The Rise And Fall Of Darth Vader (14 page)

Obi-Wan assumed an offensive stance.

“When I left you,” Vader continued, “I was but the learner; now I am the master.”

“Only a master of evil, Darth,” Obi-Wan said.

Although Vader had not expected Obi-Wan to address him by the obsolete name of Anakin Skywalker, it was most unusual for anyone to call him by his Sith Lord title alone. Vader thought,
He’s trying to confuse me!

Obi-Wan moved fast, lunging at Vader with his weapon, but the Dark Lord blocked the attack with ease. There was a loud electric crackle as their lightsabers made contact. Undeterred, Obi-Wan made a swift series of strikes, but each was parried by Vader.

“Your powers are weak, old man,” Vader said.

“You can’t win, Darth,” Obi-Wan said, making Vader wonder if perhaps Obi-Wan was taunting him by refusing to address him properly. With incredible self-assurance, Obi-Wan added, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

“You should not have come back,” Vader said.

Their lightsabers clashed again and again, and their duel carried on until they were just outside Docking Bay 327. As they moved toward the door that led directly into the hangar that contained the captured freighter, Vader heard the approaching footsteps of stormtroopers running toward his position. Vader’s blade was crossed with his opponent’s when Obi-Wan threw a glance into the hangar. Vader kept his eyes riveted on the Jedi.
You won’t get away from me this time!

Unexpectedly, Obi-Wan raised his lightsaber before him and closed his eyes. His expression was serene.

Vader could hardly believe it. He’s surrendering! Without mercy, Vader swung hard with his lightsaber, slicing through Obi-Wan’s form. He fully expected to hear the satisfying sound of Obi-Wan’s rained body collapsing upon the polished floor, and so was astonished to see only the Jedi’s robe and lightsaber at his feet. Obi-Wan’s body had completely vanished.

“No!” a voice shouted from the hangar. Suddenly, the hangar was filled with the rapid reports of many blasters firing at the same time.

Vader heard the shout and the blasters but he paid them no attention. Astonished, he stared at Obi-Wan’s weapon and empty robe, then prodded the clothes with his boot.
Where is he? How could he vanish? What sort of trickery is this?

From the hangar, over the din of the blaster fight, Vader heard Princess Leia call out, “Come on! Come on! Luke, it’s too late!”

Vader had no interest in stopping Princess Leia, nor did he wonder who “Luke” might be. But he couldn’t let them get away too easily. Turning away from Obi-Wan’s fallen robe and lightsaber, he headed for the hangar. But before he could reach the doorway, a man’s voice in the hangar shouted, “Blast the door, kid!”

There was a small explosion outside the doorway, and the two blast doors slid out from the walls to seal off the hangar. Moments later, Vader heard the freighter’s engines roar to life, carrying the ship out of the hangar and away from the Death Star.

It had been Vader’s idea to plant the homing device on the freighter, and to allow the Princess to escape so she would unwittingly lead the Imperials to the secret Rebel base. Vader had been confident that his plan would work. And yet as he picked up Kenobi’s lightsaber, he realized that he was now less certain of what the future held.

* * *

It was determined that the freighter had traveled to Yavin 4, the same moon where Anakin Skywalker had dueled Asajj Ventress during the Clone Wars.
First Tatooine, now Yavin 4,
Vader thought. Despite his devotion to the power of the dark side of the Force, he had the nagging sense that his past was coming back to haunt him.

Once the Death Star arrived in the Yavin system and was within thirty minutes’ range of destroying the moon with the Rebel base, Vader’s confidence returned.

“Today will be a day long remembered,” he told Tarkin in the Death Star control room. “It has seen the end of Kenobi. It will soon see the end of the Rebellion.”

By the time the Imperial tactical officers had determined that the stolen technical readouts revealed a vulnerable area of their battle station, dozens of Rebel starfighters had already begun their assault on the Death Star. Tarkin and most of his men had regarded the enemy ships as nothing more than a temporary nuisance, but Darth Vader had felt his confidence shift again as the battle progressed. Vader had never considered the Death Star as anything more than a deadly, oversized toy, but because the expensive superweapon was necessary for the Emperor’s schemes, he had been duty-bound to protect it.

And he had failed.

