The Rise And Fall Of Darth Vader (2 page)

Anakin was wondering if living quarters meant more than one room when the Anx was interrupted by the loud report of a blaster pistol that sounded like it came from the nearby adobe buildings. At the sound of the shot, Anakin stood still while everyone else near the freighter flinched, ducked, or dived for cover behind the few cargo containers that had already been removed from the ship. Shmi threw her body protectively in front of her son, but he pushed his arms out, pressing away from her so he could see what was happening.

A reptilian humanoid bolted out from an alley between two adobe buildings and ran toward the freighter. As it drew closer, Anakin saw the runner was a lean Arcona with an anvil-shaped head and clear, marblelike eyes. A metal fetter with a long, broken chain was secured to the Arcona’s right ankle, making a jangling sound as it whipped behind his running feet. A moment later, two blaster-wielding men jumped from the alley, and Anakin realized the Arcona was running for his life.

Seeing the men with blasters about to shoot in the direction of the freighter, Gardulla’s Anx attendant bellowed in Huttese, “Hold your fire, you fools!” Then he pointed a long, pointed finger at the fleeing Arcona and yelled to Gardulla’s guards, “Stop him!”

The guards spread out quickly. Without breaking his pace, the Arcona elbowed a guard aside and dodged another. Anakin could see that the Arcona was trying to get away from his pursuers, but he had no idea where the Arcona was trying to go. Except for some low dunes, the surrounding land was almost entirely flat, with no other ships or vehicles in sight. Nowhere to hide, Anakin thought.

The Arcona’s frightened eyes flicked toward Anakin, and the boy held his gaze. Anakin felt sorry for the Arcona and wished he could help. Then one of Gardulla’ s guards lunged forward and the Arcona sprinted away, moving past Anakin and the others. He was about two meters away from Anakin when his body erupted in a small explosion.

Anakin blinked as the Arcona’s remains fell to the ground. He turned quickly to look at the two men who had chased the Arcona away from the buildings. Neither man had fired a blaster. Anakin was observant enough to realize that the Arcona had not been shot, and that some explosive device had detonated within him.

Shmi pulled Anakin close to her side and said, “Look away, Ani.”

Anakin ignored her and kept his eyes on what was left of the Arcona. A few of the guards and the Anx attendant walked over to inspect the smoldering mess. Noticing Anakin, the Anx turned his long, pointed chin to the boy and said, “That’s what happens to slaves who try to escape on Tatooine.”

Anakin felt his throat become painfully dry. No matter how often his mother reminded him that there were less fortunate beings in the galaxy, there was no denying the fact that they were both slaves, the property of Gardulla the Hutt.

Tatooine,
thought Anakin.
Welcome to Tatooine.

Slavery was illegal throughout Republic space, but the planet Tatooine was in the galaxy’s Outer Rim Territories, where the laws of the Republic rarely applied.

Shmi Skywalker had been a slave almost her entire life, ever since space pirates captured her family during a space voyage. Separated from her parents at a young age, she had changed owners many times. One former master, Pi-Lippa, had been kind and had taught Shmi valuable technical skills. Though Pi-Lippa had planned to free Shmi, she’d died before she could, and Shmi instead became the property of one of Pi-Lippa’s relatives, who did not want to free her.

Before coming into Gardulla’s ownership. Shmi had given birth to Anakin. Shmi could not explain Anakin’s conception - there had been no father - but she accepted him as the greatest gift she could have ever received.

In the months that followed his arrival on Tatooine, Anakin kept his eyes and ears open. He eavesdropped on conversations between Gardulla’s attendants, guards, and other slaves, and watched carefully when mechanics and technicians came to repair or replace sand-fouled machinery. He wanted to learn everything he could about the desert world, its inhabitants, and their technologies, because he believed such knowledge might be the only way he and his mother would ever find freedom.

And so he learned about the early colonists of Tatooine, the miners whose search for valuable minerals ended as an astronomically expensivedisappointment. Some of the miners chose to remain on the desert world while others were simply stranded. One of the first human settlements was at a place called Fort Tusken, which was assaulted by Tatooine’s indigenous humanoids, the nomadic Sand People, who subsequently became known as Tusken Raiders. Favoring traditional club and ax weapons, Sand People wore head-concealing sandproof masks, and heavy cloaks that protected them from the elements and helped them blend in with the landscape. Sand People never adapted to easy contact with settlers, and were reputed to be as ferocious as they were mysterious. Anakin had yet to see them, but had been told that it was their howls he sometimes heard after darkness fell. He found them bloodcurdling.

