A tiny speeder whipped around the small roadways between giant mountains of metal junk that littered the surface of the planet B'wynn. Lara, the vehicle's driver, was pushing its velocity almost to the limit. She could hear the engine screaming and feel the vibrations as the craft strained to hit its top speed. The narrow path through the junk that the craft was buzzing through looked to her like a blur on both sides, but she didn't bat an eye. Lara loved piloting the speeder at such high speeds not only because of the long distances that she needed to cover almost daily out here in the metal wilderness, but also because of the massive adrenaline rush it gave her. When she felt the hot air moving past her, she could almost forget that she was making a meager living as a scavenger here on this miserable backwater planet. As she rocketed the speeder forward, a sharp turn in the road became visible ahead but instead of slowing down, she kept the speed constant, banking hard into the right turn. The speeder groaned loudly, almost tipping over with the mighty force that the hard turn applied, but Lara kept control coming out of it and immediately blasted the vehicle back up to a greater speed than before. Over the sound of the howling machinery and the fierce wind that was blowing past her ears, she heard her driving companion in the adjacent seat let out two long loud beeps.
"The handling is better than before", Lara shouted over the noise as she turned to look at her astromech droid, BB-8. "But I think we can tweak it a little bit tonight when we get home and improve it some more"
BB-8 let out a series of beeps that she interpreted as agreement and then a loud series of whistles to indicate that they were approaching their destination.
"I see it" she answered and then focused her attention back to the road in front of her.
About two hundred meters ahead the walls of junk that were bracketing the road that they were speeding down came to an abrupt end and Lara could see that they were going to enter into a larger open area. On the far side of the clearing, still out of view, would sit a gigantic starship from a war that thirty years ago changed the galaxy. It was this ship that Lara and her Droid were going to enter to look for parts to remove and then haul back to the shop where they were employed.
"Hang on tight", Lara exclaimed as they entered the clearing. "I'm going to floor it so we can get over there as quick as possible. I don't want to be out in the open for too long"
The engines roared even louder than before as she hit the accelerator trying to squeeze every bit of power out of them and in less than a minute the two scavengers got their first glimpse of the top of the massive grounded starship in the distance-an Imperial Star Destroyer. She had heard and read about these colossal ships when she was younger and she had even seen one on the surface of the B'wynn before, but only from the air as she was descending from space during her arrival here years ago. To drive right up to the actual body of one was just incredible and awe inspiring. As they got closer, Lara noticed that the bottom half of the hull seemed to be missing or perhaps buried deep into the surface by being violently dropped here but the rest of the ship still rose what seemed like hundreds of meters into the air. It was so large it could rival the size of some of the settlements on this planet.
Looking at the massive body of the craft made her once again marvel at how strange this planet that she called her home was. B'wynn was known all over the border of New Republic space in this sector as the junk rock. It wasn't really a planet by the strictest definition, it was actually a smaller satellite of a larger, but uninhabitable world that was never really named. Even from space you could see why B'wynn had the moniker it did. The planet looked like a ball of metal that was slowly rusting on every point of its surface area. It had been a starship graveyard for hundreds of years stretching back to the time of the peaceful Old Republic, but the last seventy-five years had seen the volume of metal deposited here rise almost exponentially.
The Clone Wars with its seemingly infinite droid armies and ground assault weapons along with the massive Separatist and Jedi star fleets made for a gigantic amount of the material laid to rest here. Then shortly after THAT staggering war the mighty Galactic Empire rose and seemingly just as quickly fell. The enormous battles with the Rebellion that ended that era of history along with the years of tracking and eliminating the pockets of the Empire that refused to surrender even after the death of Emperor Palpatine contributed even more scrap. Now it seemed like almost the entire surface of the planet was one never-ending junkyard.
Lara slowed the speeder down a little bit as they got to within about five hundred meters of the base of the Imperial vessel and sensing the drop in velocity, BB-8 let out a quizzical noise.
"We're going over there, to the back of the ship" Lara said as she pointed in the direction of the ships massive circular engines that were visible atop some sloping dunes of dark metallic gravel leading up to them.
She turned the vehicle slightly as she slowed the engines even more and before long they had come to rest near the foot of the dunes. BB-8 immediately popped out of his seat and over the side of the speeder, hitting the ground with a metallic thud. He started beeping at her in his hurry up tone while he excitedly rushed off to begin rolling up the sand to their entrance point.
