VI
It didn't take any Force sensitivity to know that something was very, very wrong as soon as we jumped out of hyperspace into the Alderaan system. We could feel the usual lurch of deceleration as we reverted back to realspace, but instead of the expected smoothness of space flight afterward, the ship immediately began rocking and careening with such force I would have thought we had come out of hyperspace onto the surface of a planet experiencing a violent groundquake. Luke and I exchanged glances and simultaneously unstrapped ourselves for yet another mad dash to the cockpit.
"It's not on any of the charts," Solo was shouting at Chewbacca as we entered the flight cabin. Through the viewport we could see a hailstorm of asteroids flying at us at disconcerting speed.
"What's going on?" Luke asked.
"Our position's correct," Solo continued, more to his copilot than a response to Luke's question, "except... no Alderaan."
A deep sense of dread clutched my heart and my stomach did a slow somersault. That disturbance I'd felt...
"What do you mean, where is it?" Luke demanded.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid, it ain't there. It's been totally blown away."
"What? How?"
"Destroyed," I said as the certainty settled in on me: this had something to do with Leia and those plans, I was sure of it. "By the Empire," I finished.
We finally reached the edge of the asteroids and the ship's flight leveled out. Solo turned to me in disbelief. "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've—" He was interrupted abruptly by the shrill blare of an alarm. Checking his scopes, he informed us tensely, "There's another ship coming in."
"Maybe they know what happened," Luke ventured.
I shook my head, recognizing the familiar shape of a TIE fighter on the scope. "It's an Imperial fighter."
As if to confirm my assessment, a shot lit up space ahead of us and the TIE fighter zipped past from behind.
Luke cried out, "It followed us!"
"No," I replied, relying on the Force to keep me calm. TIE fighters had no hyperdrive. "It's a short-range fighter."
"There aren't any bases around here," Solo put in. "Where did it come from?"
"It sure is leaving in a hurry," Luke pointed out. "If they identify us, we're in big trouble."
"Not if I can help it! Chewie, jam its transmissions," Solo ordered.
No. This is wrong, all wrong. Alderaan's gone, the fighter, it's all wrong... "It'd be as well to let it go, it's too far out of range," I suggested. I almost used the Force to back up my suggestion, but decided against it. Solo didn't seem to be particularly weak minded.
"Not for long!" he vowed, proving me right.
"A fighter that size couldn't get this deep into space on its own," I mused. There was something about it, something I couldn't pinpoint. The dark stain of the aftermath of Alderaan's destruction permeated every sense, making it difficult to sense anything else through it, but there was something beyond that, something very wrong about that fighter and how it came to be here. Wrong, but... inevitable?
"He must've gotten lost, been part of a convoy or something," Luke suggested.
"Well, he ain't gonna be around long enough to tell anybody about us," Solo said doggedly.
Ahead of us, one of the points of light we had assumed was a star began to grow quickly, not a star at all, but something much closer. Luke saw it, too. Pointing out the viewscreen he cried "Look at him, he's heading for that small moon!"
Moon? Did Alderaan even have a moon? I shivered as the sense of wrongness began to take focus, a dark shape moving out of the cloying fog that was Alderaan's death.
"I think I can get him before he gets there. He's almost in range," Solo was saying as the "moon" grew closer and the darkness solidified. Darkness and cold. Deep, bone-chilling cold.
Cold? My eyes widened suddenly as I realized what I was sensing. Vader. Vader, there on that m— "That's no moon," I said, abruptly cutting off my own train of thought. "It's a space station."
"It's too big to be a space station," Solo objected, but then he stiffened and looked more closely at the sphere—a huge sphere, I could see now—as it grew ever larger in the viewport. Lines and circles that had looked like valleys and craters from a distance were resolving themselves into decidedly more sentient-made forms.
Chewbacca growled softly, clearly disturbed, and beside me Luke shuddered. "I have a very bad feeling about this," he almost whispered.
Bloody Sith, he can sense it! "Turn the ship around!" I ordered.
Solo stared ahead, transfixed by the size and scope of the now clearly metallic object before us. "Yeah, I think you're right." Then he snapped into action, as if coming out of a trance. "Full reverse. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power."
He hadn't even gotten the words out of his mouth before the ship suddenly lurched, then began to shake as if we'd just entered the turbulence of atmosphere. "Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power!" Solo repeated desperately.
Tractor beam, I thought grimly.
"Why are we still moving towards it?" Luke cried, his voice rising in panic.
"We're caught in a tractor beam. It's pulling us in," Solo snapped as he and Chewbacca struggled with the controls.
"There's gotta be something you can do!"
"There's nothing I can do about it, kid, I'm at full power, I'm gonna have to shut down." He reached behind him and flipped some switches to power down the engines and the ride suddenly smoothed out as the ship stopped straining against the tractor beam. "They're not gonna get me without a fight," he swore. Chewbacca wailed mournfully.
