I'm late, I'm late, I'm late. I know!
8
Leia hadn't noticed the pieces of metal during that first flight with Han down in the ice-walled crevasses of the Carish Glacier. Half a dozen times during the hours when she was a virgin captain, she stood on her tiptoes just outside the Rrakktorr'scommon area and inspected them. The hammered, dull metal sword was firmly fixed to the bulkhead, so heavy it barely budged, but still sharp enough to slice into her skin when she pressed her thumb against it. The blade alone was twice the length of Leia's arm and nearly as wide as her palm. To the right of the sword were sections of another weapon. One piece was unmistakably a barrel and scope. The second looked like it had once been a bow; it had a lightly domed orb on one side and a sheered metal stake as though a second orb has been snapped off. Leia couldn't figure out how the two pieces would fit together, but the metal was blackened and flaking off, oxidised by open flame. Between the sections hung a long, reddish brown tuft of fur, knotted at one end into a cord. When she removed it from its hook, her nose smelled singed hair and alien smells, and later, when she flicked at a piece of lint that had become caught in her eyelashes, she could still smell the pungent odour on her hands.
"Funny," Leia said to herself, for she wouldn't have taken Han Solo for such a sentimental man.
The first official order of business was a thorough inspection and a careful inventory of everything onboard. Han's handiwork might be deliberately colourful, and several of his modifications baffled her at first, but it was good, solid work. In the galley she found enough non-perishable food supplies for a month. As far as cold, hard credits went, she had enough saved from her performances at The Manarai to stay stocked up for a year.
That was if nothing went wrong with his ship.
His ship, she half-thought again, before catching herself. No, my ship.
Leia walked the corridors and traced her fingertips over the steel plating, the open ducts, pressed her naked lips to the transparisteel portals. My ship, she kept reminding herself. My ship. She forced herself to repeat those two words until she believed them to be true and as the hours wore on, the Rrakktorr began to feel like hers.
On the third day, she was restless, and she ran in circles through the hatchways, just to stretch her legs.
In hyperspace, a ship was safe (unless, by chance, she was flying in a heavily restricted area and happened upon an interdiction field). Hyperspace was a chance for the solo pilot to rest – no pilot could spend every waking moment in the cockpit. When she'd flown with Han aboard the Spirit, he'd had no compunctions about romancing her onto the couch in the main hold or into the tiny crew cabin just off the kitchen during their hyperspace jumps. Although she was habitually a logical woman, alone, her comfort levels were tentative and unsure. She was afraid to leave the cockpit for any longer than it took to use the refresher or prepare a cup of protein concentrate, afraid that some unseen calamity or spatial abnormality would yank the ship from hyperspace and that she would sleep through the alarms. At first, she slept sitting up in the captain's chair, wrapped in a heavy woollen blanket. Then she dragged more blankets from the crew cabin into the cockpit and made a bed on the floor between the pilot and co-pilot's chairs.
In the deep of space, the stars weren't anywhere near as comforting as she'd hoped.
The light burned through her eyelids and sharp nails dug their way into the flesh of her heart whenever it began to beat quickly. She saw the irises of Han's eyes. Warm gold-brown or greenish depending on the light or what he wore. He would hate her for this. The stars weren't like the wind, didn't take her words away, her apologies to Han Solo, even her apologies to her brother.
Luke. Blood of her blood, her first love even if she didn't know how to admit that to herself.
The apologies just hung in the recycled air.
She tried not to think of Luke.
It was easy to be angry with him, hate him when he was near her. Away, she would remember when it was all new, good, and clean and she didn't feel guilty and he was different.
People close to her had a habit of getting hurt. Luke should have known that better than anyone.
It wasn't Han's fault that he didn't.
On Coruscant, it was the end of the midday shift, and most of the office staff had hurried to the turbolifts and skylane transports, off toward their respective homes, families and spouses. No one saw Han Solo come in. No one saw him walk into his office and lock the door.
It was the middle of the night by the time Lando tracked him down. The door slid open with a quiet hiss. "What's going on?" All of the lights in the office were dimmed. Han had been sitting there in near-darkness for hours. "I was just thinking about Bryn."
Lando sank into the plush leather chair opposite Han's desk, brow furrowed. The leather creaked and squawked.
"She was a sweet girl," Han said.
"That she was."
"She would have done anything for me."
"She would have," Lando agreed, slowly, as if he didn't know where this was going, and wasn't sure he wanted to follow along.
