Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

The Face of Evil

All Creatures Great and Small

The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku

High Noon on Jakku

© & TM 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd.

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

ISBN 978-1-4847-5683-6

Designed by Gegham Vardanyan

Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.

Contents

Title Page

Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Copyright

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

CONSTABLE ZUVIO’S fingertips brushed the handle of the small blaster he kept hidden in a holster in the folds of his robe. “I don’t want to do this, Seezee,” the gray-skinned Kyuzo said, his voice clear through the bandages he wore over his mouth. “No one else has to be hurt. Not me…and not you.”

The sun was low in the sky. The dry desert landscape of Jakku stretched around the pair for kilometers. To an outside observer, Zuvio and the droid designated CZ-1G5 might as well have been the only two entities on the planet.

CZ stood across the dune from the constable, his outline framed by the setting sun. With a slow and deliberate motion, the bone-white secretary droid began to raise the blaster pistol he held in his unlikely hand.

“Drop the blaster…” Zuvio warned, gripping his own small blaster tightly. He was fast…but CZ-1G5 was renowned for his speed. Could the constable raise his weapon in time?

“I’m sorry, sir,” replied the droid in his perfect clipped speech, “but I have no other option.”

A long silence hung in the air. The dry atmosphere of Jakku pressed heavily on the constable and the droid.

A single shot was fired.

And with that, only one figure was left standing, his shadow long with regret as the last remnants of day drifted away.

EARLIER.

Niima Outpost sat near the equator of Jakku, not far from the mountain ridge known as the Fallen Teeth. For Jakku, it was a relatively comfortable and temperate zone, with conditions that were mostly survivable. It was only in the peak hours of a few days of the year that you had to stay out of the sun altogether. On those days, the burning, punishing radiation of Jakku’s star would fry the skin of even the most heat-resistant species.

It was one of those days.

Constable Zuvio sat at his desk, bored. The short and stocky Kyuzo looked almost comical at the tiny workstation, his wide-brimmed war helmet hiding his features in shade, his eyes darting back and forth as he examined a stack of documents. Zuvio was a stern-looking individual, with most of his features perpetually covered by bandages that helped his sensitive respiration system cope with the climate. His eyes were yellow with black slit-shaped pupils, and his brow was furrowed in an expression that made people think he was always angry. The secret truth of the matter was that Zuvio suffered from vision problems, common in Kyuzos, and his expression was formed from years of squinting slightly to see better.

On the harsh world of Jakku, better to let people believe he was angry.

The role of constable was a difficult one. Despite the fact that the population of the town was relatively small, there was always someone willing to take advantage of the slightest weakness in his or her neighbor. So, as is the case with any gathering of beings, a desire for a semblance of structure slowly arose among the prospectors and scavengers who had drifted to the crumbling settlement of rickety landing bays and dusty salvage yards. And somehow, amid that attempt at self-governance, Zuvio found himself pinned with the label of constable. It was a job that managed to keep the Kyuzo quite busy—mostly with incoming starships and the trouble they always seemed to bring.

That day was a rare one. The best kind: a quiet day. So instead of theft and assault to investigate or ship captains to interrogate, there was paperwork—long-overdue documents that needed to be read, signed.

Luckily, the outpost had an answer for that, too; the position of constable meant that Zuvio was permitted part-time use of Niima’s lone secretary droid, CZ-1G5. CZ worked in an administrative capacity for several of the outpost’s more prominent denizens. The droid was ancient by tech standards—probably over three hundred years old—and while there were more modern droids that might have been more competent, the small Western Reaches colony had never needed one better.

CZ entered the small office and moved through the room with practiced ease, quickly scanning the pile of paperwork the constable had submitted and filing it with the proper agency via his built-in long-wave comlink transmitter. It was a sight to behold, the droid moving at lightning pace, flipping through documents at a speed impossible for most biological entities to match. Zuvio watched the droid out of the corner of his eye, listening to the sounds made by his quick movement. It was almost hypnotic.

It was a good thing the droid was around, too, as Zuvio’s archaic preference for paper was impossible for any other droid to wrap its programming around.

“You’re late, Seezee,” Zuvio said brusquely.

The droid did not immediately answer, instead shuffling off to the hallway to enter his security clearance codes into Zuvio’s encryption terminal. Data-locked terminals like that were a common way to keep secure forms protected, and typically only the owners could access them. CZ had a modified transmitter that allowed interface. It was a necessary step on Jakku, as few other beings could be trusted with the codes but a second point of access was always needed in case of emergency.

