by Alex Wheeler
Leia burst into laughter. Kitehawks were harmless. Back on Alderaan, many children kept them as pets. But Han was flailing and shouting as if he were being attacked by a horde of angry clawbirds.
"All right, Chewie," Leia said to the Wookiee, whose hairy shoulders were shaking with laughter. "Should we put him out of his misery?"
In response, Chewbacca threw back his head and let loose an echoing roar. The terrified kitehawks took off as one, vanishing into the trees.
Han's eyes were squeezed shut, his arms waving wildly in an effort to fend off his attackers. It took him a moment to realize they were gone. Finally, he dropped his arms and opened his eyes. "Told you I'd protect you, Your Worshipfulness," he said.
Leia plucked a feather out of his scruffy hair. "Lucky me."
Thorny branches slapped at his face and legs. Luke hacked through them with his lightsaber, forcing his way deeper and deeper into the dense jungle growth. Massassi trees towered overhead, their canopy of leaves blocking out the sun. His feet sank into a soft bed of mud and leaves, and when he passed, it sprang back into place, obliterating his footsteps—as it had obliterated any traces of Div and his captors.
This was pointless. The jungle stretched on for miles in all directions. Luke had picked up a few tracking skills back on Tatooine. But following Jawa tracks across the desert was a lot different from tracking mysterious kidnappers through a jungle. He had no idea where to start.
"What do you think, little guy?" Luke asked R2-D2. The droid beeped at him helplessly.
Luke sighed. "I know. But we have to find him."
R2-D2 beeped again, pointing at Luke's lightsaber with his manipulator arm.
"I don't think this is going to help," Luke said, confused. The astromech droid trilled a long series of beeps and whistles, obviously frustrated. Suddenly, Luke understood. "You don't mean that I should use the lightsaber, do you? You mean I should use the Force!"
R2-D2 beeped excitedly. His domed head spun in a circle.
Luke shook his head. "I wish I could. I know that's what Ben would have done. But I don't know how."
The astromech droid just pointed to the lightsaber again, insistent.
"I guess I could try," Luke agreed. "What's the worst that could happen?"
He wasn't sure how to start. So he just stood, waiting. Feeling somewhat silly, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of distractions. He focused intently on Div.
Nothing happened.
Come on, Ben, he thought. Help me out.
It was so frustrating knowing he had this power in himself and no way to reach it. If only there was someone to tell him what to do.
Or you could figure it out for yourself.
It wasn't Ben's voice in his head. It was his own.
Luke slowed his breathing. He relaxed his muscles. This time, he didn't try to focus his mind on Div, or on anything. He let his thoughts roam freely, as they did when he was drifting off to sleep. Instead of blocking out the world around him, he soaked it in. The soft mud beneath his boots, the chirps of the chucklucks, the rich, heavy scent of the purple Massassi bark. If the jungle had something to tell him, he was listening.
Again, nothing happened. But when Luke opened his eyes, some impulse drove him to look toward the southwest. And he noticed something he hadn't before: a regularity, almost a pattern, in the randomness of the jungle growth. But in one spot it was broken, more branches were bent and more flowers trampled than should have been. Something had come through the trees here. Maybe an animal.
But Luke didn't think so. "Come on, Artoo." He urged the astromech droid to hurry through the trees. "I sure hope this works."
He didn't know if it was the Force that made everything seem sharper, made every twisted branch and shallow footprint jump out in a way they never had before. But he didn't question it. He just followed his instincts. They brought him to a clearing, where a beat-up Firespray ship was powering up its engines. Three men loaded an unconscious figure into the cargo bay. It had to be Div.
Luke was outnumbered and outgunned, with no time to wait for reinforcements. He was going to have to handle this himself.
"Go find the others and tell them I went after Div," Luke said to R2-D2. "Tell them I'll be back."
The droid beeped in alarm, but Luke ignored it. He crept closer to the ship, careful not to let the men see him. Two of the men climbed into the cockpit while the third climbed into the cargo bay. The doors began to slide shut.
