Kenobi: Star Wars

  That was when Veeka screamed.

  A’Yark charged in from the cover to the west, howling a Tusken war cry. Before Veeka could bring her rifle around, A’Yark’s gaderffii smashed it from her hands. A return stroke sent the point of the gaderffii ripping through Veeka’s side.

  In agony, Veeka clutched her wound and fell away, scrambling to escape. A’Yark sprang over her toward Annileen and Mullen. Startled, Mullen pulled the blaster from Annileen’s face to take aim at the Tusken warrior.

  With all her might, Annileen heaved, forcing the burly man off to the side. His blaster sent a bolt just past A’Yark’s head, but the Tusken war leader did not stop. Swinging, A’Yark stabbed her gaderffii point deep in his abdomen. Annileen launched herself clear as A’Yark brought the weapon down again and again on Mullen’s body.

  “Posse kills,” A’Yark said in Basic. “Posse dies!”

  In a fog of dust, Orrin tried to crawl out from beneath the pile of rubble. Every move was painful. When he heard Veeka’s scream, he jolted upright—and felt the bones shift in his left leg.

  He fell to the ground at Ben’s feet.

  In the shadows, the cloaked figure knelt over Orrin. “I did tell you to turn back,” Ben said.

  Mullen howled from beyond. Ben looked up for a moment—and shook his head sadly. Whatever was happening, Orrin thought, Ben seemed satisfied that Annileen was safe. The man was in no hurry to leave.

  Orrin spat bitter dust from his mouth. “Couldn’t … turn back. Jabba’s people there …”

  Ben shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Your fear led to this—all of it. Fear of losing what you had. It put you on a path to suffering.”

  Ben looked back. From his position on the ground, Orrin saw a cowering Tusken youngling emerge from behind one of the stone pillars to stare at the two humans. Ben smiled reassuringly at the tiny masked figure before looking back to Orrin.

  “I know how the path ends for you,” the cloaked man said. “But there is still time, if you turn back now. Accept responsibility for what you’ve done. That won’t square you with the Tuskens, but it will be a start toward redemption.”

  Orrin sat up. He blinked the sand from his eyes. “I’ll lose everything,”

  Ben inhaled deeply. “Sometimes it takes losing everything to find your true path.”

  Ben started to stand—but then he looked up, alert. To the west, a monolith with a triangular slab balanced above it suddenly gave way, unable to support its own enormous weight. Huge rocks tumbled down. The little Tusken rushed to Ben’s side for protection. More stones snapped loose and slammed to the ground.

  Orrin could hear more Tusken children yowling in the maze as the debris landed. But he was more interested in Ben’s reaction. The man had seemed completely unafraid of the earlier phenomenon—almost as if he’d orchestrated the whole thing. But now, one hand on the clinging Tusken youngling, Ben looked worried.

  “Something’s wrong,” Ben said, his voice barely audible. “I didn’t do that …”

  A’Yark brought the gaderffii down again and again. Trying to reach her feet, Annileen saw Veeka crouching nearby. Limp and ashen-faced, Orrin’s daughter watched as her brother struggled, clawed, and finally ceased to move under A’Yark’s attack. Then she turned and fled for the northern gap, and the trail leading downhill.

  A’Yark lifted her bloodied weapon and glanced back at the departing Veeka. But before she could give chase, the Tusken younglings, frightened by the clamor in the stone forest, poured from their hiding places to the west and clustered around A’Yark, separating her from Annileen.

  Annileen turned to follow—but A’Yark surprised her by calling out, “Ben!”

  Annileen stopped and looked back. As the crowd of children clutched at her robes, A’Yark lowered her weapon and looked to the west. A cloud of gray dust was rising into the air above the standing stones. A’Yark, who moments before had been in a blood rage, seemed spellbound. She spoke to the children in her own language—before looking at Annileen and repeating her words in Basic. “See it, Ann-uh-leen,” A’Yark said. “See Ben.”

  Annileen stared, uncomprehending, at the rising dust. She knew she was in the heart of Tusken territory, and that she should follow Veeka to the safety of the posse. But Ben was still here, and so was Orrin—and something big had happened. “Was it an avalanche?” she asked as the dust climbed. “Is Ben in trouble?”

