Galaxies Apart
Thirty-Two
A mile is a long way to fall.
The immobile bodies of Mara Jade and Yoda had thirty seconds of freefall before impact. Kyp Durron knew this. And so whilst everyone else simply stared in horror at the two falling forms, he knew also what had to be done.
Luke.
Luke turned to him, astonished, and made as if to speak.
No time for words. Listen to me. We can save them, but we need to do it together. You have to trust me.
Who ARE you? Luke sent back, unable to stop himself from asking, from needing to know the truth.
And Kyp opened his mind to Luke, and the Force, and told him. Luke staggered backward a step, not prepared for what flooded to him.
Pain. Loss.
And-
He cannot know, Kyp's voice sounded again in Luke's head, even as Luke felt himself reeling in shock. Now do the same for me. We can save them! Do it NOW!
The air seemed to crackle with energy between them. Their heads jerked upward as one, in perfect synchronicity, as both men raised their hands slowly from their sides, seeming to push the very air around them upwards...
...and the bodies of Mara Jade and Yoda began to slow in their descent.
Han Solo's blaster dropped numbly from his hand. He barely noticed. He took in the sight of the falling pair slowing gracefully, gently, until they hovered almost reverentially only four feet or so from the floor of the Targeting Room.
Chewie growled softly for his attention and Han saw the Luke-Kyp partnership for himself. He felt a chill race down his spine. They were moving and acting as one. He wondered what destruction that particular little talent could cause if it was used for that purpose...
The spell broke as Mara Jade and Yoda completed their decelerated descent to the floor. Luke and Kyp were first to them - both of them, to Han's surprise. He stooped to scoop up his blaster.
"Are you crazy?!" he demanded. "Get clear of her!"
"She's not going to hurt us," Kyp stated, in a tone that somehow conveyed that no argument would be forthcoming on the issue.
Mara Jade was alive. Deathly pale, she was shivering wildly, sweat beading from her forehead, the veins standing out on her neck, and blue lightning coursing and earthing itself throughout her body. But alive.
Yoda...
"Master?" Luke called gently.
Yoda's eyes opened. Both Luke and Kyp let loose with cries of delight and surprise, but Han Solo - who had seen death more times than he cared to remember - knew the look of a dying being when he saw one.
Chewie moaned softly. Han rested a hand on his friend's shoulder.
"Luke..." Yoda said, coughing a little, speaking with extreme difficulty.
"Don't move, Master. You need to heal."
"Too late, it is," Yoda said softly. He looked so small. So frail. Soft landing or not, his body had been broken before it had ever begun to fall.
Luke shook his head. "No," he said firmly, fiercely, his voice brittle. "No."
"Luke...let me speak to Kyp. A message for him, I have."
Luke stood with Han and Chewie as Yoda and Kyp exchanged words, out of earshot. When it was done, Kyp walked to them with tears in his eyes. He looked to Luke.
"Go to him," he said.
Luke knelt beside the body of the Jedi Master. For a moment he thought Yoda had slipped away - but no, those soulful, sad eyes opened once again and brought themselves to bear upon him.
"In your hands..." Yoda said, slowly, painfully, "the fate of all lies."
"I can't-"
"You are strong!" the Jedi Master returned with surprising force, before another coughing fit wracked his body. His hand lifted to gesture to the unconscious, twitching form of Mara Jade. "Help her...you must."
"Help her?" Luke repeated, hardly believing what he was hearing. "She did this to you!"
"Reclaim her from the Dark Side...you must. In her redemption, your own power you will find. On this...all depends."
Luke nodded, despair filling him. He watched as Yoda's life force seemed to slip away from him. For an instant Luke imagined he could see through that tiny green body-
"Know this, you must," Yoda continued, his breathing coming in shorter and shorter gasps now. "There is...ano...ther...Sky...walk...er..."
He slumped back, twitched, and lay still and restful. A moment later, as Luke's numb mind struggled to cope with what was happening, Yoda faded from existence, his entire body vanishing into the void. In a heartbeat, the galaxy's last and greatest Jedi Master had ceased to be.
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The Imperial Palace guards prided themselves on being the finest stormtroopers the galaxy had to offer. Only the best and brightest were selected from the Academy on Carrida, hand-picked by the Emperor for their adaptability, loyalty and devotion.
They had sworn the oath to fight to the death to protect their charge.
Today was the day they would fulfil that oath.
