Kenobi: Star Wars

by John Jackson Miller

  Maybe I can do that. I can’t rebuild the Jedi Order, but I can certainly put together the support system it provided. Emotionally, if not in terms of power to resist the Emperor.

  Maybe starting with Annileen and the Claim …

  No. That would be following the living Force alone—wrapping myself in the present. Not worrying about the future, the longer strands, the bigger issues. A Jedi is responsible for balancing both. I’m responsible—especially now when there’s no one else to do it.

  Still, Annileen …

  Wait.

  Hold on.

  I just realized something.

  I’ll be back.

  PART FOUR

  THE RIFT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE EYEPIECES OF A Tusken narrow and confine the world, but they also bring it into focus. Now, just hours after the suns had set, there was much to be seen on the sprawling ranch southeast of the oasis.

  Shining yellow through the lens were the domes of the ranch house, a cluster of bubbles beneath the rising moons. Larger than many of the other homes on the desert, it was further lit by security lights on masts. Sheltered decks atop the sand connected the house to its garages.

  The old man stood on one of these porches, bracing against the nighttime chill. The door to his house was open behind him, and light spilled from it—as did the words of his wife, audible all the way to the northern ridge. Old Ulbreck sought peace outside most evenings, and did so again tonight. Puffing on a cigarra forbidden him by his doctor and wife, Ulbreck looked relaxed and confident in his domain. No one here could tell him what to do.

  The other person present would have been harder to see, but for his movement. Wrapped against the cold, Langer, the night watch, continued to wear a rut into the ground. Usually, the guard stood motionless, but not when the old man was outside. Langer was reputedly a good shot with his rifle, but he hadn’t used it in years; some relation of Ulbreck’s wife, he had the easy business of protecting the household. The other sentries were far out in the fields, patrolling the vaporators. Those were what the old man really cared about.

  The watchful intruders, who’d studied the ranch on previous nights, knew all this. They knew Ulbreck’s habits and defenses, and they knew the timing of the sentry landspeeders’ circuits around the ranch. The daylight theft of a vaporator thirty-seven hours earlier had resulted in Ulbreck assigning more sentries to each vehicle, but the routes and timing hadn’t yet changed.

  The members of the raiding party had arrived separately, from two different directions. On their final approach, the four had converged, running single-file, in the Tusken manner, until they reached their planned stations behind the northern ridge. Through their eyepieces, they all saw the same thing. Everything was as expected. What remained was to wait for the clouds to pass over the larger moon.

  When it happened, they moved. The first pair of raiders charged across the ridge, careful not to stumble over their bulky robes. Behind, the remaining two atop the dune lifted their rifles and fired. Several shots to the security lights left the farm in darkness.

  Langer noticed it first. “Tuskens!” But the call just brought blasterfire in return. Langer dived to avoid the shots, which paused long enough to allow the advance pair of raiders to strike. The nimbler attacker arrived first, gaderffii raised. The blunt end of the weapon struck Langer across the face, sending him into unconsciousness.

  Ulbreck had started to move on the sentry’s yell. His rifle sat where it usually did these evenings, just outside the door to his house. But now the shots from the ridge raked the decking, keeping him from reaching his weapon. He slumped behind a post and yelled to the open door. “Magda! Call for help!”

  It was too late. With Langer incapacitated, the advance pair easily reached the house. The stockier assailant kicked in the side door and threw something inside. A flash—and seconds later smoke poured from the building.

  Coughing, an elderly woman stumbled outside into the waiting gloved hands of the raiders. Terrified, she wailed in their grip. “Wyle! Wyle!”

  “I’m coming, Maggie!” Ulbreck yelled. But he could go nowhere with the shots peppering the deck. When they did pause, it was only because the shooters were charging down from the ridge, bellowing a war cry. The old farmer struggled to reach his feet, but the smaller of the attackers was upon him, swinging his rifle like a club. The butt of the weapon struck the old man in the nose. Ulbreck howled in pain and hit the deck hard, his face bleeding.

