Reversal A New Hope
Leia Skywalker, Tattooine farmgirl and newly trained Jedi Knight, follows her Master on a damn fool adventure to rescue Prince Luke Organa.
Luke Organa felt his father's neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing. Considering the size of the hole in the older man's chest, this wasn't surprising. Great. At least the droids had escaped. Maybe they would find the old Jedi Master the Viceroy of Alderaan had been trying to contact. He ducked back into the engine room maze of tight walkways to avoid the white armored stormtroopers who were too big to fit, felt the weight and heft of the pistol in his hand and swore to take a few of the leaders with him. He got the Colonel and the Lieutenant before being subdued by the four unarmored men who managed to make it through to him without being severely injured. The prince had a reputation as a superb hand-to-hand fighter and proved it. After the punishment meted out to the man who mistakenly killed the Viceroy, none of the troopers wanted to take the chance of using a gun and killing the prince, thereby incurring the further wrath of Lord Vader. They broke three ribs and his right arm while rendering him unconscious, not to mention the black eye and numerous bruises that would not show until later, but the medic had him splinted so his wrists could be bound behind his back before he woke up. Once awake, the 20-year-old prince was lifted to his feet and escorted to Lord Vader's presence. He limped on a sprained ankle and was in severe pain, but no one pushed him and he remained on his feet. Eschewing the quick retort, he stood stiff and silent in response to Vader's questioning. The prince forced himself not to react even to Vader's mailed glove lifting him a foot off the deck by the throat, squeezing. His vision was going grey before Vader dropped him. He was roughly pulled back to his feet and escorted to the Star Destroyer detention area to await further questioning.
The double sun beat down on the Tatooine desert as the jawa trawler pulled over the rise to the farm of Owen Lars. The older man strode out to where the jawas were setting out the droids, his 20-year-old niece following after him. After a few moments, a woman's voice could be heard coming from the depressed courtyard.
"Leia, Leia." she called and the girl returned to the edge o fthe courtyard to look down at her aunt.
"Tell Uncle if he gets a translator to make sure it speaks Bocce."
Leia made a face. "It doesn't look like we have much of a choice, but I'll remind him." The girl turned back to her uncle and the jawas. A sunbleached brown braid hung down her back from under her headscarf, flopping as she jogged back to where her uncle was haggling with the tiny droid traders. He eventually decided on a short red droid and a tall humanoid golden one. These followed the girl toward the garage, but had only gone a couple of meters when the little one sputtered and died. A blue droid of similar make was quickly substituted for the red one. She put them in the garage, lowered the tall one into an oil bath, left the lift control and a large towel within reach of the droid, and went back out to help her uncle with the vaporators on the ridge. With the restraining bolts in place, the droids would stay in the garage until she came back.
Just before the second sunrise, Leia Skywalker sat on the floor of the garage staring at the repeating message being displayed by the small droid. An older man in diplomatic robes was sending a call for help to an Obiwan Kenobi, except the message was incomplete. It ended with a younger man's voice calling,
"Father? Now! Hurry!" Then the entire truncated message repeated.
"Whatcha doing? I thought we were sneaking out." Leia looked up. The speaker was an out of breath blond girl a couple of years younger, dressed and tanned almost identically, and waving an envelope. Leia smiled at her friend from farmstead 15 and waved her in.
"Get in here before uncle sees you. We got these droids yesterday and I found this message this morning. I'm supposed to take them into Toshe Station and get the memories wiped before noon. But he says he belongs to Obiwan Kenobi, and there's this message for him. So how would the jawas get him? The big one says their last master was a Captain Antilles"
Beth shrugged, "Why don't we take them with us? Maybe they were being returned to Master Kenobi and something happened. He'll get the message and get them back and probably pay your uncle for them if he still wants them. If he doesn't, then we can run them in and get them wiped and you can say you tried. Besides, I want to hear all about Biggs, I've held my patience for 3 whole weeks like you wanted, and," she waved the envelope for emphasis, "I got a letter from Tether. His mom brought it over to me."
Leia grinned at her. "Master Kenobi's expecting me." Beth turned on C-3PO while Leia managed to turn off the message from the little droid. They loaded R2D2 into the speeder while C-3PO loaded himself. They drove off 5 minutes before Owen Lars stepped outside to start calling for his niece. He went back inside in frustration. He suspected she was visiting the old hermit, but since he knew from experience that she would be back before noon with the droids and have them out on the ridge like he'd instructed, he had no cause to complain. Let her mess up just once and the sneaking out would end.