Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens the Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure

by Jason Fry

  “What is it, Marcus?” Sarco asked.

  “I’m not sure.…It was a feeling I had.”

  Luke exhaled, trying to reach out not just with his senses, but also with his feelings.

  “There,” he said, pointing deeper into the jungle.

  Through a stand of trees he saw four gray shapes, dappled in shadow. One moved slightly, and the shapes resolved themselves into sturdy legs, broad backs, and stubby heads crowned with curling horns.

  They weren’t happabores but rather the creatures Luke had seen in his vision. They’d stood nearby while he faced the three remotes with his lightsaber.

  “Pikhrons,” Sarco grunted. “You have keen senses for an outlander.”

  He handed one of the long-barreled blaster rifles to Luke, then raised his own bulky weapon.

  “No,” Luke said, pushing Sarco’s rifle down.

  “What? Why not?”

  Luke shook his head. He realized he could feel the pikhrons in the Force—the comfort they took in one another and the pleasure they felt in the shade of their glen. He could also feel their wariness about the intruders atop the happabores and their urge to flee, which was warring with their instinct to remain still and silent.

  “You’re taking away a good payday, outlander,” Sarco objected.

  “I’ll pay you whatever you would have earned from the skins,” Luke said. “But we’re leaving the pikhrons alone.”

  Sarco shrugged, returned the rifles to their slings, and jabbed the happabore with the prod. As the beasts resumed their journey through the jungle, Luke looked back to see the pikhrons ambling away through the trees.

  “Did you grow up in these woods?” he asked Sarco.

  “In Tikaroo,” Sarco said. “This is home now. I only go into town when it’s necessary. They don’t like me there. They never have.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sarco just grunted.

  “Mr. Sarco?” Threepio piped up. “Why do they call you the Scavenger? It seems a most peculiar name.”

  Luke grimaced. Sometimes he suspected whoever programmed Threepio for etiquette had installed something upside down.

  “It’s supposed to be an insult,” Sarco said. “My specialty is finding things of value and figuring out who wants them.”

  “If you grew up in Tikaroo, you must remember the days before the hunts,” Luke said. “When the villagers followed the old ways.”

  The bristles on Sarco’s arms quivered briefly.

  “The old ways were sentimental nonsense. Animals are a resource, like everything else in the galaxy.”

  “But the people here lived in harmony with the pikhrons for generations.”

  Sarco shrugged.

  “Besides, resources can be used up if we’re not careful,” Luke said.

  “An entire galaxy’s worth? Impossible. What’s the point of caring about a few pikhrons? Or Devaron? Or any of it?”

  Luke looked sadly at the stately trees, wondering what had happened to Sarco that he cared so little for his surroundings. He couldn’t have been born that way—no one was. Something had warped and twisted him, turned him bitter and withdrawn.

  “Besides,” the alien muttered, “it’s a better life traveling the jungle taking what you need than scratching at dirt with a plow.”

  “Now that I agree with,” Luke said. “I grew up farming, myself. It’s hard work.”

  Sarco turned his eyeless mask of chitin toward Luke. His cilia fluttered and he cocked his head to the left, then to the right.

  “Thought you were a hyperspace scout,” he said. “Isn’t that your fighter that Kivas is working on?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re a busy young man. Y-wing, eh? If you want to sell, I know people who’ll pay good credits.”

  “What kind of people?” Luke asked.

  Sarco shrugged.

  “I find things,” he said. “As long as people pay good credits, what they do with those things isn’t my business.”

  “Well, my ship isn’t for sale.”

  “What about the droid, then?”

  “Of all the nerve!” Threepio exclaimed. “I am most certainly not for sale. Isn’t that right, Master—”

  “I meant the astromech,” Sarco said. “You talk too much—nobody would buy you.”

  Artoo chortled and Luke had to smile.

  “They’re not for sale, either,” he said. “But I’ve got a way you can make some easy credits. Take me to Eedit.”

