Chapter 10

From space, the planet Kurakae looked like nothing more than a lifeless black ball, a little lump of charcoal spinning through space under the cover of an apparently seamless shroud of storm clouds. The X-Wing's sensors blinked and whirred, trying to make sense of the darkness as Luke plunged the ship down into the first layer of cloud cover. The stars faded, Artoo squealed in protest, and the world outside turned grey, then black, then grey again as they burst through the overcast and came out over a sea that was distinguishable from the sky only by the dirty-white crests of the waves.

"It looks like there's a city to the north and…" Luke rested his right arm instinctively on the joystick, relying on the Force to hold it steady as he used his hand to scroll down to the next page of information. "Another to the southeast. What do you think, Artoo?"

He could feel the cities buzzing with life, a kind of white noise that underscored everything else. There were voices there, thoughts, dirtier and more complicated than what he had felt on Hoth or even Dagobah. Luke thought that if he really listened he might be able to focus on a single spark, to pull a voice out of the cacophony and make it mean something. Of course, even if he could do it, the chance that whatever random being he decided to focus on would have any knowledge that would help him was slim. He didn't even have a name – not the name of the city, and not the name of the man.

"…dentified vessel…." A burst of static from the ship's communicator interrupted the thought. "…ame an…ation."

"Artoo?" He returned his hand to the joystick, pulling up the ship's nose until he was flying more or less level with the water. "See if you can clear that up?"

"Unidentified vessel." The voice was clear this time, and clearly not happy with the X-Wing's current path of descent. "State your name and destination."

"This is L – " Luke caught himself just in time. Kurakae was neutral – that didn't mean friendly, and just because it wasn't actually a part of the Empire didn't mean that there weren't people here who would be happy to bring home the price on his head. "Lars." It was the first name that came to mind. "Owen Lars. I, uh… I'm a client of the Archoi Medical Supply Company."

"Owen Lars." Luke felt the escort ships pull up behind him before he saw them. He sensed no malice from the pilots; they were just doing their job, but he couldn't tell whether or not they had bought his lie. After a long com silence, a different voice chimed in. "Landing permission granted. Municipal platform A-63."

"Thank you," he replied, following his escort as they skimmed over the murky water, heading for an equally dark landmass on the horizon.

It was a port city, full of low, blocky buildings and what seemed to be hundreds if not thousands of berths for ships of various sizes. It reminded Luke of Mos Eisley, in a way, except that he had never seen Mos Eisley Spaceport quite as full as the city that spread out below him now. Nearly every docking bay and landing platform was occupied – by freighters and personal shuttles, mostly, although he noticed a few small warships among them, and something that looked like a heavily modified Y-Wing. For a planet that didn't appear to have much to offer besides the ocean, the spaceport, and the bulk of the factories rising behind it, Kurakae certainly seemed to be a popular destination.

The escort ships were still behind him as he initiated the landing sequence. The ship responded as well to the Force as it did to manual commands; Luke was hardly experienced when it came to landing the fighter this way, but he didn't think there was any way that an observer would be able to tell that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. Still, he was uneasy. It felt like a long time since he'd been around other people, and while it hadn't really mattered on Hoth, he was going to have to be careful about using the Force while he was here.

He was met by a lone spaceport official who gave the fighter a long look, registering its scored hull and Alliance markings with the same curiosity with which he regarded its pilot. "How long?" he barked in a gruff voice.

"Excuse me?" The question caught Luke by surprise.

"How long you staying?" The man's curiosity crackled in the air. Luke didn't think that he meant him any harm, but he felt vulnerable and exposed. He was beginning to think that coming here had been a mistake.

"I, uh… I'm not sure, really. A couple of days?"

The official nodded and reached into a pocket, pulling out a datacard and a token. "Pay by the day." He handed Luke the card. "Leave that in your ship. This" – he held up the coin – "is for the showers."

"Thanks." Luke took the token awkwardly with his thumb and forefinger, nearly letting the datacard fall from his hand in the process. The official gave him a hard look, and his gaze flicked for a moment to where his right hand should have been before he looked away, clearly uncomfortable.

