Star Wars Journal - The Fight for Justice by Luke Skywalker (2 page)

But can’t he see what will happen to me if I
don’t
? This planet will suck all the life out of me. My body would walk around doing chores, but my spirit would be dead. I don’t know how I’ll ever do it, but someday, I have to get out of here—out among the stars. There are so many worlds and wonders to see, so much to discover.

It’s where I’m meant to be. I know it is.

My day started with a visit from the Jawa traders. Uncle Owen wanted a couple of extra droids to help out on the farm, and the Jawas are pretty good at scavenging used droids. Of course, you have to know what you’re doing when you buy from them. They’ll assure you that everything’s first-class merchandise, then sell you a piece of scrap that keeps going just long enough for them to get out of the area.

But Uncle Owen’s pretty good at spotting those kinds of deals. He can bargain the Jawas down without any problem. And, while I’m by no means a master mechanic, I can usually tell quality merchandise when I see it.

The Jawa sandcrawler stopped by, as they do from time to time. Those things are huge, slow, and noisy, so you have plenty of warning before they arrive. The Jawas live and work in them, so they’re kind of like a small town on wheels. The smell inside the sandcrawler gets pretty bad, since Jawas aren’t the cleanest of creatures. That’s why they always line up whatever droids they’ve got to sell in the open air.

Uncle Owen looked the lineup over and picked out a protocol droid and a handy little R2-5 unit. But the R2-5 blew its motivator, so Uncle Owen went for a different R2 unit instead. The interpreter—his name is See-Threepio—and Artoo-Deetoo know each other, that’s apparent. They spend a lot of time bickering and blaming one another for everything, but they both seem like good little units.

Only I think Artoo must have a few loose bolts. He claims he belongs to an Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kenobi’s a fine name, but there’s nobody around here named Obi-Wan. The only Kenobi I’ve ever heard of is an old guy named Ben. He’s kind of… eccentric. He’s lived on his own in the Dune Sea for as long as I can remember. I’ve only met him once, about five seasons back.

Windy and I had been out in Beggar’s Canyon. We were lost, and it got a bit hairy for a while, but Ben Kenobi arrived to help us. It was kind of odd that he just showed up out of the blue like that. But we were just happy he could guide us back to the farm.

The odd thing is, Uncle Owen really hates the old guy for some reason. He lit into Ben, accusing him of all kinds of stuff, instead of thanking him for helping us get home. Then he told Ben to get out and never come back.

Before Ben left, he gave me an odd kind of look, like he was committing me to memory for some future date.

Then Uncle Owen wanted to know everything Ben had said. I really didn’t remember much, and most of what I could recall didn’t make much sense. Ben seemed a bit like a fanatic. Harmless, but really into his beliefs. Uncle Owen told me that Ben’s a little crazy from living alone and being out in the sun too much.

Anyway, Ben’s the only Kenobi I know, and he certainly never owned any droids. He doesn’t like mechanical things. I’ve even heard he
walks
everywhere!

Artoo was telling the truth about there being an Obi-Wan, though. I was giving him a quick cleaning, to get the grime from the sandcrawler off him, when I accidentally triggered a recording.

He projected a short holographic message. It didn’t make much sense, but I’ve already memorized it. It was from one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen in my life. Not that I’ve seen too many girls—there aren’t many out here on the moisture farms. But this one in the projection just took my breath away! I know I’m probably crazy, but there’s just something about her. I feel like I’ve known her all of my life.

It feels as if she’s a part of me somehow.

Whoever she is, she’s obviously highborn. Her accent gives that away. I know she’s not the kind of girl I would ever get to know, but I can’t help wishing for someone like her.

And she’s in trouble, too. The message repeated, over and over. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi… you’re my only hope.” Whoever this Obi-Wan Kenobi is, I wish I could find him, and pass the message on. This girl might still be in serious trouble, and maybe I’m the only one who can help her.

Ah, who am I kidding?