She smiled a bit as she watched him speed away, thinking back to when she first met this little droid. He had been given to her as a gift from an old family friend many years ago when Lara decided to leave her family and although he resembled a standard astromech droid in some respects, her little companion was quite unique. Whereas most astromech droids were squat and cylindrical in shape, sporting motorized legs with wheels for locomotion, BB-8 had a small astromech style head sitting on top of a body that was a perfect sphere. The body was much smaller than a normal droid's, but his lack of size was more than made up for by the speed at which he was capable of moving. The first time she had ever seen him whipping around was an odd sight. His little head just seemed to hover motionless on top of the ball shaped body that was spinning so fast it made his orange and white blocky markings blur together into a swirl of the two colors. His speed had proven to be useful on this world more than a few times to get out of tricky situations because the beings that made their livings as scavengers, like Lara did, were often not the most pleasant. She usually didn't back down from a confrontation, but sometimes knowing when to move along was definitely a necessary survival trait here.
"Wait there at the bottom while I get my stuff" Lara shouted out to the Droid.
He whistled back to her in the affirmative and when she saw him stop in the distance, she hopped out of the speeder herself. A hot breeze was blowing over the entire clearing that they had entered moments before and for a few seconds, Lara just stood still feeling it blow across the skin on her arms and face. She craned her neck back to look up at the bridge of the gigantic ship that was resting in the sand before her. It was just incredible how high up it was.
What were these things like in battle, she thought.
She had heard all the stories of the rebellion against the Empire when she was younger, but seeing this ship up close…It boggled her mind to think of the large scale skirmishes in which these ships routinely engaged back in that era. Much more confounding to her was how the rag-tag bunch of rebels were able to take on entire fleets of these monstrosities and eventually come away with victory.
BB-8 squealed out at Lara from his resting spot in the distance and this shook her out of the little trance she was in. Upon hearing him scolding her for taking too long, she grabbed some supplies and tools from the back of the speeder and headed off in his direction.
"So what have you got for us here?" Lara asked as she strode up to the droid seconds later.
BB-8 projected a large schematic of a standard Star Destroyer in the air in front of them and started searching it for the locations of the parts that Lara would be looking for today. After a few minutes of calculations, Lara saw that he mapped out paths to approximately five locations. Four of them would not be extremely difficult to get to as they were hyperdrive components that would be near the engines. She estimated that they could get to the engine rooms where the parts were within about a half-hour after entering the ship. The fifth part, however, would be the real challenge.
BB-8's holographic map showed that it was on the bridge of the downed starship and the bridge of this particular vessel was its highest point. Furthermore, to her disappointment, he informed her that there was no way to get up there internally because of all the damage that the ship had sustained. She was going to have to scale the structure on the outside and cut her way into it once she got up there. The climb up there alone would take quite a bit of time not to mention getting inside once she was up there. This was looking like a long arduous day for the both of them but the more they delayed, the longer they would be out here in the harsh environment.
"Well, looks like it's time to get to work, little guy" Lara sighed, motioning that they make their way to the foot of the climb up to the wide open starship engines.
BB-8 replied with a series of excited beeps and hurried over to and up the incline ahead of her. Lara followed and in about a minute they reached the top of the dune. On the top of the dune they paused for a moment in front of the massive engine to marvel at the size of the opening but then proceeded forward, entering the giant ship. As they moved inside, darkness quickly engulfed them but within seconds the small droid shined a powerful light forward and shot a laser pointer about one hundred meters ahead in the direction of their destination. Lara was able to see the entrance to the large engine core room in front of them where the most of the parts that they needed were housed.
"Let's get in there and get what we came here for, ok?" Lara said as she motioned in the direction of his laser.
The droid let out a series of beeps indicating agreement as he led them towards the first part of their day's work.
Almost an hour later they exited the hull through the large engine where they had entered earlier. Lara was pleased that her earlier prediction of the time they would be inside was pretty close to accurate. The parts they were looking for were all fairly close to each other in the core room and surprisingly easy to remove. They also were not too large or heavy so getting them back outside was really not that difficult. All in all, Lara was willing to consider everything so far a success. The two scavengers quickly slid down the gravel hill they climbed earlier and when they came to rest Lara removed a small flask of water from her supply pouch to take some quick gulps. The drink felt cold and refreshing and for a moment she stared up at the red sky and grinned, allowing herself to feel a sense of accomplishment that she rarely felt since coming to this planet. The moment was short lived, however, as the perilous climb to the ship's bridge re-entered her mind, making the smile on her face quickly disappear. For the journey upwards, BB-8 would not be able to join her but she still was going to need his help. She needed him to fire a grappling hook to a point near the top of the bridge so they could secure a line for her ascension to the top of the structure.
