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Din held onto his father tightly as they ran. He’d never seen his parents scared before, not until today. His father ran, his mother ran, all their friends and neighbors ran, trying to escape the droids. In a daze, Din watched over his father’s shoulder as the droids fired, again and again. Smoke and dust filled the air, and all Din could hear were the blasts and the screams. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his face against his father’s shoulder.
But they couldn’t run fast enough. The droids were still coming, from everywhere.
His father set him on the ground and his mother hugged him tightly and told him to hide in the cellar. They’d come back for him when it was safe. His father kissed him on the forehead and they helped him down into the cramped hold. His last sight of them was their forms silhouetted against the sun, closing the heavy cellar doors even as he reached out to them, silently begging them not to leave him alone.
Then there was a loud BOOM, and the ground shook. The heavy doors rattled, jostling them open a crack. And Din knew. He knew that his mother and father wouldn’t be coming back. Then a shadow covered the crack, and he heard the dreadful clanking footsteps of a droid. He couldn’t breathe. Maybe it didn’t notice him down here.
But then his heart all but stopped when the cellar doors were pulled open as if they weighed nothing. The massive metal monster stared down at him and raised its arm. Din squeezed his eyes shut again and looked away, waiting for the moment it shot him, too.
Then he heard more blaster bolts. But they weren’t aimed at him. His eyes popped open despite his terror, and he saw the droid collapse as it was peppered with shots. A new shadow filled the open doorway. For a moment, he remained frozen. Was this another droid?
But no. It was a man. He was wearing armor like nothing Din had ever seen, even on the travelers ( bounty hunters , his mother called them) that sometimes passed through Aq Vetina. It was white, though dinged and scuffed, with orange shoulders and stripes like a sunrise on the torso. He knelt down and held out a black-gloved hand for Din.
Din stared at the outstretched hand for a moment, frozen.
“Come on, kid. It’s okay. Let me help you out of there. I’ve got you.”
There was something so solid and certain about his voice, like every time his parents assured him that the monsters under the bed wouldn’t eat him while he slept. So Din reached out and grabbed his hand. The man lifted him out of the cellar as if he weighed nothing and set him on his feet on the ground, kneeling down next to him.
All around them, more men in white and orange armor were fighting the droids. Where had they come from?, Din wondered. Why couldn’t they have been a little quicker and saved his parents? He looked around, but didn’t see them anywhere. A tiny voice in his mind hoped that they somehow escaped or were hiding, but he still knew it in his heart that it wasn't so.
Then a new man fell out of the sky, cutting two droids in half with a beam of light held in his hand even as he landed impossibly lightly on the ground. Unlike all the others fighting the droids, this one wore no armor at all, just plain old tan and brown tunics and trousers and boots.
“General! I’ve got a survivor here!” called Din’s rescuer.
The unarmored man, the general, looked over at them. A droid took his momentary distraction as a chance to fire at him, but somehow he knew it was coming and used his light-sword to reflect the blaster bolts back at the droid.
“We need to get him and anyone else we find out of here,” the new man said, his voice colored by a multitude of emotions Din couldn’t begin to interpret. “I just got word from the Negotiator. Enemy reinforcements are on their way. We've got minutes at best.”
“Yes, sir. 212th! Fall back to the exfil site!”
The armored man looked back at Din.
“Hey, kid, we’re going to get you out of here, safe and sound, alright?”
Even though Din couldn’t see his eyes behind his helmet, he trusted him. He swallowed and nodded bravely.
“My name’s Cody. I’m with the Grand Army of the Republic. What’s your name, kid?”
“Din.” It came out as barely more than a whisper.
“All right, Din. It’s nice to meet you. When we get back to my place, I’ll introduce you to all my brothers. Sound like a plan?”
Din nodded mutely.
The tempo of the blaster shots suddenly rose as more droids appeared around the corner. The man with the light-sword blocked countless shots, but they just kept coming. There were always more droids.
“Time to go.”
Din found himself swept up into strong arms. The armored plates were cool under his touch, stiff and unyielding. As he was carried away, he glanced back one last time at the cellar that had been his last refuge only minutes before. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the orange shoulder armor. It was the last he saw of Aq Vetina.