Darth Vader stared up at the ship in the docking bay. On the outside it looked like a total piece of shit that was only held together by the Force and duct tape, and he wasn't too certain about the duct tape. But, based on the report from when it blasted away from Tatooine, the modified YT-1300 had some sweet engines. Studying it with the Force, he felt something strange. His former master was here, and with Kenobi was someone who seemed vaguely familiar, someone who was neither light nor dark, but was very strong in the Force. Most likely Kenobi's apprentice.
He decided that he would leave this until he decided exactly what sort of trap he was going to set. He knew from experience that his former master would come to him if he gave him time. He'd run into his former master a few times before over the years. It seemed that whenever they were on the same planet or in the same system for that matter, Kenobi could never stay away from him. They had clashed spectacularly on multiple occasions, and always, Kenobi would manage to escape and re-group. There had been rumors that Kenobi was dead when he vanished for over two years, but they had clearly been exaggerated.
As for Kenobi's new Padawan, he would deal with him later. Kenobi was his first priority.
He turned and left, taking most of the stormtroopers with him. Soon, Kenobi would be dead, and Leia would lead the Empire straight to her precious little Rebellion. If the princess hadn't been driven insane by his interrogation as he was beginning to suspect she had that was. If that was the case, who knew what would happen.
&!&!&!&!&
The passengers and crew of the Millenium Falcon waited for the last footsteps of the initial scanning crew to fade away before they exited the smuggling compartments. The compartments were extremely uncomfortable, and stiflingly hot, and being stuck in one with a slightly damp wookiee wasn't anyone's idea of fun, especially not Luke's.
"I never thought I would be smuggling myself in one of these." Han said, moving aside to let Kenobi out of the compartment he and the Jedi had shared because he was afraid of what the kid who he should never have brought aboard would do to the old man if they were stuck in a confined space together for any amount of time. The ship seemed too small for the both of them as it was.
"Nice idea old man, that's just one more thing I'm going to kill you for." the kid whose middle name had to be trouble said as he straightened out his hair and clothes, carefully brushing all of the Wookie fur off. "That walking carpet smells like ass."
"I got us in didn't I? If we hadn't gone with my idea, we would've been captured." Kenobi calmly pointed out.
"Here comes the second scanning crew, and our disguises." the kid said as he looked down the ramp. "Leave the blaster, I'll handle this."
When the scanning crew came aboard, there was a sudden snapping noise and both members fell to the ground, with the equipment they were carrying landing between them with a loud thud. Han stared in confusion, and was about to ask the kid something when the kid gestured for him to be quiet, then gestured for him to do his part as they had planned beforehand. He still wasn't certain about the plan the kid and the Jedi had cooked up. But, despite the long odds and the sheer insanity of it, it had worked so far.
"Hey down there, could you give us a hand with this?" he called down to the pair of stormtroopers at the bottom of the ramp who were guarding the ship. They complied with his request, moved away from their guard posts at the end of the ramp, and came up into the ship, out of the view of anyone else, and more importantly, out of the view of the docking bay security monitors. They too dropped to the ground after a sudden snapping sound.
"What did you do?" he asked the kid, looking down at four people who seemed to have simply dropped dead on their own accord.
"Snapped their necks. It's a lot more humane than what the Empire would've done to them if they found them alive." the kid replied casually as he walked over to the nearest stormtrooper, frowning slightly. "This armor is too large for me."
"Well, it's the best we've got, so stop complaining and put it on kid." he said as he walked over to the other stormtrooper.
He heard a sharp intake of breath next to him. He turned and saw the kid holding the stormtrooper's helmet, looking rather sick. He briefly wondered if despite the kid's tough guy act it had been the kid's first time killing someone, and that what the kid had done had finally caught up with him. He hoped the boy didn't barf on his ship. He had gotten rather sick himself the first time he killed someone. Deciding that it wasn't really his job to comfort the brat, he grabbed the helmet off of the stormtrooper in front of him. When he did, the kid looked, if possible, even worse.
