Commander Kirsa Vershun felt her teeth grinding as she watched a shower of sparks pour from motor above, listening to the engines of the transporter struggling to come to life. She knew that the Imperial dispatch office was unwilling to provide her with one of the newer Sentinel-class troop shuttles, but she couldn't help but feel insulted that they instead gave her one of the older, far less practical Theta-class carriers, refitted to carry a crew compliment far higher than it was built for.
It had been just over a standard month since she and her unit had been shipped off to Tatooine, with the end goal of their presence being the establishment of a permanent base in either Mos Espa or Mos Eisley, forging a foothold on the deprived desert planet. It was an assignment that bordered on being a form of punishment, a demotion for a woman who once brushed shoulders with the most elite figures within the Imperial hierarchy.
Kirsa went from the luxury of properly air conditioned vessels and planets that were cultivated for a comfortable tour of duty, to constantly feeling sweat dripping across her face as the unrelenting twin suns poured waves of heat upon the surface of Tatooine. Her hopes of a position within the ISB seemed further out of her grasp than it had done during her earliest days at the academy, as did her ambition to adorn her body with the ivory white uniform that came with the role.
Instead, was forced to spend hours back at the prefabricated base picking off specks of sand that managed to bury themselves into the fabric of her uniform. Her platinum blonde hair, usually pulled into the tightest bun achievable, would continually become loose, with locks always ending up coming free whenever she was on duty. To make matters worse, supplies of water and food would usually arrive late, forcing her to consume the food stuffs made to last for extended periods of time, usually resulting in a dull, highly manufactured taste.
Most of the equipment her unit was supplied with was either pre-Imperial, or in severely poor shape, and the lack of any spare parts for maintenance meant that breakdowns and system failures were a frequent occurrence. Tatooine was an unforgiving world to those who travelled to it, and Kirsa didn't think for one second that they were up to the task. Morale rarely reached anything above resignation, worsened by the fact that her stormtroopers couldn't understand what their exact mission was. Though Kirsa did her best to remind them that every piece would fit into the Emperor's greater puzzle, she too failed to see what the desolate world had to offer.
She had spent the first few weeks of her mission dealing with the Hutts and the other various criminal syndicates that used Tatooine as their own personal playground. Most of the unscrupulous characters she was forced to deal with repulsed her to no end, each one took every chance they could to leer at her, something her tight fitting uniform almost encouraged. Kirsa had a beauty that allowed her to disarm even the most arrogant of men, but it occasionally drew the wrong type of attention, a fact that made itself more than clear the more she had to negotiate with the system's local war lords. It reached a point where she would have much preferred to put a blaster bolt between the eyes of a lecherous Trandoshan than to put up with its incessant staring.
But with the little she had at her disposal, she made a system that functioned, to a certain extent. As she and her troops departed from yet another unproductive meeting with the much feared Jabba the Hutt, the aged shuttle finally gave out. The Theta-class vessel was forced to make a sudden landing in the sandy terrain, its thrusters forming a trail of thick black smoke as it careened over the landscape, leaving them stranded in a territory disputed over by the local settlements and the Tusken Raiders. It was a place Kirsa knew they couldn't afford to be present in once the beating suns descended beyond the horizon, with the lack of any moisture vaporators making it more than clear just how far into Raider territory they had strayed.
The one engineer Kirsa had in her squad spent just over two hours utilising every bit of knowledge he had to breath some life back into the ship, but even he had to finally give up. With much reluctance, he relayed the dire situation back to Kirsa.
"What do you mean there's nothing you can do?" Kirsa pinched the bridge of her nose as the motors sputtered, letting out a stuttering whine and a puff of smoke when they lost all power. "You are the one engineer we have on the squad, this is exactly what you're expected to be able to maintain."
The engineer sighed as he wiped the oil from his hands. "I was trained to work on TIE fighters and bombers, ma'am. And this is barely the same ship that it used to be when it first rolled off the production line, nothing was left untouched when they did the refit, the manuals are useless."
"You've clearly managed to identify the issue, just explain what it is," Kirsa prodded, aware of how Imperial engineers could go around in circles if left uninterrupted.
The engineer pointed towards the spot in the ceiling of the main crew hold where most of the wires were left exposed, revealing a group of panels above. "The hyperdrive module is completely fried. The module itself used to sit exactly where we're standing right now, but they pulled it apart and shoved it into the compartment where the main reactor is situated when they were creating space for extra troops. I can't make any repairs without a new module."
"We don't have that luxury," the pilot of the T-2C spoke up, "the other shuttles are all undergoing their own repairs back at the base. It's a miracle this rust bucket made it this long without crashing into a dune. We're stuck out here."
"He's right," the engineer added, setting his toolkit aside, "our equipment is barely getting by as it is. And being stuck out in open terrain isn't helping, the grains of sand on this planet are uniquely coarse, they're getting everywhere. This model wasn't built to last in this sort of environment."
Kirsa didn't dare consider the prospect of being stuck out in the open terrain of the desert once the temperatures dropped. It was likely that the entire squad would be forced to turn the ship into a fortress throughout the night, fending off hostile forces on both sides, well aware of the Tuskens' preference for picking off their targets from afar. "What's the nearest settlement to our current position?"
The pilot lifted his geo-locator, showing the screen to Kirsa. "Mos Espa, Hutt controlled territory. It's one of the few places on this hell hole we're still struggling to get a foot hold in, not without the Hutts throwing their sizeable weight around. We can't even park troop carriers there anymore, not without having to worry about kriffing Jawas stealing parts off them when we're not looking."
"Fine," Kirsa stated curtly, turning on the spot, facing towards the rear landing ramp, "Mos Espa is a spaceport, meaning that second hand parts dealers should be abundant. I'll take the speeder bike there and obtain the module before nightfall, and if we're lucky I can get it delivered in time."
"Ma'am?" the captain of the stormtrooper squad piped up, brushing a layer of sand away from his orange pauldron. "Are you sure that's wise? Mos Espa barely has any form of law enforcement, and the mayor is little more than a puppet for Jabba. It would be safer to send one of the troops out to retrieve the part."
