Star Wars_ Episode V_ The Empire Strikes Back - Donald F. Glut [70]
'Well, next time you pay more attention,' Threepio replied defensively. 'I'm not supposed to know power sockets from com puter feeds. I'm an interpreter-'Anybody else got any ideas?' Leia shouted as she stood firing at the attacking stormtroopers.
'Come on,' Lando answered over the din of the battle, 'we'll try another way.'
The wind that shrieked though the reactor shaft entirely absorbed the sounds of the clashing lightsabers.
Luke moved agilely across the gantry and took refuge beneath a huge instrument panel to evade his pursuing foe. But Vader was there in an instant, his lightsaber thrashing down like a pulsating guillotine blade, cutting the instrument complex loose. The complex began to fall, but was abruptly caught by the wind and blown upward.
An instant of distraction was all Vader needed. As the instrument panel floated away, Luke involuntarily glanced at it. At that second, the Dark Lord's laser blade came slashing down across Luke's hand, cutting it, and sending the youth's lightsaber flying.
The pain was excruciating. Luke smelled the terrible odor of his own seared flesh and squeezed his forearm beneath his armpit to try to stop the agony. He stepped backward along the gantry until he reached its extreme end, stalked all the while by the black-garbed apparition.
Abruptly, ominously, the wind subsided. And Luke realized he had nowhere else to go.
'There is no escape,' the Dark Lord of the Sith warned, looming over Luke like a black angel of death. 'Don't make me destroy you. You are strong with the Force. Now you must learn to use the dark side. Join me and together we will be more powerful than the Emperor. Come, I will complete your training and we will rule the galaxy together.'
Luke refused to give in to Vader's taunts. 'I will never join you!'
'If you only knew the power of the dark side,' Vader continued. 'Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father, did he?'
Mention of his father aroused Luke's anger. 'He told me enough!' he yelled. 'He told me you killed him.'
'No,' Vader replied calmly. 'I am your father.'
Stunned, Luke stared with disbelief at the black-clad warrior and then pulled away at this revelation. The two warriors stood staring at one another, father and son.
'No, no! That's not true ...' Luke said, refusing to believe what he had just heard. 'That's impossible.'
'Search your feelings,' Vader said, sounding like an evil version of Yoda, 'you know it to be true.'
Then Vader turned off the blade of his lightsaber and extended a steady and inviting hand.
Bewildered and horror-stricken at Vader's words, Luke shouted, 'No! No!'
Vader continued persuasively. 'Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me. It is the only way.'
Luke's mind whirled with those words. Everything was finally beginning to coalesce in his brain. Or was it? He wondered if Vader were telling him the truth - if the training of Yoda, the teaching of saintly old Ben, his own strivings for good and his abhorrence of evil, if everything he had fought for were no more than a lie.
He didn't want to believe Vader, tried convincing himself that it was Vader who lied to him - but somehow he could feel the truth in the Dark Lord's words. But, if Darth Vader did speak the truth, why, he wondered, had Ben Kenobi lied to him? Why? His mind screamed louder than any wind the Dark Lord could ever summon against him.
The answers no longer seemed to matter.
His Father. .
With the calmness that Ben himself and Yoda, the Jedi Master, had taught him, Luke Skywalker made, perhaps, what might be his final decision of all. 'Never,' Luke shouted as he stepped out into the empty abyss