As we drew ever closer, Vader's presence grew stronger and clearer until I felt as if I would choke on it. He would sense me, maybe even sense Luke. However, far from paralyzing me, this time his presence stirred my resolve and I felt oddly strong and clear, as if my entire life had led up to this very moment. It was inevitable that I face my former apprentice again. My job was to make sure I was far away from Luke when I did so. Toward that end, a plan began to form in my mind. I leaned in towards Solo. "You can't win. But there are alternatives to fighting."
There was a long pause as we all watched the space station fill our view. At length, Solo said quietly, "I'm listening, old man."
"You are a smuggler, right?"
At first he just frowned at me, but then his eyes lit up as he understood what I was getting at. He turned to Chewbacca. "Chewie, go back and open up the deck compartments. Take Luke with you, we don't have much time."
Chewbacca barked his approval and quickly rose from his seat and bustled past Luke and me, motioning for the boy to follow him. Still confused, Luke started to say something, but I gave him a short nod and without further complaint he followed the Wookiee out of the cockpit.
"I'm gonna need your help," Solo said to me as I turned my attention back to him. "How are your slicing skills?"
"Not bad," I replied, surprised that he would even begin to think I had any at all.
"Okay. We need to slice into the ship's log and alter the records to show that we ejected some escape pods after leaving Tatooine." A ship's log was a record of every action taken by the ship's computer or its mechanical components. It was recorded automatically and was supposedly inviolable, even by the ship's captain, but any halfway decent slicer could usually break in and alter the records, and no doubt Solo had prior experience in this area.
I nodded, pleased to see that he was a quick strategist even when the plan did not involve blaster fire. But there was one problem with his plan: "Won't the fact that no pods were ejected contradict the log?"
He shook his head. "I have a few empty pod bays. I had to jettison some cargo recently."
We quickly set about the task and with the two of us working together we managed to change the records in short order. We then headed out to the corridor near the main hatch where Chewbacca and Luke were busy settling Artoo into a small compartment hidden under the floor panels. Solo went to help them while I went back to the passenger compartment, grabbed my cloak, and made a quick scan of the room for any other incidentals left behind. When I got back, Chewbacca was trying to stuff his mammoth form into a second compartment while Luke and Solo were shoving a highly indignant Threepio in with Artoo. When Threepio's complaints would not cease, Luke reached over and flipped off his power switch and the droid's visual scanners went dead. With no further resistance from him, the two men were able to stow him fairly quickly, then they both jumped into the compartment with Chewbacca, leaving me the compartment with the droids. I sighed. Even shut down, no one wanted to be locked in a confined space with Threepio.
"Won't they have life form scanners?" I heard Luke asking Solo as they settled into their cubicle.
"Not at first," the Corellian replied confidently, "they'll be expecting a fight. When they find the ship empty, they'll go back for the scanners, so we won't have much time." Then they popped the floor panel into place above them.
I crawled in next to the droids and pulled the cover over my head and let it settle seamlessly into the deck above. By this time I could detect the sounds of a busy hangar bay outside the ship; we obviously had passed through the magnetic shield and were inside the space station. Vader's presence was everywhere, nearly overpowering, but I drew in the Force around me like a cloak and made myself as small and still a presence as I could. Then it was simply a matter of waiting.
After an interminable delay, I heard the main hatch forced open and the metallic voice of a stormtrooper shouting for us to surrender. When they got no response, the heavy clink of boots rained on the ramp and then finally thundered onto the deck right above my head. I half listened as they conducted their brief search, for my attention was drawn elsewhere as Vader's icy presence drew into clear focus: he was just outside the ship. Would he come on board? Did he sense me too? If so, did he recognize me? But he didn't come on board and eventually he left the hangar, his presence diffusing again, and the storm of boots overhead quieted as the troops exited the ship, no doubt to retrieve a life form scanner. I then heard the deeper thump of Luke and Solo raising the lid on their hiding place.
"Boy, it's lucky you had these compartments," came Luke's voice, muffled through the floor panel above me. I pushed up on it as Solo was replying.
"I use them for smuggling. I never thought I'd be smuggling myself in them." As I poked my head out, he turned to me. "This is ridiculous. Even if I could take off, I'd never get past that tractor beam."
"Leave that to me," I replied, silently thanking the Force that I had had occasion to learn exactly how to power down a tractor beam just before the end of the Clone Wars when Anakin and I had been hunting for Darth Sidious on Escarte, not knowing that he had been on Coruscant the entire time and we had been looking on the wrong side of the war.
Solo hoisted himself out of his compartment. "Damn fool, I knew you were gonna say that."
"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?" I rejoined, pulling myself up.
