Kita gently nudged Leia's shoulder to wake her up. She sat up with a start in the dim light, gripping the edges of the little cot.
"Shh, shh…" Kita said soothingly as Leia remembered where she was and relaxed visibly. "It's early. I thought you should have something to eat before you go."
They walked together to the cooking area at the center of the room, where a balding man warmed an enormous pot of water over an old fashioned fuel canister. Leia kept her steps light, seeing that most of the occupants of the cave were either still sleeping or just starting to wake. In one corner, two young mothers sang softly as they nursed their infants. One had an older boy with her, perhaps three or four years old, who hid his face in his mother's shirt as Leia smiled at him.
"How many people are here?" she whispered to Kita, taking the warm mug of coffee that the man passed to her and blowing the steam from the top.
"Only ninety-six in this cave," Kita told her. "There is another deeper in the mountains with more than three hundred people hiding. Honestly I'm not sure how they manage."
Leia sipped her drink, nearly groaning with pleasure at the taste of the sweet, smoky liquid on her tongue. Alderaan, home to the galaxy's most famous culinary school, was also renowned—or sometimes mocked—for its obsession with good coffee. She had barely been able to tolerate the thin, bitter brew the Alliance passed off as a morning beverage in its mess halls, and drank it only when she was so desperate for a jolt that she could ignore the taste. It made her smile to think that, even in a damp cold cave hiding from an overwhelming planetary invasion force, Alderaanis still knew what was important—and that included coffee.
"Our next group of young people is off to Aldera this morning," Kita told the man staffing the kitchen. He made a gesture that Leia recognized as a blessing from a medium sized religious sect based in the Coro Valley region, and she nodded in gratitude. "Do you have something we can send with them for breakfast?"
Farn and two other young men he introduced as Nantasiano—"Si for short" and Tantur joined them as the man took a bag and loaded it with food; tree fruits from the orchards in Carsen province, muffins, nerf jerky.
"Don't forget we're walking," Farn told him, looking askance at the overloaded bag. "We don't get transport until we reach the north end of the lake."
"You'll need your strength," he responded paternally, adding a final packet of hard crackers on top and handing the packs to the young men. Leia leaned over and picked one up, not wanting to be coddled because of her status or her gender. "You boys take care of this young lady, all right?"
"Yessir," Farn said. "Ready to go?"
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Gripping torches, the four young Alderaanis hiked through the cavern, See-Threepio tottering behind them. Leia had insisted on bringing him over Farn's objections, not telling her companions that she intended to part ways with them when they reached Aldera and would need the droid to help her break into the palace.
"The Empire doesn't allow anyone to have droids," Farn told her as they walked.
"Perhaps it would be better if I remained behind at the camp," Threepio spoke up. Leia was grateful that he had taken well to her instruction to stop referring to her as "Your Highness," to try to preserve some level of anonymity. Si and Tantur knew who she was, but they were young enough to have a skeptical view of authority generally and were perfectly happen to honor her request to treat her like anyone else. The fewer people who knew who she was when they reached the city, the better for everyone.
"I need your help, Threepio," Leia hissed at him. "You're coming. We'll find a safe place for you to hide when we get to the city. The Empire won't know you're there."
"Oh dear oh dear."
They hiked along in silence for a while, stopping briefly to eat some of the massive pile of food they carried in their packs. Leia used the break to double check that she still had the lightsaber concealed safely in the bottom of her bag. As planned, they left the blasters behind, but there was no way she was going to a hive of Imperials without some sort of protection.
"So…," Tantur spoke up, getting sick of the quiet. "What have you been up to for the last few months, Leia? Everybody thought you were dead."
"I was taken prisoner by the Empire but I got away," she said briefly. "I crash landed on a planet out in the Outer Rim and it took me a while to find a way off."
"Whoa. Crazy."
"Yeah." In her few months of solitude, and time with the Imperial Senate before that, Leia had almost forgotten what it was like spending time with boys her own age. She found herself unimpressed. Idly she wondered how Han, Luke, and Chewbacca had reacted to her disappearance. She was sure they would have figured out that she had followed through on her plan to take a ship from Lando to come to Alderaan. Realizing she felt oddly guilty about the circumstances of her departure, she pushed the thought from her mind and focused on her current mission.
