Hi there! Hope I didn't leave you having for too long. Thanks for all the feedback!
-T.
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Getting past the drifting traffic over the planet was easy - even with pursuers hot on his tail. There was another voice in his helmet, one that was warning if he didn't return to the ship immediately, he would be fired upon. Luke saw in his scanners that two other TIEs were tight on his tail. He grinned inanely. He was back in a ship, piloting. This was where the fun began.
Green laser fire streaked past the ship's bow, glancing off his shields. Luke's hands skimmed over the unfamiliar controls, dropping the ship down just above the atmosphere.
It looked as though Vader was serious about teaching him a lesson in choice and consequences, regardless of the outcome.
Another shot shook the ship. A warning light flashed red: portside shields were failing. Luke ignored it. If he channelled any more power into shields, he would lose speed, and that was paramount here.
Two more shots. Port shield was gone. Luke dropped the ship down into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the widest clear space in air traffic was around the Imperial palace compound itself - the last place he wanted to be. But to kill innocent civilians in a crash-landing, when it could be avoided, seemed unconscionable behavior for a Jedi.
The ship dropped like a stone. Luke's hand fumbled for the ejection seat lever. Timing was everything here. If he could position the ship just right, he would be able to bring the ship into the less-trafficked space in the more industrial zone to the south of the palace compound.
An alarm sounded warning. One more shot to the port-side could end it right there. Luke stared at the targeting computer, at the space between air traffic. Just another second longer…
Suddenly the entire ship seemed to explode in a flash of green laser fire, thick smoke pouring from the console. The alarms were blaring now, smoke pouring out from the tail of the ship.
Luke had no choice but to eject now. He pulled hard on the lever and flinched when a tremendous bang clapped in his ears, wrenching him upwards into the atmosphere, the roar of air screaming through the helmet. He was falling, freefall for a very long moment, the TIEs screeching past overhead, before the parachute jerked him back, slowing his descent.
The ship exploded in the distance, a plume of red fire shooting up, destroying a squat building. Luke wrested the black helmet off his head, sucking in oxygen, the wind whipping past him, recoiling at the sudden nausea that swept through him at the deaths of the people in that building. Forcibly, he shut out the panic and pain of the survivors, lest it threaten to debilitate him. He would feel all of this later, if he lived that long.
The ground was approaching rapidly, but the reality was, he was going to have to make some sort of diversion if he wasn't going to be immediately met by a squad of stormtroopers the moment his boots touched the planet's surface.
The answer, ironically, came in the form of the very traffic lanes he'd been trying to avoid with the ship.
As he drifted down, close enough now that he could see individual vehicles in the lanes, he took another deep breath, his hands going to the catches buckling his parachute over his shoulders. This was a possible suicide move.
A large transport was moving down the lane. It would be a wide-enough target that he could hit it...hopefully. When the vehicle moved, almost under where Luke would land if he fell, he released the parachute's catches, and began plummeting toward the top of the transport, the parachute drifting away like a weather balloon.
He was able to slow his fall, just, hitting feet first with a solid bang on the top of the vehicle, rolling to catch his fall, and nearly rolling off the top of the transport in the process. His fingers caught - barely - onto a small protrusion on the roof, which halted his plummet from the vehicle. He hung there, fighting back the pain coursing through his leg and ribs from the fall - he could deal with those later - the wind whipping past him, catching his breath, noting the alarm radiating from the passengers inside.
He would not be able to stay, of course. He needed to make another jump - this one hopefully not as far.
An open-top speeder passed the transport at just that very moment, piloted by a middle-aged man with a short-cropped beard. Luke got his feet under him, silently apologized to the man in advance, and jumped.
The man swerved his vehicle in a sharp cry of terror as Luke crashed very inelegantly into the passenger seat.
"Just fly!" Luke shouted. He had the blaster in his hand again, aiming it at the man's temple, even as he was scrambling to make sure all his limbs were currently in the vehicle.
"D-don't hurt me," the man stammered, his face white with fear. Suddenly Luke knew the intoxicating appeal of having power over someone like this. He understood his father on some level. He shook the thought away.
