Aphra did have a harness, thankfully, although that didn't quite salvage the rest of the situation. Luke strapped it on gingerly, casting a few glances down at the pit below, though he did know that there was no getting out of this. The rope itself was more than long enough, it seemed, and it was nocked at regular intervals with metal loops to clip his harness onto. It was—as far as Luke's questionable experience went—as safe a way to abseil as any other, if it hadn't been in a place like this.

Aphra shoved the screws into the walls and strung up a truly impressive net of pulleys in and around the alcove, passing the rope through all of them. She also had the decency to test them with Luke's weight before throwing him down the hole, thankfully; that hadn't been confirmed at all. But the preparations were calculated and done in a dizzying space of time. Luke stood in the harness, decked out in gloves and his helmet, fiddling with the screw gate at his waist.

Finally, they tossed the rope down the hole and watched it fall for a few metres before swaying in mid-air. Luke clipped himself to the nearest metal loop and stood at the edge.

Aphra clipped herself to the wall and took the rope in her hands. "Ready, kid?"

"Well—"

She shoved him forwards. He dropped, and darkness enveloped him.

He was only falling outright for a few metres—then the pulley system caught him, and he could feel the vibrations as it let him drop gently, gently. He grasped the rope in front of him with both hands at first, feeling around for a wall to abseil down, but he just spun wildly, finding no purchase. Aphra stifled a snort above him.

With a huff, Luke let go of the rope with one hand to guide himself back around, peering at the darkness he'd descended into. It wasn't total—a faint crimson light suffused the cavern, and as he descended he could see more clearly where it came from. The hole they'd descended from wasn't the only one. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of similar entrances studding the ceiling, all fanning out in a star shape from a vast, circular patch of darkness.

The red light—sunlight?—was illuminating, but not enough to see by. He reached up to switch on his headtorch, and the beam of white pierced the hall, flooding it. It was so much bigger than he'd expected. It must be the size of, if not bigger than, the arena.

The arena.

He looked up again. The beam of light felt along the ceiling, growing farther away with every second the rope lowered him, but it was enormous. It was just where the arena was. He traced the trail of red light he was in—the alcoves in the corridor Aphra was waiting in. Which meant all the other fronds of this star pattern… were other corridors? All branching off the centre?

Why would they build an arena just to have a massive cavern underneath it? And why have so many entryways—or just stark drops—into it?

Focusing on light, however, was just one aspect of the puzzle. The smell was how Luke had found this place, and the smell still dominated.

Shaking slightly, Luke tried to breathe through his mouth, though the stench was so thick he could taste it. Mould, rot, and decay permeated the very walls of the hall—when he shone his light downwards, he could see that the sandy orange walls darkened grotesquely the closer to the floor they got, as if with gore and damp. Damp, on a desert world?

Gritting his teeth, he took in a breath, and looked straight below him.

He wasn't afraid of heights, but still the drop was far enough that that was what gave him pause at first. Then, again, he saw the movement that consumed the entire floor of the chamber. It seemed to almost shimmer in his vision, like the wobbling of light through heat haze in the desert, before his eyes focused, and he could make out the motions in more detail. It was more like wriggling—more like writhing. Snakes?

Of course it would be snakes.

Luke craned his neck. Something flashed, and he frowned. The floor wasn't just those snake-like shapes, writhing. Plenty of detritus seemed to be strewn there as well: some of it cloth, some of it metal, and some of it a distinct ivory colour that made Luke's stomach flip.

Snakes and trinkets? What was causing the smell?

"You see anything, Luke?" Aphra's voice buzzed out from the comlink at his wrist. It was more efficient than trying to shout over this distance.

"Yeah," he replied, squinting down. He still had a few dozen metres to descend, and he glanced around for a place to land. "Lots of snakes. Weird ones." He peered more closely. "They've got fur on them." That made no sense. Snakes were cold-blooded. "And they don't seem to have heads—I'm not close enough yet, but—"

He could almost hear Aphra nodding. "Sand snakes," she confirmed. "Native to Geonosis. Dunno why they've got fur—it's a desert—but the head thing, you're not wrong. They've got their eyes and mouths bang in the centre of their bodies."

"Why?"

"Biology is beautiful."

"They're enormous." Luke was approaching the ground now and swung to try to hit a spot that wasn't swarming with them. "They're moving strangely, though."

"What's that mean?"

