The boasts of the Millennium Falcon's speed had not been hollow ones. The unique enchanted keel that Lando had had installed at phenomenal expense allowed the ship to sail all waters free from nearly all friction and let the Falcon make the most out of every breath of wind.
Han drank in every detail of the Millennium Falcon as he explored its decks and cabins. He had seen his fair share of Corellian White Star light freighters in the shipyards both under construction and helping to move ships after they'd come off the slipways. This ship was worlds from any of those, though.
Han ascended the shallow steps to the canopied bridge. "This is a Corellian White Star."
"Oh," said Lando, relaxing back into the blue suede helm chair with his hands behind his head. "I see you know your ships."
"I've been on one before. My dad worked in the CEC shipyards that built these before he got laid off. He built these. He wanted to be sailor, but, uh..."
"You, uh, close with your old man?
Han clicked his tongue. "Not really."
Lando nodded knowingly. "Yeah, me neither." He frowned slightly and shook his head to dispel the unpleasant memory. "My mom, on the other hand, most amazing woman I've ever known."
Han turned his attention from Lando to the luxurious first mate's chair. He ran his hand over the suede and found it as soft as he had anticipated. Slowly, he then sat down and sighed contentedly as he sank into the cushioning.
"Excuse me," said a suddenly present and impatient Elthrii. "Get your presumptuous ass out of my seat!"
Han jumped out of the chair as though it had grown red hot.
Elthrii stared Han down with her mismatched white and blue eyes as she took her seat. "Ugh. My sacro-occipital column is sticking." She half looked to Lando. "You're going to have to do that thing again later."
"Yeah," Lando replied without enthusiasm.
"All right, course to Kessel calculated. Entering destination coordinates now." Elthrii tapped the appropriate sequence into the gleaming brass navigation box. "Just keep your hand off the wheel and try not to mess anything up when we come out."
"Whatever you say, milady. Just tell me when you're ready to open the gate."
"Ready in..." The crystal on the navigation box turned green. "Ready."
Han frowned. "It's just a simple Hyperion jump to Kessel and we're there, right? What's so tricky about that?"
"Plenty," Lando said. "You can't open a gate directly to Kessel. You have to thread through the disturbances produced by the islands of the Si'Klaata Cluster and come out of Hyperius at Greater Oba Diah. From there you have to pass through the Maelstrom."
"You done flirting?" Elthrii asked. "I'm still ready."
Lando mockingly fluttered his eyelashes at Han. "You might want to strap yourself in, 'babe.'"
Han rolled his eyes and sat down in one of the remaining two unoccupied bridge chairs. Lando and Elthrii signalled their readiness to one another and the automaton tapped the glowing green crystal on the navigation box.
The cool colors and equally cool air of Hyperius swirled around the Millennium Falcon as it entered the strange plane of existence. Though Han had seen the stream through the windows of various ships, seeing it from the bridge was a totally different experience. What's more, all the colors streaked past at a speed not even the screw driven Imperial ships could match.
Han couldn't help but smile. By any and all gods, this ship was fast.
Below deck, Beckett stared at Chewbacca across a Dejarik table. "Think. Do you want to make that move?"
Chewbacca hovered his hand over the game pieces and moaned in thought.
"Do you want to make that move?" Beckett repeated.
Chewbacca growled and executed his strategy.
"You made that move. Okay. I guess I'll just have to destroy this little guy..." Beckett lifted one of his pieces and knocked over one of Chewbacca's. "Somehow, I never get bored of winnin'."
Chewbacca roared and frustration and swept the remaining pieces off the board.
"Yeah, that's real mature, big guy. Now you're goin' to have to pick 'em back up."
Chewbacca roared even louder. A concerned Han descended into the cabin a few seconds later, drawn by the uproar.
Beckett looked from the Wookiee to Han with a shrug. "Hey, hey, hey, Chewie, relax. Hey, try to compose yourself. All you gotta do is think a few moves ahead and anticipate your opponent. There's a lesson to be learned here."
Han nodded, satisfied that Chewbacca wasn't about to rip anyone's arm off. Suddenly his brow furrowed and he looked around. "Uh, you guys seen Qi'ra?"
Beckett pulled out one of the few remaining handrolls of smokeweed he had leftover from Mimban and put it between his lips. "People are predictable." He popped a friction match alight with his thumbnail and chuckled.
Chewbacca growled a less enigmatic answer and Han headed back towards the great cabin.
The Millennium Falcon's great cabin was as stunning as the rest of the ship. The walls were panelled with a tight-grained ivory colored wood accented with a tasteful amount of rose gold trim. Most of the furniture fit this decor with the bed even having rose gold colored silk sheets. The sole exception was a large double wardrobe of polished white oak with blackened silver fittings, the four doors of which were presently open.
