The Gunslinger (Most Complete))

Tatooine's twin stars turned the sky a blazing, cloudless blue, and made the horizon swim like water. Beneath a pair of well worn bantha leather boots, the dunes churned, and attempted to swallow Niome Takan. The only thing rivaling her thirst was her anger. She hadn't walked out into the desert, of course. She came on a starship, and she wasn't alone until three sunsets ago. She had come with her mentor, a man called Jarek Hawthorne. Now his well worn DL-44 hung off her gunbelt, grip hot enough to boil the blood in her fingers if she needed to fire the thing. She walked without rythm to avoid attracting the Krayte Dragons. Her steps were also unintentionally clumsy.

Niome couldn't seem to get out of her own head. Despite the dire situation, she found herself trapped in thought. She couldn't unsee it, unhear it. The missile lock alarm blaring, the roar of the engines. The way her stomach lurched when she pulled the freighter into an abrupt dive. The flash of the proton warhead as it passed the cockpit window. Then the right engine cut with a nearly deafening boom, and she was helpless to properly navigate. She still had the distinct impression she was gripping the controls. White knuckled as she tried desperately to pull up from the botched dive. She couldn't see it, but she could imagine the smoke trailing behind them. She could imagine the cheers among whoever pulled the trigger. She was delirious.

She'd been marching for three days. Three nights spent without food or water, chasing mirages her mind turned into sprawling civilization. The desert toyed with her, although Niome knew it felt no malice. On the first morning she realized she'd starve before she reached Mos-Eisley, that was if she only moved during the night. Now with her waning strength she thought the heat was a greater threat than that. Niome Takan hadn't had the energy to run towards the mirages since the second day. She didn't have the energy now to even think she might get out of this one alive. She wondered if she was following the map correctly. Still the lock sirens blared in her ears. The suns ahead hung like vultures.

She was surely as good as dead out there, in the Jundland Wastes. It didn't matter how much she hoped, because her body was failing. She knew she was waning, weakening. Soon enough her legs would refuse her commands, or worse, instead of simply fading into the black to be baked alive while unwary, she could wind up another addition to a Tusken Effigy. She could picture her bloodless face, desiccated, and weeks old looming from the top of a spike. Her thoughts were hopeless, but constant. Then something triggered her lizard brain, scuttling from the sand sent grains running in a pack passed her boots. Her fight or flight activated, and adrenaline gave her a chance to draw her blaster. In one fluid motion, the lethal weapon was in her hand, and she'd turned to face the monster.