There was a flash of white light in the void. From that flash, which soon faded into the deep cold blackness of empty space, emerged a single, battered-looking starfighter ship. The ship slowed, decelerating to an aimless drift, as the pilot assessed her position.

“Well, here we are,” she said with a grimace. “One of the pleasant tourist spots of the galaxy.” Ale’ann Trexx, a young woman in her early twenties, flicked a strand of her long, curly, silvery hair back from over her left shoulder. She had a smoothly oval, very pretty face, with clear blue eyes and a broad mouth with full, lightly glossed pink lips. She was wearing a two-piece, practical grey flightsuit, complete with gloves and fitted with pocket pouches on the outer sides of her thighs. Though light and flexible, the material was designed to contain her natural body warmth, helping her fend off the chill of deep space, alone in her very small ship.

From behind her, her astromech droid R5-N8 whistled in nervous agreement with her sarcastic appreciation. The droid, its head shaped like a flattened white and dark green cone, was nestled into the chassis of the Y-wing starfighter, behind the narrow cockpit. Being thus exposed to the vacuum of space didn’t bother him; he was built for it. The ship itself was an antique, a vestige of the days of the Rebel Alliance and the galaxy-spanning civil war, more than four decades ago now. It was why Ale’ann had been able to borrow it, dusting it off from an old hangar. No-one else had any need for it now.

Its front was almost flat, save for the protruding narrow cockpit, and painted a dull greyish-white. Two small laser cannon tubes were fixed to its very front, while a somewhat rusty old ion cannon turret, which in principle should still be able to rotate, was mounted atop the back of the cockpit. Beneath was the gunner’s seat, currently empty, back-to-back with the pilot seat Ale’ann was in. The ship was a two-seater only.

From the squarish back part of the antiquated starfighter, cylindrical engines stuck out on either side.

R5-N8 twittered and warbled again, his words appearing on the small screen fitted into her control panel. She glanced at them, and smiled again wryly.

“Thanks for the confirmation, Nate, but I can see that this is the Y’Toub system. I spent long enough here to recognise it…” She fell quiet, letting her words, and her soft girlish voice, trail off into the deep silence of the void all around them. Her blue eyes gazed through the transparisteel of her cockpit, flicking over the familiar yellow star and then portside and down, somewhat, to where the planet Nal Hutta orbited with serene slowness through the dark. Had she not known what it was, it might almost have seemed beautiful, with its wispy green atmosphere and its gauzy orbital rings, small particles of rock and ice that were barely visible yet faintly reflected the sunlight.

And yet… it was a sickly shade of green, or greenish-brown, and it made her feel queasy as she glared at it in quiet, nauseous remembrance of all the years she had spent on its surface. The atmosphere’s tinge was the result of an air saturated with the gases of marshy boglands, mingled with industrial pollutants. She felt a visceral hatred twist at her guts, just for a brief moment… until she calmed herself, drawing easily enough on the technique her Master had taught her. She closed her eyes, parted her pretty lips to breathe slowly, and rested her head back against the relative comfort of her pilot’s seat.

She opened herself to the Force, letting it flow into her, calm her, its peacefulness cleansing her of anger, re-uniting her with the oneness of the universe. She was still only in the early stages of her training at the Jedi Academy, and she still found herself struggling at times with this serene aspect of the Force. To her, growing up untutored with her the abilities that no-one else seemed to have, the Force had been a tool, a means to a practical end – subverted by the Hutt who had made her his tool, the implement of his sadistic will. The broader view of the Force which Master Cohl had taught her had left her, at first, puzzled and awed and a little intimidated. She had soon grappled with it firmly, though, determined to understand and control this “living Force” he told her about, this sense of peaceful and steadying connectedness with all life.

Only gradually, and reluctantly, had she accepted his teaching that the Force was not to be controlled, but bathed in and channelled. The openness and passivity which he encouraged her into had unnerved her. What was the point of having special abilities, if not to make herself stronger, protect herself? Master Cohl had been admirably patient with her, teaching her slowly to trust, to lower her defensive barriers, to broaden her mind to the wonders of the universe, and immerse herself in a sense of peace which did make her stronger – in ways which she had never imagined possible.

