His Father's Lightsaber

by ardavenport

"Luke."

Luke Skywalker heard the sound, but did not stir from under the insulated covering and the comforting darkness of sleep.

"Luke."

An impact jolted him awake and he struggled through the covering to push away what was grabbing and poking him.

"Luke. Hey, get up."

He stared at the dark outline of the head of Han Solo, blinking dots of orange and red com lights and the open door to the pilots' quarters behind him.

"Han," Luke complained. "What are you doing here? Now?"

The head drew back. "You said you wanted to use the tools on the Falcon. Chewie and I just finished with her. But if you're not interested. . . " He started to back away.

"No, wait!" Luke rolled onto his back and stared up at the low darkened ceiling. What schedule was Han Solo running on? Had he failed to notice that the pilots had gone in for their sleep cycle? Obviously not. The snores, heavy breathing and muttered complaints from the other people in the darkened room were not enough of a clue.

Throwing back the covering, he levered himself up. His jacket and shirt fell down to the floor, but he had gone to sleep in his pants and undershirt, so he didn't bother looking for clothes. His foot probed for the top box of the stack next to the upper bunk he had been sleeping on. He carefully climbed down the stack of equipment boxes and started to follow Han.

"Wait!" He turned back, boosted himself up on the bottom case and reached across the bunk to the padded personal compartment attached to the bunk before climbing back down, lightsaber and boots in hand.

"Close the door!" someone called out from the darkness as they exited together after he had put his boots on.

"Hmm, you could berth on Falcon if you want, kid, at least until they get all that stuff unpacked," Han said as Luke wearily pushed his hair back. The younger man looked back toward the room where he and his fellow survivors of the battle of Yavin had stayed up long past lights-out swapping stories of the pilots who had not returned. And the unused stacks of bunk racks in the corner that would not be needed until the Rebel Alliance recruited more pilots.

"That's OK," Luke replied. They started down the cluttered corridor together.

"So what did you w - - "

Luke's hand shot out, hitting a door release on his left.

"Wait."

Luke heard a sound of exasperation from the smuggler, but he ignored it and closed the door to the portable fresher unit. The small compartment reeked of cleanser and the fixtures were worn and stained, but it worked. He put his lightsaber aside, did his business and, yawning, squirted on hand sanitizer and rinsed it off. He had gotten quite a lot of friendly ribbing from his comrades about having never used a wet sanitizer before. But by the parched standards of his uncle's moisture farm even the water recycling system on the Millennium Falcon was luxurious.

He hit the exit control and the door opened again. Han Solo impatiently waited outside, but he said nothing about the delay or Luke's hasty return to the unit to retrieve his lightsaber.

"So, what did you need?" Solo asked.

"I need to get the specs on this." He held up his father's lightsaber, "and everything's still packed. But I need to stop and get R2 to save the data."

Solo shrugged. "That's not far from where the Falcon's parked."

They ran into increasing activity as they approached the hangars. People coming and going, technicians installing control panels, dragging wiring behind them, setting up the new base after the evacuation of Yavin.

In the hangar, Luke went to the droid pool in a walled enclosure to find R2-D2. The astromech sat in a line of droids, enjoying a recharge, but R2 still chirped a cheerful greeting as Luke disconnected the cable.

They met Han at the entry ramp of Solo's battered freighter and went up into the ship.

"Try these; they should give you your specs," Han said pulling out tools from a box on the floor by the work area in the forward cabin.

Luke took a scanner and picked it up, finding the activation switch. "Yeah, this'll work." He sat down, laying the lightsaber down on the work bench. He tested out the settings on the scanner before starting. R2 bleeped and parked next to the storage box he sat on.

"So, what's the hurry?" Han asked leaning next to a wall.

Luke shrugged.

"I just wanted to get it done." Luke shrugged back. "It's the only one I have." He made a first pass over the body of the saber.

"Well, it doesn't look too complicated," Han commented, looking at the image on the scanner screen. "Here," he said, picking up a small battered cylinder and showing Luke where it attached to the scanner. "It'll give you a power linkage map."

