Trilogy (65 page)

A volley of spirited chatter erupted from the assembly. This was it. The chance. The hope no one could hope to hope for. A shot at the Emperor.

Mon Mothma continued when the hubbub died down slightly. “His trip was undertaken in the utmost secrecy, but he underestimated our spy network. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.” Her voice turned suddenly stern again to remind them of the price of this enterprise.

Admiral Ackbar stepped forward. His specialty was Imperial defense procedures. He raised his fin and pointed at the holographic model of the force field emanating from Endor. “Although uncompleted, the Death Star is not entirely without a defense mechanism,” he instructed in soothing Calamarian tones. “It is protected by an energy shield which is generated by the nearby Moon of Endor, here. No ship can fly through it, no weapon can penetrate it.” He stopped for a long moment. He wanted the information to sink in. When he thought it had, he spoke more slowly. “The shield must be deactivated if
any
attack is to be attempted. Once the shield is down, the cruisers will create a perimeter while the fighters fly into the superstructure, here
 … and attempt to hit the main reactor …” He pointed to the unfinished portion of the Death Star “…  somewhere in here.”

Another murmur swept over the room of commanders, like a swell in a heavy sea.

Ackbar concluded. “General Calrissian will lead the fighter attack.”

Han turned to Lando, his doubts gilded with respect. “Good luck, buddy.”

“Thanks,” said Lando simply.

“You're gonna need it.”

Admiral Ackbar yielded the floor to General Madine, who was in charge of covert operations. “We have acquired a small Imperial shuttle,” Madine declared smugly. “Under this guise, a strike team will land on the moon and deactivate the shield generator. The control bunker is well guarded, but a small squad should be able to penetrate its security.”

This news stimulated another round of general mumbling.

Leia turned to Han and said under her breath, “I wonder who they found to pull that one off?”

Madine called out: “General Solo, is your strike team assembled?”

Leia looked up at Han, shock quickly melting to joyous admiration. She knew there was a reason she loved him—in spite of his usual crass insensitivity and oafish bravado. Beneath it all, he had heart.

Moreover, a change
had
come over him since he emerged from carbonization. He wasn't just a loner anymore, only in this for the money. He had lost his selfish edge and had somehow, subtly, become part of the whole. He was actually doing something for
someone else, now, and that fact moved Leia greatly. Madine had called him
General;
that meant Han had let himself officially become a member of the army. A part of the whole.

Solo responded to Madine. “My squad is ready, sir, but I need a command crew for the shuttle.” He looked questioningly at Chewbacca, and spoke in a lower voice. “It's gonna be rough, old pal. I didn't want to speak for you.”

“Roo roowfl.” Chewie shook his head with gruff love, and raised his hairy paw.

“That's one,” Han called.

“Here's two!” Leia shouted, sticking her arm in the air. Then softly, to Solo: “I'm not letting you out of my sight again, Your Generalship.”

“And I'm with you, too!” a voice was raised from the back of the room.

They all turned their heads to see Luke standing at the top of the stairs.

Cheers went up for the last of the Jedi.

And though it wasn't his style, Han was unable to conceal his joy. “That's three.” He smiled.

Leia ran up to Luke and hugged him warmly. She felt a special closeness to him all of a sudden, which she attributed to the gravity of the moment, the import of their mission. But then she sensed a change in him, too, a difference of substance that seemed to radiate from his very core—something that she alone could see.

“What is it, Luke?” she whispered. She suddenly wanted to hold him; she could not have said why.

“Nothing. I'll tell you someday,” he murmured quietly. It was distinctly not nothing, though.

“All right,” she answered, not pushing. “I'll wait.” She wondered. Maybe he was just dressed differently—that was probably it. Suited up all in black now—it made him look older. Older, that was it.

Han, Chewie, Lando, Wedge, and several others crowded around Luke all at once, with greetings and diverse sorts of hubbub. The assembly as a whole broke up into multiple such small groups. It was a time for last farewells and good graces.

Artoo beeped a singsong little observation to a somewhat less sanguine Threepio.

