“It’s time for you to go home, sir.”

Wyle Ulbreck woke up and looked at his empty glass. “What’s that you say?”

The green-skinned bartender prodded the old human on the shoulder. “I said it’s time for you to go home, Master Ulbreck. You’ve had enough.”

“That ain’t what I meant,” Ulbreck said, rubbing the crust from his bloodshot eyes. “You called me ‘sir.’ And then ‘Master.’ ” He leered suspiciously at the barkeep. “Are you an organic—or a droid?”

The bartender sighed and shrugged. “This again? I told you when you asked earlier. My eyes are large and red because I’m a Duros. I called you what I did because I’m polite. And I’m polite because I’m not some old moisture farmer, deranged from too many years out in the—”

“Because,” the white-whiskered man interrupted, “I don’t do business with no droids. Droids are thieves, the lot of them.”

“Why would a droid steal?”

“T’give to other droids,” Ulbreck said. He shook his head. The bartender was clearly an idiot.

“What would—” the bartender started to ask. “Never mind,” he said instead. He reached for a bottle and refilled the old farmer’s glass. “I’m going to stop talking to you now. Drink up.”

Ulbreck did exactly that.

To Ulbreck’s mind, there was one thing wrong with the galaxy: people. People and droids. Well, those were two things—but then again, wasn’t it wrong to limit what was wrong with the galaxy to just one thing? How fair was that? That was how the old farmer’s thinking tended to go, even when he was sober. In sixty standard years of moisture farming, Ulbreck had formed one theory about life after another. But he’d spent enough of the early years working alone—odd, how not even his farmhands wanted to be around him—that all his notions had piled up, unspoken.

That was what visits to town were for: opportunities for Ulbreck to share the wisdom of a lifetime. When he wasn’t getting robbed by diabolical droids pretending to be green bartenders.

They weren’t supposed to allow droids inside Junix’s Joint—that was what the ancient sign outside the Anchorhead bar said. Junix, whoever he was, was long since dead and buried in the sands of Tatooine, but his bar still stood: a dimly lit dive where the cigarra smoke barely covered the stink of farmers who’d been in the desert all day. Ulbreck seldom visited the place, preferring an oasis establishment closer to home. But having traveled to Anchorhead to chew out a vaporator parts supplier, he’d stopped in to fill his canteen.

Now, half a dozen lum ales later, Ulbreck began thinking about home. His wife was waiting for him there, and he knew he had better go. Then again, his wife was waiting for him there, and that was reason enough for him to stay. He and Magda had had a horrible fight that morning over whatever it was they’d fought about the night before. Ulbreck couldn’t remember what that was now, and it pleased him.

Still, he was an important man, with many underlings who would steal him blind if he was away too long. Through a haze, Ulbreck looked to the chrono on the wall. There were numbers there, and some of them were upside down. And dancing. Ulbreck scowled. He was no fan of dancing. Ears buzzing, he slid off the bar stool, intent on giving the digits a piece of his mind.

That was when the floor attacked him. A swift, scurrilous advance, intent on striking him in the head when he wasn’t looking.

It would have succeeded, had the hand not caught him.

“Careful, there,” said the hand’s owner.

Bleary-eyed, Ulbreck looked up the arm and into the hooded face of his rescuer. Blue eyes looked back at him from beneath sandy-colored eyebrows.

“I don’t know you,” Ulbreck said.

“Yes,” the bearded human responded, helping the old farmer back onto the stool. Then he moved a few paces away to get the bartender’s attention.

The brown-cloaked man had something in his other arm, Ulbreck now saw—a bundle of some kind. Alerted, Ulbreck looked around to see whether his own bundle was missing before remembering that he never had a bundle.

“This isn’t a nursery,” the bartender told the newcomer, although Ulbreck couldn’t figure out why.

“I just need some directions,” the hooded man responded.

Ulbreck knew many directions. He’d lived long enough on Tatooine to visit lots of places, and while he hated most of them and would never go back, he prided himself on knowing the best shortcuts to them. Certain that his directions would be better than those provided by a droid pretending to be a Duros, Ulbreck moved to intervene.

This time, he caught the railing himself.

Ulbreck looked back warily at the glass on the bar. “That drink ain’t right,” he said to the bartender. “You’re—you’re …”

The newcomer interjected cautiously, “You mean to say they’re watering the ale?”

The bartender looked at the hooded guest and smirked. “Sure, we always add the scarcest thing on Tatooine to our drinks. We rake in the credits that way.”

“Ain’t what I mean,” Ulbreck said, trying to focus. “You’ve done slipped somethin’ in this drink to put me out. So you can take my money. I know you city types.”

The bartender shook his bald head and looked behind him to his similarly hairless wife, who was washing up at the sink. “Close it up, Yoona. We’ve been found out.” He looked to the hooded stranger. “We’ve been piling customers’ bodies in the back room for years—but I guess that’s all over now,” he said jokingly.

“I won’t tell a soul,” the newcomer said, smiling. “In exchange for directions. And a bit of blue milk, if you have it.”

Ulbreck was puzzling through that exchange when the bartender’s expression changed to one of concern. The old farmer turned to see several young humans entering through the arched doorway, cursing and laughing. Through his haze, Ulbreck recognized the drunken rowdies.

