Star Wars: The Last Jedi Page 7

  “It’s a terrible place filled with the worst people in the galaxy,” Rose informed Finn. She didn’t justify how she knew this and spent the rest of the descent trying to teach Finn the technique of landing a transport pod. The result was more of a crash than a landing. Luckily, Finn had touched down on a beach and the sand absorbed much of the impact.

  When they disembarked, an Abednedo in a white robe started jabbering at them that they’d landed on a public beach. They ignored him and hurried along the boardwalk into the city.

  Finn saw that Rose was wrong about Cantonica’s capital. The city didn’t seem terrible to him at all. In fact, it was one of the most astounding places he’d ever visited.

  Sailboats and yachts drifted in the bay, glowing in the sunset. Luxury landspeeders cruised the coastal highways. Shoreline hotels offered romantic retreats for the wealthy and the connected. For those who couldn’t afford an ocean view, such fortune might be won a block away. The main strip of Canto Bight’s renowned casinos glittered like a case of gems, with each establishment trying to outshine the others in extravagance.

  Maz had not divulged where exactly the Master Codebreaker could be found, so they entered the largest gambling den they came across, the Canto Casino. It was a palace for high-stakes gambling, where millions of credits were bet on everything from jubilee wheels and zinbiddle tournaments to pongobungo cards and even blob races. Musicians tootled current hits from a side stage, waiters and waitresses walked the floor serving free drinks, and all the patrons were dressed in the height of fashion. Finn was exhilarated. “This place is great!”

  Rose shared none of his enthusiasm. “Maz said this Master Codebreaker would have a red plom bloom on his lapel. Let’s find him and get out of here.”

  Finn started after her, noticing that BB-8 was waylaid behind them. A monocled amphibian in white tie and tails, burping from the booze he was drinking, mistook the ball droid for a lugjack machine and jammed credit chips into BB-8’s data slot.

  Finn wasn’t worried. BB-8 would catch up with them. The astromech had handled worse than an intoxicated gambler.

  Rose maintained a brisk pace through the busy casino, glancing at people’s lapels. Finn spent more time eyeing the people themselves. Though his knowledge of popular culture was minimal, even he recognized that some of these beings were the galaxy’s rich and famous.

  A loud braying sound disrupted Finn’s people-watching, and the heart-pounding rumble that succeeded it caused both him and Rose to shrink back. A pack of long-eared, long-limbed creatures galloped past the window wall to the glee of the patrons.

  Rose’s eyes widened. “Were those what I think they were?” Without explanation, she hurried under an arch, leaving the casino floor.

  Finn joined her on an outdoor balcony. Below them graceful four-legged beasts raced around a circular track, spurred by jockeys on their backs and spectators in the stands. “What are those things?”

  Rose gawked at the creatures. “Fathiers. They were my sister’s favorite animals when we were kids. She never got to see one. So beautiful.”

  Finn peered through a pair of electrobinoculars mounted to the balcony’s rail. The enhanced view showed him just how majestic the fathiers were. They held their tawny heads high and raced with a noble pride, even as their jockeys spurred them with electro-whips.

  If she could admire the beauty in these beasts, Finn wondered why she couldn’t see it around her in Canto Bight. “This whole place is beautiful. Why do you hate it so much?” he asked.

  Rose scowled. “My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system. The First Order stripped our ore to finance their military, then shelled us to test their weapons. They took everything we had.” Rose swept her gaze across the well-dressed spectators. “And who do you think these people are? Only one business in the galaxy gets you this rich.”

  “War,” Finn said grimly.

  Rose nodded. “Selling weapons to the First Order, getting rich off of so much suffering. Back home…” She clutched her necklace’s medallion. “I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.”

  BB-8 darted up to them, making a racket with the credit chips clattering inside his round body. He parked before Rose and let out a rapid series of beeps.

  “Red plom bloom?” Rose started looking around. “Where?—ow!”

  Finn jabbed her, indicating a stylish human with slicked-back hair at one of the high-stakes gaming tables. A crimson-petaled flower was pinned to the lapel of a white dinner jacket.

