Chapter Text
Jumba Alley had a festive feel to it that morning.
Bright, jangly music spilled from portable speakers wedged between makeshift stalls, the brassy tunes competing with a few determined buskers clinging to the alley corners. The smell of fried and sugared treats wafted through the air, drawing customers to stands that sold deep-fried tampias, roasted Felucian butternuts, or powdered ilo cakes. People of all kinds browsed the booths and mingled in the walkway, shouting and chattering in a dozen languages. Ithorians haggled with Gotals, Toydarians and Rodians called out advertisements for their wares, and everyone kept an eye on the Jawas.
Jumba Alley was only an alley in the loosest sense of the term. Instead of being tucked between townhouses, or winding modestly through a park, it sprawled across a wide overhang that jutted out over a gap in one of the deep canyons that ran through the city planet. Booths lined one side of the alley, clustered up against the side of a cloudcutter, and a safety railing ran along the edge that hung out over the drop. Jumba Alley was low enough in the city's stratum that when Luke looked up, the buildings above them seemed to climb impossibly high and disappear into the sky.
The alley was one of the highlights of the Penumbra sector, a sector of mid-and-lower-level Coruscant populated by an array of alien species who had emigrated from the many hundreds of planets in the New Republic. The chaotic bustle of the sector was a far cry from the polished and elegant world of the city’s upper levels, where Luke spent most of his time on Coruscant, and where he and his friends and family lived and worked. The canyons between the buildings served as the racing grounds for popular swoop bike races, and most of the crowd that gathered in the alley that morning had come to see the races.
“Fresh tampias?” a Rodian vendor called out. “For you and your lady friend?”
Luke glanced over at his lady friend. She shrugged a shoulder, affecting an air of disinterest. Taking her cue, he began to turn away.
“Two for the price of one?” the vendor offered quickly. There were dozens of booths along the alley that sold hot food; it was a competitive business.
There was a moment of feigned consideration, and then Luke said, “We’ll take them,” and dug in a pocket of his jacket for the credits. “My treat.” The Rodian took his credits and passed him a pair of tampias, still steaming from the heater.
Mara carefully accepted a tampia from him and gingerly bit into the hot outer crust. As he took a bite of his own tampia, Luke found the filling inside was actually very good—flavourful and spicy—though it probably wasn’t a good idea to think too closely about where the ingredients came from.
He took her free hand in his as they continued along the alley, Mara keeping an eye on the Berchestian and two humans who had stopped at a candy booth further down. It was hard to call the outing a date when your girlfriend brought her crew with her. Or some of her crew, anyway. Dankin and Faughn weren’t bad company, though he didn’t know them very well, and they helped to keep an eye on Ghent, who was clearly an easy mark and would’ve been robbed blind if they let him out of their sight.
Mara was on-planet more often than the rest of the crew, to fulfill her duties as Smuggler’s Alliance Liaison (which she complained was mostly datawork), and to spend time with him (complaining about datawork). It was Mara who had introduced Luke to Jumba Alley and the swoop races held there. The races were a popular attraction for off-world smugglers, and she and the Wild Karrde’s crew often visited the alley when they were on-planet.
She had also introduced him to the opera and dragged him along to classical concerts and art museums; Coruscant offered a wide range of entertainments, and Mara had grown up attending the most exclusive performances. At times it felt like she was trying to offer him a glimpse of a gentler version of her past, one less fraught than her childhood in the Imperial Palace. These excursions into Coruscant's sophisticated art scene had been interesting, and certainly a far cry from what had passed for entertainment on Tatooine. But it meant dressing in a stiff suit and schmoozing with self-absorbed socialites—never his favorite pastime—and all things said and done, Luke preferred Jumba Alley.
Though her past had been among the glittering elite, Mara’s present was anchored in the Fringe, in places like Jumba Alley, where illicit trade thrived. Now, through her Smuggler’s Alliance post, she was linked to the upper levels of the New Republic government as well. One day he hoped she would also claim her knighthood as a Jedi, but at the moment she insisted that her work for Karrde and the New Republic took precedence.
