Star Wars: Join the Resistance, Book 1 Read online

  © & TM 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  Designed by Jason Wojtowicz

  ISBN 978-1-4847-0607-7

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors and Illustrator

  Acker & Blacker dedicate this book to their parents—Larry and Donna Acker and Richard & Karen Blacker—for their love, for their support, and for bringing them to see the original trilogy in the theater and buying them so many action figures.

  “ARE YOU READY for an adventure?”

  Mattis looked up from the viewport where he was watching Durkteel, his home, the only planet he’d ever known, disappear into the distance. He blinked back the lingering wink of the stars and let the compartment of the ship come into focus. He found himself face to face with a short Rodian who seemed to be made of limbs and fingers.

  “Are you ready for an adventure?” the skinny Rodian asked again. He spoke like his words were funneled out of his nose, because they were.

  Mattis smiled. It was a question he had wanted to hear his whole life. He was ready.

  “I’m Klimo!” the Rodian told him, squeezing in on the bench beside Mattis and annoying a Zeltron girl who was sitting near enough that she slid away from them. “I’m Klimo,” he said loudly at her. “We’ll all be friends soon!”

  Mattis wasn’t so sure. That Zeltron girl didn’t seem to like Klimo very much. Mattis hoped that the other new recruits wouldn’t find the Rodian annoying. You only joined the Resistance once. You didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.

  Mattis knew that Klimo was just excited. So was Mattis. So was everyone on the transport. Mattis was taking in every detail, so he could see others fidgeting in their seats. A Wookiee’s leg bounced up and down. A Saurin tapped a finger against the wall as if he was ticking off the seconds in transit. Everyone was excited and nervous and full of wonder and panic. Even that Zeltron girl, who was playing it off like she joined the Resistance all the time, was forcing herself to breathe evenly, Mattis was sure.

  Mattis stuck out his hand toward Klimo, who grabbed it in his green fingers and put Mattis’s digits through a complex dance that was supposed to be a friendly handshake. Klimo released Mattis’s hand after tugging on his pointer finger and blowing wetly through his funnel of a snout.

  Mattis laughed. “I’m Mattis,” he said. “Mattis Banz.”

  “I’m Klimo!” Klimo shouted, unable to contain himself. He leaped from the bench again and dashed back and forth through the compartment.

  “You should sit down,” Mattis said, loud enough to get credit for trying. “We’ll get to the base soon enough.” Klimo wasn’t listening. He was pestering the nervous-kneed Wookiee, a terrible idea. Mattis hoped the others appreciated his effort to calm the Rodian. His leadership. Already. After all, Mattis knew it was only a matter of time before he was a hero of the Resistance.

  Mattis had been ready for an adventure for as long as he could remember. From the first time he heard the stories about the scrappy and courageous Rebellion overthrowing the dark and giant Empire, Mattis knew his place in the universe was as a galactic champion like Luke Skywalker or Leia Organa or even Admiral Ackbar. Those names loomed large for Mattis, as if they’d been carved into fifty-meter-tall stone tablets. Hearing their stories from the older kids at the orphan farm in Lund Gourley as they tilled the hemmel fields or drift-shuttled to the Phirmist temple had stirred something in Mattis. He knew there was no more Empire to fight, but the tales made Mattis want to be a good person, a great person, like his heroes. He would always try to do the right thing. He would stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.

  So Mattis searched around every corner for adventure. He honed his heroic instincts and acted heroic whenever he could, which was mostly in little ways. Marn, the orphan mistress, ensured that the orphans had water and food, sent them to the hemmel fields, and being an old Phirmist herself, sent them to the temple often. She wasn’t cruel, but she wasn’t quite kind. She was old, and she was only one person with tasks enough to keep three busy. When the smaller children were left with scraps, Mattis heroically shared his rations. When they couldn’t lug their hemmel load to the splitter, Mattis heroically dragged it across the fields for them. When the older kids teased the younger orphans, Mattis heroically intervened.