Prophet's lightsaber cut through a stormtrooper's armour plating from stem to sternum as if it were butter. The surprised trooper was dead before he fell in two neatly cauterized pieces to the Palace floor.
Blaster fire rained down on the intruder. Fifteen stormtroopers lay dead in the corridors already. Twenty remained. They flanked the intruder, executing a killing formation exactly as they had been trained, trapping him in a pincer movement in order to rain down an unstoppable wave of blaster fire.
Prophet threw his lightsaber at his attackers and leapt five metres vertically into the air. By the time his body returned to earth, the lightsaber falling neatly into his outstretched hand, fourteen troopers remained.
Auto-blaster systems overhead tracked his every move. E-web repeating blasters with rates of fire beyond that of any living being.
But Prophet's lightsaber was like a thing possessed. It whirled and twisted through the air, reflecting and diverting the bolts back with unerring accuracy so that they struck blaster ports, stormtroopers, security consoles.
Through it all, Prophet walked on serenely toward his goal, stopping only to pick up an errant stormtrooper with no apparent effort and snap his neck with a single wrench.
The Throne Room doors were flung open from the outside. The last surviving elite squad stormtrooper, having much too late decided to abandon his training and flee for his life, managed to get three steps inside his Master's inner sanctum before that terrible lightsaber caught up with him.
The man had time to register the blade jutting from his chest before he slid nervelessly and lifelessly down, slicing himself in half in the process.
Prophet walked into the Imperial Throne Room, the seat of the Empire's power, home to the Emperor, under the watchful gaze of its occupant.
His lightsaber returned to his hand with a thought and deactivated. He knelt.
"Master," he said.
There was silence for a long moment. Prophet could sense the recent stress the Emperor had been under. The air inside the Throne Room crackled with the Dark Side. Palpatine had been in pain.
The man who called himself Prophet felt his lightsaber detach itself from him and float through the air to the Emperor, turning over and over in the air as Palpatine scrutinised it.
"You wield your father's lightsaber," the Emperor said. "But would you wield your father's power? Will you destroy him, and become the new Dark Lord of the Sith?"
The man before him stood, his Jedi robe and cowl falling away to reveal a face familiar and yet alien, a face that Palpatine knew would be his most potent weapon in the battles to come.
"I am yours to command...my Master," Luuke Skywalker promised.
The Emperor's delighted laughter echoed long and loud.
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"How is she?"
Kyp's eyes were red. The kid looked as if he hadn't slept properly in weeks. "Still out," he said, indicating Mara's body. They had wrapped her in an insulating blanket intended to shield electronics, partly to keep her warm, but mostly because her body was still earthing small blasts of blue lightning.
It had been nine hours since Yoda's death. The systems of the immense room around them had seemed to stabilise; the gravity had returned to normal. Sooner or later, everyone knew, they were going to have to make a decision about whether to try to open a portal to the past.
"Get some shut-eye, kid," Han said. "A blaster's no good with a burnt out power cell. Go. That's an order."
Kyp nodded. Han patted his shoulder almost without realising he was doing it, but the kid seemed to appreciate the gesture.
As he walked away toward his cushioned sleeping roll, a few feet from the already-sleeping body of Luke Skywalker, Kyp cast a glance back at Han. It was so strange to see him like this. So strange to have to lie.
So tempting to call him father and not Han.
Jacen Solo was asleep in moments.
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The 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.
The illusion shattered.
Luke jerked his hands from the controls, gasping as if he'd just been plunged headfirst into freezing water.
This wasn't real. He was dreaming.
Around him the trench walls loomed as claustrophobically as ever. Behind him he could almost hear the high-pitched, terrible whine of the chasing TIE fighters, waiting for a chance to cut him down.
Ahead of him, he knew, lay the exhaust port. That two-metre maw which had ruined his life.
The memory of Yoda's calm acceptance in the face of death came unbidden to his mind. The Jedi Master had sacrificed everything for him, had demonstrated the kind of pureness of spirit that Luke had once aspired to possess.
Luke forced away his fear. He was tired of it, tired of running, tired of this damned Trench and all it had come to represent in his mind.
It felt like he had exhaled a breath he'd been holding for the last five years. An amazing, quite wonderful sense of calmness and of purpose washed through him.
And Ben's voice whispered, Let go, Luke.
He wasn't speaking the same riddles again and again. Luke knew that now. Ben wasn't talking to his younger self at all. He was speaking to the Luke of today, telling him to release all of his angst. He had known.
