Disclaimers: All things Star Wars belong to Lucasfilm.

All non-original dialogue in this story is credited to The Empire Strikes Back script (Script adaptation by Lawrence Kasden and Leigh Brackett, from a story by George Lucas).

Please do not reproduce this story without permission from the authors.

BY THE GRACE OF LADY VADER

by Alderaan21, ami-padme, and FernWithy


Chapter Six

The walkers were lined up on the horizon, tiny gray dots from here, but nearby they would be towering, lumbering monstrosities. Heavily armed and armored, but not hard to trip up if you could get past the laser blasts - lazy, overconfident predators.

In other words, standard Imperial technology.

Luke turned up his forward shielding. The base wouldn't stand long against the AT-ATs if they got there (slow-moving trumps stationary), but there was a pretty good shot at stopping at least half of them. "Wedge?"

"I'm here."

"You have a gunner?"

"Yeah. Jenson?"

Jenson's thin voice piped up. "Here. Something wrong with Dak?"

"Dak decided to skip the party," Luke said briefly.

"Dak! No, there must be some mistake!"

"Cut the chat, Jenson," Wedge said.

"Yeah. Right. Sure." But Luke could hear that Jenson wasn't all right. He wondered if the boy's X-wing would show up at the rendezvous point on autopilot, with a helmet and gloves in the seat.

No time to think about that now. "We have to scatter their firepower, Wedge. How many of us are there?"

"Twenty fighters, all told."

"How many with gunners?"

"Fourteen."

"Better than I thought." Luke turned his transmitter to universal, and spoke to the small group. "Pilots, fan out and put forward shields at maximum. We're going straight at them. And when we get there, we go for the legs."

There was general assent to the order. Most of them had gotten used to taking orders from Luke. Leia had gotten in the habit of giving her less pleasant orders through him, because (she claimed) he knew how to make them sound like suggestions.

"Gunners," he went on. "Be ready with cables when you get there, but right now, you need to work with your transmitters. Turn up the frequency until you start to get feedback... "

"Aw, come on... That'll hurt... we need to hear... "

"If we're getting feedback, so's the Empire. They'll get it on their bands. More important, their tracking system runs on sound as well as movement. If they're not looking straight at us" (and they never are, he thought with some satisfaction) "we can confuse them by throwing a lot of sound around. It'll bounce on the ice, too. Should have them chasing shadows. Use your comlinks for communication."

"Good thinking, Luke," Wedge said.

"Let's do it."

Luke took his place at the center of the fan, and decided to turn up his own transmitter frequency. It would be distracting, but he didn't have much choice.

Hoth flowed out beneath him. The walkers took shape, then loomed above him.

Then the shooting started.

The sound-shadows were working - at least marginally; the Empire was shooting between and behind the snowspeeders as often as at them - but the fire power was intense. A blast hit beside Luke, and a hot rain of melted snow blurred his vision. He spun it off.

His comlink beeped. "Skywalker."

"Jenson and I are going for the first one," Wedge said.

"Don't tell me about it. Do it."

Wedge's speeder suddenly shot across the snowfield ahead, cutting a straight line at the lead walker. Luke watched long enough to see Jenson release a cable that attached itself to the "knee" if the machine, then set about trying to figure out how he was going to take the next one without a gunner.

A blast came straight at him, and he dropped his strategic planning. Small crafts were emerging from the belly of one of the AT-ATs - they looked like land-bound TIE-fighters of some kind, small and agile, and piloted by real men, with eyes not easily duped by sound-shadows.

"Luke?" someone called into a comlink.

"I see them."

"What are they?"

"I don't know! But they're hostile. Keep low and keeping heading for the walkers. They'll have to shoot at their own stuff to get you there." One of the crafts - he decided to call them TIE speeders, for lack of a better term - spun at him, firing, and he had to bank the his snowspeeder sharply to avoid the blast. Where was the intelligence report on these things?

Probably sitting in an empty chair someplace, with someone's folded jumpsuit.

Still, it wasn't Imperial style. The Emperor had always built things bigger and bigger; it was always something you could count on.

Someone else at the top is making strategic decisions.

