by Chuck Wendig
The sloppy officer’s head racks back and consciousness leaves him. Sinjir lets him drop. Then, to Pok: “Somebody’s going to want to clean this up. Ah. Good luck with that?”
And then, whistling, he traipses out the front of the cantina.
A blurry image.
A sound: whap, whap, whap.
The blurry image shakes. It gets blurrier for a second, and then focuses the other way, lurching inelegantly toward clarity.
The image resolves. Standing there are two women. One, a human. Tall, thin, professional. Dark hair coiffed up like a wave about to break. A necklace around her neck that looks like a flock of birds chained together—it catches the light of the sun. Her smile is big, broad, practiced.
The other woman is smaller. Pantoran. Blue skin. Golden hair pulled back in a simple, practical braid. She wears a dress to match: Some might call it practical and unpretentious, others might say it is drab, dull, or even unsophisticated. Her only jewelry is a pair of silver bracelets. Her smile is also practiced, but nervous, too.
Behind them: the humble skyline of the capital, Hanna City.
The first woman, Tracene Kane, says to the Trandoshan behind the camera: “How’s it look, Lug?”
A growl-hiss from behind the camera. “It looked bad. I hit it. Now it looks good.”
Tracene gives the other woman—Olia Choko—an apologetic shrug. “Old tech. Doesn’t always comply.”
“It’s your first broadcast,” Olia says. “It’s understandable.”
“This day is a first for both of us, I think.” Tracene laughs—it’s a laugh that sounds almost too big to be real. Maybe it’s who she is. Or maybe it, like her smile, is born of effort and orchestration. “So here’s how this is going to go. I’ll begin the interview, and I’ll do a brief intro—blah blah blah, first day of the new Galactic Senate, it’s a new dawn for the galaxy, and then right to you: Olia Choko, public relations representative for Mon Mothma and the new Senate. We’ll get right into it.”
“Great,” Olia says. She takes a deep breath. “Just great.”
“You look nervous.”
“I’m…a little nervous.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re pretty. You’re alien. You’ll trend well.”
“Oh!” Olia says, thrusting up a finger. “You’re going to get a shot of what’s behind us, right? Hanna City reflects the Senate’s humble new beginnings—we’re here for the people of the galaxy, all the hardworking people. And Mon Mothma is from here, so—”
Tracene puts a hand on Olia’s shoulder. “We got this.”
“Oh! But, uh. Don’t forget, too, to get a shot of the art installation in the city circle—it’s a bunch of stormtrooper helmets painted different colors, marked with different symbols like flowers and starbursts and Alliance sigils. It’s by the artist—”
Tracene gives Olia’s arm a squeeze. “I said we got this. We have the footage. You’re the last link in the chain. We talk to you. Then the Senate walks in. Nothing will go wrong. You good?”
Olia hesitates. The smile on her face is strained. She looks like a panicked squark-bat frozen in the beam of a miner’s headlamp. But she nods. “Yes. I’m good. I’m fine. I can do this.”
To the camera, Tracene points. “We’re on in three, Lug. Three. Two—” She mouths the word One—
“This is Tracene Kane broadcasting on the first day of the Queen of the Core Network. I’m standing here with Olia Choko, public relations representative of Chancellor Mon Mothma and the new Galactic Senate here on Chandrila…”
The interrogator droid hovers. A small panel along its bottom slides open with a whir and a click. An extensor arm unfolds—an arm that ends in a pair of cruel-looking pincers. So precise and so sharp they look like they could pluck a man’s eye clean from his head. (A performance this droid has likely performed once upon a time.) The arm reaches down toward its target.
It grabs the ten-sided die, lifts it, drops it.
The die clatters. Face up: a 7.
The droid exclaims in a loud, digitized monotone: “AH. I AM AFFORDED THE CHANCE TO PROCURE A NEW RESOURCE. I WILL BUY A SPICE LANE. THAT CONNECTS TO MY FOUR OTHER SPICE LANES. THAT GIVES ME FIVE TOTAL, WHICH GRANTS ME ONE VICTORY POINT. I AM NOW WINNING. THE SCORE IS SIX TO FIVE.”