"I mean…" Luke's feet hit the ground. It was harder than it looked—just stone covered with a thin layer of sand. The nearest sand snake to him was less than a metre away, and it really was moving strangely. "I've always seen snakes slither. You know, move along on their bellies in smooth movements."

"That is how snakes are meant to move, yes."

"These ones are sort of twitching. It's not very graceful."

"You're not that graceful yourself sometimes."

"I'm serious, Aphra."

"So am I."

"Something feels wrong." There was life in this cavern. He was in no doubt about that. There was life right at his feet, where the snake was lying. But…

Luke crouched down, reached out, and poked the snake. It stopped moving. Went utterly still, in fact. Frowning, he grasped its body and flipped it over, its fur coarse on his skin. It was three metres long, so not all of it flipped, and it lay there dumbly, half of its belly twisted to the sky. There was a reason for that.

The snake was dead.

Its underbelly had been totally eaten away. The harsh light of Luke's headtorch arrested it all in nauseating clarity: black flesh clinging to ribs that almost glowed white, bloody muscle fibres and sinew, the soft, rotting insides. Luke gagged at the smell. And the writhing, sun-bleached yellow-white of its intestines, glistening—

When Luke leaned over the corpse to inspect it in more detail, those intestines lunged for him.

He staggered back with a shout and twisted away. Pain erupted in tiny, blaster-shot-sized wounds along his side. He shouted again.

"Luke? What's going on?"

Gritting his teeth, he looked down.

Those weren't intestines.

"You got any information about worms on Geonosis?" Luke bit out. They hung out of his flesh like IV tubes, as fat as his little finger and—suns, they must be six inches long. Six inches long and rapidly shrinking, as they burrowed into— "If you do, tell me now!" He looked away before he vomited, but the pain wouldn't let him forget it.

"No?" Aphra sounded tense. "I got nothing about worms—"

"Alright." He took in a breath. Without looking down, he grabbed a fistful of three, four, that were still hanging out of his side—and pulled. Blood soaked his jacket and harness, but they stayed in. They were disappearing into his flesh more slowly now, and he could feel it burning. "Alright. I—"

A wordless shriek that could only be translated into Basic as No! crashed through him. Hope, instinct, bloodlust filled his chest so intensely that when his gaze landed on his own body, he almost took a bite himself. His mouth watered. Every cell in his body ached to grow.

We have been waiting for this.

No!

He yanked again, and this time something gave. He tossed that fistful of worms aside, the bloodlust toppling to the ground with them, tumbling out of his chest so fast it left him cold and empty in its absence. He looked down at where they'd fallen—right next to the snake corpse that had moved so oddly.

These worms had eaten the snake.

Were they gonna…?

He yanked at them again. Again. They stuck fast, burrowing into the soft flesh of his hip, contorting themselves in a ball and feasting…

"Luke, what's happening?"

"I'm being eaten by worms." He got the words out in a rush, but he was proud of himself for getting them out at all. "There's no snakes, the snakes are dead, the worms ate them, and then the worms flung themselves at me and—oh suns."

He staggered back from the snake's corpse as more of those worms writhed towards him—smelling him? Sensing more flesh? But behind him was another snake, twitching and squirming just like the other one had, with the delighted worms feasting inside it, and he didn't want more, didn't need more. He stomped on the worms poking around his ankle instead.

Their insides were red and lumpy on the bottom of his boot. His insides probably looked the same to them.

He staggered again, barely holding himself up. Panicking. He was panicking. That would make the situation worse.

But what was he supposed to do? The skin at his hip bulged as a worm slithered down it. They were digesting him slowly, the ends of their tails still twitching. He stared down at them. They stuck out of his side like the digits of a third hand thrusting out from his waist.

A prick, then a roar of pain in his calf. He whirled around, staring. More worms from the other corpse, creeping over to him in a carpet of shaggy yellow ropes, undeterred by his light or how he stomped them. They flattened into pulp, but the others just glided over them, faster and smoother than any snake Luke had ever seen. The worm on his calf slapped its body against his trousers as it gnawed through the linen, through his skin, and into him.

His calf muscle spasmed. Luke tried to put weight on the leg, but it nearly buckled underneath him.

"They're eating me alive," he choked up. "I can't pull out them of me."

Aphra went silent for a moment. "That's a problem."

"Yeah it is!" Luke hopped back on his good leg, away from the two streams of worms heading for him. The whole floor was littered with them. Littered with corpses—of snakes, of what looked like small mammals, of some things slightly bigger that he didn't want a good look at. All of them food for worms? What was this place? What was this chamber for?

