Heirs of the Force

14

At gunpoint, the TIE pilot led his captives back to the clearing with the small, crude shelter where he had lived for some time.

“So this is why you came running,” Jaina said to her brother. “You found where he lives.” Jacen nodded.

“Silence!” the Imperial soldier said in a brusque voice.

Jaina, her throat tight and dry, swallowed hard and looked around at the small, cleared site in the gathering evening shadows. Beside them a shallow stream trickled past. She couldn’t imagine how the TIE pilot had survived all alone, without any human contact, for so many years.

The climate of Yavin 4 was warm and hospitable, placing few demands on the home the TIE pilot had created for himself. He had carved out a large shelter from the bole of a half-burned Massassi tree, in front of which he had lashed a lean-to of split branches. Altogether, it provided him with a simple but comfortable room, like a living cave. Jaina tried to imagine how long it had taken the Imperial, scraping with a sharp implement—possibly a piece of wreckage from his crashed ship—to widen the area under the gnarled overhang.

The TIE pilot had rigged a system of plumbing made from hollow reeds joined together, drawing water from the nearby stream into catch basins inside his hut. He had made rough utensils from wood, forest gourds, and petrified fungus slabs. The man had maintained a lonely existence, unchallenged, simply surviving and waiting for further orders, hoping someone would come to retrieve him—but no one ever had.

The Imperial soldier stopped outside the hut. “On the ground,” he said. “Both of you. Hands above your heads.”

Jaina looked at Jacen as they lay belly-down on the ground of the clearing. She could think of no way to escape. The TIE pilot went to the thick foliage and rummaged among the branches with his good hand. He wrapped his fingers around some thin, purplish vines that dangled from dazzlingly bright Nebula orchids in the branches above his head. With a jerk he snapped the strands free.

The vine tendrils flopped and writhed in his grip as if they were alive and trying to squirm away. The TIE pilot rapidly used them to lash Jaina’s wrists together, then Jacen’s. As the deep violet sap leaked from the broken ends of the vines, the plant’s thrashing slowed, and the flexible, rubbery vines contracted, tightening into knots that were impossible to break.

Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, their liquid-brown eyes meeting as a host of thoughts gleamed unspoken between them. But they said nothing, afraid to anger their captor.

Marching clumsily through the humid jungle had made them hot and sticky, and Jaina was still covered with grime from her repairs on the TIE fighters engines. Now the cool jungle evening chilled her perspiration and made her shiver. Her hands tingled and throbbed, as the tight vines cutting into her wrists made her even more miserable.

In the hour or so since their capture, neither of the twins had heard any further sign of Lowie or Tenel Ka. Jaina was afraid that something had happened to them, that her two friends were even now stranded and lost somewhere in the jungle. But then she realized that her own situation was probably a lot more dangerous than theirs.

Without a word, the TIE pilot nudged them to their feet, then over to the large lava-rock boulders near the fire pit he used outside his shelter. They squatted there together, The stone chairs had been polished smooth, their sharp edges chipped away slowly and patiently over the course of years by the lost Imperial.

The last coppery rays of light from huge orange planet Yavin disappeared, as the rapidly rotating moon covered the jungle with night. Through the densely laced treetops, thick shadows gathered, making the forest floor darker than the deepest night on Jacen and Jaina’s glittering home planet of Coruscant.

The Imperial pilot walked over to the splintered chunks of dry, moss-covered wood he had painstakingly gathered, one-armed, and stacked near his shelter. He carried them back and dropped one branch at a time into the fire pit, stacking the wood in formation to make a small campfire.

The pilot withdrew a battered igniter from a storage bin inside his shelter and pointed it at the campfire. Its charge had been nearly depleted, and the silvery nozzle showered only a few hot sparks onto the kindling; but he seemed accustomed to such difficulties. He toiled in silence, never cursing, never complaining, simply focused on the task of getting the campfire lit. And when he succeeded, he showed no satisfaction, no joy.

