Episode VI, Part III
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 two Death Stars using the stolen codes.
Four Super Stormtroopers guarded the entrance, the finest of the new elite force raised by Lord Pestage. There was no hope of distracting them; for the Emperor himself had overseen their training.
They put up a fierce and deadly fight with their lightsabers. In the battle, Han lost his right hand, and one of Mina’s breasts was severed.
C-3PO and R2-D2 then rushed in, and distracted two of the guards, and so saved the heroes’ lives. But they were severely damaged, and put out of action. Imminent death awaited them if their minds were not transferred to other bodies soon.
(Rather like a certain Professor Jones in a certain movie about a certain Holy Grail?)
Yet the soldiers 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.
And Marcus Whitsun was deceived, for he was not experienced enough a pilot to know that Imperial fighters had different tactical approaches to dogfighting than Rebels.
But just as Mara prepared to fire, Marcus was saved. Another X-Wing fired on Heda’s own, spoiling her aim, so that she only sheared off one of the wings of Marcus’ craft.
This was flown by Mara Lamiya, a brown-haired Rebel pilot, who had become one of the Alliance’s top fighter aces, second only to Luke Starkiller himself.
She had fought valiantly in the Second Battle of Yavin IV, where she had been shot down and forced into a crash landing. Thanks to her piloting skills, and good fortune, she lived to fight another day. But the goggles of her helmet were shattered, and she lost an eye. Afterwards Mara took to wearing a black eyepatch—and avoided wearing helmets.
As Heda turned her attention to this new and unexpected foe, Marcus flew into the core of the Death Star.
Across the raging void of disputed space, Akira Valorum had already done likewise.
--
Luke had barely enough time to conjure a shield from the Force, to protect himself against Darth Vader’s unexpected attack.
He struggled valiantly, but Vader’s barrage of fury was the greater. It would only be a matter of time before Luke was overwhelmed, and fell before his father’s might.
Leia, standing painfully on a mangled leg, saw this and wondered how she might help her brother.
Then she remembered the Magic Mirror, and its visions.
Limping painfully over to the mirror, Leia looked in its glass once more. The shadow still stood in the place of Darth Vader—it was this eldritch being, not her father, who sought to electrocute Luke.
Leia took a deep breath, and extended both hands….
…and smashed the mirror.
The explosion that followed caught both Vader and Luke by surprise. Luke dropped his guard—but Vader, equally, cut off his surge of Force lightning.
He no longer wished to continue it. For now he was Lando Kadar once more, in body and spirit.
--
Long ago, young Lando had been filled with pride and thoughts of vengeance against his father. To that end, he had pursued every resource available to him, plumbed depths of depravity deeper than any known by the Sith and the Boma.
He had become a master of astral travel, in space and in time, to places it was dangerous even to behold, and lethal to visit in the flesh.
There, on one of these worlds, he had met his true master. Not Emperor Pestage, or Aubra or Zeno, or even a Sith at all.
No, this man was a jovial fellow with white hair, outwardly ordinary, who was dressed in red and sat in the overstuffed armchair of a book-lined study.
“Who are you?” Lando asked.
“I have many names,” came the reply. “Yen Sid is one. Henry Walton is another. But you may call me Palpatine, if you would like.”
“What is this place?”
“Some call it Xanadu, others Hearst Castle. It is my home, and the farm where I make my living. Is that not enough?”
Lando felt curiosity rising within him. “What do you grow here?”
“Many wonderful fruits. Look out that window, and you will see them.”
Lando looked at the tall glass window indicated, and beheld, outside, trees fruited with produce of unimaginable variety. Back in the caves of Ttaz, his mouth began to water.
“May I taste of them?”
“No. I keep them for myself.”
This puzzled Lando, and angered him somewhat. “Why?”
“It is not for you, Son of Annikin, to know my reasons for doing as I do. It is merely for you to accept.”
“But—”
“I will offer you something else instead: something greater, in my view. Will you take it, and accept my word, and endeavor to forget these worthless fruits?”
“Yes, gladly. What is this gift?”
“Power. Unlimited power.”
--
Lando Kadar did as Palpatine bid, and held out his right arm. Palpatine pricked his index finger with a needle, and blood (funny how black it looks, thought Lando) fell onto a parchment. This paper Palpatine promptly filed away in a chest of drawers.
Afterward, Lando went back to his home place and time, with little reason to doubt the wisdom of this great sorcerer. But unbeknownst to him, he had been the victim of a spell, a magical geas of sorts which enslaved his spirit and caused him to work evil.
The mirror, sent long ago to Condawn by the sorcerer’s minions in that galaxy, was the agent of that spell. And now, with its shattering, Lando’s true inner goodness was reborn once more.
--
Lando and Luke ran to help Leia, who sprawled upon the floor among the shards of the mirror.
