The whine of the Steadfast's engines slowly died down as the freighter settled in the sands of the Dune Sea. Every lamp and light fixture on the freighter was on and pointed in every  direction to shed as much light on the surrounding desert as possible.

Nearly 2.4 meters tall, Nikaede Celso swept her long arms over the flight console. A fine blanket of black fur covered the Wookiee's muscular body and shimmered with each motion. In the harsh bridge light, a stray highlight of silver could be seen, interspersed between the thick layers of delicate, sable down that quivered as she gave her report.

"Never doubted you, partner," Drake teased, ruffling the Wookiee's fine mane. "Engines are running like a Dathomirian baz nitch on spice."

Slumped in the acceleration chair behind Drake, Suhailya crossed her legs, tapping her toes against the adjacent control panels. "Why?" she whispered, trembling visibly. Her voice echoed in the silence of the flight cabin. "Why would you do this?"

"Because our fathers were friends." Drake flashed a reassuring smile, flipping a series of flight toggles and switches. "Call it Socorran hospitality. Something my father taught me."

"And your father believes that?" Suhailya quipped.

"He died believing it." Drake met her caustic gaze.

"I'm sorry, Drake. That was callous of me. I just don't know what you'll get out of all of this trouble. Besides the money."

"Another misadventure with my very first girlfriend." The smuggler laughed, listening to Nikaede's vigorous response. "And Nikaede gets to overhaul the engines the way she wants."

Suhailya laughed, suddenly bursting into tears.

"Hey," Drake whispered, taking her by the chin. "We can do this."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Stay close." He wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Nik, run the sensors one more time. That card's got to be around here." Drake stood up to exit the flight cabin. "Add some more filters or something, and keep the proximity sensors active. Last thing we need is to get jumped by Tuskan Raiders."

"You think they'd come this close to the Pit?" Suhailya asked. "They're very superstitious."

"If they thought it might net them some decent salvage, yeah. That's what scavengers do." Drake thumbed the restraint from his Caelli-Merced heavy blaster and cued the ramp to drop. The sound of the pressurized seal echoed in the corridor as he drew the blaster and headed down into the night. Drake chuckled, shoulder to shoulder with Suhailya, who moved with him, her smaller weapon trained ahead of her.

"What are you laughing about?"

"We'd make a helluva team," he replied, clearing the right side.

"You think?"

"Yeah, just like your old man and mine."

"Let's survive this damn race first, and we'll talk."

Drake tilted his head to listen to Nikaede's voice on the comlink channel. "Copy that." He holstered his gun. "She says the signal's coming from inside the pit. How's that even possible?" Hands on his hips, he glared up at the cockpit of his ship, shrugging his arms and shoulders in frustration. "Try again, Nikaede. Limit the range to 20 meters if you have to."

"You don't think it's down inside with the—"

At the sound of her scream, the Socorran dropped into a tactical position, knees bent, his hand yanking the heavy blaster from its holster in a single motion. As he pivoted on the ball of his foot, he found Suhailya suspended in the air, hanging from an undulating tentacle. A second tentacle shot out of the Pit and wrapped itself around her flailing arms.

"I thought you said the sensors were up!" she cried, dangling upside down.

"Sensors are for picking up enemy targets moving in on your position, not an enemy that's already here and definitely not a Sarlacc!"

Drake fired a shot at the larger tentacle holding her by the ankle, but missed when a third tentacle slithered from the Pit. It coiled about his ankle and dropped the pirate face first into the sand. He fired a second blast, burning the slimy appendage. Taking a wild shot, he hit the one holding Suhailya, partially severing it. She dropped three meters toward the ground, headfirst, but stopped short, as the writhing tendril flung her back up into the air.

"Drake! Do something!"

Dragged bodily through the coarse Tatooine sand and tossed about in the night air, Drake rolled his eyes and fought to hold on to his blaster. "Nikaede!"

The response was a loud clanking and whirring of machinery as a gun turret dropped from its hidden recess in the underbelly of the Steadfast and open fired. The successive pair of potent bolts of energy discharged from the weapon exploded just inside the pit and lit up the desert sky.

