A low bunker is built into a hill. True, it has a thick, Imperial-standard blast door…but our heroes have the code, thanks to the Bothan spies.
And here the only guards are four biker scouts. Four rather bored biker scouts, in fact. They’ve been stationed back here for months without seeing the least bit of action and they’re currently leaning against the bunker complaining about it, as bored troopers are wont to do.
“Thank goodness,” says Leia, “we’re running out of time.”
“It’s only a few guards. This shouldn’t be too much trouble,” says Han.
“Well, it only takes one to sound the alarm.”
“Then we’ll do it real quiet-like,” says Solo with a grin that is so perfectly self-confident that it really deserves a clever description, but again there is no time, because the grin disappears a second later when C-3PO interrupts.
“Oh! Oh, my!”
“Quiet,” hiss Leia and Solo at the same time, but C-3PO isn’t just complaining this time.
“I’m afraid our furry companion has gone and done something rather rash.” He points and they turn back to the bunker just in time to see Paploo scramble onto a speeder bike, flip some switches, possibly at random, and go roaring away into the forest, clinging to the handlebars, lasers blasting and repulsorlift engines screeching.
“EE CHEE WA MAA!”
“There goes our surprise attack,” groans Solo.
“Whhuug,” agrees Chewie.
But they’re both wrong.
Three of the four scouts jump onto the three remaining bikes and shoot off after Paploo, who leads them on a merry—if somewhat death-defying—chase through the trees before grabbing hold of a vine to swing unnoticed and unharmed up into a tree, while his speeder bike—and the troopers on their bikes—streak on through the forest.
“Not bad for a little furball,” says Han, as the speeder bikes disappear into the trees. “Only one guard left. Let’s go.”
He turns to go, then remembers that he still wants to do this quietly. He turns back and points at R2-D2 and C-3PO. “Stay here!”
Han and Chewie sneak up behind the distracted, bikeless guard, while Leia leads the strike team toward the bunker.
R2 gives a low whistle and rocks impatiently, but C-3PO doesn’t budge. “I have decided that we shall stay here.”
LUKE FAILED to turn his father away from the dark side on Endor. And now, in the far less pleasant setting of the Death Star’s throne room, he must face the consequences of that failure. Vader has brought him here so that the Emperor can turn Luke to the dark side.
You may think that there’s not a chance of such a thing, but that is only because you, like Luke, have underestimated the Emperor and the dark force that has consumed him.
“Welcome, young Skywalker. I have been expecting you.” The voice comes from deep within a dark hood. There’s just enough light for Luke to see the Emperor’s twisted, hateful smile.
“You no longer need those binders,” says the Emperor, and with the twitching of one of his gnarled fingers they fall to the ground. Luke is free to attack now.
“Guards, leave us,” calls the Emperor, and his silent, red protectors glide away.1 Now, Luke is even more free to attack.
“His lightsaber,” booms Vader, handing the deadly weapon to his master.
“Ah, yes, a Jedi’s weapon. Much like your father’s,” says the Emperor, carelessly laying the lightsaber on the armrest of his throne.
Now the way is fully clear for Luke to attack. And surely he must be thinking of it. But he does not.
The Emperor goes on….
“By now you must know your father can never be turned from the dark side. So will it be with you.”
“It is pointless to resist, my son,” says Vader, looming behind Luke.
“I’m looking forward to completing your training,” says the Emperor. “In time you will call me Master.”
“You’re gravely mistaken,” replies Luke calmly. “You won’t convert me as you did my father.”
The Emperor looks up and Luke sees his eyes for the first time. Anger and hate burn in them and Palpatine’s smile grows even worse.
“Oh, no, my young Jedi. You will find that it is you who are mistaken…about a great many things.”
“You’re wrong. Soon I’ll be dead…and you with me.”
And now comes something worse than the Emperor’s smile, his laugh. A nasty little laugh, meant to irritate and offend.
