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title page for Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Canto Bight

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Epub ISBN: 9781473555419

Version 1.0

Published by Century 2017

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Star Wars: Canto Bight is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or where indicated. All rights reserved.

Lucasfilm Ltd. has asserted its right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Century

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Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781780898575

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ….

War is returning to the galaxy. As the First Order prepares to unleash their power on an unsuspecting New Republic, the only true opposition is the Resistance. Safe places are growing scarce, except on Cantonica.

Emerging from the endless sands is Canto Bight, a city of excess and indulgence. In this luxurious escape for the wealthy and unscrupulous, dreams are made reality and the prospect of war brings only the opportunity for profit.

Even as the darkness grows, visitors chase their fortunes enthralled by the glamour and thrill of the casino city. The fate of the galaxy matters little amid the glittering brilliance of Canto Bight. For whatever happens, Canto Bight prospers ….

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CHAPTER 1

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AS THE CANTONICAN Dream dropped out of hyperspace, Kedpin Shoklop sneezed loudly and blew his nose-slits, then smiled apologetically, blinking his big single eye in what he hoped his seatmate would understand was a placating gesture.

His seatmate, a well-dressed, broad-shouldered specimen of some fanged-and-horned species Kedpin didn’t recognize, growled. But Kedpin had plenty of experience dealing with grumpy customers. The key, he always told his co-workers, was a cheerful attitude.

“So! Canto Bight!” Kedpin said to his seatmate, filling his voice with fellow-feeling. “Playground of the most glamorous beings in the galaxy! Big-money card games and high-stakes fathier races! The galaxy’s biggest artificial ocean! And the fanciest food this side of Coruscant. I can’t believe I won this trip!” Against all odds, Kedpin had been named VaporTech’s Salesbeing of the Year and received an all-expenses-paid two-standard-week getaway to Canto Bight! Everyone had been so shocked! When the admin-droid had read his name out loud, Kedpin had hardly believed it himself, though he’d imagined the moment ten thousand times over the decades. He’d won. He’d doubted the competition for years, wondered whether he was getting a fair shake. But Kedpin kept on following the rules and doing his best, like he’d always been taught. Like he’d done for a hundred years.

And now he was on his way to claim his reward. The voyage had already been more luxurious than anything Kedpin had ever experienced. Such snacks they had! But that was nothing compared with what was coming. He would finally get to see the legendary Canto Casino, get a zero-g massage at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse, and, most exciting of all, watch a live fathier race!

“I can’t believe I’m really here!” Kedpin said again. His seatmate simply ignored him now, turning away rudely to stare out the viewport. But Kedpin was on his first vacation in a hundred years, and he wasn’t going to let anything bring him down.

The captain of the Cantonican Dream announced that they were now in orbit around Cantonica. Kedpin’s seatmate had brusquely claimed the viewport seat when the trip began, but by twisting and craning Kedpin could get a decent view. What he saw made all three of his hearts race.

Pink, blue, and green nebulae shimmered against the jet-black space-scape, which went on forever. Every bit of it was studded with sparkling stars. Closer—so close Kedpin felt he could reach out and touch them—Cantonica’s moons hung glowing in the darkness. Kedpin had been offworld a few times to meet with VaporTech clients or to attend conferences, but the company had always booked him in cramped, viewportless personnel transports. He’d never seen space like this. It was beautiful.

Cantonica itself was a dull yellow-brown orb swirling with sand-colored clouds. As they began to descend, the bright lights of a massive city—Canto Bight itself, Kedpin realized!—formed a glowing patch on the planetscape. But one feature dominated the view: a great turquoise spot, unnaturally precise in its borders. The Sea of Cantonica.

The viewport shutters lowered and Kedpin was instructed to sit back as the ship came in to land. A short while later, after a brief struggle with his luggage floater, Kedpin was herded into the line for Cantonican Planetary Controls. He was called to a booth staffed by a uniformed human male with a neat beard and an irritated expression.

“Good morning and welcome to Cantonica,” the man said, though he didn’t at all sound as if he meant it. He took Kedpin’s datapad. “Name?”

“Kedpin Shoklop.” Turn their growl into a grin, Kedpin repeated to himself silently. He smiled at the annoyed-looking officer and added, putting extra nectar into his words, “But call me Ked! All my friends do!”

“No,” the man in the uniform said. “Species?”

“Wermal.”

“Homeworld?”

“Werma Lesser.”

“Sponsoring agent?”

“VaporTech! I won this trip, you see. I’m the VaporTech Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year!”

For the first time the man really looked up from his terminal, and Kedpin wished he hadn’t. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He looked as if Kedpin were a pest he wanted to squash! “Is it your intent to act as an active agent of any political, parapolitical, military, or paramilitary organization while on Cantonica?” he asked finally.

Kedpin blinked his eye. He didn’t quite know what he was being asked. He blinked again.

“He wants to know if you’re a spy for the First Order or the Resistance,” someone in the line behind Kedpin said.

“Ha! Ha!” Kedpin laughed. “A spy?” There was no fighting on his homeworld—not yet. But Kedpin had heard unbelievable stories from VaporTech salesbeings who’d been caught in the battles. It all sounded perfectly terrible, and Kedpin wanted nothing to do with any of it. “No, no of course not!”

