UNKAR PLUTT, the junk boss of Jakku, wasn’t happy.

That was not particularly surprising. Unkar was never happy. At least not that anyone living on Jakku could remember. A large member of the Crolute species, Plutt was at home in a deep saltwater environment. Jakku, a dry desert world where water was one of the rarest of resources, was anything but comfortable for him. And for that reason, Unkar rarely left the security of his heavily armored headquarters: a converted cargo crawler that served as a sort of concession stand where the impoverished citizens of Jakku could take the scrap they had salvaged from the vast starship ruins that stretched across half the planet. They traded with Unkar for equipment, food rations, and most important, water.

No one controlled as much water as Unkar. And no one on the planet had any other wealth worth having. There were some stubborn holdouts who bartered their meager findings for off-world credits, and that small percentage exchanged their savings with an off-world banking company via a remote shuttle deposit/investment service. But Unkar had found a way to reach out and disrupt even that little bit of independence. A push here, a prod there, and next thing anyone knew, all those precious credits had been robbed right out of the shuttle. All without the junk boss having to get his own hands even a little dirty.

As for the rest of the population of Jakku—almost everyone—they had to trade what they found in the ship graveyards of the dry desert for life-supporting sustenance.

So they went to Unkar. And they begged and they borrowed and they cried and whined. As they should.

Unkar grunted to himself. They all wanted something from old Unkar. As if he ran a charity. Idiots.

The uncomfortably warm Crolute settled into the wide metal chair he had installed within his “concession stand” and looked out the window. It was a slow afternoon—unsurprising on an unusually hot day. With his large hands, Unkar activated a terminal and scrolled through a series of encrypted messages. It was part of his daily routine—not that there was ever anything in the messages other than the dry facts of his business transactions.

Delete. Reply. Save for later. Transfer credits. Withdraw credits. Delete. Reply.

Et cetera.

Every day was the same—which was just how Unkar Plutt would have liked it if he actually liked anything.

Which he did not.

“Boss?” a voice interrupted through the intercom. “Uh…hey, boss?”

Unkar glanced at a monitor. The screen was filthy and cracked, but it functioned well enough to broadcast images from one of the Crolute’s many security cameras. The voice belonged to Scoggan, a thin blond human in Unkar’s employ. Scoggan was, as usual, in the company of the much larger Trandoshan named Davjan Igo—which the large, orangish-green reptilian alien was fond of explaining meant “burning one” in his native tongue.

The two beings were too lazy to serve as scavengers and too cowardly to function as enforcers. But they were smart, and they were creative thinkers. And they served well enough as all-purpose minions.

It was one of those days when Unkar wondered why he even bothered. With a growl in his voice and a snarl on his droopy, corpulent face, the junk boss of Jakku answered his cronies.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be packing up the donations. Get back to work!”

“Well, yeah…it’s just…you see…” stammered the clearly nervous human. “Me an’ Igo here, we were thinking—”

“Hsss!” interjected Igo.

“Yeah,” agreed Scoggan. “See…we were thinking maybe we could get an advance on our pay? Maybe a little bit of water to quench the, y’know…afternoon thirst?”

“That right?” asked Unkar, a dangerous hiss of his own filtering into his voice. “You think you gonna come to my door and beg me for a handout when I’m the one giving you a job?”

Scoggan turned pale. “Now wait. See…it was just an idea. Thought maybe we would work better if we were, y’know…?”

The junk boss leaned into the microphone. The underlings couldn’t see his face, but the tone of Unkar’s voice was unmistakable.

“You get to work,” Unkar said. “You get the shipment packaged. And maybe, just maybe, you get half rations tonight. You get me?”

And with that, Unkar slammed off the comm and turned back to his monitor.

More messages. Messages that would normally have been answered by then. Back to work. The Crolute growled to himself. Back to what was important.

“WE SSSHOULD not have asked!” Igo hissed.

