Canto Bight [Star Wars]

by Saladin Ahmed

  But none of that was Anglang’s problem. He no longer worked for the Syndicate. New operatives, of course, were told Once you’re in, you’re in for life. But as with everything involving the Syndicate, it was just a matter of money and turf and seniority. There were rules to this thing, and Anglang followed them. After 102 years of work, he paid the appropriate fee to the appropriate people and bought his freedom. The agreement was simple, unstated, and sacred: Anglang would stay out of his former employers’ way, and they wouldn’t kill him. He just needed a score big enough to hit the stars with and live on for a while. Open war between the First Order and the Resistance was coming, even if few had seen it so far. Anglang had decades of life before him, and he intended to live it out as far as possible from guerrillas and stormtroopers shooting at each other. But for that he needed money. And that meant doing a job, freelance.

  Anglang found that job on Cantonica. A good old-fashioned send-a-message hit job courtesy of Canto Bight’s once notorious Old City Boys. The gang had been there before the Syndicate and remained after the Syndicate had moved on, plying petty crimes away from the lights of the casinos, and dodging the cops. Recently they’d lost one too many members to the notorious brutalities of the Canto Bight Police Department’s Officer Brawg, a notoriously corrupt and vicious beast who ran the night desk at CBPD. Anglang had dealt with a lot of different cops on a lot of different worlds. In general the CBPD was better than most. Not savages bent on breaking limbs, but agents of the orderly spending of money. Nonlethal force was the order of the day on Cantonica. Cooperative policing, they called it. Hospitality training. There were still a few old-school head-crackers in the CBPD. But nowadays the cops here mostly ferried belligerent drunks off the strip to sober up, then turned them around so they could start spending money again.

  At least that’s how it was for the visitors with money. The scammers and hustlers who made their livings off visitors got different treatment. And, the Old City Boys had told Anglang, they got the worst treatment from Officer Brawg. Two and a half meters tall and covered in purple fur, Brawg was the dirty cop who specialized in brutalizing Canto Bight’s out-of-view and rarely discussed street criminals. A torturer, extortioner, and bully. He was hated enough by the Canto Bight underworld that they wanted him dead, and hated enough by his fellow CBPD officers that they probably wouldn’t put too much effort into avenging him. Anglang had never met Brawg, but he knew the type of cop intimately. He’d had his bones broken more than once by said type. Anglang had killed dozens of beings over the decades. He rarely took pleasure in it. In some cases taking out a target had even made him feel bad. But none of that mattered. Contracts weren’t about his feelings. They were work. Still, Anglang couldn’t help but make an exception and take pleasure in the thought of killing a bully cop like this Brawg.

  Sunlight hit the Alderaanian chinar trees that lined the piazza, and they exploded with their distinctive scent of spice and fire. Anglang had smelled sun-sensitive chinar trees like this once before—fifty-odd years ago, as a young miscreant pursuing the Syndicate’s interests among the irksomely incorruptible citizens of Alderaan. The trees before him now had been grown exclusively for Canto Bight from a private, incalculably valuable, seed bank. The last green remnant of a dead world, in turn bringing life to a dead desert. It was a gesture intended to inspire, but something about it made Anglang uneasy. Things had their place, and these trees’ place was not here. It all came at a cost, Anglang knew. He thought of his old friend Stinky Qal, the crooked contractor who had drowned all these years ago. How many beings died building their artificial ocean?

  Pedestrians stepped respectfully around him as they passed. Anglang was taller than nearly all the other species here, and he knew he cut an imposing figure in his severe black cloak. He paid the tourists and the rich idiots little mind as they peered up at him then looked hurriedly away, seeing something dangerous in his eyes. He set his mind back on the job.

  The Old City Boys’ contract had very specific requirements—this was no simple home ambush, and the money reflected that. It had to be done at the isolated night desk that Brawg worked from—the detox chamber far away from the rest of the station where Brawg was allowed free rein on the natives and the visitors who fell too far below Canto Bight’s Standards for Quality of Life. It had to be tonight—Anglang didn’t know why, but they were paying extra for the tight time window. And it had to be an explosion. Vicious and flashy, but contained enough that Brawg would be the only cop hit.

