We’re continuing with the Han Solo Adventures with Part 2 of the series.

Writer: Brian Daley
Publication Date: October 12, 1979

The Han Solo Adventures are available from Amazon.com

Plot Notes

Han Solo and Chewbacca are stuck on an alien desert planet after a water smuggling run went bad – making some money with an impromptu theater showing holos of a water planet to the natives. After the natives revolt when Han changes up the holos (learning, in the process, that the “ticket” cost was considered “tribute”) Han and Chewie clear out and, in order to make some quick money to swap out their crappy replacement “fluidic” (instead of hydraulic) hardware with more conventional equipment, take on a quick cargo job through a blind contract. Player characters would realize that this is a bad idea. Han and Chewie also learn after the fact that this is a bad idea, as the blind contract gets their ship taken over by slavers, who are planning to run slaves on the ship, and then presumably kill Han and Chewie instead of paying them.

Han and Chewie object to this for several reasons:

1. First, the penalty to slaving is death in the Corporate Sector (no word on the penalty in the Empire – the Hutts certainly doesn’t care)
2. Second, Han and Chewie have some moral objections to slaving.
3. Third, Han and Chewie know that they’re not going to get paid, and object to not getting paid for services rendered.

So, Han and Chewie take out the slaver, free the slaves, and then set out to smash their way through the slaver’s organization until they get the money they’re owed. Along the way they get caught up with CorpSec (not CorSec – that’s something else entirely) security people who want to bust the slavers for a big promotion (and also corruption in CorpSec security), and a skip-tracer who wants to seize the Falcon.

World Building

• The Corporate Sector Authority has a death penalty on slaving.
• Han is not the Falcon’s first owner (whether the debt the Skip Tracer is trying to collect is Lando’s or an owner prior to Lando is unknown)
• The Corporate Sector Authority allows non-humans in authority positions.
• You can break the hold of a tractor beam by moving with the beam until you can put the ship’s mass between you and the emitter. This presumably doesn’t work with Star Destroyers because they have multiple emitters, and even it did work with them, it wouldn’t work with the Death Star because how do you pull that trick on a battle station the size of a moon.
• First Appearance of the Swoop Bike and, indeed, any sort of hover-bike-vehicle.

Character Development

Chewbacca is no slouch in the engineering department, building an impromptu glider out of a tripod, a dead flying animal, and the ammo bandolier for his bowcaster. McGuyver, eat your heart out.

Other Notes

This story tries to get across that the Corporate Sector Authority isn’t particularly evil, it just has too much control for Han Solo’s taste, and if they weren’t as rigid in their control of free traders like Han, he might even be able to get along nicely in the Corporate Sector, maybe. Though, then he wouldn’t have had any reason to work for Jabba, and in turn be in Tatooine, setting up his introduction in A New Hope.

My Thoughts

Like Han Solo at Stars’ End, this is a pulp adventure story, with Fiolla, Han’s love interest, being his semi-femme fatale romantic foil – just as competent as Han, but able to get Han to let down his guard due to his weakness to women. If the analogy of Han Solo as played by Humphrey Bogart wasn’t clear before, it’s clear here.