Kenobi

by John Jackson Miller

  Annileen smiled as the electronic waiter rattled away. “GG-8 served us when Dannar and I were here on our honeymoon,” she told Ben. “It was the first time a droid had ever brought me anything. I felt like the Queen of Alderaan.”

  Ben took fork in hand. “You could have a droid at the oasis, I’m sure?”

  “The farmhands don’t like to see them. They take away jobs on the range.”

  “Well, you seem kind to them,” he noted.

  “No reason not to be,” she said.

  Ben smiled and began to eat.

  All through lunch, Annileen felt like a tracker losing a trail. Ben still seemed to have that sadness hidden deep within—it came out whether he wanted it to or not. But every attempt to nudge him toward a personal revelation resulted in his nimble escape to another topic. She couldn’t become cross with him; even this verbal fencing had the same fun and easiness of their lunch the day of the podraces. Rather, she began to feel sorry for how much work he was putting in, changing subjects.

  Fine, she decided as she finished her dessert. If Ben was going to insist on being more interested in her life than in talking about his, well, she’d make the sacrifice. And Ben did seem willing to listen to her entire litany of worries. About Kallie, and what future she might find. The livery wasn’t yet drudgery for her, but there weren’t many options beyond that. Would she really be happy married to some farmhand?

  And of course, they talked about Jabe. Annileen had kept closer watch on her son since the Tusken massacre. The boy wasn’t out of control, but for some reason Jabe wanted her to think he was. Ben seemed to share her concern. “When people show you signs, it’s important to read them,” he said.

  But mostly, they talked about her. About her childhood, and animals. About her father, and the failed ranch. About her hopes to study, and how that direction had changed. And about the thing that, above and beyond Tusken Raiders, Orrin’s antics, or even her children’s upbringing, occupied the most territory in her life.

  The Claim.

  And Ben wasn’t having any of her complaints about it. “I know you love it. I’ve seen you. You enjoy holding court—being the center that holds it all together.”

  Annileen laughed. “You want the job? It’s yours.”

  “Oh, no,” Ben said, picking at his dessert. “I’ve never been one for the politics of large rooms.” He took another bite. “Or smaller ones.”

  Annileen smiled.

  “Consider parties,” he said. “They’ve always struck me as big uncontrolled experiments in social dynamics. It’s as if you’re stress-testing every relationship you have at once.”

  “You’re having lots of parties out there on the Jundland?”

  “Just me and the eopie—soon to be plural.”

  “And assorted eavesdroppers,” Annileen said. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t seem cut out for the hermit life.”

  Mouth full of cake, Ben stopped himself from laughing. “We were talking about you.”

  “Right. Well, life at the store isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.” Annileen looked at the frayed awning above and clenched her fists. Okay, if you really want to hear it, here goes.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You see the Claim as a place to come to,” she said. “To interact, to get away from the nothingness. Well, everyone else around the oasis sees it the same way. Everyone. They show up before the second sun is up in the morning—and then they never leave.”

  “I have noticed a certain resident status for some.”

  “For some?” Annileen’s hands shook on the table, rattling her dinnerware. “Dannar used to joke that the Claim was the tenth largest city on Tatooine, when it was full. And I’m not sure that’s far off.” She looked down at her empty plate. “I’m barely holding together my own family, and yet I’m keeping all these other people going, too. I’m not just feeding and clothing my own. I’ve got everyone!”

  Catching her breath, she looked up at him. He was still listening intently, but she was embarrassed all the same. “Sorry,” she said. “Am I ranting?”

  Ben spoke calmly—that stoic reserve in full evidence. “A life that seems small on the outside can be limitless on the inside. Even a person living in the remotest place can be concerned about hundreds. Or the whole galaxy.”

  Annileen stared at him, mesmerized. “Who are you?”

  “ ‘Crazy Ben,’ your son says.” He grinned. “I actually think I like the sound of—”

  Ben stopped suddenly. Annileen followed his gaze across the street and saw a human in a black uniform and hat standing beside a figure fully clad in white armor.