“I don't think ‘exciting' is the right word,” the golden droid answered. Being a translator in his master program, of course, Threepio was most concerned with locating the right word to describe the present situation.

T
he
Millennium Falcon
rested in the main docking bay of the Rebel Star Cruiser, getting loaded and serviced. Just beyond it sat the stolen Imperial shuttle, looking anomalous in the midst of all the Rebel X-wing fighters.

Chewie supervised the final transfer of weapons and supplies to the shuttle and oversaw the placement of the strike team. Han stood with Lando between the two ships, saying good-bye—for all they knew, forever.

“I mean it, take her!” Solo insisted, indicating the
Falcon
. “She'll bring you luck. You
know
she's the fastest ship in the whole fleet, now.” Han had really souped her up after winning her from Lando. She'd
always been fast, but now she was much faster. And the modifications Solo added had really made the
Falcon
a part of him—he'd put his love and sweat into it. His spirit. So giving her to Lando now was truly Solo's final transformation—as selfless a gift as he'd ever given.

And Lando understood. “Thanks, old buddy. I'll take good care of her.
You
know I always flew her better than you did, anyway. She won't get a scratch on her, with me at the stick.”

Solo looked warmly at the endearing rogue. “I've got your word—not a scratch.”

“Take off, you pirate—next thing you'll have me putting down a security deposit.”

“See you soon, pal.”

They parted without their true feelings expressed aloud, as was the way between men of deeds in those times; each walked up the ramp into a different ship.

Han entered the cockpit of the Imperial shuttle as Luke was doing some fine-tuning on a rear navigator panel. Chewbacca, in the copilot's seat, was trying to figure out the Imperial controls. Han took the pilot's chair, and Chewie growled grumpily about the design.

“Yeah, yeah,” Solo answered, “I don't think the Empire designed it with a Wookiee in mind.”

Leia walked in from the hold, taking her seat near Luke. “We're all set back there.”

“Rrrwfr,” said Chewie, hitting the first sequence of switches. He looked over at Solo, but Han was motionless, staring out the window at something. Chewie and Leia both followed his gaze to the object
of his unyielding attention—the
Millennium Falcon
.

Leia gently nudged the pilot. “Hey, you awake up there?”

“I just got a funny feeling,” Han mused. “Like I'm not going to see her again.” He thought of the times she'd saved him with her speed, of the times he'd saved her with his cunning, or his touch. He thought of the universe they'd seen together, of the shelter she'd given him; of the way he knew her, inside and out. Of the times they'd slept in each other's embrace, floating still as a quiet dream in the black silence of deep space.

Chewbacca, hearing this, took his own longing look at the
Falcon
. Leia put her hand on Solo's shoulder. She knew he had special love for his ship and was reluctant to interrupt this last communion. But time was dear, and becoming dearer. “Come on, Captain,” she whispered. “Let's mpve.”

Han snapped back to the moment. “Right. Okay, Chewie, let's find out what this baby can do.”

They fired up the engines in the stolen shuttle, eased out of the docking bay, and banked off into the endless night.

C
onstruction on the Death Star proceeded. Traffic in the area was thick with transport ships, TIE fighters, and equipment shuttles. Periodically, the Super Star Destroyer orbited the area, surveying progress on the space station from every angle.

The bridge of the Star Destroyer was a hive of activity.
Messengers ran back and forth along a string of controllers studying their tracking screens, monitoring ingress and egress of vehicles through the deflector shield. Codes were sent and received, orders given, diagrams plotted. It was an operation involving a thousand scurrying ships, and everything was proceeding with maximum efficiency, until Controller Jhoff made contact with a shuttle of the Lambda class, approaching the shield from Sector Seven.

“Shuttle to Control, please come in.” The voice broke into Jhoff's headset with the normal amount of static.

“We have you on our screen now,” the controller replied into his comlink. “Please identify.”

“This is Shuttle
Tydirium
, requesting deactivation of the deflector shield.”

“Shuttle
Tydirium
, transmit the clearance code for shield passage.”

