The cantina had entered that strange desert hour when time became sticky. One sun had dipped below the dunes and the other hung low enough that its light slanted through the doorway like a giant flashlight pointed straight into the room. Everything glowed copper: the bottles, the tables, the sand blowing through the threshold, the tired faces of patrons who had sauced since sunrise, and were slowly, unwilling beginning to sober.
Geraldine Potts, on the other hand, had only just now finished erecting her base of operations at the bar. Three stools wide. One for her. One for her elbow. One for the expanding graveyard of empty glasses. The bartender slid another drink toward her.
“You know those cost money,” he said.
Gerry squinted at the glass.
“Ftheoretically.”
She drank it anyway.
A Devaronian trader down the bar watched with mild fascination. Two Jawas at a nearby table had stopped arguing over a droid elbow joint and were now quietly observing what looked increasingly like an unfolding event. The bartender sighed.
“You here with the loud one?” he asked.
“Which loud one?”
“The one with the face like a frigate.”
“Oh!” Gerry perked up. “Barb! Yes. Isn’t she delightful?”
Across the room Barb was nonconsensually arm-wrestling someone who appeared to be three bounty hunters stacked in a coat. The bartender nodded slowly.
“…delightful.”
Gerry leaned across the bar suddenly, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Do you wanna hear something craaaazy?”
The bartender closed his eyes briefly.
“No.”
“Ok. Nice. Liss’n up.”
She tapped the bar with a dramatic finger.
“Lucy Von Schmidt.”
That name alone shifted the air slightly. Even on a dusty backwater planet, people knew that name. One of the Jawas whispered something that sounded suspiciously like “Utinni gossip.” Gerry smiled.
“You know her?”
The bartender shrugged.
“Rich girl. Mining family. Nasty lawyers.”
Gerry waved a dismissive hand.
“Oh please. That’s just the brochure.”
The Devaronian trader leaned in slightly. The Jawas stopped pretending not to listen. The bartender stopped polishing his glass. Gerry lowered her voice.
“Lucy Von Schmidt,” she said slowly, “is not actually a Von Schmidt.”
Someone down the bar snorted skeptically.
“No no no,” Gerry said, shaking her head vigorously. “Not rumors. Lineage complications.”
She straightened proudly.
“I’m extremely well informed about these things. My Daddy tol’ me.
The bartender raised an eyebrow. She leaned forward further.
“Her mother.”
The bartender’s expression changed slightly. Now that name mattered.
“Wilhelmina,” Gerry said quietly.
A beat of silence followed. Even the Devaronian stopped drinking. Everyone in the sector knew that story. Lady Wilhelmina Von Schmidt. Dead on Luna. Mining accident. Corporate tragedy. Gerry tapped the bar slowly.
“Except it wasn’t really that simple.”
The bartender sighed.
“Of course it wasn’t.”
Gerry continued anyway.
“You see, before Wilhelmina married Mortimer Von Schmidt…”
She pointed upward vaguely.
“…she worked on a royal cruiser.”
Now the room was fully listening.
“Ship maid,” Gerry continued proudly. “Twenty years.”
The Devaronian frowned.
“Royal cruiser?”
“Mordonian Questular.”
That got attention.
Gerry nodded solemnly.
“And there was a prince.”
She leaned even closer.
“And after several years of extremely polite eye contact across the ship…”
She wiggled her eyebrows.
“…well.”
Gerry spread her hands like legs.
“And then suddenly—boom—pregnancy.”
The Devaronian leaned back slowly.
“You’re saying—”
“I’m saying,” Gerry whispered dramatically, “Lucy Von Schmidt is not the daughter of Mortimer Von Schmidt. She is the daughter of the Emperor. The Questulan Princess of Mordonia.”
A quiet ripple moved through the bar. The Jawas whispered frantically to each other. The bartender rubbed his temples. Gerry continued.
“But the prince was to be Emperor that coming Spring, and this would have opened up a Questulan Inquisition. So the Prince’s mother, The Queen Regent, sought to get rid of her. But how?”
Gerry was on a roll now, holding court while the whole room stood enraptured.
“Murder was too messy. Exile too risky. And besides, what of the unborn child? This was still the heir to Mordonia, however bastardy.”
She paused for effect.
“The Queen brokered a deal. Well really, she arranged a marriage between money and power. Mortimer Von Schmidt was desperate for a seat at the table, and this was how he could secure it. He could be trusted to provide, but more importantly, to be discreet…so long as it served him.”
Gerry spun on the stool and launched into the next verse.
“But as young Lucy grew older, she began to feel out of place. You see, the Von Schmidts are famously… how do I say this politely…”
She paused.
“…financially enthusiastic sociopaths.”
The bartender nodded once.
“But Lucy,” Gerry continued, “Lucy isn’t like that at all.”
She wagged a finger.
“Lucy is a worker.”
The bartender blinked.
“That’s disappointing.”
