by George Lucas
Chewbacca rumbled something, and the pilot’s attention shifted to another series of gauges. “Right, Chewie. I forgot, for a moment, that there are other ways of persuading us to return.” His teeth flashed in a grin of determination. “But the only way they’ll get us back in that traveling tomb is in pieces. Take over.”
Whirling, he ran out of the cockpit. “Come with me, kid,” he shouted at Luke as he entered the hold. “We’re not out of this yet.”
Luke didn’t respond, didn’t move, and Leia turned an angry face to Solo. “Leave him alone. Can’t you see what the old man meant to him?”
An explosion jarred the ship, nearly tumbling Solo to the deck.
“So what? The old man gave himself to give us a chance to get away. You want to waste that, Luke? You want Kenobi to have wasted himself?”
Luke’s head came up and he stared with vacant eyes at the Corellian. No, not quite vacant … There was something too old and unpleasant shining blindly in the back of them. Without a word, he threw off the cloak and joined Solo.
Giving him a reassuring smile, Solo gestured down a narrow accessway. Luke looked in the indicated direction, smiled grimly, and rushed down it as Solo started down the opposing passage.
Luke found himself in a large rotating bubble protruding from the side of the ship. A long, wicked-looking tube whose purpose was instantly apparent projected from the apex of the transparent hemisphere. Luke settled himself into the seat and commenced a rapid study of the controls. Activator here, firing grip here … He had fired such weapons a thousand times before—in his dreams.
Forward, Chewbacca and Leia were searching the speckled pit outside for the attacking fighters represented by firepricks on several screens. Chewbacca suddenly growled throatily and pulled back on several controls as Leia let out a yelp.
“Here they come.”
The starfield wheeled around Luke as an Imperial TIE fighter raced toward him and then swung overhead to vanish into the distance. Within the tiny cockpit its pilot frowned as the supposedly battered freighter darted out of range. Adjusting his own controls, he swung up and over in a high arc intended to take him on a fresh intercept course with the escaping ship.
Solo fired at another fighter, and its pilot nearly slammed his engine through its mountings as he fought to avoid the powerful energy bolts. As he did so, his hurried maneuver brought him under and around to the other side of the freighter. Even as he was lowering the glare reflector over his eyes, Luke opened up on the racing fighter.
Chewbacca was alternating his attention between the instruments and the tracking screens, while Leia strained to separate distant stars from nearby assassins.
Two fighters dove simultaneously on the twisting, spiraling freighter, trying to line their weapons on the unexpectedly flexible craft. Solo fired at the descending globes, and Luke followed with his own weapon a second later. Both fired on the starship and then shot past.
“They’re coming in too fast,” Luke yelled into his comlink.
Another enemy bolt struck the freighter forward and was barely shunted aside by its deflectors. The cockpit shuddered violently, and gauges whined in protest at the quantity of energy they were being asked to monitor and compensate for.
Chewbacca muttered something to Leia, and she murmured a soft reply as if she almost understood.
Another fighter unloosed a barrage on the freighter, only this time the bolt pierced an overloaded screen and actually struck the side of the ship. Though partially deflected, it still carried enough power to blow out a large control panel in the main passageway, sending a rain of sparks and smoke in all directions. Artoo Detoo started stolidly toward the miniature inferno as the ship lurched crazily, throwing the less stable Threepio into a cabinet full of component chips.
A warning light began to wink for attention in the cockpit. Chewbacca muttered to Leia, who stared at him worriedly and wished for the gift of Wookiee-gab.
Then a fighter floated down on the damaged freighter, right into Luke’s sights. His mouth moving silently, Luke fired at it. The incredibly agile little vessel darted out of his range, but as it passed beneath them Solo picked it up instantly, and commenced a steady following fire. Without warning the fighter erupted in an incredible flash of multicolored light, throwing a billion bits of superheated metal to every section of the cosmos.
Solo whirled and gave Luke a victory wave, which the younger man gleefully returned. Then they turned back to their weapons as yet another fighter stormed over the freighter’s hull, firing at its transmitter dish.
In the middle of the main passageway, angry flames raged around a stubby cylindrical shape. A fine white powdery spray issued from Artoo Detoo’s head. Wherever it touched, the fire retreated sharply.
Luke tried to relax, to become a part of the weapon. Almost without being aware of it, he was firing at a retreating Imperial. When he blinked, it was to see the flaming fragments of the enemy craft forming a perfect ball of light outside the turret. It was his turn to spin and flash the Corellian a grin of triumph.
In the cockpit, Leia paid close attention to scattered readouts as well as searching the sky for additional ships. She directed her voice toward an open mike.
“There are still two more of them out there. Looks like we’ve lost the lateral monitors and the starboard deflector shield.”
“Don’t worry,” Solo told her, with as much hope as confidence, “she’ll hold together.” He gave the walls a pleading stare. “You hear me, ship? Hold together! Chewie, try to keep them on our port side. If we—”
He was forced to break off as a TIE fighter seemed to materialize out of nowhere, energy bolts reaching out from it toward him. Its companion craft came up on the freighter’s other side and Luke found himself firing steadily at it, ignoring the immensely powerful energy it threw at him. At the last possible instant before it passed out of range, he swung the weapon’s nozzle minutely, his finger tightening convulsively on the fire control. The Imperial fighter turned into a rapidly expanding cloud of phosphorescing dust. The other fighter apparently considered the shrunken odds, turned, and retreated at top speed.
