Written in the late 90s, I set this story between Champions of the Force and Children of the Jedi. I was reading COTJ and the dream sequence where Luke and Callista ride a landspeeder on Tattooine and they had a good time doing it, made me wonder what his life was like there. Perhaps, after all that happened in the Jedi Academy Trilogy he might want to go home and see familiar faces who had nothing to do with his life as a Jedi. I was always interested in his friendship with Wedge, too, so I thought it was natural for the two of them to make the trip together - Wedge going along out of friendship as well as to look out for the famous Jedi.
Also, this was written before Star Wars Empire: To the Last Man and Shadows of the Empire , and I decided to make only slight reference to the latter, since it isn't exactly one of my favorite books; and no reference to the former at all.
As I was prepping the story with html to post on my web site, I saw the opportunity to add a few references to Luke's parents, which is something the Bantam novel authors were never allowed to do in their stories. I wonder how many of them would like to go back over their manuscripts and do that now?
That's probably the best thing about fanfic. The writer can go back and change things as we learn more about Anakin and Padme.
I have not, as I said before, changed any information about Luke's friend "Tank." I didn't like the EU reference to him as Janek "Tank" Sunber, as yet another old friend who betrays Luke to the Empire. To Vader, no less! This is mainly because I never understood the portrayals of Luke's childhood friends as jealous, money hungry killers who would betray one of their own without a second thought. Not everyone HAS to be an enemy. Luke has enough as it is.
Also, I gave ANH a timetable of a week from Biggs telling Luke he was leaving to join the Rebellion and the Death Star being destroyed. When you watch the movie, the whole thing seems to happen in two days!
Impossible! So I decided to stretch it out for the sake of my story. I'm thinking they had to sleep a couple of nights aboard the Falcon after rescuing Leia - or rather, she rescued them after they rescued her! - on the way to Yavin because according to all maps of the SW galaxy, Yavin is on the other side of the galaxy from where the Death Star was. Then, cracking the computer codes for the Death Star, prepping for battle, and the arrival of the slow moving Death Star would take the remaining two days. Han and Chewie would have spent one night on Yavin and prepared to leave the next day as the Death Star (finally) approached.
Shadin and solna , by the way, are American Indian words my grandmother uses to refer to kiwi and a meat-stuffed fried bread treat she makes for special occasions. ( I don't have Lucas's genius for making up names and words, so I'm stealing some from my grandma. :D )
Disclaimer: The characters and worlds used in this story do not belong to me, but is the property of Lucasfilm, Ltd. The story was written for entertainment purposes only and has never been used for profit in any way, shape or form.
Homecoming
a story by
the Terrian King
Tattooine . . .
A few of the beings hurrying along the corridors between the docking bays of Mos Eisley Spaceport noticed the figure dressed in light blue robes when he came out Bay 16. They didn't look his way for long. They'd likely seen the battered space yacht he'd arrived in and pegged him for just another tourist. Of course, that was the plan.
He locked the bay behind him and turned to look up and down the corridor. By then the handful who'd seen him were far off, either to left or right, going about their business. With a thick, fake beard covering the lower half of his face, Luke Skywalker wondered if it had really been necessary to disguise himself at all. No one was paying him any attention and he felt no danger from anyone through the force.
As long as it stayed that way. He turned to his left and fell in with the flow of pedestrian traffic headed for the central main entrance to this circle of landing rings. He'd only gone a short way when he heard a familiar buzzing whine coming from ahead of him and getting louder. Like all the others walking though the corridor, he quickly moved to one side and slowed his pace. A moment or two later a beat-up swoop beyond it's better days, if it ever had any, whizzed around a corner and into his line of sight. It streaked past him with the rider whooping like an idiot.
A split second later another swoop with an excitedly screaming rider shot past in pursuit of the other.
He laughed. And they still traveled in pairs, too. He stepped back to the middle of the walkway and quickened his steps.
Some things never changed, Luke thought. How many times had he and Deak or Windy done that very thing in their youth? As dangerous as it was, buzzing the spaceports and the pedestrian areas of town was still a reckless past time for Tattooine's young people.
The wide entry appeared and he hurried around the corner and went through to the heat and bright sunshine of Mos Eisley.
The city skyline had changed! He'd seen this from the air, but having been busy making a landing, he'd only looked to see how big the city has become and hadn't noticed the buildings in particular.
The busy thoroughfare in front of the landing bay ring was as hectic looking, sounding and smelling as ever, but a breeze was blowing in the heat of midmorning. The familiar white sandstone buildings still dominated the city, but here and there newer buildings, designed to make the heat work for them had been built. Looking oddly alien, the new buildings, designed with layered rooftops, nonetheless created the breezes he felt against the uncovered parts of his face. Prosperity had come to Mos Eisley. The new, seemingly out of place, buildings were hotels built to handle the tourist trade.
Luke looked around, trying to get his bearings, and turned to go to his right along the way. He wondered what his friend and traveling companion, Wedge Antilles, thought when he'd arrived on Tattooine a day ahead of Luke. As well traveled as he was, Wedge had probably never seen a world quite like this one.
Luke was looking for a lender's lot where Wedge said he'd arranged to have a landspeeder or other vehicle waiting for him to use during his stay.
The crowds were as always in a major port town. Creatures and vehicles moving along, and vendors booths lining the wide street on both sides. He stopped at a covered booth selling a variety of local items and asked the older woman inside for directions to Trender's, the lending lot. He bought three pieces of shadin fruit and walked faster along the route she'd laid out for him.
A bite of one of the sweet/salty fruit made him stop in his tracks to savor a taste he had long forgotten. Though a common food item on Tattooine, the fruit could not be grown or harvested in volume for export. Luke hadn't tasted one since before events had taken him away from this place eleven years ago.
He hadn't gone very far when a tangy, spicy smell caught his attention, and he followed it to an open air café. It was a good thing he spotted Trender's lot a short way along the thoroughfare, or he would have spent the rest of the day sampling the food at the small café. He took a couple of solna with him, putting one in his pocket, and carrying the other in his hand to eat along the way. The spices in the meat were not as tangy as he remembered Aunt Beru's to be, and the fried dough covering seemed heavier than her melt-in-your-mouth bread, but it was another taste of a long time ago he thought he'd forgotten, and he ate it as if he was starving for such food.
By the time he'd paid for the rent of the speeder and stowed his small pack in the carrier compartment, it was past noon and he hoped he wouldn't fall asleep during the long ride to Toshi Station.
Making himself comfortable in the driver's seat, he entered the coordinates from memory and left the city behind him.
From a distance of fifteen miles, Luke could see that Toshi Station had changed and grown, too. The same new, high, layered buildings stood among the sandstone structures that had been in this place for longer than he remembered. He grimaced. Because of him Tattooine had become a popular tourist destination in the post-Empire galaxy.
He whooshed into town, then remembered himself and checked his speed. He saw familiar buildings still standing and easily located the street where the Highclimber used parts shop used to be. He slowed when he passed the upper structure of the underground shops where he'd last walked with Biggs Darklighter, and his friend told him he going to abandon the Imperial navy and join the rebellion against the Empire.