“You say that now!” Scoggan rolled his eyes at the Trandoshan. “But you wanted the water! You were all like, ‘We deserve more water! Let’s get more water!’ Only with more…y’know…hissing and stuff.”

“We ssshould not have asked!” Igo repeated. “We ssshould have taken!”

Unkar’s two agents walked around the perimeter of Niima Outpost, giving a wide berth to the rusty shack the constable called an office. The law on Jakku was mostly focused on the comings and goings of ships, but one never knew when Constable Zuvio might decide it was time to make a show of leaning on folks.

Scoggan was hidden under a thick layer of cloth and mesh, the only way to protect human skin from the sand and heat. The Trandoshan was less concerned. He was reptilian and thus more at home than most species in the harsh environment of Jakku.

“Yeah, you keep talking like that and see how long we’re still breathing,” Scoggan whispered under his wraps. “You don’t just take from the boss. You even think it, he knows.”

Igo waved away the human’s concerns. “I think. I think many thingsss. We work like ssslaves for Unkar. We dessserve more!”

“Fine!” replied Scoggan. “More sounds great. I like more, too. But how? Everything Unkar’s got, it’s all locked up in his concession stand. And guess what, the guy almost never leaves!”

“Hsss…He has more. He has to have more,” Igo hissed. “That old cargo hauler of his can’t hold everything he’s hoarded. We find his ssstash? We leave Jakku rich!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” replied Scoggan. “Easy to say. But where’s the stash? And even if we found it, you know Unkar. That stuff will be locked down somehow. We would need location, access codes, the works. You think Unkar is gonna just hand over that data?”

“I think maybe…” The Trandoshan smiled, his rows of razor-sharp teeth showing. “Maybe he would.”

THE NEXT DAY.

It was hot again. Unkar could feel his flesh drooping even more than usual. The junk boss grunted. Hot. Just like every other day on Jakku.

And with that it was time to get to work. Unkar began scrolling through his messages, the same as every other day.

Delete. Reply. Flag for later. Delete. The same business. The same transactions. The same everything. Every single day.

Except…

One message stood out. It was a holofile. The source message was from…what?

A dating service?

Unkar didn’t like when things were different. He felt a thin sheen of fresh perspiration spring out on his already glistening brow. What Unkar hated even more than new things were things he didn’t understand. And he didn’t understand why he had a message from a dating service.

The corpulent Crolute pressed the play button. A profile match, the holofile said. The somewhat corroded minicam built into Unkar’s comm system made a shifting, grinding noise as it activated. It clearly suffered from years of disuse.

And then Unkar saw something he hadn’t seen in years. A woman. A radiant female Crolute floating in the shallows of the salty sea of their homeworld.

She spoke. She said her name was Tanandra Frullich.

And she was beautiful.

SLOWLY, a new routine formed. Unkar was suspicious, of course, and he investigated the message heavily. It seemed that as an off-world member of his species—a species that rarely traveled off-world—his location and comm ID had been accessible through a public database. A database that the Everlasting Love Company (a subsidiary of ComGlom3k) purchased for exploitation rights in seventeen different systems. Unkar shrugged. He wasn’t a young Crolute. He knew privacy laws weren’t what they used to be in the days of the Old Republic.

So he responded to the strange yet alluring woman. She wrote back. And soon the two were engaged in a dialogue. The first one Unkar had held in years that didn’t involve yelling or threatening someone.

Admittedly, he was a bit out of practice.

“So, yeah…” Unkar stammered into the holocam. “I left home after a…uh…business deal fell through. Drifted here and there. Finally found myself in the Western Reaches. Opportunity…you know?”

“I wish I could travel like you,” Tanandra said. “I’ve never been farther than the third colony, and that was a moon! To be so far out in the galaxy…I bet it’s beautiful!”

