(Also see mors-ethan-bg-story1)
Behind the Scenes
I actually wrote this story as an assignment for a science fiction course I took in college. A lot of the explanation about hyperspace travel and navigation were for the benefit of the reader (i.e. professor) who is probably not familiar with the Star Wars technology.
I'm not exactly sure why I refer to it as the "Leg-less Bantha story", as opposed to something more focused on the actual plot. My best guess: my original intention was to write a story about Mors Ethan in his early days as a scout, before he bought the Lightning Talon.
"Leg-less Bantha story"
About Mors and hyperspace
Mors Ethan was no stranger to loneliness. He grew up as an only child, which was common on his homeworld, Chandrila. He learned to entertain himself when his friends became scarce. He didn't mind.
Of course, he didn't mind company either.
Now was one of the times that he would be alone. The stars elongated into streaking white lines in front of him as his small, struggling starship lurched into hyperspace. Watching, Mors leaned back and smiled. In little less than a day, he was going to be the first sentient being in the galaxy to set foot on the recently discovered planet. Tentatively, the planet has been named Beweni.
Mors was thrilled. This is what he lived for. He had made it his lifestyle to discover the undiscovered with great enthusiasm.
Mors was a young man, only twenty-one standard years old. Nonetheless, he had seen more of the galaxy than most of the Empire's best scouts would have ever seen by the time that they turned thirty. As a teenager, Mors had worked on a corporate trade ship, where he learned a great deal about the galaxy around him. But that was only his first step into a lifestyle of seeking the unknown.
Mors's parents were among the rare fruit farmers on Chandrila. His father, Toran Ethan, took great respect in the nature and beauty of the planet. Therefore, he became very disapproving of his son's desire to leave the planet at such a young age. Toran felt that Mors had no respect for his homeworld.
Chandrila has never been like the rest of the homeworlds in the Galactic Core. Most of them are densely populated and have developed large cities. But Chandrilans have taken measures to keep their population under control and in balance with the natural environment. It's extremely rare to have more than one child to a family. Nature has always been a major part of Chandrilan culture. Grassy plains and agrifarms cover the two continents.
In truth, Mors had all the respect in the galaxy for his homeworld. But his curiosity of the other planets in the galaxy was much stronger. He wanted to know things like what the natural environments of those planets were like, what their inhabitants were like, and how far one planet was from another.
From his mother's side of the family, Mors genetically inherited a great capacity for knowledge, though he wasn't aware of it. All he knew was that he had an extreme desire to learn.
At the age of fourteen, he convinced his parents (or at least his more understanding mother) to let him join the trading company. He agreed to keep in touch on a regular basis and to come home every chance he got.
His employment with the trading company lasted for three years. By then he had saved up enough credits to buy the very first ship that he could call his own. Of course, since it was previously owned, it wasn't a very good ship. In fact, it was such a hunk of junk that Mors didn't even feel it deserved to be given a name. The ship looked like a leg-less bantha, with a large, sort-of-round front end (that looked like the head) and a downward sloping dorsal side (like the slouching back). At the back, two cylindrical engine blocks came out… one on each side. It was bulky. The flat cockpit windows were spread out across the "head" at the level where the eyes would be.
It wasn't a pretty ship, but it didn't matter to him. All he cared about was checking out the parts of the galaxy that he hadn't seen while working with the trading company. He had a lot of galaxy to see.
Being an independent scout was one of the toughest jobs in the galaxy. The Empire had their own, trained scouts and didn't need his services (which was fine with Mors, as he didn't particularly care much for the Empire and their cold hearted ways). But, by not working with the galaxy's ruling government, business was limited. On more occasions than he cared for, Mors would simply taxi people between the known planets instead of searching for new ones, just to keep an income.
When credits became scarce, Mors was resourceful enough to utilize survival skills he had learned over the years. He was able to find and hunt food on just about any planet he knew of. He often considered this to be more of a vacation than a chore, though. After all, living off other planets has always been apart of his dream.
As his nameless ship flew through hyperspace, he just stared out the window blissfully. Standing, Mors Ethan was a healthy, athletic looking man. He wasn't big in stature, nor did he look particularly aggressive. He had been in a few blaster fights before, but he was not a combat oriented man.
