Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

by James Kahn

  Vader looked at the lightsaber a moment, then slowly took it from the captain’s hand. “Leave us. Conduct your search, and bring his companions to me.”

  The officer and his troops withdrew back to the walker.

  Luke and Vader were left standing alone facing each other, in the emerald tranquillity of the ageless forest. The mist was beginning to burn off. Long day ahead.

  = VII =

  “So,” the Dark Lord rumbled. “You have come to me.”

  “And you to me.”

  “The Emperor is expecting you. He believes you will turn to the dark side.”

  “I know... Father.” It was a momentous act for Luke—to address his father, as his father. But he’d done it, now, and kept himself under control, and the moment was past. It was done. He felt stronger for it. He felt potent.

  “So, you have finally accepted the truth,” Vader gloated.

  “I have accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.”

  “That name no longer has meaning for me.” It was a name from long ago. A different life, a different universe. Could he truly once have been that man?

  “It is the name of your true self,” Luke’s gaze bore steadily down on the cloaked figure. “You have only forgotten. I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn’t driven it fully away.” He molded with his voice, tried to form the potential reality with the strength of his belief. “That’s why you could not destroy me. That’s why you won’t take me to your Emperor now.”

  Vader seemed almost to smile through his mask at his son’s use of Jedi voice-manipulation. He looked down at the lightsaber the captain had given him—Luke’s lightsaber. So the boy was truly a Jedi now. A man grown. He held the lightsaber up. “You have constructed another.”

  “This one is mine,” Luke said quietly. “I no longer use yours.”

  Vader ignited the blade, examined its humming, brilliant light, like an admiring craftsman. “Your skills are complete. Indeed, you are as powerful as the Emperor has foreseen.”

  They stood there for a moment, the lightsaber between them. Sparks dove in and out of the cutting edge: photons pushed to the brink by the energy pulsing between these two warriors.

  “Come with me, Father.”

  Vader shook his head. “Ben once thought as you do—

  “Don’t blame Ben for your fall—” Luke took a step closer, then stopped.

  Vader did not move. “You don’t know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.”

  “I will not turn—you will be forced to destroy me.”

  “If that is your destiny.” This was not his wish, but the boy was strong—if it came, at last, to blows, yes, he would destroy Luke. He could no longer afford to hold back, as he once had.

  “Search your feelings, Father. You can’t do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.”

  But Vader hated no one; he only lusted too blindly. “Someone has filled your mind with foolish ideas, young one. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master, now.”

  Vader signaled to a squad of distant stormtroopers as he extinguished Luke’s lightsaber. The guards approached. Luke and the Dark Lord faced one another for a long, searching moment. Vader spoke just before the guards arrived.

  “It is too late for me, Son.”

  “Then my father is truly dead,” answered Luke. So what was to stop him from killing the Evil One who stood before him now? he wondered.

  Nothing, perhaps.

  The vast Rebel fleet hung poised in space, ready to strike. It was hundreds of light-years from the Death Star—but in hyperspace, all time was a moment, and the deadliness of an attack was measured not in distance but in precision.

  Ships changed in formation from corner to side, creating a faceted diamond shape to the armada—as if, like a cobra, the fleet was spreading its hood.

  The calculations required to launch such a meticulously coordi­nated offensive at lightspeed made it necessary to fix on a stationary point—that is, stationary relative to the point of reentry from hyperspace. The point chosen by the Rebel command was a small, blue planet of the Sullust system. The armada was positioned around it, now, this unblinking cerulean world. It looked like the eye of the serpent.

  The Millennium Falcon finished its rounds of the fleet’s perimeter, checking final positions, then pulled into place beneath the flagship. The time had come.

  Lando was at the controls of the Falcon. Beside him, his copilot, Nien Nunb—a jowled, mouse-eyed creature from Sullust—flipped switches, monitored readouts, and made final preparations for the jump to hyperspace.

  Lando set his comlink to war channel. Last hand of the night, his deal, a table full of high rollers—his favorite kind of game. With dry mouth, he made his summary report to Ackbar on the command ship. “Admiral, we’re in position. All fighters are accounted for.”

