Revenge of the Jedi (10/17)
I have a hilariously clumsy troll over at ff.net. I was just kind of 'lolwut,' but one of my anons flipped out (and called me honey, which was somewhere between cute and inappropriate). C'est la vie.
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (10/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Luke reports to his mentors and sets out on his penultimate trial.
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Chapter Ten
Luke returned to the swamp in the middle of the night, landing his X-Wing a safe distance from the water. He peered into the darkness, just able to make out the darker smear of Yoda’s hut. Reaching out tentatively, he found Yoda deep in sleep.
Before Luke could stumble over to the hut, he caught a hint of another, fully alert presence. Adrenaline would have pumped through his veins, if he’d had any to spare.
There was a flicker of light, and Luke sighed.
“Obi-Wan,” he said, turning towards the dull glow, “I can’t -- ”
He blinked.
“Grandmother?”
“Luke,” she said, her lilting voice high and shaking, “you’re not hurt? You haven’t -- you’re fine. You’re fine.”
“Just tired,” said Luke blankly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so upset. You can show up anywhere, can’t you?”
“You were gone,” Shmi said.
“I was just on Tatooine,” he said. “It’s your home, I didn’t think -- ”
“You were gone, Luke!”
“I don’t understand,” he said, his thoughts still sluggish. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just talking with -- oh.”
She looked at him expectantly.
“Father. You can’t come near Father. I forgot.”
“You talked to Anakin,” said Shmi, the words slow and cautious, as if he might possibly be deranged. “You talked to him in person.”
“I didn’t know he’d be there!” Luke protested. “I just knew I needed to be.”
“Did he -- ” Shmi turned away, her spectral fist over her mouth. “Did he say -- ”
“I told him I’ve been talking to you,” Luke told her. “He asked me to tell you, um, hello.”
“Hello.” She made a small, stifled sound that might have been a laugh. “Forgive me. I think I need to sit down.”
“Honestly, so do I,” said Luke, and collapsed onto a stump, while Shmi carefully seated herself on a rotting log. “Sorry, I didn’t realize what it meant. But I’ve been a week coming back. Couldn’t you tell -- ”
“You were meditating or sleeping the entire time. I didn’t know if you’d nearly died, or -- ”
“No. Just resting,” he said. “It was an exhausting conversation.”
“Resting for a week?”
“It was a very exhausting conversation,” said Luke. “And I needed to meditate on . . . lots of things, but mostly the Emperor’s new project. Father told me about it.”
Her eyes widened. “Anakin betrayed the Empire to you?”
“He has some idea that if he passes information on to me, and I act on it, it isn’t really treason. I don’t know. He’s angry at the Emperor. More than usual, I guess.” Luke suppressed a yawn. “Well, I was going to ask you about it anyway. He’s been passing me information in my sleep.”
She sighed.
“And since I could tell the dreams were true, I assumed they were visions and passed them on to Leia. They were true, but they were also . . . he’s just using the Rebellion to remove his political enemies. Well, people he disapproves of, anyway.”
“I’m afraid that is Anakin’s definition of enemies,” Shmi told him, and pursed her lips. “But did the information help your friends?”
Luke stared down at his right hand, resting loosely on his thigh. The synthetic flesh was the exact same shade as his tanned skin. He wondered if his father’s were quite so high quality. Probably not. The medics had said something about recent advancements in the technology, and Anakin Skywalker had lost his hand before . . . well, before.
He sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Leia says so, anyway. They have to know about this -- but even telling them is . . . aiding and abetting Father, isn’t it?”
“Not if they know how you’re getting your information. Let your princess choose what she wants to do with it.”
“She’s not -- ” Luke shook his head. “I can’t tell her -- them -- that I’m on speaking terms with Darth Vader. Let alone that I’m his son!”
“Do they need to know that?” Shmi asked, tilting her head to the side.
Luke looked over at her, struck by the absurdity of it all. All those years he’d been a bored farmboy, longing for more, but certain that nothing more exciting than a Tusken raid could ever happen to him. Now he was a Jedi apprentice, living in a swamp, sitting across from his dead grandmother and deciding what to tell the leaders of the Rebellion about his father, Darth Vader.
Owen had always told him to be careful what he wished for. But even he couldn’t have expected anything so ludicrously improbable as this -- unless they had known. Luke didn’t think so, but --
His head ached.
“I . . . maybe not. I don’t know.” Luke lifted a hand to his temple, and then dropped it. “I don’t think I should make decisions when I’m too tired to walk in a straight line. I’ll be able to talk to you again?”
“Of course,” said Shmi, and vanished.
The next day, Luke woke to something cold and hard poking at his leg.
“Wha -- ” He opened his eyes, and Artoo beeped up at him, retracting a probe. “Hey, Artoo. Didn’t I turn you off last night?”
The droid’s response sounded suspiciously similar to a chortle. Luke laughed.
“Trivial details, right? Okay, let’s go find Yoda.” He got to his feet, wincing as his back and neck creaked into place, then wandered outdoors, Artoo whirring at his side.
Luke saw Obi-Wan before Yoda, the former’s spectral form nearly blocking the latter from view entirely. Both Jedi Masters were deep in conversation, but broke off as he approached. Yoda gave a small grunt that could have meant anything.
“Finally awake you are,” Yoda said.
“Good morning. I’m sorry -- I didn’t get back until late last night. This morning, probably.”
Luke couldn’t help but wonder if he’d always spent this much time apologizing.
“Hm! Worthwhile, was the interruption to your training?”
Obi-Wan simply looked at him expectantly.