  “No trouble,” A’Yark said softly. She nodded, watching again to the west. “No avalanche. I was right.”

  Annileen prepared to move again. But now the Tusken children began chattering and tugging at A’Yark’s garment. The warrior spoke to them hurriedly, clearly concerned about whatever information the excited younglings were providing. Then another deafening boom from the west followed—one that shook the pillars all around.

  “Is that trouble?” Annileen asked A’Yark. The warrior somehow seemed less fearsome now, surrounded by frantic younglings.

  “Is trouble,” A’Yark replied.

  The next sound from the west chilled Annileen’s spine. “Ayooooo-eh-EH-EHH!”

  She had heard the sound many times before—and she instantly knew this was no recording. “Krayt dragon,” she whispered.

  “Awakened by the sounds,” A’Yark said. Hastily, she tried to hoist a pair of children while still holding the bloody gaderffii. More children fled into the clearing from the western pillars. “I must hide the uli-ah,” the warrior said.

  On impulse, Annileen stepped forward and reached for a young Tusken’s gloved hand. “I’ll help.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  ORRIN STARED, STUPEFIED, AS a monster stormed through the stone pillars toward him. Too large by far to fit into the corridor between the megaliths, the great reptile simply forced its way through like a battle tank, shattering them as it went. Hefty boulders bounced harmlessly off the quadruped’s greenish hide.

  It was a canyon krayt, bigger than any Orrin had ever heard of. Fifty meters long? Sixty? He wasn’t about to measure it. Terrified, he scanned the debris for his blasters. One was there, smashed beneath a rock. Where was the other? Could it do any good?

  “Kenobi!” Orrin yelled. “Help me up!”

  Ben looked back at Orrin, clearly startled by the new arrival. But more squealing Tusken brats ran past, shocked out of hiding, and his attention turned to them. “Quickly!” Ben yelled, pointing to the east. “Go!”

  “Forget them!” Orrin tried to get Ben’s attention again, but saw that it was too late. The krayt had seen them through the dust cloud. Golden eyes glowing, it bounded forward, its clawed feet scrambling easily over the stones.

  It went for Ben and the Tusken child first, lashing out with its mighty tail. Orrin threw his arm in front of his face, petrified. He looked out to see Ben duck quickly, pushing the child to the ground as he did. The pillar the tail struck shattered, its pieces plummeting toward the man and child at its base. Ben started to move again. To grab the youngling, Orrin thought—

  —but instead, Ben thrust his arms high. The rubble halted in midair, as if collected in an invisible basin. Orrin looked at it in awe. And then looked back at Ben, mesmerized. Ben’s face strained from the effort, but he gritted his teeth and gave a shove to the air. Half a ton of collapsing stone tipped harmlessly away from the prone Tusken child.

  Orrin gawked. The krayt lunged.

  So did Ben, now wielding a weapon of gleaming blue light. A lightsaber!

  Leaping directly into the creature’s path, he sliced out with his weapon. The ripping movement caught the krayt in the face, severing a number of its already-jagged teeth. Startled, the dragon reared back. Behind Ben, the Tusken child scrambled to Orrin’s side—but the farmer was too fearful to shoo it away. Ben was moving again: this time, hopping lithely up a rock to the creature’s left, attracting its a
ttention away from Orrin and the little Tusken.

  Mighty rocks grinding to powder beneath its feet, the behemoth wrenched violently. It pounded its horned head against the broken pillar Ben had perched on top of. But Ben was no longer there, Orrin saw. A backflip put the man on the krayt’s hind side, with an intervening lightsaber slash at one of its tough backfins.

  The act seemed only to infuriate the dragon. It charged away from Ben, pulverizing more columns as it did. From behind a teetering formation, a Tusken elder appeared, carrying an infant. The figure froze in panic before the rushing creature’s advance.

  Ben was running, too. His free hand whisked through the air in a purposeful wave—and up ahead of the krayt, the Tusken pair suddenly went aloft, flying harmlessly out of the monster’s path. Startled, the dragon slid to a halt—and screeched to the sky.

