"What's up, Sweetheart?"
Leia looked up from her work to see her husband leaning in the doorframe of her office. The familiar slouch of his lean frame was unchanged from the day they met, but his hair, shorter than it was before they married, was speckled with gray, and the crinkles around his eyes were slightly more pronounced. He was dressed casually but neatly, and his hands and face were unmarred by grease; she wasn't up to speed on his schedule for the day but he clearly hadn't come from the Falcon. Despite the subtle signs of aging he was still handsome and youthful and she felt a rush of pride that he belonged to her.
Whatever Han had been doing, he had responded to her comm almost immediately and in less than an hour he was crossing the plush carpet of her fortieth-floor office in the New Republic's diplomatic headquarters. The gleaming spires of Coruscant filled the floor-to-ceiling windows behind her desk as the late-fall sunlight streamed through the textured shades.
"Thanks for stopping by," she said, rising from her chair to meet him.
He delivered a firm kiss on her lips. "Of course." He nodded at her midsection. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine," she smiled. "Same as a few hours ago." She smoothed her hand over the curve of her stomach. At twenty weeks pregnant, the nearly unrelenting nausea of the first trimester had abated and, absent some weary moments, Leia was feeling much like her old self again. As she stroked the bump she tried to discern any change in its shape. There was no detectable motion under her hand but any day now she should be able to physically feel the first stirrings of her daughter. Of their daughter, she reminded herself happily.
Han laid his hand on hers and kissed her head. "So. What can I do for you?"
Leia stepped back so she could look him in the eye. "I'd like to contract for your services," she began.
A grin slid across his face. "Even after this morning? I mean," he winked conspiratorially toward the sleek black chaise set against the interior wall of her office, "I'm happy to work with what we have here, but we'll have a lot more options back at the apartment."
Although she hated to admit it, her husband had proven to be utterly predictable in his delight with her second trimester hormones. She cleared her throat. "Official services, Han," she clarified. "As a pilot."
"Oh." His voice lowered to his familiar rumble. "Well, we could always combine the two — official and unofficial. Y'know, like in the old days when we were gallivanting around the galaxy and getting to know each other at the same time. Before we settled down and acquired real jobs." He leaned in and nuzzled her neck. "Before we became respectable."
Leia gently extricated herself from his embrace. At this rate the issue would resolve itself before they lifted off from Coruscant. "Let me get to the point. Our ambassador to Toloria has been out of communication for several days. I'd like us to go there so I can look into the situation and ensure that she's alive and well."
Han frowned and lowered his gaze to her stomach. "Do you need to be the one to do that? Why can't Karis go?"
"Karis is preparing for the trade conference that begins in a few days. The conference that Ambassador Maerva is scheduled to attend." Her deputy was going slightly crazy from the last-minute demands of the various delegations; she didn't want him responsible for tracking down a key participant on top of everything else.
"Still seems like low stakes for you to be involved personally." Han rubbed his chin. "There must be other New Republic officials on the planet who can locate her. Have you contacted the embassy's security officers?"
"We have." Leia perched on the edge of her desk. "But since the close of business three days ago neither they nor our diplomatic contacts have heard from her or her deputy. Tolorian officials claim to be equally in the dark."
Han was still unconvinced. "So you want to go all in and find her yourself. What if it's just a miscommunication about her schedule and you end up losing the pot?"
Losing the —. She looked at him in confusion. What in the galaxy was he talking about? Belatedly, his words triggered a memory of something she had half-heard on the holonews this morning, something about the opening night of —
Oh. Oh, no. She rose to her full height and glared at him. "Han Solo, you weren't planning on sneaking off to the Galactic Sabacc Tournament this weekend, were you?"
Her husband was the model of wounded indignation. "Sneak. Sneak? Sweetheart, you know I would be completely up front with you if I was even considering attending a low-key and respectable event like the GST."
"A cryptic message after you park the speeder is not up front, and you know it."
He raised his hands in surrender. "I promise I hadn't planned anything," he protested. "I was just thinking that maybe, if we had nothing else going on, I would try one of the walk-on tables and see how my luck goes. But now —." He paused and let out an exaggerated sigh. "I'll just have to go next year. Maybe I can enter as an official player in advance. Of course I'll need to sharpen my skills with a couple of smaller tournaments before the big one." He stared off into the distance as if pondering the sequence of triumphs that would propel him to the top of the galactic sabacc rankings.
