5
"In a restaurant," Han declared. "All dressed up."
"We've had real dinners."
"Not the same."
"Two on the yacht starship." She smiled and dangled a restless leg over the armrest. "Although I don't know if the one you burned here in the galley counts."
"We could hop from one side of Coruscant to the other. I know a great little place-"
"You're too recognisable." She shook her head. "We'd wind up on the cover of the Coruscanti Daily."
"How long can you get away for? A night?"
"Not that long," she replied.
"Ten hours."
"Six."
"Nine."
"Eight and you owe me."
"Owe you what?" he asked.
"You haven't been teaching me how to do any maintenance work. How to do system checks, reboots, scans and general repairs."
"I have people for that."
She rolled her eyes. "You have people for everything. I need to learn how."
"You're really gonna buy a ship and take off?"
"Yes."
He didn't say anything back. This was their fifth week of flying lessons and her temerity still impressed the hell out of him.
She misinterpreted the look on his face for skepticism. "I have the money."
"Sure you do, Sweetheart."
Her dark eyes flashed with anger. Han thought she looked beautiful. "How?"
"In university…" she began. "In university, I was involved with someone who came from money. We were going to run away together. We opened an account with fake identification, set it up with an intergalactic bank account so that we could withdraw funds anywhere in the galaxy." She pursed her lips. "We had enough to last us at least a year."
Han scanned the displays. "What happened?"
She shifted, drew the leg back over the armrest and straightened her spine. "I told you people close to me have a habit of getting hurt." She let out a lungful of air as though she'd been holding it in. "The money is still there, in the accounts. I'm going to use it to buy a ship. You can't teach me how to fly and not how to repair a ship."
"I guess I can't."
"Besides." She twitched the frown from her lips. "The sex is free. For an offworld dinner, you've got to improve your end of the bargain."
His laughter filled every corner of the cockpit. "Fine." He fixed her with an intense smile. "Next time we have our lesson, be prepared to get your hands dirty."
"As it so happens," she said, slipping from the co-pilot's chair and sliding her legs on either side of his so that she straddled his lap.
She used the voice she used when they were in bed, one that called to mind the feel of her hair between his legs and the slick, soft feel of her mouth. "As it so happens what?" he asked breathlessly.
"I love to get dressed up."
The Spirit of Nyenthi'Oris was a sturdy little ship and her systems had been updated prior to her purchase. The previous owner hadn't taken her for more than ten hyperspace jumps; other than a few minor hull scratches and dated interior appliances, she was in mint condition. Han had to search for things they could mend. Briefly, he entertained blasting the hydraulics or some other secondary system so that they could patch it up. Every other job, something had needed fixing on the Falcon. She'd been ornery that way. Chewbacca used to growl that she resembled Han personality-wise, that all the modifications and upgrades and jury-rigging had made her as cantankerous as her owner. It had been true enough, except that Han didn't have a hyperdrive for a heart and fluidics for veins.
He made a mock-up of a hull breach and taught Leia how to locate it and seal it. It took her three tries. It wasn't her fault - without the force of a vacuum sucking air outside the ship, the hull-patch wouldn't stick was the way it was intended.
"If you don't get this right…" He shook his head, slowly, reluctantly.
"What?"
"I won't sleep with you later."
"Damn it."
She swore as though he meant it.
They both knew he didn't.
"I'll give you a bonus question," he declared. "What part of the ship is best left to the experts?"
"The hyperdrive." She brushed the back of a greasy hand against her forehead. It left a long dark streak. "They covered that in basic piloting."
"Wasn't it kind of funny," he asked, "you being in basic piloting and never flying?"
"Funny to who?"
"Not that kind of funny."
"I know what you meant."
"There are a lot of seasoned pilots who wouldn't know the stuff you did about rebalancing the motivator. They don't know anything about hyperdrive generators."
"I studied." She stooped and picked up a stray access panel. She kept her face averted. Enough peeked out through her hair - the corner of an eyelid, the line of her jaw - that he knew she was deep in concentration, trying to replace the panel over the power core, with the clamps and screws in proper order.
"And you never registered for a single class."
"I sat in. I bought the data-packs."
"Is that what it's like, being a ward of the Emperor, not being able to do the things you want?"
