Trouble on Cloud City

3

Anja Gallandro finished packing for the trip to Bespin in less than five minutes. Slinging her satchel of belongings over one shoulder—including the few special items she wanted no one to know about—she headed down the temple’s ancient stone corridor toward the adjoining quarters occupied by the Solo twins.

She reached up to tighten the leather headband that held her flowing hair in check, though just barely enough to keep it out of her face. Anja sighed as she thought of Jacen and Jaina. Everyone in the Solo family seemed to have an effect on her life, and she found it both irritating and unnerving.

First, Han Solo had murdered her father; then, when Anja had confronted him after a lifetime of planning the moment, he had denied it, and somehow thwarted all of her attempts to get revenge. Finally, telling herself it would be the easiest way to hurt Han Solo, she had followed his children to Yavin 4, pretending to be their friend. She had believed that as she got to know the twins better, their true characters would emerge, and she would find ample reason (and opportunity) to inflict some sort of punishment on them. But that hadn’t turned out as she’d expected either.

Instead of proving heartless, self-centered, and prideful as she had believed they would be, Jacen, Jaina, and their friends at the Jedi academy had shown themselves to be helpful, patient, and honorable—even in the face of her most withering sarcasm. To make matters worse, Jacen had turned out to have an endearing love for animals and a quirky, silly sense of humor that Anja had come to find more and more pleasant as the days passed.

She stamped her foot in annoyance outside the door to Jacen’s chambers. How could this be happening? She wanted to hate these young Jedi Knights, wanted to find them despicable in every way. Their talk about trusting in the Force was a bunch of nonsense. They were trying to change her with their talk of control and inner calm. So why didn’t she despise them?

Anja couldn’t allow herself to become fond of these “friends,” she reminded herself. She needed to get revenge for the death of her father, the great Gallandro. She could never allow herself to trust a … a Solo. They would probably show their true colors sometime soon.

Perhaps if she tried goading them a bit more …

Squaring her shoulders, Anja raised one fist to knock on Jacen’s door. But before she could do so, Jaina emerged from the next room over.

“All ready for Cloud City, I see,” Jaina observed. “Me too.” She patted the small duffel she carried. “How about Jacen?”

“I was about to check,” Anja replied in as cold a voice as she could muster. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Jaina’s brandy-brown eyes blinked at Anja’s rudeness, but then she shrugged it off and gave a hesitant smile. “Guess I should have figured that out, huh?” Then she stepped forward, tapped once lightly on the door, and poked her head in without waiting for an answer.

Anja could see past Jaina into the room to where the tousel-haired young man stood in front of a wall filled with cages and aquariums. A ball of bright blue fluff sat on his shoulder.

He turned around and waved his sister and Anja inside. His face lit with a quick smile. “Hey, I’m almost done here. I was just setting the timers on those new feeding and exercise monitors you designed, Jaina. Raynar said he’d look in on my menagerie, just in case, and Uncle Luke even offered to take care of Nicta,” he said, pointing to the feathery blue ball perched on his shoulder.

“We shouldn’t keep Calrissian waiting,” Anja said gruffly, impatiently, though she wasn’t the least bit eager to go.

A rich chuckle came from the doorway. “No, it doesn’t pay to keep me waiting—unless, of course, you’re a beautiful young lady.”

Anja turned to look at the speaker and saw in the arched doorway a dashingly handsome man with dark features and a dazzling white smile.

“Well, hello…. What have we here?” the man said, striding into the room. “Two beautiful young ladies?” He took Anja’s hand, bowed, and kissed it lightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He held her hand in his and favored her with a brilliant smile.

She sucked in a quick breath. This man was too smooth and handsome for his own good. And she wasn’t at all pleased that she felt a slight flush of pleasure to be the center of his attention. From the corner of her eye she saw Jaina clap a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle.

“Ummm, Lando Calrissian, this is Anja Gallandro,” Jacen said, flushing as well. “Anja, meet Lando Calrissian, one of my father’s oldest and best friends. Lando used to be a pretty big gambler, and he’s a former smuggler, too.”

At these words Anja stiffened and snatched her hand from Calrissian’s grasp. Her gaze turned frosty, and her lip curled back in an involuntary sneer. “What a shame. I kind of like smugglers. But I’ve always found people who call themselves former smugglers to be sort of… self-righteous.”

Rather than being offended, as Anja had hoped, Lando Calrissian raised his eyebrows as if he’d found her statement interesting. “Well, we’ll just have to see if we can’t correct that impression,” he said. “I’ll wait for you three down at the Lady Luck. The others are already there.” He gave an enigmatic nod and left the room with a swirl of his cape.

As Anja turned back toward the twins, she saw disapproval in Jaina’s brandy-brown eyes.

“That was pretty rude.”

Anja blinked at her with feigned innocence. “Oh, really? Was it?”

Tension crackled in the air between them until Jacen intervened. “Lando has been like an uncle to us since we were born. He’s risked his life more than once for every member of our family. I know it’s hard for you to trust people, Anja, but Lando’s one of the best. Give him a chance.”

Jaina pointed out, “After all, he was nice enough to invite you along to Bespin, even though he doesn’t know you.”

