Kenobi: Star Wars

by John Jackson Miller

  Annileen thought. He could have been speaking to someone on a comm system, yes—although transmissions from the Jundland were often problematic. Or he could have been dictating.

  Or he could have that secret family he was taking about. Was that what Kallie had seen him holding—some possession that reminded him of the family he’d left behind? That might explain some of the sadness that seemed to hang over him at times.

  Jabe had another explanation. “He sounds deranged,” he said, rising with his dishes. “Crazy kook, sitting in the wilderness, talking to himself.”

  “You don’t know that,” Annileen said. “And that crazy kook helped save us here—and helped me track you down to the canyon.”

  “Where I was in no danger at all,” Jabe said, wiping his hands. “You were in worse trouble out there alone with him.”

  Annileen looked down. “We weren’t very alone when the Tuskens showed up.”

  “I mean besides that,” Jabe said. “What do you know about this guy?”

  “Not enough, evidently.” Annileen stopped to reflect. After a few moments, she laughed. “Don’t you see, Kallie? He heard you. He knew you were out there. That was all for your benefit!”

  Kallie rose from the table. “Think that if you want. But I think Ben Kenobi thinks about you.” She patted her mother on the back as she passed.

  Annileen put her head in her hands. “I can’t believe this. I’ve raised a sadist and a voyeur! Are both my children insane?”

  Standing in the open doorway with his sister, Jabe answered. “I don’t know, Mom. You’re the one who took off after the Tuskens with the crazy man.”

  As her kids headed off to work, Annileen sat motionless at the table. “He’s not crazy,” she said, her face twisting into a frown. “He just … talks to himself.” Setting aside her cup, she decided the matter deserved more thought.

  Then she promptly fell asleep in the chair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “KING OF THE JUNDLAND!”

  Orrin just nodded and waved as the family of four cruised past, cheering him as they departed the oasis. There was no use being modest, now. The vigilantes had won a historic battle the day before, and word had spread across the region. Orrin would see that it reached the Devaronians in Mos Eisley, too. They’d know he’d avenged their partner without delay, and there might yet be hope for the hotel contract.

  Even after the late-night celebration, Orrin had risen early in anticipation of starting his good day as soon as possible. So far, it had exceeded his hopes. Everyone around knew this was the day of the week he kept his office hours in the Claim, and many had visited him. The plaudits from his neighbors were nice, but—more important—people he’d intended to make calls on were arriving to subscribe to the Fund’s protection services.

  Success sells.

  He hadn’t let anything get him down today. Not when Ulbreck had arrived at the Claim after breakfast, armed with a new batch of stories with which to bore the clientele. Orrin would wait to pitch him again on the Settlers’ Call after the man had run out of people to torture.

  Nor had his expensive meeting with Gloamer the mechanic bothered him. It was funny that, while most of the damage the Tuskens had done to the Claim had already been repaired, the most lasting harm had been caused when his spoiled daughter put Annileen’s X-31 into the stone wall. Repairs would park Annileen’s landspeeder for weeks. Orrin would happily loan her a vehicle from his work fleet. But he’d let Veeka—whose Sportster was in even worse shape—find her own rides for a while. Maybe slowing down would be good for her.

  No, the only thing that had tested his smile was Old Number One. His technicians were finding what he had realized, earlier. The vaporator mechanism had survived—tough things, these Pretormins—but Dannar’s precious settings had been lost. The first test vial had produced what Orrin judged an absolutely pedestrian cocktail of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Later tests yielded no better results … and sickened his heart.

  But sorrow would wait today. Every visitor had brought him something: business, congratulations—even a sugar cake. And now, as he saw another figure approaching on foot from the southwest, he wondered what good tidings this person brought.

  Orrin squinted. Well, I’ll be, he thought. He stood tall and waved. “Hey, Kenobi! Ben Kenobi!”

  For a moment, the hooded man appeared to disappear back behind the dune. But when Orrin charged up the rise, he found Ben kneeling to adjust his boot. “I thought that was you,” Orrin said.