He looked around farther. There were more corpses. There were the remnants of corpses. The piles of cloth he'd seen: clothes. Clothes made from artificial threads, probably, if the worms hadn't digested them too. Tiny glinting items in the light: jewellery, or keepsakes, or decorations. Strewn in among small, yellow shards—glass? They looked almost like eggshells. And there were larger metal objects, cylindrical ones—

He tripped over one.

It scattered away from him, bowling over some of the worms, but not enough. He scrambled to his feet again, but not before two more latched onto his other leg like slimy chains. They curled around his ankle before shoving inside; just their touch made his stomach roil.

He rocketed back to his feet, trying to brush them off. They didn't go. He could feel them working their way up his leg, blood seeping out of the tunnels they left behind—

As he spun, he saw what he'd tripped over.

It was a lightsaber hilt.

Longer than his father's hilt—about the length of his forearm. He raised his head and looked around.

There were… a lot of lightsabers here. Littered amongst the bones of the dead.

Why were there so many lightsabers?

Did the Geonosians just… have them? Had they made them? Did they use them as weapons?

Weapons, Luke realised. Lightsabers were weapons.

How had they dealt with burrowing bugs on Tatooine?

He almost choked on his tears before he could follow the thought through—he wanted his aunt and uncle, and even Ben, who'd always come to get him out of trouble, so badly. He wanted to run to them with an injury and pretend not to cry while they helped him stitch it up. More than anything, he wanted not to be alone in this.

He missed them.

But missing them wouldn't help him, now. Remembering them would.

Aunt Beru used to use hot wax to seal the wounds. She said with the hole closed, the bug—usually a type of mite—would suffocate and die. That took a few minutes, but…

Uncle Owen preferred a more extreme version. He'd said to burn them.

They were vulnerable to temperature swings. Their systems couldn't take the sudden heat, or extreme cold. If Luke could burn—he looked down at the fingertip-worms in his side and swallowed—them off, then he might have a shot.

His father's lightsaber was in the side of his pack. It was the work of seconds to get it out. He took a breath, holding it in his shaking, sweating fingers.

"Alright!"

Aphra's shout broke his train of thought, though the way the rope attached to his harness was twitching, he should have noticed her sooner. He yanked his head up. She'd strapped herself in and was climbing down the rope in her harness. With her bare hands. At every notch, she unclipped her screw gate and clipped it to the next one.

"How're we getting rid of these worms, then?" Aphra asked him, still from a very safe distance above, less than halfway down the rope. Luke rolled his eyes and scoffed.

"I have a plan," he said, voice remarkably steady.

"You do?" The rope turned, and she turned with it.

Luke ignored her and thumbed the ignition. His father's lightsaber roared to life, dazzlingly blue in this dark and red hellhole, like the skies of Tatooine. He felt suddenly, virulently homesick.

"Is that a lightsaber?" Aphra cast her gaze more widely. "These are all lightsabers? You didn't mention we were rich!"

Luke gritted his teeth and pressed the blade to his side.

He screamed.

The worms screamed too, it seemed—a shrill screech filled his head, making him dizzy and setting his teeth on edge. His jacket and shirt charred, and the flesh underneath them bubbled red. The tip of the worms' tails went rigid and still. Luke pinched them between his fingers and with no resistance, no grip, they slid right out. Blood spluttered with them, like an oil pump clogged with sand.

It worked. It had worked. He just had to do it again.

His arms failed him just as he thought that. He didn't want to do it again. It hurt—all of this hurt—

The lightsaber buzzed in his hands, tranquil and steady. His father's lightsaber.

He had been a Jedi. Luke had never known him, save through stories, but Luke would come to know him, when he became a Jedi too. But first, he had to be brave. He had to survive.

He owed that much to a father who hadn't.

Another breath in. Then, he swung the lightsaber towards the worms in his legs. He missed—thankfully, since he could have taken off his leg with that swing—and took a breath. The worms seemed to shrink away from the blade.

He buzzed it against both his calves, quickly. One, two. It left a steaming red furrow of flesh behind. Before he could collapse, he clipped his screw gate to a higher loop and let the rope take his weight, hanging there, lightsaber still in hand. The worms edging towards him squirmed back when he brandished it at them, and the first line fell.

