Star Wars - A New Hope - The Life of Luke Skywalker

by Ryder Windham

  Star Wars

  A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker

  by Ryder Windham

  Scholastic Inc.

  2009

  In memory of Archie Goodwin

  PROLOGUE

  “Do you ever wonder about our father, Leia?”

  Luke asked.

  “No,” Leia said without hesitation. “I never do.”

  Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa were on board the New Hope, a Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser that currently served as the flagship for Mon Mothma, the recently elected chief councilor of the fledgling New Republic. They were in a meeting room near the cruiser’s command deck, standing before a wide viewport that overlooked a small red planet orbiting a bright sun.

  “Oh,” Luke said. “I don’t know how to say this, but... well, it’s been months since he died, and I think there are some things we should talk about. I know you’re still upset about how he —“

  “Tortured me?” Leia interrupted. “Stood by and did nothing while Grand Moff Tarkin destroyed the planet Alderaan? Cut off your hand? Killed more people than we’ll ever know?” She gestured to the red planet outside the viewport and added, “Do you have any idea how many Chubbits died on Aridus because of Vader?”

  Luke knew a great deal about the unfortunate Chubbits, but he remained silent.

  As Leia gazed into space, she said, “It seems everywhere we go, we find more of Vader’s victims, more evidence of his horrific service to the Empire.” She shook her head. “Why would I even want to think about that monster?”

  “Because our father wasn‘t just Darth Vader, “ Luke said. “He was also Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi. I’ve tried to tell you what happened on the Death Star at Endor, how he saved me from the Emperor and —“

  “Saved you?” Leia said. “Luke, as I recall, Vader delivered you to the Emperor.” She sighed. “I know you believe that Anakin Skywalker returned in the end, and if that’s how you prefer to remember him, as the Jedi hero who destroyed the Emperor, that’s your decision. But you can’t expect me to do the same, because my father, Bail Organa, the man who raised me, he died on Alderaan.”

  “I’m sorry, Leia,” Luke said. “I just thought—”

  “You thought wrong, Luke, “Leia said. “I have more important things on my mind than this. In case you haven’t noticed, the Empire didn’t die with the Emperor. We don’t know how many Star Destroyers are still in service. Moff Harlov Jarnek has blockaded Spirador. Hundreds of planets still need our help.” She moved away from the viewport. “Now, f you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. The Chubbits are justifiably cautious of offworlders, but I’m determined to convince them that an alliance with the New Republic is their best defense against the Empire.” She turned and walked for the meeting room’s exit.

  Alone in the room, Luke returned his gaze to Aridus. He’d visited the desert planet before. Except that it had a single sun, he‘d found it very similar to his own homeworld, Tatooine.

  So much had happened since the day he’d left Mos Eisley Spaceport with Ben Kenobi on the Millennium Falcon. Back then, his greatest desire had been to have adventures on other worlds. He’d never imagined that he would eventually encounter the father he’d been told was dead, discover that Princess Leia was his sister, or become a champion of the Rebel Alliance.

  But despite his accomplishments and many good friends, Luke sensed there was something missing in his life, as if part of him were somehow incomplete. The Empire had destroyed nearly all the records of the Jedi Order, including any information about Anakin Skywalker, leaving Luke with many questions about his place in the universe.

  Can I avoid my father’s mistakes?

  Are all the other Jedi Knights truly gone?

  How can I be a good Jedi when I know so little about them?

  Despite Leia ‘s apparent lack of interest, Luke believed it was important for him to find out more about the life of Anakin Skywalker.

  How can I know myself if I never really knew my father?

  He had no idea whether gaining such knowledge would make him feel wiser or more fulfilled. All he knew was that he still felt alone and out of place, just as he’d felt when he was a little boy, growing up on a desolate moisture farm in the desert wastes of Tatooine.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Is someone seeing me, Aunt Beru?” Luke asked.

  Beru Lars was standing in her kitchen, making biscuits. She glanced at the four-year-old boy, her husband’s stepbrother’s son, who sat on the hard white steps that led up to the dining alcove, and said, “Your aunt Dama will be seeing all of us. She should be here any time now.”

  Luke frowned. “No. I don’t mean Aunt Dama. I mean, is someone watching me?”

  Beru smiled. “You’re right here with me, so I’m watching you.”

  The boy shook his head. “No. Not you or Uncle Owen. I mean someone else. Someone I can’t see.”

  Beru almost dropped the spoon she had just picked up. She set the spoon down beside a bowl with a gray mixture in it and tried to keep her voice calm as she asked, “What makes you say that, Luke?”

  Luke was holding a small toy landspeeder. As he turned the toy over in his hands, he said, “I just felt like someone else was close by. I thought maybe there was somebody behind me, but when I looked up the steps. . .“ He turned his head to look back toward the dining alcove, then returned his gaze to his aunt. “No one’s there.”

  Beru sighed. “Living far from other folks like we do, it’s not unusual to get a bit jumpy. You feel a small shift in the air, or hear a slight noise, and your imagination starts playing tricks on you.”