"What's wrong kid?" Han asked, wondering why the kid was was so concerned over a pair of Stormtroopers. They were just a couple of clones rather than recruits after all, and there we millions of them where the two in front of him came from.
"I thought that the Empire had quit using that template and started using something else." Luke said, trying to regain his composure. It had almost been as if he had seen his dad lying there dead, except for a difference in scars, both men were virtually identical in appearance to his father. After he got control of himself, he quickly stripped the corpse in front of him, trying his hardest not to look at it. As he did so, he wondered exactly how much of Jango Fett's DNA the Empire still had. He was pretty sure his father knew about the fact that there were a number of his father's clones extant in the galaxy. How had he been able to handle it, considering the fact that he'd had to kill some Stormtroopers during a couple of hunts?
"Template?" Solo asked.
"The stormtroopers, as you can obviously tell, are Clones. These two are of the same template used during the Clone Wars. The guy who raised me was a son of the original." Luke said, wondering why he shared that fact, and realizing he wasn't anywhere near over what he had just done. Those two deaths he had caused hit him harder than all of the others, except maybe for his first kill.
Han looked down. Come to think of it, the Storm troopers looked rather familiar. He had some vague childhood memories of seeing people who looked just like them on the holo. He couldn't imagine what the kid was going through, seeing as the men probably looked alot like his grandpa when he was younger.
"I'd better inform you that if we stand too close together or near any other stormtroopers, our cover will be blown worse than a job done by a two credit hooker." the kid said as he put the armor on. "Our cover will most likely be blown anyways considering the fact that I don't come anywhere near meeting the minimum height requirement for recruitment into the Stormtrooper corps, but this appears to be the best plan we have for now."
As they prepared to leave, the kid turned around and said, "Chewbacca stay with the ship."
Chewie strongly objected to the kid's order and decided to show his displeasure at being ordered around by some small fry troublemaker. Rather surprisingly, the kid was completely unfazed by Chewie's expletive laden rant.
"Well, if you want to increase the chances of your friend getting killed, be my guest. Otherwise, stay with the ship." the kid said looking up at Chewie with an expression that said that he didn't care either way. "A Wookie wandering about where it clearly doesn't belong is going to raise more than a few eyebrows. If too many suspicions get raised, they won't just be shooting at you, but also at me and Solo as well."
Chewie growled what he thought about leaving his friend behind, but turned back to the cockpit, seeing the logic in the kid's argument.
Getting into the control room above the docking bay had been surprisingly easy, almost too easy. Han pretended to have a comm malfunction, luring one of the crew into leaving his station and opening the door, and the kid took care of the rest. After the room was as secured as it was going to be considering the fact that they were in enemy territory on an enemy battlestation which had at least half a million crew, he, the kid, Kenobi, and the annoying protocol droid sat around waiting while the R2 unit sliced into the Death Star's computer mainframe. Eventually, the R2 unit gave Kenobi the coordinates of the power station for the tractor beam controls, and the old Jedi left to shut them down.
Suddenly, the R2 unit who had continued slicing through the Death Star's computer in search of anything else that might be useful started beeping and whistling frantically. He hadn't seen a droid get that excited in...ever.
"What's he going on about?" Luke asked hoping that security hadn't been alerted to their presence. That would be bad. Very bad. On a scale of Everything's Fine to We're Screwed, it would be a We're Majorly Fucked since there would be absolutely no chance of escape.
"He keeps saying that he's found her, and that she's here." the protocol droid replied.
"Who has he found?" Han asked wondering what more would go wrong on this trip. The next time someone offered him credits for a ride somewhere, he was going to laugh in their face and tell them exactly where they could stuff their money.
"Why, Princess Leia." the droid replied wondering at the odd expression that crossed the human Luke's face when he mentioned the princess's name.
Luke swiftly walked over to a manual console tapped in some codes he'd learned from his dad, fiddled with the keyboard for several minutes in what seemed to be a random manner since what came up on the monitor appeared to be gibberish, encoded a data chip when he seemed satisfied with what he'd done, and set it in a datapad that was nearby.
