Star Wars - Kenobi

Star Wars - Kenobi Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Star Wars - Kenobi Read Online Free PDF
Author: John Jackson Miller
one of the luncheonette tables, cleaning it off without looking at it. “See, Dannar had it figured. Anyone can stay away for a while. Until they remember that it’s thirty kilometers to the nearest working keg. Then they never want to leave.”
    “I’ve noticed,” Leelee said, stacking packages. “That was shorter than your usual go-around with Erbaly. Something biting you?”
    “No.”
    Carting the breakfast dishes behind the counter, Annileen knew that wasn’t true. But what she’d told her friend about Dannar’s Claim certainly was. The place was the largest facility of any kind in the Pika Oasis. Two of the domes had been there since before anyone could remember, part of some ancient farm. Annileen’s late husband Dannar had added on, connecting one of the domes with a new oblong sales area beneath a rounded roof. The dome behind now constituted her family’s living quarters and guesthouse.
    The main building had been Annileen’s domain for the balance of her thirty-seven years—and in that time she’d crammed an amount of commerce that defied all geometry into the limited space. Visitors encountered rows of shelves as they entered, all angled so Annileen could see down the aisles from behind her counter that ran nearly the length of the eastern wall. But most patrons usually headed past the sundries for the rear of the main room. There, near where the far end of Annileen’s counter terminated in a bar, a food preparation area sat near eight cramped dining tables. Every day, Annileen fed and fortified half the workers living near the oasis, not necessarily in that order.
    This was her roost, but the complex went on from there. Northwest of the main store was the first garage Dannar had built to service the vehicles of oasis prospectors; it had been expanded many times since, as local mechanics rented bays. To the north and east sat a livestock area, where the few surviving animals from Annileen’s father’s failed ranch had formed the basis for a thriving livery, serving those daring fools who preferred the reptilian dewbacks to landspeeders.
    And all around: the oasis, a wide clearing shielded from the wind by gently rolling sand hills. Once a basin for a prehistoric lake, the area and its clumpy soil gave rise to flowering pika plants and a few hardy deb-deb trees—and something else. Orrin Gault’s newfangled cylindrical vaporators rose all around, producing water for delivery in the vast tankers that sat parked outside the Claim’s garages. Most of the harvest was bound for faraway parts; the locals drank what they needed and little more. They knew what they had, and its value.
    Though gifted at water prospecting, Dannar had never taken much interest in moisture farming. He’d reasoned that a store would weather the bad-harvest years better, and that had mostly turned out to be true. But he’d left his widow with so many secondary businesses under one roof that Annileen feared taking a day off, lest Tatooine’s rural economy collapse.
    She’d held up okay, or so she thought every once in a while, when she caught her reflection in the glassware in the sink. Annileen could even recognize herself on occasion. The auburn hair of her youth, which she wore tied back, was going to brown, not gray; so far so good. Inside work had never fully met with her approval, but it had kept her skin rosy rather than roasted.
    And Annileen’s eyes were about the only truly green thing on the whole planet, if you didn’t count dewbacks or Rodian barflies. Counting dewbacks was now her daughter’s job, anyway. Looking out the square window, Annileen could see Kallie, blond and determined, trying to teach the dewback yearlings some manners before they realized they had the muscle to tear the fencing apart at will.
    At least Kallie wasn’t messing with Snit, Annileen saw to her relief. The creature wasn’t of the cannibal breed; Annileen wouldn’t have let one of those near the compound. But Snit had been
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Downward to the Earth

Robert Silverberg

Pray for Silence

Linda Castillo

Jack Higgins

Night Judgement at Sinos

Children of the Dust

Louise Lawrence

The Journey Back

Johanna Reiss

new poems

Tadeusz Rozewicz

A Season of Secrets

Margaret Pemberton