Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

by Kevin Shinick

  He saw a series of numbers on the metal shard’s exterior, but he couldn’t read them clearly. He used his sleeves to rub away the grime and found traces of red paint, along with what he assumed must be the shuttle’s signature. 775519. If only he had a database of any kind, he could check the numbers to see what larger craft had sent the shuttle, and when, and why. But he had nothing but guesses.

  Around the field of debris he paced, crawling and climbing, examining each piece and discarding it. Then he saw a slightly bigger chunk. A corner of one, anyway; the rest was buried in the sand. He approached it curiously and gave it a gentle kick. It didn’t budge. It was heavy, and after a few minutes of digging with his hands, he realized that he’d found a small storage locker.

  He heaved it up out of the hole, wishing RZ-7 was there to help. The back was ripped where the bolts that had held it inside the ship had sheared off. The locker had been jerked right off its mount and thrown free.

  He pushed his visor up onto his forehead.

  “A ship crashed here, and somebody took the wreckage away, but they didn’t get everything,” he said, trying to sort through his thoughts. “A Jedi flew this craft. Or rode inside it.” When he said the words out loud, they sounded true. “Where did he sit? Where was he going? Why was he going there? Why did he crash here?”

  Was he really shot down, or did the craft experience some kind of mechanical failure?

  Karr had no way of knowing. He could barely fly anything, even the ship that had gotten him that far. Any effort at diagnostics would be useless. “At least the usual kind of diagnostics,” he mumbled.

  He pulled his trusty little blade from a pocket and began to pry at the warped metal. After three or four tries, it popped open with a creak and a groan. Inside, he found a tangle of loose wires that connected to nothing at all, and an empty life-support pack. At first, he didn’t see anything else, but something told him to keep looking.

  So he kept looking, pushing aside the wires and trash until he saw it: a roundish, palm-sized device made of a dully gleaming metal.

  His eyes widened. He held it up to the light to get a better look, and when he was sure, he hollered out to RZ-7. “I’ve got something! I’ve really got something!”

  While he waited for the droid to successfully traverse the sand, Karr turned the little device over and over in his hands. “Do you still work?” he asked it, and then felt kind of stupid. It couldn’t answer him, even if it wanted to. It did not light up, hum, or produce any helpful images. “Arzee!” he shouted again.

  The droid answered from much closer than Karr expected. “Right here, sir. Apologies, it took some effort to come this far.”

  “Look what I found!”

  “A holoprojector? Very good, sir!”

  “It was hidden, or maybe it just got tossed into the cabinet when they crashed. It’s not working, though. Do you think you can help?”

  “Sir, I will do my best to try.”

  While the droid poked and prodded the silent little unit, Karr peeled off his gloves and very gently touched the edge.

  Zap.

  Loud noises. Tumbling, rolling through the sky.

  He jerked his hand back.

  “Sir?”

  “It’s fine.” He tried again. This time he saw things falling and heard lasers firing. Everything was out of control—sparks were flying, metal was squealing and bending. Emergency lights were firing, and alarms were wailing.

  Then he saw him. A figure trying hard to fly the ship. The pilot wore a Jedi robe, and for a moment Karr reflected on how lucky he was that the Jedi wore such attire. At least it had always helped in identifying them in his visions.

  But now it was too much pain. He felt the faint coming just in time to let go of the device and sit down. He drew up his knees and let his head fall down between them while he tried to catch his breath.

  “A bad one, sir?”

  “Real bad. The crash…all I can see is the crash.”

  Just then, a gritty grinding of tiny gears grunted from the holoprojector. Both Karr and RZ-7 jumped back, surprised.

  “Sir, I think there might be some life left in the unit after all. Hold on, let me see….” He tinkered and tweaked, and a faint blue light flickered weakly to life.

  “It’s working! You did it!”

  “I do my best, sir.” He pried open a small panel that had been gummed shut with sand. Another light came on, which then produced a tiny hologram.

  It was pale and weak and riddled with static. But it played.

