Chewbacca maneuvered the AT-ST deftly around clusters of Ewoks on the ground, forcing himself to focus on the job at hand as he mentally catalogued the story he'd relate to Han once they found the missing general. Years in the copilot's seat of the Falcon had taught him significant flexibility in the cockpit, since the sensors could rarely be trusted. One had to operate the ship by feel and instinct, and that gave the Wookiee the ability to drop—literally in this case—into nearly any configuration of controls and pilot efficiently. The rocking and vibrating took some getting used to as the machine lumbered through the forest, but so far Derlin's plan was on track.
He spotted the major's signal beacon on the sensors, and shifted to the right. Out of nowhere, an Ewok swung down, hanging over the viewport and brandishing a club until he saw the Wookiee. Chewbacca bared his teeth, and the Ewok nimbly leapt off the walker onto a nearby tree, chittering happily.
He slowed to a crawl as he reached the small group of Rebels not involved in diverting the Imperials away from the shield generator. Raising a hairy paw out of the top of the cockpit to confirm his identity, he reactivated the link to Derlin.
"Can you drop that thing down so we can load it up?" the major asked, handing his comm to Threepio for Chewbacca's reply.
Chewie tried a few buttons and levers to no avail. "You got anyone down there that knows the controls on these things?" he asked finally. Threepio passed along the message, and Derlin quickly conferred with the team on the ground.
As Chewbacca waited, the internal comms system crackled to life. "Scout Three to Scout Four, you copy?"
He momentarily considered taking the Han Solo approach and shooting the entire communications array, but wanted to allay any suspicion of their hijacking plan as long as possible. Instead he turned down the volume and then flung open the hatch, swinging himself onto a nearby branch and then shimmying down the tree to join his companions.
"Chewbacca says to just give him the bag and he'll load it in," Threepio translated as Chewbacca lumbered towards them, shouting.
The Rebels early intelligence on the Endor facility showed that the shield generator was housed in a reinforced building built into the side of a hill to guard against unauthorized entries as well as aerial attacks. Originally the team had hoped to force their way in through the door, planting explosives inside and destroying the generator. The discovery of Rebel commandos and subsequent lockdown of the generator building sent them to a version of the initial Plan B.
The usual engineering design for the bunker required that the rear wall, which was supported by the hillside behind it, be detachable from the rest of the structure to allow natural fluctuations in the surrounding terrain to move the wall slightly without straining the rest of the load bearing components. However, this left a vulnerability buried deep under the hill that the Rebels hoped to exploit with their explosives. By locating the exact spot of the break, they planned to collapse the structure and—hopefully—crush the shield generator components within.
Derlin hadn't been thrilled with the backup plan to begin with, but held back on his concerns that it would be too difficult to find a precise location of the vulnerability in the heat of a battle, as he didn't have a better suggestion at the time. The capture of the AT-ST changed everything.
"Take some ropes with you," Derlin told Chewbacca as he took the pack of explosives back towards the walker. "You'll need two more men—you fire at the ground to burn away the layer above the bunker, and as soon as you spot the edge of the rear wall the others will jump down, plant the explosives, and run like hell. Got it?"
Chewbacca nodded.
"And you get out of their too," Derlin added. "Save the walker if you can, but don't get killed over it."
With a salute, Chewbacca swung his way back up the tree, the heavy bag flung over his shoulder. A moment later, he disappeared into the cockpit and then dropped two ropes.
"And I never thought that climbing unit in gym class would count for anything," one of the soldiers quipped as he grabbed on, rappelling upwards and standing for a moment on top of the walker to survey his surroundings. The second man followed quickly behind, and they both stepped into the cockpit.
"May the Force be with you," Derlin murmured as the AT-ST began treading back in the direction of the bunker. "May the Force be with us all." Next to him, Artoo tweeted in agreement.
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Three years previous, Luke was perplexed by the impact that the destruction of Alderaan had on Obi Wan Kenobi. He'd been too polite to say anything, but the older man's sudden weakness and nausea struck him as more than slightly melodramatic. Only now, as he reeled under the assault of hundreds of death screams pummeling him through space as the space station fired on the first Alliance cruiser, did he fully understand what Obi Wan was going through. Luke struggled not to drop to his knees, a wave of physical pain slamming into him as he watched his compatriots' lives snuffed out across the darkness of space. Vader stepped back, giving him some breathing room as Luke watched the ongoing battle in horror.
