Going Through Old Flash Drives
I'll get to the new dog eventually, but for now, have something interesting I found- some Star Wars fic! It's either unfinished or has a very anticlimactic ending, but my muse for it has left me (it was kind of my other possible beginning for my /other/ "Luke get captured" unfinished fic) but I thought I'd post it anyway, bad writing intact, as a sort of personal motivation to get some of Dark!LeiaEpic up.
She hadn’t meant to get stranded on the planet, and she didn’t like the way that this pilot was talking to her.
“Look, sir,” repeated Alden, “I said I was sorry.”
“You’re trying to tell us that you had no idea there was an Imperial installation here?”
“She couldn’t have known, Wedge.” The Commander wandered over from where he was examining the wreckage of Alden’s shuttle. “Intelligence didn’t even know.”
The pilot gave his commander an exasperated glare. “It’s a giant grey building clearly visible for miles! It’s swarming with TIEs! She tried to land!”
“I needed to see my uncle,” said Alden defensively.
Luke Skywalker glanced between Wedge Antilles and the stranded Rebel typist they’d been sent to retrieve. He was as annoyed as Wedge was about having to fly a dangerous mission just to fix someone else’s mistake, but it had been a mistake.
“He said he had information!” added the woman.
Luke sighed. “So did you. You did realize you brought that datapad with you, didn’t you?”
The woman turned an interesting shade of crimson. “…No, sir.”
Wedge sighed very loudly. “Let’s just get her back to base. If we can get out of here.”
“Surrender, Rebels!”
They were not able to get out of there.
-
The lichen on the ground was slimy, green, and miserable. Luke, hiding beneath a bush, was now pretty much covered in it.
He’d heard an X-Wing’s engine a few minutes earlier- hopefully, that meant that Wedge had taken off. Luke hoped his friend had the sense to clear out back to Hoth instead of waiting for him in orbit.
Meanwhile, the slime-covered rebel was fairly sure he’d evaded the stormtroopers. He couldn’t picture anyone in heavy armor intentionally venturing into this swampy section of the forest- but that was assuming they didn’t think he’d go in there either.
Luke didn’t know why he had the bounty on his head that he did, but it had been making everything lately much more difficult and annoying. Han had tried to give him some disjointed tips on evading bounty hunters, and he’d been sent on fewer missions, and there were a few new recruits who ran from him on sight.
And now he was covered with slime lichen.
His hands sliding in the muddy ground, Luke attempted to lever himself to his feet. Stormtroopers or no stormtroopers, what was essential now was that he get back to his fighter. Wedge wouldn’t leave without Luke, any more than Luke would leave without Wedge, and of course there was the problem of the typist.
She’d been running right behind Wedge, but shavit, what if she was lost out here too?
His mind preoccupied with this worry, Luke tripped and slipped back to the ground with an irritating splat.
Beep!
The Jedi clapped a hand to his comlink, bringing it up to his face. The speakers were only mildly coated with the slime, which was a relief.
“I’ve got…” came a voice- Wedge- heavy with distortion. “We’re… Get out here… Repeat… Have typist Rift… Come in, Luke!”
“Wedge?”
“Repeat…”
Luke swore. Apparently his comlink was more mud-damaged than he’d thought. “Wedge! Clear out! I’ll try to follow you as soon as I can!”
“…Will maintain orbit. Come in, Commander.”
“Wedge!”
The comlink chose that unfortunate moment to spark slightly and shut itself off. Luke shook the gadget, flipping the on-off button a few times with no result.
Sighing with frustration, the Jedi rose to his feet and attempted to shake some of the mud off of his flight suit. This had little effect.
He needed to figure out where he was. Somewhere not that far to the East were his X-Wing and Artoo, assuming that the Imperials hadn’t gotten to them by now. To the West was the Imperial weapons installation- he needed to stay far away from that. And to the North and South was, presumably, more of the blasted slime lichen.
Actually, there was probably more of that to the East and West as well.
His compass- thankfully in much better shape than the comlink, due to lack of entrance ways for the mud to splash into- pointed him East, and Luke started off, his boots squelching in the unstable ground.
-
“Milord, sir, we’ve located the X-Wing.”
Darth Vader ignored the officer’s unnecessary comment. One Rebel had unfortunately been permitted by the late commander of the troops to escape, but it appeared that the second traitor remained on the planet somewhere in their vicinity.
The X-Wing was battered and muddy, in the same shape as almost everything else in the miserable forest. A blue astromech droid was perched near the wings.
“Why has the droid not been removed?” demanded Vader.
