Scoundrels

Plot summary

Publisher's summary

Han is willing to accept even greater risks to achieve his most significant accomplishment. However, he cannot complete this task on his own.

Han Solo arguably ought to be enjoying the fruits of his recent success. The audacious smuggler and captain of the Millennium Falcon played a vital role in the daring assault that resulted in the destruction of the Death Star, striking a significant blow against the Empire in its conflict with the Rebel Alliance. However, after losing the reward he deserved for his heroic actions, Han has little to celebrate. He is also deeply in debt to the merciless crime lord Jabba the Hutt. A bounty has been placed on Han's head, and if he cannot come up with the credits, he will undoubtedly pay with his life. A king's ransom is the only thing that can save him. Or perhaps a gangster's wealth? That is what a mysterious stranger is offering in exchange for Han's assistance with a caper that is riskier than usual. The payoff will be more than enough for Han to settle his debt with Jabba and ensure that he never has to negotiate with the Hutts again.

His only task is to infiltrate the heavily fortified stronghold of a Black Sun crime syndicate underboss and crack the galaxy's most notoriously impenetrable safe. It sounds like a task for miracle workers or lunatics. As a result, Han gathers a group of rogues who are a combination of both, including his indispensable sidekick Chewbacca and the shrewd Lando Calrissian. If anyone can evade, deceive, and defeat heavily armed thugs, killer droids, and Imperial agents alike, and pull off the heist of the century, it is Solo's scoundrels. But will their crime truly pay off, or will it cost them everything?

Plot summary

The narrative unfolds in 0 ABY, occurring shortly after the Battle of Yavin. Han Solo had been granted his reward by the Alliance to Restore the Republic. However, Crimson Jack, a pirate, subsequently stole his payment, leaving him with a significant debt to Jabba the Hutt and no way to repay him. Han responded to a job posting at Reggilio's Cantina on the planet Wukkar. There, following a brief encounter with Falsta, a bounty hunter, he met Eanjer Kunarazti.

Eanjer informed Han that Avrak Villachor, a local crime boss, had murdered Eanjer's father and stolen over 163 million credits from his family. Eanjer hired Han to assemble a team of con artists and thieves to break into Villachor's heavily guarded vault at Marblewood Estate, situated in Iltarr City, and retrieve the money for an even split.

Han contacted Rachele Ree, a local fixer, who helped him locate the following team members: Bink Kitik, a ghost thief, and her twin sister Tavia, an electronics expert; Zerba Cher'dak, a magician and sleight-of-hand expert; and Dozer Creed, a shipjacker. While Han and Chewie were gathering their new team members, Mazzic, a mutual acquaintance of Han and Rachele, sent help in the form of Kell Tainer, an explosives and droid expert, and Winter, a woman with a perfect memory. Finally, due to a misunderstanding, Lando Calrissian also arrived as the group's front man, despite a recent falling out between him and Han.

Meanwhile, two Imperial Intelligence agents, D'Ashewl and Dayja, arrived on the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Dominator tracking Qazadi, a Falleen Black Sun Vigo. Qazadi arrived on Wukkar and was staying as a guest at Villachor's estate. Both Dayja and Han's team discovered that an important VIP was staying at the Lulina Crown Hotel and traveling between the hotel and Villachor's estate multiple times a day. Han's team surveilled the hotel and discovered that Aziel, a Falleen, was staying there with a large safe. The team decided to break into the safe to discover the identity of Villachor's guest and steal whatever was being heavily guarded. As Bink, Winter, and Chewie broke into the hotel suite, Dozer and Kell distracted the guards, allowing Bink and Winter to discover that the safe contained a cryodex, an ancient Alderaanian encryption device that was unhackable. Meanwhile, Dayja discovered Han's team watching Villachor and Aziel, contacted Eanjer, and made a deal with him. In exchange for Dayja providing additional intelligence, Eanjer would turn over the cryodex and the encrypted files stored in Villachor's vault. Using Dayja's information, Eanjer explained to the rest of the team that Villachor was heavily involved in Black Sun and that the encrypted files stored in Villachor's vault were a cornerstone of Black Sun's power, making the files and the cryodex to decode them almost priceless.

Over the following week, the team prepared and cased the estate while Villachor hosted the Festival of Four Honorings, a grand event where Villachor's estate was open to the public. As part of the plan, Bink attached herself to Lapis Sheqoa, Villachor's chief of security, Dozer attempted to bribe several of Villachor's security staff, and Lando introduced himself to Villachor under the alias of Kwerve, offering to help Villachor defect to a mysterious rival organization. Lando sweetened his offer by stating that his organization had a working cryodex, which surprised Villachor as less than a dozen had survived the destruction of Alderaan. Lando agreed to return later with the cryodex as proof of his offer. Meanwhile, Villachor became increasingly paranoid that Lando and all the other mysterious events caused by Han's team were either Qazadi or even Prince Xizor attempting to test his loyalty or position him for failure and replacement.

Lando arrived as agreed with a fake cryodex that Winter had recreated from her brief inspection of the one held in Aziel's vault. Villachor demanded proof that the cryodex could actually decode a file, and using information provided by both Han and Rachele, Lando bluffed his way through the meeting and convinced Villachor that the cryodex was legitimate. In the process, they swapped out the datacard Villachor gave them with a fake card containing sophisticated sensors to get readings from inside Villachor's vault. Soon after departing, however, Lando and Zerba, who had been carrying the cryodex in a case, were kidnapped by corrupt police on orders from Qazadi. They attempted to steal the cryodex, but Han, Chewie, Winter, and Kell were able to rescue them.

