II: OBJECTS IN SPACE

Tantive IV had eleven engines, engines that were among the fastest in their class. She possessed one of the fastest hyperdrive engines in the 'Verse, which was what had allowed her to get to Tatooine airspace so quickly. However, she was lacking in certain other key elements.

Her shielding was strong enough to stand up to cosmic radiation and incoming space junk, but not much else. The only weapons mounted on her hull were four low-power flash cannons, normally used for clearing debris from her path. While she could outrun an enemy, there was no way she could outgun, say, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer.

Darth Vader had, of course, been sure to bring one.

The Devastator possessed over a hundred different weapons, and it was making good use of them, bringing down Tantive IV's shields with a withering ion cannon barrage, then crippling her drive with a hail of turbolaser fire. The other ship was putting up a token resistance, its rear-facing batteries firing helplessly back at the white, wedge-shaped behemoth behind it, and occasionally their blasts met Imperial blasts, lighting up the vacuum with bursts of colliding plasma. On another day, Vader might have taken mild interest in the light show.

Today, though, he had a score to settle.

"Are they in range of our tractor beam?" the cyborg Lord asked the captain of his flagship.

"They will be within moments, my lord," the officer replied.

"Excellent. Prepare a boarding party, and inform them that I will be joining them." The decision was a spur-of-the-moment one. Vader had not taken the field in a while. This mission would be an excellent one on which to remedy that problem.

"I shall inform them at once, my lord," the captain replied, executing a brisk salute. "And, if I may say so, congratulations on tracking them down. The Alliance will crumble after this, I have no doubt."

Normally, Vader would have bristled if an inferior officer had the nerve to "congratulate" his commander, but he let it go without a response. His artificial breathing function slightly quickening, the ebony-cloaked Sith Lord swept from the bridge to take stock of the boarding party.

— — — —

"Did you hear that?" See Threepio inquired of his friend and sometime counterpart, Artoo Detoo. The protocol droid had thought he'd be glad when the Tantive IV ceased its violent shuddering, but now that it had, he found himself profoundly worried. "They've shut down the main reactor and the drive!" The shuddering began again, only faster and harder this time, and Threepio was thrown into the nearby wall, scuffing his golden finish. "Madness, this is madness!" he muttered to himself as he steadied himself. "We'll all be destroyed for sure!"

Artoo tootled a brief response, continuing to doggedly make his way down the thin, white corridor. "Well, yes, I suppose it was necessary to shut the drive down," Threepio replied, servomometers whining as he hurried after his little companion, "but I can't believe we're simply going to surrender! There'll be no escape for Mistress Inara this time."

As if to contradict the droid's outburst, a dozen humans, no uniforms to speak of save for various brown coats, each wearing a white helmet and carrying an antiquated blaster pistol sidearm, scrambled past, checking safeties and muttering a mix of prayers and curses. Threepio watched them for a moment, feeling an odd and very organic fusion of both fear for himself and Artoo and admiration for the men about to give their lives to protect his mistress.

Artoo had stopped to watch also. The two friends, one squat and barrel-shaped, the other tall, golden, and bipedal, stared down the corridor at the airlock door. After a few moments, there came a most peculiar noise from the other side of the door. "Artoo, I think we had better be—"

The rest of Threepio's statement was lost as the edges of the door began to smoke, then burst into red flame, then exploded entirely. The Alliance men didn't wait for targets to appear out of the haze, but began firing immediately, red, green, and blue plasma streaming at the ruined door. There were screams and clattering, and Threepio felt a moment of relief. Perhaps they can hold them off long enough that Mistress Inara can break free of—

That thought, too, was lost to history, as the soldier closest to the door shrieked and went down, a gout of flame bursting from his chest. White-armored figures in full helmets began to charge through the breach, and Threepio really didn't want to be standing around in their range of fire when they ran out of Rebel targets. The protocol droid turned and ran—well, shuffled as fast as his metal legs could take him—back down the corridor towards the nearest door, Artoo in his wake.

— — — —

The two sides exchanged fire down the entire length of the ship. White-armored troopers went down, clutching at flaming chests; Alliance men, young and old, were blown apart by blasts from automatic rifles or miniature grenades. Amidst it all, the ship's droid crew scurried every which way, self-preservation programming on full blazing overload.

The Rebel men knew they were doomed. They fought like men who had nothing to lose and nothing to gain, many not even bothering to take cover behind walls and crates. The Imperials used similar tactics, relying on their superior numbers to keep them safe. The Rebels were slowly being forced to the back of the ship.

Vader stepped aboard confidently, black cape contrasting sharply with the white interior of the captured vessel, one hand on his lightsaber in case of any surprise attacks. He strode down two lengths of corridor before being met by several of his boarding party, clustered around a brown-coated old man with a small insignia of a raptor taking flight over his breast pocket. "The captain, my lord," the officer in charge of the troops informed the Sith Lord.

