by Renee Ahdieh
My datapad pings, alerting me to a new bounty. I must be choosy. For all of my strengths, I have many weaknesses, and I only select jobs that keep them hidden. No hand-to-hand combat. No kidnapping. No killing. No guarding. I rarely use my blaster but make a point of letting everyone see it. Information is my currency, and fortunately, that’s exactly what’s currently desired. The Empire has placed a high bounty on any information leading it to two droids. One is golden, one squat. Tomorrow morning, I’ll find them. My snout wiggles with glee. The high price on this last job will pay for my passage off the planet and back to Kubindi. It means that the very Empire that lured me from my home with false promises is effectively paying to return me to my planet.
In the crèche, our instructors taught us of our history with the Empire and the Rebellion. The Empire was our friend, but the rebels had long sabotaged our technological advances to keep us offplanet. If we helped them, the Empire promised to help us gain a foothold in galactic trade and politics. The cunning protocol droids who spoke for the Empire on Kubindi were carefully bathed in hot oil before doddering down the ships’ ramps to meet with our elders and proudly lead us into the belly of their grand vessel as our people buzzed a cheer. We could not detect their lies.
I was one of the chosen students picked from the academy to study under the Empire as a diplomat and return to my mate and hive with new accolades. At least, that’s what they told us. Instead I was indentured and trained as a spy. My ability to read body language, smell pheromones and weapons, and hear from long distances was to become a mere tool in the hand of galaxy-wide tyranny. My fifty companions and I were put in manacles and forced to withstand propaganda, indoctrination, and reprogramming.
Mine, as might be guessed, did not take.
I slipped away on a job and attempted to return to Kubindi, only to find its orbit guarded by Imperial firepower. Since then, I’ve been working quietly and steadily to create my current reality.
After this job, I will have enough credits to hire a ship.
I now have Imperial codes to get me past the blockade.
And I have a datapad crammed with the most current information, diagrams, and manuals on advanced technology and hyperspace travel. When I return to Kubindi, my people will finally learn that the Empire holds them hostage, keeping them from a much wider universe and sabotaging their every effort to get offplanet. I also have the intel necessary to build weapons that can shoot their buzzing TIE fighters out of the sky.
Tomorrow I will find the droids. I will collect the bounty.
And then I will leave.
—
My day begins in Chalmun’s Cantina. Labria the Devaronian is already here, hiding his pointy smile and tapping his fingers to music no one else can hear. I take my place in a shadowy booth and order the only thing I can, a single shot of fermented mead from Geonosis. It has taken me months to drink the whole bottle, but I tip Wuher for keeping it around. There are only a few shots left, worms sloshing around at the bottom of the green liquid. I dip in my snout and take a dainty sip, tasting hundreds of other mouths on the dirty glass.
I can hear almost everything said in this cantina, and by afternoon I’ve heard nothing of the droids. I slurp up the worm at the bottom of my glass and leave, just another hooded figure disappearing through Wuher’s door. Outside, I do something I rarely do and take a full breath through my snout, drawing in every scent for blocks. Pain throbs behind my eyes; it’s too much. This place is too crowded, too filthy, too full of flesh. I follow the scent of hot metal, but it’s just another Jawa selling his wares. The next whiff of droid takes me to a pile of parts outside a mobster’s apartment. I hurry from droid to droid, hunting for the gold one and the squat one. My hope begins to run out. If they’re in the desert, I will have trouble finding them. Even with my goggles, that much yellow light quickly leaves me drained and hurting.
Then: I smell it. Something new.
An old speeder’s exhaust, and with it the bright odor of droids left too long in the sun. They’re not as close as I’d like, and by the time I get to the scent, they’re gone, probably hiding in one of the myriad labyrinthine buildings. I stalk the area outside Wuher’s cantina and hear a fight within. Ponda Baba and Evazan again, harassing outsiders. I hide in the shade as they lurch outside, Ponda’s arm held in Evazan’s hands like he’s in the middle of one of his disgusting surgeries. The odor of charred flesh makes my snout wrinkle in revulsion, and foul red blood still drips from the wounds. I slip in the door once they’re gone and lean against the wall, my hood pulled down. A strange scent rides the air, something I’ve never smelled before, like burning rock and cooked meat, like lightning given life. I trace it to three humans and a Wookiee. It’s that disreputable Han Solo. The new humans need passage to Alderaan for themselves and two droids.