"I take it," the Emperor remarked mildly, "That your informants failed to mention that my battle station is fully armed and operational when they encouraged you to take on this ridiculous quest?"
Luke didn't respond. He put a hand on the viewport, looking over at Vader with an expression of betrayal and hurt on his face. His father turned away.
"You believe your spies are so talented as to infiltrate my security again?" Palpatine continued, "It was I who gave them the location of this Death Star. Your rebel friends have played right into my hands, boy. And now you will join me, or your friends will suffer the consequences."
Luke glared at the old man, and noticed that the Emperor looked irritated. Puzzled, Luke wondered when his friends would be brought in. Palpatine had been threatening it for a while now, and there was no sign of them.
"Vader!" the Emperor finally snapped. "Where are the prisoners?"
"They should be here now," Vader responded. "I am unaware of any cause for delay."
For a moment Luke's heart leapt. Maybe they had been rescued by the fleet. Forgetting himself, he reached out briefly, trying to find Leia amongst the chaos outside. Then he felt a surge of darkness—tempered by a tiny flicker of…curiosity? hope? …before he pulled back in horror. He turned around, his father standing directly behind him, the steady breathing the only sound in the room.
"Interesting," Vader murmured. Luke's eyes grew wide. How much had his father surmised from his brief lapse? "Family?" The boy froze, trying to clear his mind before his father could glean any more information. He wished for a moment that he had Leia's abilities to resist, then….No! he thought. Don't think about Leia!
"Your thoughts betray you, Lord Vader." The Emperor's voice cackled through the room. "What have you discovered?"
Luke's mouth dropped open. The Emperor must have sensed his father's curiosity and turmoil over Luke's accidental admission. With pleading eyes, he begged his father silently not to betray his sister to Palpatine.
"He believes his friends have escaped," Vader said flatly. "He is incorrect."
Luke's breath caught in his throat, relief filling his body. "Thank you, Father," he thought. He looked down, wondering what this turn of events implied.
"Forget it!" Palpatine spat. "I tire of these games. You will join us now, boy, or you will die."
Glancing confidently at Vader, Luke stood up a bit straighter. If his father could defy the Emperor, so could he.
"I'll never join you," Luke said, tossing his weapon aside. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."
Palpatine shook his head, lifting both hands to point at Luke. "More's the pity," he sneered.
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A cloud of dirt exploded in front of them as Chewbacca aimed the turbolasers mounted on the front of the AT-ST at the ground and fired. The settling dust obscured the impact of the barrage, and Chewbacca cursed as he opened fire again. Over the communications system he could hear the frantic calls of the Imperials inside the bunker to the outside troops, demanding a report on who exactly was shooting at them. From what they could tell however, there had not yet been any damage to the interior of the facility.
"This isn't working," one of the Rebels remarked tightly, looking through the viewport to see if they'd made any progress in locating the seam between the roof and rear wall. "It's just tossing up dirt."
Chewbacca roared in agreement. At this rate reinforcements would arrive before they could even make a dent. In annoyance, he yanked a lever to the right of the pilot's seat, and the three occupants fell to the floor in a heap as the walker suddenly crouched close to the ground.
"Guess I figured out how to do that," Chewbacca muttered to himself. From their closer perspective, he could see that they had indeed merely succeeded in moving and loosening dirt. Time for Plan C.
As with most vehicles, spaceworthy or otherwise, the AT-ST had a large red button protected by a locked plastic cover, its purpose obvious from the number of precautions against accidental activation. With a roar, Chewbacca gestured for his companions to get out of the walker, then used brute strength to pry open the lid of the self-destruct.
"What are you doing?" one soldier asked as he scrambled out of Chewbacca's way. The specifics of Chewie's response in Shyriwook were lost on him, but he understood and obeyed the order to get the hell out of the way.
Ripping open the bag of explosives, Chewbacca activated them and then tossed them in a heap in the walker. They were meant to be attached to walls, but he was aiming for size, not precision. Then with one last silent request to the Wookiee deities he slammed a paw into the self-destruct button and swung himself out of the walker, grabbing a Rebel under each arm as he fled for the safety of the trees.
