by Alex Wheeler
I'm so tired, he thought. Why am I so tired?
But he was too tired to wonder for very long.
Instead, he closed his eyes.
And went to sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
"Luke needs us!" Leia shouted. Why wouldn't anyone on Yavin 4 understand?
"I fear that may be, Your Highness," General Rieekan said, "but we have no way of knowing where he is. I can't authorize a fool's mission."
"Are you calling me a fool, General?" Leia asked coolly.
Han cleared his throat. "I'm sure the general's not—"
"The general can speak for himself," Leia snapped.
General Rieekan sighed and shook his head. "The answer is no, Your Highness. I'm sorry."
Leia turned her back on both of them and stormed out of the temple. She heard Han behind her and picked up her pace. As he walked faster, she began to run. He didn't catch up with her until they'd nearly arrived at the hangar deck.
"Where do you think you're going?" Han asked, grabbing her as she headed toward the nearest and fastest craft. She shrugged him off.
"Isn't it obvious? I'm going to find Luke!"
"And how, exactly, are you going to do that, Your Worshipfulness? You gonna fly around in circles with your eyes closed and just wait to run into him?"
"I have to do something, Han! Are you coming or not?"
"This is crazy, Leia. You heard General Rieekan—"
"You're siding with him?" Leia couldn't believe it. Han had never turned down the opportunity to do something crazy. Never. But now that Luke's life was at stake, now he wanted to talk about doing the sensible thing? Leia was angry; felt helpless. Of course she knew that a rescue mission was foolish. Of course she knew logically that there was almost no chance of her finding Luke. The galaxy was a big place, and she didn't even know where to start. But…it was Luke. She was convinced that something would guide her to him. It always did. "Don't you see, Han?" she cried, frustrated. "I have to."
"Have to what, Princess? Spend the rest of your life jumping to random coordinates, shouting his name out the window? You really think that's going to work?"
"At least I'm doing something," she retorted. "Unlike you. You're happy just sitting around doing nothing."
Han grimaced at her. "Listen, lady, if you think this makes me happy—" He stopped himself, then murmured something under his breath. Leia suddenly realized he was counting to ten. When he spoke again, his voice was even. "The kid'll be fine. He's gotten himself out of plenty of tight spaces. Tighter than this."
"You don't even know what 'this' is."
"Yeah, but I know Luke. The kid's not about to go down without a fight."
"Exactly. Which is why some of us are trying to fight for him."
"Some of us?" So much for counting to ten. Han's anger was back. "Guess I don't have to ask who 'some of us' is. So I don't care? That's what you're saying?"
"Look at you, Han! You have less feeling than a droid!" She nodded toward the Millennium Falcon, where C-3PO was becoming hysterical. R2-D2 beeped soothingly.
"What do you mean, 'this always happens, and he always survives'?" C-3PO asked indignantly. "Nothing like this has ever—"
R2-D2 beeped again.
"Oh. Yes," C-3PO said. "But that was different, because on Kamino he—"
The astromech trilled, his lights flashing.
"That was different, too," C-3PO insisted. "Who knew he could survive a Podracer explosion? But this, this…Oh dear, Artoo, I just don't know what I'll do if something happens to Master Luke. This is a catastrophe!"
Han snorted. "Look, Princess, you don't get this yet, but maybe someday when you're a little older, a little more experienced—"
"Excuse me?" In principle, Leia believed that physical violence should be used only when all other courses of action had been exhausted. In practice, she was about ready to punch him in the gut.
"—you'll see that someone has to stay calm. Be strong. You can't just run around panicking about every little thing that goes wrong. You should take things like a—" He spotted Chewbacca emerging from the Millennium Falcon. "Well, like a Wookiee." He slapped Chewbacca on his furry back. "Right, pal? Go on, tell her Luke's going to be just fine."
At Luke's name, Chewbacca threw back his giant head and unleashed a mournful roar.
Han looked at Chewie in disgust.
"I don't care what you say," Leia said fiercely, starting toward the ship again. "I don't care what anyone says. I'm going to find Luke."