  Mattis didn’t know it at the time, but the Resistance had noticed his acts. Unfortunately, a Saurin teenager named Fikk took notice of Mattis, too, on the drift shuttle to Lund Gourley center one day. Like most Saurins, Fikk wasn’t tall but had a body like a tree trunk. He could lift more hemmel bales than any of the other kids. Mattis had lived among Saurins on and off for years. He knew their jagged teeth and knobby reptilian heads, their dark eyes, and their horrible hiss didn’t mean they were nastier or nicer than any other species. Fikk, though, was nasty.

  “You been at the farm a long time,” Fikk said to Mattis that day on the drift shuttle.

  It wasn’t a question. It felt like an insult or even a challenge, but Mattis couldn’t figure out why. So he just said, “Yeah, I have,” and went back to playing Rocks and Sand with one of the little kids.

  That wasn’t enough for Fikk. He crawled out of his seat and sidled down the aisle toward Mattis. His thick tongue touched his scaly lips.

  “Tchock told me you want to fly,” Fikk said, motioning with his head to the Cerean boy. Tchock dropped his conical head into his hands.

  “I want to be a pilot,” Mattis said. It was true, and it wasn’t a secret. Mattis practiced all the time on the roto-cropper, and he’d gotten pretty good at it. The cropper couldn’t get more than a few meters off the ground, but it was just like flying, only lower. Mattis loved everything about flying. From the time he was young, Mattis had read whatever he could about the birds of the galaxy and could answer pretty much any question about them. In his dreams, he flew every ship he’d ever seen.

  Fikk leaned over Mattis’s seat. “If you want to fly, I’ll make you fly.”

  “I’m doing okay, thanks.” Mattis laughed, hoping to make it all friendly.

  “As soon as this drift stopsss, I think I’ll help you fly, yeah.” Fikk nodded, agreeing with himself, and then stalked back to his own seat.

  Mattis spent the remainder of the drift ride in a panic. Sweat trickled down the side of his head. Burm, the kid beside him, offered, “Maybe he really does want to show you how to fly.” But Fikk was a mean kid, and there was no way he had a ship.

  Mattis waited as long as he could after all the others exited the drift. Something would surely attract Fikk’s attention, averting the fight, and what was more heroic than ending a fight without a single blow? When he finally emerged, Mattis saw th
at Fikk had found a way to pass the time. He was holding up one of the youngest kids by the arm and using the kid’s dangling feet to write bad words in the dirt. Mattis wasn’t sure of the kid’s name—Beekha? Beckgam? He was new to the orphanage, a refugee from someplace on the Outer Rim. Wherever he was from, that wasn’t what he was for!

  “Put him down!” Mattis shouted at Fikk.

  Mattis realized he was acting heroically without even trying. He was pleased with himself even as Fikk smiled, showing his sharp teeth, and dropped the kid. Beckgam was his name, Mattis remembered.

  “Get out of here, Beckgam,” Mattis said. “Join the others.” The kid hurried away and ran behind Tchock.

  “Ready to fly?” Fikk asked, taking a step forward. Mattis took a step backward, wishing the drift shuttle driver would look up from her controls and intervene.

  “If you’re not, I can give Beckgam another lesssssson. Come back here, Beckgam,” he called.

  Mattis tried to give the boy a look that kept him where he was and it worked! Mattis turned back to face Fikk. He probably couldn’t handle himself against the Saurin—Fikk was bigger and stronger, not to mention eager for a confrontation—but as long as the little kids were safe from the bully, Mattis wasn’t worried. Well, he was a little worried. But being worried about yourself is different from being worried about others.

  “I don’t want to fly,” Mattis said as Fikk took another step toward him.

  “That’s not what Tchock ssssaid.”

  Tchock, at a safe distance, dropped his head in his hands again.

