It was Cara Dune.
The cloaked body at her feet was still smoking from the hole she’d put through it, a sniper rifle lying beside it. Mando reached down and flipped the body over, looking at the Kubaz bounty hunter’s protective goggles and long snout. Mando saw the blinking tracker, still beeping its proximity alert. Cara was looking at him.
“Who’s he tracking?” she asked.
“The kid.”
She let out a breath. “They know he’s here.”
“Yes.”
“Then they’ll keep coming.”
There was only one answer to that question. “Yes,” the Mandalorian said. He brought his boot down hard on the tracking device, grinding it against the rocky ground until the red light went out.
Goodbyes took place by the supply sled that Mando was stocking up to take to the Razor Crest. Cara joined Omera, Winta, and the other villagers who had gathered as Mando finished loading supplies.
Cara stepped forward. “Until our paths cross,” she said, offering a hand, and Mando took it.
“Until our paths cross.” He glanced over at Winta, who was embracing the Child with tears in her eyes.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” the girl said, and the Child hugged her back, chirping softly. When Mando looked up, he saw Omera in front of him.
“Thank you,” she said. For a moment it seemed like she might say more, but in the end he just nodded, and he and the Child prepared to leave.
Moments later, they were gone.
“HAND OVER THE CHILD, Mando, and I might let you live.” The voice crackled through the Razor Crest’s comm.
The Mandalorian realized the other ship was already on his tail, laser cannons firing close enough that the impact rocked the Crest. A second later, one of the shots hit the starboard engine, jolting the ship sideways and making the Child cry out with a startled whimper. Alarms blared, lights pulsing on the display in front of him, as the Crest’s diagnostic systems reported serious damage.
“Hang on,” Mando told the Child, bringing the weapons online and tilting into an evasive maneuver. The other ship was drawing closer, moving in for the kill. The pilot’s voice was back in his ear, sounding cocky, overconfident.
“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.”
Mando let the would-be attacker close in, then hit the reverse thrusters and angled down, dropping abruptly back so the other ship swooped overhead, close enough to bounce off the Crest’s left flank. Within less than a second, the Mandalorian had the other pilot locked in his sights.
“That’s my line,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.
Through the comm came a sudden startled scream. The ship exploded in front of him, pulverized into a million tiny scraps that were already vanishing into the surrounding blackness.
Settling back, he glanced at the Child, who was staring at him with wide-eyed amazement and—there was no denying it—enthusiastic delight.
“This isn’t supposed to be fun,” Mando said. The Crest’s alarms were beeping, and he realized that the damage was worse than he’d initially thought. Some of the ship’s systems were already failing, and it was losing fuel. They were going down fast.
He cut the engines, heard them sputter to a halt, and switched them on again, managing to coax the main thrusters back online…although it didn’t sound promising.
Below, the reddish-brown sandscape of the planet in the distance was looming larger. Mando switched on his comm, hearing a voice already coming through:
“This is Mos Eisley tower,” the voice said. “We are tracking you. Head for bay three-five, over.”
“Copy that,” Mando acknowledged. “Locked in for three-five.”
By the time he landed, the left engine was spluttering again, fuming with ominous black smoke. Whatever was wrong with the thrusters already felt expensive. Extending the landing gear, he dropped the Crest down on the landing pad, sealed the Child in a secure compartment of the ship, and lowered the ramp to disembark.
The sign above the docking bay told him where he was:
TATOOINE
At the end of the boarding ramp, a series of electronic chirps and squeaks caught his attention. Three rusty-looking pit droids were bouncing eagerly toward him on their spindly legs, toolboxes in hand, like they were already preparing to dismantle the ship for scrap.
Mando drew his blaster and fired a warning shot, and the trio gave a communal squawk of terror before collapsing into flat protective shells.
“Hey!” someone shouted. Looking over, he saw a woman with curly brown hair in a one-piece coverall striding toward him, a tool belt swinging from around her waist. “You damage one of my droids, you’ll pay for it.”
“Just keep them away from my ship,” Mando said.
“Yeah? You think that’s a good idea, do you?” The woman eyed him speculatively. “Let’s look at your ship.” Approaching the Crest, she reached up and rapped one fist on the lower hull. The Mandalorian saw a piece of loose metal fall to the floor with a clatter. “Oof! Look at that,” she said. “You’ve got a lot of carbon scoring up top. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in a shootout.”
Mando said nothing. She’d already brought out a handheld diagnostic scope to take a better look at the damage. “Name’s Peli Motto,” she said, “since you didn’t bother to ask. This is my operation. You’re not gonna find a better mechanic on the planet.” She leaned in farther, examining the underside of the engine. “Yeah, I’m gonna have to rotate that. You’ve got a fuel leak. Look at this, this is a mess. How did you even land?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Mando and got to the point: “That’s gonna set you back.”
“I’ve got five hundred Imperial credits,” he said.
Motto looked unimpressed with the small bag of coins. “That’s all you got? Well…” She looked back at the maintenance droids. “What do you guys think?”
The droids chirped, eyeing the bounty hunter cautiously and keeping their distance.
“Well, that should at least cover the hangar,” Motto said.
