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He’s not the kind of man she hates, per se. No, she doesn’t hate him, but he smirks too much and leans across the table as if there isn’t enough room on his side for all his affronted pride. Siri wishes, just for a moment, that she could tell him that he is like fine blown glass, that she can see through him, straight to the bottom, the same way she had been able to look into the still depths of the meditation pools in the temple and see every grain of sand in the river bed. This boy is all pride and bluster wrapped around an aching core, not a bad man, but a coward. She has met him on twenty different worlds wearing twenty different faces; he is the natural consequence of the Empire.
“You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?” Solo asks, tilting his head, narrowing his eyes.
She tucks her hands into the wide sleeves of her cloak and diplomatically says, “No. Should I have?”
“It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than five parsecs.”
It is reassuring to her that Luke has a faintly nonplussed expression on his face. He’s naïve and young, so young, but at least he isn’t buying this load of chizzk any more than she is.
“I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers, mind you, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships now. She’s fast enough for you, lady.”
In another life, a past life, Siri would have leaned across the table herself and told him precisely what she thought about him and his boasts. But she is older now, and more patient, and the word “Jedi” no longer means much in the galaxy, so she merely smiles faintly.
“As you say.”
He leans back, propping one ankle up on his opposite knee as if he is trying to take up even more space than he already does. “What’s the cargo, then.”
“Only passengers,” she replies delicately. “Myself, my friend, and two droids. And,” she adds, smiling prettily, glad that even nineteen years on this Force forsaken desert planet have been kind to her. “Of course, your discretion would be greatly appreciated.”
He shifts in his seat, but the smirk not only stays in place, but widens. “What is it, some kind of local trouble?”
“I would rather avoid any, ah, Imperial entanglements.”
“Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? But it’s gonna cost you something extra,” he looks her over again, sizing her up. “Ten thousand, all in advance.”
Luke, who had been blessedly silent before, now speaks up, disbelief cracking his youthful voice. “Ten thousand? We could practically buy our own ship for that.”
“And who’s gonna fly it, kid?” She can feel the disdain pouring off of the smuggler, a dusky stain on the Force, and wonders that the boy can’t feel it as well. “You?”
“You bet I could, I’m not such a bad pilot myself,” Luke says, reminding her more of his father every second. She’s finding that she wants to box his ears about as frequently as well. “Come on, we don’t have to listen to this.”
She puts a hand on his arm under the table, keeping the polite smile tightly stitched to her face. He frowns but backs down, and she decides that the time has come to wrap up this conversation. There is a faint sense of danger pricking down her spine, the Force’s urging to stand up, leave, disappear back into the winding alleys of Mos Eisley.
“Two thousand now,” she says easily, and then makes a swift tactical move to ensure that there will be no further arguments. “And fifteen when we reach Alderaan.”
“Seventeen, huh?” The satisfaction fairly flows off him. “Alright, you’ve got yourself a ship. We’ll leave when you’re ready. Docking bay ninety-four.”
“Ninety-four,” she replies as she stands, sensing the stormtroopers entering the bar behind her. “Always a pleasure doing business with a professional.”
She manages to keep herself from rolling her eyes until she has turned around and begun to usher Luke from the bar, wrapping the Force around them with an effort before the troopers can notice them. The outside air is a scouring hot blast after the relative chill of the cantina, and Luke is still griping as they make their way back to the droids.
“That was ridiculous. Whatever that ship is, passage on it can’t be worth seventeen thousand.”
She chuckles quietly as she pulls her hood up over her graying blonde hair. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Trust the Force, Luke, and trust me. But you’ll have to sell your speeder.”
Suddenly morose, he just nods. “Yeah, whatever. It’s not like I’m ever coming back to this planet again.”
She slides into the passenger’s seat, suddenly wishing that they had had more time, time for her to teach him here where there are no distractions, time to burry Owen and Beru (they were good, hardworking types and she is trying not to think of them too much), time, perhaps, to tell him more about his father. But this is the will of the Force, and so she just directs him towards the junk yard that will give him the highest price for the landspeeder.
