• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The drills were as much a test for the body as for the mind, and the docking bay’s newly sanitized shower brought a blissful peace to muscles that were telling Luke they had not been properly exercised in too long. He stood for a long time in the place where the six needle jets converged, letting the water flowing down his body become another meditation.

When Luke finally emerged from the shower and once again donned his clothes, he allowed himself to check the skiff’s chronometer and see how long Akanah had been gone.

Barely six hours had passed.

Standing beside the skiff’s bow, Luke looked around the bay. Inexplicably, it seemed much smaller when viewed through the prospect of spending the next several days there.

Donning his hooded cloak, Luke secured the skiff, locked the docking bay—bending a pin so that only he could unlock it again—and went out into the night.

As he looked out across the spaceport and at the lights of Talos beyond, his hand—out of habit—went to the place at his hip where his lightsaber usually hung. His fingers found only air, which puzzled him for just an instant. Then he drew the face of Li Stonn down over his own and walked on.

It was a much-remarked irony that very little was free on a Free Trader world. Walking and breathing were among the few activities without a price tag—though some said that was only because the Traders’ Coalition hadn’t figured out how to deny those amenities to those who wouldn’t pay.

But there was a twenty-credit service fee to enter Talos, which crowded up against the spaceport boundary in classic Free Trader fashion. Virtually anything could be bought on Atzerri, and no small part of the catalog could be had within five hundred meters of Talos spaceport’s three entrances. Every major trader in the city had at least one of the kiosk-size satellite storefronts that crowded along the broad boulevards leading to the cabs and hire shops along the flyway ramp.

The narrow little stores were aggressively gaudy and loud. Multistory display panels above their doorways graphically hawked their wares while door barkers made promises and entreaties shoppers were well advised to ignore. Every shop along the boulevard was willing to refund service fees and provide express transport to the sponsor’s main location. Some sent small armies of droids out to stand outside competitors’ doorsteps with even sweeter offers.

The entire purpose of Traders Plaza was to snap up as many newly arrived “greens” as possible. Once they were safely away from competitors, they could be worked at leisure or steered to other members of a trading alliance—a scratchback, in Atzerri argot. The scratchback networks were elaborate. There was nothing a Free Trader hated more than having a willing buyer and seeing a competitor get the sale.

Luke surveyed the offerings in Traders Plaza with a mixture of wonder and horror. The last time he had been on a Free Trader world, it had been to try to buy weapons for the Rebellion, and there had been no time for browsing the commercial districts. Few of the offerings in the plaza had any appeal to him now, but his curiosity went beyond the personal.

Information brokers offered religious, political, and technical secrets. The forbidden vices of ten thousand worlds were available openly and without shame. Traders who called themselves facilitators arranged personal experiences. Embargoed technologies were readily available alongside unlicensed copies of commercial products. Librarians sold entertainments in every known medium without respect to content or copyright.

Though Luke had prepared himself to resist the blandishments of the sellers on Traders Plaza, his resistance was broken down by one unexpected offering on the display board of The Galactic Archives. He accepted a credit tab from the barker outside, then stepped into the tiny storefront.

“Welcome! Welcome to The Galactic Archives, your one-stop source for everything that’s worth knowing,” said the hook, greeting him with a broad, oily smile. “Whatever you want, we have