The main building had been Annileen’s domain for the majority of her thirty-seven years—and in that time she’d crammed an amount of commerce that defied all geometry into the limited space. Visitors encountered rows of shelves as they entered, all angled so Annileen could see down the aisles from behind her counter, which ran nearly the length of the eastern wall. But most patrons usually headed past the sundries for the rear of the main room. There, near where the far end of Annileen’s counter terminated in a bar, a food preparation area sat close to eight cramped dining tables. Every day, Annileen fed and fortified half the workers living near the oasis, not necessarily in that order.
This was her roost, but the complex went on from there. Northwest of the main store was the first garage Dannar had built to service the vehicles of oasis prospectors; it had been expanded many times since, as local mechanics rented bays. To the north and east sat a livestock area, where the few surviving animals from Annileen’s father’s failed ranch had formed the basis for a thriving livery, serving those daring fools who preferred the reptilian dewbacks to landspeeders.
And all around: the oasis, a wide clearing shielded from the wind by gently rolling sand hills. Once a basin for a prehistoric lake, the area and its clumpy soil gave rise to flowering pika plants and a few hardy debdeb trees—and something else. Orrin Gault’s newfangled cylindrical vaporators rose all around, producing water for delivery in the vast tankers that sat parked outside the Claim’s garages. Most of the harvest was bound for faraway parts; the locals drank what they needed and little more. They knew what they had, and its value.
Though gifted at water prospecting, Dannar had never taken much interest in moisture farming. He’d reasoned that a store would weather the bad-harvest years better, and that had mostly turned out to be true. But he’d left his widow with so many secondary businesses under one roof that Annileen feared taking a day off, lest Tatooine’s rural economy collapse.
She’d held up okay, or so she thought every once in a while, when she caught her reflection in the glassware in the sink. Annileen could even recognize herself on occasion. The auburn hair of her youth, which she wore tied back, was going to brown, not gray; so far so good. Inside work had never fully met with her approval, but it had kept her skin rosy rather than roasted.
And Annileen’s eyes were about the only truly green thing on the whole planet, if you didn’t count dewbacks or Rodian barflies. Counting dewbacks was now her daughter’s job, anyway. Looking out the square window, Annileen could see Kallie, blond and determined, trying to teach the dewback yearlings some manners before they realized they had the muscle to tear the fencing apart at will.
At least Kallie wasn’t messing with Snit, Annileen saw to her relief. The creature wasn’t of the cannibal breed; Annileen wouldn’t have let one of those near the compound. But Snit had been bitten by a kreetle as a hatchling, and had been snapping at everything in sight since. Annileen assumed her daughter had the sense to stay away—but she never knew. Breaking dewbacks wasn’t a safe job for an assassin droid, much less a seventeen-year-old girl. But Dannar Calwell had never accepted limits, and his oldest child wasn’t about to, either. Stubbornness bred true.
Annileen had hoped her son, Jabe, would be different. But it wasn’t turning out that way. And between the emergency siren, her kids, and the customers today, Annileen had just about had it. She glared out the window and winced. In pain. “Ow!”
“That’s new,” Leelee said, depositing her parcel and some credits on the counter. She pointed to Annileen’s hands. “You have literally cut off your own circulation with your apron strings. Appropriate. A little on the nose, though.”
Looking down, Annileen quickly unwound the fabric from her reddened palm. “You’re the range psychiatrist now?”
“No, but I’ve got five children of my own. And I know if you keep staring at Kallie and those animals, she’s just gonna try to ride the crazy one.”
Annileen turned away from the window. “Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said, collecting the money. “It’s always the kid I can’t see that I’m worried about.”
Jabe had already been long gone with the prospectors when the Settlers’ Call had sounded. Her son knew very well what Annileen thought about him getting anywhere near Orrin’s business. But as far as she could tell, the boy didn’t care at all. She just didn’t understand him anymore. Jabe had something everyone on Tatooine dreamed of: a guaranteed life of safe, indoor work, filling his father’s shoes. Instead, the stubborn teen kept sneaking away with Orrin’s work crew. Sure, Annileen knew the boy had eyes for Orrin’s daughter, Veeka. But he had no more chance with that hellion than he had of becoming Chancellor of the Republic—or whatever they called it these days.