  Ackbar’s voice crackled back over the headset. “Proceed with the countdown. All groups assume attack coordinates.”

  Lando turned to his copilot with a quick smile. “Don’t worry, my friends are down there, they’ll have that shield down on time...” He turned back to his instruments, saying under his breath: “Or this will be the shortest offensive of all time.”

  “Gzhung Zhgodio,” the copilot commented.

  “All right,” Lando grunted. “Stand by, then.” He patted the control panel for good luck, even though his deepest belief was that a good gambler made his own luck. Still, that’s what Han’s job was this time, and Han had almost never let Lando down. Just once—and that was a long time ago, in a star system far, far away.

  This time was different. This time they were going to redefine luck, and call it Lando. He smiled, and patted the panel one more time... just right.

  Up on the bridge of the Star Cruiser command ship, Ackbar paused, looked around at his generals: all was ready.

  “Are all groups in their attack coordinates?” he asked. He knew they were.

  “Affirmative, Admiral.”

  Ackbar gazed out his view-window meditatively at the starfield, for perhaps the last reflective moment he would ever have. He spoke finally into the comlink war channel. “All craft will begin the jump to hyperspace on my mark. May the Force be with us.”

  He reached forward to the signal button.

  In the Falcon, Lando stared at the identical galactic ocean, with the same sense of grand moment; but also with foreboding. They were doing what a guerrilla force must never do: engage the enemy like a traditional army. The Imperial army, fighting the Rebellion’s guerrilla war, was always losing—unless it won. The Rebels, by contrast, were always winning—unless they lost. And now, here was the most dangerous situation—the Alliance drawn into the open, to fight on the Empire’s terms: if the Rebels lost this battle, they lost the war.

  Suddenly the signal light flashed on the control panel: Ackbar’s mark. The attack was commenced.

  Lando pulled back the conversion switch and opened up the throttle. Outside the cockpit, the stars began streaking by. The streaks grew brighter, and longer, as the ships of the fleet roared, in large segments, at lightspeed, keeping pace first with the very photons of the radiant stars in the vicinity, and then soaring through the warp into hyperspace itself—and disappearing in the flash of a muon.

  The blue crystal planet hovered in space alone, once again; staring; unseeing, into the void.

  The strike squad crouched behind a woodsy ridge overlooking the Imperial outpost. Leia viewed the area through a small electronic scanner.

  Two shuttles were being off-loaded on the landing platform docking ramp. Several walkers were parked nearby. Troops stood around, helped with construction, took watch, carried supplies. The massive shield generator hummed off to the side.

  Flattened down in the bushes on the ridge with the strike force were several Ewoks, including Wicket, Paploo, Teebo, and Warwick. The rest stayed lower, behind the knoll, out of sight.

  Leia pu
t down the scanner and scuttled back to the others. “The entrance is on the far side of that landing platform. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Ahrck grah rahr hrowrowhr,” Chewbacca agreed.

  “Oh, come on, Chewie,” Han gave the Wookiee a pained look. “We’ve gotten into more heavily guarded places than that—”

  “Frowh rahgh rahrahraff vrawgh gr,” Chewie countered with a dismissing gesture.

  Han thought for a second. “Well, the spice vaults of Gargon, for one.”

  “Krahghrowf,” Chewbacca shook his head.

  “Of course I’m right—now if I could just remember how I did it...” Han scratched his head, poking his memory.

  Suddenly Paploo began chattering away, pointing, squealing. He garbled something to Wicket.

  “What’s he saying, Threepio?” Leia asked.

  The golden droid exchanged a few terse sentences with Paploo; then Wicket turned to Leia with a hopeful grin.

  Threepio, too, now looked at the Princess. “Apparently Wicket knows about a back entrance to this installation.”

  Han perked up at that. “A back door? That’s it! That’s how we did it!”

  Four Imperial scouts kept watch over the entrance to the bunker that half-emerged from the earth far to the rear of the main section of the shield generator complex. Their rocket bikes were parked nearby.