His face was kind and sincere. He was readily attractive, but he often did not care how he looked to the public. This left him in a ruffled, disorganized appearance almost constantly. His short darker-than-dark hair tended to be the only feature that ever stayed nice. Usually, he wore what seemed to be a dark green mechanic's outfit. He used its many pockets to hold small equipment and tools for both survival and surveying. A blaster holster and a vibro-blade hung from his belt.
The reunion
After a few hours into his trip, a warning light flashed at the ship's controls, snapping him out his daydreaming daze. Mors sat down to investigate.
Something was blocking his hyperspace route. Mors dropped the ship out of hyperspace before it was too late.
Hyperspace is another dimension that paralleled sublight space. Mass in sublight space cast "mass shadows" into hyperspace. If a ship in hyperspace collided with a mass shadow, it would be severely damaged if not destroyed. Hyperdrive-enabled starships required a navigational computer of some sort to plot safe routes through hyperspace, routes that avoided all known stars, planets, and other objects of considerable mass.
But the galaxy is always changing.
Looking out the cockpit view frame, Mors didn't see anything but distant stars. Whatever set off the warning system was still out of visual sight. He activated his sensors to see what was beyond his eyesight. Straight ahead… he detected a large starship. His sensors weren't strong enough to tell him any details about this ship.
Only slightly interested, Mors watched the position of the ship while he waited for a new route to be plotted by the nav-computer. A little bit before the calculations were complete, he detected that the ship was heading towards him.
Mors was temporarily conflicted between his desire to reach the new planet Beweni soon and his curiosity of what this ship might be and why it was in the middle empty space. Of course, with the likelihood that a ship that large was an Imperial Star Destroyer, Mors didn't spend much time making up his mind.
With the new coordinates configured, Mors brought his scrap-metal ship around to a new heading, slightly off to the right of his original direction. The rotation was sluggish, and by the time the clunker had settled into its new heading, the large mystery starship had become visible off to Mors's left. It was still quite a distance away, but Mors had been able to see that it wasn't quite the right shape for a Star Destroyer.
Since the "Leg-less Bantha" (the most common reference to his ship) was as slow to pull out of a stop as pulling any other maneuver, he realized that the capital ship would be on him before his hyperdrive was even reactivated. At the same time, he began to recognize the approaching ship, as more of its details became apparent. With a grin, Mors deactivated the hyperdrive launch sequence and let himself be approached by the familiar cargo/trade ship of his former employer.
The cargo/trade ship had a simple format. Long on the forward axis, it was very blocky from an overhead view. From the front or back it looked like two concave lenses, one facing down and one facing up, and crossing each other at the edges. Central towers protruded from the top and bottom, bulging at their ends. It was about forty times longer than Mors's ship, which itself was only slightly longer than a starfighter.
Mors was only half surprised that she was the one to contact him.
"Mors Ethan," her voice came over the comm frequency. "Imagine us finding you out here in the void of space." The voice belonged to Regina Hayleen, the closest thing to a romance the Mors has ever had in his entire life. He and Regina worked for the trading company together as teenagers – they spent a lot of time together. When Mors was ready to move on with his life, Regina stayed to build her career in the trade business.
"Hi, Regina!" Mors replied with a friendly voice. "What are you guys doing out here?"
"Classified business," she said with a serious voice. Mors couldn't detect whether she was actually being serious or joking around with him like she used to. She just had that kind of sense of humor.
Mors, in an equally serious voice, came back with, "I see. Well, your 'classified business' interrupted my hyperspace journey."
"Ohhh," her voiced rose with piqued curiosity. "Where were you going? Hopefully to buy yourself a new ship. You've had that heap for… what? Four years now?"
Mors Ethan chuckled, "I know, I know. Actually I'm in a rush to get to Beweni."
"Where?"
"New planet. You know me: 'galactic explorer extraordinaire.'"
Mors heard her laugh, then say, "Well, are you in too much of a rush to dock with us and chat a little while?"
"What about your 'classified business'?"
"Come on over and I'll tell you about it, Mors," she invited with a friendly voice.
Regina Hayleen had light-golden curly hair that reached most of the way down her back. She had a sweet, soft face with blue eyes and cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. At about the exact same height as himself, Mors had always thought that Regina had the perfect body. And he was attracted to her independent personality as well.
During the conversation over the comlink, Regina had failed to mention that she had worked her way up the ranks to a Lieutenant Manager. So as Mors came out of the airlock, he was rather surprised to see her in a uniform-suit, looking very formal. Realizing that he was still wearing his not-so-clean green jumpsuit, Mors became quickly embarrassed and uncomfortable.