  “That’s not what everyone saysss. You want to fly, Mattisss, ssso fly!” With that, Fikk hunched over and ran toward Mattis. Mattis was excited to learn whether he knew how to fight and was quickly disappointed to learn that he did not. The Saurin grabbed Mattis around the middle, knocking the wind out of him. He hoisted Mattis over his shoulder. Mattis kicked at the air and managed to wrap an arm around Fikk’s face. The scales were warm, which Mattis didn’t expect.

  Fikk laughed. It sounded like a sharp cough. Mattis didn’t think any of it was funny. He slapped his palm hard against Fikk’s face, and Fikk laughed harder and sharper.

  “You’re flying, big boy!” Fikk teased.

  Mattis wriggled off Fikk’s shoulder and hung upside down against Fikk’s back.

  He screamed for Fikk to stop, and he didn’t like the way it sounded. He felt his face turn red with exertion and embarrassment and from being upside down.

  “Stop sssqueaking, big boy! You’re a pilot now!” Fikk hissed. “How are the Gs treating you?” Mattis kicked and thrashed and pounded at Fikk. All he got for his effort was that sharp cough-laugh again. He felt tears rise in his eyes. He blinked them back.

  “I hear you whimpering back there. What are you doing, baby? You’re crying, aren’t you?” Fikk hoisted Mattis up so they were face to face.

  Mattis forced a smile, but it came out mean, meaner than Fikk’s hot breath in his face.

  “I know what you want,” Mattis told him. “You can’t produce tears of your own, so you want to see mine. Tough sand, big boy.”

  They stared at each other. They might have stared at each other for millennia if the drift driver hadn’t made a racket descending the shuttle’s steps. Fikk put Mattis back on his feet but kept an arm around him, a clawed hand tight on his shoulder.

  “You boys all right?” the driver asked. Mattis had forgotten she was still there.

  “Jusssst playing,” Fikk said. His sunken black eyes revealed nothing.

  The drift driver was a Skup with stooped shoulders, long arms, a bulbous stomach, and close-set eyes that peered through air-baked hair. She gave Mattis a look that asked, Is this kid lying to me?

  Mattis knew that Marn was of a mind that if a kid was old enough (which Fikk was) and a troublemaker (which Fikk was), they’d be sent to make trouble somewhere the professionals plied that same trade: Lund Berlo. Even for a Saurin, the dominant species there, that was a dangerous prospect.

  Mattis shook his head and said, “We’re just having fun.”

  The drift driver nodded and fixed her face with a loose smile that might have been a grimace. “Don’t have so much fun,” she said. “Not near my barge.”

  Fikk nodded, and Mattis said okay. Fikk gave him a look that Mattis hoped indicated a new respect between them, and Mattis gave him one back. The drift driver shooed them away, and making a clever choice for once in his life, Fikk obeyed. He loped off to catch the others.

  As Mattis started away, the drift driver softly called for his attention. “Kid,” she said, and beckoned him onto the shuttle. Mattis knew he ought not to go; he was supposed to be with the others at the temple already, and besides, he didn’t know the woman. She could be collecting teenagers to feed to rancors, for all he knew. But there was something trustworthy about her, something in her crossed eyes and the soft way she motioned for him to follow her that made him believe she meant to help him somehow. She closed the plug door behind him and lowered herself heavily into the driver’s seat, then motioned for him to sit in the first row.

  “You kids think I don’t see what happens on this barge. You think I’m just the back of a head that makes the drift go!” She laughed deep in her belly.

  She was right. Mattis and the others rarely paid her any attention.

  “But I see everything. I seen you, Mattis Banz.”

  She knew his name. Did she know all the orphans? She must. But still…the way she said it. She put something behind his name. She gave it the kind of meaning he thought his name would have in twenty years, when people told stories about him around the galaxy.

  He didn’t know how to tell her all that, so he just said, “You know my name.”

