Death Star (45 page)

The intercom on the table chimed. Tarkin moved toward it, continuing to speak. “You, my friend, are all that’s left of their religion.”

No, Tarkin could not understand. He had no way of grasping the concept. It was like trying to explain color to someone blind from birth.

“Yes?” Tarkin said into the intercom.

The voice from the unit was terse: “We have an emergency alert in Detention Block AA-Twenty-three.”

Tarkin frowned. He obviously knew the significance of that location. “The Princess? Put all sections on alert!”

Vader did not need the confirmation, but this new event might help convince Tarkin. He said, “Obi-Wan is here. The Force is with him.”

Tarkin, always quick to shift stances when he realized it was necessary, said, “If you’re right, he must not be allowed to escape.”

It was a reasonable conclusion for someone who did not know their history. But wrong. “Escape is not his plan. I must face him. Alone.”

Vader turned and strode out of the room. Now that he was certain his old Master was on this station, he would be able to find him. The Force was sometimes maddeningly inexact. There were times when, even knowing what he was, you could stand next to a Jedi Master and not feel his power; at other times you could sense him on the other side of a planet or halfway across a stellar system—distance was no barrier to the Force. The swirls of energy often hid as much as they revealed. But Vader knew Obi-Wan was here, and he knew he would be able to find him.

Find him and, after all these years of waiting, destroy him.

Nova arrived for his shift only a few minutes late, still chewing on the conversation in the cantina. He had gotten most of his armor on—and why they had to wear that inside the battle station made no sense at all to him. The eighteen-piece suit was a pain to don, and it offered only limited protection against a regulation power blaster, anyway. But regs were regs.

The lieutenant suddenly turned from the comm board and yelled at him: “Sergeant Stihl, we have intruders! There’s
a breakout on Level Five, Detention Block AA-Twenty-three. Take a squad and get over there!”

Stihl stared at the lieutenant. Intruders? A breakout? How was that possible?

“Sergeant! Move out!”

“Copy, sir, on our way! Bretton, Zack, Dash, Alix, Kai, with me! Mahl, Cy, Dex, Nate, on point! Move out, people!”

The squad hustled out of the barracks and into the hall, the sound of their armor rattling as they moved. The corridors were strangely deserted, it seemed to Nova, which he chalked up to luck. Fewer people meant fewer civilian casualties.

“Who are we after, Sarge?” That from Dash.

Nova didn’t know. Who were they after?

Well, kark it, he’d know them if he saw them.

“Just shoot who I tell you to,” he told the trooper. Then he raised his voice to include the rest of the squad: “Double-time it, people!”

They ran through the gray-and-black halls, following the four guards on point, their sidearms held up, fingers outside the trigger guards, as per regulations. The ceilings and floors were covered with blaster-proof absorbital, so if somebody accidentally cooked off a round it wouldn’t do any damage. If you carried your weapon pointed at the floor, however, there was a good chance in a crowd that you’d shoot somebody’s foot off, and the walls and vent grates weren’t all that sturdy, either.

The corridor branched ahead. As they approached, Nova desperately tried to remember which one led to D-Unit. Ahead, a blaster bolt sizzled through a cross corridor, and the four guards on point skidded to a stop, then moved ahead slowly toward the intersection to peer around it.

Nova suddenly realized that this was one of his dreams. It was as if he had been here before, seen the events that were now unfolding.

“Aaahhhh!”
Somebody beyond the bend in the corridor screamed, and a moment later half a dozen troopers barreled around the corner of the hallway intersection, heading toward Nova.

They were being chased by a single man with a blaster, yelling like a berserker as he ran. The man—Nova saw that he was dressed like a down-on-his-luck spacer—stopped, realizing that there were suddenly overwhelming odds in front of him. Then he turned and ran back the other way, putting on a burst of speed as he disappeared around the corner.

“After him! Go!” Nova led the pursuit, followed by his squad and the others. Once around the bend, he saw that the fleeing spacer had been joined by a Wookiee, and both of them were now shooting back at their pursuers as they fled. They returned fire, but no one was hitting anything; the excited troopers were just spraying blasterfire.

They wouldn’t hit the two. He was sure of it. But how could he know that?

They rounded a corner. “Close the blast doors!” somebody yelled.

The heavy durasteel panels ahead began to iris shut, but the running man and the Wookiee managed to leap through before they closed completely.

“Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!” somebody was now shouting. It was almost comical. Since he was the closest, Nova reached for the controls.

But in that moment, he hesitated. He knew—felt it in a way that he couldn’t explain but also could not deny—that the man and the Wookiee they were after had to escape. That somehow it would be, as the old archivist had said, part of the solution and not part of the problem.

How could he know this? Was it part of the connection to the Force that the doc had talked about? Nova didn’t know … it seemed crazy, but he had to acknowledge what he felt.

One of the troopers said, “Sarge? You gonna open the doors?”

“I’m trying. The switch is jammed.” He moved his armored hand over the controls, pretending to try to move them, knowing that none of his men could see what he was doing.

A few more seconds might make the difference. He could give them that much.

“Still not working,” Nova said. He activated his comlink. “Blast Control, this is Sergeant Stihl, operating number four-three-nine-five-seven-zero-four-three-seven. I need an override on the blast doors, Level Five, Corridor Six. Open them.”

“Manual controls appear to be functional on all doors in that corridor,” came back the reply through his helmet’s commset.

“And I’m telling you they aren’t. You gonna open it or let the terrorists we’re chasing escape?”

“Acknowledged.”

The blast doors opened. “Let’s go!” Nova said.

