The sand melted into the tri sun sky as if swept by a paint brush. Only two suns had risen and the heat formed mirages that teased it into water on the horizon. As the rescue team crossed the Dune Sea, the sand eddied about their boots. Wordlessly, they aimed for a stationary Sandcrawler; its bulk would, at least, offer them temporary shade on their journey. The mobile work-station was the only significant feature in sight, excluding the Czerka boundary markers. As they drew near, Pol picked up a nervous energy from the miners who were posted at the machinery.
The captain of the mining party hailed them as they came over the dunes. The captain's face glowed where it had been sandblasted and sunburned, as if in tribute to his orange hair. "Are you the rescue team?" he asked in a heavy accent.
Pol answered. "Strictly speaking, no, but we will help if we can. What happened here?"
The captain shook his head angrily. "The Sand People. Ack, here they come again! How do they do that?" A group of Tuskan Raiders stormed over the dunes, waving their gaffi sticks aggressively. The miners blanched and raised their arms. Canderous lead the charge against the Sand People. HK gave a jovial indication of preparedness, and Pol commanded him to the impenitent slaughter the droid had been created for. Jolee sighed sadly, and with reluctance, ignited his lightsaber.
As the last of the fifteen Tuskan Raiders fell, a second wave of the Sand People advanced. Pol wiped the grit from her brow and leapt to meet them, amid blaster fire from her droid. Canderous gave a war cry and belted the largest of their assailants to the sand. With a forceful sweep of his scimitar he removed the raiders head. He found his woman and redirected her with a hand signal, so that they stood back to back, ready to fend off the next attack. Pol and Canderous didn't have long to wait.
Jolee immobilized the last group with the Force as they emerged from the heat haze. HK aimed at the static targets. He annihilated them in seconds, delivering neat shots to their heads and dropping them as though they were no more than a walking horde of animated rags.
The miners showed their gratitude with a boisterous cheer, Pol was sickened by the levity and she inwardly cringed. Yeah, we're real big heroes, Force; I hate this kind of warfare. "I don't know how you did that, but you have my thanks, lassie." The mining captain regrouped his employees, ready to head back to the town.
"Wait! Before you go, can you tell me anything more about the Sand People? We're looking for their enclave." Pol asked, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun.
"Their camp is to the west of here, but you'd be balmy to go round there. They'll shoot you on sight with their turrets."
"The Sand People have turrets?" Canderous looked incredulously at the dead Tuskan warrior at his feet. He had gauged them to be rather primitive, given their weaponry, and reliance on numbers and brute strength to overcome a target.
"Aye, probably got them from the Jawas. They're the little folk who salvage the Czerka leavings. No doubt they'll come and wreck this Sandcrawler of ours when we leave." He shook his head pessimistically. "They don't know how to operate the turrets properly; you could use that to your advantage." He said to Canderous.
"How so?" Pol asked. She was tired of people assuming the Chief was in charge based on his age, size and gender. Maybe I should go back to the black robes and mask…
The mining captain returned his attention to her when he answered. "Well, from what I hear, they send a runner to turn them on when an enemy approaches."
"So they're not set to differentiate between friendly and hostile targets." Pol surmised thoughtfully. The retired Jedi sighed heavily, Jolee could see where this was going and didn't like it. Canderous grunted in acknowledgement and regretfully assessed the bloodstained rags of the ex-Sand People.
"Aye, that would be it, lassie. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get my men back to Anchorhead." The miners left the shade of the battered Sandcrawler and headed back to town.
"HK did a neat job on these ones." Canderous pointed to the felled Sand People with the least stains. Carbon scorching marred the rags across their faces, but burn marks aside, they were relatively clean looking.
The HK unit trilled mechanically. "Proud declaration: That's droid efficiency at its best!"
"Grizzly son of a food synth, isn't he?" Jolee grumbled. "If we take the head wrappings from the ones your Mandalorian mutilated and the robes from the ones HK terminated, we could have ourselves a convincing enough costume to get past the turrets."
Pol started on the closest cadaver. "This is so disrespectful. They're so heavily covered; in this heat it hardly seems practical. It must meet some ideological principle. This means they'll be really pissed when they see us aliens in their garb." She added as an afterthought.
"You're right on that one, girly." Jolee mumbled. "They won't care much for our appropriation of their dress."
"You'd rather be cut down by their turrets than offend them, even after they attacked us without provocation?" Canderous asked sardonically as he roughly stripped one of the fallen warriors. He threw its gaffi stick to one side, the finishing piece to their costume.
"Hell no!" Jolee laughed. "But I wouldn't call their attack unprovoked. We are on their grounds, Canderous."
"They have no way of knowing we won't defile their lands and subjugate their people, as colonists have done for the last few
millennia." Pol smiled sadly. "And here we are defiling their dead!"
"It is in the name of peace, Pol." Jolee reassured.
Canderous dragged a body over, checking it for size. "You Jedi are crazy."
"Ex-Jedi, son," Jolee corrected the Mandalorian "Now what do you suppose these wiggly doodads are for?" He held some bizarre looking items in his brown palm, while he stroked his goatee, perspicaciously rambling about their probable origins.
The three humans stripped to their civvies and began the lengthy task of donning the heavy clothes of the Sand People. Pol made most of the corrections to their dress, and felt aberrantly maternal as she did so. She examined the fully clad corpses of the Tuskan Raiders for reference while HK kept a faithful watch on the dunes.
It was agreed that their personal effects should be hidden nearby, for easy retrieval on their return. A medium sized faux-Tuskan; Jolee Bindo picked a Czerka boundary marker. The largest of the fake Sand warriors; Canderous disputed the selection sarcastically. "Pfft, yeah, I can see why you found this significant, seeing as there's only twenty thousand just like it in this featureless terrain."