It was a yes or no question. Han figured she couldn't dodge it.
She finished attaching the last clamp. Her tone was guarded. "At times."
"Eventually, don't you get too old to be a ward?"
"At the start of every year, I wake up and hope so." She handed him the multi-tool. "Then I test it. I try to leave Coruscant under my own name. Sirens go off when I hit customs. Shortly after that an Imperial Security detail arrives."
He almost believed her but she was grinning to herself. He couldn't think of a way to ask without sounding insulting, so he blurted out, "What's so special about you?"
She looked at him in mock surprise. "I thought I was special," she said. "To you."
And then she grinned.
"You're impossible, you know that."
"Stubborn," she corrected.
"Right. In thirty languages. How could I forget? Okay you… have you ever used a fusion-welder before?"
"No."
The final lesson was already set up in the starboard passageway. Han handed her a pair of yellow-shaded goggles. "Put these on." He donned a pair himself. "Ever done any welding at all?"
She shook her head.
"Never take your goggles off. If they fall and you lose 'em, close your eyes and let go of the trigger, otherwise you'll damage your corneas." He had the fusion welder in his hand but the safety was on. He tapped the two couplings with the tip of the welder. "You can use a softer filler metal if you need it. Always keep scraps on hand, pre-cut. If you can get the couplings butted up against each other like this, they'll take to one another. You need to make sure they're straight though… Hold it, find the safety and unlock it." He ran the laser beam steadily over the seam between the two couplings for three seconds. It merged into one. "That's it. And you're golden. He stood behind her, stretched his arms on either side, and pressed the welder into her hand. "Now your turn."
"Like this?" She rested her elbow atop his.
"Yeah, just like that."
He had her weld three couplings together in a row, one with filler metal, two without. She jumped the first time the beam cracked to life, but after than she was calm. She was meticulous, slightly anal-retentive even, measuring and levelling everything twice. By the last coupling, she leaned against him slightly, as though the fusion-welder had a kickback to it, which it didn't.
"Nice job," he said.
"I think I can handle this." She admired her handiwork for a moment. Then she said, "I grew up in a private boarding school. He came to see me once or twice a year." She talked as though she'd been storing the sentences up for hours. "It was always the worst day of my life. And for the record, I do know why, but it's better if you don't."
Han had seen the Emperor in holos thousands of times, and in person only once, at the opening of the Imperial Symphony Orchestra, back when he and Bryn were first married. Frail and feeble-looking, Palpatine had been surrounded by a crimson sea of the fearsome Royal Imperial Guard, as though he feared assassins waited around every staircase. He couldn't imagine what that ravaged face would have appeared like to a child. His arms tightened. "What about now?"
"He checks in. That's why I need to leave as soon as I'm able."
The undercurrent in her voice was telling him not to get attached; he wasn't listening. He ran his fingers over the welded seam, wondering if she was a restless or sound sleeper, slept on her stomach or her side. Did she like sex in the middle of the night or did she sleep curled up in a ball, limbs in, closed-off like, legs yanked together tight so no one could touch? Did she sleep with her hair down or tied up so it wasn't pinned beneath her shoulders? He had a lover like that once, who shoved her long hair over her head. It used to sprawl on his pillow and smother him.
"How soon is that?"
"Two months."
Standing behind her then, two months felt more like a lifetime. He closed his mouth over the spot where her bodysuit and bare skin meet. He used his teeth and swirled his tongue as if she was an edible, a delicacy like namana nectar.
"Hey." She murmured a sustained complaint. "Don't leave a mark."
He shoved his goggles on top of his head. "Who will see?"
She tilted her neck back and smiled at him, face half-tinted by the yellow goggles. "Everyone at dinner."
The dress was green like an aboreal forest at midday, with clumps of tilted sunlight spattered through the treetops. It fell off one shoulder and was slightly sheer; she wore a bodyglove beneath it that didn't quite reach her shoulders or her knees.
He flew her to Utrost, a cosmopolitan planet only a few light-years from Coruscant. It was afternoon in the ocean-side city of Ovi Frihet. The restaurant was terraced, set on the cliffs overlooking Utrost's Great Ocean and salt air breezes tapered toward the shore. It was lunchtime, but they called it dinner and the waiter played along.
