Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens the Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure (9 page)

She expected Sarco to climb atop one of the mounts and start back toward
Tikaroo. But instead the faceless alien set up a campsite not far from the edge of the cliff, across the river valley
from the cave.

He’s waiting,
Farnay thought.
Waiting for Luke
.

Farnay knew better than to think the Scavenger was waiting in case he might be of help. She knew what he really wanted—a chance to loot the sorcerers’ temple without attracting
Imperial attention. And Luke’s
presence wouldn’t be enough to dissuade him. The Scavenger’s customers had a way of meeting accidents in the jungle. Most of the missing were
wealthy but eccentric old hunters without people who would report them as missing or come looking for them.

She didn’t know what had happened to them, but she could guess. And if the Scavenger decided Luke was in his way, it would happen to him, too.

I
N THE MORNING Luke awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep.

He looked around the glade, momentarily confused, before he remembered where he was. When he sat up Artoo turned his radar eye in his master’s direction, beeping a cheery good morning,
then rocked sideways to bump Threepio’s silver knee. The protocol droid gave a startled hop as his photoreceptors lit up.

Luke ate a ration bar,
drank some cool, clean water from the fountain, and stood in the dew-speckled grass, staring up at the pillar again.

I was exhausted yesterday, but I’m rested now. The Force will obey me more easily
.

He sighed and reached up toward the lever with an open hand, letting his shoulders rise and fall.

Nothing happened.

He tried for longer than an hour, as the morning sun evaporated
the dew from the grass and the birds began to zip through the branches. Discouraged, he forced himself to sit against the stone
bowl of the old fountain and meditate until he had chased away his negative thoughts. Then he got up, walked over to the pillar, and told the lever to move.

It remained still.

Luke kicked a loose flagstone across the glade, startling a crowd of brilliant green
birds, then hopped across the glade with his injured toe in hand.

“I’m fine,” he said before Threepio could suggest that it was only sensible to summon a rebel medical frigate immediately.

Luke stretched out his hand, then pulled it back as a buzzing insect landed on his wrist. He shooed it away, annoyed, but it landed again, its crystalline wings catching the early-morning light.
One
compound eye swiveled to regard him as the insect picked its way along his wrist, its coiled proboscis darting out to taste the sweat on his skin.

“I’m not a flower,” Luke said. “Buzz off.”

The sap drinker ignored him. Its feet tickled. Luke looked at its teardrop-shaped body, a graceful curve that ended in a barbed stinger. He knew it wouldn’t sting him—that was a
defense against creatures
that might attack its nest. Luke held up his wrist, admiring the way the little creature’s iridescent blue body shimmered when seen from different angles. He smiled
at the exuberant life contained in that tiny, busy living thing.

“To harness the Force, you must first feel it everywhere,” said the voice of Ben Kenobi.

Luke frowned, then reached out with his senses. He could feel the Force
inside himself, a bright shining thing bubbling and roiling. He reached for the sap drinker still exploring his wrist, not
with his hand but with his feelings. There it was—a point of light in the Force, tiny but brilliant. The sap drinker’s presence seemed to overlap with his own body, his own presence in
the Force.

The sap drinker flew away with a whir of wings. Luke tried to track its
presence in the Force, but the chaotic ripples in the glade were too confusing. There seemed to be millions of currents
around him, all emanating from living things—birds and insects, but also the leaves of the trees and the tiny unseen creatures borne on the wind or scuttling across bark and rock. All those
lives were vessels of the Force, containers for its energy.

Luke tried to find
the sap drinker’s presence again amid the tumult, then stopped.

Trying to focus on a single living thing was confusing and exhausting. But the Force wasn’t limited to those individual bodies, he realized. They created the Force and made it grow, but it
escaped those boundaries, overflowing them just like the spring escaped the broken rim of the fountain.

Luke closed his eyes and let
himself sink into the Force, allowing it to wash over him. He let his awareness drift, carried this way and that by the living presences around him and the way they
made the energy field ripple and dance. He could feel the Force radiating out from his own body, just as it spilled from the birds and insects and tiny creatures.

New ripples passed over him, and he could feel bright presences
nearby. Luke opened his eyes and saw the pikhrons clambering over the rubble of the fallen temple wing. They sniffed at him, then
lowered their heads and began to graze.

Luke smiled and reached through the Force again, but this time he wasn’t trying to push the energy field across an empty space—he was swimming through it, meandering across the
currents of energy in the glade. He traced
the rock of the pillar by the way the Force surrounded it—the rock wasn’t alive, but it was an emptiness defined by the life covering it. He
could feel the ridges and crannies, the cracks that offered refuge to microscopic living things. He felt the pillar’s shape as his awareness climbed it and found the lever.

Luke bent his wrist and the lever moved as easily as if he’d held it in his
hand.

The compartment inside the pillar contained a dozen training remotes, all covered with moss from their long years in damp confinement. Most of them refused to come back to
life, either damaged by moisture or having lost all their charge. But Luke and Artoo managed to get three of them working, scrubbing them free of moss and dirt before closing up their access
ports.

“Master
Luke, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Threepio asked. “They could be an Imperial trap designed to kill intruders. Shouldn’t you at least have your pistol
ready just in case?”

“I’ll risk it,” Luke said with a smile.

He stepped back from the remotes, and they rose into the air, rotating slowly so their sensors could evaluate their surroundings. Artoo turned to roll away, and one of the
remotes charged him,
retreating hastily when the little droid screeched at it indignantly. After zipping about for a few seconds, two of the remotes returned to the pillar, hovering in front of it for a few seconds and
then touching down inside the compartment. The third remote floated in front of Luke, as if waiting for something.

