The Rise And Fall Of Darth Vader Read Free Page B

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.

CHAPTER THREE

    “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