  Anglang had settled on an ingested remote-operated nano detonator, complete with audio monitor, as the tool for the job. Expensive and hard to acquire, but perfect for the task. To be effective, though, the device would have to be implanted in someone who could get into CBPD and next to Brawg without warranting a Level 2 internal organ scan. That meant someone with no criminal record and no connection to Canto Bight’s underworld elements.

  Anglang needed a mark. Someone new to Canto Bight, stupid enough to be turned into a living bomb and hoodwinked into jail for the night. Someone fresh-faced enough not to warrant the sort of attention from Brawg that would reveal the device. Fortunately, his contacts had just delivered.

  Anglang had a name and a description: a little pink one-eyed Wermal named Kedpin Shoklop was headed his way in a gold limospeeder. An offplanet rube, the winner of some sort of ridiculous sweepstakes, vacationing above his pay grade. He sounded perfect. Now Anglang just needed to find him.

  Elegant beings from dozens of different systems milled about the Canto Bight city center. Wealthy younglings, bloated politicians, career gamblers, feted artists. Most were species Anglang had encountered before. Some were species he had killed before.

  At last a gold limospeeder—the gaudy kind the transit guild used to make clueless tourists feel important—slid to a halt not ten meters away. Filled with sudden anticipation, Anglang watched the door of the vehicle hiss slowly open. A pink, soft little alien with a big single eye wide with dopey wonder emerged, fumbling with his currency and fretting about his luggage. Kedpin Shoklop. A mark if Anglang had ever seen one.

  The job was a go.

  “SIR, I’M SORRY, BUT I have to drop you here. Drivers need a special license to enter the actual casino zone, and I’m afraid mine has expired. It’s only a few blocks from here, though.” Kedpin’s driver—an actual living humanoid, not a droid, Kedpin marveled, feeling important—looked mortified to be disappointing him.

  “It’s no problem!” Kedpin said, determined to stay cheerful. “I can see more of the city this way!” He clambered slowly out of the gleaming golden limospeeder. He handed the driver another of the thin little bars of precious white metal he’d received at the spaceport in exchange for his VaporTech-issued voucher card. Kedpin had few of them left.

  Kedpin thought about his luggage again. He worried that perhaps he might have been taken advantage of. During the ride to the Canto Bight city center he’d had time to wonder whether there really was such a thing as a luggage stamp. And try as he might, he couldn’t find any receipt from the helpful gate agent on his datapad. In fact he had no record whatsoever that his luggage existed! He could only hope that it had arrived at the Canto Casino Hotel safely.

  The limospeeder scooted off and Kedpin took a long look around him. Humanoids of several sorts milled about a city square paved with pearly stones and dotted with the Alderaanian chinar trees he’d seen so many times in holovids. At the square’s center was a great white marble fountain that played soothing music as it flowed. Kedpin’s mood improved immediately. “Canto Bight Piazza! I’m really here!” he blurted. A tall being in white arched an irritated eyebrow at him as she passed, but Kedpin didn’t care. His vacation had officially begun. Now he just needed to find the Canto Casino Hotel.

  Kedpin found he couldn’t make heads or tails of his datapad’s directions, so he looked around, hoping to ask someone for assistance. He had settled on an extremely tall being with an angled head and a severe black cloak when a spark
ling silver protocol droid on treads whirred up to him and addressed Kedpin in a matronly, cultured accent.

  “Good sir, forgive me my presumption, but are you having difficulty navigating our beautiful city?” the droid asked, her eye-lights flashing green in unison with her words.

  “Oh! Why yes, as a matter of fact,” Kedpin replied, happy for help. “I’m trying to find the Canto Casino Hotel.”

  “Ah, an excellent choice, sir,” the droid whirred. “As classic as they come. Spectacular accommodations and exemplary service. I’d be happy to show you the way. But first let me ask you: Have you been properly welcomed to Canto Bight?”

  Kedpin didn’t know how to answer that. “I…”

  “What I am asking, sir, is whether you have been welcomed in the spirit of luxury, of indulgent pleasure, that truly defines our city?”

  “I…don’t know?” Kedpin answered honestly, blinking his eye self-consciously.

