by James Luceno
“Vader,” Bail said, on seeing the tall figure in black, leading a cadre of stormtroopers into the Emperor’s building.
“HoloNet News has learned that he is known in the highest circles as Lord Vader,” the commentator said. “Beyond that, almost nothing is known, save for the fact that he led the action on Kashyyyk.
“Is he human? Clone? The Emperor’s own General Grievous? No one seems to know, but everyone wants to—”
“Switch it off,” Bail said to Antilles.
“Kashyyyk,” Mon Mothma said in incredulity. She ran her hands down her face and stared at Bail. “We’re too late. A dark time has begun.”
Bail didn’t respond immediately. Into the silence stepped Breha, holding Leia against her shoulder, and into Bail’s rattled mind came thoughts of Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Leia’s twin brother, Luke.
“All the more reason to keep hope hidden,” he said softly.
The Drunk Dancer was home, parked in the cold gloom, light-years from any inhabited systems. This far from the Core, HoloNet broadcasts were standard days, sometimes weeks, behind and always degraded, but clear enough just now for Starstone, Jula, and everyone else—Jedi and crew members alike—to identify the bodies of Iwo Kulka and Siadem Forte.
“… All the Jedi who took part in the battle were killed,” a correspondent was saying when Starstone asked Filli to mute the recorded feed. Everyone had already seen the original reports, which had since been embellished with exaggerations and outright lies.
Gazing around the cabin space at Jambe, Nam, Deran Nalual, and Klossi Anno, Starstone couldn’t help but think that the five of them made up what could be thought of as the final Jedi Council. With herself having called for the meeting, as master of ceremonies, without ever having passed the trials, let alone been dubbed a teacher.
But she could remember Shryne saying on Murkhana that the war was trial enough for anyone.
“What I’m about to say was already said by Master Shryne,” she began at last. “He warned us that by gathering together we would make ourselves a larger target for the Empire, and that we would end up drawing others into our predicament. We can’t risk fomenting another Kashyyyk. The Empire will have to come up with justifications that don’t rely on the presence of Jedi.
“Because there are no more Jedi.
“That much is clear to me now, and I’ll never forgive myself for not having had sense enough to recognize it sooner. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to think of what happened at Kashyyyk as further diminishing the legacy of the Jedi among those who never doubted that Palpatine betrayed us. But if we can’t be Jedi, we can at least continue to honor that legacy in our own way.”
Starstone looked at Chewbacca. “Just before we jumped from Kashyyyk, Chewbacca said that he believed he could be of greater help to his people from afar. I feel the same, and I know that some of you do, as well.”
She took a breath before continuing. “I’ve decided to remain aboard the Drunk Dancer with Jula, Filli, Archyr, and the rest of this mad crew.” She smiled weakly. “Chewbacca and Cudgel are also going to remain aboard for a time. Our priority will be to learn where so many of Chewbacca’s people were taken, and to help liberate them, if at all possible. I’m hoping that by finding them, we’ll also be able to learn why the Empire was so intent on invading Kashyyyk to begin with.
“Along the way …” Starstone shrugged. “Along the way we’re going to keep our eyes open for any Jedi survivors who surface on their own, or are forced into the open by Imperial spies. Not to repeat the mistakes we made at Kashyyyk, but to get them to safety. Gradually, other smugglers will spread word of what we’re doing, and of the safe routes we’ll establish, and maybe some Jedi will actually come looking for us.
“Beyond that, we’ll undermine the Empire at every opportunity, any way that we can.”
“We’re going to keep my son’s memory alive,” Jula said.
The cabin fell silent for a moment.
“I know this may sound like I’ve gone over to the enemy,” Jambe Lu said, “but I plan to sign up with a flight school somewhere, and try to finagle my way into one of the Imperial academies. Once inside, I’m going to foster whatever dissent I can.”
“We have something similar in mind,” Nam said, speaking for himself, Klossi Anno, and Deran Nalual. “But by getting ourselves attached to Imperial agricultural or construction projects, and engineering what flaws we can into the Empire’s designs.”