"Solo, I'll pay you thirty thousand credits to bring this to the detention level where Leia is being held." Luke said, handing Han the datapad, since Solo was about the right height to pass for a Stormtrooper - recruited rather than cloned - and being former Imperial Navy could pass himself off as an Imperial much better than he could.
"I want them all in advance." Han said handing the datapad back knowing that the kid wouldn't be able to provide. The four thousand had most likely already tapped him out. He wasn't going to risk his neck any further than he already had during this disaster. It was a miracle that he, Chewie, Kenobi, and the kid weren't dead already.
"Fine. If you try to cheat me or get yourself and/or Leia caught, I will personally skin you alive." Luke said handing the datapad back to Han. "I'll give you an extra thousand if you send a message to your partner telling him to cause a bit of a distraction at a pre-approved time."
"So, where are you going to get the credits, huh? Are they going to mysteriously appear out of thin air, or are you going to pull them out of you-" Han asked as the kid reached into his armor and pulled a pouch containing about forty thousand credits from a place that he didn't want to think about. He did wonder why the Alderaani princess was so important to the kid that he was willing to pay so much for her rescue, and to pay for it all in advance.
The kid gave Han all of the necessary details of the plan he had in mind. Apparently, all he had to do was hand over a datapad and convince the recipients that it contained orders from the Grand Moff Tarkin who was also aboard the station. Ten minutes later it was time for him to leave.
"So, out of curiosity, why aren't you going to the detention center yourself kid?" Han asked as he headed towards the door.
"I'm too short, someone's bound to notice that." the kid replied, gesturing for him to hurry up and get out of there.
As soon as Solo left, Luke departed as well, headed to a rather remote spot that didn't appear to be covered by any security cameras one level above the docking bay that he'd spotted on his way up to the control room. From there, he could watch what was going on and correct the situation if necessary. The droids left as well, and hid on the other side of the docking bay from the ship, out of the sight of the monitors, in place and ready for when things finally went down.
&!&!&!&!&
Obi-wan Kenobi drifted through the corridors silent as a ghost, carefully hiding in each shadow he could find, doing his best to mask his presence. It wouldn't do to be caught by Vader who was also aboard the station now when he had a task to do. Vader was his greatest regret. If he had paid attention to the fact that the boy who had been like a son and a brother all in one to him was slipping rather than being so absorbed in his grief over Siri Tachi's death, none of this would have happened. The warning signs had all been there, and he had been too self-absorbed to notice them.
After silently drifting through the corridors for hours, avoiding every patrol he came across, he finally reached the reactor that powered the tractor beams for the station. He evaded and carefully hid himself from the last obstacle in his path, which was a pair stormtroopers who were audibly gossiping about some sort of new equipment or a speeder or something, and gossiping about the latest outrage that had been committed by their their dick of a commander on one one of their private comm channels.
After distracting the duo by using an elementary Force trick to make some noise off in the distance by picking something up and dropping it, he powered down the tractor beam. With his task completed, he began the trek back to the ship.
&!&!&!&!&
Han Solo stood nervously in the turbolift waiting to reach the detention level, or rather the detention level in which the princess from Alderaan was being held captive. If he did the simple little task he'd been paid for correctly he would have more than enough credits to pay Jabba with interest. If he didn't, he'd either die, or wish he were dead. He wouldn't focus on the price of failure now, with the solution to his current problems being so close, he would focus on the itty bitty task he'd been paid thirty thousand credits to carry out. All he had to do was hand a datapad to the guy who was in charge of the detention level, and get the hell out of there.
The lift doors finally opened, revealing the sector of the detention level in which his target was located. Being sure to move like a Stormtrooper rather than a hotshot pilot, he walked over to the watch commander thanking his lucky stars that he'd pulled that prank back at the Academy that had required him to successfully pass himself off as a Stormtrooper several years ago, otherwise this task would have been a great deal trickier to pull off.
"Sir, this just came in from Grand Moff Tarkin." Han said as he handed the datapad over to its intended recipient.
The Watch Commander studied the pad briefly and sighed.
