Hot Potato

[Arya Ravenwing]

Jovan Station loomed in the viewport as Arya eased Wing of the Raven toward their designated docking station. "Remember," she said over her shoulder to her passenger, "You aren't here. You never were here. You moved your stuff back into the hold, yeah?"

One small, nondescript crate tied down in a pile of equally un-amazing crates. One smuggling hidey-hole in the bulkhead of the cargo hold that Arya knew for a fact would hold a person. She looked back at her cargo for this run, impatiently waiting for his nod. He nodded.

"Right." She activated the ship's auto-docking, allowing the station to guide the airlocks together and ensuring a quick and tight seal as the docking umbilical stretched for her ship's hatch. "You get down in the hold and be ready to get into the wall if need be. Won't be long, I promise." The smuggler shooed the man, Lucky B as he called himself, away from the cockpit as she did the final checks and settled the ship.

Arya activated the comm. "Jovan Actual, this is Dusty Maiden. Requesting fuel for my ship." She looked at the empty co-pilot's chair and found herself missing the giant grumpy Cizerack who had somehow become a part of her crew. Jaas had taken 'a rrreal vacatjion' and would be meeting up with her after this job. It wasn't anything that needed two people, anyway. She'd never needed a partner before, and found this blank spot in the cockpit a weird sensation.

The conversation with Jovan wrapped up, and she exited the ship, the airlock gently bouncing under her feet in that slightly disconcerting way that they so often did. A dock worker greeted her, arranging payment for the fill up. Arya brushed her hand through her hair, looked at the garish neon signs that declared where she needed to go right now, and started walking. The Blob Place sounded fun, she loved a good blob race, but what she really needed was more consumables. Topping off her supplies while they were here, and all.

Cizerack soldiers stalked down the promenade, causing the hair on the back of her neck to raise up. This was the closest she would go to smuggling in Pride space, and it was plenty close enough. The group of males stopped abruptly, yelling and waving their arms at a decrepit looking human in an automatic wheelchair who seemed intent on bashing his way through a glass wall and into a shop. Arya hurried her pace.

She didn't usually carry sentient cargo. Generally that meant slaves, and she was no slaver. But the job seemed straightforward enough, and credits were tight. Transporting one man from point A to point B - how hard could it be? She'd of course done her homework - Lucky B was a swoop racer who'd been caught cheating and now the Hutts had a price on his head. It wasn't a huge price, but it was enough to make anyone nervous, and that was where Arya had come into the picture.

The kid was a bit naive. If he'd cheated, she figured it had been someone else on his team doing it. He didn't seem duplicitous enough to have figured out a scheme like that on his own. She was confident, however, that no one knew that he was with her. He'd been transported to her ship in a crate. Nah, this was as simple as it got - as long as he kept his head down and stayed in the ship until she got back.

[Lucky B]

Once the safe-keeper was gone, Lucky started to count. If he counted away the silent seconds, he was sure to fill the void that had taken up residence in her absence. No noise was an unwelcome guest. And there was nothing like a monotonous task to stave off boredom’s slithery approach. All the way to twelve and back, he counted, skipping odd numbers like wobbly stepping stones. Where was she, that blackish people-thief?

The steely heels of his boots rang holy cacophony against his crate seat. If the metal man slept, he woke from his electric dream with a jolt, stiff like a hardened corpse. Lucky didn’t trust him. It was his eyes: as round and bright as twin suns, they projected no life but instead reflected it like two-way mirrors in a restroom. Lucky made his seat sing again.

“Why does the metal man call himself Twopio? Does he have an older brother or is he second best?”

[Twopio]

"Droids have no families," Twopio said, after a moment. The drumming of the human's heels against the crate was quite distracting. "Mistress Arya calls me Twopio. My proper designation is D-2PO, human/cyborg relations."

The droid turned his oculars fully toward Lucky B - a strange moniker indeed, but who was he to judge? - as Mistress Arya had instructed him to "keep an eye on him." He tilted his head slightly, wondering if he truly needed to place his face closer to the cargo so as to be touching him. Probably not. Most definitely it had been a figure of speech. "And your name, Master B. Why do you call yourself Lucky?"

