Return to Ord Mantell

7

Upon hearing the stranger’s shocking and sinister announcement, Jacen instinctively moved with his sister to stand beside their father.

Anakin came out of the Rock Dragon, lifting his chin high.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady,” Han said. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“You’d better explain yourself,” Jacen said. “Sure, we’re glad you helped us out, but how dare you go accusing my father of murder?”

The young woman did not tear her gaze away from Han Solo. Her dark, sad eyes narrowed, as hard and glassy as chips of obsidian. Tenel Ka, Lowie, and Zekk also stood beside Han, but the young woman did not seem to care a whit about being outnumbered. She still held her flickering lightsaber as if ready to take them all on.

“My name is Anja,” she said, her voice cold and even. “Anja Gallandro.”

Jacen watched his father flinch and draw back. His expression fell, and he swallowed hard. Jacen blinked, surprised at the guilty reaction his father had shown. Was there something to what this young woman had said?

“You… you’re Gallandro’s daughter?”

“In the flesh,” Anja said. “I was just an infant when you murdered my father.”

“Wait a minute.” Han held up a hand. “I didn’t kill Gallandro.”

“I’m surprised you even remember him,” Anja said bitterly. “With a career like yours, the way you stepped on your competition, cheated people, dumped your spice loads at the first sign of Imperial patrols, no wonder you’ve had a price on your head for most of your life.”

“Of course I remember Gallandro,” Han spluttered. He looked around nervously at the Ord Mantell security troops who had come with him to investigate the alarm, at the dead chameleon creatures that lay strewn on the floor. Han didn’t seem to notice that the space mines had been stolen.

He said to the troops, “Clean up this mess and… report everything to the authorities. I want to file an official complaint.” He tossed his dark hair back. “My kids were threatened. They could have been hurt.”

“How touching,” Anja said.

Han marched briskly toward the Millennium Falcon with a strong gesture.

“Come with me. We’ll talk inside the Falcon, where we can have a bit of privacy.” He strode up the boarding ramp and did not look back.

Jacen turned to his sister, and they shared a hard glance. Then all the young Jedi Knights quickly followed Han into his beloved, battered ship. Anja sniffed, drew a deep breath, and switched off her lightsaber.

She clipped it at her side. After waiting for them all to board the Falcon ahead of her, she followed them up, wary, as if suspecting a trap.

Han slumped heavily into a seat in the small recreation lounge, with its scratched and dented hologame table in the center. Equipment, spare parts, and leftovers from various cargo trips hung in the supply bins and nets. The ship looked lived in, comfortable and messy, like a familiar bedroom that wasn’t cleaned up any more than it had to be.

Jacen knew that their mother Leia never made any demands on Han Solo’s upkeep of the Falcon. This was his private area, and he could do what he wanted here, so long as it was safe.

“You can’t lie to me, Solo,” Anja said, preferring to stand despite the empty seats available. Instead, she watched him, then paced around the room looking at Han’s mementos and trophies of missions he had flown. “I’ve spent my life learning about my father. My mother told me some stories before she died, and there are plenty of records in the Corporate Sector Authority archives.”

“Well, your father was a hard one to forget,” Han Solo admitted. “He was reputed to be the fastest draw in the galaxy. Challenged the clan leader to a duel on the planet Ammuud, but when I was picked as his opponent, Gallandro declined to fight me.”

Anja snorted in disbelief. “There was more to it than that. My father was working for the Corporate Sector Authority to break a slaving ring. Slavers you were involved with, Solo.”

“I didn’t know!” Han said. “Anyway, I’m the one that got all the records the Corporate Sector needed to convict the ringleaders.”

“But then you overwhelmed my father, humiliated him, and fled justice so you couldn’t be charged for the crimes you had committed.”

Han looked at his children, who stared back with questions in their eyes. “Hey, that was a long time ago—and I didn’t really do anything wrong.”

Anja laughed bitterly. “Nothing wrong? How about when you killed my father?”

“But,” Han insisted, “I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t even there. He had stunned me, and then went off—”

“Hah. You were in the buried derelict Queen of Rangoon, searching for the lost treasure of Xim the Despot. My father and you had agreed to work together to find the hoard that had been hidden thousands of years before the rise of the Old Republic. But when you finally discovered the treasure vaults, you double-crossed him. Shot him in the back, from what I hear.”