“I KNOW!” Gerry said loudly. “Can you imagine being born into one of the most disgustingly wealthy families in the galaxy and deciding you’d rather crawl around in sand fixing stuff for womp scratch?”
A Jawa muttered something approving.
“Edzactly,” Gerry said, pointing at him.
“But here’s the part nobody talks about.”
She leaned in again.
“She has no idea who she really is.”
“Lady.”
“Yes?”
“You should not be saying this out loud.”
Gerry beamed proudly.
“It’ ok. I’m extremely good at keeping secrets.”
Right then—
CLANG
A massive metallic crash thundered through the ceiling above them. The entire bar looked up. From the roof came the unmistakable sound of tools hitting metal and a woman’s voice swearing loudly. A few patrons blinked. The bartender slowly looked back at Gerry.
“…that her?”
Gerry frowned.
“What?”
Another loud bang. A shower of dust fell from the ceiling. The Devaronian glanced toward the back hallway.
“…isn’t that the engineer you came in with?”
Gerry waved dismissively.
“Oh no no no, that’s Lucky.”
Another metallic CLANG shook the ceiling.
Someone at the bar said cautiously:
“…Lucky the moisture tech?”
“Yes.”
“…fixing the harvester?”
“Yes.”
“…on a six-million-credit emergency contract?”
Gerry paused. The room waited. The bartender slowly leaned forward.
“Miss?”
“…yes?”
“You said Lucy Von Schmidt is an engineer.”
“Yes.”
“You said she travels to remote planets fixing moisture systems.”
“Yes.”
“You said she hates her family and prefers manual work.”
“Yes.”
The bartender sighed deeply. The whole room watched her eagerly waiting for her to catch up. Gerry opened her mouth. Closed it. Thought. Then said slowly:
“…she’s on the roof.”
Everyone turned and looked up again. Except Gerry. Gerry was still processing. Another crash. A wrench rolled across the ceiling above them with a loud metallic skrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk. Gerry finally turned her head upward. Her eyes widened. Her mouth slowly opened. Then she whispered:
“Lucky Lucy.”
The bartender poured himself a drink.
The story Geraldine had just sloppily detonated across the cantina floor was, unfortunately, not entirely wrong.
Lucy Von Schmidt had never quite fit inside the Von Schmidt story.
The Von Schmidts were famous for a very particular style of living. They built megabusinesses across the galaxy—from Luna to the Horsehead Nebula—and they ran them with the delicate moral touch of a pneumatic rivet railer. Their guiding principles were simple: produce the minimum acceptable quality, squeeze the maximum possible profit, and ensure that any resulting catastrophe was legally categorized as someone else’s fault.
It had worked extraordinarily well.
Within a few centuries the Von Schmidts had accumulated so much wealth that they began orbiting dangerously close to the gravitational field of true power. Not quite royalty, but close enough that people occasionally forgot the difference.
There were, after all, only seven true ruling houses of Questular. Names that had governed the balance of galactic authority for tens of thousands of years: Mordonia, Squaremingus, FayrNazeret, MayrDezeret, Beartop, Portuberous, and Torbus.
The Von Schmidts had never been one of them. But they had always wanted to be.
For most of Mortimer Von Schmidt’s career that ambition had been pursued the traditional way—slowly accumulating influence, quietly buying leverage, positioning the family to marry into one of the seven houses and become the long-awaited eighth.
Then, twenty eight years ago, something remarkable happened. Mortimer received an invitation: The Seminal Congress of Capital Conjoinment.
This ritual occurred only once every five hundred years. The seven houses gathered, pooled their wealth into a single symbolic treasury, and redistributed it evenly among themselves—a ceremonial affirmation that power, not money, was the true currency of the galaxy. It was not about gaining wealth. It was about sharing power.
The Von Schmidts had never been invited before. For Mortimer, the offer was monumental. The youngest house in the council had been admitted more than ten thousand years earlier. History itself seemed to be cracking open for him. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Mortimer Von Schmidt was an idiot. Not a foolish man, far from it. He was ruthless, clever, and dangerously ambitious. But in the moment that mattered most, he misunderstood the entire point.
When the ritual began and the houses ceremonially moved their wealth into the shared pool, Mortimer hesitated. Then he politely declined. The scandal exploded across the galaxy before the ceremony had even finished. Headlines ran for weeks.
“VON SCHMIDT CHOOSES MONEY OVER POWER!”
The ancient houses were amused. Mortimer was humiliated. From that day forward his ambitions changed. He no longer wanted a seat among the houses. He wanted the houses themselves. All of them. Absolute power. Infinite wealth. No middle ground.
But then a second invitation arrived. A private one. From the Queen of Questular herself:
I require a personal favor. The utmost discretion is demanded. This will benefit us both, Morty.
For a moment the roof was quiet except for the slow creaking spin of the harvester fins and the wind moving across the dunes like a long sigh.