[Lucky B]

The question must've pleased him, for Lucky shined toothily.

"Do you know of the mighty kimogila? Long ago, when we were bite-sized, the kimogila tried to make a meal of us with its poisoned fangs and sanguinish claws. Twice we saw the three moons before the Pirate King found us. He and his men gave us a new home. Ourself, we lost somewhere in the long heat, so Lucky they called us. Lucky B. The Astard is silent."

When a name spun such tales of death and adventure, it was a keeper. Lucky never tired of the story: the memory was not his own, after all, and with repetition came remembrance. Twopio's shortage of awe was disappointing, but if he was jealous, it was understandable. His safe-keeper would've enjoyed it, he thought, were it not for all the moving lips. Good cargo was to be seen and not heard, except when it wasn't to be seen. In the new blazing quiet, Lucky withered like a year-old namana, ready to slip his skin.

"Tell us a tale, Second of Pio. Our minds wander and our feet are like to follow."

[Twopio]

He was fluent in over six million forms of communication (including Cizerack tail-sign, which he could translate if not actually sign himself), but it still took Twopio a moment to parse Lucky's story. The kimogila was a reptilian creature not unlike the krayt dragon of Tatooine, though native to the planet Lok. Other details were given that had no context, but the droid filed them away in case they became useful later, such as Lucky's connection with a Pirate King. The Astard was not usually silent ...but there was no reason to upset Mistress Arya's passenger-cargo with a correction.

"I'm afraid I'm not a very good storyteller," Twopio said, but hurried on as Lucky's face fell. "I could tell the story of - " he accessed his memory banks "-the Hyperspace Wars. Many thousands of years ago..."

[Lucky B]

“Are we in a classroom? We should sooner be debrained, Professor Twopio. No. No. Tell us about this blackbird’s wing and the people-thief who calls it home.”

Lucky was on the move, wandering the foothills of cargo mountains. On occasion, he stopped to wrap his knuckles upon a crate, and press his ear against it to divine the contents from its melodorism. What else did the safe-keeper hide deep in the belly of her old bird? The largest box refused to disembowel its secrets despite a feverish working of the fingers, instead it bit back with its sharpish edges and drew to the surface some vintage ruby red. Lucky sucked at his thumb and decided he cared not for the mysteries of the blackbird anymore.

“There is nought but sand to this grimy dimness. Let us thrash it, Second of Pio, real wild card, and nab for ourselves some booty in Jovan’s cave of wonderment!”

Little by little, he edged nearer to the vertical stairs, and to freedom.

[Twopio]

It took a moment for Twopio to process Lucky's trajectory; his movements random enough that the pattern was slow to emerge. By the time the droid saw that their passenger was likely to 'do a rrrunnerrr,' as Master Jaas so eloquently would have put it, Lucky was much closer to the ladder out of the hold than he was to Twopio.

"It is in your best interest to stay put," the droid nervously piped, walking as quickly as he could manage in chase of their mobile cargo. "Please, Mistress Arya would be very upset if you left after she told you to stay -!"

[Lucky B]

"The metal man must think himself a security drone to accost us such."

Surprised by the sudden change in Twopio, Lucky dropped anchor on his unscheduled flight, and reached skyward in surrender. Behind his eyes, where aborted ideas lashed in their death throes and new thoughts were squeezed shiny and slippery into existence, curiosity flashed like lightning. What would it do, his jailor? A smile, like an opee fish at dinner time, greeted the droid, and the embrace of hands, crashing down upon his shoulders like gentle jaws.

"We are leaving, Second of Pio. The safe-keeper wants us to go unseen, so, unseen we will go. Beyond the belly of the blackbird, there is much storminess, bucketheads, and coupons. And thus, it is an undertaking of obfuscation that befalls the metal man, if he is to keep the safe-keeper's secret safe."

After a step, Lucky could see his breath fogging Twopio's metal cheek. His hands traced delicate lines from his shoulders, down his arms.

"Help us, metal man. Shelter us from unfriendly peepers with all of your powers of human-cyborg... relations."

