He looked about for a seat to strap himself in, but realized that none of the other passengers seemed concerned. They just grabbed a handhold affixed to the inside hull and hung on. Han shrugged, glanced at Chewbacca, and they did likewise. The Corellian discovered that it was much more difficult enduring a tricky landing as a passenger than it was as a pilot. When you were piloting, you were too busy to think about the possible danger.
A moment later there was a slight jar, and they were down.
Han and Chewbacca followed the other passengers toward the airlock, and found a line ahead of them, waiting to disembark. Han couldn’t help noticing how hardened and seedy the other passengers appeared.
Tough, space-scarred males, with a scattering of even tougher appearing females.
Sapients of assorted species, but no families, and no one was old.
That Barabel would fit right in, he thought, conscious of the comforting weight of his blaster against his thigh.
The airlock door slid open, and the passengers began filing down the ramp, onto the landing pad. Han took a deep breath of the local air, then wrinkled his nose in disgust. Beside him, Chewie whined softly.
“I know it stinks,” Han said, out of the side of his mouth. “Get used to it, pal. We’re gonna be here awhile.”
Chewbacca’s sigh was eloquent, and required no translation.
Han didn’t want to seem like too much of a newcomer, so he tried hard not to stare as they walked down the ramp. Finally, he was able to get a good look at his surroundings.
At first glance, Nar Shaddaa reminded him of Coruscant—there was no open land to be seen at all. Only buildings, towers, spires, pedestrian glidewalks, shuttle landing pads, all of it blending into an unending vista of sentient-created construction. It resembled a permacrete forest studded with garish advertising holosigns.
But as he and Chewie walked slowly across the landing pad, Han quickly realized that even though they were on the topmost levels of the moon, this place differed greatly from the topmost levels of Imperial Center, as it was officially referred to these days.
Coruscant’s topmost levels were clean, tastefully lighted marvels of soaring, graceful architecture. Only when one traveled down, hundreds of levels down, to the deeper levels of the planetwide city, did Coruscant appear dingy and seedy.
The topmost level of Nar Shaddaa looked like the deepest levels of Coruscant. If this is a top level—Han thought, catching a glimpse of a dizzying plunge down into an artificial canyon between two massive, graffiti emblazoned buildings, I hate to think what it must be like down there …
Han had been down to the bottommost level of Coruscant–once. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
Glancing surreptitiously around at the cityscape of Nar Shaddaa, Han made a mental note to NEVER visit the bottom levels of the Smuggler’s Moon.
Overhead, the sky was a strange color, as though they were looking at a normal blue sky through a dark brownish filter. Nal Hutta hung there, as huge and bloated as the sluglike sentients that called it home. It took up at least ten degrees of the sky. Han realized that Nar Shaddaa must have two nights. One would be the normal long night, when one side of the moon was turned away from the sun. The other relatively short “night” would occur when the sun was eclipsed by the enormous bulk of Nal Hutta. Totality would probably last a couple of hours, Han thought, running a rough calculation in his head.
Chewie groaned and whined. “You’re right, pal,” Han said. “At least on Coruscant they planted trees and ornamental shrubs. I don’t think anything could grow on this slag heap. Not even a lubellian fungus.”
The two headed for a ramp that led down off the landing pad. The ramp wound round and round, and was not well lighted. Although they’d landed in daylight, the towering spires and structures that flanked the building with the landing-pad roof blocked out most of the Sunlight as they descended. The enclosed ramp quickly grew dark and shadowy. The rest of the travelers had long since departed, and they were alone in the echoing silence of the high-walled, roofed ramp. Wan glowlights provided dim illumination. Han kept his back to the wall, thinking uneasily that this would be a real good place for an ambush.
His hand dropped to the butt of his blaster–just as a blue-green splat of energy from a stun beam came out of nowhere!
Han’s reflexes had always been quick, and weeks of living on the run had honed them to a sharp edge. Before the beam splashed against the wall, he threw himself out of the way, landing flat. He rolled across the permacrete, sideways and down. When he came up, his blaster was ready in his hand.
Han caught a quick glimpse of his assailant—a stocky male humanoid, with a lot of hair on his face. A Bothan, probably. A bounty hunter, almost certainly. The Corellian snapped off a shot but missed, blowing a hole in the permacrete wall. He crouched beside the opposite wall, watching for the bounty hunter to reappear.