Binary Skies

Chapter 2: Burning Sands

Luke steered the landspeeder in complete silence, hardly even seeing the sandy scenery-if it could even be called that-as it flashed by. His stomach roiled nervously and with guilt at his ultimate decision. Ben and his father were both right-she did need help, but...for some reason his mind was set on staying.

Even if every other part of him was telling him to go find her and rescue her.

Luke was lost in his musings, but somehow, out of the five people in the speeder-two of them droids-he was the one who spotted it.

"What's that?" Luke asked abruptly, already turning the landspeeder in a detour in the direction of the plume of smoke billowing into the sky.

"Whatever it is, it doesn't look good," Ben mused.

It might have been the fact he was already turning down helping the Rebellion, and the guilt might have been getting to him, but he ushered the speeder on a little faster. "We should see if anyone needs help."

As he crested the last dune blocking their view, Luke's eyebrows shot up in shock, and he gradually slowed the landspeeder to an eventual halt, staring at the carnage in front of him.

Jawa bodies littered the sandy ground all around, and a broken transport was found to be the source of the smoke. It didn't even look like a fight-it looked more like a brutal slaughter.

The youngest of the group-and not burdened by any droids-Luke was the first one out of the speeder, cautiously approaching the closest body and silently observing the scene around him. Nearby was a gaffi stick, and he frowned. "Sand People?" he wondered out loud.

Anakin stared at the scene before him with mixed emotions. He had never cared for Jawas either, but they could be useful. Even so, he knew slaughter was dead wrong.

Anakin grimaced at the unintended pun, and exited the landspeeder once Threepio was on the ground.

He wandered the site with a critical eye, observing Obi-Wan doing the same while Luke followed the white-haired man.

As they deliberated over the scene, Anakin made his own deductions, the first of which being that Sand People were not nearly this accurate, nor did their tracks go all over like the ones here.

In fact, those weren't even bantha tracks. They looked more like dewbacks...and Tuskens didn't use dewbacks.

So this was a set up meant to throw people off the real criminals. Anakin didn't like it one bit.

He tuned in on what the other two guys were saying when Luke voiced a similar concern about whether or not Sand People would hit this large of a target.

Anakin agreed with his son's logic; why would the Sand People raid a sandcrawler and not take the bounty to be had?

It didn't add up.

"But we are meant to think they did," Ben instructed wisely as he approached Luke. Luke kicked a charred remain of the sandcrawler aside, staring sadly at the murdered Jawas. "These tracks are side by side-Sand People always ride single file to hide their numbers."

Realization was starting to dawn on Luke. "These are the same Jawas that sold us Artoo and Threepio," he stated as Ben took a firm hold of his shoulder, steering him towards the transport.

"And these blast points-too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise."

Luke noticed his father frowning at the term Stormtroopers out of the corner of his eyes, but turned back to Ben with a concerned look, a fear starting to bubble inside of his gut. "But why would Imperial Troops want to slaughter Jawas?" he asked, looking back down at a dead Jawa at his feet. Something in his mind clicked, and his fear flared anew as he looked sharply up at the two droids waiting back by the landspeeder.