[Twopio]

The droid was certain that this sudden change of attitude from the human was bound to result in his being taken apart in some way. He stood still while the man ran his hands down the painted blue of his arms, golden oculars gleaming as he tipped his head to the side a little. Lucky B was quite insane - his speech patterns hinted at it, and combined with his actions Twopio was confident in making the diagnosis. Friendly insane, or dangerous insane? It remained to be seen, but if Twopio's luck held out he'd be dismembered and stuffed into a storage compartment within the hour. He seemed to be made to suffer.

"Indeed, if you are concerned about being seen, there is the smuggling compartment. Mistress Arya left me instructions on how to hide you inside, if the ship were boarded. It is..." the droid lifted one arm and pointed toward a bulkhead, "over there."

[Lucky B]

Lucky owled at the bulkhead, as if seeing it for the first time.

"Will the metal man show us?"

[Twopio]

"Of course." Twopio carefully tottered backward and out of reach of Lucky, and then turned, walking stiffly toward the side of the cargo hold. "It is quite big enough to hold a human being, though not in total comfort. Mistress Arya herself has used it on occasion to hide herself."

[Lucky B]

Twopio's departure was a hook in the fleshy lip of his memortorium: there was an agefied bookkeeper on Malastare who smuggled stolen credit chits between her undercheeks - she moved like that, too. He trailed the stiffly eloquish one all the way to the bulkhead and, there, regarded it with dishidden unappointment. His arms knotted.

"Make it work!"

[Twopio]

"Certainly, you simply press here," Twopio placed a hand on the spot, "and here," spreading his arms so he could touch both at the same time. After a moment of nothing happening, he stepped back. "It appears I am not capable of opening it, but I assure you if there is enough leverage, this section comes off. I can assist in closing it from the outside, however. I have done it before."

[Lucky B]

With the application of his superior human endowments, Lucky removed the panel from the bulkhead and set it rumbling against a similar, unsecretive, metal panel. He put some distance between himself and the trickery, which put him in soldierly rank with Twopio. The mouse hole hidey-hole was given a frowning.

"We have some apprehensitivity about this." A firmviting hand found its place on Twopio's back, "Like a trembling leaf, he will fold himself into the micro-gloom, lest he be trampled on?"

[Twopio]

Twopio felt the weight of the arm on his back, and considered what it was Lucky was asking. Language was his speciality, of course, and the man's speech was a conglomerate of a form of pidgin Basic, Lokkian slang, and the random patter of those with attention deficit disorder.

"No apprehensitivity is needed; the hidey-hole is quite safe for trembling leaves, cargoes, and person-beings." Twopio turned his head slightly so as to see Lucky's face and gauge his reaction to the new translation pathways the droid had been creating by listening to him talk. "Unless he has a scare of tight spots, he will be quite safe from trampling. The safe-keeper has hid within of a time, and emerged to fly again. Very safe."

[Lucky B]

“We were talking about the Second of Pio.”

Meaning, loaded by the cargoful in Lucky’s eyes, was transferred gazily into Twopio’s bright vacant discs. On a knife’s edge, the moment arabesqued. The silence fell in shards around them when Lucky actioned himself fully against the droid: the first hand was reinforced by the second, pushing, wrestling Twopio towards the secret space.

“Deceptery and treacherism!” Lucky crowed, “Shrink yourself into unsightfulness, victimish metal man!”

[Twopio]

A new exception was made for this dialect - while a pronoun often means the speaker is referring to themselves in the third person, it does not always mean they are not talking about you. Twopio squawked as his body was shoved toward the smuggling hole. "Oh no, please! This one will not fit! The metal man will not-"

As he was pressed against the edges of the space and Lucky began leveraging one of his arms down, Twopio gave up completely on the new language database he'd been adding to. "I do not bend enough, Master Lucky, this will not work!" The assault abated just long enough for Twopio to turn around, arms at his sides. "Thank you. As you can see if you wish to leaveeEEE!" The smuggled cargo who was a man (or perhaps a boy), squatted down far enough to heft the droid up and into the hole, sliding him in past his hips. Twopio's legs stuck out ungainfully as the droid thumped on the walls all around him as he struggled ineffectually.

