Star Wars: The Han Solo Trilogy I: The Paradise Snare (45 page)

Now, seeing Veratil, Han ducked his head and turned away, wishing he had a hood he could pull up to hide his face. If the Sacredot saw him and recognized him, Han knew that he was in for it.

The chanting surrounding him intensified. Han began to sweat, despite the chill of the Devaronian weather, because he knew what was coming.

Across the town square, he saw a tall, furred shape standing on the edge of the crowd, watching the ceremony curiously.
Chewie! Can’t let him get drawn into this! The Exultation is going to come in just a couple of minutes!

Han plunged into the crowd, keeping his head ducked, fighting his way through the throng as he would have clawed his way through a heavy surf. He was breathing hard and his elbows and ribs ached by the time he reached the Wookiee. “Chewie!” he yelled, grabbing the big sentient by the arm. “Let’s get outta here! This is gonna turn into a mob scene any second now!”

The Wookiee whined inquiringly. “Never
mind
how I know!” Han yelled above the chanting. “I just know! Trust me!”

Chewbacca nodded and turned away, using his huge size to part the crowd before him. Han started to follow him, then something caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. A gleam … a gleam of reddish gold on a stray curl.

Han caught just a glimpse of her, but his whole mind and body jolted to a stop as though he’d slammed into a stone wall while running at top speed.

Bria? Bria!

He caught only that one brief glimpse of a pale, perfect profile and a stray reddish-blond curl, but it was enough. She was standing there, wearing a black cloak and hood, in this crowd.

Memories came surging back, so strong that they scared him …

Bria, a pale ghost of a slave in the spice factories of Ylesia. Bria, scared but determined as they robbed Teroenza of his treasures. Bria, sitting beside him on a golden sand beach on Togoria, her mouth soft and red and just begging to be kissed. Bria, lying in his arms late at night …

Bria, who had left him behind, saying she needed to fight her addiction to the t’landa Til’s Exultation by herself …

Han had spent the past five years convincing himself that he’d forgotten her. After four years in the Imperial Academy, plus nearly a year of commissioned service, he’d been convinced that he no longer cared. But now, in a single searing blaze of insight, Han Solo knew he’d been lying to himself.

Without hesitating, he turned and plunged back into the crowd, heading for the woman in the black cloak. He was halfway there when the Exultation hit the crowd, and the throng of sentients collapsed onto the cobblestones of the town square as though they’d been stun-blasted.

Han had forgotten how strong the Exultation was. Waves of intense pleasure rolled through his mind as well as his body. No wonder the Ylesian pilgrims thought the t’landa Til were Divinely Gifted! Even knowing, as Han did, that the Exultation was caused by an empathic transmission coupled with a subsonic vibration that caused a wave of pleasure that acted on the brains of most bipedal sentients, Han had to brace himself to resist it.

He knew without seeing it that the pouch beneath Veratil’s “chin” had swelled, and that the Sacredot was “humming” those vibrations as he concentrated on warm, positive emotions. To anyone unprepared for the force of the Exultation, the effect was as intoxicating as any pleasure drug. The ability to produce the Exultation was one that all t’landa Til males shared—it was actually a sex-linked biological ability they possessed that, in their natural habitat, was used to attract t’landa Til females.

All around Han the crowd had fallen prone, and most of the sentients were writhing in pleasure. The sight sickened Han. He’d shaken off the effects of the Exultation now, and he concentrated on not stepping on bodies as he plunged toward the woman in the black cloak and hood. He could no longer see her face or that betraying tendril of hair.

His fingers remembered the soft silkiness of that hair … he used to play with Bria’s curls, watching them capture the light, bringing the reddish gold to vibrant life …

The woman in the black cloak and hood disappeared behind a stone bench as the crowd heaved in a wave of ecstasy from the Exultation. Han swallowed hard. Bria had left him because she was addicted to the Exultation. Was that where she’d been for the past five years? A willing slave on Ylesia, bound to her t’landa Til masters because she needed her daily dose of pleasure? Funny … he’d thought Bria had more strength than that …

Han reached the stone bench, then stopped, staring around him. The woman in the black cloak was nowhere in sight.
Where’d she go? Bria!
Han thought, staring around him wildly. From all sides he could hear the gasps and moans of the crowd filling the air.

He jumped up on the bench, straining his eyes, trying to pick up any trace of the woman in the black cloak. Han only realized what a terrible mistake he’d made when he found himself staring across the crowd, straight into the eyes of Veratil.

The huge, four-legged creature with the tiny arms and the broad, single-horned head was staring back at him, his small, reddish eyes wide with surprise.

The Corellian had no doubt that Veratil had just recognized him as “Vykk Draygo,” the man who’d wrecked the glitterstim factory, stolen Teroenza’s treasure, and caused the death of the Ylesian Hutt overlord, Zavval.

All around Han the moans of pleasure suddenly altered into cries of dismay and loss—Veratil’s attention had been diverted, and the Exultation had come to an abrupt, jarring halt.

