Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (26 page)

Hasti nodded to herself. “And settle down, Han?” she
asked softly. “Buy a planet, or take over a few conglomerates and live the life of a good man of business?” She shook her head slowly. “Your problems are just beginning, rich man.”

His joy was receding fast, replaced by a tangled knot of doubts, plans, the need for forethought and mature wisdom. But before he could berate Hasti for being a spoilsport, he heard Chewbacca’s angry roar.

The Wookiee held a metallic ingot, frowning at it in disgust. He dumped a handful of them onto the floor in a chiming avalanche and gave the pile a kick that sent ingots skittering every which way. Han forgot Hasti and went to his friend. “What is it?”

Chewbacca explained with frustrated grunts and moans. Han picked up one of the ingots and saw that his copilot was right. “This stuff’s
kiirium
! You can get it anywhere; Skynx, what’s it doing in with the treasure?”

The small academician had located a vault-directory screen at the end of the nearest shelf stack, an old televiewer mounted on a low stand. He brought it to flickering life, and columns of ciphers and characters raced across the screen as Skynx answered distractedly.

“There would seem to be a great deal of it here, Captain. And a huge quantity of mytag crystalline vertices and mountains of enriched bordhell-type fuel slugs, among other things.”

“Mytag crystals?” Han repeated in puzzlement. “They run those things off by the carload; what kind of treasure’s this? Where’s the
real
treasure?”

A belly laugh distracted him. Badure had found a canister of the mytag crystal and flung a double handful into the air. The crystals rained down around him, catching the light, as he convulsed in laughter. “This
is
it! Or was, an age ago. Don’t you see, Slick? Kiirium is artificial shielding material, not very good by modern standards but a major breakthrough in its time, and tough to produce to boot. With quantities of kiirium to shield heavy guns and engines, Xim could field
warcraft that were better armed and faster than anything else in space at the time.

“And mytag crystals were used in old subspace commo and detection gear; you needed lots and lots of them for any spacefleet or planetary defenses. And so forth; all this was critical war materiél. With the stuff in these vaults, Xim could have assembled a war machine that would have conquered this whole part of space. But he lost big at the Third Battle of Vontor, first.”

“That’s
it
?” Han bellowed. “We went through all this for a treasure that’s
obsolete
?”

“Not quite,” Skynx commented mildly, still bent over the screen. “One whole section is filled with information tapes, art works, and artifacts. There is a hundred times more information contained here than everything we know about the period altogether.”

“I’ll bet the Survivors have long since forgotten just what it was they were guarding,” Hasti put in. “They believed the legends, just like everyone else. I wonder what did happen to the
Queen of Ranroon
?”

Badure shrugged. “Perhaps they plunged her into the system’s primary after she offloaded the treasure, or sent her off with a skeleton crew to arrange misleading sightings of her and create a false trail. Who knows?”

Skynx had left the viewscreen and started a delirious dance, first on his hind limbs, then on the front ones, hopping and capering much as Han and Chewbacca had a moment before. “Marvelous! Miraculous! What a
find
! I’m sure to get my own chair funded—no, my own
department
!”

Han, leaning against a wall, slowly sank to a squatting position. “Artworks, hmm? Chewie and I can just stroll into the Imperial Museum with a bunch under our arms and start haggling, right?” He rested his forehead on his good arm. Chewbacca patted his shoulder solicitously, making mournful sounds.

Skynx gradually stopped cavorting, realizing what a disappointment all this was to the two. “There
are
some things
of intrinsic value, Captain. If you choose carefully, you could fill your ship with items you could dispose of relatively simply. There would be some profit.” He was fighting the urge to hoard the entire find, knowing that the
Millennium Falcon
could bear away no more than an insignificant part of it. “Enough, I suppose, to get your ship repaired properly and have your wounds looked after in a first-class medicenter.”

“What about us?” Hasti interposed. “Badure and I haven’t even got a starship.”

Skynx pondered for a moment, then brightened. “I can write my own ticket with the university, an unlimited budget. How would you two like to work with me? Academic pursuits will be dull after this, I suppose, to a pair of humans. But there’d be generous pay and retirement benefits and quick promotions. We’ll be years and years working on this find. I’ll need someone to look after all the workers, scholars, and automata.” Badure smiled and put an arm around Hasti’s shoulders. She nodded.