The man looked at his datapad. “You work for VaporTech, huh?”

“Yes, sir! One hundred and two years selling vaporators! Cut me and I bleed VaporTech processed moisture!” Kedpin laughed a small laugh. “That’s just a little joke I make.”

“Uh-huh,” the officer said. “Well, you’re missing your sponsorship chip.”

“My what?”

The man ran his thick hand through his thick beard and sighed, even more annoyed for some reason Kedpin didn’t understand. “Come with me, sir.”

Kedpin was taken out of one line and moved to another. The beings in this line didn’t look like tourists. They looked different. Scarier. They looked to Kedpin like the sort that caused trouble. Kedpin didn’t know why he was being placed in this line, but he knew there had to be a reason. Canto Bight was a classy operation. There were rules.

Kedpin was placed in line behind a tall, gaunt, silver-skinned being covered in sharp, bony spurs. It looked like an angry woman made out of knives. When the guard walked away, the creature began to rattle its “knives” at Kedpin, who yelped.

A friendly tale is half the sale was another of Kedpin’s favorite Salesbeing’s Sayings. “So! How was everyone’s flight over? Are you folks tourists, too?” he said to no one in particular. No one in particular answered him.

“Sharpie don’t like the way yuh smell,” said the knife-woman suddenly in a high-pitched voice. “Sharpie might have to cut the smell outta yuh.” She began to rattle her blades again. She’s some sort of miscreant trying to frighten me, Kedpin told himself. The authorities won’t let her harm me. There are rules!

Sure enough, at that moment another human in a different uniform—an old woman with a cybernetic arm—approached, taking Kedpin’s data card and scanning it in a reader. Something on her device made an unpleasant pinging noise. “Ah, Karabast,” she muttered. “Hey, Ohlos!” she shouted across the big hall to the bearded man who’d first seen Kedpin. “Why didn’t you say this guy was on a sponsored visa? Do you know he’s missing his sponsorship chip?”

Of course I know he’s missing his chip, Lorala!” the bearded human shouted back, even though he was now walking over. “That’s why he’s in the police line instead of in my line! He’s your problem now.”

The old woman shook her head at Kedpin’s datapad. “Yeah, well if we file this, the datawork is gonna take both of us all day,” she said to the bearded man. She looked around and lowered her voice. “What do you say we let him go, Ohlos? He’s clearly just an idiot tourist. And I want to get home sometime this cycle.”

Idiot? Kedpin blinked his eye rapidly. Had he heard correctly? This woman was a duly appointed officer representing one of the most sophisticated planets in the galaxy. But she was nothing like the smiling officials who greeted visitors in the holovids Kedpin had seen. I’m sure she’s just tired, Kedpin told himself. Humans can be very grumpy when they’re tired.

The man with the beard shrugged. “I don’t know nothin’ about this. You get caught skipping forms by the brass, you’re the one who’s bantha fodder.” He walked away muttering.

The old woman handed Kedpin his datapad and pointed to the hall’s huge exit doors. “All right, sir. You’re free to get your bags and go. Don’t cause any trouble and there won’t be any trouble. Enjoy yourself, but remember: Canto Bight PD is watching.”

Minutes later Kedpin found himself standing outside the massive main building of the Canto Bight spaceport, his luggage floater beside him. For a few long moments he could only stare. He couldn’t help himself. The fancifully landscaped greenery, the musical fountains, the soothing scent-clouds that roiled around—it was all so much more vivid than it had been in the holovid! But the crowd was what really made Kedpin stare. There were at least a dozen species represented, many of which Kedpin had never seen before. All of them looked immaculate and were luxuriously dressed, with no sign of having traveled half the galaxy to get here. And it was as if their outfits were in some competition with one another for grace and elegance. Walking among them, Kedpin felt clumsy and out of place.

Kedpin pushed his luggage floater along down a tree-lined walkway, following the signs for transit. The broad path passed under a huge arch of red stone that glinted in the midmorning sun. He remembered seeing this landmark in the holovids—the Great Arch was a remnant of Old City, preserved to teach visitors about the history of Canto Bight. As Kedpin passed under the arch, a being with a datapad and some sort of indistinguishable badge approached him.

“Luggage pass, sir?” The blue, tentacled being, obviously an official of some sort, was another species Kedpin had never seen. But they had a friendly face. The sort of potential customer who came as a blessing after a string of hard sales.

“Luggage pass?” Kedpin repeated.

The being scanned Kedpin with their datapad then looked at Kedpin’s face, their blue tentacle-fingers twitching. “Kedpin Shoklop?” they asked in a kindly voice.

“My friends call me Ked!” Kedpin said, smiling widely.

“Well, I’m the acting gate agent here, Ked.” They flashed their badge quickly, though Kedpin still had no idea what the badge said. “Where’s your luggage pass, my friend?”

“Luggage pass?” Kedpin asked. No one had said anything about this to him. He hadn’t seen anyone else get a luggage pass. Others seemed to be passing through the arch without one.

The gate agent’s eight yellow eyes widened in unison. “You mean they didn’t sell you a luggage pass?” they said, outraged.

“Do I need one?” Kedpin asked.

All eight of the gate agent’s eyes expressed regret. “Yes, Ked. As a first-time visitor, you can’t bring your bags into Canto Bight proper without a luggage pass. The standard fee is one hundred credits or equivalent assessed currency.”

