The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy

by Alexandra Bracken

  Even as the fury poured through him, its flames were doused by poisonous fear every time he pictured the stark lines of the monster’s mask. What had Ben called him? That’s right—a Sith. One who relied on the dark side of the Force instead of embracing the light.

  Ben had promised that the Force had a plan for everything, that it guided their course through life. But how could the Force have let that happen? Why did evil have to win and win and win again? Luke knew he was supposed to trust in it, but, mostly, all he felt was hopeless.

  Vader had beaten Ben—a legendary warrior, a Jedi Master. What would happen if Luke ever came face to face with the Sith? If he hunted Luke down, looking for the droids, looking for the princess? Luke had had a few hours of training; Ben had had decades! And still Vader had cut the Jedi Master down with a single blow. Leaving…nothing.

  Because, as impossible as it seemed, at the moment the black-armored warrior had sliced his crimson lightsaber through Ben, the Jedi Master had disappeared. Vanished.

  Why?

  And…Luke shook his head. He had to have imagined it. But he could have sworn that in the second after he felt his heart stop and before Han had grabbed him, he had heard Ben’s voice inside his mind. Run, Luke! Run!

  But that was insane, wasn’t it? That kind of thing just didn’t happen. Ben would have been speaking to him as…a spirit?

  The shiver that crawled over his skin was chased away by the poncho someone draped over his shoulders right then. Luke looked up from where he’d rested his face against his arms to find Leia watching him.

  The person he saw was an entirely different Leia from the haughty princess who’d taken one look at him after he’d opened her cell and said, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” She was a different Leia from the one who’d blasted out the garbage chute and the one who’d thrown her arms around him in relief when they’d gotten out. He liked that about her. She wasn’t at all what he had expected; he was a little ashamed, actually, to admit that he’d really thought the princess would swoon in relief at the sight of him coming to save her. She’d rescued them from her own rescue.

  Luke heaved out a sigh, gratefully accepting the poncho. He wanted to say something, even just thank you, but every word seemed to catch in his throat.

  “There wasn’t anything you could have done. Still, I’m so sorry,” she said, kneeling down next to him. “That was General Kenobi, wasn’t it? From what my father told me of him, he was a great man.”

  Luke nodded, a numbness settling in at his center. He’d known Ben for only a day, and yet even he’d been able to see that Ben was a great man. But there was still so much about the Jedi he didn’t know. And he hadn’t actually given Luke any details about his life, not really. Something about that made Luke feel betrayed, and it brought his anger back up to a simmer beneath his skin.

  I followed you, Luke thought, surprised at the flash of rage that sliced through him. I lost everything and followed you. You promised that you’d teach me, Ben! And now…what? How would he teach himself? The lightsaber clipped to his belt felt cold and heavy. Guilt and fear sat in his stomach, knocking its contents around, making him feel sick.

  You must learn to control your emotions, otherwise they will control you. Ben had told him that when Luke was training with his lightsaber. All these things he was feeling now were tied to the dark side of the Force. Luke hadn’t understood at the time how that was possible, but now he saw how easy it would be to sink into his own helpless fury. To get lost and never come out of it.

  “Blast it. What am I doing?” Luke said, sitting up. “You just lost your whole planet—”

  “Loss is still loss,” Leia said, her voice tight. She glanced away. “We just can’t let it beat us. We have things to do.”

  “How are you so…okay?” he asked. “I feel like—in the past day, I’ve lost my only family, and now Ben. I’ve never been off my home world before, and now I’m a million kilometers away from it. It’s like I’ve been knocked out of orbit and I don’t know how to get right side up again. How do you do it?”

  A wave of pain crossed Leia’s face. She bit her lip, drawing in a deep breath. “I want to cry,” she admitted, “all the time, every moment. But I know that if I start I won’t be able to stop, and that’s not useful right now. Our situations aren’t the same, but I do know what you’re feeling right now. What it’s like to feel alone—”

  “Even though you’re surrounded by strangers?” Luke finished for her.

