A foot struck the sole of Darren’s boot.
“Hey. Wake up.”
He opened his eyes and brought his hand toward his holster.
The stranger stepped back, raising a toolbox between them.
“Easy. I need that panel behind you.”
Darren stopped.
Pipes vibrated overhead.
His back rested against a metal floor, and the air smelled of burnt oil, frying food and sewage.
No rain.
No gunfire.
He took his hand away from the pistol.
The being standing over him had blue skin, enormous red eyes, and a face so smooth it looked as though the nose had been forgotten in the design.
Long fingers tightened around the toolbox handle.
Duros, Darren thought.
Maybe.
The word came from a game, or a book.
Darren could not remember which.
The man waiting for him to move had a split nail and grease on his sleeve.
“You’re blocking the passage,” the Duros said.
Darren understood him.
He could hear sounds he had never learned forming words he did not need to translate.
He sat up and moved clear of the panel.
“Where am I?”
The worker grimaced.
“Nar Shaddaa.”
Darren went still.
The Duros pointed toward an opening in the corridor.
“And if you keep sleeping here, the Ganks will find you before security does. Neither one will improve your night.”
He crouched at the panel, setting his toolbox where Darren’s head had been.
Whatever had brought a stranger here was less urgent than the repair.
Darren moved to the far end of the corridor before checking himself.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said quietly.
The pistol was in its holster.
A knife.
The small medical kit.
The analog watch.
Two magazines counting the one in the weapon.
Twenty rounds.
His fingers found the empty radio clip.
He remembered letting it fall onto the stone.
His clothes were still the same ones from the mission, but the blood that had soaked them had vanished.
The skin under his shirt was intact; old scars remained, including the white line across his shoulder from a border operation he preferred not to remember.
He pressed two fingers beneath his ribs and took a breath deep enough to hurt if anything remained damaged.
Nothing did.
He tried again, then caught himself doing it a third time.
The worker glanced up at him.
Darren lowered his shirt.
His body was healed; he still expected the next movement to tear it open.
Darren stood and felt the ordinary weight of his own body, no pain, no weakness.
The woman had honored one part of the bargain.
Behind him, the worker swore at something inside the wall.
Darren almost turned to answer.
Rivera would have had an opinion about the repair, despite knowing nothing about it.
He put a hand against the doorway and waited for the impulse to pass.
The corridor opened onto a street that seemed physically impossible in the vertical dimension.
Speeders moved along different levels, some skimming close to crowded metal platforms.
Holographic signs covered entire facades.
Basic, he realized.
He could read the symbols without knowing how he had learned them.
He looked away from a sign and tried to picture the letters.
He could remember what it said, but not how he knew.
The woman had done more than repair his body.
A cantina advertised drinks in three alphabets.
A pawnshop sold droid parts, weapons, and objects Darren could not identify.
Wet clothes hung from an upper balcony beside exhaust pipes; below, a green-skinned Twi’lek argued with a delivery droid while two small furry beings dismantled some engine component directly on the walkway.
Everywhere there were cables, patches, rust, and the sense that the city survived because someone was always able to repair just enough to postpone collapse for one more day.
A hauler passed close enough to stir his jacket.
Darren stepped away from the unguarded edge and found himself staring down through another layer of traffic.
There was no ground in sight.
Someone behind him clicked impatiently; he moved aside before he learned whether it was a word or a threat.
At the next intersection, two private guards stopped a Rodian and demanded an identichip.
One held a scanner to his eye.
The other watched the queue forming behind him.
Darren slowed.
He had no documents, no money and a weapon he could not explain.
He looked past the checkpoint toward a transit sign, then turned back before either guard noticed his interest.
The pawnshop was on this side of the intersection.
Its window held tools, droid limbs and a tray of watches.
He pulled back his sleeve.
The Duros shopkeeper at the pawnshop examined Darren’s wristwatch with the suspicious expression of someone handling either a museum piece or junk.