After a moment he calmed, and finished his sentence, his voice echoing tinnily from inside the wall. "If you wish to leave there is little I can do to stop you, though I do remind you that your passage was booked with Mistress Arya for your own safety, and if you do not follow her instructions the guarantee of your transport will be nullified."

[Lucky B]

“Our pockets are heavy and deep. We will have our own ship, unpliant one. A fast one!”

Lucky pushed, but it was his own legs, not the droid’s, that were repelled by his exertions; he watched his feet sliding away from him and decided the dead horse had been flogged. In the face of his defeat, Twopio’s rigid and unyielding legs protruded from the bulkhead like a rude and shiny gesture. The sentiment was returned in full when Lucky ragdolled against the nearest crate to refuel his lungs.

“We are a metal man, too.”

[Twopio]

This declaration of solidarity was too much for Twopio's circuits. "Get me out of here at once! I am a protocol droid, not a decoration. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication, including a lesser known dialect of Gamorrean from the slums of Nar Shadaa, and I will not be relegated to a baby sitter for -"

He paused, considering the noise of footsteps that had filtered into the hidey-hole while he had been in the middle of his tirade. "Hello? Are you still there?

"Hello?"

He was alone.

"Oh dear."

[Arya Ravenwing]

Fuel was a little cheaper than she'd been expecting, so Arya was considering which crate of consumables she was going to add to her supplies. The 'all-in-one' option with veg, protein packs, and a dessert option with enough for two people for three months was looking good. Not that Jaas would appreciate the veggies. Not that she did, either, but she ate them out of a sense of duty to her body. The seller sensed some hesitation on her part, and said, "They last unopened for five standard years!"

"Excellent," she said, "I'll take two crates." Arya turned and looked back toward the slip where her ship was tethered to the outside of the station, imagining she could see it through Jovan's thick outer hull. "Deliver them to 32DD. Dusty Maiden." She completed the transaction and walked toward the nearest bar. She needed a new bottle of whiskey for her galley.

[Bear Banthabrand]

“Can I get a half of Corellian over here, pal?”

The Toydarian turned a pair of pink listless eyes on me, and heaved himself from his stool. I watched, exhausted by the sight of small leathery wings working overtime to keep his gut from scraping the counter. Even in his hands, the glass looked small; in mine, it was a tragic comedy. I parted with a couple of chits and sipped to make it last.

Instinct was a funny thing: persistant, nagging, and altogether unignorable. As a result, I found myself in the crummiest watering hole this side of the galaxy, broke, and at the end of my rope. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but instinct, like marriage, turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. And the only way I could divorce the head-wife was with a kiss from Madame BlasTech. Instead, I drank thimblefuls of piss water, and counted down the minutes until I was forced to leave empty-handed. If I couldn’t drown my sorrows, I would at least take them for a paddle.

A debt was owed to the architect of Jovan Station, who, in some drug-addled fever, had neglected to account for the thin sliver of space left over in some forgotten corner of the promenade. There, above the smoked windows, hung a skewed lime green sign that read: Yog’s. Its proprietor, the elusive Yog, had furnished his humble establishment with cheap and pointless rafters - a throwback to home, no doubt, where they probably bedded their sisters and counted with their toes - and a rowdy arcade machine that was wedged into the back. But, hell, I couldn’t begrudge that: Endor Defender was a classic.

There was a light at the end of the room, when a tall drink of something stepped inside. I couldn’t see her face, but I expected it was twisted by the smell of boiled farts wafting from the kitchen. She waded through the coils of cigar smoke and took a seat at the bar. Attractive, in a chiseled kind of way; her edges had edges. And there was something familiar about her. From behind the rim of my glass, I watched.

[Arya Ravenwing]

"Do you sell by the bottle?" Arya leaned forward on her elbows, peeking as far down as she could at what the whiskey selection was on the back wall. The Toydarian fluttered over, blocking her view, and she sat back to keep her face away from his gut. "And, uh, some dark ale. Whatever's good."

The Toydarian grunted, shaking his head, "Not many people come here looking for something good." But he poured a glass of dark and slid it over. Arya sipped it, and found it adequate to her needs. She raised an eyebrow toward the bottles behind the counter, and he sighed. "Pick the one you want, I'll add it to the bill."

