PROLOGUE Luke Skywalker was surprised to see the moisture vaporator standing beside Ben Kenobi's abandoned hut on Tatooine Given that over three years had transpired since Ben left the desert planet Luke had assumed 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 Kenobi's hut he sensed a strange tension in the air It reminded him of the disturbing 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 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 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 Vader 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 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 scrap 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 holstered 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
