A few speeder bikes and another swoop darted through the sky over the field at lower altitudes than Khedryn. Treaded cargo droids unloaded goods from an old freighter, and crews in dungarees worked at their ships' engines and landing gear. Other than Junker, not a single vessel on the field was less than two decades old. Expensive technology trickled out to the fringe of the galaxy only after it had been replaced by something newer and became affordable on the secondary market.
Once clear of the field, Khedryn ducked low behind the swoop's windscreen and gave the Searing its head. He squinted into the spray of dust and wind and sped for Farpoint, glinting ten kilos in the distance, and looking not so much like a town as a junkyard.
The rusting, broken remains of a decades-old star cruiser formed the core of the town. The cruiser had crashed on Fhost sometime before the Yuuzhan Vong War, and no one knew what had happened to the crew. No one even knew the make of the ship, not anymore, though it must have been big. The wreckage had created a debris field eight kilometers long.
Khedryn thought it likely that it had been a wayward Chiss ship, but if so, the Chiss had never come back to recover it. Over time the rusting hulk had accreted a community of scoundrels around it, almost as though it had its own gravity that pulled only at criminals and rogues, or just those for whom the Galactic Core meant not luxury but overcrowded cities and too many laws.
Over the decades, Farpointers had torn apart, added to, and remade the ruins of the cruiser so many times over that only the more or less intact bridge section remained recognizable as something that had once flown-though now it was a warren of cantinas, brothels, and drug dens, not a command center for a starship. Of course, the vice dens of the one-time bridge were the command center of Farpoint, and that was about all that needed to be said.
Viewing the rickety, slipshod sprawl of Farpoint from altitude always reminded Khedryn of the first time he had seen it. He'd been a deckhand on a cargo freighter running medicines into the Unknown Regions, and Farpoint had reminded him so much of the ruins of Outbound Flight in the Redoubt that he had been unable to breathe. In that moment, he knew he'd found a home.
Only a few clear memories of his time in the Redoubt remained to him. He had drunk most of them away in the years after his rescue. But he did remember the way the planetoid had looked as he'd been shuttled away on the transport, the rusted, ruined remains of Outbound Flight as stark against the stone as exposed bone. He remembered the anger the survivors had harbored against the New Republic and the Jedi. He had not shared it, despite the stories of C'baoth's betrayal.
He'd soon grown up, put life on the Redoubt behind him, and ridden ships from the Empire of the Hand to the Galactic Core. He had resided for a time on Coruscant and Corellia, but he had called only the Redoubt and Farpoint home, the first out of necessity, the second out of grudging affection. Everywhere else he'd been, hundreds of planets in scores of systems, had been nothing but way stops.
Rats always find a hole, he figured. And Farpoint, it turned out, was his hole.
Above him, the setting sun turned the ambient mineral dust in Fhost's atmosphere into bands of orange, yellow, and red that bisected the sky, a rainbow that wrapped around the world. Khedryn wondered how long it would be before the planet's natural beauty-not only the sunsets, but also the gashed canyons and sheer cliffs that bordered the Great Desert-turned it from a backrocket launching point to the Unknown Regions and into a tourist destination. He tried to imagine tourists and respectable citizens of the Galactic Alliance mingling with the rogues and scoundrels who skulked in Farpoint's ruins. The thought made him laugh out loud.
He decreased altitude and speed-the roar of the swoop growing throatier-as he hit the outskirts of the town. Ramshackle buildings made from cast-off materials leaned like drunks against the more sturdy structures built from the crashed starship's bones. The large reptiles native to the planet's deserts-ankaraxes-pulled carts and wagons through the packed dirt streets, snarling in their harnesses, side by side with ancient landspeeders and even a few wheeled vehicles.
Khedryn weaved his way through the street traffic-leaving a trail of curses in various languages in his wake-until he reached The Black Hole, his cantina of choice.
Corrugated shipping containers, welded together like a child's building toy, made up the bulk of The Hole. Smoke, discordant Yerk music, laughter, and conversation leaked out of the rough-cut holes that served as windows. He spotted Marr's parked speeder bike, put the Searing beside it, powered it down, activated its antitheft security, and hopped off onto the packed-dirt road, avoiding the inevitable mines of ankarax dung.
A trio of Zabrak lingered on the street outside The Hole, the horns jutting from their heads as irregular in size and formation as Farpoint's buildings. They chatted in their rapid, coarse language, each with a tin cup of pulkay from The Hole's stills in their hand. Khedryn knew them by appearance but not name. He nodded and they returned the gesture.
A hulking Houk sat on a crate outside The Hole's door. A light blaster cannon that looked old enough to have served in the Yuuzhan Vong War-normally a crew-served weapon-hung across his scarred chest, suspended by a strap of ankarax leather.
"Khedryn Faal," the Houk said in Basic, his voice as deep as a canyon, and pulled open the metal slab that served as a door.
"Borgaz," Khedryn returned. He stopped before the door, noticing the new words painted over old ones in an uncertain hand:
NOT EVEN LIGHT ESCAPES THE HOLE.
He puzzled over it for a moment, frowning. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Milsin calls it marketing. A catchphrase."
"A catchphrase?"
Borgaz wobbled his head from side to side, the Houk equivalent of a human shrug.
Milsin owned and operated The Hole and was always trying this or that gimmick he picked up from watching vids from the Core.
Shaking his head, Khedryn entered The Hole.
The dim interior of the place smelled of unwashed bodies, stewed ankarax, the pungent cheese produced locally by a small community of Bothans, and some offworld spice that Milsin must have purchased from a passing freighter. The eclectic collection of tables and chairs, some plastic, some wood, some resin, some metal-gathered from hither and yon over the years-mirrored the eclectic clientele. Rodian, Chiss, human, even a Trandoshan, drank, ate, gamed, and argued at The Hole. A duo of well-attired Bothans sat on crates and played the twelve-stringed soundboards of their people in a tuneless attempt at Yerk music that Khedryn barely heard anymore. Old vidscreens hung on the walls, the largest over the bar. HoloNet reception was hit or miss so far out, so most of them played recordings of shows and sporting events that had aired in the Core four standard months earlier. Nothing was produced locally, not even news. It was as if The Hole, as if all of Farpoint, existed in the past, four months behind the Core.
Khedryn nodded at familiar faces as he maneuvered his way through the tables. Milsin, an elderly human as thin as a whipweed, as bald as an egg, but as tough as an ankarax, waved at him from behind the bar.
"Spiced pulkay," Khedryn called, and Milsin nodded.
"See him?" called Stellet, captain of Starfire and a friendly rival of Khedryn's. Stellet was speaking to his Wookiee tablemate, presumably a new add to Starfire's crew. "That man's a junk jockey. Swims in engine lubricant. Handles a wrench better than he handles a woman."
Khedryn made an obscene gesture but offset it with a smile as he approached Stellet's table. "I've been on the rickety boat you call a ship, Stellet. I expect to be salvaging it when it burns out on your next run to Chiss space."