Some of the throng wailed aloud, others jerked convulsively. Still others dragged themselves to their feet with cries of distress and anger. Han ducked his head and bolted forward, determined to lose himself in the crowd. And then, ahead of him, he caught a glimpse of black.

Bria!

Forgetting Veratil, forgetting the danger he was in, Han plunged forward, slamming into would-be pilgrims, tripping over feet, elbowing his fellow sentients aside.

“Bria!” he yelled. “Stop!”

Putting on a burst of speed, Han reached the edge of the crowd. The woman was running now, but Han was moving at top speed and he caught her in a dozen swift strides.

Reaching out, he managed to grab the black fabric, yank her to a halt, then he grabbed her elbow and spun her around to face him—

—only to find that the woman he’d chased was a total stranger.

How could he have mistaken her for Bria? This woman wasn’t homely, she was even pretty in a rather worn way … but Bria—Bria had been one of the loveliest women Han had ever seen. This woman’s hair was dark blond, not gold with warm reddish highlights.

Bria had been tall. This woman was short.

She was also angry. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded in Basic. “Leave me alone or I’ll summon security!”

“I … I’m sorry …” Han mumbled, stepped back, holding up both hands in as nonthreatening a manner as he could manage. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Well, I feel sorry for
her
,” the woman said huffily. “With an ill-mannered, scruffy lout like
you
in her life!”

“Look …” Han continued to back away, hands up. “I said I was sorry, sister. I’m going, okay?”

“I think you’d better,” she said pointedly. “That priest has summoned security, I think.”

Han looked over his shoulder, cursed, then took to his heels, heading away from the crowd. He could see Chewbacca waiting for him, and waved to the Wookiee.

He lengthened his stride, and a glance back at his pursuers reassured him that he was losing them.

Been drinking too much …
he decided as he ran.
That’s gotta be it. I’m gonna be more careful from now on … a lot more careful …

“Did Han get away?” Bria Tharen asked her friend as Lanah Malo walked into the room, carrying Bria’s black cloak under her arm. Bria was seated on the single human-styled chair in the cheap room they’d rented for their short stay on Devaron.

“I think so,” Lanah Malo replied, tossing the cloak to her friend, then picking up her travel bag and dumping it on the bed. “The last I saw, he and that big Wookiee he was traveling with jumped into a public skimmer. Security was still on foot. My guess is, he made it.”

“He’s probably off-world by now,” Bria said softly, wistfully. Rising, she walked over to the window, then stood for a moment gazing up into Devaron’s coral-tinted sky. Tears gathered in her blue-green eyes.
I never thought I’d ever see him again. I never thought it would hurt so much …

The pain she felt completely eclipsed the triumph she should have been experiencing. Today she’d faced the Exultation and successfully resisted it. After years of fighting her addiction to it, now she finally knew for certain that she was a free woman. She’d looked forward to this day for a long time—but any joy she felt was drowned in her grief at seeing Han again, and knowing she couldn’t be with him.

“Couldn’t you have talked to him?” the shorter woman asked, almost echoing Bria’s own thoughts. Bria turned from the window and watched her friend and comrade-in-arms pulling on her battered, khaki-colored jacket. Quickly Lanah stuffed the last of her personal belongings into the small travel bag. “What harm could it do?” she asked, giving Bria a sharp, quizzical glance.

Bria shivered, then pulled the cloak around her shoulders. It was chilly, now that the sun was low on the horizon. “No,” she said in a low voice. “I couldn’t talk to him.”

“Why not?” Lanah asked. “Don’t you trust him?”

Moving as methodically and carefully as a droid, Bria checked the charge in the blaster she wore strapped to her thigh—low-down the way Han had taught her, five years ago when they’d been partners, companions … lovers. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “I trust him. I trust him with anything that’s mine. But what we’re trying to accomplish—that’s not mine. That’s all of us. Betrayal at this point could mean the end of the entire movement. I couldn’t risk it.”

Lanah nodded. “Solo showing up when he did sure messed up our plans,” she said. “No telling when we’ll get a clear shot at Veratil again. My guess is that he’ll hightail it back to Ylesia to tell Teroenza he spotted your ex-boyfriend.”

Bria nodded tiredly as she ran her hands through her hair.
Han loved to do that
, she thought with a sudden surge of memory so vivid that it felt like a blow.
Oh, Han …

Lanah Malo gave her an assessing glance that was half sympathetic, half cynical. “You can fall apart later, Bria. Right now we’ve got to catch the transport back to Corellia. The Commander’s going to expect a full report. Even if we failed to take out Veratil, we still succeeded in making contact with the Devaronian group … so the trip wasn’t a total waste.”

“I’m not going to fall apart,” Bria said dully, holstering her blaster without looking at it—the way Han had taught her. “I got over Han long ago.”

“Sure you did,” Lanah agreed, not unkindly, as the two women picked up their bags and headed for the door. “Sure you did …”

Long—
long
—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in
Star Wars: A New Hope
 … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before
A New Hope
and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …