She could imagine her mother’s voice in her head. What could Annileen be thinking? She cared for Ben, yes. More deeply than she’d imagined possible at this stage. No one else had measured up to Dannar Calwell. But did Ben really expect her to give up everything, just on the prospect of bad times ahead?
Nella Thaney would turn her daughter right back to the garages. She’d have Annileen tell Gloamer it was a joke, and he’d forget it. The mechanic didn’t understand humor anyway. Annileen might not even have to protect her family from fallout at all; from the side door, she could see Orrin, a smile on his face as he talked to Ulbreck. Orrin would find a way to fix his troubles. He always did. And Ben faced no danger—Orrin was just a blowhard! Why go through with this?
Annileen already knew why. She knew, and it had swept all doubts away. All that remained was seeing what Orrin had planned.
She slipped outside the Claim to watch the spectacle. It was easy to hide in the crowd; the mob was the largest she’d seen. It wasn’t just the regular vigilantes, now. Wyle Ulbreck’s landspeeders sat packed with farmhands, parked along the western dune. Mullen and Veeka were passing weapons to the riders. Annileen wondered how Orrin could even be seen in the crowd, much less make himself heard.
She soon found out.
“Everyone, listen up!” Orrin bellowed. Annileen looked up. Orrin had climbed the service ladder and was clinging to Old Number One. With his free hand, he held to his mouth a loudhailer, a portable amplifier that boomed his voice across the parking area.
“This is a big day,” he said. “And a terrible day. One of us has turned traitor!”
A buzz went through the armed crowd. A traitor, here?
“Well, don’t worry. He’s not one of us,” Orrin added. “You’re all good people. But you know him: Ben Kenobi!”
Annileen gulped for air. The name Kallie had overheard was suddenly on everyone’s lips.
“You heard right,” Orrin said, speaking through the green metal device. “You may have seen him coming around, may have heard people talk. Crazy Ben, someone called him. Living in the desert, talking to himself. Well, he’s crazy all right. He’s a Tusken-lover!”
“No!” Annileen heard someone shout.
“I know,” Orrin said. “Hard to believe any settler would help those monsters. But here’s what we know. Kenobi popped up here right after Plug-eye’s day raids started. He ran out of the store after his first visit without even taking what he bought! And the next time we saw him? The Tuskens attacked the Claim!” His voice rose. “He was here when they attacked, but he didn’t fight ’em! Then he supposedly saved Annie Calwell from Plug-eye by talking to the Tuskens. Talking to them!”
The crowd rumbled with shock. Talking to Tuskens? Impossible!
“I hear you,” Orrin said, lowering his pitch. “But it makes sense. No barbarian could figure out the Settlers’ Call, right? Well, Kenobi helped ’em. He’d heard me talking in the Claim. He knew Ulbreck’s ranch was the only place that wasn’t covered.” He nodded in Ulbreck’s direction, below. “Well, the Tuskens stole a vaporator unit from Master Ulbreck a couple of days ago. And then last night, they hit his home. And Kenobi was with them!”
Annileen watched, hypnotized, as a farmhand set out a box for Wyle to stand on. The old man seemed shaky.
“Gault is right,” Ulbreck called out to the listeners. “I did see Kenobi. But he was scrapping with the Tuskies, I thought. I’m not sure. My Maggie was in trouble—”
“Because of Kenobi,” Orrin quickly interjected. “Because of the Sand People he brought there! I’m willing to bet old Ben was mad at his partners. He was there for Wyle’s money, I’ll wager—and the Tuskens don’t care about money. They started fighting.”
Another ripple in the crowd. Everyone knew about Ulbreck’s fortune.
Orrin shook his head sadly, so all could see his emotion. “This Kenobi—if that’s even his name—I don’t know him. He showed me one face, a false one. I don’t know if he’s a bandit, or if he’s gone Tusken, as crazy as that sounds. It doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s put good folks in jeopardy. And we’re gonna stop him forever!”
Blasters fired into the air. Annileen cringed. This wasn’t what she’d expected at all! Ben had said Orrin would round up some allies, but she’d expected more oafish farmhands of the Zedd sort. This was something different. The force was too large, and Orrin was different, too. He was electric. Telling the vigilantes of Ben’s hideout in the Jundland Wastes, a place no decent person would live, Orrin sent a hateful energy through the gathering, rousing the crowd to action.
