'He knows I'm here,' Luke avowed. He kept staring at the command ship out the view-window. It seemed to taunt him. It awaited.

'Come on, kid, you're imagining things.'

'Ararh gragh,' Chewie mumbled. Even he was grim.

Lord Vader stood quite still, staring out a large view-screen at the Death Star. He thrilled to the sight of this monument to the dark side of the Force. Icily he caressed it with his gaze.

Like a floating ornament, it sparkled for him. A magic globe. Tiny specks of light raced across its surface, mesmerizing the Dark Lord as if he were a small child entranced by a special toy. It was a transcendant state he was in, a moment of heightened perceptions.

And then, all at once, in the midst of the stillness of his contemplation, he grew absolutely motionless: not a breath, not even a heartbeat stirred to mar his concentration. He strained his every sense into the ether. What had he felt? His spirit tilted its head to listen. Some echo, some vibration apprehended only by him, had pa.s.sed - no, had not pa.s.sed. Had swirled the moment and altered the very shape of things. Things were no longer the same.

He walked down the row of controllers until he came to the spot where Admiral Piett was leaning over the tracking screen of Controller Jhoff. Piett straightened at Vader's approach, then bowed stiffly, at the neck.

'Where is that shuttle going?' Vader demanded quietly, without preliminary.

Piett turned back to the view-screen and spoke into the comlink. 'Shuttle Tydirium, what is your cargo and destination?'

The filtered voice of the shuttle pilot came back over the receiver. 'Parts and technical personnel for the Sanctuary Moon.'

The bridge commander looked to Vader for a reaction. He hoped nothing was amiss. Lord Vader did not take mistakes lightly.

'Do they have a code clearance?' Vader questioned.

'It's an older code, but it checks out,' Piett replied immediately. 'I was about to clear them.' There was no point in lying to the Lord of the Sith. He always knew if you lied; lies sang out to the Dark Lord.

'I have a strange feeling about that ship,' Vader said more to himself than to anyone else.

'Should I hold them?' Piett hurried, anxious to please his master.

'No, let them pa.s.s, I will deal with this myself 'As you wish, my Lord.' Piett bowed, partly to hide his surprise. He nodded at Controller Jhoff, who spoke into the comlink, to the Shuttle Tydirium.

In the Shuttle Tydirium, the group waited tensely. The more questions they were asked about things like cargo and destination, the more likely it seemed they were going to blow their cover.

Han looked fondly at his old Wookiee partner. 'Chewiee, if they don't go for this, we're gonna have to beat it quick.' It was a goodbye speech, really; they all knew this pokey shuttle wasn't about to outrun anything in the neighborhood.

The static voice of the controller broke up, and then came in clearly over the comlink. 'Shuttle Tydirium, deactivation of the shield will commence immediately. Follow your present course.'

Everyone but Luke exhaled in simultaneous relief; as if the trouble were all over now, instead of just beginning. Luke continued to stare at the command ship, as if engaged in some silent, complex dialogue.

Chewiee barked loudly.

'Hey, what did I tell you?' Han grinned. 'No sweat.'

Leia smiled affectionately. 'Is that what you told us?'

Solo pushed the throttle forward, and the stolen shuttle moved smoothly toward the green Sanctuary Moon.

Vader, Piett, and Jhoff watched the view-screen in the control room, as the weblike deflector grid read-out parted to admit the Shuttle Tydirium, which moved slowly toward the center of the web - to Endor.

Vader turned to the deck officer and spoke with more urgency in his voice than was usually heard. 'Ready my shuttle. I must go to the Emperor.'

Without waiting for response, the Dark Lord strode off, clearly in the thrall of a dark thought.

= V =.

THE trees of Endor stood a thousand feet tall. Their trunks, covered with s.h.a.ggy, rust bark, rose straight as a pillar, some of them as big around as a house, some thin as a leg. Their foliage was spindly, but lush in color, scattering the sunlight in delicate blue-green patterns over the forest floor.

Distributed thickly among these ancient giants was the usual array of woodsy flora - pines of several species, various deciduous forms, variously gnarled and leafy. The groundcover was primarily fern, but so dense in spots as to resemble a gentle green sea that rippled softly in the forest breeze.