He was headed for a particular place, though. It was a building that looked as old as time even in his youth. He'd spent as many stolen hours as he could there with his friends. He had to smile a little ruefully as he thought back. They'd been his friends as only older youths could be to a much younger boy. He'd been bullied, teased, made the butt of jokes, and laughed at more often than not, but he'd been a part of their circle. He was acepted, though they'd have been loath to admit it then, and time spent in their company were some of the most memorable of his youth.
That would all be different now for more reasons than others. Luke knew this, but hoped they hadn't changed too much.
Fixer's shop was still where it had been the last time Luke saw it. He stopped the speeder near the front and climbed out. A slight but noticeable breeze was blowing here, too, moving the air on a day when it might otherwise be still and the heat would have been tremendous. The heat still was nearly overpowering, but this was home.
He looked around as he walked toward the door of the building. Another landspeeder was parked a little beyond the other side of the shop, and he wondered if it belonged to Wedge. They were to meet here. He noticed several underground wings had been added to the old structure. Business must be good. Well, it appeared the new prosperity extended to at least one old friend.
Luke entered the windowed front end of the shop and felt the cooler air hit his face and it took his eyes a little while to adjust to the interior, which was illuminated by the light coming through the windows. There was no need to use the force to help with the adjustment, he could already see the interior of the shop had changed very little. Racks full of spare parts lined the walls, a table to his right was stacked high with items and straight ahead, where the floor began to slant downward toward the underground work area, a desk surrounded by several chairs looked the same as he remembered it.
A figure in one of the chairs got up and ambled forward. "About time you got here, Commander," Wedge said. "Thought you got lost." He held out a container of cold water.
Luke smiled and took the water. "I did some sightseeing," he said.
Another figure got up from one of the chairs and walked closer, too. He moved his head forward and looked questioningly at the bearded face on the man who'd just entered. He frowned. "Luke?" he said. "Is that you?"
The man Luke had never called anything but Fixer looked much the same but for a thinning of his hair above his brow.
Luke extended his hand. "Good to see you again, Fixer." As they clasped hands, he fingered the beard. "It's fake."
The older man smiled. "Do you really think you need it here? No one will talk."
"I know, but I promised not to take any chances."
Fixer nodded and cast a look at Antilles, who he realized had obviously been sent ahead to scout out the territory. He extended a hand toward the sitting area. "Come in and sit down. I know your friend here has a room at one of the hotels, but you're both welcome to stay here. I added living quarters downstairs off the work area. They aren't up to hotel standards, but they're comfortable."
Luke looked at Wedge. "What did you arrange?"
"Nothing that can't be canceled."
He removed his outer cloak and the robe beneath it to reveal light colored clothing more in keeping with what the general populace wore every day. Maybe he could remove the beard, too, later. Luke draped the garments over the back of the chair Fixer indicated and sat down.
"I'd like that," he said. "Thanks for the offer."
Fixer waved him off. He motioned to the back of the building that was above ground. The rear half of the building was built without windows and was dimly lit. "The place hasn't changed much, has it?" he asked Luke. "After Wedge came in yesterday and told me to expect you, I took a look around and figured only the add-ons were new since you were last here."
Luke looked across the dimly lit room and felt himself relax. The game tables were still far in the back, the snack machines along one wall looked new, but familiar, and the parts hanging on the walls had to be the same ones as eleven years ago!
"It's good to know the opportunities have been passed around," Luke said. "The tourist business seems to have grown faster than anything."
Fixer sat down, too, and stretched his feet out before him and gestured with his hands. "Some have cashed in on it, some have ignored it. Even the newfangled hotels need to have things fixed and that's always been my business. I'm not complaining. I got a piece of land on the other side of town so my family was able to move out of here and into our own place."
"How is everyone, Fixer? Who's still around?"
"Everyone but you and Biggs, kid. Tank came back about six years ago. He left the Imperials right after Biggs did, after you became hot news. He was in the battle out by Bakura. Got hurt and came back to recover. Took over his old man's farm last year when he got too sick to run it alone. He's still troubled by a lot of things. Don't see him much." He stopped to grin. "The others will be along and you can see for yourself whether or not time's been good to us."
Luke smiled back and twisted the cap off the water bottle, and took a long drink.
Fixer started talking, the subjects ranging from the growth of Anchorhead and Toshi Station, to tourist yachts cruising the desert, to his family and other people and names Luke had not heard spoken in too long a time.
After a while, the three of them moved down the ramp to the cooler work area and the living quarters added off to the side. Alone for a few minutes while Wedge ventured out into the heat to personally cancel the hotel rooms he'd booked and to retrieve his belongings from his room, Luke settled into the small bedroom he chose to use and pulled clothing from his pack to stow in a tiny closet. He'd been sure to pack items suitable to Tattooine and suggested Wedge do the same.
It was too late to do any exploring this afternoon.
Luke could hardly wait for the following day. He hadn't meant to spend so much time in Mos Eisley after arriving, but the chance to eat food from his childhood and look at the city and it's people was too tempting to pass up. He had been away a long time. Remembering the solna still inside his robe, he took it out and went to stow it for later in the kitchen area.
Tomorrow, though, he was going to visit the empty Lars homestead far out in the desert sands. The Lars' closest neighbors, the Kimbers, had taken care of the homestead and it was they who had seen to the burial of Luke's aunt and uncle after events had swept him out of their small world and into a larger existence. Word had eventually reached him, through what channels he could only imagine, of the memorial and the posting of a caretaker to watch the place.
Xell Kimber had kept the moisture farm operating, maintaining it along with his own, and the costs had been deducted from the profit made selling the water. He had also made it his business to keep an eye on Kenobi's place even though it seemed to have it's own way of keeping intruders away, his message to Luke had said.
It was now up to Luke to decide what to do with the moisture farm. The tourist trade was indeed booming and the likelihood of the site being disturbed by vandals, fortune hunters and curiosity seekers was increasing with every tourist flight over the region. The Kimbers couldn't watch the place around the clock.
Luke left the living quarters of the shop and went into the work room to see if Fixer needed help with anything. If nothing else, he could make a stab at repairing a speeder or swoop. He'd always been pretty good at that.
By the time Wedge returned, Luke was discovering he still knew vaporators inside and out.
Old Friends and Memories . . .
The remainder of the day passed.
At sunset, a boy of eight years, perhaps, came to the shop. Entering through the back door, he brought a basket of food and some bedding items on the back of a fairly new looking two seater buggy about half the size of a landspeeder. Fixer's large blue eyes stared out of the child's small face as he was introduced to Luke and Wedge, "two friends from up north." The boy's shock of red hair spilling out from under a hat much like the one Luke used to wear made him wonder who the boy's mother was.
Aden, as the boy was called, clearly knew who Luke was even though he politely greeted him by his false name. His eyes searched Luke's person and seemed disappointed to find no lightsaber hanging at his side. Aden seemed to know who Wedge was, too, giving him the same reverent look of awe as he nodded politely at him.
As the boy was leaving, Luke put his hand on his shoulder. "We'll see one another again before I leave."
Aden eyes widened and he nodded his head once and walked away.
It wasn't the greatest prediction he'd ever made, and not even a prediction at all. Before he left, Luke was pretty sure Fixer would take Wedge and him by his home to meet his family. Even on Tattooine, people knew of their exploits in the war.
Fixer watched his oldest leave, and shook his head as the door closed behind him. "My boys hear all the latest news from Deak's children. You wouldn't believe how many Death Stars the kids on this sorry rock think you two destroyed." He looked at Luke out of the corner of his eye. "Made your stock go up with more than just the kids, though."
