Episode VI
Part IV
Han and Mace and Mina, who by now had rescued C-3PO and R2-D2, went to the central computer room of the Imperial Palace, where they sought to disable the shields of the Death Stars using the stolen codes.
The two Sith Lords guarding the entrance were no fools, and they had orders to attack any strangers on sight.
C-3PO and R2-D2 distracted them, and so allowed the heroes to overpower the Sith Lords. But the two droids were badly damaged. R2 in particular was wrecked almost fatally, and 3PO lost his left arm. (Think of Kane Starkiller having lost three of his limbs, all but the right arm, in the 1974 rough draft.)
Imminent death awaited R2-D2 if his mind was not transferred to another body soon.
Still, the guards were slain, and the room was breached, and the codes transmitted.
--
With the shields lowered, Akira Valorum, piloting the Millennium Falcon, and Marcus Whitsun, in his own silver starfighter, each respectively approached one of the half-finished Death Stars.
Marcus found some unexpected opposition: a Rebel starfighter, approaching fast, with its guns trained on him.
Heda Horus, knowing that the Death Stars would soon be destroyed if she did nothing, had decided to emulate her mentor and hero, Darth Vader, by taking personal command of a starfighter to intercept the Rebel pilots.
She did Vader one better: she used Leia’s own X-wing to disguise her approach, while the rest of her squadron used ordinary Imperial craft.
But Marcus Whitsun was not deceived, for he knew that Imperial pilots had different tactical approaches to dogfighting than Rebels.
He fired on the X-wing’s engines, even as she fired at him. But, taken off guard, she only sheared off one of his starfighter’s wings.
And Heda Horus, her craft irreparably damaged, plunged toward the surface of Ton-Muund below.
She survived; for, as a high-ranking Imperial officer and a favorite of Darth Vader, she too had been given the gift of a Dwarven ring. But her hair was singed off, and her eyes burned out, in the heat of the crash; and she lost several teeth.
Old Annikin, back in the Third Clone War, had been smarter. In her childish vanity, Heda was proud of her hair, and refused to muss it by deigning to wear a helmet. Annikin, however, had seen enough battles by then to know it was worth following the Republic regulations for pilots, and so he came through his crash on Utapau with few facial scars to show for it.
(Remember GL's own car crash?)
Heda had not realized that the Rebels, with their increasing paucity of resources, could no longer even find enough parachutes for their pilots. But nor would she have cared overmuch, had she known; for the Imperial mentality held that starfighters were more precious than personnel.
As Heda plummeted to the planet below, Marcus flew into the core of the Death Star.
Across the raging void of disputed space, Akira Valorum had already done likewise.
--
The reborn Lando Kadar, who now realized the true goodness of his son’s heart, was enraged at Leia’s attack.
He was weakened, and had lost his hands, and had no way to duel with his younger sister. So, even as Leia flung lightning bolts at Luke, Lando stood up and charged at her, and used his weight to fling them both bodily through the great glass window, down toward the lava fields of Condawn below.
But they both survived. For Leia and Lando had exchanged rings, and they had been true to each other in spirit; each was willing to die to save the other, though in different senses and from different perils.
Lando’s suit was badly damaged by the lava, but it protected him from injury.
Leia was more badly wounded. All her hair was burned off, and her eyes were melted out. But she could still see, via the Force (like Paul Atreides in Dune Messiah).
And her skin, having been immersed in the lava, remained ever afterward eerily pale.
So at last, they realized their folly, and laughed at themselves. And together, they reentered the palace, and Leia helped up the fallen Luke Starkiller.
Luke’s hair had turned white under the barrage of Leia’s lightning bolts; but Lando’s was just beginning to go gray at the temples.
--
In the throne room of the Emperor, the slaves, led by Han and Mace and Mina, confronted Lord Pestage. They asked him to yield, so that they would not have to kill him and his kin.
The Emperor was unwilling to go out gracefully. He was angered by what the Rebels had done to his beloved homeworld; and in truth, he feared the wrath of the planet’s liberated underclass.
Lord Pestage’s finger hovered near a button on his throne—a red button, long hidden behind a secret panel, which in direst emergency would set in motion a chain reaction to destroy the entire planet.
The fingers of the former slaves tensed on their stolen guns.
Just as doom was about to fall on Ton-Muund, a woman appeared from a secret entrance, crying for mercy: Alana Organa, sister of Zunia, the Emperor’s late wife.