  The droid made a low whistling noise and fluttered her eye-lights. “Oh you would know, sir. You should know! You could know. If you wish to.”

  Kedpin blinked again. He was confused. “I’m not sure what…”

  “Sir,” the droid asked, a note of reproach entering her voice, “do you want to go home having seen only the surface of Canto Bight? Or do you want to see all we have to offer here?”

  “Oh, I definitely want the full experience!” Kedpin said, excited again. “I’m going to see a real fathier race! Live!”

  “Sir, I have something much more exciting than fathiers to show you. Something for the truly discriminating. Will you put yourself in my capable hands?”

  Again, Kedpin didn’t quite know what the right answer was. But he certainly didn’t want to be rude. Yes opens more doors than no, he recited to himself. “Um, okay?”

  “Follow me, sir,” the droid said, and Kedpin followed her fifty meters down the street, to an ornately decorated storefront of shimmering pink metal. The doors whooshed open and a wave of delicately perfumed air wafted out, irritating Kedpin’s nose-slits. He sneezed loudly.

  “This way,” the droid murmured pleasantly, leading Kedpin inside.

  It was darker inside, dim enough that Kedpin felt his pupil dilate. They were alone in the building’s large front room, which was lit by smoky half lamps and decorated with strange sculptures. Kedpin didn’t know anything about art, but they looked expensive. The droid led Kedpin down a long hallway, her delicate treads whispering across the room’s plush purple floor. They came to a door of golden wood, decorated from top to bottom with engravings of various beings kissing and touching one another.

  “Behind this door, sir, is one of the galaxy’s truly unique pleasures. I have no doubt you are bold enough to take a taste of it. Do you consent?”

  Not once in his century and a half of life had Kedpin been called bold. He liked it. And after all, he didn’t want to insult the droid he was counting on to guide him to his hotel. “Um, yes?” he managed to get out.

  The droid knocked three times on the golden door, and it slid open slowly, almost teasingly. The droid ushered Kedpin into the room, then withdrew, closing the door behind her. The room was smaller than the front room had been, but it had high ceilings. It was completely bare, save for a large bathing vessel filled with what looked like mud. Opposite the door Kedpin had entered through was a set of unadorned double doors four meters high. Kedpin had only been standing there a moment when they swung open.

  A massive, rocky alien, like a three-meter-tall boulder with arms and legs, lumbered out. It wore makeup and ribbons and an incongruously tiny outfit that Kedpin realized was intended to make it look like a child’s toy. It took a big, booming step toward Kedpin, grabbed him by the shoulders, and hoisted him up with its huge, hard hands.

  “You such a pretty boy! But you such a bad boy!” the creature shouted in Kedpin’s face, its voice like a landslide. A third rocky hand sprouted from the alien’s chest, and it began to gently pet Kedpin’s head. Kedpin felt a hundred strange things at once.

  “Pretty! But bad!” the creature repeated, stopping its not-unpleasant petting. It suddenly lifted Kedpin above its head. “Such a bad boy!” it said again, and slammed Kedpin bodily into the tub of mud.

  “Ow!” Kedpin shouted. The mud was warm and smelled like flowers. For a moment he just sat there, stunned, as the alien withdrew and the silvery droid reentered.

  “That hurt,” Kedpin told her as he climbed out of the tub. Every drop of the mud—not normal mud at all, Kedpin realized, but some inorganic substance—slid off his body and rolled along the floor to re-pool in the tub. He was completely clean now! “I think there’s been some mistake. Can I ask you now to please point me to the Canto Casino Hotel?” Kedpin asked.

  The droid’s eye-lights blinked pleasantly. “Of course, sir, I’d be happy to! And I do hope you have enjoyed yourself. You are one of a select few beings in the galaxy to have experienced Sweetheart’s irreproducible ministrations, after all. I trust you were pleased?”

  Kedpin blinked rapidly, unsure how to answer. “Every dish tastes great to someone!” he said at last, reciting one of his Salesbeing’s Sayings. He’d learned long ago that he sold more vaporators when he pretended to like things his clients liked.

