The Longest Night
A Star Wars Fan Fiction
Authors note: This story is completely written. I'm going to post a chapter every other day, in order to facilitate my need to edit to insanity and to enable my very wonderful beta reader jublke to do her thing. The story takes place shortly after ROTJ.
Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to Disney, obviously, and not to me. No copyright infringement is intended.
The speeder flew through the remains of the city, dodging heaps of rubble and occasionally clipping a side fin, when the space Han chose to race through wasn't quite big enough to accommodate the elderly vehicle he was piloting. Leia held onto the side of the speeder with one desperate hand. The other hand, equally desperate, fired her blaster at their pursuers.
"Haven't you hit anybody yet?" Han yelled, steering wildly around the skeleton of a doorway.
"Every time I hit one of them, another one just takes his place!"
The supply of stormtroopers seemed to be never ending. That wasn't good. The high-pitched wheezing sound the speeder was making, that wasn't good either. Being back on the Falcon with Luke, Chewie and the droids—now that would be good. But no, Leia had felt duty-bound to view the ruin of Toprawa firsthand, as if somehow she were responsible for its destruction, instead of the Empire.
Han had told Leia he thought it might be a trap, but she told him that visiting a world decimated by the Empire would show them how the New Republic could help. She had told him he didn't need to come, that she was perfectly able to take care of herself, but he just raised an eyebrow in response and asked her since when. She told him there would be a local representative of their new government there to be her guide; he told her the guide was probably a snitch, and that maybe the news of the Emperor's death hadn't made it to the Outer Rim yet. She told him she wasn't afraid. But there had never been a doubt but that Han was going with her—and that made her feel better, like it always did.
Leia was never naïve enough to believe that the war would be over just because Emperor Palpatine was dead. It was a big galaxy, and she understood there would be pockets of diehards who would continue to fight long after there was nothing left to fight for. There were even worlds that believed they would be better off under the Empire than the New Republic. But she hadn't expected that kind of resistance on this particular world, which had been punished so harshly by the late Emperor. So, when the stormtroopers had first jumped them—when they had first realized it was a trap—Leia had been dumbfounded. But Han hadn't. Instead, he grabbed their escort by the collar, who it turned out was a snitch, and threw him out of the speeder into the dust. Then he commandeered the speeder, and was now driving the antiquated vehicle with a speed and agility that shouldn't be possible. At first, Leia even thought they might actually get away; now, she wasn't quite so sure.
Another wheeze, which sounded ominously like a death rattle, issued from the speeder's engine compartment. Han pounded his fist on the control panel and the wheezing stopped. His responding smile was a mixture of relief and self-satisfaction.
"It's good to know that all the skills you've picked up flying that miserable excuse for a freighter are useful," Leia observed. She fired off another volley of shots at the pursuing speeder bikes. It looked like they were getting closer. "Can you make this thing go any faster?" she asked him.
"Sweetheart, we're already going faster than it can go!" He turned his head, just for a fraction of a second, to flash her a lopsided grin. Leia couldn't help herself, she grinned back, then returned to firing at the pursuing stormtroopers. Two went down, no new ones joined the chase. Now, if they could just get a little further away…
"Uh, oh."
Those were almost the last words Leia would ever hear. The whine of the overtaxed speeder's engine reached an ear-shattering pitch, then, with one final clunk, its generator gave out altogether. The vehicle continued to rocket forward through sheer momentum, but as the repulsor field failed, the speeder began bottoming out in the rubble littering the ground, and its forward motion slowed.
Han did his best to steer the dying craft toward the shelter of some twisted trees; it was only as they wobbled closer that he saw his mistake. Beyond the copse the ground disappeared. He had no idea how far down the drop was, but he knew that finding out wouldn't be good. Wasting no time on words, Han grabbed Leia by the shoulders and flung her out of the speeder, away from the drop. She felt herself bounce onto the uneven ground and tumble downward as Han threw himself after her. The speeder veered right, bounced into a wall, and exploded into a ball of fiery blue-white energy and shrapnel. Then Leia's world went dark.
Pain was the first thing Leia became aware of; it twisted and snarled inside her like a living thing. She sucked air into her lungs, relieved to find that she could still do so. A few more breaths and the pain went from being completely overpowering to just about bearable. Idly, she noticed that the left side of her face felt as if there were hundreds of pins and needles sticking into it. When she lifted her head, she discovered that this made that particular set of pains became nothing more than a dull burning sensation. Encouraged by her success, she tested other parts of her anatomy, and was pleased to discover that all of them still seemed to be in working order. Knowing that she probably wouldn't like what she would see, she'd left the task of opening her eyes until last. She rubbed dirt and sand away from her face with a shaky hand, then slowly cracked the lids open, blinking away what seemed to be a planet full of grit.
What she saw made her want to close them again. Night was falling; she'd been out longer than she'd thought. Leia discovered that she'd landed halfway down a steep embankment, and was now lying wedged in the hollow of an exposed tree root. She hadn't realized how hilly the landscape was, away from where they'd landed the Falcon. Well, at least she hadn't gone over the cliff, which was the direction she thought she'd been heading. The speeder hadn't gone over the cliff, either, but it might as well have. At the top of the embankment, its remains burned merrily; the orange flames occasionally sparking with blue, or green, or violet, as some particular metal or chemical incinerated. It looked like fireworks. She slowly scanned the surrounding area, but saw no sign of the stormtroopers who'd been chasing them. They probably assumed they'd been fried inside the speeder.
Wait a minute: speeder, stormtroopers, running for their lives…
"Han!" At first, she couldn't get her voice to work. She tried again.
"Han! Han!" A potent combination of adrenaline and panic shot her to her feet, and had her clinging woozily to the twisted tree for support.
"Han!" Leia yelled as loud as she could; then she listened. The air was filled with sounds—snapping and popping from the burning speeder, the rustling of the wind in the tree branches, small creatures in the brush. None of it was the one thing she wanted to hear—the voice she desperately needed to hear.
"Han," she whispered. "Han, where are you?"