Star Wars - Kenobi

politely turned away. “Please excuse me.”
    Ulbreck followed him. “You saw me yesterday when them Sandies was here—you saw how many I put on the floor.” Ulbreck gestured to the tables. “Come tell the folks what I did. Some people won’t believe an honest man—”
    Orrin interceded. “Honestly, Wyle. Another time.” He peeled Ben away from the old man and guided him toward the bar. “Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “Some people will cling to you like mynocks if you let them.”
    “It’s all right,” Ben said, his eyes settling on Kallie as she chattered with some teenage friends. “I think I know what happened now.”
    “I’m sorry,” Annileen said. “Kallie came looking for us and ended up snooping. I’m mortified.”
    Orrin gestured for others to leave the bar, making room for him and Ben. “Gossip gets around pretty fast where there’s not a lot goin’ on.”
    Ben nodded. “I would’ve thought the invasion and massacre would have kept the circuit going for a while.”
    Orrin raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t call it a massacre,” he said, his tone more serious. He didn’t like that word. “It was justice .”
    Ben looked down, as if aware he’d spoken wrong.
    “There aren’t innocents among Tuskens, Ben. We know that group was the one that struck us here—but it doesn’t really matter. They’re predators, same as a krayt.”
    “Understood.”
    Orrin waved to Jabe to bring over drinks. He didn’t want to make Ben squirm too much—not if he might subscribe to the Fund. But he didn’t mind taking the man down a bit, either. Orrin knew Ben’s kind. Ben would play modest and detached until he had every woman in the oasis interested—and then they’d find out he was trouble. Orrin just hadn’t figured out what kind of trouble, yet. Kallie’s story, blabbed around the bar before lunchtime, added more evidence to the case for crazy. But Ben’s actions the day before suggested he might be something else—maybe some kind of Clone Wars veteran who’d lost his nerve for fighting. That would track with a bleeding heart for Tuskens.
    Change in tactics, then. Orrin took his glass and toasted. “To keeping people safe.”
    Ben nodded. “I can live with that.”
    Orrin started his sales pitch anew. This time, he described the Settlers’ Call Fund as the best hope for peace. If Tuskens were intelligent—as their encounter with Plug-eye seemed to suggest—then maybe they could learn, Orrin said. If they learned every settler household on the desert was under the same shield, they might turn their attentions to the Western Dune Sea, instead. “Let ’em hassle the Jawas for a change.”
    He started to talk pricing, knowing that if Kenobi’s place were close to the Jundland, he could ask for a sizable fee. But Ben interrupted with something that surprised him.
    “How much,” Ben asked tentatively, “would it cost to extend your protection out even farther?” He affixed his eyes to the drink in his hands. “Say … to where that kidnapping you told me about happened?”
    “What, the Lars place?”
    “Well, around there,” Ben said.
    Orrin noticed Annileen pause nearby. Since they’d started talking, Annileen had circled back and forth, dealing with matters in the store—and yet, Orrin noted, she kept swooping back cometlike to the bar, catching an earful where she could. “The Lars place. That’s way out there. Isn’t it, Annie?”
    “Past Motesta Oasis,” she said, turning back to her shelving.
    “Past Jawa Heights, even,” Orrin said, calculating. “What kind of business do you have that’d need protecting way out there?”
    “Just curious,” Ben said casually. “You were describing the potential a minute ago. I was just wondering what was feasible.”
    Orrin nodded. “Well, let’s see,” he said, pulling a datapad from his vest pocket.
    Ben waited as Orrin pretended to run the numbers. It was impossible, really. Orrin knew there wasn’t any prospect of extending patrols to Owen Lars’s farm. It was more than a hundred kilometers from the oasis, with a chunk of the eastern highlands in the way; the Settlers’ Call would have to install satellite armories farther east before they could even consider it. And they wouldn’t—because the Fund was, at its roots, a local collective.
    But Kenobi didn’t need to know that.
    “I would think nineteen hundred credits a year would cover it,” Orrin said. The figure was huge. More than anyone was