The next day dawned bright, clear and fresh with a powder blue sky. The twins didn't realise how cold it got in the desert at night, but thankfully they'd survived under their blanket amongst the trash thanks to each other's body heat. Sitting up stiffly and stretching in their grotty den, the twins rubbed their eyes and shivered in the cool air. Leia handed Luke some of the food and they finished the last of their supplies for breakfast before heading out. The sun had now risen higher in the sky and touched them with golden light, warming them through after the long night. They walked into the busy town with renewed strength from the day before. Looking like the usual street children that inhabited the small city, their messy hair, sunburnt skin, bad smell and dirty clothes blended right in. With the coins Luke had taken, they bought some bacta packs for their wounds and blistered feet, and Leia was able to treat the tender bump on the back of her head.
They leaned against a sandy wall in the shade by a busy market square and ate some deliciously sticky sweet cakes whilst they figured out what they were going to do next. They had explored parts of the surrounding area earlier and wandered through the dusty streets and narrow passages with a cautious sense of curiosity. Thick black cables had stretched over their heads from house to house like skipping ropes, and rafters supported sun-bleached rags which moved gently in the breeze as they offered precious shade below. They'd wandered past endless beige box-like houses with domed roofs and metal structures that arranged themselves in all sorts of odd places and shapes. Leia could only guess at what all the mechanics were for.
Alarmingly, they'd seen stormtroopers dotted around the city on patrol. The armed men both terrified and angered her - she remembered what Luke told her about them shooting mom with a stun ray and her blood boiled. They looked almost identical to the same ones they'd just escaped from - and so they took great care to blend in with their surroundings, and to manipulate the Force to keep their senses keen for signs of danger.
They hadn't seen anywhere resembling a security station or town hall or any kind of institutional place that may have a HoloProjector they could ask permission to use without being detected by the soldiers. But what they had seen was an overwhelmingly diverse menagerie of creatures and aliens and humans who gathered in the small city, walking amongst the bustling market stalls, in and out of dark arched doorways and drinking lazily in small cafes. Coming from a small town with only a handful of aliens and wildlife, it was a wonder to the children, and several times they had caught themselves staring open-mouthed when it was very rude to do so.
Leia watched as a small squealing bat creature was roasted on a spit and crinkled her nose in disgust, which then throbbed with pain. They were both deeply sunburnt in the face.
Looking over at her brother, she noticed all the changes in his appearance since they had been taken from home. Under his already peeling sunburn she could see bruises blossoming from the stormtrooper who had beat him when they had escaped from the prison. His lip was split too and he looked a mess, though she doubted she looked any better.
"You need bacta all over your face, you've got bruises."
"I know," he said with a mouthful of icing. "I can feel it. I'll put some on later, feels like we'll get more sunburnt today."
A light breeze flowed past them, swirling the sand and lifting the hair about Leia's face which had become incredibly tangled without the regular brushing she was made to do at home. She pushed it back behind her ears and took another good look around, wondering where they were going to be able to find someone to help them send their urgent message. Stretching out her senses as dad had taught her, he stayed alert for the soldiers. As she was scanning the crowd, she was disconcerted to notice that they were being silently watched from afar.
A large gang of street children on the other side of the market square were staring at her and her brother. Her heart began to race. Leia couldn't discern if the gaze was friendly or not. A strong wariness overcame her - any incident could put them straight back on the prison ship.
"What should we do about those kids?" she turned away and asked Luke.
She watched as his blue eyes scanned the crowds and he noticed them too. He turned back to her, trying to look nonchalant like they didn't care they were being observed.
"They might know how to find a HoloProjector. Maybe they'll help us."
Leia ate her last crumb of cake and wiped her hands on her once white dress. "Or they might be bullies who don't trust outsiders. Remember Dumbon? If things turn bad, we don't want to have another incident and get caught using the Force. We would be taken back to prison."
He considered her words and nodded. "Let's go then, before they get any closer."
They both pushed off from the wall and, as casually as they could, retreated together down a sandy alleyway away from prying eyes. They came out into a smaller, less busy street lined with oil barrels and more bizarre aliens that walked amongst the sandy buildings. Womp rats scurried amongst the houses, snuffling for scraps of food, their sandy colour blending right into their habitat. They turned and headed down the street, but Leia and Luke could both feel that the children were following them and they quickened their pace. She felt Luke tense beside her and only had a moment to catch a glimpse of several stormtroopers coming their direction before he pulled her aside and they quickly entered the nearest shop to hide.
They only had a second to catch their breath before a gruff voice shouted at them from behind.
"Ay! No urchins allowed get outta here!" a hideously ugly blue flying creature waved his arms at them from behind a cluttered counter.
Leia stared wide-eyed at the alien, who was unlike any she'd ever seen. She took in the rest of the shop - piles of scrap and junk parts littered the place, teetering in tall precarious piles that looked as if one puff of wind would topple them. It smelt of oil and rust and dirt. Hundreds of small machine parts and coils of wire hung from thick cables across the ceiling like drying herbs, making the room feel small and cluttered. Small pit droids worked in the back room sorting through scrap and squabbling with one another.
"What are you staring at huh? Rude kids! Get outta here before I have to tell you again!"
Before he angered any more, Leia brought her attention back to the alien and brought forth her courage. In her politest and sweetest voice, she asked: "Please sir, do you have a HoloProjector we can use?"
He stared at her a minute before he leaned his head back and laughed heartily at her request. Leia bristled at his response and asked again, trying her hardest not to be rude.