“I . . . don’t know,” Luke said. He glanced from one to the other, then walked past them to stare down at the swamp, taking a deep breath. “I went to my uncle and aunt’s homestead. I could tell -- ” He pressed the fingers of his right hand against his mouth. After a moment, he turned around, eyes lowered and arms crossed.
“What happened, Luke?” Obi-Wan asked. They both seemed alarmed -- concerned, even.
Luke met his gaze squarely. “Father was there.”
“Vader!”
Yoda sighed. “So. Another trap, you have fallen into.”
“I don’t think I did,” Luke said, almost unconsciously digging his heels into the soggy earth. “He wouldn’t say why he came, but I think he was called, too.”
“You must be wary, Luke,” Obi-Wan told him. “Do not let yourself be fooled. Vader is a master of deceit.”
“Really?” said Luke, and fought back the accusations that rose to his lips. He lifted his cybernetic hand, instead. “This isn’t exactly the height of subtlety. As far as I can tell, he’s never even tried to deceive me. It’s all been you will turn to the Dark Side this minute, young man and I am your father and so on. Kind of straightforward. It fits with what I’ve heard of his reputation, too.” He dropped the hand. “Besides, I’ve spent the last week meditating on -- everything we talked about, and I haven’t sensed any deceit at all.”
“He is reckless still,” Yoda said thoughtfully. Luke hazarded a guess that the pronoun referred to his father, not himself -- thanks more to the lack of visible irritation than anything else.
“He’s not happy with the Emperor,” Luke said. “Or anyone, but he hates the Emperor. He says he wants me to help defeat him. I can’t, of course. Not his way. And not ours either, for -- I don’t know, years. But he . . . might not interfere much, if it comes down to that.” He lifted his head, his expression turning defiant. “No matter what he does, though, I won’t fight him. I can’t kill my own father.”
“Then the Emperor has already won,” said Obi-Wan.
Luke swallowed.
“Assassins we are not,” Yoda said, and turned his eyes to Luke. “You are not. Never will it be required of you. Only protection, of yourself, and others.”
“But the Emperor’s got to be stopped,” Luke said. “I don’t want to kill more people, but -- ”
“Stopped, yes. For this your friends fight, hmm? Many there are in your Rebellion, seeking the defeat of the Emperor. Your concern alone, it is not. Your duty, it is not.”
“But -- ”
“No! A Jedi you are, nearly. Your duty is to the Force. To defense, not attack. Never attack. Defend your life and others', you must, yes. Sometimes at a great price. But no more.”
“I understand,” said Luke, meaning it. After the removal from Yavin, he’d discovered that a million Imperial soldiers and officers had died on the Death Star. He’d also discovered that over eight billion Imperial citizens had died on Alderaan.
Any number of star systems would have shared Alderaan’s fate if his aim had faltered. Every pilot in the Rebellion had fought in the defense of billions if not trillions of innocent people that day, and he still couldn’t regret his success. But now, when he sensed even the smallest life throbbing about him, he felt almost sick when he thought of the price attached to that success. He couldn’t imagine killing again, except by necessity.
A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, not attack, Yoda had told him, months ago now. And Luke wasn’t a soldier any more. He was a Jedi, or he would be, someday --
Someday. Luke stared at Yoda.
“Almost a Jedi? But -- you can’t mean -- there’s so much left for me to learn! I’m not anywhere near to knowing everything about the Force.”
“Heh, nor I. A lifetime, that would take,” said Yoda. He cast a sideways glance at Obi-Wan. “More than a lifetime.”
Obi-Wan chuckled to himself, then sobered. “Luke, you don’t even realize how much you’ve progressed. You are more attuned to the Force now than most Jedi are after years. Of course there is a great deal left for you to learn, but no Jedi would ever be knighted if it were a reward for perfect knowledge.”
“Far, you have come, since your failure at the cave,” Yoda acknowledged. “Two trials only are left to you.”
“Two? What are they? Do I need to go back to the cave?”
“No. Never can you go back. Another cave you shall seek.” Yoda hobbled forward, and pointed his cane across the swamp, at a murky, overgrown passage twisting into the trees. “That path, you see?”
Luke’s mouth dried. “You always said it was too dangerous to approach,” he said.
“Hm, yes, many dangers there are. Too many, before. Now . . . ” He shook his head. “Nothing, are they, to Darth Vader, and his presence you have survived twice.”
Because I’m his son! Luke didn’t think it much of a feat to survive the presence of someone, however fearsome, who had no desire to kill him. At Cloud City, Vader had chosen to spare him, and on Tatooine . . . well, Luke had only kept up his courage by talking as insolently as he dared, but he felt sure that his father would have been considerably less tolerant in any situation but the present one. He certainly didn’t owe his survival to any skill of his own.
“I don’t even have a lightsaber,” Luke said faintly.
“You would not be permitted to take one with you, even if you hadn’t lost Anakin’s,” said Obi-Wan, with a peculiar twist of his mouth. “You must succeed, or fail, on your own.”
“Yes. No blaster, no sword, no weapons,” said Yoda. “Only the Force. One last lesson will I teach you, and then you must go.”
Another protest was on the tip of his tongue. Luke hesitated, then bowed his head. “Yes, Master,” he said.
A week of intensive training later, Luke stood by the swamp, just opposite Yoda’s hut. He hoisted his pack, heavy with one bedroll, seven water bags, and several dozen nutritional bars, onto his shoulders.
“Remember,” said Yoda. “The Force is with you.”
“I remember,” Luke told him, and more for his sake than Yoda’s, added, “I’ll see you in a few days.”
He squared his shoulders and turned to the grey, shadowed wood, and the rough path that wound through it. His belt felt even emptier than usual, without anything hanging from it; Luke took a few cautious steps forward, then paused.