“Not saying it’s a problem, just not very like you,” Zuvio continued. “Most of the time, you’re where you’re supposed to be, like clockwork.” It was true. The two beings had worked closely together for years, and though Zuvio wasn’t exactly the type to make friends, CZ was about as close to earning that label as any might ever get. A change in the droid’s routine wouldn’t be noticeable to many, but to Zuvio? It stood out like water in the desert.

The droid turned toward the constable. After his many decades in service, his mild, amiable voice was tinged with a mechanical hum.

“I’m so sorry, sir.”

The constable was about to respond when the office shook from a loud explosion nearby.

BY THE TIME Zuvio arrived on the scene, his two deputies were already scanning the area. A banking ship had been hit, and hit hard by the look of it. The banking ship was a regular transport that arrived at the outpost every cycle to manage transactions on behalf of the Western Reaches Exchange. It usually stayed three or four rotations, then left to conduct other business. The ship served as one of the few anchors between Niima Outpost and the rest of the galaxy, and a strike against it could have heavy repercussions. Though the ship was built to carry a modestly sized cargo, many of the transactions were done electronically, with a large computer core in the systems mainframe built to hold account information secure until the ship reached a point where the data could be transmitted to the larger Exchange network.

Whoever had struck the ship hadn’t wanted to take any chances of failing. One side of the small cargo vessel was obliterated. That was the explosion Zuvio had heard—and the blast had taken out at least seven citizens and two droids.

A crowd was gathering. “Drego, Streehn,” Zuvio addressed his two cousins. “Crowd control.” The Kyuzo deputies moved to hold back the growing mass of concerned citizens.

One of them, an older green-skinned Rodian, wailed, “Our credits! Everything we had was on that transport!”

Another, a Melitto, shouted, “We’ll be ruined! What will we do?” But both of them were abruptly pushed aside by a long-nosed and rather thin member of the Kubaz species, one wearing uncommonly long and very finely tailored robes. Uncommon for Jakku, anyway. It was clear at a glance that the Kubaz was no native of the barren world.

“Constable!” he said angrily through a handheld translator. “I demand to know what is happening here!”

The Kubaz in question was Rikard Lovas, and the banking transport that had been attacked belonged to him.

Zuvio waved the banker past the deputies. “It’s a robbery,” he declared in his flat voice. “The cargo hold is empty. And the computer core holds no records of any active accounts.”

Lovas turned a pale blue-gray that looked sickly for his species. A bead of sweat escaped the thick rectangular goggles he always wore. “But…” he stammered. “But that’s impossible! Our system is heavily encrypted. No one could possibly access it. Not without…”

Lovas glanced at a panel on the interior of the ship. It was just like the one in Zuvio’s office. The one that allowed an individual with the correct codes to access encrypted data.

But outside of the bank manager, no one could have that access. No one except…

“Seezee…” whispered Zuvio. “Oh, no.”

CZ-1G5 WAS GONE by the time Zuvio returned to the Office of the Constable. Worse, the small locked armory in the office had been cleaned out. Three blasters. A sniper rifle. All the grenades. Even the vibro-pike he usually carried. Gone.

And a speeder was missing, as well.

The only weapon Zuvio had left was the small blaster he kept hidden at his desk. He checked it. The power cell was at half, and he had no time for a charge—not with a transport-robbing, heavily armed droid making off across the desert wastes.

And CZ would be out there, in the parched wasteland that covered the majority of the planet. The droid couldn’t afford to stay on Jakku, and there wasn’t a ship—not in Niima—that would take him. Zuvio didn’t even need to check a map. The only logical direction for the rogue droid to head was south, toward the Fallen Teeth. There was an abandoned attempt at a settlement out there that pirates sometimes used to hide smuggling ships when they didn’t want to pay docking fees.

That assumed the droid would act logically, of course. But none of it, Zuvio thought, none of it made any sense. CZ had served the town since the first colonists landed. Zuvio knew the droid well; he was liked and respected across the entire community. The droid was even known to volunteer in the public kitchens and work in his free time as a volunteer care provider for the ill. If there was something CZ wanted, all the droid had to do was ask. Why throw it all away now?

Time to find the droid and ask him.

Zuvio called in to Drego and Streehn, giving them orders to forward all evidence from the robbery to his personal comm system, and then jumped on one of the remaining speeders and headed south toward the Teeth.

