Threats to one’s life are excellent motivation.
That became abundantly clear on the second day of Qui-Gon Jinn’s emergency Jedi training course, when I accidentally shattered a window in the building across from the Agricultural Academy.
We had been sitting through the break between two completely useless classes, staring out across Anchorhead.
Botany and xenozoology were not particularly interesting on a normal day.
They became downright unbearable when an unknown threat was wandering somewhere across Tatooine while I sat in a classroom listening to a lecture about the reproductive habits of sarlaccs.
I wasn’t making any progress.
My rational mind understood that mastery of the Force was never supposed to happen overnight, but something darker had begun stirring beneath the surface.
Fear fed frustration.
Frustration fed anger.
The two emotions churned together until they became something unfamiliar and deeply unsettling.
Something is wrong.
Something within the Force itself.
The moment I reached for that strange sensation and tried to seize it, it slipped free of my control.
Power exploded outward.
A deafening crash echoed through the street as the windows of the building opposite the Academy burst into a shower of glittering fragments.
“Ah!” Camie jumped in her seat beside me.
“What was that?” “Maybe Jedi hunters,” Tank said immediately.
“My father heard that some guys with red lightsabers were looking for a Jedi in Mos Eisley.” Ice ran down my spine.
Who?
Why?
The instant the words left his mouth, I instinctively drew inward, concealing my presence within the Force as completely as I could while forcing myself to remain calm.
The others could not see me panic.
I had only just begun shaping this little group, and children shared one trait with animals.
Never show weakness.
Every pair of eyes turned toward me.
I deliberately let the silence linger before speaking.
“I haven’t heard anything about that.
Do you know anything more specific?” Tank shrugged.
“They say there was some kind of fight in a cantina.
Total slaughter.
Lots of bodies.
That’s all I know.” Relief washed over me.
Not much.
Just enough.
Whoever those red-bladed hunters were searching for, it was not Luke Skywalker.
At least, not yet.
More likely, they were hunting another surviving Jedi.
There were still enough of those scattered across the galaxy.
These were the years when Darth Vader and the Inquisitorius were systematically exterminating the survivors of Order Sixty-Six.
By the time A New Hope began, only a handful would remain.
Maybe fewer.
Most of them are former Padawans.
Which meant that sooner or later I would probably have to rely on holocrons and forgotten Jedi texts, just as the original Luke had.
That was unfortunate.
I genuinely enjoyed learning the Force from someone who actually knew what he was doing.
And that was the optimistic outcome.
The pessimistic one ended with Jedi knowledge disappearing almost entirely, leaving the galaxy to Palpatine’s heirs.
“The Imperials started another massacre,” Biggs muttered.
“They never bother the Hutts or anything living out in the desert.
They only know how to kill defenseless people in the cities.” The anger inside me gradually ebbed.
Cold logic returned.
Then patience.
That was important.
Every conversation mattered when you were simultaneously raising future allies and subtly guiding their emotions through the Force.
Words became foundations, and children absorbed them with frightening ease.
One careless sentence today could become a serious problem years later.
The Empire was not popular on Tatooine.
For good reason.
To be honest, there was barely any government here at all.
Imperial authority amounted to little more than distant military oversight.
There was not even a proper garrison capable of maintaining security outside Bestine, the planetary capital.
The spaceports certainly lacked anything resembling an actual police force.
Large warships rarely appeared in orbit.
During my second life, I had seen only two capital ships arrive.
I still lacked the expertise to identify their class, but they had unquestionably belonged to the Imperial Navy.
Officially, the governor’s office operated out of Bestine.
Customs officials supposedly worked in the major spaceports.
At least, that was what a thin booklet on Imperial law claimed.
The Academy even insisted on calling it a textbook.
The problem was that nobody had ever actually seen any of these people.
In reality, the Hutts controlled the ports, the trade routes, and nearly every profitable enterprise on the planet.
They offered mandatory protection in exchange for mandatory payments.
Tatooine belonged to the Hutts.
Imperial authority existed mostly on paper.
The truth was simple.
The Empire’s concept of government and the Hutt Cartel’s concept of government were so fundamentally different that they rarely interfered with one another.
Most people did not care.
The Empire did not actually need Tatooine, but its ideology demanded authority over every inhabited world.
At the same time, nobody on Coruscant wanted to waste resources governing a worthless desert planet.
For the Hutts, however, Tatooine was an invaluable smuggling hub.
And the Empire’s anti-smuggling efforts in the Outer Rim rarely extended beyond appearances.
Beneath the Hutts existed a loose collection of settlements defended by local militias.
Everyone paid protection money.
The Hutts protected no one except themselves.
Most of the planet belonged to nobody.
Tusken Raiders regularly attacked settlements, moisture farms, and trade caravans.
Civilized beings generally avoided that sort of behavior because it was not profitable.
The Tusken problem was usually handled by combined militias funded by local communities and criminal syndicates.
Sometimes they hired mercenaries.
Fortunately, the desert tribes were more savage than disciplined.