Leia folded her arms. "So you're telling me that exactly one year from now you intend to leave me with our baby while you go off gallivanting with a bunch of gamblers?"
His wounded expression returned. "Of course not. We could all go. Sabacc players love babies."
"They do, do they."
"Absolutely," he assured her. "They've been known to pass around babies of all kinds of species for good luck. Our daughter," he paused dramatically, and even after weeks of hearing it, Leia's heart swelled at his words, "could have an up close and personal view of the tables. Hell, maybe she could even have a hand in the outcome." He eyes lit up. "It could be her first sabacc experience, the one that sets her on her path as a professional player on tour."
Leia's lips twitched. It was impossible to stay stern with Han for any length of time. "Fine," she said, making a mental note to dredge up a diplomatic crisis one year from now. "We can plan for the GST next year if it will make you happy."
He stepped forward and cupped her face with his hands. "You make me happy," he said in a low voice. "And her," he added with a gentle caress to her stomach. "I'll fly you anywhere you need to go. When do you want to leave?"
"I was hoping for tonight," she admitted. "Does that give you enough time to get ready?"
"I think so," he said. "Might be a late departure, but we should be able to pull it off. We can sleep once we get into hyperspace."
"That was my thought too."
"Of course it was," he teased. "As if it wasn't obvious that this entire scenario is just an excuse to relive our glory days."
Eight hours later Leia plopped her bag on the floor of the Falcon's cabin and collapsed onto the bunk. She closed her eyes and circled her palm over her stomach, focusing on her daughter's steady life-pulse through their Force connection. Although familiar by now, it was a peculiar feeling that was difficult to describe; she'd tried to convey the sensation to Han knowing that he yearned for as many details as she could provide, but her verbalization always felt woefully inadequate.
Despite her increasing exhaustion, this phase was turning out to be among the happiest of her life. Even the first blush of her and Han's romance had been clouded by the war and the uncertainty of any future together. Accepting his proposal for marriage was an easy decision but she had clung to trepidation about a shared life absent the familiar patterns of wartime existence. Knowing they would both retain their fierce independence and stubbornness, she entered into marriage with what she hoped were realistic expectations. Dual careers, a shared apartment, and the responsibility for forging their own paths were bound to result in occasional tensions.
But those early tumultuous months, ones in which she established herself in the diplomatic hierarchy of the New Republic and Han started his one-man consulting operation, flew by and they both adapted quickly. Eager to start a family — indeed, more eager than Leia might have predicted — Han encouraged them to try to get pregnant. He understood her concern over her biological parentage but seemed no more troubled by it than any other obstacle they had encountered. "We're much more than the product of our genes," he told her earnestly. "You haven't been timid your entire life, Sweetheart. Why start now?"
Leia remembered her mother saying much the same when her daughter was young and uncertain about her destiny as an Organa. And once the idea of having a baby was planted, she found herself just as eager as Han. Months of trying finally resulted in a healthy pregnancy. Almost immediately Leia latched on to her daughter through the Force with such an assurance that even the grief she felt at her parents' absence couldn't fully dampen her joy.
The shudder of the Falcon's hyperdrive brought her back to the present and she forced herself up for a quick wash and change of clothes before climbing back into bed. Han's renovations of the ship's sleeping and lounging areas had resulted in a space significantly more accommodating than what previously existed, and in her current state she was especially grateful that he had outfitted the bunk with a deep mattress and luxurious linens.
She had nearly drifted off when he slid in behind her. "Sorry," he murmured. "Go back to sleep."
"Mmm." Rolling over to face him, she curled into his side. Something he had said earlier punctured her drowsiness. "Han," she mumbled, "you don't think our glory days are behind us, do you?"
"Nah." He rubbed her back gently. "Though I doubt we'll have another chance to be war heroes." He paused a beat. "But that's probably a good thing."
She let that sink in. "I never thought I'd hear you long for stability," she finally said.
His shoulder rose under her head in an abbreviated shrug. "Life's what you make of it whatever the circumstances. I don't think we'll lack for excitement if that's what we want. Heck, having a baby and watching her grow will be an adventure in itself. And then," he fondled her suggestively, "just when we've got the hang of it, we'll give her a brother or sister."