"Take us down to the nearest spaceport," Luke ordered, keeping the blaster steady.
The man's hands shook so hard, he could barely keep the speeder in a straight line. "The nearest spaceport is back that way, about four kilometers."
Back toward the Imperial palace.
No. Luke wouldn't do it. "Just keep going straight," he ordered.
The warning in the Force was subtle, but it was all Luke got: the hair on the back on his neck stood on end. He looked up and around to see what danger lurked, only to realize with a jolt, that Vader's presence was suddenly very near. In the distance, beyond blue sky, he could see the faint outlines of ships. Was Vader on one of them?
"Okay, friend," he refocused on the trembling man. "Change of plans. We're going to the surface."
He wished he had the speeder's controls, for he would have gone faster. Behind him, he knew the ships were gaining, too quickly. Luke guessed Vader would be less squeamish about killing a few civilians if it meant his son was back in his grasp.
"Down to the surface, now!" He ordered, grabbing hold of the steering mechanism and jerking it hard to the left.
The man cried out as the speeder plummeted through two lanes, barely missing a collision with an oncoming freight transport.
It wasn't enough. There were still four more lanes of traffic.
"Drop down, or I remove you entirely from your vehicle," Luke cried, feeling anger and desperation ooze up from under all that Jedi calm he had trained to keep in situations such as these.
He would not be retaken by Vader.
The speeder plunged, a three-lane drop, the man screaming the whole way down. Ahead in the sky, the ships were almost above them. Down below, the ground was approaching rapidly, crowds of people walking in great hordes. In a less-panicked moment, he might allow himself to feel shock at the massive numbers of beings on this planet, at their colossal sense in the Force, but there was no time for that now.
He got his feet under him in preparation to jump, reflecting mildly to himself that he really needed to start finding other ways besides jumping to make an escape.
The speeder was getting close enough to the surface that the crowds were dispersing in a panic. Forty feet, thirty….
At twenty feet, Luke jumped, tucking and rolling against the biting duracrete as he hit the ground. Pain flared through his head, his leg, and up his arm, but he pushed it aside with the Force, and leapt to his feet. The crowd immediately closed in, just as the ships flew by overhead.
Luke allowed the crowd to push him along, eyes and senses scanning for Imperials. Stars were still sparking through his vision from his leap from the speeder. He could feel the steady pressure of Vader against his mind, pummelling his shields for a location. Luke wasn't about to give it to him.
He wouldn't be safe on the surface for long. Too many patrols and checkpoints. With the Imperials on high-alert, he would not be able to use any Jedi mind-tricks to convince them he was never there, which meant he needed to find a way down into the sublevels.
Luke looked down at his attire. The flight suit he was wearing pegged him as a dead-ringer for an escaped pilot. He kept walking as he unzipped it, peeled the sleeves down off his arms, his senses still extended. The people around him paid him no attention, even when he veered off to the side and halted against a building to pull the suit off over his boots.
He bunched the suit into his hands and started walking again, eyes scanning for a place to dispose of it. His leg and ankle twinged enough that he had to use the Force not to limp. He glanced down quickly at his shoulder, which was throbbing. The wound was still bleeding. He could feel the dampness on his chest and arm. The fabric of his tunic was stiff with blood, sticking to his skin. Thank the Force the tunic was black, since it hid the bloodstain better. Still, there was nothing he could do about it yet, except push the pain back with the Force and hope the bleeding slowed.
There was an open ramp up ahead, unlit. A small sign labeled it as an entrance to the underground transport system. Luke headed toward it, first stuffing the flight suit into a refuse bin at the side of the street.
A lone stormtrooper stood at the entrance to the tunnel. Luke flicked the Force in a direction away from him and the trooper reacted, allowing Luke to walk past, unnoticed.