Regina detected his uneasiness. She smiled and gave him a warm hug.
"Relax," she laughed. "You made a first impression on me years ago. You don't need to do it again."
Mors smiled with relief.
Releasing the embrace, Regina looked at Mors and said, "Come on! I'll show you what we're doing out here."
The Imperial prototype (reunion continued)
Mors stared at the screen. A few colored blips maintained positions, especially a strong blue dot in the center. It represented The Entrepreneur, Regina's ship.
"So what's the problem?" Mors asked.
Regina pointed to a pair of dots off to the left of the center. One was blue, the other was green.
"The blue one is our next Point of Transaction, The Eaton. The green one is of course Imperial."
"Star Destroyer?"
"Not really." Then Regina paused – a long pause.
Mors returned a perplexed look. "Well, I can see you were fortunate enough to not complete your hyperspace jump into the face of an Imperial ship. But I still don't see why you stopped all the way out here. Were you somehow able to identify the ship while still in hyperspace? I didn't think that was possible."
Regina maintained a serious face. "It's not possible, as of yet. That's not why we stopped. We stopped because we detected a mass shadow… just the same way you detected us in your path."
"I don't get it. Ships located at your destination shouldn't register as dangerous mass shadows to you navigation computer. It assumes you'll be pulling out of hyperspace before you just drive right through them."
"Hold on a nanosecond, Mors. Let me explain." Regina then went to a nearby chair in the conference room that Mors and Regina occupied alone. The two of them had been standing at a console in the middle of one of the long sidewalls of the room. The conference room was luxurious and elegant, obviously used to conduct formal business.
Regina punched some buttons embedded into the conference table where she sat. The star map they had been viewing changed to a still image of a ship. Mors immediately recognized the shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer. However, this craft had some obvious differences to the normal Star Destroyer. For one, the armor hull seemed to be made out of lighter colored metal, almost white or a light gray. However, the most noticeable difference was the presence of the four "bubble-like" protrusions from the center of the hull, two on each side. Armored like the rest of the ship, these bubbles looked like silly flotation devices used to keep the ship in orbit or something.
"It's not a Star Destroyer," Regina started. "It's a new ship. We figure they must be prototyping it… testing it out. They're called Interdictor Cruisers. We encountered this one, Isolation, when we accidentally flew too close to its testing space."
Mors dropped his jaw, "You encountered a military prototype ship and lived to tell about it?"
Regina gave a wry smile, "It's a long story but a couple of reasons are that, A: these things aren't as fully armed as Star Destroyers, and B: I don't think the Empire is really worried about keeping these things secret. You know that whole doctrine of 'rule by fear.'"
"Fear of what? What are these things supposed to do?"
Regina pointed to the bubbles on the image of the ship. "Gravity wells."
"What?"
"We think these things are gravity wells. When activated, they produce as much gravity as a large planet, if not more… like a star. This is probably what drew us to the Isolation."
Mors nodded, "Sounds like it was done on purpose then."
"Probably. Our guess is that these things will be used to keep ships from escaping into hyperspace while they are being blasted away by a couple of Star Destroyers."
Mors shuddered. "Sort of like being stuck in biomuck while being shot at," he said, recalling an adventurous encounter he had with the natives of Yaqa III about a year ago. "I see what you mean now about that 'ruling by fear' junk."
Regina nodded. "Anyway, apparently a side effect of these gravity wells is a gigantic mass shadow projected into hyperspace. Even though there is no real mass, the gravity is so massive that it throws our sensors way off. Our navigational computer must have thought we were heading into a huge star. That's why we are all the way out here."
Mors finally nodded with understanding. "So you're just watching until the coast is clear, huh? You must not have very legal goods to trade this time." He winked at Regina. She smiled, put her index finger to her mouth, and returned the wink.
She tried to mess up his hair with her hands. But with a quick shake of his head, his hair fell right back into place.
"I don't get it," she said. "You don't even use any stabilizer chemicals or anything. How do you get it to stay like that?"
"I guess my hair just doesn't believe in entropy," Mors said with a grin.
"Okay, whatever."
Even though Mors was anxious to get to the planet Beweni, he wanted to spend as much time with Regina Hayleen as possible. He didn't know when he'd see her next.
"So where are you going after your business with The Eaton?" he asked.