If the Force was his only ally now, he couldn’t afford to hobble it. Luke dropped every wall he’d built around himself, throwing his mind wide open.
The roar of the galaxy filled him. For a moment, he felt deafened by it, blinded, all his senses overwhelmed. Luke forced himself to step back, separating out the dull murmur of plants and rocks and other nonsentients, from the louder tremors that were nearby animals, from Yoda just behind him, from his father’s distant presence, sharp, steely, and startled.
"Luke? Are you --"
"I’m fine," Luke said tightly, and felt a flicker of annoyance, followed by -- approval? Vader receded to a remote corner of his awareness.
It didn’t make any sense, but never mind; he couldn’t spare the attention for that. Luke returned to here and now, letting them guide his senses.
He walked forward, the daylight fading to a dim grey-green glow. Clumps of moss grew up the trunks and dangled from the branches, so thickly that Luke had to duck. Small, dark rodents scrambled up the trees. Hundreds of insects scuttled this way and that. It didn’t seem that much worse than his first trial.
Which he had failed.
Well, Luke assured himself, it wouldn’t happen this time. He took a quick step forward, and --
Something long and grey blurred just above his head, and agony blossomed in his shoulder. He screamed --
Luke threw himself backwards, and quick as fire, a large, dark grey snake unwrapped half its body from the branch he’d been standing under, and closed its fangs on nothing. With the breath knocked out of him, his mind struck out wildly, sending the serpent’s head and body smacking into the branch and holding it there.
He got to his feet in a few slow, cautious movements, trying to keep his outstretched hand steady, but it was his left hand and not quite so perfectly controlled as the right. The hand relaxed a little as he stood, fingers curling in, and the creature’s body seemed almost to narrow and shudder. Luke focused his mind, his fingers straightening. It gave a low hiss.
He blinked up, trying to think of what to do with an enraged, venomous, nine-foot snake. No sword, no gun, only the Force --
Only the Force! he scoffed. His mental voice sounded more like Yoda than Luke himself.
Luke considered the fangs, the attack-that-wasn’t. It might not have killed him, but certainly would have been incapacitating, and agonizing into the bargain.
Luke sighed. He’d started to crush the snake’s body on accident. Another way would be kinder, and he couldn’t leave it to attack him. He narrowed his concentration to the heart, and closed his fingers as he had before, crushing it as quickly as he could. Like a small pinprick, Luke felt the creature’s life gutter out.
Uncoiling the snake’s body from its branch and dropping it to the floor, Luke felt a rush of gratitude that his training had been so incomplete at Yavin. He exhaled and walked on.
His nerves were strung tight as he walked further into the wood, wary of every sound or motion, clinging to the Force. Another flash of the near future saved his life again; the colony of insects he sensed, just off the path, were in fact flesh-eating beetles. Luke managed to capture the colony and levitate it nearly a mile off his path, deep into the forest.
He was so deeply immersed in the Force by then that he couldn’t help but catch the tremor coming from the opposite direction -- a faint, persistent hum on the edge of his awareness. Luke hesitated a moment, reluctant to leave even so dangerous a path as this one, but this had to be the source of . . . whatever it was that he had to find. There was no point in continuing on the path; he turned off, ducking further into the forest.
The trees grew so thickly, here, that his eyes were all but useless. Luke shut them and cocooned himself in the Force, a sense of exposed roots, low-hanging branches, and anything else in the way, like trees, sliding into his mind.
He passed any number of animals, many of them dangerous, but none posed any immediate risk. He left them to their business and kept going, until a large, feline creature he didn’t recognize beyond thing-that-wants-to-eat-me would have torn his throat out. Instead, he apologetically crushed its larynx.
Luke kept going, the earlier hum now clear, repeated peals, echoing throughout his bones, and he followed it up a sharp incline. Avoiding one carnivorous plant and several more poisonous ones, he emerged into the dull, sickly light of evening. He still took a moment to adjust, blinking up into the mouth of a cave. It shone a sharp, brilliant blue-white that would have disconcerted him at any other time.
Rather to his surprise, neither plant nor animal attempted to devour him as he scrambled up the rest of the way to the glowing cave. He could sense some immense power in the Force; not a presence, exactly, but a . . . resonance. Nothing less than sapient, he thought, would dare approach too nearly.
Luke stepped inside the cave, and burst into incredulous laughter.
The cave’s light and power came not from any transcendental being or mysterious artifact, but from crystals. They hung from the roof and along the walls in jagged blue lines, each humming in the Force, and shining brightly in defiance of the encroaching evening.
Luke blinked several times, the shift from twilight to radiance dazzling his eyes. That unfading glow couldn’t be mere refraction -- some kind of luminescent organism grew on them, perhaps. But that wouldn’t explain the constant tremors they sent reverberating through the Force. He sensed no danger, but there was something. Something familiar, almost, in the sound and sight of them.
He found a dry patch of floor and dropped to his knees, sliding his bag off his weary shoulders. Spreading his bedroll out, he flopped onto his back, chewing on one of the nutritional bars and staring upwards. It’d be hours before he got to sleep in here, between the light and the low roar of the crystals -- it was like having hundreds of lightsabers buzzing above his head.
Lightsabers.
He still remembered sitting on the Falcon with Obi-Wan, watching anxiously as the old Jedi separated the hilt out. At Obi-Wan’s command, he’d peered inside and gaped at the source of the weapon’s energy -- not some kind of power cell, as he’d imagined, but a glowing blue-white stone.
