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“Cowards! Traitors! Brigands! You will rue the day you crossed Hondo Ohnaka!”
A gnarled fist shook in the hot desert air while the pirate frigate roared through the sky. Hondo, bent and weathered by age, watched as the only ship in the sky broke atmosphere and burned through into space. He squinted, shielding his deep-set eyes from the horrid twin suns, and slowly broke into a genuine smile.
“Ahh. It was good to see the old crew again. Truly, it was!” He turned to his only companion, a dull black box with legs, commonly called the 'gonk' droid, named for it's only form of audio communication.
“It is good that they are doing well for themselves, and that they are sentimental enough to remember me. Unfortunately, they also remember me enough to betray me, but such is the way of things. After all, I did teach them.” With a groan, the ancient weequay sunk to his knees before the droid, fingers finding the maintenance latch and popping the droid's chassis open.
“More fortunately, they are sentimental enough to leave me with a single droid, and unfortunately for them, they let me choose the droid.” With a chuckle, Hondo extracted the survival kit, blaster, and box of golden coins.
“And yet more fortunately for old Hondo, they did not bother to inspect said droid before stranding me here.”
Old bones popped as he rose to his feet, pack over his shoulder and box tucked under his arm. “So all told, that is...” he counted on his fingers, “three fortunes for Hondo against their one.”
A glint caught his eye on the horizon; a hulking black shape perched atop a dune that gleamed with metallic luster.
“Ah! And already signs of civilization! Four fortunes for Hondo! Come, my stubby friend! It is a good day to be Hondo!”
* * * *
“Thieves! Vagabonds! Rats! You will rue the day you crossed Hondo Ohnaka!”
Gasping, the old pirate staggered to a halt and let loose another halfhearted shot at the sand crawler. The survival pack slid off his shoulder, his blaster fell from his fingertips, and the man fell to his knees, cradling his precious money.
It had happened so quickly.
He had flagged down the crawler, and from its bowels a half-dozen Jawas gathered and twittered excitedly around him. Hondo knew the creatures only by their reputation as shrewd traders and barterers, with a passion for droids. Most commented on their pungent odor, but Hondo preferred to think of them as unfettered by hygiene in pursuit of the most sacred of directives: Profit. He was unfamiliar with their trade language, but it would not even be close to the first time he had bartered for passage through a language barrier.
“Hello, diminutive masters! I am need in transport, stranded here through no fault of my own, I assure you. I understand you have a passion for droids of all kinds. I, as I am sure you can understand, have a passion for not dying in a desert. To that end, Fate has placed us in each other's path! You can see that I have a fine power droid in exquisite condition, and for him all I ask is a little food, and a ride to the next port where I can hire a ship. Please, feel free to inspect...the...”
He turned with a theatrical flourish, intending to showcase the gonk droid that followed him. To his surprise, both the Jawas inspecting the droid and his prized companion itself were both missing. His eyes trailed upwards just in time to spy a flurry of motion. He caught the stubby legs of his beloved droid disappearing into a panel of the crawler while tiny Jawa hands retracted the makeshift crane used to snatch the droid.
Hondo whirled, sputtering with rage. “The sheer indignity-!” he started, only finding himself berating empty air.
He pursued the crawler with vehement fury, shots ricocheting off the vehicle's armor plating, until age and the desert heat forced his progress to a crawl.
“Well,” he spat, sucking in warm lungfuls of air. “I still have cash, and food, and a blaster. A minor setback, a triviality. Hondo Ohnaka understands what matters! Hondo Ohnaka knows that he can still profit!”
His back straight and his smile set, Hondo sauntered towards the horizon.
“It is still a good day to be Hondo!”
* * * *
“Mongrels! Animals! Beasts! You will rue the day...you...Pah! Forget it.”
Hondo kicked a pile of sand towards the fleeing tusken raiders, followed by his thrown blaster, hat, and grunts of exasperation.
The box of cash remained tucked under his arm. Even in the heat of the moment, Hondo had his priorities.
They came in the night, just before the twin suns rose above the Dune Sea. He guessed they had been tracking him, he did not know how long. They left him and the all-precious money untouched, instead raiding his food, water, and medical supplies. He had leapt from his tent, blaster firing wildly into the air, screaming his old-man-best.
