An Alderaanian Love Story

Chapter 14

  When her hand met the small Nabooan blaster's dark handle, in her mind came a flash of the old times when she could pick one of these up and not hurt from all the memories. No, for Sabé, it wasn't memories of the blaster. It was more like the association this kind of blaster held with her former job, her former boss, her late friend. Nearly disgusted with herself as she felt her eyes begin to sting, Sabé quickly brushed them with the back of her hand and snatched another blaster from the cabinet, hurrying back to the training gym. There she found the young princess where she'd left her, standing before a bag hanging from the ceiling, practicing punches on it. Leia stopped when she saw Sabé returning, withdrew from the dummy and frowned when her gaze met the blasters in Sabé's hands.

  "What are those for?" she asked, a glimmer of hope shining in her eyes and the older woman couldn't help but laugh.
  "These?" she asked with a thrilled smile, setting them down carefully on the hard floor. She crossed the gym and opened a large sack to begin setting up orange targets and told Leia, "Well, those are only a sign of victory, a sign of accomplishment. Feed on this, young one. I finally got through to your father."

  "He's letting me start training with blasters?" Leia's voice was excited, anxious, disbelieving. Sabé could only laugh again, gesturing to the weapons with a nod of her head. "Oh, yes! He's given me the permission and I'm calling it now: this is going to be a great day, Leia! A wonderful, magnificent day!"
  Sabé finished setting up the targets, went back to Leia's side and handed her one of the two blasters. "This," she started out and smiled at the eagerness painted so clearly on Leia's face. "Is your new best friend. The Nabooan Q2 hold-out blaster. A real beauty to behold, but you'd better treat her nice or else the two of you going to have biiig problems." Sabé stopped to check her blaster's functioning and Leia took the moment to admire the beautiful weapon. Handcrafted especially for Royal Naboo Security Forces, it was small but deadly. Compact and easy to hide with a smooth design, they were something of a wonder, a work of genius architect. And her and Han had already trained with this kind of blaster. Kriff, what was she going to do? If Sabé realized Leia already knew how to handle blasters, she would obviously want to know how . . . and Leia wasn't sure how to answer to that.

  She tried to keep a sloppy hold on the Q2's handle and waited for her instructor to turn, see, and correct her. She gripped her fingers so they held the weapon lower than she should have and made it a stretch for her thumb to reach its proper place. Sure enough, Sabé took to note the flaw and sighed. "Trust me," she said, moving Leia's fingers about the handle. "Your grip on a weapon should always feel comfortable. If it doesn't, you're holding it wrong."

  Leia let her own fingers slide to their proper, comfortable position and she waited for Sabé's further instruction. The woman showed her how to stand, how to hold the blaster out and how to keep her gaze. She showed Leia how to properly pull the trigger and when. All of which, Leia already knew. When it came her turn to take a shot at the orange targets, Leia pretended to hesitate, be sure she was doing everything right . . . then she pulled the Q2's bronze trigger and watched the laser-fire nail the target's center.

  Fear rose in Leia's throat and the horrific feeling only increased when she turned to see a stunned Sabé staring at the target in utter shock, her mouth hanging wide open. "You . . . did it," the Nabooan woman managed, rising and starting for the target to get a closer look. "You . . . hit the center. The very center, Leia." Now standing less than a foot away from the target, she turned back to look to Leia and her eyes took their turn to go wide now. "How did you do that? Huh, Leia? How did you, after an hour of just watching me, nail the target? Huh? You don't know?" She hurried back to Leia's side, took her blaster from her and refilled the power pack before handing it back. "Shoot me another," she requested and stepped back, watching very closely as Leia prepared the next shot and nailed another target.
  Leia froze, considered acting cocky and shoot another one, but grazing the edge instead and calling it luck. However, before Leia could fire off one more shot, Sabé snatched the weapon from her hands and a spark came to her eyes in curious wonder. "You know, I was even younger than you when I started training with these." She indicated her own Q2. "In service to my queen, we'd spend whole days together, working on our aim, our speed, our rapid response. None of us ever made quite the shot that fast. Most certainly not on the first day. No, we'd train hours, weeks, months trying to become that good. It's almost like . . . like you've already been taught."