S’ybll gasped as Luke fell back on top of her, causing her to lose her grip on him. As he rolled away from her, he glanced up through the hole in the shattered ceiling and saw what had caused the explosion. It was his X-wing starfighter, which hovered above the newly formed hole. The X-wing’s cockpit was empty, but the socket behind the cockpit was not.
Artoo?
And then, from his comlink, Luke heard R2-D2’s excited beeps.
Luke realized that his comlink probably had been working all along, but that S’ybll had manipulated his mind so he couldn’t hear it. He also realized that the astromech had disobeyed his command to leave Tarnoonga, assumed control of the X-wing, and homed in on his comlink to pinpoint his position. But before Luke could answer the plucky droid, S’ybll shifted on the floor beside him.
Luke spied his lightsaber lying near the rubble. Using the Force, he drew the weapon through the air, and it landed with a smack against the palm of his hand.
S’ybll shrieked behind him. Luke ignited his blade and turned quickly to defend himself.
He didn’t realize that S’ybll was already lurching toward him. His lightsaber went straight through her chest. S’ybll’s mouth fell open and she made a croaking noise.
Luke switched off his lightsaber.
Teetering on her spindly legs, S’ybll sneered at Luke and said, “I never did like you.” Then the mind witch’s eyes rolled up into her skull and she collapsed upon the cavern floor.
Luke could hear his X-wing’s engines through the hole in the ceiling. He kept his eyes locked on S’ybll’s decrepit corpse as he reached for his comlink. “Artoo-Detoo, do you read me?”
The astromech responded with an affirmative beep.
“Land the X-wing and get down here,” Luke said. “I need you to look at something for me.”
Luke called out to the scouts to make sure they were both all right. He didn’t take his eyes off S’ybll’s dead body until R2-D2 entered the cavern and arrived by his side. Only after the astromech droid confirmed that he also saw the mind witch dead on the floor did Luke breathe a sigh of relief.
“S’ybll?” Han Solo said with disbelief. He looked at Chewbacca.
Chewbacca growled.
Returning his gaze to Luke, Han said, “The mind witch? But I thought she was dead.”
“Our mistake,” Luke said.
“Our mistake?” Han chuckled. “Speak for yourself, pal. Usually when I see some old hag’s arm sticking out from under a big block of stone, I just assume she’s not gonna get up and walk away.”
Chewbacca agreed with a robust chortle.
Turning serious, Han added, “You’re positive S’ybll’s dead? For real?”
Luke nodded. “Artoo saw her body. Psychic powers don’t work on droid photoreceptors.”
They were standing on the ground beside the Millennium Falcon, which had landed on the same wide slab of rock that supported the Alliance scouts’ old freighter and Luke’s X-wing on Tarnoonga. R2-D2 was inside the freighter, helping Glaennor and Andur repair their damaged controls. The storm clouds Luke had seen earlier had since passed, and the ocean that surrounded the mountaintop island was remarkably calm.
“Sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” Han continued. “As soon as we lost contact with you, Chewie and I figured you might need a hand. We really stomped on it, got here as fast as we could.”
Just then, R2-D2 moved down the freighter’s landing ramp. Seeing the droid, Luke said, “Well, I did get a helping hand from a trigger-happy friend of ours. If Artoo hadn’t taken control of the X-wing and come looking for me, I can only imagine how things might have turned out.”
R2-D2 responded with a whooping series of beeps and whistles, and then Glaennor and Andur followed the astromech down the ramp. Looking at Luke, Glaennor said, “Our control console won’t win a beauty contest, but we’re almost good to go.”
Andur said, “General Solo, can you spare a power coupling?”
“No problem,” Han said. “Chewie?”
As Chewbacca left to help the scouts complete their repairs, R2-D2 came to a stop beside Luke and Han. Han said, “There’s something I’m wondering, Luke. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna.”
“What is it?”
“Goldenrod told me you went to Tatooine. Said you were on some kind of personal business.”
Luke sighed. “Threepio talks too much.”