A few paces ahead of them, Faughn had stopped in front of a stall that sold ruggers, wedged between the candy booth and a stall selling illegally imported Hapan beauty products. The small, long-haired creatures had become popular as pets, and Ewok traders shipped them directly from the forests and plains of their home planet.
“Best product! Straight from Endor!” The Ewok vendor told them.
“Aww,” Ghent said, “They’re cute.”
“No pets on the Wild Karrde,” Mara said. “Drum and Strang would try to eat it.”
“Yeah," Dankin said. "They try to eat Mara all the time—and she can fight back.” Mara shot the Berchestian a narrow look, and he muttered, “Sorry, boss.”
A rugger with a coat of white and pale green fur flicked its ears at them and let out a trill. Another scampered acrobatically up the side of its cage, where it perched at the top, preening its long fur.
“You could buy one for your girlfriend,” Dankin suggested to Faughn.
“She doesn’t like rodents,” Faughn said as she wiggled her fingers at a rugger.
Luke privately agreed with Faughn's girlfriend. Rodents weren’t meant to be pets, though the ruggers seemed harmless enough. Perhaps he was biased; not everyone’s first impression of a rodent was a womp rat.
“No buy, no touch. Go, go!” the Ewok waved them away. They continued on down the alley, killing time among the stalls before the main event of the morning took place: the swoop race.
The racecourse wound through the Penumbra Sector, beginning above a set of decrepit warehouses and coming to an abrupt dead-end at the far side of the canyon. The racers were required to turn sharply and make their way through the labyrinth back to the starting point. One of the qualifications for finishing the race was not ending in a fatal smear against one of the buildings that enclosed the dead end. Swoop bikes were dangerous enough—speeders that were little more than an engine on a seat—and it took a skilled pilot to navigate the hairpin turns in the city’s canyons. The races were highly illegal and extremely popular.
Further down the alley, the crowds parted to make way for one of the swoop gangs competing that day as they strode proudly down the thoroughfare, skilled pilots at the top of their game. Every one of them was an Ewok.
The Ewoks of the Golden God Gang had won the last race, and they strutted through the crowd as if they were tall as Wookiees, sun glinting off the sequins sewn into the gaudy golden hoods they wore. They wore brightly-colored feathers and beads, jewelry fashioned from a variety of materials, and belts bristling with weapons and tools. Other gangs would soon gather as well: the Black Moon Gang, the Forest Demons, and the Empire Killers. The Ewok gangs of Courscant were a long way from the Ewoks that Luke had met on Endor, with their simple leather hoods and wooden and bone jewelry.
Several tribes had emigrated to Coruscant after the planet had been claimed by the New Republic and Ewoks joined the thousands of other alien communities that thrived in the lower levels of the city planet. They’d adapted to the city in their own way, becoming expert swoop pilots and holding the best and most brutal races on the planet.
“Hey, Jedi!” A Devaronian shouted across the alley after the gang had passed. He held up his betting ticket. “You know the winner?”
It wasn’t Luke’s face they recognized in the lower levels, it was the lightsaber he wore at his side. Coruscant had been home to the Jedi Temple, and even after the massacre and decades of Imperial propaganda, people still remembered what a lightsaber signified; more so than the outer regions, where Jedi had faded into myth. Luke felt the weight of that significance, which carried with it sometimes unexpected expectations. He was often asked to arbitrate disputes or offer counsel, and he always felt obligated to offer whatever aid he could when his services were called upon.
But gaming a betting pool wasn’t one of those obligations. “Sorry, friend,” Luke called back. “The Force works in mysterious ways. If it told me that, I’d be a very rich man.” The Devaronian laughed good-naturedly and turned back to his friends.
