Why can't life be easy?

I had sort of imagined we would have an easy drive to Anchorhead; go to the hunter's lodge; organize a bounty for all willing to come with us; and be back at the slave camp with a small army while no one was the wiser and the droid was still under a ton of quicksand. I will admit I had even begun to indulge in all sorts of revenge fantasies. I would enjoy dismantling that trash canister piece by piece, keeping his mental functions and vocal cords for last so that we could carry on a conversation throughout the process.

But it was only a half-hour later that I noticed three dots on the horizon; dots that were persistently growing bigger and bigger. I pointed them out to Bastila. If I expected her to let out a string of curses at the sight, and I'm not sure if I did, then I was disappointed when she only took a sharp intake of breath.

The sand people were chasing us. Worse, their speeders seemed to be faster than ours. They were gaining on us minute by minute.

There looked to be about three speeders worth of them, about four of them on each speeder. They had weapons, at least several of those long, primitive rifles they carried. But I did not think they would shoot at us: they would not want to damage the speeder. Likely, they would catch up to us, pincer us from three different sides and fight hand to hand over the speeders. And as Bastila was driving the speeder, and there was no way I was going to fight away twelve sand people on my own, there was no good way to stop them.

Well, there was one way.

It was a a course of action I was not eager to pursue but it was the only one I could see. Over the next half-hour I ran over the options in my head, but failing to see any alternative, I made up my mind. Turning around, I sat with my face towards the back, facing our pursuers, who were now not far.

I stretched my hands forward, closed my eyes, and thought of how much I hated the sand people.

I thought of the slave camp, the backbreaking labor, the suns bearing down the oppressive heat upon me. I thought of the feeling of hunger and thirst.

I thought of all the other prisoners in the camp, subject to the same indignities.

I thought of all the other slaves they had captured.

I thought of the sand people themselves. I had seen nothing but cruelty from them, heard of nothing but cruelty from them towards outsiders. They had no art, no music, no literature. They were barely more than animals. What was the point of their existence? Don't give me some spiel about the rich tapestry of species in the galaxy. Better if they were all off dead. I felt nothing but disgust towards them.

I opened my eyes. The sand people were close now, a few speeder lengths away. Bastila began to turn; likely, she was going to try to wiggle us back and forth, to make it hard for them to pincer us; it was a good idea but ultimately pointless, for they outnumbered us three speeders to one. I took all of my disgust and channeled it out: from my body, to my hands, into my fingers.

Lightning shot out from my hands towards the other speeders.

By the standards of the Sith, it was a pretty poor display of force lightning. Not only did it take several minutes to call up, but it would have been too weak to penetrate the defenses of even an acolyte. It would not have worked agains the droid's shielding, were he present. But here it did the job. I could smell the charred flesh in the air. There was smoke coming out of the speeders, all of whom were in the process of crashing into the sand.

I turned to face forward again, not needing to see more of the carnage. I felt Bastila stiffen, as she had seen what transpired. But she said nothing as we sped on towards Anchorhead.