Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(7)
“What’d she do?”
“She did nothing. Which is quite the problem. She has debts. More now than when she started, given Nar Shaddaa.”
“Gyuti wants her head?” Mercurial asks.
“He does.”
“And he’ll pay handsomely for it?”
“He will. Fifty thousand credits.”
“I don’t want credits.”
She hesitates. “Are you saying you have Emari?”
Not yet. “I will.”
“Let’s say you do. What do you want in return?”
He grins. A cocky, lopsided smirk. “A case of nova crystals.”
“A dozen,” she counters.
“Twice that.” When she doesn’t answer, he says: “I know Gyuti, and I know for him this is personal. It burns him that she keeps slipping the leash. Makes him look bad in front of the Hutts and everyone. I know where she’s going, so I’ll get her, but I need real currency.”
“Why that much?”
Again Dengar’s words echo: We gotta band together. Form a proper union. “I need a crew to get this done.”
Finally she says: “Then get it done.”
“I’ll get my crystals?”
“You’ll get your crystals.”
Mercurial ends the call and cackles. Time to get paid, because he knows where Jas Emari is going:
The nowhere sandswept deadlands of Jakku.
Leia startles at the sound of a furious pounding on the door, her knee banging into the table above which a glittering star map is projected. The map flickers, and when the voice comes through the door—“Leia! Leia!”—she struggles to stand swiftly, almost forgetting the tremendous living weight around her midsection. The child inside her kicks and tumbles as she endeavors to get upright. Calm down, little angel. You’ll be free soon enough.
“Mum,” says her protocol droid, T-2LC. “It appears as if someone is at the door.”
“Yes, I hear that, Elsie.” She winces as she moves out from around the couch. That couch was supposed to be comfortable—but all it does is swallow her up like a devouring sarlacc. “It’s just Han.”
“Is he in danger, mum? He sounds like he’s in danger. Should I open the door? I don’t want to let the danger in, but—”
“Leia, damnit, the door,” Han says from the other side. His voice is followed swiftly by more thumps and thuds. He’s kicking the door, she realizes.
“I’m coming!” she yells back. To the droid she says: “I’ll get it.”
“But your condition, mum—”
“I’m not dying, I’m pregnant,” she snaps back, then opens the door. Han wastes no time in almost falling through it, his arm cradling a lumpy, uneven bag of something.
“Took you long enough,” he says, smirking as he juggles his footing and skirts past her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as he does.
“Don’t you know,” she says, shooting T-2LC a dubious look, “I have a condition.”
“Elsie, I told you, Leia doesn’t have a damn condition.” But then, more seriously and in a lower register, he says to her: “You do need to slow it down a little bit.” He gestures toward the star map. “For instance.”
“I am in command of my own body, thank you very much.”
“Tell that to the little bandit,” he says, dropping the sack of whatever down on the counter in the kitchen. The little bandit is what he’s taken to calling the child currently wrestling inside her belly.
“You mean the little angel.” She follows him into the kitchen, and T-2LC’s whining servomotors behind her indicate he’s following closely behind because someone (Han) told the droid to keep close to her in case she falls. Never mind the fact the droid stays so close to her, she’s nearly tripped on his metal feet half a dozen times already. “What did you bring?”
Han winks, thrusts his hand down into the bag, and pulls it out gripping a jogan fruit. “Look.” He gives it a lascivious squeeze.
She sighs, crestfallen. “Is that…whole bag full of jogan fruit?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I cannot possibly eat that much jogan fruit.”
“Sure you can.”
“Let me rephrase: I don’t want to eat that much jogan fruit.”
“It’s good for you.”
“Not that good.”
“The doctors—”
“Dr. Kalonia said to incorporate jogan into my diet, not to replace everything with jogan fruit.”
He sweeps up on her, cradling her face with his rough hand. He strokes her cheek gently. “All right, all right. I’m just trying to do right by you two.”
“I know, Han.”
“If I think I can help, I’ll always help. With whatever you or our son needs. You know that, right?”
She laughs. “I know.”
It’s been hard for Han. He won’t say it out loud, but she can see it on his face. Her husband needs something to do. He’s bored. Chewbacca’s back home, looking for his family. Luke’s searching the galaxy for old Jedi teachings. Han Solo’s got nothing to smuggle, nowhere to gamble, no foolish Rebellion to fight for.