Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens the Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure (2 page)

L
UKE SKYWALKER sensed the TIE fighter twisting for a shot at his unprotected stern even before Artoo-Detoo squealed a warning and his sensors
began flashing red.

Luke didn’t know
how
he knew, just that he did. His hands went automatically to the control yokes of his X-wing fighter and hauled them back and to the left, sending the craft
spinning to port. Laser fire stitched space where
his fighter had been a moment before, leaving Luke blinking from the brilliant glare.

“I saw him! I saw him!” Luke told Artoo even as the X-wing completed its roll and locked on to the Imperial fighter’s tail. Luke mashed down the triggers and the TIE erupted
into a ball of fire. Luke’s X-wing shot through the cloud of dust and gas, shuddering slightly.

From the droid socket behind Luke’s
cockpit, Artoo let out a squeal of annoyance.

“It was
not
too close,” Luke said. “You keep the fighter flying and let me worry about what to do with it.”

Luke opened up the throttle and dodged a pair of freight tenders, their ion engines glowing a brilliant blue. Like many other starships above the planet Giju, they were racing away from the
space lanes as fast as their engines could
take them, desperate to escape the firefight that had suddenly erupted between three rebel X-wings and a patrol of TIE fighters.

Luke’s eyes jumped to his long-range scopes, noting the position of the two green arrowheads on the screen. Those two symbols represented the X-wings piloted by Red Three and Red Leader.
Red Leader’s X-wing was in the lead, protecting a transport carrying underground
rebel leaders being evacuated from Giju ahead of the Empire’s agents. Reds Three and Five—Wedge
Antilles and Luke—were in the rear, keeping the TIEs busy.

Wedge had drifted too far to port for Luke’s liking; if his fellow pilot ran into trouble, Luke wasn’t sure he could get there in time to help. And there was no shortage of trouble
up there—the Empire had apparently sent every fighter
it had in the system to engage the rebel raiders.

“Tighten it up, Wedge—we’re each other’s protection out here,” Luke warned.

“Gotcha, Luke,” said Wedge Antilles. “I was chasing a bandit.”

“And did you get him?”

“His wingman did—flew right into him when I came up on their flank.”

“That counts,” Luke said.

“Less chatter, gentlemen,” said the cool, clipped voice of Red Leader,
known outside the cockpit as Commander Narra. “With all this traffic out here there are a lot of places
for enemies to hide. You need your eyes as well as your instruments.”

“Copy, Red Leader,” said a chastened Luke.

Narra was a veteran pilot, tapped by Alliance High Command to lead Red Squadron after the destruction of the Death Star. Twelve Red Squadron pilots from the rebel base on
Yavin 4 had headed into
space in X-wings to try to destroy the Empire’s battle station. Of the twelve, only Luke and Wedge had returned alive. Narra had asked them to continue to fly with Red Squadron, while making
it clear that neither young man should expect special treatment for surviving an encounter with the Death Star, even if they
did
destroy it.

Which was fine with Luke; his sudden
fame made him uncomfortable. Just a few months before, he’d been a farm boy on Tatooine, fixing vaporators and tinkering with skyhoppers and
landspeeders. Now people treated him like some kind of hero—but he knew better. He was just a kid who’d made a million-to-one shot, guided by a mysterious power he barely
understood.

Luke knew he had skill with the Force, the energy field created
by life that bound the galaxy together. And now he knew he’d inherited that ability from his father. Luke’s Uncle Owen
had always told him that his father had been a navigator on a spice freighter, but that had been a story meant to protect Luke. Ben Kenobi had told him the real story: that Luke’s father had
been a Jedi Knight, a gifted star pilot and a cunning warrior. But Ben had also told Luke
that his father was dead, betrayed and murdered by the Sith Lord Darth Vader. And Vader had struck down Ben
aboard the Death Star just days after he’d started to teach Luke about the Force.

So Luke had skill with the Force, yes. But what good would that do him with no one left to instruct him?

“You in there, Luke?” asked Wedge, echoed by an inquiring beep from Artoo. “The boss wants
us to turn to point two-two.”

“Right, right,” Luke said, mentally kicking himself. None of his musings about the Force would do him any good if he got himself killed—and daydreaming during a firefight was
an excellent way to do that.

Luke banked to starboard until his fighter was on the course Narra wanted. Ahead of them, a line of bulk freighters was cutting across the space lanes,
their bows turning every which direction
as their pilots tried to avoid a collision. The ungainly ships reminded Luke of a herd of banthas huddled together for protection against predators back home on Tatooine.

“Get behind me, Wedge,” Luke said. “We’ll scoot and shoot.”

“Right with you,” Wedge said, hitting his retrorockets and dropping astern of Luke’s X-wing, then accelerating until
he was flying practically on his tail. Any inbound enemies
would be able to target only Luke’s fighter, with Wedge scooting up and down to emerge from cover and fire at their attackers. It was a tricky maneuver—both pilots had to know each
other’s tendencies in combat, but more than that they had to trust each other completely. Even a month before Luke wouldn’t have dared to try it, but since
then he’d flown
numerous missions with Wedge. They could now fly in perfect formation, anticipating each other’s movements without speaking a word.

