Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

by Kevin Shinick

  © & TM 2019 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1200 Grand Central Avenue, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-05106-4

  Design by Leigh Zieske

  Cover illustration by Tony Foti

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dedicated to Josephine Viola.

  Thanks for always listening.

  The image was not what it seemed, but the pain was undeniable.

  It hit him like the opposite of what he imagined hyperspace was like, a blinding white light streaked with black flames shooting directly into his eyes. Even with his lids shut, Karr could feel it burning his retinas. Had he not known better, he would’ve blamed it on a flaw in the lenses of the stormtrooper helmet he’d recently bought—Death Star era, slight carbon scoring, 7.5 grade level in the antique military guide—but otherwise not a bad purchase for fifty-seven credits. Unless, of course, it was responsible for the pain. But he knew that wasn’t the case. Not even brand-new lenses could protect him from this agony.

  As the pain bored into his eye sockets, he recalled a warning a pilot gave him once, about never staring directly into a double-haloed Tatooine eclipse.

  Good advice, he thought as he began to lose consciousness.

  Only he wasn’t entering Tatooine airspace. He was entering the Force.

  “Are you okay?” Karr heard someone ask in a tinny voice. Actually, it probably wasn’t a tinny voice but rather a damaged speaker in the stormtrooper helmet. Maybe 7.5 wasn’t an accurate grade for the piece of junk after all.

  Karr was lying on his back. The floor was cold, but his face was hot.

  “What are you wearing?” This time he could tell the voice belonged to a woman, but he thought that was an odd follow-up question. Usually when people came across him passed out on the floor they’d ask him if he knew his name. “Karr Nuq Sin,” he mumbled out of habit, realizing only a hair too late that wasn’t the question she had asked him.

  “What are you wearing?” she asked again slowly, sounding more annoyed.

  “Green cargo pants, blue flight jacket, desert boots, black gloves, and a newly acquired Death Star–era stormtrooper helmet. Grade level: seven point—” He stopped himself in light of the new information and reevaluated. “Six point nine.”

  “You need to take it off. Now.” Her voice sounded like coins and static through the helmet, but yes. It was definitely a woman. Probably a teacher.

  “School policy prohibits any student from carrying a weapon or wearing military paraphernalia,” she added, probably quoting some passage from the code of conduct.

  Karr wouldn’t know. He’d never read it.

  He struggled to his feet and searched the floor for the black glove that always landed nearby after one of his episodes. He found it and used it to salute her. “No military paraphernalia present, sir!”

  “Except for the helmet?” She ignored the incorrect address and took the glove from his hand to inspect it.

  “The helmet is an artifact…sir!” Now he was pushing it.

  Namala Moffat sighed. “Just take it off.” He pulled the helmet loose with a soft pop. Now she could see him for what he really was: a brown-haired, brown-eyed kid with a chipped tooth to go along with the chip on his shoulder. “Where’d you get that?” she asked.

  “I got it from Janu Blenn. His great-grandfather was a service fueler in the Empire,” Karr told her. “Stormtrooper, third class.”

  Moffat frowned. “That boy’s shyer than a Snivvian at a market auction. He told you all that?”

  Karr just smiled. “In a way.”

  In the years since his unusual abilities had surfaced, no doctor (human or droid) had been able to explain them. Episodes of blinding light and searing pain weren’t exactly coveted abilities, but the images that accompanied those things were pretty cool. Most of the time. If he remembered them when he came to.

  Karr didn’t feel like explaining all that to the teacher, so he didn’t.

  The truth was that, yes, Janu Blenn was incredibly shy, but he was also stubborn. It’d taken Karr five whole days to convince Janu to sell him the trooper helmet after he overheard the boy relay some family lore about how his great-grandfather claimed to have had his mind manipulated by a Jedi. Karr figured he probably made the whole thing up to get a better grade on his history project, since the Jedi didn’t exist during Imperial times, but he had to know for sure. Which is why he was willing to go as high as fifty-seven credits.

  Of course it would’ve been easier to just wave his hand and manipulate Janu’s thoughts like a Jedi, but Karr wasn’t there yet.

  Soon, he hoped. But not yet.

  Which was why he needed the helmet.

  When Karr turned thirteen, he started to experience changes. Of course, everyone was going through changes at that age, but unlike Zarado, whose horns started growing longer, or Lara, whose adult coat of fur started coming in, Karr began getting terrible headaches that often came with garbled visions when he touched certain things, sometimes.

  “You’re just experiencing growing pains,” his mother, Looway, would say to him, trying to hide her concern.

  “Maybe,” said Karr. But unless his brain was growing beyond the size of his skull, he didn’t really get it. And it was changing him. Changing his outlook. At a time when most kids felt like they could take on the universe, Karr felt doomed. And he worried that his “adolescence,” as they called it, wouldn’t be a phase he went through but rather his expiration date.