With the fire finally blazing, the TIE pilot ducked back inside his hut, rummaged in a vine-woven basket, and returned with a large spherical fruit. The fruit was encased in an ugly, warty brown rind. Jama did not recognize it. It was nothing they ate at the Jedi academy.

Holding it in his injured, gauntleted hand, the pilot used a sharpened stone to split open the rind, then peeled the fruit with his fingers. The flesh inside was pale yellowish-green, speckled with scarlet. He broke the fruit into sections, shuffled over to the two captives, and pushed one of the fruit sections in Jaina’s face. “Eat.”

She clamped her lips together for a moment, afraid that the Imperial soldier might be trying to poison her. Then she realized that the TIE pilot could have killed either of them at any time—and that she was extremely hungry and thirsty.

Her hands still bound by the drying vine, she leaned forward and opened her mouth to bite into the bright fruit. The explosion of tart citrus-tasting juice proved surprisingly invigorating and delicious. She chewed slowly, savoring the taste, and swallowed.

Jacen also ate his. They nodded their thanks to the TIE pilot, who fixed them with a stony gaze.

Sensing an opening, Jacen asked, “What are you going to do with us, sir?” He tried to rub his chin against his shoulder to wipe off the juice dribbling from his lips.

The TIE pilot stared unnervingly at him for several moments before he turned his face toward the bushes. “Not yet determined.”

Jaina’s chest muscles constricted. All of this had been an accident, a mistake. From the thick bushes, the TIE pilot had probably watched them tinker with his ruined ship for days. But Jacen’s accidental discovery of his primitive shelter had forced him to react.

What could the Imperial soldier do with them? He didn’t seem to have many options.

“What’s your name?” Jaina asked.

The TIE pilot snapped upright and looked down at the black leather glove covering his twisted arm. He turned slowly toward her, like a droid with worn-out servomotors. “CE3K-1977.” He rattled off the numbers as if he had memorized them. Service rank and operating number only.

“Not your number,” Jaina persisted. “Your name. I’m Jaina. This is my brother Jacen.”

“CE3K-1977,” the TIE pilot said again, without emotion.

“Your name?” Jaina asked a third time.

Finally her question seemed to perplex him. He looked at the ground, looked at his tattered uniform. His mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out, until finally he said in a croaking voice, “Qorl … Qorl. My name was Qorl.”

“We’re staying at the academy in the old temples,” Jacen said, wearing a small grin—the kind that always disarmed their mother when she was angry at him. But it didn’t seem to be working with the TIE pilot.

“Rebel base,” Qorl said.

“No, it’s a school now,” Jaina said. “Everyone’s there to learn. It’s not a base any longer. It hasn’t been a base for… twenty years or so.”

“It is a Rebel base,” Qorl insisted with such finality that Jaina decided not to pursue the subject any further.

“How did you get here?” she asked, leaning closer on the smooth rock. The campfire crackled between them. “How long have you lived in the jungle?” The tight vines constricting her circulation made her hands numb. She flexed her fingers as she bent toward the fire. The smoke smelled rich and sweet from the fresh jungle wood.

The TIE pilot blinked his pale eyes and stared into the crackling flames. He looked as if he had been transported back in time and was watching a newsloop of his own buried memories.

“Death Star,” Qorl said. “I was on the Death Star. We came here to destroy the Rebel base after Grand Moff Tarkin blew up Alderaan. This was our next target.”

Jaina felt a pang as she remembered her mother talking of the lovely grass-covered planet Alderaan, the peaceful windsongs and tall towers rising above the plains. Princess Leia’s home had been the heart of galactic culture and civilization—until it was wiped out in a single blow by the incredible cruelty of the Empire.

“We must obliterate the Rebels at all costs,” Qorl continued. “Rebels cause damage to the Empire.”

