Star Wars.

The Life And Legend of Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi.

by Ryder Windham.

PROLOGUE.

Luke Skywalker was surprised to see the moisture vaporator standing beside Ben Ken.o.bi's abandoned hut on Tatooine. Given that over three years had transpired since Ben left the desert planet, Luke had a.s.sumed the vaporator would be long gone, scavenged by the Jawas or Sand People. Incredibly, both the vaporator and Ben's hut appeared to be in good shape.

The sun-bleached dwelling hugged a remote, stony bluff in the Jundland Wastes with a sweeping view of the Western Dune Sea. Luke had landed his X-wing starfighter nearby, and was eager to get out from under Tatooine's blazing twin suns. But as he trudged across the rocky ground and drew closer to the plasteel door that was the entrance to Ken.o.bi's hut, he sensed a strange tension in the air. It reminded him of the disturbing sensation he had felt on Dagobah, at the cave that was so strong with the dark side of the Force. But while that cave had radiated cold and death, and seemed to challenge and beckon Luke to enter, this was an entirely different feeling - as if the entire property were saying Go away.

However, Luke also sensed that the message was not for him. He wondered if Ben had used the Force to protect his home, and figured he'd find out soon enough.

The plasteel door was unlocked. Luke slid it open and stepped inside. The air was musty, but the shadowy interior offered at least some relief from the heat. Looking around at the various relics that rested on small tables and shelves, and the animal pelts stretched out on the semicircular couch that had also served as Ben's bed, Luke couldn't see that anything had been damaged or stolen. The only obvious evidence of Ben's absence was the thin dusting of sand that covered everything.

Luke moved down into the small living area, where he found a vacuum-seal chest on the floor beside a structural column. It was from this chest that Ben had extracted Luke's first lightsaber, the same lightsaber that Ben claimed had previously belonged to Luke's father.

Luke brushed the sand from the chest's lid, then lifted it and looked inside.

It was empty.

Luke sighed. He hadn't expected the chest to contain a second lightsaber, but he had hoped to find something useful. If not a datatape or holographic recording, at least some kind of clue that might answer the questions that had been gnawing at him for months, ever since his duel with Darth Wader on Cloud City.

As he thought of that devastating encounter, which had cost him not only his inherited weapon but his right hand, he suddenly felt an aching sensation at his wrist. Phantom limb pain, he recalled. That was the term that the medical droid had used to describe the occasional ache that Luke might feel from time to time.

Luke flexed the lifelike, mechanical fingers of the prosthetic hand that the droid had so carefully attached to the end of his right arm. Veins, muscles, and bones had been replaced with wires, pistons, and metal, and sensory impulse lines even made his cybernetic fingers touch-sensitive. Despite the fact that Luke's original right hand had been lost in the reactor shaft at Cloud City, the medical droid - an expert with highly specialized techniques of genetic reconstruction - had replicated a perfect synthetic duplicate, right down to the fingerprints.

But the medical droid couldn't do anything about the phantom pain. Luke would have to live with that.

He continued his inspection of Ben's home. It didn't take long to find the trapdoor in the floor that led to the cellar. A short series of steps, hewn from bedrock, descended into darkness. Luke pulled a small glowrod from his belt, activated its light, and climbed down the steps. The cellar wasn't entirely dark, as a scant, eerie light emanated from luminescent stone that was set in one wall.

Ben had used the cellar for food and water storage, and a small variety of dried fruits, vegetables, and meats - all of which now looked like collapsed bits of leather - remained strung to a metal pipe that traveled to a cistern. Luke also found a workbench that had been constructed from sc.r.a.p metal. Tools were neatly arranged on shelves, but a few select tools rested on the workbench, as if waiting for their owner's return.

Then Luke spotted the box. It was an intricately carved boa-wood box, resting on the floor between the workbench and small auxiliary generator. Luke was moving the glowrod closer to the box when a sudden sound came from above.

Thud!

In a swift, fluid motion, Luke spun to his left as he reached fast for the blaster that was bolstered at his right hip, and then sprang back toward the cellar steps. He brought his blaster up fast so that its barrel was angled up through the open trap door. An instant later, the air was filled by a panicked, electronic shriek.

The shriek came from the domed head of Luke's astromech droid, R2-D2, who had traveled with him and helped to evade the Imperial blockade around Tatooine. The startled droid unleashed a flurry of angry beeps as he peered down at Luke, then he stomped his treads at the edge of the trap door's opening, kicking up the layer of sand that rested on the floor of the upper room.

"Sorry, Artoo," Luke said as he lowered his blaster. "Guess I'm a little jumpy." As he returned his weapon to its holster, he muttered, "I'll probably stay that way until we find. . . Han."