He’d made the sale, jumping from wheedler to warlord with a few words. She’d never seen anything like it. And certainly not from him.
Orrin hit his crescendo. “We take care of our own. So follow me—and let’s ride!”
A raucous, angry cheer went up. Engines started, one after another, as more blasters went off. Annileen nearly dropped to her knees, life drained from her limbs. This couldn’t have been what Ben was expecting. Who could have expected it?
Orrin shimmied down from the tower and turned. Mullen and Veeka were waiting, holding a spread-open flak jacket. Orrin stuck his arms out, and they dressed him in it like a warrior king.
Stepping toward his USV-5, Orrin spied Annileen. He winked, and was off.
Dust blew against the store as one blaster-bedecked speeder after another whizzed away. Watching helplessly, Annileen flashed for a moment on the retaliatory raid after the oasis strike. That day, she’d grabbed the speeder bike and gone with Ben to follow Jabe. But now it was Ben in danger. Ben, who’d saved Jabe. Ben, who’d told her in the night not to follow, that he could take care of Orrin.
Annileen looked back at the garages, mostly empty now but for her two landspeeders. Staring at the leased luxury vehicle, she suddenly remembered something.
She dashed back into the store. Tar, serving children dropped off by their parents, looked at her from the dining area, startled. Annileen ignored him and rushed behind the counter. Kneeling, she overturned the trash bin and started rummaging.
Amid broken glass, she found the red comlink she’d discarded the night before. She clicked it on and hit the page key.
“Hello? Who is this?” asked the genteel voice on the other end of the link.
“This is Annileen Calwell,” she said, speaking urgently. “I’m a neighbor of Orrin Gault’s. I know who you are. And you need to know what he’s about to do!”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
TURN BACK NOW.
Jabe had said the words at the store, supposedly Ben’s message to Orrin. Now, as Orrin checked his blaster, the farmer heard the words again. Or thought he did, in the wind whistling past his landspeeder.
Orrin hadn’t known what to make of the message. If Ben planned to extort him, there’d have to be a meeting to parley. If he’d simply planned to expose the Gaults, he’d have come to the Claim. Or perhaps he would have gone in search of someone in authority, oblivious to the fact that no such power existed here.
It didn’t make sense.
“Fifteen clicks to Kenobi’s hut,” the goggle-wearing Mullen said, guiding the vehicle.
Orrin nodded. Holstering the blaster, he looked around in awe. His USV-5 rode at the apex of a flying wing of hovercraft, rocketing to the southwest. Every vehicle the Settlers’ Call Fund operated was here, plus Ulbreck’s teams. Orrin doubted there had ever been so many vehicles traversing the desert at once.
He chuckled in spite of himself. Yep, Orrin, some pull you’ve got indeed. Maybe farming wasn’t his calling. Tatooine didn’t offer many chances for a career politician, but with that new Empire on the rise, who knew?
Whatever. Ben wouldn’t know what hit him. Orrin lifted his macrobinoculars to scan the nothingness ahead.
From the backseat, Veeka pointed ahead, to the left. “There!”
In the middle of the desert, Ben stood brazenly astride a speeder bike. One of Orrin’s speeder bikes, Orrin saw as he focused in:
the one Jabe had ridden to the Ulbrecks’.
Mullen pointed. “Everyone’s spotted him. Dad, I think we should turn back now.”
Orrin looked up, startled. “What did you say?”
“I said if we turn and double back, the left flank will follow us,” his son said. “We’ll catch him between and herd him like a bantha.”
“Oh, okay,” Orrin said, fishing inside the jacket for a handkerchief. He wiped the sweat from his brow. The landspeeder lurched and wheeled, and a dozen-plus repulsorcraft followed.
Orrin trained the viewfinder on Ben again, still almost a kilometer away. The man simply looked back, serenely, as if aware Orrin’s eyes were on him. Finally, Ben activated the bike and turned.
“That’s right,” Orrin said, grinning. “You turn back now.”
Kenobi was zigzagging across the open sand. West, back to his place, was barred to him by one line of landspeeders; north, and the open range, by the other. Orrin had thought for a moment that the man might make for the great gap in the Jundland, the pathway the Jawas took to reach the Western Dune Sea. But he seemed to be heading instead for the branch of the Jundland highlands farther east.