  “The Master Codebreaker,” Rose whispered.

  Finn immediately understood how Maz could be so smitten by the man. He was the swankiest of all the swanky gamblers in the casino, with the aura of a magnetic charge. Admirers, particularly female, cozied up to him, blushing whenever he winked at them. He oozed confidence like a Hutt in heat, and even with untold credits on the table, he juggled dice as if the act of rolling them were a mere formality and his fortune guaranteed.

  The Abednedo from the beach cut in front of them. “These are the guys,” he said.

  A high-voltage zap in Finn’s back stopped him from asking questions. He quickly found himself being arrested by the Canto Bight police.

  As he was cuffed, Finn caught an offhand glance from the Master Codebreaker. But then the man turned away and cast his dice to the cheers of his audience.

  FROM the window of his ready room, Kylo Ren observed the flurry of activity down in the Supremacy’s hangar. Stormtrooper platoons boarded assault shuttles. Pilots strapped themselves into TIE fighters. Support staff maglocked droid walkers to the sides of transports. In the center stood Captain Phasma, her chrome armor spotless, her red-trimmed cape hanging from a shoulder.

  Rumors abounded that saboteurs had waylaid Phasma on Starkiller Base and thrown her into a trash compactor. Even if there was truth to the rumor, a trash compactor would have never ended the career of a soldier of her stature. Though she usually sided with General Hux, Ren was pleased she hadn’t met her demise. Phasma would lead the First Order’s forces in eradicating the Resistance wherever it dared to make its last stand. Victory would soon be at hand.

  But there was another adversary that needed to be vanquished. The scavenger. The girl. Rey.

  He felt the tingle of her presence again, like cobwebs that couldn’t be swept from his mind. How they were connected to each other, he didn’t know. The girl did not seem powerful enough to communicate this way. But linked they were, and it was of no consequence that Rey might be halfway across the galaxy. The Force was not bound by the limitations of space, distance, or time.

  He sensed her standing in the rain, near the dilapidated junk heap of a ship Han Solo had once owned. His nostrils flared in disgust.

  When Ren’s mind intruded on hers, she was thinking of someone else: the renegade stormtrooper who had betrayed the First Order and attacked Ren on Starkiller Base. FN-2187. The one she called Finn.

  She was concerned about him—so much so that she’d just had her barbaric Wookiee friend send a message to the Resistance and was contemplating sending another. Ren laughed. It was he who had delivered the blow that had gravely wounded Finn. He hoped the traitor died.

  Discerning Ren’s presence, the girl hissed, “Murderous snake.”

  Her recognition solidified their bond. She could see him and Ren could see her, as if they existed in the same place. He went toward her. Rain ran down her face.

  “You’re late,” she said. “You lost. I found Skywalker.”

  “And how’s that going?” Ren asked with a chuckle. “Has he told you what happened? The night I destroyed his temple? Has he told you why?”

  “I know everything I need to know about you.”

  “You do?” Ren mused. “Yes, you do…You have that look in your eyes from our little forest duel, when you called me a monster.”

  Rey stood firm. “You are a monster.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  Ren broke the connection, opening
his eyes. He was alone again, in the ready room. But his affirmation about himself lingered in his mind.

  A monster. Indeed that was what he had become.

  Beads of moisture tingled his scar. He wiped his face and noticed his glove was also dripping wet, as if he had been outside with Rey. He clenched his fist, wringing out the rain.

  To shake off the contact with Kylo Ren, Rey worked up a sweat and practiced with her staff as she often had on Jakku. She targeted a large, jagged standing stone with each end, ducking, parrying, and jumping, as if she faced a real opponent—as if she faced Kylo Ren.

  After a bout of exercise, she paused for a brief rest. Her eyes fell on her satchel, which lay on the ground where she had dropped it. The hilt of Luke’s lightsaber protruded from its pocket.

