Act 5, Scene Four
From all over Aquilae, a ragtag force of ships assembles, soaring into the upper atmosphere. Converging into a coherent flight group, these ships, marked with dazzle camouflage and bearing hand-painted slogans, approach the orbital command center.
So far, however, the station’s defenses are holding. General Shan, confident of victory, orders a wave of Imperial fighters out to battle against the rebel ships.
In the sewers beneath the Imperial Palace, Prince Luke, Princess Cora, and Mace Windy find their advance checked by the attack of a monstrous tentacled creature. The creature’s hide is impervious to blaster bolts; it grabs Cora and draws her toward its slimy, toothed maw.
Mace Windy suffers a brief hesitation, but Prince Luke tells him to fire their blasters at the sewer ceiling. The resulting collapse of the tunnel brings down a heap of debris on the monster, crushing it and allowing Cora to wriggle free. Aside from some bruises, and a tear in her jumpsuit that exposes one breast, she appears unharmed.
The trio continue on, up into the corridors of the palace, which has been largely emptied of soldiers in order to provide reinforcements for the battle on the plains. A few droid troopers provide token resistance, but the palace is eerily quiet for a royal headquarters.
That’s when Cora realizes: The doomsday bomb has been activated. The whole planet is in danger.
In orbit over Aquilae, the two fighters from Alderaan arrive at last, and swiftly alert the other Rebels as to whose side they are really on. In one craft are Bail Antilles and R2-D2. In the other fighter, the blinded Zena flies according to Chuiee’s directions, while he uses the guns to target enemy ships.
Still, the Imperial fighters are too numerous, and it seems that the Rebels will not be able to break down the shields…
…when suddenly, a whole squad of Ophuchi starfighters arrives, and begins firing on the Imperial ships!
Mara Windom radios the Rebels. She’s leading a picked squad of pilots, in defiance of her uncle’s orders to stay at home. Bail Antilles can scarcely contain his delight at having new wingmen in the deadly space battle. While the Ophuchi fighters take on the Imperial small craft, the other Rebels begin pounding the space station’s shield generators.
In the station’s command center, General Bastila Shan orders out the last wave of fighters to defend the complex from the increasingly effective assault.
But to no avail. The deflector shields fall at last… and Bail Antilles and Zena, flying with CJ’s guidance, maneuver their respective craft into a maintenance shaft on the station.
In the Great Hall of the Royal Palace on Aquilae, Mace, Luke, and Cora find themselves facing a trio of enormous four-armed droid warriors… all of which are wielding a lightsaber in each arm. Twelve blades against three…. with a ticking clock.
Mace tells Cora and Luke to run on, into Lord Sunrider’s inner sanctum. He will stay here to fight these terrible mechno-machines. Luke urges him not to do what amounts to committing suicide – but Mace knows, it is necessary to save the world from Sunrider’s mad scheme.
He charges into battle against the three terrible droids…
…and as the wizened Jedi begins his last fight, Luke and Cora take advantage of the distraction to enter the inner sanctum of the Lord of Alderaan.
In the antechamber, seven elite guards, all armed with lightsabers, face off against the two heroes. Cora, never having trained with a lightsaber, runs for cover, while Luke fights against the seven warriors. He fells six of them with ease, but the seventh cuts off his right arm at the elbow.
Luke sinks to his knees in pain. The surviving warrior raises his saber for the kill—and falls dead, struck down by Cora with the blade of a fallen guard.
Luke gets to his feet, sharing a tender embrace with Cora, before the two of them proceed into Lord Sunrider’s study.
When they enter, they find Lord Sunrider standing in front of a window at the far end of the room, with his back to them, staring out at the setting sun. A glowing device counts down numbers on his heavy, ornate marble desk: the doomsday weapon has indeed been activated, Cora says.
Lord Sunrider turns. “Always you’ve had a talent for stating the obvious.”
Cora asks her father why he would do this – throw away his own life and those of everyone else on Aquilae. He launches into a grandiloquent speech about how Alderaan needs breathing room, how it is better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees, etc. He says that he can stop the countdown at any time, should the tides of battle turn once again in his favor, but since fortune appears to be going otherwi—
Cora punches in the disarm code, and the device powers down.
Lord Sunrider stares, appalled at his daughter’s treachery. “…How?” he asks.
Cora confesses her tryst with the surgeon on Norton II, as much to clear the air between her and Luke as to annoy her father. She tells him that he has acted very evilly, in preferring to commit suicide and take the entire planet with him, rather than accept an honorable defeat by a valiant enemy.
“The Aquilaeans have no honor,” spits Crispin Sunrider, pulling a laserpistol from the sheath at his hip.
“Where is the honor in buying slaves from a thrall market? Where is the honor in invading a planet without even a declaration of war… or in disowning a child whose only crime was to be kidnapped against her will? No, Father, we… you… are just as dishonorable as they.”
But Cora proves more merciful than her father. She invites him to surrender, him and all his troops, and renounce his secret league with the Emperor of Decarte. If he does that, she says, she will do her best to ensure that he remains on the throne of Alderaan.
“Mercy, is it?” says the Lord of Alderaan. “Very well.”
He raises his pistol, as if to hand it over….
….and shoots Cora once in the eye, burning her face severely.
Luke’s lightsaber hums to life in his left hand, but before he can attack the old man, Lord Sunrider fires three more shots at the great glass window. It shatters, and the high winds suck him out to his certain death.
As the gale wind whips around them, Luke and Cora hold on for dear life to the desk, each with one hand—Luke has only one arm, while Cora’s other hand clutches her ruined eye—until the forcefields kick in and the winds abate.
Luke holds Cora tightly as sobs run down her face. The Lord of Alderaan is dead; the new Lady mourns her father’s passing.
High overhead……
Navigating the perilously twisty innards of the space station (rather like the second Death Star in ROTJ), the two stolen Starfighters come to the central power core.
While Bail Antilles and Zena (flying with Chuiee’s guidance) approach the massive central power core, CJ Thorpe and R2-D2 lock on with proton torpedoes. Directly the torpedoes are launched, the two craft turn around and exit the way they came.
Both barely make it out in time to avoid the massive explosion that follows.
Seconds earlier, in the control room, the cyborg aide asks a question in Robotic chirps to General Bastila Shan, which she answers in Basic Galactic with evident disdain.
“Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.”
Bastila is very surprised when an explosion rips through the office a few seconds afterward.