“Mechanical.”
“Yes.”
“No network synchronization.”
“Also yes.”
“Primitive.”
Darren rested his forearms on the counter.
“Antique.”
The red eyes blinked.
“Twenty credits.”
“Fifty.”
“Twenty.”
“Do you not negotiate, or do you just dislike my face?”
“Both.”
Darren smiled.
“Thirty-five.”
“Twenty-five.”
Darren reached for the watch.
The shopkeeper kept two fingers on the strap.
“Thirty,” the Duros said.
“Final.”
The second hand crossed the dial.
He had wound that watch before the mission, expecting to be back before it stopped.
For a moment he considered offering the knife instead.
Then he looked at the tools in the window and at the shopkeeper’s patient fingers.
“Cash,” Darren said.
The Duros opened a drawer.
Darren let go of the strap.
“Deal.”
He left with thirty credits.
Three went to a bottle of water with a metallic taste.
Seven went to a plate of something the vendor swore was meat.
Twenty remained.
He carried the food to a narrow standing counter beside the stall because every table was occupied.
The vendor, an elderly Twi’lek woman with one lekku wrapped in a faded cloth, watched him taste the meat with the caution of a man defusing something.
“Bad?” she asked.
Darren chewed.
“Unknown.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Neither was ‘meat.'”
She laughed, which made two dock workers beside him look over.
One was human.
The other had four eyes and hands too broad for the small cup he held.
They had the exhausted posture of people whose shift had ended but whose home was still several transit changes away.
The human asked where Darren was from.
For half a second he considered the truth.
Brazil.
Earth.
Another universe.
Dying in a ruined temple while rain came through the roof.
“Far out,” he said instead.
The worker nodded as though that explained everything.
“Outer Rim?”
“Farther.”
“Explains the accent.”
Darren had not known he had an accent in Basic.
He took a drink to avoid asking what it sounded like.
His own voice was something else he would have to learn.
The four-eyed worker glanced at Darren’s clothes.
“Military?”
“Used to be.”
“Republic?”
“No.”
The four-eyed worker waited for the rest.
Darren took another mouthful instead.
Planetary forces, private security, mercenaries: he remembered enough possibilities to know that choosing one without knowing the local questions would be a mistake.
The worker shrugged and returned to his drink.
Darren changed the subject by asking where a man without local identification could sleep cheaply without waking up lighter by an organ.
The Twi’lek vendor pointed with her knife toward a transit board.
“Level Kesh-Seven. Twelve credits if you pay cash. Don’t use the place under the casino unless you like cameras.”
“They ask for a chip?”
“They ask for twelve credits. You heard that part?”
“I did.”
The human worker snorted.
“She likes strays.”
“I like customers who come back.”
Darren folded the remaining credits into his palm.
A room would leave eight.
Enough to eat again if the prices stayed the same.
For the first time since opening his eyes, he could imagine getting through the night without accepting whatever someone offered him.
A small Rodian child squeezed between adults near the counter, carrying a tray of empty cups nearly as wide as his body.
One slipped.
Darren caught it before it hit the floor and handed it back.
The child took the cup back, rearranged the whole precarious stack and pushed on between the customers.
The vendor followed him with her eyes until he reached the stall.
“Your son?” Darren asked.
“Help.” She wiped the counter where he had spilled something.
“When he remembers.”
The human worker lifted his plate out of her way.
For a few seconds nobody asked Darren anything, and he ate while they argued over whose turn it was to pay.
He could understand the words.
He missed the joke that made all three of them laugh.
He looked down at the white strip where his watch had been.
He had nowhere to be until he found somewhere to go.
“Kesh-Seven?” he asked before leaving.
The vendor pointed again.
“That line. Don’t get off at Kesh-Four.”
He thanked her and repeated the number under his breath.
Across the walkway, a cantina screen showed the seal of the Republic.
He stopped.