(He'd never admit it, but Hondo Ohnaka detested personally spilling blood. True, many died on his orders, and scores more by his actions, but he always avoided personal killing when necessary.)
The plan had worked, as much as it was planned. The raiders screeched and fled from the mad pirate, not bothering to return his aggression and instead rushing to their animals at a breakneck pace. Much to Hondo's dismay, that which they dropped was ruined, including what remained of his water supply.
He nudged his empty canteen with his toe and sighed.
“So. No water, no food, in the middle of a desert, with only a blaster and a box full of profit.”
His shoulders slumped.
But only for a heartbeat.
“Wonderful! A true test of the Ohnaka skills that have kept this body alive and comfortable all these years! Through war! Through betrayal! Through Jedi, Hondo has endured! Thrived!”
Shoulders square, he marched onward, scooping up his blaster and hat on his way.
“In spite of cruel Fate herself, it is yet still a good day to be Hondo!”
* * * *
“Gentle Fate, provider of Profit and Comfort, please forgive this humble pirate his transgressions. He spoke out of anger.”
Hondo watched the speeder glide away into the distance, scratching his bare chest with twisted fingers. The light of Tatooine beat down on his bare body, clad only in his underclothes, his blaster gone, and worst of all...
Profitless.
Hondo's earlier enthusiasm had tempered somewhat after the third straight hour without water, food, or any shelter from the raging suns. What started as a cocky jaunt had become a dragging, pained slump, nearly a crawl amidst the desert sands. He believed, for a moment, that the sound of the approaching speeder was a hallucination. But soon enough, the light had been eclipsed by the armored figure astride the speeder bike.
“F...F....Friend! Ah, truly, my tenacity pays dividends!” Trembling, he had clawed his way to his feet, resting on his box of treasure. “I am in need of transport, and in need of a worthy soul to distribute this money to. You have transport, and I am sure you have a soul more than worthy. If not, who cares? The money spends the same!” He chuckled, which turned into a hacking cough in the harsh desert air. “So...shall we discuss numbers?”
He had only been mildly disappointed when the figure's response was to draw a pistol.
“I understand that this seems an easy profit for you, truly. I am an old man lost in the desert with a box of money and no visible weapon. To rob me would be child's play. But-”
The figure let a shot fly over Hondo's shoulder, far too close for Hondo's comfort.
“You do not comprehend! There is more where this came from! So much more! Hondo Ohnaka is many things, and chief among them is far-sighted. Profit now, and you lose the opportunity for a partnership! A partnership that-!”
Another shot, directly between Hondo's feet.
“Pah, fine. Forget you! Less to share with! Take it!” He stood, knees shaking and bones popping. “I am old, and if you wish to rob me, you can have the decency to do the manual labor yourself.” He took a few steps away, far enough to preclude any aggressive action. He swept his hat off his head, adjusting the lining with a pronounced sneer.
The figure approached the box, blaster trained on Hondo, and bent down on one knee, scooping the box under their arm. Hondo looked on coldly.
Waiting.
The figure dropped their gaze for a second, just enough to readjust the box under their arm.
Hondo's blaster was in the pirate's hand in a flash, instincts honed from ages of survival via treachery. He allowed himself a small 'Hah!' of triumph before pulling the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Again, Hondo commanded his pistol to issue forth hot death.
Again, the figure remained very much alive.
The empty-energy indicator winked just below Hondo's gnarled thumb.
The figure raised their very-functional blaster to Hondo's eye-level.
The transaction went smoothly, all told. Hondo had to appreciate the calm demeanor of a veteran highwayman. A shake of his captor's blaster, and Hondo dropped his weapon. Another shake, his boots and belt. Another, pants and shirt.
“There. You have everything.”
Another shake.
“The hat...it is of sentimental value.”
A shot rang out.
“Sentiment is overrated.”
Hondo stood, nude in the desert wind save for a scrap of cloth, and watched as everything he owned in this life sped away.
“I may have to admit that today is not good day to be Hondo.”
* * * *
Hondo found the first leg of his journey bereft of clothing to be oddly emancipating. No longer did he twist his body and tug at his clothing. No longer did he feel his shirt cling to his old body. Even the scorching sirocco of Tatooine's desert felt refreshing, revitalizing.