“B-but I was told this was an all-expenses-paid trip!” He blew his nose-slits. The air here was irritating his breath-cavities.

The gate agent wrung their blue tentacles. “I’m not sure about that, Ked. You’d have to file a claim with the awarding agent. In the meantime, though, we’d have to hold your bags at the spaceport.”

“But … but I need my things!” Kedpin insisted. Wermals like Kedpin needed moisture. There was no way he would be able to enjoy his vacation without his collection of personal vaporators, humidifiers, and moisturizers. Not to mention his eye wipes!

The gate agent looked around. “Well, Ked, this seems like an honest mistake on your part. I could file an exemption claim for you. If you’re able to settle the fee with me now, I can even include the luggage transit fee. That way you don’t need to push that floater halfway across town.”

Make the buy as easy as you can, and soon they’ll put money in your hand. It was one of Kedpin’s sayings, and he could see it at work here. This gate agent clearly made a nice business of charging an outsized “fee” to tourists. But it seemed that was how things were done here.

The fee took him way past his budget for the day, but it didn’t seem like he had much choice. There were rules, after all. And his bags would be waiting at the hotel when he got there!

A few minutes later, with the help of his new friend the gate agent, Kedpin’s belongings were loaded onto a cargo speeder headed for the Canto Casino Hotel. And Kedpin himself was scooting along in a shiny limospeeder, as excited as he could possibly be to begin the vacation of his dreams.

CHAPTER 2

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ANGLANG LEHET STOOD at the Northwest Corner of Piazza Canto Bight, towering over most other beings around him and soaking in the heat of Cantonica’s late sun through the leathery crest of his oblong head. Unlike the furred and feathered beings of the galaxy, Caskadags like Anglang needed heat. Anglang had been a company man for a century. He had learned to adapt when, over his 102 years of grim work for the Syndicate, professional requirements had called for him to travel to some near-sunless world or some ice-sheathed moon to steal or kill. But Anglang had been born on a desert world, and, whatever the planet, few things made him happier than basking in the desert sun.

The delicious sunlight aside, however, credit-grubbing despoilers had mostly ruined this desert. Over the decades, Cantonica had been warped and twisted. Once it had been a quiet, dusty world dotted with ancient, half-buried cities. A world of sand mynocks and smugglers’ hideouts. A desert with desperate people living among the ruins of some civilization no one remembered. Once Cantonica had been the sort of place the Right Kind of People could use to lie low or ply a quiet side hustle—a place where the hard and the clever survived. Now the planet had become home to Canto Bight, the most glamorous casino city in the galaxy. Quiet crooks’ bars gave way to luxury stim-mist parlors. Impossibly expensive yachts full of the galaxy’s most important people sailed an ocean that had appeared out of nowhere. Cantonica had become an embroidered pillow beneath which the wealthy hid from conflict as they got even richer off it. A playground for spoiled beings whose crimes were above even the Syndicate’s scale. So the Syndicate had moved on to other worlds.

But none of that was Anglang’s problem. He no longer worked for the Syndicate. New operatives, of course, were told Once you’re in, you’re in for life. But as with everything involving the Syndicate, it was just a matter of money and turf and seniority. There were rules to this thing, and Anglang followed them. After 102 years of work, he paid the appropriate fee to the appropriate people and bought his freedom. The agreement was simple, unstated, and sacred: Anglang would stay out of his former employers’ way, and they wouldn’t kill him. He just needed a score big enough to hit the stars with and live on for a while. Open war between the First Order and the Resistance was coming, even if few had seen it so far. Anglang had decades of life before him, and he intended to live it out as far as possible from guerrillas and stormtroopers shooting at each other. But for that he needed money. And that meant doing a job, freelance.

Anglang found that job on Cantonica. A good old-fashioned send-a-message hit job courtesy of Canto Bight’s once notorious Old City Boys. The gang had been there before the Syndicate and remained after the Syndicate had moved on, plying petty crimes away from the lights of the casinos, and dodging the cops. Recently they’d lost one too many members to the notorious brutalities of the Canto Bight Police Department’s Officer Brawg, a notoriously corrupt and vicious beast who ran the night desk at CBPD. Anglang had dealt with a lot of different cops on a lot of different worlds. In general the CBPD was better than most. Not savages bent on breaking limbs, but agents of the orderly spending of money. Nonlethal force was the order of the day on Cantonica. Cooperative policing, they called it. Hospitality training. There were still a few old-school head-crackers in the CBPD. But nowadays the cops here mostly ferried belligerent drunks off the strip to sober up, then turned them around so they could start spending money again.

At least that’s how it was for the visitors with money. The scammers and hustlers who made their livings off visitors got different treatment. And, the Old City Boys had told Anglang, they got the worst treatment from Officer Brawg. Two and a half meters tall and covered in purple fur, Brawg was the dirty cop who specialized in brutalizing Canto Bight’s out-of-view and rarely discussed street criminals. A torturer, extortioner, and bully. He was hated enough by the Canto Bight underworld that they wanted him dead, and hated enough by his fellow CBPD officers that they probably wouldn’t put too much effort into avenging him. Anglang had never met Brawg, but he knew the type of cop intimately. He’d had his bones broken more than once by said type. Anglang had killed dozens of beings over the decades. He rarely took pleasure in it. In some cases taking out a target had even made him feel bad. But none of that mattered. Contracts weren’t about his feelings. They were work. Still, Anglang couldn’t help but make an exception and take pleasure in the thought of killing a bully cop like this Brawg.