“You’re tellin’ me? I’ve been saying that for years.”
Suddenly, R2-D2 beeped with excitement. He wobbled slightly on his legs as a panel slid back on his dome to release an extendible antenna.
“What is it, Artoo?” Luke said. “You’re picking up a signal?”
R2-D2 beeped again, and then activated his built-in holoprojector. A moment later, he beamed a flickering hologram of Princess Leia onto the ground before Luke and Han.
“Luke!” Leia said. “Are you all right?” Her voice was broadcast via the astromech’s audio transmitter.
“I’m fine,” Luke said. He gestured to Han and added, “We’re all fine.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Leia replied. “But I wish you had told me you were leaving Aridus,”
“I’m sorry,” Luke said. “It’s just that…Leia, I found out some information about our father, and I wanted to investigate, so I—”
“So you risked your life?” Leia interrupted. She shook her head. “Did it ever occur to you that your…your quest for knowledge might just get you killed? Why are you so determined to find out more? Why can’t you just stop thinking about him?”
Keeping his voice calm, Luke said, “Because I’m not you, Leia. I’d rather try to have some understanding of who our father was than forget about him entirely.”
Stunned by Luke’s words, Leia’s hologram jerked slightly.
Han shifted uneasily on his feet. His eyes flicked from Leia’s hologram to Luke and then back to Leia again. Leia continued to hold Luke’s gaze.
“Please, Leia,” Luke continued. “Please just listen. I don’t want to upset you. I know you’d rather not talk about this at all, but…I’m not trying to convince you to forgive our father. I’m only hoping to figure out how he became the man he was and how certain circumstances of his life might have affected his decisions. I can’t learn from his mistakes if I don’t know what they were. Can we at least agree that we’re better prepared for the future if we know more about the past?”
Leia’s hologram was motionless and silent just long enough to make Luke wonder if something were wrong with the transmission, but then she nodded and said, “Yes, I can agree with that. But we have other concerns right now. If we talk more about…our father, we’ll talk when I’m ready. All right?”
Luke smiled at this. “Thank you, Leia.”
“The fleet will be leaving Aridus shortly,” Leia said. “We’ve located Moff Jarnek on Spirador, and we need to go over a plan to apprehend him. Artoo has the coordinates for our rendezvous. I’ll see you there.” She broke the connection and the hologram vanished.
Luke looked at R2-D2 and said, “Get the X-wing ready for launch, Artoo.”
The astromech whistled and moved off, heading for the X-wing starfighter. As the droid left, Han stretched his arms, looked at Luke and said, “So, that ‘personal business’ on Tatooine? That was about your father?”
Luke nodded.
Han lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah? Which one? The Jedi or the Sith Lord?”
“Aw, give me a break, Han. If you’re just going to joke about—”
“Hey, hey, take it easy, Luke,” Han said, raising his hands. “I wasn’t needling you, just wondering who you’re talking about.”
“Oh,” Luke said. “Well, I was trying to find out about Anakin.”
Han nodded. “See, that’s all I was askin’. So…how’d it work out?”
Luke shrugged. “Not the way I expected.” He turned his gaze to the ocean. “I learned from a HoloNet search that Anakin was on Tatooine when he was a boy. From wh
at I gathered afterward, at least a few people considered him to be a remarkable person and even thought well of him. But his life was also a lot more complicated than I ever imagined. There’s still so much I don’t know about him.” Still looking at the ocean, Luke said, “As much as I might ever learn about my father, I can’t even begin to put myself in his shoes. I don’t think I’ll ever really know who he was.”
“Yeah, that may be,” Han said as he looked out over the ocean too. “But the way I see things, knowing who your father was isn’t nearly as important as knowing who you are.”
Luke looked at Han. “Say that again?”
“Naw,” Han said. “You heard me the first time.”
Imperial Moff Harlov Jarnek didn’t think anyone could touch him, especially after he used the Star Destroyers under his command to blockade the planet Spirador, where he had a private palace.