Again, at first.
Less than a half-hour into his profound experience as truly destitute, he was sure that his skin was being gently crisped by the twin suns. Wrinkled as most weequay are by biology, and him doubly so from age, Hondo imagined himself turning into a dry husk of unidentifiable jerky, lost to the desert sands.
“Is this...how the...great...Hondo Ohnaka dies? Marooned...in some backwater ball of dust...and heat? Fie, I say! Feh and fie!” He waved his skinny arms in gesticulations of defiance, casting contempt towards every corner of barren sky. “I defy you, Fate! I curse you thricefold! You cannot kill Hondo with proper, honest peril, so you seek to undo the man through foul happenstance? Pah! I call you 'coward,' Fate!”
He flung his fist into the air, as if to strike the face of Fortune itself.
[To this day, he remains unsure as to whether or not he was hallucinating, or had seen the face of Fate.]
Another voice came from the desert air around him. “Careful, Hondo. You'll end up hurting yourself there.”
Hondo's momentum spun him around, his legs giving out and landing on his back in the blazing sands.
Above him, a hooded figure loomed; an inky-black shadow against shimmering heat.
“That voice...Am I dead?”
The voice again, always tinged with amusement, always containing the hints of a smile behind a well-groomed beard.
“Very nearly, you old pirate. And very nearly nude. Through no fault of your own, I am sure.”
The shadowy shape bent down near Hondo's face. The color had changed, but the beard remained. And those bright blue eyes would never dim, Hondo was sure.
“Master Kenobi...if I told you I was pleased to see you, would you believe me?”
Kenobi chuckled.
“Hondo, my friend, I've known you far too long to trust anything you say.”
Hondo raised a single, crooked finger.
“You are wise then, even for a Jedi.”
Darkness crept over Hondo's vision, and he fell.
* * * *
The first sensation of the afterlife that Hondo Ohnaka felt was that of a cool, moist wind. It flowed, steady and gentle, over his ruined body, dipping into the crests and valleys that the turning of the galaxy had etched with an artist's hand. Hondo found that he could not recall the blistering winds of Tatooine, and that this, here was the most comfortable he'd ever been.
The second sensation that the afterlife delivered to Hondo Ohnaka was a coarse, bantha-hair mattress. The rough texture of the animal's rope-like hair wove a formless shape beneath him, stuffed with some damp and soft sod. It itched terribly, and Hondo contemplated the unfairness that the afterlife, known for being a paradise for the just and honorable, as Hondo was, was itchy.
The third was that of cool water falling into his open mouth. Blessed wetness, wiping clean the innumerable agonies that an unfeeling desert scoured upon his lips. Holy moisture, repairing the wicked designs of heat that ruined his silver tongue. His throat barely received such libations, however, eager as the rest of his ruined body to absorb sweet, sweet manna.
Hondo had tasted libations and liquors that would make pious priests renounce their idols, make kings burn the throne, and force emperor's erase their legacies in pithy, pathetic jealousy. But this, here and now, was the greatest pleasure that his mouth had ever known.
Perhaps it was the undercurrents of desert sand, womprat urine, or the heady texture of the rather-used sponge that it was wrung from.
Temporarily sated, and convinced he was, indeed, receiving his reward for a life of industry and charity, Hondo opened his eyes to behold the opulence that awaited him in this life.
The wrinkled, tired face of Kenobi greeted him in the half-light.
“You are not the Twi'lek masseuse I would expect as my eternal companion after my death. I feel cheated.”
Kenobi laughed richly. “And you are not the Mandolorian princess that made me regret taking the Oaths, Hondo. I suppose we must both make do.”
“I am surprised, Kenobi. I was sure that your vision of paradise was a bit paler. A bit balder.” He choked on his own laugh as he sat up. “I take it I am not among the dead?”
“Much to my, and I'm sure thousands others', chagrin, old friend.” Kenobi grunted as he stood, gesturing to the dark, subterranean hut that they found themselves in. “Though you are buried, nameless, in a forsaken desert. That should provide some comfort.”
Hondo rubbed some sensation back into his tired knees and legs, then tried standing. A modicum of success followed, though he remained stooped.
“I must thank you, my friend. It is luck like this that reminds me the galaxy isn't as cruel as some would have me believe.”