  Magda Ulbreck screamed as the invaders dragged her before the house, in sight of her injured husband. The leader of the foursome set down his rifle and drew a knife from his bandolier. Rusty blade flashing in the moonlight, the robed figure loomed menacingly over Ulbreck.

  Magda screamed again. But even in agony, her husband remained defiant. “You cussed things couldn’t kill me at the Claim! I won’t beg now!”

  The knife wielder nodded. This response was expected. Ulbreck would remain defiant, they all knew, until his wife was threatened. The attackers would turn on Magda, and scare her. They might do some cosmetic harm for effect; it would be worse than that if she fought.

  But both Ulbrecks would remain alive, chastened and terrified. And if the harrowing night didn’t convince Wyle Ulbreck of the error of his ways, Magda certainly would.

  It would go entirely according to plan. It had worked before, elsewhere.

  Perfect.

  Except for the figure leaping down from the top of the covered porch.

  Boots landed squarely on the leader’s shoulders, knocking him back off his feet. The knife flew from his hand as he struck the ground, and his night-vision goggles twisted sideways beneath the Tusken head wrappings. For moments, he could see nothing at all; he heard only a struggle, all around.

  Shifting the goggles so he could at least see with one eye, the leader tumbled over, desperately trying to reach the rifle on the ground. But the man who had pounced from above was already fighting Magda’s former captors. Former, because the woman had fallen free when the figure in light tan charged. He stood between her and them now, quickly dodging one lumbering gaderffii swing after another.

  He leapt. He ducked. And in one more lightning move, he caught one of the weapons. He flipped backward, taking the gaderffii with him. Touching down, he bounded back into the fray with it. The now-weaponless raider tumbled backward, somehow—it didn’t even look like a wrong step, to the leader’s only available eye—leaving the other marauder to fight on. Gaderffii clashed loudly, metal sparking in the night.

  With energy belying her age, Magda scrambled past. The smallest of the invaders, captivated by the nearby combat, did nothing as she collected her bleeding husband and helped him toward the garages, and escape. While the Ulbrecks fled, the lead attacker at last found the errant rifle. He tried to draw a bead on the dueling rescuer, but again his facial wrappings were askew, preventing it.

  Ahead, the gaderffii duel drew to a close. The Ulbrecks’ would-be hero caught his opponent under the arm with the flange of the weapon, producing a high-pitched—and very human—squeal.

  Enough! The lead invader ripped off his bandages and night-vision goggles and raised his rifle. Eyes unfettered at last, Orrin Gault looked into the face of the Ulbrecks’ savior.

  Ben Kenobi.

  Orrin stared in the darkness, unbelieving for a second. “You?”

  Then he fired.

  Ben spun, somehow using the gaderffii to deflect the shot. The bolt sizzled past Orrin to strike one of the porch supports, right above the head of the smallest would-be Tusken. Startled, the boy turned to run. “Come on, Orrin!”

  Orrin fired again.

  Behind Ben, Orrin saw the other two invaders standing, one helping the other. When Ben deflected the second blaster shot, they started to move toward him.

  Ben turn
ed to look back. “Don’t try it, Mullen,” he said. “Masquerade’s over.”

  On the far side of Orrin, a dome opened. The Ulbreck repulsortruck peeled out, Magda at the controls. The vehicle swerved violently away from the house and turned east. The barracks were that way, Orrin knew, and more sentries.

  His kids knew it, too. “Dad, go!”

  With that, Mullen and Veeka took off, heading behind the house.

  Ben looked back with satisfaction—and then stared directly at Orrin. “I noticed something today. You don’t do so well alone.”

  Orrin turned and ran.

  In the blackness to the north, Orrin saw two Sand People rocketing away on speeder bikes. A surreal sight, but one that meant that Mullen and Veeka had escaped. His heart pounding, Orrin hastened over the dunes to the west.

  Why did I park so far away?