Vader smiled beneath his mask, despite the pain it caused him. They were getting results, and fast. "Excellent." He stepped forward and looked down on the captain, who stared back defiantly. "Captain, the plans, if you please," Vader said smugly.

No reply.

"Where are the plans?"

"Captain Raymus Antilles, Serial Number THX-1—"

Vader reached for the man's throat and hauled him up into the air.

Slowly, enjoying the look of terror in the again captain's eyes, he began to squeeze. "Where are they, Captain?"

"Sir," a trooper informed him, "the plans are not in the main computer. We've combed everywhere."

"Where are those transmissions you intercepted? What have you done with those plans?" Vader was starting to get frustrated.

"We...ack...intercepted no...aargh...trans...missions...ack...this is...a con...sular ship..we're on...aargh...a diplomatic mission..."

"If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?" Vader growled, and squeezed harder. There was a popping, a great crack, and Raymus Antilles was no more than a bag of blood and bones. "Commander, tear this ship apart if you have to. Find those plans, and bring me the passengers, I want them alive!" This was not how he had hoped things would turn out. If the plans weren't in the computer mainframe, who knew where the flash drive that held them could be? They could search for months and never find it.

He would not be reporting failure to his master. The men would find the plans, and if they did not, they would die.

— — — —

"Artoo Detoo, where are you?"

Threepio was growing exasperated with his little companion. They'd taken a wrong turn somewhere near the middle of the ship, and Artoo had gone missing. Threepio, for no reason he could fathom—it certainly wasn't any care he felt for the irksome astromech—had gone after him, and was now wandering the darkened chambers of the escape pod bays. He had no idea when an Imperial trooper would jump out and blast him, or if he'd get lost and fall into and engine, or who knew what else. "Artoo? If you don't come out this instant—"

There came a familiar tootling and beeping, and Artoo was in sight, trundling down the hall. "Thank goodness, where have you been?"

The astromech gave a noncommittal tootle that was his equivalent of a shrug. "Well, they're headed in this direction!" Threepio told him, angry at the little droid's attitude about the whole thing. Frightened, he asked, "What are we going to do? We'll be captured and sent to the spice mines of Kessel, or smashed into who knows what!"

Artoo's only reply was to start off down the hall again. "Wait a minute—where are you going? I haven't finished with you yet!"

Servomometers whining in protest, the protocol droid hurried after the utility droid, muttering complaints at a volume level equivalent to a human muttering under his breath. "Artoo, one day I'm really going to—hey, you're not permitted in there, it's restricted!" he cried. Artoo had stopped, and was working frantically with a small console with one of his many manipulator arms. "You'll be deactivated for sure!"

The door that the console was connected to popped open, and the little astromech forged ahead relentlessly. He was trying, Threepio realized, to get into an escape pod. "No, Artoo, the organics need those! Our duty is to—don't you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease! Now get out of there before somebody sees you!"

Artoo emitted a brief burst of static that left Threepio confounded. "Secret mission? What plans? What are you babbling about? I will not get in there—"

A red burst of plasma struck the wall just above Threepio's head, and he realized belatedly just how far back the defenders had been forced as he and his counterpart had argued. He was suddenly faced with a stark choice—duty, or self-preservation. After a brief hesitation, he'd calculated his response. "Are you sure this thing is safe? Oh, I'm going to regret this," he spat as he clambered into the cramped pod and the door swung shut.

Latches unlatched, thrusters fired, and they were heading towards whatever planet lay below them.

— — — —

"Lord Vader, we have a prisoner."

Vader turned and followed the officer down the length of the ship, to where his quarry was waiting. When he arrived, he was greeted by a sight many men would have called beautiful.

It was the Companion, Vader realized. The ethereal beauty, the aristocratic bearing, the cleavage-bearing scarlet dress, all were familiar to him. "Inara Serra," he rumbled.

The girl responded haughtily. "Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold. The Guild won't stand for this. When they hear you've attacked a Companion's ship with no provocation—"

"Don't act so surprised, you weren't en route to business this time," Vader replied. "Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies. I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I am a member of the Companion's Guild on my way to—"

"You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take her away!"

"Holding her is dangerous," the officer told Vader after the troops had left with the Companion. "If word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the Browncoat movement in the Senate, and the Guild will be outraged."

"I have traced the spies to her. Now she is my only link to finding their base."

"She'll die before she tells you anything."

"Leave that to me," Vader replied, ending the conversation. "Send a distress signal, and inform the Senate that all aboard were killed by pirates."

"Lord Vader?" another officer asked, stepping down the corridor to meet his Lord. "Battle station plans are not in this ship, and no transmissions were made. An escape pod was jettisoned during the fighting, but it contained no life forms."

Now they were getting somewhere. "She must have hidden the plans in the escape pod. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally, Commander, there'll be no one to stop us this time."

An escape pod. Was she really that stupid? Once they found where it had touched down on the planet, it would all be over. Not that Vader was complaining.

Soon, the Alliance would be finished. The last remnants of those Vader had fought in the war would be gone.

He could at last get on with his life.