Luke's throat was already dry from the desert heat, but as he said Han's name, he felt as if he might choke. He had no idea where his friend Han was, only that the armored bounty hunter Boba Fett had taken Han's carbonite-frozen body from Cloud City. Various reports confirmed that Boba Fett intended to deliver Han to the Tatooine-based gangster Jabba the Hutt, but so far, Boba Fett was a no-show. It was Luke's other friend, the Alliance leader Princess Leia Organa, who had instructed him to hide out on Tatooine and wait for some sign of Han.

Unfortunately, Luke had never been very good at waiting.

From above, R2-D2 emitted a series of soft electronic beeps and a short whistle. Recognizing the whistle's lilt as a concerned question from the droid, Luke replied, "I'm fine, Artoo. Go make sure the X-wing's camouflage net is secured, and I'll be up in a few minutes."

R2-D2 chirped a hesitant response, but then his motor whined and he backed away from the trapdoor. The movement pushed some sand toward the trapdoor, sending it streaming down into the cellar. Luke shook his head. One way or another, sand found its way into just about every place on Tatooine.

While R2-D2 headed back outside to inspect the X-wing, Luke returned to the boa-wood box and crouched down in front of it. Examining the box more closely with the glowrod, he noticed a tight cl.u.s.ter of b.u.t.tons, and realized that the box was a keypad safe.

Luke stared hard at the keypad. Ben had never mentioned this box in his bas.e.m.e.nt, and Luke could only imagine what the access code might be. Struggling to recall whether Ben had ever hinted at the code, Luke thought back to that fateful day when Ben - in the room just above Luke's head - had revealed himself to be a Jedi Knight and told Luke about the Force. Luke seriously doubted that Ben would have programmed any obvious letter combination, like JEDI or THE FORCE. He wished he could somehow ask Ben himself, but after their last exchange, that seemed very unlikely.

Since Dagobah, Luke had been on his own.

For a moment, he considered breaking the box open, using a small prybar he had noticed on the workbench, but then he dismissed the idea. As much as he was curious about the box's contents, he didn't want to damage it. He reached cautiously toward the box, brushing the tips of his fingers against the keypad.

Snap!

Luke flinched and pulled his fingers back as the keypad automatically slid aside on an inlaid track to reveal a thumbprint clasp. He wasn't sure what had just happened, but somehow, he had bypa.s.sed the keypad. He hesitated for a moment, then thought, Here goes nothing. He pressed his right thumb against the clasp.

Clack!

The clasp yielded to his touch, and Luke saw a thin black slit appear along the lower edge of the box's lid. He lifted the lid slowly with one hand, adjusted the glow-rod with the other, and peered inside the box. The first thing he saw was a flashpacket, an explosive device that had been affixed near the back of the keypad.

Luke eyed the flashpacket warily. It certainly appeared that Ben had rigged the box to explode, but for whatever reason, it hadn't worked. Luke thought, Maybe it's a d u d . . . .

Another possibility suddenly struck him. Maybe Ben not only left this box behind for me, but also set it to explode if anyone else attempted to open it. But how? Did Ben somehow obtain my fingerprints? Did he foresee that I would lose my hand? Or was the clasp engineered to recognize me by the Force? Luke was mystified, but if it turned out that his fingerprints had been all that prevented the flashpacket from detonating, he would have another reason to be grateful to the medical droid who had recreated his hand.

Peering past the flashpacket, Luke saw that the box contained some rectangular objects. He recognized them as books. Although he was far more familiar with datapads for information storage, he had seen enough books in his lifetime to know how what they were and how to use them. The largest book was a leather-bound volume that appeared quite ancient. Luke picked it up, and noticed that it too was sealed by a thumbclasp.

He pressed his right thumb against the clasp. The clasp yielded without a sound.

Luke wasn't surprised to find another flashpacket, this one affixed behind the book's front cover. Nor was he surprised that the explosive didn't detonate. What surprised him were the handwritten words on the book's first page.

Luke, The flashpackets were a necessary precaution. I trust you will dispose of them properly.

The future of the Jedi Knights is in your hands. Read these books and use them wisely.

May the Force be with you.

- Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi * * *

Luke blinked at the words as if to confirm they were real, that he wasn't just having a dream. The book felt suddenly heavy in his hands. He set it down carefully upon the workbench and, by the light of his glowrod, he began turning the pages. Every page was filled with handwritten text, and his heart began pounding harder as the various words and phrases caught his attention. Jedi Council.. . Old Republic . . . Battle of Naboo . . . Sith Lords . . . Jedi Temple . . . Separatist Movement.. . Battle of Geonosis . . . the Clone Wars . . .