We all managed to extricate ourselves from our hiding places, leaving only the droids behind as we heard boots coming up the ramp once more: the scanning crew, no doubt. Solo and Chewbacca took up positions on opposite sides of the hatch and waited as the technicians boarded. Two quick blows from the Wookiee's massive arms and both men were down, their cargo dropping to the deck with a loud thud. Solo then called out through the doorway, "Hey down there! Could you give us a hand with this?" I kept my hand loosely on my lightsaber, but it wasn't needed: two quick bursts from Solo's blaster on stun and the stormtroopers who answered his call were lying on the floor in a heap with the scanning technicians.
Working quickly, we stripped the troopers of their armor. I shuddered when we removed their helmets, revealing their identical faces, a thousand other faces exactly like them flashing through my mind. Jango Fett, the original. Boba Fett, his son. Jangotat. Xutoo. Sirty. Forry. Seefor. And, of course, Cody. Comrades in arms, all of them but the Fetts, right up until Order Sixty-Six. I closed my eyes against the assault of memories, then took a deep breath and let it go before returning to the task of liberating them from their armor.
Once we had it, Solo and Luke donned the two troopers' uniforms while Chewbacca and I dragged the four unconscious men back into the passenger hold and locked them into storage lockers. They would be missed eventually, but with any luck there would be enough time for me to deactivate the tractor beam before they were found and the whole station put on alert. We then quickly pulled the droids out of their compartment and turned on Threepio, warning him sternly that he would be shut down again if he uttered so much as one syllable before we had found a safe place to hide in the station. Our motley band—an old man, a Wookiee, two droids, and two "stormtroopers"—then crept through the hatch while I reached out with the Force to see if anyone else was watching the ship. No one was at the moment—apparently only the two troopers we'd already dispatched had been left to guard the "empty" ship—so we moved very quickly down the ramp and out into the hanger bay.
Before my boot even touched the metal deck of the space station, before I even saw that the sterile metal corridors outside the hanger bay matched exactly with the scene from my dream, the scene where I fought Vader instead of Maul, I knew I would not be leaving this space station alive. Vader's presence mixed with an inevitable sense of destiny: here I would face my former Padawan one more time, here I would make my final stand. The certainty of this truth was at once oddly comforting and deeply distressing. My journey was compete, or nearly so, but Luke's had only just begun and I would have to leave him so soon. It very nearly broke my heart, but I remembered Qui-Gon's admonishment to let go, to accept my time when it comes. But not yet. I still had one more task to perform. I had to make sure that my traveling companions made it off of this station.
Solo, Chewbacca, the droids, and I trooped quickly out of the hanger and up to the observation room that overlooked it, leaving Luke behind at the Falcon to stand watch. As we reached the door, it opened suddenly and an officer stepped out, his face contorting into shock as he saw the huge Wookiee towering over him. With a mighty howl, Chewbacca threw the man across the room as Solo stepped out and shot the second officer as he tried to reach for his blaster, this time not bothering with the stun setting. He removed his helmet as we all hurried into the room and the droids and I began searching for the main computer connection. Luke ran in last as he caught up with us, shut the door behind him, locked it, then took off his helmet as well.
"You know, between his howling and your blasting everything in sight, it's a wonder the whole station doesn't know we're here," he berated Solo.
"Bring 'em on, I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around," Solo shot back.
Artoo beeped loudly and Threepio translated to me: "We found the computer outlet, sir."
"Plug in," I directed him, "he should be able to interpret the entire Imperial network."
Artoo moved over to the computer access outlet and reached a utility arm forward and plugged in, beeping methodically as he did so. At length his domed head swiveled in Threepio's direction and he spat out a burst of whistles and beeps.
"He says he's found the main controls to the power beam that's holding the ship here. He'll try to make the precise location appear on the monitor." I turned towards the monitor as several schematics passed in quick succession. "The tractor beam is coupled to the main reactor in seven locations," Threepio continued. "A power loss at one of the terminals would allow the ship to leave." The series of images finally halted on one, which zoomed in and highlighted the location of the terminal in question. I quickly memorized the route displayed, then turned towards Luke.
"I don't think you boys can help. I must go alone." And put as much distance between myself and Luke as possible, I added silently.
Solo didn't argue. "Whatever you say. I got more than I bargained for on this trip already."
Luke, however, would not acquiesce so easily. Intercepting me at the exit, he said earnestly, "I want to go with you." Did he perhaps sense, as I did, the finality of this venture for me?
"Be patient, Luke. Stay and watch over the droids."
"But he can—"
"They must be delivered safely or other star systems will suffer the same fate as Alderaan," I cut him off, reminding him of our reason for being here in the first place. I then reached for his arm, willing away the lump forming in my throat. "Your destiny lies along a different path than mine."
I wanted to say more. I had so much to tell him, so many feelings to express, and our time together had been almost unbearably short. He had no idea how important he was to me, how proud I was of him. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to make sure he understood. He was my Padawan, my legacy. But to say more would have only worried him needlessly and he might have insisted on staying with me, so as I opened the door I said simply, "The Force will be with you, always." Then I swept through the door and didn't look back.