“Perhaps you refer to the imminent attack of your rebel fleet,” the Emperor says casually.
Luke freezes. This was unexpected. Just as the Emperor wanted it to be.
“Yes…I assure you we are quite safe from your friends here,” croaks the Emperor, savoring the moment.
“Your overconfidence is your weakness,” declares Luke, struggling to control his fear that the rebel fleet is indeed doomed.
“Your faith in your friends is yours!” snarls the Emperor. “Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.”
The Emperor turns slightly and gestures out the magnificent window behind his throne. Luke looks out and sees a cloudy green ball hanging in the empty starfield.
“Your friends up there on the forest moon are walking into a trap. As is your rebel fleet! It was I who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them.”
Now the fear in Luke’s heart grows—they are doomed! And the fear quickly turns to anger. He whirls back to face the Emperor but his gaze lands on his weapon. Oh, how quickly the Emperor has brought out Luke’s own dark side! And now to push him just a little further….
“Oh…I’m afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive.”
NOW YOU MAY BE THINKING that the Emperor is lying. He’s very good at that after all. As Senator, and then Chancellor, and now Emperor Palpatine, he has built his entire Empire on lies.1
But not this time. This time the Emperor has told the truth. And Han and Leia are about to learn that firsthand.
Han got them into the bunker easily enough. First he tricked the only remaining guard into chasing him around the corner of the bunker…where the whole strike team was waiting with weapons drawn.
And then he tapped the Bothan’s stolen code into the bunker’s door and that slid open, revealing a control room full of engineers and computer operators, without a soldier in sight.
“All right, up! C’mon! Move! Quickly!” yells Han, waving his blaster. His strike team rushes in behind him to take charge of the prisoners.
“The charges, Chewie! Quickly!” he calls, and the two of them begin attaching thermal detonators in strategic locations around the room.
But what was it the Emperor said? Didn’t he mention a legion of his best troops? Where are they?
Blast doors whizz open and the stormtroopers surge in from the corridors where they’ve been waiting. More pour in from outside.
“Freeze, you rebel scum!” snarls their commander.
And Han has no choice. Dozens of blaster rifles are pointed at him. No action, no matter how brave, could save the day here. There isn’t even a chance to trigger the bombs.
He looks at Chewie and Leia. They are as helpless as he is.
It’s all over.
HIGH ABOVE THE MOON, the rebel fleet emerges from hyperspace with a silent pop.
Leading the charge, Lando and Nien Nunb look through the Falcon’s cockpit window at the giant Death Star dead ahead. It’s bigger than either imagined. And only gets bigger as they zoom toward it.
Lando leans toward the comlink, making sure the rest of the fleet is behind him.
“All wings, report in.”
The answers crackle back to him:
“Red Leader standing by.”
“Gray Leader standing by.”
“Green Leader standing by.”
“Lock S-foils in attack position
s,” Wedge tells his squadron of X-wings.
“May the Force be with us,” comes the voice of Admiral Ackbar.
“Ah-the-yairee u-hareh mu-ah-hareh,” cries Nien Nunb, urgently pointing at a control panel.
“What?” yells Lando. “We’ve got to be able to get some kind of a reading on that shield, up or down!”
“Mu-ah-hareh mu-kay, huh? E-mutee bit-chu me!” fusses the copilot.
“Well, how can they be jamming our transmission if they don’t know we’re coming?”
They look at each other, then at the Death Star.
“Break off the attack,” Lando yells into the comlink as he yanks the controls to one side. “The shield is still up!”
“I get no reading,” Wedge calls over the comlink. “Are you sure?”
“Pull up!” yells Lando. “All craft, pull up!”
The maneuverable Falcon and X-wings peel away just before hitting the shield. The larger craft have a tougher time making the turn.
“Take evasive action!” bellows Ackbar over the comlink. And then he calls to his own crew, “Port engines, full reverse!” sending the ship into a shuddering, lurching spin, but saving it from smashing to bits on the invisible barrier, which, as the Emperor promised, is still quite operational.