IN THE WASTES OF JAKKU, south of the outpost, the droids waited. Zuvio was coming, and they had to be ready.

G2-9T distributed the weapons, a grinding noise emanating from its broken voice modulator as it did so. A BD-3000 with a deeply scarred and corroded chassis took the rifle and adjusted the scope while a COO-2310 selected the grenades. The J57-CM floated in, buzzing in droidspeak and broadcasting an image of what it had recorded on its telescopic lenses: the constable was near the northern ridge. Time was short.

An EG-6 gonk droid moved around the small droid encampment, offering power to any who needed it.

CZ-1G5 stared at the blaster he was holding in his stiff white hand. Anyone who knew the droid well would have thought he looked…sad.

THE TRAIL had been easy to spot. Few speeders traveled along the southern route those days. The speeder’s repulsor engines left a distinct pattern in the loose sands below.

It was as if CZ had left a map.

Zuvio looked down the long road and saw the ruins of an old freighter. At one point it had been heavily converted into a home—a poor fool’s attempt at a moisture farm. That was clearly a very long time before, and the crashed ship had been empty—abandoned—for some time.

CZ’s trail led directly toward the shell of the tall makeshift farmstead….

Too easy. Too easy for a smart droid like CZ.

The constable suddenly slammed on his speeder’s brakes. As he did so, a rifle blast burst from the distant farmhouse, clipping the front of the speeder. A sniper shot. If Zuvio hadn’t stopped…

But that hadn’t been simple chance. Everything about it smelled wrong to the constable.

Zuvio rolled behind a rocky outcropping, dodging a second shot. The speeder was ruined. The sniper shot intended for the constable’s chest had instead pierced the speeder’s engine housing—and more, judging by the vent of green fire spewing from its chassis.

The speeder exploded. Shrapnel burst across the barren landscape. One small shard of metal ripped through Zuvio’s sleeve, cutting deeply. Biting back the sudden pain, Zuvio flipped open his comlink. Jammed. No help was coming.

The constable raised his blaster as another sniper shot clipped the rock only centimeters from his head. That was three shots….

Zuvio had his assailant at a disadvantage. He knew the capabilities of each and every firearm taken from the Niima weapons locker. The weapon being used was a Czerka-93U hunting rifle, plus scope and targeting computer. The targeting system was an after-market add-on, and it had never worked quite right. It was fine if the weather was clear, but on a sandy world like Jakku…

And it chambered only four rounds, with a three-second pause for cartridge reload.

Zuvio scooped up a handful of dry sand and hurled it above the outcropping, into the zone where the rifle’s computer would be attempting to lock on to a target. At the same time, he stood up and aimed his blaster. There was a good reason Zuvio had never replaced the cheap targeting system of the old rifle: the system worked poorly with his eyes. The Kyuzo had problems with short distances. But long distances?

Long distances he could see quite well.

A shot from the rifle sizzled past his head, just as Zuvio had expected. The computer would now compensate and lock on to Zuvio, but the rifle would need to reload—buying the constable just enough time to do what needed to be done.

The constable squeezed off three quick shots. One would have been sufficient. He heard a loud metallic squeal and saw a cascade of sparks burst from the roof of the old farmhouse. A direct hit.

Unexpectedly, there was a rising scream in droidspeak from his left, and Zuvio saw a floating cam droid retreating toward the abandoned moisture farm. He was being watched. And more…it wasn’t just a matter of one rogue droid anymore. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the sniper to identify it, but it certainly wasn’t CZ. So there were at least three rogue droids on the outskirts of town—armed and using lethal force….

Zuvio didn’t waste any more time in contemplation. He was a Kyuzo, a species that originated from a gravity-heavy world. That meant his muscles were more developed than those of the average bipedal species, and he could move fast when he needed to.

With a powerful leap, the constable covered half the distance between the rocky outcropping and the farmhouse. Multiple blaster shots attempted to target him as he moved, but whoever was firing either hesitated or did not expect the speed the constable exhibited.

One more jump and Zuvio reached the edge of the farmhouse roof—a carbon-scored fighter shell of some kind. His large fingers dug in to the surface, and he kicked his way through a dilapidated makeshift window in the side of what was once a freighter docking port.

There were a lot more than three droids inside.

BACK IN NIIMA, unaware of the peril Zuvio was in, Drego and Streehn were examining the scene of the crime and interviewing witnesses.