Leia smiled against him and marveled at the course her life had taken in just a few short years. "One thing at a time, hotshot."
Their hotel in the Tolorian capital of Ischen was a short walk from the New Republic embassy. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the row of trees lining the boulevard and dappled the pavement with bright splotches. Like the surrounding buildings, the embassy compound reflected the meticulous design of the city planners: evenly-arranged structures set back from the streets at regular intervals fronted by pedestrian traffic. The chaotic energy of the Coruscant cityscape had been diffused on Toloria into a low-key energy that lay halfway between placidity and bustle.
As with other worlds, the last few years had been whirlwind of activity that centered around a primary goal: establishing the New Republic presence, an entity whose size and influence varied from planet to planet. One with middling influence like Toloria would house a diplomatic corps of a couple hundred; core worlds could commandeer nearly a thousand New Republic officials working in hand in hand with their local counterparts. Ambassadors were tasked with overseeing the corps and their staff while working within the host planet's existing political apparatus. Official duties ran from drafting tax agreements to delineating ownership of natural resources to hammering out treaties for industries that supplied the New Republic with goods and services; all of those were in addition to the larger project of replacing Imperial bureaucracy with those of the new galactic administration. Under the crush of these responsibilities, New Republic ambassadors either burned out quickly or established a minor empire designed to obey their every whim. Leia sensed that Ambassador Maerva fell in the latter category, but specific issues relating to Toloria rarely made it onto her desk. It would require careful probing to discern the circumstances that underlay the ambassador's disappearance.
"What's our first stop?" Han asked as they approached the main entrance of the embassy.
Leia nodded at the guards who swung open the iron gates. "The Tolorian official who was the last to meet with her."
Inside, a slight, nervous man introduced himself as Aegis and showed them around the Ambassador's offices. "Ambassador Maerva, her deputy, and her assistants have not responded to any of our communications for days," he recounted. "We've tried every method we could think of, even the classified channels. They just… disappeared."
"What was her work recently focused on?" Leia asked. "Was there anything that was particularly contentious?"
Aegis shrugged. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Drafting agreements between Tolorian industries and the New Republic, negotiating disputes between political parties, managing conflicts over land and water rights. Everyday issues for her office."
"Have there been tensions between your department and the Ambassador's office?"
"I wouldn't say tensions, exactly. We had our disagreements, of course. But I know we both felt that consistent progress had been made to establish a strong partnership between Toloria and the New Republic."
"I'm not sure I buy that last part," Han whispered to her as they made their way to the embassy's security office. "There's gotta be a little touchiness when a planet has to negotiate some of its autonomy away to the New Republic."
"Realistically, yes," Leia admitted. "We certainly expect resistance when we begin the process on each planet, but it's a necessary step to stability in the galaxy. By this point, planetary leaders have largely come around to seeing it that way." And we make it worth their while, she couldn't help thinking.
A review with the embassy's security team uncovered no useful information. Footage of the building's entrances and exits revealed nothing out of the ordinary and there was no record of threats being made to the Ambassador. Leia was peering over their shoulders at the holo-recordings of the front and rear gates when a stab of hunger twisted in her gut. A ripple of nausea followed seconds afterward and caused her to nearly buckle at the knees. Thanking the officers for their assistance, she arranged to meet with embassy staff in the morning and made her escape.
It was dark by the time they grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant. Han reclined in his chair and watched her amusedly as she wolfed down her dinner. "Don't judge me," she glared at him. "You want to try nurturing another life form in your body?"
"Nah, I'm good," he grinned. And then more seriously: "I'm glad you're eating, though. You feel okay?"
She shrugged. "As well as can be expected."
He leaned forward. "Well, try not to overdo it, all right? The disappearances are unusual, but there's no evidence of malicious intent. Maybe it's all just diplomatic hijinks."
That thought had crossed her mind too. "Perhaps. But it would be a serious violation of protocol to disappear without telling anyone. I'll see what I can find out from her staff tomorrow."
Han nodded. "I'll wander around town. Maybe I can turn up something."
Leia knew from experience that was code for swapping stories from his smuggling days with whatever long-lost acquaintances he managed to unearth. She poked at the remnants of her dinner, her appetite having suddenly deserted her, and stifled a yawn.
"Come on." Han dropped a handful of credits on the table and pushed back his chair. "Let's get you to bed."
