The Empire Strikes Back (Junior Novelization)

by Ryder Windham

  “That’s why I have to go,” Luke said.

  Ben said, “Luke, I don’t want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader.”

  “You won’t,” Luke assured him. He thought back to his first meeting with Ben, back on Tatooine. Ben had told Luke that Darth Vader had been one of his pupils until he’d been seduced by the dark side of the Force. According to Ben, Vader had helped the Empire to destroy the Jedi Knights, including Luke’s own father. I’ll never be anything like Darth Vader, Luke thought. And I won’t be lost to the Emperor.

  Yoda said, “Stopped they must be. On this all depends. Only a fully trained Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor.” As Luke stowed the last of his gear onto the X-wing, Yoda continued, “If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.”

  “Patience,” Ben said with great emphasis, as if it was the one word Luke should remember.

  Patience? Luke couldn’t believe anyone would encourage patience right now. Facing Ben, he snapped, “And sacrifice Han and Leia?”

  Yoda answered, “If you honor what they fight for…yes!”

  Luke reached for the lower rung of the X-wing’s retractable ladder and looked away from Ben and Yoda.

  Ben said, “If you choose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere.”

  “I understand,” Luke muttered. Then he climbed the ladder to the starfighter’s open cockpit and said, “Artoo, fire up the converters.”

  As the X-wing’s engines fired up, Ben warned, “Luke, don’t give in to hate—that leads to the dark side.”

  “Strong is Vader,” Yoda added. “Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.”

  “I will,” Luke said as he pulled on his helmet. “And I’ll return. I promise.” The cockpit canopy lowered, and the X-wing lifted off from the ground and ascended into the night sky.

  As Yoda raised his gaze to watch the departing X-wing, Ben’s apparition faded into the darkness. Yoda sighed, looked down at the ground, and shook his head sadly. “Told you, I did,” he said. “Reckless is he. Now matters are worse.”

  Ben’s disembodied voice said, “That boy is our last hope.”

  Yoda returned his gaze to the sky and said mysteriously, “No. There is another.”

  Leia paced before the wide window that offered a magnificent view of Cloud City. She was within the living quarters that had been assigned to her and she wore fresh clothes, all courtesy of Lando Calrissian. From the skylight that dominated the circular room’s ceiling, natural light poured in and illuminated the interior and its comfortable furnishings. The entire room and all its contents were white and immaculately clean.

  Leia didn’t like the place one bit.

  The room’s main door slid open and Han entered. “The ship’s almost finished,” he said as Leia crossed the room to him. “Two or three more things and we’re in great shape.”

  “The sooner the better,” Leia said. “Something’s wrong here. No one has seen or knows anything about Threepio. He’s been gone too long to have gotten lost.”

  “Relax,” Han said. He took Leia by the shoulders and gently kissed her forehead. “I’ll talk to Lando. See what I can find out.”

  “I don’t trust Lando.” Leia pulled away from Han and sat on a plush white couch.

  “Well, I don’t trust him, either,” Han said as he sat down beside Leia. “But he is my friend. Besides, we’ll soon be gone.”

  Trying to keep the sadness from her voice, Leia said, “And then you’re as good as gone, aren’t you?”

  Han looked away, then looked back to Leia’s troubled face. He didn’t know how to respond to her question, so he just gazed into her eyes and remained silent.

  Like any large metropolis, Cloud City had to deal with unwanted junk. But because Cloud City was not built upon solid ground and had no land-based natural resources, dumping was not an economical option. Virtually everything—from outmoded technology to broken appliances—was recycled into usable materials. And the recycling process began in the junk rooms.

  Chewbacca found the junk rooms on a level below Lando Calrissian’s headquarters. The Wookiee had already visited every other accessible part of the building. He was determined to find C-3PO. As Chewbacca entered a junk room and saw the piles of scrap metal that were heaped throughout, he wished C-3PO hadn’t wound up here, of all places. But where else could C-3PO be?

  Chewbacca made his way past the scrap heaps, keeping his eyes peeled for gold-plated metal. He picked up several pieces, but nothing was from a protocol droid. He tossed the scraps aside and kept searching.

