Chapter 9

Before much longer the Millennium Falcon reached the Yavin System, and, having dropped into sub light, made its approach to the fourth moon of the second planet of the system.

"No doubt the Rebel leaders will be most relieved to see you, Princess," Obi-Wan told Leia. "But they will be less than pleased to see who we've brought with us."

Leia nodded, looking up at her father. "Well, we'll just have to ensure that everyone realizes he is on our side now," she said.

Vader was encouraged by his daughter's words, but still could not help but think that the Rebel leaders would not be quite as sympathetic, no matter what he had done to save both Alderaan and his children.

"Here we go," Han said as he entered the hold. He looked at Vader. "Hope you enjoyed the ride," he said dryly. "Cause things are going to get bumpy from here on in."

"I'm sure they will," Vader replied. "I am prepared."

"Sure you are," Han muttered under his breath as he and Chewbacca went back to lower the ramp. Luke, who had spent the duration of the voyage in the cockpit with Han and Chewbacca, entered the hold at this point. He looked at Vader, and then at Leia, still in a state of shock over the latest disclosures.

"So what's going to happen now?" Luke asked his sister. "Don't you think your leaders are going to have a problem with …him?"

Leia stood up. "I'm sure they will," she replied. "Until he shows them how to destroy the Death Star."

"You really expect him to do that?" Luke retorted.

Vader was growing annoyed with the manner in which his son was speaking, as though he were not even present. "I have given Leia my word that I would," he interjected. "And that seems to be good enough for her."

"Come on," Leia said, not wishing to be drawn in to an argument between her father and her brother. "We have a job to do."

Vader and his son looked at one another wordlessly, and then Luke followed Leia off of the ship

"Give the boy a chance," Obi-Wan advised Vader as he stood beside him.

"He hates me," Vader stated.

"Perhaps right now," Kenobi said. "But Leia doesn't hate you," he said, turning to look at Leia. "Does she?"

"No," Vader replied. "Not any more."

"Then don't give up on Luke so quickly," Kenobi suggested. "Anything is possible, I have learned that today," he said with a smile.

Vader nodded. "Yes, that is true," he conceded.

Leia was greeted by the leaders of the Rebellion when she disembarked, who were most relieved to see her alive and well. However when they saw the very man who had held her prisoner on board the Death Star join her, their relief soon turned to shock.

"What the…" Admiral Willard sputtered. "What the devil is he doing here?" he demanded. He turned to Leia. "Princess?? Did he coerce you to taking him here?"

"No," Leia told him at once. "I know this seems most unusual, but I owe him my life," she told the astonished admiral. "Not only that, he prevented the destruction of Alderaan. Tarkin would have blown it to bits if Lord Vader hadn't sabotaged the primary weapons array."

Willard looked from the young woman up to the Dark Lord, scarcely able to believe her. "I can't believe what you're telling me," he said. "You're defecting, Vader? Is that what all this means?"

Vader wasn't quite sure how to respond. "I have personal reasons for my actions," he said simply. "But now is hardly the time to discuss them. The Death Star is on its way here, and I can promise you that they will not miss their opportunity to level this planet to bits unless you act fast."

"You have the plans?" Willard asked Leia.

She nodded. "Better than that, we have someone who already knows where the Death Star's weaknesses are," she said. She turned and looked up at her father. "And is wiling to show us how to exploit them."

Willard frowned. "Is that so?" he said. "And how do we know that what he tells us is the truth, and not a way of us digging our own graves? He could be easily feed us misinformation and we'd not know it until this planet was blasted into space dust."

"You are welcome to study the schematics for yourself," Vader told him, "if you believe I am lying. That is, if you have the time to spare."

Willard was torn between his need to set the attack into motion and the fear that Vader was indeed laying a trap.

"He's not lying," Leia averred. "I know it's hard to believe or even to understand, but he is on our side, Admiral," she said. "I would bet my life on it."

"We'd all be betting our lives on it, Princess," Willard replied dryly. "If you don't mind, I'd like to have a look at these plans myself. Lord Vader can show me what he knows."

Vader nodded. "Very well," he said. "Lead the way."

"Luke!"

Luke turned to see Obi-Wan Kenobi approaching him. He had avoided the old Jedi since he had learned the truth of his father's identity, and still resented Kenobi for lying to him as he had.

"We need to talk, Luke," Kenobi said.

"More lies?" Luke replied coldly.

Obi-Wan shook his head. "No, only the truth this time, I swear."

