Star Wars - Kenobi

brandishing a blaster rifle. A’Yark discarded the gaderffii and lunged, ripping the gun from the startled settler’s hands. A’Yark did not understand how a blaster rifle tore its victim apart, but understanding wasn’t necessary. The thing had a use. The marauder put it to work on the settler, who had no use.
    Well, that wasn’t exactly true. The settlers did have a use: to provide more rifles for the Tuskens to take. It might have been a funny thought, if A’Yark ever laughed. But that concept was as alien as the white-skinned corpse now on the floor.
    So many strange things had come to live in the desert. And to die.
    Behind, two more raiders entered the structure. A’Yark did not know them. The days of going into battle flanked by cousins were long since past. The newcomers began flipping crates in the storage area, spilling contents. More metal things. The settlers were obsessed with them.
    The warriors were, too—but it wasn’t time for that. A’Yark barked at them. “N’gaaaiih! N’gaaaiih!”
    The youths didn’t listen. They were not A’Yark’s sons. A’Yark had but one son, now, not quite old enough to fight. Nor did these warriors have fathers. It was the way, these days. Mighty tribes had become mere war parties, their ranks constantly evolving as survivors of one melted into another.
    That A’Yark led this raid at all bespoke their misery. No one on the attack had lived half as long as A’Yark had, or seen so much. The best warriors had fallen years before; these youths certainly wouldn’t live to vie for leadership. They were fools, and if A’Yark did not kill them for their foolishness, they would die some other way.
    Not this morning, though. A’Yark had chosen the target carefully. This farm was close to the jagged Jundland Wastes, far from the other villages—and it had few of the vile structures by which the residents wrenched water from a sky none could own. The fewer spires—vaporators, the farmers called them—the fewer settlers. Now, it would seem, there were none. Except for the young warriors fumbling, all was quiet.
    But A’Yark, who had lived to see forty cycles of the starry sky, was not fooled. A weapon stood beside the doorway leading outside. The old human’s, left by accident? Rifle to silvery mouthpiece, A’Yark sniffed.
    No. With one swift motion, A’Yark smashed the weapon against the doorjamb. The rifle had been used to kill a Tusken. The smell of sweat from another day still clung to the stock. It differed from the old human’s scent, and that of the white creature the settlers called a Bith. Someone else was here. But the rifle could not be used now, nor ever again.
    A weapon that killed a Tusken had no more power than any other, so far as A’Yark was concerned; such superstitions were for weaker minds. But just as Tuskens prized their banthas, the settlers seemed to prize individual rifles, etching symbols on their stocks. The human that carried this one was more formidable than the old man and the Bith creature, but he would have to resort to something new and unfamiliar next time. If he survived the day.
    A’Yark would see that he didn’t.
    The war leader reclaimed the gaderffii from the floor and shoved past the looting youths. Footsteps in the sand led around back, where three soulless vaporators hummed and defiled. A small hut for servicing the foul machines sat behind them.
    Fitting. A’Yark would make the inhabitants bleed for using the vaporators. Slowly, and so the suns would see. What the settlers had stolen would return to the sand, a drop at a time.
    “Ru rah ru rah!” A’Yark called, straining to remember the old words. “We is here in peace.”
    No answer. Of course, there would be none—but someone was surely inside and had heard the words. The warrior was proud of remembering them. A human sister had joined A’Yark’s family years ago; the Tuskens often replenished their numbers by kidnapping. The band needed reinforcements now, but would not take anyone here. The settlers’ presence so near the wastes was too great an offense. They would die, and others would see, and the Jundland would be left alone.
    The other warriors filed from the house and surrounded the service hut. The Tuskens numbered eight; none could challenge them. Cloth-wrapped hands curled around the shaft of an ancient gaderffii, A’Yark inserted the traang —the curved end of the weapon—into the door handle.
    The metal door creaked open. Inside, a