Chapter 37
Horb Boq stood smoking a death stick and watching the endless desert. He had been assigned to guard Gardulla the Hutts death stick factory and the days were long and boring.
The only thing here was sand, sand, and more sand. The trandoshan in charge of the factory had told them to be on alert as tensions were high between Gardulla and her rival Jabba. But days had gone by, and the only threat so far was the endless sand and the oppressive heat.
Night was falling quickly and Horb looked behind him at the factory hoping to see his replacement. The factory complex was made up of numerous buildings and warehouses, with fences and containers jutting out between them.
The low light was casting eery looking shadows over the area and Horb began feeling uneasy. He always felt this way at this time, the factory's workers had all gone home so the only ones there were the guards and the creepy silence of the desert.
"Boo!" a voice came from Horb's left and he let out a startled yelp and turned to see Xerl, one of his fellow guards, laughing at him.
"Haha, your face" Xerl pointed at Horb before clutching his knees as he bent over laughing.
"It's not that funny" Horb grumbled angrily. "What are you doing here?"
"Hehe, the boss wants us to swap with the team on the other side of the complex." Xerl said after he stopped laughing.
"Ugh, why?" Horb complained but started walking in step with Xerl as they made there way back into the factory complex. He could just about see two other guards, their replacements, moving towards them from the other side of the factory.
"I don't know, some stupid productivity thing. He wants us sharp or something, I think he's got big boss Gardulla breathing down his neck over all these rumours of an attack." Xerl told him as they walked.
"It's all so stupid. Gardulla might be going through a ruff patch, but she's still a Hutt. No-one is going to mess with us." Horb said, utterly confident in the superiority of their crime gang.
"I hear that. Hold up a sec, I got to take a leak." Xerl said and stepped behind the wall of one of the outlying warehouses to relieve himself.
Horb just shrugged and waited. He had lost sight of the other team of guards but that wasn't suspicious given how dark it was getting. He was less creeped out now he had his buddy back with him, so he just waited while absentmindedly picking at a spot of hardened sand that had fused to his shirt.
He heard clattering behind him and turned to find nothing but shadows and frowned. He figured it was just Xerl messing with him again but thought he should probably investigate.
"Xerl?" no response.
"Hey. Xerl?" no response.
"Come on man this isn't funny. You already got me once its just getting old now." Horb grumbled before hearing footsteps behind him.
He turned again with a grin expecting to see Xerl sneaking up on him, but his grin faded rapidly, and a look of horror covered his face as he saw who it was.
Horb stared in terror at the mask of the tusken raider towering above him. He couldn't speak, he couldn't move, he couldn't do anything. He didn't notice the Gaffi stick in the raiders hand, already dripping with Xerl's blood, until it was already swinging towards his head.
A choaked scream escaped him followed by a sickening crunch as the pointed club smacked into his head. The raider's howls of triumph were the last sounds Horb ever heard as his world faded to black.
-
"Lady Gardulla! The factory is under attack by Raiders!" a panicked gangster ran into the throne room to the surprise of Gardulla and her assembled minions.
She was just about to watch her pets tear apart one of her hapless slaves in the arena and was irritated that her enjoyment had been interrupted. That irritation quickly turned to furry as she processed what the man had just said.
"WHAT!" she bellowed and sent the man a murderous look.
"It's the tusken raiders. They came out of the desert, apparently there are hundreds of them. They overwhelmed the factory's guards." The gangster relayed the information he had received from a terrified comms operator at the factory.
"We can't afford to lose that factory. I want those savages dead! Send our men and kill them all, NOW!" Gardulla ranted to her minions.
"How many of us should go, mighty Gardulla." A nervous gangster asked, Gardulla had wanted them all protecting the palace before, so he wanted to know the specifics of who to send to deal with the tusken raiders.
"Everyone!" Gardulla raged and her minions scurried off to comply.
-
The Trandoshan in charge o the death stick factory was running in fear. He could hear the screams of his men and the shouts of the tusken raiders, punctuated by blaster fire.
He burst into a security room, startling the comm operator who was frantically relaying their situation to Gardulla's palace.
The Trandoshan locked the door and backed away from it slowly. It was chaos outside. They had been told there might be a raid by the tuskens, but this was not what they were expecting.
They had been expecting small bands of raiders that they could then easily hold off and get reinforcements from the palace. But now they were fighting over a hundred raiders who had appeared from out of nowhere and where quickly killing all the factories guards.
Not to mention that raider who seemed to be leading the attack. The raider was wading threw the guards killing any who stood against him while wielding a lightsabre.
A lightsabre! How did those savages get their hands on a lightsabre! The thought terrified the trandoshan.
The locked door burst of its hinges and flew across the room, decapitating the comms operator before he even knew what happened.
"Evening" The Tusken raider holding the lightsabre said friendlily as he calmly walked into the security room following the flying door.
The trandoshan's screams where drowned out by the screams and shouts happening across the factory before being swiftly silenced by the sound of a swinging lightsabre.
The tusken warlord stepped out of the security room and immediately began barking orders to the sand people closest to him before moving off to look for more gangsters to kill.
-
Soon hundreds of mercs and gangsters were loaded into speeders of all descriptions and heading out of the palace and into the desert. They were covered in weapons and looked ready to take on a whole army.
They were expecting to be fighting a small, disorganised band of sand people so some thought that the mass of speeders filled with heavily armed fighters was a bit of overkill. But Gardulla was known for liking her displays of violence to make people fear her, so no-one considered it much.
They expected to roll up to the factory and decimate the sand people with heavy blaster fire and be able to return to the palace to watch more fights in the arena without many problems. The tusken raiders weren't smart or capable enough to plan elaborate ambushes so they weren't on guard for them and were traveling along the quickest and most direct route from the palace to the factory.
The procession of speeders entered a rocky canyon, its narrow walls forcing them to move in single file. The gangsters were still anticipating the coming bloodlust and so none of them noticed the small metallic looking rock that the first speeder flew past.
They also didn't notice the loose, uneven lumps of sand that filled the floor of the canyon. They did however notice when the canyon erupted in a cacophonic explosion.
The canyon was filled with fire and death. Broken speeders smashed into each other blocking the narrow canyon. Super-heated shards of rock and metal flew through the densely packed gangsters spreading death and destruction across the canyon floor.
Over half the gangsters were killed instantly in the explosion, and many others now lay on the floor, injured and dying. Fear gripped the few 'lucky' survivors as they heard the braying shouts of tusken raiders and soon they were fighting for their lives as shots began raining down on them from the top of the high canyon walls.