I almost laugh. Do these men even know what secrecy is? They’re wanted, this town is being patrolled by stormtroopers, but they announce their intentions in plain sight. It’s almost too easy. But the droids aren’t with them, so I hurry out of the bar and squat in a dark corner between the cantina and Han’s junker ship. If their deal works out, and it will, because I know Han needs money and a reason to get off Tatooine, they will come this way.
Soon I’m rewarded for my efforts. The men walk by with two droids, one golden and one squat, as they hurry to the Millennium Falcon. My snout crinkles with delight, and I find a quiet place to comm my contact within the Empire. Thanks to the protocol droids that answer this channel, I’m able to speak in Kubazian, and it’s a small delight to taste the words of home…
“I’ve found the droids,” I say. “Mos Eisley spaceport. Docking Bay Ninety-Four.”
A mechanized voice answers, “Roger. Will credit account after collection.”
How I hate droids. My people communicate what they wish you to know, and humans communicate everything, but droids communicate nothing.
I follow my quarry to make sure they’re headed in the direction I’ve reported. They linger outside the ramp instead of hurrying onto the ship. I lean nonchalantly against the wall as the troopers appear to claim the droids.
“Is this Docking Bay Ninety-Four?” one asks me.
“Yes, that way! That way!” I say. Even though, in my excitement, I’ve forgotten to speak Basic, he understands well enough and hurries on.
As blasterfire erupts, I run away. The scent burns the hairs in my snout, and the lights give me a headache. I am not made for this place. It is pleasant, letting someone else do the dirty work. Back at the cantina, I order another drink at the bar. There’s something fitting about finishing the bottle before I leave, as if giving myself concrete evidence that no Kubaz remain on this dratted planet.
“Two in a day?” Wuher asks, but I know he’s not expecting an answer.
He moves on, and I take a sip and consider my datapad. The credits should appear at any time, and then I will look around this cantina and select the least terrible smuggler to escort me home. The bulk of my savings paid for my daughter’s message, so collecting this bounty is imperative.
“The band is good, eh?” Labria comments, giving me the full benefit of his real smile, showing only his pointed teeth against his red skin.
For once, I respond honestly. “Functional but lacking in higher tones,” I say in Basic.
The Devaronian shakes his head, ears going up in annoyance. “You know nothing,” he grumbles.
Little does he know. A band on Kubindi has at least three times as many players as this simple Bith grouping, and the intricacies of our music would soar over his horns. I was once an accomplished percussionist myself.
“Perhaps you are correct,” I offer.
I check my datapad, but still the credits aren’t there. As I stare at the balance, a new message pings in.
“Droids avoided capture. Bounty not awarded,” it says.
And that’s it.
My snout deflates and sags with disappointment. I have a day or two, maybe mere hours to sec
ure enough credits to buy my way off this planet while the Imperial codes are still good. I scroll through the boards, looking for some new or previously hidden bounty I can pick up, some easy little job to drop just enough credits into my account. It is not lost on me that, back home on Kubindi, my clan is wealthy enough to buy this cantina and everyone in it. But my daughter’s message cost everything I had, and they can’t get off Kubindi, and I can’t get a message to them, and so I sit here, surrounded by dross, so close and yet so far from saying goodbye to my mate and seeing my grandchildren and children again.
“Bad news, Long Snoot?” Labria asks.
I shake my head. If he understood me, if he could read a tiny fraction of what I’m expressing, he wouldn’t have to ask. But he looks at me and sees a hood, goggles, and a long snoot. Nothing more, nothing less.
There are no good bounties, no simple requests for information. Nothing that can be accomplished with only my senses and my cleverness.
