Star Wars: The Last Jedi Page 4

  The launch never happened.

  Torpedoes from a First Order TIE fighter shot into the hangar and detonated. In the blink of an eye, fuel lines burst and the place erupted. Flames consumed every craft, from the A-wings to Poe’s beloved Black One. Tallie was in her cockpit when it blew apart.

  The force of the blast saved Poe and BB-8 from suffering the terrible fate of their comrades. Both were sent reeling backward into the corridor. BB-8’s dome flew off the ball of his body, but he was able to activate his magnetic casters to reconnect it. The blast doors shut, sealing off the hangar to prevent the fire from spreading.

  Finn dashed toward them. “Poe! Are you all right?”

  Poe took his friend’s hand and staggered to his feet. “We need to get out of range of the Star Destroyers.”

  The Resistance would not survive otherwise.

  VEERING away from the Raddus in his TIE silencer, Kylo Ren watched his torpedoes tear open the cruiser’s hangar and decimate the starfighters within. The brilliance of the explosions dazzled him.

  But he was not done. He wanted to take out more than a hangar full of starfighters. He wanted to eliminate the Resistance’s leaders.

  Ren looped his fighter around for another attack run, and the two black-and-red TIEs behind him did the same. Fast though they were, they struggled to keep up, for Ren had followed the example of his grandfather Darth Vader and flew a custom TIE. The silencer bore a sleek, sinister design, with an oblong cockpit, a squashed rectangular viewport, and two solar wings that were notched and slanted like those on an interceptor. It tore through space with unrivaled speed and packed weaponry as devastating as the Special Forces TIEs flying with it.

  Closing in on the cruiser’s bridge, Ren waited for a torpedo lock. Since he had annihilated the cruiser’s starfighters in the hangar, he needn’t worry about any A-wings or X-wings harassing him, and the turbolasers on the First Order’s Destroyers were keeping the cruiser busy.

  The targeting computer beeped. His fingers twitched, ready to fire—until a sensation in the Force made him hesitate. On that bridge stood someone once close to him, as close as anyone could or ever would be. A person who shared his stubbornness, tenacity, and defiance.

  His mother.

  He felt that Leia—or General Organa as her minions in the Resistance called her—sensed him too. She held no anger against him, despite what he had done, despite that he had killed his father and her husband. For some reason, she still cared for him, as if he hadn’t changed, as if he were still Ben Solo, her son.

  How dare she.

  His anger fused into an emotional missile. He launched it at her through the Force, a bolt of pure rage. He felt her stagger back and it gave him joy. He wanted her to know his pain. He wasn’t Ben Solo. He was Kylo Ren. And he would sever his bond with her once and for all.

  But he didn’t press the trigger. Something blocked him at the last moment—some twinge of guilt or deep-seated fear.

  Nothing stopped the other TIE pilots from firing. A pair of mag-pulse warheads struck the cruiser’s bridge and Ren felt a chorus of voices crying out in the Force before they went quiet.

  Ren jerked his flight yoke, rolling his silencer to avoid the debris. His breathing was strained. He might not have personally killed his parent this time, but the bond had been severed nonetheless.

  He no longer felt his mother.

  General Hux addressed him on the comm. “The Resistance has pulled out of range of our Destroyers. We can’t cover you at this distance. Return to the fleet.”

  Ren’s anger flared again. “No!” he snapped back. It would be folly to retreat when a couple more well-placed shots could destroy the cruiser. Other TIE squadrons had downed the cargo hauler Vigil. They could eradicate the fleet right here, right now.

  Wounded though it might be, the Raddus wasn’t going down without a fight. Its turbolasers nailed one of the TIEs flying beside Ren, blowing it to pieces.

  “Snoke’s command,” Hux said on the comm. “They won’t last long burning fuel like this. It’s just a matter of time.”

  The cruiser’s guns erased a second TIE from Ren’s scopes. If he continued the assault without the Destroyers’ protection, he and his squadron could all die. Then victory would be pointless.

  He turned his silencer away from the cruiser and commanded the TIEs to do the same.

