Luke's X-wing was the last to land inside of the now nearly empty hangar of the Massassi Temple, his slightly battered X-wing coming to rest beside the heavily damaged fighter of Wedge Antilles. Already, technicians were working over the craft, trying to repair the damage caused to the torpedo launchers. A member of the ground crew quickly moved a ladder towards the side of Luke's ship near the canopy. Outside of his canopy, Luke could already see the residents of the base and the surviving pilots race to his ship, wishing to congratulate him on destroying the Death Star.
Luke stepped out of his cockpit and quickly climbed down the ladder into the now growing crowd of people outside of his fighter. The technicians assigned to his fighter struggled to get through the crowd to remove R2-D2 from the astromech slot, and perform basic maintenance on the fighter. Luke took the final step onto the floor of the base, and he could faintly hear Han Solo's voice over the din of the crowd. He turned around to see where the smuggler was, and then he someone collide with him.
"Hey!" he shouted to Princess Leia as she hugged him. He looked around the hangar, desperately looking for Ben, but Luke was unable to see him over the crowd.
"I knew you'd come back, I just knew it!" Leia exclaimed after Han finally reached the two. "I knew there was more to you than money!" Leia soon embraced Han as well. The other surviving fighter pilots waited calmly to congratulate Luke while they themselves were celebrated for surviving the mission.
Luke also heard the beeps and whistles of Artoo "speaking" to him as the droid was lowered from the fighter by a technician.
"Please let me through," a very proper voice emerged from the crowd whom largely seemed to ignore the speaker. "Excuse me, excuse me please," the voice continued to say as it attempted to reach Luke. "Master Luke! It is good to see you fully functional, especially considering all of the reports I heard in the war room." The golden protocol droid then began speaking to Artoo about the battle, leaving Luke alone with Leia and Han.
As the three finally moved out of the crowd, Luke could finally see Obi-Wan. The aged Jedi Master was speaking to a man a little older than Luke, who walked away soon after Luke saw them. Soon Obi-Wan was walking towards the trio, a slight smile on his face. "You did well, Luke," Obi-Wan congratulated his student. "And thank you," he said to Han.
"Ah, it was nothing," Han Solo replied as he shook Kenobi's hand. "I heard you did a pretty good job yourself out there."
Obi-Wan stood silent for a short while, remembering the screams of his wingmates as Darth Vader and the rest of his flight killed them. "Not well enough," was his only reply.
"General Kenobi," another voice interrupted them. "I'm sorry about not being able to shoot that guy down that was chasing you."
Obi-Wan took a second to remember the young pilot's name before responding. "There's no need to apologize, Wedge. Things like that tend to happen in battle."
A few hours later, Obi-Wan knelt on the floor of his private quarters, lost in meditation.
You do not need to blame yourself, Obi-Wan, the voice of Qui-Gon said. Your presence there saved many lives.
"I don't know, Master Qui-Gon," Obi-Wan replied. "I think that I actually made things worse for them. I lured Vader out there, and how many people would still be alive if I hadn't been out there."
Vader would have been out there, anyway. It was inevitable. How is your search for new students going?
"I am already training Luke, and a pilot here by the name of Keyan Farlander," Obi-Wan answered. "I have also spoken to another person on the base, the one you said that Exar Kun has been attempting to turn. I am unsure that your suggestion to train him was right, Master. I sense much anger in him."
Exar Kun has already been taken care of, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon replied to his somewhat doubting student.
"How?" Obi-Wan asked. "I thought you said that you were unable to defeat him alone."
I wasn't alone, there were others that helped me.
Exar Kun sensed the battle raging in the sky above, and he sense the familiar dark presence he had first encountered two decades previously. Gone was the slight hesitation of using anger to make himself more powerful, now the presence seemingly wallowed in his own hatred. Yet this disturbed Exar Kun, even from the far distance from the battle site, he could sense that that figure had grown immensely powerful. Even more powerful than himself… Then, another familiar presence was near Exar Kun again, the sickeningly feeling of a being immersed in the Light Side that had tried to defeat him before.
"So," the Sith Spirit spoke to the Light Side Spirit behind him. "Here for another try at defeating me? You must know that it is futile for you to even attempt it again."
"I may not have been strong enough to defeat you alone, Exar," Qui-Gon replied. "But I'm sure that we could defeat you now."
"We? You stand alone, Jedi," Exar Kun scoffed at the ridiculous statement his opponent had made.
"No, he doesn't," said a familiar congested voice to Exar Kun's left. The Sith spirit quickly turned to face his new opponent, and was amazed to see a red-exoskeletoned crustacean in brown Jedi robes standing before him.
"Master…" Exar replied in a harsh voice. "So good to see you again. The last time I saw you, you were in pieces on the ground as a result of my lightsaber," he finished with a smirk.
"As you yourself should know," Vodo-Siosk Bass answered. "There is no death, only the Force."
