by Renee Ahdieh
“How?”
“Let’s steal the Falcon.”
—
When Brea Tonnika stepped into Chalmun’s Cantina, she felt just as she had during her first con back on Kiffex. Her palms were sweating and her heart was racing out of her chest. Back then, she and Senni had been trying to break a friend out of a detention center. Back then, no credits had been involved, just duty. Everything had gone smoothly, until a guard came back to his post early and caught them. Brea stayed behind to give them cover, and her sweaty, nervous hands shot to kill. It was only her on the footage.
After that they had no choice but to go offworld. To run and keep running until there came a day when they would have a place to call home that wasn’t a dank rented room or a freighter ship.
“It’s the fastest ship in the galaxy,” Brea pleaded with her sister.
“That’s what Han says, and everyone’s too scared to challenge him. Besides, Jabba’s reward could buy a dozen fast ships.”
They looked down at the same time, as if they were sharing the same thought—the rancor devouring the Wookiee at Jabba’s palace. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen the creature in action, but every time they hoped it would be the last. Brea wondered if she could really leave Solo to that fate. She steeled her heart because taking care of Senni would always come first.
Senni sighed and said, “I don’t know. Solo would probably rather take his chances with the entire Empire than give up his ship.”
“He’s a rat roach,” Brea said, and chuckled. “I know he’s somewhere on this dirtball trying to find a new soul to swindle. But we’ve got to act now, Sen. We have to beat Jabba’s men to the ship. The place is crawling with stormtroopers. If it goes south, there is no way I’m taking work from the Empire. Not after what they’ve done to our kind.”
“You’re a hunter,” Senni reminded her. “You don’t get to choose where your job comes from.”
“If this is our last job, then yes, we can choose.”
So they chose. Brea cut a path through the tightly packed dark aisles of the tavern and settled at the bar. Wuher, the bartender, barely looked in their direction before he pulled on a draft handle and set two tall glasses in front of them. Not one for pleasantries, he grumbled his “hello” and stalked off to take another order.
“There he is,” Senni whispered into her sister’s ear.
A couple of regulars cozied up beside them, already in their cups, tapping their feet to the jumping rhythm of the band. Senni smiled and delighted two locals with stories of a job they had worked in the Canto Bight Casino. Meanwhile, Brea watched the crowd. A man in a brown robe walked in and struck up a conversation with a pilot. Beside her, Senni laughed and was her usual charming self.
“I tell you, I can’t get anything done with those helmet-heads parading about,” one of the locals told Brea, his thick bottom lip drooping.
“Never seen anything like it,” another one said.
That piqued Senni’s interest and she joined the conversation. From farmers to merchants, no one on Tatooine was pleased with the recent arrival of stormtroopers.
“What are they after?” she asked.
“Droids, sounds like,” the man said. “I’ve got a mess of them piled up in my shed if they want droids.”
Brea glanced at her sister and shared a frown for a moment before recommencing her careful scan of the cantina. She noticed a young farmer walk in. His hair was the shade of beaten gold, and even in the dark of the room she could see how bright his eyes were. There was an innocence about him as he asked his droids to wait outside, then walked up to the bar beside the old man in the brown robe.
Brea liked him, for some inexplicable reason. He had the kind of innocence she and Senni never could.
Then Brea grabbed her sister’s arm. “Docking Bay Ninety-Four.”
—
“Something strange is happening,” Senni told her twin as they raced through the crowded Mos Eisley streets. Each sandstone building looked exactly like the next; every person wore a cloak to protect themselves from the sand and the dust. It was the perfect port to get lost in, if one truly wanted to.
“Something strange is always happening,” Brea said. “First, there’s so much heat on this speck of rock—”
“It’s a desert, of course there’s heat.”
“You know what I mean. I think something terrible is going to happen.”