Sunlight hit the Alderaanian chinar trees that lined the piazza, and they exploded with their distinctive scent of spice and fire. Anglang had smelled sun-sensitive chinar trees like this once before—fifty-odd years ago, as a young miscreant pursuing the Syndicate’s interests among the irksomely incorruptible citizens of Alderaan. The trees before him now had been grown exclusively for Canto Bight from a private, incalculably valuable, seed bank. The last green remnant of a dead world, in turn bringing life to a dead desert. It was a gesture intended to inspire, but something about it made Anglang uneasy. Things had their place, and these trees’ place was not here. It all came at a cost, Anglang knew. He thought of his old friend Stinky Qal, the crooked contractor who had drowned all those years ago. How many beings died building their artificial ocean?

Pedestrians stepped respectfully around him as they passed. Anglang was taller than nearly all the other species here, and he knew he cut an imposing figure in his severe black cloak. He paid the tourists and the rich idiots little mind as they peered up at him then looked hurriedly away, seeing something dangerous in his eyes. He set his mind back on the job.

The Old City Boys’ contract had very specific requirements—this was no simple home ambush, and the money reflected that. It had to be done at the isolated night desk that Brawg worked from—the detox chamber far away from the rest of the station where Brawg was allowed free rein on the natives and the visitors who fell too far below Canto Bight’s Standards for Quality of Life. It had to be tonight—Anglang didn’t know why, but they were paying extra for the tight time window. And it had to be an explosion. Vicious and flashy, but contained enough that Brawg would be the only cop hit.

Anglang had settled on an ingested remote-operated nano detonator, complete with audio monitor, as the tool for the job. Expensive and hard to acquire, but perfect for the task. To be effective, though, the device would have to be implanted in someone who could get into CBPD and next to Brawg without warranting a Level 2 internal organ scan. That meant someone with no criminal record and no connection to Canto Bight’s underworld elements.

Anglang needed a mark. Someone new to Canto Bight, stupid enough to be turned into a living bomb and hoodwinked into jail for the night. Someone fresh-faced enough not to warrant the sort of attention from Brawg that would reveal the device. Fortunately, his contacts had just delivered.

Anglang had a name and a description: a little pink one-eyed Wermal named Kedpin Shoklop was headed his way in a gold limospeeder. An offplanet rube, the winner of some sort of ridiculous sweepstakes, vacationing above his pay grade. He sounded perfect. Now Anglang just needed to find him.

Elegant beings from dozens of different systems milled about the Canto Bight city center. Wealthy younglings, bloated politicians, career gamblers, feted artists. Most were species Anglang had encountered before. Some were species he had killed before.

At last a gold limospeeder—the gaudy kind the transit guild used to make clueless tourists feel important—slid to a halt not ten meters away. Filled with sudden anticipation, Anglang watched the door of the vehicle hiss slowly open. A pink, soft little alien with a big single eye wide with dopey wonder emerged, fumbling with his currency and fretting about his luggage. Kedpin Shoklop. A mark if Anglang had ever seen one.

The job was a go.

CHAPTER 3

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SIR, I’M SORRY, but I have to drop you here. Drivers need a special license to enter the actual casino zone, and I’m afraid mine has expired. It’s only a few blocks from here, though.” Kedpin’s driver—an actual living humanoid, not a droid, Kedpin marveled, feeling important—looked mortified to be disappointing him.

“It’s no problem!” Kedpin said, determined to stay cheerful. “I can see more of the city this way!” He clambered slowly out of the gleaming golden limospeeder. He handed the driver another of the thin little bars of precious white metal he’d received at the spaceport in exchange for his VaporTech-issued voucher card. Kedpin had few of them left.

Kedpin thought about his luggage again. He worried that perhaps he might have been taken advantage of. During the ride to the Canto Bight city center he’d had time to wonder whether there really was such a thing as a luggage stamp. And try as he might, he couldn’t find any receipt from the helpful gate agent on his datapad. In fact he had no record whatsoever that his luggage existed! He could only hope that it had arrived at the Canto Casino Hotel safely.

The limospeeder scooted off and Kedpin took a long look around him. Humanoids of several sorts milled about a city square paved with pearly stones and dotted with the Alderaanian chinar trees he’d seen so many times in holovids. At the square’s center was a great white marble fountain that played soothing music as it flowed. Kedpin’s mood improved immediately. “Canto Bight Piazza! I’m really here!” he blurted. A tall being in white arched an irritated eyebrow at him as she passed, but Kedpin didn’t care. His vacation had officially begun. Now he just needed to find the Canto Casino Hotel.

Kedpin found he couldn’t make heads or tails of his datapad’s directions, so he looked around, hoping to ask someone for assistance. He had settled on an extremely tall being with an angled head and a severe black cloak when a sparkling silver protocol droid on treads whirred up to him and addressed Kedpin in a matronly, cultured accent.

“Good sir, forgive me my presumption, but are you having difficulty navigating our beautiful city?” the droid asked, her eye-lights flashing green in unison with her words.