"Who knows? We'll have to see what kind of goods they have… you know."
He nodded. Of course he knew. That is the way it always was in the trade business. He started, "I was just wondering, because I thought we could…"
"How are your parents?" she interrupted. Mors couldn't tell if she did it on purpose or not. But her question seemed sincere enough. That's when Mors became very quiet and solemn.
Regina became concerned. "What? What is it?"
With a sigh, Mors replied, "I haven't talked to them since I left… since I left you, I think. I haven't even been back to Chandrila in years."
"WHAT? What happened?"
"I don't know. I became too busy, but I also never heard from them for a while."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Mors paused. But before he could answer, the comm system sounded.
"This is the Chief-Manager. The Eaton and the Imperial ship have separated. We will be continuing on soon. Mors Ethan, please return to your ship. We must be on our ways."
Mors and Regina looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then, without a word, he left Regina alone in the room to return to his ship.
A few meters away from the airlock door, Regina caught up with Mors.
"Mors! Don't leave without saying 'goodbye' again."
Mors turned to look at her. Then he hugged her. "Take care of yourself, Regina," he said into her hair.
"Take care of yourself, Mors. And go home, please! Go to Chandrila and check on your parents. Please… do it for me."
Mors didn't say anything. He released the hug and silently entered the airlock. The door quickly closed behind him with a harsh hissing of air.
"Damn you, Mors Ethan!" Regina cursed under her breath. She rushed away before anybody could notice the tears that came gushing out.
Arrival at Beweni
The Entrepreneur zipped away into hyperspace faster than a blink of an eye. Mors sat in his cockpit chair, waiting for his ancient nav-computer to recalibrate the course to Beweni.
He tried to make the pain go away faster, though he knew it would be completely gone when he entered hyperspace and was well on his way to Beweni.
Trying to distract his mind until then, he picked up the datapad that showed the preliminary data on Beweni sent by earlier probes. He had read over this data a hundred times before. Still, it helped.
A disc of green and yellow colors grew quickly in front of him as he came out of hyperspace at Beweni. His mind was clear and ready for the task at hand. In his eagerness to land, he almost didn't notice the other ship that registered on his sensors.
The ship was heading towards the planet. Mors felt his heart sink. Then he felt nauseous when the ship's identity appeared on his sensor screen. The Galaxy's Eye. It belonged to Hatch Maljet – Mors's occupational rival. Hatch was the reason that Mors had such a hard time making a living. Hatch always seemed to get the calls for the better paying jobs or, like today, "get there first."
Part of Hatch's success was due to his ship. The Galaxy's Eye was top-of-the-line. It had a sleek design like a speeder car or express-tram control car.
"Ethan!" came the overconfident voice through the comm speakers. "Glad you could finally make it! I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to make it away from that Hayleen chick."
Mors's anger brewed. Mors was hardly ever angry about anything. But being around Hatch Maljet was the exact opposite.
"How did you know about that, Maljet?"
"Heh! Why? What did she tell you she was doing out in the middle of no where?"
"What are you saying, Maljet? That…"
"I guess that new Imperial ship made quite a convenient story. Well, see you on the surface, Ethan."
The comm connection terminated. "DAMNIT!"
Mors pushed his ship to the max. Hatch may have beaten him to the checkpoint, but the race wasn't over.
Upon his approach to land on the planet Beweni, Mors discovered that the green and yellow colors seen from space were from the patches of green- or yellow-leafed trees that cover the surface. Though visually appealing, Mors was not happy to see that he didn't have much of anywhere to land. While flying over the serene tree-scape, he decided to take some preliminary geologic and atmospheric sensor readings. Close to standard gravity. Common soil composites. Breathable air with the exception of trace excesses of neon above normal. What this meant is that people who had breathed filtered starship air most of their whole lives would need to put on a breath mask or something after about sixteen hours of Beweni air, just to keep their lungs healthy. Nothing much to Mors. The computer recorded it all.
He had budgeted himself about 24 standard hours of surveying time. This would give him enough time to be fairly thorough in his investigation of the planet, and also keep him in tight competition with Hatch. Hatch Maljet always had a tendency to rush his surveys, usually making them less complete than Mors's. This rarely mattered to those who only requested preliminary thumbnail views of a planet, which is why Hatch always did better in business than Mors. However, Mors always made sure to make his surveys as complete as possible, not only out of personal interest and conviction, but to make sure that something potentially dangerous (like the dwelling of a large meat-eating beast) was not missed.