“Green group! Stick close to holding sector MV-Seven,” he commands, but it’s not going to be that easy to regroup!
“Admiral!” yells a controller, pointing to a viewscreen. “We have enemy ships in sector forty-seven.”
Ackbar looks up expecting to see a few TIE fighters. Instead, he sees a whole fleet: ten, eleven, maybe more Star Destroyers—and one Super Star Destroyer—shooting out from their hiding place behind the moon, each one unleashing a swarm of TIE fighters.
“It’s a trap!”
“COME, BOY, see for yourself,” croaks the Emperor, and Luke can’t help obeying. He walks closer to the window and sees the trap being sprung.
The Imperial fleet splits open like the rancor’s jaws to crush and swallow the rebels.
At this distance, the deaths of individual X-wing pilots are nothing more than brief red flashes. It’s all silent. It’s all out there in the vacuum of space on the other side of this meter-thick glass.
“From here you will witness the final destruction of the Alliance,” spits the Emperor, “and the end of your insignificant Rebellion.”
And Luke can do nothing! Or can he? His eyes flick back to the throne. His lightsaber is still there.
Ah, but the Emperor has been waiting for this. He finds space battles rather dull, but the battle here in the throne room is what really brings him joy.
He pats the lightsaber almost lovingly with his gnarled hand. And he smiles.
“You want this, don’t you? The hate is swelling in you now. Take your weapon. Use it. I am unarmed. Strike me down with it.”
Luke turns back to the window, but the Emperor knows he is still thinking about the lightsaber.
“Give in to your anger. With each passing moment, you make yourself more my servant.”
“No,” says Luke, turning to face the two Sith Lords.
“It is unavoidable. It is your destiny,” the Emperor says gently. “You, like your father, are now mine.”
Luke looks at his father—standing obediently by the throne, silent except for the continual clicks and wheezes of his respirator—and then he turns back to the window. What he sees there is a nightmare.
“THERE’S TOO MANY OF THEM!” screams someone through the comlink.
Lando doesn’t know who and there’s no time to find out and it hardly matters. There are too many of them.
There has never been a battle like this before. Any time that the Empire has had this many ships in one place, the rebels have always been careful to be as far away as possible.
But now they’ve been lured here to face far more ships than expected. For each rebel fighter there is a pack of TIE fighters out to hunt it down. For each mid-sized rebel cruiser there is a monstrous Star Destroyer bristling with cannons and torpedoes.
But don’t give up hope, reader. Not every ship is created equal and the rebels have the ship that did the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy: the Millennium Falcon.
And at the controls are two of the best pilots in the galaxy, Lando and Nien Nunb.
And that’s a good thing, because even a small space battle is not an easy thing to fly through. Ships, laser bolts, proton torpedoes racing toward you from every direction. Meanwhile, you’re racing toward other ships, laser bolts, and proton torpedoes at egregious speeds. And every time you change course you risk flying into a different set of ships, laser bolts, and proton torpedoes that were minding their own business but are now more than happy to blow up your ship.
And speaking of ships blowing up, that happens a lot, and you have to make sure you don’t run into the explosions…or the drifting debris that floats about afterward.
Now add in the fact that you aren’t just dodging all this stuff, but actively trying to protect your friends and blast away at your enemies. And now multiply all that times a thousand as Lando finesses his way through the whole Imperial armada.
When dealing with all this, it helps if you’re using the Force, like Luke, but Lando doesn’t have that power. What does he have? Nothing but the courage to fly faster and cut things closer than the enemy dares.
And right now he’s cutting it awfully close. He’s chasing down a TIE fighter even while three others are roaring in from behind. He really should break off his attack and try to get the Falcon out of this mess.