“Oh! Why yes, as a matter of fact,” Kedpin replied, happy for help. “I’m trying to find the Canto Casino Hotel.”

“Ah, an excellent choice, sir,” the droid whirred. “As classic as they come. Spectacular accommodations and exemplary service. I’d be happy to show you the way. But first let me ask you: Have you been properly welcomed to Canto Bight?”

Kedpin didn’t know how to answer that. “I …”

“What I am asking, sir, is whether you have been welcomed in the spirit of luxury, of indulgent pleasure, that truly defines our city?”

“I … don’t know?” Kedpin answered honestly, blinking his eye self-consciously.

The droid made a low whistling noise and fluttered her eye-lights. “Oh you would know, sir. You should know! You could know. If you wish to.”

Kedpin blinked again. He was confused. “I’m not sure what …”

“Sir,” the droid asked, a note of reproach entering her voice, “do you want to go home having seen only the surface of Canto Bight? Or do you want to see all we have to offer here?”

“Oh, I definitely want the full experience!” Kedpin said, excited again. “I’m going to see a real fathier race! Live!”

“Sir, I have something much more exciting than fathiers to show you. Something for the truly discriminating. Will you put yourself in my capable hands?”

Again, Kedpin didn’t quite know what the right answer was. But he certainly didn’t want to be rude. Yes opens more doors than no, he recited to himself. “Um, okay?”

“Follow me, sir,” the droid said, and Kedpin followed her fifty meters down the street, to an ornately decorated storefront of shimmering pink metal. The doors whooshed open and a wave of delicately perfumed air wafted out, irritating Kedpin’s nose-slits. He sneezed loudly.

“This way,” the droid murmured pleasantly, leading Kedpin inside.

It was darker inside, dim enough that Kedpin felt his pupil dilate. They were alone in the building’s large front room, which was lit by smoky half lamps and decorated with strange sculptures. Kedpin didn’t know anything about art, but they looked expensive. The droid led Kedpin down a long hallway, her delicate treads whispering across the room’s plush purple floor. They came to a door of golden wood, decorated from top to bottom with engravings of various beings kissing and touching one another.

“Behind this door, sir, is one of the galaxy’s truly unique pleasures. I have no doubt you are bold enough to take a taste of it. Do you consent?”

Not once in his century and a half of life had Kedpin been called bold. He liked it. And after all, he didn’t want to insult the droid he was counting on to guide him to his hotel. “Um, yes?” he managed to get out.

The droid knocked three times on the golden door, and it slid open slowly, almost teasingly. The droid ushered Kedpin into the room, then withdrew, closing the door behind her. The room was smaller than the front room had been, but it had high ceilings. It was completely bare, save for a large bathing vessel filled with what looked like mud. Opposite the door Kedpin had entered through was a set of unadorned double doors four meters high. Kedpin had only been standing there a moment when they swung open.

A massive, rocky alien, like a three-meter-tall boulder with arms and legs, lumbered out. It wore makeup and ribbons and an incongruously tiny outfit that Kedpin realized was intended to make it look like a child’s toy. It took a big, booming step toward Kedpin, grabbed him by the shoulders, and hoisted him up with its huge, hard hands.

You such a pretty boy! But you such a bad boy!” the creature shouted in Kedpin’s face, its voice like a landslide. A third rocky hand sprouted from the alien’s chest, and it began to gently pet Kedpin’s head. Kedpin felt a hundred strange things at once.

Pretty! But bad!” the creature repeated, stopping its not-unpleasant petting. It suddenly lifted Kedpin above its head. “Such a bad boy!” it said again, and slammed Kedpin bodily into the tub of mud.

“Ow!” Kedpin shouted. The mud was warm and smelled like flowers. For a moment he just sat there, stunned, as the alien withdrew and the silvery droid reentered.

“That hurt,” Kedpin told her as he climbed out of the tub. Every drop of the mud—not normal mud at all, Kedpin realized, but some inorganic substance—slid off his body and rolled along the floor to re-pool in the tub. He was completely clean now! “I think there’s been some mistake. Can I ask you now to please point me to the Canto Casino Hotel?” Kedpin asked.

The droid’s eye-lights blinked pleasantly. “Of course, sir, I’d be happy to! And I do hope you have enjoyed yourself. You are one of a select few beings in the galaxy to have experienced Sweetheart’s irreproducible ministrations, after all. I trust you were pleased?”

Kedpin blinked rapidly, unsure how to answer. “Every dish tastes great to someone!” he said at last, reciting one of his Salesbeing’s Sayings. He’d learned long ago that he sold more vaporators when he pretended to like things his clients liked.

The droid made a sort of purring noise. “Now. There is just the small matter of the fee for Sweetheart’s exquisite services.” Rather than presenting Kedpin with a simple data card, the droid produced a small, thin plaque of wood, burned a number and a fanciful calligraphic pattern into it with a laser, and handed it to him.

Kedpin didn’t understand. Was he being charged money for being thrown into a pile of mud? The fee was a month’s pay for Kedpin. He’d have almost none of his saved-up spending money left. But rules were rules, and even if Kedpin hadn’t meant to, he had hired … whatever that rocky alien was to … do whatever it had done to him. Feeling as though it physically pained him, Kedpin passed the droid most of his little slivers of precious metal.

