Kanan rushed around the corner of a building—only to be nearly run down by an Imperial troop transport. Seeing the boxy repulsorcraft careening straight at him, Kanan dived to the muddy roadway. The long vehicle passed right over him, its metallic underside mere centimeters from the back of his skull.

Now he lay in the mud at the corner of a Shaketown intersection, and there was still no sign of the woman with the alluring voice.

Picking himself up, Kanan wiped off his tunic and stood as more traffic came down the other street, this time on foot: two of Charko’s gang members, barreling in his direction with big metal pry bars in their hands. The sound of blaster shots followed behind them.

Kanan reached for his weapon, only to realize the Sarlaccs weren’t coming after him—and that the blaster shots were meant for them. The hoodlums ran past without stopping, rushing to stay ahead of their pursuers—who turned out to be Gord and his fellow guards, firing blasters.

“You’d better run, punks!” Gord yelled, firing blasters held in all four hands.

Kanan looked down the street after them and then up the route the Imperials had taken. He shook his head. I’m too sober, he thought. Nothing makes sense!

He walked around the block. At the far end of one street, he could see the Moonglow service entrance. There was no sign of any caped woman there; just the stormtroopers from before, piling out of their repulsorcraft. Kanan quickly turned away.

This was no place to stay on a fool’s errand, stormtroopers or not. This end of Shaketown, he recognized, had fared badly in a recent quake; half of it was under renovation and most of it was closed down. Resigned, Kanan decided to give up and head for Okadiah’s. I’m just being silly, he thought. Tomorrow’s moving day. Time to get packing.

Then he heard the voice again.

“Fifty up front, fifty afterward,” the woman said. “Like we agreed.”

Kanan looked down the alley to see the hooded figure facing off against Charko, flanked by several members of his gang. It was like the scene Kanan had witnessed outside the diner—only not. This place was more enclosed: Construction scaffolds rose against buildings on either side of the passage. There was a new menace to how Charko’s friends—a mix of tough-looking humans and other beings—stood. And Charko, clutching a bunch of credits in his hand, wasn’t happy at all.

“If you’ve got a hundred credits, maybe you’ve got a hundred more,” the one-horned gang leader said. He took a step forward. Towering over the short woman, he gestured to her black cloak. “You’ve got room for a lot more cash under there, I’ll bet.”

Kanan strode into view at the end of the street. “Hey, Charko! You were looking for me. Did you forget?”

Charko and his companions looked back at Kanan. “Never,” the Chagrian said. “There’s always time for you!”

Kanan saw blasters being raised. His was already drawn. Six—no, seven against one. That’s about right.

But before he could fire, Kanan saw the woman suddenly twirl in place. With one swift motion, her cloak came off—and became a weapon she cast into the air like a net. Charko turned back to get a faceful of fabric, dropping his credits in the process.

The gang leader stumbled backward, victim of a high kick from his assailant. His friends turned and gawped at what Kanan now saw: a beautiful, lithe, green-skinned Twi’lek, holding a pistol in one gloved hand.

The Twi’lek shot one human Sarlacc point-blank in a single motion, and then rushed forward in the next. As the burly man fell backward, the Twi’lek used his body as a makeshift staircase, giving her the altitude she needed to leap for a horizontal strut on one of the scaffolds. Catching the bar with her free hand, she used her momentum to help her gain a perch, clinging to one of the vertical supports. Turning, she fired her blaster down into the astonished crowd.

“Get her!” yelled a female gang member. But blasterfire was coming from a second direction as Kanan, done with watching, charged into the alley. The Sarlaccs scattered, uncertain who to target first.

With an angry bellow, Charko leapt from the mud, heedless of the cross fire. Turning toward the Twi’lek’s position, he slammed chest-first into one of the scaffold supports. The structure shook, and the Twi’lek woman dropped her blaster. Her weapon hand freed, she scrambled like a sand monkey higher up the scaffold—even as it began to fall.

Kanan knew he had to move. He rushed his nearest attacker and grabbed her blaster arm with his left hand. His motion directed her errant shot into the assailant approaching on his right; he followed with a head-butt beneath her chin that knocked her backward. Now he could see the raging Charko trying to upend the scaffold. He dived forward, even as the Twi’lek woman vaulted in the opposite direction high above, to the scaffold on the other side of the alley.

