Matuscarantos

  I wiped the sweat from my brow, after I finished putting the final touches on the chassis of an old bor droid. I returned my Arc welder to my tool belt and ran my hand over my tools in a long familiar habit. My tools were my friends and had served me well over the years. I'd be lost without them.

  The poor droid was of a pre Colpse design, and as such I didn't have any reference schematics for its model. However, I'd repced most of its parts at one point or another, as the old Hutt, Sleen Arjar was always hard on his droids. Though this guy cked the spark of some droids, I still felt sorry for the battered fellow. So I did the best I could to get it back on its feet. It wasn't difficult, the design itself was bare-bones, basically humanoid with the servos and main wiring harness fully exposed, perhaps for easy repair. Though after I'd once gone digging around in its programming, I suspected that it might actually be a repurposed and stripped down battle droid. Perhaps even from the fabled Clone War era.

  Well, it was no surprise it had been repurposed, no one needed droids for fighting here. There were tons of sun bsted fools willing to squabble, even kill, for the credits in someone's pockets. All of them far cheaper than droids in this day and age.

  Giving the battered droid a quick adjustment to its locomotion coding, I sent it out the door of the repair station I ran for Gruis Koples. My Boss. My owner in all but name. Like all Hutts he would rarely be seen outside the Walls, and it was always trouble when it happened. As it was I hadn't seen him in months.

  When my parent sold my "services" to him eight years ago, they said it would be a great way to get my hands on droids, something they'd never be able to afford. These days even the rustiest pieces of scrap walking around carried hefty price tags. Thousands of credits, at the very least. Koples wasted no time making sure I got plenty of experience. Working 14 hours days in this repair station, just to meet my standard payment quota.

  Koples was required to feed and house me, but not for free. He charged me 10 credits a day for my nutri-slop, A tasteless porridge packed with all the things a growing boy needs, and not one thing more. He also charged me 20 credits a day for my allotted six hour sleep time on a cot in the back of the repair station. Adding in the daily payments towards my freedom, that meant I owed him 100 credits each and everyday. That's if and only if, I wanted to get out from under him in another fifty years.

  Unfortunately for him, I was very good at repairing droids and any other gadgets that people brought in. They just spoke to me, I'd no clue why that might be. My payments to him were often triple what was required and any time we got really busy I could double even those payments. In fact, I was on schedule to make my final payment in a few days. Just after my twentieth birthday. Sure, I'd kept some credits or took a few days off, but not many. I wanted to see the stars, to visit other worlds, and find lost technology. Yet, without my freedom, any long term goals seemed pointless.

  The Koples repair shop stood just outside the walls of Rekarsh. One of the many Hutt run arcology cities that arose on Tatooine after the Colpse. Behind those massive walls you were safe. Safe from the beasts that roamed the Jundnd Wastes. Safe from the heat of the Twin Suns. Safe from the dry air that could snatch the life right out of you. Safe from everything but the Hutts themselves. Just how they wanted it.

  Outside the walls, it was hot. Sheer a womp rat steak, hot. It was so dry that the air could crackle and spark with your slightest movement. A plethora of nasty creatures stalked the nd looking for their next meals. Meals like me, if the shop wasn't protected with defense turrets that I'd rigged up out of scavenged parts. I was highly motivated to build them after a Scyks had been spotted hunting in the area a few years back. To this day no one knew why it ever ventured so close to the city, and they never had caught it.

  Honestly, I don't know if my makeshift turrets would have stopped the beast. Other than a few aggressive womp rats, they'd seen little use.

  I took a small break to hydrate after all that welding, and waved the next droid over.

  Now, this fellow I'd worked on many times. He was an T-series Astromech droid, he was considered ancient long before the Colpse. No telling how many millions of times this little fel had been repaired. I often wondered how he'd ended up out here on Tatooine. Likely, he was brought here, after the Hutts abandoned the legendary Nar Shaddaa. Even centuries ter they could go on and on about how wonderful their old home had been, and how the credits would flow like water into their greedy clutches.

  Hmm, several of his circuits were fried. Huh? What have we here? There was an odd glowing green crystal stuck near his core processor, as many times as I'd fixed this guy, finding a crystal stuck in there was certainly a new experience. Let's remove that shiny troublemaking rock before repcing the burned out circuits.

  "Liam! Liam are you there?" A sweet voice called from outside the shop. Only one person would risk the midday heat to bother me, and then only when there was a problem.

  That was Keelie. She'd been coming around at the worst times, tely. Her family ran a shop a few hundred meters away, and they'd always had something that needed fixing. Yet, they paid well, and often shared a bit of food. As Keelie's mother phrased it, I needed to "put some meat on my scrawny bones".

  "I'll be right out!" I yelled back, as I finally got a hold on that crystal.

  "Hurry it up Rat, the trash processor is down and my Mother is throwing a bantha sized fit about it." Keelie's voice was a musical thing, and when matched with her lithe Twi'lek dancers' build, she was often the subject of many boys' dreams out here. Not me though, I knew she was meaner than a Wraid mother protecting her brood, since I was often the target of her ire. She knew she could get away with her petty cruelties. Gruis Koples wasn't going to protect me from anyone, especially if it required him to move.

  The sad thing was that her parents were very nice people, who honestly tried to help me out from time to time. I wondered why she'd turned out this way. She made more money than half the businesses within a kilometer of here, combined. So why the need to put me in my pce.

  "Alright, just a second." I turned my head toward the door in irritation. When I turned back to finish pulling the crystal something was different.

  Wait a minute where'd the crystal go?

  A quick search didn't turn it up, so I hastily repced the ancient droid's circuits and sent him on his way. He beeped his thanks as he rolled out. I'd always wanted my own Astromech droid, they always have the best personalities. Unlike some people I could name.

  "About time Rat, could you be any slower." Keelie's lovely face was marred by a furious scowl. I often thought that her temperament matched her bzing orange skin. She was wearing a set of full robes to keep as much of the Suns' light off her skin as possible. Her arms were crossed, and she was tapping her foot rapidly in her impatience.

  I wondered why she'd waited, I knew the way. Maybe she was just looking for an excuse to be grumpy. Or a chance to mess with me, to vent her frustrations.

  "Lead the way." I lifted the hood on my work clothes and put my sunshades on. I couldn't afford to lose my eyesight to sandblindness, and it could get you faster than you'd think.

  Once I'd gotten to the Ru'mais General Goods Shop, it only took me just a few minutes to repair the trash processor. Keelie's mother, Seltha, handed me a fat pouch of credits on my way out the door. There just happened to be a small dewback meat pie in there as well. Like I said she really thought I could use the food.

  I was munching on the savory pie, filled with local spices, when I noticed an odd itching traveling up my arm. It was almost to my shoulder now. It's possible that the feeling started much earlier, but when I'm working I tend to focus so hard that everything else fades away. Despite being an incredibly strange sensation, I wasn't worried. Nothing hurt, it just itched slightly, under my skin. Very odd.

  Even if it was something treatable, I didn't have enough saved for a bandage never mind serious medical help. So I did what I'd always done when I'd gotten hurt or sick, put it out of my mind and hope my body took care of it by itself.

  I went back to work this time on a post Colpse model protocol droid. A Raksys GH05-TS8, and someone had disabled its speech functions. Again. Hmm, I can't imagine why. It's a well known fact that most protocol droids can't shut up for more than a minute. The GH models were particurly bad about it.

  I reenabled its speech, but not before reprogramming some of its behavior subroutines. For its own safety, of course.

  As the silver droid left, I got a surprise.

  [ Hello User, Welcome to the Comprehensive Technomancer's System. ]

  What in the Sarcc?