"Hey," Luke called out as he turned to leave. "Is there anyplace to stay around here?"

The man shrugged. "It's Carnival night," he said, as if that answered the question, and walked away.

The air was hot and humid, heavy with the smell and the salt of the sea. It wasn't the first time Luke had been this close to a real ocean, but he'd never been there long enough to get used to the way it smelled. He was glad to get out of his flightsuit, gladder still for the spaceport shower. It was cramped, slippery, and reeked of mildew, but it was warm running water, and it felt good to be at least somewhat clean. He shaved – not a brilliant job, but at least he didn't look like a hermit or a madman anymore – and changed into cargo pants and a short-sleeved shirt, the most lightweight of the few clothes he'd been able to scavenge from Hoth.

He almost hadn't brought them and now, looking at himself in a real mirror for the first time since he'd left the medical ship, he almost decided to change. It was stupid, he knew; it wasn't as if hiding his stump in the padding of his flightsuit would make his missing hand any less obvious. He didn't know anyone on this planet anyway. No one had any right to care and if they did, he had no obligation to explain.

Luke fumbled with his belt, leaning against the wall to try to hold it in place while he tried to convince his fingers to cooperate on both sides of the clasp. What exactly am I going to do even if I do find another lightsaber? I can't even dress myself. How am I supposed to stand a chance against… him?

And that was the real problem. It wasn't that Luke was ashamed of the way he looked, or even the way these stupid, everyday little things had suddenly become a challenge. It was just that…he was used to being the kid from Tatooine. He was used to being a pilot, almost used to being a commander. Three years after the fact, he thought he was finally getting used to being the hero of the Battle of Yavin. But now he was none of those people. He never really had been. It wasn't a farmboy or a hero that he saw in the mirror, that he was afraid people would see when they stared at him on the street. It was a man who had looked into the mask of Darth Vader and – however he had tried to deny it at the time – seen himself.

The clasp slid into place, and Luke let out a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He gave his reflection another long look, telling himself – truthfully, he knew – that there was nothing there to see. This was a war, after all. There were thousands of injured veterans in the galaxy, and it wasn't as if his parentage was written all over his face for the world to see. He still felt naked, though, as he slung the flightsuit over his shoulder and carted it back through the spaceport to the ship.

He left Artoo and the X-Wing behind, making his way through the spaceport to the city beyond. Thoroughfares built to accommodate maintenance vehicles and heavy machinery gave way to pedestrian walkways, and as the parts shops and service stations grew sparse, bars and casinos sprung up to take their place. The streets here were as drab and grey as the rest of the city, but the people who had come to partake of their offerings were dressed to the nines in every possible color, including some that Luke would have had a hard time putting a name to. It was Carnival night, apparently, and he supposed that should have been explanation enough.

Luke was no good at reading people, even through the Force, but he could feel the eyes of the city on him. On his arm, yes, but just as often on his clothing or his face or his wet, overgrown hair. The people around him wore robes and gowns and their alien equivalents, decadent from a distance but up close, mostly made of cheap, gaudy fabrics and mended in obvious places. They were at war, after all. Hard times, he guessed, were everywhere, but these people were at least trying to make the most of them. The smell of alcohol mingled with the stench of the sea, and a hundred voices rose all at once in a hundred songs that almost – but not quite – drowned out the crackle of thoughts and impulses that ran like a current through his mind.

The man next to him raised a glass, engraved with the insignia of some cantina, to his girl, and he beat with a raw animal lust. Ahead, a group of starpilots huddled in the street over an impromptu game of sabacc, greed and desperation pooling around them like sand in a Tatooine sinkhole. A group of women – girls, really, though they were trying their best not to look it – passed by, and Luke felt their stares as little jabs. One of them called out to him a loud, bawdy voice, but he could feel beneath it an anger, a restlessness that had little to do with sexual desires. It was too much. He had to focus, had to find this weapons dealer – if he even existed, that is. If he was even here. Yoda and Ben had both lived alone, on out of the way planets without much in the way of sentient life. Was this why? Was he never going to be able to set foot on a populated world again?

