Hidden in plain sight: part 4 & part 5
-Part 4 -
On his way on the ocean of sand again, which was interrupted more and more by occurring stones and boulders, Kenobi resumed into contemplation. "Solitude", Yoda had called it (Star Wars Ep III, 2:09:55) and sometimes he really felt alone. He missed someone to talk to, especially someone like Yoda to share his mind. He stopped as he made out big three-toed and the fourth sticking out tracks with claw-stripes atop. A womp rat, he realized, and where one was, he thought, others were not far away. Therefore even a single one of these part-time predators in their vicinity caused a lethal treat to him and his Eopie. He thought that it was better to avoid the tracks in a wide circle, as he heard a squeaking scream at some distance. By a slight swing of the reigns and with a sudden "tcha-yeaah", Kenobi spurred his mount Rooh forward. Despite the speed, he grabbed into the saddlebag to fetch the wooden box. He let Rooh slow down a bit to open it, reins and chest in the other hand. Without having to look, his weapon was on his belt and the box back. Rooh hastened forward again. Arriving, his first sight of the scene only gave him an impression of mingled colors of yellow sand with different shades of moving brown creatures: beige, ocher and dark brown. A metal pipe the length of her own arm in her right hand, Kenobi recognized Teeka standing with her right leg up to the knee in damp quicksand of a dried out riverbed. Her left foot was ankle-deep in the sand, too, the length of one's stride away from the right one. Kenobi spotted a blooded gash on her left upper arm, but she was still able to move the arm up to protect the head. She must have successfully defended herself beforehand of stepping into the pit, therefore the womp rat's right flank marked a black stripe, supposedly from a repulsor cannon. The weapon itself was nowhere to be seen.
Due to pain and exhaustion, Teeka started to tremble as the womp rat finished its turn to prepare for a new attack. Kenobi only had splits of seconds to react and he did not even think about it. His muscle memory awoke from its long slumber, he jumped from Rooh with a grunt to the solid bank. The moment his feet touched the ground, he activated his lightsaber. Distracted by the flash of blue light, the aggressor's head turned to him. Kenobi intended to let its attention keep this way. Then he followed the rat's eye what it focused on now.
"No", Kenobi said, "not Rooh!" The animal took a run-up and attempted to jump. Rooh did not need her usual slap to spur into a run, too. The moment as the rat's feet were all four in the air, Kenobi drew shortly away to give room for a single swing, severing the abdomen a bit under the still intact spine. Being out of practice, he panted for breath. The front part of the carcass kept twitching like a dead snake's head, still moving as long as it took him to calm down. As it finally stopped, he deactivated his weapon and turned his head to look for the female Jawa. He heard Teeka's swearing while she was trying to dig herself out of the sand with the metal pipe, having already been successful with the left foot, but struggled on and had no strength left to free her right one.
"Hold on", the former Jedi encouraged her, "I'll go for the Eopie and fetch you the spade!"
"Too kind of you", Teeka chattered. There was only a minor anxiety left in her usual fast talking. Kenobi followed Rooh's traces in the sand. According to his expectations, she had not gone far with the rest of the rat's pack not having appeared, yet. He was able to calm her down and approach her with a few soothing words. Not far in the distance, he could see a bend of the dried out riverbed. Shortly afterwards, he exchanged throwing practices with Teeka. He was holding her pipe in hand while she was digging out the other foot with his folding spade and swearing mildly in the progress once. Hence standing on the solid bank again, Kenobi offered her his water skin and she took a gulp, returning it with a "Thank you" in Jawa Trade Talk and a scrutinizing gaze.
Kenobi sacrificed a small cloth and a long stripe from his already torn blanket. With the small one and some water he cleaned Teeka's wound. Then he bandaged the arm with the stripe.
"You won't tell anybody what happened and what you saw, will you?" He waited for a reaction of the Jawa and got a short-spoken "Okay".
"I helped you to fight off this beast, but you won't tell your kin how. In turn your dilemma" he nodded towards the pipe and the folding spade lying beside them on the ground now, "will also remain a secret." Teeka broke the eye contact to look embarrassingly down to the two tools.
Kenobi insisted: "Do we have a deal here, Teeka?" It took her a moment, than Teeka's head came up again and she met eyes. She nodded. "Deal", she said in her own trading tongue.
"Good. So where did it start? Let's fix things quickly before a whole pack might arrive."