Brea sidestepped a kid racing on a hover bike. She would’ve yelled at him if she didn’t have somewhere to be. “Listen to me,” she said to Senni. “Terrible things will always happen. They happened on Kiffex and they happen on Naboo and they happen on Tatooine. There will always be a war, and there will always be someone who wants us locked up. But the only thing we can do is survive, Sen. Survive until they won’t let us.”
They got to Docking Bay 94, and there she was—the Millennium Falcon. Dirty and in need of a shine, but the Tonnika sisters knew how fast she could go. In that moment they had the same memory of seemingly endless nights aboard the most magnificent hunk of junk in the galaxy. But that was the past. Memories.
“Do you remember how to work the control panels?” Senni asked Brea.
Brea shrugged, but a quirk at her lip betrayed her thoughts. “Lando taught me a thing or two.”
They took a step toward the Falcon, but a familiar laugh stopped them cold. Jabba. Brea yanked her sister to the side and hid around a stack of crates.
“Blast!” Senni hissed.
“How many?” Brea asked.
Senni shook her head. She propped herself up and stole a glance from over the top of the crates. There were Jabba and a handful of bounty hunters, guarding the Falcon like a pack of womp rats. There were too many of them, all concentrated around the entrance to the ship. There was no way they could get on board now. Stealing the Falcon while there was a price on Solo’s head would be like stealing from Jabba himself, but it would’ve been worth it. Brea cursed herself for not acting faster, for letting her hesitation drag her down. They were too late.
“Why send hunters out for Solo if he knew where he was the whole time?” Brea wondered.
“I told you. Something strange is happening. We have to get offworld!”
“Our ride is a little off limits,” Brea whisper-hissed.
“We’ll find another way. We always do.”
Brea thought back to the time they stowed away on a ship belonging to the Ohnaka Gang or the time they were stranded in Wild Space or the time they trashed their room on Coruscant just to get back at Lando…Senni was right; they always found another way.
Brea smiled at her sister and waited for the coast to be clear. As soon as Jabba and his men weren’t looking in their direction, they slipped back out the door and onto the crowded street.
Brea and Senni Tonnika needed to regroup. Find another way to break free. It seemed as if that life they wanted was as distant as the outermost ring of the galaxy. But for now, as they ducked into a nearby alleyway, they had each other.
“You owe me a ride,” Senni told her sister after a long silence.
Brea wanted to say that she owed her more than that.
They waited to see Jabba’s next move but a scuffle broke out on the streets. Brea lifted her hood back up to see what the commotion was about. She kept close to the wall and saw a group of stormtroopers march by with rifles at the ready. Their presence ignited a wave of chatter among the street dwellers and locals, who watched them run into Docking Bay 94.
In the flurry of the moment, dozens of bodies were clamoring to see the stormtroopers in action. Their distraction brought a spark to Brea’s eyes.
The docking bays nearby were left unmanned. Any ship in Jabba’s position would sell handsomely, and if this was their last score, they were going out in style.
“What is it?” Senni whispered into her sister’s ear, craning her neck like so many others.
“We’re getting off this rock.”
Brea smirked as she grabbed
her sister’s hand and led her back into the street, knowing quite well they couldn’t stop running until they were surrounded by the stars.
“D’you know what your problem is, Long Snoot?”
The human elbows me as if unsure he has my attention, and I allow it.
“What’s that?” I say. His language is difficult for me to speak, inelegantly forced through two sets of teeth and out of my sensitive snout, an organ that can express a thousand emotions in my own language with a mere twitch.
“You’re a stuck-up spy. Immoral and arrogant at the same time. See, you can be one or the other, but you can’t be both.” He swigs the acid he considers a beverage. The fumes make my snout wrinkle. “Think you’re better than us. Pretend you’re not rich. Sit around the cantina like you fit in. But you’re just another alien, sticking your ugly mug where it don’t belong.”
My snout wrinkles, an elegant poem he can’t read. “I will take that into consideration.”