The two in their twenties were brother and sister Mullen and Veeka Gault, hellion spawn of Ulbreck’s greatest competitor out west, Orrin Gault. And their cronies were here, too. Zedd Grobbo, the big menace who could outlift a loader droid; and, at just a little over half his size, young Jabe Calwell, son of one of Ulbreck’s neighbors.

“Get that kid out of here,” the bartender yelled when he saw the teenage tagalong. “Like I told the other guy, the day care’s around the block.”

At the reference, Ulbreck heard catcalls from the young punks—and he noticed his savior turning to face the wall with his bundle, away from the troublemakers. Veeka Gault shoved past Ulbreck and grabbed a bottle from behind the bar. She paid the Duros with an obscene gesture.

Her fellow hooligans had moved on to a helpless victim: Yoona, the bartender’s wife. Catching the startled Duros woman with a pile of empties on her tray, Zedd spun her around for sport, causing mugs to fly in all directions. One struck the shaggy head of a patron at a nearby table.

The Wookiee rose to register his towering disapproval. So did Ulbreck, who had disliked several generations of Gaults, and didn’t mind helping to put this generation in its place. He staggered to a table near the group and prepared to raise his objections. But the Wookiee had precedence, and Ulbreck felt the table he was leaning against falling anyway, so he decided to check things out from the floor. He heard a scuffling sound and only vaguely registered the arrival of the bartender’s wife, who scuttled into cover beside him.

The Wookiee backhanded Zedd, sending him across the room—and into the table of some people Ulbreck was pretty sure were thieves, even though they weren’t droids. He’d eyed the green-skinned, long-snouted Rodians all afternoon and evening, wondering when they’d harass him. He knew henchmen for Jabba the Hutt when he saw them. Now, their table upended, the thugs moved—chairs overturning as they shot to their feet and reached for their guns.

“No blasters!” Ulbreck heard the bartender yell as customers stampeded for the exit. The call didn’t do a bit of good. Trapped between advancing attackers, the Gaults, who had drawn their pistols when the Wookiee struck their comrade, began firing back at the Rodians. Young Jabe might have fired his weapon, too, Ulbreck saw, had the Wookiee not lifted him from the ground. The titan held the howling boy aloft, about to hurl him into a wall.

The bearded newcomer knelt beside Ulbreck against the bar and leaned across him toward the bartender’s wife. “Take care of this,” the man said, placing his bundle in her hands. Then he dashed into the fray.

Ulbreck returned his attention to the bar fight. Above him, the Wookiee threw Jabe at the wall. But somehow, boy and wall never met; as Ulbreck craned his neck to see, Jabe’s flailing body flew in an unnatural curve through the air and landed behind the bar.

Stunned, Ulbreck looked to see if Yoona had seen the same thing. But she was frozen in terror, eyes squeezed shut. Then a blaster shot struck the floor near them. She opened her eyes. With a scream, she shoved the bundle into Ulbreck’s hands and crawled away.

Ulbreck turned his own frightened eyes back to the brawl, expecting to see the Wookiee beating Jabe to a pulp. He saw, instead, the hooded man—holding Jabe’s blaster and pointing it at the ceiling. The man fired once at the lightglobe suspended overhead. A second later, Junix’s Joint was in darkness.

But not silence. There was the Wookiee’s howl. The blaster shots. The shattered glass. And then there was the strange humming sound, even louder than the one in Ulbreck’s ears. Ulbreck feared to peer around the edge of the table shielding his body. But when he did, he could make out the silhouette of the hooded man, lit by a wash of blue light—and stray blaster bolts of orange, ricocheting harmlessly into the wall. Dark figures advanced—the criminal Rodians?—but they fell away, screaming, as the human advanced.

Ulbreck slid back behind the table, trembling.

When quiet finally came, all Ulbreck could hear was a gentle rustling inside the blanket on his lap. Fumbling for the utility light he carried in his pocket, Ulbreck activated it and looked down at the bundle he was holding.

A tiny baby with a wisp of blond hair gurgled at him.

“Hello,” Ulbreck said, not knowing what else to say.

The infant cooed.

The bearded man appeared at Ulbreck’s side. Lit from below by the portable light, he looked kindly—and not at all fatigued by whatever he had just done. “Thank you,” he said, taking the child back. Starting to rise, he paused. “Excuse me. Do you know the way to the Lars homestead?”

Ulbreck scratched his beard. “Well, now, there’s four or five ways to get there. Let me think of the best way to describe it—”

“Never mind,” the man replied. “I’ll find it myself.” He and the child disappeared into the darkness.

Ulbreck rose now, turning the light onto the room around him.

There was no-good Mullen Gault, being revived by his no-good sister, as Jabe limped toward the open doorway. Ulbreck could just make out the Wookiee outside, evidently chasing after Zedd. The bartender was in the back, consoling his wife.

Jabba’s thugs lay dead on the floor.

The old farmer slumped back down again. What had happened in here? Had the stranger really taken on the toughs alone? Ulbreck didn’t remember seeing him with a weapon. And what about Jabe, who’d seemed to hang in the air before he dropped behind the bar? And what was that blasted flashing blue light?

Ulbreck shook his aching head, and the room spun a little. No, truth was, he just couldn’t trust his besotted eyes. No one would risk his neck against Jabba’s toughs. And no one would bring a baby to a bar fight. No decent person, anyway. Certainly not some hero type.

“People are just no good,” Ulbreck said to no one. Then he went to sleep.