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A major came and found Lord Vader bent on one knee in the hallway, and quietly observed that he had never seen the monstrous dark warrior in anything resembling such a contemplative pose before. Vader straightened as he spotted the officer, and his deep, artificial tone of command snapped the Imperial back to attention.
"Report?"
"We have engaged the Rebel frigate with a detatchment of TIE Fighters, m'Lord," the major said crisply, hoping to end the conversation as quickly as possible. "Grand Moff Tarkin asks that you join him to begin discussions concering the attack on the Rebels' base."
Vader merely nodded, and the major felt a bit relieved. Giving Darth Vader an order, as indirect as it had been, was never something any officer wanted to do. The Dark Lord turned to leave, then spun back on his heel.
"Major."
The officer tensed, fearing the worst, his mind calling up horror stories from other crew members who claimed to have seen Vader kill a man without even touching him.
"Yes, m'Lord?"
"Have Intelligence send a crew to secure these items. Then send a coded all-station alert to check every sector for intruders. Any reports are to be made directly to my private comm frequency."
"Yes, m'Lord, at once!"
The major strode away, thankful to have survived the encounter. He keyed in both orders to his superior officer, advising the Intelligence team that there was both a brown cloak and a lightsaber to be recovered from the hangar aft hallway. A more discrete transmission then filtered across every comm unit on the Death Star, demanding instant searches for intruders. Under the comm signature of Darth Vader, the search procedures began immediately.
Barely 10 minutes after the major had issued the order, three Intelligence officers garbed in dark gray walked briskly down the hallway leading to the hangar. They were all anxious to get back to their posts and begin plotting a plan of attack against the Rebel base, which even now the mighty engines that powered the Death Star were firing up to advance on, and the prospect of collecting a dead man's personal effects, even if they might truly contain a rarely-seen lightsaber, simply did not compare.
As the colonel in charge calmly collected, folded and secured the brown, dusty robe, all three men received a call-back from their commanding officer to report at once, the Rebels' hidden base had been confirmed by their homing beacon. In their haste to get back, none of the three men ever noticed that the fallen Jedi's lightsaber was nowhere in sight.
