LEGACY
I originally wrote this in 1999 after The Phantom Menace first came out. Obi-Wan really blew me away and changed my entire perception of the classic trilogy.
A lot of what I wrote was contradicted by Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, so I revised it last summer (2005) after seeing ROTS. I only just recently discovered I still had an account on ffdn, so I'm only getting around to posting now.
Disclaimer: I own none of this, it's all been borrowed from Uncle George's universe. Even the plot isn't mine; only the interpretation of Obi-Wan's reactions to the plot are. It's just one of many possible takes on what might have been going on his head during the events of ANH. Your mileage may vary.
Spoilers: ANH, TPM, AOTC, ROTS, parts of "Hammerhead's Tale" and "A Spacer's Tale" from Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, and some minor details from Labyrinth of Evil and the Jedi Apprentice books, particularly #2, #4, and #5, and The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission. Also the brilliant ROTS novelization by Matthew Stover, which may be the best movie novelization of all time. Read it if you haven't already.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to all the people who helped me with original research in 1999, especially to Beth and Paula, who pointed me towards important passages in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, to Ghitsa and Yav who helped me thrash out the final scene, and to Marty, who found a map of Tatooine that was indispensable to the first three chapters. I'm also greatly indebted to whoever made that brilliant map of the GFFA in R.A. Salvatore's book, Vector Prime. Made my life so much easier (I love maps, can you tell?) Most importantly, a huge thanks to Yav, who not only beta-tested the original, but the revision as well. She also put up with my constant barrage of queries during the writing process and let me bounce ideas off of her. If she hadn't pointed out the huge communications array seen outside of Ben's home in the Special Edition, the first two chapters would have been completely different. By the way, Yav, ghost slash is still sick and wrong, but I'm not above leaving it open to… certain points of view. :VEG:
And most of all, it's All. About. Obi-Wan.
I
I am twenty-five again. I am Obi-Wan Kenobi, young, strong, cocky; a Jedi Padawan fighting at my Master's side. It is the Battle of Naboo and we are fighting a Sith Lord, Darth Maul, in the power station inside the Great Temple in Theed.
I can feel the Force flowing through me, connecting me to Master Qui-Gon, but it is not enough. Maul knocks me off the catwalk and I land several levels below. Now I have to play catch-up as Qui-Gon continues the battle alone. He presses Maul towards the corridor, the one with the cycling barriers. I leap up to join them and run as fast as I can, but am caught between the first and second barriers, several sections away from Qui-Gon and Maul. As Qui-Gon kneels and mediates, I shut down my lightsaber and concentrate. This time I will run fast enough. This time I will make it in time...
The barrier cycles off and I spring forward, but it as if I am stuck in molasses. I can barely move my legs forward. Centimeter by painful centimeter I trudge forward, trying to get free, trying to move quickly. The corridor stretches out before me, endless, and Qui-Gon and Maul seem kilometers away. But the barriers miraculously remain open. Finally I am in the last section. This time I will make it! I have to make it!
THUD! The final barrier slams shut before me, and I watch in frustration and horror as Maul wears down my Master. A butt to the chin, then a back-hand thrust with his double-edged saber and Qui-Gon is down.
"Noooooooo!" I scream, my rage and grief pouring out in one long cry. Maul then turns his attention to me and taunts me, waiting for the barrier to cycle off again so he can finish me off as well. I take a deep breath and try to focus on the Force. I look down to gather myself and see my hands gripping the handle of my lightsaber. They are creased and spotted with age. Fear and confusion squeeze my heart as I reach for my face with one hand, my other hand still gripping my lightsaber. My face feels weathered and worn and my chin is covered with a beard.
Then I hear the breathing.
The Force becomes ice cold around me as a dark presence fills me, at once both achingly familiar and as foreign as rain on Tatooine. I look up and it is not Darth Maul's red and black tattooed face I see, but the gleaming ebony helmet of Darth Vader. No longer am I the Padawan, I am now the Master, and it is my own Padawan who waits for me. Waits to kill me.