The thought was his own. He had no illusion of it belonging to an otherworldly visitor. But it was a true thought. He knew it in his bones as soon as it came to him. Not Lady Vader - she'd made it plain that she had little interest in what she referred to dismissively as "those matters," but maybe...

Another blast hit the wide steel fin that balanced the snowspeeder in the air, and Luke cursed himself. He didn't have time to figure out what these things implied about the structure of the Imperial hierarchy. He just needed to figure out how to get away from them.

He leaned the speeder into the turn forced by the hit, and swung in one-hundred-eighty degree turn to face his attackers. There were three of them. He could see white stormtrooper armor through the cockpit windows on two of them. The third seemed to be piloted by an officer.

A blast came from the one at Luke's far left, and kicked up a plume of snow and ice. The one at the center would have had a direct hit, except for the heavy shielding at front. Luke watched the laser dissipate against the energy field, knowing that it could have been his death. He fired back, more out of revulsion than any thought of hitting anything, and scored a hit on the fin of the TIE speeder that had shot him. It wasn't as well-shielded as a rebel craft, and an engine belched out black smoke.

Down to two.

But one was circling behind him, leaving him trapped.

He dove the speeder down toward the snow plain, hoping that they would fire at him and hit another target in the process. One fired (the officer, Luke thought), but nothing at all was hit. He tried to slip under the craft in front of him, but the fire was now steady, and they had him between them like a bead on a string.

A blast came at him, and he pushed the speeder up. To his horror, he was directly under the "head" of one of the walkers, and looking straight into its gun sight. If the Imperial gunner had been glancing out around the gun, Luke would have been dead. But apparently he was using readouts, and this close, the sensors didn't pick Luke up. He dove down again. This couldn't go on forever.

"I'm on it, Luke!" Wedge called through the comlink, and a moment later, the rebel speeder blasted through, and one of the TIE speeders fell into the snow, trailing fire.

"Thanks, Wedge. Go for the walker. There are more inside. I can handle the last one."

"On it."

Luke turned to face the other TIE speeder, which was retreating rapidly. He chased it almost to the battle line, then it veered toward the slight rise that led to the ice cliffs. Luke aimed, steadied his gun...

Then felt a surge of dizzy unreality wash over him. He looked up to the sky, something there pulling at his mind like a leash. The battle disappeared suddenly, and the only thing he could think of was Aunt Beru. She was making dinner, and he was late, and she would be very worried. He had to go home.

He clenched his teeth. Stop it. Home is gone. Dead is where you're going to be if -

The speeder rocked as another blast hit it, striking the control fin again. This time, Luke was going faster, and the machine bucked out of his control. He had never in his life lost control of a vehicle he was flying, and he didn't realize what was happening until it was too late to gain it back.

He did the best he could, easing the fighter down into the snow. He popped the cockpit and got out, grabbing a bag of gear, before it could turn into a target.

The main battle line was coming toward him - how far across the horizon did these walkers stretch? - but it would be a good five minutes before it reached him. The TIE speeder turned toward him aggressively, and he had time to see that it was the one piloted by the officer before it started firing at him.

Not knowing what else to do, he drew his lightsaber and ignited it, hoping that it had the energy to deflect this much power. The first blast hit, almost numbing his wrists with the force of it, then the second. He saw his lightsaber moving, but it had become a part of him, and he had become a part of the Force (he hoped), and it didn't feel like he was doing anything consciously at all.

The fourth blast bounced back at the TIE speeder, knocking it off course. Luke sliced at its engines as it went by, and he had time to register it going down toward the ice cliffs before the shadow of the AT-AT walker fell over him. There was a great crash of steel on steel as it stepped on his disabled snowspeeder and crushed it into scrap metal.

Luke looked over his shoulder. They were too close to the base. They wouldn't be able to stop half the walkers. Only two lay smoking on the tundra. The other Rebel snowspeeders were engaged with their Imperial counterparts. From the distance, Luke could see only Rebel crafts even trying to attack the walkers. He couldn't tell who they were.

He knew it wouldn't make a difference in the end. How could it? But he had to do something, had to stop at least some of the troops from making it to the base. He rummaged in the gear he'd salvaged, and found the tow-line. There was also a standard grenade. He'd expected the latter; it was standard gear. The former was more than he could have hoped for. He took it, and aimed it at the walker's belly. The line leapt into the bright morning light.

