A lone figure wearing dark robes emerged from the crack in the door. At first, he thought it was a Resistance messenger, coming to make a last-ditch negotiation he’d never accept. But as the figure walked through the sunbeam, Ren realized it was not a messenger, but his master—his former master.
“Stop.”
Standing beside Ren, General Hux seemed puzzled by the order but gestured to his officers in the cockpit that it be transmitted to all ground forces. The walkers, hovertanks, and troopers came to a halt, still some distance from the fort.
Skywalker strode across the red-stained salt flats, his robes frayed and flapping, like some crazy beggar on a fool’s errand. The hundreds of stormtrooper rifles, walker guns, and hovertank cannons pointed at him did not give him the slightest pause. He stopped below where the shuttle hovered, and with the wind whipping his unruly hair, he looked up to the cockpit and stared at Ren through the transparisteel canopy.
Ren trembled and immediately admonished himself for it. Why should he fear this madman? Skywalker was old and weak. His influence in the galaxy had faded like a burnt-out star.
“Supreme Leader, shall we advance?” General Hux asked.
Ren kept his gaze locked on Skywalker. “I want every gun we have to fire on that man.” When Hux hesitated, Ren snarled, “Do it.”
Hux nodded and relayed the command. One trigger-happy gunner in an AT-M6 walker fired first, initiating a megacaliber barrage that enveloped Skywalker in a column of fire.
“More,” Ren said.
Hux cocked an eyebrow at Ren. “We’ve surely—”
“More!”
The shuttle opened fire, along with every gun below, making a crater where Skywalker stood. When smoke and salt jeopardized their sensor arrays, Hux took over. “Enough—enough!” The officers frantically issued the order and the firing petered out.
Hux turned to the shuttle’s commander. “You think you got him?” he said sarcastically.
The man nodded, though visual confirmation was difficult with all the smoke. Ren slumped into a seat, breathing hard. His mouth, his eyes were wet. His gloved hands ached from clenching his fists too tightly.
“Now, if we’re ready to get moving, we can finish this,” Hux said.
The shuttle commander swallowed loudly. “Sir…”
An unnerving silence fell over the bridge. Ren followed Hux’s incredulous stare outside the shuttle.
Luke Skywalker climbed out of the crater, showing no sign of injury. He swept dust off his robes and raised his eyes to meet Ren’s again.
Rage surged through Ren. He rose from his seat. “Bring me down to him. And don’t advance our forces until I say.”
“Supreme Leader, don’t be distracted,” Hux said, exasperated. “Our goal is to kill the Resistance. They’re helpless in the mine, but every moment we waste—”
Ren waved his hand and Hux was tossed into the bulkhead.
The shuttle commander’s swallow was even louder this time. “Right away, sir.” He had the pilot land the ship on the battlefield. Ren left the cockpit and went to the hatch.
He ran his hand along his lightsaber hilt before he disembarked. Though he didn’t know what trick his former master might be pulling, when the opportunity presented itself, Ren would strike him down once and for all.
Skywalker waited for Ren on the battlefield. The crater behind him flickered with flames.
“Old man,” Ren jeered. “Did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul, like my father?”
“No.”
Skywalker’s bluntness came as no surprise to Kylo Ren. This was not the heroic Skywalker whom everyone admired. This was the villainous Skywalker who had tried to murder Ren in his sleep.
Kylo Ren ignited his lightsaber.
At the behest of General Organa, Poe had spent months scouring the galaxy for clues to the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker. It had been a frustrating assignment, full of dead ends, and he often doubted anything would come of it. But now all his hard work had borne a most marvelous fruit.
Luke Skywalker had appeared on the battlefield.
The First Order’s forces turned their guns away from the trenches and fired at Luke. Poe knew it would be folly to assist the Jedi. If Luke survived, it would be because of the powers he was rumored to have, not anything Poe could do. But in the meantime, the First Order was distracted, and the smoke from its fusillade provided the ideal cover for retreat.