This was the entire moon: verdant, primeval, silent. Light filtered through the sheltering branches like golden ichor, as if the very air were alive. It was warm, and it was cool. This was Endor.

The stolen Imperial shuttle sat in a clearing many miles from the Imperial landing port, camouflaged with a blanket of dead branches, leaves, and mulch. In addition the little ship was thoroughly dwarfed by the towering trees. Its steely hull might have looked incongruous here, had it not been so totally inconspicuous.

On the hill adjacent to the clearing, the Rebel contingent was just beginning to make its way up a steep trail. Leia, Chewie, Han, and Luke led the way, followed in single file by the raggedy, helmeted squad of the strike team. This unit was composed of the elite groundfighters of the Rebel Alliance. A scruffy bunch in some ways, they'd each been hand-picked for initiative, cunning, and ferocity. Some were trained commandos, some paroled criminals - but they all hated the Empire with a pa.s.sion that exceeded self-preservation. And they all knew this was the crucial raid. If they failed to destroy the shield generator here, the Rebellion was doomed. No second chances.

Consequently, no one had to tell them to be alert as they made their way silently up the forest path. They were, every one, more alert than they had ever been.

Artoo Detoo and See Threepio brought up the rear of the brigade. Artoo's domed pate swiveled round and round as he went, blinking his sensor lights at the infinitely tall trees which surrounded them.

'Beee-doop!' he commented to Threepio.

'No, I don't think it's pretty here,' his golden companion replied testily. 'With our luck, it's inhabited solely by droid-eating monsters.'

The trooper just ahead of Threepio turned around and gave them a harsh 'Shush!'

Threepio turned back to Artoo, and whispered, 'Quiet, Artoo.'

They were all a bit nervous.

Up ahead, Chewie and Leia reached the crest of the hill. They dropped to the ground, crawled the last few feet, and peered over the edge. Chewbacca raised his great paw, signaling the rest of the group to stop. All at once, the forest seemed to become much more silent.

Luke and Han crawled forward on their bellies, to view what the others were observing. Pointing through the ferns, Chewie and Leia cautioned stealth. Not far below, in a glen beside a clear pool, two Imperial scouts had set up temporary camp. They were fixing a meal of rations and were preoccupied warming it over a portable cooker. Two speeder bikes were parked nearby.

'Should we try to go around?' whispered Leia.

'It'll take time,' Luke shook his head.

Han peeked from behind a rock. 'Yeah, and if they catch sight of us and report, this whole party's for nothing.'

'Is it just the two of them?' Leia still sounded skeptical.

'Let's take a look,' smiled Luke, with a sigh of tension about to be released; they all responded with a similar grin. It was beginning.

Leia motioned the rest of the squad to remain where they were; then she, Luke, Han, and Chewbacca quietly edged closer to the scout camp.

When they were quite near the clearing, but still covered by underbrush, Solo slid quickly to the lead position. 'Stay here,' he rasped, 'Chewie and I will take care of this.' He flashed them his most roguish smile.

'Quietly,' warned Luke, 'there might be-But before he could finish, Han jumped up with his furry partner and rushed into the clearing.

- more out there,' Luke finished speaking to himself. He looked over at Leia.

She shrugged. 'What'd you expect?' Some things never changed.

Before Luke could respond, though, they were distracted by a loud commotion in the glen. They flattened to the ground and watched.

Han was engaged in a rousing fist fight with one of the scouts -he hadn't looked so happy in days. The other scout jumped on his speeder bike to escape. But by the time he'd ignited the engines, Chewie was able to get off a few shots from his crossbow laser. The ill-fated scout crashed instantly against an enormous tree; a brief, m.u.f.fled explosion followed.

Leia drew her laser pistol and raced into the battle zone, followed closely by Luke. As soon as they were running clear, though, several large laser blasts went off all around them, tumbling them to the ground. Leia lost her gun.

Dazed, they both looked up to see two more Imperial scouts emerge from the far side of the clearing, heading for their speeder bikes hidden in the peripheral foliage. The scouts bolstered their pistols as they mounted the bikes and fired up the engines.

Leia staggered to her feet, 'Over there, two more of them!'

'I see 'em,' answered Luke, rising. 'Stay here.'

But Leia had ideas of her own. She ran to the remaining rocket speeder, charged it up, and took off in pursuit of the fleeing scouts. As she tore past Luke, he jumped up behind her on the bike, and off they flew.

'Quick, center switch,' he shouted to her over her shoulder, over the roar of the rocket engines. 'Jam their comlinks!'

As Luke and Leia soared out of the clearing after the Imperials, Han and Chewie were just subduing the last scout. 'Hey, wait!' Solo shouted; but they were gone. He threw his weapon to the ground in frustration, and the rest of the Rebel commando squad poured over the rise into the clearing.

Luke and Leia sped through the dense foliage, a few feet off the ground, Leia at the controls, Luke grabbing on behind her. The two escaping Imperial scouts had a good lead, but at two hundred miles per hour, Leia was the better pilot - the talent ran in her family.

She let off a burst from the speeder's laser cannon periodically, but was still too far behind to be very accurate. The explosions. .h.i.t away from the moving targets, splintering trees and setting the shrubbery afire, as the bikes weaved in and out between ma.s.sive, imposing branches.

'Move closer!' Luke shouted.

Leia opened the throttle, closed the gap. The two scouts sensed their pursuer gaining and recklessly veered this way and that, skimming through a narrow opening between two trees. One of the bikes sc.r.a.ped the bark, tipping the scout almost out of control, slowing him significantly.

'Get alongside!' Luke yelled into Leia's ear.

She pulled her speeder so close to the scout's, their steering vanes sc.r.a.ped hideously against each other. Luke suddenly leaped from the back of Leia's bike to the back of the scout's, grabbed the Imperial warrior around the neck, and flipped him off. The white-armored trooper smashed into a thick trunk with a bone-shattering crunch, and settled forever into the sea of ferns.

Luke scooted forward to the driver's seat of the speeder bike, played with the controls a few seconds, and lurched forward, following Leia, who'd pulled ahead. The two of them now tore after the remaining scout.

Over hill and under stonebridge they flew, narrowly avoiding collision, flaming dry vines in their afterburn. The chase swung north and pa.s.sed a gully where two more Imperial scouts were resting. A moment later, they swung into pursuit, now hot on Luke and Leia's tail, blasting away with laser cannon. Luke, still behind Leia, took a glancing blow.

'Keep on that one!' he shouted up at her, indicating the scout in the lead. 'I'll take the two behind us!'

Leia shot ahead. Luke, at the same instant, flared up his retrorockets, slamming the bike into rapid deceleration. The two scouts on his tail zipped past him in a blur on either side, unable to slow their momentum. Luke immediately roared into high velocity again, firing with his blasters, suddenly in pursuit of his pursuers.

His third round hit its mark: one of the scouts, blown out of control, went spinning against a boulder in a rumble of flame.

The scout's cohort took a single glance at the flash, and put his bike into supercharge mode, speeding even faster. Luke kept pace.

Far ahead, Leia and the first scout continued their own highspeed slalom through the barricades of impa.s.sive trunks and low-slung branches. She had to brake through so many turns, in fact, Leia seemed unable to draw any closer to her quarry. Suddenly she shot into the air, at an unbelievably steep incline, and quickly vanished from sight.

The scout turned in confusion, uncertain whether to relax or cringe at his pursuer's sudden disappearance. Her whereabouts became clear soon enough. Out of the tree-tops, Leia dove down on him, cannon blasting from above. The scout's bike took the shock wave from a near hit. Her speed was even greater than she'd antic.i.p.ated, and in a moment she was racing alongside him. But before she knew what was happening, he reached down and drew a handgun from his holster - and before she could react, he fired.

Her bike spun out of control. She jumped free just in time - the speeder exploded on a giant tree, as Leia rolled clear into a tangle of matted vines, rotting logs, shallow water. The last thing she saw was the orange fireball through a cloud of smoking greenery; and then blackness.