The human snorts and stands. “Sheesh. Don’t even know when you’re being insulted. Not even smart enough to take offense.” He wobbles off to another table filled with raucous humans. They’re laughing at me now, at the strange creature with the long snoot who hides behind robes and goggles. Their species grates on my nerves. Noisy, rude, unsubtle, uneducated, especially in the rougher corners of a planet like Tatooine. Their sweat stinks of fear and desperation. They’re as trapped here as I am, although they tell themselves they chose this life.
“Know what your problem is?” I say in my own language, quietly and to myself. “Your problem is that your entire species thinks itself a sun around which the petty planets and moons spin, but really you’re just another rock, doomed to ever orbit something grander but remain ignorant of your own insignificance.”
He wouldn’t understand that, even if I said it in his language.
Soon, he’ll discover that his leather bag of credits is gone.
That, at least, is a language he understands.
He was wrong about the rich part, you see.
—
When I first came here, they called me Long Snoot. No one asked my name or species, which I at first considered the height of discourtesy. Soon I learned that it was a protective measure among thieves and felons, all hiding out here on a planet that’s not worth searching. Did I tell them my name is Garindan ezz Zavor, and that I come from a respectable hive on Kubindi? Or that my clan is known for breeding and farming a sought-after strain of succulent picolet beetle? Did I tell them my children are well-known senators, orators, and artists, that my grandchildren fill the crèches and academies to bring future glory to our hive?
No, I did not.
For one, because no one asked. For another, because their petty thoughts don’t matter. They are merely scavengers run to ground by a bigger predator. Fate chased us all here, but it won’t keep me here much longer.
I look down at my datapad, checking my accounts. Yesterday I was wealthy by any standard. Then a robed spy offered me a garbled comm message from Kubindi. I haven’t heard my own language in years, and I was more than willing to pay the substantial amount she demanded.
“Father, come home,” my daughter said, her pain thrumming in every tone. “Mother is dead, and the family is in trouble. We—”
The message cut off. The stranger disappeared. My account dipped to nearly nothing.
I didn’t care.
After that, my entire focus changed.
Before, I was quietly building my account to return home with riches at a time of my leisure. Then I could begin the process of freeing Kubindi from the control of the lying Empire. Now I have about three standard days to scrape together enough intel and creds to get me off this planet and back home, where I must bury my mate with full honors and regain control of my clan.
But my network is large, and I’ve already arranged for an informant to supply the codes I need to get home. The time is nigh, so I adjust my hood and goggles and slip out of the cantina, leaving half a credit out for the bartender, Wuher, one of the least offensive humans I know.
It’s a pleasure to be outside, free from the stench of drunken, poorly washed fools. The light on this planet would blind me if I took off my goggles, but the scent of the night air is pleasurable. The sand scours the wind clean, and I always curl my snout with joy at the clear, mineral freshness of it. Moments later, I’ll adjust, and the odor of dewbacks and rontos will hit me, big and warm, plus the smaller notes of fusty Jawas and the oily clank of metal. It’s like a symphony, the way the scents flow anew with each breeze. But it only makes me long all the more for Kubindi, for the odors that speak of home. I haven’t tasted dainty leevil pâté or robust beesh legs in ages. The only thing sweeter will be rubbing snouts with my children and meeting the new grandchildren, of which I’m sure there will be many.
I snatch a night moth from the air and try to swallow it before the vile taste hits me. Me, reduced to eating moths.
The air grows stale as I hurry through alleys and under billowing fabric tents. The humans narrow their eyes at me, their flesh radiating the scent of distrust and anxiety. They see me as a monster from their nightmares, a hideous, dishonest creature that lives to swindle and degrade them. If only they could understand that I see them exactly the same way, but with the added bonus of slavery and oppression. I am here only because their people brought me here and abandoned me. They are here by choice.