Mara also carried a lightsaber clipped to her belt, but on Jumba Alley she had another reputation that eclipsed her visible link to the Jedi: she’d become known for participating in several Ewok races. Luke had noticed the second-glances and the whispers. It had gained her a certain amount of fame—or perhaps notoriety—in the lower levels.
The Black Moon gang was the next swoop gang to make their entrance, rattling long pikes at the crowd, the skulls of small animals and crudely rendered replicas of the Death Star hanging from the ends. The pilots hissed and growled, and everyone cheerfully booed their arrival. From what Luke understood, the Black Moon gang rarely won a race, so they’d chosen the Death Star as their symbol and cast themselves as villainous holo-characters. It was a good way of holding a fickle audience’s attention. They flew hard and fought dirty, those pikes often being used in the middle of a race to unseat a rival biker.
In the wake of the Black Moon gang’s parade, a single brown-furred Ewok marched along the alley, his head turning as he searched the crowd. Instead of the customary hood, he wore a simple leather pilot’s helmet, with holes cut in the top for his ears and the straps hanging down below his face. He carried a small bag slung sideways across his body, with a dagger fastened to the front strap, and he marched along with the confidence of a Cloud City con man. Ralrk didn’t compete in the races, but as far as Luke could tell, he seemed to serve as some sort of intermediary or fixer who brokered deals between the gangs.
When he spotted Mara he rushed over, the straps on his helmet flapping. She and Faughn were picking out a scarf for Faughn’s girlfriend a few booths down from where Luke and Ghent were checking out a stall filled with speeder parts procured from unknown sources. Luke couldn’t hear what Ralrk said to Mara when he accosted her, but she crossed her arms and shook her head. His gestures became more emphatic as he spoke to her, but Mara didn't relent. Luke passed Ghent-watching-duty over to Dankin and made his way across the market to Mara and Ralrk.
“Slimesucker!” Ralrk swore as Luke approached. Mara appeared unmoved by Ralrk’s outburst.
“What’s wrong?” Luke asked.
The Ewok turned to him. “The Empire Killers are begging her to join the race today,” he said in Bocce. “And she refuses! Because of some petty grudge with their chief!”
“He knows what he did,” Mara said coolly.
“What happened?” Luke asked.
Ralrk said, “Nothing!” at the same time Mara said, “Don’t worry about it.” They glared at each other.
“I’m not going to tell the sector police,” Luke said, letting his irritation bleed into his voice. “I’ve competed in the races.”
“We know,” Ralrk said. “That is why we aren’t asking you.”
The snub was somewhat insulting, but, Luke reflected grudgingly, understandable, considering that the only time they'd invited him to complete, he hadn’t even finished the race. He’d stopped to rescue a pair of bikers whose swoops had collided, and by the time he'd made sure both bikers were safe, the competition was long over. He placed last, his team had lost, and hadn’t been invited to race again.
“He can’t race anyway,” Ralrk said, pointing at Luke and speaking to Mara as though he weren’t even there. “The Chiefs put an azat on him.”
“What?” Mara snapped, suddenly dropping her disinterested pose. “You’ve blacklisted him?”
“Three gangs lost points!” Ralrk exclaimed. “We should have never let a Jedi race!”
“Now listen, you—”
“Mara, it’s not that big a deal,” Luke said. He wasn't aware he'd been blacklisted and he didn’t understand the world of Ewok swoop racing enough to actually mind. There was probably some subtext to the azat that he didn’t understand, but he could live with that.
“It’s an insult!” Mara insisted. They were starting to draw an audience. “An azat is going completely overboard—”
“But we want you to race!” Ralrk countered. “It’s an honor.”
“It’s not that great an honor,” Mara said, eyeing him narrowly. “If I race, will you lift the azat on Luke?”
Ralrk laughed dismissively. “Impossible!”
“Then find another pilot.”
Ralrk cursed again, this time in Ewokese. Luke didn’t understand the language, but he got the gist. There were a few scattered gasps from the onlookers who appreciated Ralrk’s theatrics.