Sleeping in a new place brought mysterious dreams: winding images of her and Han and their daughter, not yet in physical form but as an apparition just out of reach from a shadowy shape that hovered nearby. Not entirely threatening but not unthreatening either, it made her uneasy in her dream and the feeling remained after she woke.
She blinked in the darkness of their suite. The curtains were pulled so tightly it was impossible to tell whether dawn had broken. She got up to use the 'fresher, deliberately ignoring the chrono next to the bed. Sometimes it was better not to know.
When she was returned to the room Han was blinking sleepily in the glow of the illuminated numbers. He waited until she drew nearer and then made a stealth lunge for her arm and hauled her onto the mattress. "Get over here," he growled. "You can't escape so easily."
She scooted under the blanket and nestled into the curve of his chest. For a moment she debated telling him about the images from her dream but decided against it. As with her Force visions, she could tuck it away and recall it later if necessary. There was no reason to burden him with vague stirrings and unsubstantiated concerns.
A muffled grunt behind her drew her back to the present. Han's hand had roamed from where it spanned her waist beneath her nightshirt, his explorations light and teasing. These days her body felt alien at times, changing slowly and then suddenly all at once, biological functions that had belonged solely to her now diverted to her growing child. Often it was only Han's touch that redirected the feeling of corporeal abandonment back to her accustomed sense of self.
His fingers drifted over the mound of her belly and then lower and the heat of her desire, never far from the surface these days, boiled anew. Pushing her hips back, she arched against him as he made quick work of her shorts and his. In this position he slid in easily and knew exactly how to start the spiral, the soft pets to her sex that gradually became more focused, migrating from the pads of his fingers to the tips. His other hand curved around to her front and traced her nipple with his thumb. She bared her neck to his mouth and teeth and the shivery stubble of his jaw to further feed the pleasure building between her legs. Upwards it rose until she could withstand it no longer and bucked against him with a hoarse cry.
She melted back against his chest as post-orgasmic tremors flittered through her limbs. "That's my girl," he murmured, stroking soothingly over her hips and thighs, and her body spasmed in a final involuntary convulsion. She lay gratifyingly limp as he encircled her even more tightly and thrust until a lengthy shudder signaled his own release.
Their post-coital nuzzling now included a ritual probing for any signs of movement from their child. Still nothing, Leia decided; flutters around her cervix that were no doubt a kick or a punch were still too weak to be detected on the surface.
Giving up, Han nosed her hair at length. "You gonna be okay today?"
"Of course." She loosened his arm and propped herself against the headboard. "I'll keep you updated on whether I need to travel to another location on-planet. Reading her reports, it sounds like the ambassador was on the move quite a bit."
"Don't go bolting off without me." Han rummaged on the bedside table for his comm. "I know how much you enjoy doing that."
"Only as much as you like running off to sabacc tournaments."
"Well there you go." He stood and stretched and shuffled toward the 'fresher. "Since I'm missing the tournament, by contractual agreement you have to stay here in the city."
"You know I agreed to no such thing," she hollered at his retreating form.
They separated in front of the embassy an hour later. Leia was escorted to a conference room outside the ambassador's offices and laid out her briefing documents on the table. Although the embassy's security officers had talked to many of the ambassador's staff, Leia's current position and historical involvement in the Alliance was sufficiently respected to induce a retread of their testimony.
"Let's start with those who worked most closely with her," she instructed the diplomatic envoy assigned to her for the day. "Can you arrange for all of the deputy directors to meet with me here?"
Soon a cluster of impatient-looking dignitaries were assembled in the foyer outside the conference room. Leia took them one at a time, asking them first to summarize what they had told the security team and then starting in with her own inquiries.
"Water distribution in the surrounding districts was a constant thorn in her side," pronounced one.
"The political factions in the Tolorian legislature were always causing headaches for her," said another.
"Between you and me, Princess, she was getting more and more annoyed at New Republic directives around trade negotiations," commented a third.
After several hours of interviews, Leia reviewed of her notes while digging into the lunch delivered from the embassy cafe.
"It seems that the consensus is that an internal Tolorian issue is likely the source of the disappearances," she said, half to herself. Tyran, the envoy assigned to her for the day, was sitting across the table slumped over his datapad.
"If that's the case, Princess, then perhaps Aegis would be able to offer some useful information."
