Part 11 (1/2)
Lando grinned and shook hands with even greater vigor.
”You've got yourself a deal,” he said.
a whole s.p.a.cecraft with the power of his mind. And yet Lando had managed to play him like a windblower.
Luke smiled to himself as he reached his front door. No two ways around it. Some people managed just fine without the least little bit of help from the Force.
Lando gave Luke detailed instructions on how to get back to the higher levels of the city, and of course Luke had them memorized on first hearing, but he didn't bother to follow them. He chose instead to wander the city on his own, moving now through the sordid byways of the undercity, built by long-forgotten workers in days lost to memory, now through the magnificent upper city, with its mighty castles and grand promenades and gleaming towers. Even in the darkest ways of the city, Luke Skywalker had nothing to fear. There were few on Coruscant with so little sense as to disturb a Jedi Master, and fewer still that Luke could not sense long before they could attack. He could walk where he would without fear of molestation.
But Luke paid little attention to his route. Fetid tunnel and grand esplanade were all the same to him that night.
His mind was elsewhere. He walked for hours, thinking of Mon Mothma's advice, of his sister and her family off on their holiday, of Lando's amazing gall, of the hugeness of the city, and of the galaxy beyond.
But his thoughts kept returning to Lando. He was a piece of work, that was for certain. Lando had had absolutely nothing that Luke needed, and yet he had managed to convince Luke to do exactly what he wanted.
Amazing, really. Luke had the power to look into the minds of others, to manipulate their thoughts. He could lift.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Homeward Bound Peace and quiet were rare commodities in Han Solo's family, and they should have been rarer still when the family was cooped up in a small s.h.i.+p. And yet, two days out from Coruscant, things seemed to be going remarkably well. Oh, there had been one or two minor scuffles, and a bit more fussing than normal at bedtime the first night, but all in all, there was far less trouble than Leia had expected from her husband's children.
She smiled at herself. No doubt she had that habit in common with every mother in history. When they were good, they were her children.
When they were bad, or when she feared they might be bad, they were Han's.
Well, just at the moment she was more than happy to admit to mothering this brood. It would be hard to imagine any children behaving better than Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin were right now.
It was just after dinner on the first night out from Cornscant, with the Falcon due at Corellia in twO days. The Falcon could have made the trip in far less time, of course, but just this once blind speed was not the only consideration.
Leia had urged Han not to try to set any records. Better they got there a day or two later, rather than not getting there at all because they had run the hyperdrive at max and blown out a coil or something. For once, Han had been easy to persuade. Maybe he felt it would be no bad thing to baby his s.h.i.+p, just this once.
Things seemed so calm that Leia wondered if she was with the right family. The remains of dinner had been cleared up, Chewie was sitting at the table with his tools spread out, tinkering with some broken bit of machinery.
Anakin was watching Chewie with rapt attention, offering his own advice now and again, speaking in a low voice, and pointing here and there at the gizmo's interior. Chewie was either taking the advice seriously, which seemed unlikely, or else displaying a degree of patience that seemed more unlikely still.
The twins were sprawled out on the floor-except, Leia reminded herself, she ought to call it a deck now that they were on a s.h.i.+p-both of them reading. Han was at the auxiliary control station at the aft end of the lounge, doing some sort of check or another on the Falcon's systems.
Probably it was something that didn't really need doing, just some bit of fiddling with part of the biggest, best toy in the universe-a stars.h.i.+p. Han looked happy, at ease, in a way that Leia had not seen in quite a while.
Leia was seated at the far end of the table from Chewbacca and Anakin. In theory, she, too, was reading, giving herself the rare treat of curling up with a good hook instead of slogging through some bureaucratic report. She had been looking forward to this for a long time. Instead she found herself doing little more than sit there in a maternal glow.
She was basking in the moment of family, with her children and her husband around her, all safe, all well, and all happy to be together.
”What's it like, Daddy?” Jaina asked, looking up from her book.
There hadn't been much in the way of conversation for a while, but it would seem that Jaina had something on her mind.
”What's what like, Princess?” Han asked, turning around in his swivel seat.
”Corellia. What's it like? I keep hearing everyone being so excited that we're going there, but no one ever says much about the place.” Jaina stood up and walked over to her father.
Han seemed fl.u.s.tered for a moment, and Leia looked at him intently.
Han had hardly spoken about his homeworld, and had said even less about his life in the Corellian Sector.
For years, she had forced herself to restrain her curiosity.
But now. Now he would surely have to say something.
”Well,” Han said thoughtfully, ”it's a very interesting place.”
”And you lived there when you were a kid?” Jaina asked as she climbed up into her father's lap. Jacen stayed where he was, sitting crossed-legged on the floor, but Anakin took his cue from Jaina. He hopped down from where he was sitting next to Chewie, went around the table, and climbed up into his mother's lap. He could tell when it was story time.
”That's right, I lived there,” Han said, putting on his best storytelling voice. ”And it's a beautiful place. The only trouble with it is that a lot of the names sound the same, so that sometimes outsiders get a little confused by them. Corellians never do. And if I'm a Corellian, and you're my children, that makes you Corellians. So listen very carefully, and don't makeany mistakes, or you'll make me look bad.
All right?”
Jaina giggled, and Jacen smiled. Anakin nodded solemnly.
”Well, the Corellian Sector is made up of a couple of dozen star systems, but the most important star system in the sector is the Corellian star system. And the most important planet in the Corellian star system in the Corellian Sector is Corellia, and the capital city is Coronet. The star that the planet Corellia goes around is called Corell, and that's where all the other things with the word 'Corell' in them get their name. But no one ever calls the star 'Corell.” Everyone does what everyone does everywhere else and just calls it 'the sun.” Everyone always does that.”
”Uh-huh,” Jaina said.
”Good. Now, I'll tell you all about the planet Corellia in a minute, but one of the most interesting things about the Corellian star system is that it has so many inhabited planets. It's rare for a star to have even one planet that people can live on, but it's even rarer for a star to have more than one. That's one of the things that makes the Corellian System so special. It has five habitable planets.
The Five Brothers, we call them. The five of them have had so much to do with each other over the generations that we never really thought of them as five different places.
They were together, the way you and Jacen and Anakin are. But Corellia has the most people and the biggest cities, and so they call it the Elder Brother, or sometimes juSt the Eldest.”
”But why are there five habitable planets?” Jacen asked.
”Does anyone know how that happened?”
”Good question,” Han said. ”The scientists are very confused by the Corellian System. The planets' orbits are so close to each other, and are so strange, that some of the scientists think the whole star system is artificial. They think somebody built it, a long, long time ago.”
”Wow,” said Jacen. ”Someone built a whole star system?”
”Well, that's one idea. Other scientists say that's crazy.
They've worked out a way that it all could have happened by itself.
But one thing is for sure. If the Five Brothers were put in their current orbits on purpose, it must have happened in the dimmest mists of time, even before the dawn of the Old Republic, more than a thousand generations ago.
”But the next thing you need to know is that there are more than just humans in the Corellian Sector. There are the Selonians and the Drall, lots of them, and a few of all sorts of other kinds of beings. At least there used to be. We don't really know what things are like now.”
”Why not?” Jaina asked.