Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Second Battle of Coruscant

The skies buzzed with thousands of TIE fighters flying a tight formation around the Imperial Palace. However, the TIEs completely ignored the fleet of emergency vehicles descending on the palace below.

Thousands of the red vehicles zoomed over the devastated area around the palace, some flying in from every emergency station on the planet. They were, in fact, the only hover traffic in the air right now, per Imperial orders.

With the laser cannons looking just like the fire retardant cannons, the rebel alliance airships looked exactly like all the others as they flew toward the palace. The ring of hundreds upon hundreds of laser cannons and turbolasers that formed the defensive perimeter of the palace did not even bother tracking the ships.

"The hammers are in place," Han Solo's voice said over the secured comlink. "Position the nail."

Kale took a deep breath and nodded to Mara. "Are you ready?"

She nodded back. "Be careful."

"Hey, it's me!" Kale said with a tight grin. With an ease that still amazed her and all the men in her unit, Kale simply floated up from the open roof of the emergency vehicle. He concentrated his vision on the palace before him, looking with Kryptonian and Force vision for his target.

He found it after only a moment. It was a dark presence in both the Force and his x-ray vision. He saw a small figure of darkness surrounded by an eerie blue aura of Dark Side energy. Although he did not doubt he could kill the Emperor, Kale was not foolish enough to believe it would be easy. Yoda often mentioned his duel with the Emperor on the eve of the Empire's creation, and the sheer amount of power Palpatine had.

But where were Non and Zod?

He felt a surge of danger through the Force, but the only thing faster than the Force itself was an enraged Kryptonian. Kale barely had time to turn and see the blur of dark rage that was Non as it struck him at full speed.

In her emergency vehicle, Mara never took her eyes off Kale as their driver continued his path toward the palace. She saw a motion from far above and looked up to see two specks of dark flashing through the fiery sky. She tried calling a warning, but it was too late. Like a missile, the larger of the two specks slammed into Kale with so much energy they both shot out of the sky and through one of the defense turrets of the palace into the dark depths below. The second speck followed a moment later.

Mara spun around, her heart thudding. "The nail has been hit!" she called. "Kale's down!"

"That was the plan, sister!" Han called. "Just keep on target!"

Mara took a deep breath. Four years ago she could kill without blinking, and now she was on the verge of tears because her boyfriend was in a fight? "Get a hold of yourself," she said, reaching for that core of cold she clung to for so many years. No emotion. No pain. Just duty.

"Let's go," she said. "Emergency bay 23."

The pilot nodded. Although she was officially without rank, her knowledge of the palace was undeniable.

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

Fifty destroyers flanked the super star destroyer Executor. Every ship looked like a dagger pointed directly at Ackbar's heart. "All ships, come about, flank speed," Ackbar called, maintaining his professional calm in his voice. "Present your main guns to the approaching ships and fire at will. Order the corvettes to attack!"

The Freedom's Hammer and her five escorts turned to present their ventral hull toward the horizon of the planet while their dorsal guns came to bear on the approaching fleet. Swarms of TIE fighters left both ships and engaged in a storm of green death in the center.

Suddenly the corvettes charged in at full sub-light, unheeding of the fighters or turbolaser fire flashing around them. One of the twenty-three remaining corvettes simply evaporated under the withering storm of a star destroyer, but another was right behind it.

Like the ship that struck the palace, the CR90 was on a complete slave rig controlled by the Freedom's Hammer. It struck the Imperial star destroyer at full speed with an astounding nuclear payload.

It was a testament to Imperial Engineering that the star destroyer did not completely evaporate under the tremendous explosion. It was a testament to Rebel ingenuity that the ship was undoubtedly out of the battle as the entire starboard hull was ruptured and venting both air and hypermatter.

The whole Imperial fleet slowed its advance when it realized that every one of the corvettes was nothing more than a larger, self-propelled missile.

"That got their attention," Ackbar said from his bridge. "And bought us some time."

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

"Why are you landing here?" the storm trooper asked as the emergency vehicle came in. "The palace is secured."

"Not any more," General Han Solo said as the laser cannon on the vehicle spun around and destroyed the trooper and his entire platoon in three shots. "The Nail is inside," he reported over the comlink. "All units report as we go!"