The droid gave Kedpin a blue thank-you flower, a piece of candy, and directions to the Canto Casino Hotel, which was only two blocks away. He stepped out onto the street and could feel his pupil contract immediately from the sun, so much brighter than the sun at home.

Kedpin sneezed in the sandy air and blew his nose-slits. He resolved to be a bit more cautious in dealing with this sometimes surprising city. Then he headed for the Canto Casino Hotel, still determined to have the vacation of a lifetime.

CHAPTER 4

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ANGLANG SAT AT the outdoor tables of the café raduli, sipping the blue honeycup that some called the best in the galaxy, and waiting for Kedpin Shoklop to emerge from the shimmering pink façade of V-333’s Silken Parlor. Blue honeycup was one of Anglang’s very few indulgences. He relished the piquant sweetness, knowing he wouldn’t have time to finish the whole cup. Anglang had watched the soft little fool stumble out of his limospeeder, apparently already having been conned out of his luggage, and bumble around the city center, wondering which way to go, until he’d been roped in by V-333 and her treat shop for depraved richlings. The idiot probably had no idea he was about to spend half his vacation budget on thirty seconds of “pleasure.”

A clueless buffoon, like all of those who visited Cantonica these days, though most of the fools in Canto Bight were rich enough to disguise their foolishness more effectively. Caskadags lived longer than many species, and he knew this meant he was slower to recognize change than some. But even he knew it now—Cantonica had been permanently ruined. Anglang sighed. He would miss the perfect, luxurious heat that warmed his crest now as he sat in the sun. But he would be happy to be done with this job and away from the various sorts of fools that had overrun this planet and given rise to the new city.

First, though, there was a job to do. The device would need to be implanted in the mark by means of ingestion. Anglang figured a spiked drink was his best bet. Then he had to get the mark into Canto Bight PD, at the start of the detox desk night shift. Which meant getting the one-eyed idiot arrested for the right crime. Brawg would be in the detox tank alone, conducting the sorts of “investigations” the other cops put up with but conveniently disappeared for. The blast radius on ingested nano-detonators was tiny. Anglang just needed to get his mark right next to Brawg, then bam!

If he was being honest with himself—and Anglang Lehet tried always to be honest with himself—he didn’t feel great about this job. It wasn’t the target. This Officer Brawg character was clearly the sort of head-cracking scum who deserved death. There was no problem there except the problem of logistics. And the plan involving the ingested detonator was logistically beautiful, the sort that had made Anglang’s pulse race with the rush of creativity as he’d come up with it. But having gotten a good look at that stupid surprised-by-everything face, and imagining it being blown up—well, it sat a bit wrong with Anglang. Kedpin Shoklop, huge worried eye constantly agape, was clearly a chump, but he’d done Anglang no wrong. Anglang had hit prestigious targets for the Syndicate for years. He was a professional. Ending his career by using such an utterly clueless civilian as his bomb—well, it wasn’t ideal.

Still, this plan was the best plan. The one most likely to end with Anglang alive and paid. And it was one guy. A fool. Hardly Anglang’s first unlucky bystander. A fee was a fee, a job was a job. Same as it ever was. Except that this one could be his last for a long time if he played it right. Anglang took another sip of tea.

A door-hole opened in the façade of the Silken Parlor, and Anglang shook himself out of his musings. Shoklop. The little pink man emerged and, shocked by the brightness of the sun, yelped loudly enough that Anglang could hear him across the street. Anglang set down his tea and stood slowly, in a manner that wouldn’t draw attention.

His mark was on the move.

CHAPTER 5

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BY MIDDAY KEDPIN Shoklop stood staring, eye wide, at a beautifully orchestrated splay of coral-and-sand-colored buildings studded with gleaming black glass and shining white tile. Jewel-hued landspeeders and speeder bikes of makes and models Kedpin had only ever seen in holovids hovered in front of the complex, and Kedpin saw famous faces among the impossibly well-dressed beings mingling near the main entrance: Krin Kallibin, the celebrated fathier jockey! And—

“Oh my! Is that … is that Orisha Okum!? She must be the most famous card player in the galaxy!” Kedpin tugged excitedly on the sleeve of a passerby, who huffed irritably and kept walking.

“The Canto Casino Hotel! I made it!” Kedpin shouted, ignoring the well-dressed beings who frowned at him. Sometimes you have to be your own booster rocket, Kedpin recited the Salesbeing’s Saying to himself silently.

The hotel grounds were dotted with gardens that held not only Alderaanian chinar trees, but also beautifully radiant plants that his data card told him were Dagobean brightmoss bushes and tall, luxuriant Kashyyyk orchidferns. Their combined scent was subtle and overpowering all at once. Kedpin’s nose-slits quivered on the crest of a sneeze, but no sneeze came. It was as if his sense of smell were being pleasantly teased. Nothing in the holovids could have possibly prepared him for this.

Kedpin made his way toward the main entrance, marveling at the variety of species around him. Tall creatures with elongated faces, tiny hovering beings, hulking things on plinths. He had only just stepped inside the palatial double doors when a green-faced, scaly little being even shorter than himself and dressed in black and white approached him as if he were a lord.

