Star Wars: The Last Jedi Page 6

  BB-8 beeped his approval, but Poe was less persuaded. “Poe,” Finn pleaded, “this’ll save the fleet and save Rey. We have to do it.”

  Poe went over to General Organa on her bunk. He looked at her, touching her hand, as if to discern what she would advise.

  “If I must be the sole voice of reason,” interjected C-3PO, “Vice Admiral Holdo will never approve of this plan.”

  Poe’s attitude suddenly changed. “You’re right, Threepio. This plan is need-to-know. And she doesn’t.”

  “Oh dear,” said the protocol droid.

  Poe looked at Finn and Rose. “So. How do we sneak you onto a Star Destroyer?”

  “We steal a First Order shuttle,” Rose suggested.

  “No good,” Poe said. “We need clearance codes.”

  “So we steal clearance codes,” Rose said.

  Finn shook his head. “They’re bio-hexacrypt and rescrambled every hour. It’s impossible. Their security shields are airtight. We can’t get through them undetected. Nobody can.”

  “I’m sure somebody can, if there’s money to be made,” Poe said. “Threepio, reach out to your droid contacts on Takodana and see if you can get ahold of Maz Kanata.”

  The droid scolded Poe that he shouldn’t be unmasking a top-secret spy network among present low-ranking company, but complied with the request. Not long after, the three-dimensional form of the tiny smuggler with big goggles appeared on the room’s holotransceiver. Armed with a blaster, Maz appeared to be engaged in a firefight, shooting at unseen enemies.

  Poe cut to the chase and asked her if she could get them clearance codes.

  “Of course I could do it,” Maz said, “but I’m a little tied down right now. Union dispute—you don’t want to hear about it. But lucky for you there’s exactly one guy I trust who can get you past that kind of security. A ‘Master Codebreaker.’ A soldier, freedom fighter, an ace pilot, a poet with a blaster, and the second-best smuggler I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh!” C-3PO exclaimed. “It sounds like this fellow can do everything.”

  “Oh, yes, he can.” The way Maz said it, grinning and blinking her large eyes, reminded Finn of how she had flirted with Chewbacca when Han had taken them all to Takodana. It made Finn uncomfortable, and apparently Rose, too, from the grimace on her face.

  A blaster bolt zinged past Maz. “And he’s sympathetic to the Resistance,” she added. “You’ll find him at a high stakes table in the casino in Canto Bight.”

  “Canto Bight? But that’s—” Poe stopped himself from elaborating further. “Maz, is there any way we can do this ourselves?”

  Maz fired back at her foes. “Sorry, kiddo. You want on that Destroyer, you got one option: find the Master Codebreaker. You’ll know who he is by the red plom bloom he wears on his lapel—”

  “Red plom what?” Finn asked. But the transmission cut out.

  Their mission settled, Finn reluctantly gave Poe the wrist beacon for safekeeping. He realized that rather than seeking Rey out, the best thing he could do to save her life—to save all their lives—was disable that tracker so the Resistance could escape the Destroyers. Then Rey could follow the beacon back to the cruiser, without the threat of being killed or captured.

  At least that was what Finn hoped.

  The sun had not yet risen on Ahch-To when Luke returned to the village. But he did not go into his hut. He walked to the bench where Rey slept and waited. When her eyes opened, he spoke.

  “Tomorrow. At dawn. Three lessons. I will teach you the ways of the Jedi—and why they need to end. And when you understand, you will leave me alone on this island to die.”

  He turned away from her and entered his hut, closing the door. Now it was time for him to rest so he could maintain the strength not to change his mind any more than he already had.

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

  The star freighter’s hatch closed, and its engines warmed. Rey tried to run toward it, but Unkar Plutt’s meaty hand held her back. No amount of squirming or wriggling would release her. She was only a small human child, while Plutt was an overweight, overgrown Crolute.

  “Come back!” Rey shrieked at the ship. “Come back!”

  Her cries caused Plutt to squeeze her arm so tightly it hurt. But that pain did not compare with the heartbreak of watching the freighter lift off. The ship roared toward Jakku’s sun, never to come back as promised.