Lara walked over to the speeder, opened a storage container and grabbed a vest that doubled as a harness for climbing while the droid rolled away to scout a good position for a clean shot with the grappling hook. She put on the vest and then looked over to where the droid had stopped. He beeped at her indicating that he found what he thought was a good spot to anchor the line and then let out another beep with a slightly different tone. She knew that he was essentially asking her if she was really ready for the climb. Lara wasn't really afraid of heights and had made climbs like this before, but BB-8 knew that she didn't really like to do it very often. Ascending on grappling lines was dangerous in even the best of conditions but the unpredictable shifting winds here on B'wynn made climbs like this much more difficult and perilous.
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be", Lara said in response to the droid's questioning sounds.
He acknowledged her response with another beep of his own and blasted the hook up towards the bridge of the downed Star Destroyer. The hook almost disappeared from sight as it got close to its target, but they saw it strike and heard a faint clank of metal a few seconds later when the sound had time to travel back down to them. BB-8 pulled on the line, whirred and chirped. Lara could tell he was checking the physics and making calculations to be sure that the line was secure enough to hold her on the way up. When he had the line secured, she connected a motorized apparatus to both the line and her vest that would help her pull herself up. The device wasn't strong enough to pull her entire weight up to the top, but it allowed Lara to help pull her own bodyweight up hand over hand by helping drive most of her weight and alleviating the need for her to do all of the work herself.
After about an hour of steady climbing, Lara reached a part of the bridge just below where the grappling hook had struck, a small ledge jutting out somewhat horizontally. It wasn't perfectly level, but for as mangled as the bridge was it would serve as a good anchoring spot where she could cut a decent sized hole to climb inside. She stopped the motorized device and just hung on the line catching her breath for a moment. From this height the planet's surface was visible for about sixty kilometers in every direction but all she saw resembled an endless sea of twisted and decaying metal. It seemed like every ship that had ever existed in the galaxy must be here, millions of rusting corpses of a thousand long gone battles.
The only natural planetary features she could discern was to the northwest where there was a small range of jagged hills with a yellow colored lake at their base. Along the coast of the lake Lara could make out small ships taking off from and landing at the small spaceport where she would be heading later to deliver the parts they were now gathering. As Lara hung in the slight breeze, she noticed that a storm seemed to be forming in the opposite direction of the small spaceport. It wasn't close at the moment, but if she delayed at all getting in and out of the bridge or if it happened to pick up speed, she would be caught in a very perilous situation up this high. She swung herself over to the ledge and secured herself, readying to cut an entry hole in the bridge. She removed a cutting device from her backpack that started melting the metal on the outside of the ship's bridge and as she watched the bright orange incision grow, she felt a very strong gust of wind that almost blew her off the ledge. The storm is approaching quickly, she thought as she steadied herself and continued cutting. After a few minutes Lara had cut a small circular hole that gave her just enough space to crawl through the hull into the bridge. As she shined her small flashlight into the hole to see the interior, she hoped that she could get in and out quickly so that she could descend the line and they could be on their way back.
When Lara emerged from the bridge with the last part they needed, she noticed that the storm was getting closer, but it looked like she could easily make it back down to the ground before it got here. They would then have no trouble outrunning it in the speeder. She figured that they would make it back to the spaceport to unload the parts and get home for the night with plenty of time before it hit giving them some time tonight to work on the speeder in preparation for tomorrow. Looking down to the ground, she could see BB-8 as a tiny dot at the bottom of the climbing line waiting for her. She waved her arm and saw the line tighten just a bit as the droid stabilized it for her descent. Lara put the vest back on, secured the climbing motor and set it to help her descend. The trip down was much faster than the ascent and she soon found herself safely on solid ground. BB-8 released the thin metal line and beeped excitedly at Lara, sounding very happy that she was down safely.
"I'm fine….the line held great, but I'm definitely glad to be back down here." she said as she smiled at the little droid. "Let's get going."
