By the time I returned to my ship, I figured I had about 2-3 hours of daylight left, and I had one thing I wanted to do before I left Tatooine.
“Bob, how good are the sensors on this ship? For example, could we find a reptile the size of this ship if we flew within, oh, 2 kilometers of it?”
“Yes sir. We could probably detect a life form that size from 5 kilometers, 7 if we do some power transferring. May I ask what you want to do?”
“Sure. I want to do a little hunting.”
I had read all my Star Wars books very well. The vicious Krayt Dragon of Tatooine was a gigantic creature. I knew its weakness, though. It has a large sinus cavity that leads directly to the brain. A single blaster bolt could bring it down if aimed just right. Why hunt one? In one of its gizzards, I would find a treasure worth many times more than what I had received from the Emperor.
My first real problem, was finding one of the huge beasts.
My second would be getting a clear shot.
My third, would be finding the correct gizzard.
I left the ship, and informed the port authority that I was leaving for a short time, and that I planned to return. For another small fee, they promised to leave the docking area in my name, rather than loan it out again. How kind of them.
With that, I left. Bob piloted the ship, while I watched the scanners. We spent the next hour and a half scanning the Dune Sea. Then I got a blip. It grew, and grew. This was one large reptile. Bob turned towards it, and soon I could see it through the glas…er, transparisteel of the cockpit. Simply amazing. This thing had to be 40M long. It was like a gigantic alligator, except the snout was shorter, and it had to be warm-blooded. There was no way a creature like this could survive otherwise. It would have needed far too much outside heat to get moving every morning.
It did notice us, turning its head and snarling. As I readied myself, Bob piloted over a few sand dunes, to make sure it would not see me leave the ship. I grabbed my new Blastech E-11, the vibroblade, and a comlink, giving another to the droid. His orders were to give me directions and warnings, in the event that the creature caught wind of my presence.
I slowly made my way to the top of a sand dune. I hoped it would give me safe haven until I could get my own assessment of my future, rather than just rely on the ships sensors. As I peaked over the top, I could see the dragon, about 100M away. This would be fine, if he would just turn his head, I could have a clear shot. At 100M, maybe I could shoot him, then hit him again as he turned towards me. I would not have very long if I did that.
I watched as the creature walked along. I needed to do something now, before it got away. So I took aim (accounting for his speed), and squeezed the trigger.
Ouch, that had to hurt. As I had hoped, I caught him in the eye. Doing this, he would have to turn towards me to either look with the other eye, or to orient his nose to sniff for me, and I was right. It took a few more shots than I thought, but he went down immediately upon hitting the right spot on the head.
It took me a few minutes to cover the distance to the reptile. First thing I wanted to do, was remove a spine from his back as a trophy. Next, was the sick part. I began to dig in. I had to have been there for a full hour, trying to find that gizzard. I decided to just start cutting any and every little thing open. After another 15 minutes, I finally found what I was looking for, and in it, five beautiful pearls. I took my treasure, as well as some of the Dragon’s meat, back to the ship, where I also cleaned myself up.
We then returned to Mos Eisley, parked in our reserved spot, and stayed for the night.
The next day, after getting some provisions and selling the meat I had collected, we left. This time I was indirectly heading for familiar territory. Home.