Beware the Power of the Dark Side!

by Tom Angleberger

  Blades whirl and clash and spark. Luke crouches low, ready to either dodge or lunge. Vader stands tall and simply pushes forward, driving Luke backward with powerful swings.

  But now Luke spins and changes the flow of the attack, surprising Vader who is just a little too slow to turn. Luke rushes in to bring down a mighty two-handed blow. Vader blocks it, but finds himself thrown off balance by the intensity of it. He steps back, not realizing that Luke had driven him to the edge of the stairs.

  He falls and Luke is preparing to leap down after him when he hears the Emperor behind him.

  “Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.”

  Again, the Emperor is telling the truth and Luke knows it. He has won, but only by using the dark side of the Force. The hate is flowing through him and he is winning this battle against his father because of it.

  Luke looks down at his father, clambering to his feet at the foot of the stairs. He had told Obi-Wan he couldn’t kill his father…and yet he almost had.

  He turns off his lightsaber and at the same time attempts to turn off the hate and anger.

  Vader climbs the stairs, lightsaber still blazing and hate still flowing.

  “Obi-Wan has taught you well.”

  “I will not fight you, Father,” says Luke, staring into the black mask.

  “You are unwise to lower your defenses!” booms Vader, suddenly swinging his light sword.

  But Luke is not there. He is springing into the air, flipping backward, and landing high above Vader on a catwalk.

  “Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you…the conflict.”

  “There is no conflict!”

  “You couldn’t bring yourself to kill me before and I don’t believe you’ll destroy me now.”

  “You underestimate the power of the dark side! If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny.”

  Vader flings his lightsaber. It slices through the catwalk and Luke falls to the ground, rolling away into the gloomy darkness of an unused area of the throne room.

  The Emperor laughs and calls out, “Good, good,” as if he were watching a show.

  Vader puts out his hand and his lightsaber flies into it. He stalks into the darkness to find his son.

  HAN’S IDEA, it turns out, is to use the AT-ST’s video comlink to impersonate an Imperial again.

  Climbing up to the cockpit, he swipes the jacket and helmet from the dead pilot, sits in the seat, and switches on the comlink.

  “It’s over, Commander. The rebels put up a fight, but they’ve been routed.”

  Han hears cheering coming through the comlink.1

  “They’re fleeing into the woods,” Han continues. “We need reinforcements to continue the pursuit.”

  “Very good,” the commander replies, as if rebels are routed any and every time he’s in charge. Now he turns to an underling and says, “Send a squad to help.”

  The squad, of course, has to open the door before they can rush out to help.

  And when they open the door, they find themselves staring at an unrouted rebel strike team, a bunch of spear-waving Ewoks, a gun-toting princess, a triumphant Wookiee, and a smirking Han Solo.

  Han, Chewie, and several rebels rush in, kick the crestfallen commander and his controllers out, place the explosives, and then make a run for it.

  “Move! Move!” yells Han, running out of the bunker.

  KRAKATHOOOOM!!!!!

  There is a very big explosion and the control bunker blows up, triggering other explosions, which in turn cause the generator building to crumble, which results in the giant shield-casting dish slowly toppling over.

  It is a strangely beautiful sight and those Ewoks who are nearby to see it will tell the story again and again for the rest of their lives.

  But right now we don’t have time to sit and watch, because this is the moment Ackbar and Lando and all the rebels have been waiting for.

  High above the exploding generator, a display screen lights up on the rebel flagship and Ackbar leaps to his feet.

  “The shield is down! Commence attack on the Death Star’s main reactor!”

  “YOU CANNOT HIDE FOREVER, LUKE.”

  “I will not fight you, Father,” Luke calls from the darkness.

  “Give yourself to the dark side,” urges Vader. “It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes…your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong, especially for…”

  Vader pauses. Luke grimaces. The Emperor rises from his throne to hear what Vader will say. This is unexpected.