At the next opportunity, Han contacted Villachor and offered to set up a meeting between him and the leader of Lando's shadowy organization while the rest of the team made their final preparations. As more and more unexplained events occurred, Villachor became paranoid enough to make preliminary contacts with the Imperials, hoping that if he defected and turned over information on Black Sun's organization, they could protect him from whatever was happening. However, in the end, he decided against it. Dayja warned Eanjer, but Eanjer decided not to warn the rest of the team that Villachor might be taking an unexpected turn by dealing with the Empire.

Finally, the day of the heist arrived, and the entire team sprang into action. Han approached Villachor with a datacard supposedly containing the time and place for a meeting, but Villachor immediately took him prisoner. Dayja, who had been making his own attempts to infiltrate both Villachor's organization and estate, was also spotted and captured. Bink, who had been flirting with Sheqoa throughout the festival, stole his keycard to gain access to the estate and then used one of Zerba's illusions to switch places with Tavia, so Tavia was with Sheqoa, and Bink was free to infiltrate the house. Sheqoa immediately suspected Bink of stealing his keycard, but as he was now with Tavia, he could find no evidence of the theft. Even so, Qazadi ordered her into the estate for a more in-depth interrogation.

With several members captured, the team had to improvise. Lando dead-dropped the cryodex in an attempt to ransom Han, but no one on the team expected that to actually work. Instead, they realized that as Winter had copied Aziel's cryodex perfectly, Qazadi would immediately suspect his aide of treachery and summon him to the estate. If the team could keep the real cryodex from being in the same room as the fake, Qazadi would keep the prisoners alive to extract more information. Winter and Dozer returned to the hotel to stall Aziel while Bink, Zerba, and Kell infiltrated the estate. Both Han and Dayja escaped their captors, and Han joined his team while Dayja went to the roof to observe. Bink, Zerba, and Kell cut their way into the vault chamber and used data from the fake datacard on the inside to penetrate the vault completely. Meanwhile, Winter and Dozer staged a landspeeder accident and then hotwired Aziel's landspeeder to operate remotely. Dozer took control of the vehicle and smashed Aziel and his bodyguards all over a parking garage before opening the side door and grabbing the cryodex while the guards were too dazed to react. Dozer and Winter tried to escape but were stopped by a detachment of stormtroopers who put everyone under arrest. Unexpectedly, D'Ashewl appeared and let Dozer and Winter go in exchange for the cryodex. When Winter communicated this to the team, they realized that Eanjer's contact had been with Imperial Intelligence and became aware that there was another operation underway.

Villachor realized that the intruders were already breaking into his vault and tried to get there in time, but due to various delays organized by the team, he was too late to catch Bink, Zerba, and Kell. Instead, when he opened the vault chambers, explosives detonated, causing the vault, shaped like a sphere, to roll out of the estate entirely and into the front lawn. Meanwhile, Lando, Chewie, Bink, and Eanjer attempted to rescue Tavia from Qazadi's chambers. Bink arrived first but was quickly incapacitated by the Falleen's pheromones. While Chewie and Lando dealt with the last of Qazadi's guards, Eanjer arrived and killed Qazadi with a hidden hold-out blaster pistol. Lando, Chewie, Bink, and Tavia quickly escaped from the estate while Eanjer stayed behind, claiming he had to finish his revenge on Villachor. Out on the front lawn, Kell and Zerba emerged from the vault with both credits and blackmail files, and the rest of the team arrived and picked them up. Lando left early, exchanging his share for the blackmail files. Dayja spotted him leaving with the box, however, and alerted the orbiting Star Destroyer to capture him. Unbeknownst to Lando and Dayja, Han had handed over an empty box instead of the blackmail files, realizing that Dayja had been watching.

Eanjer, meanwhile, hurried to the landing bay where the Millennium Falcon was parked, waiting to ambush Han and Chewie when they arrived to leave. He realized too late, however, that what he thought was the Millennium Falcon was actually a decoy set up by Dozer. Han's team had learned that the real Eanjer had been killed six weeks prior, long before hiring Han, and that the whole deal had been a setup. Without the real Eanjer to unlock the credit tabs where the money was stored, the team would have to settle for significantly less, about eighty thousand credits each instead of 14.8 million. Han offered to exchange his share for the blackmail files, intending to turn them over to the Alliance.

Development

At the 2011 New York City ComicCon, during the Del Rey Star Wars Books panel, it was announced that Timothy Zahn would be authoring a Han Solo novel set within the original trilogy era.

Timothy Zahn communicated via Facebook that his story received official approval on February 22, 2012. Initially, the book's release was slated for "Winter 2012," later specified as December 26, 2012. However, on October 1, 2012, Random House postponed the release of all books scheduled for the twenty-sixth to January 1, 2013.

When conceiving the narrative for Scoundrels, Timothy Zahn looked to the Ocean's 11 film, starring Frank Sinatra, for inspiration. The film was later remade featuring George Clooney.

Media

Editions

• ISBN 9780345511508 ; January 1 , 2013 ; Del Rey ; US hardcover [1]
• ISBN 9780345511508 ; 2013; Del Rey; US hardcover, Science Fiction Book Club edition (1364596) [11]
• ISBN 9780345536570 ; January 1, 2013; Del Rey; US eBook [2]
• ISBN 9780345511515 ; November 26 , 2013; Del Rey; US paperback [3]
• ISBN 9780593974339 ; February 4 , 2025 ; Random House Worlds ; The Essential Legends Collection Paperback [12]

Cover gallery