The Rise of Skywalker Junior Novel, page 1
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Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Images from the Film
Author’s Note
About the Author
The dead speak! The galaxy has
heard a mysterious broadcast,
a threat of REVENGE in the
sinister voice of the late
EMPEROR PALPATINE.
GENERAL LEIA ORGANA
dispatches secret agents to
gather intelligence, while REY,
the last hope of the Jedi, trains
for battle against the diabolical
FIRST ORDER.
Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
KYLO REN rages in search
of the phantom Emperor,
determined to destroy any
threat to his power. . . .
ONCE THERE WAS a woman who was born to lead. Orphaned as a child, she was adopted by royalty and became a princess of a peaceful planet. She began a life of public service as an outspoken Imperial senator, later becoming a commander in the Rebel Alliance, a politician in the New Republic, and then the head of the Resistance in the fight against the First Order. When she was a young rebel, she discovered the dark truth about her heritage. Her name was Leia, and by birth she was a Skywalker. But she never took that name for her own. In the galaxy she was always known as an Organa.
Once there was an old man who wanted never to die. He came from the nobility of an affluent world and was elected to lead the Old Republic through its gravest crisis, as its chancellor. His name was Palpatine, and he was often described as a thin, kindly gentleman who harbored no ambition other than to bring stability to a war-torn galaxy. But another ambition he did have, one so cunning and sinister that few realized it until after he had turned the Republic into an Empire and declared himself Emperor. By this title alone he became known, as his own name slipped into the recesses of the past, along with knowledge of the Republic’s most stalwart guardians, the Jedi Knights, whose extermination he engineered. With no one to oppose him, he held the entire galaxy under his command. Only mortality stood in the way of eternal rule, though even that might be overcome if he discovered the ancient secrets. It was at the height of his power, when all seemed secure, that the unforeseen happened. His own apprentice turned against him, throwing him to his death and thereby helping topple his Empire.
Once there was a boy who was born with an extraordinary gift. He could hear things, see things, and do things others could not. His mother shared a similar gift, as did his uncle, but not his father. What was special about the boy’s gift was that he heard voices from time to time. The voices told him secret things and warned him when he was in danger. He did as the voices instructed and told no one else about them, not his parents or his uncle, who trained him to join a new order of Jedi Knights. As the boy grew older, the voices faded from his dreams until he forgot about them altogether. But their influence remained. He eventually spurned his uncle’s teachings and used his gift not for good but for evil. His parents had named him Ben, but the name he took for himself was Kylo Ren.
Once there was a girl who had many dreams. One of them was to become a pilot and see the stars. In preparation, she practiced endlessly on flight simulators and built her own speeders from scavenged parts. She also dreamed of the past. She read, watched, and listened to everything she could about the Jedi of old, who had mythic powers that defied belief. But as much as she imagined herself flying starships and learned stories of mystical warriors from mysterious worlds, she could not explore the universe beyond the desert planet where she’d been orphaned. She had to wait until her parents returned. Her name was Rey, born of a family she did not know.
One day events beyond her control forced the girl to leave her desert home. She copiloted a famous starship under its celebrated captain, who told her that the Jedi and their powers were more than a myth. She also discovered that she had the gift to become one of their number if she received the proper training. When the last of the Jedi failed to teach her what she needed, she turned to another, a woman who had received the training but followed a different vocation.
So under Leia Organa’s tutelage, Rey learned the ways of the Jedi.
THE JUNGLE WAS ALIVE, and Rey was alive with it.
She darted through the dense brush, never stopping, never slowing. She dipped under half-hidden branches and hopped over exposed roots. She brushed a webweaver off her shoulder and dodged the flick of a zymond’s poisonous tongue. When she came upon swampy ground, she grabbed a creeper vine and swung over it. Her breathing remained steady throughout and she didn’t break a sweat, despite the humidity. Rey might have been a creature of the desert, accustomed to the sand and sun of Jakku, but on Ajan Kloss she moved through the jungle as if she’d lived there her whole life.
Such was the power of the Force. For those who opened themselves up to it, even the most foreign environments could become like home.
As fast as she ran, however, Rey could not shake off her pursuers. They whizzed through the air behind her, four combat remotes—one blue, one white, one green, and one red—targeting her with stingbeams. Though she couldn’t sense the robotic devices the same way she could living organisms, she was able to track them by discerning how they interacted with their surroundings. The chrome of their surfaces made glittering reflections in rainwater puddles. The puff of their maneuvering jets quieted the noisy tree chirpers. And the beams of their lasers emitted the scorched scent of ozone. All these sights, sounds, and smells clued Rey into the remotes’ locations so she could stay one step ahead of them and their precisely timed shots.