Han saw a flutter of fabric from around the open wardrobe door and heard a giggle shortly afterwards. He stepped into the room far enough to see Qi'ra standing in front of the mirror on the inside of one of the doors. One full half of the expansive wardrobe was dedicated solely to capes of varying styles and colors, one of which with an embroidered yellow ennone now adorned Qi'ra's shoulders. She did a little pirouette and giggled again. "Yeah, I had to try one on."
"That is a lot of capes."
"Mm. Maybe too many capes." Qi'ra smiled. "So, what's the plan?"
"Well, I thought we'd talk a little first and then, you know..." Han cocked a flirtatious eyebrow.
"For Kessel."
"Oh. Uh, right. For Kessel."
"Mm-hmm."
"Good."
"Yeah? How good?"
"Foolproof," Han said confidently.
"Well, it better be." Qi'ra took a formal emerald green and black outfit from the wardrobe.
"I-" both of them began at the same time. They laughed.
"You go first," Han said.
"No, what were you going to say?"
Han took a step towards Qi'ra with a tender look in his eye. "I want to tell you so much and... I want to know everything that's happened with you since Corellia."
"I'm not sure we have that kind of time."
Han took another step. "We could. We could have all the time we want after the job." Another step. "You and I." He held out his hand.
Qi'ra looked away and morosely replaced the outfit.
Han frowned. "What?"
"...I want to."
"You want to...?"
Qi'ra looked back to Han with a sadness he had never before seen. "To tell you everything that's happened. But I know if I do, you won't look at me the same. The way you're looking at me right now.
"Nothing is going to change the way I'm looking at you." Han gently put his hand to her cheek.
"You don't know that. You don't know what I've done. You-"
Han silenced Qi'ra's worries with a kiss. Oh, how she had missed Han's kisses. Though he may have had an abrasive exterior, beneath that lay the heart of one of the most kind and gentle lovers the world had ever known.
Qi'ra relaxed into Han's arms and kissed back, feeling three years of tension melt away. To her heart, it was as though no time had passed at all with them apart. There they were back in Corellia dreaming of the bright future they would have together. If only for the moment, she could honestly say she was happy.
"...Am I interruptin' something?" Beckett asked from not too far away.
Han's and Qi'ra's eyes shot open and they slowly turned their heads towards their voyeur.
"Kinda," Han hissed.
Qi'ra untangled herself from Han's arms and straightened herself out before hurrying out of the cabin.
"Good," Beckett said to Han. "'Cause we've got a lot of work to do." He twitched his head to the side as an instruction for Han to follow him. "You're makin' a big mistake."
"Oh, really?" Han sneered.
"I mean, it's yours to make except when you interfere with my livelihood. Then we have a problem."
"This isn't going to interfere with your livelihood."
Beckett stopped and turned. "You don't see it because you don't want to."
"Maybe I know her a little better than you do."
The mercenary narrowed his eyes. "Maybe you don't know her well enough."
Beckett had displayed fear towards Dryden Vos like one would have towards a wild animal, but the haunted way he spoke about Qi'ra shook Han's nerves.
Beckett sighed. "Look, I like you, kid. We got a good thing going here. Me, you, Chewie." He gestured towards all three in turn. At his name, the Wookiee half looked up from returning the Dejarik pieces to their drawer.
"Yeah."
"Right? The makin's of a solid crew. But it does not work with Qi'ra."
Han frowned. "It worked with Val. You trusted her."
Beckett did not immediately respond to this. Instead he sat down at the fold top desk in the main cabin's corner. "You wanna know how I've survived as long as I have?" He asked, drawing his revolver from its holster. "I trust no one. Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed." The mercenary took a leather case from the back of his belt and opened it, revealing a cleaning kit.
"Sounds like a lonely way to live."
"It's the only way."
Oba Diah was a duo of large arid islands that together made up oner end of the Kessel Run. While greater Oba Diah had a varied terrain of deserts, cliffs, oases, and floodplains that made it suitable for habitation, Lesser Oba Diah was little more than a vast desert of rolling dunes engulfed in a constant cyclonic sandstorm. Only the Great Lighthouse on the Promontory of Lesser Oba Diah which marked the entrance to the Akkadese Maelstrom housed any form of life on the island, but the isolation and proximity to the Maelstrom tended to make the caretakers go mad.
Qi'ra had joined Lando and Elthrii topside after Beckett's interruption. She had originally sought to head back below once they had exited Hyperius, but Lando insisted that she stay. Seeing the Maelstrom, he said, was something that anyone should see at least once in their life and they likely wouldn't have the time to appreciate it on the way out.
The Akkadese Maelstrom appeared as an all-encompassing wall of nebulous matter of more colors than Qi'ra had ever seen in her life or even believed existed before now. It had a faint glow to it much like a night sky when the moons are enshrouded by light clouds. Despite the beauty, the hairs on the back of Qi'ra's neck prickled from the sense that the Maelstrom and whatever may lurk within did not belong here.
