SWG FanFic "We Were Rangers" Pt 1of n

I remember.

I remember the house I was born in.

A small two roomed shack on the outskirts of Mos Espa. Mother and father had moved here after the war. She worked in the Trades Hall dealing with licensing for local market traders, routine work but safe and it paid well. He, well, as kids we didn't see much of Dad.

We'd hear him arrive home late, late at night. Mum would be trying to keep him quiet as he chattered animatedly in the front room of the house. Us kids would stay in our bunks, we'd learned that sticking our nose round the door was not always a good idea. In the night we'd wake again, hear him snoring on the pallet he shared with Mum. Sometimes in the morning as we were ushered out to school we'd see the bulk of him lying there, rank smelling, covered by one of the rugs that Mum and her sisters had made when they were new brides.

Most times he'd be gone. Just a pile of hides and a note that we'd to clean and stretch them and he'd see us right when he was home.

Sometimes there'd be another man there, a doctor from town and we'd be rushed straight past and sent to stay with an aunt for a few days.

Life in Espa was good, especially for kids like me and my brother. He was younger than me but smarter. Not too smart that I couldn't lead him into all sorts of trouble tho. Lifting droid parts from Watto's scrap heap and trying to sell them back. Playing dare with the odd wild squill that'd stray into the slums and then running pell mell for the nearest militia patrol as soon as the beast turned on us, all teeth and fury. You learned to be sneaky and fast, growing up in the slums. You also learned that some fuel from a speeder, a container and some old strips of scrap metal made a terrifyingly efficient way to remove womp rat lairs from the stairwells and alleys around the houses. Well, that and how to put out fires fast. But that only happened the once. Well, the one time they could pin it on me anyway. Hey, accidents happen.

The old doctor looked serious. Then again, he always did. I think that man was born without the muscles inhis face that make smiles. Perhaps it was spending your life sewing bits back onto your fellow man, digging stuff out of them and trying to keep them alive long enough to let them go out and try killing each other or themselves again that did it.

Dad was lying, face to the wall, on the pallet just inside the front door of the house. The doc had set up a portable bacta tank beside the bed and was muttering to himself that "This fool really should know better... still some things never change" His hand, red with blood, went into the bag that sat on the floor beside the makeshift bed, drew out a laser scalpel as he muttered "this really is going to hurt you a lot more than it'll hurt me".

Us kids were ushered out of the room but even next door we could hear the oaths and curses from the giant on the bed. With a final grunt and curse things fell very, very quiet and a few minutes later an ashen faced Mother came into our room. "You'll have to be quiet. Your father has a bad wound and needs to rest for a few days". Again we were shipped off to another aunts.

My school days blur into each other. Sometimes I remember the school play where I played the back end of a bantha, or the time that Malen Garston beat me up for smiling at HIS girlfriend. Dunno, ever since that first crush on the little twi'lek from the H'yobri clan I've had a fondness for blue skin. After learning to read and write and being taught the history of the Glorious Empire it was time for me to be sent on to Technical School in Bestine.