Star Wars - Kenobi

told Orrin’s handler it was a mistake to offer credit to any of you.” He turned the loudhailer to address his thugs. “Try not to kill the human woman who just drove up,” Mosep said. “She brought us here. It wouldn’t be polite.” He tugged at his neck brace and looked back at the settlers. “I’m sorry, but if you insist on making this unpleasant—”
    A blaster rifle sounded, followed by a high-pitched crack to Mosep’s side. Startled, he twisted his torso to see what had happened. There was Jorrk, staring stupidly at what was left of his exploded and smoking deck gun. Another shot sounded—and the Klatooinian fell backward, dead. Mosep looked toward the settlers.
    “I killed me a room full of Tuskens,” Ulbreck shouted, rifle sight set on the skiff. “I ain’t gonna let you people push me around!”
    At the sound of the old man’s words, all the settlers reached the same conclusion. As one, they turned and fired at Jabba’s thugs. Return fire came in, sending others to dive for cover behind the upturned landspeeders. On the skiff, Mosep screamed and hid behind the nearest Gamorrean, only to be flattened when the green thug took a blaster shot between the eyes.
    Stuck in the open, Orrin grabbed at Annileen, pulling her from the crossfire. For a second she looked at him, speechless—until his hand tightened around her arm.
    “Kids! Let’s go!” Orrin yelled.
    Startled, Annileen tried to pull away. But now Mullen grabbed her other arm. With blaster shots from the thugs coming into the rift, Orrin shoved her toward the JG-8, still parked nearby.
    Annileen yelled, but in the din, only Waller and two other settlers, crouching in cover, heard.
    Waller turned. “Orrin, stop!”
    With his free hand, Orrin pulled his pistol and placed it at Annileen’s head. “We’re getting out of here,” he said, pushing her toward the landspeeder.
    Veeka threw an armload of weapons into the front of the vehicle and slid behind the controls. “We can’t get through all that,” she yelled, pointing back at the raging battle.
    Orrin had no intention of going that way. He pointed to the sloping corridor leading upward, the rocky path Ben had taken up into the formation. “There! Go!”
    Under fire from Mosep’s henchmen, Waller could only watch as Orrin’s daughter gunned the JG-8 up the impossible terrain. The hovercraft whined in protest, slamming against ground it had never been designed to navigate. Stray blasterfire struck nearby. A steering vane caught against an outcrop and snapped off. Then the landspeeder left the battle behind …
    A’Yark ran across the high camp, robes flying.
    “To the caves!” she yelled, herding elder and animal alike. Children and scaly canine massiffs squealed and ran, leaving chores and meals unfinished near the sacred well.
    The clearing was a somewhat level theater surrounded by more of the great towers of stone, half a kilometer up the formation. Most of the day it was in shadows, but now, at mid-suns, all was exposed. To east and west, crumbling blocks piled against the mountains. Normally, those offered shade and shelter; today, they were the hiding place of last resort. A’Yark shoved blaster rifles into the hands of a pair of nurses heading off to hide the children. She had no confidence they would know what to do with the weapons. She had waited too long to teach them.
    A mechanical noise came from the gap to the north: the downward passage that had been guarded by A’Yark and Ben. A landspeeder, she instantly realized. The ascent should have been impossible! Desperately, she looked to either side. Their few warriors were still down at their observation posts, watching the firefight. There was no way to call them. Time was up.
    She turned to see Ben running with a writhing pair of Tusken toddlers, carrying them to cover. Gaderffii in hand, she dashed toward him.
    Handing off the second child to a Tusken woman in hiding, Ben looked to a wide opening between the titanic stones to the south. “That way?” he asked.
    “Bad country,” A’Yark said. “It is too late. They are here. Quickly!”
    A’Yark and Ben slid over a collapsed pile of granite. Looking back over it, they saw the red landspeeder thumping over the rocky entrance in the north.
    “Orrin,” Ben said quietly. “He just won’t turn back.”
    A’Yark looked out. The Smiling One wasn’t alone. His offspring were in the front seats, and he held Annileen in the back, at gunpoint. Seconds