“No. That’s not true,” Han Solo said, his face drawn and angry now.

Jacen looked back and forth, from the stern, troubled anger of the young woman to his father’s baffled yet clearly guilt-ridden denial.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Han said.

“And a few years later, I was left an orphan on war-torn Anobis. My father had come through Ord Mantell many times. He met my mother on nearby Anobis just as the civil war was starting. They fell in love, but he wasn’t home much because he had his missions to accomplish. My father did great work as an agent for the Corporate Sector.

“But from one mission he never returned home. My mother was devastated. My planet was being ripped apart by a civil war caused by the Imperials and the Rebellion—and she died in despair, a widow. You took my father away.”

“Hey, I didn’t kill your father. Gallandro was responsible for his own death. He made a choice, and let down his guard…… Han struggled to find the right words. “He set himself up for what happened.”

“Yeah. And you shot him,” Anja replied.

Han Solo spread his hands but seemed to see the futility of making any further protestations. Jacen wondered why his father couldn’t just convince her, why he didn’t haul out proof of what had actually happened, why he didn’t even explain himself fully. What did he have to hide?

Anja sniffed the recirculated air inside the Falcon’s enclosed spaces.

Jacen suddenly noticed the sour smell of lubricants, old upholstery, numerous meals from Corellian food packs, and the metallic tang from air that had gone too many times through the oxygen scrubbers.

“You’ve done well for yourself, Solo,” Anja said, her eyes huge and tired. “Married to the New Republic’s Chief of State, three kids training to be Jedi, Grand Marshal of the Blockade Runners Derby. I’ll bet you’re pretty proud. But at what price did you gain all this? Everyone you stepped on along the way can see full well how you got where you are.” Anja abruptly turned and marched toward the boarding ramp. “This isn’t what I expected. I had hoped for a fight. I wanted you to argue. But you, Han Solo… you’re nothing. Compared to my father, what he was and what he did, you’re too insignificant for me to kill.”

“Wait!” Han Solo said with no conviction in his voice whatsoever. “There’s a lot I can tell you about your father. He and I weren’t always enemies, you know. More like rivals, just competitors.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Solo. Especially not from you.” She strode out. The young Jedi Knights followed her to the boarding ramp, and Han Solo joined them as Anja stalked away from the ship.

Outside, the Ord Mantell guards and cleanup crew had nearly finished restoring the docking bay to a reasonably tidy appearance. They paid no attention to the angry young woman who hurried away from the battered spaceship.

Suddenly Anja stopped, as if gathering her nerve, and turned around to flash another angry glance at Han. “If you’re such a champion of goodness and righteousness, Solo,” Anja said, her voice laced with venom, “and if you and the New Republic really have the best interests of the galaxy in mind, why is it that for about twenty-five years—throughout the Rebellion and now during the growth of the New Republic—you have simply ignored my war-torn world? Why has Anobis been completely passed over by all of your peacekeeping and reparation efforts? Why have we received no help?” Her voice was choked with emotion.

Jaina turned to her father. “I never even heard of Anobis before we came to Ord Mantell,” she said.

Anja continued, hurling the words at him like weapons. “Anobis began to fight with itself in the last days of the Empire when the agricultural plains villages took up the cause of the Rebellion, hoping to overthrow Imperial rule. The mountain mining villages, though, required interstellar trade to survive and wanted to maintain the stability of the Empire. Thus a civil war began, with Rebel sympathizers and Imperial sympathizers tearing each other apart. It’s never stopped, and our world is now one big scar.”

“But the Rebellion’s been over for decades,” Jacen said. “How could it still be an issue? The Emperor’s long dead.”

“And my people are still fighting. Only now they’re fighting for a cause rather than for reality. You should go to Anobis, Solo. Take a good look at what’s happening there. If you can tear yourself away from such important diplomatic duties as watching space races or waving banners in the winner’s circle.”

She glanced one more time over her shoulder. “Why don’t you find out where your help is really needed? If you’re brave enough to accept the challenge.” Then Anja marched away, leaving Han Solo and the young Jedi Knights behind, flustered and disturbed.