Trouble was, she wasn't exactly sure what she was going to do when they got to Aldera. She envisioned breaking into the palace and finding her parents, but then what? Would they flee? Fight? Hide? Remembering the story about the executions outside Terrarium City, she resolved that she would neither flee nor hide. She would drive the Empire from Alderaan, or die trying. That issue settled, she decided she would survey the situation on the ground before she determined exactly how she would carry out her goal.
"So you know anything 'bout what's going on out in the galaxy?" Si continued. "You know, like…nah, probably not."
"I did had some time to catch up on things before I got here," Leia told him. "What do you want to know about?"
"Okay then—how are the Rampa Rancors doing? Did they make the semifinals?"
In the dim light, Leia was glad he couldn't see her roll her eyes.
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"Good, good."
Yoda placed his hands on Luke's shoulders as the young man sat cross-legged on the ground, rocks lifting off the ground in a pattern around him.
"Gently now, set them down." The rocks quivered as Luke struggled to maintain control, a few of them settling slowly to the ground while the rest crashed down.
"How was that?" Luke asked, opening his eyes.
"Pilot you are," Yoda responded, "If flying were you, how rank this landing would you?"
"Fair enough." Luke stood, brushing the dirt from the back of his pants. "Should I try again?"
"Try? No, try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."
Sighing, Luke sat back down. "Okay."
"Elsewhere your mind is," Yoda said sternly. "Focus on the present, a Jedi does."
"I'm sorry, Master, I just.."
"No!" Yoda smacked his walking stick into the ground in front of Luke. "Excuses you will not make. Up." With a surprisingly lithe jump, the little Jedi leapt onto Luke's back. "Run."
Two hours later, Luke collapsed against the side of the mud hut that Yoda called home, the exertion having been successful on focusing his mind away from everything but his aching muscles. He had been distracted, he admitted to himself. Even though he'd only known her in person for a short time, Princess Leia haunted him. For two months, ever since he'd found the holographic message begging for help, he'd held her on the type of pedestal reserved for beautiful martyrs in his mind. Like the rest of the Rebels, he believed she had died at the hands of the Empire, and he hovered around the edges of the memorials her friends had held, wanting to know more about the intriguing girl.
When she had shown up, alive and relatively well, he was thrilled to find she was a kindred spirit—as if the Force had conspired to bring them together. That was why her departure was so heartbreaking. Even untrained, he could tell she had incredible potential in the Force, and he envisioned them as a team fighting the Empire with power of righteousness on their side. He tried suppress the hate he felt towards the Empire for what they had done to her, sending her into such a spiral of fear and despair that the Dark Side gripped her tighter and tighter, leaving her to think there were no other options. If only she had come with him to Dagobah.
"In you the Dark Side is as well," Yoda spoke up. Luke had become accustomed to the Jedi's ability to read his thoughts, though he tried hard to quiet his mind as the master instructed. "In all of us, it is."
"So how do you keep it from destroying you?" Luke asked, remembering the cautionary tale of Darth Vader that Ben had recounted.
"Awareness and intention," Yoda said, tottering over to Luke's side. "Think not of how you act. Think why you act. Always seek peace, must you."
"But why do Jedi carry weapons, then?" Luke wanted to know. "Ben….Master Kenobi said that Jedi are not supposed to feel anger, or aggression. So why fight?"
"Good questions you have for a young one," Yoda said. "Debate these questions, many Jedi Masters have. Have the answers, I do not."
Luke found himself growing exasperated. "So what am I supposed to do then? What's the point of training if I'm not going to fight the Empire?"
Yoda squeezed his eyes shut, breathing deeply.
"Meditated have I for many years now," he said finally. "The perfect Jedi you think I am? Humph." Luke cocked his head, wondering where the lecture was going. "Anger have I felt, rage and fear. Yes. Obstinate have I been, it may surprise you to know, young Skywalker." Luke saw the sparkle in the old Jedi's eyes and smiled at the small joke.
"Since before I was born were Jedi always trained the same way. At the temple, younglings were raised. No families they had—only the Jedi. Forbidden were attachments. Feared we did the threat of individual attachments, of life outside the study of the Light Side of the Force. Yes, young Skywalker….feared. Only younglings would we take, soon after birth, before corrupted they could become. Once took an older boy we did, so powerful was he. But adjust our training protocols, we did not, so stubborn were we. Make him deny love, deny family we did." Yoda looked down at the ground. "Fell to the Dark Side, did he?"
"Vader?" Luke asked quietly. Yoda nodded in assent.