  Rey woke to the sunlight of another world. Dawn streamed through the doorway of the hut in which she’d taken shelter to escape the night’s rain. Fortunately, the rain had ended, as had the nightmare of her parents abandoning her on Jakku.

  She blinked and the afterimages of the bad dream faded away. This day was too important to let them disturb her. She had to have all her focus if she was going to learn the ways of the Jedi.

  Stretching her body, she slid off the stone bench and stepped toward the door, then stopped. She wasn’t alone in the hut.

  The presence of someone she knew lurked in the shadows. A brooding, angry presence. Kylo Ren.

  She saw him, somehow, undergoing surgery. He winced as a droid pulled stitches from his face. She had cut him there during their fight and she could feel the ache and sting of the wound, as if Ren had drawn her into his suffering. His pupils burned with hate.

  Instinctively, she drew the blaster Han Solo had given her and shot at the shadows.

  The energy bolt drilled a hole through the wall. Light poured inside, dispelling the darkness. Kylo Ren was nowhere in sight.

  Rey ran outside. To her relief, Kylo Ren didn’t appear to be anywhere in the village, either. He’d just been another weird manifestation of this weird island. A ghost.

  Or maybe not, as he materialized before her again. This time she could clearly see his mane of hair, his scarred face, his dark eyes. He gestured at her and said, “You will bring Luke Skywalker to me.”

  She almost laughed. Did this murderer think she would obey him? Did he think he could control her movements or extract her secrets as he had before? She would rather die than let him do those things to her again.

  Ren dropped his hand, as if surprised by the power of her rebuke. “You’re not doing this…no. The effort would kill you.” His eyes probed around her, only to settle back on her. “Can you see my surroundings?”

  “You’re going to pay for what you did,” she said.

  “I can’t see yours,” he said, ignoring her threat. “Just you. So no—this is something else.”

  Something else? What was he talking about? What was happening anyway? Was this even real?

  Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned. Luke Skywalker stood outside his hut. She kept quiet out of fear. If Kylo Ren discovered she had found the Jedi Master, he could ruin the progress she had made.

  Her silence, however, could not conceal her emotions from Ren. He snarled. “Luke…”

  Luke stopped, peering past Rey. “What’s that about?”

  Rey spun back around toward Ren. But as before, her bitter enemy was not there. In Kylo Ren’s place was a group of hairless humanoids in white robes and headdresses. Their skin was rubbery, like that of an amphibian, and tinted the gray-blue of the surrounding sea. Two large eyes rested on either side of their melon-shaped heads, with twin blowholes and a pursed mouth between. They trundled about the village on three-toed feet, regarding Rey with distrust and mumbling to each other in a singsong tongue. One jabbed a fat finger at the hole Rey had blown in the wall of her hut.

  Rey turned red, realizing Luke had been asking her about the damage and not Kylo Ren. “I was cleaning my blaster, and…it went off.”

  Luke accepted her lie without further question. Another of the beings piped something at Luke, eyeing Rey. Luke responded in their language, then headed out of the village.

  Eager to be away from Kylo Ren and those creatures, Rey followed Luke. He led her up another staircase, this one spiraling up the highest of the two mountains on the island.

  “Who
were those things?” she asked.

  “Caretakers,” Luke said. “Island natives. They’ve kept up the Jedi structures since they were built.”

  Rey glanced down at the village. The strange Caretaker beings were watching her. “I don’t think they like me.”

  “Can’t imagine what gave you that idea.”

  A section of the staircase hugged the cliff. Cooing and chirping sounded from small dark holes in the rock wall. The occasional avian perched on a step, blinking at Rey with big black eyes. “While you’re being chatty, can you tell me what those chubby birdlike things are?” she asked.

  “Porgs.”

  “Porgs?”

  “Porgs,” Luke said, without further comment.

  After strenuous effort, they climbed the last stair and arrived on a short shelf of rock near the summit. A cave was carved into the mountain behind them. Rey felt a pull toward the mouth of the cave, as she had at the tree. Luke took her to the ledge instead.