He descended into the tunnel, his eyes adjusting from the brightness of daylight, which had made his head ache, to the orange glow-lighting of underground. After a short series of stairs, Luke reached the platform, lined with people and other beings. He didn't dare board a transport, since they were more likely to be stopped. No, he must go further down. He stood casually with the crowd, but his mind was questing outward, toward the edges of the underground chamber, searching…
The transport lumbered through the tunnel, all lights and screeching noise, exacerbating the headache that was tightening behind Luke's eyes. He pushed the pain back, walking toward the end of the transport, as though he was about to board.
After exchanging passengers, the transport rumbled away, leaving him staring at a door across the rounded track.
Glancing around to see that no one was watching him, Luke leapt the ten feet across the track, balanced on the narrow ledge, and rested his hand on the keypad. It had been a long time since anyone had used this door, so the code was hard to make out. He closed his eyes, typed four numbers.
The keypad flashed red. He tried the same numbers in a different order.
The door hissed open for him, revealing a long, duracrete stairway, dimly lit by more orange glowrods, descending into the depths.
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"I don't know, Chewie," Han bit his lip, nervous in a way he did not like to admit. "I want to look for him, but it may be too dangerous at this point."
A low growl.
Solo spread his hands defensively. "Hey, pal, we can wait longer - we can even circle around a few times. I'm not leaving the guy."
Daz hadn't shown up at his appointed pickup time.
Even once Vargas had returned on the delivery transport, and had toggled and restarted everything; once they had pinged Daz's comlink - a risky move - there was no response, no signal.
Now they had waited, circling the Beleaguered Bantha four times, trying not to look suspicious.
"I'm afraid we're wearing out our welcome here," Han mumbled. "We've been on this block too long."
Chewie suggested veering into a few side streets before coming back to wait for Daz again.
Han sighed, instinctively glancing behind them to make sure they hadn't picked up a tail. It didn't appear that they were being followed. "Yeah, okay."
The wookiee turned the speeder down darker side-streets, the speeder's running lights sweeping the darkness away. They were in a sort of a shanty-town: shabby structures that were probably houses of some sort, some lit from within, some boarded shut. There were few people walking these streets and fewer lights. Their speeder would look suspicious if they circled back through here again.
Chewie snaked the vehicle slowly around through another passageway. In the distance, a figure ducked into the shadows. Han frowned, something familiar firing inside his brain. He grabbed a fist-full of the Wookie's arm fur. "Chewie, slow down."
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Luke staggered out onto a dark street, four, maybe five levels down. He'd lost track. The street appeared to be mostly abandoned: shanty structures boarded up and closed tight.
The adrenaline was receding now. His ankle was burning, his ribs hurt, his head felt like it would break into two pieces, and his shoulder throbbed with every beat of his heart. He knew he needed to stop, find shelter somewhere, and bandage the wound with something. He now cursed the fact that he'd trashed the flight suit. That fabric could have been used as a makeshift bandage for his shoulder, and would certainly be cleaner than anything he was liable to find down here. And this, of all his injuries, felt somewhat urgent. He was still losing blood, he knew. His entire sleeve and the whole front of the tunic were now soaked through.
Running lights of a speeder preceded the even hum of the approaching vehicle.
Instinctively, Luke ducked out of sight, reaching out with the Force to read the driver's intent. He didn't think the Empire would find him this far down, at least not right away -
He jolted. The passengers of the speeder were familiar. Very familiar.
His heart quickening to a staccato that threatened to beat out of his chest, Luke stepped in front of the speeder, waved his hands.
The vehicle screeched to a halt, the top raised, and a tall human stood, backlit by the running lights.
"Luke?"
"Han!" Luke croaked, stumbling forward.
"Kid!?" The other man lurched toward him in two strides, grabbing a fistful of Luke's tunic, pulling him into a fierce embrace, his face complete disbelief. "Kid? How did you - ? What are you - ?" He tousled Luke's hair, pulled back to look at him. "You're alive!"
A warning growl from Chewie coincided with a warning tug of the Force.
Suddenly a red blaster bolt lit up the dark. Han wheeled back to the speeder, yanking Luke by the arm. "Company!" He swung his own blaster back to fire a warning shot to keep their heads down.
