Author's Note: For those who may have read the novelization of Rogue One, you may recall just how the chapter regarding this particular scene turned out. I was personally underwhelmed (and I'm already being overly generous in my choice of words) by how that was written. This is my way of rectifying that in a way only Darth Vader can.
Hope you guys enjoy! - SV
THE SHADOW WITH THE BURNING SWORD
"All I am surrounded by is fear...and dead men."
The Death Star.
A name more appropriate could not have been chosen, the late Galen Erso had said.
The Empire's ultimate weapon, a mechanical horror the size of a moon that can obliterate entire worlds at the flip of a switch.
They had seen enough upon witnessing a single energy bolt from the gargantuan space station rupturing the crust of Scarif, incinerating everything on it into atoms and dust.
It had caused enough fear in those who beheld its power to last for a thousand lifetimes.
But they had pressed on—motivated with hope and the valiant sacrifice of the individuals who had called themselves Rogue One.
Even then, they knew time was fast running out, and that they were outmanned and outgunned.
"Hurry!"
It took ages for the files to finally get uploaded onto the data disk, and time had never been on their side during that entire operation.
"Let's go! We've got to go now!"
Such were the cries of the frantic soldiers aboard The Profundity, counting down the moments as the Death Star's mammoth technical plans continued to download.
The soldier who stood at the computer terminal that transferred the massive amount of information into a data disk stood still—and yet his hands trembled as he broke in a cold sweat, knowing that the crippled Rebel flagship won't last long after the punishment it had taken from the battle that took place minutes before.
Three...two...one...and yes! At last...he took the data disk out, savoring a moment of triumph even as his hand continued to shake.
He knew then that he now held information that was beyond priceless.
In his hand was the hope of the galaxy against the Empire's monstrous creation.
Such knowledge had to be safeguarded and there was not a moment to lose.
His squadmates breathed sighs of relief even as the wall panels of the Profundity shook and shattered, spewed gouts of fire or sparks from the ultrastructure beneath. Wasting no time, the exhausted squadron quickly ran through a hallway in that dying ship toward the one person who absolutely had to survive this battle.
And they continued to hope.
We will survive! Some of them may have thought.
The first soldier who got to the blast door leading to the hangar did not wait for his squadmates—for there was no time—and quickly pressed an activation stud to open the massive door.
The door slid open quickly and then abruptly stuck with a deafening clang.
A crack barely wide enough for a hand to slide through was all the door offered.
The dumbfounded rebels quickly snapped out of their stupor and attempted to pry the unyielding door open through brute force.
Lights flickered and the Profundity continued to shake and tremble. From internal damage or fire from the Star Destroyers, they could not know.
The soldier with the Death Star plans banged and bellowed through the transparisteel viewport for his fellows who ran pell-mell on the opposite side of the durasteel barrier.
They all called out in vain.
None could hear them.
None could see them.
The hallway lights then went dead, and only the monotonous whine of the alarm klaxons and the distant creaks and groans of dying machinery kept them company.
And then, for no reason at all, they felt...cold.
A preternatural chill they could not place but one which their deepest, most animal minds could understand.
That animal mind, primed to spring in the face of adversity, knew something was fundamentally wrong with what all that was going on.
The soldiers could not explain why they suddenly decided to adopt combat formation aiming their blasters into the inky gloom.
They only knew that that was where the cold came from.
Those soldiers realized that they were not alone; for along with a fresh burst of winter cold that seemed to originate from the very depths of space came a sound from the gloom.
A deep, harsh, monotonous breathing akin to a dying beast having decided to slap on a ventilator mask.
Suddenly, a blade the color of blood erupted into life, throwing slivers of red through the smoking, savaged hall.
The darkness itself had come to life...and it now stood breathing across them with a sword of hellfire clutched in its hand.
The cold they had felt then froze solid, their very souls devoured by that oldest and most primal emotion of all.
They had heard stories...
Tales from those few who had somehow survived an encounter with the darkness.
They had judged such things as hearsay and ghost stories in the past...and yet there it loomed, every bit as real as they were.
With dread, they knew that the darkness had a name.
The soldiers of the Rebel Alliance were brave beings. Hard beings. They had no choice but to be so in order to fight the scourge of the Empire.
To be soft, to be afraid, was a sure way of getting killed.
War had its way of hardening soldiers, and for the most part was precisely what experience had made of them.
Yet no amount of experience, training or expertise could have ever prepared them for the thing that stood before them.
"OPEN FIRE!" the squadron commander screamed, but his fellow soldiers were already ahead of him.
In no time at all, the ruined, darkened hallway was filled by a hail of blaster bolts fired from shaking, sweating hands until a veritable storm of plasma hurtled through space toward the looming darkness.
It would have been a death sentence to anyone.
If the soldiers had been terrified when they first saw the imposing figure materialize into existence, then words could not describe what they felt when it started to casually advance upon them.
Worse, and with impossible ease, it caught every single one of the blaster bolts with the red lightsaber it held in one hand, sending them careening into the walls or back at their sources.
In the next few moments, the survivors would learn that the squadmates who had caught their own rebounding shots were the lucky ones.
The cold only grew as the dark figure advanced with measured ease.
Consuming their will.
Strangling the very air in their throats.
Two soldiers had entirely given up—their bowels loosening in paroxysms of horror even as they dropped their blasters and proceeded to slam numbed fists on the unyielding door.
Even in their wild eyed, weak-kneed frenzy of shouting for help from behind that inexorable barrier, some part of them knew that it was the shadow that was responsible for the door jamming.
The shadow seemed to be taking its time, playing with the survivors, carelessly batting away the hail of blaster bolts with its sword.
The squadron of rebels retreated on weakening knees toward the blast door even as they continued to exhaust their blasters' fuel cartridges in their vain attempt to kill or somehow stall the walking darkness.