He had a place to sleep; he still did not know what year he would wake up in.
Inside the cantina, he took a table facing the screen, with the door and a side passage in view.
A server approached.
Darren lifted the bottle he had bought outside.
“Waiting for someone.”
She looked at the bottle, then at him.
“Not all afternoon.”
He nodded as though he had someone to blame for the delay.
On the screen, a familiar face appeared.
Palpatine.
Younger than he had been under the Empire.
No deformities.
Chancellor.
The report mentioned Naboo and the third anniversary of the crisis caused by the Trade Federation.
Darren stopped with the water bottle halfway to his mouth.
Naboo: 32 BBY.
Third anniversary.
Roughly 29 BBY, if the broadcast was current.
He checked the moving ticker beneath it: arrivals, delays, a warning about a closed freight level.
This was not a history programme.
He did the arithmetic again.
About ten years before the purge.
Anakin would be a Padawan.
Obi-Wan, newly made a Knight a few years earlier.
Dooku…
where was Dooku now?
Tyranus already?
Probably.
Kamino might already be producing clones.
Might.
That was the problem.
He knew who the Chancellor was.
He could not remember when Dooku had left the Order, or what evidence of the clone army existed yet.
The certainty of Palpatine’s face made those gaps more dangerous: it would be easy to mistake recognition for knowledge.
Ten years.
He could find someone, get a warning to the Jedi, put proof behind a claim they would otherwise dismiss.
On the screen, Palpatine shook hands with a man Darren did not recognize.
Security stood half a pace behind them.
First he needed to get off this moon.
Twenty credits would not carry him to Coruscant, let alone through the people between him and the Chancellor.
He watched the handshake end and made himself look away.
Staying alive today had to lead somewhere; it could not become his excuse for the next ten years.
Darren drank the last of the water he had bought at the stall.
“Plan B, then.”
“You talking to yourself?”
The voice came from beside him.
A Zabrak woman occupied the neighboring table.
Her skin was a reddish brown; small horns formed an irregular crown above her forehead.
A pale scar cut along the line of her jaw.
She wore light armor marked by scorch burns and a holster positioned so her hand could reach the weapon without crossing her body.
Darren noticed that before he noticed her eyes.
She noticed him noticing.
“Sometimes,” he answered.
“Makes you look crazy.”
“I already look broke. One thing at a time.”
She turned back to her drink.
A short while later, a middle-aged human man stopped beside the table.
Hard face, uneven stubble, work jacket reinforced at the shoulders.
He did not look like a crime boss.
He looked like someone who had spent twenty years doing work for crime bosses.
“Sira.”
The Zabrak looked up.
“Voran.”
He pointed at Darren.
“Who’s that?”
“Nobody.”
“Excellent start,” Darren said.
Voran did not smile.
“I need a sixth. Cargo escort. The replacement hasn’t shown.”
Sira looked Darren over from head to toe.
“He’s been watching everyone else’s holster since he sat down,” she said.
“You know how to use what’s in yours?”
“I know how to use a gun.”
“And a blaster?”
“I can learn.”
She made a sound that might have been laughter or contempt.
Voran sat down.
“The last team got hit yesterday. Del died. Renn disappeared. I have another transport leaving today and I can’t wait.”
Sira set her cup down.
“Still nothing from Renn?”
Voran shook his head.
Her thumb stayed against the rim for a moment.
Darren watched the space between them close around a conversation they were not going to have in front of him.
“How many made it back?” he asked.
“Enough to tell me what happened,” Voran said.
“Not enough to fill today’s places.”
“Same route?”
“Different delivery.”
“That wasn’t his question,” Sira said.
Voran turned toward her.
“We’ll go over the route downstairs.”
“And Renn?”
“I’ve left word. I can’t wait here for him.”
She looked at the door.
Voran waited until she looked back.
Neither seemed willing to be the first to leave.
Darren had seen teams move on because they had to.