His question was answered as an overeager man reached for the droid’s control panel only to be zapped by a welding torch.
“It has been rather uncooperative, milord.”
The droid punctuated this remark with a loud screech that awakened something in a corner of Vader’s mind.
He strode towards the X-Wing’s mechanical occupant, who let off a few more annoyed beeps. These continued to be uncomfortably familiar. Vader felt a sudden urge to slice the thing in half and silence both it and the memories of Anakin Skywalker’s droid, but he was not going to make a fool of himself in front of the base’s crew by fighting with what was essentially a metallic Rebel trashcan.
Said trashcan screeched again, loudly, rotating its scratched dome in alarm. It followed the screech with a mechanical muttering that decided the matter in Vader’s mind.
“Find the Rebel, now.” The owner of this droid was either his son, or someone who had stolen Anakin Skywalker’s old droid. Either way, their capture was essential, if only to set his mind at ease. “And destroy that astromech.”
There was a defiant mechanical raspberry from Artoo.
-
Luke had gotten better at moving through forests since he’d joined the Rebellion. Initially he’d stumbled into briars more often than recognizing trails, and he still remembered with embarrassment his reaction to that river.
But for someone raised on Tatooine, he’d become quite gifted at moving silently through trees, even trees surrounded and in cases covered by the slime lichen.
The lichen was actually a boon to silent movement in some ways, as it made it very difficult to snap twigs or rustle leaves, but it also made it difficult to move quickly without stumbling.
It was just the sort of miserable place the Rebellion would’ve chosen for a base if the Empire wasn’t there already, Luke decided. It was very pretty if you viewed it from orbit, but this forest- at least this section of the forest- was evil.
As he moved towards the clearing where he’d landed his fighter, however, the lichen began to thin out slightly, to the point where it now combined the difficulty of twigs with the difficulty of slipping.
It is perhaps overkill to mention that there were also snakes.
Still, placing one foot gingerly in front of the other, Luke made it back to fairly near his X-Wing unscathed. That was when he sensed the presence.
The Empire was up ahead. Luke bit down a Huttese swear. They must’ve found his ship, and were waiting for him.
He was not going to be trapped on this planet!
It was a very good thing that he spotted Darth Vader before beginning a lightsaber-wielding charge into the middle of the group of stormtroopers, but he didn’t precisely view it that way.
“Horror” would probably be an accurate term.
There, between him and his X-Wing, was the menacing figure who had cut down Ben before his eyes, who had sent the stormtroopers who killed his aunt and uncle, who had killed his father.
It took a great deal of self-control and more than a dose of fear to prevent Luke from going with Plan Lightsaber Charge anyway.
-
Wedge Antilles waiting in orbit. “I don’t like this,” he muttered, more to himself than to the woman crammed into the space behind him.
She responded anyhow, much to his dismay. “We aren’t being attacked. What’s not to like?”
“For starters,” said Wedge, “Commander Skywalker’s still down there. He isn’t answering his comlink. And the TIEs that aren’t attacking us probably have a reason to be holding off. Can you put that together?”
Unfortunately, her reaction was the same optimistic awe with which half the Alliance seemed to view Luke. “He’ll be fine, thought, right? He’s a Jedi.”
Wedge sighed. “… And I’m going to miss Tycho’s party.”
This piqued the typist’s interest more than he would’ve preferred. Apparently she was a gossip. “Celchu’s having a party? Do tell.”
“For Father’s Day,” said Wedge, twisting one of the controls on his com. “Or, really, for ‘Kreff It’s Boring On Hoth’ Day. If we survive, you can come. Bring friends. With food.”
“Father’s Day, and I didn’t even get to see Uncle Fret…” The woman’s voice was sadder than Wedge would’ve expected from someone who couldn’t even tell when not being attacked was a bad sign.
“Maybe you’ll be able to come back,” said Wedge. “But I will not be picking you up next time, ma’am.”
-
Luke edged very slowly towards the clearing, his saber drawn but not lit. The weapon was practically a sign reading “Hey! Enemy of the Empire this way!” after all, and while there were frequent occasions on which he was glad that it said that, now was a time that called for stealth.
He still wasn’t completely sure what he was going to do. He had no illusions about his ability with the lightsaber- he could block shots and cut things in half well, but he had never dueled in his life.
And lifetimes of dueling had not prepared Obi-Wan or his father for Vader.
With a few deep breaths, Luke decided to focus on the stormtroopers. A few were standing with their backs to him- easy targets if only they were on their own.
Luke glanced at the saber’s hilt. He supposed it had done this before. It had even faced Vader before. The Jedi closed his eyes, focusing on the presence of the Force, searching almost subconsciously for some memory of his father.