  A spacesuit of some kind? “What is that?” she asked.

  Ben slid back in his chair, away from the balcony railing. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said, his voice lower and softer than it had been. He looked again out of the corner of his eye. “I would almost say it looks like a clone trooper. I’ve … seen holos of them.” He studied the figure for another second before looking away. “But the uniforms are slightly different.”

  Annileen watched the strange pair. They weren’t looking at her—or even at the festival going on all around them. Instead, they were examining the building they were standing in front of. “That suit’s got to be awful in this heat,” she said. “I wonder why they’re here.”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said, head down as he scraped his plate. “Er—what are they doing now?”

  Spying the datapad in the hand of the hatted figure, Annileen recognized the behavior instantly. “They’re taking inventory,” she said. “That used to be the Republic’s aid station on Tatooine. I don’t know what it is now, given whatever has been going on out there.”

  “What has been going on?” Ben asked.

  “You’d know more than I would. I’ve never left the planet,” she said. “But if they’re with this New Order or whatever it is, maybe they’re still figuring out what it is they own.”

  “Mmm,” Ben said. He glanced around, newly uneasy.

  Annileen checked her chrono. “I guess we’d better get down there ourselves and get back to the kids.”

  “You know what? I think we should wait awhile.” Ben stretched and patted his stomach. “To go down to the street.”

  A little surprised, Annileen nodded. “Sure. More time to talk, I guess.”

  “And it’s the strangest thing. I’m suddenly developing a chill.” Ben rubbed at his throat. “I hope I’m not coming down with something.” With that, he pulled his hood back over his head and sank lower in his seat.

  Annileen shook her head. Obfuscation Kenobi was back.

  Across town, Mullen signaled from his post near the round building.

  “Nothing yet,” Veeka said, speaking into her comlink.

  In the passenger seat of the landspeeder, Orrin shook his head. “They said Docking Bay Eighty-Seven.” For the third time that minute, he checked to see if his blaster was in its holster. He just felt more comfortable knowing it was there.

  Orrin knew the docking bay wasn’t where the second of his two Mos Eisley meetings was to take place. He had called the meeting; the other party would take every step to place him at a disadvantage. He knew he didn’t need to be worried, given his plans. But still, he wanted Mullen and Veeka nearby, checking things out. Whatever faults his children had, there wasn’t much they couldn’t handle if things came to a fight.

  He was mostly sure things wouldn’t—but he still reached down to pat the handle of his blaster again.

  “You won’t need that,” a voice said from behind him.

  Orrin turned to see Bojo Boopa sitting in the backseat of the USV-5, pointing a blaster at him. He hadn’t heard the Gossam get in, but now he saw the creature’s Gamorrean companions taking station at either side of the vehicle, parting only to permit the entry of a character Orrin had never met before.

  “Nice speeder,” the scaly-faced Klatooinian said, taking the driver’s seat. The bronze-skinned creature then burst
into giggles. “I want one! I want one!”

  Orrin looked at the alien—and then back at Boopa with alarm.

  “Just drive, Jorrk,” the Gossam said, lowering his gun and stretching out in the cushy seat. “Our buddy Gault here has somewhere to be. And he’d better tell us what we want to hear.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “NOW, KIDS,” ANNILEEN SAID, “you realize this will be my landspeeder and not yours, right? Just so we understand each other.”

  “Huh?” Jabe said, sitting behind the controls.

  Equally spellbound, Kallie ran her hand across the hood. “Oh, yeah. Sure, Mom.”

  Ben grinned at Annileen. “I think you’re in trouble.”

  “I have been,” she said. “For seventeen years.”

  Annileen looked around the Delroix Speeders showroom. There were models here she’d never seen—nor was she likely to, out in the desert. With its open cockpit and ornate steering vanes up front, the JG-8 seemed the least practical of all; she’d need to keep it in the garage to preserve its ruby color.

  “It’s nice,” Ben said, examining the display nearby. The price was there, at the bottom, listed with options and without. Both figures were in the tens of thousands of credits. He looked up at Annileen. “It’s a generous gift, to be sure.”