"Leia!" Han grabbed her arm and, this time, refused to let go. "We have to trust him," he said, the mocking tone gone from his voice. "That's the best thing we can do right now. It's all we can do. We've got to trust him to come back to us."
"But…" She didn't want to admit he was right. She couldn't just sit here and wait. It was too frustrating.
Too terrifying.
"He'll be okay," Han said, still gripping her arm. "He'll be back."
"You really believe that?" Leia peered intently into his eyes. Han was an excellent liar, but he'd never been very good at lying to her.
"I really do," he said. But as he answered, he looked away.
"Please don't," Ferus said mildly as Div snatched the lightsaber from Luke's belt. Ignoring the older man, Div activated the Jedi weapon. Ferus kept his eyes fixed on the gleaming blue beam. Div kept his eyes fixed on Ferus.
Ferus Olin, after all these years. A fairy-tale hero from his childhood. Ferus, who'd had all the answers.
Ferus, who'd turned his back and walked away.
May the Force be with you, Lune, he had said as Ferus prepared to leave. At the time, Lune was dimly aware that his mother had fallen in love with Clive Flax and that together they would be starting a new life and a new family. But all he really cared about was that he was getting a new brother. Trever, the teenaged orphan from Bellassa who needed a home. Take care of Trever, Ferus told Lune. Trever was like a son to Ferus—yet here he was, leaving the boy behind.
Ferus had said one more thing before saying good-bye forever: You would have made a fine Jedi.
With Garen Muln and Ry-Gaul dead, Ferus was the only person left in the galaxy who could teach Lune the Jedi way. And Ferus was saying good-bye. At the time, Lune had just grinned, thinking that it was a compliment. Not realizing everything he was about to lose.
Ferus hadn't aged well. The lithe, resolute man Div remembered, the proud Jedi with laugh lines creasing his worried face and a defiant gaze that dared the world to cross him, that person was gone. In his place was a prematurely old man with gray hair and a soft, bulging belly. As far as Div could tell, everything about him was soft. Since the last time they'd met, nearly twenty years before, Div had become a warrior. And Ferus had apparently become a Corellian cream puff. Though that cream puff had just put Luke on the ground.
Div would never have imagined that Ferus Olin, of all people, would turn to the dark side. But there he was, flying a TIE fighter. There he was, standing over Luke's unconscious form.
People changed.
"You've grown," Ferus said, a smile creeping across his face. He seemed unconcerned by the lightsaber aimed at his throat.
He still has the Force, Div reminded himself. The man might have grown old and soft, but he could likely disarm Div with a single thought.
"It's good to see you again, Lune," Ferus said softly. "Better than I could have imagined."
"Don't call me that. It's Div."
Lune was a child, who had needed protecting. A prodigy, a Force-sensitive. A hope. Lune was special, according to those who had died for him. Lune was the naïve child who'd been stuffed into an escape pod, blasted off from the asteroid, leaving his friends behind, stranded. Brave Rebels before the Rebellion, they sent their one and only hope flying to safety, then waited to die. Lune was the boy who'd floated through space in an escape pod, helpless, useless, as an energy bolt slammed into the asteroid and blasted it into debris. And then, years later, when the scars had finally hea
led, Lune had sat on a hilltop and watched his entire family die.
Div was a man. He had only one thing in common with that ignorant boy: He was a survivor.
"I take it this is as much of a joyous reunion as I can expect?" Ferus said with a glimmer of his familiar dry wit.
"Is he going to be all right?" Div asked, glancing at Luke.
Ferus nodded. "Sleep dart. He'll be awake in an hour or so. I needed to buy us some time to talk—privately. There are certain things about me that Luke doesn't need to know."
"Like the fact that you're a Jedi," Div guessed.
"And does your friend know that you are?" Ferus asked.
"He's no friend. And I'm no Jedi."
Ferus didn't reply. He just looked pointedly at the lightsaber in Div's hand. As always, it felt so right. Like a piece of him too long absent had finally returned. Div deactivated the weapon and returned it to Luke's side. He had turned away from that life and away from the Force. He had lived with that empty hole inside him, that knowledge that he could have been something more, for a long time. The pain was no longer raw. It was tolerable.