  Ben stood. As Orrin shook his hand vigorously, Ben said, “I’m sorry. I thought I heard you say—”

  “Ben Kenobi—that’s your name, isn’t it?”

  Ben looked down, around, and back to Orrin. “Yes, but—”

  “But what?” Orrin smiled.

  “I was just curious how you heard it.”

  “Oh!” Orrin laughed loudly and slapped Ben on the back. “You’ll find out when you go inside.” He turned toward the store, coaxing Ben along.

  “Perhaps another day.” Ben pointed past the store. “I wasn’t going inside. I’m just here for my eopie—”

  A high-pitched shout came from the Claim. “Ben!”

  The men looked over to see Kallie in the open doorway of the store, waving frenetically. Annileen stood behind her, looking a little embarrassed.

  “I think you’re going in, brother.” Orrin put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Kenobi. There was a Kenobi down around Arnthout, sold damper coils for repulsorlifts. You any relation?”

  “Anything’s possible.” Ben smiled narrowly, teeth clenched together, as Orrin pushed him toward the doorway.

  Kallie stepped outside to greet him. She smiled. “Rooh’s been waiting for you, Ben.”

  Annileen walked up, grabbed her daughter by the shoulder blades, and pivoted her 180 degrees. “You. Elsewhere. Now.” Kallie looked back at Ben, flashed her teeth, and dashed happily back inside the store. Orrin laughed.

  Ben looked to Annileen. “Really, I’m just here for the eopie …”

  “Nonsense,” Orrin said. Eight Settlers’ Call holdouts had wised up and joined up today; maybe Ben was Number Nine. “A drink for our new neighbor!”

  Orrin held the door open for Ben. The man stepped forward, only to be stopped by Annileen. She looked up at him. “Before you walk in, I just want to say—I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not sure what you have to apologize for,” Ben said. Then he stepped inside the Claim.

  “Kenobi!”

  The man’s eyes widened at the sound of the name called out by the clutch of people at the end of the bar. But Orrin guided him inside.

  Leelee Pace looked back from her packages and waved. “Hey there, Ben Kenobi!”

  By the sundries aisle, Doc Mell told his child, “There’s that Ben Kenobi. I think he’s a doctor, too!”

  And at the bar, Jabe contributed a glare as he wiped down the counter. “Crazy old Ben. Still talking to yourself?”

  Ben looked at Annileen—and then back at Orrin. The visitor was slightly bemused, Orrin was glad to see. It happened this way all the time. People came to the oasis wanting to keep to themselves, for whatever reason—not knowing that small-town life made privacy completely impossible. Seeing Wyle Ulbreck approaching, Orrin shot Ben an apologetic look.

  “You’re the fellow from yesterday,” the old man said, tugging at the sleeve of Ben’s robe like a tailor droid checking a seam. “You’re a Kenobi?”

  Ben pulled his sleeve back. “I—”

  “Hired a Kenobi once. Gormel, they called him. Thief. Stank of spice all the time. I fired him quicker than you can say your name.”

  “Well, I didn’t say my name—to you, anyway.” Ben politely turned away. “Please excuse me.”

  Ulbreck followed him. “You s
aw me yesterday when them Sandies was here—you saw how many I put on the floor.” Ulbreck gestured to the tables. “Come tell the folks what I did. Some people won’t believe an honest man—”

  Orrin interceded. “Honestly, Wyle. Another time.” He peeled Ben away from the old man and guided him toward the bar. “Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “Some people will cling to you like mynocks if you let them.”

  “It’s all right,” Ben said, his eyes settling on Kallie as she chattered with some teenage friends. “I think I know what happened now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annileen said. “Kallie came looking for us and ended up snooping. I’m mortified.”

  Orrin gestured for others to leave the bar, making room for him and Ben. “Gossip gets around pretty fast where there’s not a lot goin’ on.”

  Ben nodded. “I would’ve thought the invasion and massacre would have kept the circuit going for a while.”

  Orrin raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t call it a massacre,” he said, his tone more serious. He didn’t like that word. “It was justice.”

  Ben looked down, as if aware he’d spoken wrong.