  She laughed that deep laugh again. “You’re a good kid,” she said. “I see you watch out for the little ’uns, and I see you stand up for yourself. But today…”

  Mattis looked away. Was she disappointed in him for allowing Fikk to bully him? He didn’t even know the drift driver, but he didn’t want to disappoint her.

  “Today,” she continued, “you stood up for a kid was pickin’ on you. Not a good kid. Maybe a confused one, maybe one angry ’bout his circumstances. He made a fool of you, Mattis Banz.” Mattis nodded. Yes, Fikk had made a fool of him. “But you didn’t make him a fool in return. That shows character.”

  The drift driver was looking at him with—was it pride? Admiration? Whatever it was, it made Mattis feel good.

  “When I see you again later, and later again, and tomorry and so on, it’s best if you don’t mention we had this conversation,” she told him. Mattis nodded. “But in not too long a time, we gonna have us a longer conversation.”

  “What about?”

  “About how you can keep on showing character.”

  “Why not now?” he asked.

  “Because now’s not the time.”

  “Why not? I mean, it could be,” Mattis said hopefully.

  “Trust me,” she said, and he did.

  “By the way. Antha Mont.”

  Mattis didn’t know what that was. “Antha Mont to you, as well,” he insisted, figuring it must be a Skup farewell.

  “Not the brightest star in the sky but means well.” She grimace-smiled again and waved him off the drift shuttle with her four fingers. Then Antha Mont—her name! Of course! It came to Mattis a moment too late—closed the door on him and drifted away.

  A long time later—just after the time when Mattis gave up hope that they would ever speak again, though he would linger on the drift shuttle for as long as he could after everyone had exited—Antha Mont proved true to her word. Early one morning, the shuttle arrived outside the orphan farm. It wasn’t a temple day, but Mattis heard the vehicle heaving and sighing onto the landing outside. Marn was the only one awake, busy at the little stove where she prepared their morning stew.

  Mattis slipped into the orphanage’s doorway to see Antha Mont motion for him to come over. Running was against the rules,
so he took fast little strides onto the shuttle.

  “What did you do to help people this week?” she asked him.

  Mattis couldn’t wait to tell her. He’d carried hemmel for the little kids and even helped them harvest some. He’d gotten them dressed and made sure they were ready for temple. He didn’t tell Marn when he caught Fikk and some of the other older kids shirking their duties and lounging behind the silo.

  Something he said caused Antha to laugh. “We’re going to have some conversations,” she told him. “During temple tomorrow, you come out and see me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Mattis said. “I’ll try.”

  She looked down her long nose at him. “There’s no try, Mattis Banz, hasn’t been for a long time,” she said. “Just do it.”

  “I’m not sure I can. Marn wants me to be there.”

  “Marn wants you to talk to me,” Antha assured him. Was that true? How could he know?

  Mattis shot a look back at the orphanage. Marn was in the window. She quickly dropped her head to attend to her work. Had she been watching them? Mattis thought she had.

  So Mattis did as Antha said. It wasn’t difficult, once he realized that Marn really did want him to talk with Antha Mont. He just waited until the congregation stood for one of the noisiest Phirmist hymns and backed up the aisle to the exit. Then he ran out of the temple and up the grassy street to where the drift was waiting for him.

  Soon he was sneaking away during every trip into Lund Gourley. The conversation with Antha Mont was easy. She did most of the talking. She talked about the galaxy. She told him about the battles against the old Empire. She told him about the exploits of the Rebellion’s greatest hero, Admiral Ackbar.

  Sometimes Antha Mont asked him questions: questions about himself (he tried to be a good person), about his parents (Mattis was certain they had fought in the Rebellion against the Empire, though he’d never known them), about how he’d like to make the galaxy a better place (he sure did want to).

  Then, as abruptly as she had come into his life, Antha Mont was gone. The drift shuttle trundled up to them one day with a wizened Saurin as its pilot.