Star Wars: The Last Jedi Page 5

  Luke’s meditation that evening took him into his memories, to a time prior to his attempt to restore the Jedi Order. He had been a young man, little more than twenty years old, when on Dagobah he happened upon another tree that held secrets. It emanated an energy that Luke had not felt before, like a chill in the Force. A domain of evil it was, or so said his master at the time.

  “What’s in there?” Luke asked.

  “Only what you take with you,” his master said.

  As Luke stepped toward the tree, his master remarked that his weapons weren’t needed. Luke took them anyway.

  The bole of the tree led him down into a cave, cold and slimy and smelling of death. Snakes, lizards, and other scaly creatures slithered between the branches and vines. He trod past them, carefully going deeper into the cave. And then out of the darkness emerged a figure armored all in black, the killer of both his first teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and allegedly his father, Anakin Skywalker: the villain known as Darth Vader.

  Luke ignited his lightsaber first. Vader followed with his, red against Luke’s blue. The Dark Lord spared no words in that fight, and Luke never forgot the sound of Vader’s mechanical respiration. Luke won the duel by landing a furious blow to Vader’s helmet. When the helmet fell from Vader’s body and rolled in the muck, its mask exploded, revealing a face underneath—a face that was none other than Luke’s.

  Soon after their encounter in the cave, Luke had fought Vader again, not as a phantom but in the flesh in Cloud City. There the Dark Lord had uttered words behind his rasping breaths, providing an answer to the mystery of the cave. He revealed he had not murdered Luke’s father as Obi-Wan had told Luke.

  He was Luke’s father.

  Luke had screamed in denial. No, no, it couldn’t be true. It was impossible.

  Yet it was possible. And it was true. It was a secret he had taken with him into the cave. A secret that had revealed itself when he saw his own face in Vader’s helmet. A secret about his father that he had somehow always known, even if it had been withheld from him growing up.

  Kids know.

  Rey also knew the secret of her parents, if she would admit it. But she had buried her secrets deep and walled herself against them. It was as if she feared such secrets could destroy her.

  Luke could not teach someone as guarded as her. He had tried to do so before, and he had failed.

  PAIGE’S death hit Rose hard.

  The young technician took refuge in a utility corridor on the Raddus. The initial shock she’d felt learning what had befallen Paige’s bomber had spiraled into grief. Her older sister meant everything to her. Paige was the person Rose had admired since her first memory. The two had spent their childhoods together, suffering through the First Order’s brutal takeover of the mining colony where they grew up, looking out for each other in those dark hours, yet also trading joys and laughs and secrets only sisters could share.

  Rose sniffled and stared at the old phase-band ring that the bomber squadron commander, a stout, silvery Martigrade named Fossil, had given her to honor her sister’s sacrifice. What looked like an ornate ring could, by the switch of a tiny lever, iris open to reveal the starbird crest of the Rebel Alliance. During the rule of the Empire, senators had worn rings such as this to hide their loyalty to the Rebellion. The historical significance of this gift would have deeply affected Paige.

  But history and politics were least on Rose’s mind. She could only think of Paige. How she would never hug her sister again when she returned from a mission. How the two of them would never adopt a pet together or get to ride a Pamaradian prancer or a fleet-footed fathier. How they would never talk, just talk, like they could for hours, sometimes about what was going on, sometimes about nothing at all.

  Rose touched the only other piece of jewelry she owned, a medallion of Haysian smelt that hung from a necklace. It was the shape of a half crescent and engraved with the emblem of her home. Paige had worn a medallion just like it. Their matched pair represented the double-planet system of Otomok, containing Hays Major and Hays Minor, their homeworld. It also signified the closest of bonds between Rose and her older sister. They were like planets orbiting each other.

  Except that now they weren’t. Now one of the planets was gone.

  The echo of footsteps told Rose that someone was near. But who else would come down here? All the other engineers were engaged in repairs elsewhere on the cruiser.

