Galaxies Apart
Eight
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.
Yes, Luke. Use the Force. Remember how the Imperials killed your aunt and uncle, Luke? Recall the asteroid field that previously had been home to a couple of billion innocent civilians, Luke? How does that make you feel, Luke?
Luke shivered. It made him angry. He felt the hatred fill him, and bathed in the heat. Let it flow.
As it coursed through him he suddenly felt bigger. More…more him, somehow. The X-Wing around him seemed to meld into his body, so it was difficult to tell where he ended and it began.
He understood.
The three TIEs behind him…he could feel every one of them. Biggs. His friend. His childhood hero. Now nothing more than floating debris, destroyed at the whim of a tyrant. The trench, with its bumps and canyons, daring to imitate Beggar's Canyon, which had sheltered life, had sheltered him.
The gun turrets, daring to spit turbolaser fire at him and his friends.
Daring to put Leia into danger.
His hands moved. The readout panel beside his left eye spun and retracted into its metal burrow.
"Luke," came the tinny echo of Yavin's Base One, "Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong?"
An image sprang unbidden into his mind. His aunt and uncle, nothing more than charred and smoking corpses over a barren landscape. His homestead destroyed. The sandcrawler shot to hell. Threepio and Ben carrying little broken Jawa corpses to a makeshift pyre in the desert.
"Nothing," he assured Base One, "I'm all right."
It was time.
He threw the X-Wing into a vertical loop, the trench spinning crazily around him as he fought against G-Force and the constraints of the craft itself. The control stick in his hands threatened to wrest itself from his grip. He held on, with body and mind. A turret flashed for an instant before him as the X-Wing hit the apex of the climb.
Then-
The TIEs appeared before him. He thumbed for manual control, disregarding the crosshairs which told him only where the TIEs were. The Force told him where they were going.
He fired.
His shots lanced out across the space, tearing into the rightmost Imperial craft and ripping it to shreds. The central TIE lurched wildly to the left in a vain attempt to avoid his cannon, an act which accomplished only a collision with the remaining TIE.
The impact destroyed the leftmost craft and left the central ship spinning into space, completely out of control.
Luke brought his X-Wing's nose down and thumbed the control for the S-Foils, ignoring the frenzied screams of his resident astromech whilst he did so.
The X-Wing rocketed toward the floor of the trench. He flipped the X-Wing right way up barely ten feet from the surface. The resulting acceleration pushed him into his seat.
Alliance pilots were taught never to close the S-Foils during space combat as even a tiny hit sustained at the incredible velocities sustained with closed foils would be fatal.
As a result, Luke was not only having to fight against the remaining turrets but also the movement of the Death Star itself, still proceeding inexorably closer to the fourth moon of Yavin.
His X-Wing had overcome the Death Star's gravity well, and reached escape velocity. The trench walls took on a life of their own. The concentration on his face never wavered for a second.
Inside the Death Star, Tarkin smiled in satisfaction. He'd just been told that they were in range.
"…you may fire when ready," he finished, standing ramrod straight, furious at his own nervousness.
"Commence primary ignition," the chief technician said, beginning the firing sequence.
Outside, Han Solo stared in abject disbelief as the X-Wing shot down the trench like a bullet. Luke had said he was 'not such a bad pilot'. That got Han's vote for understatement of the century.
"You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home!" Han screamed over the comm.
Luke heard him.
The end of the trench bore down at horrendous speed. With no pursuing TIEs, the Empire let rip with turbolasers. A barrage of death rained toward him, but none impacted.
He was all clear.
He opened the S-Foils. The X-Wing's two fins split into four, slowing the craft, unlocking the guns and the torpedoes.
He fired.
The payload detached from his craft and entered the exhaust port without complaint. He threw the poor X-Wing into one last one-eighty and hit full throttle.
The Death Star began to fall away behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the tiny shapes of Wedge's X-Wing flying to safety. An irregular silhouette against the overhead brilliance of Yavin told him Han was also OK.
Inside the Death Star, Tarkin rubbed his chin in anxiety.
Inside the Death Star, a tiny device whirred softly to itself. A proton inhibitor.
The tertiary beams met-
Reality exhaled-
And with a soundless roar the Death Star exploded, a blossoming flower of destruction in the vacuum. Luke refused to shield his eyes from the sight, though the sheer intensity of the eruption made them ache.
As the first superheated pieces of debris sparked against his navigational shields he heard the sounds of celebrations over the comm. Heard Generals crying like babies.
"Great shot, kid! That was one in a million!"
Luke sighed to himself, unable yet to reply. He patted his instrument panels tenderly, spared a glance back at an unscathed Artoo Detoo, who was bleeping and chirping his congratulations.
His tired eyes settled on his statistical readouts.
"Artoo…" he said slowly, "…check the X-Wing's system logs, will you?"
Artoo paused, and bleeped. The translation sprang up.
"But that's impossible!" Luke spluttered.
Artoo warbled again. No mistake.
Luke had six torpedoes in his launchers. He'd started the mission with precisely six torpedoes in his launchers. Had watched all six be installed.
According to his X-Wing he hadn't fired anything at the exhaust shaft.
Oh, but you did. You fired yourself, Luke. Remember how you felt when you saw that two metre target? How angry? What you saw streak away weren't proton torpedoes. It was your anger. It was the Dark Side of the Force.
Suddenly voice didn't sound like Ben Kenobi. It was too deep, deeper even than Ben, and so…
"Red Five, this is Base One," his radio broke the spell, causing Luke to start. "We've just received word that another Death Star is approaching from sector five-two-seven. This one's a lot bigger, too. Do you think you could…?"
Luke's head was invaded by insane laughter. He clasped his hands to his ears.
"You fool," Base One snarled, . "You let Biggs die…allowed Leia to die, the entire Rebellion to perish…because you were too frightened of what you could do?"
"Shut up!" Luke snapped. He turned off the commlink.
It did no good. As if its speaker was whispering conspiratorially into his ear, the voice continued you're a miserable excuse for a hero. I'm going to tear you apart. I will be the hero you never were.
And you'll never see me coming…
---------------------------------------------------------
"Awake, are you?"
Light seared into his eyes as he opened them, scalding every optic nerve. From head to toe he ached, ears telling him the mystery voice was approaching. His eyes remained fixed on the evening sky; his neck either couldn't move or wasn't prepared to.
"Help me, please," he pleaded.
"Oh," the voice replied grimly. "Not sure am I that can be done. Pick you up I will. Feed you I will. Easy are these things to do. But help you? Nothing is certain."
Luke's world swam lazily, cruelly. He felt sure he was going to black out. "How do you know me?" he moaned weakly, before the sky overhead became one with his world again.
He fell back into the abyss.
Yoda remained standing on the rock for some time. The Jedi Master finally shrugged and shuffled away, the body of Luke Skywalker following behind at an altitude of five feet.
"Complicate matters this does," the Jedi muttered to himself. "Not sure am I. Wrong, all of this is."