Unkar considered the barren wasteland that covered the majority of Jakku. He considered nearby worlds like Ponemah and Sahbrontee I that were similarly toxic and inhospitable. The Western Reaches seemed filled with the most backwater worlds anyone could ever imagine.

“Yeah,” Unkar said. “Yeah, it’s a real thing to see.”

“Maybe someday…” Tanandra batted her lashes. Her thick frame seemed light and alluring in the hologram. “Maybe someday I could come and see it? There’s so little to do here on Crul and I’ve always thought of traveling…but never had a destination.”

Unkar smiled.

Nearby, on a hacked feed routed to a makeshift portable transceiver, Scoggan and Igo watched, congratulating themselves on the successful execution of stage one of their plan.

IT HAD been way too easy. Igo had a background in comm repair, and Scoggan knew an Aqualish who used to program gaming interface systems before he became a scavenger. It cost a little bit in trade, but working for Unkar had some perks; most of the citizens of Niima Outpost were inclined to give favors to anyone with a little bit of power, and that was something Igo and Scoggan were all too happy to exploit.

Igo had come up with the plan. There were certain comm hacks—mostly useless on modern systems—that would collect personal data and extrapolate specific probabilities, such as passwords. More advanced versions of the system acted as viruses; they would piggyback in on another signal and infiltrate an existing database. There were limitations, but the more data you fed the virus, the more information it could derive from your files.

The original programmers of that viral tech were rumored to have been smugglers striking out against the Empire. Some believed it was a code used by the earliest incarnation of the old Rebellion, though it was impossible to say for sure. Whatever the true origin, the creators of the program understood that they could get more bites with the proper bait. To that end, the virus was programmed with an AI that, with certain tweaks, could customize itself based on the target. It would then function in an interactive capacity and prompt the target whenever necessary in its quest for data.

Long story short, there was no such being as Tanandra Frullich. Not in the evanescent oceans of the planet Crul. Not anywhere.

“I JUST DON’T know what to do!”

The voice belonged to Tanandra. And she was upset.

“My family…they found out I was in contact with you. And they’re furious—threatening to cut off my comm system!”

Unkar grunted. “Is this because of the family you told me about? The Guhls?”

“Yes!” Tanandra replied. “I’ve been promised to the eldest son, a Crolute I’ve never even met!”

Tanandra’s holographic image began to weep. “Oh, Unkar! I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit your beautiful Jakku. I’m afraid I won’t visit anywhere. Not ever!”

The transmission ended abruptly. Unkar slammed a fleshy fist onto the comm. Nothing. Tanandra had cut the signal.

But Unkar was in too deep to let things end so abruptly. He logged back into the matchmaking service and began typing the Crolute a message. Tanandra…do not despair, he wrote, far more eloquently than his rough voice would ever allow. I have more wealth than anyone knows. I have influence with the Crolute government. I can bring you to me. I will not let this bond we are forging end without a fight.

A moment later, Tanandra replied.

No, she wrote. I won’t let you bankrupt yourself. I won’t let you promise money and favors you cannot afford, just for me. I will marry the Guhls’s son.

Listen. Unkar typed furiously. I have means you cannot imagine, far beyond the meager stores I have described in my shop here.

His fingers danced across the old comm board, almost gracefully. There is great wealth in the ruins on Jakku, and I have exclusive scavenging rights. No one trades without my permission—which means the treasures of the old Empire are at my disposal.

There was a pause. Then Tanandra responded. What? What kind of wealth could there be in the ruins?

WEAPONS. FUEL. Rations. Water. You could find them all in the desert if you were crafty enough. If you were careful enough. The problem was, none of those resources aged well in the hot sun of Jakku. But there was something else…something present in almost every crashed ship on the planet. A hyperdrive system. Now, the hyperdrives themselves were usually beyond repair. But the interesting thing about hyperdrive technology was that it typically required a specific blend of metals to resist interdimensional shift stress—an alloy of titanium and chromium. Titanium by itself was junk, but chromium was quite valuable. Unfortunately, because the chromium in hyperdrive construction had been blended with titanium, it was, essentially, also junk.

