Change Of Destiny
Chapter one
Collecting Parts
Yinji was a Jawa. He did what most Jawas did, he collected parts of broken and scrapped droids and handed them into his clan's sandcrawler's storage bay. He did this day in and day out, but after a while of trying to get the locals to understand what you were saying whilst at the same time trying to sell said local a droid got a bit boring.
This morning, he and his assistant droid, R2-Y7, or more commonly know as Vex, were out in a ravine on the Jundland Wastes, gathering up the remains of a pod race. Yinji had a large sack tied to his back; this was for keeping the parts in. Vex was there primarily to shut down any still functioning parts of pod racer, so Yinji wouldn't electrically shock himself. R2-Y7 was an astromech droid, Yinji had found him battered and bruised, slowly rolling away from Jabba the Hutt's palace. After Yinji had hacked Vex's memory banks, he found shaky footage of a protocol droid advancing towards the camera, then static. But now, Vex had been repaired, although he was still old and had battered plating, he had only come with one add-on, which was his data scrambler.
But now, the two of them were thick as thieves, Yinji had actually kneed a man in the crotch for trying to buy Vex for a low price, saying,
"'e's only small, not even worthy to dust me floor, ah well, he'll 'ave to do."
The Jawa picked up a broken power core with still some fluid left in it; he picked up the fragments and pushed a black button on Vex's chest plate. The plate slid down and Yinji placed the power core inside. Vex's welder extended from a port and began to weld the fragments back into place as Yinji held them in place.
He held up the repaired power core and put it in a pouch attached to the bag. He rummaged around some more and was about to pull out a single turbine engine when he heard a howl that made both Jawa and Tusken Raider bloods curdle.
The Krayt dragon flicked its head in Yinji's direction as the Jawa tried to sneak away. He began to run, Vex rolling after him as fast as his rollers could carry.
Yinji knew Krayt dragons hunted their pray through movement, but he was too afraid to remember.
Vex was attempting to calculate the chances of survival. His RAM crashed and he had to reboot after the answer hit -99999.99999.
Yinji saw a small cave mouth in the side of the ravine; he knew Jundland Waste caverns and catacombs were usually full of Wraids and Worrts, but anything was better than a Krayt dragon. He dived through the small hole and was enveloped by darkness, Vex soon following.
The droid turned on his light and followed Yinji; the Krayt dragon couldn't follow them because the entrance was too small, and so it was furiously beating the ravine wall above the cave mouth.
The Jawa and the droid made their way through the cave; the only sources of light were Yinji's eyes and Vex's small light. Soon enough, after half blindly stumbling around for a minute or forty, the two found light, leading out onto a Dune sea.
Yinji pulled out a small tracking device, he held it up high and the little radar dish atop it swivelled and pointed to the east, and the two companions followed it.
The dune sea was a relentless free-for-all. The Sandpeople and the Jawas battled for territory, whilst the more important and recognised races attempted to sneak in and colonize the area. All Yinji had for protection was his ion staff, which could give mild electrical shocks, and Vex's data scrambler and welder, which both could do minimal damage.
After twenty minutes of nervously gripping his ion staff, Yinji saw his clan's sandcrawler far off, immobile, probably for selling scraps. Vex whirred, spinning his cone shaped head, he blipped at Yinji, who looked quizzically at the little droid, he was still in the basics of learning droidspeak, and he couldn't catch most of what Vex was saying. But he could tell it had an exclamation mark at the end of it.
The two began more hurriedly towards the sand crawler. The first sign of trouble was when they were about 4 meters away; they noticed that the wares bay, lowered for displaying sale items, wasn't down. The sandcrawler seldom stopped for anything except selling droids and other electronic scraps. The second sign of trouble was that the main hatch, about several meters up the side of the sandcrawler, had been forced.
Yinji and Vex stopped and stared up at the hatch, the steel ladder built into the side of the vehicle looked untouched.
