Star Wars - Kenobi

it.
    Mullen reached his father’s position, gasping. “The Call! Activate the Call!”
    “I left the activator at home,” he said, swearing. “We were going to the races!” He looked back to Annileen, behind the nearby X-31. “Do you have your activator?”
    She couldn’t hear him. Annileen had found a moment to fish her rifle from her backseat—and was angrily blasting away at her uninvited guests. Orrin repeated his question, straining to be heard. She looked at him, flustered. “I don’t carry the thing around! This is your home base. It’s supposed to be safe!”
    Ben dashed forward from the garage where he’d left Bohmer. He slid to a grinding stop behind Orrin’s landspeeder. Between shots, Mullen looked at him and snarled, “Next time, bring a blaster. You ain’t getting mine!”
    Ben ignored him. “Another wave!” he yelled, and pointed to a new group of Tuskens. Screened by their attacking companions, the newcomers charged across the Claim’s southern yard toward the giant vaporator.
    Orrin looked through the chaos at them, momentarily confused. That was Old Number One, the first Pretormin tower in the oasis. The Tuskens were attacking it, clubbing its base with their gaffi sticks.
    Annileen pointed at the tower’s tip. “It’s the Call! They’re after the Call!”
    Of course. Orrin understood right away. The Settlers’ Call used a standard transmitter to connect the subscribing farms and the vigilantes. But there was also the siren—and here, as at the Bezzard farm, it sat at the highest point in the area: atop the vaporator.
    Which also happened to be where the transmitter was located.
    A daylight raid—and now this! It added up. “Plug-eye’s here!” The crafty Tusken had figured it out somehow, and was trying to gag the oasis before any cry for help could be raised.
    Ben yanked at Orrin’s sleeve. “They’re not in the garage complex yet.”
    Orrin looked back. Only one bay was open—the one Annileen’s landspeeder had exited earlier. What Ben saw was true, but it didn’t make sense. “There’s a pass-through between the store and the garages,” Orrin yelled. “If they’re in the store, why haven’t they come through there yet?” Tuskens attacking from the garages would effectively envelop them.
    “I don’t know,” Ben said. “Something’s stopping them. Let’s take advantage. Get people to safety!”
    It made sense. Orrin gestured for the surviving Devaronians, both scared witless, to make a break for the open garage. They did, and the others followed, one by one. After Ben helped Zedd, in agony since his attack, stagger in, Mullen and Orrin followed. Now their cover became the Tuskens’ cover, as the warriors crouched behind the landspeeders and fired into the garage bay.
    Orrin looked back at the work floor. If they could avoid the Tuskens’ blasterfire, they could reach the hallways leading to the rest of the bays, including those with the Settlers’ Call vehicles. There would be more weapons there, and a chance of escape—and he and Annileen both had the codes to open the doors. But Ben, crouching with poor Bohmer, kept looking at the doorway leading back to the store.
    “There’s a reason they haven’t come through,” Ben said.
    He seemed to be concentrating. How anyone could concentrate in this situation was beyond Orrin. “What difference does it make?”
    “No,” Ben said. “Listen!”
    Orrin stood as close to the doorway as he dared, fearing Plug-eye and friends could charge in at any second. But all he could hear was blasterfire and the horrific screams of Tuskens.
    “What in—” Orrin looked back at the people in the garage, hiding behind equipment and firing out at the Tuskens. His kids and Zedd. Annileen and her kids.
    Who were the Tuskens inside fighting?
    “Was anyone else coming from Mos Espa?” Annileen asked from cover.
    “We left early to beat the rush,” Orrin said, scratching the side of his head with the barrel of his blaster. “Was anyone else in the store?”
    Annileen’s eyes widened. “Ben!” she said. “The surveillance cams!”
    Ben looked to his side. There was a flickering screen, a monitoring station for all the locations within the garage. Orrin watched as Ben quickly cycled through them. The man seemed to know his way around a security system, the farmer noticed. The garage bays all seemed empty of Tuskens. The only activity was in the store, which came up as the final image.
    “That’s what I