  “Exactly!” Leia said, squeezing his arm. The expression on her face was still so heartbroken, Luke wanted to do something, anything, to make her feel better. But even he knew that was impossible. She did understand, and so did he.

  “You were the one who found the droids, right?”

  Luke looked up at the sudden question. “Yeah. We bought them off Jawas—these desert scavengers—to work on my uncle’s farm. I found your message on the little guy while I was trying to clean him.”

  “And you went off to find General Kenobi because of it?” Leia asked.

  “Well…” Luke rubbed the back of his neck, still a little embarrassed about being outsmarted by an astromech droid. “Artoo ran away to find him. Threepio and I found him, and then Ben found us just as we were being attacked by Sand People. Saved us all. While I was gone, stormtroopers came to the farm looking for the droids and…killed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru when they didn’t find them.”

  Leia pulled back, looking stricken. “Luke—I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am—all of this, it’s all because of me. I was so desperate to get the plans to General Kenobi, I wasn’t even thinking—”

  “No, Leia,” Luke said, resting his hands on her shoulders. “The only people responsible for my family and Ben’s deaths are the Empire. Vader. I wish it didn’t have to happen the way it did, but they didn’t die for nothing. Getting the information you found to the Rebellion is all that matters now.”

  Leia looked down, rolling her shoulders back as she took in another, steadying breath. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  She smoothed out the wrinkles in the fabric of her dress, running her fingers along the watery lines of the new stains. “Why did you rescue me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I have?” Luke asked, confused. Was he just supposed to leave her there for the Empire to execute?

  “You could have left once the tractor beam was disabled. I’m sure that’s the plan our friend the captain was pulling for. You didn’t have to risk being caught. General Kenobi could have brought the information to the Rebellion.”

  Luke was almost offended that she would think he was capable of just walking away. “Because you needed help. That’s why. You don’t need a reason to help people.”

  Leia looked up at that, and Luke saw a flicker of something in her eyes. Her face seemed alive with color again. “You asked before, about how I hold it together?”

  Luke nodded. He needed…some way to keep going without constantly falling back on his anger. He couldn’t disrespect Ben’s memory by ignoring what the Jedi had tried to teach him. He needed a way out of his cycle of hatred, and Leia seemed to have found one.

  “I think about when I was very young, running wild through the palace, playing hide-and-seek with my mother and father.” She let out a faint laugh, smiling at the memory. “They were both so busy and important—they had the weight of the universe on their shoulders—but they still had this great huge capacity for fun and love. And hope. They never gave up on the idea that the galaxy could be a safe, beautiful place for all life. Joining the Rebellion finally let me have a real voice—a real way to fight for the changes I believed in. Now, fighting alongside them will be my way of honoring my parents and my people. It gives me a reason to push through and keep going. And…maybe it’ll be the same for you.”

  Luke had run through such a range of emotions over the previous few days—horror at the loss of his family, the exhilaration of finally fly
ing in space, the frustration of training, the terror of being shot at and trying to outrun and outgun the Empire…but at Leia’s words, he felt something new: hope.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I think I’d like that.”

  And when Leia offered him a tentative smile, he was finally able to return it.

  At that moment, Han burst into the central hold area, face flushed and hair wild.

  “Come on, buddy,” he said. “We’re not out of this yet! I need your help. You keep saying you can fly and shoot. Well, now’s the time to prove it.”

  Luke was exhausted, wrung out by the day, but that sounded right up his alley. He passed the poncho back to Leia with a grateful look and said to Han, “Show me where.”

  Han grinned, slapping Luke’s back. Luke followed him through the ship at a run, to a ladder well at the center of the ship. At each end of the ladder was a gun port.

  “Just aim and fire—and try to keep up with me, if you can!”

