Chapter Twenty-two

With another horn-like roar the banthas careered past Skeet.

He was fighting with the controls, trying to pull off manoeuvres he knew he would have been able to make on a speederbike but which seemed impossible in a landspeeder.

The stampede of banthas had taken Skeet completely by surprise. As he had turned into one of the final canyons which would have bought him out of the Jundland Wastes he had gunned the engine. He wasn’t sure what had spooked the herd. Either it was the sound of his high-pitched engine or his sudden appearance. Whatever had caused it didn’t seem to matter at this very moment.

For whatever reason the herd had decided to swarm towards Skeet’s speeder. He couldn’t see any young in their midst so he knew they weren’t protecting anything from his sudden appearance. Their huge four-legged hairy forms, as large as several speeders, and their curling horns over their wide-lipped features came out of the dust created by the suddenly heaving mass. Skeet dodged left, then right, then braked and tried to pull up but with no success. Brey had set the flight ceiling at one metre, a race requirement, so he changed his tactic and accelerated at a gap between two of the apparently terrified beasts.

Their calls of panic echoed off the walls of the canyon and Skeet tried to get his speeder to the side to find a nook he could hide in until they had passed. Unfortunately, the press of banthas was causing him to swerve out of their way and this seemed to make him to stay in their midst.

 He levelled out after tilting the speeder almost totally on one side to avoid the last of the beasts and then he was out, flying through clouds of sand churned up by the stampede. He closed his mouth and squinted, fumbling for his racing goggles.

The huge reptilian form of a krayt dragon that seemed to materialise out of the cloud answered two of Skeet’s questions; why the banthas were stampeding and why he was suddenly yowling his surprise as the low-lying creature roared at him. Its long snout split as it opened its mouth, its gaping maw too small to engulf the speeder but appearing to be about to attempt it. Skeet slammed on the brakes, heaved the vehicle over and shot up a small rise. The krayt dragon turned, surprisingly quickly considering its bulk, and snapped at the vehicle as Skeet shot past it, under its thrashing tail and away out of the Jundland Wastes. He left the roaring monster and the howling banthas behind.

   “I knew there was a reason I wanted to get away from this planet,” Skeet whispered to himself.

The Dune Sea stretched out in front of him, a long rolling vista of high sand hills that seemed to stretch on to infinity. Behind him the rockiness of the Jundland Wastes was just a shimmering mirage on the horizon.

The heat was almost intolerable. The sky was totally blue with not a hint of cloud, the twin suns at their highest as they passed the mid day point. Skeet loosened his collar and adjusted the cloth he was wearing as a rough headscarf. The forward momentum kept him cool somewhat as the air rushed past but even that felt warm as it caressed his face.

   “Enneight, I’m boiling in here,” he reported.

   “As am I, sir. My thruster pressure regulator reports a possible overheat in the central engine.”

   “Oh, damn it, not here!” Skeet shouted, slamming his hands on the controls. “Okay, I’ll stop for a minute and I’ll check it out.”

In the shade of a particularly high dune Skeet stopped the vehicle. It hissed with the heat from several components and he leaped from the cockpit and walked around the back of the speeder. As he approached it he could smell something sharp that assaulted his nostrils. He looked into the engine intake and saw the problem.

Bantha hair had obviously shed from the herd and clogged up the central engine, the highest of the three and the most vulnerable.

He popped open the service hatch and waved acrid smoke out of his face as he inspected for any possible damage.

   “Enneight, are the regulators giving conflicting readings?”

   “Yes, sir, I’m getting fluctuating reports.”

   “Yes, it looks like the power flow has been blocked by all that hair. I’m going to have to clean it out and re-initialise the regulator before we carry on or we’ll have a burnout...”

The comlink bleeped. Skeet wiped his hands on his racing clothes before leaning in and tapping the comlink on.

   “Hello, Driss.”

   “Hey, Skeet. I’m in the Dune Sea and it’s getting hot.”

   “Yeah, I’m suffering already. I’m looking at a burnout from bantha hair.”

   “From what?”

   “Bantha hair. I’ll tell you back at the fortress. Look, I’ve got to go.”

   “Well, if you get stuck for parts, one of our fellow racers just totalled her Mobquet into a rock wall. She thought it was a dune and tried to bottom out on it when her repulsors gave out.”

