Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
Chapter Ten
Meeting Destiny
The hatch for trash compactor 32-6-3827 adjoined a dusty, unused hallway. Han removed his stormtrooper armour but kept the trooper's white utility belt, which carried blaster power cell containers, a tool kit, and a grappling hook attached to a fibre-cord reel.
Chewbacca sat outside the open hatch and tried to brush the grime from his matted fur while Leia redid the pins that held her hair in place, muttering the Jedi Code under her breath to help herself calm down.
"Well, let's get moving!" Luke urged after he had adjusted his clothes as best he could.
A loud, angry moan drifted out from the open hatch. Evidently, the dianoga hadn't been alone in the garbage room and its' companion was now awake.
The noise caused Chewbacca to jump and run away from the hatch.
"Where are you going?" Han said, glaring at the Wookiee. Embarrassed by his co-pilot's behaviour, Han turned toward the hatch and raised his blaster.
"No, wait," Leia cried urgently when she turned around and spotted the raised weapon. "They'll hear!"
Her warning came too late. Han fired the blaster at the hatch, and the noise echoed throughout the hallway. Disgusted by Han's thoughtless action, Luke shook his head.
"Come here, you big coward!" Han called to the Wookiee, who stood trembling beside a nearby stack of barrels. "Chewie! Come here!"
Luke fixed his furious gaze on Han. "Listen," he snapped. I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on, you do as I tell you. Okay?"
"Actually," Leia intervened, her hidden fire rising again, as Han opened his mouth to retort furiously. She crossed her arms and gave a steady, experience-weighted, look to her companions. "I think that I am the only one capable of being in command of this mission, seeing as both of you are too busy comparing testosterone levels to try and get us out of here alive!"
The two men spluttered at the accusation, while Leia stalked past them, lightsabre lifted but unignited. She patted Chewie reassuringly on the arm as she walked by, and he grunted fondly at her, hopping to follow her. The two men glared at each other, but said nothing. The slight flushes in their cheeks revealed their embarrassment at being scolded by the young woman.
Obi-Wan was preparing to remove himself from the footbridge when he heard footsteps approaching. He quickly readjusted a lever on the power terminal so any passers-by wouldn't notice his sabotage, then braced his body against the terminal, concealing himself from the bridge that spanned the trench.
A detachment of stormtroopers entered through a doorway and stepped onto the bridge. "Give me regular reports, please," the CO ordered his men.
Obi-Wan felt a jolt of surprise that there was in fact, an Imperial that knew how to be polite to those below him. The Jedi had assumed that Kallus was the only one, and he had defected, so it was different. But perhaps this trooper was newly-promoted and had yet to gain the tyrannical, cut-throat attitude that was so prevalent among the upper Imperial ranks.
"Right," replied one trooper. The two troopers remained near the doorway by which they'd arrived while the other troopers marched across the bridge and through the facing doorway. Obi-Wan intended to exit the trench by the same route. As he readjusted the lever to shut down the tractor beam, he overheard the nearby troopers speaking.
"Do you know what's going on?" asked the first trooper.
"Maybe it's another drill," the second replied with a casual shrug.
Obi-Wan moved cautiously on the footbridge, cursing his aching joints, and peered around the power terminal. The two troopers were still near the far doorway, facing each other.
The troopers had changed the subject, evidently confident in the Death Star's security. Arrogant, but that was typical for Imperials.
"Have you seen that new BT-sixteen?" The first trooper asked. His companion nodded, rifle held loosely in his arms.
"Yeah, some of the other guys were telling me about it. They say it's quite a thing to—"
Obi-Wan flexed his fingers and gestured at the two troopers. Both troopers suddenly heard, or thought that they heard, a muffled explosion from the doorway behind them, and turned away from the power terminal.
"What was that?" asked the second trooper.
"That's nothing," the first trooper answered dismissively when he saw and heard nothing else. "Top gassing. Don't worry about it."
Neither noticed the top most wanted fugitive in the galaxy as he stepped softly onto the bridge and exited the generator trench.
Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca entered a corridor on the same level as the command office for Docking Bay 327. Arriving at a window that overlooked the hangar, Han gazed down at the Millennium Falcon and pointed at it. "There she is." He turned to Leia. "So, what's the plan, Firecracker? More, having faith in the Force?"
Leia ignored the hint of mocking that laced his tone and instead looked through the window. She counted five stormtrooper sentries outside the Falcon. Pursing her lips, she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.
She had faith in her ability to deal with them all single-handedly, she had faced much worse odds before after all, but not without a lot of noise. That would draw more enemies, and Leia could sense Vader onboard, though she'd been trying to ignore it. It made her remember Malachor, and the awful battle.
Her, Ezra, their Masters and Ahsoka against two Inquisitors, Vader and Maul. Ahsoka had been lost, Kanan had lost his sight, Obi-Wan spent three days in a healing trance that everyone feared he wouldn't wake from, and both Ezra and Leia had been traumatized.