  “Sister! So…you have a twin sister. Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. But now his failure is complete. Your feelings have betrayed her, too. If you will not turn to the dark side, perhaps she will.”

  “Never!” screams Luke, launching himself out of the gloom, lightsaber blazing, fighting as he has never fought before.

  He swings wildly, madly, using the dark side to move faster and strike harder. He has felt anger and hate before, but never this much fear…fear for his sister, Leia.

  It is too much for Vader. He blocks attack after attack but is pushed back farther each time. Always fueled by hatred, he now gathers additional strength from fear…but it is not enough. Luke lands a blow on his arm, then one on his side.

  The Sith Lord is forced backward until he reaches the bridge over the reactor shaft. Here he tries to strike back, but Luke knocks him down. He sprawls onto the bridge, lifting his lightsaber in a vain attempt to block whatever comes next. But Luke slashes with his saber, slicing Vader’s arm off. The metal limb tumbles down into the shaft, taking the lightsaber with it.

  And now Luke steps onto the bridge, pointing the end of his fiery blade at Vader’s throat.

  The Emperor has come down the stairs to watch all this. It has gone just as he foresaw.

  “Good! Your hate and your fear have made you more powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side.”

  Take your father’s place…The words ring in Luke’s ears. He looks at his father and at his father’s severed arm on the ground. But no, it’s not a real arm. It’s metal and wires, like…his own hand.

  Take your father’s place…Can this really be his destiny? To become more machine than man? To become the servant of the Emperor?

  No, it can’t be!

  Take your father’s place…He has come so close. One more swing of the lightsaber and his father will die and then, yes, he realizes…he would take his father’s place. That is where this fight will take him. The only place it can take him….

  “Never!” he yells.

  He throws his lightsaber aside.

  He turns from his father to face the Emperor unarmed.

  “I’ll never turn to the dark side. You’ve failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

  “So be it, Jedi,” hisses the Emperor, and blinding bolts of energy explode from his hands and instantly wrap themselves around Luke. He screams in agony, but stays on his feet, trying to use the Force to protect himself.

  “If you will not be turned…you will be destroyed,” cackles the Emperor, and as the hatred flows through him the Sith lightning intensifies and overcomes Luke.

  He can feel the Emperor’s thoughts screaming in his own mind, the swirling chaos of fresh anger and long-held hatreds, dark memories, and darker hopes. These hurt his mind even more than the dark lightning hurts his body.

  “Young fool…only now at the end do you understand.”

  The Emperor is right. Luke had no idea that the dark side was this powerful, that the Force could be used this way. He does understand now and it is a terrible thing to understand.

  Luke collapses under the onslaught, clutching at a railing to keep from being pushed into the reactor shaft behind him. But he can do nothing more. The storm of dark energy blots out his own thoughts and makes his body jerk and writhe.

  “Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark sid
e. You have paid the price for your lack of vision.”

  Luke forces his eyes open and sees that Vader is back on his feet and standing behind the Emperor.

  “Father…please…help me…”

  Vader looks on, his black mask giving no clue what he might be thinking.

  The lightning eases for just a moment and the Emperor takes a last, thoughtful look at Luke. It has been pleasurable to cause this much pain, to unleash the horrors in his own head on another. But now it is time to finally wipe out this threat to his empire. It was rather a small threat in the end, he thinks, hardly worth all the trouble he has taken.

  “And now, young Skywalker…you will die.”

  The Emperor steps forward, bearing down on Luke and flinging his hands out in front of him. The lightning erupts again but stronger than before. And Luke’s torment is worse than ever, worse than anything he’s ever known.

  And then, at last, Vader acts. Grabbing the Emperor with what is left of his arms, he lifts his master high in the air and lumbers toward the reactor shaft.

  And now, with fear added to his anger and hatred, the Emperor turns a yet more powerful lightning attack on Vader. Countless blue bolts seethe across the black mask, burning into both metal and flesh. But though he must be feeling even more pain than Luke did, Vader staggers on.

