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There's only a small port at Mos Elrey, and Hera had already decided to avoid it. She doesn't want to deal with Imperials looking too closely at their identichips, or local 'authorities' demanding bribes to ensure the ship's protection. The other option is to touchdown outside the city – that's not difficult on a planet like Tatooine, and Hera quickly finds a tall dune in the Western Sea along which to tuck away the Ghost. It's eight klicks from Mos Elrey, the collection of sand-and-mudbrick towers black like shadows along the horizon. Which is the downside – they have no speeder, and so they'll have to walk, leaving them vulnerable to attack by Tusken Raiders, along with whom or whatever else might be lurking among the dunes around them.

Of course, that's only one danger. The sky is clear, now a deep gray-purple that's brightening as the twin suns rise. If they leave too early, they run a greater risk of attracting unwanted company, as the Tusken Raiders in particular were known to ride the dunes at night. Leave too late, and they'll be caught in the dangerous midday heat. They'll have to hope there won't be a sandstorm in the time it takes them to reach city, and that they'll avoid any hidden pits or slips of quicksand.

But to Hera, none of those concerns rival the fact that this blasted planet is ruled by the Hutts.

Chopper, unsurprisingly, is content to stay with the ship. Hera has checked over her blaster, and sheathed her vibroblade, and at the moment is rummaging through one of the drawers under her bunk, the doors to her cabin left open.

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'When', she says.

He can work with that.

Kanan pulls up his own hood, tucking a fold of it over his face to keep the sun off.

"I'll be ready. Shall we?"

"Right." She reaches over to lift her bag, containing among things her own canteen, and maneuvers under her cloak to loop it over her shoulder. Then she steps out of her cabin, the doors sliding closed behind her.

"Chop?" she calls out, as they walk toward the galley. There's no answer, but Hera keeps moving. "Maybe he's already in the cargo bay."

"Maybe he's fallen out of the cargo bay," Kanan grumbles, more for effect than because he really means it.

"You think we should be worried?"

"If he's not down there, I'll call him on the comm before we leave. He really has to be on the lookout while we're gone."

Preferably not the way she knows he often handles lookout duty, which is to screw around and occasionally glance outside if he remembers.

"You think he could use a new motivator?"

Well, 'new'.

Kanan scrubs his hand over his face as he asks that question.

"Not that it isn't too late for this mission, but next time . . . "

"A new motivator would just make him complain faster."

Really, she's tried.

"Would it also make him react faster to us being in trouble?"

Sometimes it's the little things.

"He'd be able to react faster."

She's yet to find a way to make Chopper do anything. Well, nothing she's willing to try, in any case.

But the droid is meandering around the cargo bay when they reach it. Hera leaves Kanan to open the ramp out onto the warm desert morning, while she rounds on Chopper.

"I mean it, Chop. You don't want some pirates or Tuskens selling you for scrap, do you?"

Chopper blats, waving his arms at her. Hera waves her hand toward the upper decks. "Go on, get up there."

"I bet he'd do it if you were in trouble," Kanan says, in an attempt to sound supportive and . . .

Yeah, okay, Chopper knows him too well.

"You know they'd do it, too, Chop!" He calls out, because that's much more in the usual vein.

"Jawas would wrestle you into submission in a minute."

Chopper seems ready to regale Kanan with how he could take a hundred Jawas at once, but Hera's learned that sometimes the best tactic is to ignore him. She draws her hood a little farther forward, and turns to join Kanan at the ramp.

"We'll be back before sundown," she calls back to Chopper as she moves. "And the ship better be here."

He still beeping grumpily, but Chopper does start to head toward the upper decks from where he'll have to keep watch. Hera pauses next to Kanan, looking out across the open desert beyond, the distant towers of Mos Elrey still black on the horizon, though the purple color of the sky is fading to a pale blue.

"Ready?" she asks.

"As I'll ever be," Kanan says, smiling crookedly for a second before composing his face into harsher lines.

Tatooine always seems to require that, and he knows it's not just the harshness of the light from the twin suns.

"Luck's got to be on our side at least some of the time."

(No, it doesn't.)

"Let's hope so."

There's not much more they can do.