Somehow…Ben had known.
The TIE fighters were preparing to fire. He knew that. He knew every component moment of this nightmare. But never before had he been able to take control.
This Trench Run might only be a dream, a Force-born fever of the past. But it was a moment of his life he was going to have to conquer mentally; that was the true message behind Ben's words.
He had to destroy the Death Star in his mind, here and now.
Setting his jaw, Luke reached a practised hand to his cockpit controls, and touched a switch that he'd flicked on an eternity of occasions. At his side the computer obligingly retracted the tactical display.
"Luke," came the voice, as he'd known it would. "You've-"
"Nothing," Luke broke in. "I'm all right."
Base One fell silent. They'd trusted his judgement, allowed the biggest rookie pilot, the biggest risk, to breach the most stringent of the Alliance's instructions that day. They'd had faith in him.
For the first time in a long time, he had faith in himself.
Once, he'd shouted instructions at Artoo. Told him to lock this or that down, pleaded for more power. Not now. He was going to do this all by himself, or he wasn't going to do it at all. To do, or do not.
Back in the central TIE, Vader was sufficiently stirred to mutter, "The Force is strong with this one."
Shrugging off the oddity, Vader turned his attention back to the targeting display. The representation of the X-Wing flitted crazily about the screen, as his TIE attempted to gain a weapons lock. The crosshairs refused to glow with confirmation for what seemed like an age.
Vader sat poised to strike, ready, his hands tightly wrapped around the steering column, his thumbs resting on the button which would send turbolaser fire searing from his batteries and transform a snubfighter into a fused mass of junk.
There. His thumbs squeezed. Deadly laser blasts sprang from his ship.
The X-Wing dodged every blast. Vader could scarcely believe it.
Luke righted the X-Wing, almost breaking his arm fighting the control stick. Before, he hadn't concentrated. Before, he hadn't understood what Ben meant. Trust your feelings. Let go. Use the Force.
Arrogantly, naïvely, Luke had pressed on in confidence. Thinking that a simple gesture like switching off an automatic targeting system was what Ben had intended him to do.
Now, he knew better. Now, he was flying an X-Wing down a Trench barely wide enough to take it, avoiding Imperial fire and maintaining a fierce determination to see that exhaust port…
All with his eyes closed.
Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. Ben had told him that too. Luke hadn't really understood it back then, a boy fresh from the scorching purgatory of Tatooine, his aunt and uncle's smoking corpses haunting him at every turn.
The central TIE fired again. Luke had already began his dip-and-roll evasive. The high-speed move saw him plummet to the floor of the Trench before throttling back to firing altitude whilst jinking right to avoid a potentially lethal tower lunging at him from the left-hand wall. His eyes remained closed, his breathing regular and relaxed.
Artoo was screaming in terror.
Back in the chasing pack, Vader was having trouble believing what he was seeing. He had felt certain that the X-Wing was doomed. Despite the soundless expanse separating him from his quarry, he had almost heard the demise of the X-Wing's astromech unit-
The illusion shattered.
Vader gazed down at his hands as if they were disconnected from his body. His mind, his thoughts, felt so clear that it almost hurt to think.
This wasn't real. He was dreaming.
For some time now his mind had insisted he revisit this moment in time. The dream always ended as reality itself had done; with the destruction of Yavin IV and the victory of the Empire.
But never, never, had Vader managed to destroy the X-Wing which flew before him now.
And now he knew why. Why a Dark Lord of the Sith and a trained Jedi had failed so many times.
"Luke…" he whispered, reflexively reaching out with the Force.
Inside the X-Wing, Luke's eyes snapped open. The ship lurched drunkenly to one side in sympathy. He ignored Artoo's whimpers from the back, ignored the proximity warnings telling him that a Corellian YT-1300 freighter was approaching fast. His mind went over the last few seconds.
Someone had called his name. Someone…
And the TIE fighter to the left of Vader decided to open fire.
Luke, his concentration broken, didn't stand a chance of evading this volley. The laserfire pounded his X-Wing. Artoo vanished into oblivion with a final squeal. His starboard engine disintegrated.
Around him, the X-Wing began to fail.
"No!" Vader raged. Almost without conscious thought he killed his throttle speed a fraction, dropping behind his wingmates. The TIE that had fired upon Luke's ship was vaporised an instant later with a sustained burst of fire.
Too late. Luke's ship was doomed. It was losing altitude fast, venting a huge amount of plasma from the starboard engine.