  She glanced at the boulder, then back at her hilt. It occurred to her that if she wanted to master the Jedi path, she would also have to master the lightsaber. She could not rely on pure adrenaline alone to defeat more skilled opponents like Kylo Ren.

  Rey put down her staff and picked up the hilt. Flicking the activation button, she extended the blade and marveled at its bright blue beam, nearly weightless in her hand. This lightsaber had played a large role in recent galactic history, and here she was holding it as if it were her own.

  Wielding the saber, she resumed her duel against the standing stone, slashing and blocking an invisible foe’s blade, careful not to strike the rock itself. As Luke had taught her, she focused on her breath and opened all her senses. In nudges and tugs, she began to feel the Force guiding her movements, as if she were a dancer swaying to music.

  “Impressive.”

  Luke’s voice jarred her back to the here and now. Her blade sizzled through the air to bite into stone, cleaving the boulder in two. Its upper chunk fell away and tumbled down the mountainside to smash into a wheeled cart at the bottom. The pair of Caretakers who had been pulling the cart glared up at her.

  Rey cringed, switching off the lightsaber. She hadn’t meant to do that.

  Luke stood behind her. She had the feeling he’d been watching her for a while. He beckoned her to follow him.

  They climbed up the mountain stairs, returning to the meditation ledge. But this time he did not give breathing lessons or riddles. He led her through the mouth of the cave that had pulled at her before and into the Jedi temple.

  The entrance widened into a spacious chamber. Rey followed Luke to a pool in the middle, circled by a retaining wall. “I’ve shown that you don’t need the Jedi to use the Force,” Luke said. “So why do you need the Jedi Order?”

  Rey didn’t overthink her reply. “To fight the rising darkness. They kept the peace for a thousand generations.” Her reflection stared back at her in the glassy pool, while Luke’s held a frown. “And I can tell from your look that every word I just said was wrong.”

  Luke’s tone turned grim. “Lesson two. Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified like gods. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris.”

  “That’s not true,” Rey protested. On Jakku, she had studied the old tales, even paid hefty portions of food to traders to hear any story of the Jedi they knew. Some of the Jedi might have been liars and hypocrites, but they could not be deemed failures if they had protected the galaxy for as long as they had.

  Luke grew more somber as he spoke. “At the height of their powers, the Jedi allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.”

  “And a Jedi who saved him,” Rey countered. In her opinion, Luke seemed to be a little hard on the Jedi and himself. According to the tales, his training in the Jedi way had enabled him defeat the Emperor and pull Darth Vader away from the dark side before his death. “Vader may have been the most hated man in the galaxy, but you saw there was conflict inside him. You believed that he wasn’t gone, he could be turned.”

  “And I became a legend,” Luke said with a sigh. “For many years there was balance. I took no Padawans and no darkness rose. But then I saw Kylo”—he hesitated before correcting himself—“Ben, my nephew, with the mighty Skywalker blood. In my hubris I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strength. I might not be the last Jedi.”

  His gaze shifted away from the pool. “Han,” he said, “Han was…Han about it. He would’ve preferred his son learn to use a blaster rather than a lightsaber. But Leia trusted me with her son. I took him, and a dozen students, and began a training temple. By the time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him, it was too late.”

  “What happened?” Rey asked. This part of the tales she didn’t know. No one did.

  Luke looked into the cavern’s shadows. Some moments passed before he spoke. “One night I came to him in his sleeping quarters, to see if I could resolve the matter.” His voice strained. “He woke and saw me standing there, and then…the darkness exploded within him. He called on the Force to bring down the ceiling on me. I was incapacitated and it was a long time before I dragged myself out of the rubble. He must’ve thought I was dead.”

  Luke turned back to the pool. Its waters were still and clear. “When I came to, the temple was burning. Kylo left with a handful of my students and slaughtered the rest.”

  His story triggered Rey’s memory. She recalled the vision she’d had on Takodana of Luke, cowled in a black cloak, kneeling and touching R2-D2 with his artificial hand. A structure burned in the background. It must have been the temple that Luke had built.