The cold chill of space travel has never bothered her, but she can see Luke shivering as soon as they leave Tatooine’s atmosphere. She takes off her cloak, draping it over his shoulders as he sits slumped on one of the acceleration couches in the main hold, and sinks down into the familiar lotus position on the cold deck plating, smoothing her tabards as she does so. Siri watches him for a moment, seeking his father out in his features and then his mother. He has her Nubian cheekbones, her nose, but that mop of hair and those bright blue eyes, those are all Anakin Skywalker. But just now he doesn’t look like the son of a great senator and the hero of the Old Republic, he looks only cold and lost and, perhaps, a little bit afraid.
She breathes out a long calming breath, and then says, “There is so much to teach you, Luke, and we have very little time. Before the Empire, Jedi used to train for fifteen or twenty years before they were knighted,” she pauses, almost tasting the ashes of the temple in the back of her throat. “But times have changed. All I can give you now is the Force, and the ability to protect yourself.” She sighs. “I suppose it will have to be enough.”
“I’ll learn anything you’ll teach me,” he says, leaning forward almost desperately.
That coaxes a little bit of a smile from her. “Alright, come here.”
He slides onto the deck plates across from her, and she extends her hands towards him, palms up. It takes him a moment to wrangle his still gangly limbs into the unfamiliar position, but then he reaches out his hands, and she takes them, a physical anchor for the spiritual.
“Close your eyes,” she murmurs as the ship’s engines downcycle in preparation for the hyperspace jump.
Then she reaches out for the Force. It’s slippery, distant, and dark around the edges, just as it has been for all her years on Tatooine. Darker, perhaps, up here, as if the Dark has sunk itself into every ridge of the galaxy and nestled itself between the stars. She can only just touch it, but somehow it is enough. Luke catches hold of it and sinks deep into the rippling currents of the Force, and pulls her with him.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour, they sit still on the deck plating, paired lights shining in the Force, both learning and both teaching. Even when the engines rev and the ship shoots to lightspeed with a worryingly creaking groan, they don’t move. He is a natural, she thinks, as she hears Solo’s footsteps coming down the hallway from the cockpit and raises him from the trance by gently taking her hands away. A new Jedi for a new age.
She looks down at her boots and quickly wipes a tear from her cheek as Solo enters. Luke scrambles hastily to his feet when he sees him, and Siri smiles, just faintly. Well, no doubt he has talent, but he is still whiny, impetuous, and proud. In other words, he is still nineteen. No matter, she thinks, he will mature.
A moment later, there is a roar from down the hallway, and Solo, who had no doubt been about to open his big mouth, suddenly hurries out the door.
“What is it?” Luke asks, peering after the other man.
She shrugs nonchalantly, rising to her feet. “Something broke, probably.” She nods at the lightsaber he had clipped at his hip. “Do you want to learn how to use that.”
Luke’s face lights up.
There are ghosts on this space station, and they are not just the ghosts of unlucky prisoners down in the detention blocks. Alderaan is a sinkhole in the Force, a bloody black pit that seems to suck at the space around it, and the Dark is screaming. It’s deafening. She slips around another corner and hides herself in an alcove, slumping back against the cold metal grating of the wall and trying to remember how to breathe. This is what she imagines the temple must feel like now, cold corridors filled with half muted screams, except that perhaps the Death Star isn’t quite so bad. It is only adjacent to the profane, not the profane itself.
Ultimately, she reaches the power terminal without being detected because years on years of stealth training and some conveniently placed ventilation shafts allowed her to avoid the most well patrolled corridors. The room is blessedly empty when she drops lightly from one of the air grates onto the catwalk below, but she still bites her lip to keep from huffing out a breath of pain when she rises from her crouch and her knees protest. Perhaps, she thinks mildly, this is a job for the young, for the next generation, for Luke and the princess he is running towards. As she slips behind the main column that holds the switches, a compliment of stormtroopers enters from one of the large doors at the end of the room and continues through, except for the pair left as guards.
These stormtroopers are nothing like their clone predecessors. One of them lounges against the doorframe while the other peers around anxiously.