But preparation, and a little luck, turns out to be on their side. At least for the moment. In the heat, and with the careful paths they have to take to avoid slipping along the dunes or into pit traps, the walk takes just over two hours. Hera's careful to measure out the sips of water she takes from her canteen, but the heat alone doesn't bother her much, even as the suns climb higher, and the sky turns from pale to deep blue.

It's the way the air feels dusty, even when there's no wind. Hera has to stop herself from drinking when she's not really thirsty, but just wants to wash down what feels like a thin layer of sand prickling her throat. And there's the sunlight itself, bright in their eyes and reflecting off the desert landscape, until it feels as though there's nowhere to look, even when her hood shades her eyes.

But they slip into any pits, aren't waylaid by Tuskens or bandits. Hera doesn't speak much, as she doesn't want to open her mouth for too long, and so for most of the hours they walk, there's just the sound of their footsteps shifting through the sand.

That is until there's the whine of speeders, call of banthas and dewbacks, and the woosh of ships above them, as they creep closer to the city. The shadows of Mos Elrey's gates slink along the sand toward them, the short mudbrick towers no longer black but baked brown, with flags and empty clotheslines cluttering among their sculpted windows.

Edited 2018-11-18 01:29 (UTC)

Kanan can feel the skin across his cheeks pulling a bit, and there's sand crusted in his throat and in his eyelashes. Heat isn't his favorite, but it's better than biting cold, so he's not complaining.

But he does kind of wish he had brought a second canteen. Maybe there'll be time to refill it in Mos Elrey, but if not, at least he's got half of it left.

And, given that he suddenly has an urge to upend the entirety of his canteen over his face, he is going to stop thinking about water now and focus on the job at hand.

"I'm guessing we'd do better not sneaking in?" he ventures, after clearing his throat twice.

Sand. Honestly.

"Doesn't look like we have to."

There is one very bored-looking Stormtooper leaning against the wall near an open gate. People of various species are passing freely in and out, the guard not even glancing up to check for identichips. No reason to create more suspicion than they need to.

Hera keeps her pace steady as they approach, looking ahead, and then glancing to Kanan as they approach the gate.

"Want to get a drink first?'

It's not part of the plan, but is a good excuse to turn her head briefly from the trooper.

Edited 2018-11-18 02:01 (UTC)

"Water would be great," Kanan says, only a little wryly.

"But I guess something stronger would do almost as well."

He's not looking toward the Stormtrooper, but his attention is pretty fixed that way, regardless.

The trooper doesn't look at them. From the direction of their helmet, their attention seems to be entirely on the clear sky.

Once they're through the gate, and have stepped into the slightly cooler shadow of the closes tower, Hera stops where she is. Others continue to pass by them, talking, dragging along carts of droid parts or what look like roasted amphibians, no one giving them a second glance.

Hera looks down the main road that looks like it leads to an open space surrounding by slightly taller towers, and the dusty streets that branch out from it. There are no signs, but Hera spots what she's looking for, etched along a nearby wall, a bit of old graffiti of an angry tooka face and some rude Huttese words. She takes Kanan's wrist in her hand as she starts to move again.

"Market's this way."

"So it is," Kanan mutters, resettling his hood around his face -- just to keep the sun off -- and shaking some of the sand off his boots.

"Lead the way."

He'll do his best to keep pace with her, especially as the crowd density picks up. The colors of the awnings get brighter, staking out portions of precious shade for the more well-to-do vendors, while also creating something eye-catching but not painfully bright to draw in new business. Someone stops dead in front of them and begins haranguing a Chadra-fan woman selling power converters and a few other droid parts, while behind her a street food vendor starts calling out more loudly in bad Huttese, trying to advertise his wares over the sound of the arguing.

Kanan scans the area briefly, trying to see what Hera sees, and maybe also to keep an eye out for signs of trouble. It's definitely not difficult to find in a place like this.

Hera slows her pace as they step among the stalls. Her eyes lower, as she watches the tables. They pass cans of protein, rendered fruits and vegetables, precious slender vials of moisture, scratched up plate armor, power converters, chargers for blasters, chipped bits of old junk, datatapes of copied holos, a few displayed from small projectors - marching flitting podracers, marching Stomrtoopers, a dancing Twi'lek.