Mors had lost track of Hatch a while ago. They had both gone for different parts of the planet. Mors had no doubt that Hatch had found a place to land by now. The Galaxy's Eye was smaller and more maneuverable than the "Leg-less Bantha."
He continued cruising along at a steady altitude above the trees, keeping his eyes peeled for an opening and taking sensor readings on the natural environment. Ahead of him, a flock of white or light gray bird-creatures took flight from their perches in a patch of yellow-leafed trees. The "Leg-less Bantha" flew just under the last and lowest bird of the cluster. Mors quickly transcribed a note about the creatures in his field datalog.
His approach to the planet was to the morning side. Watching the sun take its path through the sky, Mors noticed that a colorful "wake" effect was produced such that a triangle of pink and orange sky was left behind the sun down to the eastern horizon. Mors made another note in his datalog and hypothesized that effect was probably a reaction of the excess neon in the atmosphere and some sort of latent radiation emitted from the sun at a sublight speed.
After spending a least one or two standard hours in the sky, taking redundant readings and stirring up more of the white bird-creatures, Mors finally found an opening that he figured he could land the "Leg-less Bantha" in. He circled it a couple of times (just to be sure) then began his decent. Then it started: the shaking, the alarms, the sinking feeling of free fall where all internal organs migrate to the neck. Mors couldn't think fast enough before he felt the jolt of impact when his ship hit the trees, followed closely by an even harder impact of hitting the ground.
Assessments
His eyes slowly opened. His head was resting on cockpit controls… and it hurt. It hurt even worse when he lifted it.
"OUCH! Ow… sith spit…"
He looked down, but didn't see any blood on the controls. He lightly touched his head where it had hit. There was no blood, but there was the dull pain of a severe bruise. He sat up but gravity told him that "up" was not quite in the direction he was expecting. His ship was leaning to its left and forward at a noticeable angle.
"Ah sith spit," he repeated. He looked around the cockpit to see what was still working. Surprisingly, a lot of lights and systems were still active. Mors turned in his chair to see if he could still access the flight data recorder. But before he could even punch in the access, he remembered how much his head hurt. So he got up and began climbing his was to the back of the ship, looking for a medpac that might still have some pain relievers in it.
A lot of things that were not secured tight enough were thrown to the front of the ship in the crash. Among them, Mors found a medpac that had a full complement of pain relievers still in it. He rationed and applied a small dose to his bruised head, enough to at least take his concentration off the pain for a little bit. He then went back to investigate the crash.
Apparently, the repulsorlift stabilizers, which helped guide the ship in fine maneuvers such as landing or docking procedures, had failed for unknown reasons. The ship began to crash land. Luckily, the emergency repulsors activated just in time. The emergency repulsors were a safety system. They produced an extremely short but extremely strong repulsor field when a crash was imminent to soften the impact. This makes the crash a lot less worse than it could have been. This is why Mors was still able to work in a functional cockpit with only a mere bruise on his head.
Still, Mors had a big problem. Without the primary repulsorlift stabilizers, the "Leg-less Bantha" would not be able to lift off the planet.
Outside the ship, Mors found that the ship had ended up in the open clearing area of the forest after all. The ground in the area was very sandy and soft, which also must have helped cushion the impact. Unfortunately, the crashing ship had taken down several of the green-leafed trees. Now the ship was partially buried in the sand, at its front-left corner. Pulling the ship out was another job for the malfunctioning repulsorlifts to do.
"What am I going to do?" Mors wondered to himself. He doubted he could repair the damage himself. Hatch could help, if Hatch bothered to find him and he was humane enough to help. As he flew over the surface, Mors never detected any buildings or structures of a possible advanced civilization.
He shook his head at himself. Hatch was his only hope. Mors went to activate his emergency beacon.
Evening came. But Mors was so busy checking out the planet Beweni, that dusk caught him by surprise. He had to get back to the "Leg-less Bantha" to set up camp.
Keeping his mind occupied with gathering information, he had almost forgotten about his accident. Still he had learned quite a bit about the planet Beweni. For starters, the trees provided just about all of the planet's life system. The green trees, as expected, provide food and air. The yellow trees, however, provide shelter (due to their thicker foliage) and water. As far as Mors could determine, the yellow trees somehow produced water instead of consuming it; and they seemed to be the only source of water on the entire planet. The water would pour out of the bark of the yellow trees and drain into the soft ground, where the roots of the green trees could soak it up. Mors theorized that the yellow trees somehow used a reversed photosynthesis process to consume light and produce water, as opposed to oxygen. In a fit of creative genius, he decided to call the process "photohydrosis."