Div scowled at Ferus. "Fine. The kid's out of the way. So here we are. You want to talk? Talk."
"Help me carry him?" Ferus said, kneeling before Luke's body. It was beyond lucky that he'd been able to sense Luke's presence in the Firespray. The Force was strong in Luke, very strong. "It's not safe out here in the open." Together, they lifted the unconscious Rebel and carried him toward the small shelter Ferus had been using as his base. They worked in silence. Ferus kept his head down but spread his attention, absorbing every detail of Lune with his peripheral vision. He had a feeling the boy wouldn't take kindly to being stared at. But it was tempting to do so.
It hurt seeing himself reflected in Lune's expression. The boy had once looked at him with respect, trusting, with the innocence of a child—the ignorance of a child—that Ferus would protect him. More than once, that trust, that duty to protect Lune, had been the only tether keeping Ferus from a bottomless fall into the dark side of the Force. But now…Ferus could feel Lune's disgust, his dismay at seeing what his old friend had become. How soft and flabby Ferus had grown over the years. How old.
How cowardly.
Lune couldn't be expected to see beneath Ferus's disguise, to understand that he'd spent decades hiding in plain sight, pretending to be a harmless, senseless courtier. And Ferus couldn't explain it to him, not without explaining why it had been so imperative to disguise himself. Not without revealing the secret of Leia Organa, the child Ferus had been sworn to protect. Anakin's child.
Leia was the second child Ferus had sworn to protect, the second "galactic hope." Lune had been the first.
He's alive, Ferus told himself. That was something.
But it wasn't everything.
Ferus had long ago accepted that his mission would mean losing the respect of all around him, even Leia herself. Only Obi-Wan understood who Ferus truly was, and Obi-Wan was dead. This, too, Ferus had finally accepted. Much as he might have craved it, he didn't need Lune's admiration. So what hurt the most wasn't the look on Lune's face; it was the look in his eyes.
As Ferus had grown soft, Lune had grown hard. The boy Ferus remembered—sweet-tempered, mischievous, preternaturally smart, hopeful—that boy was gone. The man who appeared in his place shared many of his qualities, especially that quiet, intensely watchful mode that had seemed eerie in a young boy. But this man was cold and rigid, as if a layer of thick, tough scar tissue had crusted over his soul.
Suddenly, Lune looked up and met his eyes. "Take a holopic," he suggested caustically. "It'll last longer."
Something else the man had in common with the boy, Ferus observed: He still saw more than anyone expected.
"It's been too long," Ferus said softly. "I've thought of you often over the years. You and—"
"How do you know Luke?" Lune asked sharply. "What are you doing here on this cursed moon? What are we doing here?"
He doesn't want me to say Trever's name, Ferus thought. Because he can't stand to hear it? Or he can't stand to hear it from me?
"Fair enough," he said aloud. "I was an acquaintance of Princess Leia Organa on Alderaan. After the…disaster, I found the princess again, and came to know several of her friends. Good people."
"Apparently not good enough for you to tell them the truth about who you really are."
"If you'll let me explain, I think you'll see why it's important Luke not know I'm a Jedi," Ferus said, stalling for time. What was he supposed to say: I'm keeping the secret because the ghost of a dead Jedi Master warned me that Luke wasn't ready?
"Oh, I see," Lune spat out. "If the Empire knew the truth, you'd be a target. And if the Rebels knew the truth, they might expect you to do something. But you've become a coward. So you stay hidden."
"You think that little of me?" Ferus asked.
"I don't think of you at all," Lune said. "Not since I was a child, and you abandoned us all to die."
"I never abandoned you," Ferus said. "You had your mother and Clive, and—"
"And I was supposed to protect him, isn't that right?" Lune said sourly. "That's what you told me, before you left, that I should take care of Trever. I was a child. A child! You were a Jedi, and who were you protecting? Only yourself."
Ferus shook his head. "I thought you would be safe," he said desperately. "All of you. I had a mission—"
"So did they, that day," Lune said bitterly. "They all had missions. My mother. My father. Trever."
Ferus flinched at the name.
"You think you know what happened to them," Lune said. "I can see it on your face."