"No, not that. Not that!" Drake screamed. "Ceasefire! If you blast it, you'll blast the card!"

A shrill shriek rose from the Pit along with a dusty funnel as the sarlacc spewed sand into the air. Releasing its hold, the creature threw Drake and Suhailya to the ground. As the tendrils retreated into the pit, Drake lunged for her, half running and half crawling as he dragged her back toward the safety of the YT-1300.

"Yeah, yeah," Drake grumbled, listening to the Wookiee. "The card is down inside with the sarlacc."

"What?" Suhailya gasped. "Are you sure?" She got to her feet, running her hands over her lekku to brush off the grating sand. "This is sadistic. So much for Socorran hospitality."

"Never underestimate Socorran hospitality, or our ingenuity." Drake shoved the heavy blaster into its holster. "Nikaede, bring me a canister of C-95. No, bring me two." He sank down to his haunches, staring at the slimy trails left in the sand. "And bring along some cable and a climbing harness."

"C-95?"

"It's an anesthesia. One tank is enough to knock out an entire Imperial garrison, if you plug it into the environmental system."

"You knocked out an entire Imperial—"

"Trade secrets, darling," he said, interrupting her. "If I tell you how I did it, I'd have to kill you."

The smuggler winked at her as his first mate dragged the heavy canisters from the ramp of the ship. Rolling the first onto its side, he gave it a push and let it roll down the slight incline towards the Pit. Before it fell over the lip, he aimed for the dispensing nozzle and fired a blast. After a brief, initial explosion, the canister fell inside, spewing a gray mist from the hole.

"You're going to put the sarlacc to sleep?"

"Or kill it," Drake said, "whatever comes first." He rolled the second canister down the slope and blasted the nozzle off. "Either way, it buys us time to get that card, if it hasn't already been blasted to bits." He glared up at the Wookiee. "A little over the top, partner? Here, hold this." The smuggler shrugged out of his flight jacket.

"You're going down there?" Suhailya asked. "I'm the lightest, and I got you into this. The least I can do is—"

"Stay topside with Nikaede. If anything goes wrong down there, I'll need you out of harm's way." Drake snapped into the climbing harness and backed away from them to the edge of the pit, hesitating as Nikaede called after him. "Right, good idea, partner." He caught the respirator she threw to him and pulled it over his face before descending into the darkness.

"Do you see it?" Suhailya asked, mild panic in her voice.

"Let me get my bearings," he replied, hand over his blaster.

The footing beneath him was semi-solid and gave with every step with an unsettling squish. Nearly ten meters down inside the pit, the lights from the Steadfast cast very little illumination into the actual mouth of the sarlacc. Drake activated the glowrod on his belt. The beam lit up scattered piles of debris: bones, deteriorated clothing, scrap metal, and even weapons, among them a Tuskan gaffer stick. The relics were covered in a gelatinous slime that reeked of decay and decomposing flesh, even through the respirator.

In the center of the pit, the sarlacc's gigantic beak jutted from the fleshy folds of its mouth, like the tongue of a gigantic worm. Legend claimed that the creature was gestated from a single spore that grew nearly 100 meters below the sand, becoming a carnivorous plant that digested its food over a 1000-year period. Drake didn't intend to stay long enough to give it another meal.

"Is it dead?" Suhailya asked.

"Can't tell," Drake said. "Not like you can check for a pulse." He saw a damp envelope on top of the sarlacc's closed beak. Reaching for the card, he recoiled when it opened without warning. Drake reached for his blaster, but slipped in the gelatinous ooze underfoot. Inundated with slime, he grimaced and grit his teeth to keep from vomiting.

"Drake!"

"I'm fine." He swore under his breath, struggling to get to his feet. He propped his boots against a pile of scrap metal that the beast had not found appetizing and used the gaffer stick to balance himself in the slippery footing. "Gah!" he gasped, eyes watering as the secretions seeped through every seam of his clothing. "The stink! I'd rather be eaten than have to smell this thing's breath. Get me the hell out of here."

