2016 OEAM Big Bang: Dawn of Hope (1-5)

[alexs_storybook]

Title: Dawn of Hope
Author: alexcat
Type: General
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own them, nor do I profit from their use.
Warnings:
Beta: Larry
Artist: Wendy Game
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Owen Lars, Beru Lars, Biggs Darklighter
Archive: OEAM, Ao3
Author’s Note: *See below
Spoilers: Not really
Summary: The story of Luke Skywlaker's childhood.

~~~

*Notes:
Thanks to Larry for the beta read. Thanks to Wendy Game for the wonderful cover.

Just a few little explanations and such:

Some things are from Canon and some are from what Disney now calls Legend.

A T-16 Skyhopper looks like the toy flyer that Luke is playing with at the first of A New Hope, but for our purposes, it is smaller, sleeker, more like a land rocket.

Luke’s pals were all in A New Hope originally but were cut before release. You can see them if you go to Youtube and search for Star Wars: A New Hope deleted scenes. You can also see more of Tatooine.

Most of the Luke stories are made up though the bit about water thieves is based on a Golden Book tale of Luke as a child.

There is no Zahn Range on Tatooine, but my own nod to Timothy Zahn, the Star Wars novelist who gave us the Thrawn trilogy. Grand Admiral Thrawn was such a wonderful character that Disney kept him when they threw out the rich canvas of Star Wars canon already created.

Thanks to George Lucas, for saving my life with your Jedi more times than I can count.

~~~


Prologue – Luke Skywalker

Obi-Wan looked down at the sleeping baby. The boy reminded him of the tiny Anakin they’d found on Tatooine a long time ago. How he had loved that stubborn child and loved the young Jedi. But Anakin was gone now, dead to them all.

Obi-Wan was glad Anakin didn’t know the children were alive. It was the only chance to keep them both safe. He knew the little girl would have a good life with Bail Organa. Organa was a good man and he and his wife were so glad to have a child at last. Little Leia would grow up a true princess.

Owen Lars would not have been his ideal pick to raise this little boy, but he was the baby’s next of kin, or at least as close as anyone came to that. Beru was a kind girl and she’d make a fine mother to Luke, though.

“Oh, little Luke, what will become of you? Will you have the power of your father? Will you use it well?”

He picked the child up from his little carrier in the speeder and headed for the underground home of Owen and Beru Lars, to give them something precious. More precious than they’d ever know.


~~~


Chapter One – Beru Puts Her Foot Down

The small blond boy played in the sand outside his home. He could hear his aunt humming just inside the house. Uncle Owen was out working somewhere and Aunt Beru was making dinner. He loved to hear her hum as she worked. It made him feel safe.

As he poured sand out of his bucket, making a hill to race his toy speeder on, he wondered why he had no mother and father. The other children he’d met when Aunt Beru took him to Anchorhead had parents. He had an aunt and uncle.

He’d tried to ask Uncle Owen about his parents but he refused to talk about them at all, saying he didn’t know much about Luke’s parents but even as young as Luke was, he knew that Uncle Owen was lying to him.

“Luke, it’s time to come in now. You can get cleaned up and ready to eat dinner when Uncle Owen comes home.”

Luke sighed. Uncle Owen always seemed angry about something. He couldn’t quite seem to understand it most of the time. Then there were times that he understood perfectly his uncle’s frustrations as if someone had drawn him a picture of what Owen was angry about.

He looked out at the bright twin suns and stood, dusting himself off before going inside. Aunts always seemed to have an aversion to dirt. He smiled and headed inside. Aunt Beru was making Dragon cookies. He could smell them before he opened the door.

“I smell cookies!” He said happily as she looked up from the dough.

“Not yet, you don’t!” She said as she began placing the dragon shaped pastries on a sheet.

“But I thought I-” Luke began but stopped when he realized that he didn’t really smell them at all.

He headed to the bath and was soon dressed in his good clothes and ready to have dinner with his aunt and uncle.

“So what did you do today, Luke?” Owen asked him as Beru poured milk for the boy.

“I played pod racer in the sand!”

“Podracing is a sport for people with no ambition,” Owen said gruffly.

“Now, Owen, he’s just a boy. Boys play.”

“The crowd that spends their time racing never amounts to much. Maybe I need to start taking the boy out on the farm with me. He can learn something more useful to do than play in the sand.”

Beru made a sound that told Luke he was safe here at home a little longer. Uncle Owen hadn’t won this time. But he would soon. That much Luke knew.

*

Time seemed to pass slowly on Tatooine. For both little Luke and for the Jedi who watched him from afar.

Obi-Wan lived alone out in the wilderness. He meditated much of the day, calming himself as he had seen his own Master do so many times. He worried about little Luke all alone in the clutches of his bad tempered and dull Uncle Owen. He smiled. Perhaps the kind and gentle Beru would be a good countermeasure to Owen. He wished he could have given Luke a better home, a home more conducive to love and affection.

Maybe it was better that the boy grow up hard. If Obi-Wan knew anything, he knew that change was coming and that this child and the girl would be a part of it. He had known this since they’d been born just as their kind, wise mother slipped away.

He hoped this boy would be all that Anakin could not be.

*

Luke was barely tall enough to see on top of the workbench in the toolshed when he began sneaking out in the afternoons and tinkering while Uncle Owen was out working on the moisture farm, a job that took long hours for very little money.

Luke began by making simple things, a stool for Aunt Beru to reach the high shelves in her kitchen, a new food mixer for the one he broke. He seemed to have a knack for being able to cobble things together.

Aunt Beru taught Luke to read and write when he was only four and they often went into Anchorhead to look at vids on the HoloNet, but by the time he was six, she felt that he needed to go to school with other children. She always thought that Owen’s stepbrother, Anakin, might have benefitted from the friendship of other children growing up here on Tatooine. It was a lonely and desolate world and a person needed all the friends he could get.

“Owen, I think it’s time to send Luke to the new school at Anchorhead. He is old enough and he already knows how to read. I don’t have the education to teach him the things he needs to know.”

“If he’s old enough to go to school, then he’s old enough to go to work on the farm.”

Beru seldom raised her voice or argued with her husband. Her persuasion was usually gentle and soft spoken, but not this time.

“I did not agree to raise that child so you could have an extra farmhand! He is the only family we have and he needs to go to school.” She was neither quiet nor meek when she spoke.

Owen looked up from the paper he was reading. “You are serious?”

“Yes. He is a bright little one and he needs friends and he needs more than I can teach him. He needs to go to school.”

And so it was settled.

Little Luke would go to school in Anchorhead.