  Breathless, he glanced behind him. He’d lost his rifle tumbling over the side of a dune, and he wasn’t going back for it. Especially not now, as Ben appeared over the rise. The man dropped Mullen’s gaderffii in the sand.

  Orrin patted at his chest as he ran. He’d replaced his pistol since the afternoon in the Hutt’s abode, but he wasn’t about to try to fish for it in the folds of stupid Tusken garb. Not when his speeder bike was there, its engine already running, thanks to his young assistant.

  Mask discarded, Jabe Calwell stood between the bikes, frightened out of his wits. “Orrin, come on!” he yelled. “He’s coming!”

  Orrin looked quickly behind him. Ben was still on top of the crest, yelling something. “Orrin, watch out!”

  Orrin decided he wasn’t falling for that. He reached the speeder bike—

  —and, in that instant, four figures arose from the night, lunging at them.

  Real Sand People.

  Two Tuskens grabbed at Jabe, yanking him down into the darkness. Another charged at Orrin, striking the back of his speeder bike with a gaderffii. The hovering vehicle spiraled on the air toward him. Without another thought, Orrin leapt onto it.

  The bike continued to spin with him aboard, and the world spun in Orrin’s mind, too. He saw Kenobi, still frozen on the hillside. He saw Jabe, clawing at the air in vain as one captor raised a rock to strike him. And he saw the fourth Tusken charging him, gaderffii held high.

  Plug-eye.

  Orrin squeezed the throttle and vanished into the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ANNILEEN WEARILY PACED THE floor of the darkened store. Another night, another missing child. What else was new?

  She didn’t know what was keeping Jabe, but at least this time she knew where he was. Or thought she did. Orrin had driven his kids and Jabe to the Gault ranch; Kallie had continued onward to the Claim, as promised. Annileen’s exhausted daughter had shared that much before heading back to the residence to collapse.

  But it was nearing midnight, and no one was answering her pages at the Gault place. She’d even tried to reach Orrin on the red comlink, but something must have been wrong with the subspace network. All she heard on the other side were grunts, sounds like the Gamorreans had made in her store. A wrong connection, to be sure. Who knew Gamorreans even carried comlinks?

  At least this time she could worry in peace. The store had been empty when Annileen returned from Ben’s. Tar Lup had closed the Claim on schedule, which was more than she could do, most nights. The Shistavanen clerk was staying with a friend locally and would drop off the passkeys in the morning. Annileen reminded herself to thank him. As tightly as she ran the Claim, she had to admit Tar would make a decent manager of his own place someday.

  The moons shone outside the window behind the counter, casting the interior contours of the Claim into bluish shadow. Annileen sighed. The store always seemed so much friendlier at night. During the days it was either trying to kill her with stress or bore her to death. There was no middle path.

  She’d grown accustomed over the years to the fact that nothing was ever going to change. Sure, there would be some trends amid the daily disasters and intermittent doldrums. Jabe and Kallie would present new and different challenges. The customers would become harder to take. And there would continue to be less time for her at the end of each day. But these would be gentle slides, ending only when she could no longer get her hoverchair behind the counter. Then they’d check her into the senior center outside Bestine, where, no doubt, Erbaly Nap’tee would be her roommate. Annileen would spend her remaining years explaining that no, she didn’t work for the center.

  The slide had been gentle—until now. The ride had gotten bumpier. The highs had been higher, filling her with excitement and anticipation. And the slow moments she now found interminable. She’d become more concerned about wasting days than wasting profits. It was as if her life had suddenly gained an importance and a weight it previously didn’t have, or that she’d denied. She didn’t know the reason.

  Well, something had changed, of course. There was Ben.

  Since that day out on The Rumbles, every hour she’d spent around Ben had seemed full of life. It staggered belief that, in fact, they’d only known each other for a few hours over the course of half a dozen meetings. So much had happened.