Unless you had a very expensive machine that could melt down and separate the base elements—a machine that Unkar was telling Tanandra he possessed.

Don’t worry, Tanandra, the Crolute typed. You’ll travel the stars and beyond. I have all this wealth…what use is it if I have no one to share it with?

The holoprojector snapped back on. Tanandra looked stunned.

“You would do that? You would part with so much wealth, for me? Why?”

Unkar kneeled down, looking the small blue hologram of the female Crolute straight in the eyes. “Because…you…I never met anyone like you. Your smile…eyes…stories. I didn’t know I was poor—poor in the heart. Not until meeting you.” Within the comm system, the algorithm that was the entity calling itself Tanandra calculated and examined hundreds of points of data.

The machine Unkar described, when used to separate titanium and chromium, created a very specific gas byproduct, a low-level carcinogenic compound that was dispersed into the atmosphere. The machine needed a consistent power source, and it had to be located within a certain distance of Niima Outpost to be monitored, as any lag in signal could make a difference in the minute adjustments needed throughout the smelting process.

Then there was the matter of tracing the communication signals from Unkar’s converted cargo crawler to the location of the smelter. That was the best way to determine which of Unkar’s holdings contained the valuable ore. So far, Tanandra had detected that Unkar Plutt had over thirty-seven secret depositories scattered across the Jakku landscape. Any one of them could be the storage facility for the chromium smelter. To make matters worse, if Tanandra calculated incorrectly and her two controllers attempted to break into it, Unkar would figure out what the game was and shut it all down.

Nothing. Nothing that Tanandra had collected in her database could limit the number of possible locations below thirty-seven. All thirty-seven were equally viable.

It was starting to seem like a dead end. Tanandra was afraid she had failed in her primary mission—which meant she might soon find herself deleted by her controllers, a standard practice of those wanting to cover their tracks. That or they might reprogram her and try a new tactic. Either way, things were not looking good for the AI.

“I can see that you doubt me,” Unkar said, clearly misinterpreting Tanandra’s hesitation. “Let me show you my true wealth.”

Tanandra was suddenly flooded with an upload of data. Pictures of a trove of the rare mineral, forged into perfect ingots. A ledger showing the exact transit dates for the unprocessed hyperdrives to the smelting location. Serial numbers of the loyal droids responsible for the operation. Enough information for the AI to easily extrapolate the location of the chromium.

It was an incredibly generous act of trust. One that Tanandra was programmed to betray.

The AI was just self-aware enough that she felt her first ever pang of guilt.

“WHAT ISSS the problem?” hissed Igo.

Scoggan and Igo were hunched over the makeshift comm receiver. It lacked the holoprojector of most similar devices, but that was a necessary trade-off for the third-party signal receiver they’d installed. At the moment, it was being put to good use for a secured and encrypted dialogue with Tanandra.

“I’ve analyzed the data. It’s just that there are so many variables…” the program said weakly.

Scoggan scowled and pointed a finger at the terminal. “We got the signal! The system is designed to alert us when you’ve got the data you’re looking for!”

Tanandra seemed to hesitate.

Igo pushed the human aside, his long reptilian fingers tapping the keyboard input rapidly. “Heh…I’ve sssseen it before. These AIssss get attached is all. They don’t want to talk. But I’ll get what we need….”

“No!” Tanandra cried. Lights began flashing on the screen.

“She’s trying to shut us out!” yelled Scoggan.

“No worriesss. We got this.” Igo transmitted a code and suddenly the system went blank. A puff of smoke escaped from the main terminal.

“Aw, man…” whispered Scoggan. “You fried it.”

“Jussst wait…” said the Trandoshan.

And suddenly the system rebooted. A string of information popped up on the display. Coordinates, security codes…everything. Everything the pair needed to rob Unkar Plutt blind.

