Act IV
The party reaches Norton II and comes to the subterranean court of King Kane Highsinger (who would almost certainly be played by an African American actor).
Kane dwells in a magnificent palace of crystalline ice and gleaming chrome spires. Kane, a former Jedi, is happy to meet his old friend Mace Windy, but the news that they have Cora Sunrider as a hostage troubles him. He has no wish to let foreign wars arrive on Norton II – especially not now, when his son Clieg is about to get married!
Prince Clieg Highsinger (a John Boyega type) is betrothed to Jaina Vao, daughter of Janos, ruler of the native aliens of Norton II. Tall, with inhumanly pale skin and hair and golden eyes without whites, Jaina is strangely beautiful. Her marriage to Clieg represents an end to a feud that had lasted nearly as long as the rivalry between Hubble and Beber on Aquilae.
Unfortunately, Kane’s men soon inform him that their planet is being hailed. An Alderaanian fleet has followed the rebels to Norton II, and it is commanded personally by Crispin Sunrider.
Via an open video link, Sunrider demands that Kane turn over the Aquilaean fugitives immediately, so that they might receive justice for their insults to Alderaan. If he fails to comply, Lord Sunrider says, the Alderaanians will land their troops (who outnumber Kane’s men) and launch an invasion of Norton, subduing it just as they conquered Aquilae.
Kane demurs; Mace is an old friend, and he is reluctant to send his friends to certain death. However, he knows that they have done wrongly in kidnapping Princess Cora, even if it was to save their own lives. So Kane Highsinger makes a counter-offer: he will return Cora to her father, thus making amends and preventing a bloody conflict.
As Cora watches in horror, her father refuses to accept her return: like Josef Stalin, he refuses to trust any Alderaanian who was captured by the enemy, even his own daughter. Tears stream from Cora’s brown eyes as she tries to comprehend her father’s betrayal.
Lord Sunrider reiterates his original demands, and Kane Highsinger feels honor-bound to refuse them. The stage is set for battle on the ice plains of Norton.
The resulting battle has two phases. In the first, the Alderaanians drive large, elephant-shaped AT-AT type armored walkers, which the Nortonians bring down with cable from small flying craft (like in TESB). However, eventually the snowspeeders are destroyed, and enough elephant walkers remain to discharge their cargo of troops, leading to an infantry battle.
In the second phase, the Alderaanian infantry advances toward the Nortonian base camp, which presents a tempting target as the soldiers in front of it remain stationary. But the Alderaanians are taken by surprise: a secret reserve of flying craft, kept back by order of King Kane, bombs the ice on which the enemy stands. Many of the heavily armored troops sink into the water and drown.
Now that the forces are even in numbers, Kane orders his men to charge, with the valiant Clieg and CJ Thorpe together leading the attack.
During this scene, C-3PO and R2-D2 find themselves caught up in the battle, each having been a gunner in a crashed snowspeeder. The two try desperately to get back to Kane’s command center, while being buffeted back and forth by the advancing and retreating troops. In the wake of this, the two bickering aliens seem to get on a little better than previously.
Wearing a breathing mask to insulate him from the cold, CJ Thorpe faces down a similarly masked, black-armored warrior at the head of the remaining Imperial troops. The two have a lightsaber duel, which Chuiee wins by cleaving the faceplate of his opponent’s helmet, with a blow that melts durasteel and burns flesh. Wounded, his opponent retreats, and the Nortonians continue to advance.
The assault wins the day for the Nortonians, and the Alderaanians are forced to retreat.
While the battle occurs, back in Kane’s palace, Cora is approached by an assistant surgeon on King Kane’s personal medical staff – in reality a spy for the Alderaanians. He tells Cora, who by now is wavering in her loyalties, that her father would never surrender to the Aquilaeans, even if he were by some strange chance defeated. Crispin Sunrider has already installed a doomsday device in his throne room upon Aquilae – should the Royal Palace ever be threatened, he has but to activate it, and if its timer expires, the entire planet will be devastate by poison gas.
Cora asks the surgeon how he knows this. The surgeon reveals that he was one of the designers. Lord Sunrider wanted the advice of experts on how to design biological weapons. In fact, he knows the code to disarm it.