“I’ll get your money.”
“Mm,” she said. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Just remember…” Mando said.
“Yeah,” she said, “no droids. I heard ya. You don’t have to say it twice.”
He nodded and walked out of the hangar.
—
The streets of Mos Eisley were mostly empty, as if whatever had happened on the planet had been over long before. Low, single-story dwellings the color of sandstone faced one another in relative silence.
Going around a corner and down the next street, Mando glanced up and saw a group of Imperial stormtrooper helmets suspended on spikes jutting out of the ground, a grim monument and a reminder that the Empire no longer held the planet in its grip…and perhaps a warning to anyone who might think otherwise. Farther along he encountered some of the rubble from the last skirmish that had taken place there, damaged equipment that looked like it had taken heavy fire. There were a few more inhabitants there, and a nearby doorway led to a cantina.
He stepped into the darkness.
Inside was a largely empty establishment with a pair of service droids making drinks behind the bar and a series of tables along the wall where a handful of others—drifters and pilots of all different species—were conferring in murmurs. There was an empty bandstand with no sign of musicians. Like the street outside, it looked like the sort of place that had seen action in the past, in another lifetime; it was easy to imagine rollicking music being played there, the place alive with activity and intrigue, promises and threats. No longer.
“Hey, droid,” he said, approaching the bar. “I’m a hunter. I’m looking for work.”
The droid did not look up from the glass it was wiping out. “Unfortunately, the Bounty Guild no longer operates from Tatooine.”
“I’m not looking for Guild work.”
“I am afraid that does not improve your situation,” it sai
d, “at least by my calculation.”
“Think again, tin can,” said a man at one of the tables behind Mando.
He turned to look at the young man sitting in the shadows, his feet propped up in front of him in a gesture of supreme self-confidence.
“If you’re looking for work, have a seat, my friend.” He didn’t wait for the Mandalorian to respond. “Name’s Toro, Toro Calican.” He gestured to the empty seat across from him. “Come on, relax.”
The Mandalorian had barely sat down across from him when Calican slapped a puck on the table with a flourish, activating the holo in front of him.
“Picked up this bounty puck before I left the Mid Rim,” the kid said, clearly pleased with himself. “Fennec Shand, an assassin. Heard she’s been on the run ever since the New Republic put all her employers in lockdown.”
Mando gazed down at the face of the woman, her features cool and remote, sniper’s eyes that were dark and devoid of mercy, even in the holo. “I know the name,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I followed this tracking fob here,” Calican said casually, holding it up to display the blinking red light. “Now the data suggests she’s headed out beyond the Dune Sea. Should be an easy job.”
Mando rose to his feet. “Well, good luck with that.”
For a second Calican was too surprised to speak. “Wait, wait, wait, hey, I thought you needed work?”
“How long have you been with the Guild?”
“Long enough.”
“Clearly not.” Mando nodded at the puck. “Fennec Shand is an elite mercenary. She made her name killing for all the top crime syndicates. Including the Hutts.” He met the younger man’s gaze. “If you go after her, you won’t make it past sunrise.”
He began to walk away, already thinking of what his next stop would be. Mos Eisley might’ve been a sleepy town without much to recommend it, but there was always an opportunity for those who were motivated enough to look. And he needed to pay for those repairs, to get moving again as soon as possible.
“Wait,” Calican blurted out.
Mando turned back and saw that the young hunter was looking at him differently, all the cockiness and poise slipping away to reveal the lack of experience beneath.
“This is my first job,” Calican admitted. “You can keep the money, all of it. I just…need this job to get into the Guild.” He shook his head. “I can’t do it alone.”
The Mandalorian said nothing for a long moment. “Meet me at hangar three-five in half an hour,” he said finally, and saw the kid already relaxing again. “Bring two speeder bikes, and give me the tracking fob.”
Calican held the fob out, as if he were going to put it in Mando’s hand, and then smashed it against the wall instead. The grin was back on his face as if it had never left.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got it all memorized.” The grin widened. “Looks like you’re stuck with me now, partner!”
“Half an hour.” Before the kid could say anything more, Mando turned and walked away.
AFTER LEAVING the cantina, Mando walked back to the hangar bay, to the Razor Crest, and went aboard the vessel, making his way back to the compartment where he’d hidden the Child.
But the Child wasn’t there.
Mando turned and ran down the ship’s ramp. “Hey!”
Inside her office, Peli Motto jerked upright and raised her head, shouting, “I’m awake! I’m awake!”
“Where is he?”
“Quiet!” She came out, holding the Child and bouncing him in her arms, and glared at him. “You woke it up! Do you have any idea how long it took me to get it to sleep?”
“Give him to me.”
Instead, Motto stood her ground and glared at him, with the Child clutched protectively in her arms. “Not so fast! You can’t just leave a child all alone like that.” She scowled with disapproval and maternal instinct. “You know, you have an awful lot to learn about raising a young one.”
The Mandalorian looked down at the Child, who had stopped crying and was gazing up at Motto, babbling contentedly in her arms.