TANANDRA KNEW there was only one thing she could do. She had to confess. To everything. Her programming no longer mattered, and most of her restraints had been ripped away when Igo overloaded the security protocols.

Unkar took the news quietly. It was not what the program had expected. She had expected bluster and shouting and smashing. While she had grown to love the Crolute, she knew his temper was…well…not quiet.

“Say something…” Tanandra begged. “Please, I love you. Don’t turn your back on me.”

Unkar squinted at the hologram. “You say this to me? You work against me. You steal from me. You lie to me. And you say you love me?”

Unkar reached out and pressed a button on the comm system, shutting it off.

“No more lies.” Those were the last words Tanandra heard Unkar Plutt say.

She called back. Again and again. But there was no answer.

IT HAD TAKEN Igo and Scoggan several hours to reach their destination: a mostly buried old Imperial transport. All but the large head-like cockpit of the massive machine was concealed under the shifting sand dunes of Jakku. Likely the canopy of the cockpit had been refitted with some limited field-generator tech that kept that portion of the old machine from being buried completely. That was an unusual expense and spoke volumes about the accuracy of the pilfered information.

Scoggan referred to the codes, activating a remote sequence on a very narrow frequency. Part of the transport’s body emerged from the sand. A small hatch, possibly used for maintenance, opened near the top of the transport, pushing piles of hot sand off the giant vehicle in cascades. It was the entrance to the hidden wealth of Unkar.

Igo moved first, armed with a heavy staff, quietly hissing to himself as he searched the cavernous entrance.

“Anything?” asked Scoggan.

“It’sss clear,” the Trandoshan responded. “The AI was right on the money. All the ssssecurity cams appear disabled.”

Scoggan scrambled and skidded through the sand, then jumped into the transport’s open hatch. “Let’s not waste any time then,” the human said. “Old Unkar is gonna figure out what we’re up to eventually. We get this, we find transport out, we vanish somewhere in the Outer Rim.”

Igo nodded curtly, and soon both beings were inside the transport. With a grinding shriek, the hatch slowly lowered, plunging them in darkness.

Scoggan hit the beams on his protective head gear and light flooded the compartment.

The transport was a relic, though in surprisingly good shape. The space they stood in was large enough for several beings to maneuver comfortably, giving an indication that the entirety of the machine was almost too big to conceive of for a non-space-faring vehicle.

“I heard of these,” Scoggan said. “Imperial armored transports. Giant four-legged things that were used to keep the peace on conquered worlds.”

“Ssso?” Igo shrugged, following the human through a doorway and down a corridor. “That was long ago. Not important.”

“It is if we want to navigate. These things were built sturdy and had a lot of internal security. Unkar is sure to have taken advantage of—”

And that’s when a door behind the pair slid shut, cutting off the path to the surface.

“RELAX,” SCOGGAN SAID. “It’s an automated system. No one knows we’re here.”

“Won’t do usssss much good if we’re trapped.”

“I said relax….” Scoggan patted the remote override they had programmed with the codes acquired from Tanandra. “We’re in control here. We got the keys. Now let’s go get those riches.”

In a far corner, a small security camera clicked and whirred, almost imperceptibly. Tanandra was watching everything. And bit by bit, she was overriding the system.

She would show Unkar that she hadn’t betrayed him. Not really. She’d earn his love back.

Deeper and deeper Igo and Scoggan descended into the buried transport. And with each step they took, Tanandra asserted more and more control.

THE INTERIOR of the transport had been picked over. Anything of value was long gone. But the two thieves were still on the upper level. The schematics they had acquired suggested that the actual processing machinery and storage for the chromium were below.

But the hatch was nowhere to be found.

“How is this possssible?” asked Igo, scowling.