One by one the rebel units started reporting in as the storming of the Imperial Palace began. Rather than leave their vehicle, Han and the other units actually blasted through the docking doors and drove the hover vans into the wide halls of the palace itself.

Workers within the palace scrambled through the halls in front of the Rebels in various states of undress, stunned as much by the sight of a large emergency van in the halls as by the fact they were under attack.

The surprise wore off quickly as swarms of stormtroopers came pouring out of every hallway and every turn.

"It gets rough from here," Han said as his gunner opened up. "Ladies, you're on!"

"I read you, Han," Leia answered.

"I'm already on my way," Mara said.

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

Kale lost count. Every second or so he felt the impact of duracrete, then he would fall again freely while the vicious creature above him roared silently and punched him over and over again.

A small corner of his consciousness, oblivious to the real danger to his life, noticed with clinical detachment how Non's fists had taken on almost a red glow from the heat of friction. The friction came from the near-light speed of his blows, and the numbing concussive force each of those blows had when they struck Kale's face.

He felt blood flowing from his lips and nose, and one eye swelling. He had no orientation to the world above. All he knew was that he was falling, and that Non was falling on top of him throwing fists like turbolasers.

Finally the fall ended. He couldn't have said where he was, or how far down. All he knew was that he hit something terribly, painfully solid, and this time he did not go through it. Still the blows came.

"How does it feel, Kal-El?" a cultured voice said over the piston-like rain of blows. "How does it feel to know you, who should never die, are about to?"

That clinical, detached part of Kale's mind wondered if Zod actually expected him to answer while Non was pounding on his face.

Zod's voice grew closer. "That child you loved, the one with the red hair. Is she special to you, Kal-El? Will she require my special attention after you are dead? I owe her pain, my foolish young friend. For what she did to Ursa, I owe her unbelievable pain. But the Emperor tells me he can clone her body and bring her back again and again. I can kill her again and again, for all eternity, until her mind is shattered beyond all recovery. I will do that for her, in remembrance of you, my last son of Krypton."

The blows stopped. Kale forced his eyes open to see Non staring at a silver cylinder that had fallen from Kale's belt. The larger Kryptonian picked it up, staring at it in curiosity. Zod stood right behind him. "Your Kryptonite lightsaber," the general said. "It was lethal enough against Ursa. Let us see how you fare against it."

Kale opened his mouth but did not recognize the sound that came from his lips.

With exaggerated care, Zod leaned forward. "What was that, Kal-El? I did not quite hear you."

"The lightsaber is the tool of the Jedi," Kale whispered. "In my hands or not."

Kale reached out with the Force. The blade activated in Non's hands, sending a shaft of brilliant green light directly through the brutish man's head. Whether it was a matter of overwhelming strength, or stupidity of such a scale that his body did not realize it was dead yet, Non continued to sit on top of Kale holding the lightsaber as it protruded through his skull. He made an odd whining sound, like a whipped animal, and only then toppled off Kale as the blade deactivated and fell to the floor.

Zod stood frozen, his face pale and his hands trembling with rage. "By Rao above, you will die!" Zod roared. The sound of his voice shook the walls of the black canyon around them. Faster than light itself, Zod ripped the lightsaber from Non's hand and threw it with the speed of a blaster bolt, until it shattered against a far distant wall.

He spun around. "I thought to make you kneel before me before you died," he snarled. "But even that small mercy is too much. You will die knowing pain the likes of which no Kryptonian has ever imagined!"

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

Admiral Piett stood on the command deck of the Executor with a scowl. "Order the Accuser and Avenger to the fore position of the fleet," he ordered. "Full fire support. I want every gun we have pointed at the rebel super destroyer."

"And the suicide ships?" the ship's captain asked.

Piett snorted. "Those are slave rigged ships, you imbecile. The Rebels are not that brave. Order all fighters to take them out. I want those abominations out of my sky!"

He turned in time to see a brilliant flash of bright light a few hundred kilometers off the port bow and sighed angrily. "Amend my last orders. Have the Adjudicator move into fore position. The Accuser is gone. And order ten ships from the left flank of the fleet to move in to Sector 3 of the planet. I want the Rebels trapped."

The captain nodded and turned to carry out his orders. Piett remained rooted in place. Behind him, the holographic tactical display was showing the battle in real time, but Piett did not need it. The sheer audacity of the Rebel assault on Imperial Center itself was simply too much to bear; they had to be taught a lesson.