Now, as the Super Star Destroyer
Executor
arrived in the Endor system, he thought back on what had happened at Yavin four years ago.

With Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber clipped to his belt like a trophy, he had flown his bent-winged prototype TIE fighter to defend the Death Star. None of the Rebel pilots had been a match for him until he had caught up with a single X-wing fighter in the Death Star’s equatorial trench. Despite the fury of the space battle, Vader had easily sensed that the Force was strong with this one X-wing pilot. Vader had been about to fire at his evasive target when an unexpected blast from above damaged his own ship and sent him spinning out into space. He had but a millisecond to see that he had been attacked by the same freighter that had led the Death Star to Yavin.

And then the Death Star had exploded. The resulting shock wave had sent his TIE fighter tumbling further and faster from Yavin. It had not taken him long to regain control of his ship, but because the freighter’s attack had crippled his hyperdrive and communications systems, it was some time before he reached an Imperial outpost. Vader had used that time to think about the droids that Princess Leia had sent to Tatooine, and the freighter that had transported Obi-Wan Kenobi to the Death Star. Vader had wondered,

How long was Obi-Wan on Tatooine. And why?

Had he been in contact with Owen and Bern Lars?

Did Princess Leia know that he was alive, and that the droids would find him there?

And the Rebel pilot who was so strong with the Force… where had he come from?

The Emperor had not been pleased to learn of the loss of the Death Star, but he had not faulted Vader After all, Vader had nothing to do with the battle station’s flawed design. While Palpatine’s propaganda architects had launched a campaign to discredit the Rebel Alliance by denying that a moon-sized Imperial battle station ever existed, Vader had conducted his own investigation to identify the Rebel pilot who had destroyed the Death Star, and devised a plan to lure the Rebels to the Starship Yards ofFondor.

Vader had failed to capture the Rebel spy who took the bait at Fondor, but through the Force, Vader had sensed that the spy was the pilot who had eluded him at the Death Star, and that this individual had indeed been a disciple of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Eventually, he had learned the pilot’s name.

Luke Skywalker.

According to municipal records obtained from the settlement of Anchorhead on Tatooine, that was the name on the registration for a T-16 skyhopper owned by a human male pilot who had lived at the Lars homestead and was approximately nineteen standard years old.

Luke Skywalker.

According to a Kubaz freelance spy in Mos Eisley, that was the name on a Spaceport Speeders sales record for the landspeeder that had been purchased from a young man who later left on the
Millennium Falcon
, the Corellian freighter that had also carried Obi-Wan Kenobi to the Death Star.

Luke Skywalker.

According to a captured Rebel whom Darth Vader interrogated on the planet Centares, that was the name of the X-wing pilot who had destroyed the Death Star.

Luke Skywalker.

Even while inspecting his nearly completed flagship, the Super Star Destroyer
Executor
, at the Starship Yards of Fondor, Vader could not get Luke Skywalker out of his mind. He silently chewed on the name, and considered the fact that the boy had been born three years after the death of Shmi Skywalker. To the best of his knowledge, Anakin Skywalker had been his mother’s only living blood relative.

Could there have been other Skywalkers from Tatooine? Vader allowed the possibility. After all, it wasn’t an entirely uncommon name in the galaxy.

But Anakin and Padmé Amidala had been expecting a baby nineteen years ago.

Nineteen standard years.

It’s not possible,
Vader thought.
I killed Padmé. The baby died with her.

Not for the first time, he wondered if the Emperor had told him the whole truth about Padmé‘s death. But I remember choking her… seeing her collapse on Mustafar. I was so angry with her. And yet…

Luke Skywalker exists.

Vader refused to believe that the notorious Rebel’s surname was merely a bizarre coincidence. If he had possessed any other name, Vader would not have hesitated to report what he had learned to the Emperor. But for purely selfish reasons, Vader kept the Rebel’s name to himself. To him, Luke Skywalker was more than a mystery to be solved.

He is… an opportunity. As strong with the Force as he may be, he is an opportunity… an opportunity for even greater power.

But who is he? Who were his parents? Could he have been Obi-Wan’s son? But then why was he named Skywalker and raised by the Lars family? Or was he merely trained by Obi-Wan?