“You don’t have to sit out just because I can’t race,” Luke said. He suspected that she had wanted to race, in spite of her feigned indifference in the sport and her outrage at what seemed to be a minor inconvenience. He wanted to see her compete. He decided to throw in with Ralrk. “I think you should, Mara."
“I can’t let them insult you like that,” she insisted.
“I really don’t mind,” he said. “You don’t have to defend my honor.” He was rather charmed that she wanted to, though she probably wouldn’t appreciate him phrasing it that way.
Mara shot him an exasperated look. “It’s absurd,” she fumed. “You’re the best pilot here.” Ralrk made an exaggerated noise of disbelief and the crowd murmured. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this.”
“But I want to see you race,” he said simply. She studied his face, and he hoped she could read his sincerity there, and that he genuinely didn’t care about the snub and didn’t want it to hold her back. When that didn’t seem to sway her, he tried another approach. “Where did you place last time?”
Her eyes narrowed at him, though he still suspected that her reluctance was partially for show. “You know we didn’t win.”
“Maybe you’ll win this time.”
She rolled her eyes. “Optimist. The Empire Killers aren’t the best team. The Forest Demons are better and the Golden God team usually wins anyway.”
She’d cracked. He could tell. “If Mara says yes, can you talk the chief of the Empire Killers around?” Luke asked Ralrk.
“Yes, I can make the chief see reason, just watch!”
“Fine,” she said, holding Luke’s gaze. “I’ll race.”
“Ha! Yes!” Ralrk hissed. “Follow me!”
He led further down the alley to the wide platform where the swoop riders mounted their bikes. Dankin, Faughn, Ghent, and a good portion of the crowd that had watched the preliminary negotiations trailed behind them. The Ewok gangs had already gathered on the platform, grouped near the edge where the line of swoops hovered. The Empire Killers wore elaborately embroidered blood-red hoods to distinguish them from the golden hoods of the Golden God Gang, the black hoods of the Black Moon Gang, and the inexplicable yellow hoods of the Forest Demons.
Mara wasn’t the only non-Ewok who had been asked to race with one of the competing gangs. Luke spotted another human, a pair of Selonian sisters he’d seen race before, and a couple of Sneevels. Ralrk had been busy. The Ewok fixer headed straight for the chief of the Empire Killers, a tall striped Ewok whose red hood was crowned with a tall plume of feathers. Ralrk accosted him in rapid-fire Ewokese to make the case for Mara racing with the team.
The answer was apparently no. The chief barked with laughter at Ralrk’s first proposal, whatever it was. It didn’t deter the Ralrk from haranguing the chief in brisk Ewokese. Whatever the chief replied sounded extremely vulgar. There were delighted gasps of shock from some of the surrounding Ewok bikers. “She knows what she did,” the chief said in accented Bocce.
“What did she do?” Ghent whispered to Luke.
“I have no idea.”
This back-and-forth went on for a few minutes, with other members of the gang, who all seemed keen to have Mara race, chiming in to add to the debate. A light brown Ewok in a red hood shouted something and several other gang members echoed his point. From their corner of the platform, the Black Moon gang jeered at the entire spectacle, shaking their pikes at the Empire Killers. They bared soot-blackened teeth at the other bikers. The argument went on.
“Atcha, atcha,” the chief finally said. “A debt for a debt.”
Ralrk gritted his teeth and replied, "a debt for a debt."
Ralrk, the Chief, and the rest of the gang looked expectantly at up Mara. She drew the moment out, giving the chief a long, stony stare, before she nodded in acquiescence. Around her, the Empire Killers hooted in triumph and concluded the debate with a round of vigorous back-slapping. Luke wondered if the whole argument, including Mara's part, had been a foregone conclusion—just another performative aspect of the race. It had certainly gathered a crowd.
“What just happened?” Faughn asked.
“The Ewoks prefer debts to cold hard credits,” Dankin explained. “Now that he’s agreed to Ralrk’s terms—let Mara race—Ralrk owes him a debt, and he can call it in any time, though there are these rules about what kind of debt he can call in. It’s kinda complicated. It’s almost like a currency—the richest Ewoks have the biggest collection of debts owed to them.”