~~~~



Chapter Two – Luke in Anchorhead

Beru, true to her word, took Luke to Anchorhead the very next morning to enroll him in school.

“Are we going to look at vids?” he asked her as they rode in their slow old landspeeder toward Anchorhead, a small town as towns went, but Anchorhead was the connecting point to all of Tatooine and it would be the beginning of Luke’s connection to the rest of the galaxy.

“No. We are going to school. Uncle Owen and I have decided that you are old enough to go to school.”

His face crumpled for a moment as if he were going to cry, but then he smiled. “Will I meet other children and have friends?”

Beru almost cried herself at his question. “Of course you will! The teacher there is so much smarter than I am and will teach you lots of new things. And all the children from this whole area go to school there.”

The school was very small and all the smaller children were grouped together even though they were at different grade levels. The older children formed the second group and met in the other half of the small schoolhouse.

Miss Galway was the teacher; she was pretty and blond and looked almost as young as the older students.

“Welcome, Luke Skywalker!” she turned to the students and presented their new classmate.

They said hello as one and Miss Galway showed Luke his seat and got him settled. Aunt Beru told him she would be back for him when school was out and kissed his cheek before she left.

By the end of the day, Luke had met his first friend. One of the older boys introduced himself to Luke on the playground. Luke was smaller than most of the children, even the girls, so Biggs befriended him to protect his newest classmate.

“Hi. I’m Biggs Darklighter and I’m going to fly Starfighters one day.”

Luke smiled up at the larger boy. “Me too! My name is Luke.”

They were fast friends after that.

Luke had met one other classmate, Windy Starkiller. His parents were friends of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru and had visited the moisture farm a few times. He and Luke had played out in the sand until it got dark. No one wanted to be out after dark. The Sand People attacked settlements and homesteads now and again. After they nabbed someone, they were never seen again.

By the time Aunt Beru picked Luke up at the end of the day, he was sad to go home and eager to come back the next day.

As time passed, Luke made friends with most of the children at the tiny school and he hung out with many of them as often as he could.

Biggs Darklighter’s father was a wealthy moisture farmer, who owned many farms and had the money to send his children to the best schools. Biggs went to Anchorhead because Mr. Darklighter was grooming him to take over the moisture business someday. He also wanted to keep him close because his son, even at nine, was already talking about being a pilot when he grew up and joining the military or buying his own freighter and leaving Tatooine.

