His first day of hard work went pretty well for Greene. Jed ran his farm much like the ranch Greene had grown up on, though with more machinery. As he was working on expanding the electrofence, Greene watched as Luke ran out of the house, carrying an old E-11 blaster, making pew-pew noises as he pretended to shoot at imaginary enemies. Jed was in one of the barns.

"You be careful with that thing." Greene yelled.

Luke stopped in his tracks and walked over to the man. "It's not loaded, see? And it's got a busted ac-cel-erator" the kid held up the blaster and Greene took it, there was indeed an empty space where the main power cell was supposed to be. He looked through the optic. It had been a while since he'd held one of those.

"Your old man teach you to shoot yet?" Greene handed the broken blaster back to the kid.

"Not yet, but he says in two years when I turn ten he will." Luke said. Greene was silently amused at just how incorrectly the kid was holding the blaster.

"That's as good a time as any. Just don't point that thing at me or anything alive for that matter, alright?"

"Okay!" Luke yelled as he ran off.

The next standard week passed by pretty quickly for Greene. He quite liked the slow pace of the small farm. Some days there wasn't much to do but ride the property on an old speeder bike, watching the nerf. One day, as he was checking the electrofence a speeder came swerving down the path, before hitting a rock and careening into one of the fence posts.

"You alright?" Greene hopped off the speeder bike and walked over to the now dented and scratched twin engine sport speeder.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." A bald man with a black beard waved him off. He was clearly intoxicated. "Who the stang are you this is Jed's plot innit'?"

"Greene. I work for Jed."

"Ah, that Weequay Roko ran off. Told him to stop hiring aliens…" The man tried to get his speeder started again.

"Who are you? Jed's probably gonna want you to pay for the damage to this fence."

"Dax, I work for Rollag. I'm not paying for anything."

"Well if you're on the clock your boss might and he'll take it out of your pay, I'd reckon."

"I'm not paying for anything." Dax opened his vest, brandishing a chromed blaster in a tooled black bantha leather shoulder holster.

Greene's jaw clenched. "Alright."

"You seem to be new to these parts so consider this your warning. Rollag and his crew own the Frentor River valley." The man got the speeder started and sped off.

Greene walked back to the speeder bike to get one of the spare poles to replace the broken one. He'd dealt with men like Dax many times. The Galaxy seemed to be full of them. Beings with a few blasters and hired thugs kept agricultural communities under their thumbs from Hutt space to the Core. Some were just more subtle about it than others.

That evening Greene was eating dinner with the Lough family. Nerf stew, again, but this time it had pearly jorum grains and leafy greens of some sort instead of starchy tupellos. "One of Rollag's crew, Dax, crashed into the north side fence today."

"Stang, again? Kriffing drunkards." Anger flashed over Jed's face. Luke clearly didn't hear his father talk that way much so he watched with wide eyes.

"I replaced the post, I think the old one is fried though." Greene took a bite of his stew.

"There goes another hundred credits." Renda sighed.

The next day Jed gave Greene the day off and his pay for the time he had worked so far. Greene wanted to go to town, so Renda asked him to pick up a few things while he was there. There wasn't much to see in Dowrown. There were a few dozen prefab houses, and the general store and cantina, which shared a building as well as a large nerf processing plant. The hamlet was situated in a bend of the Frentor River, so it was surrounded by clear ten meter wide water on three sides. On a hill overlooking the town there was an elaborate mansion. The mansion should've looked out of place amongst the utilitarian buildings, but it didn't. Greene noticed there tended to be a being who had to literally put himself above others in almost every settlement.

Greene parked the speeder bike in front of the general store and walked inside. It was surprisingly large, and it had everything the locals could ever need. Greene picked up a few ration packs and some socks, then started working on the list Renda had given him. He couldn't find a particular item so he went up to the clerk.

"Excuse me, do you have any Ruby Zizz? The boss's wife asked me to pick one up for the kid."

"Oh! We're out up front but Yilha might have a few stashed away under the bar, just go around and ask." The Rodian clerk gestured to the open door that led to the bar set the items on the counter then walked through the door, and then up to the bar.

"Hey hon', what'll you be having?" The middle aged Twi'lek bartender asked.

"The clerk told me you might have a couple Ruby Zizz stashed away, I just need to pick up one for the boss's kid, ma'am." Greene leaned over the bar. He could see Dax and a couple other rough looking men huddled at the other end of the bar.