  “Really?” Luke said. “But I didn’t hear the wind or anything this time.”

  Beru gripped the edge of the kitchen counter to steady herself. She said, “There’s been other times you thought someone else was watching?”

  “Sometimes when I play outside,” Luke said. “And every time we go into Anchorhead.”

  Beru stepped away from the counter to kneel down beside Luke. Gripping his upper arms gently, she said, “Luke, this is important. You’ve never, ever actually seen any man watching you, have you?”

  Luke cocked his head sideways as he held his aunt’s gaze. “You think it’s a man?”

  Beru shook her head. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I meant anyone, any person. You’ve never noticed anyone?”

  Luke shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

  Just then they heard the sound of a landspeeder engine drift down outside, and Uncle Owen bellowed, “Beru! Your sister’s here!”

  Beru’s eyes flicked to the dining cove, then back to Luke. She said, “I think it’s best that we don’t mention any of this to your uncle. This feeling you get sometimes, it might worry him. You know how he is about strangers and trespassers. And we don’t want to worry Uncle Owen, do we?”

  “No, ma’am,” Luke said. “So, it’s only a feeling? There’s no one really watching me?”

  “That’s right,” Beru said. “Now, come on, let’s go greet your aunt Dama.”

  Luke got up, clutching his toy landspeeder in his hand.

  The Lars homestead on Tatooine consisted of various underground rooms that branched off a deep, steep-walled open pit that was the central courtyard. Beru took Luke’s free hand and led him out across the courtyard, up a flight of steps along the pit’s wall, and then up through an enclosed stairway. It was a long climb for a little boy, but Luke didn’t complain. He said, “Aunt Dama has a new landspeeder.”

  “How do you know that?” Beru asked.

  “Before Uncle Owen called you, I heard the engine coming.
It sounds less rumbly than the old one.”

  The enclosed stairway delivered them to the arched doorway of the homestead’s pourstone entry dome. As Luke and Beru stepped out through the doorway and into the blazing heat of Tatooine’s twin suns, a smiling, round-faced woman walked up to them and said, “There you are!”

  “Hi, Aunt Dama,” Luke said. He held out his toy. “I have a landspeeder too!”

  Dama Whitesun Brunk was Beru’s younger sister. Like Owen, Dama’s husband, Sam, was a moisture farmer. They lived in Anchorhead, one of Tatooine’s oldest settlements, where they owned and operated a small hotel. Although Anchorhead was only twenty kilometers away from the Lars homestead, Dama and Sam seldom visited.

  “My, my, Luke,” Dama said as she bent down to give Luke a hug. “You’re growing faster than a ronto!” Releasing Luke, she stood up and embraced her sister. “I’m so happy to see you, Beru.”

  “You look well, Dama.”

  “Sorry we haven’t visited you in so long. Between managing the farm and the hotel, seems like we’re always busy.”

  Luke looked past Dama to see Sam Brunk and Uncle Owen standing beside a dark green landspeeder with a bubble canopy and three sleek thrusters on each side. Wanting a closer look at the vehicle, he began walking toward it. Owen and Sam were facing away from him, gazing at the tall moisture vaporator units that were neatly spaced away from each other across the surrounding salt flat, and talking about what most moisture farmers usually talked about.

  “How’s your crop?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “I had to replace two vaporators.”

  “Broken?”

  “Stolen.”

  “Jawas?”

  “Probably.”

  Seeing that the two men were still so engaged in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed him, Luke moved up close beside the parked speeder and studied the emblem and Aurebesh lettering that were positioned below the canopy’s rim: Mobquet A-1 Deluxe Floater. He was proud that he’d learned how to read Basic from a set of old educational datatapes that Aunt Beru had given him, but wasn’t sure how to pronounce Mobquet.

  Luke moved around to the front of the speeder and was admiring the design of the inlet ports that ringed its rounded nose when he noticed Beru and Dama walking over toward their husbands. Dama rolled her eyes and said, “I suppose you two are talking about Tatooine’s rich, cultural history again?”

  Sam Brunk chuckled, then said, “No, but speaking of history... did you hear that the Empire outlawed Podracing?”

  Beru and Owen shook their heads.

  Sam continued, “Heard it on a HoloNet report. At first, I figured the Empire would affect Tatooine about as much as the Republic did, which was not at all. But there’s already talk that the Mos Espa Arena might be shuttin’ down. If that happens, there’ll be no more Podraces for. . .” Sam’s gaze had drifted to an area beyond the homestead’s open pit. “Say, something’s different over there.”

  Beru said, “Where?”

  “There,” Sam said, pointing. “Didn’t you have some supply tanks, or some kind of. . . ?“ Sam stopped talking, and then everyone was silent.

  Luke noticed the sudden quiet and turned his head to follow the adults’ gaze to the southwest. Except for some moisture vaporators in the distance, there was nothing to see but scorched ground.

