PART THREE: THE HAND OF FATE

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

It is a time of decision for the force. The Jedi Nexus of fate approaches, drawing the Emperor together with the enemy who could destroy him.

Blinded to the future, Palpatine searches desperately for a way to ensure his own victory when he faces Luke Skywalker.

But the Emperor's greatest blindness may be towards the threat of his most powerful servant, as Lord Vader begins to question his loyalty to his dark master...

Emperor Palpatine, Master of the dark side of the Force, made no effort to hide his satisfaction as he strode across the throne room floor towards the two combatants. One of them was Luke Skywalker, a young man clad in austere black. He was holding his humming lightsaber blade at the throat of his vanquished enemy, Lord Darth Vader. Luke had given in to his anger at last, and he was astonished at how easily he had beaten the Dark Lord. Luke panted, barely containing his rage as he warily watched the approaching Emperor. The blade in his hand drifted perilously close to Vader's gasping mask. The once mighty Sith Lord was reduced to abject terror, trying in vain to crawl away from Luke.

Luke saw Palpatine through a haze of anger. The Emperor was a surprisingly small man, hunched with age and clasping his wrinkled hands together. "Good!" Palpatine said, his withered features stamped with lust. "Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take Lord Vader's place at my side!"

Luke looked at the fallen Sith Lord, once his most deadly foe, now completely at his mercy. He looked at his prosthetic right hand, gloved in black, and remembered that Vader had cut his real hand off when they last met. Not only that, Vader had also tortured his friends and delivered one of them to the ruthless crime lord, Jabba the Hutt, perhaps never to be seen again. And those acts barely began to scratch the surface of Vader's black deeds. If he put an end to this evil being, he would only be giving the galaxy the justice it cried out for. Luke suddenly recalled another man who had once been helpless before a lightsaber blade, and what Vader had done to him. Then he made the decision that felt right and just. He reversed his grip on the lightsaber he had made with his own hands and swept it through the torso of the Dark Lord, crying "For Ben Kenobi!" Vader died screaming, cut in half in a heap of seared gore.

Luke turned his back on the smoking corpse and faced the Emperor. Palpatine was nearly beside himself with glee. "Well done, my young apprentice! Now, come and kneel to me, and pledge your loyalty."

Luke didn't move. The Emperor smiled at Luke, but it was the smile of a crafty predator. "You cannot turn back, now, young Skywalker," he chided Luke. He held out a wasted hand, beckoning. "I shall raise you to such heights of power that your name shall forever eclipse the name of Darth Vader."

Luke walked over to him, and with a grim set to his features, knelt deliberately at the Emperor's feet. "Lord Vader's destiny is my own," Luke said with finality. Without warning, Luke moved. "Now you die!" Luke shouted, stabbing upward with his lightsaber at Palpatine's defenseless, robed body. The bright green blade did not find its mark, however. Even as the thrust began, the saber was deactivated by a proximity sensor hidden on the Emperor's person. The pommel of Luke's weapon thudded ineffectually against the Emperor's chest, and the galactic ruler lurched backwards. Palpatine saw a flash of crimson behind Luke, then the point of a force pike bloomed from Luke's chest. Luke was lifted from the floor, impaled on the long weapon of a hulking Imperial guard.

Luke had known he would not leave the throne room alive, but to have failed in his one chance to kill the Emperor...it was too much despair to bear. Drowning in his pain, Luke was dimly aware that his lightsaber had returned to life. Knowing death was near, and desperate to end his physical and mental torment, he managed to turn the weapon onto himself.

The red robed guard let the room's second corpse slide from his force pike and slump to the floor. He regarded his Emperor silently. Palpatine stared thoughtfully at Luke's body for a long time. Then, noticing the guard, he dismissed him distractedly.

The bland voice of Sate Pestage, the Emperor's Grand Vizier, interrupted Palpatine's introspection. "My condolences, Master, on the loss of your servant," said Pestage, glancing at the bodies on the floor."

Palpatine looked at Pestage bemusedly, searching his timeworn face for a hint of the sarcasm he thought might be behind the statement. There was nothing but a wizened serenity in Pestage's expression.

For his part, Pestage knew his Master was experiencing a period of great stress, and he meant his presence to be soothing. Therefore it was with relief that he saw Palpatine calmly beckon to him and begin walking. Together, they went out into the halls of the Imperial citadel. They met no other person as they strode along in silence, for this part of the citadel was the Emperor's private sanctuary. There were times when Pestage worried a great deal about his Master. Like the day, four months ago, when Palpatine had collapsed into a vision trance in front of most of the fleet Admirals. The glorious one had foreseen his own death, and despite his reliable means of overcoming that particular affliction, he had been afraid. Seeing fear in his Master had shaken Pestage. Palpatine was the foundation on which he built his life. He could not imagine what he would do if that foundation were taken away.