  Eventually, his family took him to a doctor. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him, so they went to a different doctor. Same result. A third doctor couldn’t help, or a fourth. Everybody in his family had their own guess as to what was happening to Karr and how to fix it, but it all came together in a mess of garbled noise.

  One afternoon, after the same old argument about what was wrong with Karr, he was sulking in his room when he saw his grandmother standing in the doorway. She had the oddest smile on her face. Then, almost in slow motion, he saw her lips form the words, It’s time.

  “I know what is causing your headaches. It’s the Force,” J’Hara said as she sat on the edge of his bed, wiping the hair out of his face.

  “The what?” he asked as if she had just diagnosed a disease.

  “The Force,” she repeated. “The Force is what gives the Jedi their power.” His grandmother had spoken about the Jedi before, but to be fair Karr was younge
r at the time and she might as well have been talking about schoolwork.

  That day, however, the Jedi. The Force. The war. It all sounded like one of the fables she used to tell him before bed. But it wasn’t, of course. This time it was a revelation. Karr had been looking for hope. Hope that what he was going through wasn’t something bad but rather something awesome. And this definitely counted as hope.

  “What do you see?” his grandmother asked as she looked into his eyes. “When you get these headaches?”

  “It’s tough to say. The pain is so great, sometimes it’s impossible to see anything. Like staring at the sun and trying to focus on the solar flares. For a really long time I saw nothing. Just felt a lot of pain. But then one day something changed. I could see and hear…something. Sounds? Words? Feelings? I don’t know.”

  “That’s because a new perception has come into your existence. You’re experiencing a gift. Your headaches happen because you aren’t finding yourself in the Force,” J’Hara explained. “Once you figure it out, who knows? You might be able to learn about an object’s past just by touching it. That would really be something, wouldn’t it?”

  “Is that what the Jedi did?”

  She nodded. “Perhaps a few, here and there. Not many, I believe. The Jedi could do all kinds of things. Maybe if you could find Jedi objects, what you learn from them could show you how to use your abilities properly. How to become a Jedi.”

  “How to become a Jedi.” Karr would always remember the day she uttered those words. For as long as he could remember, Karr had felt as out of place in the galaxy as he did in his own skin. His family had always been tailors, middle-class workers, but Karr felt he was destined for greater things. And that day, he was learning it was true.

  “Where can we find the Jedi?” he asked eagerly.

  “Sadly, they haven’t been seen in decades,” she confessed.

  “But how can I learn about the Force properly if I don’t have a master?”

  “Life is your master,” she said. “Let the galaxy lead you as if you were its apprentice. It has much to show you.”

  “But if I never know when something I touch is going to give me a headache, how am I going to make it through life?”

  J’Hara thought for a moment. “I will make you gloves.”

  After that, Karr decided to learn as much about the Jedi as he could. Through books, through stories, and if need be, through the headaches. Which was why a good part of Karr’s days was spent searching for things he could touch that might shed some light on the lost masters: robes, weapons, communicators, and of course his most recent acquisition, the stormtrooper helmet.

  The teacher wasn’t having it. She plucked the helmet out of his hands. “I’ll just…hold on to this, until after the final siren,” Moffat said with enough authority that it would probably keep most kids from arguing. “You can have it back then.”

  But Karr wasn’t most kids. He turned on the sly charm, or that’s what he hoped it sounded like when he said, “Why don’t I just keep it in my locker?”

  The teacher stared at him.

  He was usually pretty good about staying out of trouble, but maybe his lucky streak had come to an end. He was just about to try some other pleading approach that might let him keep his prize when a big, nasty call from the end of the hallway stopped him.

  “Karr Nuq Sin is delusional!”

  Both Karr and Moffat turned their heads.

  A big Besalisk named Royke loomed large and loud. He was oversized in every way, even for his species. The girth of his four arms alone nearly covered the width of the walkway as he approached, and his cronies flanked him like stubby moons orbiting a grumpy planet.

  Royke was a bully, a blowhard, and a snob. At best, he’d rank a mere 4.3 in Karr’s quality guide.

  The lumbering oaf put one of his four arms around Moffat’s shoulders. “Let me help you out, ma’am. This kid is a freak. Has some sort of brain disease, so I wouldn’t get too close. In case it’s contagious.”

  Karr protested. “I don’t have a brain disease. You don’t know anything.”

  “Lurdo thinks he’s a Jedi,” mocked the Besalisk, mispronouncing the word so it sounded more like “Jedee.”

  Karr snorted. Royke wouldn’t even know about the Jedi if he hadn’t heard Karr ask so many questions about them. The Jedi were all but extinct, and unless you paid attention in history class—which Royke most certainly did not—most people knew very little about what they did or how important they had been to the galaxy. To Karr himself even! And that someday he would become one. They were guardians of justice, for crying out loud. The keepers of the peace—

  “He even stole from his own grandmother,” Royke sneered.