The droid chirped in the affirmative and within minutes they were packed up with all the parts secured. With a roar, Lara fired up the speeder's engines for the trip back to deliver their parts.
After about an hour of travel with the approaching storm still well behind them, Lara and BB-8 got a first glimpse of their destination ahead of them. The spaceport of Jarlin was a small settlement nestled between another massive field of starship junk that covered hundreds of kilometers to its south and a large mountainside lake residing to its north. B'wynn had over a hundred of these little spaceports dotted all over its surface, each one serving as a place where offworlders could obtain scrap and starship parts for their needs. Lara had settled on the outskirts of Jarlin upon arriving planet side five years ago and before long her mechanical skills had gotten her noticed by some of the locals. A short time after that, she was able to land a job at a large repair shop run by Sann Mek. Sann was a very large and loud alien that had lived here on B'wynn his entire life. He was a terribly gruff and unsavory being that basically had a stranglehold on the entire repair and salvage operation running out of Jarlin. No one really liked him but if you had any kind of mechanical skill or are were a good scavenger then you really had no other option for employment and he knew it. Because of this he paid poorly and treated his employees like miserable servants that existed only to do his bidding. Lara, however, was tough enough to deal with Sann and she didn't fear him in the slightest. She also knew that she would not be here forever so she would be done with his nonsense one day. That fact, however, didn't make working for him daily any less unpleasant.
As they pulled their speeder into Sann's shop on the edge of the town, they saw how busy the place was and she already knew why. Tomorrow's event here in Jarlin was making for higher than usual inbound traffic from off planet. An abundance of parts and a place to get some last minute repair before the popular annual speeder race on the outskirts of settlement made the shop a hub of frenzied activity. She saw all the familiar faces of her fellow employees but there were also dozens of beings here that she did not recognize.
I'll bet he's LOVING this, Lara thought to herself about her vile employer.
She knew that he was ecstatic about not only being able to price gouge all the offworlders that were here, but also the fact that he could gamble on the race tomorrow. Lara herself was going to be competing in the race and she got a small smirk on her face thinking of all the money that Sann was going to lose because of this. He knew that she was entered in the race but, of course, believed she had no chance of winning. She knew better though. Her speeder was deceptively fast and when BB-8 got the handling optimized tonight after they returned home, it would easily be the fastest speeder in the race tomorrow. She was confident that she would win and enjoyed the fact that Sann had no idea what was going to blindside him. Her smile faded quickly, however, when he bellowed out to her from across the large room to bring her scavenged haul over to his workspace for inspection.
"HEY!...", Sann yelled at Lara. "You'd better have all the parts I wanted from that old Imperial ship. I have a wealthy buyer from off planet that is very interested in its hyperdrive components and I don't want to disappoint him"
Lara didn't reply at all. It was usually pointless to even try to engage with Sann in conversation. He was almost always overbearing and never had any interest in what she had to say anyway, just talking over her and ignoring her. She motioned to BB-8 to help her unload the five parts they recovered earlier and he scooted over to one of the storage compartments on the speeder. They both unloaded the parts, setting them on a small hovercart to push over towards the inspection area of the shop.
"Here they are", she quipped as she stopped in front of him with the cart.
Sann looked over the machinery sitting on their hovercart and frowned.
"Where is the bypass coupling?", he complained. "I promised them I would have a bypass coupling!"
Lara was in no mood to argue, especially because she knew that Sann never told her anything about a bypass coupling. He gave her a specific list of five parts to get and she returned to him with those exact five parts. She wasn't going to back down this time, however. She had been through this all too many times before with him…accusing her of not bringing back what he wanted as an excuse to short her on her pay.
"You know that you never said anything about any bypass coupling." Lara snapped back, "Here are all FIVE parts you requested and if you even think about backing out of our original pay deal, I'll just take them with me and sell them to your customer myself"
Sann' eyes widened slightly because he was not used to anyone challenging him, especially in front of the other workers that he employed. His surprised look disappeared quickly, though, and he let out a chuckle.
"Well, the little metal-rat finally stands up for herself", he exclaimed. "I wondered how long it was going to take before you finally grew a spine"
Lara said nothing, but kept an icy cold gaze directed right into his eyes revealing her refusal to be intimidated by the large creature. Sann directed a wicked smile back at her but something made him decide to not press matters.
