Chapter 9: Trustworthy Enough

Kyrr Geron's red-armored boot crunched as it stepped out of the ship and into the endless sands of Tatooine. Even through his helmet's tinted visor, the twin suns above the horizon almost blinded him before his eyes adjusted to the intense light. He primed the blaster rifle he was carrying.

Aleina Kaede had found her blaster in the cargo bay and returned it to its holster before going back to the cockpit. After that, she and Kyrr had agreed that it would be best to leave the ship and start setting their plan in motion as soon as possible.

Kyrr looked back as Aleina exited the ship and came to stand next to him, with one of his rifles slung across her shoulder. She had agreed that it would be wise to carry more than just her pistol, but she had been adamant that she would be able to use the rifle, if it really came down to it, with or without Kyrr's guidance. She had zipped up her black jacket to keep out the sand, and had put on a pair of black, leathery gloves. Kyrr watched as she pushed back her sleeve and pressed a red button on the thin control band strapped to her left wrist, which closed the narrow boarding ramp behind them with a hiss of air. Compared to the enormous cargo bay door, the boarding ramp made barely any sound as it clicked shut.

Kyrr turned to face Aleina. "What are we waiting around for? Let's get going," she said. She turned away and promptly walked off towards the city. Kyrr sprinted a few steps forward and caught up to her.

There was a strong wind that occasionally kicked sand into the air around them, and Kyrr was grateful to be wearing his helmet when he heard sand rasping and hissing against the outside of it. Aleina was struggling as the wind picked up; her eyes were almost squinted shut, and she was using her right hand to cover her face with her jacket collar in an attempt to protect her face from the sand. Kyrr sped up, walking into the wind, and positioned himself in front of her. She stayed close behind him.

The cloudless sky was a dusty blue, and through the low-lying haze of airborne sand, Kyrr could see Mos Eirat about a hundred yards away, shimmering in the waves of heat radiating off the desert. The architecture of the tan-ish plaster buildings was the standard combination of blocky shapes with domed roofs, and there was a dense throng of people walking the streets belonging to numerous races, including a scantily-clad Twi'lek female who momentarily caught Kyrr's eye before disappearing around a corner.

And it was hot. Incredibly, swelteringly hot. After only a few minutes, Kyrr could already feel the plates of his beskar heating up in the suns. Should get a coolant system installed in this thing, he thought.

Kyrr was grateful when they finally entered the city, where the shadows cast by the buildings offered some refuge from the intense heat, and also blocked some of the wind. Aleina removed her hand from her collar and spoke to Kyrr for the first time in what had seemed like hours.

"There's a cantina in this section of Mos Eirat," she said quietly, very close to Kyrr. She kept her eyes straight ahead, but had leaned over toward him, speaking into where his ear would be, if he hadn't been wearing a helmet. "There are some dealers there we… I could talk to. But I'm not really sure about this... I don't want to rush blindly into a deal right away, necessarily…" Her eyes shifted, and would move with the crowd of street-walkers for a moment, and then instantaneously change directions to follow somebody else.

Kyrr turned his head slightly toward her. "Come on, Kaede, a little while ago you were eager to get on with things. We can't slow down…Unless you have something else you'd like to say."

"I'm not saying we should slow down…" She had gotten closer to Kyrr, still looking nervously around. "I'm just -"

She stopped talking. She had accidentally brushed Kyrr's arm while absent-mindedly running her hand through her hair.

Afraid?

She took a small step away from Kyrr, and swiveled her head to speak directly to him. She saw two immense, bright yellow orbs, reflected in the dark, slitted void of Kyrr's helmet. "It's nothing. You're right, we do need to keep going."

The city of Mos Eirat turned out to be much bigger than Kyrr had assumed it was when he had seen it from the air. It must stretch for hundreds of miles! he thought, as he followed Aleina through sidestreets and back alleys in the hot and humid atmosphere, their footsteps creating a quiet, dry, swishing rhythm in the sand. They mixed with thronging crowds consisting of members of countless alien races, some of which Kyrr had never even seen before. He thought he had encountered every sentient species the galaxy had to offer on culturally-diverse Coruscant, but the people he passed in the streets of Mos Eirat continuously proved that assumption wrong; he couldn't identify quite a few of the beings he saw.