"Ah, you must be Jed's new guy." Yilha reached under the bar and handed a bottle of bubbly red liquid to Greene. "Anything else?"

"No, I'll just be going on my way." Greene said as he put a credit chip on the counter then he felt a large hand clap on his shoulder.

"Nah stay a while with me and the crew." It was Dax.

"I gotta get going, the boss is expecting me back before dinner."

"You're even doing that old nerf-herder's market runs too?" He looked at the drink. "Come on, get somethin' strong."

"It's for the kid."

"Uh-huh, I bet."

Greene tried to leave but Dax blocked the door with his broad body.

"No, you're not leaving yet. Rollag wants me to tell you to do somethin'." He pulled a bottle out of the inside of his vest. "Dump this in Jed's water supply and Rollag will buy you a ticket to anywhere in the Galaxy."

"Why?" Greene's jaw clenched.

"Rollag bought up all the other small operations around. Jed's the last independent rancher in the valley and he's still refusing to sell."

"Not my decision to make."

"Fine. Get out of here Ruby before there's trouble."

"Name's Greene."

"Ruby, Greene, they're both colors. Now get."

Greene paid for the goods and left. He'd dealt with men like Dax before, ant it was getting old. He told Jed about the incident, and about whatever it was he was supposed to take and dump into the water supply. Despite not knowing Jed and his family for very long, Greene liked them a lot. They reminded him of what he could've had.

"Rollag ought to know that wouldn't work. I've got triple distillers and quad filters on my wells, and a backup moisture vaporator 'cause he tried that dirty trick once already." Jed took a drink of his ale. "That's all he's done since he moved in, ruined us little folks' operations then bought the land way under value when they can't take it anymore. But not me, I was born on this land, and my father was, and his father, and so on."

"He's as stubborn as an old dewback." Renda sighed.

"What's a dewback?" Greene asked.

"Oh I grew up on Tatooine, dewbacks are these big lizards they have there."

"I've never been on that side of the Rim."

"You haven't missed much, unless you really like sand." Renda laughed.

That evening Greene was in his room in the machine shed, going through some of his things. He had to door open to let the cool evening air in. He was looking at an old holo, thinking about how odd he looked clean-shaven and wearing a fancy uniform, when he heard a noise outside. "Who's there?" He stepped outside and caught a glimpse of Luke before he dove into a bush. "I know you're there Luke."

"Alright, alright." Luke stepped out of his hiding place and walked over, looking down and kicking rocks. "Who was that lady?"

"Not important." Greene said.

"What's this?" Luke went into the room and picked up a white plastoid tag. "TK-778…" He read.

"Get out of here." Greene took the tag back.

"You were a Stormtrooper, weren't you? I read they had tags with numbers that start with 'TK' like that."

Greene looked down at the kid. "You read a lot don't you? I was a Stormtrooper."

"No way!" Luke gasped "Were you at Hoth? Endor? The Death Stars? Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer?"

"I was at Hoth. It was cold. That's all I'm gonna tell. You'd better not tell either, most beings still hold a grudge against the Empire. Now get." Greene shut the door after Luke left, and slumped down onto the cot. He deactivated the holoprojector and shoved it back into the trunk.

He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at his wife's face in years. Redli had paid dearly after her father and the other villagers found out where Greene had been all those years. The Empire had not been kind to the people of Myrobac. When the garrison abandoned the isolated Outer Rim world, the locals lashed out hard. Mobs surged through every city, destroying any technology that had been brought by the occupiers and doing terrible things to people who had been branded as traitors for cooperating with the Empire. Greene was lucky to make it out alive, though he could never return to his homeworld.

Another quiet standard month passed, and Jed's family became the family Greene never had. Luke even started calling him "Uncle Greene". Jed treated him like the brother he had never had, which made sense to Greene after he found out that Jed was raised by his mother alongside three sisters. For the time being, it seemed that Rollag, whoever he was, had decided to leave Jed be and let the unpredictable weather wear him down. Flash floods seemed to be a constant threat, as the hard packed dry soil just could't absorb the rain. Contstantly checking and repairing the earthen levies was dull work.

One night Greene woke up in the middle of the night to the bleating of the nerf. They were usually quiet at night. He threw on his trousers and boots before running out of the shed to see the pasture on fire. Greene had expected a predator of some sort to be lurking around, spooking the nerf and their new calves, he wasn't sure what to do in this situation. Jed was out not long after he was and he tossed Greene a large silver fire extinguisher canister. They got to work and kept the fire away from the house and the barns, but the pasture was burned.