  Unfortunately, Karr didn’t feel much like keeping the peace at the moment. And as much as he wanted to be a Jedi, he figured he could probably get away with just one brawl. Historians would say he was getting it out of his system.

  Moffat figured out where things were going, and she tried to head it off. “I’m sure he hasn’t stolen from his grandmother. Stop antagonizing him and go back to class.”

  “Oh, yeah? What about those gloves? I heard him telling someone they were from his grandmother.” Royke snatched Karr’s glove out of the teacher’s hand and flapped it around.

  Karr’s heart began to race. The gloves were a gift from his grandmother. Something special she had made him. Without them he felt exposed. And angry. Angry at Royke. Angry at Moffat for being so careless.

  Moffat’s eyes met his with a look of both irritation and apology. “Give that back to him, right now.”

  But Royke wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not when he had an audience to entertain. He danced around the hall, singing “Look at me! I’m Karr!” as he waved the glove just out of its rightful owner’s reach. Then the unthinkable happened: Royke jammed his greasy, pudgy fingers into the glove.

  “Give it back!” Karr hollered.

  “What are you gonna do? You’re not a real Jedi!” He worked his hand deeper inside the glove.

  “Oh, yeah?” Without even thinking, Karr stretched his arm out and used an open hand to grasp the air as if it was Royke’s throat. He poured all his anger, all his grief, and all his concentration into the gesture.

  The bully’s laughing stopped. Then his breathing stopped. His eyes bulged from his head and he dropped to his knees, struggling to inhale whatever air he could into his quickly closing lungs.

  Moffat yelled at Karr. “Stop that! Whatever you’re doing, stop it—right this instant!”

  He lowered his hand, but Royke continued to gasp and wheeze.

  The teacher jumped between them and grabbed Karr by the shoulders. She shoved his arm against his side. “What are you doing to him?” she demanded, loud and scared and ready to shake him to pieces.

  Royke dropped to his knees and fell forward face-first. All four of his long, beefy arms splatted to the floor, splaying in every direction.

  Everything went quiet.

  The scattered students who lingered in the hallway stood wide-eyed; they held their hands over their mouths and didn’t say a word. No announcements blared from the headmaster’s office. No doors opened, no datapads beeped inside backpacks, and none of the bully’s friends so much as breathed.

  Until Royke’s big body started to shake. He was laughing quietly.

  He worked his way up to a belly laugh as he rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. He pounded all four fists on the floor with glee.

  At first, no one joined him. Then everyone did.

  “Ha!” the bully cackled above the laughing crowd. “You totally thought you had Jedi powers!”

  Moffat’s face turned red.

  Karr’s turned even redder. “You just wait until—”

  “Enough!” declared the teacher. She snatched Karr’s glove from Royke and handed it back to Karr, but her expression remained stern. “Both of you, go to the headmaster’s office!”

  Side by side, Karr and the bully skulk
ed toward the office, neither one speaking or trying to make eye contact. When they finally arrived, the door was closed. After a few minutes it opened and a hand waved Royke inside—leaving Karr to take a seat and await his fate.

  Karr sat on a bench in the lobby outside the headmaster’s office, twiddling his thumbs and trying hard to hear what was happening on the other side of the closed office door. The muffled conversation was difficult to understand, but Karr couldn’t help noticing how much it sounded like a regular conversation between the Kitonaks in his biology class. He didn’t speak Kitonese, of course, but there was something about their low voices and the way their cheeks swallowed the words that always made it sound like they were conspiring. Probably not a totally fair judgment, Karr thought, but then again at this school the odds were pretty good that most students were up to no good. Just like the odds were pretty good that Royke was behind that office door convincing the headmaster that Karr was the one to blame for all the commotion.

  From where he was sitting, Karr could see across the lobby and into the teacher’s lounge. In there, Moffat worked at a table—reading through a database that was probably filled with job listings for some different career path. The trooper helmet rested beside her screen. She had won the argument as to where it would stay for now, but Karr had gotten what he needed from the object—confirmation that Janu Blenn was either lying or misinformed. Karr had seen no Jedi in his vision, only the blurry images of the Death Star and an explosion. Whatever he was meant to get from the vision was still unclear. It hadn’t shown him any Force wielders, at least none that he was aware of. But still, the eyes of the mask stared back at him from across the way as if they were angry. As if he had stolen something from them. And in a way, he had.

  Karr ran his gloved hands along the curve of the bench, wondering if he should add his mark to the graffiti he found there. The Hutts are nuts! Oktar is a Yak face! and his personal favorite, Don’t look away, you’ll never win, if you leave your lunch by a Gamorrean. That one would be tough to beat.

  Maybe just his name and the date? It would be proof someday that the sure-to-be-famous Jedi Karr Nuq Sin had been there. What’s the worst the headmaster could do to him?