Equally worrisome was the Emperor's accelerated physical decay as the ravages of the dark side became ever more harsh. For Palpatine was demanding more of the Force than ever before. Pestage had seen his Master spend a great deal of time in his meditation chamber, trying, he suspected, to see the future. This ability awed Pestage, but for once, it did not seem to be working. Palpatine always emerged in a rage, flailing his fists and cursing his 'blindness'. He exerted more and more power, and his apparently futile efforts took a fearsome toll on his body. Only once had Palpatine given him any explanation, and Pestage had not fully understood. A great nexus was coming, the glorious one had told him, and the strands of probability were too much in flux to follow. But whatever barriers there were did not stop Palpatine from trying, and Pestage had begun to wonder if his Emperor would actually destroy himself.

Then, one day, Vader had returned with a prize. The Emperor had received his servant with a curious coldness, but once he discovered what the Sith Lord had brought, Palpatine had seemed rejuvenated. The prize had set in motion a series of frenzied preparations, as the Emperor immediately saw in it another means of gaining the information he sought - the probable outcome of his meeting with Luke Skywalker.

The prize had also made possible the contents of the room that they now entered. It was a large chamber, filled with row upon row of man-size tanks. The Emperor moved to the nearest one and wiped away the moisture beading on its glass surface. He stared at the face behind the glass with a searching intensity, but its eyes remained closed, its hair floating in the gentle currents of the nutrient bath. Sate Pestage suppressed a shiver. It was the face of Luke Skywalker.

The Constable of Homunculi, Rollo Mon, stepped out of the shadows, his enormous head ornament casting bizarre shadows in the sharp green light illuminating the entryway. The Emperor turned to him, his hand still resting on the tank.

"Prepare him," commanded Palpatine.

Three months earlier, Darth Vader was striding through the nearly empty halls of cloud city. Behind him, struggling to keep up, was a surgeon droid clutching a foot long cylindrical tank. They hurried past vacated apartments and hollow, silent casinos. Only Stormtroopers marked their passage by saluting, their rifles held casually due to the lack of any threat. For the once thriving luxury resort was now in the hands of the Empire. Any citizens not able to evacuate in the exodus initiated by Baron-Administrator turned Rebel Lando Calrissian were rounded up and forcibly deported. Those with questionable pasts had gone to Imperial prisons, as had some of the innocent, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Vader and the droid moved quickly into the lower levels of the city. The graceful sculptures and rich decor gave way to the gritty, exposed machinery of the Tibanna gas mining facility. Here and there, the squat, grotesque Ugnaughts scurried about, continuing the task of running the enormous machines. For them, one human master was much the same as any other, provided they were paid and not mistreated. Now the valuable gas, useful for antigrav devices and blasters, would go to the Empire, that was all. Finally, the Sith Lord reached the bottom of Cloud City and entered a small control room.

Vader stepped through a cloud of steam, suddenly appearing in front of Lieutenant Pralt and his work detail. Pralt backed away before he could catch himself as the huge armored figure loomed up before him like a sculpted gargoyle. "Report, Lieutenant," demanded Vader.

"My Lord," the officer stammered, straightening himself. Pralt knew of Vader's reputation for anger, and he feared to give the Dark Lord even partial bad news. But over the past few days, a strange story had circulated through the ranks. A week ago, when the Rebels had escaped both Cloud City and the Executor, Vader had failed to execute Admiral Piett, or anybody else. Instead, he had gone to meditate in his private chamber for three days. When he emerged, he had ordered a work detail to search the lower levels of the Cloud City reactor shaft for an unspecified object belonging to the Rebel, Luke Skywalker. Rumor had it that the Rebel had faced Vader high above and survived. His bravery bolstered by these tales, Pralt swallowed once and steadily reported, "My Lord, we have located what seems to be a lightsaber, but it lies in a rather difficult location." At least, Pralt assumed it was one of the old Jedi weapons. Its resemblance to the object hanging at Vader's belt gave the Lieutenant a bit of confidence.

Vader was already moving past him. "Show me," he commanded in a deep, mechanically amplified voice that was full of a surprising eagerness. Pralt signaled his men and the team led Vader and the silent droid into a narrow access corridor.

