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Wan requested, opening himself up to the Force. Drawing in its strength and its wisdom as he groped for the way to move forward. And he felt it too. Obi-f0 Wan was right.

This was Han's mission. He would infiltrate the satellite station in the Zoma system and find the answers they all needed to save Luke and Leia.

If he survived.

CHAPTER NINE

Luke hunched over the controls of his T-16 skyhopper, waiting for Fixer to set off the starter flare. He missed the familiar feel of his old skyhopper, which was long gone, destroyed along with the rest of the Lars moisture farm. But this one, which he'd borrowed from Windy, would get the job done.

Luke engaged the repulsorlifts, hovering a few meters above the ground. He gave the thrusters a gentle push, tipping the T-16 slightly to its side and then upright again, just to get a feel for it. It had been a long time since he'd flown one of these. The last time he'd raced, he'd been curled into the cramped seat of a Podracer, a rickety bucket tethered to roaring engines that, without warning, could flip you up and out. Compared to that, the skyhopper was like a kiddie ride. Its central airfoil offered significant stability, and its gyrostabilizers would allow Luke to make hairpin turns and wild spins without fear of spiraling out of control.

No, winning a skyhopper race wasn't a matter of balance. It was a matter of speed—whether you could push the ion engine past its 1,200 kilometer an hour capacity. It was a matter of agility—whether you could gauge the angles and hit your marks better than your competition.

And, when it came to the Stone Needle, it was a matter of daring—whether you were willing to risk your life, just to win a race.

"Ready!" Fixer called, raising the signal flare over his head. "Set!"

Luke glanced at Jaxson out of the corner of his eye, then turned back to his own controls, letting the rest of the world fall away as he focused on the course ahead of him.

For you, Biggs, he thought, ready to push the thrusters to their limits.

He would risk anything to win this race.

Fixer squeezed the trigger, and the sky flashed red with the signal blast.

" Go! "

Luke took off at the signal, his skyhopper shooting forward a split second before Jaxson's. Desert streamed past, blurring into a mud of browns and grays.

The small craft hummed beneath him, responding smoothly to his every shift and turn.

The walls of Beggar's Canyon rose steeply on either side, hundreds of meters of solid sandstone that would crush him in an instant if he veered off course. Luke didn't think about the risks. He focused on the jagged trail, the thunder of the engine, and the purpling sky overhead. He didn't dare look back at Jaxson's skyhopper, but he knew if he did, he'd see a cloud of dust spattering the transparisteel of Jaxson's cockpit window. As the kilometers flew past, Luke stayed ahead, and he intended to keep it that way.

He spotted a womp rat, just a blur, streaking past beneath him, and almost smiled, remembering the days when he, Windy, and Biggs could waste a whole afternoon chasing the scraggly creatures through the canyon. During those years, all he'd wanted was to get away—from his aunt and uncle's moisture farm, from Tatooine, from his life. Now he couldn't remember what he'd been running from.

But maybe life was like a skyhopper race: you couldn't look back.

Luke forced his mind back to the track. He rocketed through the straightaway, then whipped the T-16 sharply to the right, making it around Dead Man's Turn with only centimeters to spare between him and the canyon wall. Behind him, he heard the scream of durasteel on rock, as Jaxson's skyhopper gouged out a piece of the canyon while rounding the curve. It bought Luke a few precious seconds, and he pulled even farther ahead, reaching the Stone Needle while Jaxson was still navigating the Sandy Jaws. Luke sucked in his breath. His hands tightened on the controls. The spire stretched nearly twenty meters from the canyon floor—but from this distance, the eye of the Needle appeared only