Luke jolted upright. Not a stone, he thought. A piece of crystal. A piece of one of these crystals, or similar ones elsewhere. He hadn’t sensed that crystal’s power, but it was only a tiny fraction of one, after all, and back then, he’d been so detached from the Force that he couldn’t even feel the destruction of Alderaan. Later, though, he’d been able to sense the whispers of energy, deep inside the weapon, and then -- well, and then he’d lost it.
Now, he’d be able to build a new one. That was why Yoda had sent him here, aside of the trials of the journey itself. This was his first step to creating his own lightsaber.
Several hours later, Luke was still awake, but exhausted. Finally, he gave in and searched the future for any possible dangers, found nothing, and shielded his mind from everything. Even with the light, he fell asleep immediately.
He awoke to silence. He heard only a distant drip of water, further in the cave: no dangers, no presences, no interconnected vastness wrapping itself around him. For a moment, Luke luxuriated in that absence, sensing only the light brush of air on his face, the blanket underneath him, the glow against his eyelids. But his relief almost immediately transformed into alarm. Luke sat up.
He was cut off from all other life. Alone, vulnerable. Everything was gone.
Panic shuddered up his spine and he threw his shields open, half-expecting the Force to rush into him. But the only tremor came from his renewed sense of the crystals, singing once more in his mind. The Force had been with him the whole time. Well, of course; he’d just put on a . . . a sort of psychic blindfold. It would always be with him. Always.
He could feel his father on the edges of his awareness. For the first time, it was a comfort.
Vader, Yoda, Leia, they were all with him in the Force, their presences clear and vibrant. Luke drew a deep breath, then caught it in his throat.
Leia. She was so far, usually, that he could only barely sense her. Each contact across that distance had left him exhausted, almost unconscious. Now, though, he felt her nearly as strongly as his father. She was close; well, not close, but much, much closer.
Even that, however, couldn’t explain the immediacy of her presence. Luke got to his feet, brows furrowed, and his eyes fell on the crystals. The Force, he thought, must be very strong here.
"Leia?"
"Luke!" His sense of her seemed to rush over his mind. "How -- oh, let me get a datapad."
"No, it’s fine," he assured her. "I haven’t seen anything. It’s just . . . there’s something I need to ask you about. Are you busy? I don’t know what time it is on -- wherever you are."
"It’s called Carathis," said Leia. "You wouldn’t have heard of it. But you’d better hurry before you fade out. I’m not doing anything at the moment."
Luke felt the vibrations the crystals sent reverberating throughout the Force, and smiled. "I’ve found a place where I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You’re right, though, I’ve never heard of Carathis before."
"It’s in the Alcar IV system," she said. "It was one of the clone worlds, but nobody’s lived on it since the wars. There’s no work for me in the Alliance right now, so I’m leading an expedition to see if it’d be suitable for us to settle on. I’m going to hold a vote as soon as I get back to the base."
"For us?" he said blankly, then his eyes widened. "The Alderaanians? Leia, that’s wonderful! That far out, there won’t even be any Imperial outposts."
He could almost see her face tighten.
"There is one?"
"Not an outpost," said Leia. "Some kind of project, deeper in the system. We think it’s on one of the moons of Endor."
Luke bit his lip. "The Sun Crusher."
"The what?"
"It’s . . . I might have . . . that’s what I wanted to ask you about," he said. "I’ve been contacted by a -- a disaffected Imperial. A Force-sensitive. This person recently found out about a secret project, a plan to make a new battle station, even more powerful than the Death Star. They’re so outraged about it that they betrayed the secret to me. And I think they want to keep passing information."
"But nobody knows about this," said Leia. "The Bothans hadn’t heard a thing."
Luke didn’t like to make a point of the differences between them. He hesitated, then forged ahead. "I know they’re very capable, but they don’t have any strength in the Force, do they? My contact is an actual Imperial, and very strong."
Leia considered. "There’s something else," she said. "Why didn’t your contact go directly to the Rebellion?"
"Because they hate the Rebellion," Luke admitted. "They just hate the Emperor more. They don’t want to help us, they want us to help them. They’re willing to hand over information about all their enemies in the Empire, which is . . . pretty much everyone in the Empire, and they want to keep the Sun Crusher from ever getting constructed."
"Mm," said Leia.
"But it’s not for our reasons, it’s not for us, and I can’t pass on their intelligence without telling you where it’s coming from." Hurriedly, he added, "I’ll know if they aren’t telling the truth, but there are plenty of ways to deceive without lying."
He realized what he’d just said, and winced.
"I realize that," said Leia. "I was an Imperial Senator myself, remember."
Luke did remember. He just couldn’t picture it.
She fell silent for a few moments. Then she said, "There’s a lot to consider. I have to think about it. But if we’re looking at another Death Star, we can’t afford to ignore a source of accurate information. Did this person give you their name? If we at least had a reputation to judge by --"
"No," said Luke. "They didn't."
Leia sighed. "I didn’t think so. Oh, well. Luke, we need to talk more about this -- talk like normal people, I mean. And we can’t trust anything that might get intercepted, so . . . I’ll be leaving in five days. Is there some way that I can get to you?"
"You’re much closer now," he said, and after a moment’s vacillation, added, "I’m on the planet Dagobah. I can give you precise coordinates if you need them, or meet up with you off-planet. But if I’m remembering correctly, I think it’d be almost on your course."
"Give me the coordinates on the day we leave, when I can check the navicomputer," she said. He felt a suggestion of a smile. "I don’t want to interrupt your training. Besides, I’d like to meet your teacher. Except for you, I’ve never even seen a Jedi before."
Luke’s spine prickled. Not with foreboding, exactly. Just a hint of the future, of something to do with her, and Jedi, and . . . yes. She needed to come to Dagobah, and not only to satisfy some mild curiosity.
