Madlands

1. Occupational Hazard

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The frost was creeping up the massive ramp of the Jawa land-trawler. Soon it would reach her feet, and she'd have to accept that it was time to head back inside. For now, it felt good enough to be out under the weak sun and in the cold, fresh air, to make the growing numbness in her fingers worth it. She didn't need a delicate touch for this task—chipping corrosion off the ferrite antenna from an old but salvage-worthy broadband receiver.

Hopefully this would do it—the last component to repair or reshape or rejig—and the thing would sizzle back to life, looping her in with the latest on what she was missing beyond this flakey frost world.

Irrova was a fine planet if you liked scrap and salvage (which she sometimes did), endless open expanses of brittle shale beds (at least the thin rock made a pleasing crunch as it shattered underfoot), being a bit cold all the time (tolerable), and, well, not much else. It was the not much else part that was becoming more and more of an issue.

The Jawas would most likely confiscate the receiver once they noticed it was working, not because she wasn't allowed access to such a thing, but because it would then have value. Anything she repaired during her confinement became theirs to use, sell, or barter; that was part of the deal. The Jawas were getting a better deal than they'd expected, if their slowly shifting attitude towards her was any indication.

She'd graduated from repair and information-providing serf to repair and information-providing unpaid servant. Her cranky hosts had even given back her belongings about a week ago, after she'd negotiated the exchange of her satchel and everything originally in it for the location of a dense deposit of halite in the eastern ridges. Jawas loved salt, which was scarce on Irrova and in the whole Fyren solar system in general, and halite provided a potent source. She'd also been sure to tinker with each of her datapads, data-sticks, transmitters, and other bits of more obscure tech—right before coming into contact with the Jawa clan—to make everything she owned look like non-functioning junk. There was no way she would have gotten the lot back from them if they knew the scope and value of the information she had stored within those sleeping devices.

Since she'd recovered access to her libraries, she had become even more flush with usable intel, and she found the Jawa's coming to her for almost daily insight.

It had been a calculated risk, getting caught by the crew of the land-trawler. She'd needed a place to regroup, lay low, and stay off the radar for a while. So, she'd manufactured the scene of her very clumsily trying to make off with a hover-cart of their barter-wares, and her residency was secured.

There had been a moment in which she'd thought they might genuinely blast her, but she knew how to fast talk her way into a Jawa's heart—the promise of details regarding a lonely old Irrovan who'd recently died with no family or friends, leaving behind a hut sitting empty, save for the late man's mid-value belongings, untouched and still inside.

Her life for the location of the haul, plus servitude in the form of the endless fixing of very broken things and keeping the good tips coming.

That was almost two months ago. Surely by now, the misunderstanding that sent her towards the Jawas in the first place would have blown over or been forgotten, and she could quietly resurface. But she wanted to scan and listen for any signs to the contrary first, hence the now only semi-corroded ferrite antenna that usually wouldn't be worth her time. The receiver it belonged may have been old but it was also powerful—perhaps enough so to pick up signals even through the ridiculously thick walls of the trawler that she'd dubbed "the fortress." If she only used it at the right times and in the right spots, she could probably hide its functioning existence from the Jawas for at least a while.