  In a flash of light, Admiral Ackbar, the most esteemed military commander of his generation, was gone. Ackbar’s number two, Captain Gawat, went with him, as did the rest of the bridge crew on the Raddus. Either they were vaporized in the explosion or sucked out into the vacuum of space.

  Only Leia survived.

  She drifted, arms spread, between burning fragments of the bridge. Her training in the Force allowed her to slow her breathing and retain some of her heat, but she would not last out here forever. She was being suffocated, deprived of oxygen. Soon she would join the rest.

  Several TIEs and a fighter in the shape of a claw flew past the debris back toward the fleet of Star Destroyers. Her son had piloted that fighter—her wayward, vicious, vengeful son. Corrupted by Snoke, Ben had committed the most reprehensible acts of violence against the most innocent among them. And Leia felt responsible. All her life she had worked to guard the galaxy from evil, but she could not protect it from the evils of her own child.

  And yet still she loved him.

  She would’ve done anything to see Ben again, as Han had, if only for a moment.

  The stars blurred. A chill bit into her bones. She readied herself for the end.

  A light floated in front of her, circular in shape, like a micro-sized moon. It was her beacon. The bracelet had come loose from her wrist.

  She took hold of it. Its soft light reminded her of Rey.

  The beacon needed to be returned to the cruiser, else the girl might never find the Resistance to bring Luke back. And then every last hope would be extinguished.

  Leia shut her eyes and dropped her head to her chest. She forgot about the cold in her bones and even her breath. Her sole focus was the Force.

  She rode its currents back into the hole in the cruiser bridge.

  Finn pushed himself up, groggy from the fall. The First Order attack had knocked him off his feet and into a bulkhead. He’d been chasing after Poe, but with the corridor branching ahead, he couldn’t tell which direction Poe had gone.

  Rounding the bend, he skidded to a halt. Crew were crowded around an open airlock, where droids were carrying out a stretcher. “Her life signs are weak, but she’s fighting,” a medic reported.

  Poe stood among the crew, gesturing frantically. “Move back! Give room!”

  Finn stepped to the side to let the stretcher pass. On it lay none other than General Leia Organa.

  An object dropped from her hand and fell near Finn’s feet. No one else noticed, so Finn picked it up. It was the wrist beacon that the general had showed him on the bridge.

  He moved away from the crowd and examined the glowing beacon. Somewhere out in the wide galaxy, Rey had one, too.

  THE ISLAND was haunted. Rey was sure of it.

  She stood outside Luke’s hut and watched the fog roll across the village. The haze was thick and held an eerie predawn glow. She had the vague impression that something lurked within those mists. Specters whispering secrets from a long-lost time.

  Stay here. I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.

  The voice startled her. Those words were the same she had heard so many times in her dreams on Jakku. Yet this was not Jakku. And looking around, she saw she stood alone.

  Shortly before sunrise, the fog dissipated and Luke emerged from his hut. He strode past Rey as if she weren’t there. Strapped to his back was a rucksack, a staff, netting, and an assortment of other items. She didn’t ask where he was going. She just followed.

  She trailed him up the mountain, then down the other side to the shore where a blubbery, bovine creature lounged on the rocks. Luke climbed up to it and untied an
empty bottle from his back. He then took the two teats that hung beneath the creature’s stomach and milked them. A green fluid oozed into the bottle.

  The creature turned its leathery neck to Rey. Above a tubular snout, two tiny black eyes peered at her. The milking seemed to comfort it.

  After filling the bottle, Luke put it to his lips and drank. Green liquid dribbled from the bottle into his beard. He didn’t wipe the slime away, nor did he offer a sip of the milk to Rey. She wouldn’t have accepted anyway.

  Once refreshed, he capped the bottle and returned to his hut, closing the door behind him. Rey sat on a bench outside. She reached into her satchel, shifting aside the beacon Leia had given her to take out a ration packet. It was a leftover quarter portion she’d traded with the disgusting Unkar Plutt for scrap metal on Jakku. The food tasted bland, but at least it was better than green milk. After she was finished, she put on her cloak and slept.

