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“I hear there’s a stranger in town.” Fixer leans in conspiratorially though he has to shout to be heard over the music. “Rode in from Mos Eisley last night.”
“Come on, man,” Biggs says. “People come in from Mos Eisley all the time, what’s the big deal?”
“They say this one’s a Man-doh-loh-rian.”
“A Mando-what now?”
Camie rolls her eyes, taking a deep gulp of her drink. She was always a quiet drunk, like those old miner men who would sit and just throw back one after another, showing no sign of its effects, until closing time and they stumble home.
“A Mandalorian?” Luke jumps in. “They’re the greatest warriors in the galaxy! Everyone knows that. But their planet was destroyed, there are barely any left, just a few roaming the galaxy. There’s one here?”
“Settle down, kid!” Biggs laughs. Luke frowns; Biggs is only two years older than him, and it’s not Luke’s fault he hadn’t yet left home to start at the Academy. “You’re reading too much on the holonet. All this stuff about Mandalorians is mostly legends and a lot of imagination. People like to believe in crazy stuff, you know.”
“So you think there ain’t one in town?”
“I dunno, Fixer! But I am sure it ain’t our business.”
Luke leans back in his chair, still a little salty over Biggs’ “kid” comment. “I want to meet him.”
All three burst out laughing, even Camie. “What,” she snorts, “Peli’s fuel-up guys aren’t big and strong enough for you anymore, Wormie?”
“Or maybe it’s the helmet. Watch out, it’ll be Tuskens next!”
“Lay off of him, will you?” Biggs pushes his chair back from the table, signally a definitive end to the conversation. Luke rolls his eyes, but it isn’t the worst roasting he’s received from his friends.
There’s a brief pause in the music while the band stretches and takes refreshments. On a mid-week night like tonight, with only their table of four and a few sad saps alone at the bar, the musicians are singing for their supper and likely not much more. Luke wishes he could give them a good tip, but he knows already that once he pays his tab he’ll be flat out until he gets paid at the end of the week.
When the band starts up again, Biggs calls for another round. Camie and Fixer are involved in a private conversation, so Luke turns to Biggs while he has the chance.
“I just think it’d be interesting,” he says. “Someone like that who’s been all over the Outer Rim. Maybe he knows things.”
“Things? What?”
“News, the real story, Biggs! What’s really going on out there.”
“Are you still hung up on the Mandalorian?”
“I’ve read all about them. You know they never take their helmets off? They’re all sworn to this kind of warrior’s creed. And some people say they have beskar implanted in their bones so they’re invincible in battle.”
“I told you, you read too much. Cheers.” The server arrives with their drinks. The four clink their glasses together before returning to their separate conversations. “Listen, I’ve learned a bit about history and the War in the Academy, and this whole story with Mandalore is not half as glamorous as you think. What’s left now is just bounty hunters and some weird cultists. Dangerous people. You don’t want to get involved, ok?”
“Yeah, sure.” He’s already drunk enough tonight but the cup is in front of him so he takes a sip.
“I’m serious, Luke.”
“Ok, ok, I forgot about it already! You’re the one keeps reminding me.”
Biggs laughs and smiles, his eyes doing the crinkly thing that always makes Luke feel a little warm and a little sad. He squeezes Luke’s knee affectionately and all the booze goes to his head at once.
“Sorry, kid, just looking out for you.”
By the time they settle their tab and say their goodbyes, it’s already past Luke’s curfew. Still, he walks slowly to his speeder, kicking up sand. The lights of Biggs, Camie, and Fixer’s speeders are already fading into the distance.
It’s a cool, bright night, all three moons full. The sand gleams silvery blue laced with inky shadows. About halfway home, he stops his speeder, strips down to his skin and jumps out. This is a spot he knows well, with deep, soft sand sheltered on one side by a rock face as tall as he is.
He lets his feet sink in first, toes kneading into the sand. Then he sits and shimmies his whole body under, only his head left out, and sighs heavily. He’ll be picking sand out of his buttcrack for the rest of the week but it’s worth it, warm and dense like being wrapped up in the entire planet, while the night air is fresh on his face.
With the glare of the moons, only a few stars are visible tonight. The night sky is a vast, dark, empty canvas. Anything could happen up there.
Usually he can find his way pretty well in the dark, but tonight his mind is somewhere else and he stubs his toe on a box of shorted-out power converters coming off the stairs into the courtyard.
Mouthing silent curse words, to his dismay he notices a light is still on in the kitchen, and sure enough a moment later Aunt Beru comes out, a mug of tea clutched in one hand and a rifle in the other.
“It’s ok, it’s just me,” he hisses, hopping on one foot.
She slings the rifle over her shoulder and shakes her head. “Luke, can you tell me what time it is?”
“Late, I know, it’s late. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me now, save it for when you get yourself killed by Sand People, riding around over the dunes at all hours.”
“Fine. Then I’m not sorry.”
“That’s better. We raised you to be honest, didn’t we?”
He chuckles. “Goodnight, Aunt Beru.” His toe still throbs, but he takes care not to limp while walking past her to his room.
“And have a cup of milk before you go to sleep, it’ll keep off the hangover.”
“Goodnight, Aunt Beru!”
The alarm clock rings much too soon, pulling him from a dream of a green place and a strange child with huge, dark eyes. It’s completely dark in his room and he bats around in confusion for a while before finding the clock. He sits up, rubs at his face, and remembers he has work early this morning.
Uncle Owen is already in the kitchen brewing caf. He grunts a greeting to Luke, who responds in kind.
“You coming out to survey the south fields with me today?”
“No, I told you Peli wants me there mornings this week. She’s got some offworlder’s ship that needs a full outfitting.”
“Right, you did tell me. Still don’t mean you wouldn’t make better use out in those fields. The harvest isn’t going to wait on ya.”
Luke doesn’t respond, but fills his canteen with caf and a generous dash of milk.
“Is that all you’re having for breakfast?”
“I’ll eat at the shop, she usually has something lying around.”
Uncle Owen sets a pan on the stove, oils it, and tosses on a few pieces of yesterday’s haroun bread. “Something lying around… well, as you like. Just be back before second sunset, you hear me?”