The small kitchen wasn't exactly crowded, but it was full. Every space available around the table was filled and the plates and bowls on it were steadily emptying of food. The conversation among the diners was lively.
Tall, gangly Fixer with his calloused hands and thinning hair; a quiet man named Deak with a few extra pounds on him from good cooking in his life and gray streaked black hair beneath a bandana tied around his head; a tall man called Windy who walked with a pronounced limp and had sandy red hair poking out from beneath a wide brimmed hat that had seen better days; and a still pretty woman named Camie who had breezed into the shop just after darkness fell and immediately put Luke and Wedge to work in the kitchen helping her prepare a meal.
"Well, he was the only one of us besides Camie who could crawl through the fuzzy borer holes in the sandstone cliffs at the south shore of the Dune Sea," Fixer answered. " They were our worms for going into tight places. They used to go in and collect the shells the fuzzies shed at mating time because they were the identical shape as helmets and came in all sizes. My parents had a second income from them. They'd add padding, drill a couple of holes for chin straps, and sell them in street stalls all over the place. They were as good as any helmets made of manufactured material. They made good money from them."
Luke nodded. "Garo Highclimber, Fixer's father, used to buy them from us by the gross, and we used the money to buy parts to rebuild old landspeeders and skyhoppers for racing."
"That's how I got my shop," Fixer added, pointing his finger in Luke's direction, but grinning at Wedge, who had asked the question being answered. "I got so good at repairing the junk heaps Luke, Biggs, Deak and everyone else brought to me for work, that before I knew it I'd started making a living at it. Around here, everyone uses their equipment until it falls apart, and in this heat engines and motors wear out pretty fast. It was Luke's uncle, Owen Lars, who became my first regular customer. I kept Luke's skyhopper going after three big wrecks, so Owen started bringing his stuff around for repair. Figured I must be a good mechanic to put the old T-sixteen back together after each crash and keep it going. Word got around and the other farmers in these parts started bringing me their equipment. By the time Tank Wayfinder and Biggs left for the Academy I was fixing household items and moisture vaporaters, too." He waved his hand toward the direction of his shop. "As you saw, they're still fifty percent of my business."
"He had us bringing in discarded items from old wrecks and junk heaps in the desert," Luke put in. "We went into Jawa territory back then, and boy, did they get ticked off at us."
Fixer shrugged. "You know the old story. There are so many old discard points for junk buried deep under the sand they register as mineral deposits to off planet scans. We have no natural resource but sand. All the stuff sensors pick up are castoff goods that have built up over the years and scavenging is a way of life out there. The Jawas guard their sources of material like gold mines even though the source might be just a garbage pit."
"Or old shipwrecks and lost transports," Luke added. "Every now and then a bad sandstorm would shift the dunes around and uncover the top of a wreck somewhere and the Jawas would show up at the farms weeks later with gadgets and machine parts that were a hundred years old at least. Uncle Owen would buy some of it just to get the durasteel to melt down and make useful parts in his shop."
Camie Sorren nodded. "My father did, too. A week or so later, the Jawas would come back and he'd trade the parts he didn't use for something he needed."
"Or sell it back to them," Luke offered and she nodded agreement.
In the brief silence that followed, Camie laughed lightly and playfully gave Wedge a tap in the arm. "That's the official version you've just heard, if you don't mind getting back to your original question. In reality, what we don't tell the media, is Luke didn't get Wormie as an official nickname until he got good enough behind the controls of a skyhopper to beat everyone. He threaded the eye of the needle before Windy and Deak did and in under the time Biggs and Fixer took to do it. He was the first to do it on a swoop and his time still stands. The older guys never quite got over being beaten by the youngest of us all. They all gave him a bad time for being so damn good."
"I beg to differ, " Luke said, sternly. ""I'm a week older than Deak!"
Camie laughed. "Oh, pardon me, my mistake! How could I forget that."
Wedge smiled and sat back in his chair. The only female at the table, Camie was an attractive woman with flowing brown hair and character burned into her face by the harsh life on Tattooine. She must have been beautiful as a young woman. He didn't mind sitting next to her at all, breathing in the scent of the subtle perfume she wore. He liked her. Like Luke, Wedge had a few things to get over, too, since the business with Daala, the Empire, and the Jedi search. He was surprised to realize he was enjoying the company of a woman again.
Especially one who called the Jedi Master who was his traveling companion, "Wormie."
It didn't even bother him that, thinking back, he and Luke had actually done all of the cooking while she stood back and supervised.
Deak Sorren, a quiet man compared to the garrulous Fixer and Windy, put his elbow on the table and pointed with his fork at Luke. "And now we know why," he said. "Driving fast is in his blood."
Luke chewed a mouthful of food thoughtfully. In his blood? In a way, he guessed, that was true. He'd inherited his force sensitivity from his father, after all.
"I got over it," Darwin "Windy" Kimber claimed, to general laughter and scoffing. "I did! After Deak got married and went to Mos Espa, and he showed us the old holo ads for the races that his father-in-law saved. Like he said, we knew then racing was in Luke's blood, and I finally had a reason for why he was so good." He looked at Luke sternly. "You could have told us, you know."
Luke shook his head and swallowed. "Told you what?" he asked, feeling a bit uneasy. The identity of the man who was Darth Vader was not yet common knowledge outside of certain circles in the new government.
"About your father. He wasn't just a navigator on a spice freighter, was he?"
Luke saw Camie lay her hand on Windy's arm, and he was momentarily at a loss for words.
"You don't know what we're talking about, do you?" she asked Luke.
He shook his head. "To be honest with you, no."
"Owen Lars held things pretty close to the vest, didn't he?" Fixer said, shaking his head. "Luke, there used to be a popular sport on Tattooine called pod racing. It fell out of popularity after the Empire began taxing everything it could and the governor in this sector taxed the sport out of existence. It was high speed racing of some kind, but by the time we were young it was a thing of the past. I remember my father and his brothers talking about it, and he showed me the wreckage of one when we were in Mos Espa once. Anyway, your father was a pod racer when he was young. Really young. Younger than you when you beat Biggs record for the run through Beggar's Canyon."
Deak looked across the table at Luke. "My wife's family is from Mos Espa. The old man was a pod racing fan since childhood. He claims he knew your father when they were children. Maybe he did, I don't know. He saved a lot of the holos that used to be displayed inside the grandstands at the old amphitheater. When it was torn down, he rescued as many as he could. He says one of them shows a likeness of your father when he became the first human to win a race. The records are gone, so I don't know if it's true. It's a holo of three little boys standing beside a big blue engine of some kind and people milling around in the background. You ought to come out and see it before you leave. Don't know much about the force stuff, but you'd be able to tell, wouldn't you?"
Luke nodded. "I'm sure I would. I'd like that."
"We bought the old Farlander farm out Espa way. Remember the place? Where they used to have carnival in the caves during the Jawa gatherings out on the plains?"
"Sure. Carnival Rock. I know where that is. I'd be happy to see anything you can show me. Thanks, Deak."
"Ah, wait'll you see it first. It might be junk that should have been left buried."
Wedge watched Luke's face throughout the exchange. As inscrutable as ever to most people, but he'd seen the spark of excitement there, just as he'd seen it there before the two of them went into battle.
