Derelict

R. Salway

“To die will be a great adventure,” Biggs Darklighter whispered with a grin. He was on his stomach in the shadows of a high, narrow and long outcropping of rock that thrust upward out of the surrounding sand dunes and towered over the highest of the sand formations. Dubbed “Standing Rocks” by an unimaginative person centuries ago, it was a minor landmark on this end of the Dune Sea. There were more impressive rock formations just over the horizon but Standing Rocks was known by everyone because of a presence of water deep underground.
At one end of the outcropping, a wide, slivered piece of the rock had broken away and fallen, intact, to slant upward over the sand, forming something like a low ramp with a shaded space beneath what was once it’s top end. Over time sandstorms and fierce winds made the rock crumble away and now the shadowed space beneath the sliver was littered with stones and boulders; and the wind filled the empty spaces around them with sand. Supported by compacted sand and debris from it’s own underside, the ramp of rock was permanently fixed in it’s position. At the end where the slant was highest, shadin fruit vines had taken hold and provided the crawlspace under the rest of it with effective screening at the end. It was a popular stopover spot for travelers of the Dune Sea. A place to eat the shadin fruit and to rest before traveling on. Under this ramp was where Biggs lay grinning at his own poetic thoughts.
A few feet away, Luke Skywalker, also on his stomach and holding his binoculars to his eyes, whispered back, “To die will be an end to a great adventure.”
Biggs made a dismissive sound blowing through his lips.“When did you become such a pessimist?”
“Pessimist? Me? I’m not the one bringing up dying.” He passed the binoculars to Biggs. “Near as I can tell,” he went on as if he was expert on such things, “that’s a post Clone Wars wreck. Maybe even recent. I recognize the markings and... I just got a feeling about it.”
The older youth was silent for a long time looking through the binoculars.
Luke was itching to get out there and take a closer look at the wreck. It wasn’t often the humans living on Tattooine were able to explore the wreckage of an old ship before the Jawas and the Sand People did.
“You might be right,” Biggs said at last. “Means we have to wait for the Fixer. He’s got the tools to break in.”
“But we can still go take a look , right?”
“No,” he answered with a chuckle. “We don’t have any weapons, pal. We can’t hold off raider parties with cuss words and big rocks.”
“Aw, come on, Biggs! We’ll be the first!”
Biggs shifted position so he was resting on his side and facing Luke. “We’ll still be the first when Fixer gets here.”
“No, we won’t! He’ll bring Camie or Windy with him and they’ll zoom right by us and stop by the wreck and then Camie or Windy will shoot at us pretending they didn’t recognize us when we crawl out from under here.” He gave Biggs a disgusted look. “It always happens and you know it.”
Darklighter made a shrugging motion and rolled his eyes a little. “It happened once, Luke. Once! And it could have been true. We were coming out of the sun at them.”
“Believe what you want. I’m going out there.” He snatched the binoculars out of Biggs’ hands and rolled away from his friend and got to his knees before Biggs could say anything more. Biggs, the voice of reason. If Luke didn’t know better he would swear Uncle Owen was paying him to be his friend. Ha!
Luke stood and walked a few feet to the edge of the under space and peered out. He could already feel the heat of the sun radiating from the sand beyond the shadows. He fixed his hat firmly on his head and stepped out from under as he checked his pockets.
He scanned the horizon for signs of movement and saw none. The nearest dune was miles away and the ground was flat and shallowly rippled between him and it. Feeling confident, he ran to the landspeeder which was hidden under a patched camouflage net nearby and ducked under the net long enough to grab a small shoulder bag from the rear compartment. He hefted it to hang over his shoulder and ran quickly to the end of the outcropping and looked around the fruit vines at the dark mass of the downed ship. What he could see of it, anyway.
He couldn’t believe Biggs was being so cautious about this. He could have - he should have driven his speeder right up to the darn thing and started exploring.
Luke took a few steps farther and crouched to peer under the rock ramp. Okay! The standing rocks cast a shadow all the way to what was left of the dune that once covered the ship. There would be about a hundred feet of unshaded sand to cross to reach the ship. His brown poncho - the same color as a shadow cast across sand - would help cover his movements if there were Tuskens or Jawas around. He grabbed a few pieces of ripe fruit from the closest shadin vine and stuffed them under his wide, cloth belt. He turned and looked back to call to Biggs and jumped to see his friend right behind him.
“Damn it, Biggs!”
“Move up. I want to get some fruit, too,” Darklighter said as if he didn’t see Luke jump a foot off the ground. He had taken off his jacket and turned it inside out and tied it around his waist. The lining was a light brown color, a shade lighter than his shirt. “Good idea,” he added and nodded toward the shadow. He shoved several of the oblong fruit into the arm holes of his jacket, stuffing them down to where the ends were knotted. Satisfied he wouldn’t starve while exploring, he nodded at Luke.

