Chapter Seventeen—Part 1

Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

A Father to His Son (Lines 22-27) by Carl Sandburg

Luke leans low over the handle bars of his swoop bike, urging it even faster as he flies full speed through Beggar's Canyon. Approaching a curve up ahead, he throws his weight to the right, banking the bike along the ravine's walls without decreasing his speed. He lets out a whoop of elation as he turns another corner into a narrowest section of the Canyon that was only about three times as wide as his bike. He banks again, too close, and Luke gasps as he skins his right knee against the rough sandstone.

He does not stop or slow down, letting the pain in his knee echo the pain in his heart.

Three days ago, his best friends Janek and Biggs had left together to join the Imperial Academy and become Imperial pilots. Nothing Luke had said would convince them not to go. They were nineteen and were done with Tatooine. To make everything worse, he had just found out today from Laze that Camie had said yes when he had asked her out again. It has been over a year since Luke realized that he liked the girl he had grown up with. He has not been able to work up the courage to ask her out and now it was too late.

His dad will be angry with him when he gets home. He is supposed to come straight home after work and his dad had recently forbidden him from going to Beggar's Canyon after a boy from Dannar's Claim was wounded by Sand people while racing his Skyhopper. But Luke needed to get away. Racing his swoop bike was the one thing that made him feel like all his worries would melt way. Something about the wind in his hair, the adrenalin surge and his hammering heart made Luke feel free.

The narrow canyon opens up into a broad gorge. There, in its center, was the Stone Needle. The rock formation was a tall stone tower over 18 meters from the canyon floor with a sixty meter wide ring on top. Luke increases his speed heading toward it intending to "thread" it. The loop, lined with jagged rock teeth, was just large enough to allow small repulsorcraft to pass through. Luke has managed this plenty of times before with Bigg's T-16 Skyhopper. Attempting the dangerous stunt with his much smaller swoop bike was tame enough that even his dad would not object to it.

Probably. Luke did not intend to tell him about it, in any case.

He flicks a switch on the left handlebar to allow him to increase in altitude. The swoop rises from a meter above the canyon floor to three meters with a stomach jolting lurch. Luke is five meters up and going nearly 200 kilometers an hour when the Force screams a warning at him. He jerks the swoop violently to the right and the machine bucks wildly beneath him. He manages to regain control of the still shaking bike when he hears the familiar crack of a projectile weapon echoing against the walls of the gorge.

His bike stutters and the turbothruster stalls, sending him spinning. It's all Luke can do to keep from vomiting when he hears another shot ring through the canyon. To his horror, the repulsorlift engine cuts out and he has a brief moment of pure terror before his bike plunges downward to the boulder strewn floor of the canyon. In desperation, Luke leaps away from the swoop, back flipping in midair, calling on the Force to slow his descent as he had practiced with his dad.

It is not enough.

He lands hard, on his feet and as he stumbles his left ankle gives out, rolling outward. Luke feels another surge of terror as he hears another loud crack. There is a bewildering moment as he crumples to the ground where he wonders if he's been shot. Then the pain hits and Luke realizes the sound he heard was his ankle breaking. Sharp waves of agony pulse up his leg and he can do nothing for serval long moments but lay on his side in the burning sand and gravel. Gritting his teeth, Luke rolls onto his stomach and crawls, slowly, dragging his broken leg behind him.

He finally collapses under a large boulder with a small overhang that he hopes will shield him from his attacker and the heat of the suns. Luke awkwardly maneuvers himself into a sitting position, swearing under his breath. He gets a good look at his leg, with his ankle lying against the buff sandstone, flopping at an unnatural angle. He cannot help but cry out as he pries of his boot to find his ankle swollen twice its usual size. Panting and in excruciating pain, Luke realizes how thirsty he is. His canteen is somewhere in the wreckage of his bike.

It is an hour until sunset, he cannot walk and someone is shooting at him out there. Dad help me!