Windy was Luke’s age, as was Deak, Windy’s shadow. They both came to play at Luke’s quite often. They often sat in Uncle Owen’s landspeeder and pretended they were flying. Luke was almost always the pilot, no matter how many times the other two boys asked.

Their little group was rounded out by Laze and Camie, who were sweethearts even at a young age. Laze was already called Fixer by most of the kids because he could repair anything mechanical. Camie was the only girl in their group and she was there simply because Fixer was. Luke always thought she was really pretty but she only had eyes for Fixer.

It only took a few months for Luke to feel as if he’d known the others all his young life and they seemed to accept him into their little society.

He was also a good student, learning quickly and easily, which gave him lots of time to gaze into the night sky and dream.

He dreamed of flying up there, far, far away from Tatooine and its moisture farms. He wanted to go far and fast. He wanted to do great things. He wanted things he could not yet name or understand. All he knew was that he felt a longing when he looked into the sky.

*

Luke’s first year of school passed quickly and so did another. He and Biggs talked of flying all the time. Biggs had already decided he would go to the Academy after school here on Tatooine, become a pilot and save the galaxy as often as he could.

Luke thought this sounded like a wonderful goal in life. He claimed it as his goal as well.

His uncle had very different ideas as to what the boy needed to be doing here on Tatooine.

“You need to think about life here and now, not some silly dream of flying. That’s no life… you have no home, no stability. A farmer has those. He’s rooted in the dirt, even a moisture farmer and he is doing work that makes life better for other people. He is doing honest work.”

Luke was a little young for this lecture and Aunt Beru told Owen so, but that didn’t stop him. He was as adamant that Luke grow up to be a farmer as Luke was not to. It was a battle the two fought at least once a week every year that Luke lived with the Lars family.

*

The Jedi still watched the boy from afar.

He saw much of Anakin in him. The one thing he didn’t see was Anakin’s anger. Luke seemed to be a fairly easygoing boy, even with Owen Lars as his uncle. A part of him wished the boy would stay here on Tatooine and marry a local girl, maybe moisture farm and have a house full of children.

