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With his bags slung over his back, Luke announced his temporary departure to his students at the temple.
The younglings fussed about Luke’s imminent absence and the varying progresses of their own training. Luke reminded them to meditate daily even though meditations might seem boring, and to listen to the Padawans. As for the Padawans, he told them that he trusted them to keep up with their training regime. If they slacked off, they better not let him found out when he returned.
“If Leia calls, tell her I’m going to Dagobah,” Luke told Ben. “I won’t be long. She needn’t worry.”
Ben nodded. “Yes, Uncle Luke.”
“Remember to set a good example for the kids; they look up to you,” Luke said.
“Yes, Uncle Luke.”
Leading the way to the hangar, Ben offered Luke a polite ‘may the Force be with you’ together with the other Padawans, but didn’t join the younglings in hugging Luke goodbye. Luke climbed into his X-Wing where R2-D2 was waiting, and, after saying a final goodbye to his students, took off for the Dagobah system.
Luke worried about Ben.
Ben’s future didn’t become any clearer to Luke than it had been on the day that Leia had sent Ben here to train at the temple. Three days ago, Luke had sensed the darkness in Ben again during a lightsaber dueling practice. Ben had deflected his opponent’s every blow, and had used a maneuver he had no doubt picked up from his father to feign weakness before slamming his head into his opponent’s nose. His opponent had yielded with a green nosebleed. Ben had won the duel, but the reminder of his parent had brought on renewed feelings of resentment and abandonment that Luke could sense in the Force for the remainder of the week.
Was it a mistake to bring Ben to the temple? Luke had sought counsel from the only two persons in the galaxy who would know. Leia was still convinced that Luke would keep Ben away from the Dark Side. Han was unreachable; Luke’s call had been answered with a high-pitched animal scream before it had been abruptly shut off.
With no one else to turn to, Luke had shut himself in his room to meditate. Last night, he had emerged from his meditation with a vision of carved stone orbs floating above him under a red rocky ceiling. The vision had left him with a sleepy warmth that he hadn’t known since Tatooine.
Luke had packed his bags that same night. The orbs in the vision had been floating with a fixed pattern that Luke had known by heart. Luke had flown through the Dagobah planetary system and maneuvered around its many moons and suns.
There, he would find his answer.
Luke arrived on Dagobah at the tail end of the wet season. The water that had flooded the swamps and forests was receding and leaving behind fertile soil where new grass was growing. With the help of R2-D2’s old maps, Luke eased his X-Wing onto a grass plain at the top of a knoll near the swamp where Yoda had trained him years ago.
The land in this part of Dagobah was an ever-changing terrain molded by heavy rain and floods. A light drizzle was falling. Luke followed the muddy banks of the lagoon at the foot of the knoll. Something large was swimming in the water; its many fins cut through the foggy water surface. Luke had to be careful where he stepped. If the fog were any thicker, he would be able to swim on dry land.
"Aunt Beru would've laughed me out of the house if I told her I'd miss the deserts someday," Luke said, taking off his robe. He wasn’t looking forward to cleaning the mud out of its hem. On the bright side, his robe had the same color as the mud.
R2-D2 beeped in sympathy.
Luke slept in a hollow tree that provided shelter from the drizzle. They were halfway to the site that Yoda’s hut had once stood. R2-D2 scouted ahead while he slept. At daybreak, R2-D2 poked him awake.
“What?” Luke said, rubbing the grit out of his eyes. “What trees?”
The light drizzle hadn’t let up when they neared Yoda’s swamp. Luke used his lightsaber to cut his way through the overgrown bushes that towered over him. There was no sign that any sentient life form had lived here since Yoda’s passing.
R2-D2 pointed out a tree stump to Luke. Although moss was growing on the edge of the stump, the surface where the cut had been made was smooth as a polished table. The tree trunk had been sliced clean through with a sharp blade. The tree had not fallen under its own weight.
A few more trees had been chopped down in the area, but whoever had done it had been careful to cut down only one tree in a thicket. It wouldn’t be noticeable to a passing eye on the ground or in the air.
R2-D2 stopped and beeped.
“Now we know where the trees ended up,” Luke said, looking up at the cave. The rocks were dusty red, only a shade lighter than the rocky ceiling he had seen in his vision. “We’re here, Artoo.”
The mouth of the cave was thrice as tall as Luke. It had been sealed off by a wall of timber and clay bricks. A spacecraft hatch door was installed in the wall as the only entrance into the cave. The mud in front of the cave was unmarked. There were no tracks leading to or away from the cave.
Luke tried the door and found it locked. Hearing no noise from inside the cave, Luke silently nudged the door open with the Force.
The cave was sparsely furnished with furniture that had no doubt been salvaged from a spacecraft. Wired lights were strung on the walls to illuminate the interior. The living area behind the door to the cave only had a metallic table and a couple of metallic chairs. There was also, curiously, what looked like a highchair at the table.
