Star Wars - A New Hope - The Life of Luke Skywalker Page 7

  Biggs Darklighter turned with a broad grin on his face. He threw his arms around Luke, who exclaimed, “Hey! I didn’t know you were back! When did you get in?”

  “Just now!” Biggs said, beaming as he stepped back to look at Luke. “I never expected you to be out working!”

  They both laughed at this. Luke didn’t notice any obvious change in Biggs’s appearance, so he said, “The Academy didn’t change you much. . . . Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a battle going on! Right here in our system. Come and look!”

  Hearing Luke mention a battle, Deak groaned, “Not again! Forget it!”

  Windy said, “Hey, what’s all the noise about?”

  As Briggs left the computer console, Deak pointed to him and said, “Did you come back down here to play the game?”

  Luke ignored Deak and Windy and headed for the exit with Biggs right behind him. As Fixer and Camie followed them out, Camie muttered, “I think Wormie’s caught too much sun.”

  Luke led the others onto the elevated terrace that wrapped around the station. While Fixer and Camie raised their hands to shield their eyes from the sun, Luke trained his macrobinoculars high into the sky and resighted the pinpoints of light. “There they are!” he said, then quickly handed the macrobinoculars to Biggs.

  “Let’s see,” Biggs said. He craned his neck back and gazed up through the powerful lenses. A moment later, he said, “That’s no battle, hotshot. . . they’re just sitting there!” Handing the macrobinoculars back to Luke, he added, “Probably a freighter-tanker refueling.”

  “But there was a lot of firing earlier,” Luke said. He was about to look through his macrobinoculars again when Camie snatched them from his hand. Annoyed, Luke said, “Hey!”

  While Camie looked through the macrobinoculars, Riggs said, “I tell you, Luke, the Rebellion is a long way from here. This planet. . . ?“ He shrugged. “Big hunk of nothing.”

  Fixer added, “I doubt the Empire would even fight to save this system.”

  Biggs headed back into the station with Fixer right behind him. Camie lowered the macrobinoculars and casually tossed the expensive device to Luke. Luke reached fast to catch them, but they nearly slipped from his fingers. Glaring at Camie, he snapped, “You watch it!”

  As Camie walked back inside, Luke cast another glance upward and thought, I know it was a battle. I’m sure of it!

  * * *

  Later, after getting some drinks at Tosche Station’s small cantina, Luke and Biggs walked outside. Luke was just finishing his account of his most recent race at Beggar’s Canyon.

  “So I cut my power,” Luke said, “shut down the afterburners. . . . I was so close, I thought I was going to fry my instruments. As it was, I busted up the skyhopper pretty bad. Uncle Owen? Furious! He wound up grounding me for the rest of the season.” He chucked Biggs on the shoulder. “You should have been there! It was fantastic!”

  “You ought to take it a little easy, Luke,” Biggs said. “You may be the hottest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley, but those little skyhoppers are dangerous. Keep it up, one day. . . whammo! You’re gonna end up a dark spot on the down side of a canyon wall.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Luke said, grinning. “You’ve been hanging around the starfleet so long you’re beginning to sound like my uncle. You know, you’re getting a little soft in the city. . .

  Biggs gave Luke a playful shove. “I’ve missed you kid.”

  “Yeah, well, things haven’t been the same without you, Biggs.” Luke kicked at the ground. “It’s been so quiet.”

  Biggs glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one else was in earshot, then said, “Luke, I didn’t come back just for a visit.” He looked at the ground for a moment, then lifted his gaze to Luke. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re the only one I can trust. See, I may never come back, and I just want someone to know.”

  Luke just stood there, looking at Biggs, wondering what had brought on his friend’s sudden seriousness. Confused and alarmed, he Said, “What are you talking about?”

  Biggs threw another cautious glance over his shoulder, then looked back at Luke. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “I made some friends at the Academy. When our frigate leaves for one of the central systems, I’m gonna jump ship and join the Alliance.”

  Luke was stunned. “The Rebellion?”

  Biggs gripped Luke’s arm. “Quiet down, will ya? You got a mouth bigger than a meteor crater!”

  “I’m quiet, I’m quiet,” Luke said, recovering fast and lowering his voice to a rushed whisper. “Listen how quiet I am. You can barely hear me.”

  Biggs grinned and shook his head before he continued. “My friend has a friend on Bestine who might help us make contact.”

  “You’re crazy,” Luke said. “You could wander around forever trying to find them.”

  Biggs walked off with Luke in tow. “I know it’s a long shot,” Biggs said, raising his voice. “But if I don’t find them, I’ll do what I can on my own.” Then he stopped to face his friend and said, “It’s what we always talked about, Luke. I’m not going to wait around for the Empire to draft me into service. The Rebellion is spreading, and I want to be on the side I believe in.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “Meanwhile, I’m stuck here.” He started to shuffle off. Biggs followed.

  “You’ll get your chance to get off this rock,” Biggs said. “You’re going to the Academy next term, aren’t you?”

  “Not likely,” Luke said. “I had to cancel my application.”

  “What for?”

