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There’s an old man out in the desert they say, who grows old before his time.
Mara(1) didn’t believe the stories. Or well, she did believe there was some crazy old man who’d decided to set himself up at the absolute edge of civilization, that wasn’t anything special. What Mara didn’t believe were the stories that he could somehow short out the bomb implants that singers didn’t dare to try, that he sometimes showed up in the night with a warning that Depur was planning to put someone up for auction, that he could summon a sandstorm and speak with Leia.
Mara didn’t believe the stories, but as she clung to Darasi(2), tucking her face against Darasi’s back to protect it from windborn sand, as the speeder bike headed deeper and deeper into the desert, she couldn’t help but hope that Old Ben did exist, that he could do something to help.
Mara kept the deadman’s switch for her explosive chip on her lap. Her hand was cramping from keeping the button down, and her thumb felt almost numb. She was terrified that at any moment the speeder bike would go over some bump the repulsors couldn’t compensate for, and that her thumb would slip.
Dukkra ba dukkra, but Mara didn’t want to die . She admired Tena, but she didn’t want to be her.
Mara shifted her weight with Darasi as she learned around a corner. The sound of the wind changed, pulling in closer and whistling higher. And then, all too soon Darasi was slowing down to a gentle stop. The final deceleration was gentle, barely rocking Mara.
Mara finally lifted her face from Darasi’s shoulder to glance around the canyon.
“Time to get off. You first,” Darasi said, pushing her goggles up and unwinding the scarf she’d wrapped around her face.
Mara sat up a little more and swung one leg over the back of the speeder bike. She wobbled a little, but didn’t get close to loosing her balance.
Darasi’s dismount off the speeder bike was a thing of elegance, and she didn’t look at Mara as she walked over to the door set into the canyon wall.
“Old man!” she called as she rapped the door with her knuckles.
There’s a long moment of silence before there’s the sound of a bolt being thrown, and the door creaks open.
“Is that my water?” the old man on the other side asks in a high, wavering voice. “I know the boys as the station said -”
“Ben! Chelii.”
The old man straightened, blue eyes focusing past Darasi.
“I don’t know why you put on that act,” Darasi said. “You must have known I was coming.”
“I am not actually omniscient, my dear,” Old Ben said, stepping out of the doorway and gesturing for the pair to come in. “What if you had been accompanied?”
Mara followed Darasi into the cave, and Old Ben closed the door behind them as she glanced around. The cave was . . . well, there were bits and pieces of what Mara recognized as old Tatooine artifacts(3), the type you could occasionally find in the deep caves and ancient mines. One had a symbol that the Grandmother of the quarters had told Mara the ancient people of Tatooine used for Ar-Amu.
It was very, well. Mostly it was boring. It was a boring home for a boring old man.
Mara’s opinion of Old Ben slipped. All the fuss about the wizard hermit in the desert for this? A sad old man?
The door closed behind Old Ben.
When he turned, there was none of the amusement that had been on his face when he greeted Darasi.
“Alright, what do you need?”
“She’s got a deadman’s switch she’s actively holding right now,” Darasi said.
Old Ben frowned as he sat down at the small round table. He felt under the edge of the table and there were a couple clicking sounds, like buttons being pressed or switches flipped. There was a pause where Old Ben glanced up at Mara with a thoughtful look, then a couple more clicks.
“Could you step closer young one? I think I’ve gotten the encryption and frequency correct, but but best to make sure the signal is as clear as it can be. It’s better not to take chaces with bombs.”
Mara’s gaze darted from Old Ben to Darasi, then back. “. . . ah?”
“Ben’s got top of the line jamming, interference, and repeater equipment. You need anything with a signal and he can figure something out,” Darasi said, uncrossing her arms as the tense lines around her eyes relaxed. “He can’t necessarily break any encryption, but he’s fairly good at that too. Go on.”
Mara blinked, then shuffled forwards awkwardly, holding out the hard she had clenched on the deadman’s trigger.
He’d really been able to just . . . do that? Mara wasn’t exactly an expert in how slave chips worked, but she knew that they were complicated. She’d heard that a couple decades ago someone had been trying to make a small, portable scanner to help singers find explosive chips in the body. They’d managed to make a scanner that would find one brand based off of . . . something that always went over Mara’s head, but something about what signal there was and how it interacts with the detonator meant that if you wanted to make a signal based scanner, you would have to make one for almost every type of every chip that every brand put out.
Mara was reluctantly impressed. She still didn’t think that Old Ben could really summon a sandstorm or speak with Leia, but his jamming equipment was the sort of thing that she could see the rumors that he could short out implants growing out of. And if he had top of the line interception equipment, he’d probably intercepted messages between Depuran about selling their slaves.