When he opened his eyes, Vader was staring directly at him.
-
His son.
The figure standing in the trees was his son.
After twenty years, he finally stood a chance of regaining the things the Jedi had taken from him.
The boy had his eyes closed, drawing on the Force. For a second, the Sith allowed himself to contemplate what might have been, ruling the Empire with his wife by his side and his son as his apprentice.
Father.
What remained of Vader’s eyes opened wide in shock. His son’s eyes opened as well, the meditative expression quickly replaced by horror.
“Get him,” said Vader.
-
Luke had the lightsaber ignited before the stormtroopers even began to move. This was it. He was almost certainly going to die within the next few minutes.
The flash of white light came before he could think any more, but he blocked it, then another to his left.
It occurred to him after the third shot was blocked that the stormtroopers were firing to stun. That wasn’t good.
“You won’t get me alive,” Luke managed to spit. It came out as a few mangled syllables interrupted by an “oof” from a close-range shot deflection. He wasn’t sure that he could live up to the boast as more flashes of light came thick and fast.
A stun bolt hit the ground by his feet, sending slime lichen and leaves flying. The troopers appeared to be getting smarter. It was fairly difficult to block shots by his ankles and then twist the saber to cover his shoulder, and then-
“Your skills are impressive.”
The troopers halted their fire, and Darth Vader stepped forward.
“However,” continued the Sith, “your resistance is futile.”
Like Ben’s had been. Like the Republic. Like his father’s.
“I won’t-” Luke’s throat was dry. “I will not surrender. To you.” All the correct syllables came out that time. He felt a sudden resolve. “I will die a Jedi.”
“I am not going to kill you.”
Luke did not believe this statement for an instant. “You killed Ben.”
There was no answer.
“You killed my aunt and uncle!” This one was yelled.
“I will not kill you,” repeated Vader in an angrier tone. The Sith stepped forward, and Luke had to muster a great deal of self-reserve not to step back.
“Your soldiers killed them. They would’ve killed me if I’d been there. You’re going to kill me. And I won’t let you.”
Luke’s face became a mask of resolve.
The mask slipped, however, as a low-flying X-Wing began sending stormtroopers flying.
Here's what I had for ending the fic when, as i recall, I got fed up with it...
Tycho Celchu’s party had an interesting atmosphere. There were the usual Echo Base distractions- Wes Jansen had done something unfortunate with a light fixture; Han Solo had spent all of five minutes in a corner before realizing that Leia wasn’t going to be there and leaving with several of the drinks; and a large number of uninvited but welcome people from Records were dancing very badly.
There were a few differences. Luke Skywalker sat brooding in a corner, only responding to direct questions. A few people from Espionage were missing, frantically going over reports of a destroyed Imperial weapons base with no clear cause.
And that was before the evacuation notice.
After he had finished demolishing the base, Vader, it turned out, had started heading their way.
and here's what I had in for making it a longer fic.
“Luke!” bellowed Wedge. “Climb in!” The wide eyes of a terrified Alden Rift peered over from the side of the cockpit behind him.
Luke glanced wildly at the pilot. “Wedge, you idiot!” His friend had been relatively safe in orbit, there was no need to get them both killed.
“Come on!” Wedge glared at him.
Throwing caution to the wind, Luke sprinted towards the fighter, shoving a few stormtroopers out of his way. He made it almost to the ship, in fact, before something knocked the X-Wing sideways.
“Wedge!”
“You will not escape that easily, Skywalker.”
“You killed them!” Luke wasn’t even sure who he was referring to anymore. On impulse, he charged at the Sith.
The blow from the red saber sent his own lightsaber flying, twisting his hand painfully. Luke barely managed to hang onto the hilt.
He was in decidedly over his head.
-
Vader did not want to be fighting his son. He had known that it was almost certainly inevitable, but that did not mean he had particularly relished the prospect. What he had wanted was for an almost civil confrontation to occur, ending with his son accepting his offer of galactic rule and the two of them heading off to overthrow the Emperor.
It had never been the most likely scenario, but it had been the one he believed in.
“You will be a valuable asset.”
Skywalker’s eyes widened in either surprise or fury. He tried for another strike, this one even easier for Vader to deflect. And this time the Sith noticed something.
“Kenobi gave you your father’s lightsaber.” The betrayal of it- the sheer, utter betrayal of Obi-Wan walking away with a trophy, leaving him to burn-
The lightsaber made another swing, slightly more accurate but still without the skill the boy would’ve had had he been trained. “After you killed him, you mean?”