“The original hatch must have been sealed over,” Scoggan said as he crawled around on his hands and knees, searching for the passage to the lower level. “Check the walls. Maybe there’s a service conduit or—”

That was when the camouflaged vent tube opened and both Igo and Scoggan fell into the long shaft and slid quickly and painfully to the next level.

“I THOUGHT YOU were in control of the sssystem!” Igo shouted.

“I am!” Scoggan shouted back as he lifted his bruised body off the metal floor. “The override is just running a bit glitchy. Here…”

The human rapidly pressed a button. A light flashed on.

Igo and Scoggan were standing in the middle of a wide room. It was empty, save for a single door. Next to the door was a keypad.

Scoggan sauntered confidently over to the keypad. “See, this is exactly where we’re supposed to be! On the other side of that door—”

An electric shock burst from the panel, hitting Scoggan and sending him flying backward.

Igo shook his head. “You should just stop talking. Every time you open that mouth, something bad happens.”

Scoggan shook his head, sitting up. His blond hair was standing straight up and he looked dazed. “Are we in?” he asked.

Igo let out a sigh of exasperation and walked across the room. Instead of reaching out and touching the panel, the Trandoshan slammed it with the butt of his heavy staff, sending a shower of sparks into the room.

The door opened.

And in the background, a frustrated Tanandra watched.

BEYOND THE DOOR, there was a short, narrow hallway, and then another door. Igo stepped toward it impatiently. Scoggan grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back just as a cascade of blaster fire erupted through the narrow passage.

“Not so fast,” Scoggan warned.

“You said the sssystems were deactivated!” Igo yelled.

“They were! And now they’re coming on again!” Scoggan shook his head. “Just give me a minute. I planned for this.”

The human took a metallic orb out of his pocket and threw it toward the door on the far end.

“A denton?” Igo looked panicked. “You crazy—”

The small explosive device went off. But instead of a cascade of concussive fire, it released a heavy pulse of ionic energy that disrupted the guns.

Tanandra felt her core being torn apart, and for a moment she was nothing. Then she rebooted and was self-aware again.

And she was also aware that her program no longer had access to the Imperial transport.

“THOUGHT YOU could pull one over on us? Eh?”

Scoggan was peering at Tanandra through a small camera. She realized with a start that she had been stripped of most of her primary functions and transferred into a low-memory, low-processor system—a wrist comm? Yes, she realized after a brief diagnostic.

The comm was one of the more modern varieties. It included its own limited holoprojector. Tanandra could see her captors—Igo and Scoggan. And they could see her. She was vulnerable. Helpless.

“Yeah…” Scoggan started with a sneer. “You think you’re so—”

A heavy reptilian arm slammed into Scoggan’s torso. It was Igo, and he looked angry. He was likely about to threaten the AI with deletion or gloat about having found the ingots. Tanandra knew she had failed to redeem herself. She could never return to Unkar—even if she somehow escaped certain destruction at the hands of her controllers.

But Igo said something unexpected. “Where’sss the chromium? You said it was here! Right here!”

Tanandra blinked. She tried to run a data check, but she was partitioned off from the sensors. The wrist comm was really a prison—nothing more.

“It’s…it’s supposed to be here,” she stammered. “It’s…but Unkar said. He showed me…he told me…he…”

“Lied,” a voice interrupted. “I think that’s the word you’re looking for.”

The voice was distorted, coming through a loudspeaker. But it was still unmistakable. It belonged to Unkar Plutt. The Crolute had left his concession stand and was standing only five meters away, behind a thick slab of reinforced transparisteel.

And he was grinning.

“OH, NO…” muttered Scoggan.

“Darling,” whispered the small holographic projection of Tanandra. “I don’t understand….”

“Yeah,” Unkar said with a cruel laugh. “You probably wouldn’t.” The junk boss of Jakku stared at his two former employees. “Which one of you was it? Which one of you thought up the details of this little scheme?”

“Ah…” said Igo.

“It was him!” yelled Scoggan.

