"I don't know, and I don't want to think about it." Aphra covered her face as she started up her little speeder bike. She sighed amid the clouds of dust. "Worrying about making a living every day is already enough. If I also had to think about what my creditors were thinking all the time, I'd have gone insane long ago."
Watching the two droids clumsily climb onto their owners' speeder bikes, Su Ming held the squirming Harley in his arms and asked, "But Darth Vader isn't an ordinary creditor. Just how did you offend him?"
The two speeder bikes floated slowly along the street, heading for a bar that offered food and lodging. It was already getting dark, yet the streets were still bustling.
Of course, plenty of ill-intentioned eyes swept over the group, as if judging whether they were worth robbing.
The archaeological expedition had uncovered only some metal, masks, and the planet's immovable core. Everything they could carry out was now in Su Ming's belt pouch, so they didn't look as if they had gained much.
Those gazes soon vanished.
"He was crazy—or rather, he'd always been crazy. He told me to find a legendary place within ten days, or he'd make sure I died horribly."
As Aphra spoke, she craned her neck and swallowed, as if recalling the feeling of Force Choke:
"I'm a practical archaeologist, not a space traveler. There was no way I could conjure a planet out of thin air for him, so I prepared to run away. But he caught me, stabbed me, and threw me into a scrap heap. Luckily, I'm tough."
The dim streetlights gave the place the feel of a small town in the American West. Warm light spilled from the doorways of each shop.
"So you still ran