Up in the shuttle, Han threw a worried look at the others and said into his comlink, “Transmission commencing.”

Chewie flipped a bank of switches, producing a syncopated series of high-frequency transmission noises.

Leia bit her lip, bracing herself for fight or flight. “Now we find out if that code was worth the price we paid.”

Chewie whined nervously.

Luke stared at the huge Super Star Destroyer that loomed everywhere in front of them. It fixed his eye with its glittering darkness, filled his vision like a malignant cataract—but it made more than his vision
opaque. It filled his mind with blackness, too; and his heart. Black fear, and a special knowing. “Vader is on that ship,” he whispered.

“You're just jittery, Luke,” Han reassured them all. “There are lots of command ships. But, Chewie,” he cautioned, “let's keep our distance, without looking like we're keeping our distance.”

“Awroff rwrgh rrfrough?”

“I don't know—fly casual,” Han barked back.

“They're taking a long time with that code clearance,” Leia said tightly. What if it didn't work? The Alliance could do nothing if the Empire's deflector shield remained functioning. Leia tried to clear her mind, tried to focus on the shield generator she wanted to reach, tried to weed away all feelings of doubt or fear she may have been giving off.

“I'm endangering the mission.” Luke spoke now, in a kind of emotional resonance with his secret sister. His thoughts were of Vader, though: their father. “I shouldn't have come.”

Han tried to buoy things up. “Hey, why don't we try to be optimistic about this?” He felt beleaguered by negativity.

“He knows I'm here,” Luke avowed. He kept staring at the command ship out the view window. It seemed to taunt him. It awaited.

“Come on, kid, you're imagining things.”

“Ararh gragh,” Chewie mumbled. Even he was grim.

L
ord Vader stood quite still, staring out a large view-screen at the Death Star. He thrilled to the sight
of this monument to the dark side of the Force. Icily he caressed it with his gaze.

Like a floating ornament, it sparkled for him. A magic globe. Tiny specks of light raced across its surface, mesmerizing the Dark Lord as if he were a small child entranced by a special toy. It was a transcendent state he was in, a moment of heightened perceptions.

And then, all at once, in the midst of the stillness of his contemplation, he grew absolutely motionless: not a breath, not even a heartbeat stirred to mar his concentration. He strained his every sense into the ether. What had he felt? His spirit tilted its head to listen. Some echo, some vibration apprehended only by him, had passed—no, had not passed. Had swirled the moment and altered the very shape of things. Things were no longer the same.

He walked down the row of controllers until he came to the spot where Admiral Piett was leaning over the tracking screen of Controller Jhoff. Piett straightened at Vader's approach, then bowed stiffly, at the neck.

“Where is that shuttle going?” Vader demanded quietly, without preliminary.

Piett turned back to the view-screen and spoke into the comlink. “Shuttle
Tydirium
, what is your cargo and destination?”

The filtered voice of the shuttle pilot came back over the receiver. “Parts and technical personnel for the Sanctuary Moon.”

The bridge commander looked to Vader for a reaction. He hoped nothing was amiss. Lord Vader did not take mistakes lightly.

“Do they have a code clearance?” Vader questioned.

“It's an older code, but it checks out,” Piett replied immediately. “I was about to clear them.” There was no point in lying to the Lord of the Sith. He always knew if you lied; lies sang out to the Dark Lord.

“I have a strange feeling about that ship,” Vader said, more to himself than to anyone else.

“Should I hold them?” Piett hurried, anxious to please his master.

“No, let them pass, I will deal with this myself.”

“As you wish, my Lord.” Piett bowed, partly to hide his surprise. He nodded at Controller Jhoff, who spoke into the comlink, to the Shuttle
Tydirium
.

I
n the Shuttle
Tydirium
, the group waited tensely. The more questions they were asked about things like cargo and destination, the more likely it seemed they were going to blow their cover.

Han looked fondly at his old Wookiee partner. “Chewie, if they don't go for this, we're gonna have to beat it quick.” It was a good-bye speech, really; they all knew this pokey shuttle wasn't about to outrun anything in the neighborhood.