Behind the spartan living area, a workbench sat against a wall. A dismantled blaster lay next to boxes of ammunition on the workbench, but that was not what had caught Luke’s attention.
The wall behind the workbench was covered in weapons. An array of pistols and rifles and machine guns were mounted near the top of the wall. Scopes for long-range sniping were carefully fixed to the wall next to the guns that they could be fitted to. Under the blasters were vibroblades in the forms of knives and daggers and darts. The largest knife was as long as Luke’s forearm and the smallest dagger was shorter than the tip of Luke’s thumb. Mounted under that were ropes and whips and hooks and snares and bombs and weapons that Luke had no name for.
There were no trophies displayed in the cave. This wasn’t the home of a game hunter. It was the home of a hunter who hunted for the hunt.
A rustling noise made Luke look away from the weapons. R2-D2 paused in its scanning of the wall of weapons. The noise had come from a narrow nook deeper in the cave.
Blankets were laid out on the floor of the nook; they were rumpled but unoccupied. Next to the blankets, a metallic bassinet was floating a foot from the ground. The hood of the bassinet curved over a pile of cloths that lined the inside of the bassinet. Stone ornaments arranged in the shape of the Dagobah system were dangling over the green creature sleeping in the bassinet. The creature’s big ears and wrinkled hairless head were only too familiar to Luke.
“Master Yoda?” Luke said in wonder.
As the last Jedi, Luke still had much to learn about the many powers of the Force. It wasn’t impossible that Yoda could return to the land of living. After all, Luke had seen Yoda’s ghost after his death.
“Take one more step forward and I’ll disintegrate you and your droid,” a raspy voice said.
Luke froze. R2-D2 beeped in alarm.
A Mandalorian in full armor was blocking the door to the cave. He was pointing a vicious-looking double-pronged rifle at Luke.
It had been many years since Luke had run into a Mandalorian. This Mandalorian sounded older than most Mandalorians Luke had met, who tended to live short violent lives, but he couldn’t be much older than Luke. He wore a ragged cape over his left shoulder. His boots were caked with mud. An ammunition belt and a pouch was slung over his chest. Sunlight from outside the cave glinted off his silvery helmet and armor plates. It was almost painful to look at him directly in the dimness of the cave.
“I’m not here to fight,” Luke said. The hilt of his lightsaber was a heavy weight against his hip, but he had already been outdrawn by the Mandalorian.
“Says the man who broke into my house,” the Mandalorian said.
“I don’t mean you any harm.” Luke began to put up his hands, and stopped when the Mandalorian tensed up.
The Mandalorian tightened his grip on his rifle. Red lights lit up along the sides of his vambraces. The weapons hidden in his vambraces whirred as they were armed. A rocket launcher mounted on top of the jetpack on his back rose and aimed itself at R2-D2 over his shoulder.
“No sudden move. I know what you are, sorcerer,” the Mandalorian said tersely. “You’re armed with a lightsaber.”
“Not bad man,” said a tiny voice in lilted Galactic Basic.
R2-D2 beeped in a low murmur. The creature had woken up. It was standing up in the bassinet and blinking up at Luke with bright dark eyes that were far younger than those of Yoda.
“Are you sure?” the Mandalorian said without lowering his rifle.
“Feeling I get,” the child said. It held up its arms in the universal language of wanting to be lifted up from the bassinet.
The Mandalorian considered Luke for a beat longer, and, to Luke’s surprise, lowered his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He dropped his hand to the blaster holstered at his belt. When he strode past Luke, Luke heard a distinctive metallic click that accompanied each of his step. The Mandalorian wasn’t wearing a jetpack on his back like Luke had initially thought, instead it was an exoskeleton spine brace with a rocket launcher mounted on top of it. Gently, without fully turning his back on Luke, the Mandalorian lifted up the child from the bassinet with his other hand.
The child giggled and made grabby hands at the Mandalorian. It didn’t seem afraid of being handled by a Mandalorian warrior that was armed to the teeth.
The Mandalorian put the child down on the highchair at the table, before he untied the pouch that he was wearing over his chest. Fish tumbled out of the pouch in a stream of water and flopped in the shallow puddles pooling on the table. The child yelled in delight and grabbed at a fish, which jumped out of its reach.
“Take a seat,” the Mandalorian said, taking a pot from a corner in the cave and sitting down at the table. “The droid can stand.”
“The kid is Force-sensitive,” Luke said earnestly. The metallic chair was hard and cool but dry. Being dry was a state that Luke had not been in since he had landed on Dagobah. R2-D2 hid behind Luke’s chair. “I had a vision of this cave.”
“Then we’ll have to move,” the Mandalorian said.
“There was a reason why I had that vision. I was meant to find you and your kid,” Luke said.