"I threw it all away. I wanted out. Frankly, I can't remember why."
"Han, are you drunk?"
"Stone-cold sober."
"What's going on?"
"She took my ship," he said.
Lando looked confused. "Bryn?"
"No." Han hesitated. "Leia." He hesitated again. "The Rrakktorr."
"Oh."
"I took her out once for kicks. She must have seen me punch in the codes. She drugged me," Han continued, "After we..." Instinctively, he slammed the memory away, slammed out sensual images and phantom sensations that would suck him in like quicksand – it was impossible to hate what you burned for and he needed to hate her. "She doused her lips with renatyl," he said stiffly. The anger was settling, burrowing into the core of his being while his outer self cooled, but still the words made hot blood rush through his veins. "I'm waiting for the reports on the transponders. I know she didn't have time to change them."
A moment of uneasiness passed between the two men.
"Go ahead and say it," Han dared irritably. "What you're thinking."
"You're just looking for something to hit," Lando objected. "It's not going to be me." He lay his large, caf-coloured hands down on the desk, like a peace offering. "Listen. If she could get her hands on renatyl, she could find someone who could alter the transponders. Her brother could get his hands on anything."
"He wasn't in on this."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"What are you going to do?'"
"Find her. Take my ship back. Leave her to rot on whatever backwater piece of shavit she's landed."
Lando took a deep breath. "I can make a few calls."
"It has to be off the record."
"It would never occur to me to do this on the record."
Lando moved from the chair to the doorway, just as a swathe of red fabric slipped inside. Instinctively, Han was reaching for the blaster tucked into belt.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said the man, robes swinging over the threshold. One end of his double-bladed vibroblade was unsheathed. "If you fire from that position, it will be deflected back. I'll make sure it doesn't hit you anywhere lethal."
Slowly, Han dragged his hands above his desk. "Could you excuse us Lando?"
Lando beat a hasty retreat to the hall, then froze with his hands above his shoulders as the door closed between them. There were more of them out there. Apparently, Skywalker preferred to commit murder in private.
"Wow, an official visit from the Emperor's henchman," Han muttered. "Can't imagine what I've done to deserve the honour."
"We can work on refreshing your memory."
To the naïve, Luke's relaxed stature might have indicated unpreparedness, over-confidence even. Han knew better. He said, "She's not here and I don't know where the hell she is."
"She's left Coruscant?"
"Yes." Han had filed an official report on his stolen ship to cover his ass in case she did anything stupid, so the theft was a matter of public record. "She helped herself to a ship from my lot on her way offplanet."
"One of your ships?" Luke smiled and elegantly glided into the chair Lando had just vacated, vibroblade settled horizontally across his knees. "Or a ship you gave her."
"I didn't give her anything." Personally, Han Solo decided he had met assassins with kinder eyes. "I have bounties posted on her head in five systems and ten more pending. Unfortunately – or fortunately for her - I have business to take care of here and can't take off looking for her." He leaned across his desk, far enough to show he wasn't afraid. "Believe me, it wouldn't a pretty reunion."
"You're not lying."
"Why would I lie?" Han smiled tightly. "If I find her first..."
"It appears we have something in common after all."
Not on your life, Han thought, but arguing the technicalities of his similarities to Luke Skywalker seemed foolish. He managed to shrug nonchalantly even though he was suddenly thinking about the Kalzerian that had lost his hand.
"Can she can fly it?"
"She's a fast learner, knows her stuff. So long as she doesn't run into any maintenance trouble and try to fix it herself." Han couldn't help adding, "Apparently she had difficulties obtaining pilot instruction through the usual routes but I suppose you don't know anything about that."
"It wasn't wise of you to teach her."
"In retrospect, it sure doesn't seem so."
At that, the brother laughed.
Han fell back in his chair and unlocked his knees. Hope existed that he would survive this conversation after all.
"I will stop at nothing to find her." Luke reached deep within his robes and withdrew a small glass cylinder. He flipped the lid and extended his hand. "Would you like one?"
"Those things will kill you."
"I might kill you."
"Then I'd prefer to go out fighting with a clear head."
"I look forward to it." He withdrew a white, innocuous looking cigarro and placed one end in his mouth. He produced a lighter and inhaled deeply. Han's office filled with the sweet odour of fine narcotics and t'bac. "Tell me where she would go."
