Babu Frik was in trouble.
It was a different sort of trouble than he would later face during his adventures with the Resistance. This is a story about things that happened to Babu much earlier, after Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star but before the Empire chased the Rebels from Hoth, when he was younger and perhaps a little bit more naïve.
(And I should mention that Babu Frik was not really a "he" at all; in fact, Babu's people have at least five genders, none of which have much to do with the genders we know. But Babu told me that he was all right with being called "he" for simplicity's sake, and that is good enough for me.)
Babu's trouble began (at least from his perspective) when his mate-group let themselves aboard his ship, Babu's Prize, without first asking. They felt entirely justified in doing so, I might say with good reason, because Babu's Prize had been parked on the yard outside their warren for a very long time. And you may believe me when I tell you that it was an unsightly ship indeed, crudely cobbled together from the remains of a dozen mismatched ships. Worse still was the inside of the ship, which was dimly lit and smoky, with droid parts and unusual tools strewn everywhere.
"Babu Frik!" the four members of his mate-group said in unison.
"Oh-ohhh," Babu Frik said, shrinking behind a workbench where he had been working on a droid's brain.
Perhaps I should take this opportunity to introduce Babu Frik's mate-group to you. By way of background, Anzellans typically live together in mate-groups of five or six, owing to their rather unusual mating habits, about which I will say no more because otherwise Babu Frik would be quite embarrassed.
Babu Frik's mates included:
- Babu Ziki, who was a mathematician by trade, and the quietest and most analytically-minded of the group. She was angry at Babu Frik because she was even more put off by clutter than most Anzellans, and was thinking that if Babu Frik was content to live in such messy conditions, perhaps they were more different than she had thought.
- Babu Soba, who seemed rather like a layabout at first glance, but in fact simply preferred to spend his time thinking about weighty topics and doing the invisible kinds of work that nobody else noticed. He was angry at Babu Frik because it was their anniversary according to the convoluted Anzellan calendar, and Babu Frik had not so much as mentioned it.
- Babu Avuvu, who was a poet and the most sensitive of the five. They were angry at Babu Frik because the Babu's Prize had blocked some of the suns' light from their tuber garden, and now their harvest was much smaller than it had been in past seasons.
- Babu Skeeko, who held a high rank in one of the Anzellan guilds (the Anzellan economy is much too complicated for me to explain to you right now, but suffice it to say that she was a Very Important Person). She was angry with Babu Frik because her career could be put in jeopardy if she was seen to be associating with unsavoury people, and she happened to know that Babu Frik had just been contacted by representatives of Jabba the Hutt.
"Tengu tengu Babu Frik," Babu Skeeko chattered angrily, her luxurious facial whiskers twitching. "Beebu no-a' Huttu Jabba o."
By this she meant that she had tolerated Babu Frik's sometimes questionable life choices up until this point, but she never thought he would consider a job with Jabba the Hutt and it made her seriously question his judgment.
"Buku bulubu'a a-ko bokk," Babu Frik replied, meaning that he had felt like a financial burden on the family unit lately and only wanted to do his part. He touched his stubby fingers to the sides of his head for emphasis.
"Ekk-ih no o-bala Babu nutunutu," Babu Ziki and Babu Avuvu said in unison, which was a rude comment about his ship. Babu Soba merely folded his arms and shook his head.
Babu Frik was deeply wounded by all of this. He loved each of his mates very much, and although he realized he sometimes took them for granted, he also felt that they could be a little bit more understanding about the fact that a droidsmith in the Outer Rim necessarily dealt with a not-entirely-wholesome clientele.
But there was one thing that always won them over. Babu Frik edged over to one side, not turning away from their disapproving gaze. Then he hit a button to activate an old set of speakers, which filled the workspace with the familiar sounds of the Max Rebo Band.
And Babu Frik began to dance.
The thing to remember is that Anzellans of Babu Frik's gender typically ingratiate themselves into a mate-group by way of intricate courtship dances. So although it might seem to you or me like a lot of flailing of hands and thrashing about, Babu Frik's dance was conveying to his mates a complex and deeply emotional plea.
Then the song ended. A moment of silence passed between them before Babu Frik spread his arms and cried, "Hey-heeey!"
But his mates just shook their heads disapprovingly. Then they turned to leave. Babu Soba shot Babu Frik one last longing glance over his shoulder as they exited the ship.
"Ohhhh," Babu Frik sighed, crestfallen.