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi, Shmi Skywalker, Owen and Beru Lars, and Padmé Amidala were dead, there was only one way Vader could discover the truth. He would have to ask Luke Skywalker himself. All he had to do was find him.

After enlisting an actor to impersonate Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader tailored a new trap specifically for Luke on the desert world of Aridus. Unfortunately, Luke saw through the ruse and escaped. Vader was even more frustrated by the actions of his top officer, the ultimately incompetent Admiral Griff, who allowed the Rebel Alliance to evade the Imperial blockade at Yavin 4 and evacuate to a new secret base.

Vader was not idle as he searched and waited for any information that would lead him to Luke Skywalker and his allies. He brought Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber back to Bast Castle, where he also studied an ancient Sith Holocron he had acquired. He oversaw various secret projects, including the development of mind-altering Pacifog on Kadril, the construction of robotic Imperial Dark Troopers, and preparation for a new superweapon in the Endor system. He assigned a Force-sensitive Imperial Intelligence agent named Shira Brie to infiltrate the Rebel Alliance, but her mission to discredit Luke Skywalker was a failure and left her horribly injured. Because Vader still considered Brie valuable, he ordered Imperial medics to replace her shattered limbs with cyborg prosthetics, and offered her to Palpatine to serve as an elite secret operative.

Luke Skywalker was not idle either. As word of his actions spread, many Imperials became familiar with the name of the young pilot who was a leading figure in the Rebel Alliance.

* * *

Two years after the destruction of the Death Star, an Imperial governor notified Vader that persons matching the descriptions of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa had been captured on Circarpous V, a swamp planet known locally as Mimban. Vader was aware of the Mimban legend about the Kaiburr Crystal, a luminous crimson-colored gem that magnified the Force a thousandfold, and hoped to collect this relic along with the captive Rebels.

By the time Vader arrived on Mimban, Skywalker and the Princess had escaped and fled into the jungle. After a close encounter in a cavern, he finally caught up with them at the vine-encrusted Temple of Pomojema, a pyramidal ziggurat constructed of great blocks of volcanic stone for an ancient Mimban deity, which contained the Kaiburr Crystal. Using the Force, Vader dropped a stone ceiling on Luke Skywalker, pinning him to the temple floor, while Leia Organa watched helplessly.

“You have a great deal to atone for to me,” Vader told Skywalker, who, like the Princess, was attired in the dark work uniform worn by local miners. Activating his lightsaber, Vader began swinging its red blade back and forth, chopping playfully at bits of stone from the surrounding walls. “I probably won’t have the patience to let you last as long as you deserve,” he continued. “You may consider yourself lucky.”

Turning his attention to the Princess, Vader said, “I expect no such difficulty in restraining myself where you are concerned, Leia Organa. In several ways, you are responsible for my setbacks much more than this simple boy.”

Simple boy?
Vader was surprised by the words that had come from his own mouth. Even though he knew there was more to Skywalker than met the eye, and had only intended on apprehending the Rebels, he was suddenly overcome by the desire to kill them. He realized he was losing his self-control.

The Princess picked up Luke’s lightsaber and activated its blue blade. As she moved toward Vader, he abruptly let his arm fall, letting the beam of his own weapon hang limply at his side.

“Leia, don’t!” Luke yelled. “It’s a feint… he’s daring you. Kill me, then yourself… it’s hopeless now.”

Gazing at the Princess with contempt, Vader said to her, “Go on, let him fight for you if you want. But I won’t let you kill him.” Thinking of how Luke had escaped his clutches before, he added, “I’ve been robbed too often.”

The Princess fought bravely, but she was no match for Vader. She used the last of her strength to throw the lightsaber to Skywalker, just as he emerged from under the rubble. Facing the Sith Lord, Skywalker said, “Ben Kenobi is with me, Vader, and the Force is with me too.”

The duel was furious, and carried Vader and Skywalker through the temple to a chamber where there was a dark circular opening in the floor, the mouth of a deep pit. As the battle wore on, Vader found himself breathing hard through his respirator. But then, thanks to his proximity to the Force-enhancing Kaiburr Crystal, he felt a sudden surge of the power of the dark side, allowing him to project lightning from his fingertips for the first time in his life. He hurled Force-energized lightning at Skywalker, but his young opponent deflected the blast.