Poe parked his skimmer and jumped out. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he ordered the Resistance troops out of the trenches and back into the mine. One soldier was too injured to run, so Poe threw an arm around her shoulder and helped her along.
Before reentering the mine, Poe glanced back at where Finn and Rose had crashed. But he could see nothing through a curtain of dense black smoke.
Finn stripped wire from his skimmer. The smoke had drifted past, so he could inhale without worry. But his lips tingled strangely, probably from the salt in the air.
Or was it from Rose’s kiss?
She lay on a metal sheet he’d torn off the skimmer. He corded the wire around her waist and her legs so she wouldn’t slip off. The leftover wire he used to rope the skimmer’s laser barrels through the holes he’d punched into the sides of the sheeting. He then lifted both barrel ends and started to pull Rose on his improvised sled.
The going was tough, the ground slippery. Finn had to take a longer route back to the mine, to avoid the thickest patches of smoke. Whenever they were out in the open, Finn dreaded the seemingly inevitable laser barrage. Yet for some reason, the gorilla walkers ignored them.
He checked on Rose periodically. She moaned at times, a sign she was still alive. It kept him pulling. So did his thoughts of Rey. If the Millennium Falcon had come to Crait, surely she was flying it. And as long as she piloted that ship, a rescue didn’t seem out of the question.
When they neared the trenches, Rose whimpered something. He looked down at her. “What’s that?”
A smile bloomed across her dirty cheeks. “When we met, I was dragging you,” she whispered. “Now you’re dragging me.”
He snickered, remembering how this feisty maintenance tech had wanted to turn him in as a deserter. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”
Around the turbolaser towers, only the dead remained. The surviving soldiers were fleeing through the crack in the base’s shield door. Finn and Rose would be there soon, once they crossed the trenches.
“Who’s that?” Rose asked.
She pointed across the plain. The First Order walkers had halted before a hooded figure. Smoke coiled from the crater behind him.
Finn had an inkling who the figure might be, but he didn’t waste time confirming. Rose’s life depended on getting into the mine.
After taking the wounded to a medic, Poe ran into the small command bunker inside the rebel base. General Organa stood before a blank screen, lost in thought.
“General, all survivors have returned,” he said. “I advise we set up a heavy cannon and blast anyone else who comes through that crack. And I believe your brother—”
“What about your friends?”
“Finn?” Poe swallowed. Just saying his buddy’s name—a name he’d personally given the ex-stormtrooper—felt like a shot in the gut. “He…didn’t make it.”
She turned from the screen. “Are you sure about that, Commander Dameron?”
He blinked, unsure of what to say. Was she questioning what had happened out there? And had she just reinstated his rank?
He followed her gaze out the bunker, toward the entrance of the mine, where he witnessed the day’s second miracle.
“Finn!”
His friend clambered through the crack in the shield door, hoisting Rose on a makeshift sled. “Medpac! I need a medpac here!” Finn shouted.
Some soldiers got there before Poe, taking the sled out of Finn’s arms and carrying Rose to the bunker. Finn glanced out the crack in the door as Poe ran toward him. “Was that
—”
“I think, yeah.” Poe peered into the periscope for a glimpse outside. Two figures in black confronted each other on the battlefield, one brandishing a red lightsaber, the other igniting a blue blade. The man who held the blue blade was indeed Luke, as he had thought. The other, however, was the brutal fiend who had tortured Poe on the Finalizer. “Kylo Ren—Luke’s facing him alone.”
“We should help him,” Finn insisted. “Let’s go!” Poe turned from the periscope. The few able-bodied soldiers left looked at him for their new orders. They’d run back out there if he asked them. But Luke hadn’t asked for anyone’s help. “No no no. We are the spark that’ll light the fire that’ll burn down the First Order. He’s stalling him so we can escape.”
Finn’s jaw dropped. “Escape? He’s one man against an army! We have to go help him!”
Leia walked out of the bunker, C-3PO clanking behind her. She glanced at Poe, saying nothing. Her look told him to not to stop.
“No,” Poe said. “Luke’s doing this so we can survive. There has to be another way out of this mine. Heck, how’d he get in?”
