clapped him on the shoulder. "I don't know how you did it,
recruit, but I have a feeling you've been marked for a one-in-a-
million career!"
The familiar background hum of the starship didn't comfort
Davin Felth. The sharp oil-on-metal smell, harsh lighting, and
polished decks of the huge troop transport should have made Davin
feel right at home- but ever since receiving the hush-hush orders
from Colonel Veers's command section, he had been totally
confused.
No one questioned the sealed orders when he reported to the
Imperial troop transport, and no one explained exactly what he was
supposed to do. All he knew was that now, two hundred light-years
from Carida, he was assigned to a detachment of storm-troopers,
setting off for some forsaken planet.
Stormtroopers!
He drew in a breath and tried to explain for the third time to
the man staring at papers on the desk, ignoring him. "Captain
Terrik, you just don't understand. I've spent the last day trying
to find out what is going on, but no one has the authority to help
me. I was told personally by Colonel Veers that I would receive an
assignment worthy of my talents. I'm an AT-AT operator, not a ...
a foot soldier!"
The officer's smoothly shaven head snapped up so that Davin
could see the man's eyes. Deep, penetrating, and utterly without
fear, Captain Terrik bored his gaze into Davin like a lightsaber.
"Stormtroopers are not foot soldiers!" He placed his hands on his
desk and stood, barely holding back his trembling. "If it was up
to me, you Jawa slime, I'd have spaced you when we first hit
vacuum. I'm well aware of Colonel Veers's orders, and we're going
to follow his directions to the micron!"
"Very well," said Davin, somewhat relieved. He straightened and
looked smartly around the cabin. Headquarters for the small
detachment of twenty Stormtroopers on board the ship, Captain
Terrik's cabin was decorated with battle streamers, plaques,
paintings of battles against the Rebels, and a holo of Lord Vader.
"You will show me to my correct assignment, then." He smiled at
the captain. Terrik trembled more visibly and turned redder by the
second.
"Stand at attention!" growled Captain Terrik. "Listen up, you
mynock bait! It took me all day to confirm those orders, and
Emperor only knows why Colonel Veers wants this. But you belong to
me now, Felth! We've got another month of maneuvers before we get
to Tatooine, and I intend to use that time whipping you into
shape."
"Tatooine?" said Davin, his face growing white. "What's that?
There must be some kind of mistake."
"Oh, no." Captain Terrik grinned wolfishly. He picked up
Davin's orders lying on his desk and shook them under Davin's
nose. "My detachment of storm-troopers is relieving the Thirty-
seventh Detachment that has been stationed at Mos Eisley on
Tatooine. We'll be assigned to the governor, but we're not in his
chain of command-my superior is in the next sector, half a light-
year away. In case you haven't noticed, we're not going directly
to Tatooine, so I'll have a month to break in a young Jawa slime
like you, turn you into a real stormtrooper. You'll learn pretty
quick what it's like to be a foot soldier." Captain Terrik spat
the words out of his mouth and grinned at Davin. "Any more
questions, golden boy?"
Davin felt what hope he had left seep out of him. Standing at
rigid attention just microns in front of Captain Terrik's face,
Davin knew what it was like to jump from a crashing ship into a
pit of burning fuel.
Davin Felth was in the best shape of his life when he prepared
to land on Tatooine. But getting there on board the troop
transport the past month had been pure hell.
The twenty Stormtroopers in the detachment had all pitched in
in some way or another, "helping" Davin get up to speed in the
rigorous training. Their normal three-month period of
disciplining, schooling, and physical fitness was compressed into
a never-ending nightmare for Davin. The stormtroopers were not
about to allow a mere AT-AT operator, although a graduate of
Carida Basic Military Training, into their esteemed ranks without
passing through a minimum of ritual.
Davin did not have the time to be homesick or lonely, although
his thoughts sometimes drifted to his two roommates back at
Carida. He wondered where they had been assigned.
Ten hours before landfall, Davin marched up to the
quartermaster and collected his desert gear heat-reflective
armor, comlink, filtermask, blaster rifle, blaster pistol,
temperature-control body glove, utility belt, energy source, and
concussion grenade launcher. He staggered to his cabin under the
load of equipment
Davin donned his helmet with automatic polarized lenses. Fully
outfitted in the desert-terrain gear, he clunked to the mirror in
his small cabin and looked himself over. Like it or not, he was
finally a storm-trooper.
He used his chin to click on his chinmike, activating the
comlink. He tapped into stormtrooper radio traffic for the entire
troop ship "Access to AT-AT bay now open." "Cold assault and
aquatic assault detachments reporting still in stasis." "Tatooine
landing for refurbishment ready when ready."
A series of voices checked in. Davin thought he recognized some
of the stormtroopers' voices.