Ben’s voice filled Luke’s head again.

“The lightsaber
disciplines the mind and schools the body and spirit,” he said. “Mind what you have learned. Let the lightsaber be your focus.”

Luke nodded and detached his father’s weapon from his belt. He spread his feet wide, ignited the lightsaber, and swung it around one-handed in a loose arc. Then he took hold of it with
both hands.

The remote floated before him, turning lazily in the air. It
zipped to one side, then the other, and Luke had the distinct feeling the device was sizing him up as an opponent.

“Be careful, Master Luke,” Threepio urged.

Feel the Force,
Luke reminded himself.
It will give you the reflexes you need to guide the blade where it needs to be
.

Luke remembered the first time he’d ever held his father’s lightsaber, in Ben’s little stone house on the edge
of the Dune Sea. He remembered how the brilliant blue-white blade
had dazzled his eyes and then seemed to draw them in, and the almost hypnotic sound of the blade. And he remembered how even though he’d never seen a lightsaber, let alone held one, the
weapon had instantly felt right in his hand.

Ben had told him to hold the grip so the blade would be high and ready when it appeared. He’d
shown him that everything you could do with a lightsaber—attack, defend, advance,
withdraw—began with the initial stance. Dominant foot back, blade held in parry position on the dominant side. Feet not too wide, the better for speed and agility.

Luke assumed the position, watching the remote as it eased back and forth in front of him, its movements deceptively slow. He wondered if it had
a way of sensing his ability, or if different
remotes were programmed for different levels of skill. What if the remotes used to train raw apprentices were all damaged and the Force had brought him there to be peppered with laser bolts that
only advanced students could have swatted away?

The remote dove to the right and zipped at Luke’s head. He dodged instinctively, raising the blade
high and keeping it between him and his attacker.

First defensive posture,
he remembered.
Now pay attention. You can worry about programming remotes later
.

The remote returned to its initial position in front of the pillar, with Luke turning to face it. Then his blade was diving down and to his right, to protect his hip. The remote’s laser
blast struck the blade, sending tendrils of
energy snaking across it, and then dissipated in the morning air.

That was the second defensive posture
.

Threepio raised his hands in celebration.

“You did it, Master Luke!”

Somehow Han’s mocking laughter at his getting zapped by a laser blast aboard the
Falcon
had been less annoying than Threepio’s congratulations. Luke smiled at the thought,
then had to dodge left in response
to the remote’s feint, holding the blade in the third defensive posture. He glanced quickly at the pits gouged in the glade, marking their position. It
wouldn’t do to tumble into the depths.

The remote weaved to the right, then darted behind him. Luke whirled, blade high, and a bolt of energy shot by his head to sizzle in the damp grass. The remote retreated, and Luke brought his
lightsaber
back to the ready position.

“Excellent, Master Luke,” Threepio called.

“Not really—I should have deflected it,” Luke said. “I got lucky.”

That attack forced me into the fourth defensive posture,
he thought.
The remote ran through all four basic defensive forms in order. It’s testing what I’ve learned
.

Which meant it would now attack him for real.

The remote floated in front
of him, its jets hissing faintly as it moved up and down, then left and right. It dodged left, but Luke was already bringing his blade down to the right, even as the
remote reversed course and fired at his knee. Luke deflected the laser bolt, then wheeled his blade the other way, sending energy beams flying back the way they’d come.

This time the remote didn’t back off but accelerated, following
a zigzag course and peppering him with fire. Luke’s blade was a blue blur, deflecting bolts all around him. He slipped
slightly as he tried to return to ready position, then leapt over a flurry of bolts aimed at his feet.

Luke’s mind flashed back to the Mos Eisley cantina, where two alien thugs had picked a fight with him. Ben had tried to play peacemaker, sensing Luke’s growing panic, but
the aliens
hadn’t been interested in peace. One had flung Luke into a table, then gone for his blaster, ready to gun Ben down.

The old Jedi’s hand had dipped to the lightsaber on his belt, faster than anyone would have imagined a desert hermit could move. His lightsaber sliced the blaster aimed at him in two, then
carved through the thugs.

It was the first time Luke had ever seen a
lightsaber in action, and what amazed him was that there was no wasted motion—one moment two alien bullies were threatening an old man’s
life, and the next moment their days of threatening anyone were over.

Ben had stood for a moment, coolly regarding the other patrons at the bar with the lightsaber held before him in ready position. Then he’d deactivated his blade and helped Luke up from
where he’d been sprawled on the filthy floor, looking on in awe.

Luke tried to imagine what the patrons of the cantina had thought to see a Jedi Knight in their midst after nearly two decades in which Force-users had been nothing more than rumor and legend.
What had it been like when Jedi were common sights in the galaxy? And would such a day ever come again?

The remote zipped left,
then right, then cut back to the left and shot Luke in the knee. He yelped at the sting of the laser bolt as the machine returned to floating in front of him.

“Artoo! That dreadful machine has injured Master Luke!”

“Just my pride,” Luke said, wiping the sweat from his forehead and reminding himself to quit daydreaming.

When he resumed the ready position the remote began to dart from
side to side again, testing his defenses. It tried to get behind him, and he parried the pencil-thin shaft of laser light,
sending it caroming off an annoyed Artoo. He kept turning as the remote dove at his feet, leaping over its bolts and reminding himself to keep his guard up.

Luke took two more hits and lowered his blade, causing the remote to back away. He told himself to ignore Threepio’s
comments and push out the fear of failure trying to creep into his
head.