She had another pursuer, a friendly one, who whined while struggling to keep pace. Colored orange and white, with a domed head and a spherical body, the astromech droid BB-8 was designed for starship maintenance and hyperspace navigation, not high-speed chases through wild jungles. The uneven land and thick vegetation made travel challenging for a mechanical being that rolled rather than walked or flew. Still, using every gadget available to an astromech, BB-8 managed to stay within beeping distance.
Rey had told her little friend to stay back at the base, but of course, BB-8 had refused. The droid was, above all else, stubbornly loyal. But the remotes weren’t going to quit because her unwanted helper lagged behind. They kept zapping at her while she kept running toward her goal, lightsaber hilt in hand. Their laser beams could inflict a nasty sting, as their name implied, but Rey wasn’t worried so much about the pain as she was about slowing down. Every second was precious if she wanted to impress her teacher and achieve a personal best.
She snagged a branch that blocked her way, vaulted over it, and then snapped it back at the remotes. The branch smashed into the white remote and hurled it into the bushes. A beam from the blue remote singed the air over her as she ducked and instead struck its green counterpart, causing the electronic device to fizzle and die. She took care of the blue remote by blowing on a fanged flower that she dashed past. Alerted by her breath, its petal mouth did the rest, snatching the orb from the air.
When Rey came to the edge of a gorge, she didn’t pause to get her bearings. Following her teacher’s instructions, she picked up an old A-wing pilot’s helmet from a tree stump and jammed it over her head. Rey pulled the helmet’s blast shield over her eyes and then did something that made BB-8 shriek so loudly Rey heard it through the helmet’s mufflers.
She ignited her lightsaber and stepped onto the tightrope bridge that spanned the gorge.
The red remote whistled after her. Blind as Rey might be with her eyes, she wasn’t blind in the Force. Though she couldn’t see the remote, she knew where it was in connection with everything else and could anticipate its next moves. When it fired at her from behind, she batted away its shots with her lightsaber blade. Coming to the end of the tightrope, she jumped onto firm ground and tossed off the helmet. She didn’t bother to glance back at her pursuer but immediately went to work climbing a giant broadleaf tree.
From an upper branch fluttered a piece of red ribbon. It would be hers.
As she neared the ribbon, the red remote swooped toward the tree.
Her boots thudded on the ground but didn’t stay there for long. She tucked the ribbon in her sash and ran across the tightrope, her capelet fanning out behind her. BB-8 met her on the other side of the gorge and sped after her, offering congratulatory beeps. She was going to pass this test in record time. The general would be proud.
Then Rey stopped, her heels kicking up dirt and leaves. Hovering before her was the red remote. Its maneuvering jets hissed at her. The blasted thing was tenacious, she had to give it that. But it was time to end this game.
The blue blade she held had once been wielded by Luke Skywalker and his father before him. It had been damaged on more than one occasion, most recently in Supreme Leader Snoke’s throne room. The kyber crystal that powered the blade had shattered when she and Kylo Ren had fought for the weapon. But Rey had retrieved its pieces, and through a careful study of the texts she had taken from Ahch-To, she had mended the crystal and rebuilt the lightsaber.
Nonetheless, before she could bring the blade up in front of her, the remote hit her in the shoulder with a stingbeam. She winced, but the pain could have been worse. That beam was on a lower setting. The red remote was toying with her.
The next round of shots bounced off her blade and were sent back at the remote. In each case, the remote dodged the bolts, but while it was tracking the deflected beams, it couldn’t track her.
Or so she thought.
As she tried to run past the remote, a tightly focused stingbeam struck her before she realized it had been fired. She shuddered, not so much from the pain but from frustration. There was no way—just no way—a training remote was going to get the better of her.
She lunged at it.
The remote evaded her attack, looping around her and unleashing more blasts. The majority of the shots she deflected, but a couple got through. Those stung—and the pain didn’t fade away. The remote had increased the intensity of its beams.
Now she was angry.
Rey swung wildly at the remote. She’d broken a sweat. She was breathing hard. Her blue blade cut through tree after tree, toppling them without regard. The remote remained just out of reach, pelting her with lasers. Each new hit stung more than the last, yet the pain also energized her. She’d bring down the jungle on the mechanical pest if she had to.
The red remote soared up and around her. Venting her frustration, she hurled her lightsaber at it. Though her blade came close to striking its mark, the remote rotated its jets to thrust away from the saber’s arc. The blade chopped through the treetops, carving a window to the sky.
Rey whirled, searching for the remote. It reeled and dove at her from behind. It was done toying with her—its high-pitched whine signified its next stingbeam would do more than sting. She’d be knocked to the ground, her muscles stunned. Her efforts to beat her previous best would have been for naught.
The remotes had all been programmed to analyze her combat moves and forecast her probable actions. Up to this point, the red remote had made an exceptional number of correct predictions. Yet for all its success, it lacked the capability to estimate one most crucial factor.
The Force.