But he knew that the boy had a destiny. He’d known that since the day he was born. He hoped that his destiny was not that of his father.


~~~~



Chapter Three – The Need for Speed

Luke grew fast and so did his interest in speed and flight. He went from playing with toy speeders to building them with Biggs in the Darklighter garage. He hung out with the same crowd as he did as a small boy. The population of Tatooine didn’t grow very much but then it didn’t shrink much either so here they were: Biggs, Luke, Windy, Deacon, Fixer and Camie. Luke and Biggs worked on the speeder while Windy and Deacon drank beer they’d stolen from the fridge in the workshop. Camie and Fixer were in the corner, kissing.

It was a typical day for the Anchorhead teens.

“Skywalker, when we get these skyhoppers ready, let’s go out and hunt womp rats. What do you say?” Biggs asked Luke.

Luke had heard of hunting the pests but he’d never gone. “Have you done it before?”

“My uncle was visiting over the holidays and he took me. We chased several for miles before we got them. He said you can’t kill too many at one time because they attract Krayt dragons.”

“Ktayt dragons are just a story to scare little kids. I’m ready if you are!”

“You need your binoculars then. We’ll ride together.”

“Can I shoot them?” Luke asked.

“You got a blaster rifle?”

“No but I can use yours.” Luke grinned. “Or do you want me to drive?”

Biggs laughed and in a few minutes, the two boys were headed out to the desert. Womp rats were as long as a grown man was tall and they sometimes ran in packs but today the boys found one alone. Biggs drove as they chased the creature until it was within range of their blaster. Luke put on the binoculars and aimed at the hapless creature.

And missed.

“You missed him! Are you blind?” Biggs was frustrated but not really angry.

“Hey, I’ve never shot this blaster before!”

“Wanna hunt some more then?”

“Yeah, but I gotta get back soon. Uncle Owen wants me to help with the broken vaporator after he’s done with the day’s collection.”

“Don’t you get tired of moisture farming?” Biggs asked him, not for the first time.

“Don’t you? Your dad wants you to moisture farm as bad as Uncle Owen wants me to.”

“I am tired of it and I’m going to do something about it,” Biggs said as they rode along.

“You say that every time.”

“But this time, I mean it. I talked to a guy who left here and went to the Academy. He says if I get my application in this year, I should be a shoe-in for next year or the next.”

“What about your dad?” Biggs’ dad had always wanted Biggs to take his place and run the farms one day.

“Not telling him. I’ll be old enough to sign the papers myself by then.”

“You can’t leave me here! I’ll die of boredom!”

“Then apply yourself when you’re old enough and leave this place.”

“Oooh, there’s another one! Swing a little closer!” Luke was ready this time and singed the Womp rat’s tail with his blaster.

“Better!”

“Now get me back before Uncle Owen singes my butt!”

*

It was late and Luke couldn’t sleep. He went outside and looked around. The stars twinkled in the sky and a slight breeze blew. The temperature on Tatooine was almost comfortable when the twin suns had set and full darkness had come.

As dark as it was, he saw movement out in the moisture fields, where Uncle Owen had his vaporators. He silently made his way across the sand, closing in on whoever was there.

Luke had lived on Tatooine all his life but had seen very few non-humans, other than the occasional Jawa and the fearsome Sand People. The people out in the field were not human. They looked and sounded quite porcine and Luke knew that the major criminal boss on Tatooine was Jabba the Hutt and that his henchmen were Gamorreans, a race that looked an awful lot like pigs. He’d heard rumors that Jabba was stealing water from small farms for his own use at his palace out in the Dune Sea.

Well, they weren’t robbing Uncle Owen!

He ran back to the shed and got out Uncle Owen’s old blaster, the one he used to shoot rats and snakes. He hurried toward the Gamorreans.

Luke did not see the man in the shadows watching him.

The Gamorreans laughed when the boy charged them with his antiquated weapon and turned back to what they were doing, hooking up a hose to drain the water tanks that held the moisture harvested by the vaporators.

Obi-Wan silently stepped out behind Luke. He had his light saber at the handy if his Jedi skills did not work. These dull buffoons were certainly not going to be allowed to harm Luke, nor steal from Owen Lars. He sent an image of them leaving to the minds of the thieves.

The Gamorreans stopped and looked at one another, confused. They spoke in a series of grunts that the Jedi knew to be their language then they unhooked their hoses and got into the tankers, driving away with the same confused look still on their faces.

Luke turned around and saw nothing. Obi-Wan had slipped into the shadows and he watched Luke until the boy was safely back home. They would meet one day soon, he thought as he headed back to his home in the Jundland Wastes.

*

Luke did not mention the attempted robbery to his uncle, figuring Uncle Owen would somehow make it his fault.

He did tell Biggs though.

“They just left?” The older boy looked surprised.

“Well, I did aim a blaster at them and told them to stop.”

“I have heard that Jabba was robbing some of the smaller farmers around here.”

Luke grinned. “Well, they didn’t rob this one!”

“Sounds like you’re ready to go Womp rat hunting again.”

“Am I ever! I even brought my own blaster.”

The two boys rode out looking for the huge rats. They chased a few but didn’t manage to shoot any. Luke was still too elated from his run in with the Gamorreans to concentrate. He wheedled until Biggs let him drive the speeder for a while.

When Biggs finally got close enough to the Lars homestead to drop Luke off, he stopped Luke. “I’ve heard rumors that the Hutts are going to start up the Podraces again. I was wondering if you might help me build one?”

“Are you kidding? When do we start?”



~~~~



Chapter Four – Like Father

Luke and Biggs had been working on the design for his pod racer for a few weeks. Both boys had been scavenging junk parts from their family farms and from anywhere else they could find them.

Fixer was helping them as well. He had become a whiz at fixing broken machines though he did tend to be quite sullen at times. Luke knew it was because he and Biggs were always faster than he was in their speeder races. Fixer also got mad when anyone spoke to Camie, his girlfriend since they were six. Fixer was the one who began calling Luke Wormie, because he was littler that the rest of them.

“You look so skinny that I’d bet you’ve got worms,” he’d said and the nickname stuck.

The boys had been drawing and arguing most of the afternoon, when Fixer looked at Luke and asked him, “I heard a story about a kid winning the Annual Boonta Eve Classic about thirty years ago. “

Luke looked up. He was the youngest as well as the smallest so this was exciting to him.

“His name was Anakin Skywalker. Ain’t your name Skywalker, Wormie?”

Luke actually went by the name Luke Lars at school though his friends knew that he was a nephew of the Lars family. He’d mentioned that his real name was Skywalker once or twice. Fixer always acted like he didn’t care and wasn’t paying attention, but it was all just an act. Behind his lazy façade was a first class mind.