  “Forbidden.”

  Artoo blatted derisively, and Sarco turned in his seat.

  “What did it say?”

  Threepio inclined his head haughtily.

  “He said he thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “You should shut those droids off,” Sarco said.

  “I was thinking the same thing as Artoo,” Luke said. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing,” Sarco said. “But there’s a difference between brave and stupid. Ghosts aren’t the danger at Eedit.”

  “What is, then?” Luke asked. “Look, I just want to see the place—I won’t go inside. I’m…interested in old sites.”

  Sarco turned to regard Luke.

  “First you’re a hyperspace scout, now you’re some kind of historian. Is that why you carry that antique laser sword? Out of historical interest?”

  Luke hesitated, wondering when Sarco had detected his lightsaber. He cursed himself for not being more careful.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s it exactly. I’m interested in old sites, and relics.”

  “So am I,” Sarco said, then cocked his head left and right. “So you carry a Jedi weapon, but you can’t use it.”

  Luke forced himself to choke back his pride.

  “It’s still a useful tool,” he said. “And before you ask, no, it’s not for sale.”

  Sarco’s cilia quivered in a way that made Luke uneasy. But then the alien turned away.

  “Very well, Marcus,” he said. “I’ll take you to the barrier. For an additional price, of course.”

  SARCO BROUGHT the happabores to a halt a few meters away from the edge of the jungle. He and Luke dismounted and peered out across a plateau dotted with copses of towering trees and overgrown with vines as thick around as Luke’s leg. A stone road, cracked and almost entirely reclaimed by vegetation, led across the plateau to the shattered towers that Luke had seen from the air.

  “No closer,” Sarco warned, pointing ahead of them.

  Luke noticed white spines sticking up from the ground. They were sensors, he realized—and they stretched in a perimeter between the edge of the jungle and the temple.

  His heart sank. There was no way he could reach the temple without being detected.

  Artoo whistled for their attention.

  “Artoo says he’s willing to deactivate the sensors,” Threepio said. “Though that strikes me as reckless even by his standards.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Luke said. “It’s too risky—and we can’t afford to get caught.”

  Sarco cocked his head at Luke, then turned his head so the chitinous mask faced the droids.

  “I can take you somewhere else,” he said, his electronically modulated voice curiously soft. “A place reserved for my best customers.”

  “What’s there?”

  Sarco cocked his head one way, then the other.

  “It’s a secret.”

  An image flashed into Luke’s mind—a gloomy depression carpeted with moss, the jagged ends of old bones sticking out of the dirt and leaves.

  Luke shook his head and took a step away from Sarco, his fingers creeping toward his lightsaber.

  “I’m not interested in your secrets,” he said firmly. “Is there any spot that gets us closer to the temple?”

  Sarco’s cilia fluttered and he waved his hands at the ring of Imperial sensors.

  “Are you blind, boy? You can see for yourself that there’s no way in.”

  “The lake, then,” Luke sa
id, thinking back to his vision of swimming beneath the Devaronian moons. “The one that’s nearby.”

  Sarco stood stock-still for a moment, and Luke thought the alien seemed puzzled.

  “There’s no lake near here. Just the river and the old dam destroyed in the droid war. But there’s nothing there—the valuable equipment was picked over long ago.”

  A dam? Luke thought, then realized what he’d seen in his dream wasn’t a lake at all, but an artificial reservoir.

  “The old dam? Is it outside the sensor barrier?”

  “Yes. But I told you, outlander—there’s nothing there.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Luke said.

  The river had shrunk to a knee-deep channel meandering down the center of a bowl-shaped valley strewn with rock—Sarco said most of the water had been diverted for projects upstream. Even Threepio managed to cross with only a moderate amount of complaining.

  Luke stared at the cliffs on the far side of the valley, looking for something he recognized from his vision, while Sarco kicked at the rocks. The old riverbed was littered with rusted droid parts and broken pieces of armor that had once been white but had turned a sickly yellow from years of exposure to the sun.

