The last of the blast doors were gone.
Not opened—obliterated.
Melted from the hinges, torn by force and flame, they hung now in twisted fragments of smoking metal. Their remains framed the entrance like jagged, skeletal teeth. And yet, somehow, behind those half-melted gates—
The bridge still stood.
Barely.
The air was thick with black smoke and the sharp chemical sting of scorched wiring. Flames sputtered from broken floor grates, casting flickering light across a room that was less a command center and more a war grave. The walls were pocked with scorch marks and blaster scoring, entire panels blasted open to reveal exposed circuits weeping sparks.
There were bodies.
Piled along the entrance. At least thirty stormtroopers, maybe more. Their armor was blackened, shattered, still smoking. Their limbs jutted out in unnatural angles, scorched from plasma detonations or crushed beneath blast-shield impacts. The pile was so thick it made it hard to step over. The result of wave after wave, hurled into the breach without care or coordination—driven by command, not survival.
Inside the bridge proper, blood slicked the floor.
It had run from the dead and dying into the seams of the deck, forming dark rivulets that led from wall to wall. The bridge was choked with the scent of death—sweat, ozone, iron.
And still, the last squad remained.
Six rebels.
Half-armored. Half-mad.
Burned, bleeding, choking—but alive.
They crouched behind half-melted terminals, blast shields, and scorched debris—anything that could still take a bolt. One rebel used a dead man's leg as cover. Another fired blindly through a crack in a console while pressing gauze against his own stomach wound.
They didn't speak.
They just fired.
Because they weren't holding this line for medals.
They were holding it for time.
The whine of an arc torch roared at the upper hatch. Sparks rained down from the ceiling.
> "They're breaching again!"
A rebel staggered to his feet—thigh armor shattered, blood leaking from beneath the plate. He slumped into a firing position and cocked his rifle with one good arm.
> "Let them come!"
Another soldier, face half-covered in a burn mask, slammed a thermal charge into a plasma capacitor and wedged it into the floor.
> "Make them choke on it!"
Captain Antilles crouched behind the main terminal, one arm hanging dead at his side, the other gripping his blaster. His face was a smear of soot and blood, his jaw clenched against pain.
He glanced out over the wreckage of his bridge and saw a miracle. Despite the odds the line had held.
Sure the blast doors were gone, and no reinforcements were coming. But they had bought time, and they were still, still capable of fighting, still resting.
While on the other side of the broken bridge blast doors the rest of the Tantive IV was much the same in appearance as the bridge.
The ship groaned beneath the weight of its wounds—bulkheads blackened, lights flickering, the air choked with soot and ozone. Screams had become groans. Movement had become twitching. The rebellion had become a pile of corpses.
The halls were silent now, save for the sound of boots, tight and disciplined, echoing up from the last corridor.
Dozens of stormtroopers stood just outside the shattered entry to the bridge, shields raised, rifles loaded. Black scorch marks littered the walls behind them. Piles of their brothers lay across the floor, some dismembered, some burned, some still twitching. The bridge was the only section left unconquered, and unclaimed by the Empire.
But the troopers didn't push forward now, because they were waiting. They were waited for him.
And then the sound of him entered the ship. First came the breathing, a mechanical rasp, Inhale, exhale, a Steady, Inevitable rhythm of breaths. And then his tall shadow came.
Darth Vader stepped into the hallway like a walking verdict. He moved without urgency, without fear. His armor reflected the fires still burning in the wall panels. His cloak dragged through blood.
He walked over bodies, Rebels and stormtroopers alike. Crushing their already broken bodies under his boots.
He did not slow, he did not look down, he did not care, and so he simply continued. And the ship and all its occupying Stormtroopers seemingly held their breaths.
Until suddenly the ambush came, it was only two corridors before the bridge.
Four rebels, hidden in the rafters and crawl spaces had been playing dead. When suddenly they awoke and dropped down from the ceiling like predators, weapons drawn, blades primed. One screamed as he charged, leaping with both hands gripping a Vibrosaber.