C-3PO lent his expertise. “Sir, it is possible that a natural unmapped opening exists. But this facility is such a maze of endless tunnels, that the odds of finding an exit are—”
Poe shushed the droid. “Shut up.”
“—fifteen thousand, four hundred twenty-eight—”
“Shut up!”
“—to one,” Threepio finished.
Poe stared into one of the mine’s tunnels. He saw nothing in the darkness and, moreover, heard nothing.
Finn voiced what Poe was thinking. “Where’d the crystal critters go?”
There was something—a pair of red eyes blinking back at them. Then the fox scampered deeper into the tunnel, its spines tinkling.
“Follow me,” Poe said.
Everyone turned to General Organa as if waiting for an order. “What are you looking at me for? Follow him,” she said.
She stepped behind Poe, the first to abide by his instructions.
REY swatted a porg away from the mapping scopes while Chewbacca glided the Millennium Falcon over a crystal glacier. More porgs fluttered around the cockpit but she ignored them. A dot blinked steadily on the topographic readout, indicating they were near the beacon linked to the one she wore on her wrist. Yet Crait’s surface was devoid of anything except salt and mineral deposits.
“The beacon’s right beneath this—they’ve gotta be somewhere,” Rey told a discouraged R2-D2. The droid was jacked into the Falcon’s sensor systems and hadn’t detected any biological signatures other than the porg that had tried to build a nest atop his dome.
“Keep scanning for life-forms.” Rey wished she could reach out herself. But the fight had left her body bruised, her mind foggy. And her connection to the Force felt distant, out of tune, as if she had been stretched to her limits.
One thing was clear to her. She was not going to give up on her friends in the Resistance, wherever they were. They needed her help, that much she could sense.
The Falcon turned for another pass over the glacier. Rey followed a long gash in the surface to a mountain ridge, scanning, searching, hoping. A porg perched on the dashboard looked out with her.
R2-D2 wobbled and beeped, scaring some of the porgs. The one on the dashboard squawked so loud Rey’s eardrums hurt. But then she spotted the reason for R2-D2’s excitement. “Chewie, there!”
She pointed to the top of the ridge, where fox-like creatures were dashing out of the mountain in droves. The spines that covered their bodies glinted in the setting sun like icicles.
Despite no sign of her friends, Rey was convinced they were there. Chewbacca landed the Falcon, and Rey ran out. She wasn’t looking where she was going and fell, sliding down a slope. The last of the spiny creatures jumped past her to join its pack on the ridge above.
The hole the foxes had emerged from was small, no bigger than the length of Rey’s hand. It wasn’t a crack in the mountain rock itself but, rather, a space between boulders that had been fused together.
A mountain she wouldn’t be able to move. But boulders—those she had experience with.
She closed her eyes, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again. The Force tingled, almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t worry. She knew it was there, as it always was. And she trusted that she was part of it.
Jedi wisdom held that it was the masters who learned and the students who taught. As he faced his old pupil, Luke understood just how true that was.
Anger swirled around his nephew like a cyclone. It was an anger spurred by distrust and disappointment, expectation and entitlement. Ben Solo had been a child born of privilege, son of a revered princess and a notorious scoundrel, and gifted with a remarkable aptitude in the Force. Nonetheless, given all those things, he wanted something of his own—a name. And he achieved it by rejecting his parents and uncle, by embracing his anger and doing harm to himself and all those around him.
In Kylo Ren, Luke saw the shadow of his own father as a young man—and what he himself could have become if he had not been allowed to grow up as a farm boy on Tatooine.
The young man shifted his weight from one foot to another, his eyes sunken and dark. His gaze was fierce, daring Luke to make the first move.
Luke did not let himself be lured. Patience was another lesson he’d learned from his students.
His nephew charged. Luke slipped out of the way and turned. Both rooted their feet and met the other’s stare. Drifting flakes of salt and ash sizzled on their blades.