Her silver hands had been burned black by the explosion—and her cloned eyes had been melted out, so that she was blind in ordinary terms. But, thanks to the Force, Leia could still see perfectly… and she greeted her father with a bear-like embrace.
Her beloved brother, however, she thanked with a kiss.
--
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 most beloved concubine.
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 golden 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.
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.
C-3PO and R2-D2, whose old bodies were fast dying, were hastily transferred into two unused robot shells lying readily at hand: protocol droids. R2 was uploaded into a gold-plated droid, which allowed him at last to speak in a human voice, and C-3PO was put into a silver-colored droid. Ever afterward he complained loudly about the color of his new chassis--but secretly he was thrilled.
--
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 Heda Horus and Mara Lamiya, who had continued their dogfight even as the other Rebels flew into the heart of the Death Star, shot each other down. Both of their craft plummeted to the surface of Ton-Muund far below.
Thanks to her skill as a pilot, Mara Lamiya escaped once more with her life. But all her hair was signed off, and her eyes were blinded; and several of her teeth were knocked from her jaw.
Heda Horus, meanwhile, managed to guide her damaged fighter into a harrowing crash landing, from which she was very fortunate to walk away. At least, that was what ordinary folk said—but in truth, Heda, as a favorite of Darth Vader, was one of those who had been privileged with the gift of a Dwarven Ring.
Bowing to the inevitable, Heda promptly surrendered to a squad of Rebel troops, newly landed on the planet surface.
Her greatest injury from the crash was the loss of an eye. She refused to have it replaced afterward, however, saying that a pilot who needed two eyes was no pilot at all.
In the days following the Battle of Ton-Muund, Heda began to let her hair—formerly cut short in pilot fashion—grow out once more. Thanks to the stress of the battle, it now came in white.
--
Akira Valorum did not fare as well as Marcus, or Heda, or even Mara. Han Solo’s beloved ship, the Millennium Falcon, was never seen again after the battle, and men said that the Clone King had perished that a galaxy might live.
But Han Solo himself remembered Akira Valorum's sharp sense of humor; and he thought ruefully of his large unpaid debt to Akira from their last sabacca game, which he had lacked the funds to make good.
--
Many other tales of heroism came out of the great Galactic Civil War…. only some of which are recorded in full in the surviving sources.
On the icy planet of Arpentis, site of an Imperial labor camp, the dashing Rebel spy Simon Ritter infiltrated the hellish prison fortress of black iron, and successfully liberated the golden-haired Princess Rosanna Clementias.
She was the daughter of a royal House that had remained officially neutral in the War. But Rosanna had been seized as a hostage on the orders of Lord Pestage, “to encourage the others,” after Imperial spies reported that King Salvor Clementias was secretly selling arms to the Rebels.
After her rescue, Rosanna quickly emerged as one of the Rebels’ greatest leaders of ground forces.
Likewise, the star-pilot whose heroism won the Second Battle of Hoth for the Alliance, Kim Sunbearer of Byssia, wooed Lady Winter, the niece of King Andricus of Ophuchi.
Andricus had reluctantly declared for the Rebellion after his brother’s mysterious death was revealed to be a false-flag operation masterminded by Imperial agents.
Kim was on a diplomatic visit to this new ally of the Alliance when he first beheld Lady Winter’s raven hair and green eyes. She reciprocated his affection, and approached her father about a possible marriage.
But, ever the patrician, King Andricus would not agree to grant his daughter’s hand to one of common birth… especially a man making war against his sovereign lord. Byssia was, after all, still loyal to the Empire.
To rid himself of this "turbulent pilot," Andricus told Kim Sunbearer that he could marry Lady Winter only when he had procured a kingdom of his own.
That, he thought, would be the end of the matter.
Far from it.
Later in the war, Kim and his most trusted friend, the former Imperial officer Lieutenant Lloyd Davidson, liberated the planet of Raghusa V, whose unpopular King, the Imperial lackey Hamish the Bald, had placed it under martial law in defiance of popular sympathy for the Rebellion.
A craven at heart, King Hamish fled into the Unknown Regions almost as soon as Kim and Lloyd landed. A few months later he returned, at the head of an unimpressive force of mercenaries and vagabonds. Kim’s troops swiftly routed Hamish once more, and the former King fled back to his new home in exile, never to return.
The descendants of Hamish (who, for reasons known best to philologists, are called Jamesites by historians) made occasional attempts thereafter to recover their ancestral kingdom. But they came to nothing, and the Sunbearer dynasty was secure.
Andricus, impressed despite himself, agreed to let Kim and Winter marry at last. Kim took up his new throne on Raghusa, and appointed Lloyd Davidson his viceroy and lord chamberlain. The wedding and coronation feast was the talk of the Third Quadrant.
But I’m woolgathering. Let’s get back to the story you expected.