Chapter 1 - A New Enemy
A tremor in the Force.
It brushes the edge of my mind while I am in the midst of questioning a subordinate about the captured freighter. The ship is empty, he tells me, abandoned, yet I feel a presence so familiar that for a nanosecond my instinct is to accept it without question, to welcome it. Then comes recognition, and with it confusion. "I sense something." The officer looks at me quizzically, but I ignore him. Surely it is impossible. "A presence I've not felt since…." Since a day of fire, terror, pain… death….
I turn away, reaching through the Force to renew that brief touch, but it is gone. He knows I am here, and is concealing himself from me. I stride through the corridors of the station, seeking with senses deeper than sight or hearing. There! I feel it again, stronger this time, nearer. I am sure, now. It can be no other.
Jumbled memories leap from the graves where they have lain buried and overwhelm me with a storm of battling emotions. Enemy, master, traitor, friend. The years I served at his side, and the unthinkable betrayal. Brother, he called me, as he left me to die. Twenty years, each breath burning with the echo of flame in my lungs. Each step stabbing with the pain of charred and blackened limbs.
From the maelstrom rage rises up victorious, hot and bitter in my throat. With the reflexive skill born of twenty years' experience, I slide down the channel of my anger into the cold calm power of the Force. It stills the storm in my mind and shows me the path I must follow.
He must have come as part of a Rebel plot, to retrieve the captured Senator, to bring her the stolen plans. But that is irrelevant. He is here so that I may finally make an end of him, and close the door of my past forever.
Tarkin is incredulous when I tell him. "Surely he must be dead by now."
No. I have always know he was out there, our final confrontation delayed, but inevitable. Weak as the Jedi are, deliberately shutting themselves off from the most potent aspects of the Force, still I know he could never succumb to the mere passage of time or to one of the infinite disasters that do away with lesser beings. "Don't underestimate the Force."
Still he does not believe me. "The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion."
He thinks of the Force as little more than superstition and trickery. He will learn the truth. I see the fear in his eyes as he receives news of a disturbance near where the Senator is imprisoned. Even he cannot deny this proof. I relish his discomfiture as I drive the point home. "Obi-wan is here. The Force is with him."
But Tarkin is too skilled a player in the games of power to be distracted by a momentary disadvantage. "If you're right, he must not be allowed to escape."
"Escape is not his plan." No. Once he has disabled the tractor beam so his accomplices can flee, he will seek me out. He must feel as powerfully as I do the currents of Force, bright and dark, drawing us together. He will believe it is his hour, to finish the work he left undone when last we parted.
The Dark Side of the Force rises up within me, hungry for death.
"I must face him. Alone."
I wait, in the place to which the Force has led me, corridor empty at my command of the usual bustle of the station. All is ready. The homing beacon is in place aboard their ship; the fighters are scrambled, ready to make a token show of resistance. They will undoubtedly realize they are being followed, but in their arrogance they will lead us to the Rebel base nevertheless.
My light saber burns in my hand, its gentle pulsing buzz loud in my ears. Though my mask now blocks all sensation, I remember the feel of gentle radiance on my cheek, and its absence is an ache. I lower it to guard position, and stand, motionless.
He comes. Seeing me, he stops, wary.
Unseen behind my mask, I close my eyes. He is old. The familiar face is lined and weatherbeaten. I open my eyes and meet his gaze. He watches me without fear, only sadness, and a distant pity.
Stung, I move toward him, anger mounting. He will see there is no cause for pity, and much cause for fear. His light saber blossoms into being, rising between us.
"I've been waiting for you, Obi-wan." Waiting endless years, which now seem no time at all. It is as if we stand again on Mustafar, surrounded by pools of lava, the twenty years between no more than a breath. "We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner." The Jedi council would not grant me the rank I deserved. You did not believe I was ready. "Now I am the master."
"Only a master of evil, Darth."
Evil! You speak of evil, you whose lies turned my beloved against me, who thought to trick me with her pleas, who provoked me into such a rage I lashed out against the one I gave everything to save! You dare to speak to me of evil! I strike out against him, and our sabers meet, hissing and spitting as they clash.
He twists away, and for a few moments we strike and parry in silence save for the shuffle of feet and the sputter of sabers. Neither of us is what we once were. He is slowed by age, and I by this metal and plastic shell that must serve me for a body. My clumsiness feeds my rage, which I welcome, for as my anger builds so does the power of the Force within me.