Instead, he increases speed and takes a new angle, racing to cut the TIE fighter off by shortcutting insanely close to the bow of a rebel cruiser. Just before impact, Lando does a hard roll, barely squeaking past the other ship.1
The risky maneuver brought them in close enough to not only blow up the TIE they were chasing, but also double back and, thanks to some fancy shooting by Nien Nunb, pick off the two others, while Lando just barely avoided the stray fire from three TIEs chasing an X-wing across their path.
“Watch yourself, Wedge!” cries Lando. “Three from above!”
“Red Three! Red Two! Pull in!”
“Got it!”
“Two more coming in, twenty degrees!”
“Cut to the left! I’ll take the leader!” calls Wedge.
Lando forces the Falcon into a flip and Nien Nunb unleashes a broadside on the pack of TIEs. Two explode, but the other three cut away in time and now streak toward one of the larger ships.
“They’re heading for the medical frigate!” cries Wedge.
They give chase, weaving in and out of the absolute chaos of a thousand ships pulling—or trying to pull—the same sort of aerial tricks.
Wedge does knock out the leader, but not before two X-wings are shot down and the Falcon takes a brutal hit to its forward deflectors.
And still more TIE fighters swoop in, bombarding the frigate until the hull starts to crack.
“Lamou-be-o-tee,” growls Nien Nunb.
“I know it,” yells Lando, “but what else can we—”
But he stops because he’s just answered his own question. Somehow in all that mess of flying and shooting and being shot at, he managed to pull off a quick bit of thinking.
“We’ve got to draw their fire off our cruisers,” he orders into the comlink. “Accelerate to attack speed and follow me!”
“Copy, Gold Leader,” answers Wedge, and what’s left of the rebel fighter squadrons turns to fly directly at the largest Star Destroyer in the Imperial fleet.
Seconds later, a horde of TIE fighters is rushing to meet their attack.
The two forces of fighters collide in a furious cloud of ships, laser bolts, and proton torpedoes, flying in and out and around and sometimes into the Star Destroyers.
Lando’s plan has worked. He has brought the battle to the Empire now and he keeps bringing it in closer. Hardened Imperial officers find themse
lves shrinking back from their windows as the rebel pilots skim the surface of the Star Destroyer, blasting everything in sight.
There are minor victories for the rebels in this new round of chaos…but they are very, very minor. And the Imperial fleet is very, very large.
It’s still just a matter of time until the strength of the rebel fleet is exhausted and the endless might of the Empire wins the day as it has won every day for a generation.
Unless…
UNLESS…WELL…you don’t suppose? You know…the Ewoks?
I mean, everybody else is basically captured, trapped, or doomed at this point.
Maybe they could…
No, no, it’s impossible.
Well…maybe not impossible, but highly improbable. But then again, Han Solo always says, “Never tell me the odds.”
That’s not what he’s saying right this second, of course. Right this second, he’s being shoved out of the bunker by a squad of stormtroopers only to find the rest of the legion waiting for him in the clearing.
But when he does get a chance to say it, what he means is, don’t rule something out just because it seems unlikely.
And the idea of the Ewoks having any effect at all on this giant galactic war is the most unlikely idea of all.
Han and Leia haven’t even thought of it. And the biker scouts and stormtroopers would get a good laugh out of it. And we already know how the Emperor just waved aside the whole species.
And of course, C-3PO thinks the idea is madness, but he thinks that about everything.
R2, however, has thought it over—in his own astromech way of thinking things over—and he rather likes it—in his own astromech way of liking things.
“Beepbaleep WHIRR!”
“Oh, Artoo, really? Do you really think I should? Commander Solo told us to wait quietly. He said nothing about us being involved in a rescue.”
“Brreep beepaleep WHIRRRR!”
“Well! I just think we should—”
R2 interrupts with a wild, ear-splitting series of beeps and whoops. A hundred stormtroopers turn to look. They see C-3PO stumble out from behind a tree, closely followed by R2.
Beware the Power of the Dark Side! Page 12
