The Last Jedi_Expanded Edition [Star Wars]

by Jason Fry

  —

  The suns were dipping toward the horizon as Rey and Luke entered the Jedi temple, facing each other across the font in the center of the ancient space.

  “So,” Rey said.

  “So.”

  She shook her head. “Nope, you start this time.”

  “I’ve shown you that you don’t need the Jedi to use the Force,” Luke said. “So why do you need the Jedi Order?”

  Rey peered at him. Surely this was another one of his tests. She had heard the tales of what he’d been able to do with the Force. She’d seen with her own eyes what Kylo had used that energy to accomplish. And she sensed—with a mix of fear and anticipation—what her own growing powers might one day allow.

  But one person couldn’t stand against an army like that of the First Order. No matter how powerful they might be.

  “To fight the rising darkness,” Rey said. “They kept the peace and protected the light in the galaxy for a thousand generations…and I can tell from your look that every word I just said was wrong.”

  Luke smiled and studied the mosaic in the floor. She wondered how long ago it had been created, and by whose hands.

  “You got ‘thousand generations’ right,” he said. “Lesson Two. Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized—deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, from the birth of the Sith to the fall of the Republic the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris.”

  “That’s not true!” she protested, staring at him in shock. If he was the last of the Order, the galaxy needed him to be its custodian, its preservationist. The galaxy had no shortage of those who wanted to see the Jedi discredited and buried and forgotten.

  But this was no test.

  “At the height of their powers they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out,” Luke said. “It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.”

  “And a Jedi who saved him!” Rey objected. “Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy—but you saw there was conflict in him. You believed that he wasn’t gone, he could be turned.”

  She didn’t understand. It was troubling enough that Luke had rejected the legacy of the Jedi. But whatever had happened to him had led him to reject his own legacy as well. Not for the first time, she wondered if he had slipped into madness during his years of exile.

  But the bearded man in the rough-hewn woolens didn’t look insane. Just profoundly sad.

  “And I became a legend,” Luke said. “For many years there was balance. I took no Padawans, and no darkness rose. But then I saw Ben, my nephew—with that mighty Skywalker blood. In my hubris I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strengths. I might not be the last Jedi.”

  His eyes were far away now, interrogating the past. Rey wondered if he relived those dark times every day, brooding on the top of the island as when she’d first met him, or if he never did—if it was her arrival that had forced him to confront the events that had caused him to shut himself away from family and friends and vanish.

  “Han…was Han about it,” Luke said. “But Leia trusted me with her son. I took him and a dozen students and began a training temple. And by the time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him it was too late.”

  “What happened?” Rey asked gently.

  * * *

  —

  Ben Solo—no longer a boy but not yet a man—looks up in surprise and alarm. His uncle Luke has come into his chambers, at night, and now stands over him. There is no sign of trouble—Luke is unarmed—but his Master’s face is creased with concern. And the Force is aboil with danger.

  Ben’s hand reaches up, not toward Luke but beyond him, to the stones of the ceiling. Bidding those stones to obey his command and come crashing down on Luke’s head. To crush and bury him.

  * * *

  —

  “He must have thought I was dead,” Luke said. “When I came to, the temple was burning. He had vanished with a handful of my students and slaughtered the rest. Leia blamed Snoke, but it was I who broke that family. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. A legend.”

  He said that last word as if it were something terrible—a burden and a curse. But Rey held his gaze.

  “The galaxy may need a legend. I need someone to show me my place in all this. And you didn’t fail Kylo—he failed you. I won’t.”

  Luke regarded her gravely, and when he spoke his voice was quiet.

  “I don’t know who’s more dangerous: the pupil who wants to destroy me, or the one who wants to become me.”

  For a long moment there was no sound but the wind. Then Rey felt it: Something was coming. She stepped out onto the meditation ledge, high above the sea, and peered out at the horizon. Six ships—crude constructions of wood—were arrowing through the water toward the island.

  Rey tensed. They’d been found.

  “It’s a tribe from a neighboring island,” Luke said from behind her.

  Her shoulders slumped with relief.

  “They come once a month to raid and plunder the Caretakers’ village,” he added.

  Rey hurried to the end of the ledge, seeking to trace their course. Her heart began to pound. The ships were indeed bearing slightly north of them, perfectly positioned to skirt the headlands and land in the bay where the Caretakers’ huts huddled by the sea.

  “Well, come on!” she urged Luke. “We’ve got to stop them!”

  But he just stood on the ledge, contemplating the ships and the sea. She stared at him in disbelief.

  “Come on!” she said.

  “Do you know what a true Jedi would do right now?” Luke asked, as if they had all the time in the world. “Nothing.”

  “What? This is not a lesson—they’re going to get hurt! We’ve got to help!”

  “If you meet the raiding party with force, they’ll be back next month—with greater numbers and greater violence. Will you be here next month?”

  Frustrated, Rey watched the ships cutting through the water, every moment bringing them nearer to the helpless village. Her senses were aflame, bombarding her with images: shattered eggs, crashing waves, splintered bones, and fire in the night.

