“Still, yeah. Know what you mean. The good days were good.”
“You remember when Lando tried to buy that load of Caskan wolf-snake venom from you? Only you said he had to try a sample first to make sure it was the real thing?”
Baasen’s eyes lit up a little, and his belly shook with silent laughter.
“He was seeing little pink fairies for a month,” Baasen said. “But that was before, old friend. And it was before Dusty.”
“Would it help if I said I was sorry about her?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Baasen said, then shook his head. “But it wouldn’t help any, either. She did what she did because she did it. You weren’t anything but the occasion for what was going to happen anyhow.”
Simm shot a glance at Baasen, but if the Mirialan noticed, he chose to pretend he hadn’t. Then Simm looked at Han, who shrugged. Chewbacca’s shoulder twitched forward violently, and he bared his teeth in silent pain. No one but Han saw it.
“What about you, boyo?” Baasen said. “Rebel Alliance? I’d not have picked you for one of that kind.”
Han grinned. “What kind’s that? Idealist?”
“Government man.”
“Hey now,” Han said, surprised by how much the words stung. “No reason to get ugly.”
“Call it what you want, old friend, but it comes to the same thing. The rebels get their way, and they step back in where the Republic used to be, and then who are you?”
“Look, I only took the work to help out some friends. If it pisses off the Empire, that’s just a bonus.”
“Friends, eh? Strong word for a man like you.”
Han thought of Luke. It was strange that he’d taken to the kid as much as he had. All his life, he’d had a lot of people he got along with, a few he liked. There hadn’t been many he’d put himself in the line of fire for. He found himself hoping that the kid’s milk run as Wedge Antilles’s second worked out. And hoping that he and Chewie would be back at the rebel fleet to hear the kid talk about it.
Another drive roared to life, rising and then fading away. They were running out of time. Chewbacca wasn’t looking up from the glow of the cuffs in his lap, and Han couldn’t tell where he stood with them.
“Anyway, friends are a weakness, aren’t they?” Baasen said. “That’s where your Hark failed out, too.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The rebels, they’re going up against the Empire. Wrong side of the law, them. But that don’t make them criminals, if you see. Honest people with a different view of how things ought to be. Upstanding. Hell, heroic even, some of them. They’re looking to change the galaxy. They win—not that they stand a chance, but if, y’know—then they turn into the law. You and me, now. Even little Simm here—”
“I’m not little anymore,” Simm snapped.
“—we’re criminals,” Baasen went on as if the other man hadn’t spoken. “Not looking to make anything about the galaxy better except our little part. Put us in the Emperor’s palace, we’d sell all the furniture before we took off.”
“And Hark?” Han said. “Which one’s she?”
Baasen’s lips twitched into a faint smile. “Can’t say quite. Bit of one thing, bit of the other. Only seen her once, but I can say I took a shine to her.”
Behind the two men, Chewbacca strained silently but hard. His massive arms trembled with the effort, and Han had to fight not to look at him directly. Simm shifted on his crate, and before he could glance back Han stood again. Simm’s eyes turned back to Han. And the muzzle of his blaster did, too.
“How do you figure Hark for making my same mistakes, then?” Han asked, pretending to ignore the weapon. Truth was, it made his neck itch.
“She made her mistake picking friends,” Baasen said. “Not seeing the difference between an honest rebel and a criminal who don’t mind working politics. Not as she had much choice, true. Cioran ain’t got a deep pool of rebel underground to draw from.”
“But everyplace has criminals,” Han said.
“Needed someone to help her, picked a wrong crew, said a wrong thing, and instead of keeping her secrets for free, gentleman sold ’em.”
“To you.”
“Paid best.”
“No, you didn’t. The Empire would have paid a thousand times anything you could manage. He can’t go to the Empire any more than you can,” Han said, pointing his hands at Baasen in feigned anger. Chewie paused, his chest working and his teeth bared. Simms’s blaster shifted another degree. Han’s mind raced, grabbing for something to say. Anything, really.
“Japet,” he said. “He’s the one, isn’t he? You said you’d just met him, and he’s not here now. He was the rat.”
Simm’s eyes went a little wider, and he glanced at Baasen. The old smuggler shrugged. “Figured that out, did you? Well, no point fighting about it. Yeah, Japet knew she was working for the rebels, knew she was calling for transport off.”
“How’d he know it was gonna be me and Chewie? Hark didn’t call for us in particular.”
“Didn’t know, did he? That was me keeping ears to the ground. Captain Solo gone rebel. Alliance needs someone brave and crazy enough to come to the Core. Don’t have many of those.”
“You’d be surprised,” Han said.
“Wouldn’t. Politicians. Soldiers. They’re the good people. They don’t think like us. Can’t make us out. Mistakes get made is all. No blame for it.”
Han remembered Leia at her conference on Kiamurr, and the factions that were going to be there. It was a secret meeting of the enemies of the Empire, but Baasen was right. There were going to be plenty of them who would have been just as opposed to the Republic. Trust the wrong one, and they’d all be fed straight to the Empire. Leia. Luke. All of them. It was the nature of the game.
The door hissed open, and Chewbacca hung his head, pretending to be lost in dejection. The Wookiee could be astonishingly good at looking meek when he wanted to. Garet stepped in, keeping carefully out of range of Han’s cuffed wrists. Behind him, the freighter’s engines were the pale blue of hot standby, and there was no sign of the pilot. That wasn’t good. The door hissed closed, and Han bit his lip. This was getting a lot closer to too late than he liked.
“Tower puts us ten minutes from out,” Garet said, looking back at Chewbacca.