  A trill of excitement finally found its way into Luke as he slid down the ladder. He’d seen from the outside of the ship that there were two long gun turrets—one on the top of the ship, the other below. “We’ll see about that….”

  Luke hopped up into the seat behind the gun and picked up the headset hooked over it.

  “You in, kid?” Han’s voice came through the headphones.

  “Yeah, I read,” Luke said. He relaxed, just a little bit, when he saw the actual controls. While he had a viewport window to look through, there was also a target screen. Dozens of red blips were swarming toward the green one that represented the Falcon. He seized control of the laser gun’s handles and swung the heavy thing around on its stand. Still…this was going to be a lot different from shooting womp rats in Beggar’s Canyon; even he knew that. But he wasn’t about to let Han or the others down. Luke moved his thumbs over the firing buttons, ready.

  “Okay, stay sharp!” Han said.

  Leia must have gone into the cockpit with Chewbacca, because her voice filtered into his ears next. “Here they come!”

  He heard the TIE fighters before he saw them streak past the viewport like shooting stars. The sound was piercing, as if the ships’ engines were screaming. Ack! Despite how calm he felt, Luke jumped at the sudden sound, his thumbs hitting the firing buttons. Yikes. He forced himself to stop choking the controls and take actual aim before beginning to fire again. The gun sprayed out a line of laser beams, chasing the ships across the sky and back again without a single hit.

  The Millennium Falcon bucked like an angry dew-back as it took the TIE fighters’ fire. Luke was sure he smelled smoke but kept that bit of information to himself as another three Imperial ships appeared. When they hit the Falcon again, Luke was nearly thrown out of his seat.

  “They’re coming in too fast!” he said between gritted teeth. Sweat made his hair stick to his face, his tunic hug his back.

  The sound of an explosion somewhere overhead and a cheer from Han was the only response Luke got. So he had hit one. Luke set his shoulders, focusing on the ships again. He wasn’t going to let Han get all the glory.

  “We’ve lost lateral controls,” Leia reported.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll hold together,” Han said, but he forgot to mute himself when he added, under his breath, “You hear me, baby? Hold together.”

  Somehow, Luke felt himself relaxing into the fight. It wasn’t all that different from the way he’d felt handling his lightsaber. His racing heart settled into a steady rhythm. I’m doing this, he thought—really doing it. He was anticipating which direction the gleaming black-and-silver TIE fighters would come from, their evasive maneuvers, until, finally—

  The explosion of fiery dust from the destroyed Imperial ship momentarily blinded Luke. The thrill of victory raced through him, lifting him higher than he had thought possible. He pumped a fist in the air. “I got him! I got him!”

  “Great, kid!” Han said as he hit another TIE fighter, sending it spiraling into space like a smoking comet. “Don’t get cocky!”

  It didn’t even bother Luke anymore that Han—who couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Luke—would not stop calling him kid. It had set Luke’s teeth on edge the first few times, mostly because it had reinforced everything Luke had hated about his life on Tatooine. He had felt as if he were never going to grow up, never going to move on, as if he’d always be living out in the deep desert with his aunt and uncle and a group of friends at Anchorhead he wasn’t totally sure even liked him—because, seriously, who gave someone they liked the nickname Wormie?

  Luke had applied for the Imperial Academy a few months before, hoping that would be the year Uncle Owen stopped acting like Luke was crucial to running their little moisture farm and let him go. There were moments Luke had really believed he would never break through the sunset colors of Tatooine’s atmosphere.

  Now, the thought of it just made Luke grin. Because even as a kid, he and his best friend, Biggs, had flow through the craggy teeth of Beggar’s Canyon in their T-16 skyhoppers. He’d clipped his ship’s wings so many times, it was a wonder he was still alive. But he hadn’t stopped, not until he could hit the most womp rats as the hairy, monstrous little pests scurried through the canyon ravines and washes. Not until he had the fastest time flying through.

  This kid was more than happy to show the captain up—and do it in Ben’s honor.