His son…
His remaining wingmate burst into flame. The Millennium Falcon swooped in from overhead, its Corellian pilot whooping with joy, quite unaware as he turned his main gun to target the final TIE that he had been reduced to bit-part player in this dreamscape.
Luke knew it was hopeless even as he struggled to bring the snubfighter to bear. The damage to the systems was simply too extensive for the ship to survive. He was locked into a slow arcing descent, with his only obvious means of stopping being colliding with a trench wall at high velocity. The firing mechanisms for the proton torpedoes had been completely incinerated.
He'd failed. This time he wouldn't even survive long enough to watch the Death Star reach out and destroy his life.
A proximity alarm blared. It hardly mattered. To any Imperial ships remaining he would be a helpless target. They could shoot him down for fun. Right now he would have welcomed the oblivion.
Thunk.
His X-Wing bounced and shifted. He wasn't being fired upon. Luke checked his instruments incredulously.
He was gaining altitude.
"Kid," Han's tones came over the transmitter, "you're not going to believe this. I think one of the TIE fighters is under you. I can't target it…but…" Luke could clearly hear the disbelief in Han's voice, "It almost looks as if it's…supporting you?"
There was that presence again. That strange mind he'd brushed with, the one that had so startled him. It was still alive, and it was coming, unmistakably, from somewhere below him. When he extended a mental hand it recoiled, and he tasted anger, fear, shame...
And, most puzzlingly of all, a sense of pride.
Despite this, he was running out of Trench and he had no way to fire his proton torpedos. The Death Star would still win. But...there was that lurking tranquillity again, slowing time around him, trying to tell him the way.
Once again, Luke blocked out the outside world, put himself back in communication with the Force. If the X-Wing wouldn't release the torpedoes…well, he'd just have to do the job all by himself.
You're all clear, kid, he heard. Whether the voice was real or imaginary, whether it was his own or not, he didn't know. Now let's blow this thing…and go home.
The TIE supporting him buckled and swayed as, above it, the X-Wing suddenly grew lighter to the tune of two proton torpedoes.
As Vader watched the twin balls of fire streak away, sensing that they had been fired not with a plasma discharge from the launchers, but with the Force, a surge of pride swelled up within him.
Deep in the bowels of the station itself, Grand Moff Tarkin pulled subconsciously on his lips, a bad habit of old brought on by a truly horrible feeling, a terrible premonition building within him.
Eyes tightly shut, Luke saw nothing, but watched everything. He felt the torpedoes enter the exhaust shaft, both of them, clean as a whistle. But then, he'd never missed the shot.
It was now that something had happened to those torpedoes, some phenomenon which prevented them from arriving in the reactor core and setting off the chain reaction to destroy the Death Star. In the future, Kyp had told him that it was a proton inhibitor, a device which nulled the explosive force contained in the warhead.
Well…he could deal with that.
The torpedoes, moving at a speed nearing that of light, descended the exhaust shaft and entered the reactor core. As they did so, Luke used the Force to reach inside the warheads, to gather up all the little excited protons in their clusters and superclusters, to press them all tightly together-
-and to break them.
The Death Star's structure shuddered.
As he'd known it would, his X-Wing rose sharply into the safety of surrounding space, carried and supported by the TIE fighter and its mystery pilot. Luke could do nothing but watch the space station hang there.
And nothing happened.
And nothing-
He shielded his eyes from the explosion. A part of him wanted to stare into that unbearable brightness, glory in the destruction, gloat at the victory. The rest of him wanted to remember that thousands of people had just died because of his actions.
Luke knew now, at last, which voice he had to listen to.
Over the frantic, delirious transmissions of Base One, he heard and felt another few bumps. It seemed that his faceless benefactor had decided now was the time to leave. Indeed, there was the TIE itself, looking not a little battered in the hasty departure from the blast radius.
He had the strangest feeling. Almost as if the person in that Imperial ship was really there, not some mental caricature in a Force-inspired dream. As if he was the intruder in their dream…
Who are you?
In his cockpit, Darth Vader thought about replying. Telling Luke who he was, what he was, why things had turned out the way they had.
But, when things were said and done, this was nothing more than a dream. That wasn't Luke over there in that X-Wing, just like his selfless act back there had never, could never have occurred in reality.
"Red Five?" Luke's comm unit flared into life.
"I'm here, Base One."
"Great shot, Luke! That was one in a million!"
Luke felt his heart leap.
"Leia...?"