The Mos Eisley Cantina sat half-buried in sand like the skeleton of a giant animal. A neon sign flickered above the doorway:
MOS EISLEY – COLD DRINKS / NO QUESTIONS
Barb’s trunk roared to a stop outside. The hatch popped open and music spilled out of the doorway—chaotic brass, alien percussion, and something that might have been a tuba having a panic attack.
Lucky jumped down first. Ace followed. Geraldine climbed out more carefully, brushing dried rat fluids from her sleeves with visible emotional trauma. Barb locked the trunk with a heavy clank.
“Alright sugar lumps,” she said, slinging the shock rifle over her shoulder. “First round’s on the lottery winners.”
Inside, the cantina was packed. Traders crowded the tables, moisture farmers leaned over cards, and two bounty hunters were arguing loudly over a carbon-frozen briefcase. A group of Jawas were gambling with what appeared to be a disassembled droid arm. The bartender polished a glass with a rag that might once have been part of a uniform.
Barb shoved through the crowd and slammed her hand on the counter.
“Four Craquila shots!”
The bartender looked up slowly.
“Three,” Lucky corrected.
Barb frowned. “Don’t drink?”
“I engineer.”
The bartender nodded approvingly. “Smart.”
Three glasses appeared on the bar. Ace grabbed his immediately. Barb leaned close to him.
“Cheers, Acebaby.”
They clinked glasses. Ace took a long swallow and felt the alcohol hit his bloodstream like a small meteor. His shoulders loosened slightly.
Then a voice beside him said thoughtfully, “Huh.”
Ace ignored it. The voice said it again.
“…Huh.”
Ace glanced sideways. A man sat two stools down. Older. Beard like rusted wire. Eyes red but oddly alert, like someone who had been drinking for a long time but had not stopped thinking. The man leaned closer, studying Ace with exaggerated concentration.
“…Huh.”
Ace turned back to his drink. The man spoke again, conversationally.
“Y’ever notice how faces repeat?”
Ace said nothing.
“Schtatistically fascinatin’,” the man continued, words beginning to slur together in a slow desert drawl. “One in forty thousand for general resemblance. But but but when the cheekbones match…” He leaned in further, squinting. “…an’ a eyebrows… oh ya. Then you’re lookin’ at somethin’ interestin’.”
Ace took another drink. The man nodded slowly to himself, as if confirming a private theory.
“Yep,” he murmured. “S‘s what I thought.”
Ace finally turned.
“What.”
The man shrugged pleasantly. “Oh jus’ padderns.”
Ace turned back. The man continued anyway, clearly delighted to have an unwilling audience.
“Padderns everywhere if you look long enough. Ship registries. Cargo routes. Minin’ reports. Accident logs. Li’l scratches in the universe where the truth tried t’ claw its way out.”
Ace didn’t react.
“Take cave collapses for example,” the man said casually.
Ace’s blood ran cold. His glass stopped halfway to his mouth. The man kept talking.
“Funny things, cave collapses. Always so… tidy. Whole tunnels vanish. People inside disappear. People outside so so sad. But somehow the paperwork gets written up before the dust even settles.”
Ace turned slowly. The man noticed the movement and smiled faintly.
“Oh,” he said softly. “I see you’ve noticed that one too.”
Ace stood, his stool scraping loudly across the floor. Ace leaned down toward him.
“Say that again.”
The man blinked lazily.
“S’what?”
Ace’s voice dropped into something low and dangerous.
“About caves.”
The man stared up at him for a long moment. Something in his expression sharpened. Then suddenly he barked a laugh.
“Well lookit this,” he slurred. “Big tough spaceman gettin’ hot about a lil’ story.”
He leaned forward, bumping his shoulder against Ace.
“Whassa matter?”
The man wobbled. Ace didn’t move. The man poked a finger into Ace’s chest.
“Maybe you’re one of them moon company boys. Maybe you like neat little accidents. Maybe you—”
Ace grabbed the man by the collar and yanked him halfway off his stool. The cantina noise dipped slightly. For a moment the man looked like he might swing. He took a step away from the bar. Then another. Then his foot caught the edge of Ace’s boot. The man stumbled forward. Hard. He slammed into Ace chest-first. Ace shoved him back violently.
“Watch it!”
The man steadied himself, laughing breathlessly, gripping Ace’s jacket for balance a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
“Mmm, you smell good! Is that Dust Daisy?”
Ace’s hand was already half curled into a fist. The man raised both palms again.
“Relax, relax. I’m leavin’.”
He straightened his coat, patted Ace lightly on the shoulder like a man apologizing for bumping into someone in a crowd, and started weaving toward the door. Halfway there he paused and looked back.
“Still,” he said thoughtfully, words dragging together with a drunken weight, “funny thing about padderns.”
Ace didn’t answer.
The man tapped the side of his temple.
“Most folks stare right at ’em and see nothin’.”
He squinted at Ace again.
“But every once in a while… somebody else notices the same stars.”
The man gave a little crooked salute.
“And that’s when the story starts gettin’ interestin’.”
Then he stepped out into the blazing sunlight. The cantina noise slowly returned. Lucky leaned toward Ace.
“Friend of yours?”
Ace grabbed his drink and slammed it down harder than necessary.
“Just some desert idiot.”
Ace shoved his hands into his jacket pockets in frustration. His fingers hit something solid. He froze. Slowly, he pulled it out. A heavy data wafer. Unmarked. Cold. Ace stared at it. The cantina noise hummed around him. Lucky noticed the change in his expression.
