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

exit.
    It was not a good place to be right then.

ELEVENTH ENTRY
    I had to cut that last entry short to relieve Han for a while at the controls of the Millennium Falcon . And, to be honest, because I’m getting to the part I really dread—Ben’s death. But I’ve simply got to steel myself and get on with it. This way, I can try to get a handle on how I feel.
    Well, Leia—she asked me to stop calling her princess because she hates formality—realized that I’d messed things up. “You call this a rescue?” she demanded.
    I suppose I should have been annoyed that she wasn’t more grateful; Han certainly was irritated. After all, she’d been marked for execution, and we were doing our best to get her out alive. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be any way to escape all those stormtroopers. Han looked to me for a plan; I didn’t have anyone to look to.
    And I was fresh out of ideas.
    Leia wasn’t, though. I’d always pictured princesses as these pampered young women with great skin, gorgeous bodies, rich fathers, and brains permanently in neutral. But Leia’s nothing like that. Well, no, that’s not what I mean. She is beautiful, but she’s not pampered or spoiled, and her brain is obviously very active.
    She grabbed my blaster and blew a hole in the tunnel wall. I didn’t know why, until she explained that it was the way the garbage went out, and if garbage went out, so could we. It sounded pretty reasonable, but with blaster bolts burning up the air from the troopers, almost anything would have sounded pretty reasonable right then. We didn’t have much choice but to follow her in.
    There was a drop, and then thick, garbage-strewn water. What there wasn’t was a door out of there. The smell was awful, and I didn’t even want to think about what might be floating around with us. The water was about waist-deep; at least, I hoped it was water.
    Then things got really bad.
    There was something alive in there. I don’t know what, because we never actually saw it. There were only low-level lights in the place, so we saw mostly shapes and shadows. But whatever it was, it was big and it was aquatic. And, apparently, it ate almost anything. The Imperials must use it to get rid of organic wastes, which made sense. Anyway, the problem with that was that we were organic, and the thing went for us.
    Specifically, for me.
    Tentacles suddenly wrapped around me, and I was dragged under the water. I had just enough warning to allow me to gulp in a lungful of air. But I lost my blaster as I was yanked off my feet. I did have my lightsaber, but it was inside the armor I wore, and I didn’t think the monster that had me would allow me to get it out. I struggled in the dark, filthy water, trying to free myself, and trying not to breathe.
    I’ll admit that I was scared stiff. There’s nothing worse than fighting something you can’t see, in slow motion because you’re underwater. I wanted to scream, and couldn’t. It was just me and this thing in the darkness.
    Then I felt… its tongue , I guess. Something that rubbed along my armor and then across my face. I wanted to vomit, but I was too busy holding my breath. It felt rough, like sand grains on the skin.
    And then it just let me go.
    I don’t know why. Thinking back, the most obvious reason is that it’s a scavenger. It eats refuse. And I was alive, kicking—quite a lot—and a lot warmer than its normal food. I just didn’t suit its taste, so it let me go.
    I staggered to my feet and took in a deep breath. I almost wished I hadn’t, because then I could tell what I smelled like, and it was awful. But I was so glad to be alive, I didn’t really care.
    Then suddenly, we heard the sound of motors. I’d heard something rumbling while I was underwater, and probably the whatever-it-was under there had, too. Maybe that’s why it let me go: it knew what those noises meant, and it had some way out of the room.
    We didn’t get it at first.
    We weren’t just in a