Star Wars - Kenobi

Ulbreck.”
    Kallie brought her mother a warm drink. The mug shook in Annileen’s hands. She put it down without tasting it.
    “Zedd was supposed to go with them, but he couldn’t,” Jabe said. “Orrin had a whole trove of the Tusken gear—from the Settlers’ Call rescues, I guess. I thought—I don’t know, that maybe this was my chance to get on Orrin’s lead support team.”
    “By dressing up like the people who murdered your father and scaring an old man.” Annileen was numb as a droid, at this point. “Makes perfect sense to me.” She waved aimlessly. “Continue.”
    “It was just supposed to have been rifles on stun,” Jabe said, his voice faltering. “It was to teach Old Wyle a lesson, for showing up Orrin all the time. Nobody likes Ulbreck anyway, Mom. You know that!”
    Wraithlike, she rose and found the medpac on the kitchen counter. There was still that raging bruise and scar on Jabe’s forehead. She could treat that, even if she had no idea what was going on inside his skull.
    Jabe breathed faster, the details of the raid spilling forth as Annileen cleaned the cut. He told of knocking Wyle down, and of Mullen and Veeka’s capture of Magda Ulbreck. He told of Ben’s arrival and the Gaults’ subsequent departure. And he told of the real Tuskens appearing, and the ambush. His words growing quicker and louder, he moved his head against Annileen’s efforts to treat him.
    “Ow! Ow! ”
    “Do you want me to stop?” Annileen asked, pulling back the applicator.
    “No,” Jabe said, tears in his eyes. “I want to feel it.” Forlorn, he looked up at her. “Do you want me to stop?”
    She shook her head. “I need to know. You said Ben saved you?”
    Jabe nodded. “I woke up and Orrin was gone. And Plug-eye was there. And Ben was talking to them. In Basic,” he said, puzzled. “Somehow he was talking to them, bargaining for me!” Every word seeming to remind him of how close he’d come to the end, he struggled to catch his breath. “Mom, they were going to kill me—or worse!” He blinked rapidly, tears finally falling.
    Annileen put down the applicator and pulled his head close to her chest. “I know. But Ben was there.”
    “Yeah,” Jabe said, sniffling. “I don’t know what he said, but it worked. And he took me out of there.” He looked up at her, his eyes red. “But the Gaults just left me. Orrin ran —”
    “It’s okay—”
    “—he ran, and the others were already gone,” he said, his voice rising with alarm. “And Mullen and Veeka, back with the old woman—they acted like they were really going to hurt her, Mom! And I hit that old man …”
    “And that’s not okay,” she said, stroking his blood-matted hair. “But we’ve all found out a lot tonight.”
    “I wanted something to do,” he said, voice faltering. “I’ve just been so sick of the store. I wanted some action. But this wasn’t like going with the posses. This was wrong.”
    Annileen just nodded. Well, I’m glad to hear that.
    She released him and dried his eyes. “Did you tell all this to Ben?” she asked, placing the bandage.
    “All of it.”
    “And?”
    Jabe wiped his eyes. “He said I should follow his advice for Orrin—that I should turn back now. And he said that only a fool follows another fool.”
    Kallie watched, mystified. “Do you still think he’s crazy?”
    Jabe smiled weakly. “I’m not one to judge.”

CHAPTER FORTY
    ANNILEEN HAD SAT WITH her children until after midnight, comparing notes about what had transpired with Orrin. Now that her exhausted kids had gone to bed, Annileen clutched her pillow against the breeze and tried to sort it out. So much news. So little sense.
    What Jabe had done was bad, yes—but she couldn’t figure out Orrin’s involvement. He’d made the trouble Jabe was in sound darker than a botched prank. But if Orrin needed untraceable money, he wasn’t going to get it robbing Wyle Ulbreck, who famously kept most of his fortune in aurodium-plated ingots, buried somewhere underneath his septic system.
    So what were they doing out there?
    She looked for the seventh time at the chrono by her bed. It was her birthday, now, and had been for three and a half hours. Hours in which she hadn’t closed her eyes, except to cry. Her sparely furnished room lay more than a meter underground, with a high window cracked open to the outside; the smells from the livery, as pungent as they sometimes were, reminded her of her childhood home. But after the