I stopped reading; from the clock on the dashboard, I had five days left on my trip. Placing the transmitter aside, I picked up the staff that I had brought along with me. Pulling out my penknife, I carved a winding snake up its entire length. I was incredibly focused, carving each individual scale. However, that only took another day off the trip. Exhaling, I plugged myself into cryo-sleep. Since my ship had no hyperspace drive, cryo-sleep allowed my body to turn off and rest for a journey instead of expending more energy.
Once I reached the outer atmosphere of the planet, I awoke again. Rather groggily, I navigated my ship into one of the five hangars of the New Pilot Academy. I saw only one ship in the bay; it was a clunker of a Corellian cargo ship, probably from before the beginning of the Rebel revolution against the Empire. It was undergoing some repairs being done by two creatures: a lanky man with black hair and a Corellian look about him, and a fierce looking Wookiee. On its side read its name, the Millennium Falcon.
"Hey, mate!" I yelled up to him. "Do you know a Solo?"
"What's it to you?" the man yelled back at me; standing on a stool with his back towards me, he definitely held the advantage of the conversation. He never took his eyes from his repairs, but the Wookiee growled at the name.
"He may be a man that my mother knew. Ever hear of her, Suri Organa?"
This got the man to pause a little before going back to his work. "Maybe. Like I said, what's it to you?"
"I found his name in one of her belongings. I'm thinking, maybe he can give me a job. So what you say to helpin' me find him?"
"You're looking at him. I'm Han Solo. This is Chewbacca." The man finally turned around to look at me. "I run this Academy. So, your mom is Suri Organa. How's she doing?"
"She's dead. So's how about that job?"
He wasn't listening to me; instead he paced. "Where is she buried?" He tried to sound conversational, but I could see tension lines on his face.
"What does that matter? She's gone."
"You'll get the job when you tell me where she buried, kid." The Wookiee began to growl at Han's tone.
"No." What did this guy not understand?
At that moment, two more people walked into the bay, another man and a woman. The first thing that I noticed about the man was that he was a Jedi; he carried a lightsaber at his side, his hand just within reach of it. The man had short curly brown hair covering a pale face. His deep brown eyes glared at me; mayhap he thought I was a risk. His right hand was covered in a black glove. He held his guard up, walking in front of the woman as if to protect her from something.
The woman had long brown hair wrapped in braids around her head. As she walked, the white dress that she wore rippled like water. Her face was set in an emotionless state; her deep brown eyes looked at me with cautious curiosity. She looked so much like the man; they had to be siblings, probably twins.
"Han, what's going on?" The woman laid a hand on Han's shoulder. Sighing, Han placed his hand over hers. That gave it instantly away: they were married.
"Leia… You remember Suri?" She nodded. "She's dead."
"What?" The man came forward. "Who's this, then?"
"My name's Anakin. I'm her son." I pulled the slip of paper out of my pocket. "She led me to you to get a job." Reaching to give it to Han, the other man intercepted it.
"Luke, what's it say?" Han craned his head to read the note for himself.
Luke looked up. "Where is she buried?" His voice was angry, his face even more so.
"What do you want with my mom?" I yelled at him. "You know what, forget it. This was a waste of my time." Giving up, I turned to walk back to my ship. My throat began to feel constricted and my mouth grew dry; I felt almost unable to breathe. I would just need to look elsewhere for a job; Coruscant was the biggest city in the galaxy, after all.
A kick to the ribs knocked me to the ground. Before I could react, Luke began to shake and hit me until I felt black and blue all over. I could hear Leia in the background trying to yell at him to stop; she was too late. I passed out from a weighted kick to my stomach.
I woke up on the ground, the cold metal of the hangar bay floor making my blood freeze. Tilting up my gaze, Luke, Han, and Leia were standing over me. Luke looked furious, but Chewbacca was holding him back. Han knelt beside me, looking at my injuries. Leia was berating Luke, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.
Ignoring them, I began an assessment of the damage. My left hand and wrist were broken and bleeding profusely. Some of the bones were sticking out of my palm. It looked as though someone has stepped on my hand, hard. I brought my other hand to my lip, and felt that it was swollen and cut. I gingerly touched other parts of my face, and discovered that my face was covered in bruises. My right eye couldn't open save for a slit. Thinking about the pain, I began to feel disoriented and passed out again.
I felt myself being carried up some stairs, draped over a shoulder like a dead carcass. I could distinguish two or three questioning voices, but none of their words made sense. I was placed on something soft; something rough was wrapped around my wrists and around my ankles. I did nothing to stop them.
When I woke up, I was laying in a fetal position upon a bed, my hands and feet bound with coarse rope. My broken hand and wrist was bleeding into my shirt. I looked around, and saw that I was in a small dimly-lit room; nobody else was in it.
The door opened with the creak of a rusty hinge. I lifted up my head, my one sharp eye taking in every detail. In the threshold of the door stood Han, looking only slightly concerned about my current situation.
"You all right, kid?" he casually asked me. In one hand, he sharpened a throwing knife. I instinctively recoiled in fear at the sight of the knife, fear that spiked my adrenaline, only to feel every muscle in my torso protest at the movement from their bruises. "You gave us a scare when you fainted like that."
"I was afraid. You guys kept asking after my mother, it made no sense to me. All I was after was a job." I tried to be casual as I lifted myself up and sat up.
"Ah," Han said thoughtfully.
"Why am I tied up like this?" I asked Han. I tried to pick the knots around my wrists, but they were tied in a way so that it was impossible to remove without knowing how to untie the knots. Still, they began to chafe the skin beneath it.
"It's so you don't try to hurt yourself. Kid, your mother wrote us all letters every month after we parted ways. We were her only friends. Luke was the one who gave her access to healers after the second destruction of the Death Star." Han took one step closer to me.
"He could have told me that! She was my mother!"
"Well, Luke said he's sorry. He got real livid after you turned on him like that. He probably didn't understand that you cared so much for your mother. I gotta hand it to you, kid. You gave us all a real scare."
"So, Luke was just going to pay respects to her, not bury her in a different place?"
"Yeah, now you're catchin' on."
"Can you untie me? I got some apologies to make. The first apology goes to you, Han. Sorry that I turned away. I guess that I was just real scared that you would dig up my mom. I just wanted to get a job with you, as an apprentice, kind of." My anger diffused, I felt rather childish over my actions.
"Really? Kid, it'll be rough and tough. If you wanna, I ain't saying no."
"Yeah, 'cause I really wanna. Just give me some time."
"Okay. Hold still," Han told me as he took a better grip on his throwing knife and slowly cut away the bindings. I rubbed my ankles and good wrist with my good hand when the ropes fell off; my broken wrist screamed with pain every time I moved it. I stood up slowly, the blood from my hand soaking into my jacket.
"Han, where's Luke?"
"He's down the hall in the kitchen. Come down when you're ready." With that, he closed the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I patted my chest, where I had stowed away my mother's memoirs. I wanted to know if she had gone through something like this before, given an opportunity for something that she wanted to achieve. I was proven right.