Chapter Two

Lucy rocked back on her heels, gaping. "What's this?" she cried.

The astrodroid somehow managed to look sheepish, and beeped.

"What is what?" Threepio said indignantly. "She asked you a question! What is that?"

The girl in the hologram crouched, reaching one hand out. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope," she said. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Help me - "

Artoo beeped again.

"Oh, he says it's nothing, ma'am," said Threepio. "Merely a malfunction. Old data. Pay it no mind."

Lucy sat back, considering the unknown girl. "Who is she? She looks so pretty and - and helpless."

"Er," Threepio said. "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure, ma'am. I think she was a passenger on our last voyage. A person of some importance, miss. I believe."

The recording continued to repeat itself. It seemed obviously incomplete - perhaps it had been damaged in some way. No surprise, considering Artoo's state. But there was enough to win Lucy's sympathy. She watched the hologram cycle through the message again, unable to miss the pleading and desperation in the girl's low voice.

Somebody had to do something, she thought, feeling as if she had become infected with the other girl's urgency. Lucy didn't know what any of this was about. She didn't know the girl. But somehow, that didn't seem to matter. She had to help her.

Besides, hadn't she longed for something to do? Something important? And now, this had all but fallen in her lap.

Threepio was still talking.

"Is there any more of this recording?" Lucy asked abruptly. She reached towards Artoo, and he let out a frantic squeal.

"Behave yourself, Artoo. You're going to get us into trouble!" Threepio hissed. Lucy bit back a smile. "It's all right, you can trust her. She's our new mistress!"

The astrodroid gave a long string of beeps and whistles.

"He says he's the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of these parts. And it's a private message for him."

Lucy tilted her head to the side.

"Quite frankly, miss," Threepio said, "I don't know what he's talking about. Our last master was Captain Antilles, but with what we've been through, this little R2 unit has become a bit eccentric."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said thoughtfully. "I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi?"

She knew old Ben - not well, but probably as well as anyone did. Years ago, she and Biggs had gotten lost in the desert, and it had been old Ben who found them and brought them home. She'd spoken to him once when she snuck off to Anchorhead, too - he happened to be passing through and didn't tell her aunt and uncle about it, which was enough to win her childish approval.

They'd happened across each other a few other times, too, in the ordinary course of things. But he was just a normal - well, just an odd old man. She couldn't believe that Ben's family could get caught up in something like this. She couldn't believe that he had family at all.

Threepio turned towards her hopefully. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but do you know what he's talking about?"

"Well, I don't know anyone named Obi-Wan," Lucy said, getting to her feet and searching through her tools, "but old Ben lives out beyond the Dune Sea. He's a kind of strange old hermit."

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi -"

"I wonder who she is," Lucy said, glancing back down at the hologram. Again, she felt that inexplicable rush of concern and determination. "It sounds like she's in trouble."

Lucy looked into the girl's frantic dark eyes, and set her jaw. "I'd better play back the whole thing," she decided, and stalked over to Artoo. He gave a high, robotic wail.

"He says the restraining bolt has short-circuited his recording system," Threepio told her. Lucy sighed, looking back at the hologram.

I have to save her. I don't know why, but I have to. If I don't, something horrible's going to happen to her, I just know it is.

She tried to ignore the feeling that something horrible was going to happen anyway.

Threepio said something about removing the restraining bolt.

"Hm?" Lucy looked back at the droids, and grabbed a small bar off the table. "Well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off. Okay."

It was the work of a moment to wedge the bolt off. "There you go!" she said, and glanced down.

The hologram had disappeared.

"Where'd it go? Bring it back - play back the entire message!"

Artoo's beep managed to sound innocent, curious, and bewildered at the same time. Lucy glared and Threepio turned furiously on his companion.

"What message?" he cried. "The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!"

Lucy opened her mouth to snarl at the little astrodroid, then shut it when she heard her aunt calling from another room.

"Lucy? Lucy! Come to dinner!"

"All right. I'll be right there, Aunt Beru!" Lucy shouted back, and shook her head.

Threepio turned towards her, his voice sounding fretful even for him. "I'm sorry, miss," he said miserably, "but he seems to have picked up a slight flutter."

Lucy tossed the bolt aside. "Well, see what you can do with him. I'll be right back," she said, and ran out.

Artoo blinked in his companion's general direction.

"Just you reconsider playing that message for her," Threepio told him.

He beeped plaintively.

"No, I don't think she likes you at all. And I don't like you either!"


After dinner, Lucy stomped away from the table, then stopped in her tracks.

