Jaina knew the shutdown procedures for the Corellian light freighter, but she wished that just for today there was some way to speed things up. When she thought she could wait no longer, the landing ramp of the Falcon lowered with a whine-thump.
And then their father bounded down the ramp, gathering the twins into his arms, ruffling their hair, and trying to hug both of them at once, as he had done when they were small children.
Han Solo stepped back to take a good look at his children. “Well!” he said at last, with one of those lopsided grins for which he was so famous. “Except for your mother, I’d say this is the finest welcoming committee I’ve ever had.”
“Dad,” Jacen said, rolling his eyes, “We are not a committee.”
As her father laughed, Jaina took a moment to study him, and was relieved to note that he had not changed in the month that they had been gone from home. He wore soft black trousers and boots that fitted him snugly, an open-necked white shirt, and a dark vest—a comfortable, serviceable set of clothes that he sometimes jokingly referred to as his “working uniform.” The battered, familiar shape of the Millennium Falcon was unchanged as well.
“How do we look, Dad?” Jaina asked. “Any different?”
“Well, now that you mention it…” he said, turning his gaze to each of them in turn. “Jacen, you’ve grown again—bet you even caught up with your sister. And Jaina,” he said with a wicked grin, “if I didn’t think you’d throw a hydrospanner at me for saying so, I’d tell you that you’re even prettier than you were a month ago.”
Jaina blushed and gave an unladylike snort to demonstrate what she thought of such compliments, but secretly she was pleased.
A loud, echoing roar from inside the ship saved her the embarrassment of having to come up with a response. A large form thundered down the boarding ramp. Huge heavily furred arms reached out to grab Jaina and threw her high into the air.
“Chewie!” Jaina shrieked, laughing as the giant Wookiee caught her again on the way down. “I’m not a little kid anymore!” After Chewbacca had repeated this greeting ritual with her brother, Jaina finally said what she and Jacen were thinking. “It’s good to see you, Dad, but what brings you to the Jedi academy?”
“Yeah,” Jacen added. “Mom didn’t send you to check if we had enough clean underwear, did she?”
“Nah, nothing like that,” their father assured them with a laugh. “Actually, Chewie and I needed to come out this direction to help my old friend Lando Calrissian open up a new operation.”
Jaina had always had a great fondness for Lando, her father’s dark and dashing friend, but she also knew him well enough to realize that her adopted “uncle” Lando was always involved in some crackpot moneymaking scheme or another. She held up a hand to stop her father.
“Wait, let me guess. He’s—he’s starting a new casino on his space station and he needed you to bring him a shipload of sabacc cards.”
“No, no, I’ve got it,” Jacen said. “He’s opening a new Nerf ranch and he wants you to help him build a corral.”
At this Chewbacca threw back his head and bleated with Wookiee laughter.
“Not even close.” Han Solo shook his head. “Corusca gem mining deep in the atmosphere of the gas giant.” He pointed up to the great orange ball of the planet Yavin in the sky overhead. “He asked us to come and help him set up the operation.”
“Oh, blaster bolts!” said Jacen, snapping his fingers. “That was going to be my next guess.”
Another faint Wookiee-sounding bellow came from inside the Millennium Falcon. Chewbacca turned and strode back up the ramp.
“What was that?” Jaina asked.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Han said. “When Luke found out we had to come here anyway, he asked us to stop by Chewie’s homeworld of Kashyyyk and pick up a new Jedi candidate. He’s going to be your fellow student.”
As Han spoke, Chewbacca thumped back down the ramp, closely followed by a smaller Wookiee, who was still taller than Jacen or Jaina. The younger Wookiee had thick swirls of ginger-colored fur, with a remarkable swirling black streak as wide as Jaina’s hand that ran from just above his left eye up over his head and down to the middle of his back. He wore only a belt woven of some glossy fiber that Jaina could not identify.
“Kids, I’d like you to meet Chewie’s nephew Lowbacca. Lowbacca, my kids Jacen and Jaina.”
Lowbacca nodded his head and growled a Wookiee greeting. He was thin and lanky, even for a Wookiee, with gangly fur-covered arms and legs. The young Wookiee fidgeted. Chewbacca barked a question to Han and waved one massive arm in the direction of the temple.
“Sure,” Han said. “Go ahead—take him to Luke for now. The kids can get to know each other later.”
As the two Wookiees headed off to find Luke, Han said, “Wait here, I have something for you,” and ducked back into the Falcon. He returned in a few moments, his arms laden with a strange assortment of packages and greenery.
“First,” he said, tossing each of them a small message disk, “your mother recorded these personal holo letters for you. There’s another one from your little brother Anakin. He can’t wait to come here himself.”
Jaina looked at the glittering message disks, anxious to play them. But she slipped them into one of the pockets of her jumpsuit.
“And now…” Han said, holding up a large bouquet of green fronds sprinkled with purple and white star-shaped blossoms. Grinning, he waggled the flowers.
“Oh, Dad, you remembered!”
Jacen ran forward ecstatically. “My stump lizard’s favorite food.” He took the leafy bundle gratefully and said, “I’ll feed ’em to her right away. See you later, Dad.” Then he ran off in the direction of the Great Temple.
Jaina stood alone with her father, looking expectantly at the last bulky package he held in his arms. He set it on the weedy ground of the landing clearing and stepped back so that Jaina could pull aside the rags that covered it.
“Great wrapping job, Dad,” she said, smiling.
“Hey, it works.” Han spread his hands.
Jaina gasped as she removed the coverings, then looked up at her father, who grinned and shrugged nonchalantly. “A hyperdrive unit!” she said.
“It’s not in working condition, you understand,” he said. “And it’s pretty old. I got it off an old Imperial Delta-class shuttle they were dismantling on Coruscant.”
Jaina remembered fondly the times she had helped her father tinker with the Falcon’s subsystems to keep it running in peak condition—or as close as they could get. “Oh, Dad, you couldn’t have picked a better present!” She jumped up and hugged him, wrapping her arms around his dark vest. She could tell that her father was pleased—and maybe even a little embarrassed—by her enthusiasm.
Her father looked down at her and raised one eyebrow. “You know, there’s a couple more components on the ship. If you wanted to help me bring ’em out here, your dad could show you how they all go together.”
She ran after him into the ship.
5
It was late that morning when Jacen and Jaina finally caught up with their father, Chewbacca, and his nephew Lowbacca. The twins, who had spent hours at their respective assigned duties and Jedi training exercises, arrived back at the students’ quarters just as they saw the threesome emerge from a formerly empty room.
“Hi!” Jacen called, hurrying up to Lowbacca with his sister in tow. “Are you tired from your trip? If not, I could show you my room. I have some really unusual pets. I collected most of them from the jungles here and Jaina made some cages for them—you should see those cages—and Jaina could show you her room too. She’s got all sorts of broken-down equipment that she uses to build things out of.” In his enthusiasm, Jacen never even paused to take a breath.