The Battle of Endor
Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 4:53 pm
Space beyond the transparisteel window was a grim, nearly-featureless black. Glare from the nearby moon snuffed out the light of many of the sparsely-sewn stars this deep into the Outer Rim. Eyes of ice blue stared into the frigid dark, the face expressionless, the mind forcibly kept blank. The man standing before the viewport dared not relax his guard, dared not surrender to emotion. Too much was at stake.
But the Emperor's mocking words still echoed through Luke Skywalker's mind. The Alliance's master stroke, its chance to restore the Republic and the freedom and liberty it stood for, had been Palpatine's plan all along. A grand, elaborate trap set by a master deceiver. A trap that would spell the end of Luke's friends, comrades, and all that they had fought for. Suffered for. Bled for. Died for.
Icy tendrils of fear, rage, and hate scraped against the walls he'd erected around his mind and heart. He could feel Palpatine's casual, almost apathetic attempts to piece the veil, to sample the seething turmoil that roiled within Skywalker. He could feel the vicious amusement, like a child burning an insect under focused sunlight, streaming off of the Emperor. It was just another cruel game, to him, with the rules crafted to ensure Palpatine won no matter what transpired.
Amid the endless dark, a glimmer of reflected sun caught Luke's eye. Streaks of light flashed into being, collapsing to points that blended with the spare starscape. They're here.
Moments passed, the glints growing brighter and larger. Another few seconds, Luke knew, and the fleet would blunder into the impenetrable shield. And the shield would incinerate a full-sized Mon Calamari cruiser as easily as a snubfighter. He wanted to scream to them, warn them off. Of course, that would do nothing but waste breath and amuse the Emperor.
Luke felt the hate boil within him. And yet the specks grew closer, blossoming from formless flecks of diamond dust to recognizable spacecraft.
“How could they be jamming us if they don't know we...” General Lando Calrissian trailed off as ice formed in his gut and shot up his spine. He turned away from his Sullustan copilot to the partially-constructed battle station that filled the cockpit viewport. His mouth went dry, his thoughts raced as he heard himself mutter despondently, “...we're coming.”
Precious seconds passed as the Millennium Falcon, her fighter wing, and the vast bulk of all extant Alliance naval forces in the Galaxy barreled toward the station. Then Lando snapped out of his near-catatonia and punched the intercom. “The shield is still up!”
Red Group's lead, Wedge Antilles piped up, “I get no reading, are you sure?”
“Pull up! All craft, pull up!” Lando called, already yanking the bulky freighter into a steep banking turn.
Captain Verrack, staff tactical officer to Admiral Gial Ackbar on the Mon Calamari cruiser Home One, watched as the Death Star loomed closer to his ship, dwarfing the massive command ship. Meanwhile, on the command deck, Ackbar barked, “Take evasive action!”
The massive battlecruiser veered to starboard fast enough that Verrack's stomach clenched despite the acceleration compensators. Ackbar continued, “Green Group! Stick close to holding sector MV7!”
Verrack's console beeped. Transponder signals began to fill the area around the planet... none friendly. An instant later, a gravity well appeared in the hyperlane behind the Rebel fleet. And another... and another. The tactical display was soon ringed with artificial gravity wells, while the Imperial signals moved to a holding point that would cut off any attempt to hide behind the planet? But why?
“Admiral, we have enemy ships in Sector Forty-seven!” Verrack reported.
Even as the words left his mouth, the captain tried to piece together the flood of information. He heard the admiral shout, but was too engrossed in his work to pay any heed. There had to be a way to salvage the battle. There just had to be.
Luke's heart sank as the ominous forms of Imperial starships crawled across the darkness, pinning the Rebel fleet against the battlestation. He could make out the Executor with painful clarity. There were other large ships, as well, though the young Rebel couldn't readily identify them. And swarming about were the ubiquitous Imperial-class Star Destroyers.
“Come, boy. See for yourself.” Palpatine's tone was firm and matter-of-fact, like a teacher putting on a demonstration for a reluctant pupil.
Skywalker made his way closer to the window, tracking the Imperials' progress. He watched the dazzling flashes of light that glittered between the two fleets and among the Rebel cruisers. Luke had been in too many battles to mistake the telltales of exploding starfighters. The Rebel fleet had been spared a quick and ignominious death against the shields of the station for a slow, brutal grinding down by the guns of Imperial task force. And Luke would be forced to watch every second of the massacre.
“From here, you will witness the final destruction of the Alliance and the end of your insignificant rebellion,” Palpatine gloated. Luke wondered if his control had slipped and the Emperor had read his mind, or if the monologue just happened to mesh perfectly with the dark turn his thoughts had taken. He turned toward the wizened husk, staring, for a moment, into the yellow eyes that seemed to bore through him.
But his gaze was pulled downward, to the gleaming weapon at the Emperor's side. Fleeting urges became ideas in Luke's mind... and in his heart. Could he save his friends if he...?
Palpatine's voice was husky, seductive. “You want this, don't you?” He patted the weapon, caressed it. “The hate is swelling in you now. Take your Jedi weapon. Use it; I am unarmed. Strike me down with it.
“Give in to your anger.
“With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant,” the husk snarled.
Luke turned away, trying to quell his anger and hatred. He became aware of his labored breathing as he tried to calm himself. When he could trust himself sufficiently to face the Emperor again, he turned back. “No.”
Palpatine was unfazed. “It is unavoidable. You, like your father, are now mine.”
Another column of ice chased Luke's spine.
“Artoo, are you sure this was a good idea?”
Before the astromech could reply, See-Threepio found himself staring down the barrel of a BlasTech E-11 rifle. “Freeze,” snapped the stormtrooper bearing the weapon. “Don't move.”
“We surrender!” The golden protocol shouted as if by reflex.
It was over. It was all over. Captain Solo, Mistress Leia, Chewbacca, and the rest of the commando team were disarmed and surrounded by Imperial troops. The shield was still up, and if his internal chronometer was accurate (which, of course, it was), the Alliance fleet had surely arrived. Perhaps they could get away, but that would abandon the strike team to their fate.
Threepio spent a few million processing cycles pondering how they might be dispatched. He and Artoo would surely have their memory banks downloaded and dissected if they were shut down before they could flash their cores. Then they'd most surely be smashed to bits, ground to dust, and used to build some dreadful new component in the Imperial war machine.
He reviewed his last twenty-three years of service, with the late Royal House of Alderaan, his adventures with Artoo, the difficult early years of the Alliance, the battle over a desert world that Threepio was still convinced he'd never heard of before but his innermost circuits insisted was familiar... meeting Master Luke and the grand adventures that followed from there, the bitter cold and terror on Hoth and in the dreadful asteroid belt, his temporary destruction at the hands of that absolutely horrid Stormtrooper on Bespin and his friends' frantic escape, the nasty business with Prince Xizor, and then Master Luke's seemingly callous “gift” of the droids (Threepio understood it was part of a greater plan now, but why couldn't Master Luke have been honest with him beforehand?) to that vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. All of the suffering, all of the damage to his mechanisms and circuits, all of the comrades organic and synthetic lost to the war... all of it for nothing. And their noble struggle against tyranny and oppression would end on this green planet that Threepio just knew had to be home to robot-eating beasts.
The droid reverted his processing power back to his real time sensory inputs. The Stormtroopers loomed, gleaming rifles at the ready. An ugly thought, counter to all of See-Threepio's moral and ethical subroutines, floated up through the binary mists. If he could overload his power cells while disconnecting his memory core's internal safeguards, not only could he ensure that the Empire could never use his memories and knowledge against the remains of the Alliance, but perhaps the subsequent explosion might dispatch the Imperial soldiers in the immediate vicinity. And, in the resulting confusion, perhaps their trapped comrades could escape?
The sharp sound of a charging lever being jacked entered Threepio's auditory sensors. Mere seconds after his surrender, the end would come. He'd have no time to rig his mechanisms (and part of his programming sternly chided him for thinking up such a dreadful scheme). But he could erase the bulk of his memory files. It would just take a moment to access the root direc—
A shrill cry split the air, and a heaving mass of muscle and fur pounced on the Stormtroopers from behind. Obsidian knives flashed in fuzzy paws, slicing through polymer body glove and flesh below. Without having to verbally direct Artoo, Threepio led the pair out of the fray and to the cover of a nearby tree.
He watched momentarily as a struggling, downed Stormtrooper from the group that was about to destroy him was rolled onto his back and an Ewok pounced on his chest. The stone knife in the native's hand rose high, and the protocol droid averted his gaze. A moment later, he wished he'd shut off his audio receptors as well as the felled trooper's gurgled death cries assaulted them in all of its horrid high-definition digital quality.
What the hell? First Lieutenant Ferus Arnet was standing on the commander's perch in the cockpit of Tempest Scout 1. He squinted off to the where a detachment of Stormtroopers had gone to apprehend more Rebels, droids or something. Then there had been some kind of inhuman wailing, and something jumped out of the trees. After a moment, he recognized the squat forms of the planet's abos. Intel reports said they were no threat and would be scared off by the seemingly magical gear of the garrison.
Well, they're not karking scared now. Of all times for the damned abos to find their spines. He glanced down at the Rebel prisoners, still securely cordoned by Imperial troops. Most were clad in green camouflage smocks and ponchos, but a few had more distinctive attire. He knew they were the ringleaders: the smuggler Solo and his familiar, the walking carpet. He was looking forward to their execution; he'd known some of the scouts the Rebel scum had killed in their early forays on the planet. Arnet knew it was all part of the Emperor's plan to draw the terrorists in and wipe them all out, but that didn't mean he had to like it when these neo-Separatists murdered loyalists.
Of course, he wouldn't have minded delaying the execution of the petite, brown-haired woman in the midst of the troops. Not until he and every man in his platoon had the chance to entertain her, at least. What a beauty. Too bad she lacks the brains to match.
Perhaps Lieutenant Renz could be bargained with... no doubt in exchange for being at the head of the line. Yes, perhaps that would work.
An ugly leer twisted Arnet's lips as he stared at Organa, imagining and anticipating his chance with the prisoner. After all, Alderaanian princesses were something of a rare commodity after Tarkin's escapades.
Just as he began to slip into reverie about how he'd teach the Rebel bitch a few lessons in humility, another sound echoed from the forest. His minded clouded by the irritation of interrupted fantasy, it took Arnet a moment to place the source: native horns. But music? No, that made no sense—
A signal! The lieutenant started to raise his hand to his helmet comlink. With every centimeter his hand moved, the more abos, arrows, and rocks seemed to fly from the forest and into the security cordon. Screams filtered up from the ground and over his earpiece as troopers, scouts, and officers alike crumpled to the forest floor.
Then the Rebels made their move. Solo grappled a trooper, dashing him to the ground. Arnet nudged the gunner with his foot. He would not let the Rebels get away; he'd burn them to the ground himself.
The Wookiee hurled two more Stormtroopers into each other. And then Arnet's eyes fell on his future prize. The Alderaanian slut wrestled with one officer, seemingly pulling something away from him. She knocked him down, then planted her boot firmly on his face. The flash of metal in her hand revealed what she'd captured: a pistol!