The surroundings have changed as well. I realize we are no longer above the melting pit in the Naboo power station and I expect to instead smell the burning sulfur and feel the oppressive heat from the lava of the volcanic planet Mustafar. Mustafar, where we dueled for the last time, the only time not as partners but as enemies. Mustafar, where Anakin Skywalker died. Mustafar, where Darth Vader was born. But this cannot be Mustafar, either, because I am unbearably cold. Instead, we are somewhere I do not recognize. Vader is standing in a long, curved hallway of dark, polished metal. An Imperial ship, most likely. But I no longer have time to wonder at the change... the barrier is off and I am face to face with my former apprentice.
I am no longer twenty-five. I am not Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi; I am Ben Kenobi, foolish old hermit. Though my connection with the Force is as strong as ever, my physical body cannot move like it once did. I should be an easy target for Vader, even with all his mechanical parts. But he is toying with me, savoring the game like a womp-rat with its trapped prey. Relishing every moment until he finally strikes, a lateral movement across my midsection. The same blow I'm supposed to be using to kill Darth Maul.
As he strikes, I am not aware of the lightsaber going through me. I am only aware of one thing: the sound of a scream, an echo of my own cry when Qui-Gon fell. There, in the corridor behind the laser barrier where I watched Darth Maul bring down my Master, stands a young man dressed in farmer's clothes, crying out in anguish as I fall...
I woke up with a start, my heart pounding and my bedclothes soaked through with sweat.
A dream, I told myself. It was only a dream.
I sat up, took a deep breath, and ran through a quick Jedi calming exercise until my heart stopped pounding. When I felt at peace again, I opened my eyes then got up, grabbed my somewhat tattered brown robe from the back of a nearby chair, and wrapped myself in its comforting and familiar warmth. Looking out the window, I could see that the sky was just beginning to turn pink; Tatoo I was not yet visible over the horizon and the air in my home was still brisk from the cold desert night. Shivering, even wrapped in my robe, I made my way to the kitchen and put a kettle on the stove to make some tea. It was not the chill in the air, however, that made me feel so cold, I realized. Rather, it was the remnants of my dream, of the dark cold presence of my former apprentice. I knew there was no point in trying to go back to sleep.
It was only a dream.
I have never been one to be overly concerned with dreams. Although I know they can be a medium through which the Force shows us the future, I also know the future is always in motion and dreams can mislead. They also can be nothing more than the fevered worry of an old man. But this dream... I'd had the exact same dream for the past five straight nights and it troubled me. Not only because of the dream itself, but because for those same five nights I sensed something, a disturbance in the Force. Something that tied all of us together: myself, Qui-Gon, Vader... and Luke.
I have a bad feeling about this.
That in and of itself bothered me. Luke Skywalker was eighteen and the time for his training was at hand, of that I was certain. This, then, should be a time of great relief for me, to at last begin my final mission, to take on my last Padawan. Then again, look what became of my first.
Perhaps for the first time in my life, I fully understood why Qui-Gon Jinn was so reluctant to take me on as his apprentice all those many years ago. Before me, he too had failed a Padawan and lost him to the dark side. Had the thought of taking on the responsibility of another young man's journey into the Force filled him with as much sheer terror as it did me? One lost student is enough for any Jedi's lifetime--and oh the student I lost! I could understand Qui-Gon's reluctance, but the stakes were much higher now. Then there were thousands of Jedi, more than enough to deal with a few lost to the dark side. Now, to the best of my knowledge, there remained only two living Jedi, and the dark side had full reign. To lose Luke would be to lose our last hope. I could not fail him the way I failed Anakin. Whereas Qui-Gon had feared losing another Padawan, I feared losing the entire galaxy.
Sighing, I pulled my cloak tighter around me. This sort of fatalistic thinking was doing no one any good. My kettle had come to boil, so I quickly made myself some tea, then decided to drink it out on the front steps. Tatoo I had just shown itself above the horizon and Tatoo II would not be far behind, so perhaps I could warm myself outside. I shook my head, chiding myself at this thought. In an hour I'd be desperately wishing for relief from the heat. Foolish old man. Nevertheless, I did go outside and sat in the early morning light, sipping my tea and mulling over my future. Luke's future.