It was his best chance. Also his last chance.
Luke ran toward the ship as fast as he could. One man caught sight of him and began to shout, but the noise was drowned out by the thundering engines. As the man fumbled for a blaster, Luke threw himself into the cargo bay. The doors shut behind him as blasterfire sprayed the bulkheads.
"What do you think you're doing?" the man shouted, taking aim at Luke.
Luke activated his lightsaber and struck out blindly. The laserfire bounced off the blue beam and slammed into a large stack of heavy crates. They toppled over, landing squarely on top of the man with the blaster. With a loud "Oof," he collapsed to the floor.
Luke rushed to Div, who lay in a corner, bound and unconscious. "Come on, wake up," he muttered. "We need to get you out of here before—" The engines flared and the ship lifted off the ground. "Before that happens." Luke braced himself against the wall as the ship rocketed through the atmosphere.
It seemed they were going for a ride.
CHAPTER THREE
Luke used his lightsaber to cut through Div's restraints. "Div, wake up!" he said again, careful to keep his voice down. But Div didn't move.
Luke was on his own.
He nudged the fallen kidnapper with his foot. The body didn't stir. But there were still two more on the other side of the bulkhead. He'd have to deal with them—preferably before they figured out they had a stowaway.
A narrow retractable panel separated the cargo bay from the cockpit. Luke inched it aside and peeked through the slender gap. One of the men bent over the controls, programming something into the autopilot. He ran a hand through his dark red hair, then hesitated over the control panel, as if nervous about the flight path.
"Just do it," growled the other. Tall and muscular, he looked uncomfortable, cramped in the narrow copilot seat. "We got what he wanted. Time for our reward."
"Never heard of him rewarding anyone," the redhead muttered.
"First time for everything," the big one said. "Now."
There was a rustling behind Luke. He whirled around. Div was stirring. Eyes still closed, Div lashed out with his arm, whacking the plastoid bulkhead.
"Hey, you hear that?" the copilot asked, jumping up from his seat. He opened a channel on the comlink.
Luke held his breath.
"Griff, everything okay with the prisoner?" the copilot asked. "Griff?"
Griff, lying unconscious on the floor of the cargo bay, did not respond.
It was now or never. Luke activated his lightsaber again. Blue blade held high, he burst into the cockpit. The copilot barreled toward him. Luke struck out with the lightsaber, but the man grabbed his arm and twisted hard. Luke swallowed a gasp of pain. He tossed the lightsaber to his other hand. The blade whipped through the air and sliced effortlessly through the man's bulging belly. He dropped to the ground, curled up and cradling the wound.
Laserfire screamed past Luke, scorching the wall behind him.
The pilot stood before the controls, blaster aimed at Luke. "Where did you come from? What do you want? What'd you do to Tyrus? What's that sword thing? Who are you?"
Luke swept his gaze across the tiny cockpit. There was a chance he'd be able to block the laserfire with his lightsaber. But he'd be a lot more confident about blocking it with a chair, or a storage crate, or a nice thick durasteel bulkhead. "Which question do you want me to answer first?" he asked, stalling.
The pilot shrugged. "How about…none of them?"
He fired.
Luke ducked,
closed his eyes, let the Force guide his hands.
The laserfire smacked into his lightsaber. Luke stumbled backward with the impact.
"Watch it." A voice came from behind him. And then another shot. The pilot clutched his chest and pitched forward, tumbling to the floor. Luke spun around to see Div grinning behind him. "You're welcome," Div said. "Now, what are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you," Luke said.
Div raised an eyebrow. Then he raised his blaster. "Don't move!" he shouted.
Luke froze. But Div wasn't aiming at him.
Groaning with pain, the pilot hoisted himself up to the control panel. "If you want to live, don't move!" Div warned him.
But the pilot didn't stop. He reached toward the controls. Div pulled the trigger. Laserfire sailed across the cockpit, peppering the pilot's body. He tumbled forward onto the controls, his hand slapping down on a large red switch. With a weak but satisfied smile, he dropped to the floor.