The flag officer rushed across the deck. "Admiral, we've received confirmed reports that the defense platforms on this side of the planet fired upon the defense fleet."

Piett nodded. "It explains how six ships were able to destroy twenty. Send TIE bombers and gunboats to take the platforms out."

"Yes, sir!" the officer said with a sharp salute.

When he was alone again to watch the battle, Piett ground his teeth. "There will be no quarter!" he said.

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

Mara and Leia met in a familiar corridor a few klicks from the turbolift that led to the detention block. Around them, food service personnel fluttered about like mindless animals, unsure of what was happening, but sure they should be afraid of it.

Amidst the chaos, Mara noticed Leia take a deep breath. "Are you ready?" she asked the princess.

"As I'll ever be," Leia said.

They ducked into the servants' changing room as the other servants scrambled about. When they emerged, they wore the plan gray clothes of food service personnel. They grabbed a cart that had been left in the hall and headed for the turbolift.

Mara entered an old override code that a simple security enforcement officer should not know, but one a Hand would. Accordingly, the lift door slid open and the two women walked in. "Are you sure he's actually here?" Leia said as the lift began to drop.

"He was one of Isard's prisoners," Mara said. "He transferred in after she finished with him. He's very old."

"I know."

They emerged from the lift and saw two security guards look up in surprise. "What are you doing?" one demanded. "The palace is under attack, this isn't a time to be feeding prisoners!"

Mara pulled her blaster from its holster under the over-large serving uniform and fired off two quick, precise shots. The two guards dropped like stones.

"We'd better hurry," Mara said. "The only thing going for us is the attack, and even then there are plenty of troopers to come after us."

Leia nodded and removed her lightsaber while Mara ran to the controls. Her fingers flew over the controls, and instantly all the cell doors opened.

Leia was expecting General Jan Dodonna, who was captured by the Imperials shortly after the Battle of Yavin. Instead of the general, though, she watched with a growing sense of coldness as stormtrooper after stormtrooper stepped into the hall. Each one knelt down and pointed his blaster rifle at her and Mara.

From the middle of the squad of troopers, Leia heard a familiar mechanical hiss and could see a black dome bobbing through the troopers. In the end, Vader emerged from his men. "We meet again, my daughter," he said. "We have been expecting you."

Leia turned around and glared at Mara. "I didn't know," Mara said weakly.

"Once a servant of the Emperor," Vader said, "always a servant. You will know that truth soon enough, Daughter. Welcome home."

~~Last Son~~

~~Last Son~~

A sound like a projectile going off rang through the air, followed a moment later by a breathless cry of pain.

"You've never felt your bones break, have you, Kal-El?" General Zod said with satisfaction as he stepped away from the kneeling, beaten young man. "Where is your vaunted Force now?

He flashed again toward Kale, lashing out with a vicious kick that would have decapitated a lesser being. Kale's chin snapped back and his body flew off the floor of the darkened valley of buildings where they had fallen. He somersaulted through the air to slam against one of the reinforced walls.

As his body began falling, Zod zoomed to him and caught him, only to slam him like a club against the floor.

Kale's face was swollen and bloody, his legs and arms bleeding from a dozen cuts. And now he suffered a broken rib. "Without your light sword, you are nothing!" Zod said.

He jumped ten meters in the air and came down with his elbow directly into Kale's back. The young man cried out in agony. "I will kill you," Zod continued as he stood, "and then I will have many, many years of pleasure torturing your little friend."

Suddenly the air over them shimmered and a holographic head of Emperor Palpatine appeared. "You have been watching, I presume?" Zod asked.

"I have," Palpatine said. "The space provided was satisfactorily prepared. Mara has returned to me. I have the princess. You may kill him whenever you wish."

"Excellent," Zod said.

Kale did not follow the words. All he heard was Mara. Mara had returned to the Emperor. It couldn't be. Palpatine had to be lying. And yet, why would he lie to Zod?

Suddenly the Kryptonian general was there, lifting Kale with a hand around his throat. "Too bad," Zod whispered. "She may be loyal to him, but he has promised her to me for my pleasure. I will kill her so slowly it will take her years to die. And then I'll clone her and he'll transfer her consciousness, and I'll do it again. Oh what fun we will have."

