Private The two suns sheriff

[Lyra Vosten]

Tatooine didn't forgive hesitation.


The desert burned under twin suns, heat shimmering so thick it bent the horizon into lies. Sand hissed beneath hooves as Elegra, all muscle and midnight hide, thundered across the dunes like a living storm. Her breath came in powerful snorts, each stride eating distance as if the planet itself owed her something.


Lyra Vosten leaned low in the saddle, coat snapping behind her like a black banner of intent.


Sheriff.


The word still tasted strange. Heavy. Hawtsandy had pinned a rectangular plate on her chest barely an hour ago, brass still warm from the hands that didn't quite trust her yet. A frontier town with a soft bank and hard luck had decided the best way to survive was to hire the devil it already feared.


And now the devil was riding.


Ahead, two speeders tore across the flats, repulsors screaming as they skimmed the sand. Credit chits burst from one of the saddlebags, scattering like metallic confetti in the heat haze. The robbers didn't look back. They didn't need to. Most folks didn't chase speeders on horseback.


Most folks didn't ride Elegra.


Lyra's eyes narrowed behind her tinted lenses. The heat pressed in, sweat slicking her spine, dust coating her tongue. She rolled her shoulders once, loose and practiced, and drew her blaster in a smooth, lazy arc that belied the precision behind it. The weapon hummed softly, tuned just the way she liked it. Familiar. Reliable. Unlike the town that had just handed her a badge and prayed.


"Alright, boys," she muttered to the wind. "Let's see how fast you really are."


She rose in the saddle as Elegra crested a dune, black mane whipping wild. The ground dropped away, revealing a stretch of packed sand where the speeders had to level out or flip. Lyra smiled. Predators lived for moments like this.


She squeezed with her knees. Elegra surged.


The distance closed. Not much. Enough.


Lyra fired.


The blaster bolt cracked through the air, clipping the rear stabilizer of the left speeder. It wobbled violently, fishtailing as the rider swore and fought for control. The second speeder veered, trying to split off, kicking up a curtain of sand meant to blind her.


Lyra coughed, eyes watering, and laughed anyway.


"New sheriff," she called out, voice carried by heat and bravado. "Hawtsandy jurisdiction. You're trespassin' on my morning."


She holstered the blaster and reached for the rifle strapped to her back, movements unhurried, confident. This wasn't just a chase anymore. This was an announcement.


The robbers were learning what the town already suspected.


Under two unforgiving suns, Hawtsandy had chosen its law.​

 

[Sorelle Vosten]

Sorelle felt the room settle around her like a hush, the kind that comes after a practiced storm. Warm lamplight pooled against the plaster; the window threw back a sliver of neon like a jealous star. Her body thrummed with the residue of the night — soft hands, whispered promises, a laugh that sounded dangerously like confession.
Her client lay beside her like a softened statue, fingers laced through the sheets. Pale skin freckled with sun-born dust, hair cropped close and silver at the temples, eyes the curious green of old coinage — a former freighter pilot turned city patron who'd paid handsomely for a night that felt ceremonial more than transactional. She kept thanking Sorelle in that breathy way people did when something in them had been soothed; gratitude spilled over like too many credits on a table.
"You do that," the pilot murmured, propping herself on an elbow. "You make nonsense feel like a story."
Sorelle smiled, easy and small. She smoothed a hand over the client's shoulder, the motion as practiced as any con. "That's the job," she said. "You pay, I listen, we both leave richer."

The pilot laughed, then closed her eyes. The room smelled faintly of spice and lavender — a combination Sorelle preferred for clients who liked to remember the night as sacred and not business. It made lying easier afterwards.
The comlink on the bedside table started to chitter: three quick pulses, then a steady stream. Sorelle half-turned, thumbed it open without breaking the rhythm of a caress. The tiny holo flickered, then flared into the halonet banner every cantina barback hated to see — LOOTERS STRIP CRED-VAULT / SHERIFF PURSUIT — a live feed from the surface.

She watched only half-interested, at first: a shovel-sanded skyline, two speeder blurs kicking up dust, then a black shape cutting the horizon and rearing into frame. Lyra. Even at a distance, Lyra's silhouette was a proclamation — long coat, gun glint, a mounted beast that ate dunes for breakfast. The feed caught the sheriff lifting her weapon, a bolt singing across the sunlit plain and clipping a stabilizer. The robber in the faltering speeder cursed, the other spun away into a sand curtain.