A strange vision entered his mind, a vision of a high stone wall, and people in long coats, and a line fired into a ledge and he is/she is a little frightened of how high it really is here on the wall above the cliff but he/she can't let any of the others know because after all it is his/her palace...

The hook lodged in the metal of the walker, and Luke towed himself up. What was happening in his mind? What was making these visions come? First Ben, then... then everything. He wanted to get to Dagobah now, had to get there, because someone there would have answers.

He reached the end of the tow-line, and drew his lightsaber. There wouldn't be shielding here, at least not against this kind of assault. The metal sliced easily. He tossed the grenade in, hoping that he was somewhere near a navigational system rather than causing an ineffectual explosion in an empty storeroom. There was no help for it.

He released the cable, and let himself fall.

And fall.

And fall.

He didn't know how high the walkers were, and he was only vaguely aware of hitting the snow. He fell down, dazed.

The battle moved beyond him. The walker he'd sabotaged only made it fifty more yards.


Ozzel sat in the cockpit of the ridiculous leisure craft he'd been sent out in, cursing himself, General Veers, and both Vaders.

He was at the bottom of some sort of ice trench, and he certainly couldn't climb out of it. He would need to call for rescue. As if he hadn't swallowed enough humiliation for one week at their hands.

It would have been better to just die. He should never have begged for his life. Better to die proud than live in this wretched state.

He took out his blaster, thinking that it might be better than the comlink. To be beaten, not only by a rebel, but by some mere boy waving a...

He lowered the blaster.

A lightsaber.

A Jedi weapon. Or Lord Vader's.

The boy in the snow field must have gotten that thing and learned to use it somewhere.

The Jedi were supposed to be extinct. What few had remained after the Clone Wars had been rooted out of the holes they had hidden in and killed. They had been seditious from the start, a lying, sneaking fifth column that held too much power for the galaxy's good. And who had been charged with eliminating them?

Why, the Emperor's right hand man, of course. Lord Vader.

It all came back to Vader.

Ozzel could think of two scenarios that would get a rebel boy a lightsaber.

The first was the fact that a Jedi had lived and trained a successor. It made sense. A Jedi had given him the weapon, taught him to use it. Perhaps the Jedi were secretly gathering again, preparing for a strike against the Empire. Perhaps there were more rebels with these weapons.

The second possibility was infinitely more disturbing. The Jedi, after all, had been mostly eliminated once, and a good strike would wipe out any chance they had of returning. But there was also the possibility that the boy had gotten the lightsaber from the one person left in the galaxy who still carried one himself. From Lord Vader.

Either way, it came back to Vader. Either he had betrayed the Empire before by allowing the Jedi to live and thrive... or he was plotting betrayal now.

Ozzel put his blaster back in its holster, and tapped the homing beacon. He would be fully in order when they came to get him. He would ask to be taken to the medical frigate on a Star Destroyer other than the Executor, and from there, he would contact the Emperor.

For the first time since his humiliation on the bridge, Ozzel was certain that he had a reason to be alive.


The chair Amidala was sitting in faced a view that brought forth a brief wave of emotion in her heart as she beheld it, bringing back memories of a point in her life to which time's passage had wrought a bittersweet mold.

The massive transparisteel viewport in the sleeping quarters of the Lady Vader offered one of the greatest interstellar vistas on the Executor, spanning a good part of the starboard bulkhead of her spacious sleeping room. It was one of the luxuries the Lord had bestowed on his wife, knowing she had years ago begun to share her husband's love for the starry heavens, and that it was the closest thing she had to beholding a sight of natural beauty. She had grown up on a world full of lush life and color; now she and this room were the sole spot of color remaining from that world, transplanted into a harsh, gray environment, left to thrive almost on their own. The view she beheld now reminded her of a long-ago memory of that world; stark, gray lumbering ships poised against the back drop of the otherwise peaceful vista of a planet. Hoth looked almost nothing like her Naboo, but her mind couldn't help but make the connection nonetheless.

Occasionally the tiny grayish form of a Rebel troop transport would shoot up from the planet, fleeing frantically past the blockade of Destroyers amid a flurry of green fire, much like a silvery Royal transport decades in the past had done.