  Luke destroyed the next two TIE fighters that had the misfortune of landing on his target screen.

  I’m in space, he thought over and over again. I’m doing it. And still, even watching the Imperial ships blow apart, he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around how much his life had changed in hours, never mind days, weeks, years. Luke was shocked he didn’t have whiplash.

  “There are still two more of them out there,” Leia said.

  “On it!” Luke called.

  “Not if I get there first!” Han sounded like he was having just as much fun as Luke was.

  Swinging his chair around again, Luke kept his thumbs on the firing buttons. The gun vibrated his hands as he took careful aim at the TIE fighter trying to strike at the Falcon from below. With a deep breath, he turned the laser onto the Imperial ship and watched, practically jumping out of his seat in excitement when it blew apart.

  The last enemy dot on the radar disappeared as Han took out the remaining TIE fighter. The Falcon rumbled with the aftershock of the final explosion.

  And then they were all clear.

  A relieved laugh burst out of Luke. “We did it! We did it!”

  He stood up from the gun port so fast he was yanked back down by the cord of his headset. Untangling himself from the wire, he threw the headset down and climbed up the ladder just as Han was climbing down his. The smuggler clasped Luke’s shoulder, grinning.

  “Nice shooting, kid! They teach you that out on the moisture farm?”

  Luke shook his head, his energy deflating. Han hadn’t meant it as an insult—at least Luke didn’t think he had—but the words still stung. He wasn’t just some farm kid. He’d always wanted to be something more than that.

  They passed by Chewbacca, who was busy fishing C-3PO out from where he’d fallen into a compartment that must have flown open. R2 beeped at Chewie’s side, urging him on.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I’m maimed….” Threepio’s voice faded as they entered the cockpit.

  “Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh?” Han said, throwing his gloves onto the nearest seat. Luke trailed behind him, taking in the sight of Leia standing up from the pilot’s seat and moving to one of the two in the back. “Sometimes I even amaze myself.”

  Leia leveled a look of utter contempt at Han. “That doesn’t sound too hard.”

  Luke’s heart lightened a bit at that. At least he wouldn’t have to compete with Han for Leia’s attention. As Uncle Owen had once explained, some creatures were just natural enemies. He couldn’t leave the two of them alone—not because he was afraid the smuggler would pu
t the moves on Leia but because he was genuinely worried they would eventually try clawing each other’s faces off.

  “Besides,” Leia continued, raising her chin. “They let us go. It’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape.”

  “Easy?” Han repeated in disbelief as he slumped into the pilot’s seat. “You call that easy?”

  “They must be tracking us, hoping we lead them back to the Rebellion.”

  Luke’s blood slowed in his veins at that. He hadn’t even considered it as a possibility. Maybe he really was just a dumb farm kid in need of a good hard reality check.

  “Not this ship, sister,” Han said, lacing his hands behind his head, all confidence.

  Luke could tell by the way she was struggling to control not only her expression but also her tone that Leia was frustrated. “At least the information in Artoo is safe,” she said.

  “What’s so important? What’s he carrying?” Han asked.

  “The technical readouts of that battle station,” she replied.

  “What?” Luke said, almost leaping out of his seat in shock. He would never have let the R2 unit out of his sight if he’d known! He wasn’t sure what he had thought the “information vital to the survival of the Rebellion” she mentioned in her message was, but—but it hadn’t been that!

  “I only hope that when the data is analyzed, a weakness can be found in the battle station’s defenses. There has to be a way to destroy it,” Leia said. “We still have a chance. This isn’t over yet!”

  Han suddenly looked like a wild animal that had been backed into a corner. “It is for me. I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I expect to be well paid for my trouble.”

  Luke knew that his new friend wasn’t exactly noble and would never claim to be, but…really? Disappointment thundered through him. Luke shook his head. After all that, it still boiled down to money? He couldn’t have misread the guy that badly…could he?