Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 008 - Trouble on Tatooine Read online

  Kitster stumbled closer, not believing his eyes. The smuggler was older than he remembered, and he’d cut off his beard and grown his hair. But Kitster recognized the face and the deep soft voice.

  It wasn’t until Kitster reached the hatchway that he had a strange sense of who the man was. He recognized the ragged white scar that ran from the joint of his thumb up to the middle of his wrist.

  He still wore a golden bracelet, like a slave’s manacle.

  Kitster stopped on the gangplank, reached up and touched the golden bracelet.

  Kitster’s throat tightened, and tears flooded into his eyes. He couldn’t speak.

  “You like the bracelet?” his father asked. “I keep it as a reminder. I was a slave once, too.”

  Kitster was about to speak, to say the first words he’d spoken to his father since he was kidnapped by the slavers all those years ago, when suddenly his father snapped back, raised a blaster, and shoved him toward the hatch.

  A landspeeder was coming, shooting fast over the desert, with its headlights off.

  “Get inside,” his father shouted. “It’s a trap!”

  The landspeeder screamed out of the darkness and out of the night, slamming to a halt just beneath the hatch.

  The smuggler held his heavy blaster in his right hand and took aim at the driver. Almost too late, Kitster recognized what was happening. He jumped from the hatch and knocked the blaster just as his father fired.

  The shots went wide, blowing holes in the ground.

  From the darkened landspeeder, Dorn’s cheerful voice shouted, “Hey, hold your fire!”

  He leaped out of the landspeeder, reached into the back seat, and pulled out the Ghostling child. The small boy, not more than three, looked around with wide eyes. He’d regained consciousness. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Dorn said, “but I had to lose those slave hunters.”

  “Dorn!” Anakin shouted in glee. He and Jira ran to Dorn, hugged him, and ushered him up to the smuggler’s ship.

  Rakir Banai stopped them as they were about to enter. “I don’t have room for all of you,” he said. “I’m overloaded as it is.”

  “Is this about money?” Jira asked. “We have a bit more.”

  “It’s not about money,” Kitster’s dad said. “The life-support systems just can’t handle it. Someone has to stay behind.”

  The look of panic on Dorn’s face was frightening. Everyone in Mos Espa knew that he’d helped free the Ghostling children. He wouldn’t last a week.

  The child in his arms began to cry, fearing that he’d be left behind. Numbly, Dorn set the boy down on the gangplank, and let him run inside.

  Kitster knew what he had to do.

  He had to let Dorn take his place.

  No one had recognized Kitster when he was caught. The chances were good that no one would be looking for him.

  “Go ahead,” Kitster told Dorn. “You take my seat.”

  “Thanks,” Dorn said. He embraced Kitster gratefully and ran into the ship.

  Kitster looked up at the man he thought was his father. Rakir Banai gazed down on him, put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a brave boy. You’re going to go far.”

  For just a second, Kitster was tempted to reveal the one secret he’d held all his life. He was tempted to ask, “My name is Kitster — do you know who I am?”

  But he knew that if he said those words, his father wouldn’t leave Tatooine without him. If he spoke those words, his father would leave Dorn or Pala or one of the Ghostling children here instead.

  “Thank you, sir,” Kitster said to his father. “I hope to meet you again one day.”

  He walked down the gangplank, back toward Anakin and Tatooine and a life of slavery and uncertainty. He kept his secret in his heart.

  For Kitster, it was not a hard thing to do. He’d lived this way for too long.

  Sebulba glided through the desert on a landspeeder with Djas Puhr and Gondry close behind.

  Ahead of him, a pair of seeker droids hummed across the desert at top speed. Silently, Sebulba cursed. He wished that the droids would move faster.

  These slaves had beaten him for the last time. Gardulla had planned an elaborate execution, complete with Dorn and the largest flesh eating creature he could find. He’d planned to have a blindfolded Gamorrean shoot at Ghostling children while they were trapped in a pen.

  But once again, the slaves had escaped Sebulba, made him look bad, and cost him a fortune.

  He was determined to wipe them out.

  This time, there would be no losing track of the slaves. His seeker droids had the scents and skin samples from Pala and Dorn in their files. Even if the seekers were destroyed, backup files were stored elsewhere. The slaves wouldn’t be able to hide for long.