“I need a job,” I say to Labria. “Something quick. Today.”
He looks at me with renewed interest, and I hear his teeth sliding in and out of place as he thinks. “Do you know Derrida, the Ketton?” he asks.
I nod.
“She needs a number two for a job. Tonight.”
“Why don’t you take it, then?”
Labria barks a laugh and sips his golden drink, considering. “Too much work.”
“Why has no one else taken the job?”
He glances at the bar in an assumptive way, and I produce a half cred. I’ve watched him enough in my time here to know that nothing is free.
“It’s against the Alliance. No one likes taking sides.” He sneers as he looks around the room. “The humans don’t, I mean. One master is much the same as another.”
He’s wrong. That very assumption is what landed me here, my people lured by the Empire into thinking that the Alliance was our enemy. Alone in space, we could only believe what we were told. How wrong we were. Yet even knowing that the Empire has enslaved my planet and tried to turn me into a brainless drone, I need those credits. I need them more than I need righteousness. And besides, from my understanding of intergalactic history, a small assassination on a backward planet never did change the world.
“Tell her I’ll do it,” I say.
Labria dashes off a message on his datapad. “It’s done. She’ll send you coordinates.” He sips his drink and considers me as if seeing me for the first time. “You know, some say you’re the greatest spy in Mos Eisley spaceport. Some say you’re wildly wealthy. Some say you’re greedy, unprincipled, and dirty, that you do what you do for the pure joy of destroying so many well-laid plans. So tell me, Long Snoot. What are you really?”
I stare at the bar for a moment before realizing that he can’t see my eyes through the goggles. Slowly and with emphasis, I tap the bar with my finger. Labria chuckles and replaces my half cred.
“I am very far from home,” I say.
Whisking away the half cred, I hurry outside to prepare for my last bounty.
STORMTROOPER CORPS OF THE IMPERIAL ARMY DIVISION OF THE IMPERIAL MILITARY, GALACTIC EMPIRE
OFFICIAL IMPERIAL INCIDENT REPORT FORM
INSTRUCTIONS:
Please fill out fully and completely. Details help! Sometimes seemingly small elements can change the whole story. As such, please don’t leave anything out. Be thorough! Follow the instructions carefully and answer the questions asked in each section. Paint a picture! And remember, failure to comply with proper Imperial military protocol can result in disciplinary action including docked pay, loss of equipment, expulsion, and/or summary execution. Remember also that this is an official imperial document and any discrepancy between what you write and what actually occurred is an infraction of the Imperial military protocol. Thank you for your service!
Name: Sardis Ramsin Operating Number: TD-7556
Corps: Stormtrooper Division: Sandtrooper
Unit: Foot Patrol 7 Commanding Officer: Commander TD-110
Location of Incident (Settlement, Planet, Region): Mos Eisley, Tatooine, Outer Rim
Were any other members of your detachment involved in this incident? Oh yes. Very much so.
Which ones? (Be specific!) Literally all of them.
Were any officers injured during this incident? One can only hope.
Please list all officers injured during this incident: I’d really rather not, actually.
Are you an officer? (If no, skip the following question): No.
Were you injured in this incident: …
Are all participants in the incident accounted for currently? Absolutely the krizz not.
What were the initial events that led up to the incident in question? (Be specific!)
Right, well, I guess it starts in the Mos Eisley barracks then, right? We were sent as a specific designated detachment regiment by Grand Moff Tarkin to this armpit of a planet in the literal butt of the galaxy to recover some missing droids. At least, that’s what I heard. They don’t really tell us much, you know. Well, I guess you do know, don’t you, since they = you, but I digress and whatnot. There we were, bunked up in just our underskivvies, which by the way, since we’re on the subject, are all well and good when you’re freezing your balls off on Faz or Rhen Var or something but in the double-sunned deserts of Tatooine serve only to bake you thoroughly to a crisp and lodge sand in the most unmentionable and unreachable places. So thanks for that. Also the temp regulators in those helmets you gave us are an absolute sham; like, not even remotely functional. So, you know…you might want to get on that or something.
