About the Author
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Jason Fry is the author of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and has
written or co-written more than forty novels, short stories, and
other works set in the galaxy far, far away. His previous books
include the Servants of the Empire quartet and the young-adult
space-fantasy series The Jupiter Pirates. He lives in Brooklyn
with his wife and son and about a metric ton of Star Wars stuff.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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Luke Skywalker stood in the cooling sands of Tatooine, his wife
by his side.
The strip of sky at the horizon was still painted with the last
orange of sunset, but the first stars had emerged. Luke peered
at them, searching for something he knew was already gone.
“What did you think you saw?” Camie asked.
He could hear the affection in her voice—but if he listened
harder, he could hear the weariness as well.
“Star Destroyer,” he said. “At least I thought so.”
“Then I believe you,” she said, one hand on his shoulder. “You
could always recognize one—even at high noon.”
Luke smiled, thinking back to the long-ago day at Tosche Station
when he’d burst in to tell his friends about the two ships
sitting in orbit right above their heads. Camie hadn’t believed
him—she’d peered through his old macrobinoculars before
dismissively tossing them back to him and seeking refuge from the
relentless twin suns. Fixer hadn’t believed him, either. Nor had
Biggs.
But he’d been right.
His smile faded at the thought of Biggs Darklighter, who’d left
Tatooine and died somewhere unimaginably far away. Biggs, who’d
been his first friend. His only friend, he supposed.
His mind retreated from the thought, as quickly as if his bare
hand had strayed to a vaporator casing at midday.
“I wonder what the Empire wanted out here,” he said, searching
the sky again. Resupplying the garrison at Mos Eisley hardly
required a warship the size of a Star Destroyer. These days, with
the galaxy at peace, it hardly required a warship at all.
“Whatever it is, it’s got nothing to do with us,” Camie said.
“That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Luke said, his eyes reflexively scanning the
lights that marked the homestead’s perimeter. Such caution wasn’t
necessary— no Tusken Raider had been seen this side of Anchorhead
in two decades—but old habits died hard.
The Tuskens are gone—nothing left of them but s in the sand.
For some reason that made him sad.
“We’ve hit our Imperial quota for five years running,” Camie
said. “And we’ve paid our water tax to Jabba. We don’t owe
anybody anything. We haven’t done anything.”
“We haven’t done anything,” Luke agreed, though he knew that was
no guarantee of safety. Plenty of things happened to people who
hadn’t done anything—things that were never discussed again, or
at least not by anyone with any sense.
His mind went back to the long-ago days he kept telling himself
not to think about. The droids, and the message—a holographic
fragment in which a regal young woman pleaded for Obi-Wan Kenobi
to help her.
Let the past go. That’s what Camie always told him. But staring
into the darkness, Luke found that once again, he couldn’t take
her advice.
The astromech droid had fled into the night while Luke was at
dinner with his aunt and uncle. Fearing Uncle Owen’s fury, Luke
had taken a risk, slipping away from the farm despite the threat
of Tuskens. But no Sand People had been on the prowl that night.
Luke had found the runaway astromech and brought it back to the
farm, pushing the landspeeder the last twenty meters to avoid
waking Owen and Beru.
Luke smiled ruefully, thinking—as he so often did—about
everything that could have gone wrong. He could easily have
died, becoming one more foolhardy moisture farmer cled by the
Tatooine night and what lurked in it.
But he’d been lucky
Luke assumed he’d never learn the mysterious young woman’s
identity. But he’d been wrong. It had been blasted out over the
HoloNet for weeks, ending with a final report that before her
execution, Princess Leia Organa had apologized for her
treasonous past and called for galactic unity.
Curiously, the Empire had never shared footage of those remarks,
leaving Luke to remember his brief glimpse of the princess—and to
wonder what desperate mission had caused her to seek out an old
hermit on Tatooine.
Whatever it was, it had failed. Alderaan was a debris field now,
along with Mon Cala and Chandrila—all destroyed by the battle
station that had burned out the infections of Separatism and
rebellion, leaving the galaxy at peace.
Or at least free of conflict. That was the same thing, or near
enough.
He realized Camie was saying his name, and not for the first
time.
“I hate it when you look like that,” she said.
“Look like what?”
“You know what I mean. Like you think something went wrong. Like
you got cheated, and this is all a big mistake. Like you should
have followed Tank and Biggs, and gone to the Academy like you
wanted to. Like you were meant to be far away from here.”
“Camie—”
“Far away from me,” she said in a smaller voice, turning away
with her arms across her chest.
“You know I don’t feel that way,” he said, placing his hands on
his wife’s shoulders and trying to ignore the way she stiffened
at his touch. “We’ve made a good life, and this is where I was
meant to be. Now come on—let’s go inside. It’s getting cold.”
Camie said nothing, but she let Luke lead her back toward the
dome that marked the entrance to the homestead. Standing on the
threshold, Luke lingered for a last look up into the night. But
the Star Destroyer—if that was indeed what it had been—hadn’t
returned.
Luke woke with a start, instinctively scooting up to a seated
position. His mechanical hand whirred in protest, echoing the
thrum of the insects that lived in the hardy grasses of Ahch-To.
He tried to shake away the dream as he dressed, donning his
woolens and waterproof jacket. He opened the metal door of his
hut, then shut it quietly behind him. It was nearly dawn, with
the pale coming day a glimmer like a pearl on the horizon, above
the black void of the sea.
The oceans of Ahch-To still astonished him—an infinity of water
that could transform from blank and pl to roiling chaos. All
that water still seemed impossible—at least in that way, he
supposed, he was still a child of the Tatooine deserts.
Farther down the slopes, he knew, the Caretakers would soon rise
to begin another day, as they had for eons. They had work to do,
and so did he—they because of their ancient bargain, and he
because of his own choice.
He’d spent his youth resenting chores on Tatooine; now they gave
structure to his days on Ahch-To. There was milk to harvest, fish
to catch, and a loose stone step to be put right.
But not quite yet.
Luke walked slowly up the steps until he reached the meadow
overlooking the sea. He shivered—the summer was almost gone, and
the dream still had him in its grip.
That was no ordinary dream, and you know it.
Luke raised the hood of his jacket with his mechanical hand,
stroking his beard with the -and-blood one. He wanted to
argue with himself, but he knew better. The Force was at work
here—it had cloaked itself in a dream, to slip through the
defenses he’d thrown up against it.
But was the dream a promise? A warning? Or both?
Things are about to change. Something’s coming.
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