When Cora, sensing this might be useful, asks him what the code is, the surgeon refuses to reveal it unless she sleeps with him. Reluctantly, Cora consents. After they lie together, the surgeon gives her what he claims is the disarmament code… but she knows the true code, having overheard him talking in sleep.
Cora swallows her anger at being lied to, in the hopes of preserving her honor by keeping this whole incident secret. She lets the junior surgeon go without challenging his veracity.
After the battle, Kane treats his guests to a meal of good meat and wine, which had been meant for his son Clieg’s wedding ceremony. By custom, CJ Thorpe is served by his slave, the red-haired girl Zena. Prince Luke and R2-D2, hungry after battle, both eat so much that they retire to bed early, without staying after dinner for coffee and cake.
Zena (whose eye is by now healing) is angry at Chuiee, who, as she sees it, failed to rescue her from the slave hunters, and then bought her for his own desires. After the main course, when she brings Chuiee some Somaran coffee from the kitchens, she decides to sneak a sample for herself… which instantly causes her to retch and fall to the floor in convulsions.
The alarmed guests realize at once that the Empire has a spy in Kane’s court. The question is, who is it – and who else was meant to die?
Zena is taken to Kane’s medical bay, where she is purged of the poison and kept overnight for treatment. The others are also given antidotes to the poison, which turns out to have been made from several normally innocuous herbs in lethal combination.
Outside the sickbay, Thorpe and Windy stand guard, discussing the matter. Whoever poisoned the coffee would have expected the drug to be slow-acting, not instantaneous – it was only because Zena had an extremely rare allergy to some of the herbs used by the poisoner that this particular toxin was detected in time.
Such an allergy is extremely uncommon, as Mace knows. “We were lucky,” Thorpe concludes.
“In my experience,” says Mace, “there’s no such thing as luck.”
Just then a commotion arises from the sickbay. Mace and CJ, drawing their laserswords, enter the room – to find the head doctor dead, and the assistant surgeon and Zena both gone. At once they know who the spy is.
They follow the surgeon, as he rushes toward his getaway ship with Zena in tow. In the hangar bay, the two Jedi try to stop the spy from taking off, but their way is blocked – by a female Imperial Colonel with icy blonde hair and one cold blue eye. Her other eye is wrapped with a bloody bandage… from the wound Chuiee gave her earlier.
This is Colonel Bastila Shan, right hand to the Emperor, who has been sent to take over operations in the wake of Owen Lars’ failure to halt the rebel escapees at Gordon.
The Colonel engages the two Jedi in a pitched lightsaber battle. She fights only long enough to allow her comrade to start up their getaway craft, however – at which point she leaps aboard the retracting ramp. The sleek vessel soars into the atmosphere as the two Jedi look on in defeat and bafflement.
One question remains unanswered: why was Zena valuable enough for an Imperial agent to kidnap?
A council of war follows. Kane agrees to send a squad of crack Nortonian troops to assist in the liberation of Aquilae. It is decided that everyone but Chuiee, Cora Sunrider and Jaina Vao will accompany him. Cora and Jaina will remain on Norton II, to protect Kane’s kingdom in his absence… and Chuiee Two Thorpe, at his own insistence, will infiltrate the dungeons of Alderaan itself, where Zena is likely being held prisoner.
Chuiee says that, whether she meant to or not, Zena saved his life. He owes it to her to rescue her, and thus make up for his earlier failure on Ophuchi.
Cora, much to the surprise of the others, insists on accompanying the rebels to battle on Aquilae. Since her father has disowned her, she says, she might as well try to make amends for the cruelty the Sunriders have inflicted on Luke Skywalker’s planet. Her influence may persuade some of the Alderaanian officers to surrender… and if they haven’t yet been revoked, her security clearance codes will certainly be useful. (Of the doomsday device commissioned by Lord Sunrider, though, she says nothing as yet.
The plan, thus amended, is agreed upon. Despite the grudge between their two worlds, Luke finds himself impressed by Cora’s bravery.
Taking the hairy, diminutive alien R2-D2 with him (ostensibly as a servant), CJ Thorpe dresses in a captured Alderaanian uniform, and flies off in a two-man craft for Alderaan. The others take Kane’s personal shuttle—equipped with a cloaking device—and return to Aquilae, taking with them a crack squad of elite Nortonian Rangers – with luck the nucleus of a force to resist the Alderaanian conquerors.