  From what he could tell from his vision, the Jedi in the hologram and the struggling pilot were one and the same. He looked like a man who’d taken a beating, and he rocked back and forth in an effort to hold his footing. “This is Master Sifo-Dyas, en route to the desert moon that orbits Oba Diah. I’m with…with”—an explosion rocked the ship, if that’s where he was recording the message—“Silman, flying emergency survival capsule number seven-seven-five-five-one-nine, and our long-range transmitter has been knocked out. We’re under attack by the Pykes, and I’m preparing to jettison this projector in hopes that it will be found and—” The next few seconds were garbled.

  “Oh, wow, Arzee.”

  “Indeed, sir!”

  Sifo-Dyas came back into focus. “And the truth is, we won’t make it out of this alive.” He looked exhausted and frightened, but determined. “If that’s the case, so be it. But there are things that mustn’t be lost. This is what it’s come to—and I want…I want everyone to understand that I’ve done my best. Some may disagree with my methods, but these are desperate times and someone, somewhere should know: as you are aware, I have seen a vision of the future that I feel warrants an army. You’ve disagreed with me, but I felt I had no choice. Therefore I have ordered one: a clone army from the Kaminoans. Something must be done, and I made that decision. It may haunt me, and”—more static, garbled shouts from someone else in the shuttle—“or then again, maybe I won’t have to live with that decision very long at all.”

  “Oh, wow…” Karr said again.

  Sifo-Dyas faded out, then faded back in again. To whoever else was on the shuttle, presumably this Silman person, he called, “Hurry—we can’t take another hit like that!” Then, to anyone who might find the message and hear it, or to the Jedi themselves, he added, “Come find me!”

  The transmission went dead.

  Karr was stunned. Elated. And numb. “Arzee, that was…that’s a…”

  “A Jedi Master, yes, sir.”

  “Not a vision,” he was quick to specify. “Not a blurry feeling, but my first sight of an actual Jedi.” He waited a moment to take it all in.

  “It’s happening, Arzee. I’m making a connection. First through the headaches, then by sharing the same space with Kenobi and Skywalker on that ship. And now laying my eyes on an actual Jedi.”

  “What’s left?” asked the droid.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure, but I keep feeling…they…they might still be alive, somehow. Somewhere.”

  “They will remain very much alive as long as you remember them, sir.”

  “That’s true, Arzee, but that’s not what I mean. I can’t explain it, but I feel I’m going to meet one.”

  “Probably not Sifo-Dyas, I’m afraid.”

  “No, most likely not him. But maybe Sifo-Dyas knew Skywalker! Or Kenobi! Maybe he worked with them, or fought alongside them! And did you hear the bit about the clones? Is that true? Do you think it’s true?”

  “That they were created by a Jedi? I am unaware of any evidence to the contrary, and this tragic recording is evidence in favor of the story.” As RZ-7 said this, the briefly revived old holoprojector fizzed and popped, and its lights went entirely dead. The droid regarded it sadly. “It’s a pity we can’t salvage the rest of the message, but I think that might be the last bit of life it had. Still, it did the job.”

  Karr nodded. “Sifo-Dyas must’ve made that recording just seconds before the shuttle fell out of the sky.” He sh
uddered to consider it.

  “I guess that Pyke was right, after all.”

  “And we practically watched his last words.” A swell of emotion filled his chest. Again, he was so close to a real Jedi that he could almost touch him. He was standing in the wreckage of the very shuttle the man had ridden down from space, and he’d watched some of his very last moments alive. Which made Karr remember the Pykes again.

  “Let’s get out of here before any of those criminals show up,” he said, sounding as exhausted as he felt.

  “Good idea, sir. Where shall we go?” the droid asked as they hiked back through the canyon on the way to their ship.

  “I could use some food. Let’s get off this moon and see what we can find on Oba Diah itself.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Back on board, they checked their maps and found a likely spot on the planet that didn’t look too sketchy. Within an hour, they were sitting at the bar of a cantina, surrounded by various species, including a few in beige mining jumpsuits that were covered in the same reddish dirt that coated everything back on the moon. He and RZ-7 got a few odd stares, but no one interfered with them when Karr ordered a slice of the local bread casserole that tasted like cardboard and the same weird fizzy soda Maize had bought the day before.