It had been more than eighteen years since Luke and I first came to Tatooine: Luke as an infant to be cared for by Anakin's stepbrother Owen and his wife Beru, myself as a defeated old man. I snorted at that: I had been only thirty-eight then, hardly old. But I had felt ancient, even then. A self-deposed Jedi Knight, I was one of only a very few to survive Order Sixty-Six: the Jedi Purge. Plagued both by survivor's guilt and the more specific responsibility of having failed to adequately train the Jedi who would lead the Clone Troopers in the march on the Temple and personally slaughter padawans and younglings, those too young and inexperienced to be offworld fighting in the wars, I had already bent and worn with grief when I arrived here. Tatooine, then, was my penance. Even then I had known that I would spend most of the rest of my life here, watching and waiting.
I would have liked to have cared for Luke myself. He was all I had left of the man I'd loved as both a brother and a son, but Luke belonged with a real family. My failure to Anakin was still an open wound and Luke needed a more nurturing home than I could provide. Besides, it was too dangerous. If Anakin decided to seek me out and found me with a young child, he would have known the truth—his son lived. So instead I watched Luke from afar as Owen and Beru raised him. Even from a distance, however, I felt as if I'd formed a bond of sorts with the boy. I cheered on his accomplishments, I suffered with him through his disappointments, and was incredibly proud of the fine young man he'd become. Though headstrong and impatient (qualities I knew all too well; the words had often been used to describe me), he had an incredibly noble spirit and a thirst for justice, and I believed these combined with his innate—if largely untapped— sense of the Force would make him a powerful Jedi. Of course, all of these same traits could also be attributed to Anakin, at least the Anakin I had known and loved. The only difference between them would lie in their chosen paths. Anakin chose the dark path; I could only hope that Luke would choose better, and that I would be a more discerning guide to him than I was to his father.
It was difficult to be any sort of guide at all, however, while Owen stood between us. He would have preferred it if I didn't even reside in the same system with Luke and wouldn't allow me to teach him even the most rudimental aspects of the Force. Not that I could blame him. Although he was smart enough to discount the Emperor's story of the Jedi rebellion, we had lost the trust of most beings in the galaxy. Where once the Jedi and specifically the names Kenobi and Skywalker had been words of comfort, something that helped younglings across the Republic sleep well, secure in the knowledge that all that was wrong could be set right, now the former brought to mind fear and distrust while the latter had been largely forgotten, casualties of the tragic but necessary purge of that treacherous and rebellious sect. While he knew it was all lies and propaganda, Owen was in no hurry to see Luke follow in his father's footsteps, even without knowing the full extent of where those footsteps led. Although to be honest, there were times that I wondered if perhaps Owen didn't suspect the truth about his stepbrother. He had to know about the slaughter of the tribe of Sand People that had kidnapped and killed Anakin's mother and could not doubt who had been responsible. The similarity between the completeness of the massacre there and the one three years later at the Jedi Temple would not be lost on someone as bright as Owen Lars. He had even tried to change Luke's name to Lars, but Beru had not allowed it. Beru believed in family—a lesson the Jedi, to our shame, learned too late—and would want her child to be raised knowing his heritage. I was fairly certain that unlike her husband, Beru didn't suspect Anakin's true fate, but she did know that he had once been a strong and courageous man. Kenobi and Skywalker still lived in her heart and it is what she wanted to teach Luke. Owen, however, told him lies to discourage interest in his father, his heritage. But I knew I could count on Beru to teach Luke the power of family and he remained a Skywalker, and that was all I needed. For the rest, I could be patient.
Of course, allowing Luke even this much of his birthright presented certain challenges as well. There was always the danger that he would be discovered, although I was convinced he was safe here on Tatooine, the planet where Anakin had lived as a slave and had lost his mother. As such, it was the one place I believed he would never visit again, although as Luke grew older, protecting him became more of a challenge. Not long ago, Luke had decided that he wanted to attend, of all things, the Imperial Academy. This, of course, would be suicide. The name Skywalker may be able to escape notice in the Outer Rim, but certainly not at the Academy! Owen discouraged him, of course, and it may well be the only time Owen and I have ever agreed on anything concerning Luke, although I'm sure Owen wouldn't want him to go to the Academy regardless of his name. Owen discouraged anything that might possibly entail Luke "getting involved," as he put it. So he gave they boy excuse after excuse to keep him on the farm. I knew it wouldn't last; I think Beru knew it too. The day would come when Luke would insist. That is when I would have to intervene. Luke would not go to the Academy; he would come to me. And this Owen fought with every ounce of strength he had.
