The laughter continued Luke said He can’t be alive Father help me Around Vader the fire began to burn inward moving moving closer toward his body Behind his helmet Vader tried to blot out the horrid laughter Why won’t you ever die But the laughter did not stop Vader attempted to reach for his own lightsaber but his arm suddenly felt like it was made of solid stone The flames were now licking at his cloak and boots The Emperor laughed louder Luke began to scream Vader squeezed his eyes shut He could smell fused circuits and roasting flesh WHY WON’T YOU EVER And then Vader awoke Darth Vader’s eyes snapped open Seated within his pressurized meditation chamber aboard his personal Super Star Destroyer the Executor his first waking thought was Jedi don’t have nightmares This thought surprised him almost as much as the intensity of the imagery of Bast Castle It had been over two decades since he had broken from the Jedi order to become a Sith Lord and in all those years he had not thought about whether Jedi had nightmares or dreams for that matter Not since the end of the Clone Wars Perhaps it was a premonition Vader thought as a vein pulsed against the left temple of his bare horribly scarred head He quickly rejected this notion He knew
a premonition when he had one knew that it was more than just a trick of the imagination mixing with subconscious subconscious desires The vision of his fortress had been something else Perhaps a warning but from whom Vader considered considered the possibility that the vision had been planted in his mind by a skilled telepath The idea that he might have been violated made him angry and his anger opened him to the dark side of the Force Closing his eyes he reached out with the Force and searched for signs of psychic energy trails that might lead to a telepathic invader He found nothing no one But the Emperor would not leave a trail Vader grimaced A year had passed since his last encounter with Luke Skywalker on Cloud City where he had revealed his identity to Luke and told him it was his destiny to destroy the Emperor Vader suspected that the Emperor knew of this treachery for the Emperor knew everything eventually But even if the Emperor were aware of all that had transpired Vader was certain he would not feel threatened The Emperor was simply too powerful And yet somehow Vader sensed that the Emperor had nothing to do with his strange vision of Bast Castle Could it have been just a dream Vader wasn’t sure After so many years without dreaming he had forgotten what dreams were like Above his pale head a retractable robotic arm held
his helmet close against the spherical chamber’s ceiling Dedicated servos lowered the helmet over his head and locked it onto his collar’s hermetic seal As his damaged lungs exhaled through his armored suit’s life-support system a deep hiss was emitted from his triangular respiratory vent The upper half of the meditation chamber lifted exposing Vader like a black pistil at the center of a white mechanical flower His seat rotated allowing him to face a wide viewscreen which flicked on to display the image of Admiral Piett on the Executor’s bridge Vader said Status report The Executor is prepared to leave Coruscant’s orbit Piett replied standing at attention in his gray uniform uniform Although his voice was alert his eyes appeared tired from staring at sensor screens and navigational monitors I await your command Set course for the Endor system Vader said As you wish my lord Piett’s image vanished from the viewscreen It was definitely not a dream Vader convinced himself himself without difficulty Dreams are for pathetic life-forms He stared at his own reflection on the surface of the viewscreen I am the nightmare With an imperceptible gesture he reset the viewscreen viewscreen to display the starfield that lay directly before the Executor’s bow As he gazed at the distant stars on
the screen a deeply buried memory pushed its way into his consciousness It was the memory of a wish a wish to visit every star in the galaxy But that wish and the dreams that went with it had belonged to someone else a child who lived a long time ago and was no more Those were the dreams of a boy named Anakin Skywalker