“Get the guns on them!” The lieutenant began to shout as he watched Leia Organa's gun arm come up. His gaze locked with hers. He saw death in her brown eyes. The pistol's muzzle rose smoothly, with the grace of a trained gunslinger. Determination and hate formed a steel mask on the woman's face, in that instant, more terrible than Lord Vader's own gruesome facade. The muzzle flashed.
A fraction of a second later, Arnet cried out as he felt his chest explode in white-hot agony. The hard rim of the walker hatch slammed into his back, and the lieutenant made a soft gurgle as the impact jostled what remained of his chest cavity and throat. Darkness closed in as he stared up at the forest sky, seeing not the tree limbs or soft white clouds, but the bared teeth and blazing eyes of the snarling princess rampant.
Inside of Tempest Scout 1, the gunner only heard his commander yell, “Get—” before crying out. He dragged Arnet's body back in, but the lieutenant's wide, fixed stare and the smoldering hole through both sides of his combat overalls made it readily apparent that there would be no clarification. And as the fighting on the ground further intermingled loyalist, traitor, and abo forces, he didn't dare open up without orders from higher authority.
Moff Tiaan Jerjerrod scowled at the com grille. “What do you mean, 'The natives are revolting'?”
There was a burst of static before a tinny voice uneasily replied. “We had captured the Rebels as per the Emperor's orders. There was minor resistance; Colonel Dyer was wounded and is missing. But once we had them outside the bunker...” Major Hewex's voice paused. “A detachment of troopers were sent to detain a couple of droids--”
“'Droids'?” Jerjerrod repeated in disbelief. The Rebels had brought droids? Images of old Confederate destroyer droids spraying fire into the Imperial troops and officers guarding the terrorist captives danced in his brain. Obviously, they'd have been no match against Tempest Force's vehicles; the walkers could dispatch them with almost contemptuous ease. But the casualties if the scout walkers were facing the wrong way...
“According to reports before the attack, an astromech and a protocol droid. When we attempted to capture them--”
The moff's nostrils flared at the word attempted. He hissed, “You failed to capture an interpreter droid?”
“Our troops were attacked by natives. They were highly organized and in numbers, sir. Moments after they ambushed the capture squad, they began attacking remainder of the detachment. Casualties are moderate... and the Rebels broke free.”
Jerjerrod slammed his gloved fist down on the duraplast control panel. The Emperor's Finest, indeed! Obviously, the best troops in the Empire—Vader's own 501st Legion—had been rotated off the line after their glorious victory at Hoth. Officially, they were on extended leave until the unit could be fully reconstituted, though rumors abounded that they had been sent to the Deep Core strongholds, or assigned to the mysterious Grand Admiral Thrawn. The moff didn't know; his purview was the partially-built battlestation that the Rebel slime had foolishly thought they could besiege. His control room was deep within the station, and with very few of the external cameras installed, he had no visual guide to the battle over the Sanctuary Moon. But his tactical display in the holotank more than sufficed, showing the brilliant green cloud of the Imperial task force, the shimmering emerald globe of the Death Star, and the angry red fireflies of the enemy forces trapped between them. But most heartening was the golden cone projecting from the sphere's northern surface into the Rebel swarm. It was almost enough to make him forget the blundering of Tempest Force.
“I see,” he replied with a neutrality of tone that shocked him. “Have you begun a counterattack?”
“Yes, sir. Armored units report excellent penetration of enemy lines; they're routing the abos. However, the infantry units are reporting heavy fighting and serious casualties. We're losing squads at a time to ambushes.”
Any positive feelings stemming from watching the hated Rebellion crushed in the Emperor's vise fled. How could a pack of wild savages, barely a meter tall and using stone tools and weapons, possibly cause this much trouble for the Empire's Stormtroopers, armed and armored with the best equipment and given the best training in the Galaxy at Carida? Entire squads—nine men apiece—being destroyed by creatures less threatening than his niece's Nazzar dolls?
Preposterous. Unthinkable! Ludicrous!
“Furthermore, the Rebels have gathered outside of the bunker,” Hewex continued, unaware of Jerjerrod's mounting rage. And it was then that the credit chit dropped for the moff.
“You've let them congregate outside of the bunker?! Recall your forces!”
“We have Stormtroopers holding them at bay, as well as the internal security contingent. We have also changed the code to the blast doors. Any attempts to slice them will fail,” Hewex responded firmly.
Had C-3PO a jaw instead of a vocoder, it would have dropped at the insanity Artoo was spouting. “Going? What do you mean, you're going?”
The astromech replied with a flurry of beeps and whistles. Threepio was not satisfied. “Going where, Artoo?” But the smaller droid simply rolled off across the forest floor, toward the bunker.
Why would he ever want to go there? That was where the fighting was! They had just barely survived their last brush with the Stormtroopers, and though Artoo seemed blissfully unaware it, Threepio was quite certain their reflective plating would most assuredly draw fire from the comrades of their would-be captors.
“No, wait! Artoo!” Threepio shouted. Artoo paid him no heed, dashing into the fray. Grudgingly, the protcol droid began to chase after his diminutive companion, hoping to reason with him before they were both blasted to molten slag. “This is no time for heroics! Come back!”
Commander Daegon Merrejk strode confidently toward the front of the Executor's bridge. He overheard murmured reports from the fighter controller as he solemnly conferred with General Meekus, the officer in overall command of the task force's fighter detachments.
“Still no progress on their medical frigate?” Meekus was saying.
“No, sir. Flight Gamma 9.2 was just destroyed; they reported the freighter engaged them just before contact was lost.”
Merrejk suppressed a snort of contempt. Fighters had their uses, of course; he wasn't that short-sighted. Reconnaissance and screening capital ships against bombers were ideal uses; the former could certainly be done by light cruisers and frigates, but there were just never enough of them; and the Imperial Navy's one attempt to remedy the problem of enemy ships bringing torpedoes to bear had been the dismally ineffective Lancer frigate. While its twenty quadlasers could put out a stunning fusillade, they were overmanned, too slow to keep pace with even a Victory I, and utterly helpless against any other capital ships. TIE Fighters were faster, more maneuverable, and much less expensive than the Rebel snubfighters. Their one tactical weakness was their fragility, which was handily offset by their low cost and swarming numbers.
But dashing the fighters and the new interceptors against the capital ships of the Rebel fleet? Ridiculous. That's what the TIE Bombers were for. And the Avengers, and even the Defenders. Even the Rebels had the sense to arm their attack fighters with heavy ordnance, though Merrejk would never openly admit that grudging concession... least of all within earshot of the man he passed on his way to Admiral Piett. Sergeant Vandolay, the ISB snitch in the bridge crew, glanced briefly at Merrejk from the crew pit as the senior officer passed.
Only the fools at Security would allow some mere enlisted man to look on an officer with anything other than awe, fumed the commander. Not that he held anything against the man's ideology; Merrejk himself had fond memories of his days in the SubAdult Group, another branch of ISB's parent organization, COMPNOR. He understood the need for Security's agents; he just wished their zeal was more appropriately focused. For example, why wasn't someone like Vandolay posted to the traitor Zaarin's forces? That would've nipped the problem in the bud quickly but instead, the idiot was actively searching for traitors and fifth columnists on Lord Vader's personal flagship!
But at any rate, only the laser-armed fighters and interceptors had been launched with orders to take down the Rebel fighters, scout the enemy formation, and fire on targets of opportunity. The first two made sense, but the last one only worked if there were targets of opportunity. Capital ships with full shields did not qualify for anyone with a functional mind and a respect for the power of modern naval vessels.
The commander stopped at the end of the command walkway. Before him stood Admiral Piett and Captain Gherant, task force commander and flag captain, respectively. Piett wore his captain's insignia; despite being in command of the fleet, he was technically outranked by the presence of Grand Admiral Teshik on the Star Destroyer Eleemosynary, and Grand Admirals Declann, Takel, and Makati on the Death Star itself. So, protocol demanded he wear the insignia of his permanent rank; indeed, there were very few officers who held permanent commissions in the flag grades. Merrejk supposed he might be rather rankled in Piett's place, but since the man only received his rank at the whim of Lord Vader—and the execution of his predecessor—it really couldn't be said he'd earned it on his own merits.
“We're in attack position now, sir,” the commander reported.
“Hold here,” Piett responded.
Gherant turned toward the defrocked admiral. “We're not going to attack?”
“I have my orders from the Emperor himself,” Piett replied cryptically. “He has something special planned for them; we only need to keep them from escaping.”
Brilliant flashes speckled the blackness between the stars. Luke felt the men and women that had—for a brief instant of searing agony—been at the centers of those flashes fall away. The rate was slow, but the Rebel fleet was being ground down under the heel of the Imperial fleet. Unless the shield came down, the Rebellion would die before his very eyes.
And yet, he sensed something darker still on the horizon. But how could the situation get worse?
“As you can see, my young apprentice,” the Emperor rasped with glee, “your friends have failed.”
The darkness suddenly surged around Luke, bubbling about around him and smothering him. A sick smile split the Emperor's lips, baring his decayed teeth. “Now witness the firepower of this fully-armed and operational battlestation!”
The wizened husk turned toward the controls on his chair's arm. He depressed a button with a bone-like click. “Fire at will, Commander!”
Ten seconds were all it took from the Emperor withdrawing a bony finger from the com switch to a radiant bolt of death carving into the Rebel fleet. Luke shut himself away from his senses, but it wasn't enough to shield the terror and sudden silence of nearly seven thousand souls.
“Confirm origin!” Ackbar snapped.
Verrack's shaking hands touched his controls, checking once more the readings that he'd triple-checked from the initial power spike. There could be no doubt.
The Death Star was fully operational and the spray of embers that had once been several million tonnes of the cruiser Liberty belied their intelligence that the station only had defensive mechanisms. “Origin confirmed, Admiral,” Verrack husked. “It could have only come from the Death Star.”
It all made sense now. The Imperial fleet outmassed and outgunned the Rebels by a margin even the most timid Imperial admiral would be comfortable with. But the heavies hadn't engaged, only sending waves of fighters on mostly ineffective sorties. The interdiction fields, as well, were now explained. The fleet and the gravity wells were the anvil against which the Death Star's hammer would crush the Rebellion.
They were trapped at sublight and prevented from escaping to hyperspace. If the fleet attempted to push through the Interdictor ring, the Imperial fleet could overhaul them and tear them apart even without the Death Star picking off ships. Even if they attempted to move out of the line-of-sight of the laser by maneuvering on a perpendicular course to their current formation, the Imperial fleet could still pin them and cut them down. And if they split up, it was possible some might get beyond the interdiction field—statistically, anyway—but thousands upon thousands would die, as would any chance of the Rebellion continuing in earnest.
“Home One, this is Gold Leader.” General Calrissian's voice crackled on the flag channel.
“We saw it,” Ackbar remarked bluntly, not bothering with the pleasantries of protocol. “All craft prepare to retreat.”
Verrack quickly began running the numbers on how to split up the fleet to allow for the most survivors.
“We won't get another chance at this, Admiral.”
“We have no choice, General Calrissian,” the Mon Calamari stated emphatically. “Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!”
Calrissian snapped back, “Han will have that shield down; we've gotta give him more time!”