Lucky slid halfway out of the condenser housing, her boots scraping metal. She wiped dust from her cheek with the back of her glove and leaned over the edge of the open panel.
“Try it.”
Ace looked up.
“Try what?”
“The bar switch.”
He blinked.
“The bartender controls the system from inside,” she said. “There’s a master breaker behind the liquor rack. Flip it twice.”
Ace stood slowly and walked toward the ladder hatch.
“You could have mentioned that earlier.”
“I like suspense.”
Ace climbed down the ladder. Inside the cantina the bartender watched him approach without enthusiasm.
“You break it already?” he asked.
“Engineer says flip the breaker.”
The bartender sighed and reached under the counter. A heavy switch snapped down. The lights flickered.
Then—
WHRRRRRRRRRRR
The roof above them began humming as the harvester spun to life. A cheer erupted from one corner of the bar where two farmers had been quietly betting on whether the machine would ever work again. The bartender flipped the switch back up.
WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
The sound deepened into a steady mechanical rhythm. Ace climbed back up the ladder. Lucky was sitting cross-legged beside the open panel now, tightening the final bolts with quiet efficiency. The harvester fins above them rotated slowly, catching the faint humidity drifting across the desert air.
She tilted her head, listening.
“Good,” she said.
Ace crossed his arms.
“Six million credits for that?”
Lucky shrugged. She closed the panel and slid off the housing. Ace studied her.
“You ever wonder why someone would pay that much?”
Lucky didn’t look up.
“No.”
“You don’t think it’s strange?”
She finally glanced at him.
“Everything in the galaxy is strange.”
She rolled her tool kit closed with a snap.
“People just pretend it isn’t.”
The wind pushed sand across the roof. Ace looked out across the dunes. Somewhere far off, lightning flashed again. Still no clouds. Lucky followed his gaze.
“Storm coming?”
“No.”
Ace said it quietly.
“That’s the problem.”
Lucky watched the horizon for a moment longer. Then she slung the tool kit over her shoulder and walked toward the ladder.
“Let’s get me paid.”
The cantina was louder now. The harvester working again had lifted the mood considerably. Someone had started a card game. The bartender had upgraded himself to a better bottle, and downgraded Geraldine Potts to a cheaper one. She was halfway through explaining the Congress of Capital Conjoinment to Barb.
“…which was originally supposed to be a regulatory body,” Gerry said, waving her drink dangerously close to a Rodian’s ear, “but then the corporations realized it was much easier to just be the government.”
Barb blinked slowly.
“…so the govermint is… companies?”
“Yes.”
Barb nodded.
“That makes sense.”
The bartender slid another drink toward Gerry.
“You should not be telling strangers this stuff,” he muttered.
“I’m not telling strangers, I’m talking to my friend Barb” Gerry said proudly. “She’s going on a very cool vacation soon, ain’t that right Barb?
Barb raised a hand.
“Sure am! Gonna get laid at least twice! And at least once with another person!”
The bartender looked tired. The ladder hatch opened and Lucky dropped down from the roof.
“Fixed,” she said.
“…you’re serious?”
Lucky nodded.
“Condensate line was backwards.”
The bartender leaned on the counter.
“I have been paying technicians for two months.”
“You were paying idiots for two months.”
“That checks out.”
Barb slammed her hand on the bar.
“MORE DRINKS! I’m going on vacation!”
The bartender sighed but began pouring. Ace climbed down the ladder last. He landed quietly beside them. Lucky extended her hand to the bartender.
“Payment.”
The bartender froze again.
“…right.”
He turned and pulled a small datapad from under the counter. Then he frowned.
“…that’s strange.”
Lucky waited.
“What?”
The bartender tapped the screen again.
“The contract says payment already cleared.”
Ace’s eyes sharpened. Lucky tilted her head.
“That’s correct.”
The bartender turned the screen toward her.
“Yeah but…”
He squinted.
“…it cleared three hours ago.”
Lucky frowned slightly.
“That’s impossible.”
The bartender tapped the screen again.
“Transfer origin confirmed. Imperial treasury ghost account.”
The bar went quiet. Ace said nothing. Lucky stared at the screen.
“…that shouldn’t be public.”
The bartender shrugged.
“It’s in the ledger.”
Gerry leaned forward.
“Oh that’s interesting.”
Lucky took the datapad. The transfer line was clear.
6,000,000 credits – confirmed.
Authorization signature: J. Questular
Lucky blinked once. Then handed the datapad back.
“…that’s a mistake.”
The bartender shrugged again.
“Not my mistake. You got friends in high places”
Ace felt the wafer in his pocket like a stone. Barb raised her drink.
“Well then!”
Everyone looked at her. She grinned.
“Looks like the skinny bitch is a rich bitch. Drinks on HER!”
The cantina erupted again. Ace glanced at Lucky. She wasn’t smiling. She was chewing her cheek staring at the datapad like someone whose past had only just recently caught up with them. She headed for the door.
“Time to go.”