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The deserts of Tatooine were a veritable graveyard of junk. The harsh planet had been the site of many galactic battles over the centuries, and the dry climate preserved all manner of debris from crashed ships and lost expeditions.

Het Nkik loved to fix and recondition broken things, energized by his ability to bring wrecked machines back to life. He remembered when he and his clan mate and best friend Jek Nkik had stumbled upon a crashed fighter. The small fighter had blown up, leaving only fragments—nothing even a Jawa could salvage. But digging deeper, they had found the burned and tangled components of a droid—an E522-model assassin droid that had seemed hopelessly damaged, but he and Jek Nkik vowed to fix it, secretly scrounging spare parts from the storehouse in the Jawa fortress.

Their clan leader Wimateeka had suspected the two young boys were up to something and watched them closely, but that only made them more determined to succeed. Het Nkik and his friend had spent months in a secret hideaway deep in the badlands, piecing together tiny components and servomotors, adding new instruction sets. Finally the assassin droid stood emasculated of murderous programming, purged of all hunter-seeker weapons and all initiative to cause violence. The E522 functioned perfectly, but as little more than an extremely powerful messenger droid.

Het and Jek Nkik had proudly displayed their triumph to Wimateeka, who scolded the boys for such folly; no one would want to buy a reprogrammed assassin droid, he said. But Het Nkik could tell from the not-quite-controlled rush of scent that Wimateeka also admired the young Jawas’ brashness. Never again had Het Nkik believed common wisdom about what Jawas could not do.

He and Jek Nkik had surprised themselves by selling the repaired assassin droid to the tusk-faced Lady Valarian, Jabba the Hutt’s chief rival on Tatooine—a very risky trade that brought them even more scolding from Wimateeka. Lady Valarian was a tough customer; and the one time she had felt cheated, the only remains of the hapless Jawa traders were a few tattered brown cloaks found in the Great Pit of Carkoon where the voracious Sarlacc waited to devour anything that came within reach. Het Nkik had no idea what had happened to their reprogrammed assassin droid, but since Lady Valarian had not come after them, he presumed the huge Whiphid smuggler queen must have been satisfied.

Two years ago, Het and Jek Nkik had been separated upon reaching their age of adulthood, sent out to do scavenger duty away from the Jawa fortress. In a few years, sandcrawler crews would swap clan groupings and arrange marriages; but for the time being Het Nkik saw his friend only during the annual swap meets.

Now he had credit chips in his barter pouch, he had merchandise to trade—and he looked forward to seeing Jek Nkik.

The sandcrawler ground to a halt in the demarcated area set aside for their clan subunit. When the cargo doors opened, Jawa teams scurried to haul out the repaired droids, scraps of polished hull-metal plates, appliances, and primitive weapons they had found among the sands. The Jawas’ motto was not to look for uses in a salvaged piece of garbage, but rather to imagine someone else who might find a use for it.

Jawas bustled about setting up tables, awnings, credit display readers. Others gave a last burnish to the exoskeletons of clanking mechanical servants. A few tried to look nondescript, hiding emergency repair kits inside their cloaks in the event that their wares unexpectedly stopped functioning before a sale could be confirmed.

Power droids lumbered down a ramp, little more than boxlike batteries walking on two accordioned legs. Harvester droids and ’vaporator components were set up and displayed; Jawa salesmen took their positions proclaiming the quality of their wares. A few lucky ones rushed off to be the first to snoop among the items for sale or trade by other clans.

Around the perimeter of the rendezvous flat, Jawa sentries stood with image enhancers and macrobinoculars,