  “Garbage,” Sarco muttered, stooping to pick up the angular head of a droid. “Nothing worth taking.”

  He flung the head through the air to land at Threepio’s feet. The protocol droid peered down at it, and Artoo whistled.

  “Switch heads?” Threepio asked. “What an unpleasant idea. Artoo-Detoo, some of the fantasies rattling around inside your dome border on the bizarre.”

  Artoo’s only reply was a smug tootle.

  Luke scanned the cliffs above until he could see the remnants of the braces that had once held the dam in place. They were little more than twisted wreckage now, but they told him where the top of the dam had been—and indeed, he could see a dark line on the rock that indicated the old waterline.

  He looked below that line, telling himself to relax, to use the Force to direct his eyes.

  There.

  “Do you have macrobinoculars?” Luke asked hesitantly, thinking it was a ridiculous question to ask an alien who didn’t have eyes.

  A burst of static that Luke decided was laughter emerged from Sarco’s vocoder. The alien opened a pouch on his bandolier and handed over a small but expensive pair of macrobinoculars.

  “For customers,” he explained.

  Luke nodded, then focused in on the spot he’d seen and grinned.

  “There’s a cave up there,” he said. “Maybe a kilometer upriver. It’s about ten meters above the valley floor.”

  Sarco turned to face that way, then cocked his head at Luke.

  “Your species can barely see the cave even with amplification. How did you know it was there?”

  “I had a feeling it would be,” Luke said, not wanting to explain further.

  Sarco cocked his head left, then right.

  “Impressive,” he said. “But can you get up to it?”

  “I think so,” Luke said, eyes already tracing a way up the cliff.

  Half an hour later he scrambled into the damp, cool cave, having come close to plummeting down the cliff face only once. He activated his lightsaber, the brilliant blue blade emerging from its hilt with a familiar snap and hiss.

  Luke closed his eyes, enjoying the weight of the hilt in his hand. Then he opened them and held up his father’s weapon, illuminating the walls of the cave. As in his vision, stone steps led up into the gloom. He followed them, thinking it was strange to find himself familiar with a place he’d never been.

  The stairs ended at the spot where the alien Jedi’s comrade had handed him his lightsaber. After a few meters the tunnel curved sharply to the right. Luke feared it would end in a solid wall, or a tumble of impassable rock, and thought about how discouraging it would be to have to ride back through the jungle with Sarco.

  Don’t center on your anxieties, he reminded himself, and peered around the corner.

  The tunnel ran straight through the rock, as far as the illumination of his lightsaber reached. He tried to estimate which direction the tunnel headed, then stopped. He already knew where it led—straight into the Temple of Eedit. He knew because the Force was tugging at him, its message blessedly clear. This was what it had wanted him to find.

  Getting the droids up the cliff took the better part of an hour and required haggling with Sarco over the use of his block and tackle. The alien had brought the equipment for hoisting a dead pikhron so the beast could be skinned; Luke was glad to use it for some other purpose.

  Artoo suffered being hauled up to the cave with his dignity relatively intact, beeping encouragingly at Luke each time he caught his breath and fantasized about being able to lift the droids through the air using the Force. But Threepio spent the entire time declaring that the rope was slipping and predicting his imminent demise. With the protocol droid standing safely in the cave and marveling at his miraculous survival, Luke lowered Sarco’s equipment and then tossed the rope down to him.

  “We’ll be inside for a few days at least,” Luke called down to Sarco. “I’ll raise you on the comlink when we’re ready to return.”

  Sarco raised his head from where he stood in the riverbed, arranging his equipment on his shoulders.

  “If you come out of there alive,” he said.

  Luke hesitated. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but Ben had warned him about the power of the dark side of the Force—it had corrupted his apprentice Darth Vader. What if it was behind the stories of spirits in the temple? What if some malevolent energy still lingered there?