"She never said." That was only vaguely a lie. It was a big universe. She'd never hinted at an inclination toward any one place, save far away from the Core, but it wouldn't take a genius to figure that out. "She wanted to get away from Coruscant."
Luke rested his elbows on the armchair and balanced the cigarro between his fingertips. "My sister is wilful, rash and prone to making decisions on the spur of the moment, however cataclysmic the outcome might be."
Han shrugged. "I was under the impression she was running away from something that had been in the works for a long time."
"She is running from her destiny."
"Have you considered that running is her destiny?"
Luke glared at him so sharply Han's head hurt.
"I'm just saying I think destiny is the path you make for yourself when you don't like what Fate has in store for you. Let's face it, people spit in Fate's face every day. If she wants to run away from…. Whatever she's facing, why not let her go?"
"There isn't time."
"Time for what?" Han demanded.
"There are many things you can never understand."
Han rolled his eyes skyward. "Answers weren't her speciality either."
Skywalker gazed over his shoulders out the window. "The view is impressive."
"It's better without the second-hand smoke clouding up the view," Han said without turning. The view of the planetary cityscape was impressive but he knew better than to offer Skywalker his back.
"Where was that taken?" Now Skywalker was pointing the cigarro toward a holo mounted on the south wall. The holo was a wide panoramic view of a thick wroshyr tree canopy.
"Kashyyyk," Han answered.
"Hunting expedition?"
"Not exactly."
"You're an outdoor man?" Luke queried with an almost casual interest.
"Only by necessity."
"I spent the entire year of my training living on Yinchorr. It's in the Expansion Region, if you've not heard of it. The jungles looked just like that."
"I've heard about it," Han said. "Heard the climate is a nightmare."
"I was paired with one of the best duellers in the Core. His name was Kile Hannad. For three months we trekked together, dependant on each other for survival. My life, on a day-to-day basis, was dependant on my implicit trust in him, in my knowledge that if danger faced us, he would act, and vice-versa. On any of those one hundred days, I would have died for him without a second thought."
"How nice." The sudden jaunt down memory lane had to be a way to buy time. Or something, although Han wasn't sure what that something was just yet.
"On the final day of training, we were brought to the Squall."
"Sounds fun."
"The greatest arena in the galaxy. Friend against friend, brother against brother, sword against sword. It was our final test and only one man could go on." Luke began taking rapid short puffs, and shook his head, as if to shake away the memory, his eyes blinking sharply. "I pierced his spinal cord, just below his skull. It seemed most merciful."
"Yeah," Han deadpanned. "You're a real stand-up guy. I'm sure he appreciated it."
"That night outside The Manarai, after he touched her, after being escorted off the premises, he decided to wait for her. He was going to wait for her, follow her home and hurt her. I protected her."
"Who now?" Han almost asked, but the question was caught in the back of his throat.
"You were wondering about the Kalzerian a few moments ago. You see, I had to survive. I was destined to survive. Unless that was her fate? To be assaulted and murdered by a member of Coruscant's lowlife."
How did he know? He wondered. "I wouldn't know."
"But you know many things, don't you Han? You know that she has a funny habit of hyperventilating right before she comes. You like the sound. It speaks to the primordial part of yourself that you've civilised to death. It makes you feel powerful, doesn't it, like the man you might have become, if the good Lady Fortune hadn't smiled on you, if your partner hadn't rescued you?" Luke gestured with his chin to the holo of Kashyyyk. "On bad days, you probably sit here in this office and resent him, but the truth is he didn't tame you, you merely submitted - he offered you an easy way out and you took it before the fight devoured what was left of you. She did something, didn't she? To you? Today you want to kill her, but you wouldn't be able to do it even if your pain was greater than your affection for her because you swore never again in cold blood." He started speaking fast, racing through his words, stream-of-consciousness. "But I know the wanting feels good, doesn't it? The anticipation. That's the paradox, the irony - knowing that you won't be able to bring yourself to do what you long to do. Do you feel it, when you stand here and look out that window?"
About fifty Corellian epithets were running though his head, but Han didn't move a muscle, even though every inch of his body was twitching with adrenaline. There were drugs and mind-altering chemicals that enabled their users to briefly develop heightened telepathic abilities. The death stick had probably been laced with it. "Save your drugs," he spat. "I don't know anything."
"You have a great deal of control."
"I try."
"Good." Luke smiled, eyes now bloodshot and euphoric. "Did she tell you about us?"