"That Corellian whiskey, that one," she pointed. She knew it was going to be overpriced, but she didn't have time to search for a decent liquor store. One drink, and then back to the ship and her antsy cargo. Arya looked down the bar and noticed that one of the patrons had the feel of someone who'd just glanced away from what he was really looking at. She eyeballed him, and caught him looking back at her. He was good-looking, in a scruffy, unwashed sort of way.

[Bear Banthabrand]

Now, that was a look. I held it, fully-loaded, like a blaster ready to go off. She didn’t flinch, even when the bottle was thumped upon the counter, but it caught my eye in the way expensive things do: in the hazy light, the whiskey was blood red.

“Diktat’s Office,” I read from the label, “Folks usually come here to drown their sorrows, not bury them at sea.”

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya relaxed a bit, and picked up the bottle to give it the once over. "I usually take my sorrows out back and shoot them." She watched an air bubble float through the red liquid as she tipped the bottle to the side, and then set it back on the bar. He was dressed like a spacer - not a transporter, but like someone who was used to hard living and getting physical to get what they wanted. She raised an eyebrow. "You got a lot of sorrows dogging your tail?"

[Bear Banthabrand]

“That’s one way of putting it.”

My non-answer was punctuated with a measured sip of beer. I wasn’t about to play head-shrink with a perfect stranger. She spoke like she’d walked the same roads, but I knew better: too many roads led to places like this. So we found ourselves rubbing shoulders in a den of booze-soaked bums. What did that mean? Maybe I’d find the answer inside those baby blues.

“I’d give you the short version, but something tells me you don’t have the time, Miss-?”

[Arya Ravenwing]

She tipped back her drink, draining it, and then slapped her credits on the bar. "Trust your intuition." Arya tucked her new bottle under her arm, and got up from her stool. She gave him a wink, and headed out through the drifting smoke to the promenade.

[Bear Banthabrand]

Today's Special - Root Stew!

Behind the bar, there was a chalkboard plastered with a sickly green scrawl. Below, scratched in yellow, it said: "Tomorrow's Special - Root Stew!" Yesterday, I tried the root stew for myself; there was nothing special about it. Still, my stomach growled like a wookiee at a finger buffet. I finished my drink and lingered on the spot where the winking broad had vanished. There was only so much hunger a bowl of root stew could cure. Trust your intuition, she'd said. I threw up a hand.

"I'll have the special."

Like hell.

[Arya Ravenwing]

The multi-hued neon sign proclaiming The Blob Place nearly made her pause, but she was on a schedule. Arya checked her chrono. The fuel tank was probably topped off by now, and her crate of supplies was due to arrive. She quickened her pace toward where her ship was docked, bottle safely under her arm.

[Lucky B]

Like a Lokian sulphurlily, Lucky drifted on the burbling people currents, twirling, gaping at the vaulted luminous heights. The promenade orgied colour from tiered landings full of cantinas and shops. The crowds heaved, a swarm of boring bees, always going, never doing. Where was the honey for all their busy work?

Giddy joy sprang up inside of Lucky as he wrapped himself in anonymous invisibility. He was not a metal man anymore. His feet were his to guide; his eyes were his to feast. And feast he would, for the needs of the belly outweigh the needs of the few.

A couple of fur coats waded against the tide. The big one nursed a crate of furish fruit, while the little one knifed safe passage with a sure step and a scowl.

The whisperers whispered.

From his pocket, Lucky unearthed a single credit chit and dropped it. With skillish timefication, he lowed himself to reclaim his castaway coin, and upset the fur coat’s fruit when he rose. What artistry commenced! The furish fruit jiggled and leapt, and Lucky snapped at the flying fruit like the Felucian mantis crab.

“Hail, furful brothers!” he said, juggling, “What fortunery brings us together, in the now, that we may rescue the furish fruit from a messy end!”

While the big one awed the hand-wittery, his smaller harder companion snatched at their unseated goods, snarling teeth like daggers of wet pearl. An ecstasy of fumbling.

“You clumsy buffoon!” said the fur coat. There was a note in his voice that quavered like a trembling kusak pup. He brandished handfuls of fruit with dark intent. “This, here, is a man’s livelihood!”

