"Ionizers are safe enough but being used as a barricade sounds chancy, I know I wouldn't want to count on not being battle damaged while I was stunned."

"I'm worried about numbers, even if we're better shots than them they could take us down by brute force if we don't have - cover or something to exploit."

"Could they drop you?  You said you're - a walking corpse?"

He grits his teeth.  "If you stun me can you reverse it immediately?"

"Yes, stun blasters can be configured to wake people back up."

"Then let's find out.  Bring me back up right away - " and he spreads his arms.

X shoots him.

No dice.

"That changes the calculus a little.  In my experience if people's weapons turn out to be inexplicably useless in the middle of a fight they tend to panic and keep trying to hit you with them, if they're not used to improvising."

She nods.  "Mine too."  She can't smile but there's a smirk in her voice.  "And I doubt these Jawas have had much of that kind of trouble, to get used to improvising."

The geas doesn't want him building his power base by lying, not this early, because otherwise he'd have to save his people from being emotionally manipulated by a dangerous pirate baron, so he's not making facial expressions at all.  "But if they do get close they can still wrestle me to the ground.  If I try to present an eye-catching, frightening target for the Jawas to shoot, and the rest of you blend into the crowd and take potshots, it's possible we'd be able to press our skill advantage, but I'd still need a way of keeping them off me."

He blinks.  His eyes refocus on the holo of the sandcrawler, and trace along the beam of light between the levitating image and Epsilon's projector.

*

Everyone's in position, for the revised plan.  He and X are next to each other, sighting down stun blasters, at the wide sliding doors through which the Jawas will enter.

Epsilon whistles interrogatively.  Everyone ready?

There is a chorus of affirmative beeps from a phalanx of astromech droids.

The doors slide open, revealing a line of jawas already aiming ionizers - 

And Epsilon, and every astromech droid in a row behind it, immediately holoprojects the biggest and loudest holorecordings they have directly into the jawas' eyes.

There's yelling and panic and wild firing: no military discipline here.

She was right; without restraining bolts to keep order they just can't cope.  But she knows what she's doing.

So does he.  Zap zap zap zap zap, quick and efficient.

Knowing what was coming when the jawas didn't, they were able to drop most of them before they could so much as get in the bay, but a few had the good sense to charge forward out of the holo-cacophony.

He leaps clear over the phalanx of astromech droids and manages to stun one jawa in midair, landing smoothly - draw their attention - 

They shoot, but the stun bolts sink into his flesh with no effect.  A few have the good sense to rush him, but - 

But only a few; the vast majority are already down.  She picks them off with ease, as he takes down the rest.

Bleeps of delight!

"Well done, stranger."

"We need to move the bodies," he says.  "Lock them - " he twitches " - in here, for now, but someone will need to keep one eye on them in case there's some kind of medical emergency."