There was a long pause of silence. Sounding irritated, Captain
Terrik's voice came over the comlink. "Ten twenty-three? Are you
up and ready?"
It took Davin a full two heartbeats to realize that Captain
Terrik was speaking to him.
"Ten twenty-three ready, sir."
"Report to the landing craft, ten twenty-three. Prepare to
disembark. Move it!"
"Yes, sir." His name stripped away, Davin had been assigned the
emotionless number 1023 as part of his stormtrooper
indoctrination. Their zealous devotion to duty demanded denial of
the individual, pledging their allegiance only to the Emperor.
Unwilling to make that commitment, Davin turned his thoughts to
his family, his friends, as the training attempted to squeeze away
his memories. His fellow stormtroopers reveled in the mystery that
surrounded their existence, their lack of identity. With no one to
turn to or confide in, Davin felt miserable.
It only took a moment to gather up his meager belongings. The
clothes he had taken with him from home seemed useless now, but he
kept them as a reminder of the life he used to have. He stuffed
them in a sand-colored duffel bag and carried them with his
weapons down to the landing craft. He kept to the side of the
corridor as he walked, trying to keep out of people's way. A group
of naval troopers double-timed around the corner.
The corridor widened to the immense landing bay. Stepping
inside, he felt as if he were outdoors. Worker droids ran along
scaffolding that reached higher than an AT-AT; the bay
was so wide
that he had trouble seeing to the opposite side. He set off for
the landing craft, halfway across the immense bay, to join the con
tingent of stormtroopers.
"Ten twenty-three?"
Davin swung his gear down and faced Captain Terrik. "Present,
sir."
"You're assigned to scout unit Zeta. Something came up. We're
delaying reporting to the garrison, so pile your gear in the
storage compartment with the rest of the detachment."
"Yes, sir."
Davin lined up and waited for Captain Terrik to finish his
paperwork. Accepting a salute from the officer on deck, Captain
Terrik faced the waiting storm-troopers. A warbling sound came
over Davin's comlink, informing him that Captain Terrik was going
to a secure communications mode, using frequency-jumping
techniques known only to the stormtroopers' sensors. "Quickly
now-change of orders. We're deploying to the surface, bypassing
Mos Eisley to participate in a search-and-destroy mission."
Someone asked, "What are we searching for, sir?"
"An escape pod. It jettisoned from a Corellian Corvette evading
Lord Vader's Star Destroyer and landed somewhere on Tatooine."
Breaking military silence, a gasp went up over the secure link.
"Lord Vader - here?"
"That's right," said Captain Terrik grimly. "Now double-time on
board the landing craft!"
Although Davin was the last to board the spacecraft, he was set
into his station before all the other storm-troopers in his
detachment. Lord Vader! The very thought of the Dark Lord being so
close to the backwater planet sent a chill through Davin. He
hadn't felt this strange since he had learned through the grape
vine that Colonel Veers had never even mentioned Davin's
"kneeling" defense for the AT-AT to his superiors. It was almost
as if Colonel Veers didn't want anyone to know of the fatal flaw
in the giant walker's design.
The stormtroopers sat mute as they left the troop transport,
their home for the past month. Visual images of Tatooine flashed
inside their helmets, transmitted from the intelligence network
orbiting Tatooine. Computer-generated graphics pinpointed the most
likely landing place of the small escape pod.
As part of scout unit Zeta, Davin was tasked with
reconnoitering the rocky highlands. He gripped his blaster rifle
and stole a glance at the rest of the storm-troopers waiting
patiently in two rows beside him. Everyone studied the data dump
from the mother ship. He wondered how the others could remain so
calm when they were about to embark on a mission. And for Lord
Vader at that! He just wondered why the pod was so important.
The scouting craft landed with a bump. The side yawned open,
spilling in hot air and brilliant sunshine. Davin pushed out and
joined the other stormtroopers, who quickly lined up in front of
Captain Terrik No one spoke over the comlink until Davin heard
Captain Terrik's voice.
"Lord Vader's Star Destroyer is mapping the planet with a
sensor scan, trying to locate the escape pod. It must have buried
itself on landing, or was hidden by some Rebel sympathizers. We
have a preliminary position on the pod from just before it
impacted, so we'll spread out and sift through all the sand on
this planet if necessary to find it."
"Why is the pod so important, sir?" Davin surprised himself by
blurting out the question; he only hoped that Captain Terrik would
be so busy that he wouldn't yell at him.
"It's carrying classified material, and that's all you need to
know. The point is that we need to find it ... or we'll have to
explain to Lord Vader why a detachment of the Emperor's Own failed
in their duty. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then listen up. Alvien and Drax squads, cover the next
quadrant. Zeta squad, come with me. Headquarters at Mos Eisley has
grav-lifted in three dewbacks to aid in the search-they can cover
more territory than we can and will lead us to the pod if they get
a scent. Start a circular search pattern, move."