Sometimes, perhaps due to saturation in the ground, Mors figured, pools of water would form at the base of the yellow trees. The creatures of the planet could drink from these pools. However, Mors was surprised to find that the planet was rather deserted of much animal life. There were of course the white birds that he had already seen. They rested mostly in the yellow leaves, fed off the green leaves, and drank from the pools of water at the yellow tree bases. And they squawked… constantly and noisily. It did not take long for Mors to get annoyed.
The only other animals that he saw all day were two sloth-like creatures that hung from the branches of the trees. These furry animals reminded Mors of sloth he had seen on other planets. They had three toes on each of their four legs and had very slow, tired movements. The only major difference in these creatures was the shape of their head, which was more elongated than what Mors had seen.
The two specimens that Mors came across did not move at all from their hanging positions in the trees, with the exception of moving their heads to watch Mors with every move he made. They never made a sound (unlike their feathered cohabitants). Mors spent about an hour watching the two creatures, as they just watched him right back.
Mors was hoping (ironically) to see Hatch Maljet waiting for him at his camp when he returned. He was slightly disappointed to find the "Leg-less Bantha" alone, just as he had left it. With heavy shoulders, Mors began setting up a camp.
Mysterious encounter
During the night, the birds finally silenced themselves with sleep. Leaves rustling in the breeze was the only night sound to be heard. Mors was a light sleeper, so he quickly awoke to the sudden sound that came from outside the ship. He flipped on the "dark" light in his chamber went searching for his glowrod. He had fallen asleep fully clothed and was ready for just about anything. This was common practice for him, especially on some other planets where camp-robbing animals would never allow a wink of sleep.
Outside the ship, Mors scanned the surroundings, pointing his glowrod in all sorts of directions. The night was pitch black. Beweni had no moon, and the starlight didn't provide much illumination. With his glowrod, he saw nothing. He heard nothing. From what he could tell, nothing was out of the ordinary. Thinking back, he realized that he couldn't even identify the sound that woke him up. He walked a circle around his ship.
Coming around, and nearly completing the circle, something tripped Mors. Releasing the glowrod, he fell hard to the ground… despite how soft it was. He saw the glow rod strike against the side of the ship, right before it flickered out. He heard it land near him, so he reached out for it. He finally felt it in his and picked it up, at the same time pulling himself up to a kneeling position. He could tell that the glowrod must have hit against a sharp part of the ship, because he could feel part of the side was busted open and electronic components spilled out. Before he even realized how useless the cheap device had become to him, he felt it removed from his hand… removed by something metallic.
"HEY! What the…?" Mors's voice broke the night's silence. He swiped out with his now empty hand, hoping to hit whatever just stole his broken glowrod from him. Jumping to his feet, he shouted out, "Hey! Who's there?"
For a moment he heard nothing. Then off to his right, he heard what sounded like a piece of tree bark breaking off. Mors froze. He waited and listened. Eternity passed and he never heard another noise. Finally he felt his way back inside his ship. He tried to fall asleep, but the night's silence kept him awake.
Help revealed
He must have eventually fallen asleep because he woke up with a jolt in the morning. Only vaguely remembering the events of the night before, Mors went outside and looked around, trying to determine what had actually happened. As he walked around he saw something on the ground.
It was a glowrod. It was his glowrod. He picked it up. A piece of metal was secured over where it must have been damaged. Throwing the activation switch, Mors was surprised to see the glowrod turn on.
Looking up, Mors quickly scanned the forest around him.
"MALJET? Maljet, are you out there, you jerk?"
He was answered only by an eerie silence. The noisy birds must not have awakened yet. After a moment of standing there looking into the forest around him, he went back to the entry of his ship and sat on its threshold. Upon closer examination of the glowrod, Mors could see that the metal "bandage" was tightly welded on. It was impossible to examine any of the internal repair work.
In the distance, the sound of tree bark breaking echoed. With a slight sense of panic, Mors put down the glowrod and jumped to his feet. His memory flashed back to the previous night, when the last thing he heard was the same cracking noise… only a lot closer. Now he concentrated on the forest around him again. Slowly, he drew his blaster pistol from its holster and threw the switch for "stun" setting.