Luke crashed into the backseat of the speeder, just as the hood of the vehicle closed over them and Chewie peeled away.
They rode in tense silence a moment until it was clear they weren't being pursued. "I guess we're not in the most stellar of neighborhoods," Han offered. Luke could hear the relief in his voice.
Luke sat up gingerly, dizzy at even this small motion. Chewie slowed down to a more normal speed. "What are you two doing here?"
Han twisted around to look at him. "Trying to rescue you, Junior. But the fact that you got yourself out - that's lucky….and it's gonna make our job a tiny bit easier."
Luke nodded, still trying to process everything. "How'd you know I'd be down here?"
Solo arched his eyebrows. "We didn't. We're waiting for one of our operatives to show up from where he infiltrated the palace."
Luke frowned again. He rubbed his aching head, suddenly tired beyond belief, the adrenaline wearing off. They were infiltrating the palace to find him? "Who is it?"
Han faced forward, his eyes scanning the gloom. They were circling a building with a half-lit sign labeling it as The Beleaguered Bantha. "Daz Moechen."
"Daz?" Luke tried to recall the dark-haired soldier with a slightly crooked nose and deep-set eyes. "He's missing?"
"Yeah, well, we're not going to panic yet, kid," Han muttered. "He's only a few hours late." Han's grim sense in the Force told another story. He feared the worst for the soldier.
Luke's heart sank. It was bad enough when bad things happened to his fellow members of the Alliance. But the feeling was a hundred times worse when he knew that bad things had happened to them...because of him.
"Hey, kid, you bleeding somewhere I should know about?" Solo held up his hand to the light, only now realizing it was smeared with blood.
Luke grunted. "Um, yeah. My shoulder. I could use some bandages."
Han turned back and squinted at him in the dark. "You okay?"
Luke nodded, still feeling slightly ill over Daz. "I'll be fine."
"Okay, Chewie, let's get back," Solo decided. "Get the kid patched up and get out of here before we have the Imps breathing down our neck."
There was a mournful howl from the Wookiee as he swung the speeder around from the abandoned cantina.
Luke cleared his throat. "Where are we going exactly? I caused quite a stir on the surface - "
"I can only imagine, kid."
" - and we may need to think up a new escape plan."
Han nodded. "We have a place to lie low for a little while, and collect our team."
"Your team?"
Solo turned to throw Luke a lopsided grin. "Yeah, kid. A team. You didn't think we were going to leave you to rot in Vader's clutches, did you? We've been planning for over a month now. We've got people we trust - infiltrating the palace to get you out."
Luke stilled, touched by the realization that he had friends willing to risk their lives to help him. Still, once they knew -
"They wouldn't be nearly so willing if they knew whose son I was."
Han's face clouded in anger. He leveled a finger at the Jedi. "Kid, they all know, okay? Every single one of them. And they still chose to come on this mission."
Luke clamped his mouth shut.
"Here we are." The speeder pulled into a duracrete bunker, the door slamming down behind them. "Come on."
Luke followed them through the gloom through a new door and a set of stairs, lit in garish blue light. His heart sank. He was not sure he could do another set of stairs right now. Going down them had been bad enough. He could feel the adrenaline fading, and with it the energy he had maintained the last few hours. His shoulder ached now, a sharp pain all across his chest and down his arm. His ankle felt…not broken, at least, but probably sprained.
But he set his jaw and followed behind Han and Chewie in silence, listening to the labored sound of his own breathing, counting the steps in his brain. He could do this. The hardest part - escaping the Star Destroyer - was past him. If he could pull that off, he ought to be able to make it up a few flights of stairs.
Sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight… He stumbled on the lip of the step, catching the wall with his real hand, regaining his feet.
"You okay, kid?" Han called again, turning for the first time to regard him. He did a double take, his eyes widening now as he saw the blood-soaked tunic in brighter light. "Kreth, Luke!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Luke waved him off. "It looks worse than it is."
"Really? Cause that looks pretty bad." Solo came down a stair, caught Luke's uninjured arm by the elbow. "Why didn't you say something? Here." He took Luke's weight off his ankle. "Sit down."