And in the viewscreen, the sky exploded with light as the ship jumped into hyperspace.
Stars streamed past as the ship hurtled through space.
Moments later, the autopilot took them out of hyperspace. The ship came to rest in an empty pocket of the galaxy with no planetary systems anywhere in sight. They could have been anywhere. And they had a bigger problem: the Star Destroyer looming in their viewscreen. Hundreds of times their size, the arrow-shaped silver ship hung motionless in the sky less than twenty klicks away, as if it had been waiting for them—which, Div realized, it almost certainly was.
Div glanced at Luke. "When does the rescuing start?" he asked drily.
"Maybe we can escape before it notices us," Luke said, fiddling with the unfamiliar hyperdrive controls.
Div jabbed a boot into the unconscious pilot, hoping the man could give them some clue as to what they were up against. But he didn't stir. Luke was muttering to himself, trying to program a new set of coordinates. "It's an old ship," he murmured. "It's going to take at least six minutes before the drive is ready to jump again."
"I'm not sure we have six minutes," Div said.
The launch hangars of the Star Destroyer slid partially open. A single TIE fighter slipped through the narrow crevice.
"Just one?" Luke said. "We can take it."
"Great," Div said. "But who's going to take them?" As he spoke, the hangar doors were sliding wide open. A fleet of TIE fighters poured out, blanketing the sky.
An Imperial transmission came through from the Star Destroyer. "Identify yourselves," a flat, tinny voice commanded. "Imperial authentication and docking codes required."
Luke took a weapons inventory while Div again tried to rouse the pilot, shaking him and propping him on his feet. No luck.
"A few concussion missiles and a defective laser cannon," Luke said quickly. "That's it."
Enough to dispatch three, maybe four TIE fighters. No more.
"Identify yourselves," the voice said again.
Div lunged for the comm. "We're here on official Imperial business," he said quickly. "We're expected."
The voice was unimpressed. "Identification and authorization. Now."
"How long before the hyperdrive is ready?" Div said.
"Four minutes now."
"Okay, we definitely don't have four minutes," Div said. He powered up the missile launchers. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.
The comm buzzed with an incoming message. But this wasn't coming from the Star Destroyer. It was coming from one of the TIE fighters.
"That's a Rebel frequency!" Luke exclaimed. They bent their heads together over the transmission, eyes widening in surprise. The TIE fighter had sent them a set of Imperial docking codes.
That wasn't all the TIE fighter had sent them. The message also included coordinates to be input into the hyperdrive. The TIE fighter was sending them somewhere. It was the strangest rescue Div had ever seen.
Or it was a trap.
CHAPTER FOUR
A kind face leans over him, and blond hair brushes his forehead. Her lips skim his cheek, and she smiles. She smells like zinthorn blossoms. Sleep now, she says in her soft, musical voice. He feels safe. He feels at home.
X-7 jerked the speeder back in its lane, a split second before ramming into a blue airspeeder.
"Watch it, you kreetle!" shouted the Trandoshan at the wheel, shaking a clawed fist at X-7's jet-black speeder.
"Focus," X-7 murmured, weaving through the dense Coruscant traffic. One trillion people swarmed the surface of this planet-sized city, and at the moment, it seemed all of them were crowding the skylanes of Quadrant 472. Trast speeder trucks and Zzip Astral-8s and SoroSuubs of every shape and color jockeyed for position as they whizzed past the skyscrapers, burrowing into the city like gravel-maggots infesting a rotting muja fruit. X-7 didn't possess the normal human inclination to prefer one environment over another. The mountains of Julio, the plains of Loped VII, the breathtaking cliffs of Kenosha, the bare, craggy surface of a lifeless moon—they were all the same to him. But if he had had a preference, this would be its opposite. The crystalline spires glowing in the blazing red sunset, the millions of windows glinting in the dying light, the layers upon layers of people covering every inch of the surface, buildings stretching untold kilometers into the sky—it was supposed to be the pride of the galaxy. It gave X-7 a headache.