Of course, what Babu should have done at that moment was follow them and beg for their forgiveness. He should have promised to take work only from reputable clients even if it meant doing less interesting and lucrative jobs, and perhaps also to park his ship elsewhere. But Babu Frik was nothing if not proud. And although he was stung by their rejection, he was very curious about what type of work a notorious Hutt crime lord would have in store for him.
And so, as he watched his ex-mates clamber into the finely decorated entrance to their underground burrows, Babu pulled a series of levers on a dirty control console and began the long process of firing up the ship to break orbit.
Now the Anzellans dwell in a remote sector of the Outer Rim, approximately twelve parsecs from Tatooine. In the trinary Anzellan star system, there lives a herd of spaceborne mega-organisms called the Cleed. The Cleed live for millions of years, and are quite enormous – calves are the size of a typical asteroid, and adult Cleed are so large that they have their own atmosphere. Although they are mostly covered in chitinous plating, their underbellies (which they like to face towards the suns) sustain a complex web of life, including Babu Frik's people.
Why was I telling you this? I can't remember. Anyhow, at that moment Babu Frik was piloting his ship away from the herd. He had retrieved his message from Jabba's envoys, instructing him to come to Tatooine to discuss a potentially lucrative contract.
He set the coordinates and initiated the hyperspace jump. The ship shuddered violently as it lurched into hyperspace, and Babu Frik returned to the half-dissected droid brain on his workbench.
But he found that he could not distract himself with his work. His eyes would lose focus, and he would see Babu Skeeko smiling her beautiful smile as she made a witty comment, or Babu Avuvu's pinched face as they exchanged riddles, or Babu Soba and Babu Ziki's contented expressions as they lay in the tall grass watching the suns go down.
Eventually Babu Frik gave up on the droid brain and went to the ship's mess hall, which was really just a jagged nook in between the engineering chamber and the ladder to Babu's quarters. He took a bottle of milk from the refrigeration unit and filled a grey iron mug. He tried to convince himself that he did not need them; that his true love was droidsmithing and how much more time he would have to commit himself to his craft. But he knew he was lying to himself and that the loss of his mate-group left a deep hole inside him that nothing else could truly fill.
He finished his milk. As the numbness began to wash over his mind, Babu Frik climbed the ladder into the cramped space he called his quarters. He deposited himself into a tiny hammock strung between two bulkheads, letting the milk lull him into a restless sleep.
Babu was awoken some time later by a shrill klaxon indicating the ship was approaching Tatooine. Groggily, Babu rubbed his eyes and stumbled out of the hammock. He climbed down the ladder into the primary storage bay, one corner of which served as the bridge. He activated a control console and relayed the docking protocols that Jabba's people had provided him.
Despite Tatooine's thin atmosphere, it was a difficult entry, and Babu had to scramble back and forth several times between the controls and his droid hardware to prevent things from breaking. But eventually the parachutes fired, allowing him to guide the ship into an open landing bay at a dusty spaceport.
As the ship's engines sputtered to a halt, Babu unearthed a grey and red metal disk from under a pile of droid parts. The disk was nearly as tall as he was, and he struggled to prop it against his workbench as he took a long connector component and attached one end to the center of the disk. To the other end of the connector, which reached to the rim of the disk, he attached an apparatus in the shape of an isosceles triangle. He pulled a switch at the base of this part, then frowned and pulled the switch several more times before the optical sensors at each corner of the triangle lit up.
Babu nodded with satisfaction as the contraption whirred to life. It looked rather like some type of unicycle, but in fact it was a droid, and its name was OV-22, or Ovie for short.
Speaking rapidly in Anzellan, Babu instructed Ovie to stand by to fire up the ship's engines at a moment's notice, since he anticipated they would need at least a forty-minute head start before they would be ready to blast off. Ovie replied with a series of bleeps and blorps signalling that he was happy to follow Babu's instructions, and also that Babu was looking quite dashing today. This cheered Babu somewhat (even though it was because of Babu's programming that Ovie complimented him at every opportunity), and he closed his eyes, smiled, and rocked his head back and forth.
Then Babu put his on his goggles, slung a small pack of tools onto his back, and exited the airlock. As he breathed in the dry air and adjusted to the heavier gravity, a small mechanic droid approached him, chattering that his ship could not possibly be compatible with the Galactic Transit Code.
Rolling his eyes under his goggles, Babu struck the droid on its nose, causing it to fold up and drop on the ground in a tight disk. He found the data port on the back of the droid's head and inserted a computer spike, which would ensure that when the droid woke up, it would feel compelled to waive Babu's docking fee and refuel his ship.
Then Babu Frik set out in search of his contact, wondering if this time, he may have gotten himself in over his head.
To be continued...