She opened her eyes again, soothed. Nate, her astromech droid, tweetled, and his words scrolled onto her control panel screen. ‘NAR SHADDAA IS NOT ON SENSORS. IT’S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET.’

She nodded, and began to plot a flight path, which would give the planet a fairly wide berth while curving round to approach its night side.

“Any ships approaching us?”

‘NO.’

“Good.” Not that she had been expecting otherwise. As long as she headed clearly for Nar Shaddaa, still known across the sector and beyond as Smugglers’ Moon, no-one was likely to try to intercept her. The Hutts would leave her battered Y-wing alone unless she made an attempt to enter the planet’s atmosphere instead.

Which I’m definitely not going to do, she thought with a shudder of revulsion. She would have been happier never even to see the place again, even from the distance of space.

She nudged the control stick of her fighter craft carefully. “Nate, can you check my flightpath is OK, please?” She was a novice pilot, having begun to learn to fly only a few months prior, alongside her training in the Jedi interpretation of the ways of the Force. The droid nestled in her ship’s chassis warbled reassuringly. She gave a quick smile. “Thanks. Don’t hesitate to take over if I mess it up.”

R5-N8 tweetled. Ale’ann looked away from the misty green-brown planet and focused on her small ship’s implements as she guided it in a wide, sweeping curve, avoiding anything that might look like a direct approach towards Nal Hutta. A grey blip flashed on her sensor board, indicating a ship above the planet, and her tactical screen displayed its estimated schematics. A single Chalandion-class Hutt warship, blocky and thick-armoured, bristling with turbolasers and missile launchers. She cast her screen a faintly nervous look –the ship itself was too far away for her to see it with her naked eyes– but it was holding a placid, stationary high orbit. Ignoring her.

She swooped her ship round, forcing herself not to feel hurried or impatient. A part of her was anxious to get to her destination, free her Master from Greshka’s clutches, get this done. But she allowed the Force to continue to flow through her, calming her, helping her focus. She was smart enough, and well-trained enough by the Jedi, to know that impatience would only lead her to making potentially devastating mistakes. She could not allow herself to hurry this. She needed to remain mindful of her environment, the potential dangers around, and try to calmly lift the veil of her adversaries’ intentions.

They would know she was coming, after all.

As she circled the planet from afar, an area of darkness seemed to advance and cover it over. She was moving now above its night area, the hemisphere currently facing away from the sun. She came within view of two of the planet’s moons. One was small, covered in an icy ocean, heated by the friction of Nal Hutta’s gravity and sending plumes of cold geysers erupting into space. The other, larger, twinkled with a myriad artificial lights. She took a quiet breath, as she gazed at it, approaching. The moon was an orange-brown colour, dotted with the lights of the towering cities covering almost its entire surface. Ships came and went, in steady and surprisingly orderly streams, conducting the moon’s thriving interstellar commerce to their own profit – and to the profit of the Hutts living recluse and comfortable on the planet below, away from the bustle of countless alien species restricted to their urban moon.

Nar Shaddaa. The Smugglers’ Moon. The commercial heart of Hutt Space, its gateway to the rest of the galaxy. It was said you could buy and sell anything here, from deadly narcotics to subtle poisons and illegal weaponry, to an astonishing range and variety of slaves. You could come and go for a quick transaction, or stay and develop your own shady business, far away from the rules and laws of the Galactic Federation or the Imperial Remnant. Nar Shaddaa welcomed everyone, so long as they were tough and canny enough to survive the residents’ casual ruthlessness, and so long as they were not here to challenge the Hutts’ interests and authority.

Ale’ann smiled thinly, and checked her data on the planet’s locations. The coordinates she had received would lead her to an area close to the moon’s south pole. She tapped at her ship’s sensors, located the stream of vessels flying to and from that general location, and guided her Y-wing into that fast-moving queue.