As a consequence, the red remote never calculated that a falling branch would upend the laws of gravity and hurtle into Rey’s hand. Wielding it as she would her staff, she whacked the remote backward into a tree. The red globe shattered on impact, leaving a dent in the trunk.
Rey let out a breath. She dropped the branch and caught her lightsaber hilt as it fell to the ground, its blade having switched off mid-arc.
She had broken her old record. Yet she felt no joy in her accomplishment. Around her, gigantic trees that had stood for centuries lay on the forest floor as fallen logs. The very life that had supported her in the Force had ended with her blade.
Her actions mortified her. It would have been better to lose the remote than do such grave harm to the jungle. She would return to her teacher not triumphant but ashamed.
Before she could take a step back toward the Resistance base, she froze, assaulted by a vision.
She glimpsed a young man meditating over a burnt black mask. He lifted his head as if noticing her. The young man was Kylo Ren, and the mask was that of his grandfather Darth Vader.
Rey’s surroundings shifted to a large, dark chamber. Before her was a mound of spikes resembling an enormous Jakku sand urchin. A cloaked figure sat on a throne in the center of the spikes. She couldn’t tell who it was. But there was a familiarity in it. Again, could it be . . .
Kylo Ren?
He had been there, was there, or would be there. She felt the echoes of his presence. His anger. His fury. His soul, forever at war. Somehow he was connected to all this.
Memories intruded. The first was one from her worst nightmare, of the time as a child when she had watched her parents’ starship launch from the desert sands, forever abandoning her on Jakku. Yet she also remembered a moment she’d never remembered before and found herself locked in the warm embrace of a woman who could only be her mother. She would have stayed in that moment forever, but Kylo Ren interrupted it. He stood on the Mega-Destroyer, the body of Supreme Leader Snoke at his feet, and extended his hand to her.
Join me. . . .
The voice wasn’t Ren’s. It was deeper than his and rasped, as if whoever spoke struggled to breathe.
Master Luke came to her next, standing on the island cliff in his brown robes, as he had when she first found him. After him there was Han Solo, her mentor for only a few days, but whose encouragement had led Rey to Leia and the Resistance. She saw Han touching his son’s face, before that same son plunged a lightsaber blade into his chest. You did it, she heard Master Luke say. You killed him. And then she was thrown back into the dark chamber. Dim lighting gave definition to the hooded figure on the throne. It wasn’t Kylo Ren.
The face she saw terrified her.
A beep, muted and muffled, rescued her from seeing more. She blinked and was in the jungle once again, standing among the fallen trees. Under one trunk squealed BB-8, his servomotors grinding in a futile attempt to escape. The poor thing. Her thoughtless rampage with the lightsaber had gotten him trapped beneath a tree and had popped loose a panel, exposing his internal circuitry.
She rushed over to him. “I’m so sorry.” As she pulled him out, he didn’t complain, only expressed worry about her. Was she okay? Had she had another vision?
“Yes, it happened to me again.” She didn’t want to go into details.
But BB-8 wasn’t the kind of droid you could dismiss when it came to the safety of his friends. His beeps kept coming. What had she seen? Was the Force telling her something?
“No, I still don’t know what the Force was trying to show me. But this time,” she said, “this time was worse.”
Growing up an orphan on Jakku, Rey had always had the most vivid dreams and nightmares, so vivid they felt real. But one nightmare in particular had recurred more than the others. It had haunted her not only in her sleep but when she was awake, and it had just haunted her in her latest vision. It was the cruelest moment of her childhood, when she had screamed in Unkar Plutt’s grip while her parents left Jakku, never to return. Though the double thruster engines of their starship burned blue in her memory as if they had blazed only the day before, she couldn’t remember the faces of her parents anymore. All she could remember was a voice.
Stay here. I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.
She never could figure out whether the voice belonged to her mother or her father—or both. It didn’t matter; all that mattered was the promise to come back for her. So for years she had heeded the voice’s command, remaining on Jakku, scavenging scrap for food portions and marking each passing day on the wall of her Imperial walker home.
The voice was part of her past. When she had clashed with Kylo Ren on the Mega-Destroyer, he had told her that her parents were nothing but junk traders who sold her off for drinking money. Although she knew Ren was a master of lies—even lying to himself about his identity as Ben Solo—what he had said didn’t feel like a lie. It felt like the truth.
The confrontation had made her acknowledge that the voice she had been hearing all those years was nothing more than a defense mechanism—a hope she had invented for herself so she would not give in to despair and could survive a difficult situation, which life on Jakku undoubtedly had been. While trying to hurt and confuse her, Ren had inadvertently forced her to reckon with her past. She needn’t wait for her parents to show up when deep down she knew they never would. She had found a family of her own in the Resistance. Her friends, like Finn, General Organa, Chewbacca, and BB-8, cared about her, as she cared about them. And since her acceptance of her new life, the voice and that dream hadn’t disturbed her again.