Starstone’s eyes brightened.
“I trust that all of you understand there can be no contact among us—ever again. That’s going to be the hardest part for me.” She sighed deeply. “I guess I’ve grown attached to all of you. But I’m certain of this much: Palpatine’s Empire will rot from the inside out, and eventually someone will cast him from his throne. I only hope that all of us are alive to witness that day.”
She drew her lightsaber from her belt. “We need to say good-bye to these, as well.” She ignited the blade briefly, then summoned it back into the hilt and placed it at her feet on the deck.
Regarding everyone, she said: “May the Force be with all of us.”
Lord Vader,” the gunnery officer said, nodding his head in salute as Vader passed by his station.
“Lord Vader,” the communications officer said, saluting in similar fashion.
“Lord Vader,” the Exactor’s captain said, in crisp acknowledgment.
Vader continued on to the end of bridge walkway, thinking: This is how I will be greeted from now on, wherever I set foot.
Standing at the forward viewports, he scanned the stars with his reconstructed eyes.
He had guardianship of all this, or at least joint custody of it. The Jedi no longer mattered; they were no different from others who would interfere with his and Sidious’s realm. Their mission was to maintain order, so that the dark side could continue to reign supreme.
Anakin was gone; a memory so deeply buried he might have dreamed rather than lived it. The Force as Anakin knew it was interred with him, and inseparable from him.
Just as Sidious promised, he was now married to the order of the Sith, and needed no other companion than the dark side of the Force. He embraced all that he had done to bring balance to the Force, by dismantling the corrupt Republic and toppling the Jedi, and he reveled in his power. It could all be his, anything he wished. He needed only the determination to take it, at whatever cost to those who stood in his way.
But …
He was also married to Sidious, who doled out precious bits of Sith technique as if merely lending them—just enough to increase his apprentice’s power, without making him supremely powerful.
There would come a day, however, when they would be equals.
He scanned the stars, looking forward to a time when he could find an apprentice of his own and, together with that one, topple Darth Sidious from his throne.
It gave him something to live for.
Another glass, stranger?” the cantina owner asked Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“What will it cost me?”
“Ten credits for refills.”
“That’s as much as a shot of one of your imported brandies.”
“The price of staying hydrated on Tatooine, my friend. Yes or no?”
Obi-Wan nodded. “Fill it.”
Gathered by the cantina’s single moisture vaporator, the water was somewhat cloudy and had a metallic taste, but it was of a higher quality than that gathered by Obi-Wan’s own vaporator. If he was to survive in the hovel he had found, he would need to have the vaporator repaired, or somehow obtain a newer one from the Jawa traders who occasionally passed through the region he now called home.
If it hadn’t been for the kindness of the maroon-cloaked creatures, he would still be walking to Anchorhead rather than sitting in the scant shade of the cantina’s veranda, sipping water. A wind-scoured settlement close to Tatooine’s Western Dune Sea, Anchorhead was little more than a trading post frequented by the moisture farmers who made up the
Great Chott salt flat community, or by merchants traveling between Mos Eisley and Wayfar, in the south. Anchorhead had a small resident population, a dozen or so pourstone stores, and two small cantinas. But it was known mainly for the power generator located at the edge of town.
Named for its owner, Tosche Station supplied energy to the moisture farms and served as a recharge depot for the farmers’ landspeeders and other repulsorlift vehicles. The station also boasted a hyperwave repeater, which—when it functioned—received HoloNet feeds relayed from Naboo, Rodia, and, occasionally, Nal Hutta, in Hutt space.
Tosche was working today, and The Weary Traveler’s handful of afternoon customers were catching up on news and the outcome of sports events that had taken place standard weeks earlier. Obi-Wan—known locally as Ben—had taken possession of an abandoned home on a bluff in the Jundland Wastes. He glanced at the HoloNet display from time to time, but the focus of his interest was a provisions store across the street from the cantina.