“What is it?”
Ace’s jaw tightened.
“Nothing.”
He shoved the wafer back into his pocket. Then he grabbed the drink the bartender had quietly slid toward him and knocked it back in one swallow.
Lucky set her empty water glass down.
“Where’s the harvester?”
The bartender didn’t look up from polishing his glass. He jerked his chin upward.
“Roof. Ladder in the back hallway. Been coughing dust for two months.”
Lucky nodded once and stood. From somewhere inside her pack she produced a compact tool roll that unfolded with the quiet confidence of someone who had done this exact thing on fifty different planets.
“I’ll take a look.”
She slung the roll over her shoulder and disappeared toward the back.
Barb watched her go.
“That skinny bitch ever smile?”
Geraldine leaned across the bar, lowering her voice as though discussing royalty.
“She’s an engineer.”
Barb nodded as if that explained everything.
Ace didn’t say anything. He felt the weight of the wafer in his pocket like a stone. A moment later he slipped off his stool.
“Fresh air.”
No one objected.
The back hallway smelled like rat weat and hot metal. A narrow ladder climbed through a square hatch cut into the ceiling. Wind howled faintly through the opening. Ace climbed.
When his head cleared the hatch he was greeted by a blast of dry desert air. The roof of the cantina was a mess of pipes, condenser towers, and rusted machinery bolted together over decades of repairs. The moisture harvester sat in the center like a skeletal windmill—thin metal fins stretching upward to catch the faint humidity drifting across the Dune Sea.
Lucky was already kneeling beside the main condenser housing. Panels lay open around her. Tools floated in small arcs as she worked with quick, precise movements. She didn’t look up.
“You’re standing in my light.”
Ace stepped aside.
A welding spark snapped bright blue against the metal casing. Lucky tightened a bracket and leaned back to inspect her work.
“Pressure valve’s shot,” she muttered. “And the intake fins are clogged with silica dust. Whoever maintained this system before me was either drunk or illiterate. Likely both.”
She reached out without looking.
“Torque wrench.”
Ace picked one up from the open roll and handed it to her.
Lucky took it, tightened something deep inside the housing, then leaned forward again with total focus. Within seconds she had forgotten he was there. The wind moved across the roof in long dry breaths. Sand whispered against the metal towers.
Ace stepped away.
Behind the harvester a large condenser tank cast a deep shadow against the roof. Ace crouched there, sheltered from Lucky’s view. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the wafer.
It was heavier than it looked. Scarred metal but unmarked.
He turned it once in his fingers, then slid it into the data port on the inside of his wrist unit. The wafer hummed. A soft blue projection flickered into the air above his arm.
FILES UNLOCKING
The first document appeared.
LUNA INDUSTRIAL MINING INCIDENT – YEAR 12008
Casualties listed in clean bureaucratic type.
Wilhelmina Von Schmidt
K. Dexter
Unidentified technician
Ace’s breath stopped.
K. Dexter.
His father.
He stared at the line for a long time. The wind rattled the condenser fins above him. The file expanded.
Official cause: Cave Collapse – Structural Failure.
Ace’s jaw tightened. Another document opened automatically.
BLAST LIFTER TEST AUTHORIZATION
Corporate Seal: Von Schmidt Industrial
Authorization Signature: Mortimer Von Schmidt
Ace felt something cold move through his chest. The projection shifted again. A final encrypted file appeared. For a moment nothing happened. Then a single line of text faded into existence.
If you are reading this, you have already begun to see the pattern.
Ace stared at it. The wind pushed a cloud of sand across the roof. Behind him Lucky’s torch flared again as she welded a joint inside the harvester assembly.
Another file opened.
CONTRACT PAYMENT RECORD – ENGINEERING SERVICES
Recipient: Lucy Von Schmidt
Location: Tatooine – Mos Eisley Cantina
Advance Payment: 6,000,000 credits
Ace frowned. Of course the contract used her real name. Lucky was just the mask. He’d known that from the moment the Mortimer Von Schmidt gave him the bounty brief:
Find her.
Bag her.
Bring her home.
Ideally in one piece…but hey, shit happens.
Mortimer seemed inappropriately glib about the well being of his only daughter. But that was perfectly on brand for Mr. Moon Mine, so Ace didn’t pay much mind.
At the time Ace had assumed Mortimer was worried Lucy’s soft hands beginning to become unnecessary calloused, and in his circles, that just would not do. But six million credits for a harvester repair was insanity. Something else smelled very wrong about the contract, and Mortimer clearly wanted eyes on it. Ace felt like he was investigating a mystery. Like he was back in the MMI.
But the next line on the file dissolved that idea instantly.
Payment origin: Imperial Treasury – Ghost Account.
Authorization signature: J. Questular.
Ace stared at the name. The Emperor himself had funded the contract.
The Emperor had sent her here.
Ace leaned back slightly against the condenser tank. His mind ran through the possibilities and discarded each one almost as quickly as it formed. Jamie was not a man who moved pieces without purpose. If the Emperor had created this job, paid for it…
…then something on this planet mattered a great deal more than a broken water harvester.
Behind him Lucky climbed halfway inside the harvester housing.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered. “They routed the condensate return through a copper line. Copper. On a desert planet.”
Ace slowly slid the wafer back into his pocket. Thunder rolled across the dunes. Not a cloud in sight.