  Rose wiped away her tears with her sleeve and stood. She tiptoed to the corner and peeked around it, spying a young man in a patched-up flight jacket. He opened the hatch of an escape pod and threw the sack he carried inside.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  At the sound of her voice, the young man knocked his head against the hatch. He turned, pretending it didn’t happen. “Hi. I was, umm, just doing a—”

  “No, what are you doing here, down in maintenance?” Rose moved a little closer. She recognized him from somewhere. “You’re…Finn!” She blushed. She should’ve identified him at first sight. Anyone who followed galactic events knew who this young man was. “The Finn!”

  “The Finn?” he repeated.

  “I’m sorry for being an idiot, it’s just, I’m not an idiot, I work behind pipes all day and talking with Resistance heroes is not my forte and, oh, I’m Rose and—”

  “Breathe,” he said.

  It was exactly what Paige would’ve said. Rose quit talking and breathed. It calmed her down, but she felt even more embarrassed. She had the tendency to jabber on like an excited astromech.

  “I’m not a Resistance hero,” Finn said. “But it was nice meeting you, Rose.”

  He stood in the threshold of the escape pod, looking at her. He wanted her to leave. “Okay,” she said.

  She retreated into the utility corridor. If only she could tell her sister! Finn was so charming and courageous and—

  She turned back into the hallway just as he was about to duck into the pod. “But you are a hero and that’s important. You left the First Order, and what you did on Starkiller Base—”

  “Listen—”

  Rose talked over him. “When we heard about it, Paige—that’s my sister—said, ‘Rose, that’s a real hero. Know right from wrong, and don’t run away when it gets hard.’” She took another breath, glad to get it all out.

  “Sure” was all Finn said in reply.

  His nervousness perplexed her, though it was also possible he was just taken aback. She had that effect on people. “You know, just this morning I’ve had to stun three people trying to jump ship in these escape pods, running away.” She pulled out her electro-shock prod and waved it around to demonstrate.

  Finn leaned away and frowned. “That’s terrible.”

  “I know. Anyway…” Her excitement began to wane as she reconsidered the situation. Why was someone of his stature in maintenance? Shouldn’t he be advising the other officers?

  “Well, I should get back to…” he said, fidgeting, “what I was doing.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Checking. Just checking the…ah…doing a check,” he stuttered.

  She glanced past him into the pod, at the sack he’d tossed inside. “Checking the escape pods?”

  Finn nodded. “Routine check.”

  “By boarding one? With a packed bag?” she asked.

  “Okay. Listen—”

  His hemming and hawing didn’t sound like what a hero would say. He sounded like a deserter.

  Rose jabbed her electro-shock prod at him. Its high-voltage discharge could fuse broken circuits and shock a human deaf and dumb.

  It sent Finn tumbling into the wall.

  Poe and the surviving members of the Resistance leadership sat in the tight space of the Raddus’s emergency bridge. Commander D’Acy, who had been on an errand when the attack destroyed the main bridge, addressed the assembled. “General Organa—Leia,” she said, with reverence, “is unconscious but recovering. That’s the only good news I have. Admiral A
ckbar, the rest of our leadership—they’re gone. Leia was the sole survivor on the bridge.”

  Standing near Poe, C-3PO sounded like he was caught in a loop. “Oh dear, oh dear…”

  “If she were here,” D’Acy said, “she’d say save your sorrow for after the fight. To that end, she left clear instructions as to who should take her place. Someone she’s always trusted, who has her full confidence.”

  Poe straightened in anticipation. Though they had their differences, Leia had always recognized his dedication to the Resistance. He would be proud to accept any leadership role on her behalf.

  “Vice Admiral Holdo, of the cruiser Ninka,” D’Acy said and stepped back.

  The choice was such a surprise to Poe that he didn’t know whether he felt crushed or grateful he wasn’t picked. He had never met the vice admiral in person, but he had heard that she and General Organa had been friends since youth. He also knew she was recognized as a great strategic mind, admired even by Ackbar.

  “Thank you, Commander.” Dressed in a slender gown and neck wrap a few shades darker than her purple hair, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo bore herself with dignity and grace. “Look around you. There are four hundred of you on three ships. We are the last of the Resistance, but we are not alone. In every corner of the galaxy, the downtrodden and oppressed know our symbol and they put their hope in it. We are the spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic. That spark—this resistance—must survive. That is our mission.”