  Before dawn the next day, Luke came out, again outfitted for travel. Rey followed him to the edge of a cliff. The bay below was calm, though on the horizon loomed a storm.

  Luke grabbed a wooden pole that rested against the ledge. Long and thin, it extended all the way down into the water. Luke tested its strength, then to Rey’s astonishment, used it as a lever to vault himself over the bay. After landing atop the cliff on the other side, he pulled the pole out of the shallows. Its end bore a sharp metal hook.

  Rey watched as Luke surveyed the waters. Without warning, he shoved the spear back into the sea. When he lifted the pole again, a fish bigger than Rey was hooked on its end.

  Luke shifted the pole to the rocky beach, where the fish flapped, its mouth tendrils wiggling. He leaned the pole against the ledge and walked down a path to the beach. Rey found a similar trail on her side of the cliff.

  By the time she reached the fish, the storm had hit. Rain pummeled her and the wind shrilled. It was so harsh she threw on the hood of her cloak. She’d worn the garment only for Jakku’s sandstorms, never once thinking she’d don it for rain.

  The inclement weather appeared to refresh Luke. He hoisted the giant fish over his shoulders and hiked up the path Rey had taken down. As he had before, he ignored Rey. But she trudged after him through the driving rain, hood up, staff in hand.

  Rey stayed outside the hut that night. She was drenched, her teeth chattering from the cold. She got barely a wink of sleep. When Luke emerged from his hut that morning, she stayed on the log. Her tired body wanted to keep resting.

  As he walked past her, he paused. It wasn’t for long, but it was enough. She found the strength to get up and stumbled after him.

  Her strength flagged as they climbed a crumbling staircase. Slick stone made the going treacherous. One slip, and she’d fall off the cliff to smash on the rocks below.

  When they neared the top of the staircase, the whispers began to speak to her again.

  The morning haze had lifted, revealing the shrubbery and moss that greened the cliffside. No wind blew. Yet the whispers grew louder. They said nothing comprehensible, no promise as before, perhaps nothing at all. Was she hearing voices in her head?

  She climbed a few more steps before she saw the tree.

  It was a fortress of nature. Three pulpy offshoots stood guard around a gigantic central trunk. All had tops splintered like jagged crowns, and none bore foliage or branches. Only moss grew on the ashen bark. A wide gap in the trunk looked to be a portal into the tree.

  Rey moved toward the gap. The whispers rose in volume, clearly emanating from the tree. She had seen the tree before, somewhere. Had it been in her dreams? Or in the vision that had come to her when she’d touched Luke’s lightsaber in Maz Kanata’s castle? She couldn’t be sure. Those memories were muddled in her mind. It was hard to remember what was real and what wasn’t.

  She heard Luke stop behind her, but she did not glance back at him. She ducked through the gap and entered the tree.

  The interior of the trunk had been hollowed out into a chamber. Strips of bark plastered the walls in intricate designs. There was no sign of rot, despite the damp conditions outside.

  A strange illumination drew her focus. In an alcove surrounded by a sunburst pattern of bark rested a shelf of dusty books. They seemed to shine with a light of their own.

  The whispers became a hum—not of voices but of energy. The books called to her.

  She stepped closer to them. They weren’t everyday datapads or electronic binders, but leather-bound tomes of flimsy and paper, like the journals she had kept on Jakku. She reached for one.

  “Who are you?”

  She turned at the sound of Luke’s voice. He stood in the doorway, regarding her as if for the first time.

  Fleeting memories guided her words. “I know this place,” she said. “This is a…library.”

  Luke came forward. “Built a thousand generations ago, to keep the original Jedi texts, the foundation of the ancient faith.” He removed a book from the shelf and opened it. “They were the first—and now, just like me—they are the last of the Jedi religion.”

  The elaborate runes that decorated the book’s pages captivated Rey. They were mysterious and yet familiar at the same time.

  “You know this place,” Luke said. “You’ve seen these books. You’ve seen this island.”

  “Only in dreams,” Rey said.

  Luke narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are you?”

