Lando’s voice sounded in the hold through the intercom. “Chewie, check the secondary deviation controls.”
Chewbacca dropped into the hold’s pit. He fought to loosen a section of the paneling with an enormous wrench. But it failed to budge. Roaring in frustration, he gripped the tool like a club and bashed the panel with all his strength.
Suddenly the cockpit control panel sprayed Lando and the princess with a shower of sparks. They jumped back in their seats in surprise, but Luke didn’t seem to notice anything happening around him. His head hung in discouragement and deep pain.
“I won’t be able to resist him,” he muttered softly.
Again Lando banked the Millennium Falcon, trying to shed the pursuers. But the distance between freighter and TIE fighters was narrowing by the moment.
In the Millennium Falcon’s hold, Artoo raced to a control panel, leaving an outraged Threepio to stand sputtering in place on his one attached leg. Artoo worked swiftly, relying only on mechanical instinct to reprogram the circuit board. Lights flashed brightly with each of Artoo’s adjustments, when suddenly, from deep within the Falcon’s hyperspeed engines, a new and powerful hum resonated throughout the ship.
The freighter tilted suddenly, sending the whistling R2 droid rolling across the floor into the pit to land on the startled Chewbacca.
Lando, who had been standing near the control panel, tumbled back against the cockpit wall. But as he fell back, he saw the stars outside become blinding, infinite streaks of light.
“We did it!” Lando yelled triumphantly.
The Millennium Falcon had shot victoriously into hyperdrive.
Darth Vader stood silently. He gazed at the black void where, a moment before, the Millennium Falcon had been. His deep, black silence brought terror to the two men standing near him. Admiral Piett and his captain waited, chills of fear coursing through their bodies, and wondered how soon they would feel the invisible, viselike talons around their throats.
But the Dark Lord did not move. He stood, silently contemplative, with his hands behind his back. Then he turned and slowly walked off the bridge, his ebony cloak billowing behind him.
= XIV =
THE Millennium Falcon was at last safely docked on a huge Rebel cruiser. Gleaming in the distance was a glorious red glow that radiated from a large red star—a glow that shed its crimson light on the battered hull of the small freighter craft.
Luke Skywalker rested in the medical center of the Rebel Star Cruiser, where he was attended by the surgeon droid called Too-Onebee. The youth sat quietly, thoughtfully, while Too-Onebee gently began to look at his wounded hand.
Gazing up, Luke saw Leia, followed by See Threepio and Artoo Detoo, entering the medical center to check his progress, and, perhaps, bring him a little cheer. But Luke knew that the best therapy he had received yet aboard this cruiser was in the radiant image before him.
Princess Leia was smiling. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with a wondrous glow. She looked just as she had that first time he saw her—a lifetime ago, it seemed—when Artoo Detoo first projected her holographic image. And, in her floor-length, high-necked gown of purest white, she looked angelic.
Raising his hand, Luke offered it to the expert service of Too-Onebee. The surgeon droid examined the bionic hand that was skillfully fused to Luke’s arm. Then the robot wrapped a soft metalized strip about the hand and attached a small electronic unit to the strip, tightening it slightly. Luke made a fist with his new hand and felt the healing pulsations imparted by Too-Onebee’s apparatus. Then he let his hand and arm relax.
Leia and the two droids moved closer to Luke as a voice came over an intercom loudspeaker. It was Lando: “Luke. . .” the voice blared, “we’re ready for takeoff.”
Lando Calrissian sat in the Millennium Falcon’s pilot’s chair. He had missed his old freighter, but now that he was once again its captain, he felt quite uncomfortable. In his copilot’s chair, the great Wookiee Chewbacca noticed his new captain’s discomfort while he began to throw the switches to ready the ship for takeoff.
Luke’s voice came over Lando’s comlink speaker: “I’ll meet you on Tatooine.”
Again Lando spoke into his comlink microphone, but this time he spoke to Leia: “Don’t worry, Leia,” he said with emotion, “we’ll find Han.”
And leaning over, Chewbacca barked his farewell into the microphone—a bark that may have transcended the limits of time and space to be heard by Han Solo, wherever the bounty hunter had taken him.
It was Luke who spoke the final farewell, though he refused to say good-bye. “Take care, my friends,” he said with a new maturity in his voice. “May the Force be with you.”
Leia stood alone at the great circular window of the Rebel Star Cruiser, her slim white-draped form dwarfed by the vast canopy of stars and the drifting ships of the fleet. She watched the majestic scarlet star that burned in the infinite black sea.
Luke, with Threepio and Artoo tagging along, moved to stand next to her. He understood what she was feeling for he knew how terrible such a loss could be.
Standing together, the group faced the inviting heavens and saw the Millennium Falcon moving into view, then veering off in another direction to soar with great dignity through the Rebel fleet. Soon the Millennium Falcon had left the fleet in its wake.
They needed no words in this moment. Luke knew that Leia’s mind and heart were with Han, no matter where he was or what his fate might be. As to his own destiny, he was now more uncertain about himself than he had ever been—even before this simple farm boy on a distant world first learned of the intangible something called the Force. He only knew he had to return to Yoda and finish his training before he set off to rescue Han.
Slowly he put his arm around Leia and together with Threepio and Artoo, they faced the heavens bravely, each of them gazing at the same crimson star.
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Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back Page 18