Kenobi: Star Wars

by John Jackson Miller

  His head down, Orrin rolled the bottle against his forehead. “I lost the comlink in Jabba’s town house.”

  “Jabba!” Annileen exploded.

  Orrin didn’t move. “They’re going to kill me, Annie.”

  “They’ll have to wait in line!” she thundered. She stomped toward him. “Is this about the vaporators? I thought that bank in Mos Eisley loaned you the money to buy the Pretormins!”

  “They did,” Orrin said. “Six years ago. After Dannar died. After Liselle left. My land was the collateral. But the harvest I needed never came in. I never could figure out the formula.” He stood abruptly and started to pace. “I had to borrow more and more. And they wouldn’t loan me any more, and I couldn’t make the interest payments anymore.”

  “So you went to Jabba?” Annileen seethed. Nothing her son had ever done, no previous madcap act of Orrin’s, had ever angered her so. “The Hutt? The criminal!”

  “I went everywhere,” Orrin said, looking up at her. In the moon rays from the window, he looked like a wounded animal. “No one helps a farmer! And I didn’t go to Jabba. When someone offered money, I took it—”

  “No questions asked,” Annileen finished.

  Orrin hung his head in shame. “Not enough questions, no. And now I need your help.” He cast his eyes past her, to where the cashbox and her datapads rested. “I know how you save. You can save me. Save my world—”

  Annileen fell back against the sink basin, stunned. “You want my money. To pay the Hutt!”

  “No,” Orrin said, waving his hand. “I mean yes. But no, it won’t be like that. It’ll be our money, and my fields will be your fields. Once we’re married!”

  Annileen rubbed her temples. “I think I’m going to have a stroke.” She looked over at him. “You’re still going on about that?”

  “Yes. We belong together!” Orrin put on a smile, but it began to wilt as she watched.

  Annileen shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’re in financial trouble, but you’ve got enough money to buy me a landspeeder just so you can win me over? It must have cost—”

  “Thousands. But thousands won’t make any difference to me. My problem’s a lot larger. It’s going to take your whole cash account to make Jabba go away.”

  “How do you know he will? He’s a Hutt!”

  “I don’t know,” Orrin said. “Maybe he won’t. But I know the bank won’t go away, and I owe them many times as much.” He stepped up to the counter again and tried to compose himself. “I also talked to them today,” he said more calmly. “They’d be willing to renegotiate—and that’s where the store comes in.”

  Shocked, Annileen looked around in all directions. “I’m not giving them my store!”

  “It’ll be our store,” Orrin said. “If the Claim is added to my land as collateral, they’ll negotiate a new payment plan. There’s enough in your cash account to get out from under Jabba now. Then the store’s cash flow will help me service the loan until we get a good harvest.” He gestured to the darkened shelves behind him. “They know what it’s worth, what it brings in. They want it operating!”

  Annileen reeled, struggling to register it all.

  He folded his hands on the counter, nervous. “They just want an ironclad guarantee that the Claim will always be there as collateral, always operating to service the debt.”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” Annileen said. “Your insane marriage plan or not.” Looking at him, she felt a moment’s pity. “You know, if you’d asked like a normal person, I’d have tried to help you. You know that. But even then, I wouldn’t be able to just chain myself here for years more—for years, just to help a friend!”

  “That’s why we have to get married,” he said. Orrin walked to the counter and lifted the hinged section. “The bank said—”

  “You told the bank before you proposed to me?” Annileen nearly split apart with outrage. “How romantic! Did they give their blessing?”

  “They’d be satisfied,” Orrin said, walking back behind the counter. He reached for her hand. “They’d know you and I were in it together for the long haul, to make both the farm and the Claim a success.” He tried to smile again. “They won’t foreclose. And Jabba won’t foreclose on me. We’ll all be fine.”

  Annileen tried to draw her hand away. She couldn’t go along with this, but she didn’t want anything to happen to Orrin, either. For a moment, she wondered whether Jabe knew anything about all this. Had he even returned with Orrin?