By the time they were halfway through the return trip to Coruscant, her skin had the greenish pallor of a Falleen. She slumped in the co-pilot's chair with a peculiar expression on her face and said she wasn't feeling well. She spent the end of the flight locked in the refresher or laying on the crash couch in the main hold, simultaneously shivering and sweating and looking miserable.
Food poisoning, they decided. Han had had the teratta, seasoned terk hide strips in oil and groat milk; she'd had the Chadra starfish in membrosia sauce. Definitely the seafood. Unfortunately, he had nothing on board the Spirit but a skeleton medpac, no antitoxins, nothing for nausea.
"Where to you live?" he asked after landing at the skyhook.
"I can't bring you there."
"Well you can't take a shuttle and the skytube like this."
"Can we wait?" she pleaded.
In an hour, she couldn't make the trips between the refresher and the crash couch without bracing herself against the wall.
"My place," he suggested. "I'm not much of a nursemaid but it'll be more comfortable than the ship."
"I don't know." Whatever resolved she possessed had been taxed by illness. "Maybe we should… I don't know."
The absurdity of the situation forced him to decide. "Does your building have a landing pad?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll fly you in my airspeeder."
She lived in Subsector J55-04, Level 73, on the fringes of the Palace District in a monolithic skytower that featured thousands of identical units. He propped her up in the turbolift while he slid her ID cards through the scanners.
Inside, an L-shaped lounging area and small kitchen comprised the main living areas. There were two doorways. One doorway led to an empty room with a training mat arranged on the carpet and the second led to a bedroom with an attached fresher unit. The apartment, although standardized and generic, had been livened up as much as possible with warm colours, comfortable conform furniture and packed data-cases. An expensive floater globe hovered over the dining table; inside it, coloured gases swirled in imitation of the Rainbow Nebulae. Other art pieces strategically decorated the walls and a few holocubes were displayed on data-case shelves and side tables. They revealed past nights at the Manarai, Leia with her friends in the band and the other staff. There was a holo of two toddlers arm in arm, sitting beneath a cyperill tree in one of Coruscant's botanical gardens.
Her apartments contained far more than an illusion of a life, Han decided. Far more than an illusion.
He helped her into the bedroom. She asked for bedclothes from her dresser and then she asked him to hang up her green dress. He commed a nearby pharmacy and ordered anti-nausea drops. Then he commed his assistant at Calrissian-Solo Munitions Inc. and cancelled his early-morning meeting, just in case.
It took half an hour for the medicine to arrive, and another hour for it to take effect. In the meantime, he massaged the cramps from her calves, fetched cold cloths and did whatever he could to be helpful.
"You don't have to stay," she insisted repeatedly.
"I sort of feel like this is all my fault."
"It's not your fault."
Han rearranged the pillows so that he could recline on the bed and lean against the headboard. The décor and furniture were all darker than the rest of her apartment, the walls painted a sombre shade of crimson. Stacked datadiscs and data-readers cluttered the nightstand. He slid his fingers above the crease of her wrist and pressed down between the bones of her forearm. "There's the pressure point. I'll hold it until you feel better."
"I mean it. You don't."
"I chose the restaurant."
"Oh, but it was beautiful there." Her face was shiny with perspiration. "I felt like I was fully awake for the first time in years."
"If you thought Utrost was beautiful," he said, "Then you haven't seen anything yet."
"Really." She closed her eyes temporarily. "My brother will be coming."
"You have a brother?" That surprised him. He'd figured her for an orphan ever since she mentioned she was a ward of the state. "Is that you two in the holo out there?"
"Yes."
"Older or younger?"
"Twin."
"A twin."
"He's overprotective. It would be best if you weren't here when he arrived."
"I'll take my chances. Frankly…" He lowered his voice a notch. "Let's just say I've run across more than one overprotective brother in my time."
"No." She opened her eyes again and fastened her gaze. "You don't understand. He's dangerous."
Han didn't know what to say to that. "Are you leaving him too?"
She didn't hesitate to answer. "Yes."
The veins in her wrist had risen to the surface like blue-black spider webs. "This is one hell of a … crazy plan you have."
"It will work." Even sick and half-asleep, the grit and the determination were there.
