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“Sorry, sir.” Discouraged, he trudged back up the small hill and joined the rest of his squad continuing the search.

After arriving from Mos Eisley, a giant lizardlike dewback was assigned to each squad. Davin was not given the opportunity to ride the monstrous reptilian beast, but that suited him fine. Every step the scaly animal took reverberated in the sand.

The search seemed to last forever. Davin lost count of the breaks he took, and per Imperial orders, they were forced to stay in their suits and drink the distilled water flown in from Mos Eisley with the dewback.

Setting out to cover another part of the quadrant, Davin spotted a glint out of the corner of his eye. There … whatever it was just caught the light from Tatooine’s second sun.

He almost cried out, but clamped his mouth shut. Clutching his blaster, he bounded for the glint of light. Slowly, the object took shape. Half-buried in the sand, the object looked scorched. As he drew near, he made out the faint red and blue markings of an escape pod.

There was no doubt in his mind now. “Captain Terrik, ten twenty-three reporting. I’ve found the escape pod!”

“If this is another one of your daydreams, ten twenty-three—!”

“I’m positive, sir. It may not be what we’re looking for, but it has Imperial markings.”

Minutes later Captain Terrik joined Davin by the object. A stormtrooper riding a dewback appeared over the crest of a rise, waiting for a signal that it was the right pod.

Captain Terrik surveyed the site. “Someone was in the pod. The tracks go off in this direction.”

Davin fished a mechanism from inside the escape pod. There was only one thing that used such a device —an R2 unit. He held it up so all could see. “Look, sir, droids!”

“All right. Form up. I’ll inform Lord Vader the pod wasn’t destroyed. Now we’ve really got to move.”

“Ten twenty-three reporting. They’re not in the repair bay, sir,” said Davin Felth. He stood in the middle of a bay full of droids, deep in the bowels of a Jawa sandcrawler. Cables drooped across the ceiling; tables with disassembled equipment were strewn across the floor.

“You’ve all searched the entire sandcrawler?”

“Affirmative,” answered each stormtrooper, calling off their trooper numbers one by one.

“Form up outside.”

Davin stepped across a Roche J9 worker droid lying on the metal floor. Two Jawas stood just outside of the repair bay and muttered between themselves, obviously displeased that the stormtroopers would search their ship. Davin scanned the room one last time before he left and counted off an Arakyd BT-16 perimeter droid, a demolition droid, an R4 agromech droid, a WED15 treadwell droid, and an EG-6 power droid—but there was no R2, or even a protocol unit that was often paired with an R2 droid.

A gaggle of Jawas followed him outside the cruiser. All Davin could see of the little aliens were their bright eyes, looking out of their flowing hooded brown robes. The rest of Zeta squad stood waiting for him, their blaster rifles held loosely by their sides. The stormtroopers kept their backs to one another, watching all sides for any possible attack.

As he joined the squad, Davin overheard Captain Terrik conversing with the head Jawa on the officer’s suit speaker. “You are certain that the droids were sold to a moisture farmer at your last stop?” After a series of high-pitched chatters came from the Jawa, Captain Terrik turned and waved his arm back to Zeta squad; he switched to the secure stormtrooper frequency. “Form up with the rest of the detachment.”

Zeta squad double-timed in the sand away from the Jawa sandcrawler to join the remainder of the stormtroopers. They kept guard over the sandcrawler on a rise just to the south. Three enormous hairy banthas airlifted in from somewhere, two converted GoCorp Arunskin 32 cargo skiffs, and a Ubrikkian HAVr A9 floating fortress with two heavy blaster cannons waited on the other side of the rise.

The Jawas yelled and shook their fists at the stormtroopers as they left. The little