  The droid made a sort of purring noise. “Now. There is just the small matter of the fee for Sweetheart’s exquisite services.” Rather than presenting Kedpin with a simple data card, the droid produced a small, thin plaque of wood, burned a number and a fanciful calligraphic pattern into it with a laser, and handed it to him.

  Kedpin didn’t understand. Was he being charged money for being thrown into a pile of mud? The fee was a month’s pay for Kedpin. He’d have almost none of his saved-up spending money left. But rules were rules, and even if Kedpin hadn’t meant to, he had hired…whatever that rocky alien was to…do whatever it had done to him. Feeling as though it physically pained him, Kedpin passed the droid most of his little slivers of precious metal.

  The droid gave Kedpin a blue thank-you flower, a piece of candy, and directions to the Canto Casino Hotel, which was only two blocks away. He stepped out onto the street and could feel his pupil contract immediately from the sun, so much brighter than the sun at home.

  Kedpin sneezed in the sandy air and blew his nose-slits. He resolved to be a bit more cautious in dealing with this sometimes surprising city. Then he headed for the Canto Casino Hotel, still determined to have the vacation of a lifetime.

  ANGLANG SAT AT THE OUTDOOR tables of the Café Raduli, sipping the blue honeycup that some called the best in the galaxy, and waiting for Kedpin Shoklop to emerge from the shimmering pink façade of V-333’s Silken Parlor. Blue honeycup was one of Anglang’s very few indulgences. He relished the piquant sweetness, knowing he wouldn’t have time to finish the whole cup. Anglang had watched the soft little fool stumble out of his limospeeder, apparently already having been conned out of his luggage, and bumble around the city center, wondering which way to go, until he’d been roped in by V-333 and her treat shop for depraved richlings. The idiot probably had no idea he was about to spend half his vacation budget on thirty seconds of “pleasure.”

  A clueless buffoon, like all of those who visited Cantonica these days, though most of the fools in Canto Bight were rich enough to disguise their foolishness more effectively. Caskadags lived longer than many species, and he knew this meant he was slower to recognize change than some. But even he knew it now—Cantonica had been permanently ruined. Anglang sighed. He would miss the perfect, luxurious heat that warmed his crest now as he sat in the sun. But he would be happy to be done with this job and away from the various sorts of fools that had overrun this planet and given rise to the new city.

  First, though, there was a job to do. The device would need to be implanted in the mark by means of ingestion. Anglang figured a spiked drink was his best bet. Then he had to get the mark into Canto Bight PD, at the start of the detox desk night shift. Which meant getting the one-eyed idiot arrested for th
e right crime. Brawg would be in the detox tank alone, conducting the sorts of “investigations” the other cops put up with but conveniently disappeared for. The blast radius on ingested nano-detonators was tiny. Anglang just needed to get his mark right next to Brawg, then bam!

  If he was being honest with himself—and Anglang Lehet tried always to be honest with himself—he didn’t feel great about this job. It wasn’t the target. This Officer Brawg character was clearly the sort of head-cracking scum who deserved death. There was no problem there except the problem of logistics. And the plan involving the ingested detonator was logistically beautiful, the sort that had made Anglang’s pulse race with the rush of creativity as he’d come up with it. But having gotten a good look at that stupid surprised-by-everything face, and imagining it being blown up—well, it sat a bit wrong with Anglang. Kedpin Shoklop, huge worried eye constantly agape, was clearly a chump, but he’d done Anglang no wrong. Anglang had hit prestigious targets for the Syndicate for years. He was a professional. Ending his career by using such an utterly clueless civilian as his bomb—well, it wasn’t ideal.

  Still, this plan was the best plan. The one most likely to end with Anglang alive and paid. And it was one guy. A fool. Hardly Anglang’s first unlucky bystander. A fee was a fee, a job was a job. Same as it ever was. Except that this one could be his last for a long time if he played it right. Anglang took another sip of tea.

  A door-hole opened in the façade of the Silken Parlor, and Anglang shook himself out of his musings. Shoklop. The little pink man emerged and, shocked by the brightness of the sun, yelped loudly enough that Anglang could hear him across the street. Anglang set down his tea and stood slowly, in a manner that wouldn’t draw attention.

  His mark was on the move.