Seconds later, the walker burst apart with an explosion that pushed the trunks of the nearby conifers into graceful parabolas as a fireball filled the air. Sheltering behind an immense boulder, Chewbacca felt the shockwave rattle through his bones and teeth, watching as branches swayed in the sudden wind over a radius of hundreds of meters. As the sound disappeared into the woods, Chewie stood up to peek at his handiwork, then let out a cheer of victory.
The bunker was now open to the bright noontime sky, its former contents and occupants vaporized in the secondary fireball caused by the detonation of the pack of explosives that Chewie had set. The shield itself was invisible, but a glance at the carnage told the Rebels that the tide had turned. It was time for the final attack.
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Luke screamed as bolts of electricity gripped his body, throwing him to the ground as he convulsed under the onslaught. The Emperor edged closer, lightning pouring from his fingers as he blithely observed the young man's agony.
"Father!" Luke shrieked. "Father, help me!"
Vader was intimately familiar with the pain inflicted by the Emperor's ability to distill the power of the Dark Side into a burst of lightning that attacked the physical being while enveloping the mind in a cloak of darkness. It was just discipline, he told himself, distracted again as he pondered Luke's inadvertent revelation.
It was ironic that for so many years he had avoided engaging with the princess because of her resemblance to his late wife. Not just her appearance, but her passion for politics, her rising star status at such a young age….he hated her because he worried that people would see her and forget all about Padme and everything she'd accomplished. Soon, he had mused angrily, young senators would be a credit a dozen and Padme's legacy would be lost to the ages. And because of him, her political legacy was all she had left. It was all he could do to keep himself from destroying the young Alderaani woman the day she was sworn in. When he finally was forced to confront her over her participation in the Rebellion, he relished finally having an opportunity to punish her for her arrogance and disrespect.
But Fate has a sense of irony, he acknowledged. Of course Leia was his daughter. It was a gift and a chastisement all at once. His family was alive, nearly whole, but—like her mother—his daughter would be lost to him forever because of his cruelty.
Luke screamed again, drawing Vader's attention back to the present. The Emperor was standing over the boy, watching him as he tried to break away from the relentless attack.
"Don't worry," Palpatine said, cutting off the flow of sparking electricity for a brief moment. "I won't kill you before your friends arrive. I'm sure you want to watch them die first." He lunged forward, restarting his assault as Luke pleaded with his father for help.
Vader stood, seemingly impassive, as he considered the Emperor's words. True, he'd planned on using the princess and the smuggler in any way necessary to turn his son, but now…Leia had suffered enough. He had to keep his daughter away from his master.
No. Looking at Palpatine, he suddenly realized that the old man had been lying to him from the beginning. The emperor said he had killed his wife, but if she had died on Mustafar, how were there now two living children fighting for a cause she would have believed in? Never again would he call that man his master.
Luke shuddered and then lay horrifyingly still as his father lunged at Palpatine, the old man's frail body crumpling in his grasp. He could feel the Force swirling around him like a maelstrom, Palpatine's fury crackling on the edges as he fought the inclination to simply crush the Emperor like a bug. Instead, he lifted him overhead, offering him like a sacrifice as he flung the Sith into the raging plasma field of the power core that pulsed through the throne room. With an explosion of hate and anger and overwhelming terror, his presence in the Force dissipated into a black fog, sending a tremor through the superstructure of the station.
"Father," Luke called weakly, and smiled as the black clad man rushed to his side. "You saved me."
The darkness still pulling at him like quicksand, he didn't respond, merely stroking Luke's sweaty forehead. The two men remained in silence for a moment, until another sudden tremor rocked the room around them. Pushing himself to his feet with a groan, Luke limped to the viewport and grinned as he saw a wave of laser fire from one of the Rebel ships pound the hull of the Death Star unimpeded.
"The shield is down!" he cried happily, grinning at his father.
"Then we must leave, now. I won't have you die here."
Shaking, Luke marveled at the sudden transformation of his father. He could feel the lingering conflict, the regret and shame and pain that tormented him. He took a step closer, and then, surprising them both, pulled his father into a tight embrace. For a moment there was no reaction, and then Luke felt a gloved hand patting him on the back.
"We must leave," he repeated, his vocal modulator revealing little emotion. Luke nodded.
"How are we going to get past those guards?"
"Leave that to me. Just follow my lead." Without warning, he snatched Luke by the collar, alarming the young man briefly until he gave him a reassuring pat on the arm.
The doors slid open, the Crimson Guard standing at attention as they marched out.