Out in the yard, the sky is a rich indigo fading to milky blue at the edge. As he drives, traces of pink and gold seep up from the eastern horizon, the rest going almost white, and then the whole eastern sky explodes with color when the first sun shimmers over the horizon.
Luke doesn’t have time to stop and give the sunrise the full admiration it deserves, but he gives it as good a look as he can spare while navigating the rough terrain on the way to Mos Eisley.
“Hey, kid, good morning! Rise and shine, golden boy. We got a big job ahead of us, big honkin’ job, sure hope you’re ready for it.”
He’s glad he brought the caf; it seems like one of those days he’ll need it to keep up with her.
“I sure am, Peli. And I brought the octagonal hydrospanner you asked for.”
“Swell, you can thank your uncle for that. Put it down with the others for now, will ya?”
The hangar is even more chaotic than usual. A battered junker of an old gunship, presumably the big honking job Peli had called him in for, occupies the main landing space. It looks half torn apart and spare parts are scattered all around, as if she had done a late-night dig through the inventory and left it all out as the next day’s problem.
He takes off his poncho, as the day’s heat has already started to roll in, and sets about his typical morning routine of ordering the chaos. Not knowing with parts she’ll want to use, he organizes them in place as best he can, refuels the plasma welder, and calibrates the diagnostic spectrometer, all while Peli bangs around and chatters to the pit droids.
“Ok, buddy.” Luke realizes just in time that she’s talking to him now. “I’ve called in the Jawas, there’s a whole bunch of stuff we’re gonna need. I mean, would you look at this thing?”
“So what’s the story with this rustbucket?” He gives the spectrometer a solid whack on the side and it starts whirring.
“Some bounty hunter rolled in with it last night. Says he just bought it off a trader on Nevarro, wants it all fixed up.”
“Someone paid money for that thing?”
“It’s pre-Empire. Under the radar. You know how some folks like it.”
He must have given her a look, since she raises her hands defensively. “I’m not here to judge, you know that about me! And believe it or not, the hunk of junk flies. More or less. They built things to last back then, gotta give them credit for that.”
“Sure, sure, I get it. It’s vintage, could be a sweet enough ride once we get it together, do you think?”
“Well, ain’t that the project and a half. Especially since the client wants it done with no droids. Some people, am I right? And we’re on the clock since the client says he wants to bust town as soon as his job’s done.”
“His job? Which is…”
“The job that he’s doing right now, which I’m sure the less we hear about the better. Grab that tablet, will you? I want to show you the specs before we get started.”
The Razor Crest is a model from back in the Clone Wars, the same type that maybe, just maybe, his father might have flown, though Luke doesn’t mention this to Peli. He tries to memorize as much of the information as he can before they dive into the work, picking through the ship from the inside out.
They start with the hyperdrive, which, according to Peli, was so off-kilter the owner was lucky he wasn’t blown into smithereens when he made his first jump. By the time they have it almost balanced enough to re-link with the ignition source, it’s noon and they’re both dripping with sweat.
“Wowee, I smell like bantha foot!” Peli exclaims. She fans her face dramatically. Luke tosses her a clean rag, and takes one for himself to wipe the sweat and grime from his cheeks. They lean back against the ship’s rear landing struts to take a break in its shade.
“Don’t worry, I can’t smell you over myself.”
“Aren’t you the gentleman. And you know the hardware’s good now but we’re gonna have to recalibrate this beast all over again once we get the sublight thrusters in order.”
“Can’t wait.” He swallows the last sip of caf from his canteen and, as if offended by the measly offering, his stomach gives a prodigious growl.
“You’re speaking for both of us, Skywalker! How about some lunch?”
“Yes, thank the—” Jumping to his feet, he bangs his head into the ship’s hull.
Peli laughs at him. “Easy there, hot shot! But the Jawas are due any minute. You stay here, I’ll grab us something. And you’ve still got grease on your face.”
With a last word to the pit droids, she’s off. He wipes his face again with the rag, before realizing that his hands are covered with black oil residue and he’s probably only making it worse.
He tosses the rag aside. Too much effort to deal with it now; he’s hot, absolutely starving, and too tired to move. A few minutes shut-eye and he’ll be right to clean up, have a drink of water, and maybe start on diagnostics for the sublights before Peli’s back. She’ll like that.
A moment later, he’s waking up crumpled awkwardly against the landing strut with a crick in his neck and the strangest sensation of being watched. He sits up, wincing and blinking dust out of his eyes. “Hello? Who’s there?”
The door buzzer rings from upstairs. The eerie sensation disappears.
He shakes his head, hastily tries to smooth his hair back into place, and goes up to answer the door. Usually the Jawas would come right in, but maybe Peli had forgotten about him and locked it on her way out.
The buzzer rings again. “I’m coming,” he shouts, “cool your hairy little—"
It’s not Jawas. It’s a Mandalorian.
A real Mandalorian, just like the pictures he’s seen on the holonet, armor and all. A little more worn out and drab in color than the pictures, but his helmet that shines like pure beskar, or at least how he imagines pure beskar must shine. He’s standing there solid as anything, gloved hand poised at the door panel.
“You’re just like on the holonet,” Luke blurts out.
The Mandalorian doesn’t respond, only tilts his helmet a little to one side.
Luke blushes, like the idiot he is. “Sorry. Can I, uh, can I help you with something?”
“I’m here to check on my ship.”
“Your ship?”
“The Razor Crest.”
“Ohh, that’s yours? Sure, come right in, Mister… Mandalorian…” The Mandalorian pushes past him before he can finish, and Luke follows him down the stairs.
He stops in the yard and stands with hands on hips, observing the ship, while Luke observes the impressive array of weapons on his belt.
“It looks terrible.”
“What? No, it’s gonna be great, sir. Just give us a few days. Here, let me show you what we’ve done so far.”
He beckons the Mandalorian to the ship’s underbelly, where they were working all morning, and talks him through the repairs. The armored man says very little, only nods occasionally, but he seems to follow what Luke is saying with some interest so when he finishes showing the hyperdrive, he takes him on a tour through the sea of loose parts and Peli’s plan for the ship.