It was late when the gathering around the table broke up, and Luke and Wedge walked everyone outside to their transports.
Camie hung back and turned to Wedge as the others looked over the transportation. "I know the two of you think you're fooling us with this 'visit to conduct family business' bull, but I know Luke better than he thinks. No matter how much he's changed, there are still little habits he has that he isn't aware of. He's been through the wringer lately, hasn't he? I think you have, too."
Wedge looked back at her in surprise.
She smiled, bright and radiant in the moonlight. She really was a pretty woman. "My husband and I live closer to Mos Eisley. My in-laws, Deak's aunt and uncle, have friends who work around the spaceport, so I hear a lot of rumors and news the rest of the population doesn't hear, or isn't interested in hearing. Most people here talk about what's going on with the new government like it's something that doesn't concern us. I've heard about what was going on recently, about the boy who destroyed the academy planet and nearly killed Luke, too. If you're here to protect him, be alert if you go near Mos Espa. The Sand People clans in that area don't like the name Skywalker. If he has anyone to fear on Tattooine, it's them. They're a more dangerous enemy than you might think."
Wedge considered this. "All right. Thank you."
Into The Desert Plains . . .
Skimming across the dunes in the early morning hours, Luke enjoyed the feel of Deak's late model skyhopper as he sat in the pilot's seat and put the ship through its paces. A vast improvement over his family's old T-16, this one had room in it's cabin for six, and air conditioning for midday travel. Deak had flown home the night before across the vast dune hills in a T-25 Fixer had loaned him, reasoning Luke and Wedge could go about their business more comfortably in something other than rented landspeeders. Luke wondered if Antilles knew the ship they were in amounted to the height of luxury for a traveler on Tattooine.
Again, Luke was impressed with how well his old friends were doing. If things had been different, he might be living among them now, too; working a full day and gathering at Fixer's in the evenings to relax and have a good time. There was nothing wrong with that, but, of course, that would mean the Empire would still be in power, and the Rebellion crushed at Yavin. It was because he was not still living here that his friends had the opportunity to prosper beyond the ordinary, beyond anything their parents had known.
The last time he'd seen the farm buildings they had been in flames underground, and the remains of his aunt and uncle were in the sand where they'd fallen. There was no trace of that grisly memory anywhere on the compound as he climbed out of the ‘hopper and looked around.
There were two more vaporators close to the compound and another generator was standing close to the upper entry to the tank area, and a new generator with solar collectors was at the bottom of the sunken courtyard. The Kimbers were taking very good care of the place.
The inside of the main living complex had been cleaned and kept up, and though bare of furnishings and the clutter of objects collected by a family over time, Luke thought he could still smell the scent of Aunt Beru's favorite perfume, and Uncle Owen's favorite mint cigarra smoke.
The kitchen hadn't been touched by the fires. The table, four chairs, and the appliances and cupboards were intact but dusty. The hum of the cooler was the only sound inside the living area. Xell probably kept food or drink handy for the days when he was working here.
Wedge followed a respectful distance behind him, looking around with interest. Moisture farmers or spaceport businessmen, home was always a comfortable, place to get away from the trouble of operating a working establishment. The home he had grown up in on Corellia was very much like this one, though above ground.
The bedrooms hadn't burned in the fire, either, but smoke damage had been bad. Luke supposed the inner rooms had been spared because of an oxygen burn-off from the fires in the outer rooms.
"Do you suppose they knew the complex was so big underneath the ground?" Wedge asked as Luke led him from room to room. He was surprised at the size himself.
Luke considered this. "Maybe not. They might have thought the big rooms with windows on the courtyard were all there was. Kimber said the tanks were undisturbed."
"The tanks?"
"The water tanks. The vaporators condense the water in the atmosphere and pump it here to the holding tanks. Four times a year, Uncle Owen sold all but one tank to the highest bidder." He led the way back to the kitchen. "Come on. I'll show you where they are."
The water tanks were half filled and spotlessly clean, as pristine as Uncle Owen ever kept them. The new generator topside powered a new-ish looking cooling unit. After coming in from the heat, the room felt as if it were at a freezing temperature, at least. Within minutes their clothing felt cold against their skin.
Wedge looked over the tanks. "How long does it take to fill them?"
"About a year, but water is in such demand the tankers come around and take what you have on a steady basis. That's why no one ever got rich moisture farming. You get a good price, but building up the content again eats up a lot of credits. Xell Kimber was making an extra income for his family by taking over here and keeping it going. I think if he wants it, I'll sell it to him. If I ever need to come back and stay a while, Ben Kenobi's place will be more than enough to house me. He had his own vaporators for private use."
Wedge seemed impressed. "From up top you'd never know the complex was so big underneath. Kind of reminds me of Hoth."
Luke smiled. "Yeah. I had some good hiding spots back there when I was little."
He went through another door and a long corridor lighted by the opening at the other end, took them to the vehicle storage garage. The vehicles had been destroyed, he knew, and the explosion had brought the ceiling and walls down in numerous places. The area had been rebuilt nicely and evidence of use were everywhere. Kimber probably stayed here for days at a time during the selling periods.
The moisture bath was clean and the oil had been used more than the recommended amount of times, but that was nothing new. Uncle Owen had done it, too, to save money. Luke had to stop in wonder when he got to his own little section of the garage. The tiny (though it used to look big to him at one time!) area Owen had set aside for him to use was still as it was. In fact, Owen's tools and clutter were still the same, too. Or they looked the same.
Closer inspection showed that tools and other things were used from time to time by Kimber as he kept the place going, but everything was put back where they belonged when finished. Uncle Owen's presence had been treated with respect, as if he might return one day and would need his equipment. Or his nephew would.
Luke sighed loudly. The one other time he'd been back to Tattooine he'd never come here. He didn't know how carefully the farm had been kept for him until now. He pointed to the compartments beneath his small work desk.
"I was building a model of a Mon Calamari passenger transport. I wonder if the parts I collected are still in there."
Wedge grinned. "Did you build all of these models on the wall?"
"Every one. I wanted to build my own speeder, but Uncle Owen wouldn't give me the money to buy the repulsor units. I scavenged everything else from old wrecks in the desert, but couldn't get my hands on repulsors. I think I was about ten. I put it all together and it just sat there for a year. Then I traded it to the Jawas for a wrecked swoop. I fixed it up and I met Biggs when I started racing it."
Wedge nodded. He felt a sympathy for what Luke was feeling as he reminisced. Wedge, himself, had never been back to his Corellian home after losing his family, and he suddenly imagined a visit there would be just like this one.
If Luke felt his kinship, he said nothing, just turned around and clapped a hand on the other man's shoulder as he went past him and out to the sunken courtyard. Wedge followed after a moment.
"There should be a family living here," Luke said, looking around. "It's been empty too long. If Xell doesn't want it someone will. I hope I can find someone who won't turn it into a tourist trap. I'd give it to anyone who would promise that."
Wedge followed him up the steps out of the courtyard. In the heat and breeze of the unprotected surface, he looked at the placement of the upper structures and identified each section of the large underground complex to which they connected. Luke was right. Modest as it was, the Lars farm was a home in need of occupants. He trotted to catch up with Luke.