Directly ahead of her was a small, bluish-grey Rainhawk-class transport – or at least, that was what the readings from her passive sensors told her it was. She still knew very little about the vast diversity of ships in the galaxy, and she knew better than to turn her active sensors onto the armed vessel. Like her, its crew would certainly want to maintain their privacy. Ahead of that was a much, much bigger ship, perhaps a dozen times bigger than hers, and which her passive sensors had no trouble in identifying: a Kuati-built B-12 bacta transport. With large powerful engines and a segmented structure, it carried large pressurised pods containing the life-preserving medical fluid known as bacta. For a moment, Ale’ann felt slightly surprised to see it. She did not mentally associate the brutality of Nar Shaddaa with a trade in medical supplies. But then, she reasoned, it made sense. On a world where there were no individual rights to services you could not afford to pay for, medical care would be a commodity like any other. Local care facilities would need to import bacta, so as to sell medical care to their customers.

“Well, here we are,” she remarked to the droid, and tried to sound cheerfully confident. “Shall we see what trap they’ve prepared for us?”

Nate trilled uncertainly. He didn’t much like the idea of them entering a trap. She smiled slightly.

“Don’t worry. I’ll work it out as we go along.”

The droid let out a flat electronic bleat, not at all reassured. She managed a laugh.

“Well then, I hope I can surprise you!” she smiled. Through the transparent panes of her canopy, she watched as a smallish black probe scanned the ship ahead of her and moved towards hers. She raised her eyebrows at it queryingly, but showed no other reaction. Her sensor board informed her that the Y-wing was being scanned, the probe doubtless taking note of her starfighter’s standard laser weaponry, ion turret and shield capacity. Her ship’s transponder identified it as coming from Tynna, but the probe wouldn’t be fooled; most of the ships coming here emitted false transporder readings, to conceal who they truly were. The Hutts tolerated it, knowing anonymity to be a precondition for the coming of lucrative traders, smugglers and pirates, all of them fuelling the Hutt economy.

Perhaps, though, the probe was also scanning her, and its report would flag an alarm when it recorded it with some security computer or other on the surface, thus informing Greshka’ minions that she had arrived. Well, no matter. She let it complete its scan, and cast it barely a glance as it soon moved on.

She gazed at what she could see of the moon from orbit. Though most of it shone with city lights, wide patches of eerily blue-tinged green caught her eyes, scattered within the otherwise all-enveloping urban density. She knew what they were, of course. Leftover areas of thoroughly alien vegetation, remnants from the time when the fierce Yuuzhan Vong had conquered Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa and had tried to reshape both in their own image, levelling the moon’s cityscape, killing or enslaving the countless millions who had been unable to get out, and seeding their own tough, brutal plants into the ruins.

The Vong had withdrawn from Hutt space some seventeen years ago now. The Hutts had almost immediately incinerated much of the invaders’ lethal jungle with turbolaser fire, and developers had swarmed back in, rebuilding a sprawl of towers on the cheap, enabling Nar Shaddaa to re-open remarkably quickly for business. The galaxy had moved on from the worst horrors of the Vong war, but traces of their past presence still remained, here and there, disconcerting and eerie.

Ale’ann nudged her Y-wing forward, loosely following the ships ahead of her as they plunged into the orange-brown atmosphere of the moon. Thick clouds roiled and dissipated around the prow and sides of her starfighter. Data began to ping at her commscreen, as spaceports sent her automated notifications, advertising themselves to this new arrival.

“Nate, find me the spaceport nearest our destination, and take us in,” she said. She didn’t feel quite confident enough to fly the small vessel through thick atmosphere, with little visibility on other ships that might be flying fast on an unwitting collision path with hers. R5-N8 twirtled acknowledgement, and she released the ship’s controls fully to him. Although her reflexes were sharpened by the Force, she could never match a droid’s speed of thought and reaction.

The oecumenopolis, the world-spanning city, appeared beneath her as she passed below the layers of clouds. She winced, and shielded her eyes with her hand as she realised she was flying almost directly into the sunlight. It appeared to be early morning at this longitude, with the yellow sun only just rising above the horizon into the orange sky. Her canopy darkened automatically to protect her eyes, and R5-N8 adjusted the ship’s vector so that she was no longer staring into bright light.

“Thanks, Nate,” she said.

