Escape from Tattoine

by Zoltan Berrigomo

This story explores an offshoot of KOTOR where Bastila does not have a special force talent; she is a padawan like any other. The narration comes from an original male character, with some force affinity but rejected by both Jedi and Sith, who will encounter Bastila on Tattoine. They share a spark, but will he be able to persuade Bastila to look beyond his dubious past?

5. Chapter 5: March Across the Desert

I have always wondered how it is that the sand people do not find those body suits insufferably hot. It must be some quirk of their alien physiology. For that matter, I am not aware of anyone who has seen a live sand person out of their suit, so that it is likely something of a mystery.

I had good reason to ponder this, for once the sand people captured me, they bound my hands and put a chain on my feet; and then, heaven help me, they stuffed me into a spare suit they seem to have brought along for just this purpose. My attempts to speak to them were either ignored or, worse, met with a wave of the cattle prod, so that I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut. Once I was inside that puffy piece of dirty linen, they began marching me across the desert.

It was not a bad plan. From afar, it had looked like a caravan of sand people trudging along the landscape. One had to be close to see a human face sticking out of my suit.

I will not tell you much about the march. I will only say that I felt close to fainting with heat, but, strange as it may sound, I had no energy to faint. My feet were connected by rope to the feet of the sandperson in front of me, and were I not to match his movements, I would be thrown to the ground and dragged along. Fortunately, there was little zig-zagging: the caravan was marching straight to unknown destination , and I was able to keep track of our direction to a reasonable degree. Given that the sand people raided the settlements around these parts and carried off slaves, it seemed reasonable to think that there were slave camps, and I was being marched to one of them. I would need to know how to get back if I were to have any hope of escape. No doubt the Rodian who approached me was taking a cut of every slave captured through this trap.

As far as I knew, no one had seen these slave camps first-hand: the people who were abducted never came back. Let's hope, I thought as I was dragged along, that I may be the first.