by Jason Fry
“Copy that, boss,” Wedge said. “Activating protocol now. See you on the other side, Luke.”
A moment later Narra’s X-wing vanished into the infinity of hyperspace, followed by Wedge’s.
“Access the jump pattern for Devaron, Artoo,” Luke said.
Rebel procedure was for each pilot to follow a randomly chosen zigzag path through hyperspace, making several jumps to foil any Imperials that might be tracking his or her fighter. That way, if the worst occurred, only one fighter would be lost instead of a whole squadron—or the entire rebel fleet.
Artoo beeped at Luke that he’d accessed the coordinates and locked them into the navicomputer, then followed that up with a fusillade of hoots and whistles. Luke glanced at his screen, where the little droid’s communications were translated into language he could understand.
“I’m sure there will be patrols searching for us—the Empire’s flooding sectors with warships in response to any threat,” Luke said. “That’s why we follow scatter protocol.”
Luke missed whatever Artoo whistled in response—that feeling was back in his head again, like a voice whose words he couldn’t quite make out. He knew it was the Force. But this time, it wasn’t assisting his actions. Instead, it felt like it was trying to get his attention.
“What’s that, Artoo? Yes, I’m functioning normally. But you can take over flight duties till we get to Devaron.”
Artoo beeped questioningly.
“I’m fine, pal,” Luke said. “Honest. But take the stick anyway. I want to try meditating while we’re in hyperspace. Maybe that will help me figure out what it is the Force keeps trying to tell me.”
OUTSIDE LUKE’S COCKPIT, hyperspace was an ever-changing tunnel of brilliant light. Inside, the rebel pilot had his eyes closed and was breathing slowly in and out.
During their brief time as master and student, Ben Kenobi had taught him the basics of Jedi meditation, warning him that opening a connection to the Force was something even the eldest Jedi Masters studied over a lifetime. Luke’s first lesson had come just hours after the murder of his aunt and uncle by stormtroopers, when Luke and Ben had stopped for the night on their way to Mos Eisley.
Ben had told him to focus on whatever emotions were uppermost in his mind, being honest with himself about the feelings he was experiencing and how they were affecting him. And then, one by one, he was to let each emotion go, like pouring out a cup of water. The goal was to make himself an empty vessel. Only then, Ben had said, would the Force be able to fill him.
What emotions was he feeling? Luke considered the question. He was excited about the successful completion of their mission—that was in his mind. And he was anxious—the Force was trying to tell him something, but he had no teacher to help him interpret its messages.
What had happened to Ben Kenobi? The old Jedi’s body had vanished the moment Darth Vader’s lightsaber blade touched him, leaving nothing but dusty robes on the floor. Luke had cried out in grief and rage, firing at the stormtroopers and Vader. But then he’d heard Ben’s voice in his head, telling him to run. He’d heard that voice again above the Death Star, urging him to let the Force tell him when to take his shot at the battle station’s vulnerable thermal exhaust port, instead of using his targeting computer.
But he hadn’t heard Ben’s voice since—and he feared he never would again.
Luke pushed the thought gently away. Don’t center on your anxieties—keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs. Ben had taught him that, too.
He examined each emotion in turn—first the excitement, then the anxiety—and then he imagined himself pouring them out, to vanish amid the whirling tumult of hyperspace. For a long time, he simply sat in the cockpit and let his mind drift.
There was green grass under his feet. No, not grass—stones. He was standing on flagstones, but they were so overgrown with grass that at first he’d thought he was standing in some kind of meadow. Trees had grown up through the stones, forming a glade in what had once been a courtyard.
He heard water nearby. He turned and saw a fountain, surrounded by statues of people in robes. They were faceless and without limbs—they’d been sheared off by energy weapons, the surfaces blackened. The fountain was destroyed, too—but water still burbled up from inside it, spilling out through the broken walls and across the glade.
Something made a strange noise, a little like the lowing of a bantha or a dewback. Among the trees, birds and insects flitted between branches. Beyond them stood a group of horned animals, their sides gray and scaly.