Temmin’s lips curl into a frustrated frown. The board beneath the two of them consists of a map of countless hexagonal territories. Some of the hexes contain planets. Others: stars, or asteroid belts, or nebulae.
He has never won a game of Galactic Expansion against the repurposed interrogator droid. But he’s close now. It’s never been this close.
“Ease off the throttle, you overconfident borgleball. One point does not make you a conqueror.” He rolls the die. A 5. Not enough to earn him a new resource, but he can place a new shipping lane or smuggler route. He has to think about this. He leans back on the chair. Lets his eyes gaze over the workshop and market—all around, shelves and tables mounded with what looks to be junk. And a lot of it is. Astromech parts. Starship scrap. Disassembled blasters. Over in the corner is a WED repair droid—long defunct, wound up with blinking, twinkling lights. Hanging above his head from a set of braided cables is a speeder bike scored with laser marks.
And there, against the far wall, is an old Trade Federation battle droid, scrunched down into its folded up form and wrapped up in a ratty blanket.
It’s not one of the B2s—the war droids with the cannons on the forearms and the hard chest plating.
It’s not one of the droidekas, either—those roly-poly death machines, as if a jungle scorpion had a baby with a rolling thermal detonator.
It’s just an old B1. A clanker.
Everything here is, or looks like, a clanker.
Temmin picks up a smuggler route tile, marked with a red dotted line, and he’s about to place it when the interrogator droid suddenly turns.
As if to face somebody.
“YOU HAVE CUSTOMERS,” the droid intones.
Temmin cracks his knuckles and stands up, plastering on his best salesman smile. The young teen kicks his rolling chair away and turns to face—a trio of thugs. His smile wavers, but only for a second.
“A Koorivar, an Ithorian, and an Abednedo enter a junkshop,” he says, cracking wise. They don’t seem amused. “It’s like the start of a joke,” Temmin says, then adds: “But if you have to explain it, it sorta stops being funny.” He claps his hands. “What can I do for you, gents?”
“I am a lady,” the Koorivar snaps, stepping forward. She adjusts her crimson cloak and lifts her chin. The spiraling horn atop her head is twisted and bent. A pale tongue flicks the air and licks craggy, scaled lips.
She has a long, serrated knife hanging at her hip.
Temmin knows who she is. Who all three of them are.
The Abednedo with the fleshy nose slits and the skin tendrils around that scowling, puckered mouth: Toomata Wree. Known usually as “Tooms.”
The Ithorian with the sleepy eyes, the threadbare coat, the cannon slung over his tree-branch-looking shoulder: Herf.
And the Koorivar: Makarial Gravin. (Though, truth be told, Temmin really thought she was a he. The Koorivar don’t make it easy to tell.)
All three work for—or, rather, belong to—Surat Nuat. They are the Sullustan’s property.
“Ma’am,” Temmin says, spreading his arms wide. “What can I do you for, today? What junkyard delights can I offer you—”
“Cut the rancor spit, you little puke,” the Abednedo says.
In the alien’s tongue, the Ithorian adds: “You have stolen from the goodly savior of Myrra, Surat Nuat.”
“Hey, no,” Temmin says, holding up his hands. “We’re all friends here. I would never, ever steal from Surat. We’re buddies. It’s all good.”
“You stole from Surat,” the Koorivar hisses. “Worse, you have offended him with grave insult by taking what is rightfully his.”
Temmin knew this day would come. Just not so soon.
A nervous feel
ing rises in his belly. “The last thing I would want to do is insult Surat—we all could only wish we were as savvy and as slick as he is. I don’t know what you think I stole from him, but—”
Makarial the Koorivar takes another assertive step forward. “Think hard about what happened on the Trabzon Road. Does that tickle your brain stem?”
Temmin snaps his fingers—a nervous habit he picked up from his father. “You mean the transport that crashed out there? No, no—I mean, yeah, yes, I definitely scavenged what was left there. I own that. That one’s on me. But I had no idea that was Surat’s ship—”
“It had his guild sigil all over it!” Tooms, the Abednedo, seethes. The ringlets of skin hanging from his face twitch and tremble as he speaks.
“Not that I could see—the transport was attacked by the Uugteen. Such primitives, you know? They burned that thing good on the outside. Roasted it like a florakeet before plucking its feathers.”