Just then, Peli comes clattering down the stairs. “Hey Luke, door’s open, are the Jawas—”
Startled, the Mandalorian jumps up from where he had been examining a refurbished ion flux stabilizer, and his blaster is drawn before Luke can blink. Peli squeals. He holsters the blaster with an apologetic shrug.
“Sorry, Mando, sir,” she grumbles. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Jeez.”
“My apologies,” he says. “Your assistant here was just showing me your work. When do you think it will be ready?”
“The sooner we’re back to work, the sooner you can fly out of here. Can I walk you to the door?”
Lunch is ahrisa balls and haroun bread with a side of B’omarr pickles, yoghurt dip and hot sauce. They eat in Peli’s office, where Luke finally managed to wash the black grease from his hands and face, though some still clings to his hair. He gave up on it when Peli threatened to eat his share of the hot sauce.
“I’ve told you before,” she says through a mouthful of ahrisa. “Never let the clients get too close to the job in progress. It might make wrong expectations, you understand?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And be careful around those types. They can be dangerous, you saw for yourself.”
“‘Those types,’ as in Mandalorians?”
“All of ‘em. You don’t know what he’s capable of, is all I’m saying.”
The Jawas don’t come until late afternoon. Luke stays to help Peli unload and sort their cartful of supplies, then it’s time for him to head home. The first sun is already inching towards the horizon, casting long, appealing shadows.
As the buildings and radio towers of Mos Eisley fade into the distance, the silence of the open desert settles all around him, even with the roar of his speeder’s engine.
The alarm clock rings much too soon, pulling him from a dream that seems familiar.
He rolls around in the dark, groans, buries his face in the pillow for a few minutes before getting up to turn it off.
The courtyard is still bathed in murky twilight blue. Warm yellow light spills out of the kitchen. Uncle Owen is up already, brewing caf and making breakfast, the air thick with the smell of oil and toasting haroun bread. Luke grunts good morning to him as he enters.
“You at Peli’s again today?”
Luke nods, filling his canteen with fresh caf. Without thinking, he takes a spare canteen from the cabinet over the stove and fills that one too. A generous splash of milk in both.
“She really has you running, huh?” Uncle Owen comments, eying the second canteen.
“Yeah, guess so.”
The sky outside is rich blue and the desert goes on forever. His boots make only the slightest crunching sound against rock and sand as he crosses the yard.
The Mandalorian comes by again a few hours before noon. Peli is out again, this time to exchange a package of mis-sized bolts.
“Can I come in?”
Luke stalls for a second. Peli specifically said not to show him around, but he can’t think of a good excuse not to allow the man to see his own ship.
He squints at the Mandalorian, lip hanging open stupidly. The Mandalorian looks back at him. He smiles, shrugs, and gestures the way in.
This time the Mandalorian doesn’t seem so interested in the details of the work, thankfully. He just stands there with arms crossed and stares at the ship, at the scattered tools and parts, and the droids parked at their charging station.
“No droids, right?” he says after a minute.
“Just these hands,” says Luke, now very aware of the grease that covers them and probably the rest of him.
It’s a hot day already, like always, with no wind. The air sits heavy and dusty over the hangar. Muted sounds drift in from the street outside.
Suddenly he remembers the extra canteen. “Want some caf?”
The helmet tilts as the Mandalorian looks towards him, silent as if he didn’t understand.
“You can take it to have later. I know about the helmet… thing.”
Still silent, after a moment he nods.
Luke fetches the canteen from the office and passes it to the Mandalorian, who turns it around in his gloved hands like an artifact from a foreign culture. “Thank you,” he says at last. “I’ll return the vessel to you tomorrow.”
Luke smiles and restrains himself from clapping the Mandalorian on the shoulder.
A few minutes later after the Mandalorian leaves, Peli comes back. “Here, kid, I bought you a lefty hydrospanner,” she says, tossing it at him from across the yard. “Try not to break this one!”
The alarm clock rings much too soon. Groaning, he flops over and grasps for it, then is surprised by it crashing to the floor without his fingers having made contact. The sound stops.
Sleepily, he switches on the lamp and finds the alarm clock halfway across the room, crumpled in the middle like it had been squeezed by a harvester droid’s pinchers. He turns it over and over, pressing his fingers into the bent metal.
As promised, the Mandalorian comes back later that morning. Peli is armpit-deep in wiring so she shouts to Luke to see who’s at the door. This time Luke washes his hands and hastily smooths out his hair before going up.
“Thanks for the caf. It was… nice.” He holds out the empty canteen.
Luke takes it from him.
“Weird color.”
“Yeah, that’s the bantha milk,” says Luke, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. “Looks funny but it tastes pretty good, and it cuts the acid. Otherwise this stuff will burn a hole right through your gut.”
The Mandalorian makes a low, unfamiliar sound, which Luke realizes a moment later is him laughing. It wasn’t so funny but now he laughs too, and hopes the Mandalorian doesn’t notice him blushing.
“Tatooine quality?”
He snorts and raps his nails on the side of the canteen. “Only the best.”
Peli’s voice barks from downstairs, telling him to bring them down or send them off but get back to work either way. He turns to ask the Mandalorian if he wants to come see their progress, but the man is already gone, as if he was never there.
A bang from upstairs sends Luke jumping out of his skin. He’s alone in the workshop, with Peli in Mos Espa for the afternoon to track down some obscure parts. The sound comes again, like someone thudding their fists against the steel door. Then, a polite little ring of the buzzer.
“Hello?” he shouts. No response. Not born yesterday, he grabs Peli’s blaster pistol from the office and steps lightly up the stairs, surprised at how calm he feels.
He cracks open the door just enough to show one blue eye and the blaster’s muzzle, and it’s the Mandalorian, standing in a heap like a crashed speeder.
“Mando? What the hell happened to you?”
Covered in dirt and blood, his armor scratched and cape torn, one of his hands is clutched to the side of his stomach. The other arm hangs unnaturally limp.
“Can I come in?” The words come out labored, voice thick even through the helmet’s modulator.
Luke jumps aside to let him pass. “Of course, Mister Mandalorian. Sorry for staring, it’s just… are you alright?”
He follows the limping Mandalorian down into the courtyard, where the man gingerly sits down against a wall. His helmet makes a muted clink against the concrete as he leans back. From two paces away, Luke can see his chest rise and fall with heavy breathing.