It’s also pretty clear that whatever help Old Ben provides to Amavikka is incidental - no one has that kind of equipment without a reason to use it.
Old Ben glanced over the trigger in Mara’s hand, humming a little and pressing his thumb over hers to keep the button down as he gently moved her fingers to examine it.
“No disarming switch,” he murmured. He touched something on the underside of his table, and the surface flipped up to reveal a screen. Mara glanced at the incomprehensible Basic on the screen for only a moment before she glanced back at Old Ben’s face as he tapped a few more buttons on the underside of the table, watching something on the screen, then nodded in satisfaction.
“You can let go now darling, I’m sure I’ve got the signal locked.”
For a moment Mara couldn’t relax her fingers. Then the trigger clattered to the table, and Mara winced, clutching her hand to her chest as her fingers spasmed now that they were no longer clutching the deadman’s switch for dear life.
“Alright my dear,” Old Ben said absently as he flicked his fingers at the information the the screen. “Now that no one’s going to die if there’s a wrong move, are introductions safe?”
“M - muh -” Mara grimaced and licked her lips. “Mah-rrrrrr-ruh.”
“This is Mara Redbird,” Darasi said, taking a half step forwards. “She has trouble talking, but she’s not slow or anything, she can understand us perfectly fine.”
“A pleasure to meet you dear,” Old Ben said, glancing up from the screen to give Mara a smile. The slight crows feet at the corners of his blue eyes deepened. “I’m Ben Kenobi. I’m sure you’ve heard of me referred to as Old Ben, and that’s quite alright. I’ve also been told I answer to anyone thinking about me.”
“Tuh- suh - ssssaa.” Mara huffed in frustration and glanced at Darasi, signing Thanks .
“She says thank you,” Darasi translated.
“You are welcome,” Old Ben said warmly. He turned to Darasi. “You’ll need to bring the singer here. I don’t think that I can short out this model of chip without also activating the explosive, and the signal’s complicated enough that I don’t think I can get interfere with it on something portable.”
“Right.” Darasi nodded. “Can I use your comm?”
“Right over there,” Old Ben said, absently pointing as he manipulated the screen, then sat back. “And Mara, please feel free to sit down.”
Mara became abruptly aware that she was shaking. Her knees felt weak, practically collapsing out from under her as she sat down very abruptly on the chair next to the round table. She was alive. She was - oh, there was still the surgery coming, and she knew that her chip was in a dangerous location, that the surgery was dangerous, and then there was always the chance of complications. But Mara was alive, and she wasn’t going die in the next few minutes just because her thumb twitched on the trigger.
For a long time, Mara just drifted, watching hazily as Old Ben meditated.
Then Mara blinked, and suddenly the singer was there in Old Ben’s cave, the floor had been cleared for the operation, and she was stripping her clothes off and laying back. Mara bit into the ginsu root as Darasi pressed it between her teeth. Old Ben settled on the side the singer wasn’t on to hold Mara’s hand. Darasi settled at Mara’s head, pulling her other arm up so it was out of the singer’s way, and grabbing her other hand.
Darasi wound her scarf back around her face, and Old Ben and the singer pulled on cloth face masks as the singer started humming and setting their tools on a tray to their side. The singer poured the disinfectant solution into a small tub and paused in their humming to meet Mara’s eyes.
“I’m going to start now. Nod if you’re ready.”
Mara blinked away tears, squeezed Old Ben and Darasi’s hands, and nodded.
The singer started humming again, and then I heard the wet sound of their lips parting before they started to sing.
()
“Dukkra ba Dukkra to myself I said, You can kill me but I will not be dead, I will shed my shape and take to the sky-”
Darasi gently pulled the ginsu root from between Mara’s teeth, setting it to the side.
“You cannot kill me, Ekkreth cannot die,” the singer finished, and the sudden silence after so many songs, and after her own moans and screams, felt deafening.
Mara let out a weak moan, every pant tugging at the stiched up wound below her ribs.
“How is she?” Darasi asked.
“The surgery went well,” the singer said, washing their tools in the disinfectant solution, “better than I expected given the location of her implant.”
Mara listened to them talk over her head, going over the instructions Mara needed to follow to recover. She hoped that Darasi was memorizing them, because her attention kept drifting before she managed to pull it back.
()
Mara stayed with Old Ben for a week after her surgery. Darasi had left with the singer, but she came back at the end of the week with a proper speeder.
Darasi and Old Ben helped Mara lay down on the bench seat in back, then Old Ben joined Darasi in the front.