“I saw him…I did,” said an elderly female Ottegan, her elongated face bobbling up and down rapidly. “It was that droid…that CZ droid. He left the banking ship only minutes before the explosion.”

“You saw him at the transport?” asked Streehn. “But you weren’t in there when it exploded….”

“And lucky that I wasn’t!” she said. “I had an appointment with Mr. Lovas, but when the computer informed me he was absent, I decided to leave and do some shopping. Otherwise…”

The Ottegan shuddered and emitted a scared honking noise.

“It’s all right….Just one more thing…” Drego said in a soft voice. “What time was your appointment?”

A PARTICULARLY broken-down astromech designated B33 attempted to stun Zuvio with one of its attachments. The constable moved quickly, kicking the orange-and-green-striped droid backward into an ancient-looking RIC—a crude labor droid with a giant wheel instead of legs. To his left, a tall and thin droid that looked much like a stick protruding from a board, with half a dozen tiny arms attached—a WED Treadwell—flailed in robotic panic, and Zuvio shifted his attention to the much more dangerous DD-13 surgical unit. Balanced on its three legs, the tall, cylindrical droid lashed out with a scalpel, and Zuvio barely had time to dodge. Again the blade descended, but that time the constable was too slow and he received a clean cut across the forearm in return for his momentary deficiency.

Meanwhile, the astromech was back for another attempt. The orange-and-green droid fired a tow clamp at Zuvio. Seeing his chance and vaulting to the right, the constable nimbly evaded the clamp, which then struck the DD-13. With a quick fluid motion, Zuvio shoved the astromech out the second-story window. Its metallic droid scream was cut short by a loud crash, and the surgical droid was yanked out the window as B33’s tow cable automatically retracted.

In the background of the fight, CZ held his blaster. Despite his steady hand and fast speed, the droid wasn’t firing.

The cam droid Zuvio had seen earlier slammed into the constable with a vengeful squeal. Zuvio shoved it to the side just as the Treadwell finally found its courage and rolled in for an attack. The multiple arms of the Treadwell were still flailing uncertainly, but even in a panic the droid’s tool-arms could be dangerous.

Zuvio stepped backward, tripping into the melee. Amid the chaos, he heard the singsong chirping of an MSE droid. Zuvio knew that the Treadwell would choose that moment to strike, so he rolled to his side instinctively. There was an electronic shriek as the Treadwell inadvertently dispatched the MSE, which meant the heavily shielded MSE would send an ionic charge backward and deactivate the Treadwell.

From the corner of his eye, Zuvio saw CZ fleeing down the stairway in the corner of the room. Kicking aside the tangled mess that had been the Treadwell, he moved to pursue—and found himself blocked by an EG-6 power droid covered in grenades.

The constable paused. Power droids were encased in a durable shell, but if one were to be cracked open—which was very likely to happen there—the explosion would be…substantial.

Zuvio turned without a thought and hurled himself out of the window he had entered through. The drop was not insignificant, and Zuvio hadn’t had time to properly plan his trajectory. He landed with a robust crash, just as a deafening explosion ripped through the abandoned farmhouse. Debris rained all around him—both pieces of the homestead itself and metal shards that had once made up the now very broken droids.

Zuvio pulled himself up, bleeding and bruised, and he heard a sad whine coming from nearby. One of the rogue droids was still active.

It was the astromech—unsurprising. Droids like that were designed to take a beating. Still…the orange-and-green-striped unit had seen better days. One leg was torn off and the droid’s chassis was ripped wide open. Its flat-top head clicked noisily, unnaturally, as it struggled to turn and look at the constable with its single, cracked eye.

That was when Zuvio noticed the restraining bolt.

BACK AT THE banking ship, Drego scanned the ID numbers entered into the terminal.

“Anything?” Streehn asked.

Drego shook his head. “Just standard transactions…until minutes before the explosion. You see here… ?” Drego pointed to the terminal. “All accounts were frozen automatically when the transfer occurred, but the explosion initiated emergency protocols on all communications systems, which includes credit authorization.”

“And?”

“And then the accounts were emptied, everything in them…gone.”

“To where?” Streehn asked.

“That’s the thing…” Drego mused, tapping his thick finger on the monitor. “Nowhere. The money doesn’t show up in another account. But…there’s no trace of a transfer. None.”

Streehn was frustrated. “Why would CZ rob the banking ship and not take the money? Why would CZ rob the ship at all? What’s he going to buy?”