  It was a sound they’d hear in the oasis, Orrin thought. The Tusken child cowered, burying its head against Orrin’s shoulder. This time, Orrin pushed it away. Ben, the madman, had reached the dragon in the newly created clearing. Any thought of escape had passed: Orrin had to see this.

  Aware now of the danger Ben’s weapon posed, the krayt turned on all fours and lashed out with its massive barbed tail. Ben leapt over it the first time it passed, ducked it the second, and slashed at it on the third. There was no fourth stroke. The krayt howled, recoiling.

  Orrin looked on with amazement. The surrounding stone pillars framed the combatants like some impromptu arena—only one far too narrow, and that would surely become Ben’s undoing, Orrin thought. The krayt seemed to realize it, too. Hampered by its injured tail, the krayt chose a new tactic—crushing Ben with its immense weight. Pointing toward Ben and tilting its head, the dragon threw its body into a roll. With nowhere to leap, Ben disappeared beneath the mass of tumbling fury. Another megalith was struck, and then another—tipping and shattering like ale bottles knocked over on a bar. Shards pummeled the krayt. And still it rolled, vanishing in the rising cloud of dust, Ben nowhere in sight.

  A second later the dragon appeared again, racing from the haze on all fours toward Orrin and the Tusken child. Orrin yelled—but then the krayt did, too, stopping meters short of them. Its head turned, its pointed beaklike mouth snapping in the direction of its shoulders—and now Orrin saw why. Ben was there, clinging to the creature’s jagged back, his tunic dirtied and torn. Somehow he had survived the roll and wound up on top. And he was no passive rider. He raked the creature’s haunches repeatedly with the energy blade. That was what had stopped its advance, Orrin realized.

  And stopping, for the krayt, was deadly. Hopping from scale to stony scale, Ben landed astride the monster’s neck. Finding a weak plate in its carapace, Ben plunged his blue blade in. The krayt screamed, louder than any of Orrin’s sirens ever had. It shuddered, and Ben had to fight to stay atop the beast. But he did, and his lightsaber found a home again inside the animal—this time, inside its primitive brain.

  The dragon died, its head thudding to rest meters from Orrin and the child.

  Mesmerized, Orrin looked at the massive carcass. A nasty black tongue slipped from its mouth, already beginning to dry and rot in the suns. Beside Orrin, the youngling glanced back once at the dragon—and then at his savior—before scampering away without a word.

  Ben slipped off the creature’s back and stared silently at it. To Orrin, Ben seemed satisfied in the first moment—and then crestfallen in the next, as he seemed to realize what he’d just done in front of his witness.

  “You … you’re a Jedi!” Orrin exclaimed.

  Ben said nothing. His arms hung at his sides, the lightsaber limply pointing toward the ground.

  Orrin’s mind raced. He thought back to the holonews he’d seen in Anchorhead a while back. There’d been some kind of coup, waged against the Republic by the Jedi, he thought. Orrin didn’t know much about Jedi. It had never made sense to him why the Republic would put its faith in a group it neither controlled nor understood. It wasn’t smart business. Something must have gone wrong, because the Jedi had been purged, giving rise to the Empire.

  “That’s why you’re here,” Orrin said, clawing at one of the rocky walls in an attempt to stand. “That’s why you’re hiding. They’re looking for you. Everyone!”

  Ben just looked at the krayt corpse. But he had not deactivated his weapon, and at once, Orrin realized the danger he was in. Ben had just killed a krayt dragon—and now his secret was out.

  Orrin winced as he tried to move, supporting himself against the stone towers. “You’re going to kill me!”

  Ben looked back at him. “I haven’t decided about that.”

  “You haven’t decided?”

  A weak smile came over Ben’s face. “I’m not inclined to kill to silence people. That’s something you’d do.”

  Orrin staggered from one stone surface to another, trying to make his way to the clearing. Behind, Ben sighed and turned to follow. But he walked slowly—and as he did, he switched off his lightsaber and returned it to its hiding place beneath his robe.

  He’s not going to kill me, Orrin thought, forging ahead against the pain. That led to his next thought. I’ve got a card to play.

  Orrin would go offworld and visit this Empire, and become something again. He had something to sell again: Ben Kenobi’s hide. To blazes with Tatooine, with all of it! Struggling, he stepped out into the light of the suns.