As one close to the Imperial royal family, Alana had been given prior warning of the impending destruction of Organa Major. So she spirited herself away, to live in seclusion with her brother-in-law, the Emperor, on Ton-Muund.
She was still beautiful, and her hair (in a Sith topknot) was not yet gray. After all, she had worn one of Annikin’s Rings for many years—and her Dwarven slaves had since fashioned another for her in its likeness.
Now Alana bore a broken nose, and the Mark of the Sith was a black tattoo upon her forehead—for she had resisted only once, long ago on Sullust X.
(Basically, she’s Padme AND Thea von Harbou: Fritz Lang’s wife, author of the novel version of Metropolis, screenwriter of the film—and, subsequently, a Nazi Party member during Hitler’s rule. But, additionally, this whole scene is based in large part on Kriemhild/Gudrun’s intervention to stop Siegfried from fighting her brother Gunther in the Nibelungenlied, a moment memorably dramatized in Fritz Lang’s silent film Die Nibelungen.)
One of the startled Rebels fired at her, shooting for the heart. But because he was unaccustomed to wielding blasters, he shot her in the stomach, paralyzing her.
(“That’s not funny… that’s not…”)
And, as the Emperor saw his beloved sister-in-law lying wounded and in pain on the floor before his throne, his heart began at last to melt. He yielded to the Rebels, and gave up his signet ring, and let mercy reign for Alana’s sake.
R2-D2, whose old body was fast dying, was uploaded into the unused shell of a silver protocol droid, which allowed him at last to speak in a human voice.
--
Overhead, the torpedoes of Akira Valorum and Marcus Whitsun found their marks, and two Death Stars exploded.
Marcus Whitsun escaped from the exploding space station with his life intact.
But on the way out, his spacecraft was shot and badly damaged by an Imperial fighter: the last of Heda Horus’ crack squadron. It was piloted by a droid, an ace even more talented than Heda—Mara Lumiya.
The Emperor had wanted a clone of the man he deemed the finest pilot in the galaxy: Luke Starkiller. But not enough of Luke’s DNA had come into their hands until his encounter with Vader on Kashyyyk.
It took several years to grow a clone body to maturity properly. So, rather than miss out on having a Luke of their own to fight in the Galactic Civil War, Lord Pestage ordered Darth Vader to do the next best thing: reconstruct Luke’s personality matrix, and put it into a droid.
It amused Vader to insert the matrix into a silver-plated, feminine-bodied protocol droid. But the newly christened Mara did not mind.
(In the 1975 second draft, C-3PO is one of the four-person crew in Luke’s starfighter when it destroys the Death Star.)
Faced with this new threat, Marcus returned the fire, and dealt a crippling blow—even as she did the same to him. Their spacecraft now spiraled down together toward the surface of Ton-Muund far below.
Marcus, using his own parachute, bailed out before the crash. He survived mostly intact—save for a badly burnt hand and a lesser burn on one cheek.
Mara did not fare as well in her crash as Heda had; for she was only a droid, and thus not worthy enough in Imperial minds to merit the grant of a Ring.
She would have been destroyed in the inferno; but with the Emperor’s surrender, technicians were freed to get to her in time. They could do nothing for her broken chassis; but they uploaded her mind into a new crystalline body.
Akira Valorum did not fare as well as Marcus, or Mara, or even Heda. Han Solo’s beloved ship, the Millennium Falcon, died that a galaxy might live.
--
Epilogue
In the end, the Republic was restored. Not entirely as it had been, but, its people hoped, rather better.
Mina Whitsun became the new Chancelloress. She wore a hooded mantle of purple, and a bronze crescent crown, and she feared not to show the burned side of her face, where one eye had been blinded.
(A forerunner of Darth Vader’s burn scars—at least the original concept—in ROTJ, perhaps?)
Han Solo, Mina’s husband, became the new President of the Transport Guild—which turned a blind eye to smuggling in a way it had not under the Empire. Han now habitually dressed in the elegant black furred robes of Guild traders. Together he and Mina raised Mace Windom as an adopted son.
But Han still occasionally glanced at Leia. And Leia glanced back. And Mina, who was no longer as sheltered as she had once been on Acquis, exchanged glances with her as well.
--
Marcus Whitsun became Lord of Acquis, ruling in his underwater city—which now could float freely on the surface, without fear of discovery by the Imperial fleet. He had a burn scar on one side of his face, and his crippled left hand was replaced by a bronze prosthesis; but this only added to his rakishly handsome appearance.