She hadn't meant to pick a fight with her uncle. She never did. They just seemed to happen. It'd always been - it wasn't that he didn't care about her. She knew he did, and she loved him. But they'd never been able to understand each other very well, or even to get along. He was always trying to make her into something else, as if she were a doll that could just be carved into the right shape. And she -

Well, she knew she wasn't the niece he would have wanted. Not that he'd wanted one at all, and she was grateful for everything he'd done. She was just furious at the same time.

Lucy took a deep breath. She couldn't work like this. Her hands were still shaking. Instead of returning to the garage right away, she veered right and ran outside to watch the sunset.

Biggs always said that the stars didn't control anyone's life, yet these ones certainly controlled hers. They seemed so near, as if she could reach beyond them with the barest modicum of effort. Instead, she felt menaced by them, hopelessness eating at her as the radiance of the twin suns faded into darkness. Something in her recoiled from the sight, ominous in a way it had never been before, but Lucy kept her eyes fixed on the two stars, wind pulling at her skirts and hair.

Tatoo II vanished below the horizon. As if it had given her permission, Lucy finally looked away, wrapping her arms around herself.

That girl needed her. Lucy needed to help her, even if she didn't know why. But how could she help anyone? How could she even get out?

She sighed and went to finish cleaning the droids.

"I can't believe him," she muttered to herself. "He doesn't have to do this. He just wants to punish me! It's not f - "

The garage was silent. Lucy froze, her eyes darting from corner to corner, then grabbed her control box and turned it on.

Threepio yelped, popping up from behind the skyhopper.

Lucy stared. "What are you doing back there?"

"It wasn't my fault, ma'am!" he wailed. "Please don't deactivate me! I told him not to go, but he's - he's faulty, malfunctioning:kept babbling on about his mission."

"Oh no," breathed Lucy, rushing out of the garage and back outside. She grabbed her binoculars and peered all around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"How could I be so stupid? He's nowhere in sight," she said, and let the binoculars fall. "Blast it!"

"Pardon me, miss," Threepio said, sounding even more miserable than usual, "but couldn't we go after him?"

Lucy was already shaking her head. "It's too dangerous with all the Sand People around," she said practically. "We'll have to wait until morning."

Early in the morning, she thought; they'd have to leave before Owen realized she was gone.

She did wait, but slept poorly, and woke as soon as possible, pulling on a tunic and one of her only pairs of pants. Last night's lecture was more than enough for one week.

"Lucy?" Beru glanced up as her niece rushed towards the door. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

Lucy almost kept running, but her cooler side prevailed. If anything happened, Owen and Beru would need to know where she'd gone. She stopped and turned around.

"I have some things to do before we get started today," she said vaguely.

"Well, be careful. The Sand People - "

"I'll be back before breakfast. Tell Uncle Owen, will you?" Lucy kissed her aunt's cheek and smiled at her. "I'll be all right, I promise."

She dashed out to the garage and picked up Threepio. Then she drove off without a backwards glance, relieved just to be flying again.

Her awkwardness on the ground always disappeared in the air. The wind, even as it pulled at a few loose tendrils of hair and screamed in her ears, was familiar, almost friendly; Lucy could feel the slightest change in the currents and respond as soon as it happened. Before it happened, sometimes, but that was mostly when she was younger and less skilled.

Beyond that, she understood machines. Everything she flew seemed like an extension of herself; with her hands on a wheel and her feet on the floor of a ship, even one as slight and unimpressive as this, she felt like she could rule the galaxy. Like she already did.

Lucy took a deep breath and released it, leaving Threepio to his trivial chatter while she kept her eyes on the sand, alert for a sign of anything suspicious. She could hardly miss an astrodroid as distinctive as Artoo, she reassured herself, and it shouldn't take long to catch up with him. After all, he could hardly walk, let alone fly.

"Look, there's a droid on the scanner!" she cried. "Dead ahead. It might be our little R2 unit. Hit the accelerator!"

Within a few minutes, they'd caught up with the droid - definitely an R2 unit - and she sprang out. Even with a coat of dust and grime, it was unmistakably Artoo.

"Hey, just where do you think you're going?" said Lucy, glowering at the droid.

He gave a feeble string of beeps.

"Mistress Lucy here is your rightful owner!" Threepio exclaimed. "We'll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi gibberish!"

Artoo started to protest.

" - and don't talk to me about your mission! You're fortunate she doesn't blast you into a million pieces right here!"

Artoo gave an alarmed squawk and Lucy, turning to stare at Threepio, shook her head.

"No, no, it's all right," she said quickly, "but we'd better go."

Before she could even turn back to the landspeeder, however, Artoo had started beeping again, the sounds rising to shrieks as he wobbled back and forth. Lucy gave them an exasperated look.

"What's wrong now?"

"Oh my," said Threepio. "Ma'am, he says there are several creatures approaching from the southeast."