Anja nodded and the tension broke. “Sure. I’ll give him a chance.”

“Just try to relax—and try not to insult anyone,” Jacen added.

Jaina grinned the lopsided grin that made her look like her father, Han Solo. “Fortunately for you, Lando Calrissian doesn’t insult too easily.”

Jaina nodded to Lando from the copilot’s position in the Lady Luck. “Ready for jump to hyperspace.”

“Hang on, everybody,” Lando said. He flipped a few switches and the twinkling lights outside the front viewport stretched into brilliant starlines around them.

“Too bad we couldn’t have brought the Rock Dragon,” Jaina said.

“Or the Lightning Rod,” Zekk spoke up from behind her in the crew cabin.

Lowie gave a noncommittal rumble.

“Come on, now,” Lando said, “we didn’t need to bring a whole fleet!”

“It was unnecessary,” Tenel Ka agreed.

“Indeed, and the Lady Luck is certainly quite a fine ship,” Em Teedee said.

“And she’s big enough for a crew twice this size. Anyhow, I promised your families and Luke that I’d keep an eye on all of you. You know, not let anything happen. How could I do that if you were off in some other ship?” Lando turned his most charming smile on Jaina. “Besides, don’t tell me it’s a hardship to practice your copiloting skills in the Lady Luck.”

Jaina laughed. “No, I enjoy flying more than I could possibly enjoy any ride in your new amusement park, and you know it.”

Lando’s face shone with childish excitement. “I don’t know about that. SkyCenter Galleria is fantastic. I can’t wait to show it to you. My friend Cojahn and I are sparing no expense in making it the best entertainment complex in the galaxy. If you can’t find something to enjoy in our galleria, you’re probably dead. Cojahn’s putting everything into it. He spends every waking hour there. He takes his wife and daughters with him at least once a week just to show them the progress.”

“You said he’s another former smuggler?” Anja asked from the back of the cockpit. “I suppose that means he’s respectable, too?”

“He had a pretty tough time of it up until the past few years, but things have really turned around for him. This is his biggest break. I tell you, since we started working on this new project I’ve never seen him so happy.” He grinned over his shoulder. “You’ll like him. He’s a nice guy … like me.”

The white metropolis was like an island in the sky, with towers and turrets and transparisteel windows that gleamed in the light from Bespin’s brilliant sun. All around them the soup of clouds swirled in a rainbow of pinks and oranges from airborne micro-algae and plankton that lived on the winds. A flurry of tiny ships circled like moths around the lights of the docking bays.

“Dazzling,” Zekk said.

“I never get tired of looking at her,” Lando said quietly.

Lowie gave an enthusiastic rumble as the Lady Luck touched down on a landing platform on the outskirts of Cloud City. “Goodness, yes!” Em Teedee agreed. “It is rather high, isn’t it?”

Cloud City’s altitude suited Lowie just fine. Being so high reminded him of the great wroshyr trees on his home planet of Kashyyyk. It gave him a feeling of home and safety. He was always most comfortable when he was up high, and the young Wookiee couldn’t wait to get out and explore, maybe climb some of the highest towers or just hang out on some of the external hover-scaffolding.

With Em Teedee clipped firmly to his syren-fiber belt, Lowie was the first to bound down the Lady Luck’s landing ramp. Eager to see the view, Lowie strode to the edge of the landing platform to get a better look at the layered clouds below.

Aside from the floating cities, Tibanna gas refineries, and storage tanks that drifted in Bespin’s atmosphere, the planet had no habitable landmasses. The view was exhilarating, and Lowie gave a contented sigh. It was so high up! His friends from the Jedi academy joined him.

“Ah,” Tenel Ka said. “Aha. An interesting sensation.”

Zekk said, “Whoa—and I thought the trees you liked to climb were high!” He gave Lowie an admiring look and stepped back from the edge of the platform. “I sure wouldn’t want to fall.”

“Hey, they’ve got some neat indigenous animals,” Jacen said, pointing at a flock of small creatures flying below them in the clouds. “Bespin has life-forms different from any place else in the galaxy.”

Anja seemed completely at ease with the height and moved up close beside Lowie at the edge of the platform, standing with one hand cocked on her hip. “Nice view,” she commented.

As Lando and Jaina emerged after shutting down the Lady Luck’s systems, a small and somber group of Exex, the city officials, marched across the docking platform toward the space yacht. At first Lowie thought it might be a small committee to welcome home the former Baron-Administrator of Cloud City—but he could sense immediately that something was wrong.

Lando raised a hand in greeting. “Good to be back. How ya doing?” He looked at them, perplexed. “This is all the fanfare you could manage?”

But the tiny group of officials converged around Lando and all began speaking at once in hushed voices.

“What? Wait a minute, now! One at a time.” Lowie, hearing Lando’s voice rise in alarm, moved closer so he could hear. His sensitive Wookiee ears picked up the words, and he froze as one of the female officials spoke in a low firm voice.

“It’s true, sir. I saw him fall myself. The Wing Guard has ruled it a suicide. Your partner Cojahn is dead.”