Read Star Wars Journal - The Fight for Justice by Luke Skywalker for Free Online

Wookiee.
    He was back pretty soon with a Corellian. They’re humans, and this one wasn’t that much bigger than I am, but… well, there’s something about him. He’s kind of cocky and self-assured, and more than a little flippant. But you can see, immediately, that he’s kind of special.
    It’s in the way he holds himself, I guess. Like he knows the galaxy’s against him, and he doesn’t care. He’ll take whatever is thrown at him and come out swinging. He had a blaster, hung low on his hip, kind of gunfighter style, and a casual manner about his dress, his speech, and his way of doing things. This was Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon .
    Ben seemed to like him right away, and they started negotiating.
    Early on I gathered a few things about Captain Solo. First, he and Chewie are the only crew of the ship. Second, Solo is a smuggler. I don’t have much of a problem with that; I guess some goods are essential to almost all known worlds, and the Empire imposes some pretty outrageous taxes. Most people don’t consider smugglers to be serious criminals, but they’re generally reckoned to be pretty dangerous customers. They’re avoided for the most part. It’s a profession that attracts people with big egos, who take big chances and who reap big profits…
    Or death.
    The Imperials don’t like their taxes being avoided, and they hunt out spice smugglers. Nobody in a place like this cantina would ever turn in a spice runner, but with all the stormtroopers in the city, one whiff of any contraband spice and Solo could be fried in a second. Still, you don’t get to be very old in the spice trade if you’re not fast on your feet and faster with your wits. Solo looked old enough to be both of these.
    Luckily, Solo didn’t much care that the Imperials were after us; it sort of put us on equal footing—as renegades. The problem was, he wanted a spice profit for a flight to Alderaan. Ten thousand credits!
    That was way out of our league, and Ben knew it. But it didn’t seem to bother him. He made a counteroffer of two thousand upfront, and another fifteen at Alderaan. He was obviously planning to get it from the princess, which made sense. I mean, she’s a princess, right? She’s bound to have more money than even she can spend. Of course, we still had to come up with two thousand. I had about thirty in my pockets, and Ben didn’t have a single coin. He said he always managed to get along without any. I can’t see how, myself, but I’m starting to learn that Ben’s pretty different from most people.
    We left Solo and Chewie at the cantina and headed over to a used speeder lot with Artoo and Threepio. As usual, the dealer tried to cut us down in price, and Ben’s use of the Force saved us again. We needed two thousand for Captain Solo, and that’s what Ben got us. I’m sure the dealer’s going to wonder why he was so generous when he recovers, but he can still sell the landspeeder at a profit, so we didn’t feel too badly.
    Then we headed for the docking bay where Solo has his ship. In the cantina, he told us how fast it was, and how trim, and how… well, pretty much what a wonder it was. I should have known better than to believe everything he said, of course. When I saw the Falcon , I could tell it was a piece of junk.
    It was worn down, rebuilt, and jury-rigged. You could see the weld marks, the mismatched pieces, the forced-together technology. It looked like one serious landing would shake the ship to pieces. But Ben only smiled, like this was exactly what he’d expected. I can’t figure him out sometimes. I was sure we were being conned.
    Then Solo and the Wookiee appeared, and we headed for the ship for takeoff. That’s when the stormtroopers took us by surprise.
    Maybe the ones Ben had fooled had come to their senses. Maybe they had sniffed the spices. Maybe they were just plain lucky and were checking out the spaceport on the off chance of finding their droids skipping the planet.