  And then she thought of something else, and yanked her hand away violently. “Wait,” she said, stepping to the cashbox and datapads. “How did you know what’s in my accounts? And how would the bank know the value of this place?”

  Head drooping in the low light, Orrin sighed. “I made copies of the records this morning after you left.”

  “You did what?” Annileen’s mouth fell open.

  “And I made some holograms.”

  Annileen slammed her hands on the back counter. It made sense, now, Orrin getting her out for the day. A family trip to Mos Eisley to get a new landspeeder—that would do it. “Did Tar Lup help you snoop through my files?”

  “No, no. But you had lent me the codes so he could work. I logged in before Tar showed up.”

  “Get out,” Annileen ordered.

  “Annie—”

  “Don’t ‘Annie’ me,” she said. She turned her back on him. “I won’t help you fix this. Get out.”

  Orrin approached her. “Annie, they’re going to kill me.”

  Standing at the end of the counter, she said nothing. There weren’t words.

  “Annie, I’m begging,” he said, choking up. “You’ve got to marry me. The bank says—”

  “Just go,” Annileen said, tearing up. She felt his presence behind her, could hear his fast breathing. He’d ruined his life and was here, now, invading the one place that was absolutely hers, trying to take it away. “Just go.”

  “Okay,” Orrin said, arms sagging. He turned around and started to walk. But after a second, Annileen heard the footsteps stop. Orrin lingered behind the counter with her, calculating. “Maybe there’s another way,” he said.

  Annileen looked back but said nothing.

  “The store’s just got to be in the family,” Orrin said, stepping toward her, eyes wild. “Maybe the kids—”

  Annileen winced. It was almost comical, now. “I really don’t think Mullen is marriage material!”

  “No,” Orrin said. “But I could marry Kallie.”

  Annileen’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  Orrin raised his hands to explain. “She’s nearly twenty—”

  “In three years!”

  Before Orrin could say more, Annileen’s right fist impacted his jaw. Krakk!

  Hand on his bleeding mouth, Orrin looked at her, betrayed and bewildered.

  “Get out!” Annileen yelled, shoving in an attempt to force him out from behind her bar. But the larger man turned instead, his hands grabbing her shoulders like a vise.

  Rage entered his eyes. “I don’t care how it happens! But I’m done asking! I’ve got to save myself, can’t you see?”

  Annileen struggled. “Let go!”

  Orrin wrestled with her in the cramped space. Overturned bottles smashed from to the floor. His anger grew, and he shook her. Annileen struggled. “Annie, just listen—”

  Kr-chowww!

  A blaze of blue light lit the darkness, striking the wall just behind Orrin’s shoulder. Annileen still frozen in his clutches, Orrin looked across the bar. There in the moonlight stood Kallie, in her nightshirt, rifle quivering in her hands. “Get away from her!” Kallie yelled.

  “Kallie, you wouldn’t shoot me—”

  “Don’t bet on it!” Kallie fired again, shattering a bottle just to his lef
t. “I’ve never liked you people!” Her face twisted in anger. “You always take advantage of Mom, and now you’re trying to ruin Jabe! Now let her go—and tell me what’s going on here!”

  Orrin released Annileen and shook his head. “Kallie,” he said, “you just don’t get it. None of you do.” He looked up, his face lit by the light from outside. “Jabe is dead.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  A’YARK LOOKED DOWN AT the exposed face of the unconscious settler in Tusken clothing. Grotesque, as flesh always was. A’Yark was glad it was nighttime. But she could tell the human was not much older than her A’Deen had been. His forehead bled from the rock he had been struck with. He still breathed only because A’Yark wanted to know something. Why is he here?

  Curiosity had driven A’Yark to the ranch in the first place. The vaporator thieves from the day before were the dregs of the clan, but they’d stumbled on a gap in the area patrolled by the Smiling One’s posses. A’Yark had insisted on returning with them after dark, to learn more.

  The findings had disappointed. By pilfering the worthless water-making device, the young fools had put the local farmer on alert. His house lacked sufficient defenses, but even so, A’Yark had no faith in her companions’ ability to strike it.