Kale shuddered at the thought of Mara suffering under Zod's hands, but he was physically so weak. His body had never taken a beating like this before, and it was hard for him to even think. But then he heard a whisper of a voice, like the wind through the reeds of Naboo. The voice said softly, "Use the Force, Kale."

"Master Kenobi?" Kale muttered.

"What is this?" Zod asked. "Do we grow delusional at the end, Kal-El? How pathetic. Just like your father…."

Kale tuned out the ranting of the general. He reached out for the Voice. Behind Zod he saw a wisp of an outline, a man wearing brown robes with a beard. Younger than he remembered, but it was definitely Ben Kenobi. The old Jedi looked at him now with compassion in his eyes. His lips moved, and like a whisper on the other side of the world, Kale could barely hear the words: "Use the Force."

"Now you die!" Zod said. He swung his fist with power enough to shatter worlds. Power enough to destroy suns. His fist stopped an inch from Kale's face. The general stared incredulously at first his fist, then at Kale. "What trickery is this?" he snarled.

"The Force," Kale whispered through cracked lips.

He pushed Zod back with the Force, and the general went flying away to slam into the far wall.

Kale wanted to stand tall and strong. Instead, without the general's angry fist holding him up, he collapsed to the floor in pain. Still, when Zod flew across the space at him roaring with anger, Kale looked up with determination and reached out for the one thing that separated him from all the rest of his people. Kale was not just the last son of Krypton. He was the first son of Krypton to be a Jedi.

Zod stopped as if slamming against an unbreakable wall. "What is this?" he raged.

Kale forced himself back to his feet, though he swayed. "I am a Jedi Knight," he said. "The Force is my ally."

He scanned his enemy's body with his x-ray vision. Call it intuition, but somehow Kale knew there had to be some threat the Emperor held over the Kryptonians to keep them in line. In took only seconds for him to detect the nanodroid resting in the muscle tissue of Zod's heart. "There is no death," Kale said. "There is only the Force."

"You will bow down before me, Kal-El!" Zod raged with spittle flecking his lips. "You will bow down before me!"

"No, I won't." With a flick of the Force, Kale crushed the nanodroid in Zod's heart and released the liquid Kryptonite within it.

Zod paled as Kale released his Force hold. The general clutched at his heart and fell to his knees. "Do you think you have beaten me?" Zod gasped. "Do you think you have won? I will have my revenge!"

With that, General Zod gasped one more time, turned a bright shade of red, and then fell forward onto the reinforced permacrete floor. Kale sat back himself, and then laid out flat on his back, staring up at the angry red sky. He reached out with the Force, and felt many presences that he had never sensed before.

They were more than just sensations, though. As he lay gasping in pain, he saw them, taking shape from the air. Jedi after Jedi, like Ben, shimmering silhouettes of blue that gathered around him, staring at him silently.

"He is the chosen one," one of the ghosts said.

"He will bring balance to the Force."

"He will be sorely tempted by his power."

"Strong, will he be."

Kale looked as a new ghost arrived, shorter than all the others. "Yoda!"

"Strong in the Force this place has become," Yoda's ghost explained to Kale. "Many Jedi died here. The Jedi Temple, this crater once was. But the Force lives on. Open to the Force, you must be, Kale."

"And the Force will give you strength," Ben added.

Kale was simply too exhausted to say anything. He nodded and fell back against the floor of what was once the Jedi Temple. The Force ghosts became merely a blur of shapes, and then simply an amorphous cloud of hazy blue. Suddenly the cloud shot into the air above Kale, arching over until it plunged directly into the young man's chest.

There was no pain, though, nor cold. It was a brilliant, beautiful warmth, like the feeling he had basking under the Naboo sun. The warmth filled him from fingertips to toes, and he let the voices of the Jedi past wash through him. Suddenly it was gone. He was alone on a cold permacrete floor looking up at the stars overhead. He climbed to his feet, and then stared down in shock.

The blood was gone. The scrapes were gone. He felt no pain in his side, and he could blink his eyes without effort at the swelling. He looked back up and whispered, "Thank you, Masters."

"Go now," Ben's incorporeal voice said. "Fulfill your destiny. Bring balance to the Force."

Kale nodded with sudden, steely determination. "I will. I promise."