No, Annileen concluded, he’d gone with the crew this morning in retaliation for having been made to clean the cookers before dawn. And if he followed them into danger, that’d be spite, too. That irritated her beyond measure. Spite was stupid. Even Kallie was too smart to ride Snit just to make a point. And Annileen had always figured Jabe had sense … her sense. He’d give the Tuskens the same berth, wouldn’t he?
She was afraid she knew the answer. She found her inventory datapad and returned to staring at it. She couldn’t read a word, of course. She only saw Jabe—and Orrin.
Orrin. The Claim had thrived long after Dannar’s death because Annileen had one steadfast rule: she never let anyone have anything on account. There was only one exception: Orrin, Dannar’s best friend and sometime business partner. Orrin and Dannar’s friendship had gone back years, long before Annileen had come to work at Dannar’s store as a teenager. The two men had so many side deals that she’d always felt awkward trying to set limits. But Orrin was sorely testing her patience now, dangling the possibility of range work for her son.
Orrin’s family was a mess. Why did he meddle with hers? Aggravated, she tried to focus again on the datapad.
“You’re holding it upside down,” Leelee said from behind.
Annileen didn’t look up. “Are you still here?”
“I’m waiting for my change.”
“You’re out of luck. Change is the one thing Tatooine doesn’t have.” Taking a deep breath, she looked back at Leelee and smiled wanly. “How much was it?”
Leelee waved her hand. “Keep it. Maybe you can pay Dr. Mell to give you something to help you relax.”
“Yeah,” Annileen said. “Like a ticket to Alderaan.”
As if Leelee’s words had summoned him, the local physician, a Mon Calamari man, popped his head in the side door.
“Annileen, are they back yet?” Mell wore a special cowl supplying his tendriled head with moisture, but he was flushed red nonetheless. “The posse. I heard the Call go off!”
“They heard it on Suurja, Doc,” Annileen said. “And Suurjans don’t have ears.” She didn’t know if Mon Calamari had ears, either, but she knew Doc Mell wouldn’t mind the joke. The Call was a gaudy display of decibels. Half the breakables in the store had fallen to the first test of the system, years earlier. Annileen had learned to tune it out—a talent perfected during a lifetime in retail.
“They still might need a medic. I should meet them on the way back,” the doctor said, before cracking the door and pushing his young son inside.
Annileen started. “Hey, wait. Don’t leave your kid here!”
“I’ll be back!” The door slammed.
Annileen pitched the datapad over her shoulder and felt her forehead. Yes, she was still here—and so were the four other younglings that had already been dropped off when their parents left with the posse. Two were at a table, eating food plucked from the shelf; two more were hiding somewhere. Babysitting wasn’t her job, but with people rushing out to help someone in need, she’d found it hard to argue.
Except people frequently left their children when there was no emergency, too.
Annileen looked down on the sniffling pink ragamuffin and rolled her eyes. She sighed. “Oh, all right.”
She took the boy by the shoulders and pointed him to a rack near the wall. “Take a broom, kid. And nothing else.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The child began to dutifully sweep the floor near the table where the other children were sitting.
From inside the front door, Leelee laughed. “Good luck, Annie.”
Annileen scowled, playfully. “Just go. You’re letting the tepid air out.”
A low whine sounded from the west, slowly increasing in volume and crescendo. Annileen dashed to the counter to check the video feed from the southern hillside security cam. She saw what she expected to see: landspeeders, coming back from the Bezzard farm.
And she also saw what she had feared to see. Jabe, perched precariously on the back of Veeka Gault’s snazzy landspeeder.
Annileen opened the window and called out to her daughter. “Kallie! Bring me a bantha prod.”
The girl looked up from her work. “You want the training prod or the big one?”