"I've got it from here," Elthrii said.
"All right," Lando said, surrendering his chair to her. "I'm going to head down below. Do you need anything?"
"Equal rights."
Lando sighed and shook his head.
Elthrii sailed the Millennium Falcon towards the one spot in the side of the Maelstrom whose shape seemed constant. It was a hole - one as big as a Star Destroyer - with illuminated buoys leading the way deeper inside. Each of the buoys was a heavily runed construct of pitchblende alloy steel coated in thick pitchblende glass whose sole purpose is to counteract distortions around them. 113 of these Reality Anchors were set up along the most stable path through the Akkadese Maelstrom forming a safe if somewhat convoluted path through the chaos.
Near-constant deep booms sounded out from the depths of the otherworldly churn accompanied by the occasional dim flash of colored light. At first Qi'ra thought it was just a storm, but it didn't sound like any storm she had ever heard. As she listened closer, what she had taken for the sound of rain coming from beyond the cloudy walls began to sound more like grinding stones.
"That's not..." Qi'ra began. "That's not thunder, is it?"
"No," Elthrii said, keeping her eyes fixed ahead. "Hunks of rock the size of mountains crashing together. Ships that go in there don't come out."
"None of them?"
"Some have. It's rare enough that you'd have to be suicidally brave or monumentally stupid in order to try. It's not just flying mountains you have to worry about. There's also unpredictable wind and water currents, creatures above and below the surface, and the Maw to contend with. Only safe way to Kessel is through this channel." Elthrii left a pause in the conversation she thought just long enough to be considered polite to change the subject. "So what are you going to do about your little problem?"
"Problem?" Qi'ra furrowed her brow. "I, uh..."
"That brand on your wrist tells me you're committed. And I almost don't need enhanced hearing to catch that young man's heart pounding whenever you two are together. He's clearly in love with you."
Qi'ra laughed nervously. "Han is not in love with me!"
Elthrii slightly cocked her head. "Oh, please. It's just us. You don't have to pretend. I'm in the same situation.
Qi'ra's eyebrows shot up. "You are?"
"I'm sure you've noticed that Lando has feelings for me. It makes working for him difficult because I do not feel the same way about him."
"Right," Qi'ra said, drawing out the word as she reflected on Lando's interactions with the automaton. "Yes. Yeah, I see that."
"Sometimes I think... maybe... But no. We're just not... compatible." There was a hint of sadness to that last word.
Qi'ra opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, thought better of it for a moment, then asked anyway. "How would that even work?"
Elthrii slowly looked to Qi'ra. Despite not having a face to speak of, she still managed to convey the equivalent of a sly grin. "Oh, it works."
Some time later, Lando called Qi'ra down to fill her in on the part she was meant to play. It was a crucial one but she was perfectly suited for it. She was going to need one of Lando's outfits though and - if she could convince him - a cape as well.
As Beckett wrapped up his plan he looked to each member of the heist in turn with steely eyes. "The temperature controlled vault will be at the lowest level down where it's the coolest. This is a precision job. The only way we're goin' to pull this off is if everybody plays their part. Stick to the plan. Do not improvise." The mercenary's eyes lingered none too subtly on Han as he spoke the last sentence.
In the middle of the silence, Lando heard a chime from above deck. "Oh. We'll be coming out into the Sea of Kessel shortly."
Beckett turned back to his crew. "Unless there are any more questions, best you all go topside and get some fresh air while you can. There ain't goin' to be much where we're headin'."
Though the skies of Kessel were as tumultuous as the rest of the Maelstrom, the island of Kessel itself stood in stark contrast as though it was at the eye of some terrible otherworldly hurricane. Fair breezes helped to alleviate the stifling tropical heat and the clear, faintly red water of the island's southern half teemed with fish wholly unlike any Han had ever seen. All in all, his first impression of Kessel was that it was a paradise.
This viewpoint changed drastically upon reaching the northern half of the island. The treeline stopped abruptly at the perfect halfway point between north and south. Everything beyond was a barren wasteland of rusty hills and belching smokestacks. The breeze that had seemed so pleasant before now carried a sulfurous tang and the sea below was as opaque as pea soup.
Lando beheld the sight with a look on his face as though he had smelled something acrid, which considering his surroundings he may well have. "Mining colonies are the worst."
"Yeah," said Beckett, "well, 'the worst' is where the money is."
Elthrii turned the wheel to the right, heading towards the land. Through the yellow haze, every cliff in sight had the squared angles indicative of quarrying. Dead ahead though lay a lagoon. A harbor built of stone blocks quarried from its surroundings half encircled the murky water like a great horseshoe.
Beckett took a long drag of his last handroll and flicked the stub over the side of the ship. "All right, people. Time to shine."