"But what does that mean for me?"
"Fear is fear," Yoda responded, "Whether fear of the unknown, or fear of fearing the unknown. Understand this, we Jedi did not. Accept the Dark Side, you must. Let it rule you, you must not. And deny yourself out of fear of the Dark Side, you must not."
Luke pondered for a moment, trying to absorb the Jedi's words. "Tell me about Vader," he insisted.
Yoda grimaced. "Powerful Jedi was he, and well loved. Dedicated to the Order was he. But fell under Palpatine's influence, he did. Gave him what we would not, the Emperor did."
"What do you mean? What could Palpatine have offered a Jedi?" Luke was confused.
"Many secrets he kept because of the Jedi Code. Forbidden to love we were. But powerful is love, even more powerful than the Force. This, Palpatine knew. Knew it, the Jedi did not."
"So he was in love? With who? What happened?" Luke's curiosity about the enigmatic Dark Lord had been piqued. For so long, he'd seen him as a heartless machine, hellbent on carrying out the Emperor's campaign of death. This was a side of Vader about which he was shocked to hear.
"A young woman he met as a child. Shared his love, she did. Send him to the Emperor, her death did. Took a name of the Sith and destroyed the Jedi in his grief and rage, he did. Now only we remain, you and I."
Luke rested his chin against his knees. "Who was he before he became a Sith?"
Yoda looked at him for a long time, and finally closed his eyes, sighing. "Anakin Skywalker, his name was."
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Leia was glad when the boys got into an argument over the relative merit of two different video game systems, allowing her to hike in silence while they bickered trying to outdo each other with their knowledge of technical capabilities. Her calves ached from the steep downslope they'd been following for the last few kilometers, and she was relieved as the path flattened out and she could see a hint of sunlight ahead.
"Almost there," Farn said, "And I've got a surprise for you all. Didn't want to tell Kita."
"What is it?" asked Leia, intrigued as they emerged blinking into the bright afternoon. The lakeshore sparkled invitingly in front of them, and Leia was suddenly tempted to whip off her boots and dip her aching feet in the cool water.
"Shh….c'mere." Farn led them around a bushy patch of tall weeds and pulled aside a pile of tree branches. "Check. It. Out."
Leia almost laughed aloud when she saw what was concealed under the plants. An old landspeeder, dating back further than the Clone Wars and covered with dents and rust, sat on the ground parked nose first in the brush.
"That's…nice," she said, wondering what Farn planned to do with the old thing. Surely it couldn't actually run?
"Just wait." Farn pulled open the top with a yank, not bothering with keys or controls, and hopped into the driver's seat, brushing the dead leaves off the passenger seat next to him.
"Shotgun!" yelled Si, hopping in next to his friend.
"Don't you think we should let her…." Farn started, but Leia held up a hand.
"It's fine." She watched as Tantur clambered into the seat behind Farn. "It runs?"
"You bet!" Farn fiddled with some wires under the steering controls and the landspeeder coughed to life, the repulsors activating unevenly so that it rocked back and forth as it hovered a meter off the ground. "So, you coming?"
As regally as possible, Leia opened the rear door and climbed in, fastening her safety belt as she dropped her bag on the floor in front of her, scooting over to make room for Threepio next to her.
"We'll have to take the long way around," Farn told her as her raised the roof back over them and they set off, "But it's better than walking. Kita wouldn't want us using the fuel, but we can get some more from Mich when he picks us up in the freighter."
"Mich? What's his last name?" Leia asked.
"Dunno. Why?"
"I knew a Mich in Aldera," Leia told him. "I wonder if it's him."
"Well, we'll find out soon enough. Hang on!" With a whoosh, Farn lifted them out of the bushes and carefully picked his way through the breaks in the trees where the mountain met the flat land near the shore.
"I came prepared," said Si with a wink. Clearly he'd been in on the secret. He grabbed his bag and pulled out an old fashioned optical disc, sliding it into the port in the dashboard. Immediately music came blasting from the speakers.
"You okay with all this?" Farn said, glancing back over his shoulder as the other two boys bopped their heads and danced in their seats.
"I'm fine," said Leia. She didn't admit it to her parents, but she had secreted a few albums from the Pulsar Freaks in the apartment she shared with her father on Coruscant, occasionally blasting them when she returned home alone at the end of a particularly frustrating day. Especially since they'd replaced their lead singer with a powerfully voiced woman from Bandomeer who steered the groups lyrics more towards angry feminism, she thought, catching herself tapping her foot to the pulsing beat. Tantur smiled at her.