I leaned back on the doorjamb and stroked my beard idly while gazing up into the cloudless morning sky. Owen's resistance notwithstanding, the time was very near. Soon I would have my chance to atone for my failures--or to compound them. I shivered and retreated even further into the folds of my cloak.
Just then, an odd flash of light caught my attention, high in the sky to the northwest, over the Dune Sea. It was hard to see, barely visible now that both suns had completely risen, but then I saw it again, a green streak that looked for all the galaxy like laser fire from a ship in orbit. That in itself was not odd— though a small, Outer Rim world, Tatooine was situated along the Corellian Trade Run and was therefore a perfect haven for smugglers, bounty hunters, and other lawless types who were wont to fire at each other with only the slightest provocation. What was strange was that I could see the laser fire in the daytime; the two rising suns should have completely masked it. A ship would have to have quite a lot of firepower for its laser batteries to be visible from the ground in the daytime. Frowning, I rose and went inside to my workbench. After a bit of rummaging, I found what I was looking for: a pair of macrobinoculars. I quickly went back outside and trained the binoculars on the place where I thought I had seen the flashes. After a bit of searching, I found what I was looking for: streaks of green light between two silvery specks in the sky. Or more accurately, one speck and one more elongated shape, like a drop of water that had started to run down a window pane.
Frowning, I lowered the binocs. The second ship, the elongated one, must be enormous to be so easily seen with nothing more powerful than macro-binoculars. Much bigger than any ship a pirate or smuggler would have. It could be only one thing: an Imperial warship. A cruiser, or maybe even a Star Destroyer.
Again I shivered. What would an Imperial warship be doing over Tatooine? It was true enough that the planet was officially Imperial territory, but only a small contingent of troops were ever kept here and the Empire very rarely bothered to even try to maintain order. For the most part, the Hutts still controlled the planet, just as they had in the days of the Old Republic. So what, then, could be important enough to bring a large Imperial warship here? And what was it shooting at?
Before long the shooting stopped. Whatever the Imperials had been chasing was either dead or captured, no doubt. Once more I drew my robe tightly around me, suddenly feeling even colder—and just why was I so cold anyway? By now, with both suns shining brightly I should be sweating! Why was that dream still affecting me? Even as troubling as this particular dream was, never had its affects lasted so far into the morning.
It was then that I realized the truth, and my blood turned to ice and my lungs felt as if I had breathed in a ground glass. The cold was not from within, a remnant from my dream; it was outside of me. A presence in the Force.
Only with great effort did I restrain myself from jumping up and reaching into my belt for my lightsaber, which would have been a foolish move indeed considering I hadn't even put on my belt yet, let alone my lightsaber. Instead, I gripped my tea mug tightly and ran through a whole series of calming exercises, which were only marginally effective and could not stop my mind from racing through possibilities.
Anakin. Here on that ship, orbiting Tatooine. Tatooine!
No, not Anakin—Vader. Anakin is dead.
Had he discovered me at last? Had he come to finish the job he hadn't been quite skilled enough to complete two decades ago? Or worse—and now I really begun to panic—had he somehow discovered Luke? Had the boy gone behind Owen's back, sent in an application to the Academy after all?
STOP! I ordered myself firmly and went through the calming exercises once more. Panicking was the worst thing I could do. The ship was in orbit, not on the planet, and Vader's presence was too distant to be coming from dirtside. He could be here for any number of reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with either me or the boy, but if I continued to radiate fear, he would find me. If I could sense him, surely he could sense me. If he were otherwise occupied, however, focused on whomever he had just killed or captured, then he could easily miss me--if I stayed calm. I drew in the Force, wrapping it around me the same way I would my robe, letting it shroud me, conceal me, make me a small, unremarkable presence. It silenced my anxieties, and in the resulting stillness, I could still feel his presence, a dark stain in the living Force, but it was small and distant. Definitely no closer than orbit.