But Vader was not moved, he simply raised one hand. And they all froze in mid-air.
Some screamed, others roared in rage, twisting in place, arms slowly bending backwards, blades shaking.
Then he rotated his wrist. And four necks snapped in perfect sync. Bodies hit the floor like bags of broken glass.
And not for a moment had Vader stopped walking or even bothered to look at them.
Then he arrived before the blast doors of the bridge, that were still partially hanging.
Wires sparked from their frame. The rebels inside could see him now, clear, unshaken, whole.
They didn't wait for orders and simply roared.
"For Alderaan!"
And then they opened fire, creating a wall of blaster fire, that poured down the corridor towards Vader.
Red bolts hissed through smoke, crackled off metal. The lights stuttered with the flash.
And Vader moved.
The saber came to life with a snap-hiss—a beam of bleeding crimson that danced through the air.
He didn't run.
He simply stepped forward, absorbing fire with his blade, deflecting it with unnatural precision. One bolt struck his chest armor. It sparked, harmless. Another struck his shoulder. It flashed and died.
Then he raised his hand.
A rebel behind the barricade screamed as his entire rifle was torn from his grip, flew through the air, and speared itself through another soldier's chest.
Vader stepped into the breach.
And he unleashed hell.
One rebel tried to flank him, Vader spun, severed both arms at the elbow, then flung the body into a wall. The man's head hit the metal hard, it created a sick crack sound as his skull opened and brains scattered out all over the wall with a wet splat.
Another screamed, charging with a cry for Alderaan on his lips. Vader caught the man's head between his gauntleted palms and crushed his skull like fruit.
A third fired point-blank.
Vader caught the bolt with his hand. Reflected it. The rebel fell.
Within twenty seconds, the bridge was soaked in fresh blood. And within thirty, only one man remained.
Captain Antilles lay on the ground, coughing blood, his blaster shattered beside him.
Vader stepped forward, casting his shadow across the broken console.
> "Where are the Death Star plans?"
Antilles chuckled.
His lip was split. One eye swollen shut. And yet... he smiled.
> "Death Star?"
He coughed.
> "We're on a diplomatic mission."
Vader's hand shot forward in rage, clamping around the man's throat, as he growled.
> "You lie."
Now Antilles choked hard as he was lifted from the floor, legs left dangling in the air. And slowly his back arched, but still he managed to speak in a rasp and say.
> "You have no proof. All you bastards just did was slaughter the crew of her highness. The most peaceful, most gentle and most beautiful... diplomat in the galaxy."
Vader's grip tightened at hearing these words.
And now Antilles was barely able to move anymore, but still he managed to smile again.
Then, with the last of his strength, he spat in Vader's face.
The bloody spit sizzled on the Sith Lord's mask, and Vader snarled.
In raged by this, Vader failed to see as Antilles reached down, somehow, incredibly, his fingers found the pin of his grenade belt behind his back. Then his smile turned to a mad one, as he pulled, and yelled.
> "Burn with us, you bastard!"
But instantly Vader flung him away hard.
Antilles hit the main viewport with a crack, just as the grenade went off.
The explosion tore the viewport apart, shattering the glass outward into space, dragging fire, bodies, consoles, everything into the vacuum of space. The wind screamed. Metal howled. Blood vanished into the void.
But Vader stood unmoved. His boots were locked into the floor, as his cloak whipped violently in the sudden storm, his boots only then anchored harder into the floor like pillars of stone.
Then the emergency shutters slammed closed, sealing the breach.
The fires were gone, the bridge was silent. Then Vader lowered his hand, and his saber deactivated.
Turning toward the door he looked to a trooper there and ordered.
> "Bring me the girl."
And with that, the Tantive IV was left silent again. Not peaceful, just dead and without the sound's of battle.