He had a burn scar on one side of his face, and his crippled left hand was replaced by a bronze prosthesis; but this only added to his rakishly handsome appearance.
He married Heda Horus, now Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Second Galaxy, who forgave him for shooting her down. She was, in fact, impressed by his abilities as a pilot.
Heda wore a Dwarven-forged wig of her natural hair color (black), and the white face paint traditional for the queens of Organa Major. And she replaced her lost eyes with golden prostheses. But her teeth were still natural, though a few were missing.
Mara Lumiya dwelt with them, as the captain and chief pilot of Heda’s ambassadorial starship.
As a wedding present, Chancelloress Mina bestowed on the couple one of the mind-transfer devices that had hitherto been restricted by Guild monopoly to use on Ton-Muund only.
--
Lord Pestage was stripped of his imperial title, and he and Alana were exiled to Alderaan, where he might have a kingdom of his own—the one he had always possessed.
Alana felt guilt in her heart for having abandoned her husband to die on Organa Major. And so for several years she refused all attempts at ameliorating her condition, instead going about in a silver wheelchair like Carl Organa’s. Eventually, however, she yielded to Leia’s entreaties, and received prosthetic silver legs which restored her power of walking.
C-3PO was rewarded for his heroism with replacement parts of gold. Although 3PO made a great show of hating the color of his new arm, he was secretly thrilled.
--
Leia Organa became Queen of Utapau, which began to blossom, gradually, under her rule. The surviving expatriates of Organa Major were invited to settle there, and to recreate something of their former happiness.
She took the regnal name of Nellith.
The New Jedi Order was re-founded, with two bases. One was on Utapau and one on Ton-Muund—now a beautiful planet with palaces rising from a world-spanning ocean, Venice writ large. (This of course comes from the two Foundations, on Terminus and Trantor, in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation book series.)
The Jedi Council had two co-leaders: Luke and Lando Starkiller. Luke and Lando alternated between the two respective headquarters, though Queen Leia usually remained on Utapau.
But Luke’s droids, C-3PO and R2-D3, invariably went with him. However, the droids liked it best when Luke visited Acquis, though that happened less frequently.
Lando had a small life-support device implanted in his chest, so that he no longer needed to be encased in armor. (Think of a combination of Marvel’s Tony Stark and Isaac Asimov’s portable nuclear reactors from Foundation.)
He took off his mask, and revealed his face openly. After all, he wished to show that even a Sith Lord could be redeemed.
There was now no shame in the Mark of the Sith; the bad Lords had been dealt with, and the repentant ones were welcomed into the folds of the Jedi.
Leia had elaborate golden wigs fashioned by the Dwarves, for she had always wanted hair of that color. She replaced her burned-out eyes with crystalline prostheses.
Her silver hand, and silver teeth, had been ruined by the lava, so she replaced them too, with true-silver copies specially treated so as never to tarnish.
Her queenly attire consisted of a golden cloak and a blue loincloth, a crown, and little else. She sometimes wore the red shoes traditional for queens of Organa Major; but she usually went barefoot, for she limped, and she could no longer see as ordinary men did. And she disdained too much clothing, for the heat of the lava of Condawn never entirely left her.
Lando wore the red cloak and white robes of a triumphant Jedi general, as did Luke. All three Starkillers had now destroyed their Kiber Crystals; and each of them bore a Ring, and wielded a lightsaber (or two) with skill and grace.
With Lando’s permission, Leia had the magic mirror moved from its old home on Condawn to the throne room of her new palace on Utapau.
Always when Leia looked into it, the reflection shown was not her own. This ceased to surprise her, after a while—and yet it never truly did, deep down.
In the mirror, she saw herself—largely as she used to look, before she flew to Condawn in her quest to rescue Luke. But she had a bronze right hand, and a burn scar on one cheek. And alongside her blind eye, there was a purple one of droid make.
She wondered sometimes if this was a reality where she had been the one who destroyed one of the Death Stars over Ton-Muund, instead of Marcus Whitsun. She was an excellent pilot when she needed to be, after all.
And she asked herself… if she smashed the mirror, would she meet her second self? Or, perhaps, would she meet someone else entirely?
But she stayed her hand, and did not try the experiment… for the moment.
And peace reigned in the New Republic... for the time being.