"Brace yourself, my Lord," Pralt warned as he opened the heavy door at the far end. Instantly, fierce winds swept into the tiny hallway, challenging the search team to stay on their feet. Vader stepped out onto the balcony beyond as if in total calm. Above the Dark Lord towered the enormous reactor shaft, a breathtaking open space glittering with distant lights. Below him, a mere hundred feet down, was the great sphere that terminated the shaft. It was studded with pressure release hatches that opened in response to the strong, shifting winds that coursed through the shaft. Vader stared at them as they rhythmically opened and closed, giving transient views of the bottomless drop to Bespin. Then, his electronically enhanced vision picked it out. Lying at the bottom of the giant bowl, between two restlessly opening hatches, was a lightsaber. Wrapped tightly around the weapon was a severed human hand.

Vader could only attribute the miracle before him to the workings of the Force. While in meditation, he had been disturbed by thoughts of the hand. He had had a strong feeling that it still existed, and that the Emperor would want it. So he had come in search of it, trusting in the Force, and there it was. But it was not the pathetic bit of flesh that quickened Vader's pulse - it was the silvery pommel of the old Jedi weapon clutched in the stiff fingers. His lightsaber. Returned to him after some twenty years. It gleamed invitingly from below, somehow calling to him.

Pralt's voice broke into his fascinated contemplation, and Vader was startled to find that he had been leaning partly over the railing towards his prize. "My Lord," Pralt shouted, shivering in the cold and struggling to be heard over the howling of the wind, "if that is what you seek, I doubt we could send a man down there to get it. It would be too dangerous. Any attempt to retrieve the object could dislodge it and send it out one of those hatches."

Vader didn't respond immediately. Turning away from Pralt, he raised his arms to the immensity of the shaft. "It will be your good fortune, Lieutenant, to witness a demonstration of the true power in the universe," Vader said, managing somehow to be heard over the wind. Pralt felt nothing at first, then his skin began to crawl. The winds in the reactor shaft had begun to diminish. Pralt's men backed away nervously, but Pralt stood rooted to the spot. Slowly, inexorably, the swirling air quieted, then became still. One by one, the pressure release hatches below hissed to a close, until they were all shut. Vader gestured again, holding out a hand towards the lightsaber below, and it rose up to him majestically, settling gently into his outstretched palm.

Pralt shuddered in disgust to see the severed hand up close; its cauterized stump of a wrist and its ice-covered fingers clutching the saber even in death made Pralt unconsciously reach for his own right hand, as if to make sure it was still attached. Vader gestured to the surgeon droid and it clumped up, holding its cylindrical vat. The droid pressed a switch on the container and the top hissed open. Vader pulled the hand from the saber and immersed it in the reddish Bacta solution. He attached the saber to his belt, and turned to Lieutenant Pralt. "Good work, Lieutenant," he said simply. Then Vader strode away, the droid in tow, leaving Pralt and his men gaping. They stood there for a whole minute, not moving, until finally the chill winds began to return, urging the search team back into the warmth of the corridors.

Alone in medstation seventy of the Executor, surgical droid 2-1BV had finished the treatment of the last blaster wounds from the Bespin battle. The mighty Super Star Destroyer was moving away from the gas giant and aiming itself at Coruscant, the dark heart of the Empire, the Imperial throne world. Beevee turned to the wall stasis unit where the hand of the human Rebel was stored. With no other commands to obey at the moment, he clumped over to the unit and opened it. Removing the Bacta cylinder, Beevee examined the readouts on the container. The hand was perfectly preserved. It had been frozen during its stay in the reactor shaft, and the Bacta was acting to keep the tissue in a healthy state. In fact, Beevee noted clinically, the hand could even be reattached to the original owner with little loss of function, were he available. But no doubt the owner would have a prosthetic replacement by now. A droid hand, of sorts.

Beevee's photoreceptors regarded his own hand. It was so very different from the human hand in the tank, consisting of three grasping claws at the end of a stark metal rod. It enabled him to manipulate sophisticated surgical instruments and heal the wounds incurred by the vulnerable organics. Once, on a previous assignment, the old droid had seen two young human lovers sneak into his infirmary. They had not even noticed him as he stood motionless among the diagnostic equipment. They had done many things with their hands that Beevee knew he could never do. His cold, sharp edges could never gently caress a soft cheek or smooth hair away from a warm forehead. He wondered if the Rebel whose hand this was did such things with a human female. He wondered if there had been much pain when the hand was cut off. Pain was something Beevee clinically responded to, but it was not something he could feel himself. If a lightsaber took his hand off, he would merely have impaired surgical capacities. Then his manipulator would be replaced. Like the Rebel's hand. He wondered if the Rebel's new hand could feel the skin of another person's face.

Internal sensors warned him of the approach of a new patient, a captain who had broken an ankle by tripping into a service well. Beevee quietly replaced the Bacta tank and didn't give it another thought as he prepared his instruments for the simple operation. A moment later, the Executor made the jump to hyperspace.