For a moment, Verrack admired the human capacity for optimism. Then he returned to his grim calculus, pausing only to grimace a moment later when the Death Star fired again, wiping away the Freedom, a sister ship to Home One herself... and a sorely-needed source of firepower that was now being scattered to the fringes of the solar system by the stellar winds.
There was more back and forth between Ackbar and Calrissian, rising in volume and pique. The unfortunate captain found it increasingly difficult to focus on his task. Nevertheless, he was still making progress: each simulation was giving slightly higher percentages of escapes. He quickly plotted out another series of courses with another series of formations to protect the ones that didn't make it out in the last simulation. Perhaps the Alliance would survive—
“Repeat last transmission, General!”
“Closer! Move in closer!”
Verrack looked up to see Ackbar gape for a moment, then stab his comm in frustration. “Did you say 'closer'?”
“Yes, I said closer! Move as close as you can, and engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range!”
Verrack felt his own mouth open in shock at Calrissian's mad plan. The bulk of the Alliance's heavy forces were made up of MC80 Star Cruisers, outfitted similarly to the Liberty. Some had different hull designs, due to each Mon Calamari ship being the product of artisans and craftsmen, but while true standardization was impossible on the Alliance's resources, Ackbar had made sure to tactically standardize the ships in his battle line so they could operate as a unified force.
Even then, there were enough Imperial-class Star Destroyers to outgun every heavy capital ship the Rebels had with them. And the Imperial fleet also included an Executor, two battlecruisers, and three Tector-class ships.
“At that close range, we won't last long against the Star Destroyers,” argued Ackbar.
“We'll last longer than we will against that Death Star! And we might just take a few of them with us!”
Ackbar closed his eyes for a moment in what appeared to be contemplation. When they opened, he keyed his command channel. “All ships; come about and accelerate to attack speed. Engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.”
Verrack gaped. This was madness! “Admiral, we cannot engage the enemy fleet directly! They're too powerful!”
The admiral regarded his tactical officer gravely. “You are correct, Captain. We have no chance to defeat them, even if the Death Star were to fire into its own ships. But we can buy time for the ground team to bring down the shield. We only need to hold out until then.”
“And if the ground team fails?” Verrack regretted uttering the thought the moment it had left his mouth.
But Ackbar's gaze never wavered. “Then we've lost anyway. Our objective is that station: all else, including survival, is secondary. Everything we are doing up here is a delaying action.”
The captain winced... because Ackbar was absolutely correct. With the firepower that the fleet had, the Death Star's shield was impenetrable. And why did they come here, why did so many already die... just to run away? While the odds of defeating the Imperial fleet conventionally were as unpleasantly close to zero as a cruel and uncaring universe ruled by mathematical probability would allow, the odds of bringing down this second Death Star if it were completed were still less. The Alliance's guerilla war would be impossible; there would be no safe harbor from the Imperial storm. They would be hunted down, and picked off, while sheer self-preservation pushed numerous worlds into at least grudging support of the regime. The Alliance could not win conventionally, strength to strength, whether galactically or even in this battle. Each Imperial Star Destroyer could easily take down two MC80 cruisers before succumbing. The Super Star Destroyer at the center of the Imperial formation had as many defensive guns as there were fighters in the Alliance fleet; it could casually swat them from the sky until there was no way to attack the Death Star's reactor.
The only choice was to draw fire, from both the TIEs and Star Destroyers, away from the Alliance snubs. And, loathe though he was to agree with the human, Calrissian did have a point that intermingling with the Imperials might give pause to the Death Star's gunnery crew. At least they're not droids or even that wouldn't work. Verrack's gaze lifted once more to meet Ackbar's eyes. The words were bitter ash as he nodded and conceded, “I understand, sir.”
Crushed and hollow, the tactical officer returned to his plot and began entering entirely new calculations. Yet, in the smoking wreckage where hope had been, the embers rekindled into a deadly new purpose. He began sizing up the nearest Star Destroyer to the Home One and her closest escorts.
The short-lived flashes of starfire beyond the viewport intensified as Luke watched the ships of the Alliance fleet move closer to their foe. Flickers in the Force, brief spikes of pain and terror followed by terrible silence as combatants perished in the eternal night.
“Your fleet is lost,” came the mockingly calm voice from behind. “And your friends on the Endor moon,” Palpatine continued, finally drawing a glance from Luke, “will not survive.”
Skywalker immediately turned away, back to the viewport. He could sense the desperation... pain... No. He locked away his feelings, buried them deep even as his heart ached for the wanton suffering and slaughter he felt from the planet below and the fleet above. He hid them away from the icy darkness that surrounded him; a black, freezing ocean that sapped his strength and his will with every passing second.
He had indeed underestimated the Emperor and the Dark Side.
“There is no escape, my young apprentice,” the wizened husk stated bluntly, matter-of-factly. Luke turned back toward him with that final epithet. He looked to his father, ebony armor gleaming in the cold light. Vader said nothing, only lowering his helmet slightly to look back at Luke.
“The Alliance will die,” the Emperor continued, as if he were discussing a weather forecast, “as will your friends.”
Anger burned inside Luke again. He became aware that he was breathing harder, faster, each push from the Emperor's word's fanning the flames within. He tried to clamp down on the flames, but instead found his gaze drawn to the cylinder at Palpatine's side.
“Good,” the ancient creature purred, his eyes shut in rapturous glee. “I can feel your anger.”
The young Jedi chastised himself, averted his gaze. But Palpatine refused to let up. “I am defenseless,” he hissed in an almost conspiratorial whisper. “Take your weapon.
“Strike me down with all of your hatred,” the whisper had become a snarl, “and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete!”
Luke mulled it over before forcing himself to turn away. I will not give in... I will notgive in!
But as his eyes fell upon the burning skies over Endor, he began to falter. Everything had indeed gone as the Emperor foresaw. There was no escape for the Alliance fleet, and if his friends hadn't accomplished their mission by now, every second that passed made it increasingly likely they wouldn't. And was not the goal of this mission not just the elimination of another Death Star, but the elimination of the man who sat not two meters from Luke? This war, the deaths of his friends... all of it could be ended in a second!
Within, a warning voice cried out. But it would be so easy... and everything would be better! To end so vile and evil a being, was that not what he had been trained to do? Was that not what Ben and Yoda wanted?
Beware anger and hated. The dark path...
...But what light is there if the Alliance dies?
In an instant, it was decided. Luke pivoted. Vader's hand went to his belt. The lightsaber crafted in Ben Kenobi's hut spun end over end into a black-gloved hand. Blades of emerald and crimson flame flared into being, then crashed together as Palpatine laughed.
Luke stared at the glowing blade that blocked his own, then back up the arm that held it, to the grotesque mask of the man who would dare stop him in his righteous quest. But Vader had always been there to thwart him, hadn't he? It was Vader's minions that killed the only family he'd ever known over a pair of droids, Vader himself who murdered first Luke's mentor on the first Death Star and then his best friend over it. Vader who tortured Leia, who tortured Han and then froze him in carbonite to be shipped off to Jabba the Hutt as a trophy.
It was Vader who took his hand. Vader who shattered his world, twisted the man Luke had always wanted to know into the avatar of absolute evil.
And now Vader had delivered him before the Emperor, where Luke could finally put an end to the evil that plagued the universe... only to stop him? Was it some kind of sick joke? A mind game the Sith Lord thought he was playing?
Rage at the loss and pain the black-clad monster before him had perpetrated, not just on Luke himself, but on every person in the Galaxy that had been wronged by the Dark Lord, refocused Luke's anger. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl, and he swung his blade away from Vader's, clearing it for action.
Vader pulled his blade to a defensive posture, side-stepping away from his master. Luke coiled, dropping his blade low and to the left before unwinding and turning his blade almost vertically as he came up through. The Dark Lord caught the attack on the tip of his crimson sword, then swept down to his left. Luke dropped his blade down into a horizontal swing to block. He used the momentum of the impact to carry his blade through in a clockwise sweep, parrying a vertical cut.
The two swordsmen recoiled, with Vader first to recover. He made a high slashing attack to his right, forcing Skywalker to catch it in an awkward high-left block that made him dangerously unbalanced. Vader feinted before going for a low clockwise slash, but Luke saw through it and brought his blade down and around to counter, regaining his balance. Following through his parry, Skywalker went high and made a sharp, vertical chop. Both men locked blades for a moment, filling the air with the squeal of straining energy blades trying to override each other.
Vader disengaged, wheeling his blade back and around to slash at the young Jedi. Luke was forced to pull back his own blade and angle it across the path of his father's weapon. Disengaging again, Luke feinted left before cutting right, then dropping low to meet Vader's blade in a low slashing attack. Both men recovered quickly, with Luke gaining a momentary advantage and going for another overhead chop. As Vader parried, Luke dropped his left hand from the hilt of his lightsaber, pulled away, and planted a vicious kick in the Dark Lord's gut.
Vader snarled in surprise as he was knocked off his feet and tumbled down the longer set of stairs leading up to the throne. Before he landed with a grunt, Palpatine's gloating laughter echoed through the throne room. “Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy! Let the hate flow through you!”
Luke looked down the stairs as Vader gathered himself. He still held the weapon in his right hand—the one Vader took when they last met—and his gloved thumb found the activation stud. The shaft of verdant brilliance vanished, leaving only the hum of Vader's weapon to fill the air. Luke realized he would not win this battle by his skill with a lightsaber. This was a battle for his very soul... and he'd come dangerously close to losing already.
“Obi-Wan has taught you well,” the Dark Lord noted, swinging his blade to the side.
“I will not fight you, Father.”
Vader strode up the stairs, confidently. Luke backed away, wary, watching. The Sith stopped at the landing, turned toward Luke. “You are unwise to lower your defenses.”
Before Vader's muscles—organic and artifical—had begun to wind up for the assault, Luke's blade had reignited. And before Vader had begun to unwind his attack, Luke's blade had taken up position to block. The energy blades crashed together once, then twice, then a third time before Luke cut low and locked Vader's blade. The Dark Lord advanced on the young Jedi, pushing the tip of his sword closer and closer. His sheer force pushed Luke up the final stairs to the throne. Sensing advantage with his higher position, Luke swung back, breaking the lock. Vader attacked from low right, swinging upward and to the left. The impact knocked Skywalker's blade back; he barely recovered in time to block another slash from the opposite direction.
Vader continued to cut back and forth horizontally, with brutal hammer blows that jarred Luke's blade and balance until Luke braced himself at the top of the landing and once more locked his foe's lightsaber. Both sword and swordsman strained against each other for a moment until Luke slid his blade back to the tip of Vader's sword. With this newfound leverage, he bound over the Dark Lord, then dove away from a retaliatory chop.
Not giving the Sith a moment to recover, Luke jumped into the center of a ring of control consoles. Vader turned to him, having now missed two attacks against the young Jedi. Skywalker extinguished his blade once more and backflipped onto a catwalk. With a moment of calm, he noted that Vader's respirator was pumping much faster than usual... and something else. What was...
“Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you, the conflict,” Luke challenged.
“There is no conflict,” Vader insisted with a deep rumble.