“And yet, the insides were ripe for your plunder,” Makarial accuses.
“They couldn’t crack that nut. The Uugteen, I mean. Their crude knives couldn’t pop the latch, but I had a torch and—” He fake-laughs. “I beseech you, friends. I didn’t know who I was taking from.”
He knew. Of course he knew. And he knew one day this would catch up to him. But the potential payout…
If ever he hopes to unseat Surat, he has to play the game with big moves. No weak-kneed bowing and scraping, no soft touches, no hesitant plays. Everything: big, bold, smart as a whip, strong as a bull.
“You still have the weapon?” Tooms asks.
“Ahhh, heh-heh, ahhh.” Temmin clears his throat and then lies through clenched teeth: “Not so much.”
The Koorivar’s eyes go wide. With rage and indignation, if Temmin has to guess. Makarial moves fast. The knife is off the alien’s belt and, in the span of a flash of lightning, against Temmin’s throat.
Outside, the weather complies, adding its own threat: a rumbling boom of thunder. A hard rain falls against the roof of Temmin’s shop, only serving to accentuate the silence. Behind Temmin, the interrogator droid hovers near the table where the Galactic Expansion board sits.
The boy swallows. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ve got lots on offer here. Hey. Look. Speeder bike. Or I can scrounge up a couple of droids—”
“This is all junk,” Makarial says. “Surat knows your trick. And so we know your trick. This—” With her free hand, the Koorivar makes a move similar to (and maybe mocking of) Temmin’s own gesture when they got here. “—all of this is a front. You are no junk merchant.”
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure—”
The knife presses harder against his exposed throat. “We care nothing for trash. We care everything for treasure.”
“So, let’s talk treasure, then.”
“Surat has a price.”
He feels something wet drip down his throat. Blood or sweat? He’s honestly not sure. “Everybody does. Name the price.”
Makarial smiles. A terrible sight to behold, for the Koorivar are, to Temmin’s mind, uglier than a happabore walking backward. All those lumps and scales. A nose like a fat, segmented grub. Bone spurs above the eyes. The breath doesn’t help, either—it stinks of rotting meat.
The Koorivar says with a flick of her tongue: “Your shop.”
“The shop. Like—the building?”
“And everything in it. And everything below it.”
Now: real panic. A cold saline rush through his blood. They know. They know where he keeps some—most—of his best goods.
That is not ideal.
“I have something!” he blurts. “Something big. Something…Surat wants. Okay? Okay? Just, can I show you? Please? Please.”
The three alien thugs give one another looks. The Ithorian, Herf, gives a noncommittal shrug. In Ithorese: “We might as well see.”
Makarial removes the knife from his throat. He gasps, rubs his neck—his hand comes away wet with sweat, not with blood. He claps his hands. “It’s right over there. See that ratty blanket? It’s uhh. It’s under there.”
Makarial nods to Herf. The Ithorian unslings the cannon—it’s a custom mod job, that gun, based off a DLT body but jacked up for bigger firepower. The barrel is long—so long it’s probably as tall as Temmin.
The stoop-necked Ithorian blinks his hammerhead eyes, then uses the barrel of the gun to lift up the blanket. Thus exposing the first-generation battle droid: the B1.
It stands up. Its bones rattle as it does. Literal bones—the bones of beasts, fish, birds. Bound to its metal limbs with twine and wire. Those aren’t the only modifications to the droid’s appearance, either. Half its head is missing: replaced with a telescoping red eye. The front of its nose has been sharpened and curved—less the bill of some plucky waterfowl, more the beak of a bird of prey. All of it: painted black and red.
Meant to strike a note of fear.
The alien thugs all laugh. The Rodian laughs so hard he stoops over, slapping a knee, little green mushroom ears twitching with delight.
“A battle droid?” Makarial asks. More laughter. “You wanted to show us…a battle droid? The most incompetent droid soldier in the history of both the Republic and the Empire. A mechanical comedy of errors.” The way the alien enunciates that last bit: a meh-CAN-ee-kall CO-mee-dee of err-ORs. “And you believe that Surat Nuat wants a meager, worthless B1 droid?”
“I call him Mister Bones,” Temmin says.
Upon saying the droid’s name, its eye glows a sinister red.
