The speeder was so quiet that Twitch was almost glad when its engine started sputtering. The visit to the farm, far from cheering up the unit as he'd hoped it would- it always did him- had seemed to make everyone more despondent than before, especially Cody and Tanis. The latter now jerked out of his reverie and immediately pounced on Twitch. "Private! What the- what's happening to this vehicle?"

Twitch gulped. "It's overheating, sir," he admitted. "But…it shouldn't be. I mean, I'm not sure why; I filled the extra coolant tanks myself, sir. I've done it a million times, and nothing like this has ever happened."

"What do we do about it?" asked Cody, interrupting Tanis pre-harangue.

Twitch shook his head. "There's not much we can do, sir. We should power down for a little while, to let things cool down, but we won't get far if the engine's cooling system is malfunctioning."

"Can we make it back to that farm?"

"Let me check." Twitch peered at the navigator. "No, I think we've gone too far. We wouldn't make it until after nightfall, and it's a bad idea to travel after dark."

Tanis was beginning to regain control. "Why is it so dangerous?" he demanded. "We have weapons, you know, Private."

"Yes sir, but at night the temperature drops really low. Sometimes if the air is moist you get frost, even. And at night, you get krayt dragons. They're nocturnal, mostly. I mean, there've been sightings in daylight, but those are really rare, so I wouldn't worry too much about that-"

"So where should we head for, then, Private?" Cody interrupted gently.

Twitch took the hint and glanced at the screen again. "Um…oh, okay. Looks like we're coming up to Whitesun Peak, sir."

"What's that?" demanded Tanis.

"It's just this giant rock formation, sir. Like a mountain. They say it was part of Mochot Steep once, but there was a rockslide or something. Anyway, we're on Thar land now, so they'll find us in a day or two, even if we can't find them. And Whitesun Peak has all these little caves and caverns and stuff where we can camp for the night. We can radio back to base for a new speeder or repair supplies, and we'll just wait in there." He pointed out the viewport. They could make out the distant peak now, a jagged white tower rising over the sand, like a tooth scraping the sky.

The engine failed completely as they approached the Peak, but according to Twitch, it would have done this even if the coolant tanks had been fine. "Electronic stuff gets weird around Whitesun. It's got this, like, magnetic field or something. That's one of the reasons the Thar claimed it. They think it's some kind of holy ground." They carried it the last few meters. It was light enough for the unit to lift together, and they received unexpected help from Tanis, even if he was too weak to lift more than a small part of the rear bumper. "It's my duty to see the mission completed successfully," he gasped when Twitch offered him the opportunity to supervise instead.

They found a cave far in enough to shield them from sudden sandstorms, extreme temperatures, and unfriendly natives or predatory creatures, and then Twitch and Tanis stepped back out beyond the reach of whatever magnetic power the rock had, to send the transmission requesting supplies and backup from the Anchorhead base before the suns slipped completely below the horizon.

Now, sitting beside the small emergency heat lamp and looking around at what he had already come to think of as "their cave" (he'd always been good at making himself at home in places), Twitch struggled to recall something that the few Thar he knew who lived in town, and the old smugglers who did business with the Hutts and sometimes had to cross the dunes, had said about Whitesun Peak. Some kind of ghost stories or something, legends about how the vast network of caves, tunnels, and catacombs inside and under the mountain contained the lairs of monsters, spirits, and witches- or maybe beings that were all three at once- and even the entrance to the Tuskens' Hél itself.

Being a clone trooper, of course, he'd had 99.99% of the spirituality, superstition, and credulity bred out of him before he was decanted (99.99% because, of course, even in a cloning system devoid of all human error, absolute perfection could never be reached- and the Empire's system contained plenty of human error at times). Still, Twitch thought, it would have been nice if he could've remembered the stories- he could have told them for the unit and Tanis, and maybe everyone would've gotten a kick out of them; maybe it would have made everyone that much more relaxed. As it was, Burninator radiated a casual hatred of all authority except Cody's, which he tolerated, but especially Tanis'. Cody seemed about as deadbeat as a trooper was able to be, in fact the whole unit did. Tanis, for his part, was a stuck-up bully to compensate for the fact that he was also a bundle of nerves and social anxiety. Twitch had heard of scrawny misfit kids who got beaten up in school and joined the Navy looking for manhood and a sense of camaraderie, and he'd bet the few credits he'd managed to obtain in his life that Tanis was one of those.