Holding her forearm and lying down with her was suddenly more intimate than having her upturned body beneath his. There were chinks in her armour. "Do you have any idea where you'll go?"
"Yes."
He ran his finger along her forehead, caught a stray hair trapped between two eyelashes and another stuck to the corner of her mouth. "You're not gonna tell me are you?"
"No. They'll know if you know."
"They'll know if I know?" he repeated. The sedative in the anti-nausea drops had kicked in. Or she was delirious.
"They'll know," she murmured. "They'll make you tell them." She closed her eyes sleepily. "Don't let go."
Leia awoke to an uncomfortable conversation outside her bedroom."I'm Han Solo. You must be-"
"Luke."
Silence.
"Uh… Your sister has food poisoning."
Another silence. She pressed her palm against the spot where Han had been lying earlier and felt no trace of body warmth. Han must have been in the other room when Luke arrived. They were lucky. Stupid. And blessedly lucky. Luke's visits tended to be haphazard, twice a week at most - she hadn't even been certain he would come tonight - but still, she shouldn't have been so reckless. She knew better.
"I brought her home from dinner." Han sounded as though the awkwardness of the moment were wearing on him.
"Oh?"
"I thought I should wait until you got here."
"Thank you."
"And… I guess I'll be going now."
"Yes."
The main entrance swished shut. She willed herself to be a void, feel and reveal nothing.
Luke stormed into the bedroom like a krayt dragon whose territory had just been overrun by another dragon. "Who is he?"
"He just told you. He's an acquaintance."
"What kind of acquaintance?"
"He invited me to dinner to discuss a possible performance at a benefit he's hosting."
"An acquaintance," Luke repeated, pacing around her bedroom, fingertips studiously grazing the walls and furniture. He stopped at the bed. "Or something more."
"I suspect his intentions are more," Leia admitted, because every lie needed a kernel of truth in order to be perceived as believable. She sensed the pressure against her mind; she concentrated on shielding her innermost thoughts. "You were rude. He was only being kind."
There was a long terrible moment where he debated pursuing the line of questioning.
Finally, he relented. "Well, shall I comm for a medic from the palace?"
"No." She covered her eyes with the damp cloth to block out the night table lamp, and his eyes. Her head still throbbed and her entire body ached from vomiting as though she'd singularly strained every muscle from the back of her neck to her ankles. "Just let me sleep."
"Can I get you anything?"
"Maybe. Watered down juice."
"Just a second."
As soon as he left, she touched the wrinkled fabric of the bedcover where Han had lain again and wondered what he was thinking now. She wished she'd been awake to say goodbye. With a sigh, she slipped her arm back beneath the covers, up against her stomach. With her other hand, she traced the bones of her forearm until she found the pressure spot. Craving the memory, she held it as he had.
Moments later, feet padded back into the room and snapped her from the daydream. Then came the clink of glass on the wooden surface of her nightstand. "So what did he say?"
His voice had changed. He could do that so easily; go from sounding like someone's worst enemy to their best friend within the span of a several seconds. "About what?" she asked.
"About the benefit? When is it?"
"It's not for a few months. We didn't finish. It was something I ate in a hors d'oeuvre."
"Seafood?"
"Yes."
He laid a cool hand on her shoulder. "You're very warm."
"It's the fever from the food poisoning," she mumbled. Coruscant's sun was distant for an inhabited world. Orbital mirrors reflected the sun's rays toward the surface to make the climate more agreeable. On Utrost, the sun had been high and brilliant. Her pale skin wasn't used to it. She distracted him with questions. "What time is it?"
"Almost morning."
"You were late."
"We had an incident." He paused. "He's been asking about you."
It was the prelude to the type of intricate conversation she dreaded when she felt healthy. "What does he want?"
"He inquires as to your happiness."
"And what do you tell him?"
"That you're well." The weight of Luke's bent knee tipped the mattress. "I should warn you, he grows weary of allowing this fling with a commoner's life you seem hell-bent on experiencing."
"It's not a fling."
"If you were to accept his offer, you would want for nothing. You wouldn't have to live like this. You'd have luxurious quarters within the Imperial Palace, gowns of Lashaa and Ottegan silk, jewels, servants to cater to you. You wouldn't have to work."