Luke stopped to catch his breath. He knew he should start at the beginning, but the book was so thick, and he was impatient to find two names in particular. He began flipping through the pages even faster, scanning the text for the names - Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader - that he believed were the keys to the answers he sought.

Ever since the duel on Cloud City, his thoughts had been dominated by two questions: Is Darth Vader really my father?

And if he is, why didn't Ben tell me the truth?

The dull ache returned to Luke's right wrist, and he stopped turning pages. He hadn't found the names he was looking for, but had come to a section that contained Ben's instructions for the construction of lightsabers. The section included numerous ill.u.s.trations by Ben himself.

Luke hadn't considered the possibility of building a lightsaber. Only after he lost his lightsaber at Cloud City did he realize that he had no idea where to obtain another one, let alone how to go about making one from scratch. Now, thanks to Ben's book, it seemed he might actually stand a good chance at replacing it.

A skilled Jedi can complete a basic lightsaber in a few days if necessary, but creating one for the first time can take many months. The most essential component is the focusing crystal, preferably a natural jewel, which can be . . .

Luke was transfixed, nearly forgetting his intent to find information about his father's ident.i.ty. He flipped back a few pages and began reading from the beginning of the entry.

Like most Jedi younglings, I constructed my first lightsaber at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

Although it was merely a competent weapon, I would be a liar if I said I built it purely for training exercises. I crafted it with much thought and care, and dared to imagine that it would serve me well in the future.

In fact, I did use the weapon during my earliest missions with my Master, but it was not u n t i l . . .

Seeing the word Master, Luke skimmed ahead. He suspected Ben was referring to Master Yoda, but he didn't see Yoda's name written anywhere. Luke went back to where he had left off.

. . . but it was not until after we went to Ilum, when I was still in my thirteenth year, that I learned the true power of a lightsaber.

Luke turned the page. He had expected the journal to provide details about what Ken.o.bi had experienced in his thirteenth year that made him learn "the true power of a lightsaber," but as he read through the next few pages, it appeared that the elder Jedi may have kept that information to himself. Ben had also mentioned being "on Ilum, " but there wasn't another mention of Ilum either, at least not that Luke could plainly see.

Luke frowned. Although he was eager to read the entire book, he also believed that building a new lightsaber might be his first priority. According to Ben's instructions, first-time efforts at lightsaber construction could "take months." Luke and his allies didn't know Han Solo's current whereabouts and had yet to formulate a rescue plan, but if they were going up against Boba Fett or Jabba the Hutt, Luke had a feeling that a lightsaber would be useful.

As Luke reexamined the instructions for lightsaber construction, his thoughts returned to Obi-Wan at age thirteen. What was he like then? Luke wished he could have known more.

CHAPTER ONE.

Although the Jedi Order had deliberately banished Ilum from all standard star charts for many centuries, almost every Jedi trainee dreamed of visiting the sacred, secret planet in the Unknown Regions. That was because many generations of Jedi had gathered crystals from Ilum to energize their lightsabers, and some Jedi maintained that Ilum crystals were the finest in the galaxy.

Constructing a lightsaber on Ilum was not regarded as the most challenging trial for a Jedi apprentice, but to Obi-Wan, it was confirmation that he would become a Jedi Knight. And if anyone appreciated the opportunity to become a Jedi, it was Obi-Wan. Less than a year earlier, when he was still just a few weeks shy of his thirteenth birthday, he was nearly convinced that no Jedi Knight or Master would ever choose him as an apprentice.

But those days were behind him now. The Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn, with some encouragement from Master Yoda, had taken Obi-Wan as his Padawan. Granted, they had gotten off to a rough start, and it only became rougher when Obi-Wan temporarily renounced the Jedi Order to join the revolution on the planet Melida/Daan, a decision that he quickly came to regret. Qui-Gon had forgiven him and accepted his return, but there remained an uneasiness between them. Still, despite their disagreements and conflicts, a bond had developed, and both were confident this bond would grow stronger over time.

And so it was that Obi-Wan and his Master, traveling in a small transport ship on loan from the Galactic Senate, had made the pilgrimage to the snow-covered world of Ilum. As Obi-Wan meditated over the blue crystal he had just harvested from the frigid cavern, Qui-Gon stood a short distance away, watching.

Using the Force, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi maneuvered the components of his lightsaber so that they hovered in the air in front of him. The blue crystal rotated slowly, then drifted into place within the lightsaber's energy chamber. Focusing all his attention on the components, he sealed the compartment, and then adjusted a locking mechanism. The lightsaber's a.s.sembly was complete.

