A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away….
The sickening smack of armored fist against unprotected flesh was a sound not even the near deafening cacophony emanating from Juren’s Repairs could drown out. The proprietor did his best to stay out of people’s affairs, but recent events had made that difficult. Having returned to his homeworld of Talus nearly a year before, he’d watched as the quiet farming community he’d grown up in slowly transformed into the sort of retched hive of inequity and discord children were warned away from.
“Please, I’ll pay, I swear, just let me go,” called a pained voice from the street out front.
Setting his hydrospanner aside, Juren Manu stopped to brush errant strands of hair from his eyes. Swoop Gangs, groups of misguided youths frustrated with their lives for one reason or another, had taken to terrorizing the locals, shaking them down for whatever meager credits they could get. With local authorities neutered by the presence of an on world Imperial Base, hope that something would be done had died on the vine. Locals had established for themselves an informal curfew at dusk, but that had only emboldened the gangs, making them strike in broad daylight.
Juren found himself reflecting on his former life more and more often these days. As mechanic for Evasive Maneuvers Charter Service he’d spent almost ten years traversing the hyperspace lanes with an assortment of passengers and the ships crew, a group that had come to feel like a family. As the years wore on the crew began to drift apart, starting families and moving on with their lives. When it had finally been his turn to walk away, he’d opted for a quiet life back home, fixing things in as close to hermit like solitude as he could muster.
The damp thuds of punches and kicks continued, but the screaming had stopped.
Quiet life.
Right.
“Alright,” Juren said, closing his tool kit and turning to his R2 unit, “Boo, I think we’re done here. Run a diagnostic, and lock up when you’re finished. I’m going home.”
Lying to the droid was pointless, really. Boo had been Juren’s near constant companion since childhood, and the little astromech droid always knew what his owner truly intended. Often times before Juren knew himself. Wiping his grimy hands on an already filthy coverall didn’t do much to clean them, but the paunchy mechanic did it mostly out of habit anyway.
“Hey! Break it up, right now!” Juren called, stepping from his shops hanger door, hand inching towards the holdout blaster he kept holstered at the small of his back. He didn’t want to use it, but he was too busy this week to get himself killed.
All eyes turned to him, giving the victim, a prone and bloodied Duros, a minor reprieve. The tough who’d been administering the beating was a hard eyed Twi’lek that couldn’t possibly have been more than fourteen. Giving his lekku a shake he briefly looked as if he would resume the assault before shrugging and turning to Juren.
“What’s it to you, old man?” sneered the group’s de facto leader, “You trying to take his place?”
Juren stood his ground. One of Evasive Maneuvers’ long time passengers had been a Barabel monk, and while the holy man had taken a vow of non-aggression, he’d been more than happy to teach a bright eyed young mechanic a few things about self defense. When standing against one of the reptilian Barabel in combat, even Wookies tended to think twice.
“We can all walk away from this right now.” Juren said, carefully enunciating every syllable, to give the appearance of calm. “This doesn’t have to end in violence.”
“What if I want it to?” the Twi’lek asked, grinning as one of his compatriots threw him a vibroblade.
The gang leader advanced, licking his lips in anticipation, blade at the ready. Juren briefly considered simply pulling his weapon and burning a hole in the thug before assuming an unarmed combat stance. He’d pull the blaster when he had no other choice, and not a moment before.
As the Twi’lek raised the vibroblade to attack a shot rang out. Suddenly, the teenage punk found himself missing not only his weapon, but three of the fingers he’d been using to hold it.
“Echuta!” he screamed, clutching where his digits had been only moments before.
“You’re lucky that’s all you got,” echoed a gravely voice. Striding confidently down the lane came the voice’s owner, a fully armored Mandalorian with a large and intimidating rifle slung over his shoulder.
“I think it best you leave now, son,” he grated, pressing the T shaped visor close to the youth’s face, “Do I make myself clear?”
Perhaps thinking superior numbers could still grant him a victory, the Twi’lek turned to find that his troops had abandoned him. Gulping, he pressed his mutilated hand close to his chest and made a hasty retreat. When he made the mistake of stealing a glance back at his attacker, he was greeted only with an icy stare accentuated rather than hidden by his foe’s helmeted visage.
“Sir,” The Mandalorian said acknowledging Juren for the first time, “what you did there either makes you very brave or an utter di’kut.”