“You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before,” Skywalker countered. “and I don't believe you'll destroy me now.”
“You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny!” The Sith hurled his crimson blade skyward at Luke. The young Jedi pitched to the side, narrowly avoiding being vertically bisected. The catwalk was less fortunate, as the lightsaber sizzled through its floor grate and vertical supports. Luke bounded off the falling section, using it as a springboard to carry him away from Vader.
The Sith Lord recovered his weapon as Palpatine cackled, “Good... good!”
“Stay on target, Blue Squadron,” Colonel Merrick Simms called. “Unfortunately, we can't rely on that communications ship to blow itself up.”
“Awful lot of fire coming from the portside. No fighters yet, though,” called Blue Three. Simms' eyes slid across the glaring white hull of the enormous Allegiance-class Star Destroyer. The battlecruiser was acting as the main communications ship for the Imperial fleet and had the entire Alliance fleet's sensors blind. If not for General Calrissian's intuition, was a certainty that most of the Rebel fighter force would have barreled straight into the shield before the back ranks could've done anything about it. The knowledge that Blue Squadron's B-Wings had been in the front ranks send an unpleasant prickle up Simms' spine.
But he quickly buried that unpleasant thought, turning his mind to the remarks of his pilot.“That eager for a dogfight, Rookie One?” He managed to put a smirk into his voice, even if it stubbornly refused to appear on his face.
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” complained the tinny voice.
“Well, I kinda like it,” answered Blue Two, Commander Ru Murleen. Her relationship with her squadronmate was an open secret. Then again, after what they did taking down that Phantom TIE Fighter project, the Alliance brass was willing to look the other way instead of breaking up a winning team. “Adds more mystery than calling you—”
An alarm went off in the cockpit. Simms glanced at his radar. “Blast! You wanted company, Blue Three, you got it! Squints, ten—no, make that twelve from five o'clock. Gold Leader, can you cover us?”
“Be there in a second, Blue Leader.”
“I don't think we've got it, Gold Leader. Two, Three, pull back and provide cover. Falcariae is almost in position; I need to get set up for my run.”
“Copy, Lead.”
“Roger, Blue Lead.”
Vader held his blade out before him as he searched the dark, unlit corners of the incomplete throne room. “You cannot hide forever, Luke.”
“I will not fight you.”
The Sith turned toward the sound. I have you now. “Give yourself to the Dark Side,” he taunted. “It is the only way you can save your friends.”
He reached out with his feelings. He did not have a physical location on Luke, but he could sense the turmoil. The mention of his doomed compatriots had stirred the young Jedi. Perhaps he felt safe in the shadows... but nowhere was safe from the Dark Side of the Force. Vader pressed harder against Luke's defenses. “Yes. Your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong.”
He felt a mad scramble, to bury feelings deeper, to hide and conceal the pathetic connections that made him weak, made him vulnerable. And in the scramble, the gleam of something truly prized was overlooked... by Luke. “Especially for,” Vader began... then paused. Impossible! “Sister!”
Vader's own confusion clouded his senses for but a moment. He honed in on the icy knot of fear building in Luke. “So, you have a twin sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her too.”
Despair and self-loathing screamed out of the void, now so strong that Vader could localize his son's physical form while tormenting him emotionally. “Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the dark side,” the Dark Lord paused, savoring his ultimate victory over Kenobi, “then perhaps she will.”
Despair and pain changed to righteous fury with such explosive suddenness that Vader was momentarily overwhelmed. He didn't hear the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber, and only barely registered the defiant scream of “Never!”
He began to turn toward the sound when a lance of emerald death drove toward his face. His swordarm snapped his blade upright, barely clearing Skywalker's thrust before it plunged through the gargoyle mask. Vader pinned the blade under his own for a moment, but Luke pressed back, swinging both blades in a broad arc to the Sith Lord's right.
His blade free, Skywalker cocked back to his own right, then exploded forward with a snarl. Sparks flew from where his blade slashed the low ceiling, his blade's song changing from a crackling hiss to a thunderclap when it finally met the Dark Lord's weapon once more. He battered Vader's weapon, his lightsaber carving into pillars, ceiling, floor with each recoil. He struck another hammer blow, holding the shimmering green shaft before him. Vader counterattacked, striking upward at the outstretched blade.
Luke barely noticed through the dark haze of his rage. Vader could not be allowed to live with the knowledge of Leia's origins. He could not live for his crimes. And Luke would be the one to correct the Force's mistake in letting this dark beast continue as long as he had. He hurled the weightless beam about with such force that each stroke grew a grunt of exertion, but he did not feel the weariness that his mortal frame should. His hate drove his blade closer to his father's form, his righteous fury let him block the parries and feints.
Vader was driven back, pinned against a catwalk railing. Luke's foot lashed out, striking the back of Sith's mechanical knee joint with a Force-fueled blow. The sable apparition buckled, awkwardly brought his lightsaber across to block a vicious attack. Skywalker chopped again, knocking the blade away. Again, and further away.
The Force shuddered.
Vader let himself fall back, Skywalker's sword struck the railing in a shower of molten metal. He thrust his crimson blade upward; Luke's jade beam cut across to parry... a fraction of a second too late.
Skywalker cried out as his flesh was seared, stumbled back. He clutched the wound, his natural hand white-knuckled just under his ribcage. Vader began to rise. A boot struck the side of his helmet, echoing in his supplemented hearing. His aided vision stuttered a moment. He reached out with the Force, relying on the Dark Side to guide him.
He found himself staring into a blazing black sun.
Skywalker stood, his bloodied hand over his synthetic replacement on the hilt of his weapon, the blade high over his head. Blood welled-up from the still-smoking cut in his side. The emerald shaft swung downward, intent on splitting the Dark Lord from crown to loins.
Vader pulled himself away from the dazzling storm of roiling darkness, obeyed his instincts. A fraction of a second too late.
Both father and son howled; Vader, in agony as the blade cleaved his right shoulder away. Luke, in rage as his killing blow merely maimed. He thrust the blade to Vader's throat; the Dark Lord weakly raised his remaining hand in submission. His respirator wheezed, overworked with the sudden shock to the system it regulated.
“Good!” The laughing voice came from behind. “Your hate has made you powerful,” hissed Palpatine. “Now, fulfill your destiny... and take your father's place at my side!”
Luke looked down at the maimed figure before him. The severed arm still clutched an ignited lightsaber. Smoldering flesh glowed softly at the end of the stump, and where Vader's armor had been cut away. He looked down at his right hand. The replacement. The one Vader took on Bespin. He flexed it.
Outwardly, it moved the way a normal hand would. The nerve impulses felt the same, due to rigorous training. But the servos buzzed and the internal mechanisms creaked with the movement.
Luke looked back to the severed arm. Take his place...
Colonel Simms flipped on his targeting computer. “I'm starting my run.”
The Imperial communications ship spat verdant energy into the MC80 cruiser off its flank. The Mon Cal heavy, Falcariae, spanned the hundred-kilometer gap between the two giants with vicious fusillades of crimson turbolaser and ion blasts. The Rebel ship had its full forward firepower to call upon, while the Imperial battlecruiser sat above its foe, the bow swinging to port and down to clear more firing arcs.
But it was still an all-up battlecruiser. The guns it could bring to bear did not match the caliber of Falcariae's main battery, but the medium guns were plentiful and rapid-firing. Starbursts prickled along hulls of both ships, casting sharp-edged flashes of light. And flying into the hailstorm of particle beams, Blue Squadron made its approach.
Blue Leader's scanners were in active mode, lashing the battlecruiser with radar and lidar. Firing solutions were plotted, refined, adjusted, and re-refined every millisecond. Twenty seconds until contact: plenty of time to lock up the target. The twin MG9 torpedo launchers in the B-Wing cycled their first warheads. The targeting display showed glowing yellow bars, closing in from the left and right on where Falcariae was focusing her fire.
Fifteen seconds to contact. The targeting solution was tighter... but not a good enough lock yet. An indicator flashed on the console; Simms didn't see it. But his wingmen saw the same warning light go off in their cockpits. “The TIEs are in range,” Ru Murleen called, her voice tight with restraint. Being caught between a well-armed target and its fighter escort was not how B-Wings were meant to fight.
“Hold them for a few seconds; Gold Leader will be here,” Simms noted flatly. Less than ten seconds out, passing through the forty-kilometer mark. Emerald tracers now raced from behind as well as ahead.
Then the targeting computer made its steady tone, and the display flashed as the ranging bars overlapped. “I have a lock!”
His finger squeezed the triggers for both launchers and his cannons. The bomber bucked and spat its torpedoes into the battlecruiser at over nine kilometers per second while the heavy laser cannon and three ion cannons pumped their vermillion fury past the racing projectiles. Point defense guns opened up, but with only four seconds between launch and contact, the odds of intercepting the torpedoes were not in the Empire's favor. Two thermonuclear fireballs erupted in the heart of Falcariae's bombardment zone. Then another pair, fired at point-blank range an instant before Simms threw his B-Wing into a steep dive.
Blue Leader groaned as his maneuver strained the acceleration compensators and he was yanked out of his seat with eight-hundred kilograms equivalent of force. As he eased back on the stick and the red mist cleared from his vision, he rasped, “Take your shots, Blue Two and Three! I'll come back and cover!”
“'Preciate it, Boss!” Blue Three answered, sounding more ragged than his commander. The distant mote of Rookie One's B-Wing--I really do need to stop calling him in that, Simms thought distantly—rolled and juked furiously to dodge the fire coming at him from ahead and behind.
“Torpedoes away!” The cry was almost simultaneous from Blues Two and Three. Simms glanced back over his shoulder to see the explosion. Flame boiled out of a new hole in the battlecruiser's ventral plating. “It's a hit!”
The momentary elation over drawing blood gave way. “Sitrep!”
“Blue Two, shields at half. But I'm okay.”
“Blue Three, minor damage to my intercooler, shields coming back.”
“Spast! Break off, Three! I didn't think they hit you that bad.”
“Hey, it was my job to draw the fire, right? Besides—”
“Cut the chatter,” Simms growled, and immediately winced. “Three, are you okay for a second pass?”
Rookie One responded almost immediately. “Yes, sir.”
Simms grimaced, and was glad for the audio-only comms. He spared a glance at his shield charge. “Looks like they only grazed me a couple times; I'll fly rear. You two, deflectors to double-front, dump everything into your shields. Three, you and I will cut under after this pass. Ru, you go up top and drop in on them. You should have just enough time to charge for a couple of shots, so make them count.”
A stormfront began to blow through the throne room, even as the air was perfectly still. Luke felt cold swirling past, centered on the cloaked figure before him. Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor...
Or suffer your father's fate, you will.
Luke turned. His nostrils flared as the movement sent a spike of pain from his wound rippling through him. He angled the lightsaber defensively across his chest. He banished the pain from his face, from his mind, and stared at the Emperor.
“Never.”
The crashing of Palpatine's malevolent glee was tangible. Flames simmered behind his sulfurous irises. Luke was unfazed. “I'll never turn to the Dark Side.
“You've failed, Your Highness,” Skywalker declared, defying the dark, icy storm swirling around him. “I am a Jedi. Like my father, before me.”