Moving slowly, as if even my the smallest physical movement would cause ripples in the Force that he would sense, I rose from the stoop, my bones crackling in protest. I'm getting too old for this, I thought wearily, then chastised myself for the thought. At fifty-six I should not be this old. When Qui-Gon was fifty-six he had been in the prime of his life. I should never have allowed grief and isolation to age me the way it had. Pushing the thought resolutely from my mind, I went inside and headed for a small room located behind my bedroom. In a house that was very purposefully furnished and equipped with only the most ancient and worn items, this was the one room where everything was modern and completely state-of-the-art. My communications room.
Most of the moisture farmers near Anchorhead assumed I lived out at the edge of the Dune Sea because I was a hermit, a crazy old sorcerer who longed for the days of old when he was young and skillful and could work his magic. Even Owen thought I stayed so far from civilization to atone for my past failures. In truth, he was partly right, but that was not the main reason I chose to isolate myself sandwiched between the Dune Sea and the Jundland Wastes. The main reason was because out here I could easily escape Imperial scrutiny. The Imperial presence, such as it was on Tatooine, was all concentrated in the larger cities. Bestine, Mos Eisley—places with spaceports mostly. Occasionally some bureaucrat would send a stormtrooper or two into Anchorhead just for the fun of terrorizing the locals. But rarely, if ever, did they venture out into the Wastes or the Dune Sea. Those areas were largely the realm of beings such as Tusken Raiders, Jawas, or even the Hutts. So when crazy old Ben Kenobi made his home among the likes of these, the humans wrote him off. Which is why no one noticed when about ten years after my arrival on Tatooine, I erected a huge communications array outside my home, complete with interstellar and holographic capabilities. From here I could monitor everything from politics on Coruscant—Imperial Center, I corrected myself with a grimace—to the latest holovid debut on Corellia. For a hermit, I was quite well informed.
Working quickly, I turned on the receivers and scanned all the frequencies ships in space would use to communicate with each other and with the planet below, hoping to ascertain what the two ships were about, but the airwaves were remarkably silent. Whatever that smaller ship was, the Imperials were not interested in communicating with her, only killing or capturing her, which they may well already have accomplished. Finding nothing helpful on the transmitter, I went back outside and brought the macrobinoculars to my eyes once more. The two ships were still there, but the shooting had definitely stopped, which meant, as I suspected, that the Imperials had either killed or captured their prey. In fact, the smaller speck did look like it was considerably closer to the big speck than it had previously. Caught in a tractor beam, I surmised. But why here? And more importantly, why Vader?What could be important enough in this system to attract any Imperial's attention, let alone the second in command of the entire Empire? Surely Darth Vader had better things to do then to chase after the kinds of criminals that frequented the hyperspace lanes around Tatooine.
Then a thought occurred to me. What if that was a slave ship? That would be enough to get Vader's attention.
Although the Empire officially supported slavery, even subjugated entire races like Wookiees and Mon Calamari to slavery, I knew that Vader loathed the practice, perhaps even more than he loathed the Jedi or even me. If that ship was smuggling slaves, maybe even human slaves, which was illegal in the Empire, then perhaps that was something that would interest Vader enough to bring him all the way out to Tatooine. It would be fitting, even, since slavery and Tatooine would be forever linked in his mind.
At least I hoped it was something that simple—and that much removed from Luke.
For most of the morning I alternated between watching the sky and listening for communications from the ship, neither of which proved very enlightening. At one point I did catch an outbound holo transmission—likely a report back to some commander elsewhere, or maybe even the Emperor himself—but it was heavily coded and I could determine neither the content nor the recipient. I recorded the transmission and saved it for later, hoping that with a little time my slicing skills would be up to the task of deciphering the code. That accomplished, I went back outside for another look through the macrobinoculars.
I had just stepped out of the doorway when light and warmth so suddenly flowed into me it almost took my breath away. It was as if I had been frozen in carbonite and was now being set free. The dark stain on the Force that had held me in its grip for most of the morning was gone. I looked up sharply and searched the sky with my macrobinoculars. The ships were gone. He was gone, and I could once again feel the twin suns beating down on my dark robe, already making me feel uncomfortably warm.
"Slaves," I mumbled to myself, my voice cracking slightly in the dry desert air. "He must have been hunting slavers." He had what he was after and wouldn't be back.