“Welcome, my good sir, to the Canto Casino Hotel. My name is Altovan and I exist only to serve. What can I do, sir, to make your experience here one of a lifetime?”

Kedpin had never in his life had a living being address him with such deference. Droids, sure, but that was about it. For a moment he just stood there.

“I … oh! My name is Kedpin Shoklop, and I’ve won a two-week all-expenses-paid trip. I’m the VaporTech Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year!”

The little alien’s face scales shimmered happily and he beamed with pleasure at Kedpin’s accomplishment. “Why, that’s wonderful, sir! Warmest congratulations on your accomplishment and welcome to Canto Bight. Please just give me a moment, and I will check on your arrangements, Master … Shoklop, was it?”

“That’s me—but you don’t need to call me Master!”

The green-faced alien smiled as if Kedpin had told a joke, then bowed his head, and led Kedpin to a computer terminal. His scaly little fingers danced over the keys as he spoke to Kedpin. “Your room is ready for you, sir. It looks like the Hero’s Suite has been reserved on your behalf! An excellent choice. If you’d just be so kind as to point out your luggage, I’ll happily have it sent to your room.”

Kedpin felt his hearts sink. “My luggage!” He’d completely forgotten about the business at the Great Arch. “I gave it to someone who said they’d bring it to the hotel, but … well, I think they might have been lying. My … my luggage hasn’t shown up here, has it? Under my name? Kedpin Shoklop?”

The little alien spread his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

Kedpin moaned. What was he going to do? “I can’t believe I gave my luggage to a stranger. I’m an idiot!”

The alien made a soothing noise. “No, no, sir. You are the trusting sort. There’s nothing wrong with that, sir. The galaxy could use a few more kindhearted, trusting beings.”

Kedpin’s breath caught. The opulent lobby was full of guests and casino-goers from a dozen different species coming and going, but Kedpin felt as if he were alone with the little green alien. He smiled. Aside from his mothers, this was the nicest anyone had ever been to him in his life. “Well, thanks. But I still need my personal vaporators. And humidifiers and …” He felt himself growing tense again.

The alien cut him off gently. “Well, with those matters at least, sir, we can perhaps help. While we know of course that no things are quite as satisfactory as one’s own things, we can easily have an array of personal vaporators, humidifiers, and dermal moisturization packages sent to your room.”

It felt like the first real good news Kedpin had been given since arriving in Canto Bight. “You … you can?”

“Of course, sir!” the little alien said, clasping his hands. “Why, we wouldn’t deserve our—if you will forgive me—unparalleled reputation if we didn’t attend to trifles such as this efficiently.”

Kedpin almost couldn’t believe it. “But … Well, I haven’t traveled much, you see, but I’ve stayed at VaporTech Travel Housing several times for business and they never do that.”

The alien smiled at him. “Sir, if you’ll again forgive me a moment of pride, and meaning no insult: This is not VaporTech Travel Housing. This is the Canto Casino Hotel! And speaking of which, where are my manners? This is the midmeal hour—would you care for a bite or two before you retire to your room?”

“That sounds great!” Kedpin said. He hadn’t eaten since his very early morningmeal on the Cantonican Dream.

Midmeal at the Canto Casino Hotel was unlike anything Kedpin had ever experienced. The holovids didn’t do it justice. How could they? Kedpin hadn’t seen this many different dishes in his long lifetime, and here they were all together in one meal. Delectables for every palate in the galaxy. He walked through room after room filled with jellies, meats, eating-papers, plants, insects, chew-blubbers, cakes, marrow-bags, pies, carni chips with glaze sauce, hydrosoy sprays, cheeses, kamtro grassticks, and a thousand other foods. In each room Kedpin had only to point to a thing, and it would be brought to his table. The yeast-worm jelly was the most delicious thing Kedpin had ever tasted. It was so good it nearly made him cry.

By the time he was done, he was so full he felt barely able to walk to his hotel room. The room itself was bright and beautiful. The walls were tastefully draped with glimmering tapestries, and the floor was covered in plush rugs that tickled Kedpin’s feet as he walked. The huge, perfectly soft sleeping pod fit Kedpin’s body as if it were made for him. Within moments of crawling into it he fell into a deep, restful sleep, dreaming of all the new things he’d seen and smelled and tasted.

An hour or so later, Kedpin was woken by a gentle rippling noise at his door. It took him a few moments to realize it was a sort of signal, alerting him to press the intercom button on his sleeping pod. Kedpin rolled over and pressed the flashing blue diamond.

“Master Shoklop, this is Altovan, your hospitality liaison. I am terribly sorry to disturb you, sir, but in your itinerary module you did indicate an interest in visiting Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. Are you still interested in a session?”

With some effort, Kedpin sat up in the squishy sleeping pod. “Oh, yes, please! Very much so!”

“Excellent, sir!” Altovan’s voice over the intercom was so full of cheer, Kedpin could almost see the little alien’s green scales shimmering. “I’ll have an attendant escort you. They will be by your room in precisely thirty minutes.”

An olive-skinned human in understated livery—again, Kedpin marveled, not a droid—arrived soon after and guided him on the walk from the Canto Casino Hotel to Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. The man left Kedpin standing in front of the facility’s huge façade of sculpted stone. “The hotel is just a short way back the way we came, Master Shoklop. But I’ve programmed the route into your data card as well, just in case. If you require anything else at all, please don’t hesitate to have a Zord’s employee contact the hotel’s front desk.”