“I’m fine. I just need to sit here quietly for a bit.”
“Fine? You look like something my uncle fished out of an old sarlacc pit. And that shoulder’s not gonna pop itself back in on its own.”
“It’s not broken.”
“Maybe not, but believe me, I know a dislocation when I see one.” He crouches next to him. Now that he has a chance to look, he notices where the Mandalorian is holding with his good hand to his stomach. Below the armor, there’s torn black fabric and blood oozing from what must be a gnarly flesh wound. “Will you at least let me check it out and clean up that nasty gash?”
A pause. The Mandalorian nods once.
Luke dashes to Peli’s office and digs through her odds and ends to find the medkit. It’s not great, but there’s sterilizing spray, bacta only a few months past the expiration date, and some gauze. He also grabs a roll of electrical tape, a water tin, and, doubling back, a sugar biscuit left from lunch.
The Mandalorian is sitting just as he left him, a stoic shape blending into the cluttered background of the workshop.
“Let’s start with the bleeding gut wound… I did warn you about the caf, didn’t I?” That gets a small huff which Luke hopes is a laugh, but then the man’s entire body tenses with pain at the movement.
“Ok, easy there. Just let me see it.” He gently moves the gloved fingers aside to reveal a wound nearly a hand’s length across with raw, jagged edges. It will need suturing, and he’s glad to find a curved needle and thread in the bottom of the medkit.
First, sterilizing and wiping away the grime with clean gauze. It must sting something terrible, but the Mandalorian shows no reaction, nor any sign of life other than his slow, effortful breathing. “Speaking of caf, ever seen what happens when a womprat gets into a sack of raw beans?” While stitching, he launches into the absurd story, which ends with Uncle Owen up on the roof of the house in his boxer shorts and Aunt Beru shooting a hole through the kitchen window.
With the wound cleaned, stitched, bactaed, and bandaged, he turns to the injured arm. “I’m gonna have to take your shoulder plate off, that ok?”
The Mandalorian nods.
A thorough examination proves his intuition was correct: the bones are intact but the joint is clearly out of place. He instructs the man to lie flat on his back.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” he says. He braces one foot against the Mandalorian’s armpit, grips both hands around his wrist, and starts to gently pull. “We’ll have you good as new soon enough. I’ve fixed more busted shoulders than I can count. You know, there’s not much to do for fun around here except ride around on speeder bikes. Well, now I’ve got my skyhopper, but you wouldn’t believe the number of dumb crashes me and my friends have gotten into. Just last season, we were blitzing it through Beggar’s Canyon and—"
“Ackkh.” The Mandalorian lets out the most restrained, polite sound of misery Luke has ever heard. The arm bone slides smoothly back into its socket.
“And that should do it!”
The Mandalorian sits up and hesitantly raises and lowers his arm, then clutches it to his side and rubs the shoulder with his other hand. “It’s actually much better.”
“Man, don’t sound so surprised! I told you I know what I’m doing. A bit of bacta and you’ll be right as a rankor by tomorrow.”
Luke sits back and wipes his sweaty brow on his sleeve, a little shaky from nerves now that the moment of pressure has passed. Remembering the water and sugar biscuit, he hands them to the Mandalorian. “I’ll go wait in the office,” he promises. “Give a shout when you’ve got your helmet on again.”
He slumps in Peli’s desk chair, turned to face the wall, every ounce of willpower engaged to keep from peeking out through the window. After just a few minutes, the Mandalorian gives a hoarse “Ready now.” He comes back out and slides down the wall to sit at his side.
“You have somewhere to stay?”
“At an inn by the market. Run by a couple of Bothans.” He sounds a little more alive and less pained than before.
“Right, I know that one. Me, I live out on the salt flats. My aunt and uncle have a moisture farm there.”
“Is it nice?”
“Guess so.”
A long pause. “No parents?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” The Mandalorian has a nice voice, Luke decides, though he sounds a little sad no matter what he says. These words come out in the same tone. Clearly not keen on conversation, he surprises Luke with a second question.
“So you’re going to be a farmer?”
Luke blows his lips. “Suns, no. I’m a pilot. I’m getting off this rock as soon as I can. Gonna join the Rebellion, or something.”
“Or something.”
“You’ve been all over the Outer Rim, right? You must’ve seen some Rebels out there. I bet there’s loads going on, they just don’t let us hear about it.”
He shrugs. “Probably. Not my business.”
Luke frowns. “But why not? The Empire destroyed your planet, didn’t they? I would’ve thought you of all people would be keen to stick one to those dumb bucketheads.”
“I said, it’s not my business. And talk like that could get a kid like you in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m not a kid, I’m almost nineteen.”
“Sure.” The Mandalorian shifts his seat, crossing his outstretched legs at the ankles.
“What is your business then? Bounty hunting?”
A grunt which Luke takes as affirmation.
“So you’re here on Tatooine chasing after some poor sap and he got the jump on you. That what happened?”
“No, Tuskens.” Luke waits, hoping he will continue. “I was triangulating my target’s location out in the wasteland and I ran into a group of them. Tried to ask them for help but I guess I got a sign wrong.”
Luke whistles through his teeth. “You offworlders really are crazy. You can’t talk to Sand People!”
“They’re good people, and I know a little of their language. Just not the right part, it seems.”
Luke laughs and to his relief, so does the Mandalorian, but again he seems to wince in pain.
“You probably got some banged-up ribs on top of it all. Take the bacta for tonight, ok? For the shoulder and the cut too.”
The Mandalorian nods wearily.
Something occurs to Luke. It has been sitting in the back of his mind for the last few minutes at least, but now he can’t stop from saying it. “I could help you, you know. If you want.”
The shining helmet swivels to face him directly, and Luke sees himself reflected in the dark visor. He wonders if he’s meeting the man’s eyes underneath. “What do you mean?”
“The Jundland Wastes are almost impossible if you don’t know your way through, but I’ve lived my whole life not far from there. I can take you where this target of yours is, and on routes so we avoid the Tuskens.”
A long pause, while he keeps trying to match the Mandalorian’s gaze through the visor. Then the helmet turns away from him again. “No.”