Tears blurred his vision—he was surprised that was the first time so far. Pain was settling in and shock was fleeing.

Aphra called from above, "You alright?"

"I got rid of the worms!" The voice that came out of his mouth had no right to sound so chipper. He was holding back sobs with an iron fist.

"With a lightsaber?" Aphra was still hanging up there, watching him.

"I'm creative like that."

"Can you be a little more creative and grab some more of those? They're always good money."

Luke huffed, trembling on his weak, injured legs. He didn't want to put weight on either of them. But he dragged himself forwards to where he'd kicked the other lightsaber, bent down, and picked it up.

His vision whited out. A dozen blaster shots punctuated his chest. He looked up, the smell of sweat and sand stuffing his nostrils, to see four—five—eight battle droids looming over him.

"Roger roger," one said. The clamour of a thousand screams quietened. He collapsed, and the worms made him their home.

The harness caught him as he fell, in real life, and the pain of another worm diving in for a taste snapped him out of it. The lightsaber had rolled out of his grip, so he lit his father's again and drove it into his leg, hissing.

Aphra concluded, "I'll get the lightsabers. You just… hold onto that one."

"You'd," he tried to get out, too tired to hiss or bite it, "better."

She grinned at him—a little sheepishly, for once, which he had to appreciate—and did something with the rope. It started to lift Luke back into the air. Back into the darkness. Away from the worms at his feet, which stretched up and up to follow him but couldn't.

Too tired to hold on, he let it spin him aimlessly, around and around and around. The chamber floor shrank below him. The lightsabers flashed in the looping light of his headtorch like teeth.

"That was smart, kid," Aphra said. Luke took a sharp breath as she pressed another bacta patch to his side. They were far enough from the tunnel into the arena that he couldn't smell the rot emanating from the alcoves anymore, but it stuffed his nose, nonetheless. "Though you injured yourself even worse that way."

"They were eating me," Luke bit out. He leaned back, against his pack and the wall. It wasn't a very effective cushion, but he made do.

"And you nearly set yourself on fire!" she chirped. "Not very efficient way of doing it, but whatever works." She slapped the last patch on—with all the force that entailed—and Luke made a sound like a tooka being run over. "Quick thinking. How'd you know the heat would kill them?"

Knowledge passed down and preserved, gifted to him by family now dead. They'd saved his life all over again.

"Guessed," he mumbled and looked away.

"At least we're out of there," she said. She unfolded her legs from where she'd crouched in front of Luke and spun around to sit against the wall, about a metre down from him. "And we know there's definitely a droid factory on this planet."

Luke frowned. "Did you get that from the worms?"

"What? No. I've got no idea what's going on with the worms. But while you were busy crying"—("Hey!")—"I actually looked around the floor of the chamber."

"How'd you avoid getting eaten?"

"Razor-sharp reflexes, of course." Luke looked at her sidelong. "Alright, I did what you did and grabbed a lightsaber. I grabbed a lot of lightsabers, in fact."

"That's what you went down there for."

"And while I was down there, I saw something."

She waited. Luke rolled his eyes. "What did you see?"

Her hands gesticulated wildly. "Battle droids. Or—more specifically, I saw an exit to the chamber, on the bottom of the floor. A big grand tunnel, like this one." She gestured around. The tunnel they'd retreated to certainly could be described as grand, compared to the other tunnels. If one were feeling generous. "It had four tough-looking battle droids down there, all looking up at us."

"They didn't attack you?"

"Nope." She popped her lips for emphasis. "They just stood and watched."

Luke tilted his head back with a groan. Dust off the wall trickled into his hair, cool and dry. "That gives me a bad feeling."

"I always have bad feelings. Usually I take indigestion tablets, and then they go away."

Luke sighed.

Aphra reached out to pat his shoulder—more gently than she'd slapped his side earlier. "You wanna take a nap? We've been in here for about a day anyway. It's time we rested."

"What're you gonna do when I'm asleep?" he mumbled, but just the word nap seemed to set something off in his brain. "Go down to grab those worms and study them?"

"Blast it, kid, you've figured me all out." She winked at him. "Nah. I'm just gonna take the chance to check in with the boss. Gotta let him know there are man-eating worms down here."

"And about the droid factory."

"And about the droid factory, yeah. Before you ask, no you can't listen in."