Again, Mors stood in a deafening silence for a long breath. Fearing that he was beginning to suffer from paranoia, he turned to his left to get inside. But that's when it caught his eye.
Mors stepped away from the entry to get a better viewing angle. Several meters in front of his ship, Mors saw the "vehicle" for the first time. The "vehicle" immediately reminded him of a large mechanical spider. Several thin mechanical legs, pointed at the end, held up the body. The body wasn't much thicker than the branch of a tree. That was done on purpose, because hanging from the body was one of the sloth creatures that Mors had seen the day before. Also extending out of the body were about four mechanical tentacles with claw-like manipulators at the ends. The creature controlled the "vehicle" with the controls that lined the body-branch.
And the "vehicle" moved in complete silence. Not one mechanical crank, hum, or hiss was ever produced from it.
So many revelations and questions rushed into Mors's head at the same time.
That's why I couldn't hear anything last night. How did they build those? They must feel more comfortable hanging upside-down. Where did they get the material and power sources for those? One of those arms must have been what grabbed my glowrod. If they are so technologically advanced, why don't they have any cities or any other structures? Their muscles must be to slow, but their brains must be super fast…
Standing there stunned, with his mind spinning faster than a hyperdrive motivator, Mors almost didn't notice two more sloth-controlled vehicles come out behind him. The vehicles moved towards the "Leg-less Bantha." The arms of the vehicle behind Mors removed a maintenance panel on the outside of the ship, completely without a sound.
It wasn't until one of the sloth made a slow, tired, low moaning or growling sound that Mors snapped out of his daydreaming daze. An answering moan-growl came from the other side of the ship. Mors turned in time to see a tool held by a vehicle-arm produce a bright spark from the ship's innards.
They're fixing my ship! They're cooperating on fixing my ship! How do they know what to do?
Mors watched with amazement the speed and precision of the sloth and their vehicles. He had considered helping but decided he might be more of a hindrance to these gracious, marvelous creatures. He decided instead to just watch and learn – learn both how the vehicles were operated, and what they were doing to fix his ship.
By the early afternoon, a small miracle had been performed. The sloth and their utility vehicles had repaired the repulsorlift stabilizers on the "Leg-less Bantha." With the ship put back together, the vehicles began retreating back into the forest. Mors attempted to follow on foot, but they were too quick. But just before he lost sight of one, he saw a mechanical arm randomly strike against the bark of a tree, breaking a piece of it off with a noticeable cracking sound.
Departure / Epilogue
Looking at his chronometer, a sense of urgency suddenly hit him. He was six hours over his own budget. Hatch Maljet had no doubt left hours ago. With a silent expression of gratitude to sloth creatures, Mors got in the "Leg-less Bantha." The ship struggled but it pulled itself out of the sand and began an ascent to the now pink eastern sky.
With one last orbit around Beweni, Mors scanned for The Galaxy's Eye, but could not find it. Hatch was definitely gone. Moments later, the nav-computer indicated it was ready with a desired route.
In hyperspace, Mors relaxed and finalized his preliminary report of the planet temporarily named Beweni. He included all of his notes, but wrote a great deal about the enigma of the technologically adept sloth creatures, and their mysterious utility vehicles.
A week later, Mors Ethan received a fair commission from a small Core World corporation to find a new planet to move their headquarters to. Apparently, his report of the planet Beweni was much more detailed than Hatch Maljet's, and Mors's reputation got a sweet little boost. He now had some credits to live off of for a little while.
En route to the planet Aofot, a prospective planet for his client, Mors caught himself thinking of Regina Hayleen. He realized that he hadn't seen her since their chance encounter on his way to Beweni. He wondered what had happened, after hearing Hatch imply that he had set her up in Mors's path. Was she really waiting for that Imperial ship to leave her next point of contact?
Confused, Mors ended up wondering if he would ever see Regina again, and what would be said if he did. Then, for a moment, Mors considered going home to Chandrila, to see his parents. But the thought left quickly as the "Leg-less Bantha" indicated that Aofot was drawing near. Mors brought the ship into sub-light space… with a jerk. Cursing the ship, Mors suddenly decided that he was going to use his commission to help pay for a new scout ship… something he could depend on… something he could name.
A smile came across his face. He already had a name picked out for his new ship.