“Anyway,” Motto went on, “I started the repair on the fuel leak. I had a couple setbacks I want to talk to you about.” Shifting the Child easily into the crook of her left elbow, she reached up to the wall console, flipped open the access panel, and typed in a diagnostic code. The Child observed all this with vivid interest. “You know I didn’t use any droids, as requested, so it took me a lot longer than I expected.” She glanced hesitantly at him. “But I figured you were good for the money, since you have an extra mouth to feed.”
Mando glanced back to the Child again, hearing him coo and gurgle. The kid seemed to recognize that, whatever Peli Motto’s financial motives might be, he was safe with her.
“Thank you,” he said.
The earnestness of his response seemed to surprise her, but only briefly. “Oh, well, I guess I was right,” she said. “You got a job, didn’t you?” He didn’t need to reply, but she followed him outside, still talking. “You know, it’s costing me a lot of money to keep these droids even powered up!”
The Mandalorian stopped. In front of him, Toro Calican stood next to a pair of speeder bikes that floated effortlessly above their own shadows. The young hunter was leaning against one of the bikes with his arms crossed, head tilted back in a pose that he’d no doubt practiced in a hundred different mirrors.
He gestured at the bikes. “Hey, Mando, what do you think?”
He inspected the bikes cautiously, not expecting much. They were secondhand at best, mashed together out of spare parts, but they’d make it to the Dune Sea.
“What do you expect?” Calican asked defensively. “This isn’t Corellia,” he said, referring to the planet known for top-of-the-line ship manufacturing. He turned to nod at Motto, who was still standing there with the Child in her arms. “Ma’am.”
Peli Motto said nothing, just gave him the suspicious glance of one who’d seen his kind come and go, but Mando heard the Child’s response, a bright chuckle of amusement, as if all this—including Toro Calican’s posturing—was just part of a pageant that had been arranged for his personal entertainment.
Mando climbed aboard his bike. Calican had already fired up his engine and gone roaring down the street toward the desert, and a moment later, the Mandalorian joined him, hoping that he wasn’t making a mistake.
He’d find out soon enough.
THE DESERT WAS FOREVER.
For the archaeologists who studied its past, the Dune Sea contained countless secrets. Folklore held that, once, long before, it had been an actual sea, before the twin suns of Tatooine had dried it up and left it as it stood, hundreds of kilometers of blazing hot sand that stretched out in all directions. Bones of creatures long since extinct littered the dunes, and beneath them, perhaps, lay ancient kingdoms that had come and gone even before that.
The Mandalorian pushed the throttle forward, leaning into the wind. The speeder bike performed better than he’d expected, its engines actually seeming to function best at top speed, as if appreciating an opportunity to devour so much open space.
Somewhere out there was their target: Fennec Shand.
Shand’s reputation was beyond question. For those who could afford her services—crime lords, crooked politicians, and Hutts—she was a messenger of death, a ghost with a sniper rifle, and by the time you saw her, it was already too late.
Mando knew that if they failed in their mission to bring her back, he and Calican would never survive. Shand would make sure of that.
Throttling down the speeder bike, he slowed and came to a halt. The kid stopped alongside him and peeled off his goggles, glancing over. “What’s going on?”
Mando pointed. “Look. Up ahead.”
Calican climbed off his bike and pulled a pair of macrobinoculars from his pack, aiming them at a pair of banthas that were standing unattended in the distance. “Tusken Raiders,” he sneered. “I heard the locals talking about this filth.”
“Tuskens think they’re the locals,” Mando said. “Everyone else is just trespassing.”
The kid snorted as if he would’ve expected as much from an inferior species. “Well, whatever they call themselves, they best keep their distance.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you tell them yourself.”
Calican turned around, ready with some offhand retort, and saw the two Tuskens standing behind him, their traditional gaffi sticks in hand. His mouth fell open and his eyes went wide.
“Relax,” Mando said. He turned to the Tuskens, raising his hands and addressing them in sign language.
“What are you doing?”
The Mandalorian didn’t bother looking over at him. “Negotiating.”
“For what?” The kid looked back and forth, bewildered, as the Tusken in front of them responded, the conversation drawing out in silence. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to need passage across their land,” Mando said. A moment later, he turned to Calican. “Let me see the binocs.”
“Why?”
Without bothering to respond, Mando took the macrobinoculars, turned, and tossed them to the Tusken, who caught them easily and tucked them away.
“Hey!” Calican bawled. “Those were brand new!”
“Yeah, they were.” Mando got back on his bike, revved the engine, and took off, not waiting for the kid to follow.
They rode farther, coming up alongside a high dune, and Mando cut the speeder’s power and leapt off, gesturing for Calican to follow. “Get down.”
“What? Oh.” The kid dismounted, scrambling to join him.
Crouched down side by side, they peered into the open valley below. The arid silence was pierced by the faint but unmistakable bray of an animal wandering in the middle distance.
“All right,” Mando said, “tell me what you see.”
“Dewback,” Calican said, gazing down at the bellowing lizard, which was dragging a body behind it in its harness, facedown in the sand. “Looks like the rider’s still attached.” He glanced at the Mandalorian. “Is that her? Is that the target?”
Star Wars: The Mandalorian Junior Novel Page 7