  “There aren’t innocents among Tuskens, Ben. We know that group was the one that struck us here—but it doesn’t really matter. They’re predators, same as a krayt.”

  “Understood.”

  Orrin waved to Jabe to bring over drinks. He didn’t want to make Ben squirm too much—not if he might subscribe to the Fund. But he didn’t mind taking the man down a bit, either. Orrin knew Ben’s kind. Ben would play modest and detached until he had every woman in the oasis interested—and then they’d find out he was trouble. Orrin just hadn’t figured out what kind of trouble, yet. Kallie’s story, blabbed around the bar before lunchtime, added more evidence to the case for crazy. But Ben’s actions the day before suggested he might be something else—maybe some kind of Clone Wars veteran who’d lost his nerve for fighting. That would track with a bleeding heart for Tuskens.

  Change in tactics, then. Orrin took his glass and toasted. “To keeping people safe.”

  Ben nodded. “I can live with that.”

  Orrin started his sales pitch anew. This time, he described the Settlers’ Call Fund as the best hope for peace. If Tuskens were intelligent—as their encounter with Plug-eye seemed to suggest—then maybe they could learn, Orrin said. If they learned every settler household on the desert was under the same shield, they might turn their attentions to the Western Dune Sea, instead. “Let ’em hassle the Jawas for a change.”

  He started to talk pricing, knowing that if Kenobi’s place were close to the Jundland, he could ask for a sizable fee. But Ben interrupted with something that surprised him.

  “How much,” Ben asked tentatively, “would it cost to extend your protection out even farther?” He affixed his eyes to the drink in his hands. “Say … to where that kidnapping you told me about happened?”

  “What, the Lars place?”

  “Well, around there,” Ben said.

  Orrin noticed Annileen pause nearby. Since they’d started talking, Annileen had circled back and forth, dealing with matters in the store—and yet, Orrin noted, she kept swooping back cometlike to the bar, catching an earful where she could. “The Lars place. That’s way out there. Isn’t it, Annie?”

  “Past Motesta Oasis,” she said, turning back to her shelving.

  “Past Jawa Heights, even,” Orrin said, calculating. “What kind of business do you have that’d need protecting way out there?”

  “Just curious,” Ben said casually. “You were describing the potential a minute ago. I was just wondering what was feasible.”

  Orrin nodded. “Well, let’s see,” he said, pulling a datapad from his vest pocket.

  Ben waited as Orrin pretended to run the numbers. It was impossible, really. Orrin knew there wasn’t any prospect of extending patrols to Owen Lars’s farm. It was more than a hundred kilometers from the oasis, with a chunk of the eastern highlands in the way; the Settlers’ Call would have to install satellite armories farther east before they could even consider it. And they wouldn’t—because the Fund was, at its roots, a local collective.

  But Kenobi didn’t need to know that.

  “I would think nineteen hundred credits a year would cover it,” Orrin said. The figure was huge. More than anyone was paying currently, except for Ulbreck, if he ever bit. “And we’d need that up front to get weapons caches and patrols set up.” He looked Ben in the eye. “I don’t know if you can find that.”

  Ben suppressed a laugh. “I don’t know that I can, either!”

  Thought so. Orrin nodded and started to put away the datapad. Then Ben said something in a softer voice: “But I don’t know that I can’t.”

  Orrin raised an eyebrow. He’d known Kenobi had money enough to buy supplies, but why would anyone of means live and dress as he did? “What kind of work are you—”

  He was interrupted by a high whine from outside, syncopated with a thumm-thumm-thumm that grew louder every second and rattled cans from the shelves. Annileen looked up. “What the—”

  Jabe peered out the window behind the counter. “You’re not gonna believe this, Mom!” The screech passed from east to west, heading toward the parking area. Annileen hurried to the side door, Orrin alongside her.

  It took Orrin a second to realize what he was looking at. It was a landspeeder, but some idiot had modified it to make it look like a snubfighter, with wings mounted on either side and a long, pointed nose grafted onto the front. The vehicle was painted a shocking red, with orange mock flames on the air intakes. And it was currently making violent revolutions in the sand, its fake wingtip cannons nearly clipping several of the vehicles parked nearby.