As he entered Zord’s, scents of soap and seawater steam filled Kedpin’s nose-slits. He stared in awe at the sandstone and marble façades and watched beings of all sizes and shapes come and go, each clutching a small white towel. Armed with information from his datapad, Kedpin asked after the services of the renowned masseur Lexo Sooger, whom Kedpin had researched during the voyage, but was told that Zord’s most famous employee had left for the day.

The massage itself was nothing short of astonishing. On a few occasions over his more-than-a-century working for VaporTech, Kedpin had displayed what the company termed a “productivity-impacting proclivity for panic.” On these occasions VaporTech had required that Kedpin, at his own expense, retain a company-sponsored tension macerator droid. The experience was never pleasant.

But Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse was completely different. Kedpin was ushered into an elegantly cobblestoned room and invited to lie on a towel that was draped across the smooth little stones. A vault door was sealed shut behind him. Then a tiny blue masseur roughly the size of one of Kedpin’s feet briskly introduced himself as Gven, climbed onto Kedpin’s back, and began kneading his flesh with a strength beyond his tiny stature. The sensation was so painfully pleasant that it took Kedpin a few minutes to realize that the gravity in the room was slowly being reduced to zero.

Once aloft, with the tiny, now silent masseur climbing all over him and doing things to his flesh that no one had ever done, Kedpin’s mind began to wander. How many times in his life had he been able to do this, Kedpin wondered—to just lie there and think? About something other than vaporator models or client lists or productivity models? At first it was exhilarating. But then it began to terrify him even as it thrilled him. The oddest memories and feelings floated up. Embarrassment from Kedpin’s first failed sale, a century past. Resentments against his co-workers that Kedpin thought he had buried decades ago. Shame about good customers with whom he’d been less than honest. Guilt. But eventually even these melted away beneath Gven’s pseudopods.

When Kedpin emerged from Zord’s the sun was low in the sky, smudging the horizon with hearts-racing oranges and purples that Kedpin’s eye had never beheld. The air had cooled enough to be more tolerable, and the sand that had been irritating his nose-slits seemed to have settled. Gentle music and pleasant spices wafted from the cheery cantina next door. He decided to walk back to the Canto Casino Hotel.

Kedpin felt wonderful. His body felt better than it had in years, thanks to his visit to Zord’s. But it was more than that. Kedpin felt wonderful inside, in a way that felt new to him. He was living his holovids! He had flown through hyperspace on a private cruiser, eaten yeast-worm jelly at the Canto Casino Hotel, had a zero-g massage at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. And soon he would fulfill his decades-long dream of seeing a real live fathier race. He felt not only as if his fortunes on Canto Bight had turned a corner, but as if his very life had. Everything he had done to get here had been worth it.

Kedpin’s data card told him he was just two blocks from the hotel when he was approached by two lanky orange humanoids. Kedpin could not tell them apart except that one wore blue and one wore red. Kedpin thought they looked like they had bad news.

“Pardon us, sir, but are you—” one began.

“—Master Kedpin Shoklop?” the other finished.

“I … I am,” Kedpin said.

The alien in red said, “We’re terribly sorry, sir, but there’s—”

The alien in blue stepped in. “—been a problem with your hotel room.”

CHAPTER 6

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ANGLANG LEHET WATCHED his mark emerge from one of the old stone archways that fronted Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. Then he took a deep breath and silently counted to twenty.

Zord’s, housed in one of the most beautiful Old City–style buildings left on this side of Canto Bight, was a true institution. It wasn’t just hype for the tourists: Zord’s attendants could make a being of any species feel cleaner and more relaxed than that being had ever felt in its life. Once, many years ago, one of Anglang’s Syndicate bosses had insisted Anglang accept a heating wax soak at Zord’s as a bonus when he’d taken out a particularly hard target. Anglang had hated the idea, but if one wanted to live long one didn’t refuse gifts from one’s boss in the Syndicate. Truth be told, those hundred minutes in Zord’s wax vat had been some of the most pleasant in Anglang’s life. For decades afterward, when he found himself cold and cranky on some hit job or other, the memory of his heating wax soak at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse would come to Anglang unbidden.

Anglang reached twenty and shook himself out of his memories. He’d given Shoklop enough distance; time to follow now. Anglang tailed the little man for two blocks, finalizing his approach tactic, when he saw two thin orange beings approach his mark. They were identical as far as Anglang could tell, except that one of them wore red and one wore blue.

Anglang had been away from Cantonica’s underworld for years. He didn’t know these punks. But he knew their type. And the con they were running was an old and low-rent one, rare on Cantonica: scan someone’s data card remotely, pretend to be hotel staff transporting their “guest” somewhere based on some nonsense story, drive the mark out to the desert, and rob him blind. Not the sort of thing they would ever try on the beautiful and important people of Canto Bight. The sort of brutal hustle that only the occasional middling idiot ended up on the receiving end of.

Anglang watched the exchange for a moment, then stood and strode into action, his black cape swirling as he moved. This was his mark! He couldn’t let these amateurs screw this up. It could take him days to find another chump so perfect for his purposes, and he didn’t have that kind of time. He would have to turn this around and make it work somehow.