In the dark pools of his nephew’s eyes, Luke was struck by the sight of his own reflection—an old man, grim and tired and sad. “I failed you, Ben. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are. The Resistance is dead. The war is over. And when I kill you, I’ll have killed the last Jedi.”
But reflections are just reflections, they need not be reality. Luke looked past his reflection, past those dark eyes, into the Force.
“Every word of what you just said was wrong,” he said to Ben. “The Rebellion is reborn today.”
The Force showed him a vision of Rey, who stood at the bottom of a crevasse, meditating as he had taught her. Her hand rose, and so did a stack of boulders, loosened from a hole in a mountain.
“The war is just beginning,” Luke said.
Rey’s hand twitched. Her breathing changed. Luke sensed she knew he was there with her. He’d always be there.
“And I will not be the last Jedi,” Luke said.
Finn watched the boulders levitate from the mouth of the tunnel to reveal Rey, standing on the other side like the last beam of the sunset.
She opened her eyes, teetering. The boulders dropped to the ground. Finn ran to her and took her in his arms. He held her tight. She smiled.
Rey—he had found her again—Rey!
But when their eyes met, he saw she wasn’t the same Rey he had known.
“Rey,” Kylo Ren said, snarling her name. “She made her choice. She aligned herself with the old way that has to die. I will destroy her and you and all of it. Know that.”
He swung but Skywalker would not cross blades. His former master kept ducking, dipping, evading, eluding. Ren gnashed his teeth, frustrated. But it became clear that Skywalker had to dodge because he could not match Ren’s power. Soon he would make a wrong move. And once that happened, Ren would strike him down just as he had struck down Snoke.
“Strike me down in anger,” Skywalker said, “and I’ll always be with you. Just like your father.” He stepped back and deactivated his lightsaber.
That was Skywalker, always trying to lecture, always try to impart his nonsense. This lesson would be his last.
Ren lunged and swung at his master with all his strength, all his rage.
His blade cut nothing but air.
He swung again, and yet again his lightsaber slashed straight through Skywalker. His old master shimmered, as if he wasn’t there, as if he was just a hologram, a phantom, a pro
jection of Kylo Ren’s mind. What Jedi trick was this?
“See you around, kid,” Skywalker said, then vanished.
Ren fumed. He had been goaded by a ghost. And now the trenches were vacant. The Resistance soldiers had fled into the mines. Skywalker had tried to distract him to give them time to get away.
Ren would not let that happen.
He called a squad of troopers to his side and stormed through the shattered shield door into the rebel fort. The Resistance soldiers weren’t in the mines, either. The entrance chamber was empty, as was the command center.
Ren’s hand began to tremble. The stormtroopers hurried away from him. He examined the antiquated command center consoles.
He picked up two small objects from the ground. A pair of chance cubes, strung together. Ren knew the dice well. They had been Han’s, hanging in the cockpit of—
The Millennium Falcon. Ren glimpsed the ship through the Force. Rey and Leia were boarding. Both seemed upset by something.
Rey turned her head in his direction and glared at him. She was angry at him. She thought he had betrayed the person he should be.
But she was wrong. She had betrayed him.
The Falcon’s ramp rose, and Kylo Ren’s communion with her ended. He stood alone in the command center, seething with rage. The dice had disappeared, just part of Skywalker’s trick.
This time, Leia didn’t interrupt any happy reunions. She joined one herself, entering the Falcon’s lounge where most of the Resistance’s survivors sat. She gave Chewbacca the biggest hug she could, and the Wookiee in turn gathered up everyone else he could in his arms, squeezing the air out of Poe.
Some couldn’t partake in the festivities. Rose lay on the medbed, injured but in a restful sleep, and Finn scrounged in the locker underneath it. Of the many things he pulled out was a set of leather-bound tomes. They looked very old, and Leia wondered how they had come onto the Falcon. Han hadn’t exactly been a bookworm.
Finn found a blanket and draped it over Rose. Leia noticed Rey seemed puzzled by Finn’s attention to the other girl. She distracted herself by inspecting two chrome pieces in her hand.
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