The smuggler snatched the black envelope from the sarlacc's beak and tucked it into his shirt. He felt lightheaded and stumbled against the side of the pit, struggling to keep his eyes open. Skin tingling, Drake felt the harness tighten about his waist and groin. What seemed like hours later, the Wookiee dragged him over the lip and onto the sand. "What took so long?" He felt nauseous and cold.

"Drake!" Suhailya called, but her voice was so very far away.

"I don't feel so—" He passed out and collapsed on the desert floor at her feet.

                                                           * * *

Skin still tingling unpleasantly, Drake sat in his flight chair and pressed a towel to his nose. Having doused the cloth in spice and Corellian brandy, he took short, shallow breaths in an attempt to dampen the sarlacc's sickening scent. Despite three showers, he could still smell the rot and decay from being in the creature's mouth. The entire flight cabin reeked of the foul odor, and he wanted to gag as it filtered even through the scent of the liquor to assault his nostrils.

More sensitive to the smell, Nikaede bawled a steady stream of caustic complaints about the powerful and fetid stench coming from her captain.

"One more word," Drake growled at her, "and I will shave off your eyebrows while you're sleeping. Try explaining that the next time we're in Mos Eisley."

"By morning you may not have any eyebrows, so you'll match," Suhailya said, leaning over his chair. "That slime you fell in? It's a neurotoxin excreted by the sarlacc. Niakede must have ruptured a sac when she fired on it. You're going to have some pleasant dreams tonight."

"Depends on what's in that sealed envelope," Drake said. "Let's find out where we're headed." He watched over his shoulder as Suhailya opened the rare parchment and reached in, retrieving the card. On a black background, rendered in blood red, he saw the swirling event horizon around the configuration of a gravity well. In shock, he read the words on the electronic register. "The Maw?"

The dread on Suhailya's face was translation enough, but Drake waited for the card to transmit its frequency, which was then translated by the ship's computers. The coordinates came up across the screen, awaiting confirmation.

"The next jump is Kessel?" Drake felt his jaw drop.

As a child, he remembered sitting at his father's feet while the elder Paulsen played sabacc with some of the most infamous smugglers in the known galaxy. He listened to their nightmarish tales of the Akkadese Nebulae with carbonbergs the size of small moons and semi-sentient alien species the size of Star Destroyers emerging from hyperspace. Both collided with unsuspecting ships, snuffing them and their pilots out of existence.

"Nobody goes into the Maelstrom, not willingly. Suhailya!" he called after her as she retreated from the cockpit. Tossing the towel into his chair, Drake followed her. "Hey," he said, catching her by the arm. She resisted, but defeat and sorrow had weakened her. "I didn't say I wouldn't try."

"What's the use?" she replied, weeping on his shoulder. "Kessel? I can't ask you to do this. To risk your ship? In the Maelstrom? This has gone well beyond just a few hyperspace jumps. I'd never forgive myself if something happened to this ship, Nikaede or ..." her voice cracked, "...you."

"Come here." Drake embraced her in his arms, massaging her shoulders beneath the warmth of her lekku. "I'm in 50/50 remember? When I said that to you, I wasn't talking about the money. It's an old saying in the philosophy of aa'kua. I meant I'm in 50% heart, 50% spirit, 100% strong."

"Another Socorran proverb?" she whispered.

"One for every occasion," he said with a chuckle. "When the chips are down, I do my best to remember who I am and where I came from. My people. My family. It's time you do the same." Drake kissed her on the forehead. "Nikaede," he said, pressing the internal comm. "Set a course for the Akkadese Nebulae." He sighed, his cheek puffing as he turned towards his quarters. "Get some rest. Looks like we're going to need it."

"Where are you going?" Suhailya held onto his hand as he released her.

"To take another shower and this time I'm using every drop of Niakede's favorite Ithorian shampoo."

Suhailya laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. "Need some company?"

Raising an eyebrow, Drake grinned mischievously. "Being that this might be the final jump for me and my ship, I could use the cheering up."

He followed her with his eyes as she left a trail of clothing back to his personal quarters.