Star Wars - Kenobi

what I’m supposed to do about that. It’s not as though I’m going to be any less worried about things after I’ve been here six months. Or six years, or however long it takes for hope to return to the galaxy. It’s not like I’m going to suddenly get my friends back. It’s not like I’m going to feel any better about what I had to do to poor Anakin. It’s not like—
    No.
    No, no. I’m sorry. I don’t feel like doing this right now.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    THE REPUBLIC. FOR A thousand generations, it had been out there. The bright center of the galaxy, shining light into the imaginations of everyone who lived on the Outer Rim. The Republic had seen tumult and change, invaders and oppressors. It had resisted the incursions of armored nomads and crazed cultists. It had even turned its back on the rest of the galaxy for a time, protecting itself against a dark age of fear and plague. But light had always returned.
    Weeks earlier, someone in the store had told Annileen that the Republic had changed yet again. She hadn’t paid much mind. The bright center for her meant Mos Eisley, the large spaceport in the distant east—a bustling metropolis that made the capital, Bestine, look like the farming community it really was. Annileen liked visiting Mos Eisley, despite its well-deserved reputation as a den of criminal activity—and on a day as slow as today, she would have found some business excuse to go.
    But Jabe and Kallie were both in Mos Espa, as was practically everyone else. The Comet Run Podrace was no Boonta Eve Classic, but it emptied the Pika Oasis as efficiently as the plague. Gloamer had shut down the garages and left with his crews; most of the independent mechanics, normally willing to profit from his absence, had followed suit. Kallie had rented half the livery animals to racegoers. And naturally, Orrin had given his vaporator crews the day off. His workers already spent so much time in the Claim that Annileen wondered if any of them could tell the difference between workdays and holidays anymore. Dannar’s one criticism of his best friend had been that Orrin confused popularity with profit. He made money, but he also spent a lot to look like a big man, too.
    Annileen would never be accused of making that mistake. She gave no thought to closing the store. The revelers would return in a spending mood, whether they’d won their bets or not. The evenings following races were the most lucrative in the store’s year. She’d cover her month’s expenses before last call.
    But the race days themselves were quiet. Annileen had shared a quiet breakfast with Leelee; Annileen had actually sat at a table for a change. Afterward, the Zeltron woman headed home, where she planned to lie in a luxurious coma all day until her family’s return. Annileen gave Old Ulbreck unlimited access to the bantha jerky jar with instructions to tell Erbaly Nap’tee, should she come by, that the store’s owner had emigrated to Heptooine. Finally, after supplying Bohmer with a full carafe of caf, she grabbed her floppy hat and satchel and stole into the southwestern yard.
    There she sat on a blanket in the shade of the store’s mammoth vaporator, her back against the machine’s frosty base, feeling every puff of cool air that wafted off the compressor. Datapad on her lap, she looked at the images and imagined. In seconds she was sitting on the coast of Baroonda, a place alive and teeming with nature. Or Capital Cay on Aquilaris, watching the seacroppers bring in their catch. Or on the Gold Beaches of Corellia—or some other locale.
    It was an old datapad, one she hadn’t looked at in years. She thumbed again through the pictures. More faraway places—distant both physically and into the past. The holo-emitter on the device didn’t work anymore, but she didn’t care. The collection of pictures was a hopeless wish list collated by a much younger person. The planets still existed, for sure; she doubted Chancellor Palpa-whoosit or anyone he was fighting had the power to change that. But the places were impossibly beyond her reach.
    She’d brought the datapad outside to refresh her memory about those distant places. Ben had gotten her thinking again about the galaxy—well-traveled company always did. She’d hoped to ask him if he had been to any of the worlds in her pictures. But the morning had passed with no Ben.
    It had been silly to expect him to come, Annileen thought. The man had already bought most of what he