The victory," he snorted. "They let Luke Skywalker use one of their X-wings, is all."
"Surely, not all on his own. All the pilots that died?"
"Right, the fighters and the pilots." He gave her a thorough look, and decided something. Either she held the confidence of a homeworlder, or he was pretty sure he'd never see her again. The latter, probably.
"Luke gets it done- for them, but for the old man and his aunt and uncle, too- and the Alliance shows the loss of fighters and pilots to the galaxy and says give us some more and we'll get it done."
Definitely eastside, Albrina listened, and definitely young enough that it was the Bombing that gave him no memory of the stateliness of Corellian life, the dignity and calm, the Wookiees who trailed behind school children.
"I'm not sure we'll get it done," Albrina said cautiously, "but I think it's worth the effort. And that we can use the presence of Commander Skywalker and Princess Leia." She dragged his compatriots back into conversation. "You probably know their talents better than anyone."
He ignored her obvious attempt at gossip. "Everybody that hates the Empire is 'cause of what it did to someone: aunts, and old men and Wookiees."
"Meanwhile the Alliance is fighting for the idea of democracy," Albrina murmured, her own voice slipping more into the eastside accent.
"You're the one in uniform."
"And Princess Leia, who lost her planet, is transferred."
Captain Solo stared down at the inventory board in his hand. His thumb tapped it as he thought. "Yeah. But last I heard she'll be with Skywalker, so that's good."
"Do you mean the purity of their motives? They'll remember, and fight for, all the beings the Empire has given a sad story? Not just democracy. They'll make it real."
No wonder he was still here, she thought. While he worked hard to turn Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia away- the same as he treated anyone he met- he had probably never met two beings so unworthy of doubt and suspicion.
"All I know," he said offensively, "is that war is good for business."
Did he hear her thoughts? And then say something just to contradict them?
"Oh, yes," Albrina said. "I think I heard-" she glanced up at the freighter- "that is, in varying terms, that you're..." What was another word, a polite one, for smuggler? "... a free trader?"
Solo liked that description, and his eyes flicked affectionately to his ship. Behind the captain, Chewbacca snorted with good humor. Solo's pride dissolved into irritation with his copilot. "What are you standing around for? Go get busy."
Why was she afraid to offend him, when that's what he wanted? "I believe some have named you a smuggler."
"S'one way of puttin' it," he said, not insulted.
"But you aren't doing that," she felt compelled to point out again, "right now. Taking advantage of the war. Trafficking illegal goods while the Empire is too busy to enforce their laws." She whirled her hand at all the activity taking place to load his ship. "You're working for the Alliance."
That someone hinted he had higher principles did insult him and he scowled at her again. The Corellian in her described him as pissed; sometimes there was no better way to say it than how one learned it first.
He was pissed at himself. He'd blame the transparency of his eastside accent, but it was what was in him. She could see, though, how he could be dangerous if he let himself. It was the Wookiee who gave permission to press on; he'd obviously been through this conversation with his captain many times. He hadn't moved, and gently hooted and bobbed his head at Albrina.
"They're still operatin' below the laws of the Empire," he snarled at her.
"Sure," she agreed. "Of course. We're all traitors. We're also not a get-rich-quick scheme."
Chewbacca made a sound that was a definite chuckle.
"I figured you'd be off for greener pastures is all," she added. "Knowing your feelings for the Alliance."
He regarded her coldly. "Think of it as picking at a carcass that ain't dead yet."
"Ah," she didn't mean to say. "I will, then. I thought maybe it had something to do with the Princess or Luke Skywalker."
"He's a sucker and she's- Look, Major Lady. I got work to do. Enjoy your walk, huh?"
She smiled at him to show no hard feelings. "I'm stationed with the Princess," Albrina offered. "Leaving this afternoon. Would you like for me to relay a message?"
"Nah," Captain Solo intercepted another droid, this time with the practical purpose of getting back to work, "I'll see her again."
"Good." It slipped out with satisfaction. Albrina was very glad to hear the casual confession and bet that Princess Leia would have a different version events. "It was nice talking with you, Captain Solo."
She meant it. Confusing and enlightening, but worth the time. "Clear skies to you."
He lifted a hand, and muttered something, but she couldn't hear it because of the wind and the fact that he had already strode half a dozen paces away. As she continued around the Millennium Falcon to catch the pathway again, she smiled and waved at Chewbacca, who had resumed his pacing back and forth.
He beamed at her, and while the bowcaster dangled from its strap over his shoulder, with his claws he preened the fur on his chest outward, toward her. It meant something, and it was her own fault she didn't know more about Wookiees to understand what.