Teeka nodded again and pointed a thirty degree angle variation from Rooh's prior fleeing route. It seemed not far away from the river bend he had seen previously.
While picking the tools, Kenobi let Rooh drink a few gulps of the brackish water puddles on the rim that caused the quicksand problem. Teeka made use of the time to retain some of the meat by cutting out the rat's hind leg with a steel knife from her belt.
"Are you trying to attract us problems? What are you …", he was interrupted by her mumbling something about "waste of resources" and "on our way".
Now it was Kenobi's turn to half-choke a swearword. The damage was already done, blood streaking into the sand, dying it dark.
Teeka produced a leather pouch from a fold of her robe, sticking the meat joint into it and leaving the foot and its still dangerously sharp claws protruding out above.
Rooh shied away from the stench and Kenobi was glad to hold Rooh's reigns to control their withdrawal from the scenery. "Please turn it over to set limits to its flush."
"I could need a helping hand for that."
Kenobi sighed and made sure to secure Rooh's reigns on a bigger stone in visual range and out of the direction of the wind, as well as not stepping into or taking hold on blood during his help. For Rooh's sake to be on the safe side, the two of them rubbed their hands with unspoiled sand afterwards.
Soon Kenobi rode Rooh's back in the direction of where Teeka had pointed for her trading speeder and paid attention to stay lee. Teeka maundered on foot behind them, carrying the darkening leather bag with caution. They arrived there without an incident. The speeder parked by the bend of the empty river. It did not only feature the common scrap and spare parts, but also a little pile of black melons. A repulsor cannon lay a bit beside of it. A few steps away a whole was dug up which showed two half-appearing gourd-like black melons, too.
Teeka cheered to see her belongings untouched in her absence. She swung her bag into a box of the storage space and came up with a black melon in each hand. With an intense look of her yellow eyes, she offered Kenobi one of them.
Knowing what droughts meant to the locals from Tattooine, Kenobi could not refuse to drink its content. In return, the situation gave him the opportunity to ask her for a cover pad and a new fleece for his evaporator. He was not disappointed, as Teeka resumed her habit of not missing a good exchange. Kenobi haggled his way to become the new owner of the cover pad, but she had no fleece to offer him.
[FYI: For all who wonder if one is able to dig oneself out of quicksand, here is a part of a German documentary of a public television channel to support the possibility: Dirk Steffens in quicksand/ Dirk Steffens im Treibsand: watch?v=1A6kS40DVtQ.]
-Part 5 -
At the same time the boy in question had finished his first breakfast and tried to steal himself back to his room while his aunt and uncle are discussing the farming issues of the day. To his surprise, the two of them totally skipped yesterday's topic of the peril in town
"Luke, what about your completion of exercises which you have to submit?"
"So much of getting away", Luke thought. He halted reluctantly to answer: "I'm working on it."
"No fiddling around on techniques before you have finished", she continued.
"Mh, yes, aunt Beru". He could see a reason to finish his homework before the heat of the day started to pester, yet it was not a reasoning that he liked. There where more interesting things to explore than learning the propagation of plants and writing a summary about it. For now, he pretended to give in and went to his room. For some time, Luke heard the couple converse in lowered voices. Suddenly the boy understood a clear "Be careful, Beru. I love you" and "I love you, too" from his aunt before his uncle left. Afterwards, the usual noises of his aunt tidying up the kitchen were audible while Luke was working. Then the shredding machine started to rattle and he knew it was her grating vegetables to prepare them for fermenting.
One of the probot-droids' transmitted pictures clearly showed a nearly severed womp rat with the striking burns of a lightsaber. "Kenobi. I am sure it was him", Reva exclaimed in the solitariness of her room. "Where are you, Kenobi? I am not the one who wants to fight you. I want to find you. You are close, I am sure of it." Then she stopped short. "Why was there so much blood on the carcass when the lightsaber wound was clearly cauterized?" She wanted to take a closer look and gave the droid the order to zoom in. There it was. The carcass had been turned over. Now she could see that the right hind leg was missing and the left hip covered a good part of the clean cuts, which were obviously made by a sharp metal knife. Suddenly a rumble was transmitted, interference, a black picture. Anyway, she had seen enough.
Arriving at Anchorhead, Beru not only saw stormtroopers patrolling, but also fulfilling a gruesome task of removing a decaying corpse of a young man from the entrance arch. The town had been busy, yet, and she pondered if Owen's murmured statement of the local Jedi's hunt had come to a lethal end. She carefully drove to the guarded parking lot to not arouse any unjustified suspicion.