  When at last he reaches the open shaft he hurls the Emperor down into the reactor. It’s a long, long way down and the Emperor fires his lightning upward as he falls.

  He might still have used his powers to save himself, but his hate is now so strong his only thought is to cause Vader more pain. So the lightning continues to flicker and flash even after the body is out of sight.

  And then comes a great explosion when his body finally reaches the reactor and a poisonous wind races up the shaft, knocking Vader at last to the floor.

  He comes close to falling into the shaft himself, but suddenly his son is there, pulling him back from the edge.

  OBVIOUSLY THERE are a lot of things on Luke’s mind, but before he can even begin to sort it all out, the entire Death Star jolts wildly, nearly sending both him and his father into the pit.

  He has no way of knowing what caused it, but he knows it must mean that the shield is down and the rebel attack is finally under way.

  He wants the attack to succeed, of course, but he needs to get clear of it first…and take his father with him.

  Battered and buffeted by first Vader and then the Emperor, Luke has little strength left, but he uses it all to drag his father across the bridge to the elevator. He searches his Jedi-sharpened memory for the floor of the docking bay where Vader’s shuttle deposited him hours earlier.

  When the elevator gets them to the right floor, the door opens to reveal chaos. Troopers, officers, underlings, and construction workers scramble in every direction. Some race to repair the damage, some race to defend the station, and some hang about so they’ll be close to a ship when the call to evacuate comes.

  They didn’t know Luke was aboard, so now he passes as just another person in the way. And no one thinks for a second that the crumpled black burden he carries could possibly be the invincible Darth Vader. Vader, they are sure, is still stomping about somewhere protecting the Emperor.

  In truth, Darth Vader is gone now. The body Luke eases gently to the floor is Anakin Skywalker.

  “Luke, help me take this mask off,” Anakin says, no longer booming.

  “But you’ll die.”

  “Nothing can stop that now. Just for once let me look on you with my own eyes.”

  It takes Luke a moment, but he soon discovers how the front of Vader’s mask can be detached from the helmet and removed. When he does so, the sound of Vader’s respirator, already ragged, stops.

  And now Luke sees for himself the face of his father: scarred and battered into something barely human.

  And now Anakin sees his son’s face: a handsome face, creased with concern and, yes, bearing its own battle scars.

  But at last Anakin sees him not as a Jedi or a warrior or a threat or a mistake, but as his son…and Padmé’s son.

  And Anakin smiles. Not a smile like the Emperor’s. Or a crazed grin like Darth Maul’s. Not even a smirk like Anakin might have shown Ahsoka back in his Jedi days.

  But a real smile.

  The smile that only Padmé ever saw.

  “Now…go, my son,” Anakin struggles to say. “Leave me.”

  “No. You’re coming with me. I can’t leave you here! I’ve got to save you!”

  “You already have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister…you were right.”

  “Father…I won’t leave you.”

  And then another great jolt! Luke looks up to see cargo crates spilling, troopers running, and an officer barking orders that no one stops to listen to.

  When he looks back down, his father is dead. But Luke keeps his promise. He will not leave his father. He stumbles toward the distant shuttle, staggering under the weight of this giant half-metal man who wrought so much evil.

  Leave him there, you want to shout to Luke. He’s the bad guy! The villain! Just leave him and get out of there before the whole Death Star blows up!1

  I can’t blame you for that, reader, but think of this:

  In the end, Anakin did what no Jedi—not Luke, not Obi-Wan, not even Yoda—could do.

  In killing his master—the mighty Sith Lord Darth Sidious, known to the galaxy as Emperor Palpatine—Anakin fulfilled his destiny and restored balance to the Force. And so, though the galaxy will not honor him…Luke will.

  THREE X-WINGS and the Millennium Falcon scorch across the surface of the Death Star toward a gap in the incomplete side of the giant space station.

