The Empire Strikes Back (Junior Novelization)
Page 15
As the Falcon hurtled forward, Leia moved Luke to a bunk and broke out the ship’s emergency medical supplies. She worked fast and did her best to treat his wounds, and didn’t ask for details when she placed the autotourniquet on his right arm. But Leia suspected she’d be needed in the cockpit, so when Luke was stabilized, she kissed him and said, “I’ll be back.”
Leia entered the cockpit and took the navigator’s seat behind Lando. Both Chewbacca and Lando were flipping switches and adjusting controls as they tried to shake off the TIE fighters that were now hammering the Falcon’s deflector shields with their lasers. As the Falcon entered space, Leia saw a large, wedge-shaped ship in orbit of Bespin, and said, “Star Destroyer.”
It was Vader’s ship, the Executor.
“All right, Chewie,” Lando said. “Ready for lightspeed.”
“If your people fixed the hyperdrive,” Leia pointed out. After all, she’d been disappointed by the Falcon’s hyperdrive twice before.
Ignoring Leia’s remark, Lando said, “All the coordinates are set. It’s now or never.”
Chewbacca barked.
Lando ordered, “Punch it!”
The Wookiee pulled back on the throttle. The engine sounded like it was winding up, then it cut off.
“They told me they fixed it,” Lando said as Chewbacca let out a frustrated howl. “I trusted them to fix it.”
More flak exploded outside the Falcon. Leia sat back in her seat and glared at Lando. Chewbacca jumped out of his seat and stormed out of the cockpit.
“It’s not my fault!” Lando insisted.
After returning to the Executor, Darth Vader proceeded to the bridge and walked directly to Admiral Piett’s command station. Snapping to attention at the sight of Vader, Piett announced, “They’ll be in range of our tractor beam in moments, lord.”
Vader asked, “Did your men deactivate the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon?”
“Yes, my lord,” Piett reported. He knew if his men hadn’t done their job, he’d be a dead man.
“Good,” Vader said. “Prepare a boarding party and set your weapons for stun.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Seated on a crate in the Millennium Falcon’s main hold, C-3PO was almost entirely reassembled except for his lower left leg, which he held across his lap. Since boarding the Falcon, R2-D2 had been working as fast as he could to put his friend back together, and was now using a retractable tool to repair C-3PO’s right foot.
Chewbacca ran into the hold and grunted loudly to himself. C-3PO remarked, “Noisy brute. Why don’t we just go into lightspeed?”
While Chewbacca lifted the deck plates to uncover the access pit, R2-D2 beeped his explanation.
“We can’t?” C-3PO said. “How would you know the hyperdrive is deactivated?”
As Chewbacca jumped into the pit, R2-D2 whistled knowingly.
“The city’s central computer told you?” said C-3PO, surprised. “Artoo-Detoo, you know better than to trust a strange computer.”
R2-D2’s extended repair tool sparked against the golden droid’s right foot.
“Ouch!” C-3PO cried. “Pay attention to what you’re doing!”
In the pit, Chewbacca confronted the hyperdrive with a fusioncutter. There was an unexpected flash of electric current, triggering a surge that caused sparks to fly in the Falcon’s cockpit.
On the bridge of the Executor, Vader gazed through the viewport and watched the Falcon attempt to evade the pursuing TIE fighters. Focusing his attention on the ship that carried the young Skywalker, he said aloud, “Luke.”
On the Falcon, Luke’s head lifted from his bunk. He said, “Father.”
Son, Vader said from across space, come with me.
Luke’s head fell back to the bunk. “Ben,” he moaned, “why didn’t you tell me?” Then the ship’s hull shuddered. Luke rose from his bunk, taking the blanket with him, and proceeded to the cockpit.
In the cockpit, Lando shouted into the comm, “Chewie!”
In the main hold’s access pit, Chewbacca heard Lando and angrily smashed the fusioncutter against the hyperdrive mechanism.
Back in the cockpit, Lando and Leia looked up in surprise as Luke entered. Wrapped in the blanket, he gazed out the cockpit at the Executor and said, “It’s Vader.”
Then Luke heard Vader’s voice again from across space: Luke…it is your destiny.
Luke sank back into the seat behind Leia. He closed his eyes and groaned again, “Ben, why didn’t you tell me?”
The Executor was closing in on the Millennium Falcon. Admiral Piett turned to a lieutenant and said, “Alert all commands. Ready for the tractor beam.”
