Vader looked on in surprise. He seldom saw his Master so publicly demonstrate his power. And he understood what it meant, of course. There must be no survivors who could bear witness. Only the Royal Guards could be allowed to live—only they could be trusted never to reveal what they’d seen, or even to talk about it among themselves.
	The freighters completed their turn and accelerated back toward the clearing, their engines screaming in the otherwise quiet air. The Royal Guards shifted position to stand before the Emperor, partially shielding him with their bodies, and fired as rapidly as they could at the oncoming ships. They hit the ships again and again, but the tiny bolts did no damage.
	Vader sank more deeply into the Force. Beside him, he felt his Master’s power gather. He reveled in the moment, in the combined pool of their collective, unadulterated might.
	The freighters opened fire, writing thick lines of plasma onto the air. The shots churned the ground, destroyed trees, heated the air of the clearing; one slammed into the chest of a Royal Guard and vaporized all of him save for his helmet.
	Lost in the Force, Vader anticipated the shots that would have hit him, saw the appropriate angles of impact and deflection, and used the rapid spinning of his lightsaber to turn first one, then a second, and then a third shot not into the tree line but back at the ships, the heat and energy of the blaster shots driving him backward, warming the hilt of his weapon, a heat he could feel even through his glove. His Master did the same with his lightsaber, the graceful arcs of its red line weaving a protective shield around him and turning the second ship’s shots back at it. Both ships tried to turn out of the way of the redirected shots, one turning hard left, the other hard right, but they only exposed their underbellies and engines to the deflected bolts.