"No death," Exar laughed. "Then what happened to all of those senators that I slaughtered, right after I dispatched you?"
"They too have joined the Force," Qui-Gon answered Exar.
"And their power has joined with ours," yet another voice joined in. Exar Kun swirled around to face the new intruder, and was startled at who he saw.
"Ulic," he growled in anger.
"They really don't need me, Exar," the spirit of Ulic Qel-Droma responded. "But you should see the power of the Light Side."
"None of you are powerful enough to destroy me!" Exar exclaimed. "Not even you," he said as he pointed to Vodo-Siosk.
"Alone, yes," Qui-Gon replied. "But together…"
"So, all three of you were able to destroy him?" Obi-Wan asked.
Together, we were more powerful than Exar Kun, Qui-Gon's voice explained. He will no longer trouble anyone here again.
"So you and two other Force Spirits completely defeated him?" Obi-Wan asked, making sure that he had heard his Master correctly.
Completely, Qui-Gon replied.
The nearly transparent and blue face of a woman appeared from a holotransmitter inside of one of barracks set aside for the pilots in the Rebel base. "I heard about that operation from Mon Mothma," she said to the man attempting to listen to her words through the loud and boisterous sounds of the other pilots in room, "I'm glad to hear you made it through."
"I nearly didn't, Lynia," Keyan Farlander replied after telling Sarkli to quiet down. "How are things going on the Independence?"
"Like I said before, we've already heard about what happened at Yavin, and things are pretty busy here as well. Although not as busy as it seems to be around there," she added after a particularly loud cheer from the pilots. "What just happened?"
Keyan turned around to look at what had caused the previous ruckus to erupt. "I think they just broke into Janson's stash of Tanaab Whiskey… Anyway, I've finally taken yours and Mon Mothma's advice to find someone to formally train me in the ways of the Force, and you're not going to believe who it is."
"I probably won't," Lynia replied. "Who is it?"
"General Kenobi," Keyan answered her.
"The General Kenobi? The Negotiator?"
"The one and the same," Keyan replied.
"So, apparently Biggs and this guy defected together from the Rand Ecliptic a little while ago. From what I've heard, he's a pretty good pilot, although he's also a bit unlucky," Wedge Antilles explained to Luke Skywalker as the two of them walked towards the medical bay in the Rebel base a few days after the Battle of Yavin. "All of the others say he'd make an excellent addition to Red Squadron."
"What do you mean, unlucky?" Luke asked the veteran pilot. After his much celebrated destruction of the Death Star, a grateful Rebel command had given the young pilot the command of the brand new Rogue Flight of Red Squadron, a position that seemed to put a lot of pressure on Luke's shoulders. Not only did he have the responsibilities of being a pilot, he also had the pressures of continuing his Jedi training under Ben Kenobi.
"When he defected, he had already lost one of his arms, and had to have a prosthetic attached. And one of his first missions for the Rebellion, he was forced to eject and was clipped by a TIE fighter," Wedge answered, watching Luke wince in pain at the mention of the last accident. "We're here now," he said as they entered the medical bay.
A 2-1B medical droid welcomed them into the medical bay, and showed them to the patient that they wished to see. He was lying in a simple hospital bed, exercising his right leg and listening to another patient inside of a force field.
"You should have seen the look on that guy's face when the ejection seat malfunctioned," the patient in the force field said, nearly laughing at the mere memory of the event. "And of course, he achieved escape velocity. I don't know how long we had to search before we eventually found him, and he certainly hasn't lived that one down."
Wedge and Luke waited politely until both pilots finished chuckling at the misadventures of another pilot. "Derek Klivan?" Luke Skywalker asked.
"Klivian," the pilot responded. "Did they spell my name wrong again?"
"Apparently so," Luke replied, quickly correcting the misspelling on the datapad. "Sorry about that. I'm Luke Skywalker, the new commanding officer of Red Squadron's Rogue Flight," Luke introduced himself. The title, still new to him, felt almost unwieldy coming out of his mouth.
"Biggs' friend," Derek replied. "What brings you here to the med bay?"
"We're looking for pilots for our Flight," Luke answered. "Your name came up with several recommendations."
"Well, I obviously can't fly at the moment," Derek replied as he pointed towards his left leg. "The droid hasn't cleared me for flying yet, but a squad is a squad."
Luke turned to the man in the force field, placed in quarantine for a case of Hesken Fever he had developed before the Battle of Yavin. "Wes Janson, you are also highly recommended."
The four pilots talked for a while, finalizing the duty transfers and listening to Janson tell more stories of his time with the Tierfon Yellow Aces. It was then that Luke excused himself, leaving Wedge alone with the two to finalize the transfers. As Wedge watched Luke walk out of the door, he turned his head towards the other two pilots in the room. As the door closed, Wedge couldn't help but have a bad feeling about those two…