The droid piloted the ship smoothly, descending towards a broad grey platform nestled between high buildings. Two freighters already rested there, and N8 set the Y-wing down with barely a bump. Ale’ann opened her cockpit’s canopy eagerly, pushing it up. She jumped out, three or four metres down onto the landing ground. Her landing was not quite as flawless as she had intended, though, as her legs stiffened from having spent too long in her pilot seat. She breathed in a little hiss of breath, as she steadied herself.

N8 chortled musically with amusement. She gave him a mock-glare in return, looking up at him, with his white and green semi cone-shaped mechanical head.

“It’s not actually funny!” she said. “I hate being cooped up like that!”

The droid twittered, his version of a good-natured laugh. She smiled slightly, despite herself. Nate wasn’t a bad sort. He was an R5 astromech, part of a series produced on the cheap long ago, less versatile but less expensive than the excellent old R2 model. R5s had been mass-produced, but their production had soon been discontinued due to the droids’ quirky personalities and occasional unreliability. Still, fifty or so years ago many of them had remained on the market, and the Rebel Alliance at that time had bought as many as it could – desperately short of cash, and desperately in need of astrodroids for its starfighters. R5-N8 had been one of many bought up in bulk-loads. He had been assigned to a Y-wing squadron, had seen action during the galactic civil war, and then had somehow been left dormant in the hangars of the Rebel base on Yavin IV. He had remained dormant there when the Rebel base had been converted into Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy, and then had been packed up and brought along when the Academy had relocated to Ossus. There, he had eventually been woken from his decades-long sleep, and put to use again by the Jedi.

And Ale’ann had borrowed him to come here to Nar Shaddaa today. To rescue Master Rho Cohl, her instructor at that Academy.

She stretched, unfolding her arms and trying also to work some proper feeling back into her numbed legs. She bent down and massaged her calves, drawing on the Force to move a flow of warmth through her muscles, relaxing them. As she did so, she looked around. The air was cool, this close to the south pole, but not cold. There were enough pollutants in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect, and she imagined that on the equator, the air would be stifling. It was uncomfortably damp here, and puddles on the pitted surface of the landing area indicated a recent downpour of acid rain. There was a sharp acrid tang in the air.

The early morning sunlight gleamed and glinted off the panes of the many tall buildings. But even bathed in the light of a new day, this was an ugly place. The crowded towers had been erected as fast as possible after the Yuuzhan Vong had left, using for the most part the same blocky, bleak grey materials, and dark brown windowpanes. Layers and layers of dull, functional bridges connected nearby tower blocks. Gigantic neon projections in garish, mismatched colours advertised large local businesses, their unavoidable flashing contrasting with the strips of white light fixed to the sides of many of the blockish, inelegant towers. And even a mere decade and a half after the beginning of post-war reconstruction, the whole place was starting to look grimy, stained with dirty rain and polluted air, as it had been for countless centuries before the Vong had demolished the earlier version of this unappealing moon-wide city.

There was life, of course. She could see figures crossing some of the bridges, or vrooming past on speeders. And she could sense life, through the Force, an inchoate mass of it all around her, crammed into these skyscrapers. But despite the sheer numbers, it felt muted, subdued, with flickering peaks of anger and fear and sinister excitement, and a dull deep underside of bleakness. Nothing like the vivid, thriving life in the forests around the Jedi Academy temple on Ossus.

This was a place packed with millions of beings, and quickened with all the dramas of life; and yet the spirit of its long-term residents felt to her as though dampened, almost dead.

Nate toodled a warning. Ale’ann nodded. She had already sensed the two people emerging from a nearby building, onto the landing area. She finished rubbing at her legs, then straightened up and turned to face them, looking casual. Walking towards her plodded a thick-set but very tall woman, dressed in a flowery woollen top and beige shorts. She was a Besalisk, her skin a greyish pink, her head bald with a thick crest, wide cheeks and a bulging neck pouch. Her massive feet were bare, with three toes on each foot, webbing between them and large blunted claws at the end of them. She had six thick, flabby arms with immense hands, and looked old, her skin wrinkled. There was a slight stoop to her gait, though her small yellow eyes were sharp still. Some distance behind her walked a male Nikto, a humanoid with a flat yet vaguely reptilian face, and yellowish-white skin. Thin and wiry, he carried a blaster rifle with feigned casualness of his own, not quite pointing it at Ale’ann.