Reluctantly, Luke sank down to the greasy, concrete step, his eyes going to the seeming endless tunnel of stairs above him. The blue light was only exacerbating a massive headache.
Chewie growled, raised his comlink to say something Luke didn't catch.
"We'll get someone down here to help," Han muttered with a frown as he inspected the wound on Luke's shoulder. "Damn, this is pretty deep. You get in a knife fight with someone?"
Luke grimaced, remembering the speed with which she had laid him out on the floor. He should work to improve his hand-to-hand combat skills. "Yeah." He winced as Han pulled the torn fabric away from the wound. "This woman who was guarding my cell."
Solo whistled. "Impressive." He patted his pockets, as if he kept a medkit on the ready. "We need something to stop the bleeding. Chewie, di'gya tell them to bring the medkit?"
Luke shook his head, pressing to his feet. "I can walk," he told Han, feeling a strange mixture of embarrassment and relief at Han's support as the smuggler swung Luke's good arm over his shoulder. "It's not bad." He steadied himself and threw a smile at his friend. "Just like old times, right?"
"What - me saving your butt again?"
Luke choked out a laugh.
"You're gonna owe me a new shirt," Solo groused. "You're bleeding all over me."
"Put it on my tab," Luke answered.
There was suddenly a loud slam from the stairwell above, and hurried footsteps. Luke jolted at the familiar presence, turning his face up to the newcomer. "Chewie!" It was Leia's voice, alarmed. "What is it - "
She broke off when she saw them, Luke offering a weak smile from his place, paused on the stairway. He knew he must look terrible. Leia's reaction to him confirmed it.
"Luke!" She cried, running down the stairs to him. "How - ? You're free?" She flew into his arms, heedless of the blood-soaked shirt. Luke winced as she pressed into his wounded shoulder, his vision beginning to tunnel. "Are you okay? What happened? How did you get out? Is Daz - "
"Easy, Princess, he's hurt," Han murmured, holding Luke up so the Jedi didn't fall back down the stairwell.
She drew back in alarm, seeing all the blood for the first time. "Good stars, Luke, what happened?"
Luke blinked, still trying to clear the gray fog in his vision, his head and arms tingling. "I'm okay, Leia, it's just - " he felt his knees buckle, and suddenly it was though he was under water, voices echoing cavernously in his ears, mingling together. He felt frozen in treacle, unable to answer them, frantically scrabbling to the surface of a deep, calm pool, beckoning him to rest.
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"Luke!" It was Leia's voice again. Luke surfaced somehow, his eyes flying open. He was no longer in the stairwell, but resting on some sort of cot. He blinked again. Leia was hovering in his line of vision, her brow creased with worry. "Can you hear me?"
Luke scrambled to sit up. Several pairs of hands pressed him down, voices he didn't recognize murmuring words he could not decipher. Instinctively, he lashed out. There was a crash and shouts. He rolled almost to a sitting position.
"Kid, stop! Luke!" It was Han's voice. The smuggler appeared over him, pushing him back. "Stop! They're trying to help."
He stopped struggling, lay back, eyes shut, realizing where he was. This was not the Empire. He was safe. Vader was not here. "Sorry," he rasped. "Sorry. I'm not…."
"S'okay kid," Solo's hand remained heavy on his arm. "Tellchen here is going to fix you up. You remember Cam?"
Luke opened his eyes and fixed them on the other man. Cam Tellchen. He remembered the man was… "You're the medic?"
The older man nodded. "Yeah."
Luke grimaced. "Sorry," he said again. "My memory's not so…"
Tellchen nodded in understanding. "No offense taken, Luke."
Leia was near, on his other side. She pulled his left hand into hers. Her fingers were icy cold. "We're safe here for now. The fruit-packing plant is an Alliance safehouse."