"I’d like you to meet him, too," said Luke.
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Title: Revenge of the Jedi (10/17)
Fanverse: Revenge of the Jedi
Blurb: Luke reports to his mentors and sets out on his penultimate trial.
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Chapter Ten
Luke returned to the swamp in the middle of the night, landing his X-Wing a safe distance from the water. He peered into the darkness, just able to make out the darker smear of Yoda’s hut. Reaching out tentatively, he found Yoda deep in sleep.
Before Luke could stumble over to the hut, he caught a hint of another, fully alert presence. Adrenaline would have pumped through his veins, if he’d had any to spare.
There was a flicker of light, and Luke sighed.
“Obi-Wan,” he said, turning towards the dull glow, “I can’t -- ”
He blinked.
“Grandmother?”
“Luke,” she said, her lilting voice high and shaking, “you’re not hurt? You haven’t -- you’re fine. You’re fine.”
“Just tired,” said Luke blankly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so upset. You can show up anywhere, can’t you?”
“You were gone,” Shmi said.
“I was just on Tatooine,” he said. “It’s your home, I didn’t think -- ”
“You were gone, Luke!”
“I don’t understand,” he said, his thoughts still sluggish. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just talking with -- oh.”
She looked at him expectantly.
“Father. You can’t come near Father. I forgot.”
“You talked to Anakin,” said Shmi, the words slow and cautious, as if he might possibly be deranged. “You talked to him in person.”
“I didn’t know he’d be there!” Luke protested. “I just knew I needed to be.”
“Did he -- ” Shmi turned away, her spectral fist over her mouth. “Did he say -- ”
“I told him I’ve been talking to you,” Luke told her. “He asked me to tell you, um, hello.”
“Hello.” She made a small, stifled sound that might have been a laugh. “Forgive me. I think I need to sit down.”
“Honestly, so do I,” said Luke, and collapsed onto a stump, while Shmi carefully seated herself on a rotting log. “Sorry, I didn’t realize what it meant. But I’ve been a week coming back. Couldn’t you tell -- ”
“You were meditating or sleeping the entire time. I didn’t know if you’d nearly died, or -- ”
“No. Just resting,” he said. “It was an exhausting conversation.”
“Resting for a week?”
“It was a very exhausting conversation,” said Luke. “And I needed to meditate on . . . lots of things, but mostly the Emperor’s new project. Father told me about it.”
Her eyes widened. “Anakin betrayed the Empire to you?”
“He has some idea that if he passes information on to me, and I act on it, it isn’t really treason. I don’t know. He’s angry at the Emperor. More than usual, I guess.” Luke suppressed a yawn. “Well, I was going to ask you about it anyway. He’s been passing me information in my sleep.”
She sighed.
“And since I could tell the dreams were true, I assumed they were visions and passed them on to Leia. They were true, but they were also . . . he’s just using the Rebellion to remove his political enemies. Well, people he disapproves of, anyway.”
“I’m afraid that is Anakin’s definition of enemies,” Shmi told him, and pursed her lips. “But did the information help your friends?”
Luke stared down at his right hand, resting loosely on his thigh. The synthetic flesh was the exact same shade as his tanned skin. He wondered if his father’s were quite so high quality. Probably not. The medics had said something about recent advancements in the technology, and Anakin Skywalker had lost his hand before . . . well, before.
He sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Leia says so, anyway. They have to know about this -- but even telling them is . . . aiding and abetting Father, isn’t it?”
“Not if they know how you’re getting your information. Let your princess choose what she wants to do with it.”
“She’s not -- ” Luke shook his head. “I can’t tell her -- them -- that I’m on speaking terms with Darth Vader. Let alone that I’m his son!”
“Do they need to know that?” Shmi asked, tilting her head to the side.
Luke looked over at her, struck by the absurdity of it all. All those years he’d been a bored farmboy, longing for more, but certain that nothing more exciting than a Tusken raid could ever happen to him. Now he was a Jedi apprentice, living in a swamp, sitting across from his dead grandmother and deciding what to tell the leaders of the Rebellion about his father, Darth Vader.
Owen had always told him to be careful what he wished for. But even he couldn’t have expected anything so ludicrously improbable as this -- unless they had known. Luke didn’t think so, but --
His head ached.
“I . . . maybe not. I don’t know.” Luke lifted a hand to his temple, and then dropped it. “I don’t think I should make decisions when I’m too tired to walk in a straight line. I’ll be able to talk to you again?”
“Of course,” said Shmi, and vanished.
The next day, Luke woke to something cold and hard poking at his leg.
“Wha -- ” He opened his eyes, and Artoo beeped up at him, retracting a probe. “Hey, Artoo. Didn’t I turn you off last night?”
The droid’s response sounded suspiciously similar to a chortle. Luke laughed.
“Trivial details, right? Okay, let’s go find Yoda.” He got to his feet, wincing as his back and neck creaked into place, then wandered outdoors, Artoo whirring at his side.
Luke saw Obi-Wan before Yoda, the former’s spectral form nearly blocking the latter from view entirely. Both Jedi Masters were deep in conversation, but broke off as he approached. Yoda gave a small grunt that could have meant anything.
“Finally awake you are,” Yoda said.
“Good morning. I’m sorry -- I didn’t get back until late last night. This morning, probably.”
Luke couldn’t help but wonder if he’d always spent this much time apologizing.
“Hm! Worthwhile, was the interruption to your training?”
Obi-Wan simply looked at him expectantly.
“I . . . don’t know,” Luke said. He glanced from one to the other, then walked past them to stare down at the swamp, taking a deep breath. “I went to my uncle and aunt’s homestead. I could tell -- ” He pressed the fingers of his right hand against his mouth. After a moment, he turned around, eyes lowered and arms crossed.
