Buckets: A Star Wars Story

28. Major

Jakku was hell.

From the moment our transports touched down on that force forsaken planet to the moment I left it, it was hell. There... there just isn't any other way to describe it.

Jakku is a desert planet devoid of any life worth having and filled with degenerates from every corner of the seedy underbelly of the galaxy. True, Counselor Rax may have come from there, but it doesn't get a free pass because of that. Far from it. If anything, the fact that someone so distinguished could come from such a dreadful place made the whole thing even more insulting. It was proof that people from that dreadful place could, indeed, help themselves. They simply chose not to.

At the end of the day, we weren't there to sightsee, and by the time we touched down on Jakku the battle was in full swing. Star Destroyers were already plummeting out of formation and down into the planet below, sending fountains of sand, dirt, and metal careening up through the air only to slam back down into the earth like projectile weapons in their own right. We were battling Republic forces that had caught wind of our invasion of the planet and before long we found ourselves surrounded by Rebels. I took refuge in the carcass of a downed AT-ST and set Peek up so he could begin monitoring transmissions and sending them back to the fleet. Aurek was at my back the entire time while the Death Troopers were keeping the bulk of the Rebels busy.

Eventually, he gave a frustrated gonk and Aurek stopped shooting to look at us, "What's wrong?"

"He can't get a good signal here. We're going to have to move!"

"Move where?" Aurek asked as a blaster bolt slammed into the wall right above my head. "Where, pray tell, will he be able to get a clearer signal where we won't get our heads shot off?"

I didn't have a single clue. I strapped Peek to my back and picked up my DLT, ignoring my smarting arm as I did, and turned back to Aurek, "If we want to keep scanning, we'll have to plug him in somewhere. Let's see if we can locate a downed ship."

*

Jakku was far from going in our favor. Ships were falling left and right, or straight down, as the case usually was. We had barely cleared the remains of the Walker when we watched in horror as a Star Destroyer sailed down towards the planet's surface.

"Move!" Aurek grabbed ahold of me and we swung ourselves behind what remained of some Republic transport just in time to avoid the tidal wave of dust and sand that followed the deafening boom that accompanied the ship slamming into the ground.

The air smelled like tibanna gas and dirt, and had it not been for my bucket I would have wound up choking. The gasping bodies of nearby Rebels were proof enough of that. Aurek and I didn't even bother killing them as we ran past, though hindsight would have told me that it would have been prudent to have done so.

We finally found an abandoned X-Wing, and as Aurek covered me and Peek, we began attempting to plug into the communications relay from the cockpit. However, it took us virtually no time to realize that it wasn't going to work when Peek gave another irritated gonk and backed away with a frustrated whine. "No luck," I threw my hands up and hefted Peek back onto my lap.

Aurek nodded before he hefted his DLT up to his shoulder again and pointed a way off to a downed Republic ship several hundred yards off, "Think that may work?"

"Can't be any worse, can it?" I asked and prompted a laugh from Aurek beside me.

"Point noted. Let's go."

We made our way across the shifting sand. We took out Rebels as we went, but with so many ships hitting the surface visibility was steadily going from bad to decent. The wind would catch the sand and keep it airborne which made it almost as effective as a blast visor when it came to visibility.