X. Sorry About The Mess

There was much to be done in Mos Eisley, and doing it right took time. Ben had learned the secrets of the spacers, and had mastered the art of doing business without standing out. It would be impossible, of course, with the boy in tow. Anakin's son might have been a natural pilot, but the lifestyle of the hardened frontiersmen was foreign to him. With masterful control, he slipped away before Luke realized it, blending in, disappearing. In the swampy gloom of Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina, Luke stood out marvellously, a beacon of innocence concealing Ben's purpose as the Jedi master slipped through the shadows, moving from conversation to conversation with one eye on the boy, one on the Wookiee.

Known now to the Imperials as G5-623, the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk was little more than a slave farm; the proud Wookiees themselves had been branded as "non-sentients" by the Empire. A Wookie spacer, by default, was more likely than not an escaped slave, and would be both knowledgeable and motivated when it came to avoiding the Imperial hyperspace lanes. But for that reason exactly, making a beeline for the towering Wookiee pilot would brand him to anyone watching as a man seeking at all costs to avoid Imperial attention.

There was a delicate dance to this, an intricate series of steps invisible to the casual observer. But Ben had spent years learning the dance, and so approached the pilots with Imperial ties first, seeking passage through official Imperial channels as an old man with impractical requests. Slowly and deliberately, begging, demanding, grinning like an Outer Rim eccentric, he exhausted the goodwill of the reputable pilots one by one, and failed his way ever closer to the center of the bar, where the undesirable Wookiee waited. He was the pilot of last resort, or very nearly so; and as a hundred eyes followed the foolish old man from pilot to pilot, sneers of dismissive laughter began to echo in the air behind him. A horned Devaronian grinned at him devilishly from the shadows, delighting in his foolishness. The Imperial spies—those he knew to be Imperials—watched him for a time and then lost interest, just as he had hoped. Meanwhile, the steps of his secret dance became known to the Wookiee, who—it became clear—was not working alone. As he circled from one pilot to the next, Ben watched the Wookiee's eyes intently, watched his telltale signals to someone in the shadows. He was pulling work, Ben realized, for someone who did not want to be seen doing business.

A man so eager to avoid attention that he let an escaped Imperial slave make his contacts for him was just the sort of man he needed. There was something more to him, too: some raw glow about him. He was untrained, unfocused, like all born after the Purge—but the Force ran wild in him, too. There could be no mistake: Ben had found his pilot.

After that, the rest of the dance was frustrating. Eager to be on with business, Ben nearly let his haste give the game away. He locked eyes with the Wookiee, who nodded and moved to a vacant section of the bar.

Three more conversations to go. Then two.

Then one.

The last pilot between Ben and the Wookiee was a tall human, clean-shaven with dark sideburns, who had been audacious enough to wear a decommissioned Republic flight suit into the bar. He was an Alliance sympathizer, and easily recognizable as such. The kind of man a Rebel would trust.

Ben needed him to say no.

"I'm looking for passage to Alderaan," said Ben.

The pilot nodded. "I'm your man," he said. "I'm a Corellian. Name's BoShek. I know the Corellian System, I know the Corellian Run, and I know the Core Worlds as well as my own ship."

"What are you flying?" Ben asked.

"Light freighter," said BoShek. "She's called the Infinity. YT-2200, heavily modified. Six passengers, more if you don't need much cargo."

"Class 2 hyperdrive," said Ben. "Not good enough."

"Like I said, old man," said BoShek, "heavily modified. You ever hear of the Kessel Run?"

Ben shrugged. "I've heard it's closed for business. The Empire has posted interdictors all around the edge of the Maw after that slave revolt."

"There's ways around 'em," said BoShek. "If you don't mind a little gravity sickness, and your ship's fast enough. It's the smugglers' proving ground, now."

"And that's what you are?" Ben said disapprovingly. "A smuggler?"

"Not so loud," said BoShek. "I'm whatever I need to be. There's a hefty discount if you're hauling above-board, though…"

"I wouldn't say that," said Ben.

BoShek nodded. "What's the cargo?"

Ben smiled softly. "Three Rathtars."

The smuggler's eyes bugged out. "Rathtars? E chu ta, my friend. I'm not putting those on my boat."

"I'm willing to pay," said Ben.

"Yes, well, I'm not," said BoShek. "Where did you even find those blasted things?"

"Let's just say I have a very large friend," said Ben, "who is a certain admirer of exotic predators. He's grown quite bored with his rathtars, and is in talks—quiet ones, of course—to trade them to Alderaan's planetary zoo. There's return work, if you want it."

"No thank you."

"If you don't like rathtars," said Ben, "you should see what I'll be bringing back."

BoShek eyed him as if he were mad; then, with a thought, glanced at the Wookiee over his shoulder.

"I'm not your pilot," he said. "Look, why don't you try Chewbacca here? I'll save you the trouble of asking around. He and his pal are the only two lugnuts in the galaxy desperate enough to take on that load."

"If you're sure, then," said Ben, feigning disappointment.

BoShek nodded, glanced at the Wookiee again, and lurched off his barstool.

"Well…" he said. Gesturing again at Chewbacca, BoShek slipped away to try his luck in a bar with saner clientele.

"I'm looking for safe passage," Ben told the Wookiee. "Very safe passage."

"Gwwwarrrf," said the Wookiee. He had observed the smuggler's dance. He already knew Ben was serious. He already knew rathtars had nothing to do with it.

"Two passengers. Two droids. No cargo."