Orrin figured it out immediately. “Cute,” he said. “He’s trying to get us into Hanter’s Gorge.” Annileen had said she and Ben had witnessed the Tusken massacre there. Orrin didn’t know whether Ben had a soft spot for Sand People or not, but all the same, he wasn’t going to be led into a trap. “Cut him off,” he said over the comm system. “Send him into the rift!”
The Roiya Rift had always looked to Orrin like a wall that a child had built out of blocks—and then knocked half of it down. Here, the Jundland Wastes bowed inward, a semicircle of flat desert terrain at the mouth of a half ring of jagged, towering teeth. The wide passageways between the teeth twisted south into the wastes, climbing and subdividing into smaller corridors; the Tuskens loved to hide here. The oasis attackers had been making for the rift when they’d wound up in Hanter’s Gorge, kilometers to the east, by mistake. But with the rift, there was no prospect of those on high ground sniping at the posse. The pillars of stone climbed too high, and the paths between rose too gradually, twisting and bending as they went.
The landspeeder lines held, and Ben veered into the gap. Without pause, his speeder bike rocketed for one of the narrower, rubble-strewn ramps. Within seconds, he was gone from sight. Orrin knew then that it was all over for Kenobi. Vigilante vehicles streamed into the semicircle, taking up station in front of all the apertures, not just the one Ben had taken. There was no escape.
Mullen brought the Gault landspeeder to a stop. “Are we going up after him?”
“Not sure we’ll have to,” Orrin said. “He’s a tourist. He’ll find out there’s Tuskens up there and will turn right back around.”
“What if he’s pals with the Tuskies, like you said?” Mullen asked.
Orrin rolled his eyes. “That was for the crowd, Mullen!” He smirked. “But so what if he is? They’ll see we’ve brought an army and kill him all the same.”
Orrin stepped out of the vehicle and straightened his jacket. He nodded for his kids to approach. “Now, remember,” he said quietly. “If Kenobi comes out, don’t give him a chance to say a word. You cut him down fast and the others will follow.”
Veeka looked at her father. “What if he’s unarmed?”
“We’ll say we saw him draw on us,” Orrin said. He glared at his daughter. “Are you that worried about him? You do want to continue living it up on my money, don’t you?”
“I don’t care,” she said, spitting on the ground. “One less beggar in the desert. I just wanted to know what you were gonna say.”
“Just follow my lead, as usual.” Orrin reached inside the vehicle for the loudhailer. Turning, he walked into the middle of the gathering. Under the noon suns, the stone formations gave Orrin the impression of standing within a giant, natural coliseum. The place had fallen silent except for the click-clacks of blaster rifles being adjusted. Armed settlers crouched behind hovering repulsorcraft. Any eyes that weren’t on the gaps were on Orrin.
Orrin shouted into the amplifier. “Come on out, Kenobi!”
His voice echoed all around. But no response came.
Watching from cover, Ulbreck looked back, warily. “Don’t like this.”
“Don’t worry,” Orrin said, gesturing toward a group of settlers in the rear. “Send up the smoke charges.” The mortars were one of the Fund’s earlier investments, and they’d never had occasion to use them. But they were designed for exactly this: flushing out the opposition. A few parabolic shots up into the crags and Ben would have nowhere to—
“Ayooooo-eh-EH-EHH!”
Orrin froze. The screech came again from the hills. A krayt dragon call: just like the Settlers’ Call siren, only more natural sounding. Rising and trilling, the noise reached every listener in the would-be arena.
Orrin looked back at the others, a canny grin on his face. “Don’t be fooled, folks. That’s our trick.”
Some of the settlers shifted nervously, but they all stayed in position. Orrin walked back to his landspeeder and brought the loudhailer to his mouth. “You’d better cut that out, Kenobi, or you’ll scare your friends.” He waved back to the settlers setting up the mortars. It was time.
Then it happened. The Zeltron, Leelee’s husband, noticed it first. “Listen!” Waller Pace said. “Do you feel it?”
Orrin didn’t have time for empathic Zeltrons and their feelings. “Stay focused,” he said. But now Orrin felt it, too, and heard it. A low rumble, rising slowly to a crescendo. Pebbles on the ground began to roll. Dust rose.