Luke let his eyes scan the small, windowless room. Han was standing near Chewie now, near the door. Leia was sitting on one side of the cot where Luke lay, Cam on the other. The lights here were the same blue/white as the stairwell. He shut his eyes against the pain of the glare, and wondered if they were really far enough from the Imperial Palace to be "safe" - if it was even possible to be far enough away. Vader and the Emperor would be searching for him by now. Already, he could feel a locus of energy, casting out for him, searching….
He mentally pulled his shields tighter around him and shuddered.
"Sorry," Cam murmured, as he had just poured a strong-smelling disinfectant on Luke's shoulder wound. It burned. "I should have warned you."
Luke shook his head. He didn't have the energy to explain himself.
Leia's cold fingers brushed the side of his head, past the long, angry scar along his hairline. "What happened here, Luke?" Her voice sounded small; tense, as if she already knew the answer.
He turned his gaze to her, squinting in the light as Tellchen was cutting away more of his blood-soaked shirt. "Surgery," he whispered. "I had a head injury…"
There was a long silence in which nobody spoke, all eyes going to Cam, who dropped the shredded remains of Luke's shirt, and pulled the sterile packages of bacta bandages from his field case.
After a moment, Luke let his head sink back into the pillow behind him. Finally, Leia said the words. "From the fall?"
Luke peered into her eyes, seeing the depth of personal responsibility she was prepared to take on; the heavy guilt over what had happened to him on Third Moon. He pursed his lips. "It's not your fault, Leia."
She glanced away.
The silence was thick and uncomfortable. Tellchen was focused very intently on Luke's shoulder, pressing the bacta dressing onto the wound; Han was staring at a distant spot on the floor, his expression a troubled mask.
It was Leia who broke the silence, as if no one else were in the room but the two of them. "I should never have told you to come."
Luke studied her face for a long moment. Of course she would feel responsible for what happened. But how could he explain to her the Force, the Jedi, and what exactly his volatile relationship with Vader was? "It's not your fault," he said again. "Vader - "
"What did he do to you?" She cut in. Her voice was angry, her brown eyes probing, scanning him now for other obvious injuries.
Luke clamped his mouth shut, guarded now. How would she take learning about his hand? Or the many weeks struggling to relearn how to eat, stand, and walk again? How could he explain the empty hole in his heart where a father should have been?
"I'm alright, Leia," he said instead. "I'm alive. The Empire…" he tried a small smile. "...provides very good medical care."
Tellchen glanced up from Luke's shoulder, and laughed shortly. "The perks of being wanted alive." Leia was not amused.
Luke remembered again, Vader's promise to drag him to the Emperor, like a prized Gundark, to complete his training. His own smile faded, the joke landing flat.
Cam was too intent on the task at hand to notice the thick tension that had returned to the room. His brow furrowed as he pointed the medical scanner at Luke. "How is your head now?"
Luke refocused his eyes on the medic. "It hurts," he admitted. "I may have hit a little hard landing on the transport. Or hitting the ground. I can't remember."
"'Landing on a transport'?" Han repeated from his place by the door. "What the hell were you doing?"
Luke grimaced. "Getting shot down from a TIE fighter I stole," he replied. "I was trying to get rid of my parachute before I hit the ground. I thought keeping the chute with me would be like wearing a giant target on my back."
The Corellian straightened. "So you…" he prompted, looking somewhat baffled.
"Cut my chute loose and went in for a landing," Luke finished. He paused. "...On a transport that happened to be passing by."
He saw matching expressions of disbelief on all of their faces. Chewie growled something Luke didn't catch. The Jedi raised his eyebrows to Han. Solo shifted against the wall, rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "He says you're absolutely nuts, kid."
Luke smiled a little at that, at the grudging respect in the Correllian's eyes. It certainly hadn't been one of his brighter ideas, but it had worked, so…
"You should probably try to avoid any more crazy stunts like that, if you don't want to exacerbate that head injury," Cam told him, looking serious now. "I mean it, Luke."
"It wasn't my first choice of exit strategy," Luke informed him, leaning back again into the pillow. "But it worked, at least."
He suddenly felt so very tired. The expression in his eyes must have evident to all present, for Leia snapped into action.
"You need rest, Luke."