Navigating the skylanes demanded his full attention. But how was he supposed to concentrate with these wretched memories floating around in his head?
"I dare you!" the boy cries.
"No, I dare you!" he shouts back.
The boy laughs and steers his speeder bike straight for the edge of the ravine. He surges forward at top speed, then pulls up at the very last minute. The momentum carries him across. He waves from the other side. "Your turn now, you sprigging coward!"
He is afraid. But he is also determined. He leans forward. Pushes the throttle. Wind thunders in his ears. The ground opens beneath him, and he is flying—
"Enough!" X-7 shouted. Blind with rage, he rammed the speeder into the bright red sport speeder in front of him, knocking the sport into a wild spin across four levels of traffic. The sport crashed into a zip speeder, which smashed into two Flash speeders. Crushed and twisted durasteel spiraled through the air; drivers moaned and cried; sirens screamed. And X-7 quietly steered his heavily armored Serous into a narrow alleyway, fleeing the chaos he'd caused.
The needless destruction made him feel better. And that was the problem.
Feeling angry.
Feeling better.
Feeling anything at all. It wasn't right. He wasn't built for it. He was a tool, not a person. How many times had his commander burned that message into his brain? The Commander, who had taken X-7's flesh-and-blood form and molded it into something better, something perfect. Scooped out his mind, purging it of memories, of emotions, of weakness, and turning his will to durasteel.
All these years, X-7 would have felt grateful, if he could have felt anything at all.
But now everything was going wrong. It had started with the feelings. Frustration, impatience, rage. They'd clouded his mind; that was why he hadn't been able to complete his mission, he told himself. It was why Skywalker still lived. And the more often Skywalker foiled him, the angrier he grew.
Then, as if the feelings had wedged open a long-sealed vault, the memories had arrived. Not even memories—just flashes, really. Nothing he could grab hold of or understand. A too-familiar scent. A few notes of a long-forgotten song. A voice. And now, it was even worse, these incomplete moments, confusing stories from someone else's life. As nonsensical as a dream.
Dreaming. Something else X-7 wasn't supposed to be capable of.
He was broken.
He must be broken, because that was the only possible explanation for his not wanting to be fixed. For his suddenly having wants, which were as alien as the feelings. For his disobeying a direct order from his commander to return for retraining.
It was why instead
he was here, guiding his speeder into the alley behind the Commander's building, with an armory of weapons on the seat beside him.
He didn't want retraining. He wanted answers.
The thirty-story building was home to several third-rate Imperial officers, those deemed unworthy of space in the more desirable Imperial headquarters. On the plus side, being this far from the Emperor meant less chance of running into Lord Vader in the hallway. On the other hand, placement in this quadrant was often the first stop to a far less appealing posting: the Outer Rim perhaps. Or to being "promoted" to commandant on a prison moon, forced to live out the rest of one's life eating diluted gruel, administering executions, and waiting to die.
X-7's research had revealed that this was likely to be his master's fate—although the Commander himself hadn't yet figured that out.
The building was stocked with a full complement of stormtroopers in addition to the handful of Imperial has-beens and never-weres. But again, they were hardly the cream of the crop. With a little stealth and some cheap false docs, X-7 could have waltzed into the Commander's office without notice.
He chose not to.
The docs brought him into the building and onto the turbolift. But when he reached the sixty-second floor, he stepped out with his dart shooter in hand. It was small enough to be concealed in his palm; the guards never knew what was coming. He aimed for the small pocket of flesh just below their helmets and above their body armor—a little-known but fatal weakness. One stormtrooper, two, three, toppled to the floor with a satisfying clatter. Three more dropped, leaving only one on his feet. On a whim, X-7 decided to give him a chance to fire. Lasers shot from the blaster, peppering the wall of the turbolift as X-7 dodged the beams. The stormtrooper charged, and X-7 leapt out of the way, firing a blaster as he soared through the air.