"All I want is my ship back," he hissed.
With a flick of his knee, the vibroblade was vertical and in Luke's hand before he'd even risen from the chair. "You know what I want." He dropped the cigarro on the floor and dug in his toe, grinding ashes and drugs onto a carpet that had taken a thousand hours to knot by hand. "I suggest you keep me abreast of any information that comes your way. I'm going to check in from time to time."
"Yeah, you do that."
As Leia's brother walked away, Han felt like a massive, claustrophobic pressure had been released from his body, one that had been building so gradually over the last several minutes that he hadn't realised it had been there until he was freed.
"Did she tell you about us?"
The assertion (for it was never a question to begin with) rang like the aftermath of a sonic explosion.
"I know," Han said aloud.
Then, "I knew."
"We've got a big problem," Lando was saying. He had removed his sei-weave cloak and fanned the pink-tinged haze with it. "A big problem. And he left a bloody mess in the turbolift."
On the seventh day, Leia dreamed of that meeting, but in her version, she watched her brother cut Han to pieces with his vibroblade. On the twelfth day, the navicomputer warned her that the neutrino radiator was gradually losing power. The mechanism prevented the deflector shields from overloading and shutting down by way of dispersing excess energy. She knew she had to settle into a port and get it looked at. It wasn't an unexpected type of breakdown, for the radiator needed to be reconfigured every six months.
As for the flashing vibroblade, she reassured herself that Luke was far too calculating to kill the only living connection to her, and perhaps she had only dreamed of what her brother wished had happened.
Gelgelar Free Port was a spaceport in the Outer Rim Territories, and it was there that she landed finally. The spaceport was ragged and grungy, the walls of the buildings a type of heavy-duty canvas, but the native man running the nearest shipyard repair centre was familiar with her version of neutrino radiator. He promised he could repair it within two days. The climate was damp and overcast, drifting clouds of shvash gas gave the air the rank odour of an unsanitised refresher. Roganda Ismaren would have been horrified.
It was ironic, the ease with which Leia adopted the habits of the lone spacer. No species were meant to live aboard a ship, spacebound indefinitely. In the constant warring battle between firm ground and the stars, company and isolation, neither side ever won. It would have been wiser to stay onboard the Rrakktorr after picking up a few necessities, but the truth was she craved the companionship of people. Leia had never been so alone, not for days and days on end, without even the prayer of seeing another person. She donned an old shapeless jacket (courtesy of Han's closet) and tugged at sections of her hair along her scalp so that they came loose from her braids and made her look frazzled. The local tapcaf wasn't that different than the lower-class establishments she'd visited on Coruscant – poorly lit, smelling of cheap alcohol and greasy core-style food. The entire north wall was bubbled and stained with heavy water damage. The majority of patrons looked to be crewmates from the same ship, wearing beige jumpsuits with red emblems embroidered onto their right shoulders. Several local girls were making a play for them, the hems of their peasant skirts tied up, collars yanked down low to reveal pale quivering flesh, mouths reddened with berry extract, cooing under their breath. Leia couldn't fault the girls for their bold behaviour – not on a planet like this, where the measure of a woman's life was probably equal to the number of children she bore and the greatest chance of escape a besotted spacer.
She ordered a beer she had no intention of finishing and watched the tapcaf dramas unfold with detached interest. This is no longer the illusion of a life, she thought resolutely, even if I have no idea what I'm doing. No one bothered her and she had drifted off into grey, numbing daydreams with one hand on her glass when she heard a voice.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
Blinking, Leia squared her shoulder blades against the back of the booth. The scrawny young man had a broad smile that was slightly wolfish due to a pair of snaggle-toothed incisors. Unruly brown hair was determinedly secured in a bun at the nape of his neck and bound with twine. His jumpsuit identified him as a member of the larger group. "No thank you. I have one."
"You don't seem to care for it." He slid into the seat across from her, impervious to the rejection or aware of it but determined to make himself known nonetheless. He waved at a nearby, slightly unsteady robo-waiter. "Two Tatooine Sunburns."
"Do you not understand Basic?" she asked.
"You come to a tapcaf, you drink," he said cheerfully. "Or you at least pretend to drink more convincingly. Otherwise people notice you, even if you're sitting in the darkest corner." He leaned over and lowered his voice. "You're flying a flashy ship that's heavily too heavily armed to be strictly commercial. The gang has been talking about it ever since you landed. What did you park it in the first bay for? Everyone knows they charge you an extra fifteen percent to dock there."
