[Han Solo] - 03(43)
It made sense that she’d want to stay on his good side.
When Teroenza reached Kibbick’s audience chamber, he hesitated before the portal, consciously summoning up enough of a servile air to pass.
He didn’t want Kibbick to be aware of his contempt. Not yet. Soon, though ….
Soon, Teroenza comforted himself. Play your part. Listen to him babble.
Agree with him. Flatter him. Soon you won’t have to do this any more.
Only a few more months to put up with his foolishness. Soon ….
One of the first things Han Solo did after getting the Millennium Falcon was challenge his girlfriend, Salla Zend, to a race. In the smaller, unreliable Bria he’d never had a hope of defeating her swift Rimrunner, but now …
Whenever the two of them happened to have cargoes bound for the Kessel Run, the two smugglers would race through that dangerous area of space.
They frequently ran spice and other contraband to the Stenness System, and the Kessel Run was the fastest way there.
One time Han would win … the next, Salla. The two ships were very evenly matched. Neither of the two smugglers liked losing, and their friendly competitions became increasingly fierce. They began taking chances … dangerous ones. Especially Salla. An expert pilot, she flew her ship alone and was proud of her skill at getting the last bit of power out of her vessel.
One morning Han and Salla left her apartment together, kissed each other goodbye, and promised to meet on Kamsul, one of the seven inhabited worlds in the Stenness System. Han grinned at Salla. “Loser buys dinner?”
She smiled back at him. “I’m going to order the most expensive thing on the menu just to spite you, Han.”
Han laughed, waved, and they parted to go to their respective ships.
The run to Kessel was uneventful. Han managed to beat Salla in by nearly fifteen minutes, but one of the loader droids assigned to his ship developed a malfunction, and slowed the loading process. Salla’s Rimrunner came swooping down for a reckless landing while he was still loading up, and Han was barely five minutes ahead of her in lifting off.
He was flying with Chewie as copilot and Jarik in the topmost gunner’s mount. Imperial patrols in the Kessel region were becoming more and more prevalent these days.
Han keyed his intercom as they went blasting into the Run. “Look sharp, kid,” he told Jarik. “I don’t want any Imp patrols catching us by surprise.”
“Right, Han. Just keep a lookout on those souped-up sensors of yours, and I’ll blast ‘em before they know what hit ‘em.”
The first obstacle to be faced once they left Kessel was the Maw—a treacherous, roughly spherical region of space containing black holes, a few neutron stars, and scattered main-sequence stars. From a distance, the Maw appeared in Kessel’s nighttime sky to be a rounded, fuzzy, varicolored glow, much like a nebula. But as a ship drew closer, the spherical shape became clearer. The Maw glowed with the light from the suns within it, the ionized gas and dust trails snaking throughout in bands of color. And, seemingly looking back at Han, were the accretion disks of the black holes.
The accretion disks resembled white, watching eyes against the dimmer regions of the Maw. Depending on their angle relative to the Falcon, those eyes were slitted, narrowed, or wide open. In the middle of each “eye” was a pinprick black “pupil” marking each of the black holes that were sucking in the trails of starstuff.
Almost like the jungle on an Ylesian night, Han thought. Black nights with watching predator eyes ….
Navigating the perimeter of the Maw at normal sublight speeds was a tricky proposition, and racing around it at full throttle was asking for disaster. Han glanced at his sensors, and saw that Salla was gaining on them. He increased speed, pouring it on, until he was going faster than he ever had before on a run.
“She won’t catch us now,” Han said to Chewie. “I’m gonna hold this lead until we’re into the Pit and then we’ll be far enough ahead that we’ll make our jump to hyperspace at least twenty minutes ahead of Rimrunner.”
“The Pit” was a perilous asteroid field encased within a wispy gaseous arm of a nearby nebula. Together, the Maw and the Pit made the Kessel Run the dangerous proposition it was. Hearing Han’s boast, Chewie gave an unhappy moan and made a suggestion.
“Whaddaya mean, let her beat us?” Han demanded indignantly, his gloved fingers flying over the controls as they went screaming past the first cluster of black holes. The gas and dust from nearby stars was being pulled into the accretion disks in long, attenuated streamers of bluewhite and rose. “You crazy? I ain’t buying dinner! I’m gonna win a nerf tenderloin with a broiled ladnek tail, surf and turf special, fair and square!”