  Her voice conveyed a quiet strength. Everyone on the bridge hung on to her words, including Poe.

  “To your stations, and may the Force be with us.”

  Poe blinked. That was it? She hadn’t given them any instructions. Yet no one else seemed puzzled.

  Poe leaned over to C’ai Threnalli, who was sitting next to him. “That’s Admiral Holdo? Battle of Chyron Belt Admiral Holdo?”

  The Abednedo mumbled an affirmative.

  “Not what I expected,” Poe said. A great military strategist should have formulated something more than a speech.

  As the others disbanded, Poe approached Holdo and saluted. “Vice Admiral, Commander Dameron. With our current fuel consumption, there’s a very limited amount of time we can stay out of range of those Destroyers.”

  “Very kind of you to make me aware.”

  “And we need to shake them before we find another base,” he said. “What’s our plan?”

  She rebuffed him immediately. “Our plan, Captain? Not commander, right? Wasn’t it Leia’s last official act to demote you? For your Dreadnought plan, where we lost our entire bomber fleet?”

  “Captain, commander, you can call me whatever you like, I just want to know what we’re doing,” Poe said.

  “Of course you do. I understand—I’ve dealt with plenty of trigger-happy flyboys like you. You’re impulsive. Dangerous. And the last thing we need right now.”

  Holdo wasn’t being sarcastic. She was being serious. Poe couldn’t contain his shock. “Leia put the Resistance in your hands? Do you even have a plan?”

  “Captain Dameron, that is need-to-know information, and you do not need to know. Stick to your post and follow my orders.” She turned her back to him and went to a console.

  Poe froze, unsure of what he should do. BB-8 rolled around him, trying to buoy his spirits, but he needed something more than reassuring beeps. He needed wisdom and advice.

  He needed General Organa.

  LUKE flipped up the hood of his cloak and slipped out of his hut. It was the dead of night.

  Rey snored on an outdoor bench, too deep in sleep to notice him. He ascended the hill, then crossed the island in the moonlight. Wookiee growls led him to the landing site of the Millennium Falcon.

  Chewbacca roasted his dinner outside the ship. He grabbed a spit from the campfire and brought the blackened slab on it to his lips. Before he bit into the meat, an uncooked member of its species, one of Ahch-To’s little avians, waddled up from a group and stared at him innocently. Chewbacca snarled, showing fangs, and the other avians around him shot in all directions, much faster than they appeared capable of moving.

  The Wookiee returned to eat his meal, but then dropped it with a guilty whine. Luke smiled as he walked up the Falcon’s boarding ramp. Chewbacca’s heart always won out over his hunger.

  The interior of the ship hadn’t changed much since Luke’s first trip off Tatooine in it. Grease stained the bulkheads. Loose plates rattled on the floor. Rust ate at the rungs of the turret ladder. Frayed wires spilled out of a wall socket. None of it concerned Luke. The Falcon wouldn’t be the Falcon if it wasn’t in a perpetual state of disrepair.

  In the cockpit, the pilot’s seat still showed Han’s contours, worn in from decades of use. Luke gripped its edge and looked out the canopy at the night sky. Gold six-sided chance cubes dangled from the canopy near Chewbacca’s chair. Luke held them with his metal fingers, detecting an almost imperceptible weight on one side of the cubes that most certainly favored landing on the sixes.

  He entered the lounge where Obi-Wan Kenobi had trained him how to wield a lightsaber. The blast helmet he’d worn to cover his eyes while fighting the remote rested on a shelf, probably untouched since that test. The holographic chessboard, however, had seen much more recent use. Its console lights blinked for a saved game to be resumed.

  Luke sat down on the couch, remembering the moments he’d had on this ship. A series of gentle electronic beeps—more familiar to him than any other sound in the universe—told him he wasn’t alone. “Artoo?”

  The silver-domed astromech unit wheeled out of a corner. Though the droid had a little rust around the edges, none of that stopped him from squealing at seeing Luke and venting disappointment that his old master had left him behind.