“In my experience there's no such thing as luck, Hondo.”
“Ah, yes. Your 'Force.' Well, master Kenobi, I do not claim to know the great mysteries of the galaxy, but I do know a cause to celebrate. And this...” A gnarled hand reached behind him, and with a flourish, and to Kenobi's great surprise, produced a small bottle. “Is a cause if I've ever known one.”
Kenobi's surprised face was one for the ages. “Where...How...I bathed you! How did you-”
“Tut-tut, Kenobi. A pirate knows to pack properly for emergencies.” Hondo settled himself into a worn chair next to an end-table, gesturing to the one across from him. “I trust a noble Jedi General like yourself still has the essentials? Two glasses, of reasonable cleanness?”
Kenobi remained incredulous. “Emergency? Hondo, you were nude, in the desert, hopelessly lost! You could have smuggled a communicator, a beacon, a canteen, something! How did that not constitute an emergency?!”
Hondo waved his weathered hand. “Oh, you Jedi. You always seem so serious. You confuse inconvenient circumstance with a proper emergency. Being lost in the desert without food, weapon, or life-saving water? Inconvenient circumstance. Meeting an old friend with no drink to share? Emergency.”
Two glasses hit the table as Obi-Wan slumped into the chair opposite. “I would say that is a valiant code, Ohnaka, but I know you too well to assume this code does not change with the winds of profit.” He reached out and poured both glasses full of a bright-blue liquor. He raised his own. “What shall we toast to?”
Hondo raised his own glass and paused, suddenly looking serious. “There...is not much to celebrate, my friend. The galaxy...it has fallen apart. The Empire squeezes the life out of the people, make them afraid and unwilling to spend money. The stability that the Jedi brought, where pirates like me were afforded a proper chance to speak, is replaced with blaster-fire and, I did not believe it until I saw it, Kenobi...Hanging.”
“The galaxy has fallen to darkness, my friend. There is nothing to toast.” Hondo sullenly threw back his shot and stared at the empty glass.
Kenobi's face remained impassive. Wordlessly, he extended his hand, and the bottle tipped itself expertly into Hondo's glass.
“Pah. Even your tricks, which so often amused and baffled, now remind me of a better time.” The old pirate sneered. “Would that I remain alive now.”
Kenobi raised his glass. “To hope, master Ohnaka.”
Hondo raised a rough brown eyebrow-ridge.
“Darkness passes into light. This has been the way of things since before you, I, or anyone we know were ever even a twinkle in someone's eye. The days of darkness seem eternal, that there could never be a light after this. Even I, sitting in my tiny hole on this desolate rock, seem to be proof positive that there is no light left in this world.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi sat up straighter. Hondo could not quite define when he stopped being the lonely old hermit and started being his friend and often-foil. Nor could he place where the change took place the most.
But for a moment, he was General Kenobi once more.
“But the truth is that yes, we will endure. We will survive. This will pass. Right now, as we speak, the Empire sows the seeds of its own destruction. They squeeze, they oppress, they hurt. The people of the galaxy endure, they grow. Every new horror steels them against the next. And soon, the Empire will have no more horrors to call upon. The fear will pass. Hope will return.”
Hondo picked up his glass, mouth slightly agape. “To hope, then.”
Both men emptied their glasses, then refilled and toasted anew.
“You, master Kenobi, you lie very well. You almost got me to believe again.” Hondo wagged his finger theatrically. “You would have made a good pirate...Ben.”
Kenobi blinked. “'Ben?'”
“A name, a new name. 'Obi-Wan' stands out a bit, my friend. Ben is just believable enough.”
“Ben...I'll keep it.” He refilled both their glasses. “And that is high praise, Hondo. I know how highly you value pirates. You, on the other hand...”
Another mutual drink vanished, glasses filled anew.
“Would make a terrible Jedi.”
Both men laughed, the weight of ages and darkness gone from their shoulders.
* * * *
In the morning, Hondo would be gone, of course.
A stolen speeder from a nearby farm.
Owen and Beru watched as the ancient weequay sailed into the horizon.
“Thank Ben Kenobi~!” he called as he vanished.
Owen sighed.
“That man's trouble, I tell you. We've gotta keep Luke away from him. Kid will lose a hand if he follows that old bat.”