Luke stood and looked at the old Jedi. "What do you want to tell me?" he said. "How much my father loves me? How he has spent the past nineteen years searching the galaxy for me?" he asked sarcastically.

"I know how angry you are, Luke," Obi-Wan replied. "And you have every right to be. I never should have lied to you the way I did, but I did it to protect you."

"Protect me?" Luke replied. "From what? The truth?"

"Yes, the truth," Obi-Wan replied. "You were not ready to bear the burden of the truth," he explained. "But now that you know it, I must explain to you the circumstances which lead your father to make the decisions he did. I have only recently been made aware of those circumstances myself."

"What circumstances are you talking about, Ben?" Luke asked tiredly. "What could possibly justify a father abandoning his children the way he did?"

"The fact that he thought those children had perished along with their mother before they were born," Kenobi replied. "The fact that he only recently discovered that those children were actually alive, and that he had been lied to for the past twenty years by someone he trusted, namely his master, the emperor Palpatine."

Luke was taken aback by this information, and was silent for a moment as he digested it. Yes, that would explain why Vader had been absent from his children's lives until recently. But the more pressing question still remained unanswered. Why?

"Why did he turn to the dark side then?" Luke asked. "Why did he trust someone as evil as the emperor? He was a Jedi! How could he put his trust in someone who stood for everything the Jedi fought against?"

Kenobi sighed, realizing that at this point he must admit to his own failures, his own inability to see what was happening to the man who he had once called brother. "Palpatine did not always appear to be evil, Luke," he explained. "For many years he was the Chancellor of the Republic, and was considered to be a fair and benevolent leader. It wasn't until your father began to fear for your mother's life that Palpatine started to lure him to the Dark Side."

Luke frowned. "My mother? What did she have to do with this?"

"Everything," Kenobi answered. "Your father was not supposed to marry, being a Jedi; and so he and your mother married in secret. When your father learned of her pregnancy, he began to have visions of her dying in childbirth. These visions drove him to the point of desperation, and, not knowing where else to turn, he succumbed to the lure of the Dark power that Palpatine offered him. You see, Palpatine lead your father to believe that he could save the life of your mother through the Dark Side, and your father, so desperate to save her, believed him."

Luke was astonished by this revelation, and was rendered speechless for a moment. My father loved my mother so much that he sacrificed his soul to save her? "He…he turned to the Dark Side to save my mother?"

Kenobi nodded. "Yes," he replied. "I did not know any of this until today, when Vader told your sister. He kept it to himself, letting it eat away at him until it destroyed him, along with the Darkness that he allowed to claim him. If only I had known, if only he had confided in me…perhaps things could have been different."

Luke was silent as he listened to the old man's tragic tale.

"I know you are angry right now Luke," Kenobi said again. "But I thought you needed to know this. I hope it makes a difference."

Obi-Wan turned and left Luke at this point, letting him ponder what he had just learned.

Leia, Vader and Willard proceeded to the command center along with the little astromech droid, R2D2 in tow. Vader kept turning and looking at the little droid, starting to feel as though he had seen him before.

"What is the designation of that droid?" he asked his daughter.

"R2 D2," she replied. "Why do you ask?"

Vader nodded. "He and I used to make quite a team," he told her. "He was my companion on many missions during the Clone Wars."

"Really?" Leia asked in amazement. "What an incredible coincidence!"
"Not really," Vader replied. "It was the property of your mother, after all. It is not that surprising that it became part of your household."

"What about his counterpart? C3P0?" Leia asked .

"I built that droid when I was a boy," Vader replied. "He was meant to help my mother around the house."

Leia was about to respond when they entered the command station, and more pressing matters were immediately pushed to the foreground. A technician hooked up Artoo to a computer terminal and activated the play back mechanism, downloading the information stored on the disc into the computer for analysis.

"It's the thermal exhaust port," Vader told his daughter as the technicians, Admiral Willard and General Dodonna pored over the data. "It's relatively unprotected."

"How could we destroy it?" she asked.

"One proton torpedo blast would start a chain reaction that should destroy the station. A small one man vessel would be able to access the port," he told her, folding his arms over his chest. "Your fleet has ships that small, I'm certain of it."

Leia nodded. "Yes we do," she said. "Where is it? This port?"

"Below the main exhaust port," he told her, watching as the rebels pored frantically through the huge amount of data. "It will take them hours to find it," he told her. "Fools," he added, shaking his head.

Leia nodded. "I know," she said. "But you have to understand their point of view; you've not given them any reason to believe you. They don't know you as I do."