Lucy's eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder - and saw nothing, but it didn't matter. She knew what was out there.

"Sand People!" She ran to the landspeeder and grabbed her laser rifle. "Or worse."

The rifle was one of the few pieces of machinery she'd learned to use because of her uncle, not in defiance of him. He'd taught her to shoot when she was a little girl, and insisted she carry the weapon with her whenever she left the homestead. Just in case, he always said.

Thanks, Uncle Owen, she thought, and returned to the droids. "Let's go have a look," she said briskly, then laughed when they stayed frozen in place. "Come on!"

Carefully, Lucy threaded her way up a rocky ridge and grabbed her binoculars, scanning the canyon. She could see two enormous banthas, but neither of them had any riders.

"There are two banthas down there, but I don't see any . . ." Lucy froze, catching a small raider at the edge of her vision. "Wait a second, they're Sand People, all right! I can see one of them now."

She tried to focus on the distant raider. Instead, the binoculars went dark and she looked up in alarm: a large Tusken Raider was looming over her. He howled, shaking his weapon.

Threepio backed right off the side of the cliff, bouncing and rattling on the way down; Lucy grabbed her rifle and leapt out of the way, blocking the raider's double-pointed gaderfii as well as she could. The rifle cracked.

Stupid, stupid -

She was scrambling back, rolling left and right as she tried to avoid the swinging gaderfii, then reaching out only to have her hands close on air. There was nowhere left to go.

The raider gave a cry of triumph, swinging his weapon in the air, and Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. The blow, when it came, was quick and precise, and she only managed one scream before slumping to the ground.

The Sand People dragged her back down the cliff and dropped her body near a dark alcove in the rock, while they went to ransack the landspeeder. Artoo, cowering in the back of the alcove, whirred to himself, then made small distressed sounds.

The raiders didn't seem to hear him. Several of them began pulling strips out of the landspeeder; Artoo could only rock in anxiety, his sensors fixed on the unconscious girl in front of him.

Then, something deeper in the canyon gave a great howling moan. The raiders stiffened, dropping their salvage, and fled as an indistinct brown figure slowly approached them. Artoo rolled a little back, his sensors darting across the canyon.

The figure - a man in a hooded brown robe - knelt beside Lucy's prone body, his hands dropping to her wrists. Then he reached up and pressed his fingers against her temples.

Artoo moaned.

The man turned towards him, pushing his hood off, and revealing a weathered, kindly face. He was an old man, or looked like one, with piercing blue eyes, a mop of untidy silver hair, and a small, neatly-trimmed white beard. He smiled at the little droid.

"Hello there!" he called out. Artoo trembled, emitting a low, warbling beep.

The old man gestured for him to approach.

"Come here, my little friend," he said, and his voice gentled. "Don't be afraid."

Artoo's sensors went back to Lucy. He beeped inquiringly.

"Oh, don't worry - she'll be all right," the man said. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a light shake.

The world swam before Lucy's eyes. She groaned, struggling to sit up, only vaguely aware of the hand supporting her back.

"Rest easy, child," he said, with a wry look. "You've had a busy day - you're fortunate to be all in one piece!"

Lucy rubbed her neck, then blinked several times, still trying to orient herself. Her gaze landed on the old man's face.

"Ben?" she exclaimed. "Ben Kenobi? Boy, am I glad to see you!"

At that, Artoo waddled out of the alcove as fast as his wheels would take him. Ben's expression turned reproving.

"The Jundland wastes are not to be travelled lightly," he told her.

Artoo, whose creator had evidently not seen fit to include any sense of self-preservation, gave a string of happy beeps and whistles. Lucy ignored him, clambering to her feet and leaning heavily on Ben as he helped her walk to a large rock, where she collapsed.

"Tell me, young Lucy, what brings you out so far?"

Lucy waved her hand at Artoo. "This little droid! I think he's searching for his former master - I've never seen such devotion in a droid before." Both humans looked at him, and Artoo gave a small, sad whine. Lucy turned back to Ben. "He claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is he a relative of yours? Do you know what he's talking about?"

Ben's eyes widened, and something very like dread came over his face. He sank down. "Obi-Wan Kenobi," he repeated, lingering on the syllables. "Obi-Wan. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time - a long time."

"I think my uncle knows him," said Lucy, remembering last night's quarrel. With a decided effort, she kept the familiar note of petulance out of her voice. "He said he was dead."

Ben shook his head. "Oh, he's not dead," he said, and then his old wry look came back. "Not yet."

"You know him?" asked Lucy, feeling that she couldn't be surprised by anything, at this point.

"Well, of course I know him." Ben chuckled and tapped his chest. "He's me!"