▸ Column · Star Wars — Rebellion-era refugee resettlement on a backwater relief station
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
I'm the only relief worker on a backwater resettlement station who speaks the dialect of the families we pulled off a dead world — three years now, helping them through the ration-permit and housing-block bureaucracy nobody else can read. Every time I mention leaving, the station administrator's eyes well up and she reminds me forty families have nobody else who can talk to them. Now a bigger relief outfit's offered me real credits, actual medical coverage, and a team to run instead of forty cases crushing me alone. Here's the thing: she's had eight months to bring on a second translator and hasn't even posted the opening. I'm starting to think "we need you" is just a leash with a nice ribbon on it. I filed my notice and she immediately called an emergency council session to "address the crisis" — which feels like a hostage standoff where I'm somehow both the hostage and the one holding the blaster. How do I stand my ground without feeling like I personally walked out on forty families who never did a thing wrong?
Han Solo replies
Kid, let's start with the tears, 'cause that's where she wants you looking. Eight months. Eight months and she didn't even post the job. You don't sit on a hole that big in the hull unless you've decided the leak's working in your favor. Watch the hands, not the mouth — and her hands have been in your pocket the whole time. "We need you" is free. Try this one: she had a real chance to fix this and chose not to, because a fixed problem walks out the door.
Now the part I'm not gonna let you off on. Forty families aren't a guilt trip. They're real, and they're actually counting on you, and that's the rarest thing there is. But there's a difference between abandoning somebody and leaving smart. Take the offer — that's not even a question. Then you do the handoff your way: write down everything you carry in your head, the contacts, the permit tricks, all of it, and hand it over clean. That council "crisis" meeting? That's the obvious trap. Don't fly straight into it expecting a fair fight. You set the terms. You're not the one who left these people short. She did, eight months ago.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
Of course he tells you to dodge the room. He'd rather slip out a side hatch and call it strategy. Don't. Walk into that council session and run it — it's your last command, so give it like one. Bring the handoff document. Name the date you leave, out loud, on the record, and name the eight months she spent not hiring. She turned forty families into a hostage line; you turn that same room into the moment you make their care someone else's job, properly. You're not abandoning anyone. She did that already. The difference between you and her is you'll do it where everyone can see.
— Leia Organa
▸ Read next