  “My uncle needs me.”

  Having heard that excuse too many times, Biggs groaned and rolled his eyes.

  “No, I’m serious!” Luke said. “The Sand People have been getting really crazy. They’ve even raided the Outskirts of Anchorhead!”

  “Come on, Luke,” Biggs said. “Your uncle could hold off a whole colony of Sand People with one blaster.”

  Luke glowered. “I know. But we’ve almost got enough vaporators to make the place pay off. I have to stay one more season. I can’t leave him now.”

  “What good’s all your uncle’s work if the Empire takes it over?” Biggs said. “You know they’ve already started to nationalize commerce in the central systems? It won’t be long before your uncle’s just a tenant, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire.”

  “No, that’s not gonna happen here,” Luke said. “You said yourself, the Empire won’t even mess with this old rock.”

  “Things can change.”

  “I wish I was going,” Luke said sullenly. “Are you going to be around long?”

  Biggs shook his head. “No. I’m leaving in the morning.”

  “Then I guess I won’t see you.”

  “Maybe someday,” Biggs said. He clapped Luke on the back. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. Then he brightened and said, “I’ll be at the Academy soon enough. . . and then, who knows? I won’t be drafted into the Imperial Starfleet, that’s for sure.” He extended his hand to Biggs. “Well, take it easy, buddy,” he said as they shook hands. “You’ll always be the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “So long, Luke,” Biggs said. Then he walked off, his cape flapping at his back.

  Watching Biggs walk away, Luke wondered if it might indeed be the last time he’d ever see his friend. He also wondered if he really ever would make it off Tatooine.

  * * *

  The day after Luke witnessed the orbital space battle through his macrobinoculars, a group of Jawa merchants sold two droids to Owen Lars. One of the droids, an astromech unit named R2-D2, carried a secret message for someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  And Luke Skywalker’s life was forever changed.

  INTERLUDE

  “Excuse me, Master Luke,” C-3PO said as he and R2-D2 entered Luke’s quarters on the New Hope. “Would you know where I might find Captain Solo? He told me to wait for him in the main galley. I waited, but. . . he never arrived. I’m afraid I can’t find him
anywhere.”

  “I don’t know why he wanted you to wait there,” Luke said, “but Han and Chewie are delivering supplies to some allies in the Outer Rim. They left in the Falcon over an hour ago.”

  “Left!” C-3PO said indignantly.

  R2-D2 emitted a string of blurting beeps.

  C-3PO glanced at the astromech beside him and said, “You don’t have to tell me ‘I told you so!” The golden droid shook his head with dismay. “Sometimes, I get the distinct impression that Captain Solo deliberately misleads me. Come along, Artoo.”

  As the two droids made their exit, Luke grinned. Although he had come to regard C-3PO and R2-D2 as valued friends, he recalled that he hadn’t been very impressed when he‘d first met them on Tatooine. At the time, he’d been more interested in the prospect of getting some power converters at Tosche Station. But his view of them had changed when he’d learned of their escape from a Rebel Alliance ship, and then R2-D2 had projected a fragment of a holographic message from an imperiled princess.

  Luke would never forget the swift series of events that had followed…

  His reunion with Ben Kenobi in the Junland Wastes, and his first awareness of the Force.

  His horrific discovery of the charred remains of Owen and Beru, slain by Imperial stormtroopers who had been searching for the fugitive droids.

  Meeting Han Solo and Chewbacca at Mos Eisley Spaceport, and escaping into space on the Millennium Falcon.

  The realization that the Empire had obliterated the planet Alderaan.

  The rescue of Princess Leia, and the death of Ben Kenobi on the Death Star.

  The battle at Yavin, which had taken the lives of so many Rebel pilots, including Biggs Darklighter, shot down by Darth Vader in the Death Star’s trench. . .

  Over the course of just several fateful days, Luke had gained new allies and a sense of purpose. He had been transformed from a Tatooine farmboy into an enemy of the Empire and a hero of the Rebellion. But as he thought of Ben, Owen, Beru, and Biggs, he lowered his head sadly. He still had a hard time believing they were gone.

  Granted, he hadn’t entirely lost Ben. The Jedi had become one with the Force, and he endured as a spiritual entity who materialized infrequently. Although Luke could never predict when Ben’s spirit might contact him, he sometimes sensed the Jedi‘s presence through the Force.

  In the aftermath of the battle at Yavin, Luke had gone on several secret missions. On an assignment to infiltrate an Imperial base on Kalist VI, he was surprised to be reunited with his childhood friend Tank, who was by then a lieutenant in the Imperial Army. Although Tank had embraced the ideals of the Empire and attempted to turn Luke over to Darth Vader, he ultimately helped Luke save Leia during an Imperial attack.

  While investigating a report of a new Imperial Superweapon at the Starship Yards of Fondor, Luke met a lovely young woman, Tanith Shire, who worked as a supply-tug operator. The superweapon turned out to be an immense Star Destroyer that would eventually be used as Darth Vader’s personal flagship, and Tanith helped Luke escape a trap that Vader had set for him. He and Tanith had parted with a kiss at a spaceport on the planet Kabal.