"Hey, Luke. I just had an idea. Remember Demi Maren? The mechanic from Bespin who lost everything when the Imperials took over Cloud City? She's looking for a place out of the way, far from the center where she can settle her family and live a quiet life. This might be the place for her."
Luke stopped and turned to his friend. He felt the force hum through his body as if it were a tangible thing. Wedge was right. He could feel it.
Life as a moisture farmer on Tattooine was harsh, but one that was rewarding in many ways, but no more harsh than living afloat in the upper atmosphere of Bespin mining tibanna gas. The Marens could take care of themselves in a hostile environment. And here they wouldn't have to worry about repulsor failures sending them to their doom in the crushing forces and excessive heat of the giant planet's lower atmosphere.
The idea felt right.
Luke took a final look around the austere cluster of small structures before climbing into the hopper and closing the door. As he waited for the craft's system to warm to green, out of the corner of his eye a stocky robed figure ambled toward the steps to the courtyard. Another figure, slighter, dressed in tan outer clothing, short sandy hair bobbing up and down in the breeze, waited at the top of the steps.
Luke smiled but didn't turn his head to look. He knew they wouldn't be there if he did. When the two figures were side by side, the slighter one led the way down the steps and out of sight, and Luke lifted the hopper into the air and turned it in a slow graceful arc toward the Dune Sea.
Dark Memories . . .
If they were lucky they would reach Deak's home by mid afternoon. Luke flew the hopper and acted as a tour guide, wondering if this was what the tourist trade also did with customers.
Wedge was either exceedingly polite or he was really interested in the scenery, pointing out anomalies in the wind patterned sand from time to time. He seemed relaxed and carefree, but Luke couldn't help but feel something was stirring under his calm exterior.
Jawa transports, bantha tracks, Sand People traveling in the distance, and the glint of metal from long buried crashed ships or dead ground vehicles marked the endless sand dunes and he was the first to spot every one, showing a special interest in the Sand People.
Luke knew it was because of the warning Camie had given him to pass on to Luke the night before, but he said nothing about it.
The hopper ate up the distance across the Dune Sea. As a child Luke and his family had made the crossing for carnival in the company of many others. Three days in landspeeders and T16 skyhoppers was turned into a flight of mere hours in this newer, faster hopper. The gathering of Jawas and the gathering of humans was a big event then, the one time of year many of the farming families mingled with strangers who were not their neighbors and learned what was happening in other parts of the planet and beyond.
Luke enjoyed those times. The sleep-outs in the middle of nowhere, running around, playing with friends he saw only once a year, trying to sneak out of the circle of adults always on watch throughout the nights, trying to leave the safe circle of firelight from the camp and find out what was so bad about the darkness beyond it.
With the influx of new trade and businesses on Tattooine, the carnival gathering had fallen out of existence. The skyhopper Luke was flying in now was a factor in the demise. One could get from one side of the planet to the other in a matter of hours now, and the week long caravan travels were a thing of the past. Communications had improved, too. He had spotted several satellites, logos visible for miles, in space above the planet when he'd arrived just a day ago. No longer controlled by the Hutts, the ability to communicate around the world and around the galaxy was a common thing now.
After a time, a long, low range of craggy peaks appeared on the horizon and began to inch near, but before the hopper ever reached them, a lone upthrust of rock and sand appeared closer to the travelers.
"Carnival Rock," Luke said. "It's a part of the mountain range, just one of several spires sticking up out of the sand around here. They're all full of caves and tunnels made by the fuzzy borers Fixer was talking about last night."
He took the hopper lower to the ground and the height of the formation came into focus. It was huge. At least a mile wide and half that high, in some places the rock spires had crumbled and fallen to form sloping hills covered in places with the only vegetation Wedge could remember seeing on Tattooine.
"That'll be Deak's place," Luke said and went lower to the ground and slowed the speed of the hopper. A farm setting very much like the Lars homestead, with one exception, came into view.
Getting out of the hopper, Wedge couldn't help but notice the high, thick wall built along the side of the compound facing the rock formation. Though still far off, the fallen spires from the rock had tumbled their debris in great piles spreading away to within a half mile of the homestead. He could only wonder what the wall was built to keep out. Remembering the warning he'd gotten from Luke's friend, Camie Sorren, he imagined he might know one thing that was on the other side of the wall.
They were met by Deak and his three youngsters, a girl about 7, and two boys 5 and 4. All three stared at the visitors in wide eyed surprise.
"One of the drawbacks of all those shiny, new comsats in orbit," Luke muttered softly to Wedge.
"I think they're surprised we're not eight feet tall," Wedge answered with amusement. "When we're gone they'll be telling their friends, ‘No kidding, they were little guys. Shorter than Dad!'"
Luke coughed into his hand. "They might lower the number of Death Stars we've destroyed."
With the children hovering back after introductions, Deak led the two into the sunken courtyard of his home to meet his wife. She was a pretty woman named Oria - a face and name Luke thought he recognized. She told him she was a Whitesun, her father was a cousin of Luke's aunt, Beru.
"It's been a long time," Luke said, remembering meeting her as a child many times.
"Well, I hear you've been busy," she replied with a smile. She ushered them into the living quarters, a spacious room with a table and chairs beside the windows opening onto the courtyard. The table was set for a light midafternoon snack. Nearby was a smaller table with a few items on it's top.
The children were impressed. Allowed to eat casually outside the usual formal family setting, they crowded the adults at the table and listened quietly to the conversation.
"This is the holo I wanted to show you," Deak said, turning in his seat to take a large object from the smaller table. Ori's father pulled it out of a scrap heap a few years back. The holo generator is damaged so the images don't move anymore. It's kind of eerie seeing people's images this way. Anyway, he says that boy in the middle is Anakin Skywalker after he became the first human to win a podrace."
The image in the holovid was frozen, as if time had suddenly stopped completely for the people in it. Hands raised in mid wave, legs stretched in mid stride, smiles frozen forever on faces, and banners extended in a breeze no longer blowing.
In the foreground a boy stood surrounded by smiling children and adults. Straight cut blond hair framed a round, dusty face with a button nose and the outline of protective goggles across his eyes. A large helmet was held in the crook of one of his arms and the other was being held in the air by a little Rodian child next to him who seemed to be jumping up and down. Another boy, dark haired and with a dark complexion, grinned and waved at the imager. There was no longer depth to the holo and the flat likenesses lay against a static background.
In the far right of the holo the slightly blurred presence of four adults could just be seen: a tall woman with dark hair pulled back away from her face, a smaller, younger woman with her dark hair up in a tight fashion around her head, a creature of unknown species, and a tall man in brown robes.
Luke placed his hand on the holo and closed his eyes.
Immediately he saw it whole and bright, the children in motion as they posed for the imager, and the adults moving in and out of the picture from the right. The boy, Anakin, turned his head and smiled at the adults coming toward him. Numerous species of beings walked past in the background and for just a second a winged, flying creature could be seen with the adults before the holo restarted again.
For a few seconds, Luke saw though the boy's eyes as he turned his head and caught sight of the adults . . .
Luke opened his eyes and drew back to look at the old holo again. He pointed out the tall woman. "This is his mother, my grandmother. This one," Luke smiled, "he saw as an angel. She was beautiful. I think she's my mother. The man here . . . I think he was a Jedi. Qui Gon? Qui Gon, is his name, I think." He looked at Ori Sorren. "Would your father be willing to sell this?"
