Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [38]
It didn’t end like an ordinary battle. It just stopped. No carting-away of prisoners. No evacuation of wounded.
Nothing at all.
There were no bodies outside the caves. There were no bodies inside the caves. No sailors. No marines. No astromechs or medical droids. The only sound was the hush of sand stirring in the breeze, and the clicks of cooling stone. The air in the caves reeked of the ozone from recent blasterfire, and pockets of slag still glowed yellow where thermal dets had gone off against the rock. Luke left his blaster in its holster, and clipped his lightsaber back onto his belt. He felt no threat here.
The cave floor was littered with emergency blankets and used bacta packets, ration bars and water jugs, even a few of the DH-17 carbines favored by the marines. Luke drifted through the caves, eyes half-closed, brushing the rock with his fingertips. He felt fading resonances of the same emotions he had sensed, more distantly, from the base of the crater’s rim. But these were only echoes in the Force.
Somehow, in the process of leading the entire task force into a trap, he had also managed to misplace several hundred people. Captured? Not by Imperials, that was for sure. Killed? Disintegrated, leaving not even dust behind? It didn’t seem possible.
It wasn’t possible.
He wasn’t even upset, not really; the magnitude of everything that had happened was too vast, far beyond any emotional response he could imagine. He was numb. Stunned, he supposed.
He sagged, leaning into the rock wall, and let his head hang. “Ben?” he said, softly, sadly, without hope. “Ben, can you hear me? What should I have done? Master Yoda? What was I supposed to do?” In the rustle and hush of the sandy breeze, he heard no answer.
All he knew was that this was all wrong.
He slid down and sat, his back against the stone. He let his head roll back and squeezed his eyes shut. Suddenly he felt like everything was all wrong.
He’d made wrong choices every day of his life. In his mind’s eye floated everyone who’d died because of him. Everyone who’d been hurt. From Mindor to Endor, back to Yavin—back to the corpses that had lain, still smoking, in the ruined doorway of the Lars moisture farm. I guess I sort of thought everything was over. I got my happy ending. I thought I did. I mean, didn’t I do everything you asked me to? Master Yoda, you wanted to break the rule of the Sith. And they’re gone. Ben, you asked me to destroy Darth Vader. I did that, too. Father—even you, Father. You told me that together we would throw down the Emperor. And we did. Now it’s over. But it’s not the end. It’s never the end.
The cave boomed and shivered as the rock storm arrived like an artillery barrage. Luke just sat, head down, letting dust and grit trickle inside the back of his collar as meteorites pounded the hills.
I guess I was still kind of hoping there might be a Happily Ever After in there somewhere. Not even for me. I was ready to die. I still am. It’s everybody else. It’s like everything we went through, it was for nothing. We’re still fighting. We’ll always be fighting. It’s like I didn’t actually save anybody.
Gone is the past, he remembered Master Yoda saying once. Imaginary is the future. Always now, even eternity will be. Which Luke had always interpreted as Don’t worry about what’s already done, and don’t worry about what you’ll do later. Do something now.
Which would be fine advice, if he had the faintest clue what that something should be. Maybe if he’d had more experience as a general, he’d know if he should search for his missing men, or return to the crash site and wait for pickup, or try to find some way to signal the task force spaceside. I never should have taken this job. I just don’t know what a general would be doing right now. All I know is what a Jedi …
Then his head came up. I do know what a Jedi would be doing—and it isn’t sitting around feeling