They reached the derelict vessel without incident a few minutes later. They scrambled to the top of the dune and, back to back, scanned the horizon again.
“Unless there’s a long line of Sand People coming from the southwest and hidden from us behind the rock spires, I’d say we were safe for now,” Biggs said.
Luke and Biggs both turned and looked at the wreckage they’d found. The part of the ship uncovered was a dull dark gray color and from their vantage point, they could see it was the curved edge of a round fuselage. At the same time, they stepped off the crest of the dune and slid down until their feet hit the bare metal of the ship with barely audible thunks.
“You know,” Luke said, standing and taking a few steps onto the hull, “if this is one of the old YT series we might be able to find a service panel up here. They all have the same codes so any mech anywhere can open them. I heard ‘em talking about it one time at the spaceport in Mos Eisley when I was really little. I saw them punch a couple of codes we can try.”
“What good would that do? If the ship crashed there won’t be any power to it. If it was abandoned on standby, we can’t up the power from a maintenance hatch for the same reason, and even if we could there’s still a lot of ship under the sand. Finding a way to open a port wouldn’t do us any good if the port is buried.”
Luke smiled and reached into the big pack on his shoulder. He withdrew a laser cutting tool. “I was replacing filters on the vaporators this morning. Might take a few minutes but this baby can cut through a hull in no time. If Uncle Owen knew I had it, he’d ground me ‘til my hair turns gray. It’ll have enough power to jumpstart the locks, maybe long enough to open ‘em, too.”
Biggs shrugged and looked at the metal under his feet. “Okay. What do I look for?”

They had to kick and brush some sand away from the edge of the exposed part, but a while later the two friends lifted away a 1x1 meter section of hull and the younger stretched out on his stomach to poke around at the inner hull. Biggs left him and wandered away to take another look at their surroundings. He squatted at the outer edge of the uncovered section of hull and scanned the horizon with his binoculars. He passed a few minutes eating shadin fruit and standing watch. Behind him, Luke worked as quickly as he could. Finally, he shifted position and stuck one foot between the cables, wires and pipes over the inner hull of the downed ship and starting kicking as hard as he could at the small oblong section he’d cut away. After the fifth or sixth time, it moved and moved again and then fell away, taking a split second to clatter and then skitter along inside the ship. He looked up and around from the side of the maintenance hatch where he was sitting. Biggs was standing by the end of the ship’s hull where it was covered by sand, eating one of the shadin fruit. He put the large inner seed into his pocket and lifted the binoculars and started another scan of the area around them.
“Got it, Biggs,” he called.
Looking in the general direction of Anchorhead, Biggs lowered the binoculars and got up to hurry toward the open hatch. “No sign of movement anywhere.”
He knelt beside Luke and rummaged around inside the shoulder pack the youth brought with him. He pulled out several light sticks and handed some to Luke. Both tucked them into their clothing here and there.
“Hand me the rope,” Luke said. “I’ll tie it off on one of the pipes and drop it down. I think we’re over a cargo hold. The cutaway echoed after it fell.”
Biggs laughed shortly. “Great. That probably means an empty cargo hold, pal. Why waste our time?”
“It also skittered a ways so the deck is tilted.”
“I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”
“Not on your life.”
“Alright,” sighed Biggs. “We can leave the packs here. Give me your poncho to cover them.” Luke did. “Let’s go.” He flicked on a light stick and dropped it into the hole. It hit and clattered loudly.
Luke stuck his legs through the hole, dropping the rope between them, and gripped it in both hands and slipped through the hole.