  Luke let out a heavy breath. “Leia blamed Snoke. But it was me. I failed.”

  Rey could feel the anguish of his soul, mired in self-doubt. “You didn’t fail Kylo. He failed you.” She fixed her gaze on Luke. “I won’t.”

  The wind whistled through the cave mouth. But as she listened, she heard, she felt, there was something more to the sound than a subtle change of the breeze. Had Kylo Ren found them so quickly?

  She hastened out of the cave onto the ledge. Half a dozen wooden boats traversed the sea to the island. This wasn’t the First Order. They would never ride in something so primitive.

  Luke came to stand behind her. “It’s a tribe from a neighboring island. They come once a month to raid and plunder the Caretakers’ village.”

  Just as he described, the boats slewed toward the coast. Yet it gave Rey no relief they weren’t allied to the First Order. She might not have endeared herself to the Caretakers, yet she didn’t wish them harm.

  “We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “Come on!”

  Luke didn’t move a muscle. “Do you know what a true Jedi Knight would do right now?” He paused, as if to impart weight to his answer. “Nothing.”

  His indifference shocked her. This was not the time for lessons. It was time for action. The speeders were landing as they spoke. “They’re gonna get hurt. We have to help!”

  “If you meet the raiding party with force, they’ll be back next month with greater numbers and greater violence. Will you be here next month?”

  How did that matter? She was here now, and she could do something. She wasn’t going to stand idly by. It infuriated her that he—a Jedi Master—would even suggest it.

  “That burn inside you, that anger thinking of what the raiders are going to do,” Luke said, “the books in the Jedi library say ignore that. Only act when you can maintain balance. Even if people get hurt.”

  It was one of the stupidest things Rey had ever heard. If that was Jedi wisdom, she wanted nothing to do with it.

  She hopped off the ledge and slid down the mountainside.

  “Wait—Rey!” Luke called.

  Somehow, she kept her footing on the steep path, zigzagging down the cliff until she got to the bottom. The village lay just beyond the tidal pools. Shrieks and screams echoed from the common area.

  Rey pulled the lightsaber from her satchel, switched on the blade, and ran as fast as she co
uld, splashing through the shallow pools. Arriving in the village, she rushed into a crowd of Caretakers and let out a battle cry, holding the lightsaber high.

  The shrieking momentarily stopped. Large eyes blinked at her. Rey took a few steps back. The raiders were males of the same species as the Caretakers. Yet instead of plundering and pillaging, they were dancing and drinking with their female counterparts.

  Luke had lied to her. This wasn’t a raid. She had barged into a matchmaking celebration.

  The males and females welcomed her with hoots and hurrahs. High-pitched notes were played on makeshift instruments. Youths waved clumps of glowing seaweed. Chewbacca and R2-D2 even barked and beeped at her, whooping it up with some Caretakers in the back.

  Doing her best to hide her embarrassment, Rey waved her lightsaber back at them as if in greeting. Everyone went wild.

  The party resumed full force, though Rey didn’t partake in the festivities for long. She managed to slip away, finding refuge on the porch of a hut. Here she stared out at the sea as the moon rose, stewing in anger. How could Luke have done that to her? Was she nothing but a fool to him? Had he no care for anything other than himself?

  A faint light shone through the lip of her satchel. She opened the bag and took out the beacon bracelet she’d tucked away for safe keeping. Its glow would have been imperceptible in the sunlight, but in the darkness, it shed a soft incandescence that reassured her. Leia had said if the beacon went dark, it signaled that Rey should not come back. The light’s persistence suggested that the Resistance also persisted.

  Rey thought of Leia, who in a mere couple of days on D’Qar had shown Rey what a good mother and a strong woman could be. And then she thought of Finn, the one true friend she’d met in a long time. Had he recovered from his wounds? Might he be thinking of her?

  She felt selfish abandoning him to journey to Ahch-To when he had risked his life to save her on Starkiller Base. If something happened to him while she was away, she’d never forgive herself.