Thunder rumbled in the Force as Jedi and Dark Lord stared each other down. Finally, Palpatine spoke. His tone was flat, final. Deadly. “So be it...
“Jedi.”
But the Emperor's mocking words still echoed through Luke Skywalker's mind. The Alliance's master stroke, its chance to restore the Republic and the freedom and liberty it stood for, had been Palpatine's plan all along. A grand, elaborate trap set by a master deceiver. A trap that would spell the end of Luke's friends, comrades, and all that they had fought for. Suffered for. Bled for. Died for.
Icy tendrils of fear, rage, and hate scraped against the walls he'd erected around his mind and heart. He could feel Palpatine's casual, almost apathetic attempts to piece the veil, to sample the seething turmoil that roiled within Skywalker. He could feel the vicious amusement, like a child burning an insect under focused sunlight, streaming off of the Emperor. It was just another cruel game, to him, with the rules crafted to ensure Palpatine won no matter what transpired.
Amid the endless dark, a glimmer of reflected sun caught Luke's eye. Streaks of light flashed into being, collapsing to points that blended with the spare starscape. They're here.
Moments passed, the glints growing brighter and larger. Another few seconds, Luke knew, and the fleet would blunder into the impenetrable shield. And the shield would incinerate a full-sized Mon Calamari cruiser as easily as a snubfighter. He wanted to scream to them, warn them off. Of course, that would do nothing but waste breath and amuse the Emperor.
Luke felt the hate boil within him. And yet the specks grew closer, blossoming from formless flecks of diamond dust to recognizable spacecraft.
“How could they be jamming us if they don't know we...” General Lando Calrissian trailed off as ice formed in his gut and shot up his spine. He turned away from his Sullustan copilot to the partially-constructed battle station that filled the cockpit viewport. His mouth went dry, his thoughts raced as he heard himself mutter despondently, “...we're coming.”
Precious seconds passed as the Millennium Falcon, her fighter wing, and the vast bulk of all extant Alliance naval forces in the Galaxy barreled toward the station. Then Lando snapped out of his near-catatonia and punched the intercom. “The shield is still up!”
Red Group's lead, Wedge Antilles piped up, “I get no reading, are you sure?”
“Pull up! All craft, pull up!” Lando called, already yanking the bulky freighter into a steep banking turn.
Captain Verrack, staff tactical officer to Admiral Gial Ackbar on the Mon Calamari cruiser Home One, watched as the Death Star loomed closer to his ship, dwarfing the massive command ship. Meanwhile, on the command deck, Ackbar barked, “Take evasive action!”
The massive battlecruiser veered to starboard fast enough that Verrack's stomach clenched despite the acceleration compensators. Ackbar continued, “Green Group! Stick close to holding sector MV7!”
Verrack's console beeped. Transponder signals began to fill the area around the planet... none friendly. An instant later, a gravity well appeared in the hyperlane behind the Rebel fleet. And another... and another. The tactical display was soon ringed with artificial gravity wells, while the Imperial signals moved to a holding point that would cut off any attempt to hide behind the planet? But why?
“Admiral, we have enemy ships in Sector Forty-seven!” Verrack reported.
Even as the words left his mouth, the captain tried to piece together the flood of information. He heard the admiral shout, but was too engrossed in his work to pay any heed. There had to be a way to salvage the battle. There just had to be.
Luke's heart sank as the ominous forms of Imperial starships crawled across the darkness, pinning the Rebel fleet against the battlestation. He could make out the Executor with painful clarity. There were other large ships, as well, though the young Rebel couldn't readily identify them. And swarming about were the ubiquitous Imperial-class Star Destroyers.
“Come, boy. See for yourself.” Palpatine's tone was firm and matter-of-fact, like a teacher putting on a demonstration for a reluctant pupil.
Skywalker made his way closer to the window, tracking the Imperials' progress. He watched the dazzling flashes of light that glittered between the two fleets and among the Rebel cruisers. Luke had been in too many battles to mistake the telltales of exploding starfighters. The Rebel fleet had been spared a quick and ignominious death against the shields of the station for a slow, brutal grinding down by the guns of Imperial task force. And Luke would be forced to watch every second of the massacre.
“From here, you will witness the final destruction of the Alliance and the end of your insignificant rebellion,” Palpatine gloated. Luke wondered if his control had slipped and the Emperor had read his mind, or if the monologue just happened to mesh perfectly with the dark turn his thoughts had taken. He turned toward the wizened husk, staring, for a moment, into the yellow eyes that seemed to bore through him.
But his gaze was pulled downward, to the gleaming weapon at the Emperor's side. Fleeting urges became ideas in Luke's mind... and in his heart. Could he save his friends if he...?
Palpatine's voice was husky, seductive. “You want this, don't you?” He patted the weapon, caressed it. “The hate is swelling in you now. Take your Jedi weapon. Use it; I am unarmed. Strike me down with it.
“Give in to your anger.
“With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant,” the husk snarled.
Luke turned away, trying to quell his anger and hatred. He became aware of his labored breathing as he tried to calm himself. When he could trust himself sufficiently to face the Emperor again, he turned back. “No.”
Palpatine was unfazed. “It is unavoidable. You, like your father, are now mine.”
Another column of ice chased Luke's spine.
“Artoo, are you sure this was a good idea?”
Before the astromech could reply, See-Threepio found himself staring down the barrel of a BlasTech E-11 rifle. “Freeze,” snapped the stormtrooper bearing the weapon. “Don't move.”
“We surrender!” The golden protocol shouted as if by reflex.
It was over. It was all over. Captain Solo, Mistress Leia, Chewbacca, and the rest of the commando team were disarmed and surrounded by Imperial troops. The shield was still up, and if his internal chronometer was accurate (which, of course, it was), the Alliance fleet had surely arrived. Perhaps they could get away, but that would abandon the strike team to their fate.
Threepio spent a few million processing cycles pondering how they might be dispatched. He and Artoo would surely have their memory banks downloaded and dissected if they were shut down before they could flash their cores. Then they'd most surely be smashed to bits, ground to dust, and used to build some dreadful new component in the Imperial war machine.
He reviewed his last twenty-three years of service, with the late Royal House of Alderaan, his adventures with Artoo, the difficult early years of the Alliance, the battle over a desert world that Threepio was still convinced he'd never heard of before but his innermost circuits insisted was familiar... meeting Master Luke and the grand adventures that followed from there, the bitter cold and terror on Hoth and in the dreadful asteroid belt, his temporary destruction at the hands of that absolutely horrid Stormtrooper on Bespin and his friends' frantic escape, the nasty business with Prince Xizor, and then Master Luke's seemingly callous “gift” of the droids (Threepio understood it was part of a greater plan now, but why couldn't Master Luke have been honest with him beforehand?) to that vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. All of the suffering, all of the damage to his mechanisms and circuits, all of the comrades organic and synthetic lost to the war... all of it for nothing. And their noble struggle against tyranny and oppression would end on this green planet that Threepio just knew had to be home to robot-eating beasts.
The droid reverted his processing power back to his real time sensory inputs. The Stormtroopers loomed, gleaming rifles at the ready. An ugly thought, counter to all of See-Threepio's moral and ethical subroutines, floated up through the binary mists. If he could overload his power cells while disconnecting his memory core's internal safeguards, not only could he ensure that the Empire could never use his memories and knowledge against the remains of the Alliance, but perhaps the subsequent explosion might dispatch the Imperial soldiers in the immediate vicinity. And, in the resulting confusion, perhaps their trapped comrades could escape?
The sharp sound of a charging lever being jacked entered Threepio's auditory sensors. Mere seconds after his surrender, the end would come. He'd have no time to rig his mechanisms (and part of his programming sternly chided him for thinking up such a dreadful scheme). But he could erase the bulk of his memory files. It would just take a moment to access the root direc—
A shrill cry split the air, and a heaving mass of muscle and fur pounced on the Stormtroopers from behind. Obsidian knives flashed in fuzzy paws, slicing through polymer body glove and flesh below. Without having to verbally direct Artoo, Threepio led the pair out of the fray and to the cover of a nearby tree.
He watched momentarily as a struggling, downed Stormtrooper from the group that was about to destroy him was rolled onto his back and an Ewok pounced on his chest. The stone knife in the native's hand rose high, and the protocol droid averted his gaze. A moment later, he wished he'd shut off his audio receptors as well as the felled trooper's gurgled death cries assaulted them in all of its horrid high-definition digital quality.
What the hell? First Lieutenant Ferus Arnet was standing on the commander's perch in the cockpit of Tempest Scout 1. He squinted off to the where a detachment of Stormtroopers had gone to apprehend more Rebels, droids or something. Then there had been some kind of inhuman wailing, and something jumped out of the trees. After a moment, he recognized the squat forms of the planet's abos. Intel reports said they were no threat and would be scared off by the seemingly magical gear of the garrison.
Well, they're not karking scared now. Of all times for the damned abos to find their spines. He glanced down at the Rebel prisoners, still securely cordoned by Imperial troops. Most were clad in green camouflage smocks and ponchos, but a few had more distinctive attire. He knew they were the ringleaders: the smuggler Solo and his familiar, the walking carpet. He was looking forward to their execution; he'd known some of the scouts the Rebel scum had killed in their early forays on the planet. Arnet knew it was all part of the Emperor's plan to draw the terrorists in and wipe them all out, but that didn't mean he had to like it when these neo-Separatists murdered loyalists.
Of course, he wouldn't have minded delaying the execution of the petite, brown-haired woman in the midst of the troops. Not until he and every man in his platoon had the chance to entertain her, at least. What a beauty. Too bad she lacks the brains to match.
Perhaps Lieutenant Renz could be bargained with... no doubt in exchange for being at the head of the line. Yes, perhaps that would work.
An ugly leer twisted Arnet's lips as he stared at Organa, imagining and anticipating his chance with the prisoner. After all, Alderaanian princesses were something of a rare commodity after Tarkin's escapades.
Just as he began to slip into reverie about how he'd teach the Rebel bitch a few lessons in humility, another sound echoed from the forest. His minded clouded by the irritation of interrupted fantasy, it took Arnet a moment to place the source: native horns. But music? No, that made no sense—
A signal! The lieutenant started to raise his hand to his helmet comlink. With every centimeter his hand moved, the more abos, arrows, and rocks seemed to fly from the forest and into the security cordon. Screams filtered up from the ground and over his earpiece as troopers, scouts, and officers alike crumpled to the forest floor.
Then the Rebels made their move. Solo grappled a trooper, dashing him to the ground. Arnet nudged the gunner with his foot. He would not let the Rebels get away; he'd burn them to the ground himself.
The Wookiee hurled two more Stormtroopers into each other. And then Arnet's eyes fell on his future prize. The Alderaanian slut wrestled with one officer, seemingly pulling something away from him. She knocked him down, then planted her boot firmly on his face. The flash of metal in her hand revealed what she'd captured: a pistol!
“Get the guns on them!” The lieutenant began to shout as he watched Leia Organa's gun arm come up. His gaze locked with hers. He saw death in her brown eyes. The pistol's muzzle rose smoothly, with the grace of a trained gunslinger. Determination and hate formed a steel mask on the woman's face, in that instant, more terrible than Lord Vader's own gruesome facade. The muzzle flashed.
