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"Rebel scum!"
The Force user had been strong, but he had bested them. Chasing down their companions was necessary, but satisfying.
The two women turned, firing a flamethrower.
He laughed, and simply walked through the flames.
"Have you not heard? I am Darth Vader."
They bolted once more, fleeing through the star destroyer's aft kitchens.
His power in the Force was spent, at the moment. No matter. Rebels could not be allowed to jeopardize the Empire, no matter that it was two cowards scampering away like mimmoths.
He chucked one of their blasters into their back with raw strength, the discarded weapon shattering into an empty cartridge and useless parts as it hit them in the back. She fell, her comrade desperately struggling to lift her back up and resume running.
They ran into a locker room, nearing the docking bay and escape pods.
He hefted two meat-chopping knives from a nearby cook, and stalked after the Rebellion's pitiful cowards.
The locker room was a tangled maze, and he saw their fleeing backs once more. He threw again, main cybernetic strength enough to embed both knives in both women, one in the shoulder, and the other into a calf. The meat chopper in the woman's calf was swiftly coated with blood as he hit something vital.
He drew his blade, the glittering red of his lightsaber pulsing through faint steam from the showers.
"Now, you die, fruitless Rebels." he said as he drew even with their stalled bodies.
And he stopped. The blood flowed, and their lives were already diminishing in front of him in his Force-aided sight. What a pathetic chase. He'd hounded the true Rebels, Leia, Luke, and that damnable Solo for years at this point. They knew how to run, how to keep a chase going until he and his forces were dog-tired, and he could barely see from the red rage choking his vision. He would make them see, that the Empire was the only path-
But it would wait. There was the now to deal with.
His comm unit had been destroyed in the fight with the Rebellion's talented Force user. Trained by his prodigal children, doubtless, that one.
He turned, and ripped a headset from a nearby communications officer, the man sputtering but barely daring to breathe as he was noticed by Vader.
"Voice override. This is Darth Vader. Two medi-pods to aft crew lockers, a squad of troopers to escort the Rebel prisoners to the medical wing, and then the brig. Do it, now."
He dropped the headset next to the silent comms officer, and strode away, cape ominously veiling the scene in darkness-
Void. Starry space. Silent explosion. The comms officer's face stretched in terror as the ship, a full star destroyer, simply came undone around them all. The two Rebel women, both blonde, (sisters, perhaps? he idly wondered), blood freezing as vacuum stripped away at them.
His emergency suit protocols activated late, sealing him away from the freezing void, but not before he'd lost several breaths, chilling him inside, his vision clouding over. He reached desperately for anything solid to grapple to, a piece of the ship, a way back inside a section that he hoped wouldn't be rent asunder in the explosions echoing through the ship.
Nothing. Nothing within reach- he snagged something! A generator gear. Barely as big as his chest. Not enough. He bolted his belt's spool of grappling wire to it, and fired the grapple in the direction he was drifting away from, hope unspooling to a hundred meters away. His erstwhile anchor drifted, not catching to any piece of the wreckage.
He gritted his teeth, and pushed with the Force, angling his anchor towards the nearest fragment of star destroyer. Not enough thrust. He clenched his teeth harder, and pushed once again- there! He spun the anchor once, twice, about the pipe that dangled from a fractured wall from the kitchens. He'd strode though there just minutes earlier, but it felt like hours of effort.
He reeled himself in, like a fish on Naboo, triumphantly- a kitchen knife floated by, almost lazily slicing through the cable as if it were his own lightsaber and not an implement of simple steel.
He drifted.
He faded.
The first thing that felt wrong was the air on his skin. The second wrong thing was the light in his eyes. The third wrong thing was the voice in his ears.
"He's my father. We'll take care of him."
A conveyor belt. Luke, old, an old man now, standing partway down the odd loops and valleys. Leia, an old woman, standing above, directing Luke where to go. A baby boy crawled between them, innocently, lost along the conveyor's looping pathways.
He himself tried to reach Luke, hands outreached... and that was another wrong thing. Bare skin on his arms. Healthy skin, sun-drenched, like Tattooine skin. He tripped on the conveyor and was pulled along, past Luke.
He was drawn into the maw of a great spaceship, and swallowed by it.
A bed. He was in starkly white quarters.
"You must come to see The Emperor."
Of course. That was his duty. He sat in the proffered wheelchair, and an orderly, too tall to be a human, along with another one, conveyed him. He gestured, pale arms outstretched, grandiosely directing his footmen, that led this carriage. "You know I am Darth Vader?"
"Right, boss, right. Darth Vader, in the flesh."
Flesh... something was wrong.
That was unimportant though. He had to see The Emperor.
"The path is uncertain from here, lads." He gestured to the great pathway that led to The Emperor, laden with psychic traps and watchful guard cyborgs.
"Of course, boss. Lead the way." His ever obedient footmen dutifully followed as he led them through the vicious psychic assaults of the wards The Emperor placed in his path.
He drew his lightsaber and batted away the guard dogs, vicious hounds, robotic beasts. Almost to The Emperor.
"Hello there, Vader."
"Hail to the Emperor! Bask in his glory!" He commanded his vassals.
They dutifully bowed, and retraced their steps, fading away.
"Father, today I'd like to see if you can recognize someone new..."
The Emperor, appearing as an old man from a vision, why? What old man? Why mispronounce "Vader" as "Father"?
Something was...
"Luke?"
"Yes?"
"How long have you been trying to heal me?"
"A very long time, Father."
"Let us try together, then."
"I'd like that, Father."