Leia's comment surprised him and he turned back to her. "I appreciate your belief in me, Leia," he told her. "It means more to me than I can express."

Leia smiled. "I have an idea," she said. She stood up and walked over to the group of technicians. "Check the exhaust port," she told them.

They looked up at her, and then located the area on the schematics. They examined the area in question, talking in low tones among themselves. Then they looked up at her. "This is it," they told her. "How did you know?"

"Lord Vader told me," she said. "That's how," she added, looking up at General Dodonna. "Now can we get this battle under way?"

Dodonna nodded, glancing over her shoulder at Vader briefly. "Yes, let's get everyone together for a briefing. We have no time to lose."

Leia and Vader ran into Luke and Obi-Wan in the corridor.

"Well?" Obi-Wan asked.

"We found it," Leia told them. "Come on Luke," Leia said, taking his hand. "There's no time to waste. You're a pilot, right?"

Vader and Obi-Wan walked behind the twins. Vader seemed deep in thought.

"I spoke to Luke," Obi-Wan told Vader. "Everything you told Leia earlier, I told to him."

"And?" Vader replied. "Did it make any difference?"

"He was quite shocked, of course," Obi-Wan replied. "But yes, I think it has made a difference. Surely you sensed a change in the boy when he spoke to you just now."

Vader had sensed a change, but was reluctant to even consider what it meant. "Yes," he admitted. "I did."

"Patience," Kenobi said. "I know that has never been one of your strengths," he added wryly. "But you really must try to be patient with the boy."

"I will try," he said.

General Dodonna waited until the assembly of pilots and technicians were silent before he began.

"The battle station is heavily shielded and carries firepower greater than half the star fleet," he began. "Its defenses are designed

around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be

able to penetrate the outer defense."

Vader stood beside Leia, annoyed at the pomposity of the General, who seemed content to take credit for the key information. He looked over the crowd of young pilots, and saw his son watching him. He held Luke's gaze for a moment, sensing within his son a small level of acceptance, a perceptible decrease in the amount of hostility Luke harbored. Luke looked away and returned his attention to the briefing.

"Pardon me for asking, sir," asked one of the squadron leaders. "But what good are snub fighters going to be against that?"

"Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to

be any threat," Dodonna replied, keenly aware of Vader's presence, "or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station."

Luke continued to listen to the General's analysis, his eyes drifting every so often over to where Leia stood with Vader. They made such an odd looking pair; the tiny white clad princess standing beside the huge black armored Sith Lord; and yet even from where he was sitting, Luke could sense the bond between them. Every so often Leia would say something to him, and Vader would bend his head close to hear her.

"That's impossible, even for a computer," the young pilot seated beside Luke declared upon hearing the description of the plan of attack given by the general,.

"It's not impossible," Luke replied. "I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my

T-sixteen back home. They're not much bigger than two meters."

"Then man your ships! And may the Force be with you!" Dodonna concluded.

"Such a maneuver would be easy for the Chosen One," Kenobi commented to Vader as he and Leia watched the pilots file out of the room.

"It isn't likely the Rebel Alliance would trust me with one of their craft," Vader replied.

"The Chosen One?" Leia asked. "Is that what you were called?"

"Your father is the one spoken of in Jedi prophecy," Kenobi explained. "The greatest of all the Jedi, the one who will bring balance to the Force and destroy the Sith."

Leia looked up at her father. "Is that true? Do you mean to destroy the Sith?"

Vader remained silent for a moment. "I am not certain what my destiny is any more, Leia," he admitted. He stopped when he saw Luke approaching them. He wore the orange flight suit of the Rebel fleet. Vader couldn't help but feel a surge of pride when he saw his son.

"Luke!" Leia said, embracing her brother. "Be careful out there, okay?" she said.

Luke smiled. "I will," he replied.

Leia looked around him. "Where is Han?" she asked.

"He took his reward and left," Luke said, the disappointment evident in his voice. "I really thought he'd change his mind."

"Captain Solo must follow his own destiny, Luke," Vader said. "As we all must."

Luke nodded, looking up briefly at the Dark Lord. "I suppose so," he said simply.

"Use the Force, Luke," Obi-Wan advised. "Let it guide your actions."

Luke nodded as he released his sister. He looked up at his father.

"May the Force be with you," Vader said.

Luke was about to say something in response, but decided against it. He simply nodded in response, and then turned and left them.

Vader watched him go, his heart torn between the pride he felt at seeing his boy embarking upon his first battle, and the fear that this same battle would claim the life of his only son.

"Come on," Leia said, taking her father's arm. "Let's go."