He recited a litany of what seemed to be memorized phrases, thoughts that had been brainwashed into him. “The Emperor’s New Order will save the galaxy. The Rebels want to destroy that dream, and so we must eradicate the Rebels. They are a cancer to peace and stability.”

“You were on the Death Star,” Jacen prompted. “That was over twenty years ago. What happened?”

Qorl continued to stare deeply into the fire. His scratchy voice was barely more than a whisper. “The Rebels knew we were coming. They fought. They sent their defenses against the battle station. All TIE squadrons were launched.

“I flew with my squadron. All my companions were destroyed by X-wing defensive fire. I was damaged in the cross fire… one solar panel out of commission. I spun away from the Death Star, out of control.

“I needed to get back to effect repairs. All comm channels were jammed, filled with dozens of requests for assistance. My orbit was decaying, and I spun toward the fourth moon of Yavin. I kept trying to hail someone on the comm channels. When I finally got through, I was told I would have to wait for rescue. They instructed me to make a good landing if I could—and to wait.”

“So you crashed,” Jaina said.

“The jungle cushioned my fall. I was thrown out of my craft into the dense brush… when one of the solar panels caught and lodged in the trees above. I limped over to my TIE fighter. Stayed as close as I dared, afraid that it might explode. My arm—” He held up his left arm in the black leather gauntlet. “Badly injured, ligaments torn, bones broken.

“I looked up into the sky just in time to see the Death Star blow up. It was like another sun in the sky. Flaming chunks of debris fell through the air. It must have started dozens of forest fires. For weeks, meteor showers were like fireworks as the wreckage rained down onto the moon.

“And I stayed here.”

The firelight bathed Qorl’s face with a dancing, yellowish glow. The jungle sounds burred in a hypnotic hum all around them. The TIE pilot gave no sign that he realized his two captives were listening. Only his lips moved as he continued his tale.

“I have waited here, and waited, as ordered. No one has come to rescue me.”

“But,” Jaina said, “all those years! This place has been abandoned for quite some time, but people have been at the Jedi academy for eleven years now. Why haven’t you turned yourself in? Don’t you realize what’s happened in the galaxy since you crashed?”

“Surrender is betrayal!” Qorl snapped, glaring at her as anger flickered across his weathered face.

“But we’re not lying,” Jacen said. “The war is over. There is no more Empire.” He took a deep breath and then plunged ahead. “Darth Vader is dead. The Emperor is dead. The New Republic now rules. Only a few remnants of old Imperial holdouts are still buried in the Core Systems at the center of the galaxy.”

“I don’t believe you,” Qorl said flatly.

“If you take us back to the Jedi academy we can prove it. We can show you everything,” Jaina said. “Wouldn’t you like to go home? Wouldn’t you like to be free of this place? We could get your arm treated.”

Qorl held up his glove and stared at it. “I used my medi-kit,” he said. “I tended it as best I could. It is good enough, although there was much pain … for a long time.”

“But we’ve got Jedi healers!” Jaina said. “We’ve got medical droids. You could be happy again. Why stay here? There’s nothing to betray: there is no more Empire.”

“Be quiet,” Qorl said. “The Empire will always rule. The Emperor is invincible.”

“The Emperor is dead,” Jacen said.

“The Empire itself can never die,” Qorl insisted.

“But if you won’t let us take you back to get help, then what do you want?” Jaina asked.

Jacen nodded, chiming in. “What are you trying to accomplish?”

“What can we do for you, Qorl?”

The TIE pilot turned away from the campfire to stare at them. His haggard, weather-beaten face held new power and obsession, springing from deep within his mind.

“You will finish repairs to my ship,” he said. “And then I shall fly away from this prison moon. I’ll return to the Empire as a glorious hero of war. Surrender is betrayal—and I never surrendered.”

“And what if we won’t help you?” Jacen said with all the bravado he could manage.

Jaina instantly wanted to kick him for provoking the TIE pilot.

Qorl looked at the young boy, his face coldly expressionless again. “Then you are expendable,” he said.