Star Wars / Star Wars Visions: Ronin

CHAPTER ONE

Two months after the Ronin arrived on the Outer Rim world of Genbara, he ran out of credits. This concerned him less than it did B5-56, who took every opportunity to scold.

Look at it this way, he told his trundling companion. No need to worry about where we ll sleep.

A man with no coin had no reason to pace his trek in terms of outposts and inns. He could pay for no bed. Thus, he could wander to his heart s content, and the woodland vistas of Genbara did reward the wandering. Vast stretches of pine were interrupted only by patches of farmland, claimed by settlers rebuilding their lives far from the scars war had left on worlds nearer the galaxy s Core.

The Ronin slept that night under a small lean-to that a local woodcutter had told him of the day before, when he passed the old man s hut on his way into the mountains.

The mountains, sir? Are you sure? the woodcutter had said as he sucked his teeth. They sat on the veranda of the man s hut and shared a pot of stale tea. It had been the last in the Ronin s tin, but he offered it freely in exchange for hot water and company. You ll want to follow this road up, past the ridge. It will take you to a village in the valley. If it s still there.

An ominous thing to say. To the Ronin, it suggested he was on the right course. B5 saw the look in his eye. The droid s own eye flashed from red to blue under his thatched hat as he murmured a warning.

The woodcutter, who had no facility with Binary, mistook the dome-headed astromech s sound for nervousness. He grinned. There were four villages up there, little droid, when I first built my humble hut. Then there were three, then two now just the one. Word is they angered a spirit. A spirit that doesn t take kindly to settlers.

Yet he thinks the spirits don t mind him? said a voice in the Ronin s ear.

Mountains are different, the Ronin said.

The woodcutter, who thought he had been spoken to, nodded sagely. B5 swiveled a baleful

Emma Mieko Candon is a queer author and escaped academic drawn to tales of devouring ghosts, cursed linguistics, and mediocre robots. Her work includes Star Wars Visions: Ronin, a Japanese reimagining of the Star Wars mythos, and The Archive Undying (2023), an original speculative novel about sad giant robots and fraught queer romance. As an actual cyborg whose blood has been taken for science, Emma s grateful to be stationed at home in Hawaii, where they were born and raised as a fourth-generation Japanese settler. By day, they edit anime nonsense for Seven Seas Entertain­ment, and by night they remain academically haunted by identity, ideology, and imperialism. At all hours of the day, they are beholden to the whims of two lopsided cats and relieved by the support of an enviably hand­some wife.