Tatooine’s other significant natives were the Jawas, diminutive beings with glowing eyes who salvaged the miners’ enormous abandoned vehicles to scavenge the desert for any scrap of metal or bit of junk that they could transform into goods for sale or trade. Although Jawas were almost as malodorous as a backed-up refresher, Anakin looked forward to their visits to Gardulla’s estate because he learned a great deal by watching them work. Much to the amazement of the other slaves and a few attendants, Anakin quickly gained a reputation for being able to fix discarded appliances.

As for Gardulla, Anakin learned that she competed with an even larger Hutt, named Jabba, over control of various enterprises on Tatooine. Anakin also discovered that Gardulla fed those who displeased her to a monstrous krayt dragon that she kept in a pit beneath her fortresslike palace off Mos Espa Way, and that she was addicted to betting on the Podraces. Anakin was in no hurry to meet any krayt dragons, but he was intrigued by everything he heard about the dangerous, high-speed sport that involved a pair of repulsorlift engines tethered to an open-cockpit vehicle. The first time he overheard two of Gardulla’s attendants discussing the design of a Podracer they’d seen, he remembered the dream he’d had just before he arrived on Tatooine. According to the attendants, Podracing was the biggest attraction in Mos Espa, and it drew crowds from all over the galaxy. Anakin wondered if he’d ever get to watch a Podrace.

A few months after his arrival to Mos Espa, Anakin was helping a late-model droid mechanic repair a portable vaporator near the estate’s main entrance when a winged, pudgy-bellied Toydarian with a flexible trunklike nose flew into the courtyard. Seeing the boy, the Toydarian paused, hovering in the air, and examined Anakin’s handiwork. Speaking in Huttese, the Toydarian said in a low, wheezy voice, “You put in that water pump unit the wrong way.”

Anakin had been told not to talk with strangers, but he cautiously replied, “I rigged it.” Seeing that the Toydarian seemed genuinely interested, he demonstrated the pump mechanism and added, “I made it work better.”

The Toydarian’s eyes went wide as he watched the pump in fluid operation. “Hmm… who showed you how to rig it?”

“Nobody,” Anakin said. His mother had told him not to brag, but he could not help feeling proud. “I just… I figured it out. My mom can fix things too.”

“Is that so?” The Toydarian lowered himself in the air to examine the unit more closely. “You’re not bad with your hands, kid,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

Anakin bowed his head slightly and said, “Thank you, sir.”

“I have an appointment with Gardulla,” the Toydarian said. Then he winked and rubbed his clawed fingers together and added, “A matter of money!”

Anakin didn’t know how to respond to that, but just then, Gardulla herself heaved her bulky body into the entrance and said, “Ready to pay up, Watto?”

“Maybe, maybe,” the Toydarian said as he hovered toward Gardulla. “But the next race is tomorrow, and I have an idea for another bet…”

Anakin watched the Toydarian follow Gardulla into the main building, then went back to work on the vaporator.

* * *

Gardulla lost her bet with Watto.

Two days later, Anakin and Shmi had a new owner.

When Watto wasn’t gambling, he ran one of the most successful parts dealerships in Mos Epsa. He had need for someone with Anakin’s mechanical aptitude, and had plenty of work for Shmi, too. Both mother and son were grateful to Watto for keeping them together, and after sharing a dingy, fetid room with six other slaves at Gardulla’s estate, they were astonished to learn they would have an entire hovel to themselves at Slave Quarters Row, along the outskirts of Mos Espa. Watto believed they should feel grateful, and made it clear that if they didn’t do as he said, he’d fill the hovel to capacity with additional slaves.

As days turned into weeks and months became years, Anakin made the best of his time, learning all that he could about technology and interstellar travel. He studied the aliens who passed through Mos Espa and got to know the local merchants on a first-name basis. While siting in junked starship cockpits, he learned to recognize the controls for thrusters, stabilizers, and repulsors. From watching other mechanics and pit droids, he became proficient at repairing Podracers at Watto’s shop.

By age seven, he began to secretly salvage bits and pieces to restore a junked Podracer cockpit and a pair of Radon-Ulzer 620C engines that he hoped to transform into his very own Podracer. He kept this project under the cover of an old tarp in an area of the common refuse dump in back of the slave housing, where Watto never ventured, and deliberately kept the Podracer looking like it would never run. If Watto ever found out about it, he would dismiss it as just some childish project.