I renew my attack, and taunt him. "Your powers are weak, old man." Our sabers lock, crackling as their energy fields compete. That infuriating pity is still there in his eyes.
"You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." His voice holds a grave certainty, beyond anything I have ever heard from him.
Almost I pause. What does he know, what could he have learned in the intervening years…? But that is nonsense. Fool, there is nothing beyond death. If I strike you down, you shall be dead, and I shall have the victory.
My rasping inhalations quicken, my ravaged lungs straining to extract enough oxygen from the filtered and enriched air provided by my mask. I save my breath for fighting, but my mind continues to shout my litany of grievances against him. You hunted me down to kill me. You took my legs from me, and my arm. You did not even have the courage to kill me cleanly, but instead left me to burn.
The Force flows through me, fed by my fury, speeding my reactions and strengthening my blows. He is tiring. Our sabers lock again, and I gloat, feeling my triumph approaching. "You should not have come back." His eyes meet mine, searchingly, but still he shows no sign of fear. My anger is redoubled, and I slash at him, his defense weakening with every strike.
Our battle has carried us down the corridor. An open door beside us looks out into the hanger where the captured ship waits. Once more our sabers lock, and his head turns. Following his glance through the open door, I see across the hanger a young man, clad in a dirty white tunic and leggings. He catches sight of us, startled, and starts to move this way.
I jerk my attention back to Obi-wan. He is still gazing intently at the boy. I prepare to take advantage of his distraction, drawing my saber back for a great spiraling blow. He looks at me, and even as I begin to swing he smiles, then composes himself in an attitude of meditation. He holds his light saber vertically in front of him, eyes closed, offering no resistance as my weapon whistles toward him. Exultation surges through me, swamping a tiny pang of… what? Regret, grief? My saber bites into his neck, severing it cleanly, and he falls, his robe billowing around him and sinking into a crumpled heap on the floor.
A cry of "No!" echoes across the hanger, and blaster bolts ricochet in my direction. But I am caught, stunned, staring at the pile of clothing at my feet, light saber hilt dead upon it. Unbelieving, I poke at it with a booted foot. No body, no blood, nothing save these empty robes to show that Obi-wan was ever here.
Can his presence have been nothing but an illusion, a trick? But I felt him so clearly in the Force. Surely that could not have been faked.
Continued blaster fire demands my attention, and I turn toward the door, saber raised to deflect the bolts of energy. It is that boy, in his stricken grief careless of his own safety, blasting indiscriminately toward me. There is something about him…. I move toward him, but his friends aboard the ship shout, and he aims a blast toward the door controls. The door irises shut before me, blocking my view. But as the last small opening in the center shrinks closed, I feel a surge in the Force, and the boy turns and runs aboard the ship.
The Force ebbs from my body, leaving me weak, and I lean against the door, gasping for breath. I stare at the empty pile of clothes, wondering.
At last I straighten. A few members of the station's staff gather around, uncertain whether to approach me. I gesture curtly at the pile. "Take them away. Disintegrate them." They hasten to do my bidding.
Whatever has happened to his body, Obi-wan is dead. Destroyed, defeated. His fire has gone out of the universe. Behind my mask my lips quirk in a wry, bitter smile at the memory of Tarkins's words. Now I truly am all that is left of the Jedi.
I watch the display. Rebel fighters swarm around the station, tiny ships, no threat whatsoever to the massive Death Star. I do not understand what they hope to accomplish. But still my pulse quickens at the thought of a fighter battle. Annoyance mounts as I watch our fighters miss easy shots, veer ridiculously wide, make mistake after mistake in pursuing the Rebel ships. I know I can do far better.
There, that is my chance. I gesture curtly to the two pilots I have handpicked and held in reserve. "Several fighters have broken off from the main group. Come with me."
We hurry to the fighter hanger. I strap my self into the seat of my specially modified TIE fighter. Tarkin will not like me lowering myself to join the combat personally. But I do not answer to Tarkin, only to my Master, and he indulges my taste for flying.
We take off, and I grin with delight. This is my native element. I never feel more alive than when I am behind the controls of a small craft, free to leap and soar and dive through space, Force flowing though me, enabling me to react to obstacles before I can even see them.