She smiled. "It's yours if you want it. Dad has a working one of just the boy and his pod. He gave this to us to pass on to you someday. Deak's been wanting to give it to you for a long time now."
Deak pointed his fork at Luke. "You oughtta come home more often. Or, at least, keep in touch."
"Thank you," Luke said. He passed the holo to Wedge so he could get a better look at it. "I wonder what a Jedi was doing at the pod races?"
Ori said, "I don't know, but my father will be intrigued to hear that. He's never mentioned a Jedi with your father before."
"Does he know anything more he might be able to tell me?"
"Not much. He was a boy then, too, but he remembers your grandmother was named Shmi and she and your father were indentured to and worked for a merchant. My own grandparents were slaves, too, once. He didn't know the other woman. The one who might be your mother. And he certainly didn't know the man who was a Jedi. When your father married and came back to Tattooine, my father never got to see him before he left again. That was after your grandmother died. Something happened in the deep desert between here and Mos Eisley, and the Tusken tribes in this area still remember it. No one really knows what happened, but the Jawas have said some of the offshoot clans still fear the name Skywalker."
Luke sat back and sighed. "Well, the name meant nothing to the Sand People out our way, or we might have had more trouble with them. At least, more than we did have."
"Not necessarily," Ori said. "Maybe that was why you didn't have trouble with them."
"It's possible," he admitted, though he doubted her reasoning.
The Tusken Raiders on the other side of the Dune Sea showed no special interest at all in the Lars homestead, nor in him. If Luke's family had lived in this area, things might have been different.
Ori looked at Luke with an odd expression. "Funny how it turned out, isn't it? My father's cousin, Beru, ending up raising you."
Luke smiled at her. "I guess that makes us second cousins."
She smiled back and shrugged. "At the very least." She glanced at he children, then leaned close to say in a lowered voice, "Thank you. You just put my kids on a cloud."
Deak snorted a laugh. "As if they aren't there already. Ever since Fixer called to say you were coming home for a visit, they've been wondering if they would get to meet you." He ruffled his daughter's hair. "Now that they have, they're as silent as ghosts when they're usually full of questions about you I can't answer!"
Luke helped himself to another two slices of shadin. "My sister's twins are almost two," he said. "I'm sure Wedge will have the same affect on them one day."
"Now that you mention it," Deak said, gesturing with his fork. "What about this sister of yours? Could have knocked me over with a feather!"
"We saw a few holos on the newsnet of her wedding," Ori said. "Come to thing of it, the woman in the holo does look like her. Small, dark-haired, holding herself like a queen."
For an instant Luke felt the hum of the force in his veins for the second time that day. What Ori had said . . . and then it was gone. The young woman in the picture did carry herself in the same manner Leia did. He'd assumed it was due to her palace training as the daughter of aristocracy. Maybe it was also a natural grace . . .?
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, and when Windy Kimber suddenly showed up at the farm, Luke didn't bother to think of the oddness of it. The children had shirked their shyness and began plying both Luke and Wedge with questions. They were disappointed neither one had traveled to Tattooine in their X-wings, and that Luke obviously had no lightsaber hanging from his belt.
Wanting to race the sunset back to Toshi Station in the hopper Fixer had loaned Deak, they brought their visit to a close. Windy, of course, decided to follow after them in his hopper.
The shot came from the hills to the west of the homestead. Luke's reaction was a blur of motion. His lightsaber, tucked into a fold of his loose fitting garments, seemed to come from nowhere and appear ignited in his hand. He deflected the shot and sent it piercing a water barrel near the entrance to the underground garage. Water spattered in all directions as the barrel flipped once through the air and thunked to the sand. The second shot was deflected harmlessly in the air.
Wedge rolled to the nearest wall, his blaster also magically appearing as if from nowhere. He returned fire while Deak and Windy rushed Deak's family to cover.
"Where is it coming from?" Wedge called.
Running to his side, Luke replied, "Aim anywhere on the hillside. They'll have moved by now."
"Who?"
"Sand People. Three, no banthas with them. They either walked or came in a transport of some kind."
Deak and Windy were back, sheltered behind another offshoot of the wall. "Transport, I'll bet. One of our neighbors south of here had one stolen last night. Thought it was one of their kids' friends."
Wedge looked around the compound yard. "Is your hopper slaved to a beckon call?"
"No, but the kids' old speeder is."
"That'll do," Luke said. "Bring it up as close to Wedge as you can. If you have weapons handy give us some cover."
His friends did better than that. While the snipers on the hill were raining fire onto the little landspeeder coming toward them, Deak and Windy raced to the hopper and followed with an aerial attack.
The old speeder was hardly Wedge's idea of a frightening attack vehicle, at least it was fast and handled easily even though gravity made the ride rough. His zigzagging turns were throwing him around in the seat no matter how hard he tried to brace himself.
Luke was faring better, somehow standing up on the seat and deflecting laser bolts with little difficulty. Only once did he falter - when the snipers decided to ignore the hopper in the sky and all three began to fire on the speeder. A shot got past Luke, piercing the windscreen and missing Wedge by a hair.
At the base of the hill, Wedge swung the speeder to the left sharply, and Luke leaped out of the seat, motioning for him to go around the hill.
The hopper was fast approaching with one of the occupants firing out an open door.
Luke scaled the steep, rocky hillside quickly, his force enhanced movements a blur of motion as he leaped from boulder to ledge wherever he could find a foothold. He angled toward the closest sniper and leaped high in the air, landing on the narrow ledge the sniper was hiding on. A tuck and roll brought him behind the fearsome looking Tusken Raider.
The sniper whirled around, blaster rifle in one hand while the other reached for a dagger at his side.
The snap-hiss of his lightsaber was drowned out by the scream of the hopper passing overhead with laser bolts targeting a spot higher up the hillside. Luke swung it up, then down and severed the blaster rifle in two just ahead of the power unit. The Tusken stumbled back a step, distracted long enough for Luke to reach out his hand and cause the dagger to fly out of the sniper's loosened grip. The sniper leaped off the ledge and disappeared from sight, but the hopper was swinging back around and streaks of weapons fire pummeled the area where he had jumped.
Luke was already in motion. The next closest of the Sand People was up and to his right. He jumped upward again, landing on a ledge with nothing for cover. The second sniper saw him from the other end of the long ledge. He leaped over the rocks he was using for cover and began firing his short blast rifle in rapid sequence.
Deflecting the shots precisely was next to impossible. They were coming too fast. Energy met the lightsaber blade and whizzed off in all directions, even though Luke was trying to send them harmlessly into the rocks and boulders and sand that formed the hillside. Debris flew through the air, and he concentrated hard to stay aware of where the hopper was to keep from sending a shot it's way.
A particularly large rain of dust and sand brought enough cover for Luke to attempt an advance. A forward, leaping somersault into the air brought him to ground on the rocks a few feet above the ledge, but the sniper saw him and re-directed his fire. The split second difference in timing was all Luke needed to get his bearings. He sent the shots back on the shooter, striking him in the arm and grazing his shoulder and the leggings of his right leg.
Unable to continue firing, the Tusken emitted a shrill cry of anger and attacked, grabbing his dagger and leaping through the air straight for Luke.