  “I’m going in!” calls Wedge. He and his wingmen suddenly drop into the hole in the side of the space station. The Falcon is maneuverable, but not that maneuverable. Lando has to take it up into a tight backflip and then dive straight down into the unfinished innards of the Death Star.

  “Here goes nothing,” he says, but that’s just space jockey talk. He’s got his foot on the throttle and Nien Nunb’s got his finger on the trigger. They know that this is something.

  Though unfinished, this Death Star was going to have some improvements over the last one. You may recall that a ventilation shaft that led straight to the main reactor doomed that one. The ventilation shafts are still there—we just saw the Emperor fall down one, after all—but this time Jerjerrod made sure the exhaust ports were very, very, very heavily armored. In the plans, at least.

  And, had the Emperor allowed Jerjerrod more time—not to mention more money and more workers—the whole thing would have been shut up tight.1

  But an unfinished Death Star was part of the bait for the Emperor’s trap…and now it’s providing just enough room for the fighters and the Falcon to slip through a crack in the armor and shoot straight for the heart of the space station, the reactor core.

  Unfortunately, there’s also enough space for TIE fighters to slip in behind them.

  “Now lock on to the strongest power source,” Lando tells Nien Nunb. “It should be the power generator.”

  “Form up and stay tight,” Wedge tells his wingmen. “We could run out of space real fast.”

  Unfortunately, there’s no straight shot this time. This shaft was never finished and is half clogged with huge cables, construction equipment, and scaffolding. Lando has to spin the Falcon this way and that to squeeze through.

  The compact TIEs are better suited for this space. They’ve caught up with the rebels and rake them with cannon fire.

  BZZZZRAK!

  One of them hits an X-wing. The pilot struggles to regain control but the tunnel’s just too tight! The X-wing spins into a wall and explodes, almost taking the Falcon out with it.

  “Deh-te’ill DOU!” yells Nien Nunb.

  “Agreed,” calls back Lando. “Maybe this will do it.” He points ahead to a large gap in the tunnel, where one wall is still incomplete.r />
  Lando leans toward the comlink: “Wedge, stay with me. The rest of you split up and head back to the surface and see if you can take some of those TIE fighters with you.”

  “Copy, Gold Leader.”

  Four X-wings peel off and shoot through the gap. Two TIEs follow them, but four remain locked on to Lando and Wedge.

  One of these scores a direct hit on the Falcon. The deflector shield holds, but the impact sends the ship into a tailspin just as the tunnel up ahead is half blocked.

  Lando manages to regain control and shoots through the narrowing gap, but not without slamming the Falcon’s topside into a wall. There’s an awful lurch as various parts of the Falcon are ripped away, but the hull holds and the ship just keeps on going.

  “That was too close,” mutters Lando.

  “Mu-the gate-oh…”

  Now the tunnel opens up into a cavernous space with a glowing reactor at its center. They see Wedge’s X-wing hurtling toward it.

  “Lor-ac!! Lor-ac!!” yells Nien Nunb!

  “All right! Wedge, go for the power regulator on the side tower.”

  “Copy, Gold Leader….I’m already on my way out,” comes the response.

  Wedge fires his torpedoes and then peels away. They explode into a huge metal structure perched on the side of the reactor.

  The Falcon keeps straight ahead until it’s almost swallowed by the glowing mass at the center. Nien Nunb fires directly into it and then Lando hauls on the wheel to just barely avoid the reactor and follow Wedge back to the surface.

  But behind them the reactor is exploding. Will they get out in time?

  Out in the relative safety of the space battle, Ackbar has heard Wedge and orders, “Move the fleet away from the Death Star.”

  A feeling of triumph and, yes, disbelief grows inside Ackbar. After all these years of fighting, the Empire is about to be destroyed.

  But will the Falcon be destroyed with it?

  Unnoticed by either the panicking Imperials or the triumphing rebels, Darth Vader’s shuttle slips out of a docking bay and heads for the forest moon, carrying Luke and what remains of Anakin Skywalker.