Yinji slowly pulled out the droid attachment lift from a cavity beside the ladder, he tightened the clamps around the ladder and Vex rolled onto it. Yinji climbed the ladder, trying, as he always did, to not think about the height he was climbing to.
He stood on the platform at the top and looked at the small space where the lever that activated the droid lift should be, the lever had been ripped off.
He slowly walked into the long corridor which usually with electrical wires and cables hanging across the ceiling, now sparks of electricity flashed, the wires and cables had been slashed. He continued to walk, gripping his ion staff tightly, he turned around a corner. He felt the crackles of electricity underfoot as well above his head; there were wires under the checker plate floor as well as the ceiling.
The Jawa walked onto the railed platform that had another lift that led to a large hall, where most of the living quarters were located. His eyes widened as he observed the scene before him. Jawas lay everywhere, some groaning, and some not moving at all. Yinji spotted his clan chief, lying slouched against a wall, and ran over to him. Yinji knelt down beside the chief, surrounded by others who were well enough to help.
"Chief, what's wrong, what happened?" asked Yinji in Jawaese, his eyes flitting to the wounds on the chief's body, showing patches of scarred, pale skin.
"Yinji…" breathed the chief "Yinji…attacked…we were, by, by, men, the biggies, and droids" the chief chuckled "Ah, the HK series, HK-64 model if I'm right" Jawas always prided themselves on their knowledge of droids.
"Chief, who sent them Chief!?" Yinji shook the chief, but the glow in his eyes flickered and guttered out. Yinji let the chief down, and sat down and put his head in his hands, this wasn't happening.
A hand placed itself upon his shoulder, Yinji looked up at a Jawa staring down at him, the Jawa helped him up, Yinji recognised him, and his scent was well known to Yinji. The other Jawa was called Furor; he gave of a scent of great knowing
"What shall you do now?" asked Furor
"I'm going, I'm going to leave Tatooine and find the people who did this, and then I'm going to explore the Galaxy. I'm tired of desert life, I'm tired of this sandy rock of a planet, and I'm going to leave!" Yinji said, he didn't know what had come over him, he let it all flow from his mouth. Furor bowed his head, smelling solemn; he walked towards a door, beckoning for Yinji to follow.
The Jawa followed the other, walking through more corridors; they came to a dead end with two doors on either side. Yinji was about to speak, but Furor silenced him with a hand, he pulled out a key from his robes and slid back a concealed grill on the wall and inserted the key. Furor knew most of the sandcrawler due to the fact he was the late chief's son.
Furor led Yinji into the room now opened; the walls were lined with weapons and racks with armour and other, smaller weapons stood on the floor. Yinji's mouth fell open beneath his cowl.
"Can't let you go out into the Galaxy without protection" said Furor, emanating the feeling he was grinning.
Yinji shook his head in disbelief; sandcrawlers were unauthorised to carry any weapons aside from ion staffs.
"And we've got a droid attachment for R2-Y7" added Furor.
Yinji examined a repeating carbine blaster, he took it off the shelf and hefted it, it was extremely heavy. He put it back and shook his head
"I can't use one of these, I'm okay with my ion staff" Yinji admitted "but I'd like to see where this droid upgrade is" he added eagerly, looking about
"Please, at least take some grenades" pleaded Furor, taking two handfuls of spherical objects and began strapping them to Yinji's bandoleer usually used for housing power cores. Then he pulled down a small blaster from a top shelf, but it was attached to extendable arm.
Yinji and Furor walked to the platform with the ladder, where Vex was still patiently waiting at the bottom. Yinji nodded and began to clamber down the ladder.
Furor sighed and walked back inside, good, now Yinji was gone he could find that motherboard.
Yinji looked down at Vex
"Come on, we're going to Mos Eisley" he said, the astromech droid bleeped in recognition and they set off towards the far off speck that was the Mos Eisley spaceport.
((A/N: Hmm, it seems rather floppy compared to my other works, Ah well, the next few chapters will be better))
