“Very funny.” Han didn’t sound amused. “Do you remember Wildis Jiklip?”
Leia frowned. Wildis Jiklip was a mathematics prodigy about Han’s age. Well traveled, with a Corellian mother and a Coruscanti father, she had been educated in both systems and had been licensed to teach at the university or academy level by the time she was in her early twenties. Then she’d disappeared for two decades, and only a few people knew what she’d been doing during that time.
She’d become a smuggler under the name of Red Stepla. She ran unusual routes, carrying unusual cargoes, and had an uncanny ability to get forbidden goods to their markets at a time when they’d be most valuable. Her record for success was unrivaled. Where most smugglers led a hand-to-mouth existence, spending their earnings in port on gambling binges and other recreations, retaining barely enough for fuel and to acquire new cargoes, Red Stepla and her crew led very unobtrusive lives, investing their earnings in a variety of ports all over the galaxy.
A few years before the start of the Yuuzhan Vong war, Red Stepla and her crew retired-by the simple expedient of disappearing. Wildis Jiklip then reappeared, an independently wealthy theoretician who occasionally taught university-level courses on Coruscant and Lorrd, focusing on interplanetary economics, supply-and-demand trade economics, systemic economic reactions to widespread warfare, and related subjects.
Han knew the secret of her dual identity, and Leia had learned it from Wildis herself, who trusted anyone Han would trust enough to marry.
Leia nodded. “Sure. What about her?”
“She’s supposed to be on Coruscant, doing one of her lecture series. I tried to get in touch with her to talk about Corellia. I thought maybe she could give me a hint about the official GA reaction to what’s going on there. But she discontinued her lecture series in the middle, just a few days ago, and all the ways I have to get in touch with her are out of operation-reporting that she’s on leave of absence due to a family emergency.”
Leia shrugged. “So?”
“Well, she has no family. Yeah, I know, that’s not suspicious in and of itself. But I still wanted to talk political shop with other Corellians. So I arranged for a holotransmission to Wedge Antilles.”
Leia felt a moment of surprise but kept it from her face. She knew she was spoiled when it came to finance-she’d lived as a planetary princess, albeit one from a financially responsible family, as a child and young woman; she’d commanded the resources of a rebel government and then a legitimate one. Expenditure had seldom been a consideration for her. Han, who had been reared in poverty and had lived in difficult financial circumstances for the first half of his life, was more stingy, and the fact that he’d been willing to pay for a live, instantaneous conversation with a friend light-years away was quite a concession for him. It told more about the state of his concern over Corellian politics than anything he’d said over the last few days. “And how is Wedge?”
“Well, I couldn’t get through to him via HoloNet. They say there’s some sort of equipment breakdown causing intermittent connections with the Corellian system.”
“So you sent him a message by standard record-and-transmit.” Han nodded. “Just a heads-up, how’re-you-doing sort of message.”
“And?”
“And it got there, and I got a reply … but it was delayed by several hours. Long enough for my message and the reply to have been intercepted, decrypted, scanned, and analyzed before being passed on.”
Leia didn’t say, Now you’re being paranoid. They were the first words to leap to her mind, but in truth Han wasn’t being paranoid. The GA government was probably keeping a close eye on comm traffic to and from Corellia in light of that system’s ongoing defiance of government edicts. “All right,” she said, “so communications to Corellia are under close scrutiny.”
“So I kept looking around.” Han looked troubled. “Activated some false identities. Bounced message packets to Corellia via Commenor and some other worlds. Checked with some old friends still in the trade, found that antismuggling patrols by the GA are intensifying right now … in the vicinity of Corellia and a few worlds that have spoken out in support of Corellia. I’m really beginning to think something’s up.”
Leia moved around to the front of the couch and settled beside her husband. “Something more than just mild harassment by the GA to inconvenience a system that’s not playing by the rules, you mean.”
“Yeah. But I don’t really know how to confirm it. How to take my hunch and make it into a fact.”