Dark eyebrows made an angry vee. “Doesn’t matter.”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR ORRIN, RETURNING TO the Claim was always like coming home. It wasn’t his home, of course; it was Dannar’s. And then Dannar’s and Annileen’s, and for the last several years Annileen’s alone. But Orrin felt a tie to the compound that went beyond the law, or such law as there was on Tatooine. Orrin had laid the first bricks for the store, driven in the first landspeeder for repair, and eaten the first meal at the lunch counter.
A place was a thing, and you weren’t supposed to get sentimental about things. But it was also his last link to the best friend he’d ever had, and that wasn’t something he’d ever be able to ignore.
The Claim had been Dannar’s big idea. He was good with ideas, even better than Orrin was. Together they’d made great things happen in the oasis; one day, they’d imagined, Orrin’s farms and Dannar’s market would turn it into a second Anchorhead. Or even Bestine—Orrin could see that happening. The Pika had that much potential.
But Dannar had changed after marrying his salesclerk. He’d always kept a foot in the store after that, never willing to risk more than he could afford at one time. And after Kallie was born? Forget it.
Fatherhood had the opposite effect on Orrin; he couldn’t wait to hit the range each day, searching for treasure in the air. But Dannar’s bets were ever smaller, and on surer things. That had made Dannar’s Claim a strong operation, to be sure: a good earner, even by Orrin’s current standards. But it had meant that only one of them was able to go for the main chance, when opportunity came. By the time Jabe was in the cradle, Orrin’s holdings had almost completely enveloped the store property.
Not that Dannar had ever begrudged Orrin success. Dannar had been happy to see someone making use of his ideas—and the fact that it was a friend profiting made it even better. The Calwell and Gault operations were as close as they could be without a legal partnership—which the friends never contemplated, given their mutual contempt for the legal clerks in Bestine. No tax collector had any right to either man’s work. And if Orrin wanted to store his vaporator construction speeders in Dannar’s garages, or if Dannar wanted to range his dewbacks on Orrin’s land, well, they didn’t need a document for that.
The policy had continued under Annileen, more or less, in the nearly eight years since Dannar passed. The Claim’s spare garages now held the entire Gault work fleet. And when Orrin took administrative control of the Settlers’ Call Fund he had co-founded with his neighbors, it made perfect sense that the Claim should serve as its operational base. The facility had plenty of room to house the emergency response vehicles owned by the Fund—and if the responders needed an arsenal, they only had to walk next door to find Annileen’s gun racks.
There was one more thing the Claim had to offer, Orrin knew: the reward for a dangerous job well done. As manager of the Call Fund, Orrin had seen the need and made the provision long ago, and no one had ever argued.
His was a vigilante organization with a liquor tab.
“Good stuff here, folks!” Orrin climbed out of his prized USV-5 landspeeder and slapped the hood. The other vehicles were arriving, one by one. “Park the loaners by the garage—we’ll take care of them. And you can drink your fill before the lunch rush!”
A cheer rose from the growing crowd. Some quickly headed into Dannar’s Claim, but more lingered outside, sharing their stories and trophies. Reminded, Orrin reached into the landspeeder to find his new gaffi stick—or gaderffii, or whatever the savages called the bizarre hunks of metal. The young Tusken cut to pieces in the crossfire had carried this one. Now, with one boot on the bobbing hood of his parked hovercraft, Orrin hoisted the weapon over his head. He gave a war whoop and smiled broadly. Another cheer went up.
“Let’s hear it for the king of the Jundland!”
Orrin’s head snapped back at the sound of the feminine voice. Veeka was there, having parked her vehicle behind the others. Young Jabe and a couple of other settlers’ kids were piling off the back of the speeder, rifles in hand. Veeka grinned at her father and shouted again. “Hail to the king!”
“Don’t call me that,” Orrin growled. He hated the name—and Veeka knew better than to use it. But he heard it again from here and there in the swelling crowd.
“All hail, king of the Jundland!”