“Apologies! We mean to listen,” Lucky beamed, “But the whisperers are in a furor and we fear you may be quite mad. Good day, sir!”

Once the fur coat had resumed his march, Lucky flourished a large round furish fruit from his jacket and took a happy bite. It was disgusting.

[Bear Banthabrand]

“Anything I can do to help, mister. Anything at all.”

For the third time, I found myself on the receiving end of that greasy smile. The shopkeeper, a scrawny Neimoidian, liked to remind me he was there, watching. He bowed every time, but not for long: he liked my hands where he could see them. And, while I inspected frozen dinners, he mirrored my every move. When I dared a glance at the fresh fruit, he nearly coughed up a lung.

“Look, buddy, will you relax? I’m not going to steal your blasted namanas.”

A ring of silvery chimes drew my attention to the door, where a couple of Bothans had just walked in. They were a strange sight: one was small, with black fur, and a face to turn blue milk sour; the other was huge for a Bothan, he was carrying a crate full of what looked like bantha balls, and smiled at me as he passed. The little one was all-business.

“Solt. Fifteen Utapaun potatoes, as agreed.” He sounded bored. Every word was a childbirth. “Hand-picked. These, I have inspected, personally. I trust you have the payment ready?”

“Rulph, I’m insulted you would think otherwise.”

To my surprise, the jittery Neimoidian ducked out of sight, and when he reappeared, he was holding a large case. It hit the counter with a thud - that thing was heavy. Rulph snapped his fingers.

“Rubert?” His drone became a whip crack, “Rubert! Get your head out of the clouds!”

The big fella, who had his nose buried in the honey melons, gave a snort of surprise and loped over to his buddy. He deposited the potatoes with a clatter; the others went rigid, and hissed hard words under their breath. Rubert’s ears drooped. “My bad,” he said.

While the small business was done, I pored over the nutritional information on my box of bantha burgers like it was the funny pages. After a moment, Solt, the shopkeeper, said, “There are fourteen.”

“What?” Rulph croaked.

“I count fourteen potatoes here, gents.” Solt’s hands were on the case. “You promised fifteen.”

“There… I counted… I…” Rulph turned to his companion, leapt, and slapped him on the head. “Rubert, you had… one job.”

“Sheesh!” Rubert whined, rubbing his ear, “You told me ta carry the potatas, so I did. I carried ‘em all the way here! Counting was your job!”

“Silence!” Rulph’s beady eyes widened. His desperation stunk more than the tower of Tusken cheese wheels behind me. “The boy. That idiot boy. He stole it from us.”

“Okaaay. Well, gentlemen, I’m afraid that’s all for today. If you could just make your way out. Thank you!”

For the first time, the scrawny Neimoidian left his counter. He sure had some wind in his sails. Before I knew it, he was upon me, taking my bantha burgers. I fired up what I thought was a legitimate complaint, but somehow found myself being ushered towards the door with a web of spindly fingers on my back. Rulph wasn’t far behind, making bargains while Solt clapped out the rhythm of his retreat.

“You can have the fourteen at a discount. Twenty-five percent. Fifty. Pasterly, please!”

With a little help from the shopkeeper, the door rattled shut. In the window, a red light flickered into life that read: Closed. Suddenly, that bowl of root stew seemed like it had been a bad idea all along. I gave the Bothans a look but they were too busy with their ugly ass potatoes.

“We split up. Find the boy. Get the potato. We make the deal. Don’t mess this up for me, brother.”

“Find the boy. Get the potata,” Rubert repeated, as he wandered off.

Now Rulph looked at me - he seemed to be weighing something up behind his eyes. From his pocket, he took a small pouch and tossed it my way. It was full of seeds. If that was supposed to compensate my inconvenience, then Bothans seriously undervalued the humble bantha burger. Still, I helped myself to the seeds, and chewed while I tracked the little guy into the crowd. There was a smell of opportunity about this one.

[Arya Ravenwing]

She pushed the crates into the ship through the airlock, letting them slide further in on their anti-grav fields, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Time to check on her precious cargo in the hold. Which was open. Arya's blaster was in her hand before she had a conscious thought about it, and she sidled up to the opening that led down into the belly of the ship, peering down the ladder. "Twopio?"