I took off Artoo’s restraining bolt, in hopes of releasing more of the message, but instead the message vanished. Artoo couldn’t bring it back up, so it’s probably really old. Both of the droids are pretty battered up, and they’ve seen some action. See-Threepio said he thinks the girl was a passenger on his last ship, but the recording was probably made before he even met Artoo. It could be a couple of decades old, even. I’ll bet the girl is middle-aged, married, and raising a bunch of kids.

Ahhh, I really should quit my dreaming and accept that nothing interesting is ever going to happen to me.

So much has happened since yesterday, I don’t know if I’ll ever get my thoughts straight.

I wish I had someone to talk to, to help me figure all this stuff out.

I’m in a small cabin on the starship
Millennium Falcon
, and I’m being hunted by stormtroopers. It’s still hard to grasp that this is really happening to me.

I really underestimated that little R2 unit. Sometimes I forget how smart droids can be. Artoo sure pulled a fast one on me last night. He didn’t need the restraining bolt pulled to free up that message of his at all. He needed it pulled so that he could
escape
.

He left last night, but it was too dangerous then to look for him.

See-Threepio had remained behind; he still had
his
restraining bolt. But Artoo had his mechanical mind fixated on Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he must have had some kind of directions as to where to find him, because he’d set off alone, at night, across the Dune Sea.

I was even more certain than before that he had to be malfunctioning. Nobody in his right mind, human or droid, would go there. For one thing, the temperatures get
really
high. A human can dehydrate in about thirty minutes. Droids don’t dehydrate, but the sun and sand can be dangerous. All that metal attracts the heat, overloading their cooling systems, and, no matter how careful you are, sand gets into everything. It can really ruin a droid’s insides.

And then there are the Sand People, otherwise known as Tusken Raiders. They don’t come around much, but when they do, nothing and nobody is safe from them.

I didn’t have much choice but to go after him. Not so much for Artoo’s sake—though I did feel kind of sorry for the small droid—but because we really needed him to help with the harvest. I didn’t dare tell Uncle Owen what the droid had done. He’d just have a fit and probably decide to scrap him and make me do his work instead.

So there was nothing to do but load up my landspeeder and head off after him. If the winds hadn’t been too brisk, I knew I could follow his trail. Threepio talked me into letting him come along, claiming he could reason with the R2 unit. He hadn’t been too good at that so far, but if he came along, then it meant I’d be able to keep an eye on him, too. He claims to be loyal, but so did Artoo—right before he took off.

We picked up some of Artoo’s trail, heading straight for the Jundland Wastes. That was interesting, because that was the direction Ben Kenobi lived in. It was also where the Sand People were rumored to be hanging out.

I’d brought my blaster pistol along, just in case. I’m a pretty good shot with it, if I do say so myself. But I’ve never shot anything bigger than a womp rat, and they’re not exactly bright. Vicious, yes, but pretty dumb, too. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to kill a Sand Person, though. They may be savages, but they’re intelligent beings.

Even shooting one in self-defense would make me feel funny.

Not that I got the chance. We headed out and finally picked up Artoo. He was trundling along a canyon, still headed for the Dune Sea.

I ordered him to stop, but he refused. He kept carrying on about his mission, the secret plans, and having to get to Obi-Wan Kenobi. I have to admit, I thought he was just overheating. And what an imagination! All that stuff about a secret mission was unbelievable.

But things went from bad to worse. Artoo detected something, so I checked it out with my electrobinoculars. I caught sight of a couple of banthas, being watched by a Sand Person. At first, I didn’t get it. They always rode one to a bantha. Why was there only one Sand Person, with
two
banthas, then?

Simple. The other Sand Person was stalking me!

But before I could figure this out, it attacked me, knocking me down. I didn’t even get a chance to use my blaster.

Sand People are really tall and built like steel walls. This one knocked Threepio over a short drop and slammed me into the ground.

Then it came at me with its gaderffii stick.

Staring right into the face of death does something to you. I mean, I had never really thought about dying before. I always knew it happened to everyone eventually, but not to me, not
now
. Even the crazy flying races I’ve done with Biggs and Windy were more like games than something that could kill you. But I saw in the way it attacked that it was going to kill me. It raised its weapon.