  Then he heard a roar. Not an animal sound, but a noise made by intense fire.

  Chewbacca edged around a high stack of crushed metal and found a conveyer that moved scrap from a garbage chute to the other side of the room. Four small, porcine humanoids—Chewbacca recognized them as Ugnaughts—were stationed on both sides of the long conveyer, from which they selectively removed valuable scrap. Anything the Ugnaughts didn’t want was fed through an open oval-shaped door into a blazing furnace, the source of the roaring sound.

  Chewbacca sighted a flash of gold on the conveyer and realized he was looking at the blaster-scorched remains of C-3PO. The Wookiee pushed his way past the scrap heaps and Ugnaughts to grab C-3PO’s headless torso. Then he quickly knocked the droid’s other dismembered parts off the conveyer.

  One of the Ugnaughts had seized C-3PO’s head. Chewbacca barked a command at the Ugnaught, but rather than hand over the head, the Ugnaught tossed it to one of his fellow workers. Chewbacca tried to intercept the catch but missed, and failed to prevent the droid’s head from being thrown to another Ugnaught. That Ugnaught threw it to another, who missed, and C-3PO’s head clattered against the floor.

  Chewbacca howled with rage. And the Ugnaughts quickly learned the hard way that it’s pure foolishness to play keep-away with a Wookiee.

  Leia and Han were still in the bright white living quarters when Chewbacca entered, carrying a packing case. The case was crammed with C-3PO’s parts.

  “What happened?” Leia gasped, rising from the couch.

  Chewbacca set the case onto the circular table at the center of the room, then grunted an explanation.

  “Where?” Han said.

  Chewbacca repeated himself.

  Han said, “Found him in a junk pile?”

  Leia shook her head as she peered into the case. “Oh, what a mess. Chewie, do you think you can repair him?”

  Chewbacca examined some of C-3PO’s pieces, looked at Leia, then shrugged.

  Han said, “Lando’s got people who can fix him.”

  “No, thanks,” Leia said, a bit surprised that Han had even considered the idea. From what she’d seen so far, Lando dealt with most of his responsibilities through his aide Lobot, the bald cyborg with the cranial computer bracket. According to Lando, Lobot’s headband kept in constant contact with Cloud City’s central computer. She had as much reason to trust Lobot as she did Lando, which was not at all.

  Just then, an electronic chime sounded and Lando stepped down into the room. Standing in the doorway, he said, “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

  “Not really,” Leia said.

  Lando cast a long, appreciative glance at Leia, then beamed and said, “You look absolutely beautiful. You truly belong here with us among the clouds.”

  “Thank you,” Leia said coolly, thinking, I wonder how many times he’s used that line.

  Lando said, “Will you join me for a little refreshment?”

  Han looked at Lando suspiciously. Chewbacca answered with a hungry bark.

  Lando added, “Everyone’s invited, of course.” He offered his hand to Leia, but Han stepped in and Leia took his arm. Lando was turning to lead them out of the room when he noticed the gold-metal limbs in the case on the table. With a quizzical expression, Lando said, “Having troub
le with your droid?”

  Leia and Han exchanged a quick glance, then Han looked at Lando and said, “No. No problem. Why?”

  Han and Leia exited the room, and Lando and Chewbacca followed, leaving C-3PO’s parts behind. The group proceeded into a window-lined corridor, where long shafts of light fell across white walls and columns. As they walked past a group of uniformed laborers, Lando gestured at the surroundings and said, “So, you see, since we’re a small operation, we don’t fall into the…uh…jurisdiction of the Empire.”

  Leia said, “So you’re part of the mining guild, then?”

  “No, not actually,” Lando said, leading the way down another corridor. “Our operation is small enough not to be noticed…which is advantageous for everybody, since our customers are anxious to avoid attracting attention to themselves.”

  Han asked, “Aren’t you afraid the Empire’s going to find out about this little operation and shut you down?”

  “That’s always been a danger looming like a shadow over everything we’ve built here,” Lando said as he approached a closed pair of doors, “but things have developed that will ensure security.” Chewbacca sniffed the air and growled. That rotten smell again.

