Lady Obscura: Vader's Shadow [Star Wars | Luke Skywalker]

Chapter 21

If it wasn't one extreme, it was another, it seemed. Tatooine had to be blisteringly hot. Of course, hours in a rickety old landspeeder, wrapped up in the loose, rough-spun garments typical of the locals hadn't helped in the slightest. It had been early morning when she had landed in Mos Espa, before the heat of the day had become fully realized. And it had been all day that she had been stuck in that speeder.

Selling her ship had been laughably easy, but finding a speeder had proved more of a challenge. Even though Tatooine was a perfect planet for hiding and disappearing on, Athara was still inclined to be cautious; that was why it was a smaller shop she tried. But because it was a smaller, and rather run-down, establishment, the speeder she had ended up with was all but an outright piece of junk. The owner was obviously down on his luck, because the old Toydarian was almost desperate to sell anything to her at whatever price he could get. Even so, she probably paid more for it than she should have. Still, it worked, and with her limited mechanical knowledge and N3's help she was able to verify that the speeder, though old, was sturdy and in relatively good order.

So, once she had filled the speeder with supplies, she and her droid had been on their way to Mos Eisley. Then Anchorhead the next day. She had remembered upon her approach to the sandy planet what little Luke had told her of his life there. From those stories she remembered the city of Mos Eisley, the town of Anchorhead and the Jundland Wastes. She had debated just landing in Mos Eisley, being the largest settlement, but again, her overactive sense of caution had pushed her to land in the smaller port city of Mos Espa; the expectation was always to land in the bigger city with the intention of disappearing in the crowd, after all, so anyone tracking her would likely start there.

Once she had reached Anchorhead, though, she was at a bit of a loss. She remembered that Luke had said Kenobi's hut had been in the Jundland Wastes, but she had never been to Tatooine before and knew better than to blindly wander into the wilderness of the desert planet. And the rudimentary nav-system in her speeder was next to useless. It had labeled a huge swath of the area as the Jundland Wastes. There were also three main towns around the eastern edge; Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, and Bestine.

And she was, essentially, lost.

It was then that N3 made a noise that sounded remarkably like a sigh before plugging into the nav-system that she had just finished verbally abusing. Before Athara could say anything, he had programmed a route out into the middle of the Wastes, not really all that far from Bestine.

"You couldn't have done this earlier, before we came all the way to Anchorhead? Where did you get this?" The little droid whirred happily, his response appearing on the display screen of the speeder.

"Artoo. You were talking to Artoo. And he told you where to find Kenobi's hut." She couldn't help but be a little skeptical. But she didn't have any better ideas, and Luke's little droid had proven his reliability and inventiveness time and time again. Then another thought struck her.

"Wait—you knew Luke was going to be here on Tatooine? You couldn't have said something?!" The little droid at least had the grace to make a rather meek and abashed little whistle. Athara groaned as she settled back into the pilot's seat. "Alright. But I'm not going through that," she muttered, gesturing to the image of the Jundland Wastes, "so back to Mos Eisley and around, I guess. We should be able to make it back there before dark." One up side to a planet with two suns? Lots of daylight.

So it was back to Mos Eisley. Then, the next morning, they were off toward Bestine and into the Jundland Wastes. The trip was surprisingly uneventful. After everything she had heard about Tatooine, she was expecting for, well, anything to go wrong.

But then they hit the Jundland Wastes proper, complete with winding canyons and crevasses, looming towers of rock and outcroppings and walls high enough to provide actual shade from the merciless suns. It was slow going, thanks to the uneven terrain, and Athara didn't like it. She had a bad feeling about it.