"It seems that we are to bring the princess down to the captured Rebel ship in order to use her as bait to catch the intruders. I don't know exactly what it is those high ranking officers smoke during their breaks, but I have a feeling that things would go alot smoother if it were banned. That's the second order today that I received saying I should let the princess escape if someone came to rescue her. The last one was from Lord Vader." The man said shaking his head.
He turned to leave now that his task was done, and he was in fact thirty-thousand credits richer. Things had gone better than he had planned. As far as he was concerned, that whole letting the princess escape thing wouldn't be his problem. The instant he got the word that the tractor beam controls were offline, he and Chewie would be getting the hell out of here.
"You, help us escort her down." the Watch Commander said, freezing him in his tracks and infinitely complicating the situation.
Great. Just kriffing great.
&!&!&!&!&
Luke watched as his sister was escorted to Solo's ship. Everything was going according to plan. From the sound of things, it seemed that she'd picked up a few new expletives while she was away. In the part of the interior of the Falcon that was visible through the lowered ramp, one of the deckplates shifted slightly. Good, Chewbacca was in position, and Solo had come down with the group that was escorting the princess as he expected he would. Now, all that was left was the old bastard Kenobi that he and Leia would be killing at their first opportunity the instant he dealt with the brainwashing Organa had done on his sister.
Speak of the devil...Oh look, Kenobi's in a lightsaber fight with Darth Vader. He's dead, and Lord Vader had just unknowingly thwarted any chance he and Leia had of getting revenge on the old bastard. He decided that it was the best time to send the signal that the plan started now, as they were leaving without the now deceased Jedi.
He raised his blaster, and fired at the blast door control causing the doors to close, shutting Lord Vader and the reinforcements that were behind him out of the docking bay. At this signal, the guards surrounding Leia and the ship were to be killed, and everyone would start making their way aboard the Falcon in order to get the hell out of there.
Chewbacca popped out of one of the smuggling compartments before the blast doors were even closed, and started firing at everything in armor. He was surprised that Solo didn't get hit as he made his way to the Falcon. The instant Solo was aboard, he laid cover fire for Chewbacca using a hidden cannon that had popped out of the underside of the vessel. Leia ran up the ramp while Chewbacca continued firing at any and all of the imperials he could aim his blaster at. The droids were halfway across the docking bay and would reach the ship soon.
It was time. He jumped down the from the ledge he was on, using the Force to land lightly on his feet after the six meter drop. Putting on an extra burst of speed, he raced across the docking bay, and up the ramp of the ship. The instant the droids were aboard, the ramp was closed and the ship took off. When he reached the cockpit to see if Solo needed any help getting the ship into hyperspace, the man turned around and gave him a look that said that if he touched the controls there was a good chance that he'd lose some fingers.
"I was this close," Solo said holding the thumb and forefinger of his right hand about two millimeters apart. "This close to leaving you all behind."
"Thanks." he said, now understanding why his dad wanted to strangle Solo with his bare hands.
Leaving the cockpit, he made his way to the ship's small gaming and dining area. There, by the holochess set, sipping on a mug of tea that she'd somehow acquired was his sister Leia. The sister he had spent over six years without, and sometimes feared that he would never see again. The moment she saw him, her eyes went wide, and she ran towards him.
"Luke!" she yelled as she grabbed him into their first hug in over six years.
"Leia, how did you know who I was?" he asked, slightly puzzled. He had received confirmation of the rumored mind-wipe a couple years earlier, and knew that it was supposed to be permanent. He had planned on bringing her to any and every specialist he could the instant they were off Solo's ship.
"I got my memories back. I don't know how but, when Lord Vader was interrogating me, I broke through some sort of barrier and there they were." Leia said as she clung to him even more tightly.
He could tell that the memory of the interrogation pained her greatly, as well as the double betrayal by the man that she had called father for most of her life. Her pain and anguish radiated through the Force so intently that he himself felt it.
"I thought I lost you." he said, holding his sister close. "I'm never going to lose you again."
Edited on 3/13/2012