“The only reason you have a vision is the kid isn’t trained to use its powers,” the Mandalorian said. He had a knife in his hand. He picked up a small fish that slid between his fingers on the table.
“I can teach it,” Luke said, thinking of Ben and the kids at the temple. Most of all, he thought of Yoda’s dying instructions for him to pass on what he had learned. “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m training a new generation of Jedi.”
“The Luke Skywalker that destroyed the first Death Star?” The Mandalorian tilted his head towards Luke. His helmet betrayed no emotion.
“I couldn’t have done it without the Rebellion,” Luke said.
“I thought you’re a myth,” the Mandalorian said.
“I’m real and so are the Jedi,” Luke said. “We can help.”
“I’d agree if we had this conversation ten years ago.” The Mandalorian slit the fish open from mouth to belly. Its guts spilled onto the wet table. He put the gutted fish in the pot, and grabbed another fish. “There was a time I looked for your kind. Not anymore. The Jedi was almost wiped out in the last war. I’m not handing the kid over to you.”
“The galaxy needs Jedi to defend it against the Dark Side. The kid could do a lot of good for-” Luke insisted.
“Save your breath. I’ve heard the spiel before.” The Mandalorian cut him off. “For people out there, there is always a greater good that the kid is good for. From Imperial remnants to the New Republic and everyone in between.”
“If you’ve already made up your mind, why didn’t you kick me out of this cave?” Luke said. Having this conversation was like ramming his head into a wall. A faceless wall made out of beskar. With Vader, Luke had been talking to his father. Luke didn’t know this Mandalorian from the next guy. Exasperated, he stood to leave. “I’m wasting my time.”
“Because the kid said you’re alright, and because I’ve travelled across the galaxy for more than ten years looking for you,” the Mandalorian said, lifting his eyes from his knife and the fish guts staining his gloves. “I need to know. What is it?”
The sudden heat behind the Mandalorian’s cool flat voice caught Luke off guard. “What is what?”
“The kid,” the Mandalorian said. “It was fifty years old when I took it under my wing as a foundling. It couldn’t speak any language and it doesn’t remember where it came from. I was told it belongs with the race of Jedi. That’s you, but you’re human, like me.”
A fish jumped out of the child’s grasp and off the table. It left a wet trail as it flopped across the rocky floor. The child clutched at the armrest of the highchair and peered over its edge. Under the child’s stare, the fish levitated towards the child’s outstretched hand.
Luke sat down again. R2-D2 was beeping at Luke to communicate its desire to leave. Luke hushed it. An olive branch was a rare commodity to come across in the wide expanse of the galaxy, and Luke wasn’t one to refuse it. “I don’t know what the kid is, but I was trained by a member of its species on this planet. Master Yoda was one of the most powerful Jedi of his generation before he lived here in exile.”
“How long will it live?” the Mandalorian said.
“Master Yoda was nine hundred years old when he died,” Luke said.
The Mandalorian fell silent. He paused in the middle of gutting the fish in his hand. He turned his attention to the child, who was ignoring the two of them in favor of swallowing the fish it had caught. “That’s a lot longer than I thought.”
“And humans can’t live for nine hundred years,” Luke said. He was beginning to understand the strange dynamic between the Mandalorian and the child. “You know, most Jedi are trained from a young age. It’s not too early for him to join us.”
The child licked its lips, savoring the fish it had eaten. It turned in its seat and noticed that the Mandalorian was watching it. Cooing, it stretched out a hand over the table. The fish scattered across the table started to slide towards the Mandalorian as if they were being reeled in on a fishing line. Soon, all of the remaining fish were laid out in front of the Mandalorian in a pile. The child clapped its hands and tried to crawl up the wet table towards the fish.
“No,” the Mandalorian said finally, and pressed the child back into its highchair. “The kid will choose its Way one day. Today is not that day.”
The child laughed and wriggled in the Mandalorian’s hold. The Force was strong with the child. Its contentment rolled off its mind like frothy sea waves in summer, like the sleepy warmth that Luke hadn’t known since Tatooine.
Luke stayed for a meal of fish stew. R2-D2 was offered a dirty rag to wipe mud off its treads.
When Luke and R2-D2 left the cave, the child was playing on the floor with holographic dolls to reenact an exciting space battle. The Mandalorian was lowering himself carefully to the floor, bending his legs one after the other. His ungreased joints creaked under his armor.
The door clicked shut behind Luke by itself. R2-D2 beeped at Luke questioningly.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t found an answer to my Ben-shaped problem yet, Artoo,” Luke said. A stray thought entered his mind, something about Han and Leia and Ben and the Millennium Falcon. Ben was sleeping in a floating bassinet for some reason. It prodded at his mind lightly, but fled before he could grab it and take a good look at it. Luke shook the thought out of his head. “Set a course for the X-Wing, will you? When we get home, we’ll smell like wet womp rats.”