Chewbacca nodded his assent, and stood to his full height. He made eye contact with the man in the shadows. They shared a wordless conversation in the space of a second. The Wookiee began to lead Ben over.

A feeling of hate and hostility hit Ben like a brick as he stood up.

He'd been half-watching the grizzled, scar-faced little traveler since he came in with the hulking Ponda Baba, one of Jabba's regular spice smugglers. Both of them were deeply rattled by something, the small man especially. He was angry, and afraid, and had come clear across the galaxy to get away from…something. He had the aura of a man on the run, and that made him unpredictable. Anger and hatred swirled in him with wild terror; and these past few days, Ben sensed those forces even more acutely. But the bar was a swirling morass of hostilities. Even through the Force, it was difficult to sense the sharpness of the scarred man's murderous intent until it came to a head.

Something had happened while he was distracted. The troublemaker had taken offense to Luke; boasting and hassling, he was fixing for a fight. Anakin would never have stood for it at that age. With diffident arrogance, he would provoked the fight, and ended it decisively. But Luke was not entirely Anakin's son. With grace and gentleness, he let the provocation go.

"I'll be careful," he said.

His gentleness only provoked the troublemaker's fury further. "You'll be dead!" he barked.

Ben stepped in. Eyes were on him now—on them both.

"This little one's not worth the effort," Ben said dismissively. "Now let me get you something."

He had seen bar fights before through the eyes of the Force. Most of the time, just before the violence broke, the aggressors would flare up with an anger that was easily sensed. But the scarred man had grown so accustomed to violence that his emotions did not telegraph his intent. It was with the eerie calm of a habitual murderer that he seized hold of Anakin's boy—Padmé's boy—and smashed him down hard, through a table, to the hard cantina floor. In his youth, even with no warning, Ben might have caught him. Obi-Wan, the Jedi, would have caught him. But Ben's reflexes were too slow to stop the assault. He watched helplessly from the prison of his old body as the boy went down hard, shocked, afraid. Writhing at his feet, Luke groaned softly, gasping for breath. He looked up through the pain with utter astonishment, as if it were the first time he had felt the hand of human cruelty.

It was Padmé's face, that face of disbelief, confusion, pain. It was the shocked, sad face of innocence betrayed—the face she had worn on Mustafar.

Obi-Wan…

He could still feel the radiant heat of the lava. It still burned his face. The strength roared back into Ben's limbs—but not from the source he had been taught to channel. It coursed through him, and took him, and for the briefest of moments he fell to its embrace.

The scarred man was going to kill the boy, now. His murderous anger snapped into sharp focus. Suddenly he was reaching for his blaster, already had it out when Obi-Wan's wrath met the weapon head-on, cleaving through the weapon with brutal strength. It didn't need strength, of course: the energy weapon sliced through concrete and durasteel as if it were the most delicate silk. It knew no opposition and needed no muscle to do its work. But he jerked the weapon up with all the might of the Force, ripping through the weapon before turning back in its fury on the now-disarmed wielder.

Reacting as quickly as a seasoned smuggler could, Ponda Baba jerked in to haul his friend out of the way. Protectively, he threw his arm over the scarred man, but the plunging blade would not be denied. It ripped through the jacket's hidden armour, through the smuggler's massive arm, into the little man's chest, burning through his innards as it put him down. He tumbled to the floor in a heap of wailing flesh, carrying his companion's severed arm all the way to the ground with him.

Yes, said the Dark Side. Teach them a lesson. Show them.

Ben froze in horror. All eyes were on him now, as he stood in the centre of the bar with a shimmering Jedi weapon. Chills washed over him as he looked down at his handiwork, at the terrible carnage his blade had wrought with near-perfect efficiency. The severed arm at his feet was not a clean cho mok, a surgical and precise severance of a limb that would heal cleanly and take a prosthetic well. No, he had felt the Dark Side guide him as he struck, felt the subtle cold strength with which he had pulled at the grisly wound, bursting the intricate web of veins with his mind even as the saber sealed them. The blade had not burned it shut cleanly, as it should have; the floor was covered in blood, and the cowering Aqualish thug was still losing his lifeblood, rivulets streaming down the mangled stump as he scurried away.

A healthy opponent could survive a cho mok easily enough, if he survived the shock. Ponda Baba would not survive this brutal blow on his own. The wound would kill, and kill slowly, without extraordinary medicine. Such was the power of the Dark Side.

All his subterfuge, the delicate dance of smugglers' intrigue, was undone. Guile was worth nothing, now. Word would get to the Empire instantly that the last Jedi had been here. All the Emperor's wrath would rain down on him, and in that moment he stood ready to challenge it. Then, disgusted with himself most of all, Ben powered down the saber and stepped over the severed arm to the boy. The smugglers, intuiting the seriousness of what had just happened, affected an air of disinterest. They went back to their drinks. The band picked up. Everyone who was not rushing to alert the Empire took great pains to distance themselves from the private dispute. And the Wookiee, smiling gently, was looking down over his shoulder, impressed by Ben's warrior brutality in a way the old man had not intended.

Ben hoisted Luke gently to his feet, burying his sorrow deep as he returned to the business that was now even more urgently at hand. "Chewbacca here," he said, "is first mate on a ship that might suit us."

With the affected confidence of an old bar brawler not to be trifled with, Ben made his way to the table in the shadows. Inside, beneath the sand-caked robes, he was trembling as an awakened rage licked at the edges of his calm and threatened to undo him.