Star Wars - Kenobi

rode the lead beast. The fourth and final bantha had a cable around its neck, and was dragging something like a landspeeder. Except it was three times as long as any A’Yark had ever seen.
    “What now?” Gaderffii raised in indignation, A’Yark stomped across the sand, trying to get the attention of the makeshift caravan. The hovercraft had a large flatbed surface in back, with something huge lying upon it.
    A vaporator tower.
    A’Yark skidded to a halt. A young Tusken was operating the vehicle, although certainly not as it was supposed to be operated. The thing lurched forward in fits and starts, bumping against the rear legs of the irritated bantha in front of it. The machine was sparking, with fumes rising from beneath its hood; this would likely be its last trip, anywhere.
    The sight of A’Yark caused the bantha riders to stop. That, in turn, resulted in the landspeeder again slamming into the rear bantha. The animal screamed and kicked, its massive foot causing the hovering vehicle to bob and weave on the air.
    A’Yark didn’t know which warrior to smack first. She chose the one in the machine.
    “A settler abandoned it,” the would-be driver said.
    “And you did not kill him?”
    The war leader’s tone was enough; the young warrior bowed his head in shame. “They fled. We thought the prize was more important.”
    “The prize!” A’Yark walked along the length of the flatbed. “What are we to do with this?” She smacked the vaporator with her gaderffii, producing a loud clang. “Are you Jawas now? Will you peddle trash for crumbs?”
    “It makes water,” the warrior sitting atop the lead bantha said. “Water! We need—”
    “I know what it does!” A’Yark leered at the metal abomination, astonished that any Tusken didn’t know the offense it represented to the natural order. “Settlers defile the land with vaporators. We destroy them. We do not—”
    A’Yark paused. “Wait,” she said, considering. She faced the driver. “You took this thing from the Smiling One’s lands?”
    “The human war leader from the oasis—and the gorge?” The driver shrank in his seat. The memory of the massacre was still fresh. “No. You told us to stay away from his lands. This was in a different place.”
    Well, at least they listened to one thing, A’Yark thought. Her reconnaissance had given her a sense of what territory the Smiling One considered his. Taking something belonging to him might bring his forces out on another hunt. A’Yark never shrank from battle, but the others would not be ready for that meeting. It was best avoided.
    Sounds came from within the rock formation. A’Yark turned to see children peeking down, curious at the new arrivals. Others would see the giant device, too, if they left it around near the entrance to the rift. A’Yark pointed her gaderffii and grunted a command. “The thing will fit in the cave beneath the overhang. Carry it up there—and try not to break it.”
    The young warriors looked at one another, puzzled at the reversal. A’Yark’s next yell put them into motion.
    A’Yark watched it go past and calculated. She wasn’t sure what they would do with it, if anything. But circumstances were dire, and even an object that had no meaning to the Tuskens might become important in the clash against the settlers. It only took a pebble to cause a sore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    “GIVE ME THE BAD news,” Orrin said, squinting upward from beneath his farmer’s hat.
    Veeka shimmied down the scaffold. “Eighty-seven milliliters.”
    “That’s it?” Orrin was stunned. A human on Tatooine could sweat more in five minutes. “The settings have got to be wrong.”
    The young woman mopped her brow angrily and glared at her father. “You want to go up and see?”
    Orrin didn’t. It had been like this everywhere in the eastern range. The Gault sweetwater formula had been producing fine at the test towers just a month earlier. Now it was programmed into all the Pretormins during what normally was the most productive time of the year.
    And the sky seemed to have given up on them.
    “Diagnostic?”
    “Not gonna say anything different today than it did yesterday,” Veeka said. She wiped her hands on her work pants. “Dad, we’ve got to do something else.”
    What? Orrin didn’t know. It wasn’t normal, this performance. It went against everything he knew about the art and the science. Nothing in the atmosphere had changed; everything was well within expected