“Well, why not?” He sits up eagerly, almost claps his hand to the man’s knee but thinks better of it. “I’m a great guide, you know! Could do it blindfolded. I have a speeder, binocs, we can take water from the farm.”
“And how much do you want in exchange?”
“What? Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
Again the Mandalorian turns his helmet to him, this time with a suspicious tilt. “You don’t want payment?”
Luke shrugs.
“I’ve never met anybody who’d do something for nothing. If it’s not credits you’re after then—"
“Well, I guess you never met anybody like me.” He flashes what he knows is his winningest smile.
“And what if you get hurt? Or killed. This isn’t a game. A million things could go wrong and then I get run out of town for getting a local kid in trouble.”
“I told you, I’m not a kid.” That gets him only another blank look. “It’ll be fine, hear me out. I show you the way—nothing dangerous there, not when you’ve got a ‘local kid’ with you—and then I wait a perfectly safe distance away while you go in, do your thing, grab your guy, and we hightail it outta there.”
The Mandalorian uncrosses and recrosses his ankles, rubbing at his shoulder. “And what about your aunt and uncle? And your boss? It’ll be at least a day’s travel in each direction.”
“Easiest thing in the world! I tell Peli I’m needed at the farm and my aunt and uncle I’m staying over here for a few days to finish the job. And we just hope they don’t run into each other.”
The Mandalorian is quiet for so long that Luke starts to worry he’s passed out. It’s getting towards evening, and the shadows are lengthening. He’d better get moving within the hour or he’ll miss curfew and be grounded, and then so much for this whole adventure.
Finally, he hears the Mandalorian take a deep breath. “Ok, I accept.”
“Hot sands, yes!” He claps and almost jumps to his feet, catching himself just in time.
The Mandalorian snorts.
“Like I said, you don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everything. Water, blankets, something for us to eat. You got a speeder bike, right? We can meet at Tosche Station at dawn and take my speeder from there.”
“Sure, but not tomorrow. I need a day to heal.”
“Of course. So dawn, Tosche station, day after tomorrow. What else I’m thinking, Mister Mandalorian—hey, what’s your name?”
Silence.
“Do you not have one or you don’t want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Which one?”
Silence.
“Well anyway, I’m Luke Skywalker, and it’s very nice to meet you.” He extends his hand. The Mandalorian looks down at it for a moment. Then he takes it and, to Luke’s surprise, instead of shaking it he just holds it and lets his arm drop, so now all of a sudden they are holding hands while twilight deepens over the workshop.
A strange sound pulls him from a dream about deep space. Confused, he lies there blinking at the ceiling for a few moments before he remembers that it’s his alarm clock, which he had to fix with spare droid vocalizer parts.
Next he remembers that he’s going with the Mandalorian tomorrow. Awake all at once, he hops out of bed.
Uncle Owen is already in the kitchen, brewing caf and making breakfast.
“Good morning!” says Luke. Uncle Owen grunts, busy with the stove.
Luke pours caf into his canteen, plus a generous splash of milk. It does turn a weird color, now that he notices. “Peli asked if from tomorrow I can stay a night or two in Mos Eisley, to finish this big job. That ok?”
“After that you’re back to two days a week there, right? There’s a lot for us to do before harvest.”
“Yeah, sure thing. Thanks, Uncle Owen!” Luke grabs a piece of toasted haroun bread off of his uncle’s skillet and rushes out, chewing big chunks of it on the way to his speeder.
Peli grumbles when he says he needs to take two days off for the farm, but the way the work is going, he doubts she’ll have any problem finishing by the time he’s back. The Razor Crest is starting to look like a real ship, and when she revs up the suborbital thrusters for a diagnostic, it purrs like one. What’s left now is mostly odds and ends, tweaks to the flight interface and some cosmetic work.
Luke has gotten attached to the old girl, he realizes while taking a macro-sander to a newly welded section of the hull. He’s sorry he won’t get to see her in action.
The day goes by. Heat, lunch, more heat, Jawas, sweat and grime and minor electric shock from a miscalibrated fuel converter. At the end of the afternoon, Peli tosses him a bag of credits, his pay for the last two weeks, heavier than usual with all the extra hours he’s been working. He waves goodbye, promises to give her regards to Owen and Beru, and scampers out.
A quick stop at the market. He doles out credits for a few bags of nuts and dried fruits, bantha jerky, pilgrim’s bread and hard blue cheese.
At one stall, a small trinket catches his eye: a bantha, no larger than the pad of his thumb, carved out of bone or horn, and strung on a rawhide loop. Something about the tiny bantha’s face and finely curved horns makes him smile, so after a little haggling he buys it too.
He stops at Tosche Station on the way home, just for one drink. Fixer, Deak, and a couple others are at the cantina, no Biggs but the band is hot and in the end it’s not just one drink. If anyone notices he’s any different than usual, they don’t say anything.
Dawn is the only time on Tatooine when the slightest hint of moisture can be felt in the air. Luke relishes the soft touch of life on his face while waiting for the Mandalorian at their meeting point. He lies back on the hood of his speeder to watch the stars fade.
He doesn’t have to wait long, though. Only a few minutes after arriving, his skin starts to prickle and he hears the sound of an approaching speeder bike engine.
They park and lock the Mandalorian’s bike behind the hardware store, and then they’re off in Luke’s speeder with few words. The Mandalorian tosses a satchel in the back seat, which Luke sees is full of supplies.
“I told you I’d bring everything,” he chides. The Mandalorian shrugs.
It’s an hour drive until the salt flats start to give way to rough terrain and the looming red rocks that make up the Jundland Wastes. The suns rise behind them, color spilling over the sky. The Mandalorian doesn’t speak but after a while Luke starts to, mostly pointless facts about the area and his childhood mishaps here.
Luke is desperate to ask more questions of his traveling companion but he can tell it isn’t the time.
At least the armored man seems content to listen. He rarely responds but sometimes tips his helmet or gives a little hum of interest.
They go slower as walls of red stone rise out of the harsh ground. By noon, they’re deep in the labyrinth of the Jundland. It wracks even Luke’s brain to plot a safe course through here to the coordinates given by the bounty hunter.