But we have business to attend to, so I focus on our foes, signaling my squadron to take up attack formation. The rebel ships dip into a long trough that scores the surface of the station. They fly along it, easily dodging the fire from the big, slow guns that line it.
I radio the main control room, commanding them to cease the gun's fire along the trough. Then I swoop down behind them, flanked on left and right by my attendants. The tight quarters are a welcome challenge, and the Rebel pilots are skilled, so I take great satisfaction as we shoot them down, one by one.
The three of us swoop up out of the trench in tight formation, searching for more Rebel fighters to engage. We don't have far to look. Here are another three, diving down to trace the same path along the trough. What is it about this trench? They act as if it is the location of some important strategic target, though I can see nothing they might be aiming for. No matter, the fighters themselves are my targets. I lock onto the one to the right and fire, my blasts streaking across space to strike the fighter, which explodes in a ball of flame.
My second claims the other flanking fighter, and I go after the leader. But before I can target him, he fires two torpedoes, then quickly pulls up. Flames erupt on the station's surface, much more than I would have expected from such a small impact.
I frown. This must be their target, then. The stolen plans must have revealed some vulnerability here. Very well. I will make sure they are not able to exploit it.
I swoop upward, following the fleeing leader. This one is skilled, and leads me an exhilarating chase, twisting and turning, skimming dangerously close to the station. But eventually I catch up to him, and with a roar of my guns his craft plows into the surface.
I nearly laugh aloud. This is the best flying I've done in years. Look, here comes another formation of three Rebel ships. You'd think they'd learn not to waste their effort.
These approach the trench at breakneck speed, seeking to outrun us. But the ragtag Rebel ships are no match for the Empire's technology, and we soon gain ground on them. One of my flanking pilots fires. A rebel ship is damaged, but not destroyed, falling back and up, away from the station. "Let him go. Stay on the leader." I take careful aim, then fire, and their second trailing ship explodes into smoke and scattered debris.
Only the leader is left, and I close in on him. This one flies with something like my own preternatural skill, dodging my blasts almost before I fire them. Curious, I reach out my senses, and feel a vivid bright presence in the Force at the controls of the Rebel ship. Even as I watch, the Force surges up even more strongly within him.
"The Force is strong in this one." In an earlier age he would have been identified as a child and trained as a Jedi. Now those born strong in the Force are left untrained, most never aware of their powers, except perhaps as a stronger than normal intuition, or quicker than normal reflexes. This one seems at least to have learned to use the Force in his flying.
Almost I regret the necessity of killing him, but his skill with the Force only increases the miniscule chance that he might actually hit whatever it is he's aiming at. I lock in on his ship and fire, but again he dodges, and my blast strikes only a glancing blow, damaging little other than his maintenance droid.
Again the Force surges within him. I am growing angry. He will not dodge me again. I call on the Dark Force, and sink into its embrace. "I have you now." The targeting computer locks onto his ship, and, Force guided, I fire.
My shot goes wide, and suddenly the fighter to my right bursts into a ball of flame. "What?" I cry. They have no other ships left! I twist around, trying to glimpse where the shots are coming from. A shape streaks out of the sun. Then the fighter to my left is hit and knocked sideways into mine.
My ship spins out of control, away from the station, toward empty space. I try frantically to reestablish my stability.
Behind me I feel a brilliant surge of Force, followed in an instant by a tremendous impact as a blast front rocks my little fighter, tossing it wildly though space. Incredulous, I strain to see. Where the Death Star hovered, nothing remains except a rapidly expanding ball of superheated gasses and tumbling, twisted debris.
Numb with shock, I labor automatically at the controls until I manage to restore my ship's stability. I aim it away from the planet Yavin. If I remember correctly, an Imperial base is located only a few star systems from here, but in this small craft it will take me days to get there. I activate my distress beacon, and lay in my course. Looking behind me one last time, I confirm that I am truly alone, the only survivor of the destruction.
Fury like none I have known before overwhelms me. Twenty years of hard labor, huge amounts of the Empire's resources, all the time and energy of countless of the Empire's best minds and talents, destroyed in an instant. The stolen plans must have revealed some fatal flaw after all, and the Rebels were able to find and exploit it.
My anger only grows during the two days until a patrol ship retrieves me. When I emerge, my rage is focused on two targets. The Senator who stole the deadly plans, and the unknown pilot, strong in the Force, who fired the final shot. I will find them, no matter how long it takes, and I will have my revenge.