The deck was tilted but not by much, and Biggs was right. The large cargo hold was empty but for some trash littering it’s metallic surface. While Luke worked at getting the hatch open, Biggs looked around half-heartedly. The light stick showing exposed wires and pipes with quickly made repairs.
“Lots of damage repairs,” his voice echoed loudly. “This ship saw some action somewhere.” Luke looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. This hatch isn’t original equipment. They had to make it fit. I bet it wasn’t airtight.”
Biggs came over to see. “Pirates, maybe? I hear stories at the docks now and then. They’ll do anything to keep flying.”
“Could be,” Luke agreed, adjusting the angle of his welding tool. “This was a ...” He grunted with pain as molten metal dripped away from the tool close to his fingers. A few seconds later there was a loud snick and the hatch shuddered, trying to move in the direction of the slanted deck. “...bad patch job.”
Both young men put their hands to it and shoved. It opened into a tightly curved, narrow corridor, and they stepped through together, Biggs holding his light stick high and forward.
He looked around. “I’ll go this way.” He nodded to the right and started away.
Luke took the light stick from behind his ear and went cautiously to the left.
“Another hold; hatch open,” Bigg’s voice said and echoed along the corridor. “Empty.”
“Same here. Now, I see empty bunks but some of the lockers have clothes hanging in them.”
Luke walked beside crew quarters, depressions in the wall of the corridor with bunks and tall, thin lockers. Ringed curtains, for privacy, hung askew, and old, broken personal items littered the floor. At the end of the corridor he came to a closed hatch with alien writing on it, but the familiar galactic symbol for radiation told him this was probably the engine room.
The only other open door was on his right. He pushed a hanging curtain aside and stepped over a raised section of bulkhead and into a large open area. A galley was to the right and a small table in front of a carved bench was to the left. Ahead he could see Biggs’ light approaching the large room from across the ship. “Found the galley,” he called. “Food’ll be years out of date by now.”
“That’s why we brought our own, farm boy.”
“Get serious, Darklighter.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“There’s gotta be something left in here!”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
Their voices and footsteps echoed faintly through the ship.

“Hey, Luke. Come look.”
“What is it?”
“The way to the cockpit is full of sand.”
Luke hurried through what he decided was the crew lounge and found his friend standing in a small round compartment. With the lounge at Luke’s back, the sand filled corridor in front of him would have led straight ahead to the cockpit bubble. To his left was an open well of some kind running from top to bottom of the ship. The bottom part was also filled with sand and a few trickles came down from the part of the well above. Biggs was standing in the opening of the corridor he’d been following and right beside it was the entry/exit hatch with a control panel beside it.
The slant of the ship in the dunes was enough to let sand in through hull breaches.
Biggs moved forward and stuck his head inside the well and looked up. He ducked back quickly. “Let’s get away from here. This might be a gun well with a ladder going to gun turrets up and down. There’s a rock stuck up there blocking the sand. It could fall with us moving around down here.”
Sand trickled lightly as he spoke.
Luke nodded and stepped backwards into the lounge. “This looks like the main living area. There’s a galley and I think an auxiliary control panel or something.” He pointed out the panel across from the galley in the tiny living area.
Biggs looked at the younger boy. “Luke, look at all this junk on the deck. This wasn’t caused by a crash landing. I think the ship was looted right after it crashed. Either the crew took what they could and got away on some kind of small transport, or they died and someone else took everything. The crew might be covered with sand in the cockpit. If they had cargo, it’s gone. Jawas or Sandpeople made quick work of this thing before it got buried under the sand.”
“But we can still look around!” Luke insisted. He held an arm wide and spun on his heel. “Look at this! The ship’s lounge. Might be some crew personal stuff around.”
“Oh, yeah,“ Biggs chuckled. “Nothing like twenty year old shavers, comlinks and data pads!”
“Biggs,” Luke said patiently. “We’re on Tattooine, remember? Uncle Owen’s laser tool is older than that and it got us in here.”
Biggs shook his head slowly and waved his light stick ahead of him. “Okay, okay. Let’s look around.”
Luke grinned. “I’ll make an adventurer out of you yet.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m a by the rules kind of guy. You know that,” he said with a grin.
Luke made a scoffing sound. “Speaks the man who buzzed Jabba the Hutt’s repulsor sled just to win a wrecked swoop from a drunken old Dug!”
“Hey! That was a pre-Clone Wars model and my father repaired that swoop to near mint condition and he’s won a lot of races on that thing.”
“Brag, brag, brag. Like you never had any plans work out before. Come on, start looking around.”

Biggs found a few gadgets tucked away in the galley and among the crew quarters (“good for parts, if nothing else. Fixer’ll buy ‘em from us”) and Luke found a box to sit on and cleared years of dust and sand from the com panel , hoping to use the powerful battery pack from the laser cutter to get it running.
What a find that would be! The ship’s logs intact after all these years. They could carry away the modules and he could get them to play later. Find out where this old tub had been and who it belonged to.
Luke pried under a keypad on the top of the panel and loosened it enough to lift it out. He peered inside the panel with a light stick and let out a whoop of delight.
“Woo hah! There’s an aux power unit plug in here.”
The sound echoed sharply around them but neither noticed.
The older boy hurried across the lounge and looked over his shoulder. “That’s an emergency booster plug, alright. Good thing power plugs are universal in design.”
Luke chuckled. “Damn right.”
He cuffed Luke’s shoulder. “I’m always right. Thought you knew that by now.”
“I suppose you designed them that way personally?”
“Sure. My first year science project in school.”