As the suns blaze directly overhead, they take a break under a rocky outcropping, or rather Luke does while the Mandalorian goes off to some private shelter to eat and drink. Chewing on leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, the heat seeps under his skin despite the small shade. He spares a precious handful of water to splash on the back of his neck; it dries almost instantly.
The meal finished, he cleans his fingers with sand and waits for the Mandalorian.
The high rock ridges here tend to catch sounds, whistling wind and the occasional scratch of scurrier feet. It’s hard to tell where they come from or from how far away, and unlike in the open desert, impossible to see any further then around the next bend. Maybe this is why the place sometimes makes Luke feel on edge.
But now—no. Now, there is something there.
All the hairs on his body stand up at once. Before he can think about it, he’s throwing his pack into the speeder and shouting in all directions. “Hey, Mister Mandalorian, come back! Hey! Mando! Mando!”
The bounty hunter comes charging around a rocky outcropping, blaster drawn.
“Time to go,” Luke says. He jumps in the speeder and revs the engine.
“What is it?” Lowering his blaster, the Mandalorian looks from side to side, confused.
“Come on, come on, let’s go!”
He gets in next to Luke and Luke hits the ignition at full blast. A second later, a massive thud and screech comes from behind them. Twisting around, he curses loudly.
A juvenile canyon krayt dragon is loping after them. Three meters tall with a gaping mouth of fangs and as armored in scales as the Mandalorian is in beskar, it must have jumped down from an ambush point directly above where their speeder was parked.
“Kriffing hell,” the Mandalorian grumbles. He fires his blaster and hits true, but the creature only squawks without slowing its pursuit.
“We gotta outrun it,” Luke shouts over the roar of the engine. “They don’t have much stamina. Hold tight!”
He banks hard to the right. The back end of the speeder almost spins out but he holds steady. Behind them, claws scramble against loose rocks as the predator follows close around the turn.
Now sharp to the left, into a canyon bed filled with tall standing boulders that he deftly navigates around at full speed. The Mandalorian keeps trying to shoot, but even he can’t hold aim with the speeder’s weaving. The krayt dragon has lost some ground on them but it’s still in hot pursuit.
“You said they don’t have much stamina!”
“Any minute now!” He shifts the speeder up another gear, whips around a rock pillar, and dives the speeder into a narrow canyon, barely wide enough for it to fit without scraping the sides. Hopefully too narrow for the beast.
“You’re insane!” the Mandalorian shouts.
For a second, it seems like it worked. Then he hears rocks tumbling down the cliff walls behind them. A glance up confirms it: the krayt dragon is running pace above them along the edge of the canyon rim.
The narrow passage starts to widen, and as if it was all happening very slowly, he sees their way out.
They’re fast approaching a deep crevasse, the tail end of an impassable split that Luke had steered them north to avoid. It closes to only a few meters further up, but here, it just might be enough.
Steering towards a point where the lip slants slightly up, he rapid-fire shorts out the repulsorlift engine and switches it back on just as they reach the edge. The speeder launches violently in the air, soars for three stomach-turning seconds over the abyss, and lands neatly on the other side.
He risks a look back over his shoulder. The krayt dragon must have pulled up hard right before attempting a jump. It’s standing now at the edge, and as Luke slows the speeder to watch, it gives itself a good shake and turns to plod back the way it came.
“Yeeeeeee-haw!” Luke whoops and stops the speeder. Ripping off his goggles, he vaults out of the driver’s seat onto the hood and pumps his fists in the air at the retreating krayt dragon.
The Mandalorian also gets out of the speeder, looking shaky on his legs. “You’re insane,” he repeats.
Luke only laughs and claps his hands. He jumps down and, armor be damned, wraps the Mandalorian in a tight hug with a pound to the back. “Check that out, Mando! Hottest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley and no mistake. Ha!”
“Craziest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley,” the Mandalorian retorts, but Luke hears warmth in his voice.
“Well, you can give me a medal later. Let’s get back on the move for now, before that thing finds a way around.”
Tatooine has mercy and the heat of the day is breaking.
Towards the end of their day’s travel, Luke has turned them south, emerging abruptly from the craggy maze of the Jundland onto the edge of the Dune Sea. They’re looping around, he explains to the Mandalorian, to avoid a Tusken trade route.
Sunset approaches. Luke breathes deeply in the cooling air and slows the speeder to halt at a dip in the dunes, sheltered by a rocky outcropping that rises out of the sand like an echo of the Jundland’s crests. Less than an hour now from the target’s holdout, they’ll make camp here for the night and set out again at first light.
The Mandalorian hesitates before getting out of the speeder. “Luke,” he says, “how did you know that canyon dragon was going to jump us?”
“I don’t know,” says Luke, standing and leaning his elbows on the side of the speeder. “I’ve always been, well, I guess you would say intuitive.”
“Huh.”
“What ‘huh’? I know my way around, told you.”
The Mandalorian starts a fire while Luke gets their supplies in order. How he starts it is to arrange a pile of dried bantha dung, the fuel Luke had brought from his house, and briefly blast it with a flamethrower from his wrist. Luke tries hard not to show how impressed he is.
The fire crackles brightly and, although the brutal heat of the day is still a fresh memory, already its warmth is welcome. With the disappearance of the suns, the temperature plumets.
Luke eats by the fire while the Mandalorian vanishes immediately with his own meal, presumably behind the rock ridge.
When he has finished, the Mandalorian still has not returned. The guy must be enjoying some fresh air after the whole day in his helmet, Luke thinks.
The sand around the fire pit is pleasantly soft and warm, still holding the suns’ heat in its glassy grains. Luke sifts it in his hands, contemplating, and then—screw it. He strips quickly, leaves his clothes in a pile by the fire, and goes out past its circle of light to where his feet sink past the ankles.
The moons are just rising and the sky blazes with stars. He sits down and eases himself under the sand. If he could purr like a loth-cat, he would under the thick, warm blanket of the desert. He lets his head rest back and loses himself in the lights of the cosmos above.
“Are you ok?”
His eyes snap into focus as a dark shape looms above him.
“Oh, it’s you, Mando,” he breathes, startled. “Yeah, this is pretty nice. You should try it.” The instant he says this, he realizes he might have crossed a line, but the Mandalorian doesn’t immediately retreat or refuse.