“What was the problem?" Luke asked. "What happened between Mara and the chief?”
“Look, Skywalker,” Dankin gave him a sidelong look. “I like you, mate, but she’s my boss.”
Luke sighed.
One of the Ewoks produced a human-sized poncho, bright red and embroidered in the same style as the Empire Killers’ hoods, with gold beads and sequins along the edges. He presented it to Mara. A murmur of excitement rippled through the bystanders as Mara took off her jacket and pulled on the poncho. “Keep an eye on Ghent,” she said as she handed Luke her jacket.
“Take care of yourself out there,” he replied, stepping closer to kiss her. "For luck." He had wanted to tell her he loved her—he hadn’t yet, they hadn’t been together for that long; less than a year—but Luke knew how he felt, he knew. He just wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it from him yet.
She turned away and swung onto one of the Empire Killers’ swoops. There was a rush all along the alley as the crowd placed their final bets and claimed their spots along the railing that overlooked the race’s starting point.
“Did you get good odds?” Faughn asked Dankin. She reviewed his ticket and then said with a tsk, “let me place the bets next time.”
“I could write a program that could calculate the winners,” Ghent said.
Faughn patted his shoulder. “That's not how it works. The fun is in not knowing what's going to happen next.”
Luke felt a slight tinge of jealousy as he watched Mara maneuver her swoop into place. He hadn’t been lying about not being offended by the azat, but it was just that swoop racing was fun. He was good at it. The racing he’d done back in the canyons of Tatooine offered different hazards than the canyons of Coruscant: the very real chance of in-air collision with civilian speeders and the constant threat of law enforcement versus the chance of disturbing a krayt dragon den or colliding with a bonegnawer.
But that envy was overcome with the feeling of pride that bloomed through him as he watched Mara’s swoop streak away from the starting point and scream by the overhang, the crowd cheering wildly as they passed. The spectators rushed from the railing to the booths, where enterprising shopkeepers had set up portable holo-players that picked up the race on the relay of cameras that had been rigged along the course.
The crowd’s excitement rose as the swoops approached one of the first hazards of the track. Called “the Pinch,” it was a passageway between two buildings so narrow that only a few bikes could fit through it at the same time. The first bike through the Pinch was awarded extra points, and the bottleneck meant that bikes that didn’t get through in the first wave would struggle to catch up as the race progressed. A Golden God biker made it through first, his hood rippling and glittering in the wind like a victory banner.
Mara’s swoop was sixth through the Pinch. Three other bikes attempted the Pinch at the same time, and she was forced to pull her swoop sharply up, barely making it through the pass as the other bikes sped through below her. "Not bad," Dankin said, elbowing Luke.
Beyond the Pinch, the swoops came to a section of the canyon where a series of walkways cut through the “track.” The bikers broke into two groups, one flying above the walkways and the other below. Anticipation vibrated through the onlookers. Many bikers used this point to knock competitors onto one of the walkways below. It wasn’t as if the races didn’t have any rules—they did, although Luke had never been able to fully understand them—but sabotaging another biker’s flight wasn’t prohibited.
It was here that the Black Moon Gang made use of their decorated pikes to force other swoops out of the race, and, in an unexpected turn of events, two of the Black Moon bikers turned against each other, their pikes clashing together. The audience went wild. Neither biker managed to unseat the other, and they raced on, forced apart when a Golden God swoop flew between them.
As Mara approached a walkway, a Forest Demon biker half-threw himself out of his seat in an attempt to unseat her. An excited gasp rippled through the crowd. She rolled the bike in anticipation of an attack, landing a vicious kick that knocked the Ewok into the air. Dankin whooped and punched Luke in the arm. The Ewok’s bike careened off into the depths of the canyon and he skidded onto the walkway, stumbling shakily to his feet after a few minutes and walking off.