“The ride might get a little bumpy,” Darasi said as she pulled out of the canyon. “Someone spread a rumor about an escaped slave around this region, and the slave catchers are out combing the area.”
“Not to worry my dear,” Old Ben said, lifting the shotgun in the footwell to hold. “I can cover us no matter what happens.”
“Good,” Darasi said as they accelerated across the sand and scrub. “Mara, I don’t want you fighting, but worst comes to worst, there’s a blaster pistol and vibroblade tucked under your seat.”
“Gu- gu- god- ot odid,” Mara said, her hand slipping down the feel for the hilt.
The first hour passed without incident, but partway through the second hour, Old Ben made a sound and unbuckled his seatbelt to stand so he could prop the barrel of the shotgun on top of the speeder’s transparisteel windshield.
“Problem?” Darasi asked as she reached out to the center console to flick a button, making a shield snap into place over the open top of the speeder. The shield had odd caustic patterns like the kind Mara had sometimes seen in the light reflected off of the water bowls Jabba the Hutt kept his snacks in, but it hummed steadily and didn’t seem to have any problems parting around Old Ben.
“We’re coming up on company,” Old Ben said, swinging the shotgun around to prop it on the back of his seat.
Mara’s hand dropped down beneath the bench seat to grab the vibroblade again. Her stomach lurched as they crested the top of a dune, and then Darasi cursed and Mara grunted when trying to brace against the speeder’s sudden turn made the incision in her abdomen send up a flare of pain.
“Sorry Mara!” Darasi called as the sounds of yelling started up in the distance.
“How sandstorm proof would you say this speeder is?” Old Ben asked thoughtfully, his tone at odds with his razor sharp gaze as he braced himself on the back of his own seat, aiming the shotgun over Mara’s head as he shot at whoever was behind them.
“We live on Tatooine ,” Darasi yelled over the sound of blasters shooting. “It’s as sand proof as Hulu(4) could make it and then some!”
“Good,” Old Ben said, and he ducked low, tucking himself under the speeder’s rippling shielding.
“Old man!” Darari yelled, swerving to turn the speeder down the side of the sand dune. “What are you - kark!”
Mara stared in awe at the cloud of sand swirling overhead.
“Keep moving my dear,” Old Ben said, faint strain coloring his voice. “This doesn’t extend far, and I can’t keep it up for too long.”
“You - what?”
“You lot do call me the wizard hermit,” Old Ben called. “You can’t seriously be all that surprised.”
“You mad bastard,” Darasi laughed, but the speeder didn’t stop moving.
But by the time the sandstorm dissipated, and Old Ben had slumped down to sit in his seat again, there wasn’t anyone following them.
It was almost dark when Darasi pulled to a stop in the shadow of a freighter.
“Hey dancer girl, I heard they sent hunters to find you! I was wondering if you’ve make our . . . rendezvous,” the smugger leaning against the ramp’s supports said, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Feraan, you frightful fuck!” Darasi called out, vulgar in the way she only ever was when she felt safe.
Mara relaxed a hair, reassured as she listened to the pair flirt and swear and trade innuendo.
“Come on, darling,” Old Ben said, leaning over the back of his seat to offer Mara a hand. “Let’s get you up and out.”
Mara let him pull her up, letting out a grunt as the movement sent up another flare of pain from her incision.
“Here,” Old Ben said once Mara had managed to stand on the sand on her own two feet. Mara turned to see him offering something red.
Mara carefully lifted it from his palm to find that it was a spherical red crystal. Her eyes widened and the looked up at Old Ben. “Lrrrr- lrrrrruh. Poo - pooolrrr. Mmmm?”
“Yes, it is a krayt dragon’s pearl, and yes, I do want you to keep it,” Old Ben said.
“Uuuu- uuuuuaaa? Mmmmm?”
“Why you? Well,” Old Ben’s eyes went distant as he looked down at the red crystal Mara was holding, “it was given to me as a gift in good faith. But I cannot use it or treasure it for reasons that are my own.(5) But you can. And I thought, perhaps. Well. You are Mara Redbird. It seemed to fit.”
“Tuh - tsssaaah. Kh.”
“You’re welcome darling. And I hope it serves you well.”
Mara looked down at the red(6) pearl, Leia’s gift, and thought of the bedrock beneath the sand. She had survived. She would endure.
“Mara, come on!” Darasi called, and Mara tucked the krayt pearl away into a deep pocket, and carefully limped over to the ramp.
Mara stepped onto the ramp, then turned.
“Be brave,” Darasi said, holding a hand out. Mara reached out to squeeze her hand. “And don’t look back."