Years later, and Leia still had nightmares about the crippling coldness that radiated from the Sith Lord. Maul had been a fraction of his strength, an insect compared to Vader's raw power. No, fighting would draw Vader to them, and that wasn't an option they would survive. Not without Obi-Wan returning to save them, and they couldn't rely on that. She needed another plan.
Leia switched on her com-link and raised it to her mouth. "See-Threepio, do you copy?"
"Yes, madam," C-3PO answered.
"Are you safe?" Leia asked. She was a firm believer that droids could have as much personality, if not more than, a sentient and she treated them as such. They thought, therefore they lived. She had read that somewhere.
"For the moment," he replied. "We're in the main hangar across from the ship."
"We're right above you," she told him. "Stand by."
Luke tugged at Han's sleeve and gestured at the Falcon. "You came in that thing?" he said incredulously. "You're braver than I thought."
"Nice!" Han scoffed. He was thoroughly exasperated and stressed out by now. How had impressing a pretty girl turned into this? Surely he wasn't that bad a person as to deserve this happening to him?
"Come on!" Leia urged, having decided to sneak down to the hanger and use the Force to knock the troopers unconscious.
They walked fast down a hallway, making their way to the lift tube that would take them to the lower level. Han made sweeping movements with his blaster rifle, ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. But as the group rounded a corner, even Han was surprised to run straight into seven approaching stormtroopers.
"It's them!" shouted the squad leader. "Blast them!" Han's blaster rifle was already levelled at the squad leader, and Han didn't hesitate to fire. The blast knocked the squad leader off his feet and the six remaining troopers stumbled back. Without any plan but to knock down every Imperial soldier in sight, Han fired again and charged the startled troopers, who turned and ran back up the hallway.
As Han chased and fired after the troopers, he shouted to his allies over his shoulder, "Get back to the ship!"
"Where are you going?" Leia yelled as Chewbacca ran after Han. "Come back!" She turned to Luke with a frustrated expression. "If he hadn't been so reckless," she huffed. "I could've used the Force or just deflected their blasts with my sabre! We wouldn't have gotten split up then."
"He certainly has courage," Luke shrugged.
"What good will it do us if he gets himself killed?" Leia retorted, hoping her worry for the smuggler and his Wookiee friend wasn't obvious. She grabbed Luke's hand, feeling a Force bond suddenly spring into place as she did so. Thankfully, she was trained well enough that she was able to both put her emotions about it aside and block off their thoughts in a few seconds.
"Come on!" She urged him. They ran off in the other direction down the hallway as quick as they could, Leia casting a brief glance back in the direction her other companions had gone down.
Hollering and firing his blaster rifle, Han chased the stormtroopers through a long sub-hallway. At the end of the sub-hallway, the troopers were forced to turn left around a corner. Not thinking about where the turn might lead, Han ran after the troopers and entered a TIE fighter hangar. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight that greeted him.
The hangar was filled with hundreds of stormtroopers, and it appeared that Han had interrupted their weapons drill. The stormtroopers he'd been chasing now stopped and turned with their blasters raised. The other troopers all looked his way.
Han squeezed off a shot to fell one more trooper, then turned around and ran for his life.
Chewbacca had been trying to catch up with Han when he heard the hail of blasterfire up ahead, then saw Han come racing back toward him. A hail of laserbolts slammed into the wall behind Han as he ran past. Quickly sizing up the situation, the Wookiee turned and ran even faster after Han.
Before Luke and Leia could reach the hangar that contained the Millennium Falcon, they were spotted by yet another squad of stormtroopers. Leia deflected the wildly flying bolts away as best she could, felling an enemy with almost every shot as she and Luke rushed down a narrow sub-hallway, trying to elude the troopers who fired at them from behind.
The sub-hallway ended at a short ramp that led up to an open doorway. Luke and Leia raced up the ramp and were through the doorway before they realized the floor ended at an enormous air shaft. Luke nearly lost his balance at the edge of the floor, but Leia grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back.
"Shavit," Leia stated flatly, hearing her words echo as they surveyed the air shaft.
The shaft's steep walls seemed to stretch to infinity. Across the chasm, another open doorway was set in the facing wall. Luke and Leia realized they were standing upon nothing more than a shallow overhang that housed a retractable bridge.
Blasterfire exploded behind them. Leia spun around and began deflecting the shots back at the advancing stormtroopers. Luke scrambled around until he found a control panel embedded in the doorway.
He reached over to the panel, hit a switch, and the door slid shut behind them.
"There's no lock!" he warned.
"Shoot it then!" Leia cried, eyeing the door, which was already making noises. The enemy would break through soon enough.
Luke aimed his blaster at the control panel and fired, frying the door's opening mechanisms.
"That should hold them for a while," Leia sighed, lowering her sabre slightly.
"Quick," Luke urged her, looking at the door across the chasm. "We've got to get across. Find the controls that extend the bridge."