I reach the meeting place first and put my back against the rough clay dwelling. Sending my senses out into the night, I smell thieves counting creds, murderers with blood still on their hands, enforcers with smoking blasters, females drenched in hopelessness, starving children, and a hundred different species sleeping fretfully behind locked doors. This is normal in the slums of a place like Tatooine. All the honorable life happens farther out, on respectable moisture farms. Things I never smell here include the tang of fresh oil paint, the resin flaking off an instrument’s plucked strings, the nutty zing of ink, or the powdery cosmetics painted on actors waiting behind dusty curtains. Of all the places for a cultured Kubaz to end up, it’s ironic that it’s on a planet bereft of arts, decorum, and education.
Not that it matters. I’ll be gone soon.
I smell my informant before I see him. He’s human, because of course he is. Nervous, sweating, his flesh still redolent of the armor he’s worn all day while tromping around, cajoling and intimidating and killing his own kind on an order he doesn’t fully understand and never questions. I was never that naïve. It’s the nature of my species to question. It just so happens that I didn’t question the right things, and that’s how I came to be here.
He’s jumpy, and he’s still wearing a blaster. The less I speak, the more comfortable he will feel, so I simply hold out the worn purse of dewback leather I snatched from my unkind neighbor in the cantina, jingling it slightly in my glove.
That noise propels him forward. “Turn it out so I can see,” he whispers.
It’s a foolish demand. There are too many credits here, more than I can hold in my hands, but I pour out enough to satisfy him. Even through the goggles, I can see his bulbous eyes gleaming. Just as I want something, so does he. We are both willing to do underhanded things to make it happen. I wonder what purpose this money will serve. Perhaps a crime boss has stolen the dancing girl he thinks he loves, or maybe his child is sitting in irons in the market. Maybe he, too, just wants to escape the lies of the Empire. It doesn’t matter. I tuck the coins back into the bag, and he snatches it without touching my glove and hands me a slip of paper with several codes scribbled in Basic.
“These will get me past the blockade?” I ask.
He jerks back when he hears my voice. I’ve been told it reminds humans of the whine of insects, which makes sense, as I am descended from insects. They never question that I have gone to the trouble to learn their entire language, while not a single one has bothered to learn my name. If I told him his voice reminds me of the hooting complaints of a Kowakian
monkey-lizard, he’d probably shoot me where I stand.
“The codes are good, at least for a few days. It would be best if you were on a ship with no guns, some sort of trader. Nothing the rebels would fly.”
When he says the word rebels, he spits in the sand, and I can smell his moisture soaking up the dust. So this one—he still thinks his people are the good guys.
“Your friend is about to get jumped,” I observe, and he pulls his hood down and spins. A soft thump and cry around the corner send him running toward the compatriot who watched his back during our exchange. My work is done, and I melt into the night.
The scent of their blood follows me. Even for villains, this place is dangerous.
—
I live here, but I would not call this place a home. My people build beautifully complex hives, each person curling in their own tight cell at night to dream the dreams of grubs. My hovel on Tatooine feels both too small to be a home and too big to be a sleeping cell. Someone stored beasts here once, but I prefer their lingering odor to that of humans and the other sentient creatures who surround me. Beasts have honest interests, most of them pertaining to the physical drives dictated by their body chemistry. Their odors are predictable, harmless, dependable.
But people emit thousands of pheromones in their secretions, their thoughts and feelings laid down like the whispered conversations that mar a concert. Tatooine is no place for a thinking being who relies on unspoken communication, especially when the communicators are unaware of how they lie to themselves. It is unfortunate that my business keeps me waiting for hours in cantinas, the air thick with lust and greed and fear. Perhaps this is why they hate me: Somewhere, deep down, they know someone is listening.
I lock my door as everyone else does. My blue light is calming, and I buzz a sigh as I finally remove my hood and goggles. I worry that when I return to Kubindi, my family and friends will focus on the unattractive ridges worn into my flesh by this disguise, the lines of tight leather pressing around my snout and drawing circles around my eyes. My hair will stand up straight, but parts of me will feel as if they droop. Among the Kubaz, little can be hidden, and I will be out of practice.