Leia didn't miss the tone of casual indifference. She hadn't expected enthusiastic cooperation from the Tolorians, but most of the New Republic officials also seemed less than thrilled that she was there.
"And what do you think?" Ignoring his suggestion, she looked at him pointedly. "You interacted with the ambassador fairly frequently. Surely you must have a theory about what happened."
Tyran shifted in his seat. "To be frank, the ambassador is not an easy person to work with. And I'm not the only one to say that," he added hurriedly. Unsure of Leia's specific perch in the chain of command and whether criticizing his boss was a smart move or not, he sat up straighter. "Though her deputy, Sollus, has always been loyal to her. They are a tight-knit unit, the two of them."
This was a new angle. "Did you sense anything untoward between then? A personal liaison, perhaps?"
"I'm — not sure," Tyran confessed. "I mean it crossed my mind — everyone's mind — as office gossip at one time or another. But there was never any evidence of a relationship between them."
"And her two assistants?" Leia re-checked the files on the women. "Anything out of the ordinary there?"
"I wouldn't say so. Though surely," the casual tone returned, "all four of them disappearing together would lead one to assume that no foul play is involved."
"Yes, that's likely," Leia said evenly. "But beyond that we're still in the dark." She rose and gathered up her documents. "I will go meet with the Tolorian embassy staff now. Thank you for your assistance."
Ironically, she found the Tolorians more cooperative than their New Republic counterparts; or perhaps they had just been instructed to play nice. Her interviews with them, however, turned up no additional clues.
As the last interviewee left, Leia stood and stretched her legs. Her dress, not strictly a maternity outfit but one strategically draped to ward off curious glances about her possible state, stretched over her bump. She rubbed it absentmindedly, trying to recall when she last felt the baby move.
"Princess." She looked up to see Aegis hurrying toward her. "We just received a coded message from the Ambassador."
"You found her?"
"It seems that she allowed herself be found," Aegis corrected. "Actually, although the message is from her, the only thing it contains are coordinates. I assume they are of her current location. I will forward them along to you," he added helpfully. "One of our security officers can accompany you there."
"Her transmission only includes coordinates?"
"Correct. I have already instructed the security team to meet her there. It's the site of one of our camps."
Leia regarded him blankly. "With tents?"
"No, no," Aegis assured her. "There are cabins with all of the modern comforts of the city. We call it a camp because of its isolation and separation from the normal rhythms of the embassy. We have several of them," he continued, "but this is the most remote one. They're designed to act as a setting to break a diplomatic impasse and prevent the falling back on typical patterns by the delegates involved."
"Of course." She felt slightly foolish. It made sense in theory, but the idea of luxurious yet rustic hovels outfitted solely for diplomatic conferences would have been laughable during the war.
"But why didn't you search the camps earlier?" she asked suddenly. "It would seem like an obvious first step when the ambassador went missing."
"We flew out to check the main one," Aegis said, a touch defensively. "The others are rarely used and none of our remote monitoring systems indicated that they had been breached."
"But —" She clamped her mouth shut before the rest of her questions escaped. Why would Ambassador Maerva send coordinates if the location was an established embassy property? Were they meant as a signal for another party and intercepted by the Tolorians instead? But if that were the case, why would Aegis turn them over to her if he wasn't meant to have them in the first place?
Aegis was looking at her curiously. She bent down and rifled through her bag as a distraction. "I will meet the security team at this camp," she said, drawing herself up. "Thank you for your assistance, Aegis."
"Of course."
Outside she messaged Han about the change in plans. She was waiting for his response and peering around for her escort when a speeder glided up next to the curb and honked. Edging closer, she paused before the tinted windows of the unmarked vehicle. The blood-red exterior was generously lined with chrome piping, an effect that was both futuristic and antique at the same time. The frame hugged a sinuous curve that ended in a flourish of carved metal on the front of the hood. A soft swish of the passenger door unveiled a luxurious cream-colored interior topped off with a roguish pilot at the controls.
"Hey there, good-lookin'. Can I offer you a ride?"
"I'm not sure I want to know how much of our savings you forked over for this," Leia said as she climbed in. The seat contoured to her body and embraced her snugly. It was more comfortable than most beds she had slept on.
"Absolutely none whatsoever," Han replied cheerfully. He played with the controls, retracting a sunroof and flooding the interior with a warm glow. "In fact, the guy who owns this beauty insisted that I borrow it for the duration of our visit. Wouldn't take no for an answer. And all I did was let slip some dirt on a certain customs official stationed at the southern freighter port on Coruscant."