She looked at the smouldering circuits on the panel in the doorway grimaced. "Oh," she said, patting her infinity-bun anxiously. 'A Jedi never shows their anxiety' Obi-Wan's voice chided her from memory. 'Release your fear into the Force and trust in It.'
"I think we just blasted it."
'At least' Luke thought wryly. 'She took her share of the blame.' He liked this girl. Most people would have used the fact that he blasted the controls to give him all the blame for the predicament, ignoring that he had been following her instructions.
There came a grinding sound from the door behind them.
"They're coming through!" Luke warned.
Leia bit her lip as she thought furiously. She was good at Force-jumps, as Obi-Wan insisted she have a certain amount of proficiency in every area of her lessons, but taking Luke with her would ruin her balance and she didn't want to risk it.
She looked up, spotting an outcropping of large metal pipes that jutted down from above.
Her eyes lit up, remembering the grappling hook attached to her utility belt (standard issue for all Rebel soldiers).
But as she reached for her belt, laserfire hit the wall behind her.
Luke and Leia fell back against the doorway's alcove as more laserbolts whizzed past them. Glancing out from the alcove, they saw three stormtroopers firing from an upper-level doorway on the facing wall.
Leia stepped out of their shelter and once again began deflecting the bolts of deadly energy. She thanked her Master mentally for being so rigid about her Soresu practice. He sent back an amused acknowledgment before retreating from their bond so he could focus on his own return to the ship.
One trooper was hit in the chest, and fell forward into the shaft. The other troopers returned fire, and Leia retreated to the alcove.
"I have a plan," she whispered to the tense prince. "Distract them for a minute."
He nodded and, after taking in a deep breath, he stepped out of their cover and began firing at the troopers.
While Luke kept the troopers occupied, Leia pulled the grappling hook from her belt. She was still paying out the hook's thin cable when the door behind her began to open.
"Here they come!" Luke shouted. He fired again at the stormtroopers across the shaft. One of his shots struck a trooper, and he collapsed.
Meanwhile, Leia tossed the hook high, letting its weight carry the cable up to the metal pipes. The hook whipped around one pipe and the hook's tines locked onto the cable. She gave the cable a single tug to make sure it was secure, then pulled Luke to her side. Behind them, the door opened a fraction more.
"May the Force be with us!" Luke muttered, keeping his grip on the blaster rifle as he wrapped his arms around Leia while she pushed off from the overhang. Leia carefully used the Force to guide them as they flew over the chasm.
They swung across the treacherous shaft and alighted on the opposite ledge, just as the stormtroopers broke through and fired at them from behind. Luke returned fire, then the two scrambled through the doorway and ran into another hallway. This time, they didn't get lost on their way back to the Falcon.
Several stormtroopers rushed through a Death Star hallway.
"We think they may be splitting up," one trooper reported. "They may be on levels five and six now, sir."
Obi-Wan stood hidden in the shadows of a narrow passageway that adjoined the hallway. A small smile of fondness played on his lips as he listened to the conversation. Typical that Leia had attracted trouble. She was her parents' daughter in that way. Never able to stay out of trouble or ignore someone in need of help. When he was sure the troopers had passed, he drew his lightsabre from his belt. He did not activate the blade but held it ready.
He had a feeling he would be using his weapon sooner than later. Much sooner. Silently, Obi-Wan proceeded into the hallway.
Han and Chewbacca raced through a corridor with several stormtroopers hot on their trail. As the man and Wookiee approached a wide doorway, a trooper shouted out from behind.
"Close the blast doors!"
Suddenly, thick metal doors began to slide out from the doorway's frame. Chewbacca maintained a breakneck pace as he ran between the converging doors. Han spun and fired back at the stormtroopers, then turned again and leaped through the closing aperture at the last possible moment before the blast doors sealed off the corridor behind him.
"Open the blast doors!" shouted the trooper. "Open the blast doors!"
On the other side, Han and Chewbacca kept running.
Obi-Wan still had his lightsabre drawn as he moved along through an access tunnel that led back to Docking Bay 327. Having disabled the tractor beam, his remaining goal was to make sure that Leia and Luke, the babies that he had sworn to protect, left the Death Star on the Millennium Falcon. Alive.
But before he could reach the hangar, he sensed the cold malice of a Sith Lord, and when he looked straight ahead he spotted a tall, shadowy form at the end of the tunnel. It was his former apprentice, Darth Vader.
Vader had already activated the red blade of his lightsabre. For a moment, he stood motionless. Then he approached Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan activated his lightsabre and stepped slowly forward. He'd fought Vader before. He hadn't been afraid then either.
His only regret was that he would be leaving Leia, who had suffered so many losses already in her young life, and who he had come to love as a daughter in the years since her birth. His fondest memories since Order 66 were of the times when he would sneak into Naboo to check on her, and see her innocent giggles.
But he would do what had to be done so that the Jedi, Padmé and everyone who Vader had killed would get the justice they deserved. Leia would see it happen. He had Seen it in the Force. Leia would defeat the Sith and restore the Order. It was her destiny, and this was his.