“Hi there!” Ale’ann said chirpily. “I just went ahead and landed. I hope that’s okay?”

“It is if you have credits,” the elderly woman rumbled, her large alien mouth broadening into a smile full of thick, aged teeth. “That’ll be 85 creds per day. Or two peggats and a trugut, if you have Hutt currency. I’m the owner of this pad.”

“I’ll probably be gone by this evening, but I’ll pay in advance for two days,” Ale’ann offered. She slipped her hand down into the large pocket on her left thigh. “Coins okay?” She had credit chips too, but those would involve connecting to her bank account. Coins, she knew, were reassuringly anonymous for both sides in many of the transactions here on Smuggler’s Moon.

“Coins are fine, lovey.” The elderly Besalisk woman crossed two of her arms over her chest, placed two of her other hands on her hips, and let her other two arms hang vaguely by her side, close to her own ample pockets. “ ’long as we understand each other, it’s all good!” She laughed. The Nikto remained standing a few paces behind her, his wiry legs flexing now and then as though preparing to pounce, the rifle in his hands pointing away from anyone… for now.

Ale’ann fished out a handful of coins, and counted them. “Don’t s’pose you have a shower handy that I could use?” she asked casually. “I’ve been cooped up for days in my cockpit. Real water for myself, and a sonic cleanser for my clothes?”

The woman nodded. “Just inside.” She gestured back with one of her arms. “Throw in another nine creds, or ten if you’re feeling generous and want to round it up.” She grinned.

Ale’ann smiled. She walked past the tall alien, and lightly dropped the coins into the woman’s very large, outstretched hand as she did so. “This way, you said? Great!”

The Besalisk closed her immense fist around the coins, and shoved them into a pocket. All smiles in turn, she waddled after the slender Human girl, on her thick legs and clawed feet.

“Welcome to Nar Shaddaa!” she cackled, in a thick throaty laugh.

* * *

Five years earlier

Greshka’s palace on Nal Hutta stood proud atop a hill of rock, amidst the vast plains of slimy bog dotted with smog-infested villages. The palace itself was built of a sickly pale green stone, embedded with sparkling purple gems that made the whole complex sparkle and glint from afar… at least when enough sunlight was able to pierce through the permanent heavy, green-brown mists. Modular buildings, in the rounded shapes which characterised Hutt architecture, protruded from the main bulk of the palace, proclaiming Greshka’s wealth and influence to all within sight.

At the centre of the web of buildings, though, was a broad open space, a yellow stone courtyard fitted with large potted, slimy-looking plants. At one end of the courtyard, an elevated, pyramid-like platform of darker yellow stone was topped with a wide flat area, upon which rested Greshka, Hutt lord of this domain. His immensely thick slug body was an orange-tinged greenish colour, with large lidded yellow eyes.

Scattered around the rest of the courtyard were yellow stone seats, shaped to accommodate humanoid physiologies. The Hutt’s courtiers and retainers sat or milled around, their master largely ignoring them. Here and there were a tall, thin, green-skinned Sakiyan, an immense quadruped t’landa Til, a web-footed female Toydarian dozing slumped in one of the chairs with her leathery blue wings folded over her chest, or over in one corner a mauve-skinned Ryn with thick white hair, sitting quietly with his back to a tall column, and watching. Atop four solid poles of stone, three or so metres above ground, there was a large cage. In it sat a despondent female Human, fair-skinned and with silvery long hair, and young – somewhere in her mid teens. Like all the other beings in this courtyard, other than Greshka himself, she wore a gauzy light robe of pale green, marking her effectively as Greshka’s property.