  “Sorry, Owen,” Sam said, finally breaking the awkward silence. “I just realized what was, uh, missing. It’s the headstones.”

  Owen said nothing, but just kept his eyes to the southwest.

  Sam said, “I, uh, hope it wasn’t vandals….“

  “No,” Owen said. “I removed the headstones.”

  “Oh,” Sam said.

  Without any further explanation, Owen turned and headed for the entry dome. After he was gone, Beru said, “Please forgive Owen. He... he just didn’t see a need for anyone to know where Shmi was buried.”

  “But he removed all the headstones,” Sam said. “His parents and uncle were buried there too, yes?”

  Beru nodded.

  Luke said, “Who’s Shmi?”

  Ben’ jumped. She hadn’t seen Luke in front of the parked speeder and didn’t know that he’d been listening. She glanced at Dama, then back at Luke and said, “Shmi was your grandmother, Luke.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Is my father buried there too?”

  “No,” Bcru said. “Your father didn’t die on Tatooine.”

  “Oh,” he said again. Then he looked at Dama and Sam and said, “My father was a navigator on a spice freighter. Uncle Owen told me so.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It had been a long time since Luke Skywalker had felt like someone was watching him. A few years, at least. But he felt it now.

  He jumped to his feet and looked around. He’d been lying on a blanket that he’d stretched out on the sand so he could be comfortable while he gazed at the night sky. Now he was anything but relaxed.

  He glanced back in the direction of his home. He half expected to see his uncle trudging toward him, but there was no sign of movement between his position and the winking lights on the distant security sensors that ringed the moisture farm’s perimeter.

  Like any seven-year-old child on Tatooine, Luke knew the dangers of straying too far from home at any time of day, let alone the middle of the night. Hidden sinkholes and sudden sandstorms were deadly threats, as were various nasty creatures always looking for a meal. Womp rats traveled in packs and had claws and teeth that could easily slice through flesh. Hulking krayt dragons roamed the mountains and canyons of the Jundland Wastes. Worst of all were the Sand People, the masked nomads also known as Tusken Raiders, who sometimes attacked and killed without any obvious motive or reason. More than once, Luke had heard his uncle say, “If the heat doesn’t kill you on Tatooine, everything else will.”

  Luke recalled other times when he’d had the sensation of being watched by some invisible presence. His aunt Beru knew about at least one time, when he was four, because he’d told her. What he didn’t tell her, because he didn’t know how to explain it and didn’t want to hurt her feelings, was that he had taken some comfort in the idea of someone else watching over him. But then she’d told him his mind had just been playing tricks on him, or something like that, and he’d stopped thinking about it.

  Luke scanned the dark horizon. Still no sign of movement. The only sound he heard was the pounding of his own heart. He tried to convince himself that he hadn’t really been frightened, and that he was merely nervous with excitement. He took a deep breath to calm down, and, as he did so, he knew he had overreacted. He was certain that no one was watching him. He knew he was alone.

  All alone.

  Still standing, he tilted his head back to look at the stars that filled the sky. He’d memorized the names of many worlds and stellar bodies in the Arkanis Sector, the region of space in the galaxy’s Outer Rim, which included Tatooine’ s binary star system. There was Arkanis which boasted a starship pilot training facility. Both Andooweel and C-Foroon were said to be refuges for smugglers and pirates, as was the water planet Tarnoonga. He knew little about Najiba, Tythe, Hypori, or Siskeen but had heard that Geonosis had been the location of the first battle of the Clone Wars, the great interstellar conflict which had ended shortly after he was born. Luke suspected that all these worlds were far more interesting than Tatooine.

  A bright flare streaked across the northern hemisphere before it vanished. Luke smiled as he held his breath and waited. A moment later, two more streaks radiated from the same direction. Luke had heard some folks call such streaks of light “shooting stars,” and his uncle often said, “People can believe what they like.” But Luke knew that the streaks were meteors, bits of debris striking and burning up in Tatooine’ s atmosphere, and he maintained that anyone who called them shooting stars was just plain wrong.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a bright point of light that appeared to be moving slowly, drifting up from the northern horizon
. He realized at once that it was a spacecraft, reflecting the light from Tatooine’s suns. From its trajectory, he guessed it had launched from Mos Eisley Spaceport, roughly fifty kilometers away. He wondered if it might be a spice freighter. For all he knew, he was looking at the same ship that had once carried his father.

  Luke watched the moving point of light until it vanished into space. He wondered if the ship might leave the Arkanis Sector. He could only imagine where the ship was headed, but he wished he were on it anyway.

  He stooped down to pick up the blanket and the small container of water he’d brought with him and began walking home. He paused twice to look at the stars again, and it took him almost twenty minutes to reach the security sensors.

  He dipped his hand into a pocket and withdrew a droid caller he’d rigged to allow him to sneak past the small, roving guard droids that patrolled the homestead’s perimeter. Out of habit, he walked carefully around the area where he knew the bodies of his grandmother and Owen’s parents and uncle were buried.