Even now troops were clashing down there, their blood marring the once virgin white snow. She felt a degree of guilt at not feeling more remorse over those lost lives... she regretted every one of them - for all were fighting for a cause they believed in - but they didn't have near the impact they would have had years ago. She prayed the blood of her own flesh and blood was not being spilled, and that was all she prayed for. That they would all live so she could touch them once more. Prisoners would be taken once the base was secured, and her husband would be going down there to oversee the process.

He had promised her he'd bring the twins back to her were he to find them. But Amidala more and more found her desire to go down to the frosty surface of the planet intensifying, the desire to see them. She found herself wondering just how effective Anakin would be, how much force he might potentially need to use in getting them to return (especially Leia) without her there...

Anakin would no doubt protest her assertions to accompany him to the planet. She knew of only one way to tell Anakin she was going with him.

Amidala leaned forward in her chair and lightly pressed her fingers against the cold viewport once more, as if to reach out and touch the cold, bleak sphere of the Rebel planet, hanging only a few thousand kilometers away. As if by doing this she could touch it, touch the people on it...

It would be the closest she had been to her children in nearly two decades. And she planned to get even closer, if she could help it.

The chair she was sitting in, a small plush reddish thing, was one of the few pieces of comfortable-looking furniture that existed in the spartanly furnished military quarters; most of them for the comfort of Amidala herself, as Ani's suit precluded any real need for physical comfort. He had allowed her a certain degree of latitude in furnishing this room: it was her own to do with as she chose. He'd even conceded to a bit of retouching of the main room of the quarters itself, to make it feel more like a place that was their home instead of a place he simply stopped by when he was off duty. Right now he was probably on the bridge, in the center of action, as he always liked to be. She had wanted to be up there as well, should any new information on the children arrive, but Anakin had pointed out that a sudden appearance by her on the bridge now would only spark suspicion among those smart enough among the crew; certainly not something that was needed when so many eyes already were on them. It all came down to the heavy stakes that were their children's lives...

Amidala was certain the notion of her wanting to go to the surface would have occurred to Anakin - after all it was their children they were going after - but she knew he'd not bring it up on his own. He'd avoid a confrontation on this matter with her if he could help it. She knew he feared for her safety in a potentially hostile environment, and would refuse it if she brought it up. She dearly appreciated his concern - there was no question they still loved each other, though it was comforting to be reminded - but her conscience wouldn't let her stay away willingly, knowing her babes were down there, so close to her...

She did have her own methods of persuading him. She just wasn't eager to use them against him, to circumvent his decisions. She had done it to an extent before, such as with the Trika 4 incident, and she remembered the rift that had existed between them (however briefly) afterwards, and had no desire to have something like that come between them now. Too much else already lay in that gap. But then, there hadn't been nearly as big a personal stake there as there remained here now.

She was going, there was no question of that.

Amidala had heard little about the battle. From her quarters she'd that seen a couple of transports had already made it through the blockade - at the cost of a crippled Star Destroyer - but that in itself provided very little information as to the situation on the surface. She was certain the twins still yet remained on the planet, however. After all, Leia was a central leader of the Alliance, and Luke was one of their best fighters... neither of them would run from the battle before they knew their use had ended, which would not be so until the still-ensuing battle had been ended.

Amidala felt a cold lump collect in her gut at the thought of her son. Luke was a good pilot, she knew (she'd been with Anakin when he'd first read the Intelligence reports of the identity of the pilot that had destroyed the Death Star); he would most certainly have been one of the ones the Rebellion would send out to meet their forces, but it also meant he probably had a better chance of survival than any Rebel flying out there. So surely he was fine... and certainly Anakin would tell her if he sensed anything had happened to Luke...

She closed her eyes against the thoughts, against the image of the white planet. Down there, on that world a battle was being waged, one that could mean the inevitable rebuilding of their family, or its permanent dissolution...

As always in the blackness, her mind began seeking refuge in a familiar, terrible haven. Memories...

(a finger, firm yet gentle, fingering a damp section of hair away from her cheek so he could look at her... a voice, deep and sensual when spoken in low heated tones, tickling pleasantly at the very ends of her nerves... )

"My Lady."