Seized from behind by Kanan, Charko lost hold of the scaffold support—and the whole thing started to come down, all five stories of it. Kanan saw only one place to go: the large picture window of the building the scaffold was attached to. He launched himself and the Chagrian through the window, creating a shower of shards even as an avalanche of scaffolding came down in the alleyway behind them.

Dazed, his blaster lost in the dive, Kanan struggled to regain his feet inside the vacant building, which he recognized as an abandoned cantina. The Chagrian had taken the brunt of the crash, and yet somehow the thug still stood, ready to fight it out.

“You’re on my turf now,” Kanan said, raising his fists. “I do all my training in bars!”

Kanan and Charko traded punches across the dark quake-damaged room. Kanan grabbed a chair; Charko did the same with half a broken table. The two carried on a parry-and-thrust battle with their makeshift weapons—it was a kind of fighting the Jedi never taught, and it suited Kanan just fine.

Blow by blow, he maneuvered Charko in front of the only remaining intact window. Winded from his exertions, the Chagrian staggered. Kanan saw his opening. A roundhouse kick sent his opponent smashing through the pane behind him.

“Are we done here?” Kanan asked, stepping up to the windowsill. Charko didn’t get back up this time. But the others were still out there, Kanan remembered. He readied himself and carefully climbed out the shattered window.

There wasn’t anything to do. All Charko’s companions were down. Some, Kanan had taken out earlier; others, the Twi’lek had. The rest had been crushed under the falling scaffold. And the Twi’lek herself was nowhere to be seen.

Rubbing his bruised cheek, Kanan searched the wreckage for his blaster. He was in pain: the kind that would pass, but enough to make it tough to go another round with the Sarlaccs. By the time he found his weapon, however, it was clear to him no danger remained.

But something was missing from the scene. The credits Charko had dropped had been plucked from the ground, and small footprints led away from the place where they had lain.

He saw the Twi’lek’s cloak nearby, pinned beneath a heavy girder. She did leave me a souvenir, after all. With great effort, he pulled the metal aside. He took the garment into his hands and held it up. It was a good find, he thought, as he turned to stagger out of the alley. Because he was beginning to believe she had never been there.

He stopped thinking that when he stepped out into the street—and found himself looking into her eyes.

“Ah,” she said, seeing her cloak.

“Ah,” he repeated. Kanan stood frozen, studying her under the bright light of the moon. She was shorter than he was, with deep green skin, full lips, and a chin that came to a pleasing point. She wore a gray pilot’s cap that allowed exit for two head-tails that hung at a little more than shoulder-length. She wore a brown vest, gold-colored slacks with utility pockets, and black gloves that matched the cloak in his hands.

“I knew I’d forgotten something,” she said, removing the garment from his hands so deftly he barely noticed she’d done it. Then she looked at him with concern. “You okay there?”

Kanan nodded.

“You speak Basic?”

“Words fail me.”

She smiled. “So they do.”

It wasn’t a dig—or if it was, it was delivered so gently that Kanan chose not to notice it. He looked back. “That was something back there.”

“Yes,” she said, still talking in that wonderful voice as she flicked mud from the cloak. “It’s a good thing I was here to save you.”

Kanan’s brow wrinkled, and he looked back. “Save me?” He pointed at the bodies. “You had a whole gang after you!”

The Twi’lek lifted the cloak to put it on. “I’d paid them to do a job for me. There was a minor pricing dispute. I could have handled it.” Seeing him look back at her, slack-jawed, she bumped a gloved fist underneath his bruised chin. “You did pretty good though. I’m impressed.” She studied him. “So, you just randomly go around sticking your neck out for people?”

“No!” Kanan said. “Er—almost never.” He blinked as she pulled her hand back. “Wait a minute,” he said, gesturing back to the bodies in the alley. “You needed them to do a job? For you?”

“Mm-hmm. And now it’s done.” She flipped the cloak back into place around her shoulders, turned, and started walking.

“I do jobs,” Kanan said, tromping after her. His whole body hurt from the fight, but he didn’t want the conversation to end so soon. “You need something done, I’m there.”

“No, thank you,” she said, continuing on. “I have stops to make.”

“Wait!”

Kanan tried to follow, but his body rebelled. Wincing, he grabbed at his knee. When he looked up, she was gone again—likely down one of the side alleys.

Disgusted with the universe, he yelled into Gorse’s endless night. “What’s your name?”

For a long moment, nothing.

And then that voice again, calling back to him.

“Hera.”