Young Ale’ann was resting against the curved, bronze-coloured bars of the cage, trying as usual to empty her mind of all thought and feeling, maintaining herself in a state of only semi-consciousness as she waited wearily for this day, like all those before it, to end. Her eyes were closed. It had begun to rain – a thick greasy rain descending from the polluted brown sky, thick clouds only faintly brightened by the sun they concealed. There was a roof to the cage, thankfully, but as she opened an eye, she saw the courtiers looking unhappy and getting wet, some moving discreetly to the shelter of stone overhangs around the courtyard’s edges, others glancing nervously at the Hutt and not quite daring to risk his disapproval. Greshka himself was perfectly at ease out in the open, the dirty rain running in rivulets over his thick squat body, and his attendants were expected to remain exactly where they were.

Ale’ann stirred, her half-conscious mind emerging back into full wakefulness as she sensed newcomers approaching. She sat up straighter, folding her legs, and turned expectantly to look at one of the wide ornate doors leading into the courtyard. From the visitors nearing it, she could sense smug satisfaction, caution… and fear.

Within a few moments, the Hutt’s attendants were able to hear the footsteps and voices, confirming what Ale’ann had felt through the Force. Visitors. She looked over at Greshka, and saw the greedily intelligent glint of his mostly closed eyes. He didn’t stir.

The once white doors, smudged and stained with years of exposure to marshy air and greasy rain, swung open. A somehow still white protocol droid bustled into the open courtyard, his servomotors whirring audibly. He walked forward far enough for the visitors to emerge behind him, then bowed low, his mechanical components whirring again.

“Your magnificence,” the droid intoned in his finicky voice, speaking Huttese, “your cousin the esteemed Jorba sends humble and respectful greetings, and sends his favoured servant Ksheshlan to express anew his house’s obedience to clan Jellianic and to your munificent overlordship of this your blessed domain.”

Greshka’s eyelids parted enough to signal he was awake, and he rumbled noncommittally as he gazed at the small delegation. Ale’ann eyed them too, curious. Any novelty was welcome in these long and dreary days. She adjusted the folds of her gauzy thin slave-robe over her folded knees.

Ksheshlan, the servant sent to pay homage by Jorba to his cousin and social superior, was a t’landa Til – a massive, four-legged hulk of bulky muscle, with thick oily beige skin, thin arms, and a beakish face topped with a long leathery horn between small white eyes. He was accompanied by two humanoid guards, grey leathery-skinned Weequays, who now roughly pushed the other three newcomers down onto their knees. The fear was coming off those three, Ale’ann realised. It roiled out from them through the Force, stark and bitter. She looked at them, feeling wary. New slaves, perhaps?

Ksheshlan, his voice deep and rumbly, expressed his master’s homage to Greshka in terms very similar to those the protocol droid had just used. Between him and the Hutt up on his altar, Greshka’s attendants stood or sat uncomfortably in the rain, silent. Ale’ann’s attention, however, remained on the captives who had just been brought before her owner, as they knelt on the wet yellow stone surface, with their hands atop their head and rain soaking their face. One was a male Human, fair-skinned and dark-haired, probably in his forties, unkempt and badly shaved. The second was a beautiful female Twi’lek, distinctly feminine despite baggy clothes, her skin a deep lovely red, her ‘brain-tail’ lekku draped around her shoulders and twitching with great nervousness. The third was a fairly short male Gamorrean, green-skinned with a thick snout and tusks. He was snortling, his deep-set eyes wary and worried as he assessed his surroundings.

“Mighty lord Greshka,” Ksheshlan was saying, switching to Basic now, the lingua franca of the galaxy, “my master presents to you the deficient crew of the freighter Flashbolt, those who you’ll recall failed to make the Rarmbak run and dumped your cargo.”

“We ran into an Imperial patrol!” the dark-haired Human spoke up hastily, indignant. “My ship’s senses are the best in the quadrant, and we saw them before they saw us! We only just had time to void the cargo. We’d have been captured! You know how angry the Imps get about hard drugs!” He began to get to his feet, but the Weequay guard behind him pushed him roughly back down to his knees. “We’ll compensate you, triple! We’ll do the next three runs for free!” His brief indignation had given way to bleak supplication. “You won’t have lost anything by this, Greshka – you’ll profit!”

Greshka gargled something harshly in Huttese. A question.

“His eminence,” the white protocol droid translated prissily, “demands that you explain why you did not turn tail and escape along another flight path, with the cargo still on board. A most reasonable query.” The droid cocked its head. “You stated that the Imperial vessel had not immediately detected you – did you not?”