  The Tuskens had attacked the oasis, something they hadn’t done in years. She’d ridden into a battle and met a most-wanted Tusken warlord—who turned out to be a matriarch and mother, like herself. She and Orrin had both been hassled by big-city lowlifes. And the man her kids knew as the jovial uncle had suddenly declared his love for her.

  And she’d begun to imagine a different life for herself. All this had happened, since Ben’s arrival from … where? She still didn’t know. Unbelievable.

  Some people are trouble magnets, her mother had said. And by “people” her mother had meant “men,” and by “some,” she meant “all.” It had taken Dannar four years to pass the Nella Thaney Stress Test. Four years during which he’d had to show that, while he might once have been a sand-spitting rowdy, he could stay in the same place and open the store every day. For Annileen’s first two years working the counter, her mother had counted her pay every week, just to see if Dannar was keeping his word. A credit short and he’d have been a no-account dreamer again. But Dannar was Tatooine’s greatest salesman, because eventually he sold Nella Thaney on himself.

  Nella wouldn’t have let Ben Kenobi within rifle range of her daughter.

  Her mother’s sayings came fresh to her ears. A man with no past is a man with no future. No one with sense moves to Tatooine. Nothing good comes from the Jundland Wastes. Annileen remembered them well. She’d caught herself saying them to Kallie a few times, although she had the integrity to curse herself afterward. Ben had no visible means of support, no occupation, no seeming willingness to commit to anything beyond his solitary existence. And despite his efforts, trouble found him everywhere.

  But if he was a jinx, why did she feel so much better having him around?

  Annileen walked to the counter and closed the hinged flap. She wouldn’t need her blaster. She wouldn’t take her new landspeeder out in the night to see if the lights were on at Orrin’s house. She would imagine that Jabe had gotten caught up in an all-night sabacc game at the Gault place with Mullen and Veeka and their friends, and she would be fine with that.

  Because she was going to see Ben again. Sometime. Maybe soon, and everything would be fine. It always was, when he was around.

  Annileen walked through the stacked tables and chairs toward the hallway leading to her residence. Down the darkened hall, something moved in the shadows, giving her a terrifying start.

  “Kallie, I thought you’d gone to bed!” Annileen said, heart pounding. She squinted down the hallway. “Kallie?”

  A shadowy figure slumped in the doorway to the hall leading to the garages. “It’s me, Annie.” Orrin’s voice was scratchy and unusually high-pitched. �
�We have to talk.”

  Orrin sat at the bar stool Annileen had pulled down from the counter. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he said.

  “I never do at this hour,” she said, pouring him a drink in the darkness. “The last thing I want is for anyone to think I’m still serving.” She withheld the mug from him long enough to survey him. In the moonlight, Orrin looked as gray as she’d ever seen him. His hair was messed, his face dirty. Gone were the spiffy clothes from Mos Eisley that day; he looked as if he’d dressed out of the back of his landspeeder. “You brought Jabe back, I hope?”

  Orrin reached past the mug in her hand and grabbed the bottle instead. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said, raising it.

  “Try at the start,” she said, pitching the contents of the mug into the basin.

  He looked at her and started to say something. Then he shook his head. “No, no, I can’t tell you that part right now. You’ll never—”

  “Start somewhere!”

  He clasped his hands together. They were shaking. Gathering himself, he finally spoke. “I’m out of time. This time tomorrow—” He paused, looking through the darkness at the chrono behind the counter. “No. In about fifteen hours, I have to come up with fifty-six thousand credits.”

  Annileen laughed. “What crazy scheme is it now?”

  “No scheme,” Orrin said between gulps. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “Just a plan to save my life. My ranch. Everything.”

  Annileen gaped at him for a moment before looking at the office door. “Wait. Not the Gossam and the Gamorreans?” She put her hands on the counter and loomed over him. “That’s what the Mos Eisley thing was about?”

  Orrin looked down in silence.

  “Of course,” Annileen said, wandering half dazed to the end of the counter. “Of course!” She looked back at him. “I called you on the direct link. I got a Gamorrean!”