"At least now I know where to look for the next illegal shipment when it inevitably goes awry," Leia said. She flashed her comm at him. "Can you fly us to this location?"
"Is that where the ambassador turned up?"
"It would seem that way. The coordinates originally came from her, or so Aegis said."
Han sat back in his seat. "And you trust him? The coordinates could be faked to get you out of the way." He fiddled with a knob. "Or worse."
Leia pondered that. "I don't sense deception in him," she said finally. "Though I'm not sure he's being entirely truthful."
"It's always been my opinion that not being truthful qualifies as deception."
She sighed and studied the front of the embassy. A faded speeder with a diplomatic logo was idling next to the gates. "Han, I'm not an oracle — you know that. I don't think we're in serious danger, but I can't predict what will or won't happen. We'll just have to take our chances."
"Do you honestly think that? Even now?" He sounded more hurt than angry and her heart ached a bit at his tone. "The risks you take don't just affect you, you know."
"They never did," she shot back. "What do you think I was doing during the war, playing with lives?" Her anger rose; he of all people should know. "Or are you implying that I haven't taken your preferences into account? That I have been careless with your life? Because I'm pretty sure you can do that perfectly well on your own."
The speeder behind them honked impatiently and Han made an obscene gesture out the window. Without responding he pulled them into traffic and gunned the accelerator.
They stewed in silence as they left the city. Han flew on the edge of recklessness, either as a pointed reaction to their debate or in an attempt to get the trip over with. Leia comm'd the embassy re-iterating their plan to meet the ambassador on their own.
After an hour they pulled up to a service center set back from the road. The setting sun illuminated clouds of dust along the horizon and heat mirages shimmered distantly across the plains. The tree-lined boulevards of Ischen were as if a dream or part of a landscape existing on another planet.
"I'm hungry," Han announced as he parked the speeder. Flying always put him in a better mood. "You must be too."
"I can always eat," she admitted. It was still a novelty, having an appetite rarely satisfied for long yet largely untinged with nausea.
They climbed out and took in the surrounding expanse of matted, dry grass dotted with few landmarks larger than a scrubby tree. In the not too distant past the living landscape must have undulated in the wind, rich-hued and populated by all varieties of flora and fauna. Now it merely resembled a worn-out husk with no signs of life.
Han scratched a line in the dust with his boot. "Not much to look at out here. I thought it was supposed to be the rainy season."
"It is," Leia replied. "The climate has worsened on this part of the planet. Most of the inhabitants have been driven to the cities where water is supplied from the aquifers. I read that the rivers have almost completely dried up."
They made their way into the service station. Manned only by a lethargic service droid, the pickings were slim. Leia discovered that nerf jerky was clearly the regional specialty in the category of service station grab 'n' go snacks. She picked through a shelf of granola bars, scrutinizing the ingredients for anything resembling protein. Han swiped some drinks through the credit scanner and they sat down to a picnic dinner on the hood of the speeder.
"Still, I kinda like it out here," Han decided. "All this open space. Easy to imagine driving a herd of nerfs across the land."
Soon assorted plastic wrappers were all that remained of their feast. "We should get going," Leia said. "I want to catch the ambassador before she heads back to the city."
She was strapping herself into her seat when her comm went off. "Wait. I just received something. It's a different set of coordinates."
"Again? Did it come from the embassy?"
Leia squinted at the digital signature. "I'm not sure. There's no indication who sent it."
Han sighed. "Now it's starting to feel like a trap."
"Perhaps. Or an indication that the security team can't be trusted. The first set of coordinates could have been a decoy."
"Great." Han grumbled. "New Republic embassy officials are apparently not trustworthy enough to deal with an in-house situation so someone contacts you, a public figure of interest to a lot of beings, with cryptic non-explanations. What do these people have against using plain language?"
"No one wants to take the heat if something goes wrong. Lack of accountability is a lot easier when you don't spell things out."
"Clearly."
They sat in silence, marinating in indecision.
Han drummed his fingers on the dash and gazed out at the surrounding scrub. "Look," he said. "It's your call. Normally I wouldn't have any objection to going to investigate, but with the baby…" He glanced down at her stomach and then met her eyes reluctantly. "It's your call," he repeated.