  Once he’d returned to Yavin 4, Luke fought a hulking humanoid monster that he and other Rebels had come to call the Night Beast after it had made a series of nocturnal attacks. Impervious to blasterfire, the Night Beast turned out to be the long-dormant guardian of the Massassi, the original inhabitants of the ancient temple that the Alliance had transformed into their command headquarters. Fortunately, Luke had been able to use the Force to reach out and calm the creature. The Night Beast was placed on a Rebel transport so that it might deliver him to a reunion with the descendents of the Massassi.

  Not long after that incident, a wounded Rebel agent returned from a mission to Aridus, which was how Luke had first learned of the desert planet that the New Hope currently orbited. According to the agent, an old man wielding a lightsaber had saved him from a squad of stormtroopers, and his rescuer had identified him as Ben Kenobi. C-3PO had traveled with Luke in a small smuggling ship to Aridus, where they’d soon discovered that “Kenobi” was really an actor hired by Darth Vader to lure Luke into yet another trap.

  Luke wondered, Was Vader trying to capture me because he sensed I was the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, or did he know even then that I was his son? Luke sighed. He doubted he would ever learn the answers to even half the questions he had about his father.

  Luke’s quarters had a small viewport, and he gazed through it to see Aridus. He recalled how he and C-3PO had left the planet on their smuggling ship but almost immediately found themselves in unknown, and even more dangerous, territory…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ““We’re in trouble, Threepio,” Luke said, surveying the dead control console in their ship’s cockpit. “Anything those Imperials we escaped didn’t knock out, this crash has. No communicator, no power… no heat.”

  Luke and C-3PO had barely managed to flee Aridus in their ship before a squadron of Imperial TIE fighters sighted them and opened fire. Their ship had taken a severe pounding, but Luke had evaded the fighters by flying into the slipstream of a passing comet. The comet had carried them far across space at an incredible speed until it had entered a near collision course with an immense ice world in a star system that wasn’t even on most galactic charts. The planet’s gravitational pull had caused the comet to fragment before impact, but it had still taken all of Luke’s piloting skills to make a crash landing.

  Now the ship rested in a snow-filled valley beneath rocky cliffs. It was bad enough that Luke didn’t know where they were and the engines were damaged beyond repair, but there wasn’t any way to summon help either. He couldn’t expect Princess Leia or anyone else at Rebel headquarters to find him. The other Rebels probably thought he was still on Aridus. They would never be able to trace his haphazard journey to the ice world.

  He glanced out the viewport and saw a massive wall of dark clouds approaching over the frozen terrain. Stepping past C-3PO, he opened the ship’s emergency locker and was relieved to find that it was stocked with insulated clothes and cold-weather survival equipment. C-3PO said, “Sir, my sensors indicate a steady and rapid decline in temperature. Night is approaching, I fear.”

  “More than night, Threepio,” Luke said as pulled on a thermal jacket. “Look on the horizon. We’ve got a blizzard coming our way. . . fast.”

  C-3PO peered out the viewport while Luke tugged a snug hat over his head. Luke half expected the usually nervous droid to start trembling at the sight of the incoming storm, but C-3PO said in a reassuring tone, “Even wrecked, the ship is some shelter, Master Luke. Surely, with your thermal gear, you can weather whatever this dreadful ice world hurls at us.”

  “We’ll find out soon, Threepio,” Luke said. Although he had various regrets about his mission to Aridus, he had not been greatly bothered by the torrid climate that was so similar to Tatooine’s. On the ice planet, warmth existed only as a memory.

  He placed an emergency heat capsule in a small cylindrical furnace, set the device on the floor, and hunkered down beside it. Even with the thermal clothes on, he was colder than he’d ever been in his life.

  * * *

  “We could be much worse off, sir,” C-3PO said, trying to sound cheery despite the storm that raged outside. “Suppose the comet had actually struck this miserable snowball of a world instead of narrowly missing it.”Gazing out the viewport at the snow that had already almost completely covered their ship, he added, “And it’s certainly the last place the Empire would look for anyone. Correct, Master Luke?”

  C-3PO turned to face Luke, who remained seated beside the small furnace. Luke shivered as he stared at the furnace’s dimming light. “Th-this is our last heat. . . emergency heat capsule,” he stammered. “After it goes. . . don’t know. . . h-how much longer.. I’ll be around, Threepio.” Without knowing why, he lowered one trembling hand to his side to touch his lightsaber. He realized he felt some comfort just knowing t
hat it was still clipped to his belt.

  My father’s lightsaber.

  C-3PO was silent for a moment, then said, “The extreme cold must be playing havoc with my sensor circuitry I could swear I detected something moving outside! Perhaps you should take a look, Master Luke. . . ?“

  Luke slumped and collapsed on the floor beside the exhausted furnace.

  * * *

  He awoke to the sound of unfamiliar voices, and the smell and texture of oily fur against his face. He was still in his thermal clothes, his body draped over the body of a large creature. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious or where he was, except that he was no longer in the ship.