  It wasn’t good, but it made him think of her.

  “Sir, you should be happy. You found what you were looking for—the veritable feather in a sandstorm though it might have been.”

  “You’re right, Arzee. I just keep feeling there’s gotta be a Jedi out there somewhere. Maybe not Sifo-Dyas, possibly Skywalker, but someone.” He sighed dramatically and let his chin rest on the rim of his cup.

  A man who was one part bartender, one part waiter appeared at his left with a pitcher of the soda—offering to top off Karr’s glass.

  Karr raised his head, accepted the drink, and said thanks. It wasn’t tasting any better, but it was wet and he was thirsty. He’d been thirsty for ages, now that he thought about it.

  The man with the pitcher paused. “Did I hear you say you were looking for Jedi?”

  Karr refused to get excited. He was too tired, so he simply muttered, “Yeah.”

  “You’re in for disappointment, my friend, because they’re all gone. Been that way for a long time. Since the Clone Wars from what I’ve heard.”

  “Thanks,” Karr said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  “Of course, if you wanna hear a crazy story, you should talk to Nabrun Leids. He’s one of our regulars who claims he saw one about thirty years ago.”

  “Thirty years ago?” Karr suddenly got excited. “That’s long after the Clone Wars.” He leapt from his chair to get closer to the bartender.

  The bartender tried to keep Karr’s expectations in check. “Don’t get too excited, kid. As I said, he’s a regular here. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a regular in every cantina this side of the galaxy, if you know what I mean. Which is why I call it a crazy story. There are two things you’ll never find in these types of establishments: a low tab and an honest tale.”

  Karr spun around and scanned all the faces in the room. “Which one is he?” he asked, ignoring the bartender’s warning.

  The man sighed as he pointed across the room. “He’s the Morseerian sitting over there.”

  Karr stared blankly. He liked seeming like an experienced traveler, but the truth was, he wouldn’t know a Morseerian if he fell on one.

  The bartender extended his finger farther. “The tall four-armed green guy wearing a gas mask.”

  As Karr approached the pilot, he wondered if he was scaring the Morseerian but then realized his species just had really big eyes. “Is it true you saw a Jedi once?” he asked pointedly.

  The smuggler leaned back and siphoned a swig of his drink through a special tube that went into his mask. “As true as the hopeful expression on your face.”

  It was clear he was about to launch into a story he had told a hundred, maybe a thousand times before, but Karr couldn’t even wait for it. “Where? When?”

  “In a place not unlike this one, in fact. I was having a drink when this kid, not much older than yourself actually, comes sauntering into the place. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed him except for the fact that he had droids with him that had the owner yelling. Anyway, I’m minding my own business when this same kid gets into an argument with an Aqualish smuggler I know named Ponda Baba. Next thing I know, out of nowhere, an old man in a flowing robe ignites a lightsaber. Now, I had heard rumors about Jedi before, and I always figured they were a myth, but suddenly, there in front of me, illuminating the place with his sword, this magical knight swings his weapon and cuts the arm of that smuggler right off. I’m telling you, it might have taken a second, it might’ve taken a day. All I know is that time stood still. And then, just as quickly as it began, it was over. Everyone went back to what they were doing, and the old man went off with the kid to talk to a Wookiee. I know because I couldn’t take my eyes off them. A real Jedi. And I’ll tell you what else I remember. Though he didn’t use it…the kid had a lightsaber, too.”

  Karr’s face was warm. Not from the heat of a vision but from the excitement of knowing he was closer to the Jedi than he thought. “And you say this was thirty years ago?”

  Nabrun Leids took another sip through his mask. “Let’s see, I’ve been smuggling for about forty years, give or take, so yeah, somewhere in there.”