I have to get out of this crowd. He was suffocating. There were too many people here, too many voices. He tried to focus, but the city was a blur in his mind's eye. This had been a mistake. He longed for Hoth. For Dagobah. For silence.

What he found wasn't silence, but it was close enough. A string of calm, of voices that spoke not in the excited pitch of the Carnival around him but in a slow, methodical, everyday sort of way. There. It was a safe place, as streaked with darkness as the rest of the world around him but quiet. And right. Luke didn't know what was right about it, exactly, but he thought that things would be all right, somehow, if he could only make it through the crowd to the quiet.

He let himself be pushed through the crowd, past glitzy casinos and sabacc halls and a string of expensive-looking bars, down into a darker cross-street. A few of the revelers who had lost their way or maybe just had a few too many drinks were here, leaning against the walls and sprawled on the ground, giving into to baser thoughts or just to pure exhaustion. Luke left them where they were and stepped further into the alley. The grey of the city was almost black here, the buildings too small and too close to each other to leave anything but shadows between. He followed the doors, one after another, touching them with the hand that wasn't there. Here. He stopped. This was where he was supposed to go.

It was a bar of a completely different sort from the ones on the main road – dark and damp, but surprisingly crowded. Nearly every table was full and there was a crowd of multi-racial patrons gathered around the counter. They were locals, maybe, or freighter pilots. None of them were dressed in Carnival livery, and none of them even looked up when Luke opened the door and walked in. He could feel them glowing, pulsing in the Force, but not like the people outside had. That had been a crowd. These were just people, some of them tied to each other, some of them at least reaching out – but most of them were just alone.

He ordered a drink, took a sip, and set it down on the counter in front of him. He wouldn't finish it; it was hard enough to focus sober. Something had called him here. He tried to keep his mind on that, on the reason he had come here in the first place. If there were any illegal weapons dealers in this city, they were far more likely to be hanging out in places like this than in the too-public neighborhood he had just left.

He tried to focus on a single target. The bartender – he was right there, pouring a drink with his back to the counter. Luke lowered his eyes and stared into his drink, seeing bubbles, the dirty glass, the water-stained counter…and then seeing through them. It wasn't like touching Han or…or Vader. He had no connection with this man, and what he saw was grainy and dulled, like the view from his skyhopper after a flight through a sandstorm. A drink. Another drink. A silent loathing for the patrons who drank them. An empty till, and a woman. She was waiting for him with eyes that had already given up.

The bartender turned, gave him a quizzical look, and gestured to the glass on the counter between them. "Not strong enough for ya?" he growled.

Luke shook his head and pulled away – or tried to, anyway. The bond he had erected between them lingered, and he saw the woman's eyes close, saw her shake her head and fade away as he took another sip. "It's fine," he lied, and turned his attention to the Sullustan seated next to him.

One by one, he touched his fellow patrons. They were tainted, every one of them. Anger. Despair. Loss. He didn't look any closer. He didn't really want to see. At the far end of the counter, a spirit dark with illness and decay took pleasure in what might be its last indulgence. At a table in the corner, a woman looked at her companion with hope and concern, and what he threw back at her was a murderous rage. And at a dark table in the very back of the bar….

Luke stood, vaguely aware that he had spilled his drink in the process. The bartender cursed; the Sullustan moved to a cleaner spot further down the bar. Luke barely noticed. He should have felt it sooner, should have known what about this place felt so right…because it wasn't right. He had left the Alliance for a reason, and he never would have come here if he had known….

He took a step back, but couldn't bring himself to run. This place had been full of despair, but now, as he saw himself through a familiar pair of eyes, it flooded with a twisting, gut-wrenching relief. The figure stepped out of the shadows with his mouth half-open in palpable disbelief.

"Luke?"

Luke stepped forward to meet him.

"Han."