"Thanks." Soon the image was lined with pink filaments. Luke clicked the data transfer switch to transmit the data to R2, who bleeped an acknowledgment.

"Try some of the other mods," Han suggested, gesturing toward the jumble he had taken out of the box. With Solo's help, Luke also got a logic analysis, control schematic and several materials scans. Soon R2 was able to display a holo of the saber with a variety of interior views.

"That should be enough to make your own, if you need to," Han pronounced.

"I guess," Luke agreed. "Ben told me that a Jedi makes his own lightsaber. But I still want to keep this one." He looked back at the saber hilt laying on the work bench. "It was my father's." He touched the silver and black lines of the hand grip.

"So, your father made that one," Solo shrugged. "Doesn't look like anything special. The power supply might be hard to get."

"Why?"

"The Empire restricts power supplies that small with that much juice. Strictly for military use only," Solo replied, folding his arms before him.

"That wouldn't stop you."

"Got that right," Solo agreed with a crooked smirk.

"Well," Luke turned back to the saber, "the focusing crystals are supposed to be special, but I don't know why." He wished he'd had more time with Ben Kenobi to learn about the lightsaber.

"Well, open it up and try the scattering analyzer. That should tell you what you've got," Han suggested, frowning down at the interior holo projected by R2.

Luke grimaced. He did not look forward to taking the lightsaber apart and risking not knowing how to put it back together. He glanced at the scan holo; it looked like he had more than enough to double check with. Eyes on the scanner screen, Luke felt under the projections by the emitter end where the scans showed a release catch. He pressed on it. It didn't budge. He pressed harder with the same result.

"Try both of them," Han suggested, hovering over Luke's shoulder, pointing to a second catch on the screen.

It took a couple of tries, but Luke found that pressing in opposite directions released the catches with a loud click. The emitter core slid out the end. Inset in the cylinder glinted two squarish, slightly irregular blue crystals only a little wider than his thumb. He frowned, wondering why anyone would use such raw crystals; they would only make tuning the energy beam harder.

Snapping the scattering analyzer to the scanner, he passed the device over the exposed crystals. The results were disappointingly mundane.

"See, nothing special," Han commented. "A few interesting trace elements, but nothing I couldn't find on the black market. If you want some." he offered.

Luke shook his head. "No. Thanks." He slid the emitter core back and it clicked into place. He tested the catches to make sure it was firmly seated and for a moment wondered if the saber was now misaligned. The crystals were irregular and aligning them would be tricky. He held the saber out, hesitating over the activation switch.

But, he reconsidered, if its alignment was so fragile that one couldn't open it up and look inside without realigning it then it would be too prone to breakdown to be an effective weapon.

// Trust your feelings. //

Luke's hand tightened on the grip and he glanced toward Han, who had obviously not heard the voice. Ben Kenobi's voice. The same as he had heard during and after the Battle of Yavin. Though Luke had seen his mentor killed by Darth Vader when they escaped from the Death Star, Luke was now certain that the old Jedi Knight was still with him. Somehow. Something that Ben Kenobi had failed to mention during their brief time together. Along with so many other things. Like how to tune and maintain a lightsaber.

Luke touched the activation switch and the bright bluish-white blade appeared, humming with power, the same as before. Luke could feel it in his hand; it felt natural. Han Solo scowled at it.

"Want to try it?" Luke offered. Han had disdained everything Ben had said, but Luke had a feeling that the smuggler would not turn down a chance to try out a new weapon. And perhaps Han might be a little less critical of Ben's 'hokey religion'. Luke liked Han, and he did want any friction with him over it.

"Me?" Han put his hand to his chest, caught off guard. Luke extinguished the blade and offered him the hilt.

"Sure. Give it a shot."