Sorelle's smile slid off somewhere quiet. The pilot noticed. "You know them?" she asked, sleepy curiosity turning sharp.
Sorelle's thumb hovered over the comlink. She could call it in — a quick ping to Rissa, a status update to the homestead — or she could watch. There was always value in watching. Information could be a currency, like heat signatures or a bribe tucked into a palm. Lyra had the badge now, a new kind of leverage across systems and outlands. That made the footage more than a distraction. It made it news.
She let the holo play, the grain of static and the grain of Lyra's voice both settling into her chest like a second pulse.
"Sheriff Lyra Vosten," the anchor voice read from the corner of the feed, a tone that smelled of local pride and thinly veiled dread. "New appointee. Chase ongoing. Local bank credits stolen."

The pilot's fingers tightened. "Is she—" she began, then stopped. Sorelle watched the sheriff crest a dune, call out, and fire again. The feed split to a shaky angle from a tavern skycam; the crowd in some distant town plaza pointed, some cheering, some ducking.
Sorelle let herself be indulgent for one heartbeat. She sent a simple, efficient message to Rissa Vosten : Live feed — Lyra in chase. Tatooine. Speeder hit. Eyes on Elegra. Want an ETA? No flourish. No judgment. Just data, parceled and useful.

She felt a private tug — a small, animal pride — seeing Lyra so plainly. The rest of the message stayed unsent. Loyalty was slippery; it smelled like opportunity and danger both. Sorelle finished the sentence in her head instead: Get me paid if she blinks.
The pilot moved closer, voice soft as apology. "Stay for breakfast?"
Sorelle considered the offer, then the holo again, the silhouette of her sister framed by two suns and a horizon that never promised mercy. She kissed the pilot's forehead, a light, noncommittal press, and stood, boots whispering on worn floorboards.

"Maybe I will," she said. "But not here. I've got work."
She swept the comlink into her pocket and pulled on her jacket — the one that creased perfectly at the shoulders, the one that read like an invitation and a warning at once — and paused at the door. For a sliver of time she let the pilot's grateful smile anchor her, then stepped back out into the cantina's hush and the electric, far-off taste of a chase under twin suns.

 

[Lyra Vosten]

The world narrowed to sun and metal and the smell of hot leather.

Lyra felt the presence before she saw it — the subtle change in the air behind her, the telltale hiss of a repulsor field closing. A shadow blipped into being, a second rider sliding up on Elegra's flank like a ghost that knew how to move without sound. Lyra didn't flinch; she only tightened her knees and kept her head forward, eyes on the two speeder silhouettes racing for the rim.

Then the pinch closed.

A rider ahead dropped low, arm snapping out. A small satchel spat across the sand and exploded open like an unlucky comet: credits — hundreds of metal chits — spraying into the air and catching the sunlight. They turned the horizon into a glittering wall, a teeth-baring screen that caught the eye and the sensors both. The nearest speeder banked, using the glittering cascade as a mirror and smoke, a shallow sand-storm of currency that hid them just long enough.

From behind, a searing pain lanced across Lyra's shoulder as a tracer chewed past and nicked the leather. She tasted copper and grit. Elegra tossed her head and shifted, hooves digging as she fought the uneven sand churned up by three craft. The rider behind opened up again, and hot plasma stitched an angry line where Lyra had been a heartbeat before.

Not today, she thought, teeth grinding. Not under my law.

Lyra rolled with Elegra's stride, leaning so the bolts skimmed harmlessly past. She yanked the rifle free in one fluid motion, sighting with a calm that had nothing to do with how much it hurt. The speeder in the rear was lined up — a narrow window between the credits-sparkle and the sand plume. She fired, clean and cold. The bolt found the left repulsor housing. The rider screamed as their craft pitched, wobbling like a wounded beast, then kissed the sands and folded into a tumble of metal and sand.

The front rider, hidden by the metal-sheen screen, used the distraction and the chaos like a perfect alibi. He clipped the throttle, dove low, and slid into a ravine where shimmers and heat hid him. The credits rattled around Elegra's hooves, a clattering rain that sounded obscene in the silence that followed the explosion of flight.

Lyra spat sand from her mouth and forced a laugh that tasted like ash. One down. One gone. Her badge—still warm from the handover—caught a sun-gleam and stared her back in brass. She eased Elegra to a halt and scanned the place where the other speeder had vanished, pulse steadying even as the ache in her shoulder flared.

"What a day," she said to the wind, and the wind didn't bother to answer. She collected herself, gathered the scattered credits as best she could—each clink a reminder she'd been cheated out of more than money—and looked toward the distant ravine. The hunt wasn't over. Not by a long shot.