Skywalker's Legacy, page 15
Chapter Two
Ben Owens entered the garage feeling old and worn out. He was dressed in desert robes, and a silver-gray beard protruded from the hood. He might have been mistaken for a hermit, except that he did not live alone. "Brenna---" he said.
His daughter rolled out from beneath the speeder and gave him a grease-smudged grin. "Hi, Dad." A few strands of blond hair strayed from under the work cap she wore and framed her face with a golden halo. A false halo, Owens knew.
"Brenna, come inside. I want to talk with you."
The grin faded as she took in her father's expression. She rose to her feet and followed him inside.
"Sit down."
Brenna sat.
"I went to Anchorhead today," Owens began, pushing the hood back from his head to reveal tired sky-blue eyes. "I wanted to pick up the thermo-coupler for your project in there. On the way home, I passed by Beggar's Canyon."
The daughter suddenly looked as tired as the father.
Owens shook his head. "Do you have any idea how dangerous a stunt like that is?"
"I'm a good pilot, Dad."
"Good pilots do not take unnecessary risks. Good pilots especially do not go joy-riding down Beggar's Canyon at full throttle. You could have been killed."
"It wasn't that much of a risk," Brenna argued.
"Brenna...that canyon's taken more lives than I care to recount."
"I know Beggar's Canyon like the back of my hand. I've been through it a zillion times before. I know every rock and windstream in it, and I can handle a skyhopper better than anybody."
"Bren---" Owens ran his fingers through his silver-gray hair in frustration. "How can I explain it to you? Collecting pilots' insignias is not worth risking your life."
"It wasn't that dangerous. I was using the Force---"
"The Force---" Owens interrupted "---is a figment of your imagination. It doesn't exist. I wish you'd stop thinking about it."
"You don't understand, because you don't feel it."
"Brenna---" He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away. "Brenna, I do understand. More than you realize. But until the day comes when you understand just how dangerous these stunts of yours are, I'm suspending your transport privileges."
"You're grounding me? But Dad---"
"I'm sorry, Bren. I know how much the skyhopper means to you, but I just can't see any other way. Now give me the key."
Brenna stood up angrily and reached into her pocket and threw the code-card onto the table. "You may be able to take the Skyhopper from me, but there's one thing you can't take away. I feel the Force, Dad. Someday I'm going to learn how to use it!"
Her father shook his head. "The Jedi Knights are a myth. The sooner you accept that, the---"
"They are not a myth!" Brenna insisted, her eyes brimming with tears. "They're real. I know they are. And someday...someday..."
Owens shook his head again, patiently. "You need to get your head out of the clouds, and put your feet on the ground. You've got final exams coming up in school. That's what you should be concentrating on."
"Do you think I give a womprat's carcass about school? What I want is to get off this Force-forsaken dustball and find someone who can train me, and learn what I was born to learn!" Brenna slammed the table to accent her words, and the vase with the water-flower from Kalmyr tipped and spilled. Most of the water ended up on Owens' lap. The delicate plant, one of the few luxuries Owens allowed himself on his desert farm, wilted almost immediately.
Owens kept his voice level. It was one of his daughter's greatest annoyances that he was always the same, that he never got angry, never seemed especially happy or unhappy, never varied in his show of emotions any more than between a smile and a frown...except for those few times when he was having one of his attacks. "Brenna, go to your room," he said quietly. "Stay there until you calm down and decide to act like an adult."
Brenna let out an exasperated "Oooooh!" and turned on her heel and left. When she was gone, Owens looked at the dying water-flower, and then with slow deliberation, picked it up, returned it to its vase, refilled the vase with water, and put it back on the table. Then he reached for a towel to clean up the mess on the table, and on himself. He wasn't angry---much. Brenna was still young, and had so much yet to learn. She was his responsibility, and if she was lacking in self-control, he had only himself to blame. But she had very nearly been killed today. And there was still the possibility, however remote, that the fear she had given off from that experience could act as a homing beacon for old enemies who would like nothing more than to destroy him, through her. Brenna did not know about that, not yet. Someday, he would have to tell her. Someday soon. But not today.
But for the moment, he had distance on his side. If he could just keep her from doing any more stupid stunts like the one she had pulled today, maybe she would survive this yet.
Brenna slammed her door shut just to let her father know how angry she was. That was about all she could do. She knew how useless it was to argue with him, especially on the subject of Jedi Knights, so she flung herself on her bed and squeezed her pillow tightly in frustration. Then she picked up her pillow and flung it against the wall. As she fell back down to the bed again, something bumped her head, and she turned to see the doll she had outgrown playing with years before, but didn't really have the will to throw away.
Brenna picked up the doll and moved it to the side. It wasn't really her father's fault that he didn't understand, she decided. If you couldn't feel the Force, it was hard to believe in it. Still, she did feel it, and someday she would learn how to use it properly. In the meantime, she asked herself what a Jedi Knight would do if he were stuck in an inescapable prison---like her bedroom.
Brenna looked back at the doll, glanced at the door, then smiled a little. A Jedi would practice, she decided, and drew in a calming breath. Beggar's Canyon had been an accident. Everything had been going fine until that stabilizer came loose, and a momentary panic had set in. Fortunately, she was able to regain her wits, correct the problem, and finish the run without further incident, and now she had another pilot's insignia to show for it---and it had not occurred to her father to take it away from her. Brenna took it out of her pocket now, put her doll in a sitting position facing her, and whispered, "Watch this."
Brenna's brows furrowed in concentration. After a moment, the pilot's insignia rose, then began a wobbly floatation to the other side of the room and dropped into a dish that held a collection of other insignias.
Child's play, she decided, and then sighed as she realized that was exactly what it was. Someday, she thought. Someday...
In his own room, Ben Owens took off his robe, then reached inside his tunic and pulled from around his neck a small crystalline cube attached to a chain. It was the only decoration he wore, and he kept it hidden. If it were ever discovered, it would pass as a souvenir kept by an eccentric desert-worlder who dreamed of another life. The scene inside the holo-cube was a miniature land/sea-scape, with gentle waves frozen in mid-motion as they headed towards the shore and tiny sea-birds, no more than specks, really, hanging motionless in the sky. The cube could have been a souvenir from any of a thousand worlds that had an abundance of water. Owens knew, though, that this particular scene was of a certain inlet on Kalmyr, of the place that had been his wife's favorite hide-away, where she would have liked to have been buried, if there had been anything to bury.
But this cube was unique in more than just its scene. It had been a gift from one of his students, a brilliant light engineer, and it was the only one of its kind. Not even Brenna knew its secrets. Owens touched the sides of the cube in a patterned sequence, and the tiny waves became animated. The birds circled or flew to the edge of the scene and faded out, only to be replaced by more birds that faded in from other sides. Owens touched another sequence, and the inlet dissolved to the head and face of a dark-haired, dark-eyed smiling young woman, with slightly exotic features, who seemed radiant even in such a tiny likeness. She was younger than Owens now was and older than Brenna now was, but would remain forever ageless in a lifeless image.
Owens smiled a little, but the smile was tinged with sadness. He shook his head and spoke softly, more to himself than to the silent image. "I felt her today, Brie. Just once, briefly, when she was in trouble. I'd almost forgotten what her presence was like. It won't be long now before she stops using the Force altogether. I know it's for the best, but...I miss her. About as much as I miss you. I wish there was another way I could keep her safe. And I wish you were here with me..."
Ben Owens had no idea that his daughter, a mere room away, was at that moment levitating pilot's insignias with a control that even Luke Skywalker would not have thought possible of an untrained Force adept...