As soon as the laser tool was attached to the com panel, the surface lit up like the sky on a clear night at the poles and lit the inside of the ship with faint light, like holiday lights strung in a window. The lone screen began to flicker with life and brightened the compartment even more. Biggs found an overturned crate to use as a seat and set it up beside Luke’s. He reached into his jacket sleeves and pulled out a some fruit and handed one to Luke. “Okay! What have we got here?”
Luke was touching keys experimentally with one hand. “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he answered around a bite of the fruit. He keyed the pad to bring up the last viewed program the old memory bank could muster and the screen went blue and a small rotating symbol appeared in the center. “Hmm!” he said excitedly and swallowed. “Wonder what those guys were looking at before they hit air?”
The symbol, round with three forked tines occupying the top third, spun lazily, giving the boys a good look. The center tine was topped with a kind of crest like a three leafed plant and the two side tines curved behind it.
Biggs stopped eating and stared at it. “I’ve seen that sign before,” he said and craned his neck awkwardly for a better view. “I went to one of the cantinas with my dad after a race and there were these people, humans and non, in a side room. It was just a quick look while the door was cycling shut, but I’m pretty sure some of them had this sign on their clothes.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
Biggs shrugged but didn’t answer. He stuffed his mouth with fruit and looked at the spinning symbol thoughtfully, not wanting to give voice to what he was thinking. After a few more seconds, the symbol vanished and was replaced by a broken transmission of a sober faced, young man dressed in strangely colored camo fatigues and standing or sitting in front of a blank wall.
“Sarrilkey,” he said, his voice heavy with static from the bad transmission. “When you reach the rendezvous point look for the three. Inside will be your instructions and some supplies. The dunes are attracting attention so stay undercover. Watch out for eighth parts and inside curves. Ditch where you will rise, where the stand has fallen.”
There was an instant of hissing static and the message began to repeat.
Behind them a trickle of sand began to fall quietly and didn’t stop.
Sarrilkey? Odd name for a ship. Must mean something in another language, Luke thought and grunted. “What the hell was that? All that cryptic nonsense? Eight parts of what, and what’s an inside curve? Smugglers’ code? ”
Biggs nodded. “Yeah. Probably. Since the Hutts moved in my dad says this old sand pit of a planet’s become a dumping ground for smugglers.”
“Uncle Own said pretty much the same. You think this might have been a Hutt smuggling ship? Bringing in spice or something?” Luke couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.
“Maybe. It would explain why the ship is pretty much bare of cargo and stuff. If the crew made it out, they’s take it with them, if scavengers found the ship and crew dead, they’d take everything too. We’re exploring an empty ship, Luke.”
“So what? We’re the first!”
Biggs chuckled. “We’re the last!”
“I meant we’re the first in years!”
“Don’t go all indignant on me.” He motioned with his head. “Anything else?”
Luke tapped the keys again and a holonet newscast began to play in the air above the screen. The deep voiced reporter was speaking of events taking place in far parts of the galaxy according to the galactic zoom-ins the graphics provided. A daring shipyard raid by insurgents here, the Imperial fleet destroying a small moon used by a faction of rebellious malcontents to attack Imperial outposts there, a smuggler’s base found and wiped out on the remote planet of Keylarris V, which the map of the galaxy showed to be on the edges of the Unknown Regions.
Biggs shook his head. “Can you believe it? Who knows how long this crates’ been buried here and the last newscast the crew heard sounds just like the one I heard last night!”
“‘Cause the Empire controls the news and they’re the greatest thing to happen to the galaxy since the invention of the hyperdrive, according to themselves. Uncle Owen won’t even watch it, says what he hears in town on market day is where the real news is.”
Biggs chuckled. “He’d get no argument from my dad. Or from me. I hear a lot hanging out with Dad and the other racers, and none of it made the newscast.”
“Aw,” Luke said disappointedly as he clicked through the recorded images on the companel. “There isn’t anything here but old newscasts. This isn’t hooked up to the cockpit computer at all, just entertainment for the crew. I was hoping to find the ship’s registry or something.”
“Even smugglers have to take a break, I guess.”
“Look at these games, Biggs,” he said disgustedly. He was opening file after file. “Ten, fifteen years old, at least. I beat most of these when I was little!”
The older boy nodded. “Pull it out anyway when we go. Let’s take it with us. Fixer might take it in trade for parts. My swoop needs a few things and you’d better fix your speeder before your uncle discovers it’s nav console is held together with spit and paper tape.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah.” he said dejectedly. He started to chuckle. “Isn’t it just our luck? We find a ship that’s been buried for decades and it’s already been picked over. It can only happen to us!”