"My answer will never change." She rolled over and dragged the wet cloth from her eyes. "You swore you would never permit it."
"He seems to think…" His jaw was set. "He seems to think that you'll betray me."
Betray. If only she understood what betray meant to her brother. Linguistics said all language originated in a shout of pain, a cry of joy, an exclamation of love. They said most words were related to the senses. But what was betray, especially to a man who was hardened and impenitent, a man who inured himself to emotion.
"How does he foresee this? Do you meditate? What do you see?"
"You think I can't sense it in you," Luke replied, anger rising pure and unrestrained. "Something is building. Perhaps I've kept your secret for too long."
She struggled to sit up and was almost overcome by a hotflash of nausea. The bedroom pitched and shifted. "You believe him rather than your own flesh and blood? He's lied to you before, hasn't he? Right now, he has you convinced that you're indebted to him. That's he's permitting you me – and this debt of gratitude you feel is nothing but a way to manipulate you-"
"You pretend that your skills are so inferior to mine that you wouldn't know how to use them."
"I haven't the training, Luke."
"Except for what I've taught you."
She pressed the balls of her feet into the carpet. "It's been a lifetime since you taught me anything."
"I know you practice more than you admit. Often, on the way here, I can sense it, the force shifting near you, around you."
"I not a Jedi." She didn't trust her legs to support her; she steadied herself on his shoulder. "I never will be."
"The Jedi are extinct."
Luke helped her into the refresher. She turned on the tap and lowered her face to the sink; the cold water revived her.
"What are you then?" she asked, peering at his expressionless reflection in the mirror. If he pitied her, she couldn't see it in his eyes.
"I know enough. I know more." He shrugged casually, his anger subsiding as quickly as it had come. He stepped up behind her and gathered her hair with one hand. With the other, he traced a circle through the back of her nightdress as though he meant to soothe her.
She wondered if the gesture was one of genuine comfort or one he'd learned was expected of him.
"The Jedi were foolish," he continued. "There is no light and there is no darkness. The Force is merely a power, a power that only the gifted among us can touch."
She shifted so that her elbows rested on the counter and watched the water flow over her wrists. On Utrost, waves generated from the ocean tides had converged with waves reflected from the shore and the peaks seemed to stand still on the surface. Throughout the meal, they'd mesmerized her. "That's what he's taught you."
"They didn't understand the nature of the Force, Leia. Our father did. When the Jedi Council requested that Anakin spy on Palpatine and become a traitor to the government that the Jedi had sworn to support, he refused. When the Jedi came to kill Palpatine, he died saving his life."
Saved indeed, Leia thought bitterly. And for what? A dictatorship? "Perhaps it was our father who was mistaken."
"Be careful of your words."
"You can sense how I feel. Why would I bother to be careful of my words?"
"Because you'll have to face him yourself. You're to have dinner with him."
"No."
"No?" He raised an eyebrow, as though amused by the vehemence of her refusal. "It's an order."
It took all of her strength to stand. "Are you on duty that night?" she asked.
"Yes."
He helped her back to the bed and pulled the covers partway up. She felt physically winded as though she'd sprinted up a flight of stairs, emotionally helpless and drained. Luke was changing. Palpatine had been cultivating his desire for power, nurturing it and coaxing it like a wilting flower planted in sandy soil. It wasn't in Luke's nature by birth, but his nature was nearly gone. Eventually, he would want more power and bargain her away.
This was whatshe foresaw.
He stood above the bed looking down at her. "I suppose you're not… well no." Question answered, he leaned down and kissed her forehead with such tenderness that her heart ached. This had been Luke once, a long time ago, even five years ago. "I know you wouldn't betray me, truly. You were mine before you were even born. But you need to pretend."
"I can pretend," she whispered. The defeat in her voice wasn't an act.
"Yes, I know you can."
His hair tickled her cheek and neck. She felt his lips graze curve beneath her collarbone where Han had kissed earlier, and then, she felt the blood vessels breaking and an undercurrent of panic rising, both outside of her and within her.
And then he stood and stepped away from the bed as though nothing had happened.
As though he didn't know.
"There is a gift waiting for you in the kitchen," he announced coolly. "Roganda says it will match the dress she purchased for you."