She sighed and opened her eyes and looked up at her reflection in the viewport just as the armor-clad figure of her husband materialized in it as well, striding through the entryway to her room, dissipating once more her bittersweet recollections.

For a moment she locked eyes with it, as always penetrating through the dark lenses to find the blue that was so long and so often hidden beneath them; the deep, soul-drowning blue that years of concealing behind lenses had not diminished in the slightest. As always when he and his intense presence were near she felt that terrible desire to be with him...

But she shunted it away, even now ashamed of her weakness. (What would Leia think, were she to know of this? )That hadn't happened in decades, a brief glance at the suddenly annoying bed blatantly reminded her, and not even Gungan shield technology could ever allow it to truly happen again.

She smiled weakly and walked towards him, stopping directly in front of him and turning to face the viewport again. Amidala took the monstrous gauntlet of his right hand and placed it on her shoulder; he made no move to remove it, but let it rest there with a tenderness anyone but she might have been surprised at. It had taken her time to become accustomed to his touch; knowing it was him, but still the hand of a machine touching her... but despite the lack of flesh somehow he still managed to come through, the gentleness that had been unmistakably that of the man who had permanently branded himself on her... she reached up and laid her hand on his. He placed his other hand on her left shoulder. It was the hand that still contained a last few mangled remnants of flesh, and Amidala almost fancied she could feel echoes of a long-extinguished warmth in its contact, even through the leather glove.

"What is the situation down there?" she began, her eyes still fixed on the reflection. An odd sight the two of them made; the fearsome, mechanical leviathan and the diminutive, red-clad nymph, the background of the starry void passing through them. (A novice might have made the comparison of them being as unalike as night and day... but it was more like midnight and sunrise, she thought: one coming in subtly behind the other, warming its chill with the barest touches of warmth and light... )

"The Rebel force has mounted a credible resistance to our forces, but the destruction of their shield is imminent," he continued, as Amidala lightly moved her left thumb in circles around the fabric of the back of the glove, caressing it. "I will depart for the surface the moment it is confirmed."

Amidala said nothing, only waited in silence a moment. He mirrored her silence (except for the involuntary breathing of his respirator) and by the sudden thickness in it she knew well why; he knew what she was waiting for him to do. For a little while she just stood there focusing her thoughts on the forever unaltering metronome of his breathing, allowing it to serve as a guide for them to flow along in an equally calm manner, enough so that she could say what she knew she was going to say.

"I'm going with you," she said, dispatching any preamble.

She could almost sense the intensifying in his foreboding nature; he removed his hands from her shoulders and she turned to face him, looking upward into his face mask.

"The Rebels will likely be hostile and not take kindly to our arrival, love," he told her, the reluctance faintly evident in his tone. "I will not allow those under me to unnecessarily endanger themselves in such an environment."

"But I'm not one of your troops, Lord," she replied, her veils swaying slightly as she shook her head. "I am your wife."

"And as such it is still my responsibility to ensure your well-being."

"And as my husband, is it not the same for me?" she shot back quickly.

"It is in my duty to willingly risk my life for the Empire. And you would be in a far more vulnerable position than mine would be. Any endangering to your life is a risk I am unwilling to take, my love."

"I'm afraid it isn't your risk to take. I'm not so fragile, love. It is not as if I am unskilled and defenseless, you will remember." Even when he had first known her she had been anything but. Gentle and kind almost to a fault, yes, but not fragile and defenseless.

"I do not consider this cause worthy enough to risk losing you," he told her, looking away from her out the viewport.

Even for our children?

She took his hand again and held it to her face. "Come now. I'd be with you the whole time. Surrounded by you and however many garrisons you think you might need. It would be foolish to take such an inflammatory strike towards the second in command of the Empire with him and his well-known powers so close by."

She had a point. Who better to guard the Lady Vader than the great cunning warrior, her husband himself, with his widely-feared powers and fiercely intense loyalty to his wife? The moment anyone even thought of taking a strike at her, he would act.

"You may well need me if you ever want to persuade them," she pointed out. "I may be able to coax them to our side willingly, and I would think it would be in the Empire's best public interests at this point to attempt to do so with minimal bloodshed." Them could only mean one thing to either of the couple.

"Assuming you will have any influence left at all," Anakin reminded her coolly. "You may have been the woman she remembers, but that is not who she will see when you stand before her."

