The wind blew softly through the grass on a planet largely covered by plains in the deep core. A herd of six horses munched on grass while I slept on a bed of evergreen boughs. A mule stood over me watching me sleep. I dreamt of a man in a tie advanced fighter in black armor. 7 X wings were surrounding the tie fighter. The shields of the tie fighter had been completely destroyed. The hyperdrive was lost as well as one of the engines. Seeing that the tie fighter was trapped by the planet's gravitational pull the X wings peeled away. The tie fighter orbited the planet getting drawn in ever closer to its atmosphere. The edge of one of the wings of the tie fighter hit the atmosphere first causing in to cartwheel down to the ground.

I slept deeply in my tie fighter exhausted from going over plans for the Death Star with Palpatine. I was so tired that I absentmindedly failed to reach out through the force while I slept to scan for other life forms in my vicinity. I awoke to alarms blaring because I was being fired upon by a squadron of X wings. I channeled the anger I felt over my own carelessness to using it to immerse myself into the dark side. The pilot of the X wing closest to me clawed at his throat in a desperate attempt to breath. He soon fell still killed by my force choke. But not even my talent in using the force could protect me from the overwhelming numbers of the X wings.

This attack on me was clearly planned. One did not encounter by chance as squadron of 8 X wings. They must have dropped out of hyperspace right next to me otherwise my astromech would have alerted me to their presence. Someone must have betrayed me by leaking my flight plans to the rebellion. As I fell helplessly from the sky sucked into the planet's gravity, I went over the short list of people who knew my flight plans. All of them I had known for years and were therefore confident of their loyalty except for Admiral Piett's new assistant Lieutenant Conrat. I vowed revenge upon him. No traitor to the Galactic Empire lives for long.

My Tie-Fighter cartwheeled out of control as it entered the planet's atmosphere because all Tie-Fighters were only designed for travel in space. A plateau loomed before me and in spite of all of my years of meditation terror rose up within me. I used the force to try to redirect my crash into the cliff. It was a partial success. I hit the cliff at a shallow angle. The impacted jerked me forward. I collided with the control panel then everything went black.

I awoke with a start. The sky was just starting to turn grey in the east. Sensing my alarm, the herd looked up from their grazing. "It was only a dream," I spoke reassuringly to them, "you can go back to eating your breakfast." Yet in spite of my reassurance all of them did not go back to grazing. Cloud an aloof mare stared east in the direction of the plateau.

"Shit!" I hissed under my breath my jaw clenched. As far as I was aware there was only one person, if he even deserved to be called that, who wore life supporting armor. Of course it had to be my luck that Darth Vader would crash land on the planet that I was on.

The logical thing to do would have been to run far far away from there. Yet I was strangely drawn toward the east. I got dressed, stamped out my fire, and ate a handful of chestnuts that I had roasted last night for breakfast. Seeing that Cloud, Lady, and Tiny were already moderately clean I just quickly groomed their saddle and girth areas with a stiff brush. Then I saddled the horses. Lady and Tiny each had a pack saddle. Lady carried my belongings while Tiny, a massive draft horse, carried a days' worth of water for everyone. Cloud had a side saddle without a leaping horn. It was my preferred saddle to use when traveling through areas that were generally safe such as this one. Riding side saddle spared a part of me that tended to get sensitive around that time of month while the lack of a leaping horn enabled me to ride normally as well as on the off side using the same saddle. I smiled as I checked the time on my data pad. I had broken camp and saddled the horses in under twelve minutes, a new record.

I held Cloud's reins loose letting her pick her way towards the crash in the east that she was so interested in. The plateau loomed ahead growing ever larger. After quarter hour I switched to riding on the off side prompting several loud cracks from my back. As she grew more confident of where she was heading Cloud broke into a trot. The rest of the herd followed alongside her. It was not long until she paused at the edge of a clearing at the bottom of the plateau.

It was not so much a natural clearing as a furrow carved through the glade by a Tie-Fighter. Yet again I found myself questioning why I was doing something so stupid as approaching a starfighter that probably held Darth Vader. To my own surprise my curiosity drove me on. The impact of the crash had partially opened the cockpit. Seeing a dead tree branch I reached up and hung on it. With a crack it broke off. I dragged it over and jammed the end in the cockpit. I rolled a rock over to use as a fulcrum. Sat on the other end of the branch and the cockpit opened far enough for me to enter it. I used the force to hold it open.

I slithered in head first. Darth Vader lay slumped over the controls legs awkwardly crossed. His lower legs were pinned by debris. His suit had been damaged by the crash and as far as I could tell was only functioning enough to keep him breathing. I reached out through the force to try to further discern his condition. The majority of his legs were cybernetic. I sighed with relief. That would make it far easier to free him. I grappled around for his light saber. I cut through the lower part of his legs and the straps on his harness. Next I pondered the problem of how to extract him from the cockpit without causing him further harm. I sat there for a good thirty seconds before the answer came to me. I was so stupid! I had a lightsaber. I could cut my way out of there.

I jumped out of the cockpit and gingerly dragged Darth Vader out behind me. Now that he was free of the damaged craft, I could finally get a better look at his injuries. The first thing that I looked at was the damage to his suit. An inability to breath tends to kill one rather quickly. After a bit of fiddling around with it, I was able to access the system diagnostics on his suit. While his suit was able to continue acting as a ventilator for him all of the climate control functions of it had failed. In addition to that there was only about a day's supply of IV fluids left. That put a serious wrench in my plans. I was about 5 days travel away from home by the way I had come. Through taking an alternative route I could cut it down to 3 days but that traveling away from fresh water through long expanses of exposed terrain.

Now assured that he wasn't about to stop breathing on my I set about trying to fix his legs. I suspected that his hips were dislocated. I had seen that injury once before when it happened to an old friend of mine in a speeder crash. I reduce the dislocations with no small amount of cursing. Darth Vader was fit and after his hips being dislocated for hours his muscles had started to spasm. As his second hip finally when back into place with a clunk I felt presence of someone in pain in the force.