  The seekers whipped over the desert, dipping and bobbing as they bounced over the dunes. They headed straight for Bantha Rock.

  Sebulba glared ahead, and silently wished that they would pick up speed.

  Suddenly, ahead, he saw a bright light lift into the sky from the base of Bantha Rock. It was pushing the dull shape of a Corellian freighter, its running lights off.

  “Looks like we’re late again,” Djas Puhr said.

  The spaceship engaged its thrusters and shot into the night like a flaming star. In seconds it was gone.

  When Sebulba reached the base of Bantha Rock, he found no slaves, only a landspeeder. It was Jabba’s landspeeder, the same one that Dorn had driven into Mos Espa earlier in the day. Its thrusters were turned off, along with its repulsorlift, so that it lay dead on the sand, making pinging sounds as its engines cooled in the night air.

  The seeker droids both halted a few meters from the landspeeder and made the same report. “Sir, the scent trail ends here. The slaves have escaped!”

  Gone. All the slaves were gone — Dorn, Pala, the Ghostling children, and their accomplices.

  Rage twisted in Sebulba’s gut. His eyes burned with fury. He pulled out his blaster and filled Jabba’s landspeeder full of holes.

  Soon the landspeeder was just a burning hunk of wreckage. He left it for the Jawas to scavenge.

  On a distant plateau, Anakin and Jira watched Sebulba’s fireworks display. They couldn’t hear the curses he muttered, but they knew they had him beat.

  They laughed and cheered, while Kitster sat silently in the back of the landspeeder, huddled in a ball. He looked miserable.

  “We beat them, Kitster,” Anakin said. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” Kitster said.

  Anakin stared at his friend and tried to figure out his mood.

  Kitster glanced up at him and said in a reassuring tone, “It’s good. I’m all right, Annie.”

  “You sure?” Anakin asked.

  Kitster nodded. “Positive.”

  Anakin couldn’t figure out why Kitster was in such a quiet mood. Maybe he was just tired. They’d both worked so hard the past few days. Anakin felt all of his muscles loosening, the stress seeping out of him. He thought he’d be able to sleep like a runkit for the next month.

  Maybe Kitster is sad, Anakin thought. We beat Sebulba, but in doing so we’ve lost two of our best friends.

  “Don’t be sad,” Anakin said. “We’ll see them again someday. I promise.”

  Kitster looked up at him and smiled weakly. “You always keep your promises, don’t you, Annie?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  They climbed into the landspeeder. Anakin drove. The night wind washed over his face, and he hurtled under the starlight. The desert had cooled. Scurriers leaped across the sand to get out of his path. It was pleasant, peaceful.

  Jira said, “Anakin, Kitster, we have a few coins left over. I want you to have them.”

  “Us?” Kitster asked. “But that money belongs to the slaves.”

  “They gave the money to you children, to help you buy your freedom,” Jira said. “I think you should keep it, and spend it wisely.”

  “How much is there?” Kit
ster asked.

  “Almost a thousand.”

  Kitster whistled. “That’s a lot. Annie, what will you do with all that money?”

  Anakin thought about it. Five hundred wasn’t nearly enough to buy freedom for himself or his mother. But Watto had been having him race a lot lately. If Anakin could win a couple of Podraces, he’d make lots of money. Eventually he could even earn his freedom.

  Anakin drove Jira home and then dropped Kitster off for the night. When he got to the house, he looked through the window first. His mother was up late working again.

  Her friend Matta was still sick, and her cruel master, Dengula, had threatened to send her to the spice mines if she didn’t keep up with her quota on droid repairs.

  So Shmi Skywalker was up working late for the third night In a row. She’d always said that the biggest problem in the universe was that no one helps anyone else. Now she was finding a way to help.

  Anakin looked at his mom through the window and realized that she was like a sculptor, carving on a huge stone. In her own way, day after day, Shmi Skywalker made the biggest problem in the universe a little smaller. She just kept chipping away at it.

  As he walked into the door, his mother looked up at him and set down her repair tools. She was shaking, her eyes were red from crying.

  “Annie,” she said. “I was so worried about you.”