   “Is she alright?”

   “She’ll live. I’ll talk to you later.”

The comlink went dead and Skeet stood up, stretching his   back and arms. He groaned and looked back at the engine.

   “Ah, well. By the sounds of it, it could be worse for me.”

   “I’ll sleep when we’re out of the Dune Sea,” Skeet told Enneight as the ‘droid voiced his concerns over his master’s continuous yawns. “We’ll be crossing paths with the racers coming in the other direction soon and the last thing I want is a head-on crash.”

   “The corridor of the race is five kilometres. The odds on actually colliding with another vehicle...”

   “Are more than I care to be ignorant of. Look, I’m alright. I’ll make it.”

Enneight conceded without any other complaints. Skeet skipped over another dune and down low between two others. He slid past the bleached white bones of some long-tusked creature before rising back up over the next dune.

The first indication he had that the other racers heading in the opposite direction were passing him was when the sand next to his speeder erupted. Another blaster bolt sizzled past uncomfortably close and exploded in the air somewhere behind him.

The speeder coming at him had a hood-mounted blaster and it fired again as they closed. Just off to the approaching speeders right was another vehicle, unarmed but still close to the first. Skeet ascertained quickly that the second speeder was worried about passing the leader and then being shot by the fixed weapon, which jutted forward from the hood.

Skeet heaved over, his anger at this blatant attempt on his life evident. He was frustrated and tired and the last thing he had wanted was to be shot at by a fellow competitor.

Before Enneight could point out the folly of his master’s apparent manoeuvre, Skeet had aimed his vehicle directly at the approaching craft. The weapon fired again, the red bolt slicing down the side of Skeet’s speeder as he banked over but doing little real damage.

Skeet went to move to one side of the craft but then suddenly threw his speeder across the nose of the attacker, neatly slicing off the weapon protruding from the hood and still managing to avoid a heavy collision. As he passed the craft the second speeder came up fast, the cloth-covered pilot waving with thanks as he accelerated past the first with no threat of being shot from behind.

Skeet left the two racers and continued on his way.

   “Damn it!” he cursed, once again slamming his hands on the steering control. “This is a race, not a freckin’ shootout! What the freck was he thinking!” His heart raced, his eyes were wild and his muscles were tense. What he really wanted to do was turn around and force that racer into the ground so he vented his rage by applying more power to the engines, slapping the controls intermittently.

He continued like this for a few moments, teeth gritted and jaw tight as he tried to force the feelings of rage that had swelled up inside him out of his system. As he did so, Emag’s words entered his mind and he simply let every muscle in his body relax. Don’t get angry. Don’t get nasty. Just relax. Go with it. Relax.

He breathed out, noticed that several tolerance meters were blinking red and eased off the power.

   “Sir, I know that you wish to get out of this sea of sand but I must advise you rest.”

   “I’m okay, Enneight. Let’s just get out of here and then I’ll sleep for a few hours. Let’s just get out of here.”

   “Very well, but if you do not stop for a while after we exit the Dune Sea I will power down the engines myself.”

Skeet nodded.

   “Whatever you say.”

As the speeder cooled in the cold night air, so did Skeet. They had completed their roughly semi-circular course through the Dune Sea and had now entered the low rocky hills of the southern-most part of the Jundland Wastes. Skeet, worried about sandpeople and not wanting to leave the speeder in the open, had opted to stop in a small box canyon to sleep. It was well into the night, now, and he guessed that he should finish the course by late the next day.

He had made good time over the Dune Sea and had even flew on through the rocky hills for a while before Enneight made good his promise and started to slow the power flow to the engines. It was neccessary to replace several fuel cells, anyway, and Skeet did this before climbing back into the pilot’s seat and closing the hood.

   “How’s she looking, Enneight?”

   “Good. She has performed far beyond even master Yard’s expectations. I’m sure he would be proud of the performance he designed her to have.”

Skeet yawned and leaned back.

   “I just hope she makes it. Even that would be a victory. For me and Brey.”

   “It is already far into the night, sir. I will wake you when the suns rise.”

Skeet nodded and closed his eyes.

   “You’ve been great, Enneight. Thanks.”

   Quickly he fell into a deep sleep.

A bright light did wake him several hours later, but it wasn’t the light from Tatooine’s twin suns.