In the months since he had arrived on Tatooine his hair and beard had grown quickly, and his face and hands had turned nut brown. In his soft boots and long robe, its cowl raised over his head, no one would have taken him for a former Jedi, let alone a Master who had sat on the High Council. In any case, Tatooine wasn’t a world where questions were asked. Residents wondered, and they gossiped and theorized, but they rarely inquired about the reasons that brought strangers to remote Tatooine. Coupled with the fact that the world was still largely under the sway of the Hutts, the prevailing frontier etiquette had made Tatooine a refuge for criminals, smugglers, and outlaws from star systems galaxywide.
Many of the locals were just learning that the former Republic was now an Empire, and most of them didn’t care one way or another. Tatooine was on the fringe, and fringe worlds might as well have been invisible to distant Coruscant.
Months earlier, when he and Anakin had been in pursuit of clues they had hoped would lead them to Darth Sidious, Obi-Wan had told Anakin that he could think of far worse places to live than Tatooine, and he still felt that way. He took in stride the ubiquitous sand that had so rankled Anakin. Tatooine’s double-sunset skies were always a marvel to behold.
And the isolation suited him.
All the more because Anakin had been subverted by Palpatine and, for a brief time, had served this new Emperor.
Given everything that had happened since, the one image Obi-Wan knew he would never be able to erase from his memory was that of Anakin—Darth Vader, as Sidious had dubbed him—kneeling in allegiance to the Dark Lord, after having gone on a murderous spree in the Jedi Temple. If there was a second image, it was of Anakin burning on the shore of one of Mustafar’s lava flows, cursing him.
Had he been wrong to let Anakin die there? Could he have been redeemed, as Padmé had believed to the last? These were questions that plagued him, and pained him more deeply than he would ever have thought possible.
And now, all these months later, here he was on Tatooine, Anakin’s homeworld, watching over Anakin’s infant son, Luke.
Obi-Wan’s reason for living.
Watching from afar, at any rate. Today was as close as he had come to the child in weeks. Just across the street, Luke sat in a front carrier worn by Beru while she purchased sugar and blue milk; neither she nor her husband, Owen, was aware of Obi-Wan’s presence on the cantina veranda, his vigilant though covert gaze.
As Obi-Wan brought the water glass to his mouth and sipped, a HoloNet news report caught his ear and he swung to the cantina’s display, simultaneous with a torrent of static that interrupted the feed.
“What was she saying?” Obi-Wan asked a human seated two tables away.
“Band of Jedi were killed on Kashyyyk,” the man said. Close to Obi-Wan’s age, he wore utilities of the sort affected by docking bay workers in Mos Eisley spaceport.
Had the HoloNet reporter been referring to Jedi who had been on Kashyyyk with Yoda—
No, Obi-Wan realized when the feed suddenly returned. The reporter was talking about more recent events! About Jedi who had obviously survived Order 66 and been discovered on Kashyyyk!
He continued to listen, growing colder and colder inside.
The Empire had accused Kashyyyk of plotting rebellion … Thousands of Wookiees had died; hundreds of thousands more had been imprisoned …
Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut in dismay. He and Yoda had recalibrated the Temple beacon to warn surviving Jedi away from Coruscant. What could the ones discovered on Kashyyyk have been thinking, banding together like that, drawing attention to themselves instead of going to ground as they had been ordered to do? Did they think they could gather enough strength to go after Palpatine?
Of course they did, Obi-Wan realized.
They hadn’t realized that Palpatine had manipulated the war; that a Sith occupied the throne; that like everyone else, the Jedi had failed to grasp a truth that should have been evident years earlier: the Republic had never been worth fighting for.
The ideals of democracy hadn’t been stamped out by Palpatine. The Jedi had carried out missions of dubious merit for any number of Supreme Chancellors, but always in the name of safeguarding peace and justice. What they had failed to understand was that the Senate, the Coruscanti, the citizens of countless world and star systems, grown weary of the old system, had allowed democracy to die. And in a galaxy where the goal was single-minded control from the top, and wherein the end justified the means, the Jedi had no place.
That had been the final revenge of the Sith.