A fraction of a second later, Arnet cried out as he felt his chest explode in white-hot agony. The hard rim of the walker hatch slammed into his back, and the lieutenant made a soft gurgle as the impact jostled what remained of his chest cavity and throat. Darkness closed in as he stared up at the forest sky, seeing not the tree limbs or soft white clouds, but the bared teeth and blazing eyes of the snarling princess rampant.
Inside of Tempest Scout 1, the gunner only heard his commander yell, “Get—” before crying out. He dragged Arnet's body back in, but the lieutenant's wide, fixed stare and the smoldering hole through both sides of his combat overalls made it readily apparent that there would be no clarification. And as the fighting on the ground further intermingled loyalist, traitor, and abo forces, he didn't dare open up without orders from higher authority.
Moff Tiaan Jerjerrod scowled at the com grille. “What do you mean, 'The natives are revolting'?”
There was a burst of static before a tinny voice uneasily replied. “We had captured the Rebels as per the Emperor's orders. There was minor resistance; Colonel Dyer was wounded and is missing. But once we had them outside the bunker...” Major Hewex's voice paused. “A detachment of troopers were sent to detain a couple of droids--”
“'Droids'?” Jerjerrod repeated in disbelief. The Rebels had brought droids? Images of old Confederate destroyer droids spraying fire into the Imperial troops and officers guarding the terrorist captives danced in his brain. Obviously, they'd have been no match against Tempest Force's vehicles; the walkers could dispatch them with almost contemptuous ease. But the casualties if the scout walkers were facing the wrong way...
“According to reports before the attack, an astromech and a protocol droid. When we attempted to capture them--”
The moff's nostrils flared at the word attempted. He hissed, “You failed to capture an interpreter droid?”
“Our troops were attacked by natives. They were highly organized and in numbers, sir. Moments after they ambushed the capture squad, they began attacking remainder of the detachment. Casualties are moderate... and the Rebels broke free.”
Jerjerrod slammed his gloved fist down on the duraplast control panel. The Emperor's Finest, indeed! Obviously, the best troops in the Empire—Vader's own 501st Legion—had been rotated off the line after their glorious victory at Hoth. Officially, they were on extended leave until the unit could be fully reconstituted, though rumors abounded that they had been sent to the Deep Core strongholds, or assigned to the mysterious Grand Admiral Thrawn. The moff didn't know; his purview was the partially-built battlestation that the Rebel slime had foolishly thought they could besiege. His control room was deep within the station, and with very few of the external cameras installed, he had no visual guide to the battle over the Sanctuary Moon. But his tactical display in the holotank more than sufficed, showing the brilliant green cloud of the Imperial task force, the shimmering emerald globe of the Death Star, and the angry red fireflies of the enemy forces trapped between them. But most heartening was the golden cone projecting from the sphere's northern surface into the Rebel swarm. It was almost enough to make him forget the blundering of Tempest Force.
“I see,” he replied with a neutrality of tone that shocked him. “Have you begun a counterattack?”
“Yes, sir. Armored units report excellent penetration of enemy lines; they're routing the abos. However, the infantry units are reporting heavy fighting and serious casualties. We're losing squads at a time to ambushes.”
Any positive feelings stemming from watching the hated Rebellion crushed in the Emperor's vise fled. How could a pack of wild savages, barely a meter tall and using stone tools and weapons, possibly cause this much trouble for the Empire's Stormtroopers, armed and armored with the best equipment and given the best training in the Galaxy at Carida? Entire squads—nine men apiece—being destroyed by creatures less threatening than his niece's Nazzar dolls?
Preposterous. Unthinkable! Ludicrous!
“Furthermore, the Rebels have gathered outside of the bunker,” Hewex continued, unaware of Jerjerrod's mounting rage. And it was then that the credit chit dropped for the moff.
“You've let them congregate outside of the bunker?! Recall your forces!”
“We have Stormtroopers holding them at bay, as well as the internal security contingent. We have also changed the code to the blast doors. Any attempts to slice them will fail,” Hewex responded firmly.
Had C-3PO a jaw instead of a vocoder, it would have dropped at the insanity Artoo was spouting. “Going? What do you mean, you're going?”
The astromech replied with a flurry of beeps and whistles. Threepio was not satisfied. “Going where, Artoo?” But the smaller droid simply rolled off across the forest floor, toward the bunker.
Why would he ever want to go there? That was where the fighting was! They had just barely survived their last brush with the Stormtroopers, and though Artoo seemed blissfully unaware it, Threepio was quite certain their reflective plating would most assuredly draw fire from the comrades of their would-be captors.
“No, wait! Artoo!” Threepio shouted. Artoo paid him no heed, dashing into the fray. Grudgingly, the protcol droid began to chase after his diminutive companion, hoping to reason with him before they were both blasted to molten slag. “This is no time for heroics! Come back!”
Commander Daegon Merrejk strode confidently toward the front of the Executor's bridge. He overheard murmured reports from the fighter controller as he solemnly conferred with General Meekus, the officer in overall command of the task force's fighter detachments.
“Still no progress on their medical frigate?” Meekus was saying.
“No, sir. Flight Gamma 9.2 was just destroyed; they reported the freighter engaged them just before contact was lost.”
Merrejk suppressed a snort of contempt. Fighters had their uses, of course; he wasn't that short-sighted. Reconnaissance and screening capital ships against bombers were ideal uses; the former could certainly be done by light cruisers and frigates, but there were just never enough of them; and the Imperial Navy's one attempt to remedy the problem of enemy ships bringing torpedoes to bear had been the dismally ineffective Lancer frigate. While its twenty quadlasers could put out a stunning fusillade, they were overmanned, too slow to keep pace with even a Victory I, and utterly helpless against any other capital ships. TIE Fighters were faster, more maneuverable, and much less expensive than the Rebel snubfighters. Their one tactical weakness was their fragility, which was handily offset by their low cost and swarming numbers.
But dashing the fighters and the new interceptors against the capital ships of the Rebel fleet? Ridiculous. That's what the TIE Bombers were for. And the Avengers, and even the Defenders. Even the Rebels had the sense to arm their attack fighters with heavy ordnance, though Merrejk would never openly admit that grudging concession... least of all within earshot of the man he passed on his way to Admiral Piett. Sergeant Vandolay, the ISB snitch in the bridge crew, glanced briefly at Merrejk from the crew pit as the senior officer passed.
Only the fools at Security would allow some mere enlisted man to look on an officer with anything other than awe, fumed the commander. Not that he held anything against the man's ideology; Merrejk himself had fond memories of his days in the SubAdult Group, another branch of ISB's parent organization, COMPNOR. He understood the need for Security's agents; he just wished their zeal was more appropriately focused. For example, why wasn't someone like Vandolay posted to the traitor Zaarin's forces? That would've nipped the problem in the bud quickly but instead, the idiot was actively searching for traitors and fifth columnists on Lord Vader's personal flagship!
But at any rate, only the laser-armed fighters and interceptors had been launched with orders to take down the Rebel fighters, scout the enemy formation, and fire on targets of opportunity. The first two made sense, but the last one only worked if there were targets of opportunity. Capital ships with full shields did not qualify for anyone with a functional mind and a respect for the power of modern naval vessels.
The commander stopped at the end of the command walkway. Before him stood Admiral Piett and Captain Gherant, task force commander and flag captain, respectively. Piett wore his captain's insignia; despite being in command of the fleet, he was technically outranked by the presence of Grand Admiral Teshik on the Star Destroyer Eleemosynary, and Grand Admirals Declann, Takel, and Makati on the Death Star itself. So, protocol demanded he wear the insignia of his permanent rank; indeed, there were very few officers who held permanent commissions in the flag grades. Merrejk supposed he might be rather rankled in Piett's place, but since the man only received his rank at the whim of Lord Vader—and the execution of his predecessor—it really couldn't be said he'd earned it on his own merits.
“We're in attack position now, sir,” the commander reported.
“Hold here,” Piett responded.
Gherant turned toward the defrocked admiral. “We're not going to attack?”
“I have my orders from the Emperor himself,” Piett replied cryptically. “He has something special planned for them; we only need to keep them from escaping.”
Brilliant flashes speckled the blackness between the stars. Luke felt the men and women that had—for a brief instant of searing agony—been at the centers of those flashes fall away. The rate was slow, but the Rebel fleet was being ground down under the heel of the Imperial fleet. Unless the shield came down, the Rebellion would die before his very eyes.
And yet, he sensed something darker still on the horizon. But how could the situation get worse?
“As you can see, my young apprentice,” the Emperor rasped with glee, “your friends have failed.”
The darkness suddenly surged around Luke, bubbling about around him and smothering him. A sick smile split the Emperor's lips, baring his decayed teeth. “Now witness the firepower of this fully-armed and operational battlestation!”
The wizened husk turned toward the controls on his chair's arm. He depressed a button with a bone-like click. “Fire at will, Commander!”
Ten seconds were all it took from the Emperor withdrawing a bony finger from the com switch to a radiant bolt of death carving into the Rebel fleet. Luke shut himself away from his senses, but it wasn't enough to shield the terror and sudden silence of nearly seven thousand souls.
“Confirm origin!” Ackbar snapped.
Verrack's shaking hands touched his controls, checking once more the readings that he'd triple-checked from the initial power spike. There could be no doubt.
The Death Star was fully operational and the spray of embers that had once been several million tonnes of the cruiser Liberty belied their intelligence that the station only had defensive mechanisms. “Origin confirmed, Admiral,” Verrack husked. “It could have only come from the Death Star.”
It all made sense now. The Imperial fleet outmassed and outgunned the Rebels by a margin even the most timid Imperial admiral would be comfortable with. But the heavies hadn't engaged, only sending waves of fighters on mostly ineffective sorties. The interdiction fields, as well, were now explained. The fleet and the gravity wells were the anvil against which the Death Star's hammer would crush the Rebellion.
They were trapped at sublight and prevented from escaping to hyperspace. If the fleet attempted to push through the Interdictor ring, the Imperial fleet could overhaul them and tear them apart even without the Death Star picking off ships. Even if they attempted to move out of the line-of-sight of the laser by maneuvering on a perpendicular course to their current formation, the Imperial fleet could still pin them and cut them down. And if they split up, it was possible some might get beyond the interdiction field—statistically, anyway—but thousands upon thousands would die, as would any chance of the Rebellion continuing in earnest.
“Home One, this is Gold Leader.” General Calrissian's voice crackled on the flag channel.
“We saw it,” Ackbar remarked bluntly, not bothering with the pleasantries of protocol. “All craft prepare to retreat.”
Verrack quickly began running the numbers on how to split up the fleet to allow for the most survivors.
“We won't get another chance at this, Admiral.”
“We have no choice, General Calrissian,” the Mon Calamari stated emphatically. “Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!”
Calrissian snapped back, “Han will have that shield down; we've gotta give him more time!”
For a moment, Verrack admired the human capacity for optimism. Then he returned to his grim calculus, pausing only to grimace a moment later when the Death Star fired again, wiping away the Freedom, a sister ship to Home One herself... and a sorely-needed source of firepower that was now being scattered to the fringes of the solar system by the stellar winds.