With his lightsaber still floating before him, Obi-Wan shifted his gaze to his Master. Like Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon was wearing an insulated robe to protect him from the cold. Qui-Gon's eyes were on the floating lightsaber, but Obi-Wan thought he detected something distant in the man's expression, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

Obi-Wan's lightsaber wavered slightly. Obi-Wan waited a few seconds, then said, "Are you not supposed to say a few words, Master?"

Qui-Gon's eyes flicked to Obi-Wan's . "Ah, yes," he said. Returning his gaze to the hovering lightsaber, he recited, "The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force. The Force is the blade of the heart. All are intertwined: the crystal, the blade, the Jedi. You.... are one."

Obi-Wan heard Qui-Gon's hesitation in the final sentence, and thought he detected a hint of sorrow or regret in his Master's voice. As he reached out to grasp the floating lightsaber and lower it to his side, he said, "Have I done something wrong, Master?"

"No, Padawan," Qui-Gon answered. "You've done well. I regret it is I, for a change, who is not being mindful of the moment." Then Qui-Gon looked away, letting his gaze sweep over the cavern's interior. "It is unfortunate that such wondrous surroundings could become diminished by foolish memories."

Obi-Wan shook his head. "I am sorry, Master, but I don't understand."

Qui-Gon returned his gaze to Obi-Wan and said, "The last time I stood in this chamber, it was with Xanatos."

Obi-Wan swallowed hard. Xanatos had been Qui-Gon's previous Jedi apprentice. Strong with the Force and a brave warrior, Xanatos had served alongside Qui-Gon on numerous missions, but ultimately left the Jedi Order to ally with his biological father, a corrupt governor who had initiated a civil war on their homeworld, Telos IV. Qui-Gon had been forced to kill Xanatos's father, an act that did nothing to stop or divert Xanatos on his path to the dark side.

For years afterward, Qui-Gon had maintained that he might never take another apprentice, and that he eventually did was much to Obi-Wan's credit. But shortly after Obi-Wan became Qui-Gon's Padawan, Xanatos reemerged, seeking revenge against his former Master - and nearly destroying the Jedi Temple in the process. Obi-Wan had been with Qui-Gon when they caught up with Xanatos on Telos IV, and neither was able to stop the dark, former Jedi from deliberately ending his own life by plunging into a boiling black pool of acid.

"Xanatos wasn't your fault," Obi-Wan blurted out without thinking. Qui-Gon had not asked for his opinion, and he felt his face flush.

"Perhaps you're right," Qui-Gon replied. "But for a time, Xanatos was my responsibility. And he was also my friend."

Obi-Wan had no response for this. He had come to regard Xanatos as an embodiment of evil, and had a hard time believing that he could have ever been a friend to anyone.

Obi-Wan also felt a bit stung. The trip to Ilum was important to him, and he hadn't expected his Master's thoughts to dwell on Xanatos. He almost wished that Qui-Gon's memory of the failed apprentice had dissolved along with Xanatos himself on Telos IV, but he immediately buried the thought and banished it from his mind. Such a line of thinking could only lead to the dark side - Obi-Wan didn't need Master Yoda, Qui-Gon, or anyone else to remind him of that.

Qui-Gon sighed. "You have worked very hard toward this day, and I regret I allowed unpleasant memories to intrude. Forgive me, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan was taken aback by his Master's request for forgiveness. Although he wasn't sure whether to speak, he said, " I . . . I forgive you, Master."

"Then all is well," Qui-Gon said, smiling as he placed his broad hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Come now, let us see the result of your handiwork, this blade you have created by the will of the Force."

Stepping back from Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan held his lightsaber out in front of him and thumbed the activation switch. The beam ignited, and the cavern's crystallined walls reflected its brilliant blue light as they magnified the sound of the weapon's distinctive hum.

Obi-Wan had been raised at the Jedi Temple and had more experience with lightsabers than many Padawans his age. Still, his eyes went wide with surprise as he beheld the brilliant beam that extended before him. He had expected that the Ilum crystal would produce a more intense beam than the weapon's previous crystal, which he had selected from a supply at the Jedi Temple's lightsaber crafting facility. But he was not prepared for the way the Ilum crystal would make the weapon feel in his grasp.

It was different somehow. He tested it, sweeping the blade through the air. The blade was still pure energy and without weight, but it seemed more precise and focused.

Obi-Wan looked to Qui-Gon, who smiled as if he could read his Padawan's thoughts. Qui-Gon said, "Some Jedi claim that Ilum crystals make one feel more connected with the Force."

Before Obi-Wan could comment, a beeping sound came from the comlink at Qui-Gon's belt. Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber as Qui-Gon removed the comlink, listened briefly, and then said into it, "On our way."

"What is it, Master?"