She takes her time turning among the rows of stalls, not apparently looking for anything particular, but finally, she halts, turning to one of the stalls with no awning above to lend it shade. Laid out along the table, each item equidistant from the others, are spare droid pieces. Spare locomotion power cells, servo-couplers, neurocircuits and cooling cables.

Hera reaches over the table, lifting a miniscule, circular photoreceptor from the table and holding it up to the light, before she looks to the vendor. There's a Duros woman dusting off a clasper arm, and a younger girl sorting objects among boxes under the table.

"For an old mosquito droid." Hera lets the lens topple into the palm of her hand. "Don't see many of these anymore."

The Duros looks up, her large eyes turning between Hera and Kanan. "Separatist tech. Not much demand for it, but some rebuild them to use for farming or maintenance."

"Could be useful to us," Hera says, with a nod. "We've got some hollowed out shells, but I've never found neurocenters small enough to use with them."

The woman sets down the arm with a clank. "I'll show you what I've got in the back."

Kanan watches all of this, not bothering to try to pick apart whatever code and response he just heard. It's --

Honestly, it's better if he doesn't know. There's less he can give up that way, and it's not like what he knows of the Jedi is going to actually cause harm, these days. Not immediately, anyway.

He takes a breath, making it deeper than usual to try to forestall a cough from the sand in his throat. It . . . sort of works. But at the same time, he also reaches out with the Force, making sure they're not heading into an ambush.

Or, at least, they're not about to be ambushed by anyone that's not Force-sensitive and reasonably well trained. He wishes he felt better about that, but here they are.

"Thanks," is all he says, nodding once. He's not a bodyguard, so complete silence would look . . . weird. This should be noncommittal enough. He hopes.

The woman turns her red eyes briefly to Kanan, and then down to the girl under the table. "Areta, gadan rum."

The girl looks up when her name is called, her own large red eyes wincing slightly in the bright sunlight, and she at once follows the Durese instruction, straightening up and leaning slightly over the table. She takes the moment to eagerly look over the strangers, perhaps glad to have something besides sorting to do.

Hera, meanwhile, folds her hand over the photorecptor, and glances once back at Kanan. Then she follows the woman, who leads them as they thread through the tables and stalls, on toward the edge of the market, back to the earthen towers. She waits until they've reached the towers' shadows before she speaks to them again.

"I'm Sovi," she says, in Basic again.

Kanan, at Hera's look, falls in behind them both, careful to keep out of the way of Hera's blaster hand.

Just in case.

He can't help but look back at the girl, meeting her eyes and smiling slightly, though he does forbear to wave.

But it's good to know she's all right, and that she'll probably stay that way for at least the next little while.

"Hera," she answers to Sovi.

There does, she decides, have to be a certain level of trust now. That being said, she leaves it up to Kanan to share his own name.

"Kanan," Kanan says, mustering up another faint smile. He can feel the hackles on his neck going up, though, as they wend their way farther and farther from the market center.

It only makes sense, of course, because their contacts like population centers about as well as population centers like their presence, but still. Imperials could have set up an ambush anywhere along this corridor, because quite frankly it's turning into a lot of long, low buildings used for storage. These, in particular, don't seem to be accessed very often, and most of the people that do step out of the buildings go scurrying away, rather than striding confidently down the street.

Hmm.

"Looking forward to doing business with you," she says.

Without warning, she takes a sharp but smooth turn, down an alley between a squat mudbrick building, and next to it what looks more like a large shack, made up of thick welded metal plates, long since rusted over, that look like they might have once been the decks of large ships. Tucked along the side of the shack is a short incline that leads right to an unmarked door that looks though it's partially submerged in the sand.

"I think I have something here that you've been looking for." Sovi slips an old punch key card from her pocket, and the door slides up, opening into a very dark shaft that from what light comes in from the sunny afternoon seems to go much deeper. Sovi steps in, still leading the way. Hera again steals a glance back at Kanan, before moving to follow.

Kanan, almost as soon as the dark shaft becomes clear, sends out a tiny tendril of Force-presence, checking to see that this remains not-an-ambush.

A few seconds later he nods in response to Hera's quick glance, striding after both women with full confidence.

Some of this is because Hera should be doing a lot of the talking. H's never been very confident in his own diplomatic skills, not least because Caleb never got the full benefit of training in that before . . .

Well.

He should probably think of at least a few useful things to say, though. Just in case.