Watto did catch Anakin taking a refurbished Podracer for a test spin around the junkyard, but the Toydarian’s fury died when he realized how well the boy handled the vehicle. Like Gardulla, Watto was addicted to gambling on Podraces, and he could hardly believe his good fortune, to own a slave who might generate revenue at the racetrack. Despite Anakin’s age and species, he was tested and soon qualified to become a Podrace pilot. Much to his mother’s horror, he eventually began competing under Watto’s sponsorship.

Watto never stopped threatening to buy more slaves, but Anakin and his mother continued to have the hovel for themselves. Watto even gave Shmi an aeromagnifier that she could use to clean computer memory devices, allowing her to bring in a modest income. Despite these advantages, Anakin did not give up on his dreams of freedom. He began thinking of making some kind of a scanner to locate the transmitter implanted in his body, even though he wasn’ t sure how such a transmitter might be deactivated or removed.

At some point, while listening to spacers talk of faraway worlds, he became aware of the Jedi Knights, the powerful peacekeepers of the Galactic Republic, who used lightsabers: a handheld weapon that emitted a lethal, truncated laser beam. Despite his limited knowledge of the Jedi, he sometimes had dreams of becoming one. Anakin wondered if any Jedi had ever heard of Tatooine, or if any had been born into slavery.

By age nine, he was resigned to the fact that he wasn’t leaving Tatooine any time soon.

Still, every night, lying in the darkness of his small room that was cluttered with his various homemade devices and scientific projects, he vowed: I won’t be a slave forever.

“How’s your Podracer coming along, Ani?” his friend Kitster asked as he stepped over a rusted land-speeder turbine in Watto’s junkyard.

Anakin shot a startled look at the dark-haired boy. “Keep your voice down!” Anakin said in a low voice. “You want Watto to find out?”

Kitster lowered his own voice and said, “Sorry, I forgot. How long have you been working on it?”

“Almost two years,” Anakin admitted as he picked up a worn gasket.

“You really think it’ll fly?”

“Once I get a few more parts, sure it will,” Anakin said, tossing the gasket aside. “Problem is, if I fly it, Watto will know I have it, and then he’ll want to take it from me. I’ll just have to keep it a secret, and keep flying his cruddy Pods.”

“I’d like to try flying a Podracer someday,” Kitster said wistfully.

“Maybe you will.” Anakin didn’t want to hurt Kitster’s feelings, but he knew that his friend wouldn’t last five seconds in a Podrace. Operating a Podracer required incredibly fast reflexes, the competition was fierce, and Anakin - as far as anyone knew - was the only human ever to fly one and live. Despite this accomplishment, Anakin knew he’d have to do better to please Watto. In the more than half-dozen races he had competed in so far, he had crashed twice and failed to finish even once. The biggest challenge he had was dealing with Sebulba, the gangly, crook-legged, antagonistic Dug, who won often and cheated almost constantly. Sebulba never hesitated to force competitors off the course, and had caused more than a dozen pilots to crash in the past year alone. Anakin thought, If it weren’t for that cheat, I’d have won by now!

Kitster asked, “Think you’ll win the next race?”

Anakin shrugged. “I’d be happy just to make it to the finish.”

Anakin turned to another pile of metal, and found himself looking at a pair of slotted lenses that were surrounded by multicolored wires contained within a skull-shaped metal armature. Strangely, the lenses seemed to be staring back at him, and he realized they were burned-out photoreceptors. “Hey, Kitster!” he said as he picked up the object. “Look what I found!”

“What is it?”

“A droid head!” Anakin said, brushing sand from the vocoder plate beneath the photoreceptors, which had served as the droid’ s eyes. “And not a pit droid’ s either!” The head’s metal plating had been removed, and the exposed photoreceptors had a surprised, wide-eyed expression. He handed the head to Kitster.

“It’s pretty beat up,” Kitster observed. “Maybe it was some kind of war droid?”

“I don’t think so,” Anakin said as he looked around, hoping to find some other droid parts. “The metal’s pretty thin - Oh, WOW!” His gaze had fallen on what appeared to be the decapitated head’s skeletal body, which lay in a tangled heap beside a pile of discharged fuel cells. Like the head, the body was without plating, but Anakin was delighted just the same. “The whole structural framework’s there! You know what this means, don’t you?”