Chapter 16: En Route to the Lando System
As the Millennium Falcon slid through hyperspace, Kit Fisto faced down a tiny remote with his lime-colored lightsaber thrumming before his deep black eyes. Every few seconds when the remote spat a laser his stance would change, dozens of head-tails flex, and the lightsaber flawlessly catch the tiny beam. Luke sat sleepily behind the dejarik table watching him. Hyperspace lag was catching up with Luke; he felt like he needed to sleep but there was far too much to think about.
Han Solo came by and sat with his hands around a cup of caf, scowling at Kit.
"Something happened when I got here." Luke said quietly. "It changed something."
Kit's lightsaber retracted, a staticky, signature sound. "The Force is very strange here."
"You keep saying it's strange, but reality looks perfectly normal to me." Han said.
"But you can't feel the Force." Kit said.
"You don't think people appearing from other universes is unusual?" Luke asked. "From other times?"
"Well I don't know if I believe any of this." Han growled.
"It's right in front of you!"
"Hmm." Han said, and took a drink, wincing at the heat.
"Thanks for coming, anyway." Luke sighed. This conversation was beginning to feel like an old argument
"I came when Patra talked about you. I'm not chasing any galactic weirdness, I don't care that much. I was just coming back for a friend." He began to get up.
"Wait." Luke said. A revelation, a realization, had come over him. Han had been at Yavin 4; he had shot TIE fighters off the rebel's backs before Luke destroyed the Death Star.
"You didn't come back to the Yavin base, did you?" Luke said in his calm voice. Han stopped at the corridor to the cockpit. "That changed the universe! That must be the event that made all this."
"I know that!" Han yelled, and stormed out of sight.
Luke sat down, rather stunned, Kit's unblinking eyes stared vividly.
"Apparently he does not take the weight of the universe very well."
"Neither would I! Poor Han...I don't blame him for it, I'm just trying to figure things out. And who knows what's happening at home!" Strange to think of a whole lost universe as 'home'. There could be no smoke rising from an entire universe! No billions and billions of charred skeletons.
Luke pulled himself out of the past, a past that seemed so much nearer here where an era had never come to an end. He gathered the light side of the Force and slowly released it, then looked at Kit.
"This is a strange future." The Nautolan said, laughing. "Like a holodrama more than the life of a Jedi!"
They talked about the past and alternate present for a time. Luke was fascinated by the descriptions of the Old Republic, the armies of Jedi Masters and Knights on worlds with strange names like Geonosis and Korriban, cloned armies and Force-sensitive 'droids, all destroyed by the New Order in a Purge that Kit had been fleeing when something had happened to land him in the path of a vornskr hunting party. Kit listened raptly to what Luke thought of as a poor retelling of the Rebellion's history and the attack on the Death Star, but there there was a divergence in the reality of it so he wasn't sure what to say any more. Kit grew quiet, thinking about his home.
Luke went into the cockpit and sat behind Han and Chewbacca. "So where are we going?"
"To see an old friend." Han said quietly. "He 'll probably know where your Rebellion is."
"Lando?"
Han turned around.
"I met him in my world. I'm sorry, if you don't want to talk about that. I didn't mean to blame you."
"No, it's okay. Just...yeah. Let me think."
Luke turned to leave.
"Wait. I might as well ask...what happens to me?"
Luke hesitated, but figured that there would be no harm in telling. "The Rebellion won. We fought the Empire for a while. You, well you married Princess Leia and became a Republic ambassador."
He left Han in a stunned silence.