“What happened, Luke?” Obi-Wan asked. They both seemed alarmed -- concerned, even.
Luke met his gaze squarely. “Father was there.”
“Vader!”
Yoda sighed. “So. Another trap, you have fallen into.”
“I don’t think I did,” Luke said, almost unconsciously digging his heels into the soggy earth. “He wouldn’t say why he came, but I think he was called, too.”
“You must be wary, Luke,” Obi-Wan told him. “Do not let yourself be fooled. Vader is a master of deceit.”
“Really?” said Luke, and fought back the accusations that rose to his lips. He lifted his cybernetic hand, instead. “This isn’t exactly the height of subtlety. As far as I can tell, he’s never even tried to deceive me. It’s all been you will turn to the Dark Side this minute, young man and I am your father and so on. Kind of straightforward. It fits with what I’ve heard of his reputation, too.” He dropped the hand. “Besides, I’ve spent the last week meditating on -- everything we talked about, and I haven’t sensed any deceit at all.”
“He is reckless still,” Yoda said thoughtfully. Luke hazarded a guess that the pronoun referred to his father, not himself -- thanks more to the lack of visible irritation than anything else.
“He’s not happy with the Emperor,” Luke said. “Or anyone, but he hates the Emperor. He says he wants me to help defeat him. I can’t, of course. Not his way. And not ours either, for -- I don’t know, years. But he . . . might not interfere much, if it comes down to that.” He lifted his head, his expression turning defiant. “No matter what he does, though, I won’t fight him. I can’t kill my own father.”
“Then the Emperor has already won,” said Obi-Wan.
Luke swallowed.
“Assassins we are not,” Yoda said, and turned his eyes to Luke. “You are not. Never will it be required of you. Only protection, of yourself, and others.”
“But the Emperor’s got to be stopped,” Luke said. “I don’t want to kill more people, but -- ”
“Stopped, yes. For this your friends fight, hmm? Many there are in your Rebellion, seeking the defeat of the Emperor. Your concern alone, it is not. Your duty, it is not.”
“But -- ”
“No! A Jedi you are, nearly. Your duty is to the Force. To defense, not attack. Never attack. Defend your life and others', you must, yes. Sometimes at a great price. But no more.”
“I understand,” said Luke, meaning it. After the removal from Yavin, he’d discovered that a million Imperial soldiers and officers had died on the Death Star. He’d also discovered that over eight billion Imperial citizens had died on Alderaan.
Any number of star systems would have shared Alderaan’s fate if his aim had faltered. Every pilot in the Rebellion had fought in the defense of billions if not trillions of innocent people that day, and he still couldn’t regret his success. But now, when he sensed even the smallest life throbbing about him, he felt almost sick when he thought of the price attached to that success. He couldn’t imagine killing again, except by necessity.
A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, not attack, Yoda had told him, months ago now. And Luke wasn’t a soldier any more. He was a Jedi, or he would be, someday --
Someday. Luke stared at Yoda.
“Almost a Jedi? But -- you can’t mean -- there’s so much left for me to learn! I’m not anywhere near to knowing everything about the Force.”
“Heh, nor I. A lifetime, that would take,” said Yoda. He cast a sideways glance at Obi-Wan. “More than a lifetime.”
Obi-Wan chuckled to himself, then sobered. “Luke, you don’t even realize how much you’ve progressed. You are more attuned to the Force now than most Jedi are after years. Of course there is a great deal left for you to learn, but no Jedi would ever be knighted if it were a reward for perfect knowledge.”
“Far, you have come, since your failure at the cave,” Yoda acknowledged. “Two trials only are left to you.”
“Two? What are they? Do I need to go back to the cave?”
“No. Never can you go back. Another cave you shall seek.” Yoda hobbled forward, and pointed his cane across the swamp, at a murky, overgrown passage twisting into the trees. “That path, you see?”
Luke’s mouth dried. “You always said it was too dangerous to approach,” he said.
“Hm, yes, many dangers there are. Too many, before. Now . . . ” He shook his head. “Nothing, are they, to Darth Vader, and his presence you have survived twice.”
Because I’m his son! Luke didn’t think it much of a feat to survive the presence of someone, however fearsome, who had no desire to kill him. At Cloud City, Vader had chosen to spare him, and on Tatooine . . . well, Luke had only kept up his courage by talking as insolently as he dared, but he felt sure that his father would have been considerably less tolerant in any situation but the present one. He certainly didn’t owe his survival to any skill of his own.
“I don’t even have a lightsaber,” Luke said faintly.
“You would not be permitted to take one with you, even if you hadn’t lost Anakin’s,” said Obi-Wan, with a peculiar twist of his mouth. “You must succeed, or fail, on your own.”
“Yes. No blaster, no sword, no weapons,” said Yoda. “Only the Force. One last lesson will I teach you, and then you must go.”
Another protest was on the tip of his tongue. Luke hesitated, then bowed his head. “Yes, Master,” he said.
A week of intensive training later, Luke stood by the swamp, just opposite Yoda’s hut. He hoisted his pack, heavy with one bedroll, seven water bags, and several dozen nutritional bars, onto his shoulders.
“Remember,” said Yoda. “The Force is with you.”
“I remember,” Luke told him, and more for his sake than Yoda’s, added, “I’ll see you in a few days.”
He squared his shoulders and turned to the grey, shadowed wood, and the rough path that wound through it. His belt felt even emptier than usual, without anything hanging from it; Luke took a few cautious steps forward, then paused.