"Well, that Sandcrawler is unlikely to be here much longer with what I hear of the Jawas scavenging abilities. So a marker is our only option." Pol was swamped in the robes, and suffering a slow drain from the heat that seemed to suck her into a leaner, weaker version of herself. She looked back at the gigantic machinery, peering myopically through the strange eyewear of the Tuskan raiders. Her words came out huskily, stifled by the wrapping.
"That's giving them a lot of credit, Champ. There's no way those stunted scrap haulers could move all that in a day."
"Wanna bet? You shouldn't underestimate the height deficient Chief. We did that with Calo, remember? And what did that teach us?" Pol touched her face for the umpteenth time, she felt claustrophobically constricted by the clothes. And to think I complained about those hateful Jedi robes.
"Bah!" Canderous exclaimed.
Pol gave in, she had promised herself that she would endure and that she wouldn't ask, but curiosity won out. "Oh frack it, I have to ask. How hot is it, HK?"
"Answer: It is 120 degrees Fahrenheit, Master, and only two suns have risen." HK responded with a tone of deep portent. "Statement: My core temperature is almost twice that amount. Surface temperature of unit HK-47 is 160. Recommendation: In the interest of meatbag safety, it world not be advisable to touch my chassis at this time."
"Um, HK, it's not safe to touch you anytime."
"Acknowledgement: Oh Master, you flatter me. But in this instance, it would serve you and your meatbag companions well to be mindful of the burns they would receive should physical contact be made."
"HK, I need you to tag that marker." Pol pointed to the marker that Jolee had buried their gear below. HK cocked his wrist and set fire to the marker with his flamethrower. Pol yelled. "I said tag it not toast it!"
"Placating proclamation: Master, I have no other means by which to distinguish this marker from the rest."
"Just extinguish that!" At her word, HK doused the post. The reflector that winked brightly in the charred Plasteel ceased its eternal revolution, welded by HK's flamethrower, into an innovative position.
Jolee nodded his approval, "The roasted marker, shouldn't be too hard to find."
They headed in the direction of the commune, armed only with the gaffi sticks of the fallen warriors. Canderous hefted his experimentally. "You could really do some damage with one of these." He stated, bringing it down into his gauntleted palm with a sickly thud.
Pol's mind went out to their weapons and gear hidden below the melted marker. "Let's hope we don't have to."
The group gained the approach to the enclave with ease. Packs of Banthas stumbled about the dunes, watched by Tuskan Herdsmen. The fraudulent Sand People loped along the dunes in an intrepid imitation of the Sand Peoples gait. HK tromped along beside them. They had been certain that the eight foot red droid would illicit a response from the natives. The fact that he didn't suggested that turrets were not the only foreign tools in the Sand Peoples arsenal. They passed the turrets at the entry to the settlement without difficulty, but were halted by a guard who honked and hooted noisily. His message was clear even without HK's translation.
"HK go on Translate and tell him we mean no harm, tell him that we only want to talk." Pol ordered hastily. The droid complied. After a short discussion, he addressed his mistress.
"Translation: He is surprised, Master, as am I. But he is outraged by your appearance; he demands you remove the clothing of his people immediately. Shall I roast him, Master?"
"No HK. Tell him we will comply, and explain that we had no choice but to don them to pass the turrets."
"Acknowledgment: As you wish, Master."
Pol and her companions stripped swiftly, stopping at their underwear. Jolee handed the clothing to a second guard apologetically, he adopted Pol's pose. They stood with their heads bowed slightly in polite submission. Canderous took a divergent approach; he stood his ground proudly and glared at the guard, until Pol elbowed him in the ribs. Taking her hint, he relented vaguely by dropping the challenge from his gaze.
"Translation: We are being taken to a holding cell to await an audience with the chieftain."
Pol hesitated. "Ask him how long that is likely to take."
"Caution: Such a question might be considered belligerent on your part, Master. Query: do you wish me to ask it anyway?"
"Never mind HK, we will go peacefully."
Five guards escorted them roughly through the Hessian lined pathways of the open air camp. A warrior prodded Pol in the back with his gaffi stick when she tried to get a glimpse past one of the wooden doorways they were passing. Seeing that she had overstepped her mark, she corrected herself, but not before Canderous complained about the treatment of his woman. "Watch yourself." He growled at the Tuskan Guard aggressively. His escort cracked him with a gaffi for his insolence as they were rudely shoved into a small cell.
It was standing room only in the cramped space and HK took up a large portion of it. The humans kept their distance from the broiling hot exterior of his framework. Pol sagged and leaned against Canderous. She rubbed his back, where the guard had struck him. There was no need, he was already healing, but Canderous was receptive to her touch despite the intolerable heat. He smiled in spite of their predicament and used the opportunity to conduct a thorough examination of Pol's figure.
She stood calmly in the baking heat, boldly adorned in the racy lingerie Mission had purchased. Sweat beaded on her lip and brow as she stroked his back absently. Strands of hair slicked down across her cheek when the moisture had fought gravity for it and won it free of her hair clasp. The most of it fell limply over her shoulders. Canderous's gaze fell past the ends of her hair inexorably drawn to her cleavage. "Nice boots." He quipped in Mando'a.
Pol answered back flirtatiously, "You got a license for that firearm, soldier?"
HK commenced translation. "Translation…"
"Whoa! HK, don't translate that, I'm too old for their nonsense." Jolee protested urgently.
"Relieved acknowledgement: Canceling translation. I shall resume interpretation on request. Observation: The Master's statement was ambiguous. Admission: I was unsure of how to translate it."
"I bet you were." Jolee said with a chuckle.
"Observation: My scans indicate that the Mandalorian is unarmed, contrary to the implication of my Master's comment…"
Pol laughed, "HK-47 that will do."