XV. Freedom Relics

The sandy-haired desert child, the human from Tatooine, stretched out his arms and made a display of his boredom. He still smelt of sand and blood, and below that, the pungent reek of ozone and burnt human flesh. He'd taken a bit of a beating—his first beating, perhaps—and had come through a blaster-fueled massacre just before, or passed very close to one. Perhaps he'd never been to space before, and the wonder of it all was a distraction. But Chewbacca smelled all manner of trauma about him. To bear the weight of it all, and to affect the appearance of boredom at the first few moments of leisure—there was a courage in that. Perhaps he was not as weak as he looked.

Loyal Han Solo, the human of incalculable courage, was in rare spirits. It pleased the old Wookiee to see him so. He was out of danger, now—that was always how he seemed to feel in the freedom after the jump. To Chewbacca, hyperspace was the loneliest place in the galaxy—the loneliest place outside of it, maybe—but it brought Han Solo to such a place of serenity that he knew they would never have roots again, if he could help it.

Chewbacca could live with that. Every time they came out of hyperspace, Han Solo's own species tried to murder him. Again, and again, and again, one pink-skinned monster after another came after him. Han Solo had killed so many of his own kin in self-defence it had become second-nature to him. It was the most heartbreaking thing Chewbacca had ever seen. And yet, one murderous human after another, he courageously made advances on human mates, for as long as they would let him. There'd been a dozen like the female in the Mos Eisley cantina—a dozen who seemed attractive, as far as he could judge such things. And always in a haze of panic and blaster fire, they were driven away to other worlds, other lives.

Han Solo was happy here, and that brought the Wookiee comfort. His never-ending war against his own species was the most heartbreaking thing in the world. But it was the nature of humans, he thought, to have broken families—to be broken families. It was best not to think about it too much.

"How long 'til we get there?" the farm boy asked.

"About six standard hours," Chewbacca said, on the off-chance it mattered.

The boy walked past him as if he were a dumb animal.

"Han, how long?" he asked.

"About six hours, kid," said Han Solo. He darted his eyes to the Wookie. His face was stern, but he thought it was hilarious.

"Funny," Chewbacca snorted, and went to check the damage to the power converters.

As usual, the converters hadn't responded well to the abuses of pulling against tractor beams, of having power rerouted again and again from one ramshackle system to another as courageous Han Solo changed his mind again and again what sort of power he wanted: put everything to this, full power to that. He looked with eager anticipation to the magnificent silver canisters he'd stacked by the alluvial damper. They were Freedom Relics, as the Wookiees referred to all vintage technology produced before the Fall, and it had been immensely kind of Han Solo to cough up the last of their emergency fund for them. The specifications of these converters were off the charts, making them a once-in-a-lifetime steal for a patchwork ship of the Falcon's capabilities and demands—but more than that, the converters were a symbol. Freedom Relics were reminders of a time before the enslavement, and it touched him that Han Solo respected that, even if he didn't understand.

"You okay, pal?" said Han Solo.

"I'm fine," Chewbacca snorted.

"Don't take it person—" Han Solo started, but stopped. Nobody this far out from the Wookiee's home sector ever understood him, and he never took offence. "It's something else, isn't it?"

"Darth Vader is not a story of ghosts," Chewbacca said, his fur bristling. "He is real."

"Ah, Chewie…" Han Solo waved his hand dismissively and looked over the converters himself, equally displeased by their sorry state. "Hey, good call on those replacements."

"He came to Kashyyyk during the Second Battle," said Chewbacca. "The one we lost."

Han Solo stood up so sharply that he almost cracked his tiny human skull on the bulkhead. Chewbacca never lied about the Fall, and loyal Han Solo knew it.

"You're sure?" the smuggler said with concern. "You saw him?"

Chewbacca shook his shaggy head. "He lives in the secret stories," said Chewbacca, though he knew he ought not to speak of them to a human. "He slaughtered a whole village, without a friend at his side."

Han Solo blinked his eyes. "Single-handedly? A whole Wookiee village?"
Chewbacca nodded.

"So what do we do, then? Drop these two at the nearest station?"

"We do the job," said Chewbacca. "You need that money."

"You're scared," said Han Solo. That scared him, too. He wasn't used to smelling a Wookiee's fear.

"We do the job, Han Solo," Chewbacca repeated. "Darth Vader is real—or he was, fifteen standard years ago. He is real, and he is terrible. That is why the Imperials fear him. But maybe the old sick one was bluffing."

"Could be," said Han Solo, stroking his chin with a little hairless paw. "That old man's a lot cannier than I thought. Just the same…thanks, pal, I'll be careful."

"Those two are a hotter commodity than we expected," Chewbacca warned him.

"Of course they are," Han Solo grumbled. "That's why the take is so good. Nothing we can't handle. Nothing we haven't handled before. But still…stay sharp. There's more to their story than we've been told."

"I sense a danger I cannot see or smell," Chewbacca growled. In the precise, literal language of Shyriiwook, it was the closest thing to a "bad feeling" a person could have.

Han Solo was headed back to the cockpit, turning it all over in his mind, when the young one interrupted again.

"Han," he said. "Are you sure they can't follow us?"

