Since all the parts were avaible, I started with repairing the astromech droid. A few of the parts needed the touch of my technomancy, but these were minor issues that barely tapped into my mana. I gave every part a thorough cleaning, then cleaned the body of the droid inside and out. I'd have given it and oil bath, but the oil in the vat was hardened and would take quite a while to deal with.

  This little guy would soon be ready to charm the masses, or help find lost treasures.

  The assembly took a fraction of the time cleaning did. All that was left was to get him charged up. I hooked him into the speeder's power core. The oversized core would barely notice the droid's needs.

  That out of the way, I now had time to look around.

  Like most Tatooine homesteads built before the Hutts changed everything, the central courtyard was sunk into the ground at a depth of about 5 meters. It was 30 meters long and about 20 meters wide, now that I was paying more attention it was more of an oblong than a circle. The ramp was about four meters wide and facing north, the repair bay was directly opposite it with a triple sized doorway for rger droids and small vehicles. There were three normal doorways on each side of the courtyard.

  The raised outbuildings usually contained the generators and/or pumps for plumbing. I'd seen the signs of two of them, but there were likely more buried out there. Somewhere between those outbuildings and the courtyard would be the moisture vaporators that were vital to survival out here. I'd only seen the top of one poking out of the sand.

  The walls of the courtyard and the outbuildings were constructed of a type of artificially created sandstone. Using sonic fields to compress and properly align the molecur matrix of the material made it far stronger than the natural version. Quite durable and long sting. I've been told that some of the first buildings built with this method were still standing, thousands of years ter. I'd no idea if that was true.

  I decided to start at the repair bay and go counter clockwise. This lead me to the kitchen, all of the appliances were still intact but would require extensive cleaning as this was were the womp rats had been nesting. The main lounge was next, this had games and entertainment devices. There was also a door leading out of the room away from the courtyard. This was probably a way to access the outbuildings without having to cross the sands. The room after that was setup to monitor and regute power levels, everything in there was dark for now.

  Under the ramp was a rge storage room. This was were the Mynocks had been. Not much was left in there, only a couple of crates I'd open ter. The next room was a bedroom, again with the proper cleaning it would be usable. After that was a room that probably had charging stations for droids. The stations were gone likely taken along with the functional droids when the previous owners had left. This room also had another door opposite the courtyard. More outbuilding access. The st room was another bedroom. This one was empty, and likely had never been used.

  Now back to the repair bay, I quickly checked on the astromech droid. He was still charging.

  Next up was bring the combat droid up to a functional status, I wanted a guardian. I wasn't great at fighting, and hated conflict. It could be that I had internalized too much of my former owner's early lessons with a pain colr. Technically illegal, by the Hutt's own ws, to do to an indentured servant, or a sentient under a certain age. But nobody stopped him, or seemed to care much. That was life here. The ws only really applied to non-Hutts and going against them just made you the next target.

  At least Koples had stopped the lessons, once he was sure I'd been properly broken in. Some Hutts never do.

  This combat droid could go a long way to helping me overcome my fears. At least I hoped it would.

  Using Scan to figure out what parts I needed to conjure, only took a few minutes. Actually summoning all of the parts took hours. The integrated weapon systems were the worst to conjure and burned through my mana hard. Apparently the previous owners had removed all the weapons. A precaution? Or just trimming costs?

  Before assembling him, I checked on the astromech droid. He was fully charged and in standby mode. Before I turned him on, I made sure to check his programing and pce myself as his new owner. I otherwise left his code alone just giving it a brief scan for any truly egregious behavioral problems. Everything seemed fine so I started him up.

  Joyous whining beeps and boops. The hallmark of the astromech droids. R2-C6 was basically saying, "It's good to be alive again." Its primary sensor turned towards me and issued a querying beep, "Are you my new Master?"

  "That would be me, do you have a nickname?" Astromech droids almost always did.

  His beep were low and somewhat sad, "They used to call me Red."

  "Red it is then."

  A happy chirping beep. The droid's top spun around, an odd quirk, but I found it amusing. Astromech droids almost always were.

  "Why don't you putter about, while I finish working on the big guy in there? Tomorrow we'll dig up some of the vaporators and get some of the generators running."

  Red's rocked back and forth in acknowledgement. He rolled off to see for himself what his old home looked like now. I hoped it didn't get him too down.

  Almost two hours to fully rebuild the combat droid. The parts were just that complicated. I set him up to charge, but unlike Red I put a limiter on the power draw, the droid's oversized core could probably drain the speeder dry and still need more. That was a shocking amount of power. I could hardly wait to meet him, but it would likely take all night, to barely get him to a tenth of a full charge.

  That would be enough to put him in standby and work on his code. Maybe guard us for a few hours. Sigh. He'd really need those generators up to fully charge.

  I worked on the power hauler for a while, before taking a break to eat. Just a couple of ration bars and a liter of water. Bnd but still better than the nutri-slop.

  Night was falling.

  I checked on Red, who was cleaning. He had a couple of built in tools for that. A specially calibrated sonic emitter, that worked kind of like a sonic shower. Two retractable working arms, which were very odd for an R2 model to have, that he used to work a broom he'd found somewhere. He'd vaporized the remains of the dead varmints with his arc welder. Clever.

  Despite everything, Red seemed okay. He greeted me with a friendly boop.

  "Great job on the cleanup, Red." I'd never met an astromech droid that didn't like a bit of praise.

  He let out a series of cheerful sounds, rolling in a circle a few times. I guessed that his previous owners were light on the compliments.

  Since there wasn't much for me to do, I decided to turn in early. After all, I'd barely slept the night before.

  I'd bought a small sleeping bag and pillow that I brought to the repair bay. I id it out in the corner and threw myself down. Nice, far better then my old cot.

  The sound of Red rolling about was comforting, and soon my eyes closed.

  Dreams of flying to the stars, kept me company all night.