But I was not convinced; I could still feel that disturbance in the Force. It was no longer colored by Vader's presence, but something still was not right and I couldn't just leave it alone and hope that it was just something as innocuous as the arrest of slavers. If Vader had come here, I had to know why.
I went back inside to my communications bench and scanned through recordings I had made of all the channels. This time I did pick up something, two transmissions in fact. The first was a communication between the ship in orbit and the Imperial capital in Bestine township. It, too was coded, but not nearly as heavily as the previous message had been and I was able to decrypt enough of it to determine that the Imperials were sending a detachment down to the planet and that the local authorities were to give them free reign to conduct their business. The second was another outbound hyperspace transmission: a distress call, uncoded, ostensibly from the small ship that had been captured. According to the message, the ship was the Tantive IV, a consular ship from Alderaan, which had fallen under attack by pirates and was on the verge of being destroyed.
Tantive IV? Why did that name sound familiar?
Trying to remember where I'd heard of the ship before, I listened with great curiosity to the message again. It ended abruptly, as if the sender had been cut off suddenly. Leaning back, I stroked my beard thoughtfully. Obviously the distress call was a fake, probably sent by the Imperials to mask the fact that they had attacked a diplomatic ship. But what was an Alderaanian consular ship doing over Tatooine?
Then it hit me. Alderaan! The Tantive IV was Bail Organa's ship! The very vessel that had rescued Yoda and me after Order Sixty-Six. Bail Organa's ship had been captured above Tatooine!
But that made no sense. While it was true that it was a pretty direct route between Tatooine and Alderaan, a consular ship from a Core World wouldn't be so far out along the Outer Rim, particularly not Bail Organa's personal ship. Bail knew Luke and I were here and avoided Tatooine like Hutts avoid a bath. Then there was the other message, the one sent to Bestine. They were intensifying their ground presence, which meant that the Tantive IV had been carrying something or someone vital and despite its capture, the Imperials were far from secure. Something was going on that was not only important enough to bring Bail within a light-year of Tatooine, but a big enough threat to the Empire to attract Darth Vader's attention as well, and I had to know what it was. Bail Organa and Darth Vader together in close proximity to Luke was a decidedly disturbing turn of events.
When I finally decided I would learn nothing more of value monitoring the Imperials' transmissions, I made sure my recorder was on so I could check for communications later, then started to get up with the intention of going into Mos Eisley to see what I could pick up from the local rumor mill. But as my gaze came upon the interstellar transmitter, I paused. Whatever was going on, it was something I should not keep to myself. Yoda would want to know about this, especially if it involved Bail Organa and Vader both. Still, I hesitated. When we had first exiled ourselves, me to Tatooine and him to Dagobah, Yoda and I had been very careful about never contacting each other. After a few years, however, it became vital for us to communicate so that we could plan together the best course of action for Luke and Leia's future. At first we'd been very furtive, using Qui-Gon's spirit to relay messages to each other, then grew more bold and both rented mailboxes with a text message service run out of Sullust. Eventually, as the Emperor wrote off Yoda for dead and Vader gave up looking for me, we were able to each set up a more direct communications system in our respective homes, although Yoda's was far more modest than mine as he was able to keep in touch with events through the Force better than I and really only needed his to speak directly to me. Now I routinely sent transmissions to him without concern—coded of course, and relayed through a dozen systems to make both the source and target locations very difficult to trace, but even that was practically unnecessary as no one ever even bothered to intercept the messages. But with a new Imperial presence on the planet, I couldn't be sure that they weren't doing a more thorough job of monitoring extra-planetary communications. Even if Vader had been here for some reason that was completely benign to my purposes, it wouldn't do to call attention to myself. After taking a moment to weigh the pros and cons, I decided to wait until I could learn more about the Imperials' reasons for being here. Then, when I could ascertain the safety of such a call, I could make a report to Yoda.
My course of action decided, I quickly washed up, dressed, then removed my lightsaber from the table by my bed and clipped it to my belt. Despite my desire to portray myself as a harmless old man, I never went anywhere without my lightsaber. It was one of the last things I had to connect me with my past, with my own heritage as a Jedi, and I refused to be unprepared. Besides, with the Jedi all but extinct, most people wouldn't recognize a lightsaber if they saw one, or if they did they would regard it as merely an old relic from a time long past. Just another indication that the sad, pathetic old hermit couldn't let go of the past.