  “A gift. Right,” Kallie said, rolling her eyes. “If you can’t win their hearts, buy them. It’s the Gault way.” She looked back at her mother, who was admiring the interior. “But it’s the only way we’d ever get something like this.”

  “Oh, I could afford to buy it myself,” Annileen said. “But I never would.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think a frontier merchant did so well.”

  Annileen smiled. “What, did you think the personal deliveries to new arrivals cut into the profits?”

  “I really don’t—”

  “It’s twenty-plus years of scrimping and saving—and avoiding whatever new thing Orrin had for us to invest in.” She ran her hand along the rich fabric on the seats. “But this is amazing. I didn’t think anything like this existed.”

  “It is amazing, isn’t it?” asked a husky voice. The dealer, a happy, squat human in his fifties, patted the rear engine lovingly. He gestured to the backseat. “It’s the extended model, ma’am, straight from Sullust. Extra room in the back for light cargo, or for your children.” The retailer looked at the teenagers fawning over the vehicle, and then at Ben. “Congratulations, sir, on raising such a fine family.”

  Ben stammered. “Oh, no, these aren’t—”

  “—as fine as you think,” Annileen finished. She grinned at his unease. Breathe, Ben. She turned to the dealer. “But the landspeeder looks wonderful, Garn. What happens next?”

  “Master Gault authorized the contract yesterday afternoon, ma’am. She’s all yours.” The seller passed her a pouch containing the vehicle’s maintenance codes. “Be sure to tell Orrin that Garn Delroix provided good service.”

  “I will.” Annileen looked back to see that Kallie was already in the passenger seat, and that Jabe had started the engine. “I’d better go now, if I ever want to see it again. Come on, Ben!”

  Ben followed her into the backseat. Annileen gasped as she sat down. “Have you ever ridden in anything as nice as this?”

  “It is nice,” he said.

  Jabe guided the vehicle out through the wide doorway and into the busy streets of Mos Eisley. The foot traffic was noisier than the landspeeder by far. “Take it easy, now,” Annileen warned her son, leaning forward to be heard.

  “No problem.” Jabe smiled broadly and gripped the control stick—

  —and the landspeeder rocketed ahead, accelerating at a sudden rate that pushed three Calwells and a Kenobi back into their luxuriously cushioned seats. Jabe guided the gleaming vehicle through the curved streets at a breakneck pace. The landspeeder drew close to one building and then another, before whipping under the neck of a surprised saurian ronto. By the time the giant bolted, the JG-8 was careening down another street.

  “Stop! Stop!”

  A second after Annileen yelled her command, Jabe punched the brake—and the world stopped moving outside. Driver and riders were tossed forward into the restraint webbing, which caught them like a mother catching a child.

  Annileen was less gentle with her own child. “Jabe, what were you thinking?”

  “Sorry! I just touched it,” Jabe said, stroking the steering yoke admiringly. “Not as good on the turns as I’d like. But I’d bet Gloamer could really soup it up.”

  “Not going to happen!” Annileen said. Ben seemed amused.

  She looked at her daughter. “Both of you, switch into the back. The grown-ups are taking over.”

  Kallie opened her door and stepped out of the hovering vehicle, while Annileen stood in her seat, wondering where they’d wound up. They were in a bazaar in a part of Mos Eisley she’d never been to before. Standing by her mother’s side of the vehicle, Kallie pointed off to the left. “Hey, is that the Bezzards over there?”

  Annileen turned to look. It was a young couple, yes—but they were older than her recent houseguests. “Not the Bezzards,” she said, squinting. “But I do know them.”

  Reclining in his seat, Ben smiled mildly. “Annileen knows everyone.”

  “Yeah, the man came through once looking for parts for something,” she said. “That’s Cliegg Lars’s son, Owen.”

  Ben’s eyes widened—and locked on the couple emerging from behind the fruit stand, a basket of purchases in the man’s hands.

