Honor Among Thieves

“You know what I find?” Leia asked.

“About?” Han responded.

“Things with layers. When you peel off a layer, you usually find another, smaller layer of the same stuff underneath.”

Han laughed despite himself. “You asking to look?”

She swatted him, but he could see her smiling under the veil. If it weren’t for the mud, creepers, stinging bugs, and nearby presence of a hyperspace-disrupting alien technology already at least half under the control of the Empire, it might have been a very pleasant walk.

Something the size of Han’s hands flapped out of the jungle canopy and landed on the Bothan’s shoulder. It had large, diaphanous wings in dozens of bright colors. They seemed to sparkle and radiate even with only the faint light the jungle let in. The body was thin and multi-legged and graceful, with a small, wedge-shaped head and large, black eyes. A long tail curled behind it, quivering gently.

Han froze. “Sunnim,” he said loudly, though trying to keep his tone conversational so no one panicked. “Do not move.”

Scarlet stopped and turned around, her face lighting up when she saw the fragile-looking creature. “Oh, would you look at that!”

“Kill it, kill it now,” Han repeated, still keeping his voice level and light.

Scarlet frowned at him, but to her credit she started to slowly pull the knife off her belt. “Are you sure? It doesn’t seem—”

While she was speaking, Sunnim reached up and touched one of the delicate wings. “Pretty” was all he had time to say before the long, curling tail snapped out and struck him in the throat. Scarlet yanked out her knife, but Han already had his blaster in his hand and in one shot blew the creature off the Bothan’s shoulder in a shower of flaming bug parts.

Sunnim stood rigid, the color of his skin darkening all around the angry, red wound the stinger had left. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a stuttering gasp came out, followed by a spray of foamy saliva. Scarlet and Baasen rushed to him, helping to lay him gently to the ground. The Bothan continued to choke out an increasing spray of white foam, his body stiff and trembling.

Scarlet pulled the medpac off her waist, but by the time she’d opened it, the Bothan’s struggle was over. Sunnim lay stiff, staring up at the sky through sightless eyes.

“Sorry, my boy,” Baasen said, his hand under Sunnim’s head, the stump of his other arm on the dead man’s chest.

Scarlet slowly put her medical supplies away, shaking her head. “Great. The things that look like monsters aren’t, but one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen can kill in seconds with one sting? What kind of world is this?”

“When something hangs out in an environment as dangerous as this in bright, eye-catching colors, it’s because it’s the meanest thing in the jungle. The brightness is a warning, not an invitation,” Han told her.

Leia put a hand on Baasen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“My thanks to you,” Baasen said, standing up and brushing the mud from the knees of his pants. “Not that the cheap little bastard was a friend, but I appreciate the courtesy.”

“Maybe I should walk up front,” Han said. He took the lead with Scarlet when they started moving again. The poor Bothan’s rotten cabbage smell didn’t seem offensive anymore, only sort of sad. The last of the scent quickly faded behind them, replaced by the jungle’s sour dirt stink.

“What makes you such an expert on alien life?” Scarlet asked after a few minutes.

“I’ve been all over the galaxy. Seen a lot of stuff,” Han said, panting with exertion. “Plus, I have common sense.” The ground level had started to angle up, and the steep climb only made walking in the mud that much harder.

“Lot of deadly butterflies?” Scarlet asked, half teasing. Han was gratified to hear she was puffing, too.

“There’s a million variations of the same things, but they’re the things you see over and over,” Han said. “The eyes go near the mouth. Dangerous things get warning colors. We’ve all got eyes and legs, because eyes and legs are useful things to have no matter where you come from.”

“Fascinating.”

“You asked, sweetheart.”

After a few more minutes of climbing they reached the top of a rocky hill. The trees thinned out, and they could see sky again. There were still brightly colored streamers of energy spreading across the blue, and columns of smoke showed where pieces of the Star Destroyer had fallen through the atmosphere.

Off in the distance, in the direction they’d been traveling, a massive construction of cut stone poked up through the jungle canopy.

“Looks like you’ve got us heading the right way,” Han said, pointing out the massive temple to Scarlet.

“Good work,” Leia said, coming up to stand beside them. “I’d hate to get lost in this.”

“You and me both,” Han replied.

“ ’Bout an hour, you think?” Baasen asked, pulling out his datapad and trying to bounce a rangefinder off the top of the temple.

“Sure,” Scarlet said with a shrug. “If we don’t fall in a sinkhole, or get eaten by bog monsters, or stung to death by bugs, or run into some new horror we haven’t seen yet. I believe someone mentioned snakes earlier.”

Baasen laughed and put a companionable arm around Scarlet’s shoulder. “I like you, girl. You’ve got spunk.”

Scarlet laughed back. “I don’t like you. You’re about to lose another hand.”

Baasen kept his smile, but he removed his arm from her shoulder.

Half an hour later, they finally found a snake. A massive creature, twice as big around as Han’s waist, with bright scales like burnished copper and brass. It lay motionless across their path like a fallen log, the head and tail so far away they weren’t visible in the dim light and underbrush.

“Do we shoot it?” Baasen wondered aloud.

“It’s not moving,” Han said. “It seems perfectly happy. Look.” He jumped over the thick body of the snake. “Just leave it alone.”

Scarlet hopped over the thick, scaly body, then held out her hand to Leia. The princess was shorter than the rest of them, and leaping over the snake wasn’t as easy for her, but with Scarlet’s help she made it. Baasen backed up, gave Han a skeptical look, and then ran at the snake. When he pushed off to leap, his leg shot out from under him in the wet mud and he slammed into the snake’s side at full speed, bouncing across its back and into the mud on the other side.