"I said, please can we use your Holoprojector? We have some money we can give you in exchange."
This perked his interest. Immediately he stopped seeing them as worthless street children and looked closer at the two of them.
"How much money you got huh?"
Leia held out the remains of the coins Luke had taken. She had no idea what they were worth. The creature flew lazily over the counter and looked at the contents, hovering before them. He muttered and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Thas barely 'nough to buy a roast womp rat eh. No deal. Intergalactic messages get expensive. What you wanna use it for anyway huh?"
She exchanged a brief glance with Luke which the creature narrowed his bug eyes at. "We need to send a message to our relatives."
"Relatives? Why not ask your parents then ay? Street rats."
She ignored the insult and tried to remain sweet-voiced, though it was hard when she was a stranger to letting insults pass by unchecked. "We have no way of reaching them, please sir, we'll do anything to use it."
He scratched his stubbled blue chins with a filthy claw and pondered her words. "Aight, here's a deal kid. I'm retirin' real soon. I need this place cleaned up. You both help out cleanin' my shop and at the end of the day, you can send ya message."
Leia calmly accepted, though inside her heart jumped for joy. Bravely offering him her small hand, they shook on it. The bug creature introduced himself as Watto, and she told him their names. It looked like they were finally getting closer to finding their parents.
The children were used to hard work when training with their dad. He made them do exercises which helped their agility and swiftness. They were fast with good stamina; they could run and jump and hide with ease. But the work that Watto required of them was more physically demanding than anything they'd done before. The alien seemed like he would keep his promise, but cleaning the shop was not as simple as it had sounded at first. Leia had been expecting chores like mopping the floor or dusting some shelves, but instead found herself moving heavy machinery and cables as thick as her waist across the back yard. Between them they shifted ship parts and barrels, pipes and oil tanks, boxes and fuel containers. It was back-breaking work; messy, dirty and exhausting. The twin's arms and legs were soon shaking from the toll, covered in oil stains and dirt from the array of objects they'd had to carry.
The day wore on and the sun progressed slowly across the sky, and still they worked in the sweltering heat. The little droids bossed them about, and Leia was tempted more than once to kick their legs out from under them. Watto came to check on their progress several times, asking them to clean and lift and organise without any offer of a break or food. It seemed to Leia that the blue alien was trying to get them to do as much as possible before the sun set and that he was enjoying the free labour. She gritted her teeth in anger as she brushed debris from a newly revealed patch of floor, recently covered by part of a ship engine that Luke had wearily carried into the yard. She glanced over at Watto, who was reclining at the counter, counting money over his fat belly. Just a few more hours, she told herself, just endure a few more hours, then we can send that message.
By the end of the day, the twins were nearly faint with exhaustion. After recovering from the kidnapping, pod tumble and the desert trek, Leia thought they were finally on the mend, but the cleaning work had left them weak and even more filthy. She felt oily and sweaty and dry all at the same time, like her sweat throughout the day had turned into a layer of grime that clung to her from head to toe. There was filth beneath her nails and soot in her hair. With clothes matted with grease, sand and dirt, the twins finally sat together at the counter to use the projector Watto promised them. He gave them some privacy, flying off to the back of the shop to yell at the droids.
She exchanged a relieved glance with Luke and smiled wearily. He smiled back gingerly, for his face was red and from the heat. Her forearms, face, legs and scalp felt hot, and she knew she had been burned again as well by the twin suns. They would be suffering for their hard work tomorrow, but by then the message would be sent, and at least they could rest knowing that they'd done what their parents had asked of them. They had endured so much since the stormtroopers invaded their home, and now finally they were getting close to it all being over. Maybe once they sent the message, they would be rescued and reunited with their mom and dad.
Leia leaned forward and pressed the buttons to see what they'd do. After some fiddling about, the twins worked out how to access the HoloNet and searched for Alderaan's government information portal. They found a contact page, and submitted a request. They'd barely used the HoloNet back home, and she hoped fervently that their message would reach the right person somehow.
The projector beeped, indicating it was filming them and they began their message recording. Speaking without any prepared words, she began.
"I am Leia Kayla and this is my brother, Luke Kayla. We're nine years old and we're from the planet Bakura. We're sending a message to Alderaan as we have been instructed to do so by our father and mother, Ben and Priya Kayla, in case of an emergency," she looked over at Luke and he continued for her.
"This is an emergency situation. We are looking for our parents. We were kidnapped from our home by stormtroopers from the imperial army and taken to a prison for…some bad behaviour which we shouldn't have done. Because of this, our parents don't know where we are. We don't know if they're safe. But all we do know is that Bail Organa on Alderaan is a friend of our parents, and we ask him to help us find our mother and father, and to save us from the soldiers."
"We escaped from the prison into hyperspace in an escape pod," Leia continued. "We landed here on a plant called Tatooine, in a city called Mos Espa. We have been here-" Leia stopped and Luke's head shot up as they heard the sound of men outside.
It was well past closing time. Leia looked open mouthed and jumped out of her skin as the door to the junk shop suddenly burst open and flew across the room, smashing with a deafening crash into a pile of neatly stacked engine parts.
Into the room ran several armed stormtroopers, all holding black guns at the ready. They aimed at them, intending to fire. From behind them a tall figure emerged from the shadows. It ducked his head beneath the door frame as the darkness from outside morphed into a man, a shadowy nightmare of a creature, breathing heavily, with black eyes and a black cloak, shaped like a human but looking more alien than any they'd ever seen. She'd seen this creature on the news back on Bakura. He was called Darth Vader, the Emperor's right-hand man.