  “Sad story, the Larses,” Annileen said, only half noticing Ben’s sudden move to adjust his boot. Across the road from the landspeeder, the brown-haired woman with Owen Lars turned, and Annileen saw what she was carrying. “Hey, they’ve had a baby!”

  Kallie started to wave to the couple. “Let’s call them over!”

  At once—and quite free from Jabe’s grasp—the landspeeder’s control stick slammed forward, causing the vehicle to hurtle ahead again. Kallie twirled and fell to the sandy street, buffeted by the jet wash from the twin engines. Aboard, the unrestrained Annileen fell backward into Ben’s arms.

  The boy grabbed the steering yoke in panic. The vehicle skirted over the top of a wheeled cart and ripped through an intersection, even as its young driver fought the controls. “It’s stuck!” he yelled.

  Annileen scrambled across the center console and helped him pull back on the stick. All at once it gave way, and the acceleration died. The vehicle floated to a stop in front of an illegally parked starship, whose owner, fearing the arrival of authorities, ran for his loading ramp.

  She fell back into the backseat, out of breath. Ben seemed rattled and wary, but otherwise intact. She clutched at her son’s sleeve. “Jabe, I told you to knock it off!”

  “I didn’t do it, Mom! It started on its own!”

  “On its own?” Annileen felt as if an artery had ruptured in her head. “You nearly killed your sister!”

  Rising cautiously, Ben raised his hand. “No, no. I saw it,” he said. “Jabe’s telling the truth. I saw the control stick. It slipped forward, on its own, while you weren’t looking.”

  Both Calwells looked at Ben. Annileen looked incredulous. Jabe was absolutely stupefied. “Th-thanks,” he said.

  “I don’t believe this,” Annileen railed. “Pricy landspeeders don’t just start driving!”

  “Still, that’s what I saw,” Ben said. “Jabe saved us.” He bowed his head slightly to Jabe, who looked at him in wonder.

  Aggravated, Annileen shook her head. “I’m gonna give that dealer a piece of my mind!”

  Ben put up his hand. “I don’t think that’s necessary—”

  Annileen glared at him. “What, you’ll save us from wild animals and Tuskens but not defective vehicles?”

  Ben was speechless.

  It was as harshly as Annileen had ever spoken to him, and she regretted it instantly. She sank back into the seat and tried to calm down.

  She
looked about. They were in a neighborhood she’d never seen before. “Where are we?”

  Placing his hood back over his head, Ben scanned the area. “Nowhere near where we were,” he said, with what almost seemed like satisfaction. He was breathing easier now, Annileen saw, and it made her feel better. Until her comlink went off.

  “Jabe tried to kill me!” the tinny voice shrieked.

  “It’s all a dumb mistake,” Annileen told her daughter over the comm. “Stay where you are, Kallie. We’ll be back for you in—”

  Ben grabbed at her sleeve. “Annileen,” he said, pointing out of his side of the vehicle. “There!”

  She looked out to see a landspeeder that resembled Orrin’s, being driven by a Klatooinian. It parked near the Mos Eisley Inn, and Bojo Boopa emerged from the back. The other passenger door opened.

  “Orrin!”

  Annileen rose in her seat and watched, spellbound, as across the way two armed humans stepped up and frisked Orrin. His holster was empty, she saw, and the man made no move to oppose the search. He looked grim.

  “That’s the Gossam from the store!” Annileen said.

  Jabe reached for his blaster. “They’re mugging him!”

  “No.” Ben reached forward and touched the boy’s shoulder firmly. “I don’t think that’s what’s happening.”

  Then what is happening? Annileen wondered as the human and alien toughs conducted Orrin past the hotel and toward an alleyway. She looked at Ben. “Orrin’s not even supposed to be in town today!”

  Jabe started to move again, only to be stopped this time by Annileen.

  “Mom, they’re taking him away! We’ve got to help him!”

  “We don’t know what’s happening,” Annileen said. “It could be business. It could be nothing,” she added. But she didn’t believe it.

  She looked plaintively to Ben, who was already out of the vehicle. He walked to the driver’s side and spoke quickly. “You two get Kallie and return here. I’ll see what I can find out.”