  Anakin nodded. “It’s all right. They’re gone. They’re safe.”

  She hurried out from behind her little worktable and gave him a hug.

  “How’s Matta?” Anakin asked.

  “She’s almost better. She’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

  “I can help you with those droids,” Anakin offered. His mother couldn’t fix a droid half as fast as Anakin could.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” his mother laughed. “I don’t want you to do a thing, dirty as you are.”

  She peeled off the Jawa robe and threw it into the trash, then sent Anakin to clean up.

  Two days later, Mos Espa was gearing up for a big race. Once again, Anakin faced Sebulba.

  This time it was on the Podracer track.

  He’d been round the course twice as he headed for his final run. Ahead of him, Sebulba’s split-X screamed over the desert. Anakin fought Sebulba and Rimkar for the lead.

  The twin suns of Tatooine glared on the flats, and a watery sheen rose off the white sands.

  Anakin had just passed through the stadium, bearing the blaring voices of the announcers. The crowds had cheered.

  Somewhere in the arena, his mother would be standing, perhaps biting her knuckles as she worried. Somewhere Kitster would be leaping up and down, cheering Anakin on.

  We’re all like trees in Gardulla’s pleasure garden, Anakin thought, trapped here, rooted in a place that we don’t want to be.

  He thought about the strange little box in the cubbyhole above his bed. He thought about the dream that told him that he had to open the box from the inside. Maybe the dream wasn’t talking about that old box at all. Maybe the dream had been telling him to look for a way to escape from Tatooine.

  Maybe that’s what I’m doing right now, Anakin thought.

  Anakin drove by instinct. At times he seemed to fuse with his Podracer, become one with it, or maybe became more than either a man or a machine alone.

  Now was one of those times.

  He soared over the desert toward Metta Drop. When he hit it, his stomach always went out from under him, and he felt kind of sick. The best way to keep from getting sick, he’d discovered, was simply not to think about it, to fix his mind on something else.

  At times like this, when his Podracer soared over the desert, Anakin felt as close as he could to being free.

  He sailed over Metta Drop, and the Podracer fell away beneath him. He thought briefly about Pala, Dorn, Arawynne, and the Ghostling children.

  By now, the Ghostlings would be home, joyfully reunited with their parents. He tried to imagine how happy they would be.

  By now, the kidnapped children had all returned home. The future looked bright. The Ghostlings wouldn’t die in Gardulla’s pleasure garden for her amusement. Their mothers and fathers wouldn’t have to spend long years grieving the loss.

  Anakin couldn’t imagine the joy they must feel. He’d never been to Datar. He’d never seen the hanging nests in the bayah trees that Ghostling children slept in. He’d never tasted the night air beneath Datar’s silver moons, or watched a blaze bug light the heart of a trumpet flower as he struggled to keep awake.

  Anakin couldn’t imagine the Ghostling children sleeping peacefully in their mother’s arms, with their brief captivity on Tatooine fading from memory like a bad dream.

  He couldn’t imagine where Dorn might be, or Pala, or how they must feel right now. Both of them would be heading home and places that they only dimly remembered, to blessed reunions with parents and family who would be strangers. He imagined them high above Tatooine, flying to a new home, soaring free.

  What would it be like to be free?

  He hit the bottom of Metta Drop. Suddenly Sebulba’s Podracer swerved in front of him. The cruel Dug flashed his vents. The engine exhaust slammed Anakin’s Podracer and sent him fishtailing out of control. His Podracer began to spin.

  Anakin had seen crashes like this a hundred times — Podracers screaming over the desert, out of control, slamming into one another or into rocks.

  By instinct alone Anakin cut the thrusters and tried to right his steering. That would save the Podracer engines, mostly. The heavy engines slammed into the sand, sent a wall of debris flying, and split off in two directions. Anakin’s Pod hit the ground with a bone-wrenching crash. It veered first left, then right, then went rolling over the desert, splintering apart.

  The cockpit bounced against the hardpan.

  For a brief second, Anakin was flying above the desert of Tatooine, flying above the crowds and the horrors, flying away like Dorn and Pala.

  For a brief second he felt the hot wind in his face. He opened his mouth for his first sweet taste of freedom.

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