"Oh thank the Maker!" came a strangely muffled reply, and there was some clanging that didn't sound right at all. Arya slid down the ladder and cursed at the sight of Twopio's blue legs sticking out of her smuggling hide. She pulled him out, scraping his paint against the edge of the bulkhead, and demanded answers. "What in the nine hells are you doing in there? And where is Lucky?!"

"Master Lucky decided to leave," the droid said. "He would not be reasoned with."

"Krasst!" Arya realized she was holding her blaster too tightly, and holstered it under her jacket. "Stay here. I'll be back." She climbed up the ladder, and entered the codes to leave the ship. That little bastard was slippery if he'd managed to get out and lock the door behind him, but he couldn't have gotten too far. She stood for a moment, just outside the ebb and flow of the crowds of people and aliens that made up the majority of Jovan Station.

"Krasst!"

[Lucky B]

Between snaking threads of wearified travellers, Lucky wove for himself a pattern of escape. At length, he eyed columns of people tubes with vessels, like fireworks, that twinkled in their ascent and inevitable fall. In pictures and words, a floating sign storied the length and breadth of the station. Lucky pinned his attention to the sign and twisted at the last stubborn tuft of fur on his rankish fruit. It was all but bald now, and perhappibly, a degree eatible. The fur ripped free and drifted spirally to the ground.

“Ahem!” There was a buxom Twi’lek, arms afold, making a warzone of her face as she eyed, first, Lucky, and then the pitiful little tuft, and back again.

“If we do not cast down our unwanted oddments, oh, one with sea-green flesh, with what will the cleaner put food on the family table? We are but links in a great chain - fight not against it.”

The mouth opened like it meant to consume him, so Lucky awayed with all hasterism. Before the people tubes pressed a rag-rich crowd of refugees. They clambered, an unwashed heap, before the feet of a swaggified sort with golden hair. He called himself

“Seezer Silvertongue. And not only am I offering safe passage, but free passage, to all who will pledge their hands to a spot of unpaid labour aboard my trade ship, the humble Workhorse. So, if you wanna ditch this floating rust bucket once and for all, make your way to Bay 36E within the hour - I promise to take care of you.”

A white flash of teeth was the last Lucky saw of Seezer Silvertongue; in a fever of madness, the crowd heaved as one towards the people tubes, and a sandwich of floor and feet made of Lucky a much-trampled filling.

[Bear Banthabrand]

Usually, having a height advantage meant never losing sight of your quarry in a crowd. But when your quarry was a black-as-the-night Bothan inside a bustling space station, well, that changes things. I bobbed and I weaved, rubber-necking at every turn, and whenever I laid eyes on the little runt, I hit the thrusters.

“Exuse me, miss. Coming through. Sorry, pal. Thank you.”

Things were going well: Rulph was in my sights, and he was too distracted to even notice he had a tail. Heh. All that was left, was for me to step in at the opportune moment, and muscle a profit from this… whatever the hell I’d gotten myself into. I took a pinch of seeds and then I stepped in something. The seeds rained down on unsuspecting pedestrians; I was frozen, spread-eagled, like an oversized surfer. Once I was certain there was no danger I was going to end up on my ass, I righted myself.

“What the…”

Wedged in my boot, there was a chunk of something. I worked it free, and held it in the stale light: it was a half-chewed chunk of raw potato with the same hairy flesh as the others. Huh. Looks like the thief came this way, after all. I checked the floor for any more signs of half-eaten food, but instead, I found something else. At a glance, it looked like some poor soul had lost his mind and started tearing out chunks of hair in the middle of the promenade. Caged inside those grey walls with rest of the down-and-outs, I could sympathise. But I knew better: this wasn’t no lock of hair, it came from an Utapaun potato, and a balding one at that. I got myself real low and, sure enough, there was another sad tuft of fur up ahead.

There was no reason to keep tabs on Rulph anymore, not when I had a trail of my own. So I had breadcrumbs for a lead, that didn’t matter: this was some bounty hunting shit.

