The Vastor growl lowered to a threatening rumble. I still have the girl.

He reached up to the shapeless mass of meltmassif; he laid his hand upon it and it slumped to liquid, and then that enormous hand lifted Leia by the neck. She dangled from his fist, limp, lifeless—only through the Force could Luke tell she still lived. Vastor growled again. She can still die, the growl said. You both can.

Luke sighed. “All right, forget the easy way.” He took three running steps to the lip of the ledge and jumped.

The Force carried him high over the abyss that had once been the lake of molten lava. He flipped in midair, to make himself into a spear with a lightsaber for a blade. Vastor dropped Leia and vaulted away with a contemptuous grunt as Luke’s flight ended with his lightsaber blade driving into the platform.

Luke somersaulted to his feet astride Leia’s unconscious form and lifted his blade to garde. “I warned you not to underestimate my powers.”

Are you mad? You were never even close to me, fool!

“I wasn’t aiming at you.”

Vastor’s eyes flicked from Luke’s face down to the lightsaber hole in the platform, which was now spitting sparks and gouts of smoke that smelled very much like a damaged repulsorlift burning out. Vastor’s eyes widened, “What have you DONE?”

With one last gush of black tarry smoke, the repulsorlift shorted out completely, and the platform plummeted like the several tons of rock and obsidian it was, to the empty bottom of the formerly lava lake. But instead of falling the several hundred meters to the rocky bottom of the lava lake, after only twenty or so it landed, very hard, on the dorsal hull of a Corellian light freighter that had been hovering there ever since Luke had slipped out through its topside hatch and leapt to the wall, to make his long, slow climb up to the ledge above.

The impact knocked Vastor off his feet; Luke, with Leia in his arms, landed as softly as a Force-using feather pillow.

Vastor sprang to his feet, needle teeth bared in a feral snarl. I will kill every last one of you!

“No,” Luke said, “you won’t.”

A slight sideways tilt of his head invited Vastor to look around, which he did. Which was when he saw the full company of black-armored stormtroopers on a ring ledge about three meters above him, all with weapons aimed at his gigantic chest.

“Air Marshal Klick,” Luke called upward. “Tell Kar Vastor your orders.”

The black-armored officer stepped forward crisply. “Kar Vastor, I have been directed to prevent, by any and all necessary means, any attempt on your part to do harm to that ship, to the woman, or to Emperor Skywalker.”

Emperor Skywalker. Vastor’s growl dripped loathing.


- Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Chapter 17