  Lando stopped at the double doors and said, “I’ve just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of here forever.”

  The doors parted at the middle and slid sideways into the wall to reveal a white-walled dining room with a long, neatly arranged banquet table. At the far end of the table, rising from his seat, was Darth Vader.

  Chewbacca roared. Leia froze. And Solo made his move, quick-drawing his blaster pistol to fire at Vader. But the dark lord, moving with incredible speed, raised his right black-gloved hand and deflected the fired bolt into the wall. Han rapidly squeezed off three more shots, but all were just as easily nullified by Vader. Then Han felt an invisible tug as his blaster was torn from his grip. The weapon flew through the air, straight at Vader, who caught it by the barrel.

  Facing Leia and her allies, Vader lowered the blaster to the table and said, “We would be honored if you would join us.”

  A figure stepped out from an alcove behind Vader. It was Boba Fett. Clutching his blaster rifle across his armored chest, the masked bounty hunter moved so he was just off to Vader’s left side.

  Leia, Han, and Chewbacca were still standing in the open doorway when they heard a clattering of footsteps behind them. A squad of blaster-wielding stormtroopers had taken up position outside the dining room. Near them stood Lobot, who was unarmed.

  Even though Leia had already expressed her mistrust for Lando, and heard his talk of deals that would keep the Empire out of Cloud City, it was only upon seeing Lobot with the stormtroopers that she realized…Lando set us up!

  She looked at Lando, as did Han and Chewbacca. Lando looked Han square in the eye and said grimly, “I had no choice. They arrived right before you did. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Han said, his expression blank. He took Leia’s arm, and together they turned, stepped toward the banquet table, and faced Darth Vader. After all, there was nowhere else to go. Then Chewbacca and Lando entered the dining room, and the double doors slid closed behind them.

  Luke’s X-wing starfighter raced across space. Although no one had told him the location of his friends, his vision had been crystal clear. They were in a city in the clouds. He was certain he would find them on Bespin.

  Through his cockpit window, Luke sighted the giant gaseous planet in the distance. Behind him, R2-D2 beeped and whistled. Luke consulted the scope that displayed the translation for the astromech’s language, then answered, “No. Threepio’s with them.”

  Sounding more distressed, R2-D2 whistled again.

  “Just hang on,” Luke said. “We’re almost there.”

  Luke couldn’t stop thinking about his vision, how his friends were in pain. He accelerated toward Bespin and hoped he would arrive in time to help them.

  Chewbacca was in agony.

  The Wookiee was in a Cloud City prison cell and a high-pitched siren was screeching and echoing off the cell’s durasteel walls. He pressed both hands hard against the sides of his hairy head, trying in vain to protect his sensitive ears. He felt like his skull was about to split wide open.

  Chewbacca started pacing back and forth within the large cell, his arms flailing in useless effort to ward off the violent din. Desperate to escape, he reached up to grab the thick, black metal bars that crisscrossed overhead and separated him from the upper ceiling. He tugged at the bars but they wouldn’t yield. Suddenly, the siren ended, but it took Chewbacca a moment to comprehend it was over. The noise was still ringing in his ears.

  The Wookiee shook his head and moaned, waiting for the pain to drain off. Exhausted, he looked down to a metal bench, on which rested the case that contained C-3PO’s parts. Who had taken the case from Leia’s living quarters and delivered it to his cell? Why hadn’t the stormtroopers just returned the parts to the Cloud City junk room? Chewbacca had no idea. He was more relieved that the parts hadn’t been smelted than curious about how they’d arrived in the cell. And now that the siren was silenced, he could concentrate on reassembling the droid.

  He reached into the case and removed one of C-3PO’s hands, then set the hand aside and picked up the droid’s head. He contemplated it for a moment, looking into the droid’s dead eyes as if they held some secret. Without any tools at his disposal, Chewbacca doubted he could do much for the droid. But he could try.