The scout looked behind him at the explosion, with a satisfied sneer. When he faced forward again, though, the smug look faded, for he was on a collision course with a fallen tree. In a moment it was all over but the flaming.

Meanwhile, Luke was closing fast on the last scout. As they wove from tree to tree, Luke eased up behind and then drew even with the Imperial rider. The fleeing soldier suddenly swerved, slamming his bike into Luke's - they both tipped precariously, barely missing a large fallen trunk in their path. The scout zoomed under it, Luke over it - and when he came down on the other side, he crashed directly on top of the scout's vehicle. Their steering vanes locked.

The bikes were shaped more or less like one-man sleds, with long thin rods extending from their snouts, and fluttery ailerons for guidance at the tip of the rods. With these vanes locked, the bikes flew as one, though either rider could steer.

The scout banked hard right, to try to smash Luke into an onrushing grove of saplings on the right. But at the last second Luke leaned all his weight left, turning the locked speeders actually horizontal, with Luke on top, the scout on the bottom.

The biker scout suddenly stopped resisting Luke's leftward leaning and threw his own weight in the same direction, resulting in the bikes flipping over three hundred sixty degrees and coming to rest exactly upright once more ... but with an enormous tree looming immediately in front of Luke.

Without thinking, he leaped from his bike. A fraction of a second later, the scout veered steeply left - the steering vanes separated -and Luke's riderless speeder crashed explosively into the redwood.

Luke rolled, decelerating, up a moss-covered slope. The scout swooped high, circled around, and came looking for him.

Luke stumbled out of the bushes as the speeder was bearing down on him full throttle, laser cannon firing. Luke ignited his lightsaber and stood his ground. His weapon deflected every bolt the scout fired at Luke; but the bike kept coming. In a few moments, the two would meet; the bike accelerated even more, intent on bodily slicing the young Jedi in half. At the last moment, though, Luke stepped aside - with perfect timing, like a master matador facing a rocket-powered bull - and chopped off the bike's steering vanes with a single mighty slash of his lightsaber.

The bike quickly began to shudder; then pitch and roll. In a second it was out of control entirely, and in another second it was a rumbling billow of fire on the forest floor.

Luke snuffed out his lightsaber and headed back to join the others.

Vader's shuttle swung around the unfinished portion of the Death Star and settled fluidly into the main docking bay. Soundless bearings lowered the Dark Lord's ramp; soundless were his feet as they glided down the chilly steel. Chill with purpose were his strides, and swift.

The main corridor was filled with courtiers, all awaiting an audience with the Emperor. Vader curled his lip at them - fools, all.

Pompous toadys in their velvet robes and painted faces; perfumed bishops pa.s.sing notes and pa.s.sing judgments among themselves -for who else cared; oily favor-merchants, bent low from the weight of jewelry still warm from a previous owner's dying flesh; easy, violent men and women, l.u.s.ting to be tampered with.

Vader had no patience for such petty filth. He pa.s.sed them without a nod, though many of them would have paid dearly for a felicitous glance from the high Dark Lord.

When he reached the elevator to the Emperor's tower, he found the door closed. Red-robed, heavily armed royal guards flanked the shaft, seemingly unaware of Vader's presence. Out of the shadow, an officer stepped forward, directly in Lord Vader's path, preventing his further approach.

'You may not enter,' the officer said evenly.

Vader did not waste words. He raised his hand, fingers out stretched, toward the officer's throat. Ineffably, the officer began to choke. His knees started buckling, his face turned ashen.

Gasping for air, he spoke again. 'It is the ... Emperor's ... command.'

Like a spring, Vader released the man from his remote grip. The officer, breathing again, sank to the floor, trembling. He rubbed his neck gently.

'I will await his convenience,' Vader said. He turned and looked out the view-window. Leaf-green Endor glowed there, floating in black s.p.a.ce, almost as if it were radiant from some internal source of energy. He felt its pull like a magnet, like a vacuum, like a torch in the dead night.

Han and Chewie crouched opposite each other in the forest clearing, being quiet, being near. The rest of the strike squad relaxed - as much as was possible - spread out around them in groups of twos and threes. They all waited.