“We’ve made it!” Leia shouted, turning to give the startled Wookiee an unexpected hug. He growled at her—very softly.
Darth Vader strode into the control room where Governor Tarkin stood staring at a huge, brilliantly lit screen. It displayed a sea of stars, but it was not the spectacular view which absorbed the Governor’s thoughts at the moment. He barely glanced around as Vader entered.
“Are they away?” the Dark Lord demanded.
“They’ve just completed the jump to hyperspace. No doubt they are at this very moment congratulating themselves on their daring and success.” Now Tarkin turned to face Vader, a hint of warning in his tone.
“I’m taking an awful chance, on your insistence, Vader. This had better work. Are you certain the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship?”
Vader exuded confidence beneath the reflective black mask. “There is nothing to fear. This will be a day long remembered. It already has been witness to the final extinction of the Jedi. Soon it will see the end of the Alliance and the rebellion.”
Solo switched places with Chewbacca, the Wookiee grateful for the opportunity to relinquish the controls. As the Corellian moved aft to check the extent of the damage, a determined-looking Leia passed him in the corridor.
“What do you think, sweetheart?” Solo inquired, well pleased with himself. “Not a bad bit of rescuing. You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard,” she admitted readily. “The important thing is not my safety, but the fact that the information in the R-2 ’droid is still intact.”
“What’s that ’droid carrying that’s so important, anyway?”
Leia considered the blazing starfield forward. “Complete technical schematics of the battle station. I only hope that when the data is analyzed, a weakness can be found. Until then, until the station itself is
destroyed, we must go on. This war isn’t over yet.”
“It is for me,” objected the pilot. “I’m not on this mission for your revolution. Economics interest me, not politics. There’s business to be done under any government. And I’m not doing it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid for risking my ship and my hide.”
“You needn’t worry about your reward,” she assured him sadly, turning to leave. “If money is what you love … that’s what you will receive.”
On leaving the cockpit she saw Luke coming forward, and she spoke softly to him in passing. “Your friend is indeed a mercenary. I wonder if he really cares about anything—or anybody.”
Luke stared after her until she disappeared into the main hold area, then whispered, “I do … I care.” Then he moved into the cockpit and sat in the seat Chewbacca had just vacated.
“What do you think of her, Han?”
Solo didn’t hesitate. “I try not to.”
Luke probably hadn’t intended his response to be audible, but Solo overheard his murmur of “Good” nonetheless.
“Still,” Solo ventured thoughtfully, “she’s got a lot of spirit to go with her sass. I don’t know, do you think it’s possible for a Princess and a guy like me …?”
“No,” Luke cut him off sharply. He turned and looked away.
Solo smiled at the younger man’s jealousy, uncertain in his own mind whether he had added the comment to bait his naive friend—or because it was the truth.
Yavin was not a habitable world. The huge gas giant was patterned with pastel high-altitude cloud formations. Here and there the softly lambent atmosphere was molded by cyclonic storms composed of six-hundred-kilometer-per-hour winds which boiled rolling gases up from the Yavinesque troposphere. It was a world of lingering beauty and quick death for any who might try to penetrate to its comparatively small core of frozen liquids.
Several of the giant planet’s numerous moons, however, were planet-sized themselves, and of these, three could support humanoid life. Particularly inviting was the satellite designated by the system’s discoverers as number four. It shone like an emerald in Yavin’s necklace of moons, rich with plant and animal life. But it was not listed among those worlds supporting human settlement. Yavin was located too far from the settled regions of the galaxy.
Perhaps the latter reason, or both, or a combination of causes still unknown had been responsible for whatever race had once risen from satellite four’s jungles, only to disappear quietly long before the first human explorer set foot on the tiny world. Little was known of them save that they left a number of impressive monuments, and that they were one of the many races which had aspired to the stars only to have their desperate reach fall short.
Now all that remained were the mounds and foliage-clad clumps formed by jungle-covered buildings. But though they had sunk back into the dust, their artifacts and their world continued to serve an important purpose.
Strange cries and barely perceptible moans sounded from every tree and copse; hoots and growls and strange mutterings issued from creatures content to remain concealed in the dense undergrowth. Whenever dawn broke over moon the fourth, heralding one of its long days, an especially feral chorus of shrieks and weirdly modulated screams would resound through the thick mist.
Even stranger sounds surged continually from one particular place. Here lay the most impressive of those edifices which a vanished race had raised toward the heavens. It was a temple, a roughly pyramidal structure so colossal that it seemed impossible it could have been built without the aid of modern gravitonic construction techniques. Yet all evidence pointed only to simple machines, hand technology—and, perhaps, devices alien and long lost.
While the science of this moon’s inhabitants had led them to a dead end as far as offworld travel was concerned, they had produced several discoveries which in certain ways surpassed similar Imperial accomplishments—one of which involved a still unexplained method of cutting and transporting gargantuan blocks of stone from the crust of the moon.
