Galaxies Apart
OneThe TIE fighters filled the heavens behind him. Luke Skywalker, farmboy, saviour, closed his eyes and silently implored his long-dead father to help him. A signal from Artoo told him that his X-Wing was not the target. Wedge was.
"I'm hit!" came his new friend's voice, shame and disbelief evident that he should suffer this fate, "it's not bad."
Luke glanced at Artoo's scans and told his friend to do what he must have been dreading. "Get clear, Wedge. You can't do any more good back there."
Wedge didn't waste time with arguments. "Sorry," came his voice as his X-Wing pulled out of the trench and to relative safety. Wedge had done his job. He had absorbed the fire meant for Luke, and he had survived. Luke supposed that was a small victory.
It also meant the pursuing TIEs now had just one more X-Wing to disable before they reached a defenceless Luke.
The X-Wing was a wonderful little fighter, but it lacked rear offensive capabilities of any kind – and in this Trench, there was no turning around, no turning back. No time to do either.
Luke's only hope was that Biggs Darklighter, his old friend from Tatooine, was a good enough pilot to keep the TIEs off his back for long enough. This was the point of no return.
His scans showed fire. Biggs' X-Wing frantically used every inch of the limited space available to it to manoeuvre around and out of the fire. Luke watched in delight as Biggs successfully evaded salvo after salvo, sweeping from left to-
No!
Too late. Biggs had fallen for it. Pushed by constant fire from one side his X-Wing had backed itself into a corner. Concentrated fire from the central TIE pounded it for a few brief seconds before Rebel craft, Biggs Darklighter included, blossomed into oblivion against the artificial canyon of this monstrous space station.
He restricted himself to a bit lip, a clenched fist. The stinging in his eyes had nothing to do with sweat. Biggs had done his job, too. Right to the end.
He threw his craft into a series of steep and shallow dives and jinks, throwing his X-Wing across the targeting screen of the TIE for all it was worth.
He would not be caught.
He would not…
Use the Force, Luke.
Luke shook his head, impatiently. This was no time for him to become delusional. Around him his X-Wing swerved to the left and right as he tried to jink his way out of trouble, tried every trick he'd ever learned in Beggar's Canyon and beyond to squeeze another few seconds of existence from an unsympathetic Fate.
He strained to peer through the targeting computer, its computer readout counting down the time until his torpedoes could cross the distance from his sturdy little craft into the crucial exhaust port.
Let go, Luke.
It was Ben's voice he was hearing. He had thought it had been his grief-stricken imagination that had conjured the old wizard's warning to him only seconds after he had witnessed Ben cut down by Vader on the Death Star. But no.
Ben's voice.
The Force was real, and more powerful than he'd imagined.
He could almost feel Ben, looking over his shoulder, looking at him with those old eyes full of terrible knowledge, that kind face full of tension. If he looked behind him now, would see Ben or only the trio of TIEs that were about to blast him to the hereafter?
He could almost begin to understand, to see things differently. The urgency, the terrible edge he had felt biting into him only moments before, he could feel it lose its potency, release its hold of terror upon him.
Ben was telling him to let go…
His eyes flicked to the targeting computer, as, around him, the chaos of the trench seemed to fade into a white noise. He had a decision to make, he knew.
There was only one decision he could make.
This is for you, Ben, he thought, and flicked a switch. The targeting computer retracted back into his aft instrument panel, and the trench burst back into life.
"Luke," came the tinny echo of Yavin's Base One, "Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong?"
He pictured Leia and Threepio down there, one naturally worried, the other a natural worrier. A slight smile ghosted his lips. "Nothing," he assured Base One, "I'm all right."
And Luke flew alone, just as he'd always flown.
The three Imperial ships behind him were nothing more than a few Banthas, with Sand People taking some pot-shots from far below.
The aft portions of his X-Wing disintegrated. Abruptly Artoo's scans and diagnostic screens winked out. "I lost Artoo!" he broadcast in despair. Somehow he'd always thought the little astromech was indestructible. Another myth shattered by the Empire.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The signal that the TIE had locked on. With a strange sense of peace, he waited for the lasers to lance out and complete the carnage. A few did, and missed.
One of the TIEs exploded.
Luke checked his screens in disbelief. It was real. One of them had perished. But how?
"Yee-hew!"
The voice carried into his cockpit. Luke knew that voice, knew it and knew what had happened. Han had come back. The Millennium Falcon appeared on his scopes to confirm this a second later. Luke felt the Force surge through him, felt for the first time that he was going to do it.
Behind him one TIE spun in panic, hit the other and impacted against the trench wall. The remaining TIE spun harmlessly out into space.
Luke flew, alone, as he'd always flown.
"You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home!"
Luke thumbed the controls. Waited until it felt right.
Fired.
His torpedoes sped away from him and disappeared into the exhaust port. Direct hits, both. He'd done it. He pulled his X-Wing up and closed the S-Foils, getting the hell out of there.
After a few hundred thousand miles he pulled back and waited. The ignition sequence continued, and he saw the primary firing rings around the maw of the superlaser light up bright green. Tertiary beams shot down the tubes, mere tributaries to the immense well of power that was building up at epicentre.
Nothing happened.
The beams joined, coalesced and reacted with each other in a way only the Empire's best scientists understood. He watched as several beams built in one point, as that point seemed to retract and pulsate once, twice-
Panicked, confused, cheated, impotent, Luke began firing his X-Wing's turbolasers at the immense space station.
Three times-
Now out of his mind with frustration and rage, Luke's fists pounded the cockpit transparisteel.
The superlaser shot across space. It had been fired at the maximum range, so that it took all of took three seconds to reach the fourth moon of Yavin.
To Luke, watching that spear of death arc before him, it felt like an eternity.
Impact.
The moon, an immense ball of rock, shook once and flew apart, just as Alderaan had done. He watched a billion billion pieces of rock burn and race where once a planet had been.
Where once the Rebellion had been.
Where once Leia had-
The new asteroid field expanded at a fantastic rate, one mountain-sized piece barely missing his X-Wing.
The shockwave of Force was much, much worse. Just a few days previously he'd felt nothing but a small discomfort at the demise of Alderaan. Now he screamed in the pain of the death of billions of life forms, one of whom among the many was the white-robed figure he'd travelled the galaxy to save. It built, swelled and-
-he sat up in his bed, gasping.
Every night the same dream. Every sleep for three years, reminding him he was the galaxy's biggest mistake. How he had failed to bring down the Death Star in time. How he had been responsible for the destruction for the Rebellion, the hopes of all those under the Imperial thumb.
Reaching for the ampoule of TranqSleep beside the bed and giving himself a double-strength dose, Luke could only hope that his sleep would be dreamless, that when he next woke up his hands would not be covered in blood only his mind could see.
No. It was just as before.
Always just as before.
Obi-wan Kenobi. Yavin IV…Use the Force, Luke…