  It was the question she’d often asked herself. All she could say for certain was the purpose for her visit to Ahch-To. “The Resistance sent me.”

  “If they sent you, what’s special about you? Jedi lineage? Royalty?”

  She wished she was special or a Jedi or royalty. Maybe then he would listen to her. But she didn’t dare reveal what she actually was.

  “An orphan,” Luke said, reading into her silence. “Where are you from?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “No one’s from nowhere.”

  She sighed. “Jakku.”

  A hint of a smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “All right, that is pretty much nowhere. Why are you here, Rey from nowhere?”

  “The Resistance sent me. We need your help. The First Order—”

  Luke’s smile vanished. “Why are you here?”

  Rey diverted her eyes. She knew what he meant. There was a reason Leia had sent her and not Poe Dameron or someone more qualified for secret missions. Leia had recognized Rey’s extraordinary gifts.

  “Something inside me has always been there, but now it’s”—she paused, grasping for the right word—“awake. And I’m—I’m afraid. I don’t know what it is or what to do, and I need help. I need someone to show me my place in all of this.”

  “You want a teacher.”

  For a moment, her hopes returned—but like a spark, they fizzled out when Luke spoke again. “I can’t teach you.”

  “Why not? I’ve seen your daily routine. You’re not busy.”

  “I’ll never teach another generation of Jedi,” he said.

  She shook her head. This was Luke Skywalker, the icon of the Rebellion, who had defeated Death Stars and the Emperor and had single-handedly resurrected the Jedi Order from its ashes. How could he give up on what he had spent the greater part of his life building?

  Luke stepped back to the doorway and leaned a hand against the trunk. “You asked why I came here? I came to this island to die, and to make sure the Jedi Order dies with me.”

  He stared out at the island, then looked back at her. “I know only one truth,” he said. Conviction knit his brow. “It’s time for all of this to end.”

  His defeatism startled her. “Why?”

  “You can’t understand.”

  “Make me. Leia sent me here with the hope you’d return. If she was wrong, she deserves to know why. We all do.”

  Luke responded by walking out of the library, leaving her alone. Sadly, she had been right. The island was haunted. The great Luke Skywalker, Master of the Jedi, was but a ghost of the hero he once had been.
/>
  Finn slumped down in a corridor on the Raddus. Crew rushed past, occasionally glancing at him as if he should be doing something. But what could he do? The cruiser had lost its starfighters, so there was no need for his rather poor gunnery skills. And he knew nothing about repairing starships. The First Order had trained him to excel on the battlefield, not in engineering.

  The beacon he held continued to emit its warm glow. Did the light mean that Rey was still alive? General Organa hadn’t explained the details. All Finn knew was that the beacon would lead Rey back to the cruiser—and right now, that was too risky with the First Order on their tail. She’d likely be captured or killed. Even if Skywalker returned with her, Finn doubted that anyone—Jedi or not—could survive an attack from thirty Star Destroyers.

  Everything seemed doomed. And all he could do was stare at the floor.

  BB-8 roamed the hallway, halting before Finn. The droid bobbed his dome to the right and left, looking at Finn and beeping in concern, but Finn didn’t lift his head. He wasn’t in the mood for a pep talk, especially from this particular astromech. He was about to tell BB-8 to scram when the droid’s projector switched on and a holographic recording flickered before him.

  In the Resistance’s medical center on D’Qar, Rey stood over Finn as he lay in a coma. She looked at him for some time, then leaned over his recovery pod and kissed his forehead. “We’ll see each other again. I believe that,” she said. “Thank you, my friend.”

  The hologram vanished. Dust motes floated in Rey’s place. A few moments passed before Finn’s heart settled down. “Kinda weird you recorded that, but…”

  His gaze fell to the beacon in his grasp. It seemed to shine brighter than before. “Thank you,” he told BB-8. “I know what I’ve got to do.”

  The droid burbled, then rolled away. Finn didn’t putter around either. He got to his feet and rushed down the corridor.

  If it was too dangerous for Rey to come to them, he would find a way to go to her.