  Annileen was nowhere to be seen, nor Veeka. But Mullen was there, on the ground near the JG-8. A lone massiff stood over his body, feasting.

  Heart in his throat, Orrin dragged his broken leg across the clearing. The massiff, done gorging, wandered away. Orrin reached his son’s side and collapsed onto the ground beside him, wailing. Mullen was dead at the hands of a Tusken, just like his beloved younger son, Veeka’s twin.

  Where was Veeka? Squinting, he saw footprints and a light trail of blood heading off to the northern exit. Was it Veeka’s blood, or Annileen’s? Would Veeka really have fled back to the posse? If so, there was no helping her now, any more than if the Tuskens had gotten her.

  Ben approached, staying a respectful distance away. Orrin looked up from the mess that had been Mullen. Did Ben expect him to repent now? After all this?

  He snarled hatefully. “I’m going to tell them. The Empire! And they’ll destroy you!”

  Ben folded his hands together in the sleeves of his cloak and looked at the ground.

  Orrin struggled to stand again. “Did you hear me, Jedi? The Empire will destroy you—and everything you love.”

  Ben shook his head. “They’ve already done that.”

  The farmer ignored him. He staggered toward the damaged landspeeder. “You’d better kill me now, because I mean it!” He heaved himself into the vehicle. “I’ll do it, Kenobi!”

  “No, you won’t,” Ben said. “I’ve seen your future. I don’t think you’re going to live much longer.”

  “Because of you!”

  “Because of you. Because you didn’t turn back.” With that, Ben pivoted and started walking away.

  Orrin gawked at the man, but only for a moment. He activated the JG-8, which groaned in protest. There was no going back, not with the posse and the crooks down there. No, there was only forward, through the opening to the south, and whatever lay that way. If Veeka lived, he’d find her again—somehow.

  Ben simply stood and watched as the vehicle lurched forward a few meters at a time, starting and stopping fitfully. Orrin fought with the controls, pounding at the dashboard with his fist. “Blast you, move!”

  The younglings hidden, Annileen reentered the clearing from a narrow opening to the east. Visiting Tuskens in their place of last resort was unnerving on its own, but she nearly turned right back around when she saw Orrin hovering toward her in the battered JG-8.

  Then she realized he wasn’t heading for her at all,
but rather making for the exit to the south. Orrin looked even more beat up than the vehicle, his hair covered with dust and his mouth bloodied. He seemed to be paying her no mind. Looking back, she saw Ben standing, fifty meters away, making no effort to pursue.

  Orrin seemed to notice her at last when the reluctant landspeeder came to another sudden stop. Annileen could barely recognize the man she knew—but for the wicked smile that came over his face when he saw her. His words dripped with delightful venom. “Ben’s been lying to you,” he said.

  Annileen shrugged. “You did it all the time.”

  Orrin sneered. But before he could say anything else, the Tusken he knew as Plug-eye emerged, gaderffii in hand, from the western labyrinth near the southern opening. The adversaries saw each other. Orrin took aim and crushed the accelerator.

  The JG-8 seemed to forget its reservations, gunning forward. A’Yark stood stoically as Orrin raced to ram her—until the moment she hurled her gaderffii. The heavy implement spun through the air, striking the windshield with terrible force.

  A spray of glass showered Orrin, his windshield smashed for the second time by someone he’d angered. But the landspeeder surged forward anyway, striking the Tusken warrior with full force and carrying her with it toward the southern exit.

  Annileen pursued the landspeeder. Orrin couldn’t see anything through the fractured windshield, she realized—but he was accelerating nonetheless. She skidded to a stop in time to watch the hovercraft miss the narrow bantha path that led down the side of the cliff. The vehicle sailed freely for seconds until, lacking anything for the antigrav units to repel against, it tumbled downward, end over end. It vanished in the bad country.

  Meters behind Annileen, Ben ran up. “A’Yark!” he yelled.

  Annileen looked down. Off the edge of the sheer drop from the bantha trail, A’Yark clung to a jutting rock. Annileen scrambled to the side and reached down for the raider’s hand. Dazed, the Tusken stared up at her, jeweled eye gleaming in the suns. Then the Tusken murmured something, and Annileen felt A’Yark’s grip loosening.