A Certain Point of View

Chapter 6: The Passengers

He is here.

It was his second shipboard assault of the day, and even the Dark Lord was tired.

Exhaustion, in its way, was a safety function of the life support. His blasted lungs were delicate structures, and sustained exertion had damaged them before. But the Force would carry him even when the broken machine of his body would not, and it was not for such simple concerns that he hesitated now.

From the beginning, the Rebels' desperate assault bore all the hallmarks of his old master. Daring assaults against superior forces with little chance of success, as he had once said, were "his speciality." Obi-Wan was never reckless—not tactically—but paradoxically, the Jedi Master's caution and resilience made him especially suited to the feats of near-lunatic courage in which they had once indulged together.

At first, he had his doubts as to whether Obi-Wan had taken a direct hand in the attack. He had not shown himself in the attack on Scarif, not even when he might have been useful. The Rebels on the surface would not have been so easily fenced in and wiped out, he thought, with Kenobi leading them. And yet, there was something about the attack, and about the slight tremors in the Force aboard the Profundity, that reminded him of his old master. He took an awful chance jumping to Tatooine—but here was the Rebel ship, as he must have known it would be.

And somewhere on that vessel, at long last, his old master was aboard. There could be no denying it, now.

It was his pleasure, usually, to board first, ahead of his troopers. He relished the terror of the desperate soldiers as he cut through them alone. But Vader did not dare underestimate the cunning of his old master, and he did not dare walk into a trap. As the boarding shuttle latched to the airlock and its cutting torches went to work, he directed the first wave of stormtroopers to the front. If his boarding tactics were known to Kenobi, the stormtroopers would take the brunt of any trap, and he would follow behind to settle their score once and for all.

The torches hissed as they pierced first the outer airlock and then the inner. Stormtroopers poured into the breach. A chorus of blaster fire erupted from the stark white halls of the Rebel ship. And still he waited, reaching out with the Force. As he predicted—as Kenobi must have known—coming back to this world of bittersweet memory dulled his perceptions, made him less astute through the Force than he ought to have been. But Kenobi's presence was here, very close by. The closest they had ever come since...

Vader stretched out his feelings, hunting, seeking—but his hatred, boiling in him now, made any fine sensing impossible. He thought, in some deep place, of his homeworld, of his old life, of all the thousand ways he had learned to hate them. At the center of them all was Obi-Wan's betrayal, and there the hatred was too much for even him to harness as a weapon. Through the Force, he cast his terrible gaze over the ship, but it brought him no greater focus. He found that in his anger he could not sense Kenobi's presence at all—only broadcast his own. He should have known Kenobi would go into hiding here. The closer Kenobi came to his old homestead, the more muddled Vader's perceptions became, and the weaker his grip on the Dark Side.

As his anger grew, the Rebels felt it in the corridors of the little ship, and it shook them. Their aim faltered as they trembled. Slowly, the tide of the assault turned and the stormtroopers forced their way into the ship.

The Rebels died screaming, not at the hands of Vader's greatness, but to the clumsy shooting of the lowly foot soldiers. That, too, was a frustration and a slight. Vader fought to control his anger, harnessing it, ready to bring it to bear, and stepped at last into the breach.

There was no trap waiting for him. Only the remains of a terrible firefight as two squads, boxed into a narrow hallway, had each gone down destroying the other. He looked down at the bodies as he passed, checking the blast points, searching for signs that Obi-Wan's lightsaber had bounced the bolts back into them. But it was clear at once—this was only an ordinary firefight, and a sloppy one at that.