He realized his lightsaber was in his hand. And then he sensed something else. He looked up and saw three remotes hovering nearby—remotes like the one Han Solo had kept for blaster target practice aboard the Millennium Falcon.
Three? He couldn’t fend off three—he had enough trouble anticipating the actions of just one. But the Force was very strong there. He could feel it all around him, a living thing, like wind or rain.
And it was telling him that something wasn’t right.
The horned creatures were pawing at the grass, muttering in distress.
And then he could feel it. Something dark and wicked was nearby, bent on his destruction.
He slipped on a loose flagstone, nearly falling to his knees before he recovered his balance—
—and found himself gazing into the infinite kaleidoscope of hyperspace. He was breathing heavily, he realized, and sweat was running into his eyes behind his goggles.
Artoo tootled something, and Luke glanced at the translation on his screen.
“I know my heart rate is up—I can feel that myself,” he said. “But I’m okay now. It was the Force. It was showing me something—a vision, I guess you’d say.”
But what did the vision mean? He’d been practicing with his lightsaber, in a place where the Force surrounded him. Yet his life had been in danger. If only the vision had lasted a moment longer, perhaps he might have learned what it meant instead of having to guess.
His screen lit up with a series of messages from Artoo.
Luke laughed.
“I agree the Force would be more useful if it gave me an actual message instead of random data,” he said. “But that’s not how it works. I’ll just have to keep my mind open and hope the next thing it tells me is easier to understand.”
A refueling station hung above the mottled green-and-yellow sphere of Devaron, its navigational lights blinking green and red against the stars. Luke took back the controls from Artoo and guided his X-wing down toward the station and the pitted bulk of an ancient freighter nestled against it.
Artoo tweetled happily and Luke nodded: his sensors showed two X-wings attached to the freighter’s underside.
“Looks like Narra and Wedge beat us here,” he said.
“Approaching starfighter, identify,” said a stern voice over the comm.
“Little Brother Five coming home to Mama,” Luke said.
“Acknowledged,” the voice said, its tone more friendly now. “Nice to have the family back together.”
Luke eased the X-wing beneath the freighter, goosing the retrorockets as a flexible docking tube descended from the larger ship’s underside, like the questing tentacle of some great beast. The tube locked itself over the X-wing’s cockpit and droid socket, clamping tight. Once Artoo tweeted that they were successfully docked, Luke popped his cockpit’s canopy and clambered up a flexible ladder in the tube, waving to Artoo where he waited in the fighter’s droid socket.
He emerged in the freighter’s main hold, where Narra and Wedge were waiting for him, their flight helmets under their arms.
“Sorry I’m late,” Luke said, relieved to finally shed his own helmet. He’d spent much of his childhood dreaming about flying a fighter in deep space, yet somehow none of those fantasies had included the fact that helmets smelled awful, left you sweaty, and gave you a headache.
“You’re not late,” Narra said. “The Alliance has assigned you a more complicated scatter patte
rn, with additional jumps.”
“Flyboys like us are a credit a dozen,” Wedge said. “Heroes like you get special treatment.”
Wedge grinned to show he was kidding, but Luke’s face fell anyway. His life shouldn’t be more important than the lives of his fellow Red Squadron pilots.
Narra clapped Luke on the shoulder and smiled.
“You won’t like this special treatment, son,” he said. “Orders direct from the fleet—Mon Mothma’s asked you to retrieve logs of Imperial communications that were intercepted by several rebel cells along the Shipwrights’ Trace.”
Luke groaned. All he wanted to do was fly his X-wing against the Empire, not fetch data tapes. But he couldn’t ignore an order from the Alliance’s leader.
“Those logs could give us a picture of Imperial operations on the entire trade route,” Narra said. “Think of it as your chance to see the galaxy, Lieutenant Skywalker. The mission details have been loaded into your astromech. He’s on his way to Docking Bay 12 to do preflight on your Y-wing—you’ll be flying Y 4, one of the two-seat models.”