He blew out his grumble through his nose, but he did reach out to rearrange his pack again, as a pillow for his head. "I've chased after a battle droid, been dragged by a battle droid, got blown up, had worms chew through me, burned myself and—" He cut himself off. He didn't want to talk about the visions he'd had—when touching the pillar or that lightsaber. "Don't I get to know why we're here?"

"We're here to make money, kid."

He lay down against his pack and closed his eyes. "That's all we ever do."

"It's the best thing to do."

"What about helping people?" Luke asked, before he thought better of it. He cringed. He expected Aphra to roll her eyes.

"If you want something more," Aphra said, an edge to her voice, "you're welcome to find another partner."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "I didn't realise I was a partner."

"You're not. You're an assistant. Which is why you don't get to know who the boss is or what the job is for. You just follow along."

He kept his eyes closed until she stomped off, her annoyance bleeding off of her. Now there was no way she'd make the call while he was there. She was probably trying to find a tunnel suitably far enough away, that she could hear if he screamed—actually, would she care that much?—but he couldn't hear her conversation, even if he was only pretending to sleep.

Pretending was all he could do, anyway: sleeping was too difficult. He shifted for a while, grimacing at the hard stone under his back. At the farm, he could sleep on the floor no problem if Biggs was around, or if someone was using his bed for some reason. He could sleep anywhere.

But he wasn't on the farm.

A sob choked him. It was only then that he realised the fabric of the pack against his cheek was damp.

His comlink buzzed.

He sat up, only wincing a little, and reached for it. A welcome excuse not to lie there and wallow. It was Leia.

Are you alright?

I'm fine.

He put the comlink down—he didn't feel like explaining. But almost immediately, it buzzed again.

I'm literally your twin sister. I can feel that you're not fine.

His stomach twisted. He knew that Leia was his sister. He knew that just as Luke had abilities, she did too. And he knew that they were connected in ways far deeper than two people who had never actually met should be.

Ran into some trouble, alright? Aphra says the flesh should be healed up by tomorrow. Used some bacta patches on it.

It was bad enough to use bacta? Concern that wasn't his infected his heart. Luke, what happened?

I'm fine, he insisted. And—There's a droid factory here. Discovered that, at least. We're making headway.

She accepted the change of topic. Droid factory? Do you think the Empire wiped out the Geonosians so they could use the space for something?

That would be her first thought—she was a Rebel—but something didn't ring right. I don't know. It might have something to do with why Aphra's boss wanted her to come here in the first place.

You still don't know who that is?

She won't tell me. Bitterness soared in his chest. He ignored it. How are you?

She ignored him. How have you found the planet itself?

It's a scorched desert wasteland, he joked. Then, less jokingly: It feels like home.

She didn't push farther than that. Survive, she ordered. I do want to meet you, you know.

I know.

May the Force be with you.

His throat dried up.

He put down his comm and glanced around. Aphra was still away, far away—he couldn't sense her in the immediate vicinity at all—so he reached into his pack and pulled out Ben's old diaries. He didn't open any of them: he just rested them on his knee and let his hand hover on the leather-bound cover, trying to absorb some of their calm. And their grief.

It is strange, knowing I and Yoda may be the only Jedi left, Ben had written. The words were burned into his mind. I can grieve Anakin. I do not know how to grieve them all.

But Ben had also written—in a cipher it took Luke three weeks and no small amount of asking Aphra for code-breaking training to crack—in the back of the book the contact details he had for members of the Rebellion. Allies to the Jedi. People he always relied on to help.

The Organas.

Bail had explained the situation to him over a voice call so heavily encrypted neither of them knew what each other looked like. Luke had no ship of his own to come to Alderaan with, and they rightly didn't trust Aphra enough to ask if she could drop him there. Again and again, they'd asked him to leave Aphra behind and just stay on a planet for a few days, long enough for them and their vast resources to pick him up. He'd refused.

He… couldn't.

He couldn't go to a new home when the image of his old home, burnt out and empty, was still so vivid.

They didn't necessarily understand. But they were sympathetic. They'd happily put him in touch with Leia. And once they'd started talking, they hadn't stopped.

After several long moments of sitting there, sucking up the grief and tranquillity Ben had infused the journals with, he put them back into his pack, but he kept his comlink in his hand. Warmth emanated from it. It was the only thing that meant he wasn't alone.

That was what the journals offered. Even when he was alone in the galaxy with only Aphra for company, even with his aunt and uncle dead, Ben dead, and his father long dead… There was connection. There was family.