Unfortunately, people still died.
The Lars homestead happened to sit in one of the safer regions of Tatooine.
Shortly after Luke’s birth, nearby settlers had effectively carried out a small-scale genocide against the local Tusken clans, driving the survivors deep into the desert.
Beyond the settlements, law scarcely existed.
Custom filled the void.
Slaves.
Spice.
Weapons outlawed across most of the galaxy, including disintegrators.
Given enough credits, almost anything could be purchased on Tatooine.
Most people simply lacked the money.
The widowed father of the Starkiller brothers, however, apparently had enough to purchase a middle-aged Twi’lek woman the previous year.
Fortunately, none of my friends came from the ranks of Tatooine’s laborers.
Those unfortunate people rarely had enough resources to raise children, let alone send them to school.
Some customs, however, were respected almost everywhere.
Selling locals into slavery was considered extremely unhealthy.
Not because it was immoral.
Because it dramatically increased the likelihood of being murdered in retaliation.
As a result, personal feuds generally ended in swift executions rather than imprisonment.
Jawas, meanwhile, occupied such a low position on the social ladder that nobody cared what happened to them.
Tatooine was a world ruled by strength.
“I don’t like the Empire either,” I said slowly, “but right now we’re small and weak.
If those Imperials with red lightsabers notice us, there won’t be anything left of us.
So while we’re still weak, let’s avoid attracting the attention of people who can kill us just because we happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The group fell silent.
Then I smiled.
“First we grow up.
Then we make lots and lots of credits.
After that, we buy a ship and everything else we’ll need.” Even those who had never seriously considered leaving Tatooine smiled.
“And then we can start making noise.” …
“You must control your emotions.” Qui-Gon’s voice was stern.
“Your connection to the Force is powerful.
If you allow your emotions to control you, you will become an animal.
If you allow fear to decide your destiny, you will become something even less.” There was not much I could do except stare at the floor while he scolded me.
Then again, I’m only a boy.
A ten-year-old child who had been frightened by the possibility of dying.
Only for a moment.
But long enough to brush against what the Jedi called the Dark Side.
“My Master was the greatest Jedi of his generation,” Qui-Gon continued.
“The moment he surrendered to his fear of losing me, he became only a shadow of the man he had once been.” So someone had eventually told him about Count Dooku.
“The moment you embrace fear,” he said quietly, “you have already begun to lose.” “Master,” I asked without the slightest embarrassment, “did you die because you were afraid?” If he intended to lecture a ten-year-old about the Dark Side without first explaining it properly, he could hardly complain when that same ten-year-old asked uncomfortable questions.
Qui-Gon sighed.
“Sometimes the cause of a Jedi’s death is simply not spending enough time in the training salle.” Another cryptic lesson.
“Rejecting emotion does not make you stronger.
If you stop feeling, you stop hearing the Force.
And when that happens, you never know where the next strike will come from.” Truthfully, I barely remembered the details of Qui-Gon’s duel with Darth Maul.
Still, the explanation made an uncomfortable amount of sense.
Many of the orthodox Jedi had died during the Clone Wars, while the so-called unconventional Jedi often survived situations that should have been impossible.
Plo Koon.
Mace Windu.
Kit Fisto.
Aayla Secura.
Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Anakin Skywalker.
None of them fit the image of an emotionless Jedi.
The same held true for the Sith.
Their greatest successes came when they mastered their emotions rather than becoming slaves to them.
Even Darth Maul had been at his most dangerous while serving as one piece of Palpatine’s carefully constructed machine.
“A Jedi shouldn’t surrender to emotion,” I said slowly, piecing the lesson together, “but he shouldn’t run away from it either.” Only then did I realize something.
Qui-Gon had never tried to indoctrinate me.
He explained why things were dangerous.
He demonstrated consequences.
He taught through examples.
But he had never once recited the Jedi Code or demanded unquestioning obedience to Jedi doctrine.
Was it because I was still too young?
Or had Qui-Gon’s beliefs always been that far removed from orthodoxy?
The future New Jedi Order certainly would not obsess over preserving every tradition of the old one.
Many survivors of Order Sixty-Six eventually embraced change.
Even Jedi Master K’Kruhk, who would one day lead the Order after the Sith-Imperial War, never attempted to restore everything exactly as it had been.
Perhaps the destruction of the Order had shaken Jedi philosophy to its very foundations.
“A correct conclusion,” Qui-Gon said.
For the first time since the lecture began, his expression softened.
“Now all that remains is putting that lesson into practice.” The Force ghost folded his arms.
“The dangers surrounding you are not disappearing.
And the Dark Side grows stronger with each passing day.” There was nothing left to do except continue training.
This brief moment of panic had revealed just how weak and vulnerable I still was.
Obi-Wan might not be able to save me.
The beginning of the canonical story was only nine years away, and I was nowhere near ready.
Not even the legendary luck of the Skywalker bloodline seemed like something I should trust.
At the time, I had no idea just how quickly events were about to spiral beyond anyone’s control.