Lar adjusted the shoulder pads and belt on his sizable frame, keeping his dark brown eyes on the trail below. Though the sun was past its hottest point, it was still uncomfortable and he needed to let some cooler air into the recesses of his skin. How the blazes did the Sandpeople wear those tight rags around themselves all the time and not go insane?
“Is he there, yet?” asked Zed, hopefully cradling the large, double-barreled pistol in his right hand. The pistol wasn’t especially large, but Zed was so small-framed that it looked almost comically mismatched in his thin, delicate hands.
“I hear his engine- there’s only one. Shut up and make sure you’re wearing your work glove when you fire that thing this time.”
Zed wanted to grumble, but didn’t. The last time he’d shot off his hand cannon on impulse, he’d pulled the trigger with his right hand but held the barrels with his left to help him aim. The shot had heated the barrels so hot and quick that he’d needed burn cream on his hand each day for a week.
They both stopped talking as the bike stopped on the trail. The rider was dressed in clothes that were...different somehow. They weren’t quite what you’d expect a miscreant in the Jutland Wastes to wear. As he dismounted, he didn’t have the rolling, skulking gait that a thug from the Hutts or a ne’er-do-well from Mos Eisley would normally have. This fellow moved and dressed more like a skilled professional who was trying to blend in, but hadn’t quite picked up the knack yet.
Lar tapped Zed on the shoulder, and made a little hand gesture that would have had no meaning to anyone other than the two brothers.
Zed stifled a giggle. Since their childhoods, the twin boys had been physically different but shared a similar sense of humor. They’d developed a sign language between them without effort that had served them multiple times, and had become as complex as any military field language. In this case, Lar had made two fingers walk a few steps and then stroked the underside of his nose with his index finger. ‘This fellow isn’t who he appears to be,’ the two quick gestures said. ‘He is trying too hard to appear beneath his station, but his refinement keeps showing through.’
Lar, more the strategist, indicated to Zed he should circle around and train his oversized blaster on the biker, who was taking up a position behind a rock with a shiny blaster.
Zed moved with near total silence. Growing up, they’d played a game many times before similar to this, and had honed it to near perfection.
Lar looked over at the biker, then at the wall and nearby rocks, took his own position out of sight behind his cover, and smiled in anticipation of the fun he was going to have with this fellow.
“Well, now...” he started, speaking away from the biker and at the wall. The noise ricocheted from wall to rock and around again, until it sounded off right next to the biker’s ear.
The biker jumped at the noise, firing three quick shots from his blaster as he backed away and rolled from the noise.
Lar smiled. He’d played many a prank on Zed and Jada from this very spot. He turned his head to the right and spoke again. “A little jumpy, aren’t we-“ he started. He’d barely finished the ‘y’ in ‘jumpy’ when the biker spun again and fired three more shots in the direction of the noise.
Unfortunately for the biker, the maker of the noise was behind the rocks, still laughing silently. Down the line, Zed caught Lars’ eye and made a few more hand gestures. ‘Let me do the next one,’ Zed said with his rapidly moving hands. Lars nodded, and Zed watched until the biker stood in just the right spot, and...
“BOO!” barked Zed. The biker spun around once more, fired twice and...
His weapon clicked.
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Lar and Zed each smiled separately as their quarry fumbled to reload.
Now it was playtime.
#
Jada kept waiting, pretending to look for her brothers through her binoculars. After a minute, she heard blaster fire to her right, and the sound of one of the bikers’ engines revving up and taking off to her left.
Stupid grainhopper, Jada thought to herself. She’d been around bikes and blasters long enough to know what the sounds of each portended. The biker on her right had fired eight shots. Most hand blasters didn’t use clips that carried any more than that. Now he’d have to reload, and unless Lar and Zed were drunk they would make short work of him.
The biker on her right, on the other hand, was a different story. Rather than turn around and head out of the canyon, he was trying to follow the trail and flee further into the canyon rather than go back the way he came.
Jada smirked. He was trying to avoid getting taken down by the hand-cannon he’d heard them talk about on the comlink’s open channel. Unfortunately for him, Jada knew where that trail led- a long, winding road down to...well...
#
About the time Lar and Zed jumped their quarry and started giving him a solid pounding for stalking their sister, Jada’s other pursuer had already blasted off on his own speeder bike, looking for a means out of the canyon that wouldn’t involve passing Jada or any member of her family. He’d already tapped the button on the comlink on his wrist calling for backup.
After only a few seconds of trail, his locator went fuzzy and blanked out.
He hit the locator several times to no avail. Looking back and forth at the rock walls on either side through his visored helmet, he appeared to realize what was blocking his transmissions. He kept moving forward for a few more minutes, until...
The maps on his scanner hadn’t said anything about this, either. He was in a box canyon, surrounded by rock walls on three sides. The only way out now was to either turn around and go back the way he came, or leave his bike behind and try to scale the walls and then return to base on foot.
Not likely.
Not likely at all.
He tried to raise the base on his comlink again- no luck. It didn’t work. He settled for recording a message that would continue beaming out until he got clear of this place.
“DK-422 to base,” he said, in an accent that lilted slightly and would have given him away instantly as a foreigner to any Tatooine native. “DK-422 to base. DK-423’s signal has gone dark, repeat, gone dark. I counted eight shots. Quarry is unsecure. No concrete sign of rebel activity. We were led into an ambush.”
DK-422 was no stranger to hostile environments. Unfortunately, even the skills he’d developed thus far were no match for those refined by desert dwellers over generations of living, dying and hunting under the double desert sun of Tatooine. He didn’t notice as one of the ‘rocks’ nearby suddenly unfolded without a sound and revealed itself as one of the dreaded desert sandpeople. The stuff of tales told to frighten children, Tatooine sandpeople wore thick layers and tinted, telescopic goggles to protect them from the desert suns, and had learned the art of absolute stealth in a desert environment.
“Attempting to backtrack” DK-422 said, still speaking into a dead comlink in the hopes of being heard while his distress call repeated on its own, “and make a run past hostiles on speeder bike after this message is completed. I say again, no authentic rebel activity noted, and quarry gave no indication of rebel association, despite what our informant said. But locals apparently suspected a trap and laid an ambush for us.”
Three more ‘rocks’ unfolded and began moving stealthily towards their prey. True to form, the four hunters stayed out of sight until they wanted to be seen. At just the right moment, the lead hunter let his swathed foot brush a rock and make the slightest noise.
DK-422 interrupted his message and whipped out his pistol. As his arm extended, one of the sandpeople let out a triumphant cheer, using the bladed side of his gaffi stick to cleanly slice the soldier’s hand off through the wrist.
More cheers from the sandpeople went up; the blaster would fetch a good trade from the Jawas.
To his credit, DK-422 spent the last moments of his mortal existence fighting as best he could with only one hand. But it was over in seconds. The sandpeople had fully earned their reputation as boogeymen for many generations of Tatooine settlers. Any threat posed by their prey was the last thing on their minds as they dispatched him without difficulty or mercy.