He was resting in a lounge chair in the palace, watching a holovid, when he heard one of his servant droids walk into the room. Although Jarnek hadn’t heard any alarms go off, he felt a sudden panic when he turned to look at the approaching droid.
The droid’s chest had been equipped with concealed blasters to kill trespassers, but Jarnek could see clearly that the droid was no longer prepared to stop anyone, because its chest was gone, along with its head and arms. It looked as though some kind of industrial laser had cut the droid in half, just above the waist.
The droid’s remains tripped and collapsed across the floor.
Jarnek couldn’t imagine how anyone could have made it through the blockade and infiltrated his palace. He had stormtroopers as well as droids monitoring the entire building. He jumped out of his chair and was about to run for a blaster that he kept on a nearby table when a hooded man appeared in the same doorway through which the damaged droid had entered. The hooded man said, “You’re under arrest, Moff Jarnek.”
Glaring at the intruder, Jarnek bellowed, “Who do you think you are?”
“I’m Luke Skywalker,” Luke said as he pulled back his hood. “I’m a Jedi.”
In December of 1976, my brother Corey let me borrow his copy of Star Wars, a novelization, written by Alan Dean Foster, of the then-forthcoming movie. I can’t deny that Ralph McQuarrie’s cover art totally reeled me in. I am very grateful to these gentlemen for introducing me to the adventures of Luke Skywalker.
A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker incorporates dialogue and situations from deleted scenes of writer/director George Lucas’s film Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and transcribed dialogue from the Star Wars Radio Drama, by Brian Daley. It also incorporates plots and details from previously published stories, notably “Iceworld” and “The Paradise Detour” from the Star Wars comic, by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson; the Star Wars comic book stories “Crucible,” by Chris Claremont and Archie Goodwin, and “Luke Skywalker’s Walkabout,” by Phill Norwood; and the novel Tatooine Ghost, by Troy Denning. I am indebted to all these writers.
My daughter Dorothy, who’s increasingly the Star Wars expert in our house, gave me some very useful story ideas. Several friends at Star Wars Fanboy Association, including Jean-François Boivin, Joe Bongiorno, Rich Handley, Chaz LiBretto, James McFadden, Abel G. Peña, Josh Radke, and Dan Wallace, were extremely generous with their knowledge about Luke Skywalker’s life and lightsabers.
My endless thanks to Annmarie Nye at Scholastic, and J. W. Rinzler and Leland Chee at Lucasfilm, for giving me the opportunity to revisit the worlds of Star Wars.
For Allan Kausch, who introduced me to Darth Maul
The prong-nosed rat knew that the dark heap lying in the tunnel was a dead man. He could tell by the incredible stench. Unable to detect any other predators in the tunnel, the rat’s sharp nose twitched with excitement at his discovery, a large and easy meal, all for him.
The rat edged along the side of the tunnel, stepping over the skeletons of other creatures—many small skeletons, but others quite large—as it moved toward the corpse. Ragged scraps of broad, waterproof fabric were piled over the lower half of the dead man’s body. His head, arms, and chest were exposed. A fine layer of dust covered his skin, barely concealing the bold, jagged tattoos that adorned his remains. His head rested at an odd angle against the ground because of the long, sharp horns that jutted from his skull. The rat slunk closer to the body and opened his jaws.
The rat never saw the fist that crashed down on the back of his neck. And then the man, who was very much alive, opened his yellow eyes as he rolled over and lashed out with his other hand to seize his prey. He kicked away the fabric scraps he’d been using as blankets, revealing the mechanical apparatus that formed his lower body.
The apparatus was affixed to the man’s midriff, just below his rib cage, and consisted of a droid carriage equipped with six metal legs. The legs were unevenly jointed, cannibalized from the parts of ruined droids, each leg ending with a tapered point. As the prong-nosed rat writhed in his clutches, the man skittered out from under the blankets like a monstrous robotic spider, his metal legs clacking against the tunnel floor.