One parry with the lightsaber blade and the dagger was severed at the hilt, but the sniper kept coming. Luke shut off the lightsaber and swung the handle like a club and struck his attacker in the head. The Tusken staggered and went down on one knee, rolled across the sandy slope and came to his feet drawing his hand from his waistband and arching it back to throw. Luke saw the detonator in his hand and made an upward sweeping gesture. The detonator flew from the sniper's hand and continued straight into the air until it was out of sight. The shockwave from it's detonation in the high atmosphere was barely felt by the people on the ground.
Roaring in frustration again, the sniper got to his feet and rushed Luke again.
Luke jumped to a flat space nearby to secure his footing, and immediately lances of red energy filled the air around him. From above the third of the Sand People was firing at him, and the one in front of him, having drawn him into the open, was climbing upward on the rocks and boulders to join the other.
Throwing himself back to cover, Luke parried the blasts as well as he could. He was pinned for the time being. Trying to avoid killing the attackers was not going to work with the Tusken warriors. He'd known that going in, but he still decided to try to take one alive if he could.
A feeling of imminent danger swept over him and he looked upward to see another detonator dropping toward him. Quickly he used the force to push it away, and it sailed off only a modest distance to the south before exploding. This shockwave hit hard, but he was already in motion, leaping off the ledge to the one below so fast the explosion seemed to expand in slow motion. He was safely hidden when the shockwave passed over him. Mere seconds had elapsed.
Through ringing ears, he could make out the sounds of blaster fire above him, shots repeating in rapid succession, but none of them were coming in his direction. Luke risked a look upward.
The Tusken warriors were in a battle with someone else. Wedge, no doubt, as he came up behind them.
Luke jumped up to the ledge he'd been on and ran along it, following the path upward the sniper had taken. Halfway, the blaster fire stopped. He looked up.
Where the third sniper had hidden, Wedge appeared, blaster in hand pointing at the sky by his shoulder, and a grin on his face.
"You can come out now, Commander," he called, apparently having seen him dive for cover. "It's all over."
Before he could retort, Deak and Windy appeared beside Wedge. Luke held his tongue, and used the force for another high leap and a forward flip that brought him lightly to their sides.
Wedge indicated the bodies nearby. "I know you were trying to take one alive, but there was no way to do that. The one up here had a bag full of detonators. They were ready to take us all out and go along if they had to."
"I figured that. Too bad." Luke turned to the others. "Thanks for the help, Deak, Windy. Good job."
Deak nodded his acknowledgment and hurried away to get sick in the sand a short distance away. Embarrassed, he walked back slowly, taking off the sash at his waist to wipe his face. "Sorry," he said. "I, uh . . ."
Wedge slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Happened to me my first firefight, too. All over the com unit. My commander promoted me to communications specialist on the spot."
"That was the start of his meteoric rise to commander," Luke added.
"Yeah, from raw recruit to commander in fifteen years."
Windy laughed. "I wouldn't ride those meteors anymore, if I were you!"
Deak folded the sash and tucked it in a pocket, nodding behind the others. "We had an audience."
On a high dune to the north of the hill, three dark, angular shapes of massive size were visible against the darkening sky. Sand crawlers. After a few second, the large vehicles began to turn one by one and slowly disappear from sight behind the dune.
"Let's go back and make sure your family is alright, Deak," Luke suggested quietly.
Wedge looked at the bodies, but Windy waved his hand at them in dismissal. "We can leave them here," he said. "They'll be gone by morning. Their tribe will come for them."
"We can all go in the hopper," Deak said. "I'll use the beckon call to get the speeder home."
"We took a hit in the windscreen," Wedge said.
Deak looked at him with admiration. "Fixer will take care of it. I hope my kids didn't see you driving it like that."
His children had seen more than just that, as it turned out, and they had already begun to spread the word among their friends. Within two hours word of the attack had spread over the planet, and Luke's quiet visit was common knowledge.
Settling the Past . . .
Luke and Wedge didn't return to Fixer's shop at Toshi Station until late the next morning, and though they tried to be casual about it, the gathering of his friends at Fixer's was anything but informal.
Camie had brought her husband, Cade Sorren, Deak's cousin, to meet Luke and Wedge, but the person Luke most wanted to see was Tank Wayfinder, the one friend who had not shown up until now. Seeing him was the next best thing to seeing Biggs Darklighter again.
Tank had changed more than any of the others Luke had known. He was no longer the exuberant, outgoing youth who's passion for racing fast machines was almost as great as Luke's. Biggs had taken to Luke immediately, but Tank had needed convincing that the daring and reckless young Skywalker was worth bringing into the circle. His respect had to be earned.
Dressed like a man who couldn't care less what he was wearing, Tank greeted Luke with a nod and an almost embarrassed hug. As soon as Luke had seen him inside Fixer's shop, hanging back out of the way, he had known this was the reason he had felt drawn to return to Tattooine. It wasn't his own past he had needed to settle at all. It was Tank who needed help.
Of all the youths forming Luke's childhood circle of friends, he and Tank had changed the most. From carefree, restless young men with big dreams of a future in the stars, they had mellowed into men who had seen too many of the wrong things happen among those stars.
Though willing to talk and reminisce about the old days, Tank was ill at ease about other things, and it took Luke a while to steer the conversation around to a subject he felt was the thing Tank was avoiding.
"I never could have dreamed," Luke said, "the first place I ended up after leaving here would be with the very same rebel unit Biggs had joined."
"He'd been with us less than a week," Wedge said. "I have to admit, things really started moving after Tattooine joined the fight."
"He was on patrol assignment when I got to Yavin. I didn't see him until the day of the battle when all pilots were called in to fly with their units. He didn't know I was there until he saw my name on a duty roster."
Tank clasped his hands together on the table top before him and stared at them. He was building up the courage to speak, and once he started, his story tumbled out of him as if a dam had broken and the words couldn't be stopped until they had run themselves out. The others listened in silence.
"I was here, Luke," Tank began softly. "I was aboard the SD when it caught the Corellian freighter it'd been chasing across a quarter of the galaxy. I was off duty, asleep, or I would have been one of the tags sent down to return what was in the pod that jettisoned. I was a mid man in the regiment, not new anymore, but not quite a veteran, either. Biggs was officer material, I wasn't. I was assigned to the Trooper ranks. I was trooper designee TK2431 . . .
"Biggs had just returned from leave. He was an officer candidate and was supposed to be sent to Carida for training, but his shuttle was diverted to the SD to replace the troopers who were lost in the fight to take the Corellian transport. He was at the briefing and told me what happened, that we were leaving Tattooine, and a farm had been hit by the tags in a recovery operation. I couldn't believe it. Neither of us knew until later which farm had been hit. The SD took Vader to the emperor's battle station, and then we went straight to Coruscant. Biggs had been planning to leave for a while and this just made him more determined to go. He found out somehow that the farm the tags hit was yours, and he told me. We thought you'd been killed, too, or conscripted by the unit. They did that sometimes. It was enough to push Biggs into deserting as soon as we got to Coruscant, but not me. I was too scared. I saw what they did to deserters who were caught . . . .
