Tatooine, Tainted

Posted on Sun Jan 18th, 2026 @ 11:15pm by Kalen "Rex" Vickers & Mentis

2,011 words; about a 10 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Hangar, Bestine
Timeline: High sun, After "The Bantha's Breath" (Concurrent with New Alderaan)

OLD

“Quite some heat you have here,” Mentis commented as he caught up and started to move along with Rex towards the exit, “I didn’t think it would be that different to Mustofar, but I’m willing to admit I was surprised.”

Rex let out a short, barked laugh at that, the sound pitched just a touch too high to be entirely natural. “Yeah, well,” he said, hitching his bag higher on his shoulder and starting toward the mouth of the hangar, “Mustafar wants you dead... Tatooine just wants you gone.”

NEW

The hangar walls were packed duracrete and exposed stone, striated with old tool marks and scorched seams where something hotter than blasters had once bitten into the rock. Heat pooled low, trapped, and the air carried a fine grit that clung to skin and fabric alike. Somewhere overhead, a vent fan groaned, pushing warm air in lazy circles that did nothing to cool the place.

Behind Rex and Mentis, the transport gave a tired hydraulic sigh as a second ramp finally fully lowered, disgorging the last of its passengers from another compartment. The ship's lettering was flaking in sun-bleached Aurebesh along the hull, as though even the letters had grown weary of surviving repeated landings on the planet. No one lingered. People moved with the practised efficiency of those who knew better than to stand still under twin suns.

Outside the hangar mouth, Bestine opened up in layers.

Low, squat buildings hugged the ground, their pale stone and sand-coloured plasteel designed to reflect rather than absorb heat. Cloth awnings were stretched between structures, patched and re-patched, casting islands of shade already crowded with traders, drifters, and locals going about their business. The smell hit hard and fast: hot metal, old oil, something fried beyond recognition, and the ever-present dry tang of sand.

What did not hit was just as noticeable.

There were no towering prefabs, no sleek loaders, and no uniformed crews moving with corporate precision. No logos burned into walls or stamped onto crates. Whatever GalactaWerks owned elsewhere on Tatooine, it had either not bothered with this quarter of Bestine or had been quietly told to keep its distance.

Rex must have clocked that absence immediately. He did not comment on it, but his shoulders eased by a fraction as they moved deeper into the port district, as though the lack of certain insignia mattered more than he cared to admit.

They passed their first Jawas not twenty paces from the hangar exit.

A small knot of them clustered beneath a canvas shade, robes the familiar dusty brown from their factfiles, faces entirely lost in shadow beneath tight-wrapped hoods. They were nothing like Reave. No oversized hat. No heavy weapons slung for intimidation. Just scavenged blasters worn low, a gaffi haft peeking from beneath layered cloth from one of them, and movements that were quiet, economical, and assured. They murmured to one another in clipped bursts of Jawaese while sorting scrap laid out on a threadbare tarp.

One of them looked up as Rex and Mentis passed.

Yellow eyes lingered on Rex a second longer than necessary.

Rex did not look back.

He kept moving, boots crunching softly on packed sand, his mouth already reshaping itself into that easy, affable grin - the one he wore like armour when he did not want anyone asking the wrong questions.

"Alright," he said brightly, clapping his hands once as if this were all part of a well-laid plan. "First things first. We find transport."

The spaceport proper thinned quickly into a sprawl of low workshops, shuttered cantinas, and rental yards that looked as though they had last seen proper business a decade ago and were still offended by the idea. Most speeder lots were either empty or conspicuously closed, hand-painted signs declaring "NO OFFWORLD RENTALS" or "NO TRAVEL BEYOND CITY LIMITS" in blunt, unfriendly lettering.

A few locals were willing enough to talk - in the way people were willing to talk when they already knew the answer would not change.

Mos Entha came up more than once.

Sometimes with a shake of the head, sometimes with a muttered phrase about lost comma... But always with the same quiet conclusion: no one goes out there right now.

Rex listened, nodded, laughed it off.

"Yeah, yeah, rumours," he said to one grizzled spacer who had paused mid-cigarra to warn them off. "You know how it is. Sand gets in the relays, someone panics, suddenly it's the end of the world."

The spacer spat into the dust. "Ain't sand, friend. And it ain't panic."

Rex's smile did not falter. "Appreciate the concern," he said lightly, already steering them away.

They found a Toydarian at the far edge of the district, where buildings gave way to a ragged strip of hardpan and half-buried junk. A faded sun-cloth drooped over a crooked frame, casting uneven shade over a miserable collection of speeders that looked as though they had been assembled from spare parts and bad decisions.

The Toydarian himself sat on a low crate, leaning heavily on a stick carved from something old and polished smooth by time. One wing hung uselessly at his side, shrivelled and scarred, while the other twitched occasionally in irritation rather than flight. A wide-brimmed hat shaded his aged eyes, and a threadbare poncho hung off his shoulders like it had given up trying to stay straight years ago.

He looked up as they approached, and then grinned, revealing too many thick and yellowed teeth.

"Customers," he grasped in Huttese. "Or fools," he amended with a gruff laugh, maybe thinking himself funny with his dark humour. "Sometimes same thing, eh?"

