Star Wars Journal - The Fight for Justice by Luke Skywalker by John Peel

Vader.
    I could feel something odd, like a disturbance in the Force. It was like the disturbance I’d felt on the Death Star earlier, when Vader had struck down Ben. It was a feeling of great evil.
    I hadn’t felt Ben die, but I had sensed this great, dark shadow in the Force. So I was pretty sure the pilot we were facing was Vader.
    And I wanted to kill him.
    Just not badly enough to jeopardize our mission. Right now, it was more important to stop the Death Star. I took a deep breath and made my decision.
    “We’re going in,” I told Wedge and Biggs.
    It didn’t even occur to me until later that they were both senior to me, and they were the ones who should have been making that decision, not me. But they both accepted it as if they’d wanted me to take over.
    Then we went in, Biggs and Wedge covering me. I had to really focus on my flying now. The trench was barely wider than my wing-tips, and any fluttering about could take us into one of the walls or towers.
    And the stabilizer broke loose again.
    Artoo was on it immediately, but for a second I was sure we were lost. I fought the controls to keep the ship steady, and somehow I succeeded. The shaking stopped, and all I had to worry about were the guns and the TIE fighters.
    Biggs and Wedge got one of them, but the leader was on my tail now, maneuvering to get a clear shot at me. I had to concentrate on flying; I couldn’t try to fire back. Then Wedge took a hit and had to pull out. The leader was coming in fast. Biggs tried to stop him, but it was no use.
    There was another explosion.
    It was Biggs.
    As I watched his fighter burst into flames I went into complete shock. I realized that I no longer had any connection to Tatooine. First I lost Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, then Ben, and now Biggs. My oldest and closest friend was gone.
    Biggs and I had flown together on the razor’s edge so many times, I guess I never realized that someone might actually get hurt—or even killed. How many times did we push our luck to the absolute limit? I desperately tried to focus on my flying and that fighter on my tail, but I couldn’t keep the images out of my head.
    Right before he left for the Academy, Biggs decided to build a T-16. From scratch. He said a true pilot should know every last detail about his ship and how it works. What better way to learn than to build the ship yourself? He wanted me to help, but I was wary of the whole idea. No way would he be able to build his own ship. I gave him a hand occasionally, but more often than not I just watched him in action. He was so consumed by his work that he sometimes didn’t even know I was there.
    Biggs was a good mechanic, handy with a torch and pliers. Good mechanics can repair and maintain ships. What Biggs didn’t realize is that it takes a great mechanic to build a ship. He admitted that his finished product was a little rough around the edges, but insisted that he could fly it with anyone in any T-16. I couldn’t help myself when he said this. I laughed out loud. Right in his face. Now, I know I didn’t think much of the Millennium Falcon when I first saw her, but she turned out to be a fine ship. That’s because Han deliberately made it look like a piece of junk. Biggs’ ship, on the other hand, looked like a piece of junk because that’s exactly what it was. This was no disguise, this ship was a true scrap heap.
    Well, Biggs was less than pleased with my laughter. That was about as angry as I’d ever seen him. If we weren’t such good friends, who knows what he would have done to me. He repeated his boast, and challenged me to fly with him. I wasn’t exactly nervous that he would leave me in the dust in that thing, so I accepted his challenge. Thought I’d have a little fun with him.
    What happened next was definitely not what I had in mind.
    I thought we would go for a casual flight around the canyon. Since Biggs hadn’t flown his creation yet, I thought that he’d want to test it out first. Kind of get