Luke scowled. The Y-wings were ungainly fighters, slower and less maneuverable than X-wings. And the two-seat configuration suggested someone from the Alliance was coming with him—he hoped it wasn’t some member of the diplomatic corps who’d spend the journey practicing speeches and getting spacesick.
The doors to the hold opened, and a droid with gold plating walked stiffly into the hangar beside a dull gray supervisor droid with red photoreceptors.
“I don’t know why this is so difficult for you to process,” See-Threepio said angrily. “As a translator, my skills are essential to the success of this mission. That means a weekly oil bath is well within allowable regulations, and the quality of the lubricant used is critically important.”
The supervisor droid grumbled something as it trudged along.
“Then you need to have your calibration rechecked,” Threepio said. “The oil you have onboard might date back to the First Coruscani Migration. If it got any sludgier it would actually be solid.”
“Good luck, Skywalker,” Narra said with a smile. Luke wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the recruiting mission or the chances of surviving Threepio’s complaints.
“Yeah, Luke—enjoy your flying brick,” Wedge said.
The two Reds turned away, but then Narra stopped and looked over his shoulder, his expression grave.
“Watch out for Imperial patrols, Skywalker,” he said. “Devaron’s lightly garrisoned, but it’s not too far from Giju. We just embarrassed the Empire—I wouldn’t be surprised if they threw a dragnet over this entire region.”
Luke nodded, then turned to where Threepio was waiting with ill-concealed impatience.
“Nice to see you again, Threepio,” he said to the gleaming droid. “What were you saying?”
“I was explaining that I’ve prepared a dossier for each of our three stops on this mission, Master Luke,” Threepio said. “I’m particularly excited to visit Whiforla 11. Whiforla-song is one of the six million forms of communication in which I am fluent, and among the most complex. I can instruct you in the proper fluting for ceremonial introductions to the rebel leaders there, though as a human your vocal range will limit you to basic greetings and congratulations on a successful molting. I’m afraid this will force us to cut the exchange of well wishes to less than an hour.”
“That is a shame,” Luke said.
“Oh, I quite agree, Master Luke,” Threepio said brightly. “I thought on the way to our docking bay we could start practicing the first of the four Whiforlan fluting forms.”
The corridors of the refueling station were filled with a mix of species—horned Devaronians rubbed shoulders with green-skinned Duros, while diminutive Aleena dodged massive Herglics. The blank walls were interrupted here and there by windows revealing Devaron below.
Luke had shed his flight suit and put on a yellow jacket, black shirt, and brown trousers—the kind of clothes worn by spacers across the galaxy. His blaster pistol sat snug in a holster on his hip, while his father’s lightsaber hung beneath his jacket, concealed from view.
Luke stiffened as he spotted a quartet of stormtroopers marching in his direction, led by an officer in an olive-green uniform. The spacers in the corridor gave the troopers a wide berth, shrinking from them with fearful looks.
“Oh my, stormtroopers,” Threepio said. “As dangerous fugitives we’ll surely be captured and sent to some terrible prison. I hope it’s not the—”
“Shh,” Luke said. “There’s no reason to suspect us of anything. Remember our cover story—we’re hyperspace scouts. Honest, hardworking hyperspace scouts.”
But Luke had to fight down a surge of anger at the sight of the troopers’ gleaming white armor. Back on Tatooine, soldiers like these had killed his aunt and uncle and turned the only home he’d ever known into a smoking ruin. And they’d done similar things to countless other families on thousands and thousands of other planets.
He kept his expression blank as he walked past the troopers, with Threepio clanking along behind him. He’d almost relaxed when he heard the clipped, cold voice of the officer.
“You there! Halt!”
Luke stopped and turned slowly, hoping the troopers were stopping someone else. But the officer was looking right at him, finger pointed accusingly.
“Hand over your identification,” the man said.
Luke carefully reached into his jacket pocket—the stormtroopers might have itchy trigger fingers, and the death of a civilian on a refueling station would require nothing more than a report to be buried in a bureaucratic archive somewhere. He extracted his identification and handed it to the officer, whose eyes jumped between it and Luke’s face as Threepio fidgeted nearby, his servomotors whining.