Juren had never been this close to a Mando before, let alone heard their language, but he could figure out what di’kut meant from context. If anything gave a being the right to call Juren a moron, it was saving him from a fight with someone half his age. It had been a long time since the sight of a man had made the mechanic uneasy, but this one fit the bill nicely. His sky blue armor gleaming in the sun, the Mando slapped Juren on the shoulder before turning and walking away, leaving the man he’d just saved dumfounded.
*******
The following day was full of mundane tasks, chief among them a patch job on a Nar Shaddaa agri-utility crop sprayer. The owners had been hounding him about it, so it became top priority. Juren didn’t like alienating customers, even jerks like these. The old Narsh Dirt Crate, as the ship was affectionately known, had sprung a few leaks over the years. It was never going to need to be sealed for vacuum, but keeping pesticides from leaking into the cabin and asphyxiating the captain would be optimal.
Aside from those “lucky” enough to get work at one of the starfighter manufacturing plants, Talus was a world of farmers. Farm equipment, subsequently, has a tendency to break down, leaving Juren with a steady stream of crop sprayers and repulsorplows to tinker with, putting food on the table and keeping him occupied. It wasn’t a glamorous life, or an exciting one, but it was the one he’d chosen for himself.
Boo chirped, signifying he was now comfortable with the seals‘ integrity. Juren briefly considered running a test to be sure. He could toss a low yield smoke grenade inside the ship, close the hatch and wait to see if the gas came pouring out. The drawback to that plan would be having to scrub the ship’s air filters before he returned it. No, he surmised, better to take the little droid’s word for it and call the job done.
Patting the little blue and gold R2 unit on the dome, Juren went to wash up. Nobody cared if you went to the cantina with dirty hands. Truth be told, the boys might actually respect him a little if he came in looking like he’d done a hard day’s work, a notion Juren quickly disregarded. He didn’t care what they thought of how he looked drinking his Talmog. Juren had elected for a utilitarian life, and he only went to the cantina begrudgingly. He had never been much of a drinker before, but life in the rural wastes of Talus did that to people.
Vomisa Station, just outside the Unez Cantina
Some years back, in a tapcaf on some backwater world he could no longer recall the name of, an old drunk had explained a theory that had always stuck with Juren.
“Corellians,” He’d slurred, “are crazy. Not just the planet, the whole system! They’ll go to war about any fool thing, and change sides at the drop of a hat!”
As Juren parked his speeder at the far edge of a mob of angry looking farmers, he started to consider the truth of those words.
“You shot my son!” screamed a furious Twi’lek woman, her lekku shaking. The object of her ire was none other than the blue armored Mandalorian from the day before. “What did he ever do to you? He’s just a child!”
This seemed to resonate with the crowd, a group who had no doubt been terrorized by the boy and his gang previously. That was apparently all in the past however, as the crowed murmured in agreement that something should be done.
“Lets teach this bucket head a lesson!” screamed a voice from the crowd, and the mob began to close in. To his credit, the Mandalorian didn’t even seem to notice what was going on around him. He continued to stand idle, looking off into the distance as if the mob wasn’t there.
When Juren heard a blaster shot ring out, he was more than a little surprised to find that he’d fired it. His blaster held aloft, he recovered his composure enough to give a stern look to the collected throng. He would have to consider his words carefully. Neither a well liked nor well respected member of the community, there was no chance the crowd would disperse simply on his say so.
What Juren had planned next was rendered moot as a battalion of Stormtroopers arrived. The Empire seemed to have no real interest in the day to day peacekeeping of the planet, but they’d always been quick to break up anything even remotely resembling a rebellion. Juren quietly slid his blaster into it’s holster, casually joining the crowd as they dispersed. He was feeling pretty confident that he’d made it, too, when he felt a firm hand grasp his shoulder.
“You and I just can’t seem to stay out of one another’s way,” said a familiar voice. Juren turned to find himself face to T shaped visor with the man who’d saved him the day before. “Seems I was right, you really are a di’kut. Come on, I’m gonna buy you a drink.”
“That’s ok,” Juren stammered, “You saved me, I made a fool of myself trying to save you, we can call it even. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home and cry now.”
“I’m not sure what gave you the impression you had a choice in the matter,” The Mandalorian said, a hint of humor in his voice.
“I-if you insist!” Juren said, forcing a smile.
“It’s my buy’ce, isn’t it? You’re terrified of the helmet. Some shabla men,” The Mando said, reaching up to unseal his helmet. As the merc shook out long hair, Juren came to a realization.
“He’s a girl!” the mechanic yelped, to nobody in particular, drawing a laugh from the aforementioned girl.
“The name’s Ka’ra SoSuza. Now come on, lets get that drink.”
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