"His Majesty demands solitude." He kept his order short, quickly shutting the door behind him as he pulled Luke away. Luke quickly picked up on the ruse and pretended to struggle slightly before plastering a resigned look on his face. They turned a corner, and his father released him.
"This corridor will take us to the shuttle bay," he said, walking ahead briskly as Luke tried to keep up. His arms and legs were still tingling from the Emperor's attack, but he would deal with that later. Right now he was with his father and the Emperor was dead. That was all that mattered.
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Lando Calrissian blew out a nervous breath as he acknowledged the order to proceed from Admiral Ackbar. If he thought about it long enough, he would realize that he was probably more scared of Han Solo should he fail to return the Millennium Falcon in one piece than he was of the Imperials. But there was no time for such musings at the moment. Instead, he told his Sullustan copilot, who looked comically tiny in Chewbacca's oversized chair, to check in with the snub fighters trailing them as he plunged into the crevice that would take them to the battle station's core.
"All squadrons checked in," Nien Nunb reported.
Lando activated the comm. "Follow my lead and keep the TIEs off our tail," he ordered. "Stay tight and let's blow this thing." As practice, he fired a few turbolaser shots at the interior hull, watching the resulting explosions with grim pride. "That'll knock them off their feet," he crowed.
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Luke was moving at a dead run, wondering how he'd been cursed with such short legs in spite of his towering father when the other man suddenly turned, throwing himself over Luke. A split second later the wall next to them exploded, sending a blast of flame and shrapnel towards them. Luke shook his head clear, pulling himself out from under his father as the station's firefighting systems kicked in, sealing off the puncture and dropping foam onto the remaining flames.
For a moment, Luke had a hard time seeing through the smoke. "Father, I'm fine," he said, trying to pull the man to his feet. Then as a fan began sucking away the remaining murky air, Luke gasped , dropping to his knees.
The black suit that had protected his father's injured body was in ruins, the back melted away under the heat of the explosion. The helmet was blown half off, and his breath came in gasping heaves.
"Father!" Luke gently turned the man, wincing as he felt the hot plastic that had melted onto his neck.
"Luke." His voice was raspy. "Luke, go on. Leave me."
"No!" Luke tried to pull his father to his feet. "Father, I won't leave you! You can't die."
"I…" The words wouldn't come out. "Luke, help me take this mask off. It's useless now anyways."
"But…"
"Luke." His father's voice was firm. "Let me look on you with my own eyes."
Holding back tears, Luke gently tugged the top portion of the mask up and cast it aside. Blue eyes, looking much like his own, peered back from the ruined face.
"I'm so sorry, Luke," he said, his voice softer and reedier without the mask. "Now go."
"I won't leave you behind like this. You saved my life."
"Your sister needs you, Luke," he insisted. "It's my fault. She's on the Chimaera. Go to her before it's too late."
Luke's hand went to his mouth as his father closed his eyes. The station shook again, alarms wailing as the impact of the Alliance assault became clear. He could see the shuttle bay only a few dozen meters away. A moment later, he made his decision. He wasn't going to leave his father behind.
Gripping the heavy body, he walked backwards towards the shuttle bay. Crowds of staff and troopers poured past him, ignoring the odd spectacle of a Jedi carrying the dead former Sith as they fled certain death. Commandeering a shuttle, Luke dragged his tragic cargo on board and shot out into space.
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"They've ordered an evac of non-essentials!" With Solo unconscious, the troopers and pilot on board the shuttle decided to ignore all protocol and just talk in front of Leia as if she wasn't there. She tried not to grin, not wanting to further antagonize the jumpy men in such a fluctuating situation.
"Hail the Chimaera," the head trooper ordered. "See if you can find out what's going on."
The pilot tried twice, then sighed in exasperation. "They're not responding."
"What the hell?" the junior trooper said frantically. "What do we do?"
His superior officer glanced back at Leia, who stared back at him stonily, then turned to the pilot. "Set a course for Imperial Center. We can regroup there and turn them over to the ruling council until his Majesty is able to give us further orders."
"Yessir." The pilot seemed relieved to have an option that involved getting away from the increasingly pitched battle. With a final glance back at the capital ships in the distance, he accelerated away from the system, transitioning the shuttle smoothly into hyperspace. A second later, a massive explosion rocked the entire system. The Death Star was gone.