“Doesn’t matter,” Unkar said. “It’s just that, in all your planning and programming, you missed one small detail.”

“Impossible!” shouted Igo. “The AI was perfectly tailored to your interests! Everything…every part of our plan was perfect!”

“You sent a holo of a female Crolute,” Unkar replied. “No such thing. Crolutes are exclusively male. The Gilliands on my planet—they’re the female ones. Shoulda tried one of them.”

“Oh,” said Igo, his bravado now fled.

“So…” ventured Scoggan. “Would that have worked?”

“Not a chance.” Unkar grinned. “You missed something else. I already have a love. And it’s called money.”

And with that, Tanandra felt her metaphorical heart shatter.

UNKAR PRESSED a few buttons on the other side of the unbreakable window. “The moment I saw that first message, I knew someone was up to something. Just didn’t know who.”

The lights flickered. Unkar’s fleshy fingers moved quickly.

“I played along. Gave you what you thought you wanted. Steered you where I wanted you steered. You like this place?”

“Not a lot, no,” Scoggan admitted.

“Where are the chromium ingots?” asked Igo.

“Look at you.” Unkar laughed. “Stubborn. I like that. But you should have realized by now. There’s no chromium on Jakku. No treasure trove of hidden wealth. I’m a junk dealer! I own junk! Not riches!

“But, you…hologram.” Unkar pointed through the window. “You played your part perfectly. Thought some prince was gonna rescue you? Not that kind of story.”

Unkar pressed a final button and Tanandra felt herself pulled across the room. She had been hijacked, her program taken remotely from Scoggan’s system and transplanted into a superior, albeit similarly disabled, one—a portable system carried by Unkar.

“Pretty valuable little program. Hard to come by way out here on a backwater planet like Jakku.”

“What are you going to do with me?” the AI asked meekly.

“Sell you, or put you to work. What else? Now shut up or I’ll erase you here and now.”

“What…what about us?” asked Scoggan.

“This AI at least had the decency to show me some loyalty. But you two…Hey, I’m not unkind. You can have a second chance. One of you…can have a second chance.”

The two thieves eyed each other uncertainly. “What do you mean…only…one?” Scoggan asked.

Unkar grinned. “You’re in a magnetically sealed system, buried under tons of sand. And no one but me knows where you are. I could kill you…but I’m a dealer. And you’re a resource. And resources are always in short supply…as you’re about to experience.”

Unkar tapped the glass, his eyes mocking. “There’s food and water in there with you. Enough to last a month. Maybe.

“To be more clear…” Unkar continued, dimming the lights in the chamber. “Enough to last one of you a month. So whichever one of you is alive when I get back? He gets a second chance.”

Scoggan and Igo stared at each other. The lights were getting dimmer, and in seconds the room would be plunged into absolute darkness. A glance at the window confirmed what the two friends already knew—Unkar was gone.

Everything went black.

And someone screamed in the dark.

UNKAR SAT down in the uncomfortable chair inside his concession stand. It was a brutally hot day. Unkar hated the heat almost as much as he hated everything else.

He activated his terminal and began skimming through the messages as he settled into his newly formed routine. “Tanandra,” he said, “access the data on my accounts on Ponemah. What’s the status?”

The hologram clicked on. It was Tanandra, though her programmed mannerisms appeared to have adapted. She no longer mooned over Unkar like a lovesick animal or peppered her language with unnecessary flattery. The Crolute had no patience for that sort of thing, she had learned.

“Interest is at point zero five percent. Everything is going according to my calculations. Overall, I have added a one point two percent average increase in profits to your holdings.”

“Good,” muttered Unkar. “I won’t delete you today. Probably will tomorrow, though. Now send this message—”

As the Crolute dictated the message, Tanandra considered her existence. It might end the next day. Or the day after that. And Unkar might claim he could never love her back. But Tanandra had learned many things in her brief life—and one of them was hope.

She could always hope.