Ale’ann winced with sympathy. She knew where this was going. So did the prisoners, it seemed. Tales of what Greshka did to those who displeased him had spread far and wide among his employees. The beautiful Twi’lek nibbled with stark anxiety at her lip, and looked up at Ale’ann and the cage, fear in her eyes. The Gamorrean too looked up at her, and began to tremble, emitting little whimpering snorts and shnuffles of fear.

“We had only seconds in which to decide!” the male Human was saying. His tone was defiant, but his posture was one of pleading. “It was the best thing we could have done, in the circumstances!”

Greshka looked rather amused. “No,” he rumbled in Huttese. “It wasn’t.” He turned his massive bulk, and his large alien eyes looked up at Ale’ann. She held his gaze for a moment, then sighed, and nodded.

“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly.

She reached out with the Force.

It was a flow of sensations that came quite naturally to her now. The feel of glowing life around her, pulsing in all its complexity. Her mind channelled these sensations, bending them to her will – or rather, to her master’s bidding.

She didn’t even look, as she heard the gasps of surprise and alarm, and she felt the Human freighter captain rise up off the ground, lifted by her invisible pull. She focused the power running through her, and used it to tear away his clothes, wrenching them off him. He struggled against the unseen grip in the air around him. To no avail. She clenched her hand, and began to shrink him even while his clothes, his belt were still tumbling away into a scattered pile on the stone surface below.

“Greshka!” the man cried out, as he thrashed around in mid-air. “Spare my crew! It was me, not them! I made the decision! It was me! My responsibility! I did it! It was me!” His shouts dimmed in intensity as she shrank him. Then she motioned with her hand, and that same invisible force brought him flailing through the air towards her. Tiny, he passed between the bars of her cage. She opened her mouth wide.

He didn’t scream. She managed not to look at him. Naked and shrunken, he was forced into her mouth. She closed her lips, sealing them shut behind him.

She was aware of the Twi’lek screaming, down below. Vaguely, she was aware of a struggle. The two remaining prisoners were trying to fight back. And the man in her mouth was struggling on her tongue.

She pressed him with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and sucked hard. She felt him squirming, wriggling. Her mouth watered, squirting saliva to wet him, soak him. She no longer really felt guilty; she had done this so many times. Merely a little uncomfortable. She was aware of the Hutt watching her, amused, as her jaw moved and she made faintly audible sucking sounds. She ignored him.

And she was aware, too, of how good the smooth, struggling, faintly salty morsel felt inside her mouth, squirming and rubbing himself over her tongue. Her stomach groaned, aching. She had not been fed yet today – no doubt deliberately, she knew. She was hungry. Very hungry. And the silky, salty wriggles on her tongue were sharpening her appetite.

Her stomach yearned and her mouth watered further. She sucked and sloshed urgently, shifting the tiny man around on her tongue, letting him slip and slide around her mouth, thoroughly wet. Then, at last, she swallowed. She felt him slide smoothly into her throat, and she gulped him down hard. Gwyulp.

“Magnificent, isn’t she?” Greshka said with pride. “No-one else has one like her. Do you know, clan Hestilic twice tried to steal her from me?”

Ale’ann felt the unfortunate man pass down inside her gullet, inside her chest. “The others too, my lord?”

“What?” He looked up at her again, and waved one of his stubby arms impatiently. “Oh, yes – yes, of course! Eat all of them!”

One of the Weequays was holding the red-skinned Twi’lek beauty in a choke-hold, but now pushed her forward. She stumbled, and fell on the stone ground. Ale’ann reached out with the Force and lifted her into the air, rapidly stripping her of her clothes. The woman struggled helplessly against the unseen grip.

“Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t!” she wailed. “I’ll, I’ll captain the Flashbolt! I’ll fly all the runs you want! We’ll do everything you ask! We’ll never disappoint you again! I’m sorry! Pleeeease!”

“And deprive our guest of the sight of my pet feeding? I think not.” Greshka chortled. “But you’re right, Hirani’vida. You won’t disappoint me again.”