“It is but I never heard of anyone named Anakin.”

Biggs laughed. “It would be funny if he were your dad or something, wouldn’t it?”

Luke smiled an almost dreamy smile. He often dreamed that his lost father was a space pirate or a hero of some old, forgotten war and that he’d come rescue him someday and take him away from Tatooine to the Core Worlds. “It sure would.”

No more was said as they worked but that evening when he got home, Luke asked Aunt Beru about Anakin Skywalker.

“Have you heard of a boy named Anakin Skywalker?” He asked as he ate the fresh cookies Beru placed on a plate for him when he came in.

Her face went slack for a second and she said nothing. Luke felt… something, panic perhaps? But he wasn’t afraid. How odd. Finally she said, “You need to ask Uncle. He knows more about these things than I do.”

Luke thought that was a strange answer, but he didn’t argue. She seemed upset anyway, so he went out to clean the droids that Owen used on the farm. That was his job, and he was already better at taking care of them than his uncle was.

He forgot to ask at dinner. Owen was ranting about some old man he’d seen walking out on the borders of their property.

“That old wizard has no business here!”

“Now Owen, I’m sure he’s harmless. Maybe he gets tired of living all alone out there in the Jundland Wastes.”

“Ben Kenobi has no business here! If he comes again, I’m going to tell him so.”

Luke wondered who this ‘wizard’ was and why he made Owen so mad, but he said nothing. His mind was on the pod racer and how he was going to find a power converter he needed. Maybe Fixer could get it from the garage he worked at.

The next morning at breakfast, Luke did think to ask his Uncle about Anakin Skywalker.

“Have you ever heard of a pod racer named Anakin Skywalker?”

Owen dropped his cup of caf, hot caf and glass going everywhere. “Where did you hear that name?”

“Fixer, I mean Laze asked me if I knew of someone with that name. He said he won the Boonta Eve Classic about twenty-five or thirty years back.”

“I do remember. Anakin was your father. He won that race when he was a little kid. He flew a freighter when he grew up and got killed in the Clone Wars.”

Luke stared open-mouthed at his uncle. This was the first time he’d ever heard a word about his parents and he wanted to know more, so much more. “How are you related to him?”

“He was my stepbrother.” Owen looked as if each word hurt to say, but Luke could not stop.

“Did he live here?”

“He was born here but left when he was a boy. My father married his mother many years after he was gone. I really never knew him then he was gone.”

“How about my mother? Did you know her?”

“I don’t even know who she was. Your mother died giving birth to you. That’s all I know.” He pushed back from the table. “I’ve got to get to work. I don’t have time for this foolishness.”

Before Luke could say anything else, Owen left his breakfast uneaten had headed out to his day of work on the farm. Luke didn’t dare ask any more questions about Anakin after that and he never mentioned him to his friends again either.

But he wondered.

*

Obi-Wan was furious when Owen Lars caught him wandering at the edge of his moisture fields. He’d wished a million times that he’d been allowed to take the boy and raise him. He was certain this one would have turned out very different from Anakin.

He seemed to be a gentle child, for the most part. He did have a love for speed, just like Anakin. He’d heard that Luke and the Darklighter boy were building a pod racer. The days of the huge crowds at Mos Espa had long since passed, but young men and a few not so young ones as well still built and raced the little craft out in the desert away from any towns. Every few years, Jabba would sponsor a race at the old arena.

