• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He left his post and took the lift platform to the bridge. In front of the wide viewport, he climbed on an overturned equipment box and stared. The smoke grew thick. His heart sank inside him as if he had just lost all his possessions in a bad trade.

He recognized the oxidized brown metal of an old ore hauler’s hull, the trapezoidal shape. The sandcrawler had been assaulted, blasted with heavy-weapons fire, and destroyed.

Het Nkik knew his friend and clan brother was dead.

The lookout chittered in terror, expressing his fear that whatever had struck the sandcrawler might still be around to attack them. But the pilot, seeing the enormous wealth of unclaimed salvage, overcame his uneasiness. He used the comm unit to transmit a message to Wimateeka’s fortress, establishing his salvage rights.

Greasy tatters of smoke curled up in the air as the sandcrawler descended toward the destroyed vehicle. Het Nkik felt a resurgence of anger bubble within him. He recalled how stormtroopers had assaulted Jawa fortresses for practice. He thought of Eet Ptaa’s settlement raided by the Sand People. Yet again, someone bigger had attacked helpless Jawas, perhaps out of spite, or for sport, or for no reason at all.

The only thing Jawas ever did was take their beatings, flee, and accept their helplessness. Nothing would ever change until somebody showed them another way.

He thought of the blaster he had purchased at the swap meet.

The pilot brought the sandcrawler to a halt facing the best escape route if attackers reappeared. The hull doors clanked open, and the Jawas scrambled out, ducking low for cover but eager to dash toward the treasure trove of scrap. The pilot scrambled forward to apply a claim beacon to the ruined sandcrawler, warning away other scavengers. Jawas swarmed into the half-open door of the wreck, scurrying to see what treasures had been left undamaged.

Several Jawas squealed as they realized they were not alone by the damaged sandcrawler. A bearded old human in worn but flowing robes stood off in the shade beside two droids that he seemed to have claimed for himself. He had built a small, crackling pyre. Het Nkik sniffed, smelled burning flesh; the old man had already begun the ritual disposal of Jawa carcasses in the purging flames.

The human raised his hands in a placating gesture. Some of Het Nkik’s cousins speculated that the old human had killed the other Jawas, but Het Nkik saw this was obviously absurd.

A protocol droid walked stiffly beside the old man. Its gold plating was a bit scratched, and it had a dent in the top of its head; but all in all the droid seemed to be in good functioning order. The other droid, a barrel-shaped model, hung back and bleeped in alarm at seeing the Jawas. Het Nkik automatically began to assess how much he could get in trade for the droids.

The protocol droid said, “I offer my services as an interpreter, sir. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication.”

The old man looked calmly at the droid and made a dismissive gesture. “Your services won’t be needed. I’ve lived in these deserts far too long not to understand a little of the Jawas’ speech. Greetings!” the old man said in clear Jawa words. “May you trade well, though I sorrow for your tragedy here today.”

Three Jawas bent close to the rock-strewn ground and spotted bantha tracks. They set up a wail of panic, suddenly convinced that the Sand People had declared an all-out war.

But something did not seem right to Het Nkik. He looked at the tracks, at the crude weapons fire that had struck the most crucial spots on the enormous ore hauler. He sniffed the air, sorting through layers of scent from molten and hardened metal to the burning stench of bodies, to the heated sand. He detected an undertone of plasteel armor, fresh lubricants, a mechanized attack, but he could find none of the musty smells of the Tusken Raiders or the dusty, peppery scent of their banthas.

Het Nkik pointed this out, and the other