Star Wars Journal - The Fight for Justice by Luke Skywalker Read Online Free Page A

and let all of these excuses wash right over him. “That’s your uncle talking,” was his reply. I guess he was right, too. It was Uncle Owen, and not me.
    In spite of my fears, I’d have loved to have gone with him, but it was just so crazy. I mean, romantic quests are fine, but we have to live our real lives, not some incredible adventures we dream up.
    I could rationalize it in all kinds of ways. Ben was known to be a little touched in the head; I’d have to be just as crazy to go with him. I didn’t really know him, after all. True, he’d saved my life twice, but I’d hardly spent any time with him.
    But that was logic speaking, and logic isn’t always enough. The funny thing is, from the moment I met Ben, I felt tied to him somehow. Sort of like fate, or destiny. Or maybe it’s that Force he’s always talking about. The point is, I feel as if I’ve known Ben all of my life. So when he said, “We’re off to Alderaan,” it didn’t seem that odd. Just impossible, because I’d never get my chores done.
    To my surprise, Ben didn’t try to talk me out of it. I was expecting him to try his best, but that’s obviously not Ben’s way. When you’ve made a decision and told him, he won’t argue with you, even if he thinks you’re wrong. He just nodded and said that I had to make up my own mind, and the Force within me would show me the right way to go.
    I wish I knew what he was talking about. I don’t feel any Force within me. Just a lot of confusing emotions and thoughts, all tugging me in different directions. I didn’t know which ones I should be paying the most attention to. That was the problem. Ben and this Princess Leia needed help, and Ben seemed to have confidence that somehow I could be that help. But Uncle Owen needed my help, too. Shouldn’t family come first? Or was that just my fears talking?
    In the end, it didn’t matter what I decided. Maybe Ben’s right about the Force leading us in the right direction.
    I offered to take Ben to Anchorhead, where he could get other transportation. He’d have to head over to Mos Eisley, the spaceport, to grab a ship to Alderaan. I couldn’t take him that far; Uncle Owen would never let me hear the end of it. Ben accepted the offer, and we set off.
    We never made it.
    On the way, we saw smoke… and that meant trouble. Out here in the Dune Sea there’s nothing to burn—no vegetation, at any rate. So if there was smoke, it had something to do with intelligent beings. Neither Ben nor I had a clue as to what the smoke was from, but it was clearly our duty to take a look and see if we could help.
    We couldn’t.
    The smoke turned out to be a blazing sandcrawler. Somebody had blasted it apart and shot all of the Jawas. There were tiny bodies everywhere and the stench of scorched meat. It wouldn’t be long before the womp rats would be around, looking to eat.
    Threepio recognized the Jawas as the ones who had captured him and Artoo. I couldn’t be sure myself, but he remembered plenty of details about the crawler and the other droids. Strangely enough, the droids had all been violently disassembled. I looked around and saw bantha tracks all over. There were even a couple of broken gaderffii sticks that the Sand People use.
    It didn’t make much sense to me. I know the Tusken Raiders are violent, and they’re greedy. So why did they destroy the droids instead of taking them along as loot? I couldn’t figure it out.
    But Ben could. He pointed out the bantha tracks. Like I said, there were lots of them, and that’s not something the Sand People do. Instead, they ride single file, so you can’t tell how many of them there are. And then Ben pointed out the precision of the damage to the sandcrawler. Tuskens are kind of wild, and attack and shoot at anything. But the attackers here had been very careful and precise, first stopping and then demolishing the crawler. It wasn’t Raider-style fighting, it was stormtrooper style.
    Imperial stormtroopers!
    Ben