He had also seen employers discover how useful that explanation could be.
“Pay?”
“One twenty.”
“One fifty.”
Voran accepted too fast.
Darren understood immediately that he should have asked for more.
“Shit.”
Sira laughed.
“New market?”
“A little.”
Voran pointed at the Earth pistol.
“That a slugthrower?”
“Close enough.”
“Ammo?”
“Limited.”
“Then rent one of my blasters. Fifty.”
“Thirty.”
“Forty.”
“Out of the pay.”
Voran looked at him for a moment.
“On return of the weapon.”
“Deal.”
Another bargain that probably favored the other man.
One hundred and ten after the rental.
Enough for several nights, and an introduction to people who moved things through the city.
He had accepted less convincing promises on Earth.
He kept his hand on the table.
“I have no local chip. If that stops us at the first checkpoint, tell me now.”
“Freight access is mine to clear,” Voran said.
“You stay with us.”
The guards outside the pawnshop had wanted a record.
Voran wanted another body beside his cargo.
For today, that gave Darren a way through.
Voran held out a hand before Darren could rise.
“Name.”
“Rick Deckard.”
The name arrived from a film before he had time to choose something sensible.
He watched Voran for a sign of recognition and got impatience instead.
“Stay here, Deckard. I need to clear the lift.”
Voran went to the counter.
Sira remained where she was, turning her cup between her hands.
On the news screen, Palpatine had given way to somebody discussing shipping figures.
Darren found himself waiting for the Chancellor to return, as though another glimpse might reveal a weakness invisible to everyone else.
“Don’t stare at that all day,” Sira said.
“Bad news?”
“It’s always bad news. Eventually you’ll order a drink.”
He put his empty bottle down.
“Do you trust him?”
“Voran?”
Darren nodded.
“To pay. If we deliver.”
“And the rest?”
“You just agreed to work for him.”
“I noticed.”
She studied him long enough for him to regret asking.
Then she leaned back and looked toward the door.
“He pays for a guard. Don’t let him get a martyr at the same price.”
Darren looked toward Voran.
“Does he know the difference?”
“He knows I do.”
“Del and Renn,” he said.
“You knew them?”
“Yes.”
He waited, leaving her room to add something.
She did not.
A pair of dockhands came through the door and her gaze caught on them before returning to her cup.
Darren recognized the small, useless check.
He had looked at the rubble that way after the woman answered him.
He almost told her about Rivera.
The name was already waiting behind his teeth.
He swallowed it; he knew two names from her life, and that was no invitation to trade losses.
“You don’t have to sell me the job,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
That made him smile, briefly.
She finished her drink, keeping her eyes on the entrance.
Voran called them over.
He had put a short case on the counter and was arguing with its owner about something on a datapad.
When the argument ended, he opened the case and pushed a blaster toward Darren.
“Check it. Sira, come here a moment.”
Darren kept the muzzle down and his finger clear.
The weapon’s weight sat farther forward than he expected.
There was no slide, no familiar magazine release; two small controls offered several ways to make an expensive mistake.
“Which one’s the safety?”
Sira pointed.
“That. Leave the lower selector alone.”
He tested the safety while keeping the weapon down, then settled his hand around the grip again.
His thumb wanted to rest against a projection that was a control rather than a piece of the frame.
Sira tapped the side of his hand.
“Not there.”
Darren shifted his thumb.
“All right.”
Voran called her again.
She gave the weapon one more look and followed him through a side door, leaving Darren with the case and the cantina owner’s increasingly hostile attention.
He could put it away, let them assume that familiarity with one weapon transferred cleanly to another.
The temptation lasted until he imagined discovering the difference while Sira stood in front of him.
“Somewhere I can test this?” he asked.
The owner pointed toward a passage behind the counter.
“No slugs. Nothing explosive. Close the door.”
At the end of the passage was a cramped testing recess, its far end lined with scorched material.