The datareader landed on his desk with a thud.
"She's 23," Lando began. "She studied theatre at the University of Coruscant and has been working at the Manarai for just over a year. She was raised on one of Palpatine's estates for gifted children, and by 'gifted', all indications are that her father was a Jedi, although there are no records about her mother. A Jedi by the name of Anakin Skywalker was killed in a duel in Palpatine's chambers, along with the Jedi Master Mace Windu. Palpatine claimed that Windu, at the behest of the Jedi Council, sought to assassinate him, and that Skywalker came to his defense. He claimed that in the ensuing battle, both Jedi killed each other and fell out the window."
"Interesting," Han declared, closing down his console and swivelling his chair around. "What else?"
"During her final year in university, she was involved with the son of a prominent Coruscanti family, a student by the name of Iolu PrajiSix months later, he turned up in a gutter fifty levels below the surface with his heart cut out. She was questioned in his death but never charged with anything." Lando set a pair of gold-rimmed datadiscs down. "The brother, Luke, is a member of the Emperor's Royal Guard. He serves as a Sovereign Protector."
"That explains a lot." Han was not soft. He trained religiously and he could still draw a blaster faster than nashtah could spring and sink its jaws into a man's throat. But old-fighting instincts had told him he would not walk away easily from an encounter with Luke Skywalker.
"Explains what?" Lando asked.
"She's afraid of him."
"No wonder." Lando removed his Veda cloth cape and settled into the plush leather chair on the opposite side of Han's desk. "Here's a charming anecdotal aside for you. A few months ago, some Kalzerian who'd had too much to drink made a grab for her or copped a feel. I'm sure it's an occupational hazard at the Manarai. Unfortunately for the Kalzerian, her brother was present when it happened. He took him outside and cut off the offending hand with a vibroblade."
Han flinched – he'd used more than well… a hand to touch her. That's right Han, he thought. Turn paranoid. "Maybe it was an isolated incident."
Lando casually reached over and picked up a stylus made of exquisitely carved black oxite. "Normal, well-adjusted individuals don't work for the Emperor."
"Are these the highlights?"
"The entire file is highlights. Most of her medical files were classified and encrypted, except for a visit to a numbered clinic in Sector 4892last year. They specialize in pregnancy termination."
Han managed to keep his expression blank, even as indignation on her behalf welled within him. The background check had been his idea; he just hadn't expected it to be so… thorough. "Did you turn up anything under the name Lusa Durasha?"
"Durasha was the family name of a woman who worked at her school. Our guy didn't turn up any bank accounts, onworld or off." Lando twirled the stylus between his thumb and forefinger. "I told you she was trouble. We've lost a lot of money trying to keep our operations free from organized crime and away from Imperial interests. If you're planning to make her your latest mistress-"
"She's not my mistress," Han countered, digging around on his desk for the brief on Curovao ImpEx. "And the Empire is one of our biggest customers."
"Sure. They are now. But I know how you are. All I'm saying is that if she's disposable… it might be better to end it now."
"You're all smiles and fun until it comes to the business, aren't you old friend," Han muttered sarcastically. He found the brief, snapped it into a data-reader and began reviewing numbers.
"Han, I'm just pointing out that most of your women tend to be temporarypursuits."
"She's…" Not. Only as he went to say it, did he realise it was true.
"That's what I was afraid of." Lando set the stylus back on Han's desk. "Listen, I can see the attraction. She's beautiful. She's mysterious. She's intelligent. She has a thing for ships. It's almost uncanny. Until I remember that she's an actress."
"Don't insult me." Han slapped the data-reader on his desk and glared, his jaw taut. "I know when a woman is playing me."
"I'm not insulting you. I'm saying there's more to her than what you see on the surface." He smoothed the corners of his moustache. "The other student, the one they found with his heart cut out, he was in the intensive pilot training program."
"You've got it all wrong."
"Yeah, I figured you'd say that." His business partner sighed. "Sometimes I wish Chewbacca was still around to keep an eye on you. Now are you ready for the Curovao ImpEx meeting?"
"Are we budging on our wholesale offer?
"No."
"Fine." Han stood and reached for his jacket. "Then is my collar straight?"