He had no recollection of how he’d lost his lower body or who had grafted his torso to the droid carriage. Although he knew the tunnels that had become his domain, he did not know that he was on a planet named Lotho Minor. Nor did he remember his own name. And for the moment he didn’t care. His mind was on only one thing.
Food.
He tore into the rat and began eating it greedily. A few minutes later, as he licked the last of the gore from his lips, a familiar feeling returned to him. It was the only feeling he had, the only emotion he knew when he wasn’t delirious with hunger. Hatred. Not just anger and rage, but pure and total hatred.
He hated his circumstances. Hated the tunnels and all the vermin that ventured into them. Hated being hungry, and being unable to rest without some other creature trying to take a bite out of him. Hated that he knew all those distractions were meaningless. The primary object of his hatred was something far more significant, something he despised with such incredible intensity that he…
Can’t remember.
Hated his bad memory too.
How had he arrived at this place? How long had he been living like a wild animal? His yellow eyes darted back and forth, sweeping the tunnel as if he might find a helpful answer in the shadowy nooks, amidst the gnawed bones of small creatures that littered the ground.
Nothing.
He grimaced. He wanted to remember. He wanted to know.
The frustration was like a painful itch that he knew he could never ever scratch. He lowered one hand to his side, and his fingertips brushed against one of his cold metal legs.
Wasn’t always…like this.
He knew that he wasn’t a man anymore, that he hadn’t been one for years. He was just a creature in a filthy tunnel. And then he remembered the object of his hatred.
A man…the man who left me for dead.
The hatred surged through his veins, filling him with the urge to kill anything within reach. He surveyed the skeletons and rotting carcasses on the tunnel’s floor, then used his droid legs to launch several swift and vicious kicks that sent bones crashing against the walls. Finding a large rib cage, he seized it and brought it down hard across the back of one metal leg, then threw aside the splintered bones. He found no satisfaction in this petty destruction. He only hated more.
Why can’t I remember?!
Balling his hands into tight fists, he felt his sharp, dirty fingernails dig into the bases of his leathery palms. He gnashed his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as he struggled to conjure up a memory, any memory, that would help him recall his own identity.
It was then, while he felt his hatred burning within, that a spark ignited in his mind. And he saw a sea of fire.…
The boy named Maul had to stand on his tiptoes to peer through the thick window in his small room. The window was polarized to block heat and light, but the view was still so intense that it made the boy squint. The light did not come from the
sky, which was choked with black, smoky clouds, but radiated from the river of lava that flowed below the facility where Maul lived. Turning his head slightly, he saw the lava empty into what looked like a wide, fiery sea.
The planet’s name was Mustafar, according to the droid that looked after Maul. The droid also served as the boy’s teacher and had shown him holograms that illustrated Mustafar’s terrain and the planet’s location in the galaxy. The droid had shown him holograms of other worlds too. Maul had a hard time understanding that the holograms represented actual planets, but he had to memorize their names and correctly indicate their locations or the droid would subject him to a painful shock.
Fortunately, Maul was alone. Looking through the window, he tried to spot any signs of life. Occasionally, he would glimpse Mustafar’s armored natives riding lava fleas in the distance, heading for the northern region where they worked as miners. A few times, he had even seen ore haulers traveling across the sky. At the moment, he could not see any Mustafarians or vessels, just the never-ending flow of lava, fire, smoke, and clouds.
The droid had told Maul that he wouldn’t last long on Mustafar’s surface, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to venture outside. After all, if the Mustafarians could move about freely, why couldn’t he? He might need Mustafarian armor to protect him from the heat, and also some kind of breathing apparatus. He wondered how difficult it would be to acquire such things. He had no reason to believe a Mustafarian would just give him what he needed to survive. But he did imagine that going outside would be exciting.
Maul moved slightly and saw something shift across the window’s surface. Maul realized it was his own reflection. He could see only the top of his head, which had multiple small horns. Like the rest of his body, his head was distinguished by red and black patterns. His eyes were bright yellow with small black pupils.
Lives & Adventures Page 28