“What do you think’s going on?” the slouching one asks as Siri grabs one of the power gauges and pulls it down.
“Maybe it’s a drill,” the other says. “It’s probably a drill.”
The other sighs, which comes through his helmet mike as a rush of static. “So, have you seen that new BT-16?”
“Not yet,” the trooper sounds dejected. “Some of the other guys were talking about it. It sounds like it’s quite a thing to see.”
Siri finishes with the other two power gauges, thinking that yes, a two meter tall spider droid with spiked legs and a repeating blaster canon would definitely be something and that she profoundly hopes that she never has to see it. She takes a risk and prods at an empty storage container around the corner with the Force. It thumps, and the troopers turn towards the sound.
“What was that?” the more alert one asks.
“Probably nothing,” the other replies as Siri slips through one of the other doors and back out into the corridors.
The pulse and hiss of the Dark is worse when necessity forces her to open her senses a little more and try to grasp for the Force. She is running down the last few corridors, the hanger bay just ahead, stopping only to flatten herself against a wall whenever another group of stormtroopers hustles by. It seems that her young friends have abandoned all pretense of stealth, and now the station is swarming with stormtroopers running down the corridors shouting things like, “They may be splitting up,” or, “We think they may be on levels five and six now.” It’s useful information, only in that it tells her that they had ignored her one rule (“Be quiet about it,” she had said to Luke, her eyes boring into his. “Do whatever you have to, but be quiet.”) and that she is going to have to have strong words with Solo and Skywalker when this is all over.
Or not, she thinks as her blood runs cold and her saber jumps off her belt and into her hand, an old reflex. She turns around and yes, there he is with his hood pulled up, shadowing his face, and his already ignited lightsaber in his hand. The clack of trooper boots is fading into the distance, so that the only sound in the corridor is the hum of his saber and the faint whisper of cloth as he pushes his hood back.
“Master Tachi,” he says, and there is more emotion in his eyes than Siri has seen there since they were padawans together. She just wishes that the emotion wasn’t hatred. “We’ve known each other for so long. Surely we can resolve this without any unpleasantness.”
She looks down at his saber, the glow of which is hollowing his cheekbones out and giving his face a skeletal look.
“Somehow, I doubt it,” she replies and ignites her own saber.
He smiles then, that little quirk of his lips that she used to love, the one that says that he is about to do something risky and flashy, and then he strikes, and she realizes that she is quite possibly outmatched. He is fast and strong, and his style is not what it used to be. That style she had known so well that she could practically anticipate his moves, but this is different, wilder, darker, like everything else about him. Oh, it’s still as sharp and precise as a razor’s edge, but every time he swings his blade, she feels like the air around it rips and sucks at her, and it feels like blood in her eyes or mud sucking at her feet. He swings again and locks their blades together, their faces inches apart and he’s snarling and all she can think is that she is too old and too slow and that Luke is going to be left utterly alone. He bears down on her with his blade, bringing her to her knees, only just barely keeping his blade away from her skin.
“We’re a little old for this, Siri,” he says, mocking, as she senses Luke entering the hanger.
She bares her teeth at him and doesn’t bother to reply, instead calling with difficulty on the Force to shove the blades up so she can plant a foot solidly in his stomach. He stumbles back with a gasp, and she rolls away, wondering how long it’s been since someone landed a hit on him. They square off, and he has naked anger on his face now. And in that moment, the Force unfolds for her like a flower, glimmering, bright, and she can see into the very heart of it.
“You can’t win,” she says as she settles into a familiar neutral guard, the Force burning in her heart and down through her veins just like it used to. “It doesn’t matter if you drive that blade through my heart, you can’t win anymore.”
That’s exactly what he does, with such a force that it drives the blade through to the hilt. Her saber falls from her nerveless hand, skittering on the deck plates, and she wishes that she could touch him with gentleness or with compassion, that she could scrape some of the Dark off his skin. But the Force is embracing her, and Luke is screaming, and now she is screaming back.
“Run, Luke! Run now.”