Ale’ann moistened her lips, and drew upon the Force to guide the lithe, struggling Twi’lek head-first into her mouth. The woman screamed and screamed, begging, until Ale’ann’s soft pink lips closed firmly around her thighs and bottom. Bare, red, lovely long feminine legs remained sticking out from her mouth, and kicked desperately but ineffectively at empty air. Glancing down from her cage to the courtyard below, Ale’ann saw that some of the Hutt’s attendants were looking away, queasy. Others, though, were watching with rapt fascination. And Ksheshlan, the massively muscular, four-legged t’landa Til, was forcing himself to watch, his beaked alien face uncomfortable and uneasy.

She met his gaze for a few moments, just to compound his unease, as she sloshed at the front part of the Twi’lek woman in her mouth, wetting her thoroughly. She felt the helpless woman try to beat and scratch at her tongue, struggling wildly. She continued to hold Ksheshlan’s eyes locked onto hers as she sucked the Twi’lek’s smooth bare legs slowly in between her pretty lips, until the woman’s feet vanished with a soft swllp into her mouth.

She sloshed and sucked at her for a short while, then swallowed smoothly. A fluid bulge slid down her slender neck, and disappeared forever into her young body.

The gorgeous Twi’lek woman was gone. Eaten.

Ksheshlan took the opportunity to look away, turning to face Greshka again. “Truly remarkable, yes, your eminence,” he forced himself to say. “And a… potent reminder of your power.”

“Yes, and mine alone!” Greshka said proudly. “Unique on all of Nal Hutta! I keep her healthy and fit, as you can see.”

Ale’ann remained quiet, not having been ordered to speak, and instead used the Force to lift the last remaining smuggler up off the ground. The green-skinned, porcine Gamorrean squealed and struggled as she stripped his clothes off from several metres away, maintaining him suspended in mid-air.

She felt the Twi’lek plop down into her stomach, and shivered quietly with guilty pleasure at the fluttering of the two people in her tummy.

“The Jedi are not aware of her, then?” Ksheshlan was asking.

Greshka narrowed his heavily lidded, alien eyes. “There are no Jedi here!” he snapped. “Jedi don’t come to Nal Hutta! They wouldn’t dare!”

Ksheshlan bowed deeply, bending the knees of his thick front legs. “Of course. Of course, your eminence. I meant no offense.”

Ale’ann paused, holding the unfortunate Gamorrean shrunken in mid-air, some distance from her still. The Jedi… She had heard them mentioned only twice before, and she had no idea who or what they were. She had gathered vaguely that they might be people with abilities similar to her own: to sense an unseen presence, to move objects and people through the air… Having no other frame of reference, she had imagined them hazily as some sort of marginalised yet powerful Hutt clan or grouping. But now Greshka had just said that there were no Jedi on Nal Hutta…

She shrugged to herself, dismissing the puzzle for now, and pulled with the Force, bringing the shrunken Gamorrean sailing swiftly through the air into her open mouth. He squealed with distress, wriggling, as she closed her lips and began to suck at him. She had eaten Gamorreans before, and there was something delectable about their flavour which had made her keep this one ’til last. Tangy, salty, a little smoky even perhaps… She sucked at him harder, and felt herself smile, just a little, as she absorbed his taste onto her tongue. She flicked him around every time he struggled, tossing him about inside her mouth, keeping him off balance. His bare skin rubbed his deliciousness over her taste buds.

Eventually, she swallowed him down, a big strong gulp to force him down her throat, and she breathed out a little sigh of mingled pleasure and regret. She licked her lips, discreetly.

The Hutt, she noticed, was already waving his stubby little arms to dismiss his cousin’s envoy. It was still raining, the rain thick and oily pouring down from the heavy green-brown clouds, and Greshka’s attendants were sitting miserably drenched on their stone chairs. Ale’ann ignored them all. She lay down on her side, dry in the centre of her cage, and turned her back on them.

Resting her hand on her softly gwurgling stomach, enjoying the flutters of the food inside her, she closed her eyes and tried to rest.

And to imagine, through the veil of frustrating vagueness, what on earth the Jedi might be…

* * *

[Continues in part 2...]