The fires had burned out. The screams had gone quiet. The smoke still lingered like a ghost over the corridors. Here and there, a console sparked, or a piece of twisted armor let out one last hiss of cooling metal.
But then, not long after Vader had given the order she was found. Heavy footsteps echoed through the halls—boots against steel. Methodical. Unhurried.
A squad of stormtroopers marched down the corridor with weapons drawn, checking rooms and dragging bodies aside as they moved.
And between them, was Leia.
Her hands were bound behind her back with magnetic cuffs, her dress was slightly torn, scorched and dirtied. One sleeve was totally ripped off, and a line of blood dried against her temple. Her braid had come undone, trailing down her shoulder like a war banner.
But she kept her chin high, and her eyes were like fire.
The troopers shoved her forward, but she didn't stumble. She walked—like a queen being led to her throne, not a prisoner to her execution.
They brought her to the sealed docking chamber between the Tantive IV and the Black Maw—where the bridge corridor had been breached, the emergency shutters still sealing the gaping maw in the hull.
And there he stood, just waiting for her, Darth Vader. He was still as a statue, cloak unmoving, armor gleaming even in the midst of the broken ship.
The troopers stopped five feet from him respectfully, but Leia didn't.
She stepped forward, until she stood alone, five paces away from a monster.
> "So," she said, voice sharp. "You came all this way to chase a diplomatic envoy?"
Vader didn't move, he merely spoke and said.
> "Do not play games with me, Princess."
> "You're the one playing—dressing like a corpse, sending children to die in white armor."
She met his gaze without flinching. His mask reflected her face back at her—tiny, determined, defiant.
> "Where are the Death Star plans?" he asked.
She smiled.
> "What Death Star?"
Vader took one step forward.
The sound of his boots was like thunder in a tomb.
> "You will tell me. One way or another."
> "Then I hope you're ready to waste your time."
There was a pause, his hand lifted, and then it came hard, a backhanded slap.
"Smack!"
Vader's gauntlet cracked across her cheek, hard enough to drop most men. Leia staggered, just one step, but caught herself, breath sharp.
Blood ran down from the corner of her mouth, as she looked up at him, and laughed.
> "That's the best you've got?"
Vader stood silent.
Stormtroopers shifted uncomfortably behind him. No one had expected her to mock him.
But she wasn't done.
> "You're angry, aren't you? That we slipped through your fingers. That someone might still be out there with your secret. That for all your armor, all your fear… you can't stop what's coming."
Vader's breathing deepened.
His fist clenched.
He stepped closer.
Leia braced herself—but didn't move. She looked up into his mask and let him see the hate in her eyes.
> "Go ahead. Just try and break me, slap me again, harder. Cut me to pieces I don't care, I'm not afraid. Because even if I die the galaxy will still rise up without me, and your Empire will fall. Like all evil things it will come to an end, and the light will triumph!"
For a second, just one, Vader didn't move, until he suddenly raised his hand.
Leia's body seized mid-air, choked by an invisible grip around her throat. Her boots lifted an inch off the floor. Her vision blurred—but she refused to blink. Refused to cry out.
She stared him down until her lips turned blue.
For a moment he just watched her, until he suddenly, as if losing interest he unceremoniously dropped her, and this time nobody caught her. She landed hard, coughing, gasping, but smiling again, even through the pain.
> "Still... not... talking."
Vader loomed over her for a moment longer.
And for the first time, something flickered behind that mask. A trace of confusion. For whatever reason he could see something familiar in her face, in those defiant eyes.
But as fast as it came, it then seemingly passed. Instead he looked to the troopers again and ordered.
> "Take her to away. I want her placed in a holding cell and transported to the Death Star for immediate interrogation."
And with that the Stormtroopers saluted him, and immediately rushed to her, and with force pulled her up to her feet. She didn't resist them and she had no time to even think before they were already dragging her out of the bridge, and away from Vader.
And as they dragged her away, she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.
> "You'll regret this. You asshole."