"Here's your agreed upon pay", he sneered even though It was apparent that he wasn't happy with the sudden turn of events.
He leaned in a little closer to Lara and in a lower tone of voice so others could not hear said, "You'd better watch yourself LITTLE GIRL. I don't like your attitude and you may find yourself without work…or worse"
"Not being associated with you is something I would welcome", she fired back without breaking her penetrating gaze, "And …..YOU don't have the guts to do worse, Sann"
Sann drew back with a sour look on his face, dismissed her and started inspecting the goods that Lara had brought him. She turned away, looked at BB-8, gave him a sly grin and he beeped an enthusiastic low tone back at him that to her sounded like a laugh.
Soon, she thought, I'm leaving this planet.
She wasn't sure where she would go but she felt that her time here was coming to an end. Her thoughts then slowly drifted back to the present and she decided that her work day was done whether Sann liked it or not. It was time to head back home with BB-8 to do some last minute modifications on her speeder and try to get some sleep before the race tomorrow. As they turned and started moving towards the speeder, Lara thought she heard her employer bark something to her, but she didn't want any more interaction with him so she simply ignored his words. She had work to do.
BB-8 led the way back to the vehicle and popped up into it with Lara quickly following suit. She fired up the engines and within seconds they were tearing out of the shop and heading for their home in the hills outside of Jarlin.
They were just about home when the rain from the storm that Lara had seen coming earlier in the day arrived so she stepped on the accelerator to cover the last kilometer and a half to their dwelling before they got caught in it. BB-8 chirped to her to inform her that they should pull the speeder into her small garage to work into the night but still remain dry. She nodded in agreement and hit the switch on the dashboard that would open the door to the garage allowing them to swoop right inside when they got there. Lara knew that the speeder wasn't quite ready yet and they would most likely be working deep into the night. She had always been obsessed with vehicles and speed, whether it was a small hoverbike when she was a child or learning from her father and her older brother how to pilot small starships when she was a teen.
Shortly after arriving on B'wynn, Lara learned about the Jarlin race. It was a big event and attracted drivers from many local star systems. The first time she saw the race was on a holoprojector in Sann' shop, watching with about a dozen of her co-workers. She was impressed by the speed of the different vehicles that competed and the dangerous terrain all around the town that the race ran over, but was perplexed as to why every racer was non-human.
After asking a local resident why this was the case, she was told that humans don't possess the quick reflexes needed for the vicious turns the course takes and the high velocities that the speeders maintain throughout the race. Lara wanted to see for herself if she could run the course so a few weeks later she took her own speeder out to try it. The speeder was an older model than the one she currently owned, but it still was capable of high velocities. She was easily able to complete the course in pretty good time and she was certain she could compete in the race. She was even confident that she could win it if she could somehow gain possession of a slightly better speeder and find the funds for the considerable entry fee.
It had taken five years of saving to obtain enough credits but she managed to do it and with the acquisition of a faster speeder she was just about there. One more night of tweaks would be all that she needed to have her speeder ready. She reflected back to earlier today when she was thinking about her life her on B'wynn not really having any excitement and just now realized that she WAS excited about the race tomorrow. It even stirred up some long dormant memories of her younger years in a place far from here. Tomorrow was going to be a good day…she could feel it.
Up ahead, Lara saw the turn off the main road that led back a few hundred meters to their home and as she took the turn, the open garage with a light illuminating the inside became visible. The garage sat just in front of a massive pile of junk that continued back for a kilometer or so up to the base of some small hills. She guided the speeder inside the garage, touching it down gently and shutting off the power to the engines. Outside the rain started to fall harder and BB-8 beeped at her indicating that they timed their arrival well.
"Yes we did. Good thing too" Lara replied as she hopped out. "I didn't really feel like being wet and chilled while working tonight"
The droid jumped out of the speeder right after Lara's feet hit the ground and she watched him immediately head towards the back wall of the garage where the tools they would need were stored
"You think we can get these inertial dampeners optimized for tomorrow?" Lara asked.
BB-8 tweeted out a positive beep as he was gathering material and Lara smiled to herself at her companion's never-ending optimism.
"Ok, time to get started", she replied.
He rolled back out in front of the speeder and handed her a medium sized hydrospanner. She looked at the tool in her hand then looked at the speeder and thought This is going to be a long night.