"I didn't get the courage to leave until I heard you were still alive and had been the rebel who destroyed the battle station. By then Biggs was dead, but I didn't know it yet. I heard you were being hunted by Vader, and I finally got the courage to desert, too. I couldn't be a part of that. I was already a part of what happened here. Biggs had told me where to go when I was ready, and I ended up being sent to a small rebel cell that was assigned to map the routes the Alliance fleet would take to avoid the Imperials. We found the ice caves on Hoth and helped install the power generators before being reassigned. While you were moving into the ice caves we were marking the route to the rendezvous point outside the galaxy. I didn't know what scared was until we got out there, laying out marker buoys so far outside charted space the galaxy looked like a wall hanging . . .
"After that we finally saw action fighting at Endor, and when the celebrating was done, we were being reassigned, again, to scout ahead for the taking of Coruscant. The distress call came from Bakura and we were sent there instead. That's where our luck ran out. In the battle our ship was damaged and we couldn't get clear. We took a hit that decompressed the aft sections, and we barely made it to the life pods before the bridge was hit. We were all full of shrapnel and burns and had no idea whether we'd be picked up by our side or the enemy. We knew what they did to captives, but we went into the life pods anyway. When we woke up three days later, the skirmish was over. Bacta was scarce in those days and the meds did the best they could for us, but we got mustered out. There wasn't enough to go around for proper healing."
Luke touched his own face. "It happened to me, too. Left no scarring, but the damage was done."
Wedge nodded. "No one regretted it more than the medic corps that good soldiers were sent home half healed."
Tank raised his clasped hands and laid his forehead on his knuckles. "But, I was here, Luke!" he said between clenched teeth. "When your family died! I was that close to being one of the tags who was responsible for killing them. If I had been, I don't know if I would have had the courage to stop them! Biggs and I would have been gone weeks before if I hadn't been too damn scared to desert then. He waited for me until he couldn't wait for me to get over it any longer."
Luke put his hand on Tank's shoulder. "We were all scared, Tank. We lived with fear every day. None of us lost that feeling. In fact, the new government is taking so long to get itself established because we have to deal with entire populations who are still fearful from the war. Feeling afraid goes with the territory."
"He's right," Wedge added. "Besides, you didn't do anything stupid. You heard what happened to me at Bakura, didn't you? I almost blew myself up with a Ssi-Ruuk mine! It looked like a message cylinder, so I was going to grab it and take it in. Luke had to clear the area around me and come in alone to get me out of that mess."
Luke smiled. "All the time we were in the system, people were sending him things packed with springs and confetti!"
"I think I still have confetti in my hair."
"Tank, take a good look at Wedge and me. Of all the pilots who went after the Death Star, only three of us made it back, and that was thanks to intervention from someone who wasn't even in the fight at that time. If you had left with Biggs, chances are you would have fought in the battle at Yavin, and you would have died, too. Where would your family be today without you?"
The man closed his eyes tightly and kept his head bowed.
"It wasn't just being scared, Tank. You did what you were meant to do. You were meant to survive, to come home and be here when your father got sick. You might not believe it, but I do. There are some things that are meant to happen in the universe and they can't be changed. From something that seems as small as one man coming home from war to something as large as a planet being destroyed to show once and for all how much evil there exists in the hearts of our leaders. Some things are just meant to be. "
It was a while before Tank rejoined the conversation. Camie picked up the thread by asking about Alderaan, and steering the conversation to Leia and away from the war. Luke could sense the change happening in his friend, though. A healing process was beginning. The guilt for his inactions, and his association with the people who had turned Luke's life upside down was beginning to crumble.
When Fixer asked Luke if he had decided what to do with the Lars farm, he felt the force hum throughout his body, and with it came a vision.
A lovely young girl dressed in Jedi robes, a lightsaber at her side, walked down a landing ramp and stepped onto a huge holo screen with the image of uniformed beings exchanging symbols of peace. A blaze of stars in the background shaped like the arc of the Tingel Arm with a blue blob of color where the Corporate Sector would be, shimmered brightly as the woman spread her arms in greeting and embraced two older people waiting to greet her.
Luke saw their faces and nodded to Fixer. "As a matter of fact I have. I sent word to a friend of mine from Bespin, who is looking for a quiet place to settle her family and start a new life, that she might like it here. She's coming to check it out, so I'll be around for a few more days to wait for her and show her around." He looked at Tank. "I'd appreciate it if you'd do me a favor after I'm gone, Tank. Look in on her and her family once in a while, make sure they get settled in all right. They used to be gas miners at Bespin, they're used to hard work, but even so, they'll be new to moisture farming."
Camie looked at him shrewdly. "You're pretty sure she's going to accept the offer."
He shrugged and smiled. "I know she will."
She shook her head. "I don't think I like our young Skywalker being smarter than me now."
"He was always smarter than you!" Windy said and raise his arms to fend off a blow.
Somehow or other, Wedge realized he and Luke and the other men were cooking or preparing food for a midday meal while Camie walked between them and supervised.
It had happened again.
Maybe she didn't have the force as an ally like Luke did, but she could still wrap men around her little finger with no effort whatsoever. He would have been willing to bet Cade waited on her hand and foot.
Wedge watched as she added a garnish to the plates he was preparing.
She stood back to smile at him. "There! Perfect. I'd hire you guys in a minute if I had a tapcafe."
He turned to see Luke looking in his direction with a bemused expression on his face. The Jedi Master hadn't seen it coming either. Wedge felt better.
Later, watching everyone as they left, all in different directions, Fixer clapped Luke's shoulder with his hand. "Well, I'm glad you were able to settle your personal business, Luke."
Luke sighed heavily. "Thanks, even though it turns out that wasn't why I came back after all. I made my peace with what happened to my family a long time ago. I was here before, secretly. I stayed at Ben Kenobi's house for a couple of weeks while we planned the infiltration of Jabba the Hutt's palace. The emperor and Vader were looking for me with spies everywhere, so I stayed as far away from people as I could. I didn't know it until today, but that was when I made my peace." He turned his head toward Tank's speeder disappearing down the street. "I came back to help Tank. I think you'll find he isn't going to be such a hermit anymore."
"Thank Alderaan's spirits for that," Fixer said, using a new phrase that was making it's way around the galaxy as a show of respect for the lives lost to the Death Star. "I was running out of ideas to get him away from that farm. Do you know how many of my kids' birthday parties and school events I've dragged that poor guy to see?"
"I can't imagine," Luke said. "But, like I said before, I'll be around until Demi Maren gets here. Do you mind if I stay downstairs a while longer? Now that Deak's kids told the whole planet I'm here I can't risk a hotel, so you might be overwhelmed by curiosity seekers. I'll go out to Ben Kenobi's place if it's going to be a problem."
"Don't even think about it. The Sand People might get brave enough to go after you again way out there," Fixer said. "You're welcome here as long as it takes. You, too, Wedge. Besides, neither of you have been to meet my family yet. You have to give my wife at least one chance to make you cook dinner for her like Camie did!"
Laughing with more than a little embarrassment, Luke turned to follow him and Wedge inside the shop. He looked down the street in time to see Tank's speeder disappear to sight around a corner, and his smile turned to one of serenity. Whatever war the daughter of Tank Wayfinder and Demi Maren would be instrumental in stopping was far in the future. For now he just had to be sure her parents had the opportunity to meet; and if he had the time, he might even make a visit to Mos Espa and see what he could discover about his own parents.
Anyway, first things first. He called to his friend, "So what's your wife's favorite food, Fixer?"
The End
A look inside Fixer's shop . . .
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