Another such prop was something I kept behind my house under an old Bantha wool tarp: an old, decrepit-looking landspeeder. I used to use an eopie for travel as I vastly preferred live mounts to machines despite my proficiency with the latter, but at some point it just became too cumbersome to get around without a speeder. However, I wanted to maintain my appearance of a somewhat doddering and senseless hermit, so I made sure my speeder looked to be the most decaying piece of useless refuse on the planet. Covered in rust from front to rear and listing precariously to one side whenever I climbed into the driver's seat, my speeder was something even Jawas disdained. Most of the farmers were surprised every time I actually made it all the way into Anchorhead without breaking down . They would have been shocked to discover that not only could this speeder easily make the trip to Anchorhead, it quite frequently carried me all the way to Motesta, Arnthout, Mos Eisley, or even Bestine and back without so much as straining the repulsors. Like my communications array, my landspeeder was actually quite modern and well-built. A hot rod in a deceptively old and weathered package. It amused me to think of it as an analogy for myself. Well, maybe not completely—I wasn't likely to be doing any back flips like I could when I was in my twenties and thirties, but at least my mechanical skills hadn't suffered over the years.
The journey to Mos Eisley from my house was a long one. I briefly considered making the much shorter trip to Anchorhead, the small farming community near which Owen's moisture farm was located, but I decided there would be little I could learn from there. It was a small town, little more than a trading post for the nearby moisture farmers, and it had very little in the way of off-planet communications and no spaceport at all. If I had any hope of learning what the Imperials were doing here, I had to go to Mos Eisley, even if it meant taking the entire day to do so.
Mos Eisley, though a thriving metropolis by Tatooine standards, was really little more than one giant spaceport. Northeast of my home and about twice as far away as Anchorhead, it sat on the far edge of the Jundland Wastes in a wide valley and was the major port of entry for most of this part of the planet. It was populated by almost every species known in the galaxy and much of that population made their living through less than legal means. Pirates, smugglers, and gangsters abounded and the Hutts still controlled most of the city, if not the planet. Mos Eisley was living proof that the Emperor's "New Order" did not eradicate crime and depravity nor create the much-vaunted galactic-wide security the propaganda would have you believe. That was the city's one saving grace; still, there was no place in the galaxy I despised as much as I did Mos Eisley.
Then again, that was pretty much the Wookiee calling the bantha furry, wasn't it? As a Jedi Knight, or a former Jedi Knight anyway, I was every bit as much a criminal as the most despicable gangster. More so, actually, in the eyes of the Empire. This is why, despite my distaste for the city, Mos Eisley was a perfect place for me and I had had many occasions to visit there in the past, especially when I needed supplies or information that would not be in keeping with my life as a "hermit." In Anchorhead you could not use the refresher without everyone else knowing about it; in Mos Eisley you could kill a being in broad daylight without so much as a blink from passers by.
As I approached the spaceport city from the south, I kept alert for signs of an increased Imperial presence and was surprised to find that there seemed to be no more stormtroopers than usual. It seemed unlikely that they hadn't arrived yet; surely the travel time on a shuttle from orbit would be much smaller than the time it would take my speeder to traverse the Jundland Wastes. So then where were they? Were they simply keeping a low profile so as to not alarm the locals (unlikely since Mos Eisley locals were not easily alarmed) or had they simply gone elsewhere? That thought made me very uncomfortable, since "elsewhere" included Anchorhead and Owen's farm and I wanted the Imperials, especially stormtroopers, descendants of the clone troopers that carried out Order Sixty-Six, as far away from Luke Skywalker as possible.
As I pulled into town, I headed straight for Chalmun's Cantina, an absolutely wretched hovel of a place that was one of Mos Eisley's most popular taverns for the simple fact that it was a wretched hovel of a place. If there was contraband to be bought, information to be had, or "business" to be conducted, it could usually be found at Chalmun's. It was also a wonderful place to get killed; you could always count on someone getting into a brawl and as often as not, a patron or two ended up dead on the floor or slumped over a table before each night was over. On the upside, it was one of the few places not Hutt-owned—Chalmun was a Wookiee, a species renowned for their honor and integrity and with a long enough lifespan that most of them remembered the Jedi fondly—so at least the cantina itself was above board, even if most of its patrons were not.