That made Skynx think of something else. “Bollux, would you and Blue Max care for positions? You’d be of great help, I’m sure. After all, you two are the only ones who interacted with the war-robots at any length. There’s certain to be an effort to study their remains; we have a great deal yet to learn about their thought processes.”

Blue Max answered for them both. “Skynx, we’d like that a lot.”

“
If
the locals don’t march in here and take it all away from you,” Han reminded them, as Chewbacca helped him to his feet. Seeing their concern, he added, “I guess we’ll leave you a portable defensive generator and some heavy weapons and supplies out of the
Falcon
. That’ll give us more cargo space.”

Badure sounded uncharacteristically angry. “Han, how gullible do you think the rest of the universe is? You always want to do the right things for the wrong reasons. Well, what will you do the day you run out of excuses, son?”

Han pretended not to hear. “We’ll punch through a distress
call just before we make our jump out of this system. There’ll be a Tion Hegemony gunboat here before you know it. Come on, Chewie; let’s break out the handtruck and get the ship loaded before anything else happens.”

“Captain,” Skynx called. Han paused and looked back. “Here’s a funny thing: I still think this adventuring was basically just danger and hardship a long way from home, but now that it’s ended and we’re parting company, I find myself saddened.”

“Look us up for a refresher course, any time,” offered Han.

Skynx shook his head. “I have much to do here; all too soon I’ll be called away by my blood, when it’s time to go chrysalis, then live a brief season as a chroma-wing. If you wish to see me then, Captain, come and look on Ruuria for the flyer whose wing markings are the same as my own banding. The chroma-wing won’t recognize you, but perhaps some part of Skynx will.”

Han nodded, finding no adequate way to say good-bye. Badure called, “Hey, Slick!” Han and his copilot looked to him and he laughed. “Thanks, boys.”

“Forget it.” Han dismissed the entire incident. He started off again with his sidekick, both of them moving with some pain due to their injuries. “After all, a Life-Debt’s a Life-Debt, isn’t it,
partner
?”

On this last note, he poked a knuckle into his copilot’s ribs. Chewbacca swung angrily but not too quickly. Han ducked and the Wookiee backed off. “Look,” Han said, “that’s it for missions of mercy, all right? We’re smugglers; that’s what we know and that’s what we’re good at and that’s what we’re sticking to!”

The Wookiee growled concurrence. The others, surrounded by the endless shelf stacks of Xim’s treasure, heard the discussion echo back from the corridor. Han broke into Chewbacca’s rumblings with, “When the
Falcon
’s repaired and this wing of mine’s fixed, we’re going to try another Kessel spice run.”

The Wookiee croaked an irritated objection. Han insisted. “It’s fast money and we won’t have to look at any dirt! We’ll get Jabba the Hut or somebody to back us for a cut. Listen, I’ve got this plan …”

Just as they were moving out of earshot, Chewbacca’s protests stopped. He and Han Solo shared some joke that made both laugh slyly. Then they returned to their schemes.

“There,” Badure declared to Hasti, Skynx, Bollux, and Blue Max, “go the
real
Survivors.”

Brian Daley’s first novel,
The Doomfarers of Coramonde
, was published on the first Del Rey list in 1977. It was an immediate success, and Brian went on to write its sequel,
The Starfollowers of Coramonde
, and many other successful novels:
A Tapestry of Magics
, three volumes of
The Adventures of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh
, and, under the shared pseudonym Jack McKinney, ten and one half of the twenty-one Robotech novels. He first conceived of the complex
GammaL.A.W
. saga in Nepal, in 1984, and worked on its four volumes for the next twelve years, finishing it shortly before his death in 1996.

Brian was enthralled by the Star Wars saga and very excited by the possibilities it afforded for popularizing science fiction for a mass audience, so he was very pleased to be chosen as the author for the first Star Wars spin-off novels, the three volumes of
The Han Solo Adventures
. He continued his association with Star Wars by writing the radio plays for “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi.”

You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

In
The Empire Strikes Back
, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the
Star Wars
expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of
Star Wars!

Turn the page or jump to the
timeline
of
Star Wars
novels to learn more.