If the Force was his only ally now, he couldn’t afford to hobble it. Luke dropped every wall he’d built around himself, throwing his mind wide open.
The roar of the galaxy filled him. For a moment, he felt deafened by it, blinded, all his senses overwhelmed. Luke forced himself to step back, separating out the dull murmur of plants and rocks and other nonsentients, from the louder tremors that were nearby animals, from Yoda just behind him, from his father’s distant presence, sharp, steely, and startled.
"Luke? Are you --"
"I’m fine," Luke said tightly, and felt a flicker of annoyance, followed by -- approval? Vader receded to a remote corner of his awareness.
It didn’t make any sense, but never mind; he couldn’t spare the attention for that. Luke returned to here and now, letting them guide his senses.
He walked forward, the daylight fading to a dim grey-green glow. Clumps of moss grew up the trunks and dangled from the branches, so thickly that Luke had to duck. Small, dark rodents scrambled up the trees. Hundreds of insects scuttled this way and that. It didn’t seem that much worse than his first trial.
Which he had failed.
Well, Luke assured himself, it wouldn’t happen this time. He took a quick step forward, and --
Something long and grey blurred just above his head, and agony blossomed in his shoulder. He screamed --
Luke threw himself backwards, and quick as fire, a large, dark grey snake unwrapped half its body from the branch he’d been standing under, and closed its fangs on nothing. With the breath knocked out of him, his mind struck out wildly, sending the serpent’s head and body smacking into the branch and holding it there.
He got to his feet in a few slow, cautious movements, trying to keep his outstretched hand steady, but it was his left hand and not quite so perfectly controlled as the right. The hand relaxed a little as he stood, fingers curling in, and the creature’s body seemed almost to narrow and shudder. Luke focused his mind, his fingers straightening. It gave a low hiss.
He blinked up, trying to think of what to do with an enraged, venomous, nine-foot snake. No sword, no gun, only the Force --
Only the Force! he scoffed. His mental voice sounded more like Yoda than Luke himself.
Luke considered the fangs, the attack-that-wasn’t. It might not have killed him, but certainly would have been incapacitating, and agonizing into the bargain.
Luke sighed. He’d started to crush the snake’s body on accident. Another way would be kinder, and he couldn’t leave it to attack him. He narrowed his concentration to the heart, and closed his fingers as he had before, crushing it as quickly as he could. Like a small pinprick, Luke felt the creature’s life gutter out.
Uncoiling the snake’s body from its branch and dropping it to the floor, Luke felt a rush of gratitude that his training had been so incomplete at Yavin. He exhaled and walked on.
His nerves were strung tight as he walked further into the wood, wary of every sound or motion, clinging to the Force. Another flash of the near future saved his life again; the colony of insects he sensed, just off the path, were in fact flesh-eating beetles. Luke managed to capture the colony and levitate it nearly a mile off his path, deep into the forest.
He was so deeply immersed in the Force by then that he couldn’t help but catch the tremor coming from the opposite direction -- a faint, persistent hum on the edge of his awareness. Luke hesitated a moment, reluctant to leave even so dangerous a path as this one, but this had to be the source of . . . whatever it was that he had to find. There was no point in continuing on the path; he turned off, ducking further into the forest.
The trees grew so thickly, here, that his eyes were all but useless. Luke shut them and cocooned himself in the Force, a sense of exposed roots, low-hanging branches, and anything else in the way, like trees, sliding into his mind.
He passed any number of animals, many of them dangerous, but none posed any immediate risk. He left them to their business and kept going, until a large, feline creature he didn’t recognize beyond thing-that-wants-to-eat-me would have torn his throat out. Instead, he apologetically crushed its larynx.
Luke kept going, the earlier hum now clear, repeated peals, echoing throughout his bones, and he followed it up a sharp incline. Avoiding one carnivorous plant and several more poisonous ones, he emerged into the dull, sickly light of evening. He still took a moment to adjust, blinking up into the mouth of a cave. It shone a sharp, brilliant blue-white that would have disconcerted him at any other time.
Rather to his surprise, neither plant nor animal attempted to devour him as he scrambled up the rest of the way to the glowing cave. He could sense some immense power in the Force; not a presence, exactly, but a . . . resonance. Nothing less than sapient, he thought, would dare approach too nearly.
Luke stepped inside the cave, and burst into incredulous laughter.
The cave’s light and power came not from any transcendental being or mysterious artifact, but from crystals. They hung from the roof and along the walls in jagged blue lines, each humming in the Force, and shining brightly in defiance of the encroaching evening.
Luke blinked several times, the shift from twilight to radiance dazzling his eyes. That unfading glow couldn’t be mere refraction -- some kind of luminescent organism grew on them, perhaps. But that wouldn’t explain the constant tremors they sent reverberating through the Force. He sensed no danger, but there was something. Something familiar, almost, in the sound and sight of them.
He found a dry patch of floor and dropped to his knees, sliding his bag off his weary shoulders. Spreading his bedroll out, he flopped onto his back, chewing on one of the nutritional bars and staring upwards. It’d be hours before he got to sleep in here, between the light and the low roar of the crystals -- it was like having hundreds of lightsabers buzzing above his head.
Lightsabers.
He still remembered sitting on the Falcon with Obi-Wan, watching anxiously as the old Jedi separated the hilt out. At Obi-Wan’s command, he’d peered inside and gaped at the source of the weapon’s energy -- not some kind of power cell, as he’d imagined, but a glowing blue-white stone.
Luke jolted upright. Not a stone, he thought. A piece of crystal. A piece of one of these crystals, or similar ones elsewhere. He hadn’t sensed that crystal’s power, but it was only a tiny fraction of one, after all, and back then, he’d been so detached from the Force that he couldn’t even feel the destruction of Alderaan. Later, though, he’d been able to sense the whispers of energy, deep inside the weapon, and then -- well, and then he’d lost it.