"And I'm so sorry for your loss," Ferus began.
"But you can't know. Not unless you were there. Like I was. But I was only fifteen, and they wouldn't let me go with them. Even though I could have helped. So I watched them from a hill overlooking the factory. Like lizard-ants, swarming across the grounds, shooting, running, dying."
Ferus wanted to stop listening. As Lune went on, relating their deaths in horrifying detail, Ferus wanted to summon the Force around his ears like a thick blanket, drowning out the noise. But he made himself hear it all. A Rebel mission betrayed from the inside. An ambush. His old friend Clive cut down where he stood, ripped through by blasterfire. Lune's mother, Astri, fierce and proud, blown to bits by an Imperial grenade. And Trever. Trever, who had survived as an orphan on the streets of Bellassa when he was only a teenager, until Ferus had turned him into a soldier and a fugitive. Trever, who had died a prisoner, trapped inside the munitions factory when the concussion missiles rained down and the building imploded.
"Enough!" Ferus finally cried. He laid Luke's body out on a narrow cot, then lowered himself to the edge, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder. Only then did he notice that his hand was trembling. "Please, Lune," he said quietly. "Enough."
"It's Div."
And Ferus nodded, acknowledging that it was true. "I'm sorry for what happened to them," he said. "And for what's happened to you."
"Nothing happened to me."
Ferus sighed.
"Don't," Div said harshly. "Don't you dare judge me. So I'm different from the kid you remember? Look at you. Those people we used to be? They're gone. Erased. Whatever it takes to survive, right? That's what makes you and me special. Not the lightsaber, not the Force. We're survivors. Whatever it takes."
The words were proud, but the tone was ashamed. Ferus lowered his head. Lune was just trying to wound him, Ferus knew. He was lashing out, angry about the past, angry about having a reminder of all the things he'd worked hard to forget. Angry that Ferus had left in the first place, then had had the temerity to come back. They were just words.
But shame flooded him nonetheless. The truth hurt.
Luke opened his eyes. The world was blurry. "What happened?" Gradually, the blurs of color before him resolved themselves into faces. Ferus and Div peered down at him, wearing curiously similar expressions.
"You passed out," Div said, then hesitated. He locked eyes with Ferus, and for several moments, a heavy silence settled between them. "You must have hit your head harder than you thought," Div said. "In the ship."
Luke rubbed the spot where his head had slammed into the bulkhead. He felt a small lump, painful to the touch. Still, something seemed off. "My head doesn't hurt that much," he said dubiously.
"Head injuries can be tricky," Ferus said quickly, helping him off the cot. "All the more reason to return to the Rebel Base. And quickly. We have work to do."
"Work? What do you mean?"
Ferus and Div exchanged another of those mysterious glances. Luke wondered how long he'd been out and what had happened between the two of them. It was as if they'd known each other for years rather than minutes.
"That ship you commandeered was on a rendezvous course with an Imperial Star Destroyer," Ferus explained.
"I noticed," Luke said, rubbing the lump on his head again. If they hadn't escaped in time…Speaking of which…"What were you doing in a TIE fighter?" Luke asked suddenly. "And how'd you find us? And—"
"It's a long story," Ferus said. "And I can tell you on the way. Right now all you need to know is that the pilot of that ship—the one who kidnapped you, Div—was an agent of Darth Vader. The information he gathered is crucial to the Rebel cause. To you in particular, Luke. It's the key to saving your life…and, if we're lucky, to ending Vader's."
CHAPTER SEVEN
It had been foolish to hope that Leia would be happy to see him. Ferus knew that.
But he'd hoped anyway.
Was it his destiny to seemingly disappoint everyone he cared about?
It was so good to see Lune again—Div, he reminded himself. And to see him with Luke and Leia, as if the Force itself was drawing them together, readying them for the fight to come.
But it was also unsettling. Years before, Ferus had worked hard to bring Jedi and Force-sensitives together, to draw them out of hiding, prepare them for battle. Obi-Wan had warned him against it, had said it was too soon. (Just as he now said, from beyond the grave, that it was too soon to alert Luke and Leia to their destiny.) But Ferus had gone forward anyway—and they had all died.