When Obi-Wan lifted his gaze, the intermittently garbled HoloNet was displaying an image of someone outfitted in what almost seemed a costume of head-to-toe black. Human or humanoid—the being’s species wasn’t mentioned—the masked Imperial had apparently played a role in tracking down and executing the “insurrectionist” Jedi, and enslaving their Wookiee confederates.
The burst of static that accompanied the reporter’s mention of the figure’s identity might have surged from Obi-Wan’s brain. Still chilled by the earlier announcement about the Jedi, he was now paralyzed by sudden dread.
He couldn’t have heard what he thought he heard!
He whirled to the spaceport worker. “What did she say? Who is that?”
“Lord Vader,” the man said, all but into his glass of brandy.
Obi-Wan shook his head. “No, that’s not possible!”
“You didn’t ask if I thought it was possible, sand man. You asked me what she said.”
Obi-Wan stood up in a daze, knocking over his table.
“Hey, take it easy, friend,” the man said, rising.
“Vader,” Obi-Wan muttered. “Vader’s alive.”
The cantina’s other customers turned to regard him.
“Get ahold of yourself,” the man told Obi-Wan under his breath. He called for the cantina owner. “Pour him a drink—a real one. And put it on my tab.” Righting the table, he urged Obi-Wan back into his chair and lowered himself onto an adjoining one.
The cantina owner brought the drink and set it down in front of Obi-Wan. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” the man from Mos Eisley said. “Aren’t you, friend?”
Obi-Wan nodded. “Heatstroke.”
The cantina owner seemed satisfied. “I’ll bring you some more water.”
Obi-Wan’s new friend waited until they were alone to say, “You really all right?”
Obi-Wan nodded again. “Really.”
The man adopted a conspiratorial voice. “You want to remain all right, you’ll keep your voice down about Vader, understand? You’ll keep from asking questions about him, too. Even in this Force-forsaken place.”
Obi-Wan studied him. “What do you know about him?”
“Just this: I have a friend, a trader in hardwoods, who was on Kashyyyk when the Imperials launched their attack on a place called Kachirho. I guess he was lucky to get his ship raised and jumped. But he claims he got a glimpse of this guy Vader, ripping into Wookiees like the
y were stuffed toys, and going to lightsabers with the Jedi who were onworld.” The spaceport worker glanced furtively around the cantina. “This Vader, he toasted Kashyyyk, friend. From what my friend says, it’ll be years before a piece of wroshyr goes up the well.”
“And the Wookiees?” Obi-Wan said.
The stranger shrugged forlornly. “Anyone’s guess.” Placing a few credits on the table, he stood up. “Take care of yourself. These desert wastes aren’t as remote as you may think they are.”
When the water arrived, Obi-Wan downed it in a gulp, shouldered his rucksack, and left the cool shade of the veranda for the harsh light of Anchorhead’s principal street. He moved in a daze that had little to do with the glare or the heat.
As impossible as it seemed, Anakin had survived Mustafar and had resumed the Sith title of Darth Vader. How could Obi-Wan have been so foolish as to bring Luke here, of all worlds? Anakin’s homeworld, the grave of his mother, the home of his only family members …
Obi-Wan gripped the lightsaber he carried under his robe.
Had he driven Anakin deeper into the dark side by abandoning him on Mustafar?
Could he face Anakin again?
Could he kill him this time?
From the far side of the street, he shadowed Owen and Beru as they moved from store to store, stocking up on staples. Should he warn them about Vader? Should he take Luke away from them and hide him on an even more remote world in the Outer Rim?
His fear began to mount. His and Yoda’s hopes for the future, dashed, just as the Chosen One had dashed the Jedi’s hopes of bringing balance to the Force—
Obi-Wan.
He came to an abrupt halt. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in years, speaking to him not through his ears, but directly into his thoughts.
“Qui-Gon!” he said. “Master!” Realizing that the locals were quickly going to brand him a madman if they heard him talking to himself, he ducked into the narrow alley between two stores. “Master, is Darth Vader Anakin?” he asked after a moment.
Yes. Although the Anakin you and I knew is imprisoned by the dark side.