[Arya Ravenwing]

She had been tempted to dash into the throng and start making her way down one side of the promenade and then the other, but a better idea had occurred, and so she was pointing her finger in the face of one of the Alliance techs instead. "I need to see the security feeds for the airlock leading to my ship!"

"And like I said, we don't usually let civillians -"

"Someone stole something out of my ship right under the nose of the Alliance and you're not going to let me review the file?" Arya put her hands on her hips. "I guess I should go get the Jaani'saarri, then, I'm sure they'll be all over your docking spur and reviewing your protocols for quite some time if they discover that you're letting thieves into the ships docked here."

"That, that won't be necessary!" The tech blanched, and pulled out his padd, tapping a few commands into it's touch interface. "What airlock again?"

"32DD," Arya said, peering over his shoulder.

"Right, of course. Here we go..." Lucky quite clearly left the airlock and headed in a certain direction. It wasn't much, but it was something, at least.

"That should do it, thank you," Arya said, clapping the tech on the shoulder and already looking back at the promenade.

"But, it doesn't show the thief getting on -?"

"I'll handle it from here. Old friend of mine, thinking he's going to stir up mischief, looks like. Thanks again!" The smuggler took off jogging down the promenade, head on a swivel.

[Lucky B]

Either this crowd breaks, or I do!

Barking beratements, Lucky’s spine weathered the last of the stampeding crowd. Relief, like ice pearls, rolled in tingles down his back. In agonish blissphemy, Lucky cat-stretched in the golden sun of his salvation. Short-lived. By the will of a hulkish hand, he found himself footside, where the aches sunk like water into the sand of his skin.

“My furful friend,” Lucky greeted the bejowled one, “You saved us! Plucked, we have been, from the clutches of certainish death!”

He was big for a fur coat, with eyes like swimming pools. On some lazy breeze, his gaze drifted, first, over Lucky, and then towards the fruit in his hands. The swimming pools shrank.

“Hey! You did steal the potata! Give it back!”

His great fumbling paw fumbled air. When it came to starts, Lucky had always been on-pole. He hugged his balding fruit like a newborn. “Mine!”

Jowls aquiver, the fur coat swiped slow-motionly, and with unnotable success. “Mine!”

[Bear Banthabrand]

It was about when my fist struck the big fella in the kisser, when he stumbled bloody-muzzled in a shower of Utapaun potatoes, that I considered the ailing subtlety of my choice. I threw an arm around the wiry kid and offered Rubert a look of consolation.

“Mine,” I heard myself say. The stupidity was infectious.

Towards the turbolifts, I led him, while the onlookers looked and the bystanders stood by. We made it to the lifts without trouble; there was something to be said for shock tactics, after all. Over my shoulder, I saw Rubert scrabbling around on all fours, gathering potatoes, and yelping at clumsy spectators when they offered to help. I’d seen some strange things.

“Inside.”

Without fuss, the kid obliged, and hobbled into the turbolift. In my surprise, I almost forgot to join him inside, with the smell of static and thick soup of multi-species body odour. The wall of shambling down-and-outs was closing in around us, but their advances were stopped short by a fully-loaded shake of the head. This was a private party for me and - a creeping sideways glance, just to make sure - Lucky. You could say that again.

Just before the door whined shut, I spotted a familiar face in the crowd: Miss Trust-Your-Intuition, herself. Next time, the Diktat’s Office was on me.

[Arya Ravenwing]

There was an altercation of some sorts ahead of her, and Arya stood on her tiptoes to try to see over a taller alien. By the time she reached where a Bothan was struggling to his feet and wiping blood from his muzzle, she seemed to have missed whoever had caused it. Looking across the way, she could see two men getting into a turbolift, people talking and some pointing in their direction. The perps, no doubt. Her eyes popped with surprise to recognize the man from the bar, and was that Lucky B beside him?!

She shouted "Hey!" and ran foward, but the doors closed and they were gone. Arya slammed her hand on the slick metal of the turbolift doors, then jammed her finger into the call button. Had they gone up or down? She looked at the floor indicators and cursed loudly enough to draw some shushing from a Cizerack male in a delivery outfit for a nearby fast food kiosk.