▸ Column · Outer Rim spacer life — a freighter-pilot's family, port fines, casino moons, and debts owed to Hutts (Star Wars, original-trilogy era)
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
Last cycle I floated my kid brother Derek 3,400 credits to clear a port-authority fine he swore would get his pilot's license flagged across the whole sector. We shook on it — monthly repayments starting after the trade season. Seven months on, I've seen exactly one 200-credit transfer, and that only landed after I brought it up at the family meal. Felt like prying it out of a closed blast door. Then this weekend he posts a whole holo-reel from some long bender on a casino moon with his girlfriend, and I couldn't stop running the figures in my head. I don't want to torch things with my own brother over money, but I'm saving hard for a down payment on my own freighter berth, and that missing 3,200 is real to me. Do I send him a written repayment schedule, pull Mom in to mediate, or just write it off as tuition for a lesson about lending to family and never raise it again?
Han Solo replies
Thirty-four hundred and a handshake. Kid, I've got a price on my head and a Hutt who wants me decorating his wall, and you know how all that started? A deal I shook on. So believe me when I say I know the whole act from the inside — I've been the guy doing the ducking, smiling, "next month, I swear." It's all hands and no mouth. Watch the hands.
And his hands just booked a casino moon. That's your answer, right there. He's not broke. He's choosing. The holo-reel told you everything the one sad little transfer was supposed to cover up.
So let's kill your three doors. Writing it off and never speaking? That's not peace, that's fear with the lights off — and it'll sit in your gut every time you look at that berth you couldn't afford. Pulling in your mom? Don't hand her your collection job. That's your brother and your money; you don't outsource that.
Send him the number. Your name on it, plain, to his face. Then watch what he does when paying you back costs him a weekend. Now you'll actually know him.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
Cute, Han — "send the number and watch." Watch how long, exactly? He's already shown you who he is; you don't need another season of surveillance to confirm it. A schedule you just "watch" is a soothing speech with a spreadsheet attached. Spare me.
Give him a date — first of next month — and tell him plainly what's true if it doesn't come: that his word stops being worth anything to you, and you'll stop lending it weight. That's not revenge, it's clarity, and decide it now, before he charms you out of it. I love a man who'd dodge a debt and then fly into any fire for me. Derek needs to learn which of those he's going to be — and you're the one who gets to make him choose.
— Leia Organa
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