Anyway, there we were, shlanging about and waiting for run orders from 110.
Commander TD-4445 had moved into the city proper with his mounted squad (according to their melodramatic outbursts on the comms). I really don’t know what the mounties are so fussy about. They have it made, if you ask me. While we futz around like holograms on the dejarik board, these lucky moes get to roll nobly across the desert on dewbacks. And look, those animals, I can’t explain it. There’s something graceful about them. They just move like every particle of ’em is perfectly aligned and entirely free. They’ll take you through a storm, over a river, into a building. They’ll maul the kriff out of anyone that gets in your way. They’re basically a stormtrooper’s best friend. Before you say anything else, yes, I put in to be in the mounties, and no, I wasn’t accepted. No, I don’t know why, but I’m still pretty miffed.
Anyway, I was actually sitting there pondering that—why I didn’t get positioned in the mounties instead of with this inept pile of foot-patrol trash. And Tintop was being a nuisance again, as I recall. He’d slipped TD-787 something that made him gassy and TD-787 was about to wreck him (again!) when Old Crag spoke up, and the whole of Unit 7 knows that when Crag has something to say, you listen. Even though, if we’re being honest, 99 percent of what that relic spews is unadulterated bantha piss. But whatever; it breaks the monotony, I guess.
“Do you blokes know where we get our name from?” Crag says all mysterious like. TD-787 is stopped mid-lurch, like absolutely about to choke the useless life out of Tintop, but instead TD-787 turns and goes, “Because our helmets are shaped like buckets, I always figured.”
Everyone scoffed, because that would’ve actually been funny if he’d meant it as a joke, but TD-787 was born bereft of even the remotest sense of humor, so…well, it actually makes it even funnier that he was serious, honestly. Either way, we all had a good chuckle, except Crag, who scowled—the old clone’s permanent expression augmented—and said, “Not that name, you cog!”
“It’s because we were born in the storm,” Commander 110 said from the doorway. And then, because 110 always gotta say everything twice, the second time wistfully: “Born in the storm.” I can’t lie, though: He looked impressive standing there in his full body armor, helmet off, backlit by the twin Tatooine suns, his shadow thrown long across the barracks floor.
“Ay,” Crag said. “The storm of history. As
the galaxy transitioned from chaos to order, our regiment was created to maintain that order.”
“That’s one version anyway,” Commander 110 said. Even backlit, I could tell he was smiling some. Could hear it in his voice. He was having one of those patriotic sway type moments, when the whole Galactic Empire seemed to sparkle in his eyes and whatever ridiculous mission was ahead appeared infinitely manageable—all part of the grand design. And that’s all well and good, but there was sand in my butt crack and the day wasn’t getting any cooler, so quite frankly I wished he’d hurry up and get to the point. Which he then did: “Run orders, boys.”
Everyone groaned.
110 ignored us, wisely. “We’re moving into Mos Eisley proper.” (The barracks are on the outskirts of town, apparently to discourage too much fraternizing with the locals, but like…fat chance, if you know what I mean. Also, outside of town = closer to the endless barren infinity of a wasteland festering with Sand People, banthas, and a million other ways to die. Also: sand. All the sand. All the sand ever.)
So, Mos Eisley proper didn’t seem like so terrible a thing, by comparison. If those droids had been wandering around the deep desert, they wouldn’t have made it back to base in one piece, let’s just put it that way. Bad enough you run off to some stinking banthahole planet with secret plans or whatever on board. Don’t add insult to injury by making me deal with even more sand. You know? And anyway, the dewbacks were there. And maybe…well, a stormtrooper can dream.
So we geared up, put on our inefficient, technically archaic, and altogether butt-scratchingly uncomfortable armor, put on our absolute garbage-dump helmets that don’t let us see a dang thing, and loaded up these E-11s you’ve given us, which require one to aim as far as possible away from what one’s shooting at in order to have half a chance of hitting it. So thanks for all that!