  “That burn inside you, that anger thinking what the raiders are going to do?” Luke asked. “The books in the Jedi library say ignore that. Only act when you can maintain balance. Even if people get hurt.”

  Oh really? Well, then the hell with what a bunch of old books say.

  Rey shoved past Luke, squeezed through the entrance to the temple, and took off at a run down the ancient stairs.

  “Wait!” she heard the Jedi Master call. “Rey!”

  But Rey had waited long enough.

  * * *

  —

  The Master Codebreaker looked exactly like Finn had imagined: a young human, with a striking white streak in his hair and a thin, perfectly groomed mustache. He wore an immaculate gaberwool tuxedo with a leather cummerbund, a platinum ring—and, yes, a pin on his lapel that looked like a red flower.

  He stood at one end of a gaming table, surrounded by riveted onlookers, cupping a pair of dice in one hand. Next to him was a tall red-haired woman whose geometric hair seemed to levitate above a cheongsam decorated with an intricate, hypnotizing lattice of lace.

  The Master Codebreaker winked at the woman in lace, then let the dice fly. They tumbled across the table and the onlookers roared in delight.

  Time seemed to slow down as Finn made his way through the crowd, trailed by Rose and the rattling BB-8. Somehow, he knew, everything would work out. They’d cut it a bit close, to be sure—the fleet would be running on fumes by the time they got back to it—but it would be okay.

  A sour-faced Abednedo stepped in front of him, right into his personal space. More puzzled than annoyed, Finn turned
to brush past him.

  “Yeah, these are the guys,” the Abednedo said.

  Before Finn could protest or even make sense of what was happening, two police officers stepped forward, saying something about parking. Or maybe it was littering. Finn wasn’t sure—he lost the thread of the conversation when he saw the cops unclip their stun prods and raise them.

  This is happening way too often, he thought a moment before the jolt of electricity shot through him, the world around him shrank to a dim tunnel, and everything went black.

  * * *

  —

  The stairs were taking too long, so Rey skidded down the slope leading down from the temple, then raced across the top of the island, scattering nesting porgs and digging in her bag for Luke’s lightsaber.

  She ran past the tree housing the Jedi tomes and reached the winding track that led down to the Caretakers’ village. It was growing dark and she was breathing hard. She could see the lights below her—and, through the gloom, the shapes of the raiders’ ships approaching the rocky shore.

  Fear lent Rey an additional burst of speed—fear and anger. Luke had said the raiders came every month. That meant this had happened many times during his exile. How many nights had he stood brooding at the crest of the island, doing nothing, while those who served him were left to suffer?

  She didn’t understand how anyone could do that—and so this would be the last time it happened. She’d watched the Hosnian system burn; with the First Order on the march, other worlds were in danger of meeting the same fate. But this one village would be spared. At least in this one tiny corner of the galaxy, there would be some justice.

  She hurtled a tide pool and her finger found the lightsaber’s activator, its light tinting the water around her blue. Its weight felt like a promise of retribution, and the ancient Jedi weapon’s hum sounded eager to her ears.

  As she neared the village, kicking up loose rock, she heard screams and cries ahead. She slashed through a gate made of driftwood, lightsaber raised over her head—

  —and came to a shocked stop.

  Tables groaned with platters of fish, roe, and spiced seaweed. Caretaker matrons were dispensing grog into stone mugs and passing them into a crowd of males and females, dancing energetically on their spindly legs to the sound of horns and drums. The raiders, Rey saw, were the same species as the Caretakers, but wearing woolen caps and warm, colorful coats designed for seafaring.

  She’d interrupted a party.

  The partygoers turned to behold Rey poised like a war goddess, teeth bared and weapon raised. They greeted her with joyous cries, swinging lengths of kelp studded with phosphorescent bladders above their heads. Rey halfheartedly waved the lightsaber in the air and they cheered even more loudly.

  Her sides hurt and her adrenaline had leaked away, leaving her feeling shaky and faintly sick.

  On the fringe of the crowd, she spotted Chewbacca with a mug of something, one hairy fist resting on R2-D2’s dome. The Wookiee called out a cheerful greeting, and the astromech beeped.

  “Seriously?” Rey asked.

  She was staring out over the moonlit ocean, still furious, when Luke finally made his way down the slope into the village. He stood next to her, but she refused to look at him.

  “Raid and plunder?” she asked when she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “In a way.”

  “Was this a joke?”

  At least he had the good grace to sound sheepish. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d—you just ran so fast.”

  The musicians had begun a lilting song that struck her as beautiful but sad. It made her think of lonely voyages across vast and uncertain seas.

  Luke held his hand out to her. He was inviting her to dance, she realized. She looked away, flustered and embarrassed.

  “I’ve never danced before,” she admitted.

  Luke smiled. “You’ve never single-handedly fought a Bonthian raiding party, either.”

  “Yeah, but this is scary.”

  She took his hand, roughened by work and weather, and looked down to see how to position her feet correctly, trying to copy his stance. He gave her an encouraging smile and they began to dance, their steps forming overlapping squares across the stone and gravel, in time with the drums.