Today it was Beru visiting the scrap trade shop in Anchorhead in need of a new drive belt for her shredding machine. The problem was that the shop's owner could only produce examples of too much width so far. Now he buried his head in a big crate and speaking to her all the while he was rummaging and ransacking: "Yeah know, there should be a smaller one around here. Dun-not know, after some time if it's still flexible … The heat, you know." He stopped and turned to her, hands still empty, and he came so close as to be able to whisper in her ear: "We are secretively collecting for Esha. Want to donate, too? You know, to support and afford her a prosthesis when the threat of those inquisitive people is gone. She has mouths to feed. Your husband saw it happening, you know." He turned his head to lock eyes with her until it was almost unbearable.
"Well, will you send me a message if you find a suitable one, won't you? And for the time being", she paused as having to re-think over the matter, "concerning your request, this is all we can do at the moment" and reached into her bag to hand over a decent amount of credits.
As soon as the money vanished into his pockets, the two of them heard the rising volume of unrest from outside and stepped to the wall beside the window to look out in a partly protected way.
A woman completely dressed in black and with braided hair demanded attention from the gathered crowd. Beru foreshadowed nothing good from remembering Owen's description.
Beru witnessed that the woman in black halted before Tumo Haspen, a brewer and tenant of a small bar, and shouted at him: "There is evidence of even an other Jedi having been around here lately and you know it." She turned her head to the others in a circle to continue: "Some of you must know a lot more about this matter and I want to know who of you and what specifically." Her gaze returned to Tumo again and reached to her belt to activate the red light of a semicircular weapon. "So you, will you tell me?"
Reva stopped the red light of the blade at the rapid pulsing cervical artery of a male civilian.
"Nothing, nothing, but…" he stuttered.
"But what?" she insisted.
"The son of … of BeBeru's sister …"
"I am listening …" Reva emphasized every word, the weapon still humming asynchronously with his blood circulation.
"… was… was taken a-a-way to the Jedi temple a-a-as a child, a-away from slavery."
"You mean the wife of Owen Lars at Lars' homestead?"
Beru could not blame Tumo Haspen for his betrayal for all what happened in town the last days.
The brewer only nodded to her inquiry and with an ironic "Thank you" the woman deactivated her lightsaber and turned to go. Just to be confronted with a joining of another high-ranked male humanoid dressed in black.
However, this was something Beru did not waited for to see and moved away from their viewing point of the open window of the shop. "Don't", the shop owner whispered into Beru's ear. She ignored his warning, already on her way to make it home, avoiding stormtroopers by slipping through alleyways or calmly walked them by in an engaged way to reach the parking lot. She did not leave in their converted biogas-speeder without having paid the guard and exchanged a few words of small talk, including Beru's hushed mentioning of the present gathering of the forecourt of the town square, warning her of reprisals, though she had nowhere to go for hiding.
The ten-year-old Luke had taken a first pause by drinking a glass of blue Bantha milk in the kitchen. His aunt had informed him that she was gone to town and uncle Owen checked the perimeter and its evaporators. For once Luke wished for being with him to busy his mind and hands, to have him for company. Luke was concerned about Beru's purchase in Anchorhead, although their regular life had to continue in its routine. This routine had also been interrupted by a broken preserving tool and the need to buy supplies. While reading and learning on his screen and writing on his tablet, time passed by slowly with the rise of the heat, even perceptible in the underground and acclimatized room of his. Luke dared not to change up the air-conditioning to not overburden the whole electrical farm system. He was fed up and had the pressing urge to move himself before he could be productive to think again, before the climax of the heat at midday. So unnoticed, he was able to slip away and pondered to run to his favorite rock formation. "For the danger of sensitive beings is in town", so he thought, "not here in the vast open desert of sand and rocks. Didn't uncle Owen say that getting out was an option? Well, …" and he enjoyed being able to stretch his muscles, heading at full speed for his aim.
A quiet ring came from his wrist and Ben checked his ComLink. He mumbled to himself: "There is trouble."
Teeka looked up and fast-talked in Jawa Trade Talk: "What? A rat again? I see noth…".
"I have to go quickly". He started to approach Rooh.
"Leave it tied up for a bit, its a creature of the desert. That'll be faster", and she pointed to her speeder nearby.
Ben nodded. "Alright, thanks". They jumped in and headed off. Teeka drove while he told her their destination and why he knew.