  The height provided an unsurpassed view of the ocean. Giant waves crashed on rocks below, and the sky met the sea along a gray horizon. The sight should have relaxed her, but her conversation with Kylo Ren hung over her like a noxious cloud.

  Luke broke a stalk off a plant that grew between the cracks in the rock. He rolled it back and forth in his palm. “What do you know about the Force?”

  The truth was she knew virtually nothing. On Jakku, no one talked about the Force. Life was too hard to believe in anything that didn’t immediately put food in your belly. But she dared not show Luke her ignorance.

  “It’s a power that the Jedi have, that lets them control people and…make things float,” she said, fumbling through what little she knew.

  “Impressive,” Luke quipped. “Every word in that sentence was wrong.”

  Rey felt foolish for not asking Leia more. She had left D’Qar in such a rush, with barely enough time to say good-bye to Finn.

  Luke gestured to a large smooth rock. “Lesson one. Sit here. Legs crossed.”

  When she had seated herself atop the stone, Luke spoke with a reverence she had not heard from him before. “The Force is not a power you have. It’s not about floating rocks. It’s the energy between all things, a tension, a balance that binds the universe together.”

  “Okay,” Rey said. His description could’ve characterized a thousand other mystical traditions. “But what is it?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Annoyed he wouldn’t give her an answer, she still did as he said. Her world soon became one of sound—waves breaking, gulls cawing, and the measured tones of Luke’s voice.

  “Breathe,” he said.

  She exhaled and inhaled, filling her lungs with the salty sea air. With every breath, her heartbeat slowed and her impatience receded. A calmness she had never experienced on Jakku settled over her.

  “Now…reach out.”

  She lifted an arm and stretched out her hand. Something danced on the tips of her fingers. “I feel something.”

  “You feel it?”

  Most definitely, she did—so much that it tickled. “Yes, I feel it!”

  “That’s the Force,” Luke said.

  “Really?” It seemed so easy to access its power. Just a few breaths and her palm tingled with new energy. If she had only known this method before, her hardscrabble life could’ve been far different.

  Luke sounded equally astounded. “It must be really strong with you.”

  Her confidence soared. That was the first nice thing he had said about her. “Well, I—”

  She yelped as pain shot through her palm. Opening her eyes, she realized that what she had felt wasn’t the Force at all, but a reed Luke held. He had smacked her hand with it.

  Her cheeks reddened in embarrassment at being so easily tricked. Luke hadn’t been talking about stretching out her hands at all. “You meant reach out like…” Not knowing exactly how to define it, she pointed to her center—her heart. He nodded.

  “Okay, got it.” She shut her eyes, determined to try again.

  Luke moved her arms so her palms touched the stone on which she sat. It helped her resist the temptation to use her limbs.

  “Breathe,” Luke said once more. “Just breathe.”

  Out and in went her breaths, slowly but surely. With them went her confusion and her questions. Peace returned, deeper than before.

  “Now,” Luke said, “reach out with your feelings.”

  Rey didn’t think about what he had said. She just let it happen. Every one of her senses reached out, rather than one dominating the others. A new awareness of the world came to her, informed by the little things she would have missed otherwise. She felt moisture on the boulder beneath her. Smelled the algae that flourished in the seashore pools. Tasted a gust of moldy air coming from within the cave. Heard the mating song of some faraway leviathan.

  “What do you see?” Luke asked.

  Though her eyes were closed, images flashed in her mind. “The island,” she told him, perceiving it in all its glory, as if she were one of the gulls gliding above. It was quickly replaced by a vision of flowers blooming before her. “Life,” she said, enjoying the flowers’ lovely fragrance, yet also sniffing out the rot in the soil from which they grew. “Death and decay,” she added, watching blades of grass shoot from the dirt, “that feeds new life.”

  A view of the mountainside presented itself, splendid in the sunlight. “Warmth,” Rey said, shuddering as she was plunged deep into the sea, “and coldness.”

  Her perception returned to the cliff, where a mother porg doted over her nest. “Peace,” Rey observed, touched by the maternal affection. But as before, the scene was swiftly upended. A wave smashed into the nest. “Violence,” she said, as the sea snatched the eggs.

