The words Han Solo cut through the hubbub of voices and children’s squealing as if the tapcaf had fallen into total and complete silence for a moment.
“In a statement issued by the Office of the State, President Sal-Solo has declared Han Solo and his family to be enemies of Corellia following the attacks on Centerpoint and Rellidir, and he’s ordered their arrest,” said the HNE holoanchor.
Han tried not to swing around in his seat or curse at the screen. He raised his head very slowly, caught Leia’s eye, and focused on the screen as if bored. No, he wasn’t bored at all. He was furious, and a little scared. He wondered how good an actor he was; but nobody seemed to be looking at him.
It was probably because the image on the screen was of a younger Han, a man still with brown hair and relatively few lines. The picture of Leia was way out of date, too.
“I think we’d better be going,” said Leia. “Some urgent laundry.”
“Right behind you,” said Han.
He didn’t like running, and there was nowhere safer to run. Coruscant wasn’t going to welcome him with open arms, either. Either way, they were fugitives. They split up as soon as they left the store and met up again back at the apartment.
“Have I changed that much?” said Leia.
“What?”
“The picture of me that they’re running.”
“I hope so,” said Han. Maybe he should have assured her she looked as good as ever to him, but he thought that practical reassurance about her safety was more important than flattery right then. “And I’m going to grow a beard, just in case. How about you?”
Leia gave him a withering stare. “I didn’t shave today. You didn’t notice?”
“I meant change your hair or something.”
“The Aurra Sing look? Yes, it’s so me.”
“I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humor.”
“You know what they say,” said Leia, and took scissors from the kitchen. “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”
Chapter Four
Vandals have desecrated the Corellian Sanctuary on Coruscant. The domed building, a resting place for Corellian dead, was daubed with paint during the night, and marble plaques were smashed. Inside, diamonds set in the dome-formed from the compressed carbon of cremated Corellians-were hacked out of the ceiling. Police are treating the attack as retaliation for yesterday’s bombing of the Elite Hotel on skylane four-four-six-seven, which left six hundred and thirty-four dead and hundreds more injured. Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion, confirmed as caused by commercial-grade detonite.
HNE Morning News
UPPER CITY, TARIS.
“My name’s Mirta Gev,” said the girl.
Fett stared at the heart-of-fire necklace in the palm of his glove and wanted to clutch it in his bare hand, but he didn’t know why. For the first time in many, many years, he felt grief.
None of that turmoil showed. He made sure of that and studied her: strongly built, heavy boots, practical armor, no jewelry, a battered shapeless bag over one shoulder, and no concessions to feminine fashion whatsoever. Passersby gave them a wide berth on the promenade. “So are you a bounty hunter, or do you just like armor?”
Mirta-if that was her real name-nodded twice, just little movements as if she was measuring what she was going to say rather than blurting out a smart answer. She seemed utterly unafraid of him, and that was rare.
“Yeah, I’m a bounty hunter,” she said. “Object recovery more often than prisoners, but I’ve survived so far. Aren’t you going to ask me who killed Sintas Vel?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because we parted a long time ago.”
Mirta shrugged and held out her hand for the necklace. “I know. You left your wife when your daughter was nearly two. Sintas left on a bounty hunt before Ailyn’s sixteenth birthday and never came back. That’s not common knowledge.”
“Okay, that’s proof you know Ailyn Vel.”
“And I need to return that necklace. It’s all she has left of her mother.”
Fett hesitated and handed back the heart-of-fire. He wanted it very badly, but he didn’t rob kids like her of their meager bounties.
So it’s all Ailyn has left. Like all I had of my dad was his armor. And his ship.
“How is she?”
“What?”
Why am I doing this? “How’s my daughter?”
“She’s … okay, I suppose. Angry. But she’s surviving.”
“I think you know she tried to kill me.”
“She did mention it
“Does she know I’m alive?”
“Of course she does.”