Drego folded his fingers in contemplation.

“I think there’s someone who might be able to answer that.”

THE SECRETARY DROID had left a trail of footprints through the desert sand, almost easier to follow than the speeder trail had been. Only this time, Zuvio was fairly certain he wasn’t walking into a trap. No, CZ was panicking. His path zigged and zagged through the sands uncertainly. The droid was afraid.

Zuvio crested a plateau. The sun was slipping beneath the horizon, the desert stretching out into a wide plain of emptiness. Just a hard, rocky surface with nowhere left to hide.

CZ-1G5 was there, moving as fast as his stiff robotic legs would allow.

It was never going to be fast enough.

A wave of sadness washed over the constable; there was no way this would have a happy ending. No matter what had happened in the past day, CZ had been a fixture of the town for years—a part of the community in Niima. The bank transport robbery, the gang of droids waiting in ambush on the outskirts of town…Zuvio shook his head. It wasn’t CZ. It wasn’t in his nature. The droid just wasn’t programmed that way.

But programming could be changed.

Regardless, CZ was a danger. If Zuvio didn’t stop him, anything could happen. He had known CZ for years…but he was the constable, and he had a job to do.

Zuvio holstered his pistol and descended onto the plain.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND. Why are you talking to me? That droid…that CZ unit…you should be out looking for him!”

The banker was in the constable’s office, standing near the door impatiently.

“Could you just go over the timeline for us once more?” Drego asked, grabbing a datapad. “The details will help in the official report.”

Lovas paced the floor, agitated.

“As I have already said, I know as much as you do! I was on my way to work when the explosion ripped the transport apart. When I got there, the damage was already done and you were on the scene!”

Lovas moved as if to leave. “Now if that is all, I have a considerable amount of work to do! I have to see about repairs! So—”

Streehn moved quietly, blocking the door.

“Thing is…” Drego continued. “Thing is, you weren’t at the transport. We know that. But you did have a meeting. So why weren’t you there?”

Lovas was sweating, fumbling nervously for his pockets. “A personal matter,” the Kubaz muttered. “I had things…I had business….”

“Business?” Drego challenged. “Business with who?”

Lovas looked up at the two Kyuzo deputies, glaring and angry, his long beak flushed red.

And in his pocket, the banker pushed a button on a tiny device.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. How long have you been wearing that restraining bolt?”

Zuvio’s voice echoed across the empty desert. Knowing that running was no longer an option, CZ turned to face the constable.

“I’m sorry, sir. I cannot answer that question.”

“Yeah,” Zuvio said. “I kind of thought so.”

The secretary droid’s hand twitched.

“Since you probably can’t say much, let me do the talking,” Zuvio suggested, taking a cautious step forward. The droid and the constable were still far apart—more than ten meters. Odds were poor the constable could reach the droid before CZ raised his gun. Still…

“Those droids back at the old farmhouse,” Zuvio continued. “I guess I’m supposed to think that was your gang? That you just turned bad after all these years?”

CZ paused. “That’s certainly what has occurred. I have been a very bad droid.”

“Have you?” Zuvio asked. “For how long? How long have you been bad?”

“I…” CZ hesitated as he searched his memory. “I have always been bad,” he answered. “I am a bank robber,” he added unconvincingly.

“Okay. Sure,” the constable replied, taking another quiet step. “So where’s the money?”

“The what?” CZ was getting agitated. That wasn’t good. “The money is…the money from the banking vessel…it’s…it’s…”

Zuvio shook his head.

“You robbed a bank transport, but you don’t know where the money is?”

Another step forward.

CZ was trembling. “Sir, I am afraid that I may be required to shoot you now.”

The constable took another step forward. Still too far.

“Who put that restraining bolt on you?”

“I cannot answer that, sir. I am sorry.”

“Okay…can you tell me who didn’t put it on you?”

The droid paused. “I…I suppose…”

Zuvio took another step. “Was it me?”

“What? No, sir. Of course it was not.”

“Was it either of my deputies?”

“Certainly not, sir. No.”

“So it was someone else living on Jakku?”

The droid paused. “No…no, it wasn’t anyone who lives on Jakku.”

There it was, Zuvio thought.

Another step closer.

“Was it Rikard Lovas? Did he put the bolt on you?”

“I cannot answer that, sir.”

Zuvio shook his head. “Sorry, Seezee. I think you just did.”