She straightened her spine and resisted peering around the bar at the sea of beige uniforms. Bay One had been the easiest dock to park in. "Big deal. So they noticed me."
"I'm just saying that for someone who doesn't want to attract attention, you're attracting a lot of attention."
"Who says I'm trying avoid attention. Maybe I love attention."
"Maybe you do. But then I'm surprised you're sitting in the back corner of the bar." Their robo-waiter returned and placed two ruby-red beverages on the table. Leia threw a few credits on the table and the man stared disapprovingly. "And you just tipped the robo-waiter. No one tips the robo-waiter."
They can smell a green pilot halfway across system, Han had said. "I'll remember next time."
"You'd better," he went on, "Because your ship is fracking hot."
"Thank you," Leia stammered.
"No, I mean she's hot. There's a Sector-Wide Port Notice out on her."
She could feel hot goose-pimples rise along her arms, sweat in her armpits – she'd tried to change the transponders using a basic slicer guide, but Han's ship had a sophisticated code in place that she couldn't break. "She's mine. I've owned her for nearly three years now."
Withdrawing a flimsy from his right breast pocket, he said, "Are you sure? Cause there's even a dead-on description of you here on this piece of flimsy."
What would Han Solo do in this situation she wondered? Casually, Leia lifted the glass to her lips and forced herself to take two long swallows. It tasted like pure algae sugar and alcohol but she gulped it down without a whisper of a grimace. Then she asked, "What do you want?"
"What makes you think I want something? Maybe I'm just friendly."
"Genuinely friendly people without ulterior motivations are an endangered species," Leia said icily.
He extended his hand anyway. "Jasod. Jasod Revoc. Endangered species."
"That's funny. Last time I checked, Jasod Revoc was young only in his Holonet reruns."
"My mother was a big fan."
"How nice."
"I swear on her grave." He hunched over the table. "What do I call you?"
Leia thought for a moment. "Captain Lili Renalem."
He laughed. "I thought she was tall, blonde and had a body that would make nine out of ten humanoid species swoon."
"I had my legs surgically shortened and dyed my hair."
"Ah yes." He tucked the flimsy back in his pocket.
Leia sampled a more accommodating smile, while beneath the table she swiped an increasingly damp palm over her leggings. Obviously, if the man hadn't reported her already, he had a plan in mind – something he wanted. Perhaps she should play along until she could her hands on the Port Notice. "You came over to warn me that my ship was hot and listed? Buy a round of drinks to soften the blow? See if I was interested in little portside romance in exchange for the piece of paper in your pocket?"
"I haven't decided yet." He shrugged. "I figured I'd come over here and feel you out."
"In that case, do us both a favour and keep your hands on the table."
"Hey." He wiggled his fingers, all of which were wrapped firmly around his glass. "Where are you headed?"
"I have shipping work in the Outer Rim," she replied automatically. That's what she'd been telling everyone persistent enough to ask, although the truth was, Leia didn't have the slightest idea how to obtain legal shipping work, let alone illegal. It had been one of those items she'd been trying to work into casual conversation with Han.
"Shipping," he repeated.
"Yes." She paused and rubbed her forefinger thoughtfully along the lip of the table. "I also trained in theatre. I worked mostly in entertainment the last few years."
"When will your ship be repaired?"
"By morning."
"So you need a co-pilot."
"No. I'm flying solo." Leia inhaled sharply. Was that the sort of thing Han had and laughed? "Where's your rig?"
"I don't have one of my own – yet. I'm just a shiphand. One of many on a small commercial transport. We're picked up a shipment of vohis mould this morning, but we're waiting on the paperwork."
"Vohis mould?"
"They say it tastes like bitter salt."
"Tried it yourself?"
"No. It smells too musty."
"You're a shiphand?" she asked suspiciously. "What are you doing with a Port Notice?"
"I have my hobbies during downtime."
"How lucky for me."
"It hasn't been officially uploaded to the system yet. That takes weeks. In a place like this…" His eyes flickered over the drab interior of the tapcaf, the ancient model of robo-waiter. "…Months."
"Then it's unfortunate we met." Leia demurely sipped her Tatooine Sunburn, let her eyes fall over his face unabashedly. "Or fortunate?"
"I know what you're thinking," he blurted out.
"What am I thinking?"