He headed back to his home, thinking of the past, thinking of Anakin, a boy he’d loved like a brother, a boy who had become one of the most dreaded men in the galaxy.



~~~~



Chapter Five – Racing the Wind

Luke and Biggs were making great progress with the racer. It would be ready to actually test in a few more weeks. They cobbled it together from old parts and stuff Luke found in the junkyard in Anchorhead. Biggs bought the engine with his allowance. It was an old speeder engine but the boys had souped it up.

“So who’s gonna fly the racer?” Luke asked.

Biggs grinned. “I’m the oldest so I guess I should do it.”

Luke made a rude noise.

“What?” Biggs laughed and looked quite innocent.

“I can fly it as well as you can!”

“We’ll both practice and whoever is fastest can fly it.” Biggs loved to fly as much as Luke but he also loved to win, so he’d agree to whichever one was faster, hands down.

They went back to work.

*

Uncle Owen knew they were up to something. He just didn’t know what. Luke knew that Owen would kill him if the found out about them pod racing. He seemed opposed to anything that remotely seemed like fun. He’d been that way as long as Luke could remember.

Even though Luke had to work hard on the farm, at least Uncle Owen wasn’t like Biggs’ father, who kept pressuring Biggs to learn how to manage the family business when all Biggs wanted to do was leave Tatooine and fly.

The boys were having a hard time keeping the racer secret from their folks, since they spent so much time on it. Luke was fairly sure that Aunt Beru knew what they were up, but he was also sure that she’d never tell Uncle Owen.

“Well, it’s done. Shall we take it to the Jundland Wastes for some practice?” Biggs was about to burst with excitement.

Luke grinned. “Can I drive it out there?”

Biggs laughed. “I was thinking of hauling it on one of Father’s flatbeds.”

“Won’t he know?”

“Nah. He doesn’t pay much attention to the daily running of all these farms. He does the managing and money counting.”

“Okay. Can I drive the flatbed then?”

“You’re too young.”

Luke laughed. “Not that young. I’ve been driving the speeder for years, since I was old enough to see out.”

Biggs finally agreed and together they went to one of Mr. Darklighter’s sheds and retrieved one of his flatbeds. They hauled their racer onto it together. It was fast but was so light that the two boys could easily lift it and move it around.

Luke drove out to the Jundland Wastes. They took an old blaster rifle with them too. Sometimes a person might run into Jawas or Sand People out there. The Jawas were just annoying as they rode around scavenging junk to sell, but the Sand People were scary and no one knew for sure what horrors they subjected their captives to. No one came back from being captured to tell.

They found a rather flat place and offloaded the little racer.

“So who gets to drive?” Luke asked, hoping Biggs would let him drive it.

Biggs ruffled his hair. “You can make the first practice run. If I don’t let you, I’ll never hear the end of it, will I?”

“Nope!” Luke hopped on the little racer and fired the engine. It roared to life and the sound echoed through the wastes.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” Biggs looked nervous.

“Ah, come on, there’s no one around and it’s fast. Really fast.” Luke gunned it and took off in a flash across the white desert of the Jundland Wastes.

He loved the way it felt beneath him, loved the vibration of the engines as he sped up. He yelled out loud with the joy of it.

*

Obi-Wan watched them from afar. He had known they were building something but not sure what until now. A pod racer. Like father, like son. In some things, anyway. Luke loved flying and going fast as much as Anakin had.

The wastes had been quiet today. Maybe the Sand People would stay away while the boys were out there. Maybe that fool child wouldn’t manage to get himself killed!

He watched as Luke ran the little racer faster and faster. He was a good pilot already. When he learned to use the Force, he might be better than his father was. He hoped so. They would be in need of all the help they could get when the Rebel movement finally grew big enough to challenge Vader and his emperor.

Luke finally parked the speeder and got off, letting the Darklighter boy fly it. He was good too but he lacked that extra that the Force gave to Luke.

Out of the corner of his eye, Obi-Wan spotted a few Sand People. He needed to warn the boys, but wasn’t yet ready to reveal himself to Luke. Soon enough that would happen but not today. He put his hand to his mouth and mimicked the sound of a Krayt dragon.

The Sand People froze in their tracks. The hungry dragons might be the only thing they did fear. Obi-Wan knew that few had ever seen one of the creatures and lived to tell the tale, but he had. There were several living out here in the wastes. As huge as they were, they still managed to hide from most travelers. He knew the Sand People had probably seen them too, thus their almost unreasonable fear.

The boys did not hear him with their racer roaring as loud as it did.

He knew that he could produce the illusion of a dragon for a few moments… and only a few. Maybe that would be enough to fool the Sand People and drive them back to their homes. He closed his eyes and gathered the Force about him, pulling strength from everything, as Qui-Gon Jinn had taught him.

*

Luke saw it, as did the audience it was intended for.

Coming over a rise in the sand was a giant Krayt dragon, bigger than anything he’d ever seen. It was moving slowly but covering a lot of ground due to its size. It stopped and looked around and roared, a sound louder even that the racer engines.

Luke waved when Biggs came around again. Biggs pulled up and stopped.

“What is it?”

When Luke turned to point out the Krayt dragon, it was gone, but its roar echoed all over the vast wastes.

“We gotta get out of here! Drive it on the flatbed and let’s go!” Luke was terrified.

Biggs agreed and, in a very few moments, the boys were gone, heading back to their shed to clean up their speedy little racer.

The Sand People had retreated as well, deciding some human children weren’t worth dying for.