And I was too stunned to fight back.

I thought I was doomed. That this was the end. I’d never get to explore the galaxy. Never see the stars up close, or visit any other worlds. I couldn’t believe I was going to be killed for the contents of my landspeeder and a couple of droids.

It seemed so futile, so pointless, dying out there like that.

And then there came this really strange noise—it took me a couple of seconds to recognize it as a krayt dragon. It howled and echoed all over the place, sending tingles up my spine, it did worse than that to the Sand Person, though. I couldn’t see his face, of course—but every muscle in his body spelled
fear
. The next thing I knew, the Tusken Raider was gone.

First of all, I was
really
glad to be alive. I knew how lucky I was. And second, I was getting really scared, lying there on the ground as the creature that scared the Tusken Raider approached me. But I simply didn’t have the strength to get up and flee for safety. I’d banged my head pretty badly when I fell, and I couldn’t get to my feet.

Then the monster appeared.

If I hadn’t been so shaken, I might have laughed. The
monster
turned out to be an old man in protective robes, carrying something like a horn, through which he blew to produce that terrible shriek. It was old Ben Kenobi, and he’d managed to save my life a second time!

His fingers obviously had some skill, because he managed to help me to my feet by manipulating my aching muscles and nerves. That and a sip of water had me feeling better in a couple of minutes.

It turned out that Ben had imitated the cry of a krayt dragon, the one thing that terrifies the Sand People, which is why they’d fled without looking back. He might be an eccentric old hermit, as Uncle Owen said, but he was certainly good at arriving just when he was needed—and at knowing exactly what to do.

I didn’t see how this could have been pure coincidence, Ben finding me. But it made more sense to believe Ben was just passing by, than to believe he somehow sensed my trouble.

But that’s the weird thing—Ben
had
been looking for me.

He was surprised to discover I was with a couple of droids, though. Even more so when he discovered that Artoo claimed to belong to him.

You see, Ben is Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m not sure what it’s all about, except that he used to be somebody really important—a Jedi Knight. And then, for some reason, he decided to lay low for a while. So he started calling himself Ben Kenobi instead. It seems kind of odd to me, but I soon discovered that Ben wasn’t as crazy as Uncle Owen tried to make him sound. A bit eccentric, maybe, but not crazy.

Ben took us to his house. Threepio was damaged by the Tusken Raider attack, and I needed to do some quick repairs. I couldn’t take him back to the farm in the state he was in. My uncle would have been furious.

His house was small and simple. He had a few gadgets, like a vaporator to get his own water and stuff like that. But there were no droids or any sort of transportation. He really
did
walk everywhere!

I don’t think I could do without droids or speeders or any of a hundred other things, but Ben doesn’t need them and doesn’t miss them.

I could hardly believe it when he told me he was a Jedi Knight. I mean, I didn’t know there were any Jedi Knights left. I wasn’t even sure they’d ever existed in the past.

When I was young, I’d heard about the Jedi from someone at school. I asked my uncle Owen about them, and he told me that they were just stories. Aunt Beru had told me that there
were
once great and wise knights who kept the peace, called Jedi, but that they were long gone. “Most of the stories they tell about them just grew and grew,” she explained. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

And here was Ben, telling me that he’d been a Jedi Knight in his youth! It was incredible, partly to discover that there really had been Jedi, and partly because “crazy old Ben” had been one of them.

And then Ben really surprised me. He told me that my
father
had also been a Jedi—and his close friend!

My father…

All my life, I’ve wondered about my father. What kind of a man was he? Uncle Owen had never told me much, just that he had been a navigator on a spice freighter. It takes skill to pilot your way around hyperspace, and I always figured I had inherited my piloting skills from my father. Uncle Owen had never told me that my father was also a Jedi.

According to Ben, my father was a hero—a great pilot, a great warrior, and a great man. He had been trained by Ben to become a Jedi, and my father was one of Ben’s best pupils.

Uncle Owen knew all about this, too, but he’d never revealed a word of it to me. Ben thinks Uncle Owen was wrong to hide the truth, but he won’t come right out and say so.