With his sister, he could make something new. With their father's memory, he could try to be brave.

He wasn't the last Jedi. Not yet.

His gaze was drawn inexorably towards the pack Aphra had left behind.

He swallowed. But he couldn't feasibly have stopped himself from reaching out to where she'd stuffed the stolen lightsabers and weighing them in his hand.

Instantly, the effect returned. Blaster bolts punched through his gut, but he was prepared for them this time, and he was already in pain. Instead, he forced his eyes open and looked around. He was standing in an arena—the arena he'd explored earlier—and in it raged a battle. Jedi, lightsabers flashing and whirring; droids, clanking forwards, shouting orders in tinny voices; Geonosians chittering and cheering in the background. What had happened here? What…

Just a little longer, he determined, with thoughts that weren't his own. Master Yoda's reinforcements will be here soon. The senator will be able to escape soon. We just need to… hold out…

One battle droid lurched forwards, ahead of the rest, its pink head looming in their vision. It raised its blaster, and it only needed one of its shots to hit.

The Jedi fell. Their lightsaber thudded to the ground with them to nestle in their robes. The battle worsened, stormtroopers arrived, and then it dissipated suddenly, all combatants still alive fleeing—or chasing? The Jedi's corpse stayed there, still in death, until a bug loomed over them.

They dragged the corpse away, down a tunnel. Into the alcoves. The lightsaber bounced along with them the whole time. And then they fell and were separated, and the lightsaber bounced into the chamber of death and rot and lay there for a long time, only seeing the weakest rays of sunlight.

Around it, worms fed on the dead.

Luke opened his eyes, breathing heavily. His head spun. His left hand tensed against the ground, pressing the tender skin of his fingertips into the sand-blasted stone, digging into every grit and groove. He came to in his own body: hurting, tired, and prone.

He tossed the lightsaber back into the bag. By some miracle—or some miraculous intervention—it landed in the open bag, and the top of it flipped shut.

His eyes slid closed again. He sagged down the wall, back onto the pack, and that was how Aphra found him.

Luke woke up several hours later, eyes sticky with salt. Aphra crouched over him, tapping his shoulder.

"It's been a few hours," she said. Her tone was quieter and gentler than usual. "You happy to take watch while I sleep?"

He rubbed his eyes. "How many hours?"

"Eight."

He nodded. That was a long time, but he was pretty injured, and the bacta patches had to do their work somehow. He felt a lot stronger than before, even if everything ached. At least he could walk. "How much sleep do you want?"

"Wake me up after four." She settled down with her own pack as a pillow. "I'm an adult. I don't need as much sleep as a growing teenager—"

"I'm eighteen," Luke said.

"Exactly."

"That's a myth, anyway."

"Go on watch, kid." Her head hit the pack; she grumbled and reached her arm up in a jerky, spindly sort of movement to dig the lightsabers out of it. She put them next to her instead. "Too hard to sleep on. Is that why you took them out of the pack in the first place?"

Luke blinked. "What?"

She looked up at him with half-open eyes. Sleepy as she was, she had no right to look that cunning. "You took it out of the bag. Curious?"

Luke flushed. "I—" He took a breath. He might as well ask, instead of wondering. "The lightsabers belonged to Jedi, right?"

"Yeah."

"What do you know about the Jedi?"

Aphra barked a sharp laugh. "My dad was obsessed with them. At least, the ancient Jedi. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure he cried when the Jedi rebelled against the Republic and got wiped out, but most of the"—she wiggled her fingers—"technical lore I know is stuff like the Ordu Aspectu. Who went extinct a looooong time ago."

"Your dad?" Aphra had spoken only briefly—and bitterly—about him earlier.

"He thought the Jedi were the key to the universe or something. Went on a lot about balance, about forces for good, and peacekeepers. I think he genuinely thought that with enough information, he could bring back the Jedi and save the galaxy." She rolled her eyes. "I probably set him back a while when I set fire to the house. He kept a lot of notes in there."

"You—"

"It was never going to work, anyway. The Jedi were a faction," she said. "They worked for the Republic. They used the Force or something. My dad believed in that. I believe they had freaky powers, sure, but the key to the universe? Nah. They're gone. The Empire wiped them out."

"But your dad wanted to bring them back," he pushed, heart in his throat.

"Delusional. He always was." She rolled over. "Why'd'you wanna know, anyway?"

Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. "The lightsabers," he said at last. "Why do you think they're here?"