There was more back and forth between Ackbar and Calrissian, rising in volume and pique. The unfortunate captain found it increasingly difficult to focus on his task. Nevertheless, he was still making progress: each simulation was giving slightly higher percentages of escapes. He quickly plotted out another series of courses with another series of formations to protect the ones that didn't make it out in the last simulation. Perhaps the Alliance would survive—
“Repeat last transmission, General!”
“Closer! Move in closer!”
Verrack looked up to see Ackbar gape for a moment, then stab his comm in frustration. “Did you say 'closer'?”
“Yes, I said closer! Move as close as you can, and engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range!”
Verrack felt his own mouth open in shock at Calrissian's mad plan. The bulk of the Alliance's heavy forces were made up of MC80 Star Cruisers, outfitted similarly to the Liberty. Some had different hull designs, due to each Mon Calamari ship being the product of artisans and craftsmen, but while true standardization was impossible on the Alliance's resources, Ackbar had made sure to tactically standardize the ships in his battle line so they could operate as a unified force.
Even then, there were enough Imperial-class Star Destroyers to outgun every heavy capital ship the Rebels had with them. And the Imperial fleet also included an Executor, two battlecruisers, and three Tector-class ships.
“At that close range, we won't last long against the Star Destroyers,” argued Ackbar.
“We'll last longer than we will against that Death Star! And we might just take a few of them with us!”
Ackbar closed his eyes for a moment in what appeared to be contemplation. When they opened, he keyed his command channel. “All ships; come about and accelerate to attack speed. Engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.”
Verrack gaped. This was madness! “Admiral, we cannot engage the enemy fleet directly! They're too powerful!”
The admiral regarded his tactical officer gravely. “You are correct, Captain. We have no chance to defeat them, even if the Death Star were to fire into its own ships. But we can buy time for the ground team to bring down the shield. We only need to hold out until then.”
“And if the ground team fails?” Verrack regretted uttering the thought the moment it had left his mouth.
But Ackbar's gaze never wavered. “Then we've lost anyway. Our objective is that station: all else, including survival, is secondary. Everything we are doing up here is a delaying action.”
The captain winced... because Ackbar was absolutely correct. With the firepower that the fleet had, the Death Star's shield was impenetrable. And why did they come here, why did so many already die... just to run away? While the odds of defeating the Imperial fleet conventionally were as unpleasantly close to zero as a cruel and uncaring universe ruled by mathematical probability would allow, the odds of bringing down this second Death Star if it were completed were still less. The Alliance's guerilla war would be impossible; there would be no safe harbor from the Imperial storm. They would be hunted down, and picked off, while sheer self-preservation pushed numerous worlds into at least grudging support of the regime. The Alliance could not win conventionally, strength to strength, whether galactically or even in this battle. Each Imperial Star Destroyer could easily take down two MC80 cruisers before succumbing. The Super Star Destroyer at the center of the Imperial formation had as many defensive guns as there were fighters in the Alliance fleet; it could casually swat them from the sky until there was no way to attack the Death Star's reactor.
The only choice was to draw fire, from both the TIEs and Star Destroyers, away from the Alliance snubs. And, loathe though he was to agree with the human, Calrissian did have a point that intermingling with the Imperials might give pause to the Death Star's gunnery crew. At least they're not droids or even that wouldn't work. Verrack's gaze lifted once more to meet Ackbar's eyes. The words were bitter ash as he nodded and conceded, “I understand, sir.”
Crushed and hollow, the tactical officer returned to his plot and began entering entirely new calculations. Yet, in the smoking wreckage where hope had been, the embers rekindled into a deadly new purpose. He began sizing up the nearest Star Destroyer to the Home One and her closest escorts.
The short-lived flashes of starfire beyond the viewport intensified as Luke watched the ships of the Alliance fleet move closer to their foe. Flickers in the Force, brief spikes of pain and terror followed by terrible silence as combatants perished in the eternal night.
“Your fleet is lost,” came the mockingly calm voice from behind. “And your friends on the Endor moon,” Palpatine continued, finally drawing a glance from Luke, “will not survive.”
Skywalker immediately turned away, back to the viewport. He could sense the desperation... pain... No. He locked away his feelings, buried them deep even as his heart ached for the wanton suffering and slaughter he felt from the planet below and the fleet above. He hid them away from the icy darkness that surrounded him; a black, freezing ocean that sapped his strength and his will with every passing second.
He had indeed underestimated the Emperor and the Dark Side.
“There is no escape, my young apprentice,” the wizened husk stated bluntly, matter-of-factly. Luke turned back toward him with that final epithet. He looked to his father, ebony armor gleaming in the cold light. Vader said nothing, only lowering his helmet slightly to look back at Luke.
“The Alliance will die,” the Emperor continued, as if he were discussing a weather forecast, “as will your friends.”
Anger burned inside Luke again. He became aware that he was breathing harder, faster, each push from the Emperor's word's fanning the flames within. He tried to clamp down on the flames, but instead found his gaze drawn to the cylinder at Palpatine's side.
“Good,” the ancient creature purred, his eyes shut in rapturous glee. “I can feel your anger.”
The young Jedi chastised himself, averted his gaze. But Palpatine refused to let up. “I am defenseless,” he hissed in an almost conspiratorial whisper. “Take your weapon.
“Strike me down with all of your hatred,” the whisper had become a snarl, “and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete!”
Luke mulled it over before forcing himself to turn away. I will not give in... I will notgive in!
But as his eyes fell upon the burning skies over Endor, he began to falter. Everything had indeed gone as the Emperor foresaw. There was no escape for the Alliance fleet, and if his friends hadn't accomplished their mission by now, every second that passed made it increasingly likely they wouldn't. And was not the goal of this mission not just the elimination of another Death Star, but the elimination of the man who sat not two meters from Luke? This war, the deaths of his friends... all of it could be ended in a second!
Within, a warning voice cried out. But it would be so easy... and everything would be better! To end so vile and evil a being, was that not what he had been trained to do? Was that not what Ben and Yoda wanted?
Beware anger and hated. The dark path...
...But what light is there if the Alliance dies?
In an instant, it was decided. Luke pivoted. Vader's hand went to his belt. The lightsaber crafted in Ben Kenobi's hut spun end over end into a black-gloved hand. Blades of emerald and crimson flame flared into being, then crashed together as Palpatine laughed.
Luke stared at the glowing blade that blocked his own, then back up the arm that held it, to the grotesque mask of the man who would dare stop him in his righteous quest. But Vader had always been there to thwart him, hadn't he? It was Vader's minions that killed the only family he'd ever known over a pair of droids, Vader himself who murdered first Luke's mentor on the first Death Star and then his best friend over it. Vader who tortured Leia, who tortured Han and then froze him in carbonite to be shipped off to Jabba the Hutt as a trophy.
It was Vader who took his hand. Vader who shattered his world, twisted the man Luke had always wanted to know into the avatar of absolute evil.
And now Vader had delivered him before the Emperor, where Luke could finally put an end to the evil that plagued the universe... only to stop him? Was it some kind of sick joke? A mind game the Sith Lord thought he was playing?
Rage at the loss and pain the black-clad monster before him had perpetrated, not just on Luke himself, but on every person in the Galaxy that had been wronged by the Dark Lord, refocused Luke's anger. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl, and he swung his blade away from Vader's, clearing it for action.
Vader pulled his blade to a defensive posture, side-stepping away from his master. Luke coiled, dropping his blade low and to the left before unwinding and turning his blade almost vertically as he came up through. The Dark Lord caught the attack on the tip of his crimson sword, then swept down to his left. Luke dropped his blade down into a horizontal swing to block. He used the momentum of the impact to carry his blade through in a clockwise sweep, parrying a vertical cut.
The two swordsmen recoiled, with Vader first to recover. He made a high slashing attack to his right, forcing Skywalker to catch it in an awkward high-left block that made him dangerously unbalanced. Vader feinted before going for a low clockwise slash, but Luke saw through it and brought his blade down and around to counter, regaining his balance. Following through his parry, Skywalker went high and made a sharp, vertical chop. Both men locked blades for a moment, filling the air with the squeal of straining energy blades trying to override each other.
Vader disengaged, wheeling his blade back and around to slash at the young Jedi. Luke was forced to pull back his own blade and angle it across the path of his father's weapon. Disengaging again, Luke feinted left before cutting right, then dropping low to meet Vader's blade in a low slashing attack. Both men recovered quickly, with Luke gaining a momentary advantage and going for another overhead chop. As Vader parried, Luke dropped his left hand from the hilt of his lightsaber, pulled away, and planted a vicious kick in the Dark Lord's gut.
Vader snarled in surprise as he was knocked off his feet and tumbled down the longer set of stairs leading up to the throne. Before he landed with a grunt, Palpatine's gloating laughter echoed through the throne room. “Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy! Let the hate flow through you!”
Luke looked down the stairs as Vader gathered himself. He still held the weapon in his right hand—the one Vader took when they last met—and his gloved thumb found the activation stud. The shaft of verdant brilliance vanished, leaving only the hum of Vader's weapon to fill the air. Luke realized he would not win this battle by his skill with a lightsaber. This was a battle for his very soul... and he'd come dangerously close to losing already.
“Obi-Wan has taught you well,” the Dark Lord noted, swinging his blade to the side.
“I will not fight you, Father.”
Vader strode up the stairs, confidently. Luke backed away, wary, watching. The Sith stopped at the landing, turned toward Luke. “You are unwise to lower your defenses.”
Before Vader's muscles—organic and artifical—had begun to wind up for the assault, Luke's blade had reignited. And before Vader had begun to unwind his attack, Luke's blade had taken up position to block. The energy blades crashed together once, then twice, then a third time before Luke cut low and locked Vader's blade. The Dark Lord advanced on the young Jedi, pushing the tip of his sword closer and closer. His sheer force pushed Luke up the final stairs to the throne. Sensing advantage with his higher position, Luke swung back, breaking the lock. Vader attacked from low right, swinging upward and to the left. The impact knocked Skywalker's blade back; he barely recovered in time to block another slash from the opposite direction.
Vader continued to cut back and forth horizontally, with brutal hammer blows that jarred Luke's blade and balance until Luke braced himself at the top of the landing and once more locked his foe's lightsaber. Both sword and swordsman strained against each other for a moment until Luke slid his blade back to the tip of Vader's sword. With this newfound leverage, he bound over the Dark Lord, then dove away from a retaliatory chop.
Not giving the Sith a moment to recover, Luke jumped into the center of a ring of control consoles. Vader turned to him, having now missed two attacks against the young Jedi. Skywalker extinguished his blade once more and backflipped onto a catwalk. With a moment of calm, he noted that Vader's respirator was pumping much faster than usual... and something else. What was...
“Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you, the conflict,” Luke challenged.
“There is no conflict,” Vader insisted with a deep rumble.
“You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before,” Skywalker countered. “and I don't believe you'll destroy me now.”
