Read Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I for Free Online Page B

shook his head mournfully.
    Leia placed her fingers under Han’s chin and turned his head. Positioning herself in his gaze, she smiled broadly. “You know what I remember most? The time Chewie strapped me to his chest and carried me across the underside of Rwookrrorro. Like I was a toddler.”
    Han snorted. “Consider yourself lucky. One time I had to ride in a quulaar slung from Tarkazza.”
    Leia clamped a hand over her mouth but laughed anyway. “Katara’s father—the one with the silver stripe on his back?”
    “That’s the one.” Han laughed with her, but only for a moment. Then he turned and gazed out over the treetops. “It gets easier for a moment, then I’m right back to remembering. How long does it take, Leia? Till you’re past it?”
    She sighed. “I don’t know how to answer that without sounding trite. Life is all about change, Han. Look at this place: luma-poles have begun to replace phosflealanterns, repulsorlift vehicles are replacing banthas … Things have a strange way of reversing direction when you least expect them to. Enemies become friends, adversaries become confederates. The very Noghri who tried to kill me became my protectors. Gilad Pellaeon, who once came here to enslave Wookiees, fought with us at Ithor against the Yuuzhan Vong. Could anyone have predicted that?” Leia extended her hands to massage his shoulders. “Eventually the heartache fades.”
    Han’s muscles bunched under her touch. “That’s the problem. The heartache fades.”
    He sat down, letting his feet dangle over the edge of the bridge. Leia squatted behind him and wrapped her arms around him. They remained unmoving for a long moment.
    “I’m losing him, Leia,” he said despondently. “I know he’s dead, but I used to be able to feel him alongside me, just outside the edge of my vision. It’s like if I turned quickly enough, I’d catch sight of him. I could hear him, too, clear as day, laughing or complaining about something I’d done. I swear, I’ve had conversations with him that were as real as this one. But something’s changed. I have to think long and hard to really see him, or hear him.”
    “You’re getting on with your life, Han,” Leia said softly.
    He laughed shortly. “Getting on with my life? I don’t think so. Not till I’ve found some way to make his death count for something.”
    “He saved Anakin,” Leia reminded.
    “That’s not what I mean. I want the Yuuzhan Vong topay for what they did at Sernpidal—and for all that they’re continuing to do.”
    Leia stiffened. “I can understand that coming from Anakin, Han, because he’s young and hasn’t figured things out. But please don’t make me hear it from you.”
    He shrugged out of her hold. “What makes you think I know any more about life than Anakin knows?”
    She dropped her hands by her sides and stood up. “That’s something I hadn’t considered, Han.”
    “Well, maybe you should,” he rasped, without turning around.
    Where moments earlier images of the sacrifice had played, twenty captives now huddled inside an inhibition field, raised and sustained by two small bloodred dovin basals. At the center of the mixed-species group stood the Gotal H’kig priest, whom Harrar had promised imminent death. The field’s hemispherical outline shimmered like waves of rising heat.
    With Harrar, Nom Anor, Raff, Elan, and her pet observing from the command platform, a youthful Yuuzhan Vong warrior wearing a wine-colored tunic entered the hold, paid obeisance to his elite audience, and approached the field.
    “An assassin,” Elan said to Vergere in hushed surprise.
    “A mere apprentice,” Harrar amended. “Said to show little promise—though the task he is about to execute will escalate him in the eyes of many.”
    Ripples played across the immaterial surface of the inhibition field as the warrior stepped through its one-way perimeter. Nearby guards raised their amphistaffs in anticipation of a desperate charge, but