They broke into laughter, shaking their heads wearily. Finally, Luke got to his feet and shined the lightstick around the living space and he saw what he missed the first time through, his excitement clouding his vision. Hatches and small doors open or broken and the contents of shelves and small compartments lying askew or on the deck.
Biggs had risen, too and clapped a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go back out and wait for the Fixer.”
Luke nodded and motioned his head toward the com console. “Yeah. Hold the light closer and I’ll pull out the data unit.”
He pushed aside the keypad and unhooked the laser cutter from inside the panel and tucked it into his belt. He reached inside, grabbed the data unit and wrestled it out of it’s housing, the ports coming away from their housings with slight clicks and pops. He straightened up, the large oblong unit in his hands.
“Got it,” he said, then frowned as his attention was caught by a flickering bright green light inside the panel where the data unit used to be. “Hold on,” he said, handing it to Biggs. He leaned closer to look at the unexpected light and immediately recognized a countdown timer. At a steady pace it was counting down to zero.
“Run!” he shouted at Biggs and started pushing his friend ahead of him. “I think there’s a bomb in there!”
“What?!” Biggs shouted in surprise, and stumbled rapidly backwards as Luke pushed him along.
“Run! We have to get out of here!”
Biggs realized Luke was serious and he spun around and raced for the corridor to the cargo holds on the other side of the ship. “How long ?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Do you think I care? Go!”
Biggs held the data unit at arms length and looked it over quickly, ready to throw it away from him if it had a flashing timer, too. Only his lightstick illuminated it from his left hand.
There was a loud rumble and the sound of scraping and bending metal behind them and both boys yelled in fear and dropped to a crouch and tried to feebly protect their heads. The sound stopped suddenly with a kind of muffled but heavy sounding thump.
“It wasn’t the bomb,” Biggs said in a whisper. “Come on!”
They scrambled to their feet and covered the few paces to the cargo hold from which they’d entered.
“If it wasn’t the bomb what was it?” Luke shouted over the sound of their footfalls.
“Hell if I know!”
Biggs raced into the hold and stopped under the small hole in the upper hull. He knelt on one knee and slapped a hand on the other. “Come on, Luke! Step up and get out. I’ll hand up the data drive.”
Luke didn’t have to be told twice. He ignored the rope hanging down and reached for the side of the opening. Biggs guided one of his feet to his shoulder and stood to propel Luke upward through the hole.
After handing up the computer unit, Biggs grabbed the rope and hauled himself upward. Luke’s hand was there at the top to grasp his and pull him through the hole.
The bright sunlight made his eyes water, but Biggs found the data unit and grabbed it to him.
“Bring the packs!” He was running toward the end of the uncovered hull and went over the edge at full speed.
“Whoa!” Luke cried behind and above him and then fell with a thump and a clatter of the packs beside him.
Both boys squinted and wiped at their eyes, looking for the long shadow of the rock spires they’d followed to the ship earlier.
“Come on!” Luke said and started running. “Over here!”
Biggs ran, closing the distance between himself and Luke as they sprinted full out for the safety of the fallen rocks.
At the same time as the ground beneath their feet began to shake and buckle and toppled them in mid stride, a muffled but ear numbing boom came from behind them and they flattened themselves against the shaking sand and covered their heads again as best they could. The ground stopped quaking and they felt themselves being pelted by a long rain of sand. Neither moved until several seconds after it stopped.
Luke raised his head and felt sand flow from his hands into his hair and down the back of his neck. The acrid smell of smoke filled the air. He looked back and a plume of black smoke rose high above them.
He looked Biggs and saw his face as drained of color as his own probably was, but as their fear faded away both felt their cheeks burning and they got to their feet. Luke lifted their packs and shook the sand from them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Biggs said. “I’ll bet they can see that from space.”

As Luke gunned the engine of his landspeeder and raced away from the spire of Standing Rocks, he glanced at his friend who was sitting beside him and shaking sand out of the data unit he was holding. “Give that old thing a toss,” he said. “It almost got us killed.”
Biggs shook his head. “That’s why I’m keeping it. The ship was rigged to blow if this was compromised, Luke. I’m going to find out what’s in it.”
Luke followed the sand patterns to hide his wake. “We saw what’s in it, pal. Nothing. Old nothing.”
Biggs laughed. “Yeah, well...” He raised his head and looked over the passing dunes without really seeing them. He was certain now. That symbol seen at the start of the messages...
It was the sign of the rebellion against the Empire.
It had to be.
And he wanted to learn all he could about it.

The End

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