It seemed to grow larger and larger with each step it took, and the atmosphere within grew even thicker with raw fear.
A passing soldier already prepared for the evacuation heard shouts and banging from the blast door leading to an airlock.
What he saw, aside from his fellow soldiers who were in tears begging for help and pulling at the door, chilled him to the bone.
The trapped squadron was fast firing into the gloom where a red bar of light caught every bolt.
There he saw why his comrades had been utterly broken by fear—the shadow with the burning sword.
With a casual gesture from the shadow, lo and behold, they all witnessed their comrade fly up unsupported and smash onto a ceiling panel.
The outsider's breath caught in his throat, feeling a supernatural cold radiate from within the black chamber of slaughter that was the hallway.
His fellows were akin to children forced to live out the ghost stories that had frightened them most.
What the black demon was doing was impossible—but it did so anyway.
The soldier pinned on the ceiling, the sheer horror in his eyes visible even all the way through the viewport, did not last long afterward—a contemptuous backward slash of the darkness' lightsaber ripped him clean in half.
"HELP US!" his trapped fellow on the other side of the viewport bellowed.
He quickly logged in the pass key to the door and ran a simultaneous instant diagnostic and was astonished to find that the blast door was in perfect condition.
Yet there it stood, unmoving and unyielding, sealing those inside with the darkness that thirsted for blood.
Soon he resorted to brute force in combination to those inside who were attempting to pry the door open—but the door still would not yield.
It simply stretched a hand, and the demonic figure drew the lethal bolts of light into its palm for a fraction of a second before flinging them back to their sources.
His opposite from the other side of the damned door—the side where the shadow rained down blow after merciless blow, carving effortlessly through the helpless, screaming remainder of their squadron—finally was able to force his hand with the data disk through the tiny gap, bellowing desperately for the free soldier to take it.
The outsider was hurled backward by some invisible force of will the moment he had taken the disk and from the damned door witnessed the light leave his fellow soldier's eyes when that burning red blade speared through the foot-thick steel as easily as it had through his comrade's beating heart.
Wincing from the pain, the soldier with the disk was then helped to his feet by a couple of his surviving comrades.
The blast door then opened as if nothing had gone wrong.
The soldier ran sobbing and slipping and stumbling toward the docking bay where the salvation of the galaxy may be safeguarded.
It was no guarantee and fighting back now seemed not only pointless but a laughably foolish enterprise.
It was not because of the war, nor because of the battle which had already cost countless Rebel ships and lives.
Only minutes had passed from when an Imperial landing craft had forcefully boarded the Profundity and things had gone from bad to unspeakably worse.
Most of those who remained no longer recalled the battle, for what was that compared to what had transpired?
Forget the planet-destroying power of the Death Star which stood ominously out the viewports.
Forget the fact that the Rebel flagship was crippled beyond repair and still continued to take fire from an entire fleet of Star Destroyers.
Death itself had come aboard the Profundity.
Inexorable.
Insatiable.
Invincible.
All the soldier knew was that the disk inside his pocket must not be allowed to fall into the hands of death.
He ran as quick as his exhausted legs could take him as soon as his fellows had helped him up,.
I'm sorry...
The next thing he heard, to his shame, were the sounds of their tortured screams.
I'm sorry!
He continued to run, eyes streaming with fearful tears, through those fellows of his who had chosen to go down with the ship in a last stand.
Braver men then he.
What use though was bravery against the shadow?
He noted a grim justification for his actions as he felt the the horrifying cold growing closer even as those brave soldiers attempted to bring it down with everything they had.
He heard the shadow's loud, unchanging mechanical breaths and its hungry sword catching blaster bolt and flesh and bone with absolute impunity.
So close he was to the docking bay where a rebel pilot stood ready to slam the door shut, shouting for him to hurry.
The soldier then had his feet lift off the ground by their own volition, as if an invisible hook and chain had caught him by his insides, wrenching him backward through the ruined darkened corridors.
With a last anguished scream of defiance, he tossed the data disk to the pilot who promptly caught it in the nick of time.
The paltry few who attempted to save him only ensured that he was not the last to die that day.
The alarms that sounded off in the docking bay was not welcome news for the shadow.
It quickly made its way to its target, ignoring the flickering lights and the burning structure of the dying flagship.
It had nothing to be afraid of the dark, for it was the dark.
Its fury gathered from within, and the Force shattered under its power.
The sad number who remained still attempted to resist.
Their fear gave it power and it fed off them as if a voracious parasite.
The ship's corridors crumpled and flew about the wraith in a maelstrom of apocalyptic proportions, throwing and tearing apart bodies of ally and enemy alike as it ran on powerful mechanized legs toward the Corellian CR90 Corvette that had just begun to launch.
It must not escape.
The shadow reached out and grasped, and felt the shape of the Corvette trapped squarely in its fist.
The ship promptly halted halfway through the docking bay doors.
Drawing power from the event horizon of the dark side, the shadow felt an intoxicating rush of terror from the survivors within the ship.
The Corvette's metal hull groaned and strained as it continued its attempt to escape the black demon's indomitable power and it felt a savage pleasure knowing it was about to get its prize.
Suddenly, a torrent from the light exploded into existence—and in that split second when the Force had somehow struck back against the darkness' will did the Corvette manage to jump into hyperspace.
The shadow said nothing and only its mechanical breathing broke the silence; yet its wrath burst like a supernova from within its being, imploding what remained of the devastated docking bay of the Profundity along with the bodies of those stormtroopers who had the misfortune of trying to help their master.
It then deactivated the red blade which still hungered for more blood.
Through muted-red lenses that served for its eyes, the shadow looked out onto the black vacuum of space.
Through infinity, its rage seethed.