“Groundquake!” Veeka yelled.
Orrin shook his head. No, that wasn’t it. It was something else, thundering downward, through the gaps from the Jundland Wastes. And now he saw what it was.
Banthas!
One after another, the enormous beasts charged down the stone chute Ben had ridden his speeder bike up. And not just from there! Several broad pathways wound down from the mountains—and now they were filled, too, disgorging banthas of all sizes. Right at the settlers.
“Stampede!” Ulbreck yelled, ducking under his hovering vehicle. The hairy mass coursed across the desert floor like water from a broken dam, sending settlers diving in all directions.
The loudhailer fell from Orrin’s hand into the open cab of his landspeeder. He tried to use his vehicle for cover, too, but a giant bantha struck it first, ramming the hovercraft’s hood into his midsection. A heartbeat later a second bantha struck the USV-5, sending both Orrin and the vehicle spinning.
All around, the scene repeated. The charging animals smashed into landspeeders and sent them careening like toys. Settlers dived and fell in desperation. In the rear, the beasts upset the mortars, resulting in smoke rounds shrieking over the vigilantes’ heads. Two struck the wall of the rift with an ear-shattering clang—and in the next instant smoke filled the air.
Orrin clung to his landspeeder until it bounced into a boulder, knocking him to the dust. Dazed and dizzy, he spent long moments lost in the smoke. Somewhere, a blaster went off. A farmer screamed. Orrin didn’t move.
In the fog, a voice came from nearby. It was Ben’s.
“Turn back now.”
Orrin blinked. Before, he had heard the words only in Jabe’s voice, and then later when Mullen had said them. Hearing them now, from Ben himself, he realized the message wasn’t a demand. Instead, Ben’s voice was calm and consoling, as if giving advice to a friend.
Orrin reached for his blaster, which was still secure in his holster, but there was nowhere to point it.
Finally, as the yellowish smoke settled, he coughed and rubbed his eyes. The landspeeders had been thrown around like sabacc cards in the breeze. Some still hovered, their engines driving them futilely into the nearby walls. Others were upended, or half on top of other vehicles. The settlers were in the dust, gasping for air and grasping for their fallen weapons. At least they were all moving, as far as
Orrin could see.
Into this scene, three remaining creatures emerged from the uplands. A bantha calf trotted down—followed, improbably, by an eopie mother and her kid. The trio of laggards tromped heedlessly through the chaotic scene, following the herd into the open desert to the northwest.
Orrin found Mullen and Veeka awkwardly getting to their feet. Mullen had taken a bantha horn to the side of his head; he was bleeding from his temple. “Can you fight?” Orrin asked.
Mullen grunted angrily.
Orrin took it as affirmative. “Kenobi’s playing games,” he muttered. He turned, blaster in hand.
But something else came screaming down from the stone fissure. A speeder bike and rider, sizzling down the pathway Kenobi had taken up into the mountains. It soared in a straight line, one that would take it over the heads of the vigilantes and to the open desert beyond.
“Blast him! Blast him!”
Quick-witted vigilantes caught the vehicle in a crossfire as it zipped past. Several shots struck true, and the speeder bike flashed with fire, spiraling to the right. Its forward struts struck the ground hard. The vehicle and its passenger flipped end over end, finally smashing into an unoccupied repulsorcraft.
Orrin rushed forward. Wreckage was everywhere. A body burned in the debris. Excitedly, Orrin approached the rider’s side.
And saw that it was, in fact, a burlap duffel. Half of the smoking bag had ripped open where it had been tied to the handlebars. Without thinking, Orrin shoved his hand into the smoldering debris and found the fake rider’s stuffing: a bundle of Tusken head wrappings.
“It’s from your wardrobe, Orrin,” Ben said. His voice echoed all around, louder than the krayt call and certainly louder than the phantom whisper Orrin had heard earlier. “I brought it from your place!”
Looking about in surprise, Orrin threw the wrappings away. How Ben was saying it wasn’t important. Remembering where he had dropped the loudhailer, Orrin dashed toward his landspeeder, piled up against the rock. He skidded to a stop beside it and reached inside the vehicle, fishing for the amplifier’s handle. Finding something, he lifted it—
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