“Artoo, come back at once!” C-3PO cried in the Falcon’s main hold. “You haven’t finished with me yet!” Indeed, C-3PO was still holding his left leg. As R2-D2 scooted past the access pit that contained the furious Chewbacca and over to the main engineering console, C-3PO said, “You don’t know how to fix the hyperdrive. Chewbacca can do it. I’m standing here in pieces, and you’re having delusions of grandeur!”
R2-D2 extended his manipulator arm to move a circuit on a control panel. Suddenly, the control panel lit up, and the hyperdrive kicked in.
“You did it!” C-3PO shouted as the entire ship tilted up, sending R2-D2 rolling backward into the open pit to fall on top of Chewbacca. The hyperdrive engines roared.
In the cockpit, Luke was already seated, but Leia and Lando were nearly thrown off their feet as the ship blasted into hyperspace.
In the blink of an eye, the Millennium Falcon was gone. On the Executor’s bridge, Admiral Piett gasped, then looked at Darth Vader and cringed.
Vader was still facing the viewport, gazing at the area where the Millennium Falcon had been just moments before escaping into hyperspace. He turned slowly, then proceeded across the walkway, away from the viewport. Below Vader, the technicians in the bridge’s lower level looked up at him, waiting for him to react to the situation.
Maintaining his slow stride, Vader glanced to his right and barely noticed Admiral Piett. The Sith Lord could practically taste the Imperial officer’s fear, but as angry as he was at losing Luke, he knew that Piett—unlike some recently deceased Imperial officers—was not at fault. Vader had much to contemplate, so he looked away from Piett and kept walking.
Without a word, he left the bridge.
The Rebel fleet was traveling through space, en route to what the Rebel Alliance hoped would be their new secret base. X-wing and Y-wing starfighters cruised past some of the larger vessels, including a three-hundred-meter-long Nebulon-B escort frigate, which had been converted for medical duty.
A single ship was attached to the Nebulon-B’s docking tube: the Millennium Falcon. In the Falcon’s cockpit, Lando Calrissian was in the pilot’s seat. As Chewbacca entered the cockpit, Lando spoke into his comlink, “Luke, we’re ready for takeoff.”
Luke’s voice answered, “Good luck, Lando.”
Lando said, “When we find Jabba the Hutt and that bounty hunter, we’ll contact you.”
Luke answered into his own comlink, “I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point on Tatooine.” Showered and wearing a clean white robe, Luke was sitting on an elevated bed in the Nebulon-B’s surgery suite. The bed was adjusted to an upright position so he could watch 2-1B, the medical droid, who stood to his right. At the foot of his bed, Leia stood quietly, listening to Luke’s conversation with Lando.
From Luke’s comlink, Lando’s voice said, “Princess, we’ll find Han. I promise.”
Luke thought Leia might say something, but she remained silent, so he said into his comlink, “Chewie, I’ll be waiting for your signal.”
The Wookiee wailed over the comlink.
Luke said, “Take care, you two. May the Force be with you.”
Chewbacca’s wail was heard again over the comlink, which brought a smile to Leia’s face. Luke grinned back at her, but then Leia’s smile seemed to melt away into an expre
ssion of sadness.
No, not sadness, Luke thought as she stepped away from him. She’s devastated. Devastated about Han.
Leia moved across the room to join R2-D2 and the fully repaired C-3PO, who were facing a wide viewport. Luke turned his attention back to 2-1B’s surgical work. At Luke’s right wrist, there was an open panel that exposed the working mechanisms for his new hand, a realistic-looking synthetic replica that the droid had already attached to the end of Luke’s arm.
Testing the hand’s artificial nerve connections, 2-1B prodded the fingers with a thin metal pin. “Ow!” Luke said, feeling the pin’s contact. Luke wriggled the fingers, made a fist, then relaxed his hand. It was completely functional.
Luke rose from the bed and stepped over beside Leia and the droids. He followed their gaze out the viewport and watched the deployed Millennium Falcon glide past and away from the medical frigate. He put his arm around Leia’s back and held her to his side, hoping to comfort her, then he realized he was touching her shoulder with his new hand.
R2-D2 whistled as the Falcon flew out of sight. Still standing by Leia, Luke thought about the future. Will we be able to rescue Han? Why didn’t Ben tell me the truth? And what will I do if…no, not if. What will I do when I next meet Darth Vader?
My father.
The future had once seemed so promising to Luke, but now everything seemed uncertain and complicated. What had Yoda said? Always in motion is the future.
The medical frigate and the rest of the Rebel fleet slowly veered onto a different course, then continued on into space.
Like his father, Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker had a future to think about.
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MAY 2014
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