Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [54]
“And you to me.”
“The Emperor is expecting you. He believes you will turn to the dark side.”
“I know … Father.” It was a momentous act for Luke—to address his father, as his father. But he’d done it, now, and kept himself under control, and the moment was past. It was done. He felt stronger for it. He felt potent.
“So, you have finally accepted the truth,” Vader gloated.
“I have accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.”
“That name no longer has meaning for me.” It was a name from long ago. A different life, a different universe. Could he truly once have been that man?
“It is the name of your true self,” Luke’s gaze bore steadily down on the cloaked figure. “You have only forgotten. I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn’t driven it fully away.” He molded with his voice, tried to form the potential reality with the strength of his belief. “That’s why you could not destroy me. That’s why you won’t take me to your Emperor now.”
Vader seemed almost to smile through his mask at his son’s use of Jedi voice-manipulation. He looked down at the lightsaber the captain had given him—Luke’s lightsaber. So the boy was truly a Jedi now. A man grown. He held the lightsaber up. “You have constructed another.”
“This one is mine,” Luke said quietly. “I no longer use yours.”
Vader ignited the blade, examined its humming, brilliant light, like an admiring craftsman. “Your skills are complete. Indeed, you are as powerful as the Emperor has foreseen.”
They stood there for a moment, the lightsaber between them. Sparks dove in and out of the cutting edge: photons pushed to the brink by the energy pulsing between these two warriors.
“Come with me, Father.”
Vader shook his head. “Ben once thought as you do—”
“Don’t blame Ben for your fall—” Luke took a step closer, then stopped.
Vader did not move. “You don’t know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.”
“I will not turn—you will be forced to destroy me.”
“If that is your destiny.” This was not his wish, but the boy was strong—if it came, at last, to blows, yes, he would destroy Luke. He could no longer afford to hold back, as he once had.
“Search your feelings, Father. You can’t do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.”
But Vader hated no one; he only lusted too blindly. “Someone has filled your mind with foolish ideas, young one. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master, now.”
Vader signaled to a squad of distant stormtroopers as he extinguished Luke’s lightsaber. The guards approached. Luke and the Dark Lord faced one another for a long, searching moment. Vader spoke just before the guards arrived.
“It is too late for me, Son.”
“Then my father is truly dead,” answered Luke. So what was to stop him from killing the Evil One who stood before him now? he wondered.
Nothing, perhaps.
The vast Rebel fleet hung poised in space, ready to strike. It was hundreds of light-years from the Death Star—but in hyperspace, all time was a moment, and the deadliness of an attack was measured not in distance but in precision.
Ships changed in formation from corner to side, creating a faceted diamond shape to the armada—as if, like a cobra, the fleet was spreading its hood.
The calculations required to launch such a meticulously coordinated offensive at lightspeed made it necessary to fix on a stationary point—that is, stationary relative to the point of reentry from hyperspace. The point chosen by the Rebel command was a small, blue planet of the Sullust system. The armada was positioned around it, now, this unblinking cerulean world. It looked like the eye of the serpent.
The Millennium Falcon finished its rounds of the fleet’s perimeter, checking final positions, then pulled into place beneath the flagship. The time had come.
Lando was at the controls of the Falcon. Beside him, his copilot, Nien Nunb—a jowled, mouse-eyed creature from Sullust—flipped switches, monitored readouts, and made final preparations for the jump to hyperspace.
Lando set his comlink