The desert terrain was featureless, ever-shifting. Davin
crunched his way through the sand, not sure what he was looking
for, but knowing that some kind of evidence from the escape pod's
landing had to be present. He climbed a small hill. The desert
spread out in every direction. They might as well have been the
only ones on the planet.
Seeing a rise in the sand below him, he scooted down the ridge
and poked his blaster into the ground. He struck something hard!
He clicked on the comlink. "Captain Terrik, ten twenty-three
reporting. I think I found the pod."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir." Davin excitedly dug into the ground with his
blaster butt . . . only to unearth a large rock.
Captain Terrik appeared over the ridge just as Davin made his
discovery. "Ten twenty-three, what are you doing!"
"Sorry, sir." Discouraged, he trudged back up the small hill
and joined t he rest of his squad continuing the search.
After arriving from Mos Eisley, a giant lizardlike dewback was
assigned to each squad. Davin was not given the opportunity to
ride the monstrous reptilian beast, but that suited him fine.
Every step the scaly animal took reverberated in the sand.
The search seemed to last forever. Davin lost count of the
breaks he took, and per Imperial orders, they were forced to stay
in their suits and drink the distilled water flown in from Mos
Eisley with the dewback.
Setting out to cover another part of the quadrant, Davin
spotted a glint out of the corner of his eye. There . . . whatever
it was just caught the light from Tatooine's second sun.
He almost cried out, but clamped his mouth shut. Clutching his
blaster, he bounded for the glint of light. Slowly, the object
took shape. Half-buried in the sand, the object looked scorched.
As he drew near, he made out the faint red and blue markings of an
escape pod.
There was no doubt in his mind now. "Captain Terrik, ten twenty-
three reporting. I've found the escape pod!"
"If this is another one of your daydreams, ten twenty-three-!''
"I'm positive, sir. It may not be what we're looking for, but
it has Imperial markings."
Minutes later Captain Terrik joined Davin by the object. A
stormtrooper riding a dewback appeared over the crest of a rise,
waiting for a signal that it was the right pod.
Captain Terrik surveyed the site. "Someone was in the pod. The
tracks go off in this direction."
Davin fished a mechanism from inside the escape pod. There was
only one thing that used such a device-an R2 unit. He held it up
so all could see. "Look, sir, droids!"
"All right. Form up. I'll inform Lord Vader the pod wasn't
destroyed. Now we've really got to move."
"Ten twenty-three reporting. They're not in the repair bay,
sir," said Davin Felth. He stood in the middle of a bay full of
droids, deep in the bowels of a Jawa sand-crawler. Cables
drooped
across the ceiling; tables with disassembled equipment were strewn
across the floor.
"You've all searched the entire sandcrawler?"
"Affirmative," answered each stormtrooper, calling off their
trooper numbers one by one.
"Form up outside."
Davin stepped across a Roche J9 worker droid lying on the metal
floor. Two Jawas stood just outside of the repair bay and muttered
between themselves, obviously displeased that the stormtroopers
would search their ship. Davin scanned the room one last time
before he left and counted off an Arakyd BT-16 perimeter droid, a
demolition droid, an R4 agromech droid, a WED 15 treadwell droid,
and an EG-6 power droid-but there was no R2, or even a protocol
unit that was often paired with an R2 droid.
A gaggle of Jawas followed him outside the cruiser. All Davin
could see of the little aliens were their bright eyes, looking out
of their flowing hooded brown robes. The rest of Zeta squad stood
waiting for him, their blaster rifles held loosely by their sides.
The storm-troopers kept their backs to one another, watching all
sides for any possible attack.
As he joined the squad, Davin overheard Captain Terrik
conversing with the head Jawa on the officer's suit speaker. "You
are certain that the droids were sold to a moisture farmer at your
last stop?" After a series of high-pitched chatters came from the
Jawa, Captain Terrik turned and waved his arm back to Zeta squad;
he switched to the secure stormtrooper frequency. "Form up with
the rest of the detachment."
Zeta squad double-timed in the sand away from the Jawa
sandcrawler to join the remainder of the storm-troopers. They kept
guard over the sandcrawler on a rise just to the south. Three
enormous hairy banthas airlifted in from somewhere, two converted
GoCorp Arunskin 32 cargo skiffs, and a Ubrikkian HAVr A9 floating
fortress with two heavy blaster cannons waited on the other side
of the rise.
The Jawas yelled and shook their fists at the storm-troopers as
they left. The little brown-robed aliens then scurried around the
sandcrawler, preparing to continue their journey.
Captain Terrik's voice came over Davin's helmet. "Floating
fortress - fire when Teady upon the Jawa sandcrawler. When it is
destroyed, ride those banthas up to the wreckage and leave that
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 30