From these monstrous blocks of solid rock, the massive temple had been constructed. The jungle had scaled even its soaring crest, clothing it in rich green and brown. Only near its base, in the temple front, did the jungle slide away completely, to reveal a long, dark entrance cut by its builders and enlarged to suit the needs of the structure’s present occupants.
A tiny machine, its smooth metal sides and silvery hue incongruous amidst the all-pervasive green, appeared in the forest. It hummed like a fat, swollen beetle as it conveyed its cluster of passengers toward the open temple base. Crossing a considerable clearing, it was soon swallowed up by the dark maw in the front of the massive structure, leaving the jungle once more in the paws and claws of invisible squallers and screechers.
The original builders would never have recognized the interior of their temple. Seamed metal had replaced rock, and poured paneling did service for chamber division in place of wood. Nor would they have been able to see the buried layers excavated into the rock below, layers which contained hangar upon hangar linked by powerful elevators.
A landspeeder came to a gradual stop within the temple, whose first level was the uppermost of those shipfilled hangars. Its engine died obediently as the vehicle settled to the ground. A noisy cluster of humans waiting nearby ceased their conversation and rushed toward the craft.
Fortunately Leia Organa quickly emerged from the speeder, or the man who reached it first might have pulled her bodily from it, so great was his delight at the sight of her. He settled for giving her a smothering hug as his companions called their own greetings.
“You’re safe! We’d feared you’d been killed.” Abruptly he composed himself, stepped away from her, and executed a formal bow. “When we heard about Alderaan, we were afraid that you were … lost along with the rest of the population.”
“All that is past history, Commander Willard,” she said. “We have a future to live for. Alderaan and its people are gone.” Her voice turned bitter cold, frightening in so delicate-looking a person. “We must see that such does not happen again.
“We don’t have time for our sorrows, Commander,” she continued briskly. “The battle station has surely tracked us here.”
Solo started to protest, but she shut him up with logic and a stern look.
“That’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape. They sent only four TIE fighters after us. They could as easily have launched a hundred.”
Solo had no reply for that, but continued to fume silently. Then Leia gestured at Artoo Detoo.
“You must use the information locked in this R-2 ’droid to form a plan of attack. It’s our only hope. The station itself is more powerful than anyone suspected.” Her voice dropped. “If the data does not yield a weakness, there will be no stopping them.”
Luke was then treated to a sight unique in his experience, unique in most men’s. Several rebel technicians walked up to Artoo Detoo, positioned themselves around him, and gently hoisted him in their arms. This was the first, and probably the last time he would ever see a robot being carried respectfully by men.
Theoretically, no weapon could penetrate the exceptionally dense stone of the ancient temple, but Luke had seen the shattered remains of Alderaan and knew that for those in the incredible battle station the entire moon would present simply another abstract problem in massenergy conversion.
Little Artoo Detoo rested comfortably in a place of honor, his body radiating computer and data-bank hookups like a metal hairdo. On an array of screens and readouts nearby the technical information stored on the submicroscopic record tape within the robot’s brain was being played out. Hours of it—diagrams, charts, statistics.
First the rush of material was slowed and digested by more sophisticated computer minds. Then the most critical information was turned over to human analysts for detailed evaluation.
All the while See Threepio stood close to Artoo, marveling at how so much complex data could be stored in the min
d of so simple a ’droid.
The central briefing room was located deep within the bowels of the temple. The long, low-ceiling auditorium was dominated by a raised dais and huge electronic display screen at its far end. Pilots, navigators, and a sprinkling of Artoo units filled the seats. Impatient, and feeling very out of place, Han Solo and Chewbacca stood as far away from the stage, with its assemblage of officers and Senators, as possible. Solo scanned the crowd, searching for Luke. Despite some common sense entreaties, the crazy kid had gone and joined the regular pilots. He didn’t see Luke, but he recognized the Princess as she talked somberly with some bemedaled oldster.
When a tall, dignified gentleman with too many deaths on his soul moved to stand by the far side of the screen, Solo turned his attention to him, as did everyone else in the room. As soon as an expectant silence had gripped the crowd, General Jan Dodonna adjusted the tiny mike on his chest and indicated the small group seated close to him.
“You all know these people,” he intoned with quiet power. “They are the Senators and Generals whose worlds have given us support, whether open or covert. They have come to be with us in what may well prove to be the decisive moment.” He let his gaze touch many in the crowd, and none who were so favored remained unmoved.
“The Imperial battle station you now all have heard of is approaching from the far side of Yavin and its sun. That gives us a little extra time, but it must be stopped—once and for all—before it can reach this moon, before it can bring its weaponry to bear on us as it did on Alderaan.” A murmur ran through the crowd at the mention of that world, so callously obliterated.
“The station,” Dodonna went on, “is heavily shielded and mounts more firepower than half the Imperial fleet. But its defenses were designed to fend off large-scale, capital ship assaults. A small, one- or two-man fighter should be able to slip through its defensive screens.”
A slim, supple man who resembled an older version of Han Solo rose. Dodonna acknowledged his presence. “What is it, Red Leader?”