  But before she could turn her band back to The Pillars, the false Tuskens had arrived. A’Yark’s eye was good enough to tell imposters even at a distance through darkness; the worst of her people didn’t comport themselves like the costumed bumblers. Then Ben had arrived, galloping past on his eopie. A’Yark had instantly resolved to stay, ordering the others to hollow out a hiding place near the pretenders’ parked speeder bikes.

  Alone, atop the western ridge, she’d seen an initially weaponless Ben fight the costumed settlers. The fight had confirmed what she’d suspected.

  “You are Ben,” she said to him now.

  “Yes,” Ben said. He stood halfway down the rise, looking down at her and her companions, all standing guard over the motionless youth.

  A’Yark strained to remember the words K’Sheek had spoken in their exchanges, so long ago. But they came to her now, when needed. “You are … a great worrier.”

  Ben chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “Great warrior,” A’Yark repeated, annoyed.

  “Wars do not—” he began, still grinning in the moonlight. Seeing that his expression offended her, he changed it. “Never mind.”

  Ben walked cautiously down into the depression. He looked different now. Dark robe removed, he wore a light tunic giving him more range of movement—and yet he did not shiver in the wind. He gestured to the prisoner, collapsed and guarded at the bottom of the dugout. “This boy, Jabe, is the son of my friend. You met her.”

  “Ann-uh-leen,” A’Yark pronounced, without thinking.

  “Yes, you did hear me say it,” he replied. For some reason, the human’s words were easier for A’Yark to understand, and he understood her. Was it his magic, somehow?

  “Release Jabe,” he said, slowly. “So I can take him to her.”

  “No,” A’Yark said.

  Ben raised his hand and waved it before A’Yark. “You will release him.”

  “No,” A’Yark said.

  Ben nodded. “All right.” He put his hand down. A’Yark watched warily as he began to pace, keeping a generous distance between himself and A’Yark’s party.

  “All right. You should release him, then,” Ben said. “It is right. You remember—I brought you your son. The day of the massacre.”

  “My son was dead,” A’Yark said, words dripping with bile. With that, she turned and stepped over Jabe’s body. Turning back so Ben could see, she suspended her gaderffii above Jabe’s head, ready to plunge the heavy end downward into his skull. “You takes Annileen a dead son,” she announced. “It is right.”

  Her companions fanned out, gaderffii ready. Ben reached for the fold of his tunic. In the dark, A’Yark couldn’t see where he carried the weapon, but she was sure it was there. “I hoped we could bargain,” he said, calmly. “I guess you’re not a transactional people.”

  A’Yark stood silent, not understanding.

  Somehow sensing her confusion, Ben spoke. “Trade. Tuskens don’t trade.”

  “No. Tuskens take!” A’Yark shouted, raising her gaderffii.

  At the sound of her voice, two young warriors charged Ben from either side. Ben swept his hands upward. The fighters went aloft, carried by an unseen windstorm. They landed to either side of the pit—while one of the gaderffii pinwheeled through the air right over A’Yark’s head. The other weapon buried itself into the ground to her left.

  Ben hadn’t even looked at the attackers.

  “Wait,” she told the others in their language. Theirs was a mad attack, but it told her again how powerful he was. Yet Ben had chosen not to kill her companions. Was it intentional?

  Ben looked over his shoulder. “Any forces the Ulbrecks reach will secure the house first, before searching here. There’s still time for us all to get what we want, A’Yark. I want the boy.”

  “No,” A’Yark said, bringing her weapon down again to a menacing position over Jabe’s body. She poked at the teenager’s clothing with the blunt end of the gaderffii. “It is forbidden for Tusken to unmask. But for a settler to wear the mask of a Tusken—”

  “—it is indescribably worse,” Ben said. “That’s your belief, isn’t it?”

  “It is believed.” A’Yark gripped the gaderffii. “Jabe dies.”