"Not through hyperspace, kid," said Han Solo. "And not through the lanes I chart."

"Well, what if the blockade slowed us down and those Star Destroyers got after us?"

"They're not going to follow us," the smuggler said again.

"Well what if they don't have to follow us? What if somebody on the ground heard where we were going?"

Han Solo rolled his eyes—an expression, for his kind, of exasperation rather than amusement.

"Look, kid, it's not gonna matter. They make for Alderaan, they'll take the trade lanes. It's the long way around, plus there's no ship in the Imperial Fleet that can hit point five." He cocked his customary grin. "Even if they knew the exact docking bay we're headed for, trust me—we'll outrun 'em."

The farm boy nodded, but didn't seem convinced.

"It will be all right, little one," Chewbacca barked at him. "We'll keep you safe." The boy jumped at the sound, backed away uneasily, not understanding.

"Chewie here says to pipe down," warned Han with a smile. The boy nodded and retreated to the passenger lounge, visibly unsettled.

"You are a bad man, Han Solo," said Chewbacca, though as he passed into the hallway he couldn't suppress a barking laugh.

In the bottom bunk of three stacked beds, the old human was breathing uneasily as he slept. He had rested much of the way, and though the room was warmer than stalwart Han Solo liked it, he shivered beneath the blankets. His head-fur was white with age and covered the reptilian bare skin of his face with a regal mane of silver. He was not very old, really—perhaps not even by human standards—but the stench of hidden sickness was just barely perceptible on him. Chewbacca was sniffing at the door of the room when the passenger turned and uttered a single word in his sleep—a strange Basic-sounding word the Wookiee had never heard and did not understand:

"Leia…"

He started awake suddenly in a fit of coughing severe enough to wake him. The Wookie cocked his head to one side, but did not turn away.

"Are you all right?" Chewbacca hooted. The old man found his feet, but not without effort.

"Bad dreams," he said with a shrug, then caught himself. "That's not what you meant. Forgive me, your language is difficult."

"You're not well," said the Wookie.

"That is the way of things. We come from the Force, and to the Force we return."

Chewbacca nodded. "You are strong, Young Grandfather. I have never seen a planet so treeless, and the spacers in Mos Eisley say you survived its Great Drought."

Ben shook his head without sadness. "I didn't, you see," he said. "I didn't survive. I simply have—unfinished business."

"Do you have a family?" Chewbacca asked.

The old human nodded. "It's—complicated."

"I have a family," said Chewbacca. "They do not forget you. Some day, I will die far from my family, alone in the stars beside Captain Han Solo. But when we die among the stars, we belong here with all the families who have come before. You come to your freedom, as Wookiees say. There is a celebration in that, more now than ever."
"That's quite true," said Ben. "There is no death, in the end. Only freedom. Only the Force."

Chewbacca cocked his head. "Do you know what a Freedom Relic is?"

Ben shook his head. "I don't know that word. I certainly can't pronounce it." He tried it, made a sound somewhere between a yawn and a huff that meant nothing at all. Chewbacca laughed in spite of himself.

"Freedom Relics," the Wookiee chuckled, "are old things. Mechanical treasures from before the Fall. Before the Empire enslaved us. Made much better than we know how to make them anymore. A symbol of what greatness we could be, and make, and do—before the dark times. Ships that glisten like mirrors, not dirty and worn. Weapons like mine—and like yours." He pointed to the folds of the Jedi's robe. "From the days when your kind could walk in the open."

Ben looked down. "You know what I am," he said.

Chewbacca waved a hairy paw toward the front of the ship. "I think maybe you and I are Freedom Relics," he said. "The others are too young to remember. But we are old enough. I remember, and you remember. The Fall of the Old Republic. The deaths of all those we loved."

Obi-Wan…there is still good in him…

"We are indeed old," Ben whispered from behind haunted eyes. "Too old, for this sort of thing." Chewbacca turned away, stunned suddenly by the grief he sensed.

"Most Freedom Relics these days are busted up now," Chewbacca said. "You don't do a mechanic's work without learning that. But they still work better than anything new. Don't forget."

"I won't," said Ben, trying to shake off some hidden darkness.

With a curled finger, Chewbacca pointed at the center of the old man's chest. It was the place where Han always pointed to himself when he was riled up. It was probably where humans thought the seat of their emotions lay, or their spirit, if they had one.

"It's busted up inside," said Chewbacca again. "But it still works better than a new one."

The old man smiled, speechless for a moment.

"We are not just memories, old relics like you and I," said the Wookiee. "We are hopes. Old, stubborn hopes that maybe freedom will come again one day. Old hopes that have refused to die."

A smile cracked the old man's face. "Thank you, my friend," he said, still struggling to parse out the string of hastily barked words. "Kindness is a rare thing out—"

"You owe us money," Chewbacca barked suddenly. "Don't mistake me. I'll help you any way I can, but you're no good to Han Solo if you stop breathing before we get paid."

Ben held his tongue—remembered suddenly how uncomfortable Wookiees were receiving praise or gratitude from strangers. They were not yet intimate enough for thanks by the rules of Wookiee etiquette—and sadly, he knew, they might never be.

"Have no fear," he said. "I've too much do for that."