THE PARADISE SNARE(120)

The man jerked, went limp, then slid down the wall, to lie motionless on the permacrete.

Weaving, biting his lip, and swallowing bile, Han lurched to his feet and stumbled over to the man. Two fingers against his throat assured the Corellian that the bounty hunter was now as dead as Garris Shrike, who was lying sprawled a few meters away, staring up at the twin moons with blank, sightless eyes.

Han slid down the wall in his own turn and just sat there, his head whirling, sick and exhausted. He began to shake all over, and the bout lasted for nearly a minute.

Gotta get hold of myself, he thought dully. Gotta think. Think…

Climbing back to his feet, Han staggered over to the bounty hunter again and stood eyeing him. The man was about his own size, and he, too, had brown hair.

Darker than Han’s own, but that might not be noticed …

Han’s breath puffed white as he yanked on the man’s boots, pulling them off. Slowly, methodically, he set about stripping the bounty hunter.

Five minutes later, Han stood swaying, dressed now in the bounty hunter’s clothing. Grimly, he began putting his own clothes onto the corpse … his worn gray pilot’s jumpsuit, his battered lizard-skin jacket, his boots. He replaced the bounty hunter’s blaster in his holster.

Lastly, he took a handful of credits, and all of his faked IDs, and placed them in the man’s inside pocket, sealing the pocket shut. Then he sealed the jacket closed, too.

Stumbling and limping, Han went looking for Shrike’s blaster. He found it, finally, and went back to the body. Wincing, he adjusted it to its highest setting, aimed the weapon, then, turning his head to the side, he fired directly into the corpse’s face. When he forced himself to look, the dead man no longer had a face—or eyes.

Or retinas.

Han staggered away a few feet and was thoroughly, wretchedly, sick.

The thought of what that meal had cost him made him even sicker . .

.

With a groan of effort, he grabbed the body beneath the arms and dragged the bounty hunter across the icy permacrete, just as Shrike had dragged him. He went backward slowly, carefully, until he was once again beside that deep, deep airshaft that he’d jumped.

Han peered down, then looked away quickly, fighting dizziness. The shaft went down a long, long way.

He rolled the body to the edge, then, with a hard push of both hands, sent the bounty hunter over the edge, tumbling out into empty air.

Han didn’t watch the body fall. With dragging, limping steps, he lurched back to Shrike’s body and placed the captain’s blaster in the dead fingers. Then he pressed the button to summon the turbolift.

When the doors opened, he nearly fell into the lighted interior.

The turbolift started down, and Han stood swaying, bracing himself with both hands. He had to work at not passing out.

It had been a long night …





16


Rebirth


Han Solo stood alone amid the teeming mass of cadets gathered at the ooftop landing field on Coruscant. The tight collar of his new uniform chafed his neck, but he resisted the urge to tug at it. Doing so might wrinkle it, and Han wanted to look his best.

All around him, cadets were being hugged and kissed farewell by their families. Only a few cadets were alone, as he was. Han scanned the crowd and noticed a dark-skinned boy a few meters away, who didn’t seem to have anybody. And there was a young woman with military-short hair standing across the landing field who was also alone.

But most of the cadets had fathers, and mothers, brothers and sisters and grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins, who’d come to see them off in their hour of triumph. Han felt a wave of loneliness. He was older than the other cadets, and that, too, set him apart.

But hey… I’m here. I made it.

The transport Imperator lay waiting for them on the landing field.

Soon, the cadets would be boarding it for their trip to Carida, the Imperial military training world. Han smiled a little as he studied its lines, its oversized dorsal fin. A Corellian corvette. How fitting …

He gazed at the crowd again, searchingly, and suddenly realized that he’d been hoping to see a certain red-gold head among the wellwishers.

Dumb, Solo. Really dumb. You didn’t really expect her to show up, did you? She’s long gone!

No, Han decided, he really hadn’t expected Bria to show up. But maybe, deep down, he’d hoped she would …

He sighed. Dewlanna had used to quote an old Wookiee proverb at him, something that translated into Basic as, roughly: “Joy unmixed with sorrow is suspect.”

Dewlanna …

If only she could see him now. Han imagined her, her tall, shaggy form, her snubbed black nose, her little, twinkling eyes nearly hidden beneath tufts of graying tan Wookiee hair. She would be very proud today, he knew that. For a moment she was so real that he could almost imagine her, could almost hear her growls and moans as she told him how proud he’d made her.