The idea of being paralyzed with uncertainty for the next several months was intolerable. "Let's check it out. Just approach carefully as we arrive."
"Sure, sure," muttered Han.
Darkness had settled across the plains as they neared the coordinates. The speeder headlights revealed a clump of neatly arranged trees, the first they had seen since leaving the city. "Someone's managed to find water out here," Han commented.
Leia nodded. "We must be approaching another governmental outpost." Sure enough, a small sign featuring the logo of the Tolorian diplomatic corps flashed in the glare of the headlights as they flew by. A cluster of buildings came into view; Han reduced speed, dimming the lights and securing the speeder doors.
"So what's the plan?" He idled the speeder a safe distance from the largest building.
"Let's scout out the perimeter before we go any further," Leia said. "Then we can enter through one of the secondary entrances and hopefully avoid being caught off guard."
Han nodded thoughtfully. "Or we could just ask that friendly-looking fellow who's coming our way."
Leia cursed under her breath. "Is he armed?"
"Doesn't look like it." She could hear his grin. "But I am."
In deference to Toloria's laws against concealed weapons, Han had left the hotel that morning with only a single blaster. He's slipping, Leia thought to herself. Based on previous experience, she would have predicted he'd be carrying at least three on his body at any time if only to thumb his nose at the prohibitions.
"Can we help you?" Leia inquired as the man drew up alongside the speeder. In the ambient glow of the interior lights she could make out a neatly-trimmed beard accompanied by a weary expression.
"Leia Organa?" In response to his unthreatening manner, Leia nodded.
"I am Sollus D'erraco, the ambassador's deputy. I'm glad you received my message."
"You mean the second set of coordinates after we were well on our way to the first?" Climbing out of the speeder, she faced him with her most authoritative stance.
"I apologize for the subterfuge in the way we contacted you. We are accustomed to keeping things close to our vests."
"Even with me?" Anger flared at their presumption. "We're all on the same side here. Why would you leave us in the dark?"
"A situation developed here today and we did not want the entire security team interrupting at an inopportune time." When Leia just stared at him, he went on hurriedly. "It's a bit of a long story. We can fill you in once we're clear of the current hurdle."
"You can fill me in now." A sudden stab of pressure-pain in her uterus only increased her irritation. She tried to massage the spot discreetly. "Please explain why we first flew to your planet, and now all the way out here, without any clear explanations. How did you even get my comm address?"
"I had help from the central office," Sollus answered vaguely. "The ambassador can give you the longer version, but in short we have been engaged for days in delicate negotiations with representatives from one of the major political parties. This afternoon those talks took a turn for the worst and I convinced the ambassador to request additional assistance from you."
"If this is one of the embassy's camps, why is the office in Ischen unaware that you're here?" Han questioned.
"I diverted the surveillance footage," Sollus answered smoothly. "Please. We will explain it all later, but time is of the essence now."
Leia ignored his urging. "I'd like to see the ambassador first. Can you ask her to come speak with me before we meet her negotiating partner?"
"I'm afraid that's not possible."
"Why not?" Leia peered through the lit windows of the cabin. "Is she being held hostage or something?"
Sollus paused awkwardly. "Sort of."
"Sort of?" Han repeated. "Isn't it usually one or the other? Yes she's being held hostage, or no she's not?"
"The Ambassador is not being held hostage herself," Sollus clarified. "The remaining delegate is holding a blaster to his head and says he'll pull the trigger at midnight if we don't agree to his terms."
"Oh, for —" Han grumbled under his breath. "Are diplomatic proceedings always this melodramatic around here?"
Relief mixed with a new set of worries for Leia. Besides the unnecessary loss of life, any negotiation ending in the death of one of its parties was an obvious black eye to the New Republic diplomatic division.
"All right." She poked wayward wisps of hair back into her braids and started for the cabin. "Let's get this situation resolved before it spins even further out of control."
"Why?" Han demanded. "Maybe we should just let him go through with it. I mean, since he's this close. There's only —" he checked his chrono — "a couple of hours left until midnight."
Leia ignored him and turned to Sollus. "Is there anything else we should know before we go in there?"
"He's not violent. But he is very determined."
Her feelings of dread were only marginally assuaged when Han drew his blaster from the holster. "Let's hope that first part holds," she muttered.