I parked my ancient-looking speeder outside the cantina and slipped quietly into its dark interior. It was a slow afternoon for Chalmun's and I easily found an empty table at the edge of the room where I would not call attention to myself. Thought not a regular by any stretch of the imagination, I was familiar enough with this cantina and others like it to know how to blend into the background here. From my corner table I could watch the other patrons for hours—as long as I kept purchasing drinks, of course—and with the aid of the Force, listen in on many of their conversations. I was sure that if I sat long enough I would hear someone talking about the capture in orbit. If I was very fortunate, it might even be someone from whom I could buy further information.
A Twi'lek waitress came over and took my drink order. Though she looked familiar to me, if she recognized me from previous visits, she gave no indication. Not surprising; Chalmun's was no friendly corner pub. The Twi'lek returned in short order with my first drink and I leaned back in my seat and settled in for a long stay.
The suns had long since set when I finally exited the cantina and headed back to my speeder. As I had suspected, it had been a long, boring day, but I was satisfied that I had as much information as could be gleaned from non-official channels in Mos Eisley.
Apparently the Imperial ship I had seen was a Star Destroyer, which were huge warships sixteen hundred meters in length boasting more than one hundred weapons emplacements. This was not too surprising as Vader would likely have nothing less for his flagship. The Tantive IV, on the other hand, was a Corellian corvette, a notoriously versatile ship often modified to serve purposes that ranged from troop carriers to passage liners. Corvettes were usually chosen for transport when there was a need for quick exits into hyperspace because they had navicomputers capable of very fast calculations for hyperspace jumps, which is probably why Bail Organa, an early critic of both the Clone Wars and Chancellor Palpatine himself, chose it for his personal travel in the last days of the crumbling Old Republic. Clearly this "consular ship" was up to something much more clandestine than a simple diplomatic mission. Unfortunately, I was not able to ascertain exactly what sort of clandestine purpose, but it was doubtless something to do with the rebellion. The good news was that this theory would not only explain Vader's personal interest in the ship, but also meant it likely had absolutely nothing to do with Luke, which was a huge relief to me. The bad news was that it meant Bail Organa had almost certainly been exposed as a rebel and I still had no idea what could bring either him specifically or the rebellion in general out to Tatooine. I even briefly wondered if he could have come here seeking me, but I discounted that fairly quickly. The very hope of the rebellion rested in Bail's and my separate charges and I could imagine no situation dire enough that he would risk bringing attention to either one of them, at least not without contacting Yoda first, and then I would have heard something. More likely Bail was not involved personally at all but had rather sent his ship on a mission of some sort and it had been waylaid along the Corellian Trade run completely unbeknownst to him.
I also learned that a stormtrooper detachment had indeed landed on the planet, but they had bypassed the city altogether and had landed somewhere west, toward Arnthout. They might have gone to Bestine to make contact with the Imperial garrison there, but my instincts told me that was not the case. The detachment was sent here to search for something. But what? A rebel sympathizer with whom the Tantive IV was supposed to make contact? An escapee from the ship itself? Either possibility was troubling and presented me with a dilemma: should I delve into this matter further to see if I could be of some assistance? I felt somewhat duty-bound to do so because of my allegiance to both the rebellion and Bail Organa and the fact that anyone important enough to have Darth Vader chasing after him or her was someone worth risking my life for. On the other hand, to do so would be to possibly risk exposure and threaten our plans for Luke—plans that were ultimately vital to the cause of the rebellion—or perhaps even bring unwanted attention to the boy himself.
I still had not reached a decision when I arrived home hours later. I fervently wanted to contact Yoda and discuss the matter with him, but I was still nervous about the increased Imperial presence. If they were searching for someone, they would also be monitoring both outbound and incoming communications and I could not afford that kind of scrutiny, neither for myself nor for Yoda. So instead I decided to sleep on the matter. I had to trust the living Force to guide me.
I still had a very bad feeling about this.