  Luke, she supposed, was a good dancer. She followed his lead, their hands clasped, as the moon shone down and the party turned around them.

  “I thought they were in danger,” Rey said. “I was just trying to do something.”

  “And that’s what the Resistance needs—not an old failed husk of a religion. Do you understand now?”

  She let go of his hand.

  “I understand that across the galaxy our real friends are really dying. That legend of Luke Skywalker that you hate so much? I believed in it. I was wrong.”

  And she left him alone on the edge of the party, backlit by the moonlit sea.

  Everyone in the Resistance understood that waiting patiently wasn’t one of Poe Dameron’s strengths.

  Behind the control yoke of an X-wing, there were hostiles, friendlies, and noncombatants, and a flyby or two would sort out which was which. He knew how much damage he could deal out, how much he could take, and made decisions accordingly.

  And if things went wrong, well, BB-8 could usually fix it.

  Suddenly none of that was true. Most of the Resistance’s starfighters, including Black One, were space dust—and flying one of the few remaining fighters into the teeth of thirty Star Destroyers would be suicide, even for a pilot as skilled as Poe.

  Even BB-8 was gone—after a couple of hours of baffled searching, Poe realized the astromech had joined Rose and Finn on their hastily conceived mission.

  Poe didn’t blame the droid. It’s what he’d wanted to do himself.

  As for Holdo, Poe had avoided the heavy cruiser’s temporary bridge since his confrontation with her—he wouldn’t do anyone any good by losing his temper and getting himself confined to quarters. So he circled among the mess, the medical suites, and the ready room, checking in on his surviving pilots and trying to keep their spirits up.

  But it wasn’t working, and he knew it as well as they did. The heavy cruiser’s lower levels were guarded now, amid reports of more demoralized personnel trying to reach the escape pods.

  Poe understood their desperation. The two surviving Resistance ships remained just out of range of the First Order’s weapons, but there was nowhere for them to run. The only thing changing was the level of their fuel reserves, creeping ever closer to zero. How long would it be until they ran dry? Six hours? Seven if they were lucky? And under the circumstances, would an extra hour really matter?

  He checked his comlink on the vanishingly small chance that he might somehow have missed a message from Finn and Rose in the four or five minutes since he’d last checked.

  Nothing.

  Poe tried to imagine that was because they had just reached the tracking-control room of the flagship pursuing them, and were about to free the Resistance from its own slow-motion destruction—and not, say, dead or shackled in a First Order interrogation room somewhere.

  As he wandered the Raddus, Poe’s mind kept gnawing at the problem of Holdo. If the Raddus’s new commander was a friendly, she was the kind you didn’t particularly want as a wingmate.

  But what if she was something worse? What if she was actually another hostile?

  Poe found that hard to believe—but then Holdo’s intentions were beside the point. Her actions—or her lack of action—had left the Resistance rudderless and in despair, at a time when it had never needed hope more desperately.

  Poe realized his wanderings had returned him to the officers’ level, and Leia’s stateroom. He gathered himself and thumbed the door controls, then stepped into the makeshift medcenter. Two med droids glanced briefly up from their stations by the
bed next to C-3PO, then returned to their work.

  Poe nodded at C-3PO and leaned over the Resistance leader. She was pale and motionless, eyes closed.

  Poe was struck, and not for the first time, by just how small Leia was—a petite, delicate-looking woman, seemingly at risk of being swallowed up by the bedding and the gurney around her. It was an impression that many people had on meeting her—and that vanished the moment she engaged with them. Her determination, her ferocity, her sheer force of will belied her size and made visitors remember her as far bigger than she was.

  “How is she, Threepio?” Poe asked, wanting to smooth a stray lock of hair from her forehead but not daring anything so familiar.

  “Her signs are steady, Captain Dameron,” the protocol droid reported. “Most of the trauma she experienced was due to the pressure wave from the blast. Though I am not programmed as a medical droid, Captain, I am of course more than able to interpret their findings for personnel who lack such expertise. Therefore…”

  Poe’s mind drifted as C-3PO rattled on about ebullism, hypoxia, and exposure to solar radiation. He stared down at Leia, trying to will her to return to consciousness, to come back to the people who so desperately needed her.

  “It seems you didn’t hear me, Captain Dameron,” C-3PO was saying, a bit peevishly.

  “Sorry, Threepio, what was that last part?”

  “To reiterate, Captain—it’s not my place to say, but might you put a little more faith in Vice Admiral Holdo? The princess certainly did.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement, Threepio,” Poe said.

  It was true that Leia Organa’s trust wasn’t given easily, and her friendship was a far rarer gift than that. But everyone made mistakes—even the general.

  And every starfighter pilot knew that a single mistake, if made at the wrong moment, would kill you.

  Rose wouldn’t quit.

  The moment she spotted the guard’s gray-and-blue Canto Bight Police Department livery through the gloom of the cell block, she was at the bars yelling that she and Finn needed be released this instant, or at the very least granted access to an attorney.