After a pause, he says simply, “Why?”
“I dunno, it feels good! I do it all the time.” He can see the outline of the Mandalorian’s helmet shifting from side to side, as if he’s weighing the situation. “Are you not allowed to take any of your armor off or only the helmet?”
“Only the helmet. It’s just—well. It never came up before.” Struggling with his words, he sounds so sweet and awkward that Luke can’t help but smile.
“Let’s have it then! Keep the helmet, lose the rest and get in here. Don’t worry, it’s dark. I won’t see you.”
The Mandalorian’s shape disappears. The sound of his heavy boots trudge back towards the campfire. He’s gone for long enough that Luke is resigned to him not coming back, but then he’s back and naked save for his helmet and boxer shorts.
It’s an odd sight but Luke can’t look away, despite his promise. He’s only human. The strong lines of his body, his muscular grace freed from the encumberment of armor, are entrancing as he crouches in the sand an arm’s length from Luke.
He lets out an earthy sigh as he sinks under the sand and Luke’s mind goes somewhere else.
“You’re… right,” the Mandalorian says, sounding still confused but genuinely pleased. “This is nice.”
Luke has been restraining his curiosity all day and finally it gets the better of him. “Are all Mandalorians great warriors?”
“All the ones I’ve met. This is the Way.”
“Do they all live by the Creed?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Living by the Creed.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never lived any other way.”
“I wish I had a creed or something to live by.”
Without looking, he feels the Mandalorian’s eyes on him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like…” Suddenly, unusually, at a loss for words. “All my life, I’ve been looking up at these stars. I look at the sunset. I look at the dunes. And I just feel like there’s more out there, like there’s something I’m missing, or someone. Or something more that I’m supposed to be doing, you know? I don’t even know what. This probably doesn’t make any sense, I’m just talking my mouth off.”
“No, it does,” says the Mandalorian, replying quicker and more definitively than Luke expected.
“When you swore to the Creed, did you feel you feel like you found that something?”
The Mandalorian is quiet for a breath. “Yes.” Luke waits. “I was… my parents were killed when I was a child. The Mandalorians saved me. They took me in and raised me in the ancient Way. Now, I use the skills they taught me to provide for them. We mostly live in hiding since the Purge, for protection. I go out and by my work I support my covert and the foundlings.”
“Foundlings?”
“Orphans, like me. And you.”
Apparently he is done talking but Luke still waits. This is the most he has heard the Mandalorian speak in one go and he mulls over the man’s words. Then he catches Luke off guard by speaking again.
“You asked for my name once. Do you still want to know it?”
Luke nods, cautious not to spook him, then realizes he might not see the gesture in the dark. “Yes. Of course I do.”
“My name is Din. Din Djarin.”
“Din Djarin…” He tries out the syllables on his tongue, round like the ringing of a bell.
Next to him, the Mandalorian laughs quietly.
“What, am I saying it wrong?”
“No, you’re saying it right. I just haven’t heard it like that before.”
For a while, neither of them speak. Luke closes his eyes. He can feel every grain of sand vibrating around him, every star ringing in the sky above as if they were within his skin. Long, slow desert time flows through him like a river. A low pulse from the horizon echoes in his bones, along his spine, in the space behind his eyes.
After a while, the low sound get closer, and he realizes it belongs to this world. A herd of banthas is moving towards them over the dunes, sending out their subsonic calls to others of their kind.
He sits up, sand cascading from his hair. Beside him, Din does the same. He adjusts something on his helmet and then arms and legs flail as he clambers out of the sand bed.
“Banthas. Tuskens headed our way.”
“Woah, woah!” Luke hisses and scrambles after him. He grabs Din’s wrist just to slow him down but the Mandalorian freezes as if shocked.
Grabbing his macrobinocs from the speeder, Luke switches them to night setting and focuses on the distant herd.
“It’s ok,” he says. “They’re too scattered. Tuskens move their stock all together and they ride single file. This is a wild herd.”
“You’re sure about that?” Din comes to stand next to him, cape draped over his bare body.
“Look for yourself.” He offers the binocs but Din only tilts his helmet. “They’re coming straight this way. It’s beautiful to see up close. Shall we sit down?”
They sit on the crest of the dune, wrapped in blankets, watching the herd move slowly over the moon-bathed plain.
After half an hour, maybe more, they are close enough that the shadowy mass starts to differentiate into separate animal shapes. Some very large, some less so, some small that could be young. They are quiet except for the occasional long-distance call that buzzes in Luke’s bones.
Finally, the herd is close enough to hear the dull thud of their footsteps, the light swish of displaced sand. It might be twenty or thirty adults, impossible to say as their forms shift and merge in the dim light, horns and eyes gleaming. They pass within a few paces of Din and Luke. Massive heads swing rhythmically, hanging ropes of fur sway in time with their step.
Wild bantha are shy of humans. With their keen night eyes and sharp noses, there’s no way two grown men could go unnoticed out here in the open. Nonetheless, the herd walks as peaceably by them as if they were rocks. Only one young calf turns its head to look, then lets out a squeal and jumps back to its mother’s side.
When the last animal passes over the ridge, silence and stillness again stretch from horizon to horizon.
Sunrise, a glory in pink, gold, and white, catches Luke and Din already on the move.
As they approach the target’s coordinates, the Mandalorian pulls out a small box-shaped device with a two-fold antenna and blinking red light. “Tracking fob,” he tells Luke. It starts beeping faster as they get closer. Luke adjusts their course a few times to follow its signal.
It beeps faster. Then it beeps very fast. Din orders him to stop the speeder.
They’re back in the rough country of the outer Jundland, where open patches of gravel and sand alternate with high crests of russet stone. Parking the speeder behind one such ridge, they crawl to the top and peer over the edge. Luke scans through his macrobinoculars, the Mandalorian with a slender telescope.
On the other side of the ridge, there’s a small encampment around an old pourstone house. The structure is of similar design to old Ben’s house, the hermit who lives on the other side of the canyons, but in poor repair, most likely abandoned for years until now.
Outside the house, a few speeder bikes are parked, their newness in stark contrast to the condition of the building.
Four people are sitting in a circle around an ashen firepit. Two humans, a Rodian, and a tall, brightly colored being of a species Luke doesn’t recognize.