Several breathtaking hairpin turns later and the race reached at the dead-end of the track, the swoops making the dangerous turnaround and looping back. One of the Sneevels successfully managed the turn only to nearly collide with a Black Moon bike and spin off down a side passageway, out of the bounds of the race. The rest of the racers made the turn, some more gracefully than others, and a few bikers who had been in the lead fell behind.
The crowd’s excitement began to build as the swoops neared the finish line. Two bikes were neck and neck, one of the racers wearing the unmistakable hood of the Golden God Gang, the other on a Black Moon swoop. As they sped toward the finish line, the two bikes began to swerve and smash into each other, attempting to knock the other bike aside. The Black Moon bike took a heavy hit and spun out of control, the Ewok pilot flying out of his seat and into the air. In a blur of motion, Mara dove her swoop down toward the wreck, throwing out an arm to catch the Ewok midair and swing him onto the seat behind her. The Golden God biker flashed across the finish line.
The crowd roared. “Hah!” shouted Ralrk, bolting toward the platform where the riders would disembark. There were cheers and shouts and jeers at the returning bikers. Luke, Dankin, Faughn, Ghent, and a good portion of the crowd, caught up in the general enthusiasm, followed Ralrk to the platform.
Luke couldn’t stop beaming.
Mara’s rescue of the Black Moon rider slowed her down enough that she didn’t finish with the fastest bikes; she streaked across the finish line somewhere in the middle of the pack. Two Golden God bikers had finished first, which put their gang in the lead but didn’t guarantee the team would win the day.
This is where the elaborate points system came into play—different maneuvers throughout the race netted the competing teams certain points, and the team with the most points would be declared the winner of that day’s race. There were points for certain maneuvers and demerits for others. It was a convoluted rating system that didn’t follow any logic that Luke understood. As the riders began to disembark, the clan chiefs gathered in a knot, arguing over the distribution of points.
Mara leapt out of her swoop and raced over to where the chiefs were huddled. “I get points for the skyline curve! And for unseating a Forest Demon biker!” The chiefs continued squabbling, ignoring her protest and the protests from the other bikers, who gathered around chiefs, shouting out defenses and objections. One of the Selonians, towering above the other bikers, was howling something in Selonian. It all seemed to be part of the process.
One of the chiefs held up a hand and the rest fell quiet. He pointed to Mara. “She take the points that Gunda lost when she save his life!” he announced in heavily accented Basic so that the entire crowd could understand. The Chief of the Golden God Gang shouted what sounded like a curse, threw up his arms, and stomped off.
The crowd cheered at the surprise upset. Mara was nearly knocked off her feet as the Empire Killers swarmed her, shouting in their triumph in a garbled combination of Bocce and Ewokese.
“What’s going on?” Ghent asked. “Did we win?”
“Yeah, we won,” Luke laughed.
Ralrk elbowed him. “Now all the Empire Killers owe me debts,” he cackled, delighted with his ringer.
Mara had an alarmed and bewildered look on her face that Luke recognized well from his time on Endor. He stepped up and pulled her out of the pile of celebrating Ewoks. “Thanks,” she said, her hands on his shoulders to steady herself.
“Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Good flying out there.”
She frowned. “I lost points in the Trialon zone.”
“You won the race!”
“On a technicality!”
“You were magnificent,” he said.
“You’re being soppy,” Mara said, though something flickered in her face, and he knew she was pleased with the compliment even though she didn’t know how to respond to it. He could sense the adrenaline thrumming through her system, and he wished that they were somewhere less public.
A small hand poked him in the side. “You! Come!” an Ewok in red hood demanded. Another Ewok had grabbed the corner of Mara’s poncho and was tugging insistently.
“Ralrk?” Luke called out for clarification.
Ralrk popped up beside them. “You are invited to the winner’s ceremony! The Golden God Gang is not! Ha! Slimesuckers!”
“The winner’s ceremony?”
“Yes, we will take you to the village!”