“Your purpose here?” the officer asked as he slid Luke’s ID through a slot in his datapad.
Luke wished desperately that he had Ben Kenobi’s ability to cloud minds with the Force. But that knowledge had vanished along with the old Jedi’s body. He’d have to hope that the Alliance’s slicers had created a fake identity good enough to fool the Empire.
Well, he could rely on hope and a bit of acting. He’d seen Han bluff his way past his share of Imperial patrols, after all.
“Hyperspace scout, just like it says there,” Luke said, trying to pack a bit of Corellian bluster into his voice. “We’re refuelin’ before we head out to the Western Reaches. Friend of a friend found an ol’ ship log, see—a ship log with the coordinates of a Tibanna gas deposit. Interstellar gas—the really pure stuff.”
Luke told himself to stop and blink suspiciously at the officer.
“But don’t go jumpin’ my claim now,” Luke muttered, shaking a finger in warning. “Wouldn’t be proper.”
“We have no interest in your lunatic tales about space gas,” the officer said. “And where is your scout ship?”
“Docking Bay 42, just down the hall here,” Luke said. “Bought me a converted starfighter—Clone Wars salvage, modified for long hauls. She’s a tough ol’ gal—rode out a meteorite strike in the Lower Flora Cloud with just a couple of dents. Lower Flora’s where we got jumped by Sikurdian pirates, you know. Say, you fellas mind taggin’ along? We could throw a scare into them bandits—”
“Be quiet,” the officer snapped. “I am an officer of the Galactic Empire, not some scruffy mercenary for you to hire.”
“It was just a suggestion,” Luke said plaintively.
The officer glared at Luke, then eyed Threepio, who fidgeted uncomfortably.
“And what does a hyperspace scout need with a protocol droid?”
“Oh, this one can talk to anything—he’s programmed with about a million strange Wild Space dialects and old trade languages.”
“Six million, to be exact—” Threepio began.
“Plus I’ve made a few special modifications,” Luke interrupted. “Even taught him to cook a not-bad pot of chuba stew. No need for that look, sir!
Chubas ain’t just Hutt chow, you know. That’s an unfortunate misconception. See, what you need to do is season them—”
The officer held up his hand for silence and thrust Luke’s identification back at him.
“Carry on,” he said. “But remember, it’s the duty of every Imperial citizen to report suspicious activity. In any region.”
Luke nodded and the officer signaled to the stormtroopers, who marched away.
“Thank goodness,” Threepio said. “I’m not programmed to resist interrogation.”
“I wasn’t looking forward to it either,” Luke said as he and Threepio continued toward the docking bay where Artoo was waiting.
Then Luke stopped at one of the windows overlooking Devaron, Threepio nearly plowing into him.
“Master Luke, what is it?”
Luke didn’t answer, continuing to stare at Devaron. Someone or something down there was calling to him.
“Sir? Are you quite all right?”
Luke shushed the droid and reached out with his mind in hopes of figuring out what the Force was asking him to do. Was Devaron where he was supposed to go? Was it somehow connected with his vision?
But he could sense nothing else. He turned away from the green-and-yellow planet with a frown.
“We need to get to our fighter if we’re to make the first rendezvous,” Luke said. “And we wouldn’t want to keep Artoo waiting, now would we?”
AS HIS Y-WING FIGHTER climbed away from the refueling station, Luke glanced back down at Devaron, hoping for some new signal from the Force. He was still staring at the jungles far below when Artoo beeped to get his attention.
“Sorry, Artoo,” Luke said. “Access the jump pattern for Whiforla.”
“Space travel used to be so much more civilized,” Threepio groused from where he sat in the tail gunner’s bubble behind Luke. “One could simply travel from place to place, rather than meandering about like a Purcassian river eel during spawning season.”
“Well, a more civilized galaxy is what we’re fighting for,” Luke said as the Y-wing rocketed into hyperspace.