Hesitating only a little, Han took the lightsaber, holding the emitter end out and pointing away from either of them. The controls were simple; activation switch and a power adjustment. A lightsaber blade could cut though anything material, but sometimes it needed an extra power boost for cutting through heavy or dense things like walls. The activation switch could also be locked to prevent accidents though the sensors in the saber would only allow activation while a living hand was on the hilt, unless the switch was pressed into a hold position to allow the user to throw the blade. Luke did not plan on trying that maneuver anytime soon.

Han hit the switch and the lightsaber blade came to life again. He held it out, experimentally dipping the blade. Luke immediately wondered if this had been a good idea. Somehow, he knew that the lightsaber did not feel so comfortable in Han Solo's hand than in his own.

"Hmm, it's got some weight to it," Han observed. He stepped away from the wall into the forward cabin and tried a few wide one-handed swings in the air. Luke grit his teeth. But as Han began to stab at an imaginary adversary, Luke wondered if Han had ever seen a lightsaber before. It had not occurred to him to ask.

Luke had never seen a lightsaber before Ben Kenobi had handed one to him, but Han was older than he was. Old enough to remember the Clone Wars, when the Jedi were supposed to have been working to subvert the Republic (at least that was how the Empire's history went) before they were defeated. And Han was from Correlia, a much more central world than the backward wasteland Luke had grown up on.

Han slashed at his invisible enemy, taking a step forward.

Luke had hardly heard anything about Jedi, except the Empire propaganda about them being enemies of the state. Nobody talked about them, except to mutter that if they tried to kill the Emperor they couldn't be that bad, or they couldn't be that great since they failed. The Empire was universally disliked by the independent-minded moisture farmer community around Anchorhead.

R2 bleeped an alarm. Luke jumped up when Han suddenly swung the saber at his side, as if he were twirling a blaster for show. He nearly dropped it, caught it just in time, but not before the tip grazed the deckplate, the metaloid squealing and groaning from the contact.

Chewbacca, Han's first mate, howled from the corridor leading into the forward cabin.

Han hastily straightened and shut off the lightsaber. He gave it back to Luke.

"Works OK. Don't use it on the ship," he told him.

"Thanks," Luke answered sarcastically, but Han was already striding away, only pausing to drag his boot over the superficial damage to the deck, testing the damage. Chewie rumbled and growled.

"Just trying it. Don't get excited," he said, passing the Wookiee on his way out.

Luke watched him go and turned back to the work bench, placing the lightsaber back next to the scanner. He checked the last scan again and saved it. R2 chirped fretfully.

Luke felt the Wookiee's presence as much as he saw the shadow over his saber. He looked up at Chewie who tilted his head and whoofed.

"I'm just getting the specs," he explained, not really sure if Chewie had a question or was just commenting. He did not understand the Wookiee language and could only pick out a few terms common to most languages in the Empire. Han had mostly explained anything Chewie said if necessary though the Wookiee could be very explicitly expressive when he really wanted something. But this was not one of those times.

Chewie bend forward and reached down. Luke knew that he had no way to stop the Wookiee from taking his turn with the lightsaber, but Chewie did not pick it up; he just laid one enormous hairy paw on the hand grip. He whoofed again, but Luke did not try to answer. The Wookiee wasn't talking to him. Did Chewie know anything about Jedi?

"It was my father's," he offered.

Chewie looked at him a little critically, his eyes clearly communicating his disbelief. Luke clamped his mouth shut, offended but even more unwilling to have friction between himself and the Wookiee than with Han.

Chewie looked away first, the moment of disagreement passing, and his attention returned to the lightsaber again. He hooted mournfully, almost like a moan and exhaled a huge sigh. Luke winced from the whiff of bad breath. He did know that Wookiees ate mostly raw meat.

Chewie straightened. A huge Wookiee paw descended on his head and roughly ruffled his hair. Chewie warbled some form of approval before turning away. R2 emitted a long string of bleeps and whistles.

Luke and R2 watched as Chewed paused in the circular doorway to the corridor and gave one last shake of his hairy head before leaving.

Sighing, relieved, Luke turned back to his father's lightsaber.

- - - END

(This story was first posted on tf.n: 15-September-2008)

Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.