Cam nodded in agreement, pulling one final bandage around Luke's shoulder and taping it off. "Yes, you do." He reached down to gather his supplies. "A couple of hours, at least, then we can go."
A siren of warning went off in Luke's brain. He couldn't rest - couldn't just lie here, double-digit kilometers away from the Imperial Palace, with both Vader and the Emperor actively searching for him, and rest. He shook his head, slowly easing himself up to a sitting position. "I can rest later. We need to get out of here before they find us."
Han cleared his throat. "Um, small problem there."
Luke raised his eyebrows.
"The team is not back from the palace."
"And we still have no word from Moechen," Leia added.
Luke stared at them. Did they not understand the urgency of the situation? The longer they stayed here, under Vader and Palpatine's noses, the sooner the trap would close. "We can't stay," he argued. "We have to leave."
"And leave our men behind, Luke?" Leia's voice was pained. It invited no argument. "We just need an hour to gather everyone together." She looked at him. "An hour of sleep would probably do you wonders."
Everyone in the room nodded. No one said so, but Luke knew dragging a lame and injured comrade through the Coruscant streets would endanger them all.
An hour-long healing trance could heal his ankle, ease the pounding pain in his head. And Yoda had taught him how to shield himself, even in such a trance.
He shouldn't risk it. A tingling warning in the Force told him to go, to move.
But then, they couldn't leave their compatriots behind either.
"All right," he sighed, sinking back into the firm give of the cot. "One hour. And then we go."
They were already moving to exit the room, to let him sleep.
"Wake me in one hour," Luke called to Leia before she slid the door shut behind her.
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Darth Vader, after swooping recklessly close to the surface of Coruscant, past the smoking wreckage of the ship, over the swarming traffic lanes, and seeing/sensing no detectable sign of his son, flew straight for the palace, docking his I-TIE in his private bay, and releasing an angry roar of frustration into the universe.
Luke had been very foolish to pull such a stunt. But Vader would get him back. He reached into the Force, lashed his sense out across the overly-populated Coruscant skyline, searching for the bright wash of light that was his son's presence. The boy would not be able to hide forever, especially so close by
He couldn't detect even a flicker.
Vader barrelled through the glass-walled corridors of the palace, down the private turbolift, in a foul mood.
Court was in session, and the dark lord glared at the hangers-on, simpering around Palpatine until the red guard closed the colossal doors behind them. And they were alone.
"Where is my Jedi, Lord Vader?"
Palpatine had risen from his massive throne on its ebony dais, and walked slowly, steadily to the edge of the room, the click of his cane the only sound in the massive room. The planet's sun was low on the horizon now, orange sunlight luminescing the entire throne room through the length of the massive bank of windows. No other building came close to matching the palace in height. No vehicles or ships were allowed in the prescribed radius around the towers, which made for a spectacular, unobstructed view.
It was this view the Emperor peered at now, all of it beneath his notice, save for the whereabouts of a single human. Vader's son.
Vader braced himself. The failure was his own. He had underestimated Luke's ability to get past his guards in the state he was in; had underestimated the boy's determination to leave. He was well-acquainted with Palpatine's anger, and fully expectant that it would be turned on him.
"Well?" the ruler sneered, turning his hooded-visage to regard Vader, yellow eyes leering in the shadows. "What have you to say for yourself?"
"He is," Vader offered, "very powerful, in spite of his injuries."
Palpatine's thin lips drew back to reveal his ruined teeth, a snarl of accusation on his face. "You let him go. Didn't you?"
Vader was silent.
"Answer me." The voice was quiet, deadly with cold rage.
"He escaped, my Master," Vader allowed. "I had his ship shot down, so he could not get further afield."
Palpatine stood to regard him for a very long, tense moment. Vader stood statue-still, waiting for retribution, should it come. It would not be the first time.
Abruptly, the Emperor turned back to the window, impatient. "He is still on-planet," he growled.
"Yes, my master."
"Find him." Vader could feel a cold, merciless smile forming on the old man's lips, even though he could not see Palpatine's face. "And bring him to me."