Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [10]
“Well, y’know, I was only a kid at the time,” Han said slowly, “and working for Shrike gave me, y’know, more pressing concerns than following the news, if you get me—but I seem to recall that your friend Kenobi was a general himself, back in the Clone Wars.”
“I know. But he hardly talked about it.”
“He was always modest,” Leia said. “Obi-Wan was part of so many of the stories my fath—my, ah, adoptive father used to tell. He was a great hero of the Republic. That’s why I turned to him when my cover was blown.”
Luke shook his head. “It’s just not the way I’ve always seen myself spending my life.”
“Oh, is that all?” Han said. “C’mon, Luke—nobody ends up living their lives the way they expect.”
“No?” Luke said. “I can think of this one guy—got his own ship, resigned his commission, got the military off his back, pretty much does whatever he wants to do, mostly just flying around the galaxy with his copilot rescuing princesses and such, accountable to no one but himself—”
“Accountable to no one? Are you kidding me?” Han looked appalled. “Luke, have you ever met your sister? Luke Skywalker of Tatooine, let me introduce Princess Leia Organa of whouf—!”
“Of the Extremely Sharp Elbow,” Leia finished for him, having delivered the sharp elbow in question rather briskly to his short ribs.
“Yeah, okay, peace, huh?” Han rubbed his side, a wounded expression on his face. “All kidding aside, Luke, think about it. If you and me both had ended up living the lives we were expecting, we might still have flown at Yavin.”
“You think?”
“Sure,” Han said. “As TIE pilots. Working for Vader.”
Luke looked away.
“Sometimes, things not going according to plan is a gift,” Han said. “You gotta go with the flow, y’know? I mean, trust in the Force, right? Would the Force have brought you this chance if you weren’t supposed to take it?”
“I don’t know,” Luke admitted.
“Why don’t you ask Kenobi himself, the next time he shows up with that Force-ghost thing of his?”
“He’s not a ghost—”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
Luke shook his head, sighing. “He … doesn’t come around anymore. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen him. Like he’s drifting away. Too far away to make contact.”
“And maybe that means something,” Leia said. Luke gave her a sharp look, and she replied with a shrug, “I know less about being a Jedi than you do about being a politician … but don’t you think that your indecision itself signifies that you’ve been, well … leaning the wrong way? I mean, don’t you usually just sort of … know?”
“Yeah,” Luke said quietly. “Yeah, usually I do.”
A saying of Yoda’s came back to him so vividly he could almost hear the Master’s voice: If far from the Force you find yourself, trust you can that it is not the Force which moved.
“I suppose,” Luke said reluctantly, “it doesn’t have to be a career …”
A broad grin rolled halfway onto Han’s face. “You’re in?”
Luke nodded. “I guess I am.”
Han clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, buddy! You’re the greatest!”
“Thanks for what?”
He turned his grin all the way on. “Ackbar swore if I didn’t talk you into this, he was gonna make me do it. Han Solo and the Rapid Response Task Force just doesn’t have the right ring, you know?”
“HERE IS MINDOR’S EFFECTIVE GRAVITIC RADIUS.” Commander Thavish, the task force’s intelligence coordinator, was the next-youngest guy in the room, and he had five years on Han, let alone Luke. He keyed his thumbstick, and the pinpoint of Mindor grew into a sphere roughly a decimeter in diameter. “Standard englobement puts our Double Sevens here.”
Three new pinpoints formed an equilateral triangle around the planet, roughly parallel to the system’s plane of the ecliptic. The fourth and fifth pinpoints appeared above and below the plane. The five Double Sevens were the strike force’s entire complement of CC-7700/E interdiction cruisers, each capable of projecting a simulated gravity well out to several