  “I can take care of myself,” he told Sarco, scanning the forested cliffs across the river. For a moment he thought he’d seen something glinting in the sun.

  “You’ll get more credits, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he added.

  I’m running up quite a bill for the Alliance, he thought wryly. I better learn to use the Force to trick a quartermaster into approving it.

  Sarco cocked his head back and forth in that strange, vaguely clockwork habit he had.

  “We’ll meet again, Marcus,” he said, and strode off across the rocky valley to where the happabores were waiting.

  “What an unpleasant creature,” sniffed Threepio.

  “I kind of feel sorry for him,” Luke said. “But look, he got us this far, didn’t he?”

  “Wherever that may be.”

  “Right,” Luke said. “That’s a good question. Let’s find out the answer.”

  They walked for longer than half an hour, footsteps echoing in the close confines of the tunnel, while Threepio imagined various calamities that were certain to befall them.

  As they walked, a sense of calm settled over Luke. His father’s lightsaber felt like an extension of his hand, and his senses were quick to register each chip and divot in the tunnel, each slight current of air. He was aware of his breathing in and out, and of the unhurried beat of his heart.

  It’s the Force, he realized. It’s getting stronger. Stronger, or perhaps I’m feeling a deeper connection with it.

  Something gleamed in the pale blue light of his saber. Luke held up his hand for the droids to stop, interrupting Threepio’s speech about what it would be like to be entombed for millennia without power while vermin chewed through his wiring.

  There were pieces of stone scattered across the floor. Beyond them, the passageway sloped upward but was blocked by fallen rocks. Luke advanced cautiously, clambering up the pile and peering through the tumbled stones.

  “Oh no, it’s obviously completely impassable,” Threepio said. “I suppose we’ll have to go back to Tikaroo.”

  “No, it’s mostly loose stone,” Luke said. “I can feel fresh air, in fact. Come and help me clear this stuff out of the way.”

  “But, Master Luke, I’m not programmed for demolition.”

  “Neither am I. We’ll just have to do our best.”

  Artoo hooted at Threepio and
rolled to the edge of the pile. He extended a utility arm and plucked a small stone out of the tumble, then turned and rolled away with his prize, whistling cheerfully.

  “Well, that’s no end of help,” Threepio said.

  Together they shoved the loose rock aside, Luke carving away at some of the bigger blocks with his saber, careful not to let the liquefied rock burn him. He found himself whistling a sprightly tune as he worked.

  “Master Luke!” Threepio exclaimed. “That sound you’re making—it’s the first Whiforlan fluting form!”

  “Is it?” Luke asked, smiling. “It’s catchy.”

  Luke climbed to the top of the pile, pushed at a slab of stone with his shoulder, and was rewarded when it slid aside and then toppled out of sight, landing with a crash.

  “We’re almost there,” he said. “If we get the big pieces moved you and Artoo should be able to get through.”

  He pushed his head through the gap he’d created, then his shoulders, saber raised to illuminate his surroundings. What he saw made his heart catch in his throat.

  “I’m going to take a quick look around,” Luke said. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “Be careful, Master Luke!” Threepio said.

  Luke scrambled through the gap and found himself on the edge of what once had been an enormous hall, lit by the light of late afternoon.

  Much of the roof had tumbled down, columns were shorn off or toppled, and the floor was covered with drifts of leaves that had blown in through shattered windows. The center of the floor was a crater, surrounded by rubble. Something screeched in the shadows, the noise of its scrambling retreat echoing around Luke. He whirled in a circle, brandishing his father’s lightsaber in front of him, then forced himself to take a deep breath.

  It’s not a demon or dark-side ghosts—just jungle creatures, he thought. You’ve invaded their home, that’s all.

  He raised his saber high and saw two statues at the far end of the hall, their faces bubbled and blackened, their arms ending in cauterized stumps. The temple had been bombed and then vandalized with heavy energy weapons—someone had worked hard to erase any sign of beauty that had escaped the initial spasm of violence.