  In the undergrowth beyond, the Rebel strike squad lay in wait.

  “Grrr, rowf rrrhl brhnnnh,” Chewbacca observed slowly.

  “You’re right, Chewie,” Solo agreed, “with just those guards this should be easier than breaking a Bantha.”

  “It only takes one to sound the alarm,” Leia cautioned.

  Han grinned, a bit overselfconfidently. “Then we’ll have to do this real quietlike. If Luke can just keep Vader off our backs, like you said he said he would, this oughta be no sweat. Just gotta hit those guards fast and quiet...”

  Threepio whispered to Teebo and Paploo, explaining the problem and the objective. The Ewoks babbled giddily a moment, then Paploo jumped up and raced through the underbrush.

  Leia checked the instrument on her wrist. “We’re running out of time. The fleet’s in hyperspace by now.”

  Threepio muttered a question to Teebo and received a short reply. “Oh, dear,” Threepio replied, starting to rise, to look into the clearing beside the bunker.

  “Stay down!” rasped Solo.

  “What is it, Threepio?” Leia demanded.

  “I’m afraid our furry companion has gone and done something rash.” The droid hoped he wasn’t to be blamed for this.

  “What are you talking about?” Leia’s voice cut with an edge of fear.

  “Oh, no. Look.”

  Paploo had scampered down through the bushes to where the scouts’ bikes were parked. Now, with the sickening horror of inevitability, the Rebel leaders watched the little ball of fur swing his pudgy body up onto one of the bikes, and begin flipping switches at random. Before anyone could do anything, the bike’s engines ignited with a rumbling roar. The four scouts looked over in surprise. Paploo grinned madly, and continued flipping switches.

  Leia held her forehead. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  Chewie barked. Han nodded. “So much for our surprise attack.”

  The Imperial scouts raced toward Paploo just as the forward drive engaged, zooming the little teddy bear into the forest. He had all he could do just to hang on to the handlebar with his stubby paws. Three of the guards jumped on their own bikes, and sped off in pursuit of the hotrod Ewok. The fourth scout stayed at his post, near the door of the bunker.

  Leia was delighted, if a bit incredulous.

  “Not bad for a ball of fuzz,” Han admired. He nodded at Chewie, and the two of them slipped down toward the bunker.

  Paploo, meanwhile, was sailing through the trees, more lucky than in control. He was going at fairly low velocity for what the bike could do—but in Ewok-time, Paploo was absolutely dizzy with speed and excitement. It was terrifying; but he loved it. He would talk about this ride until the end of his life, and then his children would tell their children, and it would get faster with each generation.

  For now, though, the Imperial scouts were already pulling in sight behind him. When, a moment later, they began firing laser bolts at him, he decided he’d finally had enough. As he rounded the next tree, just out of their sight, he grabbed a vine and swung up into the branches. Several seconds later the three scouts tore by underneath him, pressing their pursuit to the limit. He giggled furiously.

  Back at the bunker, the last scout was undone. Subdued by Chewbacca, bound, stripped of his suit, he was being carried into the woods now by two other members of the strike team. The rest of the squad silently crouched, forming a perimeter around the entrance.

  Han stood at the door, checking the stolen code against the digits on the bunker’s control panel. With natural speed he punched a series of buttons on the panel. Silently, the door opened.

  Leia peeked inside. No sign of life. She motioned the others, and entered the bunker. Han and Chewie followed close on her heels. Soon the entire team was huddled inside the otherwise empty steel corridor, leaving one lookout outside, dressed in the unconscious scout’s uniform. Han pushed a series of buttons on the inner panel, closing the door behind them.

  Leia thought briefly of Luke—she hoped he could detain Vader at least long enough to allow her to destroy this shield generator; she hoped even more dearly he could avoid such a confrontation altogether. For she feared Vader was the stronger of the two.

  Furtively she led the way down the dark and low-beamed tunnel.