Ahead, the corridor branched. Again, he could not say how he knew, but he was sure the fugitives had taken the turn to port.

“Which way, Sarge?”

“To the right,” Nova said, and led the charge.

There’s your chance, friend
, he thought.
I hope you make good use of it
.

T
here he was. After so much time and across so much space, the hooded figure of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his former Master and friend, stood right in front of him. He had aged; his face was lined, his beard white. It was impossible not to remember vividly the last time they had seen each other, when his Master had crippled him and left him to die on the fiery banks of a river of molten rock, light-years from here.

Now his anger smoldered in him like the banks of that coursing stream of lava.
You should have killed me then, Obi-Wan
.

Vader lit his lightsaber. The red beam crackled with power.

Obi-Wan had already known Vader was there, of course. The Force swirled about the two of them, forging a link impossible to miss.

Vader strode toward the old man. As he drew nearer, Obi-Wan ignited his own lightsaber. The blue gleam of the blade flashed brightly.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete.”

Vader raised his weapon to attack, and Obi-Wan matched his pose.

“When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the Master.”

“Only a master of evil, Darth.” With that, Obi-Wan stepped in and cut.

Vader blocked the attack easily. Obi-Wan attacked again, and again, Vader blocked each strike.

If the old man thought he could rattle him by attacking instead of defending, he was mistaken. Vader riposted, sped up his timing, and took the initiative, forcing the erstwhile Jedi to defend.

He still had some skill, his old Master did, but he was out of practice. Vader could feel it through the Force.

Obi-Wan twirled and blocked a slash, then wove a defensive pattern with his blade. The Force was still with the old Jedi; he was able to anticipate Vader’s strikes and block or parry them. But after a quick exchange, Vader felt the energy shift in his favor. “Your powers are weak, old man.”

There had always been in Vader a small bit of worry about this day. Not much; just a trace. He had been sure, in his youthful arrogance, that he had been stronger, had been better than the Jedi Knight who had been his teacher, and the memory of what Obi-Wan had done to him would never be erased. He had been a superior fighter even when he had been Anakin Skywalker, and yet Obi-Wan had defeated him.

Could he win now?

It was as if the old man could read his thoughts:

“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Vader knew that Obi-Wan was taunting him by using the Sith honorific, but he would not allow himself to be baited. Obi-Wan lunged again, attacking, but Vader was ready. Their sabers clashed, sparks spewed, the stink of ozone wafted over them, but Vader stood his ground. The blades slid along each other’s length, then stopped, bound together in the magnetic handle guards, the men face-to-face.

Vader shoved, hard, and they broke the clash. Obi-Wan retreated a step.

Vader felt the fierce anticipation of victory pound in his heart. “You should not have come back,” he told the old Jedi.

Another exchange—four, five, six attacks and blocks—and Vader knew the old man was weakening. The Force might be strong in Obi-Wan, but the dark side was stronger in Vader. It let him anticipate his adversary’s strikes and counter them almost before they began.

Obi-Wan knew it, too. He began a retreat, backing away, his lightsaber itself seeming weaker as he moved.

Vader backed Obi-Wan past an open blast door leading to the forward dock where the Rebel freighter was being held under guard. The old man was obviously tiring.

You’re mine, old man
, Vader thought.

But just as he was ready to deliver the final strike, Obi-Wan managed a fast series of attacks, and Vader had to move quickly to avoid the strikes. Even as old and weak as Obi-Wan was, his technique was accomplished enough that a foolish move on Vader’s part could still be fatal.

A group of stormtroopers standing in the dock became aware of them. Vader felt rather than saw them notice the strange duel, and sensed the troopers heading toward them.

He did not wish them to interfere, but even to warn them off would take concentration that he could not afford at the moment. Should his attention falter, Obi-Wan could kill him in the blink of an eye.

Vader heard someone call from the dock: “Ben?” It was a young man’s voice. Still he could not risk a look in that direction.

But Obi-Wan glanced away, quickly, then looked back at Vader. Then he did the last thing Vader could have possibly imagined—

He smiled.

It was an expression not the least worried; almost beatific, in fact. Then, still smiling, Obi-Wan lifted his lightsaber so that the tip pointed straight up at the ceiling.

The action was so totally unexpected that Vader paused for an instant in shock. Not even the Force had lent him prescience concerning this. His former Master had left himself wide open. Was it a trap?

It didn’t matter. If it was, Obi-Wan wasn’t fast enough, or strong enough, to spring it in time. Vader shifted his lightsaber and cut from the right, hard, aiming for the neck—

His lightsaber sheared through the old man as if the latter were no denser than the air itself, and Obi-Wan collapsed.

Yes!
Fierce, exultant joy coursed through the man who had been Anakin Skywalker. He had done it! He had slain Obi-Wan Kenobi! His revenge was complete!

From a distance he heard someone scream
“Nooo!”
—a cry of utter despair. But Vader paid it no heed. The dark side surged within him as powerfully as he had ever felt it—for an instant. But then it stopped.

What had just happened?

Vader looked down at the body. But there was no body. Only Obi-Wan’s robes and cloak.

This was impossible! It could not be!

The squad of stormtroopers began firing at somebody in the docking bay, but Vader could not be bothered to look. He stepped forward, stared down in disbelief. An illusion of some kind? Some Jedi mind trick that the old man had never imparted to him?

Impossible! Obi-Wan had taught him everything Vader knew …

But
, whispered a voice from within,
maybe not everything that
Obi-Wan
knew
.

Vader reached out with his boot to touch the corpse, but
he only stirred the empty vestments, charred by the lightsaber’s heat, with his questing foot.