“That’s him,” Din whispers. “The Rodian. He’s a bounty hunter with the Guild, pretty good one, but he started taking outside jobs. That’s against Guild regulations.”
“You’re a bounty hunter going after another bounty hunter?” Luke hisses back.
He tilts his helmet. “Happens sometimes.”
They watch for a while longer. “His friends might be trouble,” says Din. “I don’t know them. But maybe he’ll be smart and come along without a fuss.”
“You’re going in four against one? Really?”
“Four against one Mandalorian. Don’t worry, kid.”
Luke shakes his head and smiles.
“You stay here in the speeder, ok?” Din continues. “Keep the engine running.”
As casually as if he were pointing out interesting rock formations, he whips out his pistol and fires four times in rapid succession, disabling each of the speeder bikes. Then, without a backward glance, he launches himself over the ridge and marches down into the encampment.
Luke does not, in fact, stay in the speeder but at his vantage point, binocs focused on the encampment.
The Rodian and his three companions are milling around like ants, shouting in indistinct voices. When they see the Mandalorian, they cluster together, blasters drawn and pointed at him. Din stops a few paces away and Luke wishes he could make out their conversation.
Whatever they are discussing, it is brief. A flash of red light as one of them fires on Din, who recoils, but his chestplate deflects the blast and he springs into action.
Before Luke can understand how, two of the Rodian’s friends are on the ground with smoking blaster wounds. One of them is rolling around and groaning, shot in the leg. The other doesn’t move.
Din takes the Rodian down with a full-body tackle and the two of them grapple on the ground while the remaining accomplice, one of the humans, takes shelter behind the house and shoots out wildly. After he catches Din in the shoulder, the Mandalorian sits up to shoot him with deadly accuracy.
In that moment, the Rodian scrambles to his feet and makes a run for it.
He doesn’t make it far—a whipcord shoots from Din’s wrist to encircle his ankles and he goes down hard. Din reels him in and this time manages to get handcuffs on him, though not without a struggle.
While the Rodian squirms and pushes him away, his wounded companion, the other human, limps towards them from behind. He holds a blaster, pointed straight at the vulnerable space between Din’s back armor and his helmet.
“Din!”
Everything slows down.
Luke vaults the ridge and closes the short distance to the camp. He raises his hand without a single thought, only pure intention.
Everyone goes flying. The man, who hits the wall of the house with a thud. The blaster clatters against a rock wall some ten meters away. Oddest of all, the blaster bolt pauses in midair, an arm’s length from Din’s neck, and changes directions to plunge harmlessly into the sand.
After that, they’re all quiet for a minute. Luke glances down at his hand but it looks completely normal. Maybe it is completely normal. No one is reacting, so it must be very normal what just happened.
The Rodian breaks the spell. “What was that? What the kriffin’ hell was that?!”
“You’re going back to answer to the Guild,” Din growls, hauling him to his feet. “That’s that.”
“But—but…”
A pained moan comes from near the house. The other man is regaining consciousness. Din shoots him on sight.
Luke raises his eyebrows.
Din says, “That wasn’t fair play, shooting in the back.”
They load the Rodian in the back seat of the speeder. He grumbles and whines, and they start the return journey accompanied by his litany of complaints against Din, the Guild, the desert, and Luke’s speeder. At first, Luke argues back, but eventually Din nudges his knee and tells him not to engage.
With no sympathetic audience, the Rodian falls silent and they drive until midday with no conversation.
They break under a rocky overhang. Din refuses to go off to eat his meal, unwilling to leave Luke alone with the Rodian, so he sits there in silence while the other two eat.
When finished, Luke pressures Din to at least take some water. “Just go for two minutes, I’ll be fine,” he says, and Din agrees.
“No, Mando!” the Rodian protests. “Don’t leave me here with him.”
Luke thinks he’s joking at first but the other bounty hunter watches him with large, suspicious eyes the whole time Din is gone.
They make camp two hours out from Mos Eisley, burning the last of the bantha dung and eating the last of their provisions.
As soon as they’ve settled, Din binds the Rodian’s ankles with thick rope while he sighs dramatically. While he goes off to eat alone, the Rodian picks at the meal he’s given and then curls up near the fire. Luke tosses him a blanket.
By the time Din returns, the captive is softly snoring. Still, Din comes to sit close to Luke and speaks to him in a low voice.
“Was that some kind of desert sorcery?”
Luke is confused for a moment, then it lands. “Back at the camp?”
The Mandalorian nods, staring into the fire.
“I don’t know. I just… wanted to help.”
Thankfully, Din lets the subject drop. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, if my ship is ready.”
Right. The Razor Crest. The job. Din isn’t from here and he isn’t staying here, not like Luke, who has nothing to look forward to but another grease-coated shift at Peli’s shop, another harvest season at the moisture farm, another blank day rolling into the next.
He doesn’t ask Din to come with him and Din doesn’t offer. He doesn’t ask if he’s ever coming back to Tatooine.
Instead, he bites his lip, summons all his courage, and reaches to take the Mandalorian’s hand.
Din twitches at his touch but then he turns his hand over, palm to palm with Luke’s. Their fingers intertwine. The night sky and the campfire and the open desert run hot through Luke’s veins.
The moons creep up from the horizon. Suddenly Luke remembers something. He feels around in his pocket and there it is: the small bantha carved in bone.
“Hey, I have something for you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, you, nerf herder.” He pulls out the trinket and holds it out to Din, who hesitates, then takes it in his free hand and brings it up to his visor to examine. “You can give it to one of the foundlings or something.”
“One of the foundlings,” he repeats. He closes his hand around the bantha and turns to examine Luke with the same intent curiosity.
Din is leaving tomorrow and Luke is staying, so he shuffles closer, puts his hands on either side of Din’s helmet, and reaches up to place a kiss above the visor.
Sinking down, he sees himself reflected in Din’s visor. Then, the Mandalorian’s gloved hands are on either side of his face and the front dome of Din’s helmet comes to press against his forehead. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Afterwards they sit for a while with Luke’s head on Din’s shoulder and the side of his helmet resting lightly on the crown of Luke’s head. The night grows colder, the fire burns down to embers.