  “Then we are at an impasse,” Ben said, pulling out the metal weapon that A’Yark had seen before. He activated it, and a spear of blue energy lit the gully. Sharad Hett had named it once for her. A lightsaber.

  Ben walked toward the pit. “I won’t let you kill Jabe, no matter what he’s done.”

  “We are born to die,” A’Yark said.

  “Maybe you are,” Ben said. “But it is possible to be ready to die—and still prefer to live. And I think you do.”

  Her gemstone eyepiece glinted purple in the light. “You are wrong!”

  “I think not.” Ben said, staring at her. “I’ve heard them talk about you, A’Yark—and seen your actions. You don’t just strike just for menace. You have goals.” He lowered the lightsaber slightly. “Like at the oasis store. You came for Annileen. Why?”

  A’Yark stood motionless, astounded. How could a human know anything that motivated a Tusken?

  Ben paused for a moment. “Ah,” he said. “I see. You thought she was like me. And like Sharad Hett,” he said. “If you knew Sharad, you must have known that he was not like the other settlers. He carried a weapon, like this,” Ben moved the shining sword to and fro, slicing the air before A’Yark and her captive. “And he could do other things.”

  “Sharad … wizard,” A’Yark said.

  “Wiz—” Ben stopped moving the lightsaber. “Yes. He would have seemed.”

  “You are his kind,” A’Yark said, mesmerized. “You knew him.”

  “I am of his kind, yes. And I knew him.” Ben’s eyes narrowed in the light as he searched carefully for words. “Sharad Hett … left my people. Many years ago. He brought his skills to you—became a Tusken.” He looked away, gravely. “He was not supposed to do this. But you took him in.”

  “Yes.”

  Struck with a notion, Ben looked down at A’Yark, “You weren’t his wife, were you?”

  A’Yark shook her head. “No. K’Sheek lived as my sister, when she lived.”

  “Ah. I didn’t know her name.”

  The recovered attackers from earlier gave A’Yark long and imploring looks. Of course, they were wondering. It was madness, conversing with so powerful a human—and on settler lands, too! But A’Yark realized this was the moment she’d been working toward since the massacre in the gorge. “Ben will join us,
” she said, abruptly.

  “I—” Ben seemed startled. “Me, join you?”

  “Yes. As Sharad did.” A’Yark kicked at Jabe’s shoulder. “To save Jabe. That would be … what you call a trade. A Tusken trade.”

  Ben mused for a moment, as if contemplating a possibility he’d never even considered.

  “The Sand People in The Pillars are few,” A’Yark said. “Ben joins. Leads war parties.”

  Ben gestured toward her. “But your people have a war leader, A’Yark. A formidable one—in you.”

  A’Yark sneered. Whether he intended to flatter her made no difference. Whatever A’Yark was, Ben was different. Something greater. “You would attract others,” she said. “Some lives who remembers Sharad. They would follow. Sand People will thrive.”

  Never in A’Yark’s memory had such an offer been made to an outlander. Even Sharad was made to endure trials. And yet this human actually seemed amused by the invitation. “Well,” Ben said, under his breath, “that would certainly be one way for me to stay out of sight.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, seriousness returning to his face.

  A’Yark paused, suddenly apprehensive. Not about the impending return of sentries, but rather, wondering whether to speak the rest. She’d told herself many times she was not as superstitious as the others. But some things handed down had meaning, and having seen Sharad’s feats, she was inclined to believe this thing. “They says a warrior will come from the sky to lead us. He will grow mighty. Generations unborn will walk in fear.”

  For a moment, Ben seemed puzzled. A’Yark wondered if she had spoken the words properly. “This—was a prophecy?” he asked. “A dream someone had?”

  “Those are the same thing.”

  “And you desire this end?”

  “Tuskens want. Yes.” It was a foolish question for Ben to ask, A’Yark thought. Had he not heard of the destruction wrought years earlier on the Tusken camp, where all present died, regardless of age? Sand People could not live where such threats existed unopposed. If Sharad had not been the arrival of legend, then perhaps Ben was instead.