  “Yes, yes, I know.” But Luke’s concession didn’t stop the droid from blurting out binary Luke knew he had never programmed. “Hey—sacred island. Watch the language.”

  R2-D2 switched his vocabulary, but not the forceful tone of his beeps. The droid wanted Luke to return and help the Resistance.

  “Old friend, I’m doing what’s best. Nothing can change my mind.” Luke touched the astromech’s dome, as he had so many times in the past. It was a human gesture, but it usually had the effect of calming down the short-fused droid.

  R2-D2 quieted, as Luke had hoped he would. Yet in place of beeps, the droid projected a hologram—the same hologram he’d projected when Luke had first encountered the droid more than forty years before on Tatooine.

  Luke’s twin sister, Leia, leaned before him in miniature, making a silent plea. She was young in the image, barely nineteen, and wore the flowing robes of her status as princess of Alderaan. Her mouth moved to words that Luke could never forget. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.

  Her words—and her beauty—had motivated his younger self to find the crazy old wizard in the deserts of Tatooine. As a consequence, that quest had saved him from the Imperial stormtroopers who burned his uncle and aunt to the bone.

  Luke frowned at R2-D2. The astromech knew him too well. He was trying to make Luke feel guilty for abandoning his friends. “That’s a cheap move.”

  Cheap though it might be, it was working. For as Leia’s image flickered before him, Luke remembered he was more than the last of the Jedi.

  He was also a brother.

  Finn lay on a repulsorlift cart, being pulled in fits and starts down the corridor. He tried to kick, but nothing happened. His leg wouldn’t respond and his wrists were in binders. “I…can’t move…” he said. “You…stunned me….Help!”

  Rose glared down at him. “I’m taking you to the brig and turning you in for desertion.”

  “No!” he said. She had it all wrong. He had to make her understand he wasn’t a deserter. He was just trying to warn Rey. “This fleet is doomed. If my friend comes back to it, she’s doomed, too.”

  Rose let go of the cart and crouched down to his level. “You’re a selfish traitor.”

&nb
sp; “Look,” Finn said, his tongue able to move more freely now, “if I could save Rey by saving the Resistance fleet, I would, but I can’t. Nobody can. We can’t outrun the First Order fleet.”

  “We can jump to lightspeed,” she said.

  “They can track us through lightspeed.”

  Her suspicion turned into alarm. “They can track us through lightspeed?”

  “Yes! They’ll just show up seconds later and we’d have blown a ton of fuel, which we’re dangerously short on.” Finn started to wiggle his limbs. His paralysis was wearing off, but his jaw remained numb. “I can’t feel my teeth. What did you shoot me with?”

  Rose ignored his question, lost in thought. “Active tracking,” she said. “Hyperspace tracking is new tech, but the principle must be the same as any active tracker. I’ve done maintenance on active trackers. They’re single source, to avoid interference. So—”

  Finn got the gist of what she was saying. If the First Order could operate only a single hyperspace tracker at a time, it would be installed on the most powerful vessel in the armada, the Mega-Destroyer.

  “They’re only tracking us from the lead ship!” they said at the same time.

  He held up his bound wrists and gave her a beggar’s smile. For a tense moment her suspicion seemed to return, but then she keyed the code and unlocked the binders.

  Immediately the pair went to work hatching a plan. Rose believed she could shut the tracker down if she could gain access to the power breaker room on the Mega-Destroyer. Finn could lead her there. He knew the layout of the Supremacy by heart, having spent an entire training cycle with his trooper team mopping its floors. But they’d need a ship to transport them to the Mega-Destroyer. Since Rose was only a maintenance tech, she couldn’t fly a Resistance shuttle for her own use.

  Poe, however, would be able to get one for them.

  They found the pilot in General Organa’s quarters, by her bedside with C-3PO and BB-8. The general lay in a coma as medical droids fussed about her, caring for her every need.

  Finn introduced Poe to Rose and pitched him their plan to sneak aboard the Supremacy and disable the tracker. Even a temporary pause in the tracker’s operation would give the Resistance enough time to jump to lightspeed without being followed.