He had heard of Jawas, however, and recognized them by their descriptions: they were generally about half as tall as a normal humanoid, robed in rough, brown fabric, with yellow eyes that shone out of the unnaturally dark emptiness under their hoods, where everyone assumed their faces must be. Kyrr once knew a man back on Coruscant, who had complained about the Jawas he had encountered on his last "business" trip to Tatooine. The man had just gotten back, and was chatting over drinks with his friends on a balcony in the Traviss Entertainment District. "I hate those little cretins," he had said, momentarily pausing as he raised his glass to his lips. "They smell terrible if you get too close, and they always drive a hard bargain." Kyrr had waited for him to put the glass back down on the table, before he had pulled the trigger from a higher balcony almost 500 meters away. Kyrr supposed long-range listening devices had their uses.

During their long walk, Kyrr saw a Jawa conversing with a green-skinned Twi'Lek man. As Kyrr approached, the Twi'Lek muttered something in what sounded like the Bocce language, to which the Jawa responded with a loud and high-pitched cry of "Nyeta! Gad'wa toineepa!" Kyrr didn't know enough Jawaese to understand what it meant, but the Jawa was very animated, waving his short arms in the air and gesturing energetically, and was obviously not satisfied with whatever it was the Twi'Lek had said. As Kyrr walked by, he could see that the soft-spoken Twi'Lek man looked taken aback as the small creature continued to shout at him so rapidly that Kyrr had no hope of making out individual syllables. He decided, then and there, that he definitely did not like Jawas.

Their route through the city seemed to go on and on, and Kyrr was beginning to wonder if perhaps Aleina had gotten lost, and was just too stubborn or afraid to tell him.

Kyrr had never been to Tatooine before, and at this point he was just hoping that the buildings had indoor temp regulators. Every time their journey took them into the shade, Kyrr could feel the temperature drop by several standard degrees; stepping back into the sunlight felt like stepping out of an oven and into a blast furnace. Kyrr could see that Aleina's face had turned a more pinkish color from the heat, and every now and then he would feel a bead of sweat roll down his own cheek inside his helmet.

That's it. As soon as this whole deal is done with, I'm buying a coolant system for this suit.

Kyrr wondered why Aleina, who had supposedly been to Mos Eirat so often, wasn't used to the heat by now. Then he realized that perhaps there was no getting used to it. As he was contemplating this, Aleina stopped in her tracks. She looked back at Kyrr behind her.

"Lost?" he asked.

"I just have this bad feeling, that – no, I'm not lost."

"Good. Let's keep moving, then."

Aleina turned away hesitantly, but then kept walking. Kyrr followed her along the street and then into yet another shady alley, just another space between two beige blocks of Tatooinian architecture, seemingly the thousandth they had passed through.

They had barely set foot in it, when a large human male stepped out from behind a thick, exposed, and rusty pipe leading from the ground into a wall. There was a devious look on his wrinkled, leathery, dark tan face, and in one hand he held a small, cobbled-together-looking blaster pistol. He stood there aiming the blaster at Aleina, poised to shoot. His eyes focused first on Aleina's face, then the rifle she was carrying, and finally Kyrr, who stepped forward imposingly, his own rifle raised. The expression on the man's face melted away into an apprehensive look of defeat as he took in the sight of Kyrr's blood-red Mandalorian armor, and his muscles lost their tension. His arms dropped to his sides, and he calmly and casually walked past Kyrr and out of the alley. Kyrr watched as the would-be attacker turned the corner, and was gone from sight.

Well, that was… odd, to say the least.

"Friend of yours?" Kyrr asked Aleina.

"Definitely not," Aleina replied. "But I feel like I've seen his face before… Did I mention I had a bad feeling about this?"

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, exactly. I think I just saved your skin, though. Seems like this plan is working out pretty well so far, huh?"

"Yeah, I suppose it is…"

"By the way… Are you sure you're not lost?"

"I already told you, I know where I'm going! Can't you trust me?"

"No."

Aleina didn't respond right away. She looked somewhat distant, for a moment. "Right," she said quietly, eyes downcast. She looked up again. "Of course not. The cantina should be up ahead, along this next street on the left."

With that, she turned around and continued walking.

She seems trustworthy enough, Kyrr thought as he followed close behind.

After a long hiatus, I have started to work on Kyrr Geron again. It's hard to believe that it has been almost two years since I began this story, and I would like to believe that my writing has improved somewhat in that time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far into Kyrr Geron. If you want to see more chapters, be sure to say so in a review!