The blaster began to twitch in the droid’s hand. Any moment it would rise, and the droid would pull the trigger. Zuvio gauged the distance. Too far. And the droid…Zuvio thought back to just that morning, when he had watched CZ file the papers in the office. The droid’s speed was legendary. Maybe a trick he picked up long before, a quirk developed from never having had a memory wipe. Didn’t matter…

CZ was fast. Zuvio felt a bead of sweat escape the war helmet he wore, but his eyes betrayed nothing of the fear or turmoil he felt.

CZ was fast, but Zuvio was a Kyuzo. He was fast, too.

The constable felt the grip of his small blaster in his hand.

“I don’t want to do this, Seezee.” Zuvio said. “No one else has to be hurt. Not me…and not you.”

The sun was setting, the last of the light escaping.

A single shot was fired, and only one figure was left standing.

THE ORB-SHAPED DT-17 floated through the door into the constable’s office, its laser turret glowing with a charge.

“You ask too many questions, Deputy,” Lovas growled.

Streehn moved quickly, shoving Drego to the side and taking the attack droid’s blaster charge in the shoulder. The Kyuzo deputy was hurled across the office.

Drego whipped his blaster from its holster. Too slow. The DT-17 fired again, striking him in the hand. Drego’s gun exploded as it flew from his fingers—fingers he was lucky to still have.

“You couldn’t just let the droid take the fall, could you?” Lovas reprimanded.

“No one would have known. No one would have cared that he wasn’t guilty. The town would have had a villain to blame and the mayor would have refunded the stolen money….No one would have known!”

Streehn tried to get up, slumping as he did so. Drego knew his cousin was hurt badly. Another shot like that…

As if sensing Drego’s thoughts, the droid pointed its weapon at Streehn. Lovas smiled wickedly. “One more rogue droid. Two more bodies. I’ll still win, and the both of you,” the banker huffed, “won’t be asking questions no more.”

The DT-17 moved forward, preparing to shoot, when it suddenly exploded.

Constable Zuvio stood framed in the doorway, his blaster pistol trained on the banker, an inactive and blaster-scorched CZ on the ground behind him.

“That’s okay,” Zuvio said. “I think we’ve got all the answers we need right here.”

STREEHN FLEXED HIS ARM, noting the rapid healing. A small supply of bacta had been seized from Lovas’s personal belongings. Zuvio had thought it only appropriate that the deputy get a touch of that before it was distributed to the other innocents injured in the attack on the banking transport. Nearby, Zuvio logged the last details on the case. The bank manager had been caught red-handed. CZ’s data core had been examined by multiple technicians, and the evidence was clear: Lovas had reprogrammed the secretary droid to delete the record of all the credits in the banking transport computer, without actually withdrawing any of the funds. With everyone under the belief that the droid was the culprit and that he had transferred the funds to his own personal data core, the Kubaz would have been free to move the credits to an anonymous account at a later date while everyone was searching elsewhere.

It had been a terrible plan. Even if CZ hadn’t been caught, eventually the accountants working for Niima’s mayor would have found the money trail. But Lovas had been desperate. Seemed he owed gambling debts to the Irving Boys.

Difficult to pay those off while rotting in prison, Zuvio mused.

Handing the datapad off, Zuvio stood up and stretched. “Take care of this for me, will you, Seezee?”

The droid stood nearby, mostly repaired—inside and out. “Of course, sir. Right away,” CZ said, his left eye twitching. The other eye had been destroyed in the standoff and was now roughly patched over with metal until a suitable replacement optical sensor could be found. Glancing at the data, CZ exclaimed, “Ah! Life without parole. I’m sorry to say that I cannot quite bring myself to feel badly for the scoundrel. Is that quite all right, sir?”

Drego stepped in, having just finished his rounds. Behind him rolled the orange-and-green astromech that had fallen out the window of the abandoned farmhouse. “Lovas got off easy if you ask me,” Drego said. “Way too easy.”

B33, purged of the banker’s toxic programming, chirped and whistled in crude agreement with the deputy.

“Oh!” said a scandalized CZ, too embarrassed to translate the astromech’s blunt droidspeak. “Well,” he added, “I’m sure life in prison will suit him well enough. Come along, Bee-Thirty-Three. We have work to do.”

So CZ and his new assistant embarked on their rounds to help the citizens of Niima, and Zuvio considered that at least just that once, on a planet filled with scavengers and pirates and thieves, the good guys had won.

Turned out there was something that felt better than a quiet day after all.