He expected this sort of thing from officers, especially new ones like Tanis, but he was bewildered by the attitude of the unit. He hadn't expected them to be like this at all.

"What are we going to do when we find the Thar?" he asked now.

Cody looked up from cleaning his blaster. "You know the tribe better than we do, Private. What do you suggest?"

Twitch swallowed his nervousness at being suddenly put on the spot. "Well, we're asking a lot of them," he began. "I mean, they have very close-knit families. We're asking them to give us one of their tribe's children. They won't be happy about that."

"So what?" Burninator grinned. "This is a desert planet, man, and those tents have gotta be flammable." He cracked up, to a joke that was not apparent to Twitch.

Cody glared at Burninator and then turned back to Twitch. "Sorry, Private. You were saying."

Twitch tried to put Burninator's contribution out of his mind. Beside them, Tanis was staring at the clone. "I think we should announce ourselves to one of their sentries, if we can find them, and come to the camp on foot, with our helmets off and our blasters in the holsters. They'd take it as more respectful. I mean, their warriors might make a big thing out of making us put our hands up and taking our blasters, but it's just for show. They know they can't fight the Empire. It's a bitter enough pill for them to swallow as it is. If we go through the whole 'surrender' thing, it'll make them feel less sore about it."

Cody heaved a deep sigh. "Private, be honest: is there any chance they're going to give up this girl without a fight?"

"I don't know." Twitch considered it. "It's possible, if we explain that the order's coming from her father and she's not in any trouble. Their chief, Kylja Vigdyr, is a lot smarter about galactic politics than most of the locals. She might understand."

"Commander?" Cody turned away from the cave's entrance and looked behind him. The young local private, Twitch, was watching him.

"Yes?" he asked as patiently as he could.

For a moment, the young man's courage seemed to fail him. Then, he seemed to regain it, and asked, "It's just…sir…you must know what people say about your unit."

"What do people say, private?"

"Well…sir…I mean…well, you're legends! What you did during the Clone War-"

Cody cut him off. "Did you fight in the Clone War, private?"

"Well, no, it was before my time-"

"So you've never taken aim at a man you've served with in hostile territory for months on end and shot him in the back?"

Twitch stared. "What do you…? Sir, I'm sure…but that's against the Code-"

"Kriff the bloody Code." Cody stepped forward, feeling the way he often thought Burninator must feel all the time. "What do you want to know, Private? What it's like being the glory of the Imperial infantry? What it was like saving the galaxy from those nasty, evil Separatists and nasty, evil Rebels? What Burninator's problem is?" He laughed harshly. "Well, nobody really knows that last one."

He shifted. "You know, Burninator's been pissing off the gen-norms since he was decanted? And we all covered for him, but me especially, because I was always the one going to be put in for Commander. You know how it goes. I've always been the responsible one in the unit. And I'm telling you this because I have a feeling you are, too. And because I don't think this unit will be around much longer. Don't talk, listen. There's ways to make us disappear, and gods know it's easy as hell to clone more. So I want to tell you a little story, Twitch…"

"Twitch." He glanced at the young private. "Where'd you get that name?"

"I've got a twitch in my right eye." Twitch shrugged; he rarely ever talked about this part of his life. He didn't see why it was necessary to dwell on it. He didn't really even like his name, now that he came to think of it, but there wasn't anything that he could do about that; it was his Name. "Anyway, when I was decanted, I was scheduled to be, you know…to not progress any further. They were worried it would affect my eyesight. But one of the senior guys took me off the list, and now my eyesight's completely average." He shrugged again. "But that's what they call me. You know."

"I've heard." Cody nodded at him. "Well, Twitch, it's a long time until morning, so you might as well know the story of how we got to be out here with you." He looked out at the darkened horizon again. "Here at the edge of the world."