An imaginary vibroblade sent a cold stab through Amidala's chest. She and Anakin had discussed the notion that Leia would be none too happy to be reunited, particularly once she discovered her ties to Anakin; even worse, her mother's own willing consorting with that very figure and the symbol he embodied which was completely polar to what she embodied. Luke might be willing, even eager, to see her, as he had no memory of his mother that Leia had, but Leia...

I will still be a traitor in her eyes.

Possibly the greatest pain a mother could endure was that of being spurned by the being she'd borne from her from her own flesh, by her own tears and sweat. And yet Amidala found she was willing to endure it, if it meant even only a brief contact with her babies again. Even if they weren't babies anymore.

"You wouldn't deny me the right to at least see them, would you? After all that's happened?"

One of his hands clenched just noticeably, and she was almost sorry she'd said it. She knew he hadn't forgotten all the trouble and loss he'd inflicted on her in her life, and having it thrown right back at him could be none too comfortable. She didn't like using his guilt against him this way, but for him it was a relatively small price in the scheme of things. So much in her life had been lost because of choices he had made, and were he to fail in bringing them back now - he would cost her even more.

"You once told me you would not presume to deny me anything unreasonable so long as I was happy in the end," she went on. Those words he had spoken to her before his transformation, and so much was different now from then... but the love that was the foundation of that promise still yet remained. So many promises he had broken to her, and he would have no desire to break yet another... "I do not consider this to be an utterly unreasonable request, my Lord." She pinned her eyes on his, trying not to let her sympathy for the pain in the blue hidden underneath quell her resolve.

The fire in her eyes and words brooked no room for discussion. Anakin knew when he had lost a battle, but was always reluctant to admit it. He'd never been able to argue with her on any point for long. He continued to stare in silence out the viewport and she knew she'd won, even before he spoke again.

"Very well. You will accompany me. But," he said, turning back to her, raising a finger. "You do not leave my side. Not for anything."

She smiled, wrapping herself in the folds of her scarlet robes. "I wouldn't have it be any other way, my love."

Just then, the communicator on his wrist beeped.


They were down to three.

One technician, a young woman Leia didn't know, sat listening to Imperial communications. General Rieekan was scrambling back and forth among the monitors, shouting ineffectual orders at pilots who had no choice but to fly reactively as they shot into orbit, diving away from Imperial fire.

At least they hadn't lost any transports.

Yet.

"We have to send them out two at a time," Leia said.

Rieekan shook his head. "No."

"We have no choice. There are still five transports in the hangar. We'll never get everyone off if... "

Rieekan took her shoulders. "Your Highness, we only need one more."

This didn't sink in right away, and when it did, it should have brought relief, but instead, it made Leia want to scream. Each transport held fifty people. That meant that there were at least two hundred fewer people here than there had been when they'd arrived. Instead of screaming, she pressed her lips together, then pushed out a breath in a sharp, plosive sound that seemed very, very loud. "Fine. Just fine."

She could feel the rage beneath her breastbone, a physical thing, a sharp-cornered cage with a small, carnivorous creature beating at the bars. It set her nerves on edge, sending waves of blinding energy through her body, energy that she didn't know what to do with.

Except for her hands. Her hands knew. Hitting and firing a blaster weren't enough for them. They wanted to crush, to tear, to gouge. She felt it as an unbearable itch in her palms.

(the more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers)

Her words echoed back to her and mocked her. She had fought herself until she was weary to the bone to keep from tightening her grip, to beat her demons and not become the enemy she fought... the enemy in her blood. But they were slipping through her fingers anyway. Each day she would come, and a face she expected wouldn't be there, and the creature in the cage would lean through its sharp little teeth and gnaw at her heart until she thought she might go mad. Didn't it matter to anyone else? Didn't it matter at all?

It matters. Hold on, because it matters immensely.

The voice was an external thing, a soft, lilting man's voice with a cultured Coruscant accent. She had only heard it on old newsvids, but she thought she recognized it. For some reason, she had begun to speak to herself in General Kenobi's voice.

Perfect. Just perfect. Like it wasn't crazy enough before.

The floor rocked, and a fine veil of snow slipped down from the ceiling.

The Empire was approaching.