  The thumm-thumm-thumm resolved into a musical beat. Orrin saw now that the central turbine for the ridiculous-looking landspeeder was, in fact, a giant speaker, blasting sounds that nearly lifted pebbles from the ground.

  Behind Orrin and Annileen, Kallie yelled to be heard. “The animals are going crazy! Did the Call siren break?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Annileen said, gawking.

  The canopy of the strange vehicle slid forward to reveal the driver, a spindly thing with a leathery face and a head shaped like a teardrop. His cranium tapered off into a gray curl that pointed to the sky. He wore a black trench coat—in Tatooine heat!—and as he stood up in the driver’s compartment, Orrin spied not one, but three blaster-bearing shoulder holsters peeking out from underneath. Picking up a jeweled cane, the alien stepped out of the strange speeder.

  Half the occupants of the store were at the windows now, watching the driver. Two sets of knees divided his legs into thirds, and golden anklets shook back and forth as he kicked the sand with his hooves. Any jangling the rings did was purely theoretical, as the speaker continued to boom away.

  “That’s a Gossam,” Ben said, at the window.

  “That’s an idiot,” Annileen replied from the doorway. “What’s he brought with him?”

  They soon saw. Crammed into the backseat of the vehicle were two enormous green masses—figures that now struggled with each other. If the driver was a mystery to many of the Claim’s patrons, all could recognize Gamorreans, the great porcine warriors who worked for any lowlife that would feed them. The two fought, each trying to squeeze through the small space to exit the vehicle. When one finally won out and clambered out on the right, the entire speeder-thing nearly flipped over. The Gossam driver berated the Gamorreans, cracking at them with his gem-tipped cane.

  “What the blazes is he supposed to be?” Annileen said.

  Orrin froze. Sudden realization washed over him. No. No, they wouldn’t send anyone here. Would they?

  It took him just a second to answer his own question. Orrin stepped backward into the store, nearly stumbling over his own feet. The good day had take
n a turn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “WE’RE HERE TO SEE Orrin Gault,” the shrivel-faced Gossam said, standing in the doorway to the Claim.

  “I can’t hear you,” Annileen said. “You’ve deafened us all.” She had let the creature enter only after he agreed to turn off the alleged music; that communication had required two minutes of makeshift sign language.

  The Gossam clip-clopped on the synstone floor. His sickly yellow eyes traced the shelves around him, as if taking inventory. He reached for a flask inside his jacket, revealing his blasters for Annileen to see clearly. A swig later, his gray lips smacked loudly. “Orry-Orry-Orry,” he said, as if trying out a new tongue. “Orrin. Orrin Gaa-woooolt. Orrin Gault. Is one of these sounds familiar to you, grubber?”

  Orrin was missing, but over the shelves Annileen saw that the door to his office was open. He’d likely gone for his blaster. Behind the counter, Jabe had pulled the pistol from the cashbox. Annileen waved him off. If she didn’t want Jabe hunting Tuskens, she surely didn’t want him killed in a shootout with … what? Whatever these people were.

  “I’m Bojo Boopa,” the Gossam said, surveying Annileen. “But you will call me Master Boopa.”

  “Not if you don’t want me to laugh.” Annileen looked to her left. Ben was standing casually at a clothing rack, trying to pay the visitors no mind. But she saw his eyes dart between her and Jabe in a way she found reassuring.

  The Gamorreans thundered forward, bumping against shelves. Items clattered to the floor.

  “Hey!” Annileen stepped up—only to freeze as one of the titans growled. The other balled his fist and punched a display, knocking packages all across the aisle. At the bar, Jabe began to move.

  “There’s no need for trouble,” Ben said, interposing his body between the Gamorreans and Annileen.

  Boopa leered at him and returned the flask inside his coat in a move that displayed his blasters to the watchful customers. “What are you supposed to be? A hero?”

  “Not at all,” Ben said, kneeling. “I’m the janitor.” He began picking up the fallen containers and placing them back on their shelves.