“MISTER BONES IS ONLINE,” the droid says: Its voice is a grinding distortion interrupted by bursts of static. Words speed up and then slow down again, mangled by what seems a faulty vocoder. “HELLO, EVERYONE.”
The Rodian shakes his head. “An idiotic name for an idiotic droid.”
“I think you’ve insulted him,” Temmin says.
The laughing stops. For just a moment, as they try to figure out what that even means, or what game Temmin is even playing.
Their hesitation is not wise.
Mister Bones cackles—a scratchy, warped laugh from his speakers—as his one hand swings free on a hinge. From the hole springs a sparking, vibrating blade. The Ithorian is slow to react, and by the time Herf is bringing up his DLT cannon, Bones has whipped his arm back three times already—and the cannon is whittled down, three smoldering bits clattering to the floor.
The Abednedo draws a blaster—
Bones tackles Herf, and slams him straight into Tooms. The Abednedo flails and falls, with the Ithorian landing on top of him, and Bones on top of him. Temmin’s B1 bodyguard begins pounding both fists down, punching the Ithor’s oddly shaped head hard enough that each hit ratchets it back into Tooms’s noseless face. Whap! Whap! Whap!
Mister Bones gabbles and laughs.
Makarial’s maw stretches wide, hissing a gassy exhortation of distress and rage. The Koorivar reaches behind, under her cloak, and draws a blaster—pointing it right at Temmin’s head. Temmin, who is now frozen, reaching for his own blaster—stuck in a leather holster bolted to the underside of a nearby table.
“Do not pick that up,” Makarial whispers.
Temmin calculates his odds.
They’re not good.
He withdraws his hand. Smiles. Nods. “Sure, sure.”
“Tell your droid to back off.”
“Now, hold on—”
“Tell him.”
Temmin grins. “Which droid are we talking about here?”
Makarial’s pale, ghostly eyes focus, then narrow in bewilderment—just as the interrogator droid floats up behind her, a syringe fixed to the end of its second extensor arm. Temmin chuckles.
The floating droid stabs down with the needle. A needle filled with a toxic narcotic—locally sourced, locally brewed, and with enough stopping power to put a Gamorrean to sleep for the better part of a week.
The needle snaps off, and clicks as it hits the ground. Never actually delivering its toxi
c payload.
Right, right. Temmin thinks, with no small disappointment: The Koorivar have really hard skin, don’t they?
Temmin runs. He leaps up over a table, then to another table, then across a trio of metal stools—blaster fire sizzles in the air behind him, knocking junk off shelves. An oil can hops off the corner of a table ahead of him. Temmin yells as he bolts for the door—
There. Ahead. The door is open. Someone is standing there.
Someone new. Long dark cloak.
Someone with a blaster all his own.
The new figure raises the blaster. Temmin drops his weight, letting his leg skid out from under him—laserfire trades above his head, and somewhere behind him Makarial yelps in pain. There comes a crash.
Temmin leaps to his feet, presses himself flat against the textured wall of his junk shop. Makarial’s down, writhing and howling. Mister Bones has lifted his head like a curious, startled hound. The new visitor regards the situation, then peels back his hood.
It’s not a him at all. It’s a her.
Temmin’s eyes go wide.
“Mom?”
“Admiral Sloane, the shuttle is ready.”
She stands. Hands behind her back. Staring down a long hallway. At the end of the hallway: a vent cut free with a micro-torch. Ahead of her, stormtroopers go in and out of doors—cabins, sleeping quarters. No sign of the interloper anywhere. She bites down on her teeth to suppress anger.
Lieutenant Tothwin says again: “Admiral, I said—”
“I heard what you said,” she snaps.
“The others. They’re already heading to the planet’s surface.”
“Everyone is accounted for, then.”
“Yes. Pandion. Shale. Arsin Crassus’s yacht showed up on screen a short while ago and is now descending to Akiva.”
“And Yupe Tashu?”
“Adviser Tashu’s shuttle is on screen as well. We directed him to continue on toward the meeting site. They’re expecting you to be there ahead of them—”
“They can wait.”
“Of course. It’s just that—Moff Pandion is already—”
“Tell me,” she says. “This deck. Nothing of import here, is there?”