"My parents would ground me for life if they knew about this," she thought with some amusement, "Riding around in a speeder with three strange boys listening to punk music and plotting to sneak past an armed blockade." For a moment she let herself forget about the last few months, the agony of torture and loss and oppression, and just watched the tall conifers whip by in a blur out the window.
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It had been many years since Solo and Chewbacca had visited Rendili, on the Corellian Trade Spine just a hop away from Solo's home planet. It had become a drydock for the Victory-class star destroyers that were such a nuisance for Rebels and smugglers alike, making it a particular bold location for the small Alliance base that to which they were being driven by a dour faced Lowen woman.
Some unidentified Rebel had spotted his ship as they landed in a small spaceport near the town of Eerksgur-Ro and the Lowen was waiting for them with a code transmitter as they exited their docking bay. Friendly at first, she became confused when Solo insisted that he no longer had any Rebels with him aboard the Falcon.
"You were on Yavin," she repeated. "All the departing ships were supposed to load up. What happened to your passengers?"
"I wasn't really officially part of the evac," Solo said. "I'm just a contractor."
"Well, I'm still under orders to bring you back to the safe house," she responded grimly, clearly annoyed at being sent on an errand to fetch pilots who were less than dedicated to the Alliance cause. "All right?"
"Do we have a choice?" Solo looked meaningfully at the blasters hanging from her hips.
"I'm not kidnapping you. Commander Antilles asked to see you."
"Wedge is here?" She nodded. "Good. I'd like to see him too then. I have a thing or three to discuss with him."
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Farn stopped the speeder near the ancient rotting stump of one of the gargantuan trees that marked the transition of the coniferous forest of the Juran mountains to the rolling hills of the high plains outside Aldera. The passengers climbed out and helped pull branches and leaves over their vehicle.
"From here we walk," Farn said, helping Leia slip her pack on. "You still want to bring the droid? He could stay here and guard the speeder."
"I need him," she insisted, and waved for Threepio to climb out. Clearly he'd been hoping for guard duty.
"Is it much farther?" she wondered, noticing that the shadows on the ground were growing with the approach of twilight.
"Probably two more hours of walking?" Farn guessed. "Are you doing okay? We can stop and eat if you need."
"I ate while we were driving," she told him. "But won't it be getting dark?"
"Yeah. We need to keep the torches off for the last bit, so the Imps don't see us. Don't worry- just stick close to me. It's all flat from here."
Breathing deeply, Leia plunged into the grass after him. It'll be fine, she thought. We're just going to walk through the dark past a bunch of stormtroopers, that's all. No problem. Trembling, she tried to push away the image of stormtroopers as they surrounded her in her cell on the Death Star, dead faced and silent behind their masks as she screamed and tried to fend off the blows from their batons and rifle butts with her bound hands. Willing herself to focus on the plains stretching ahead of them, she held her hands tightly against her sides to still them.
For all their bravado, Leia could tell her companions were growing nervous too as the sun slipped behind the mountains and the darkness swallowed them. The stars appeared, one by one, the constellations comforting familiar, but their light did little to illuminate the sea of grass ahead of them. On the horizon, Leia could see the faint glow of the lights of Aldera. She resisted the temptation to grab Farn's hand, and for a fleeting moment found herself wishing Han Solo was there with her. He seemed so much more self-assured than these boys who were thrust into a war they didn't understand and didn't want. Even Luke, or Chewbacca, though she suspected the Wookiee really didn't like her. For lack of anything better, she slowed her pace to allow the droid, who'd been warned to keep silent, to catch up with her. She grabbed his arm and walked on.
Suddenly two pairs of lights shot across the plains several hundred meters in front of them, disappearing as they curved away towards the lights of the city.
"There's the highway," Farn whispered. "There's a closed rest stop just ahead. That's where we get our ride."
Without lights, they had to feel their way along the gravel shoulder of the speeder highway and nearly smacked face first into one of the outbuildings of the rest stop. Farn fiddled with a locked door, popping it open and pushing Si inside first to check for intruders before guiding Leia, Tantur, and Threepio into the cramped space.
Shutting the door behind him, Farn finally illuminated one of the torches.
"Okay!" he said, taking a deep breath. "Now we wait. Mich should be here within the hour."