“You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny!” The Sith hurled his crimson blade skyward at Luke. The young Jedi pitched to the side, narrowly avoiding being vertically bisected. The catwalk was less fortunate, as the lightsaber sizzled through its floor grate and vertical supports. Luke bounded off the falling section, using it as a springboard to carry him away from Vader.
The Sith Lord recovered his weapon as Palpatine cackled, “Good... good!”
“Stay on target, Blue Squadron,” Colonel Merrick Simms called. “Unfortunately, we can't rely on that communications ship to blow itself up.”
“Awful lot of fire coming from the portside. No fighters yet, though,” called Blue Three. Simms' eyes slid across the glaring white hull of the enormous Allegiance-class Star Destroyer. The battlecruiser was acting as the main communications ship for the Imperial fleet and had the entire Alliance fleet's sensors blind. If not for General Calrissian's intuition, was a certainty that most of the Rebel fighter force would have barreled straight into the shield before the back ranks could've done anything about it. The knowledge that Blue Squadron's B-Wings had been in the front ranks send an unpleasant prickle up Simms' spine.
But he quickly buried that unpleasant thought, turning his mind to the remarks of his pilot.“That eager for a dogfight, Rookie One?” He managed to put a smirk into his voice, even if it stubbornly refused to appear on his face.
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” complained the tinny voice.
“Well, I kinda like it,” answered Blue Two, Commander Ru Murleen. Her relationship with her squadronmate was an open secret. Then again, after what they did taking down that Phantom TIE Fighter project, the Alliance brass was willing to look the other way instead of breaking up a winning team. “Adds more mystery than calling you—”
An alarm went off in the cockpit. Simms glanced at his radar. “Blast! You wanted company, Blue Three, you got it! Squints, ten—no, make that twelve from five o'clock. Gold Leader, can you cover us?”
“Be there in a second, Blue Leader.”
“I don't think we've got it, Gold Leader. Two, Three, pull back and provide cover. Falcariae is almost in position; I need to get set up for my run.”
“Copy, Lead.”
“Roger, Blue Lead.”
Vader held his blade out before him as he searched the dark, unlit corners of the incomplete throne room. “You cannot hide forever, Luke.”
“I will not fight you.”
The Sith turned toward the sound. I have you now. “Give yourself to the Dark Side,” he taunted. “It is the only way you can save your friends.”
He reached out with his feelings. He did not have a physical location on Luke, but he could sense the turmoil. The mention of his doomed compatriots had stirred the young Jedi. Perhaps he felt safe in the shadows... but nowhere was safe from the Dark Side of the Force. Vader pressed harder against Luke's defenses. “Yes. Your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong.”
He felt a mad scramble, to bury feelings deeper, to hide and conceal the pathetic connections that made him weak, made him vulnerable. And in the scramble, the gleam of something truly prized was overlooked... by Luke. “Especially for,” Vader began... then paused. Impossible! “Sister!”
Vader's own confusion clouded his senses for but a moment. He honed in on the icy knot of fear building in Luke. “So, you have a twin sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her too.”
Despair and self-loathing screamed out of the void, now so strong that Vader could localize his son's physical form while tormenting him emotionally. “Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the dark side,” the Dark Lord paused, savoring his ultimate victory over Kenobi, “then perhaps she will.”
Despair and pain changed to righteous fury with such explosive suddenness that Vader was momentarily overwhelmed. He didn't hear the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber, and only barely registered the defiant scream of “Never!”
He began to turn toward the sound when a lance of emerald death drove toward his face. His swordarm snapped his blade upright, barely clearing Skywalker's thrust before it plunged through the gargoyle mask. Vader pinned the blade under his own for a moment, but Luke pressed back, swinging both blades in a broad arc to the Sith Lord's right.
His blade free, Skywalker cocked back to his own right, then exploded forward with a snarl. Sparks flew from where his blade slashed the low ceiling, his blade's song changing from a crackling hiss to a thunderclap when it finally met the Dark Lord's weapon once more. He battered Vader's weapon, his lightsaber carving into pillars, ceiling, floor with each recoil. He struck another hammer blow, holding the shimmering green shaft before him. Vader counterattacked, striking upward at the outstretched blade.
Luke barely noticed through the dark haze of his rage. Vader could not be allowed to live with the knowledge of Leia's origins. He could not live for his crimes. And Luke would be the one to correct the Force's mistake in letting this dark beast continue as long as he had. He hurled the weightless beam about with such force that each stroke grew a grunt of exertion, but he did not feel the weariness that his mortal frame should. His hate drove his blade closer to his father's form, his righteous fury let him block the parries and feints.
Vader was driven back, pinned against a catwalk railing. Luke's foot lashed out, striking the back of Sith's mechanical knee joint with a Force-fueled blow. The sable apparition buckled, awkwardly brought his lightsaber across to block a vicious attack. Skywalker chopped again, knocking the blade away. Again, and further away.
The Force shuddered.
Vader let himself fall back, Skywalker's sword struck the railing in a shower of molten metal. He thrust his crimson blade upward; Luke's jade beam cut across to parry... a fraction of a second too late.
Skywalker cried out as his flesh was seared, stumbled back. He clutched the wound, his natural hand white-knuckled just under his ribcage. Vader began to rise. A boot struck the side of his helmet, echoing in his supplemented hearing. His aided vision stuttered a moment. He reached out with the Force, relying on the Dark Side to guide him.
He found himself staring into a blazing black sun.
Skywalker stood, his bloodied hand over his synthetic replacement on the hilt of his weapon, the blade high over his head. Blood welled-up from the still-smoking cut in his side. The emerald shaft swung downward, intent on splitting the Dark Lord from crown to loins.
Vader pulled himself away from the dazzling storm of roiling darkness, obeyed his instincts. A fraction of a second too late.
Both father and son howled; Vader, in agony as the blade cleaved his right shoulder away. Luke, in rage as his killing blow merely maimed. He thrust the blade to Vader's throat; the Dark Lord weakly raised his remaining hand in submission. His respirator wheezed, overworked with the sudden shock to the system it regulated.
“Good!” The laughing voice came from behind. “Your hate has made you powerful,” hissed Palpatine. “Now, fulfill your destiny... and take your father's place at my side!”
Luke looked down at the maimed figure before him. The severed arm still clutched an ignited lightsaber. Smoldering flesh glowed softly at the end of the stump, and where Vader's armor had been cut away. He looked down at his right hand. The replacement. The one Vader took on Bespin. He flexed it.
Outwardly, it moved the way a normal hand would. The nerve impulses felt the same, due to rigorous training. But the servos buzzed and the internal mechanisms creaked with the movement.
Luke looked back to the severed arm. Take his place...
Colonel Simms flipped on his targeting computer. “I'm starting my run.”
The Imperial communications ship spat verdant energy into the MC80 cruiser off its flank. The Mon Cal heavy, Falcariae, spanned the hundred-kilometer gap between the two giants with vicious fusillades of crimson turbolaser and ion blasts. The Rebel ship had its full forward firepower to call upon, while the Imperial battlecruiser sat above its foe, the bow swinging to port and down to clear more firing arcs.
But it was still an all-up battlecruiser. The guns it could bring to bear did not match the caliber of Falcariae's main battery, but the medium guns were plentiful and rapid-firing. Starbursts prickled along hulls of both ships, casting sharp-edged flashes of light. And flying into the hailstorm of particle beams, Blue Squadron made its approach.
Blue Leader's scanners were in active mode, lashing the battlecruiser with radar and lidar. Firing solutions were plotted, refined, adjusted, and re-refined every millisecond. Twenty seconds until contact: plenty of time to lock up the target. The twin MG9 torpedo launchers in the B-Wing cycled their first warheads. The targeting display showed glowing yellow bars, closing in from the left and right on where Falcariae was focusing her fire.
Fifteen seconds to contact. The targeting solution was tighter... but not a good enough lock yet. An indicator flashed on the console; Simms didn't see it. But his wingmen saw the same warning light go off in their cockpits. “The TIEs are in range,” Ru Murleen called, her voice tight with restraint. Being caught between a well-armed target and its fighter escort was not how B-Wings were meant to fight.
“Hold them for a few seconds; Gold Leader will be here,” Simms noted flatly. Less than ten seconds out, passing through the forty-kilometer mark. Emerald tracers now raced from behind as well as ahead.
Then the targeting computer made its steady tone, and the display flashed as the ranging bars overlapped. “I have a lock!”
His finger squeezed the triggers for both launchers and his cannons. The bomber bucked and spat its torpedoes into the battlecruiser at over nine kilometers per second while the heavy laser cannon and three ion cannons pumped their vermillion fury past the racing projectiles. Point defense guns opened up, but with only four seconds between launch and contact, the odds of intercepting the torpedoes were not in the Empire's favor. Two thermonuclear fireballs erupted in the heart of Falcariae's bombardment zone. Then another pair, fired at point-blank range an instant before Simms threw his B-Wing into a steep dive.
Blue Leader groaned as his maneuver strained the acceleration compensators and he was yanked out of his seat with eight-hundred kilograms equivalent of force. As he eased back on the stick and the red mist cleared from his vision, he rasped, “Take your shots, Blue Two and Three! I'll come back and cover!”
“'Preciate it, Boss!” Blue Three answered, sounding more ragged than his commander. The distant mote of Rookie One's B-Wing--I really do need to stop calling him in that, Simms thought distantly—rolled and juked furiously to dodge the fire coming at him from ahead and behind.
“Torpedoes away!” The cry was almost simultaneous from Blues Two and Three. Simms glanced back over his shoulder to see the explosion. Flame boiled out of a new hole in the battlecruiser's ventral plating. “It's a hit!”
The momentary elation over drawing blood gave way. “Sitrep!”
“Blue Two, shields at half. But I'm okay.”
“Blue Three, minor damage to my intercooler, shields coming back.”
“Spast! Break off, Three! I didn't think they hit you that bad.”
“Hey, it was my job to draw the fire, right? Besides—”
“Cut the chatter,” Simms growled, and immediately winced. “Three, are you okay for a second pass?”
Rookie One responded almost immediately. “Yes, sir.”
Simms grimaced, and was glad for the audio-only comms. He spared a glance at his shield charge. “Looks like they only grazed me a couple times; I'll fly rear. You two, deflectors to double-front, dump everything into your shields. Three, you and I will cut under after this pass. Ru, you go up top and drop in on them. You should have just enough time to charge for a couple of shots, so make them count.”
A stormfront began to blow through the throne room, even as the air was perfectly still. Luke felt cold swirling past, centered on the cloaked figure before him. Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor...
Or suffer your father's fate, you will.
Luke turned. His nostrils flared as the movement sent a spike of pain from his wound rippling through him. He angled the lightsaber defensively across his chest. He banished the pain from his face, from his mind, and stared at the Emperor.
“Never.”
The crashing of Palpatine's malevolent glee was tangible. Flames simmered behind his sulfurous irises. Luke was unfazed. “I'll never turn to the Dark Side.
“You've failed, Your Highness,” Skywalker declared, defying the dark, icy storm swirling around him. “I am a Jedi. Like my father, before me.”
Thunder rumbled in the Force as Jedi and Dark Lord stared each other down. Finally, Palpatine spoke. His tone was flat, final. Deadly. “So be it...
“Jedi.”