  He reached for the droid’s torso and placed it on his lap. Then he examined the scorched metal at the bottom of the head and found the neck ring was unbroken. He stuck C-3PO’s head into the torso’s neck socket and began to reconnect the wires and adjust the circuits.

  The lights in C-3PO’s eyes sparked on and then flickered out. Chewbacca made another adjustment and the eyes switched on again. This was followed by a flurry of almost unintelligible words, uttered at varying speeds and tones, from C-3PO’s mouth: “Mmm. Oh, my. Uh, I, uh—Take this off, uh, don’t mean to intrude here. I, don’t, no, no, no…please don’t get up. No!”

  Chewbacca twisted a wire and C-3PO’s eyes switched off. Then he squeezed a circuit as he pulled a wire, and the eyes illuminated again. But this time, C-3PO’s head moved from side to side in the torso’s neck socket and the droid spoke clearly: “Stormtroopers? Here? We’re in danger. I must tell the others.”

  Then C-3PO tried to move, and realized the awful truth. “Oh, no!” he cried. “I’ve been shot!”

  Darth Vader watched as two stormtroopers prepared an elaborate mechanism in the prison entry area. The mechanism consisted of an adjustable rack that stood vertically and faced a slanted panel of assorted instruments, including chemical injectors, microsurgical vibroscalpels, diagnostic scanners, and an electroshock assembly. All the instruments were designed to induce pain, which was appropriate since the mechanism was engineered for torture.

  Han Solo was strapped to the rack. Unable to move his arms or legs, he studied the pain-inducing instruments on the facing panel and tried to brace himself for the worst. From what he’d heard about Imperial torture devices, the diagnostic scanners would be used to anticipate loss of consciousness and the chemical injectors would keep him awake. That way, he wouldn’t pass out, and would experience every measure of pain.

  Darth Vader walked around the instrument panel and stood close to Han. Because the rack elevated Han’s body, Vader had to tilt his own head back slightly to stare directly—through the lenses of his black helmet—into Han’s eyes. Han glared at Vader and clenched his bound fists.

  A red light illuminated on the slanted panel, and the rack tilted forward. Han’s head and neck were not restrained, so he twisted his face away and squeezed his eyes shut as the rack lowered his upper body into direct contact with the horrendous instruments. Vader leaned in closer and watched Han’s facial responses with interest.

  A spark flashed at the top of the instrument panel, an
d Han winced.

  A second spark flashed, and Han screamed. The pain was overwhelming.

  The third spark came, and Han learned there was pain beyond overwhelming.

  Han didn’t pass out. And the torture mechanism was just getting started.

  Solo’s piercing cries filtered through the closed door that separated the prison entry area from the holding chamber. In the holding chamber, the closed door was guarded by two stormtroopers. Lando Calrissian and Lobot stood a short distance from the stormtroopers, as did Boba Fett. Hearing Han’s screams, Lando and Boba Fett slowly turned to look at each other. Lando tried to keep his face as expressionless as Fett’s helmet.

  The door slid open. Darth Vader ducked his head as he strode through the doorway and entered the holding chamber.

  Lando said, “Lord Vader.”

  Brushing past Lando, Vader stopped to face Fett and said, “You may take Captain Solo to Jabba the Hutt after I have Skywalker.” Then he walked off.

  “He’s no good to me dead,” Boba Fett said, following Vader into a corridor with Lando and Lobot in their wake.

  “He will not be permanently damaged,” Vader assured him, passing two stormtroopers as he entered an open lift tube.

  “Lord Vader,” Lando repeated. “What about Leia and the Wookiee?”

  Turning to face Lando, who stood just outside the lift tube, Vader said, “They must never again leave this city.”

  Lando was stunned. “That was never a condition of our agreement, nor was giving Han to this bounty hunter!”

  “Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly,” Vader said.

  Lando knew there was only one answer he could give. “No,” he said.

  “Good,” Vader replied. “It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here.” The lift tube door slid shut.

  Boba Fett turned and headed back to the holding chamber, leaving Lando and Lobot standing in the corridor near the lift tube. Watching Boba walk away, Lando muttered, “This deal is getting worse all the time.”