  “And between it all?” Luke asked.

  Rey shifted her attention. She let the images and smells, feelings and sounds fade into the background and instead concentrated on the ways those details came to her, the paths that brought her senses alive.

  Luke was right. There was something in between. It connected her to the rock, the porgs, the sea, the waves, the island. It was untouchable yet tangible, invisible yet bright. “A balance,” she described, “of energy.”

  Yet it was more than a source of power. Much more. A set of principles governed it. It held influence, yet did not judge. Most simply, it attracted things—like gravity, like love.

  “A…force,” she said.

  “And inside you?”

  “Inside me…” And there it was, encompassing her, too, as if there were no difference between the inside and the out. “That same force.”

  “This is the lesson,” Luke said. “The Force does not belong to the Jedi. It is so much bigger. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies is vanity.”

  The joy of discovery was short-lived. Her senses took control. “There’s something else here. A powerful light. Blinding.”

  “This is the first Jedi temple. The concentration of light.”

  “But there’s something else.” In her mind’s eye she saw a hole in the rock, ringed by a reddish moss. “Beneath the island. A place. A dark place. It’s cold. It’s calling me.”

  Luke’s voice took on a new urgency. “Resist it, Rey. Fight it!”

  She couldn’t. The darkness swallowed her up. She heard a roar. Felt a shake. The ground moved. A chorus of stars shrilled in the skies. A fountain gushed from the underground cove. Someone called her name. Luke? Where was he? Should he not be here, too? In the Force? It was supposed to connect everything and everyone.

  “Rey—Rey!”

  Her vision ended in pain. Luke smacked her awake. She choked on air and shivered. She was wet, as if she had actually gone underwater. “That place,” she said, remembering to breathe, “was trying to—”

  Luke didn’t let her explain. “You went straight to the dark. It offered you something you needed and you didn’t even try to stop yourself.”

  He started toward the cave behind the
m. Rey staggered up from the rock. “I saw everything—the island, and past it…I felt the stars singing. I thought my heart would explode, but…I didn’t see you. Nothing from you, no light, no dark.”

  Even here, as she stood before him, she couldn’t sense him. Why? Wasn’t he a Jedi Master? Shouldn’t he shine brighter than anything else?

  “You’ve closed yourself off from the Force,” Rey said. Luke wasn’t merely hiding out from the rest of the galaxy. He was hiding from the very thing that had made his destiny.

  Her accusation fell on deaf ears. “I’ve seen this raw strength only once before—in Ben Solo,” Luke said. “It didn’t scare me enough then. It does now.”

  Luke entered the cave. Rey remained on the ledge, still in shock. She noticed cracks in the dirt surrounding her. A chunk of the mountainside had collapsed into the sea. When had that happened? Had she somehow caused a landslide?

  She looked into the mouth of the cave, then turned away.

  WITH Poe’s help, Finn and Rose commandeered a transport pod and flew away from the Raddus, unnoticed by Vice Admiral Holdo. The pod’s small size made it indiscernible to the First Order’s active tracker, allowing it to leap into hyperspace without attracting any pursuit. It arrived in the Cantonica system exactly according to plan, but for one small issue. Finn found a stowaway next to the toilet.

  “Beebee-Ate! What are you doing here?”

  The droid rolled out of the restroom into the main cabin, beeping innocently.

  Lingering at the door, Rose raised an eyebrow at the droid. “Watching after us?” She looked at Finn. “We’re on approach. Strap in.”

  Finn glared at the droid. “How do you say ‘Poe’s going to kill me’ in beep?” BB-8 should have been assisting Poe on the Raddus, not trying to supervise them like some pint-sized babysitter.

  The droid sniped back something Finn knew was best left untranslated.

  Finn followed Rose into the cockpit. The orb of Cantonica hung before them out the viewport. A medium-sized ocean added a splash of blue to the otherwise drab and desert-covered planet. Along the ocean’s crescent edge lay their intended destination, the blinking lights of Canto Bight.