A target hung above a sloping catch plate.
Somebody had written the same warning on the wall in letters large enough for an idiot to read.
Darren understood those, too.
He checked that the recess was empty, closed the door and raised the blaster.
The first shot struck below the target.
Red light flashed against the plate near the floor, and the sound was much sharper than he had expected in the small room.
He lowered the weapon, annoyed with himself.
He had braced for a kick that had not arrived in the way his hands expected.
Knowing the difference intellectually had done nothing to remove it from his muscles.
The second shot was low as well.
He reset his grip and slowed the third, watching for the dip instead of trying to force the sight upward.
The bolt still struck the bottom of the recess.
He could feel the movement now, too late to stop it.
“Excellent,” he told the empty room.
He stopped.
Three shots had shown him a problem he would not train away before the lift cleared.
Shorter distances would help, but he could not promise Sira a precise shot past her shoulder.
She needed to hear that before they started.
He checked the safety and went back to the counter carrying the weapon low.
The owner looked up from a terminal.
“Works?”
“The weapon does.”
The owner grunted and pointed at the case.
Darren laid the blaster inside.
His Earth pistol felt suddenly reassuring against his hip, and therefore dangerous in a different way.
Twenty rounds.
Whatever else he did today, he could not treat those as an answer to every problem.
He waited with one shoulder toward the wall.
Beyond the front window, a cargo hauler crept past so close that its hull blocked half the street.
A pilot shouted down at someone under the traffic lane.
The person shouted back.
Darren found himself listening for rotor blades.
There were none.
He closed his eyes for a moment and saw Rivera’s boot instead.
The water in the cuff.
The distance he had been unable to crawl.
“Deckard.”
Darren opened his eyes.
Sira stood at the counter with a strap over one shoulder.
He had not heard her return.
She glanced at the open case.
“That’s yours. Voran’s cleared us through.”
“Right.”
She waited while he pushed away from the wall.
He had responded late to the name.
He knew she had noticed.
“Deckard isn’t yours, is it?”
“It’s the one I’m using.”
“You’ll have to answer to it.”
“I just did.”
“Eventually.”
He let that pass.
She closed the case and picked it up.
“Case stays shut through freight control,” she said.
“You get it back in the lift.”
Darren glanced at his own holster.
“Keep that covered.”
He pulled his jacket across it.
Voran’s access was useful only while he let them manage the crossing.
“Anything else I should know before we leave?” he asked.
“If you lose sight of us, stay where we can find you. Don’t take another lift because you think it goes to the same place.”
“That happen often?”
“Once was enough.”
He almost asked who.
She was already looking toward the side door.
He left the question alone.
Voran returned, checked the case in Sira’s hand and counted them with a glance.
The habit was familiar enough that Darren nearly looked behind him for the rest of his old team.
“You ready?” Voran asked.
Darren could have said no.
He could keep his twenty credits, find Kesh-Seven and put off this choice until hunger made the next one for him.
He could still picture the vendor’s knife pointing toward the transit board.
Twelve credits, cash.
No one here knew that he could afford to walk away.
He felt for the twenty credits in his pocket.
They were still there.
This job might buy him food, a room and the name of someone who could make him exist on a local record.
It might also leave Sira asking about him at the next table.
“Ready.”
He followed them into the street.
Sira set a quick pace toward the freight access, and this time Darren kept his attention on her instead of the impossible height of the buildings.
At the entrance, Voran showed something to the attendant.
No one asked Darren for an identichip.
He passed through before that could change.
Inside, the freight lift held two cargo speeders and three men waiting beside them.
One checked a securing strap; another looked past Voran as though expecting someone else.
Sira carried the case aboard.
Darren stepped across the gap and turned toward the door.
On the other side lay a route to a cheap room and a night he might survive without firing a shot.
He let the door close.
The lift began to descend.
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Thanks for reading — and for supporting Darren’s increasingly questionable life choices.