Rex spread his hands, but answered in Basic. His accent, however, seemed to drop to an even more colloquial manner. "Little o' column Aure, little o' column Besh. We're looking to rent."

The Toydarian snorted and tapped his stick against the nearest speeder - a boxy, sand-scoured thing with one mismatched stabiliser fin and a coolant line patched with something that definitely was not rated for coolant.

"City use?" he asked.

Rex's grin widened, just a touch too quick. "Outskirts."

The Toydarian's eyes flicked past them, out toward the horizon where the land flattened and the sky shimmered with heat.

"Nothing runs to Mos Entha," he said flatly.

Rex did not miss a beat. "Didn't say Mos Entha."

The old Toydarian chuckled, a wheezing sound that turned into a cough he waved away with his stick. "Sure, sure. Been nothin' but static for days. No-one cares to check, mine, huh. GalactaWerks town, these days. Too rich for our blood. Hutts ain't interested, and we got enough trouble with the Tuskens." He studied Rex for a long moment, then Mentis, eyes narrowing slightly at the Rattataki's bearing, the way he stood too still for a man in the heat.

"No records," the Toydarian finally went on in his thick accent, clearly making some conclusions of his own. "No names. No questions. You break it, you bought it. You don't come back, I keep the deposit."

Rex reached into his jacket without hesitation.

For just a heartbeat, his fingers appeared to brush the inner pocket again, the small, flat weight there now unmistakable to Mentis. Rex then drew out a small stack of fresh peggats and set them on the crate between them - not even waiting for a figure from the merchant. Still, association with Bomoor and Thane had some benefits on this occasion; there had been no resistance at providing a limited amount of local currency for this mysterious trip for the duo.

Mentis stepped forward, his eyes flicking once to Rex’s jacket, spying that recurring hesitation, before turning to nod at the Toydarian. He added, with a stiffness that did not quite pass for charm, "Thank you. We'll... take care of it."

The Toydarian’s eyes narrowed for a beat as he reached for the peggats Rex had laid down, never quite looking away from the Rattataki’s pale skin and the faint tracery of old and new scars that no desert sun could bleach away. He made a low sound in his throat - not quite agreement, not quite suspicion - then turned with a grunt and hopped down from the crate to ready the speeder, his stick crunching sharply as it bit into the sand with each step.

Mentis watched him go, then turned slightly toward Rex, lowering his voice.

"They don’t want to talk about Mos Entha, do they?" he said. "Not even to really warn us off. It’s like they think speaking about it will bring some misfortune down upon them."

Rex followed the Toydarian with his eyes, squinting against the glare. He gave a small, dismissive shrug, the motion practised, casual.

"That’s Tatooine for you," he said lightly. "If something’s bad enough, folks stop naming it. Saves breath. Saves nerves."

Mentis was not convinced. He shook his head slowly.

"I thought it was just self-interest at first. People scraping by, too busy with their own problems to care what happens in another settlement."

His gaze drifted beyond the low buildings of Bestine, toward the heat-shimmering horizon where the desert flattened into something vast and unforgiving.

"But that’s not it. People here do care. They know that what happens in one place affects the rest. They’re just... afraid."

He glanced back toward the Toydarian, now rummaging through a crate for the speeder’s key chit, muttering to himself as he went.

"It reminds me of the cult," Mentis continued quietly. "There were some who wouldn’t speak Axion’s name. Not even in private. As if naming him would summon him, like the djinn in that Alderaanian legend. You would know more about Tatooine superstitions than I, but it feels like something’s being deliberately omitted here."

Rex snorted softly, but there was no real humour in it. He rolled his shoulders, as though easing out a kink, and for a moment his eyes lingered on the ground rather than the horizon.

"Tatooine’s not big on legends," he said. "Just long memories."

Before either of them could say more, the Toydarian turned back, holding up a small, battered chit between two thick fingers.

"All ready," he wheezed, blending the words into a dry little chuckle. "She’ll run. Mostly. Just don’t push her too hard."

He flicked the chit toward Rex, who caught it one-handed without looking.

Mentis exhaled, the dry air catching slightly in his throat as he studied the speeder properly now. Up close, it looked even worse than it had from a distance. Sand-scoured hull. A faint rattle somewhere deep inside the engine cowling. The sort of vehicle that had survived not because it was good, but because it was stubborn.

"We’ll be careful," Mentis said, then cast a sidelong glance at Rex. "Won’t we?"

There it was - the returning smile.

Flashy and familiar; it was the one that promised everything was under control, even when the situation very clearly was not.

"Of course," Rex said, spreading his hands as if the answer were obvious. "It’s me. I’m always safe, Mantis."

The Human turned toward the speeder, already moving, already committed. He swung himself into the driver’s seat with practised ease, but the moment he settled in, the smile slipped just a fraction. His hands rested on the controls a beat too long before doing anything with them, fingers tapping once, twice, then stilling. His eyes tracked the horizon again, not toward Bestine this time, but toward where Mos Entha lay buried somewhere beyond the dunes.

Whatever he saw there, he kept it to himself.

The speeder coughed as he brought it to life, then steadied into a rough, uneven idle.

"Hop in," Rex said, glancing back over his shoulder, the grin already back in place. "Long drive."

Beyond the settlement, the desert waited.

And Rex, despite everything written into his posture and his pauses, eased the speeder forward all the same.

TBC

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