Star Wars - Kenobi

Several he recognized as neighbors from the east who’d gone to bury the bodies of Cliegg Lars’s posse, years earlier. He couldn’t imagine what they’d seen that day. Few had ever talked about it since. Some had wanted to retaliate then, but they understood that going on a hunt so far from territory they knew was a recipe for disaster.
    Orrin thought it did something to a person to walk away from a scene like that. You could hide and tell yourself you were doing the right thing, but any blood a human had would turn to dust. Or acid. For them, this moment was more than right.
    It was necessary .
    He crouched as he reached the edge. Such caution wasn’t necessary. No return fire came from the floor of the gorge. Dozens of rag-wrapped warriors ran this way and that, some abandoning their gaffi sticks and guns as they sought pathways out of the death zone.
    What a dumb bunch, Orrin thought. He’d been afraid they’d gotten smarter when they attacked the oasis. An improbable concept, to be sure; couldn’t be much intelligence attached to bandaging one’s head and living in the desert. But Dannar’s Claim was the center of defense for all the lands surrounding the Pika Oasis, and hadn’t they attacked the tower with the siren? Watching the savages scuffle to survive now, he decided it was random chance. Plug-eye might have some sense, but the rest of the Tuskens were of low quality.
    Orrin knelt and set to work lowering their quantity. A slight-looking raider was high on the far rise, scrambling up a rocky incline toward a gap. Orrin sighted the bandit and fired. The shot struck the Tusken in the center of his back, throwing him across the other side of the crest and out of sight.
    “Was that Pluggy?” his neighbor asked.
    “Too tall. But we’ll sort ’em out later,” Orrin said. He clucked. “They’re wearing their death-shrouds, folks. Put them in the ground!”
    Annileen gasped.
    From the western side of the gorge, she and Ben had ridden up a spiraling, pebbled approach to a notch in the hillside. Creeping up the shattered rock incline, she’d heard the shots echoing all throughout the canyon. Now, lying on her stomach, she saw everything.
    “They’re … they’re being massacred.”
    Ben, a few meters behind her, said nothing.
    “The Tuskens, I mean,” Annileen said, looking back over her shoulder at him. “They’re being massacred.”
    “I know,” Ben said. He was kneeling, his eyes closed. He seemed to have a headache. From the suns or the sounds, or the whole day? Annileen didn’t know. He seemed to have gone to that dark place again—the place that his trips to the Claim had helped him escape. But she could feel a headache coming herself—especially when she spied Jabe, happily blasting away in the shooting gallery alongside his friends.
    She shook her head. There was no reaching Jabe’s location from here, but he wasn’t in any danger, and neither were she and Ben. She stood, intending to try to yell to her son. But muscles that had been tensed since the Tuskens arrived at the Claim suddenly became jelly. Feeling the wind leaving her, she fell to her knees, eyes still focused on Jabe.
    Ben joined her at the lookout point. Kneeling beside her, he spoke, his tones low and measured. “How does this make you feel? Given what the Tuskens did to Dannar. And to your store.”
    “Bad.” Annileen closed her eyes, not realizing why she’d answered that way. And then she said it again. “Bad.”
    Ben lowered his head. For a moment, she thought she heard him say, “Good.”
    A’Yark leapt, cape blousing as boots hit the ground. Up from the gully, another warrior cowered beneath an overhang. Seeing A’Yark, the terrified warrior crept out, quivering.
    Not my son. A’Yark simply pointed to the short rise, behind. Another coward, another lost fool who didn’t deserve saving. But there’d be time for recriminations later.
    A blaster shot struck the nearby rock face. Throbbing feet again went into motion. A’Yark knew the gorge, and its places to hide. A’Deen would be somewhere. A’Deen, who had listened, and not fled. Listened, and gone to find the others.
    A’Yark heard more Tusken voices over the rise. There was still a chance.
    “That’s a speedy one,” Mullen said, watching his father shoot.
    “Yep.” Orrin couldn’t keep a bead on the Tusken, but it hardly mattered. One Sand Person would hop out of his rifle sights, and another would dart back in, begging to be