"That you've barely had five minutes to judge my character." He picked up his glass and downed the remainder of his beverage in one long swallow. Then he pointed to himself. "About me. Well, I'm not a very good cook but I know how to clean up after myself and I grew up in a shipyard and can fix almost anything. I know how to change a transponder, which I assume you would have done by now if you could. I like Outer Rim blues music, and was obsessed with the Galactic Bandits series when I was growing up. I talk a lot. I'm sarcastic to a fault. My mother always told me I was too smart for my own good and my mouth was going to get me into trouble."
Leia arched an eyebrow. "You know how to change the transponder?"
"Blindfolded."
"Fortunate," she pronounced.
He smiled. "A job."
Obviously, his easy confidence was his key to getting people to like him. She still didn't know whether or not to trust him but the stakes in this conversation had just changed dramatically. "Maybe we can make a deal," she began tentatively. "I may have some work for you. I can't pay you in advance and there are no guarantees that I don't leave you at the next spaceport if I deem you not up to task."
"Fair enough."
"But first, I want you to change my transponder…" Leia held up her glass. "As soon as this is finished. As a measure of good faith."
"Then you'll conveniently take off without me while I go grab my personal effects."
She cursed herself for giving in too easily. "Listen, if I have to trust you…" She smiled flirtatiously. "Don't you have to trust me?"
"I suppose so."
Ten minutes later, they braved the less than fresh planetary air and made their way to the shipyard. Leia promptly showed him the engine room.
"The guy who's looking for you," he began. "He's not using official channels."
"Probably not."
"Jilted lover?"
Leia shrugged ambiguously and gestured toward the hallway. "Do you mind? I'll be right back."
On the way through the corridors, she unbraided her hair and ran her hands through it. She went into the fresher and dug out the container or renatyl. After taking the antidote, she spread an even layer of the sedative over her lips. The old tech jacket was abandoned on the fresher floor.
When she made her way back, he had one hand buried deep in the sublight control panel. "I'm almost done setting up," he said without turning around.
"That was fast. You weren't lying."
"Nope." He winked. "So what's her name?"
"Her?"
"According to the current transponder she's called the Rrakktorr's Revenge but I assume you're going to want something new."
"Yes." Leia pushed at her hair so that it fell behind her shoulders. She stood close enough that her arm brushed up against his, as if to inspect the final steps. "Her name is… The Solus Lily."
"Feminine. I like it. It suits her." A set of green cable was now connected to the innards of the sublight engine. He plugged them in to a portable keypad and started typing. "It suits you."
"Thank you."
Even though a part of her brain screamed that he might be a psychotic killer who hitch-hiked around the galaxy stealing ships from women by offering to help them, her instincts were telling her to trust him. She should reject his offer for help but the truth was, she did need it. Although she'd thought she could handle deep-flight alone, the idea of heading back into space was unsettling. She could fly adequately, but she wasn't a seasoned pilot, and eventually something would go wrong that she couldn't handle. Besides, a partner wasn't a bad idea - a lone smuggler was limited to small time payoffs.
He had a nice laugh, an honest laugh.
Are you seriously considering taking a complete stranger on board? Leia cleared her throat. "I don't have work lined up quite yet."
"Didn't figure you did," he grunted.
That was unsettling. Was she such a bad liar?
"And um… For the record… the hair is nice and all. And the lip gloss. You're pretty. But my real name is Jasod Revoc and um… the rumours about him were true."
"The rumours?" The Holonet actor's life had been fodder for tabloids such as Galactic Gossip and The TriNebulon Newsflash. When the paparazzi weren't stalking his every move, they enjoyed speculating that his one true love was another actor by the name of Mack Grane. "Oh!" She covered her mouth and almost laughed. "Oh my."
"What's so funny?" He looked as if he wasn't sure if she'd just insulted him or not.
"Nothing," she said, extending her hand. I just don't read people as well as I thought I did. "Welcome to The Solus Lily."
"Thank you kindly Lili."
"It's Leia."
"Leia," Jasod repeated, holding onto her hand tightly and looking at her with a bewildered expression. "Leia?" He stumbled backward, then collapsed against the deckplates with a loud thud.
"Oh, damn it," she muttered, seeing that his knuckles were decorated with nicks and scrapes from reaching into the engine core, for in her haste, she'd forgotten to wash her fingers after applying the renatyl. "Some mercenary you're going to make."
Swearing again, she went to fetch her new co-pilot a blanket from the cockpit.