"Hell if I know."

"Was there a battle here? An invasion?"

"During the Clone Wars? There were two. Never heard about them at the time—as I said, I was busy dusting off chatterplants in a homestead that didn't even have a holocomm—but I heard later that the Clone Wars started on Geonosis. Then Geonosis was invaded again. And possibly again! I don't know. But the Jedi fought in the Clone Wars, so they were probably there. Can I go to sleep now?"

Luke laughed. It was a weak laugh. He felt like gritting his teeth. "Why did the Jedi fight in the Clone Wars?" He had run into that in Ben's diaries—his mixed feelings about it, how he remembered the whole period—but…

Aphra snorted. "They were idiots, that's why. Half of them died. And then all of them died. And only fanatics like my dad remember them." She opened her eyes to shoot him a meaningful look. "That's what helping people does to you. And why making money is a better way to go."

Luke rolled his eyes.

"Moralise all you want. My dad is skint. I'm a feared, respected rogue the galaxy over."

"Is?" Luke hung onto the part of what she said that he could be bothered to argue about. "Your dad's still alive?"

"Yeah?"

Luke opened his mouth to say something but paused. He had nothing to say. His mouth closed again, a ringing in his ears. Red crept up his neck and cheeks; he resisted the urge to duck his head. Something turned in the pit of his stomach.

It wasn't until he heard the marching feet that he figured out what that meant.

"Aphra," he said—quietly and urgently. "Wake up."

She groaned. "You know, I didn't actually have the chance to fall asleep—"

"Wake up." The marching feet got louder, metal thudding cacophonously against stone. Luke scrambled for his pack, zipping it up and slinging it onto his back. He strapped his father's lightsaber to his waist and drew his blaster.

Aphra looked at him. "Did you get that from the chamber as well?"

He froze. Looked down. The truth sprang to his lips, but an obfuscation replaced it just in time: "I needed something to burn the worms off, didn't I?"

She snorted and finally—finally—climbed to her feet. "Are those battle droids, then?" she asked, listening to the approaching footsteps.

"Probably," he snapped. "We should run."

"Are you kidding?" She put her hands out in front of her and stretched her arms. Luke heard something crack. "You didn't let me nap."

The tunnel they were in was long and straight for a long way on either side of where they'd rested. They'd picked this spot intentionally for that, so nothing could hide around a corner from them before attacking. It meant that the approaching phalanx of battle droids, when they initially turned the corner, were out of blaster range.

Luke turned to run, but Aphra caught his arm and unholstered her blaster.

She said in his ear, "You're not gonna stop me from reprogramming one this time."

Your intrusion was cruel and unnecessary. Curiosity is an admirable trait, as is self-preservation; wanton murder is not. Our children only needed a taste of your flesh, and you killed dozens of them for the crime of it. Perhaps you are another humanoid who intends to crush bugs.

Or perhaps not.

You weep grief the way you weep sweat and blood and tears. We can smell it on you, in the chemicals that permeate the air, but more than that: we can sense it. We can sense you. And we can tell what you are, even if the blade you carry did not betray it.

Members of our hive once had the vaunted abilities of the Jedi. That connection to the galaxy, once embraced into our mind, becomes all of ours. We are all aware of how it feels. We too hear the voices of the dead. In the rare times that a Jedi child was born into the hive, did we give them to the Jedi? Did we give up our own? No!

But we did send them to the Jedi. They learned the humanoids' ways, and the ways of the wider galaxy. When they left the Order, once their training was complete, they were ours again, entirely.

We call them ambassadors. Understanding is immediate and ubiquitous within the hive. Outside of the hive, it is fraught. Other hives on the planet would fight us over a misunderstanding; invaders from other worlds would do much worse. Ambassadors are treasured arms of our society.

Ironic, then, that it was the Jedi who started the path to our ruination. They are perhaps some of the few who can understand us, truly. They know what it means to be connected—to serve a higher purpose—to belong.

Or rather: they knew.

They cannot know anything anymore. Not like we can, through our living chain of memory, and through the sacrifices of those who survived. There are no Jedi left, and there is no one left to mourn them.

Apart from you.

You can know by touching. You can know by experiencing. This is not an understanding we understand, not one we have encountered before, even when we have been with Jedi who understood. Even when no one still lives to carry the memory, the memory is carried. The living chain extends beyond death.

This is an understanding we want.

We would certainly have enormous use for it.