Star Wars - Kenobi

silver vehicle carried two humans in an open compartment protected by a windshield. A grim, hairy-faced human steered the vessel as his older passenger stood brazenly up in his seat.
    A’Yark had seen the passenger before, at a greater distance. Clean-shaven, older than most Tuskens ever got—and always wearing the same senseless expression.
    The Smiling One.
    “More to the south, folks!” the standing human said, macrobinoculars in hand. “Keep after ’em!”
    A’Yark didn’t need to know all of the words. The meaning was clear. The missing warriors weren’t nearby, ready to strike. The band, routed, had taken flight.
    Seeing the tall human’s landspeeder, the cowering young Tusken from earlier squealed and stood. Leaving his gaderffii on the ground, he bolted.
    “Urrak!” A’Yark yelled. Wait!
    Too late. Another landspeeder banked—and the hollering riders aboard chopped the fleeing Sand Person down with blast after blast. Not six days a warrior, and dead in seconds.
    This was too much. A’Yark rose, weapon in hand, and dashed behind the hut. Away from where the laughing settlers, aware only of their killing, could see. Ragged fabric flew as the warrior tumbled over a dune into a dusty ravine. Another dune followed, and another.
    At last, A’Yark fell to the ground, gasping. Three had been lost—maybe more. And the Sand People couldn’t afford to lose anyone.
    Worse, they’d lost to settlers using a low trick no Tusken four years earlier would’ve fallen for. The settlers would know now: the mighty Tuskens were not what they once were.
    Struggling to stand, A’Yark looked down at the ground. The elder shadow lengthened. Like the older brother sun, the band had struck—and failed.
    It was time for the Tuskens to hide. Again.

CHAPTER TWO
    ORRIN GAULT TOWERED OVER the farm, a lofty witness as some Tuskens ran for their lives—and others ran to their deaths. Clinging to the side of the vaporator tower, he watched the last landspeeder disappear over the horizon.
    “Okay, Call Control, that’s got it,” he said into his comlink. “Shut it down.”
    He released the comlink button and listened. His ears still rang from the alarm atop the tower, which he had just deactivated by hand. Peering out from beneath the canvas brim of his range hat, he scanned the landscape. One by one, the sirens kilometers away went quiet—and silence returned to the desert.
    He looked at the comlink and cracked a grin. Orrin, son—that’s some pull you’ve got there. It was nice to reach a point in life where people did what you said. And on Tatooine, where the people were born cussed and nobody took orders from anyone else, it meant even more.
    The danger was past. For the first time since receiving the distress signal, Orrin took a deep breath and pondered the barren land below. He’d been born on a farm just like this, far from the nearest way station, nearly fifty standard years earlier. And even now, there was no place he’d rather be in the morning than on the range.
    People thought he was crazy for that. Everyone he’d ever met preferred the evening, with its relief from the heat. But once the suns were gone, and the air settled on you like something dead and heavy, you had to get underground. Nothing good happened after dark, with Tuskens and who-knows-what-else on the prowl. Mornings, meanwhile, were like getting out of jail—or so Orrin imagined. On Tatooine you might overnight no better than a womp rat in a hole, but you’d become human the second you stepped outside.
    And then there was that little stretch between first and second sun, when the cold night wind would kick its last and the planet itself would sigh. Good water prospectors lived for those moments, when the precious drops that had birthed in the night suddenly realized you were on to them, and fled. A smart farmer like Orrin could smell them, and follow them. And it was possible to follow them—because in daylight, nothing could stop you. Not in this region. Not anymore.
    Those were the rules. The new rules, maybe—but his rules, made possible by his hard work and guidance.
    Guess I forgot to tell this batch of Tuskens, he thought, climbing down the ladder. The raiders had ruined more than the morning for these poor people. Orrin winced. The guts of half a dozen maintenance and sentry droids marked the Tuskens’ path into the camp. Two vaporators sparked, maintenance doors at their bases bashed open. And then there were the strike