“Artoo, switch the deflectors to double front,” Luke said, ignoring the astromech’s sulky beep that he’d already done so.

He rolled across the topside of one of the bulk freighters, then dove beneath the next one, juking and weaving to throw
off any Imperial that might be trying to get a bead on him. Ahead, three
TIEs wheeled through space, green fire lancing out from their blaster cannons. Laser fire splashed against Luke’s shields, which flared with the impact. Luke broke to starboard while Wedge
broke to port, their cannons spitting energy. One of the TIEs vanished in a fountain of fire, while another lurched drunkenly, one
solar panel bent and spraying sparks. The third TIE was rising, up
and away from the fight.

“Wedge! Down!”

Luke thrust his stick forward, throwing the X-wing into a dive that slammed him back in his seat, grunting with effort. Laser blasts burst all around him, dazzling his eyes. He dodged left, then
right, ignoring Artoo’s flurry of protests. He had no time to peer at his readout
and see if Wedge was still alive, or if his X-wing had been turned into a superheated cloud by the quartet of
TIEs that had been lurking in the heart of the freighter convoy, waiting to ambush them.

“How did you—” Wedge began, then stopped. “You know, for just an hour I’d like to know what it’s like to fly with the Force watching my back.”

“It’s almost as good as having you watching
my back,” Luke said with a grin. “Now let’s make them pay for that little trick. Artoo, dial up the inertial
compensators.”

Luke slewed his fighter around in a tight turn, grimacing at the sound of some overstressed system groaning in the port wing. Wedge followed him, weaving around Luke’s X-wing and filling
the space ahead of them with deadly spears of light. Two laser blasts ripped
one of the TIEs in half, while another flew too close to a freighter’s engine wash and tumbled out of control.

“Two left,” Luke said. “I’ll take the one to port.”

He opened up the throttle, and the distance between him and the TIE ahead began to shrink. To starboard, he could see Wedge’s fighter matching his maneuver. The TIE dodged in every
direction, the pilot’s desperation increasingly
obvious, but Luke hung right on his tail.

And then…what was that? It felt like something was in his mind, something elusive. Like a word he couldn’t quite call to mind even though it was on the tip of his tongue. Artoo
whistled urgently and Luke shook his head, trying to chase the odd feeling away. There were more pressing matters at hand.

Wedge rolled down and right, then up and left,
bracketing the TIE in his sights. A moment later the Imperial fighter he’d been chasing was a bright cloud in their wake as they continued to
race up and away from Giju.

“You need a little help there, Red Five?” Wedge asked.

Luke smacked the side of his helmet, annoyed with himself. He needed to focus.

“I’ve got it, thanks,” he said, rolling his fighter completely over and blasting
the TIE’s starboard panel off with a volley of shots while flying upside down. He brought
the X-wing right side up as the crippled TIE tumbled past him, the cockpit oscillating wildly around its remaining solar panel. Then Luke settled his X-wing in beside Wedge’s, their wingtips
just meters apart.

“I was just asking,” Wedge said. “No need to get fancy.”

Artoo squawked derisively.

“Nice flying,” Narra said in their ears. “The package is clear and calculating the jump into hyperspace. Activate your scatter protocols and we’ll meet at the rendezvous
point at 2300 hours.”

“Copy that, boss,” Wedge said. “Activating protocol now. See you on the other side, Luke.”

A moment later Narra’s X-wing vanished into the infinity of hyperspace, followed by Wedge’s.

“Access
the jump pattern for Devaron, Artoo,” Luke said.

Rebel procedure was for each pilot to follow a randomly chosen zigzag path through hyperspace, making several jumps to foil any Imperials that might be tracking his or her fighter. That way, if
the worst occurred, only one fighter would be lost instead of a whole squadron—or the entire rebel fleet.

Artoo beeped at Luke that he’d accessed
the coordinates and locked them into the navicomputer, then followed that up with a fusillade of hoots and whistles. Luke glanced at his screen,
where the little droid’s communications were translated into language he could understand.

“I’m sure there will be patrols searching for us—the Empire’s flooding sectors with warships in response to any threat,” Luke said. “That’s why we
follow
scatter protocol.”

Luke missed whatever Artoo whistled in response—that feeling was back in his head again, like a voice whose words he couldn’t quite make out. He knew it was the Force. But this time,
it wasn’t assisting his actions. Instead, it felt like it was trying to get his attention.

“What’s that, Artoo? Yes, I’m functioning normally. But you can take over flight duties till
we get to Devaron.”

Artoo beeped questioningly.

“I’m fine, pal,” Luke said. “Honest. But take the stick anyway. I want to try meditating while we’re in hyperspace. Maybe that will help me figure out what it is
the Force keeps trying to tell me.”

O
UTSIDE LUKE’S COCKPIT, hyperspace was an ever-changing tunnel of brilliant light. Inside, the rebel pilot had his eyes closed and was
breathing slowly in and out.

During their brief time as master and student, Ben Kenobi had taught him the basics of Jedi meditation, warning him that opening a connection to the Force was something even the eldest Jedi
Masters studied over a lifetime.
Luke’s first lesson had come just hours after the murder of his aunt and uncle by stormtroopers, when Luke and Ben had stopped for the night on their way to
Mos Eisley.