Now, he’d be able to build a new one. That was why Yoda had sent him here, aside of the trials of the journey itself. This was his first step to creating his own lightsaber.
Several hours later, Luke was still awake, but exhausted. Finally, he gave in and searched the future for any possible dangers, found nothing, and shielded his mind from everything. Even with the light, he fell asleep immediately.
He awoke to silence. He heard only a distant drip of water, further in the cave: no dangers, no presences, no interconnected vastness wrapping itself around him. For a moment, Luke luxuriated in that absence, sensing only the light brush of air on his face, the blanket underneath him, the glow against his eyelids. But his relief almost immediately transformed into alarm. Luke sat up.
He was cut off from all other life. Alone, vulnerable. Everything was gone.
Panic shuddered up his spine and he threw his shields open, half-expecting the Force to rush into him. But the only tremor came from his renewed sense of the crystals, singing once more in his mind. The Force had been with him the whole time. Well, of course; he’d just put on a . . . a sort of psychic blindfold. It would always be with him. Always.
He could feel his father on the edges of his awareness. For the first time, it was a comfort.
Vader, Yoda, Leia, they were all with him in the Force, their presences clear and vibrant. Luke drew a deep breath, then caught it in his throat.
Leia. She was so far, usually, that he could only barely sense her. Each contact across that distance had left him exhausted, almost unconscious. Now, though, he felt her nearly as strongly as his father. She was close; well, not close, but much, much closer.
Even that, however, couldn’t explain the immediacy of her presence. Luke got to his feet, brows furrowed, and his eyes fell on the crystals. The Force, he thought, must be very strong here.
"Leia?"
"Luke!" His sense of her seemed to rush over his mind. "How -- oh, let me get a datapad."
"No, it’s fine," he assured her. "I haven’t seen anything. It’s just . . . there’s something I need to ask you about. Are you busy? I don’t know what time it is on -- wherever you are."
"It’s called Carathis," said Leia. "You wouldn’t have heard of it. But you’d better hurry before you fade out. I’m not doing anything at the moment."
Luke felt the vibrations the crystals sent reverberating throughout the Force, and smiled. "I’ve found a place where I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You’re right, though, I’ve never heard of Carathis before."
"It’s in the Alcar IV system," she said. "It was one of the clone worlds, but nobody’s lived on it since the wars. There’s no work for me in the Alliance right now, so I’m leading an expedition to see if it’d be suitable for us to settle on. I’m going to hold a vote as soon as I get back to the base."
"For us?" he said blankly, then his eyes widened. "The Alderaanians? Leia, that’s wonderful! That far out, there won’t even be any Imperial outposts."
He could almost see her face tighten.
"There is one?"
"Not an outpost," said Leia. "Some kind of project, deeper in the system. We think it’s on one of the moons of Endor."
Luke bit his lip. "The Sun Crusher."
"The what?"
"It’s . . . I might have . . . that’s what I wanted to ask you about," he said. "I’ve been contacted by a -- a disaffected Imperial. A Force-sensitive. This person recently found out about a secret project, a plan to make a new battle station, even more powerful than the Death Star. They’re so outraged about it that they betrayed the secret to me. And I think they want to keep passing information."
"But nobody knows about this," said Leia. "The Bothans hadn’t heard a thing."
Luke didn’t like to make a point of the differences between them. He hesitated, then forged ahead. "I know they’re very capable, but they don’t have any strength in the Force, do they? My contact is an actual Imperial, and very strong."
Leia considered. "There’s something else," she said. "Why didn’t your contact go directly to the Rebellion?"
"Because they hate the Rebellion," Luke admitted. "They just hate the Emperor more. They don’t want to help us, they want us to help them. They’re willing to hand over information about all their enemies in the Empire, which is . . . pretty much everyone in the Empire, and they want to keep the Sun Crusher from ever getting constructed."
"Mm," said Leia.
"But it’s not for our reasons, it’s not for us, and I can’t pass on their intelligence without telling you where it’s coming from." Hurriedly, he added, "I’ll know if they aren’t telling the truth, but there are plenty of ways to deceive without lying."
He realized what he’d just said, and winced.
"I realize that," said Leia. "I was an Imperial Senator myself, remember."
Luke did remember. He just couldn’t picture it.
She fell silent for a few moments. Then she said, "There’s a lot to consider. I have to think about it. But if we’re looking at another Death Star, we can’t afford to ignore a source of accurate information. Did this person give you their name? If we at least had a reputation to judge by --"
"No," said Luke. "They didn't."
Leia sighed. "I didn’t think so. Oh, well. Luke, we need to talk more about this -- talk like normal people, I mean. And we can’t trust anything that might get intercepted, so . . . I’ll be leaving in five days. Is there some way that I can get to you?"
"You’re much closer now," he said, and after a moment’s vacillation, added, "I’m on the planet Dagobah. I can give you precise coordinates if you need them, or meet up with you off-planet. But if I’m remembering correctly, I think it’d be almost on your course."
"Give me the coordinates on the day we leave, when I can check the navicomputer," she said. He felt a suggestion of a smile. "I don’t want to interrupt your training. Besides, I’d like to meet your teacher. Except for you, I’ve never even seen a Jedi before."
Luke’s spine prickled. Not with foreboding, exactly. Just a hint of the future, of something to do with her, and Jedi, and . . . yes. She needed to come to Dagobah, and not only to satisfy some mild curiosity.
"I’d like you to meet him, too," said Luke.