  Vader’s shuttle settled onto the docking bay of the Death Star, like a black, wingless carrion-eating bird; like a nightmare insect. Luke and the Dark Lord emerged from the snout of the beast with a small escort of stormtroopers, and walked rapidly across the cavernous main bay to the Emperor’s tower elevator.

  Royal guards awaited them there, flanking the shaft, bathed in a carmine glow. They opened the elevator door. Luke stepped forward.

  His mind was buzzing with what to do. It was the Emperor he was being taken to, now. The Emperor! If Luke could but focus, keep his mind clear to see what must be done—and do it.

  A great noise filled his head, though, like an underground wind.

  He hoped Leia deactivated the deflector shield quickly, and destroyed the Death Star—now, while all three of them were here. Before anything else happened. For the closer Luke came to the Emperor, the more anythings he feared would happen. A black storm raged inside him. He wanted to kill the Emperor, but then what? Confront Vader? What would his father do? And what if Luke faced his father first, faced him and—destroyed him. The thought was at once repugnant and compelling. Destroy Vader—and then what? For the first time, Luke had a brief murky image of himself, standing on his father’s body, holding his father’s blazing power, and sitting at the Emperor’s right hand.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against this thought, but it left a cold sweat on his brow, as if Death’s hand had brushed him there and left its shallow imprint.

  The elevator door opened. Luke and Vader walked out into the throne room alone, across the unlit ante-chamber, up the grated stairs, to stand before the throne: father and son, side by side, both dressed in black, one masked and one exposed, beneath the gaze of the malignant Emperor.

  Vader bowed to his master. The Emperor motioned him to rise, though; the Dark Lord did his master’s bidding.

  “Welcome, young Skywalker,” the Evil One smiled graciously. “I have been expecting you.”

  Luke stared back brazenly at the bent, hooded figure. Defiantly. The Emperor’s smile grew even softer, though; even more fatherly. He looked at Luke’s manacles.

  “You no longer need these,” he added with noblesse oblige—and made the slightest motion with his finger in the direction of Luke’s wrists. At that, Luke’s binders simply fell away, clattering noisily to the floor.

  Luke looked at his own h
ands—free, now, to reach out for the Emperor’s throat, to crush his windpipe in an instant...

  Yet the Emperor seemed gentle. Had he not just let Luke free? But he was devious, too, Luke knew. Do not be fooled by appearances, Ben had told him. The Emperor was unarmed. He could still strike. But wasn’t aggression part of the dark side? Mustn’t he avoid that at all costs? Or could he use darkness judiciously, and then put it away? He stared at his free hands... he could have ended it all right there—or could he? He had total freedom to choose what to do now; yet he could not choose. Choice, the double-edge sword. He could kill the Emperor, he could succumb to the Emperor’s arguments. He could kill Vader... and then he could even become Vader. Again this thought laughed at him like a broken clown, until he pushed it back into a black corner of his brain.

  The Emperor sat before him, smiling. The moment was con­vulsive with possibilities...

  The moment passed. He did nothing.

  “Tell me, young Skywalker,” the Emperor said when he saw Luke’s first struggle had taken its course. “Who has been involved in your training until now?” The smile was thin, open-mouthed, hollow.

  Luke was silent. He would reveal nothing.

  “Oh, I know it was Obi-Wan Kenobi at first,” the wicked ruler continued, rubbing his fingers together as if trying to remember. Then pausing, his lips creased into a sneer. “Of course, we are familiar with the talent Obi-Wan Kenobi had, when it came to training Jedi.” He nodded politely in Vader’s direction, indicating Obi-Wan’s previous star pupil. Vader stood without responding, without moving.

  Luke tensed with fury at the Emperor’s defamation of Ben -though, of course, to the Emperor it was praise. And he bridled even more, knowing the Emperor was so nearly right. He tried to bring his anger under control, though, for it seemed to please the malevolent dictator greatly.

  Palpatine noted the emotions on Luke’s face and chuckled. “So, in your early training you have followed your father’s path, it would seem. But alas, Obi-Wan is now dead, I believe; his elder student, here, saw to that—” again, he made a hand motion toward Vader. “So tell me, young Skywalker—who continued your training?”