“No, no. Don’t do that,” Orrin said. He laughed, loudly enough so they could hear him. He knew not to take it seriously. These people weren’t looking for a ruler; it was why half of them were on Tatooine! They needed to know he knew that, too. Orrin leaned the gaderffii against the hood of his landspeeder and raised his hands in humility. “It’s a team effort,” he said, quieting the crowd. “Always. You folks … you saved that farm.”
His voice rose. “And never, ever forget why we’re doing this. Remember the people that the Tuskens have killed, for no reason at all. People who were just trying to make an honest living. Farmer after farmer—we’ve lost more prospecting knowledge than we can ever appreciate. It’s why we all came together to set up the Settlers’ Call, years ago—to help us take back our lives.”
He pointed to a tall vaporator tower, rising from the slope to the south of the store. “Up there on top is the very first siren, erected on Dannar Calwell’s Old Number One vaporator. Some of you new folks didn’t know Dannar, but he was the best friend a man—and this oasis—could have. The Tuskens took him from us, too, but the siren remains—one of many. That’s part of his legacy to us. Dannar’s gone, but the call still goes out. And it’s our job to answer it!”
Orrin softened his voice. “That’s the key, folks. I know you’re not fighters. I know you have your own fields you should be working right now. And it’s not always easy to find the extra credits that keep the Settlers’ Call going. I’ve sure put plenty into it myself. And not just money.” He choked up for a moment, and paused to clear his throat. “But that’s just it. Many of you know my younger son died a few years ago, answering the Call. He did it to save a neighbor. There’s not a day that I don’t miss him—but I don’t regret at all what he went to do. A community’s a living thing—and our actions together keep it alive.”
Orrin looked up. The settlers were watching him, spellbound. As usual.
“That’s all,” he said, breaking the solemnity. “And before you drink up, a reminder—any of you who haven’t paid your subscription for this season, the Settlers’ Call Fund office is in the back, behind the secondhand clothing. You might need us at your place one day. These speeders don’t run on goodwill!”
Orrin smiled as several of the posse members rushed to shake his hand. He glanced up at the climbing suns. His crews had lost most of a morning in the fields, but this was important, too. Without camaraderie, there was no community—the oxygen that the Settlers’ Call needed to function. Subscriptions always went up after a Tusken attack, but that was nothing compared with what happened after a successful defense and retaliation. He nodded to Mullen, who opened the door to the store for the settlers.
Brzzaappt! A golden electric flash struck the ground not far from the teenager’s feet. Startled, the boy jumped backward, tripping over his boots and landing on his rear.
Mullen and Orrin stood back. “Yikes,” Mullen said.
Orrin nodded. “Yep.”
Jabe looked up from the sand to see his mother holding a bantha prod. “What the—” Realizing what had happened, his immediate reaction was incredulity. “You almost shocked me!”
“Oh, did I miss?” Annileen snarled. “Maybe I should try again!”
“Mom!”
Behind Orrin, Kallie appeared in the store doorway holding a shorter staff. “Mom, do you want to switch to the training prod?”
“This is training him just fine,” Annileen growled. Taking a breath, she looked at the bantha prod for a moment before rolling her eyes and tossing it away. She turned and loomed over Jabe. “Now, you listen to me! You did not have my permission to skip out on the breakfast prep. You did not have permission to go working in the suns with these roughnecks.” Her voice climbed. “And you sure as blazes don’t have my permission to go out with the posse!”
Jabe coughed, more embarrassed than hurt. “Mom, people were in danger!”
“You were in danger!”
Smirking, Orrin gestured to the amused vigilantes, who had forgotten about the free spirits. “A wide berth, gentle creatures, if you please. Annileen Calwell is parenting again.”
Hearing his voice, Annileen turned abruptly and sputtered. “And—and you!”
Orrin outweighed his best friend’s widow by thirty kilos—and yet as she started toward him, he took a step backward. Self-preservation came before public image. Spying the gaderffii resting against the hood of his landspeeder, he playfully picked it up and held it with both hands, in simulated defense. But Annileen kept coming. “Easy there!” he said.
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