A loyal Stormtrooper, thwarted by the very bureaucracy which he serves, struggles to track down a Rebel saboteur on board the Death Star in the days and hours before the fateful Rebel attack. Darth Vader, the sole survivor of the explosion of the Death Star, crash lands on a primitive world where savagery is the key to survival....

Fresh from the killing fields of Jabiim, where the Empire has virtually wiped out the populace of that world, Imperial Lieutenant Janek Sunber is sent to the quiet prison base on Kalist VI....