  Karr almost couldn’t believe it. This was the second bit of proof he had that the Jedi existed after the Clone Wars. And if that was possible, anything was possible. “Where was it?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s not so easy to say. See I’ve been all over this galaxy, and after a while one cantina starts to look the same as the next.”

  “Come on!” cried Karr. “You’ve got to remember something!”

  Then Karr himself remembered.

  “Let me touch your mask!” Karr excitedly ripped off his right glove and unconsciously threw it to the floor. But since they were in a bar and that gesture usually meant a fight, the Morseerian went for his blaster. Lucky for Karr, the amount of liquid in the pilot’s system sloshed to the left and Nabrun Leids went with it, crashing to the floor.

  “No, no. I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Karr insisted.

  But the damage had been done. “I think you should leave!” the bartender yelled from across the room.

  “N-no,” stammered Karr. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just—Were you wearing that mask when you saw the Jedi?”

  Nabrun Leids crawled back into his chair. “No. That one’s long gone.”

  Now Karr was getting hot from frustration. “Can’t you remember anything about the planet?”

  “Son, I’m asking you to leave!” yelled the bartender.

  But Karr kept his attention on the Morseerian. “Not one single thing?”

  “I—I don’t know. There might have been…”

  “Might’ve been what?” Karr demanded.

  But the bartender had had enough. “Take your change and go,” he insisted as he threw the credits across the room.

  Instinctively, Karr reached up to grab the change.

  “Oh, no,” he mumbled as the pain rushed to his head. If there was one thing that had traveled from one side of the galaxy to the other and had witnessed all the important events life had to offer, it was currency. Wars, births, murders, negotiations, graduations, scientific breakthroughs, coronations—it all created a storm of cluttered and confusing images that left Karr powerless to exercise what little control he had learned, and he felt himself blacking out.

  But not before he heard the Morseerian say, “There might’ve been two suns.”

  When Karr woke up, he was staring at a Chadra-Fan. It wasn’t as nice as staring into Maize’s eyes, but it was a friendly face nonetheless.

  “You must be a lightweight.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been watching you, and it seems you passed out
after having only one drink.”

  “I wasn’t…” Karr didn’t feel like explaining. “Yeah. I’m a lightweight.”

  “I also heard you talking to Nabrun Leids.”

  Getting his bearings Karr remembered the situation and frantically looked around for the smuggler. “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

  “Relax, he’s long gone. And from the look of our bartender over there, I’d suggest you head out, as well.”

  Karr thought for a moment. “You know of any planets with two suns?”

  The Chadra-Fan laughed. “I’m sure there are many out there.”

  Karr lowered his head. So close and yet so far. At least it was something.

  “Listen, don’t waste your time chasing crazy stories. The Jedi are gone, but if you wanna chase their ghosts, you should go to Batuu.”

  “Batuu? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s on the edge of Wild Space—the sort of planet that folks mostly pass through, rather than live or stay. But there’s a fellow there, Dok-Ondar. He’s the finest antiquities dealer I know. The finest I’ve ever heard of. Tell him I sent you. My name is Qweek, and we were once acquainted. It’s been many years, but he’ll remember me.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate it. Really,” he added for emphasis, shaking the Chadra-Fan’s hand.

  “Happy to be of service.”

  RZ-7 watched Qweek return to the bar. Then he said, “What do you think, sir? Is it worth heading to the edge of Wild Space?”

  “Definitely. He was…very specific. And clearly the more we’ve traveled the more we’ve learned, so why stop now?”

  “Perhaps because every venture has also brought us closer to Hutt hangouts, First Order stormtroopers and various criminal elements?”

  Karr laughed. “That was a rhetorical question, Arzee. Besides…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “It’s almost like the Force is trying to guide me. Every time I’m about to give up and say it’s too much, we get another hint. Another lead. Another name, or another place.”

  Just then, a pair of stormtroopers entered the cantina, pausing to stop and interview a couple of men near the door. Karr’s stomach clenched, thinking of how they’d taken Maize and wondering if they were coming back for him and RZ-7 after all.