Star Wars 45: Death Probe

Marvel Star Wars 45: Death Probe is the forty-fifth issue in the Marvel Star Wars series of comics.

Plot
Imperial officer, Admiral Damon Krell sends a modified Viper Probe Droid on a direct course for a damaged blockade runner. The Probe smashes through the ship's hull and begins slaughtering the entire crew. It attaches itself to the main power grid of the ship and takes command of all of the vessel's automated functions.

Luke Skywalker's X-wing fighter comes upon the runner, but the larger ship's weapons systems blows his ship to peaces. Luke and R2-D2 jettison from the X-Wing and space-walk to the blockade runner. Using his lightsaber, he cuts himself a path inside through a service conduit. Luke encounters the Probe Droid but realizes that he cannot tamper with it, less he accidentally initializes a self-destruct sequence. Worse, he determines that the Probe Droid intends on piloting the blockade runner into the Rebel fleet and detonating the ship.

But the Probe Droid registers that the intruder aboard the ship is Luke Skywalker. A red flag in its programming activates, with prior orders to capture and bring Skywalker back to Darth Vader, alive. This order supercedes all others and the Probe Droid redirects its course. The Rebel fleet is now alerted to the danger.

Luke succeeds in having R2 hack into a section of the ship’s controls – enough to activate one escape pod. Luke sends a message to the fleet before R2 and he get into the escape pod.

The Probe Droid detours the blockade runner through hyperspace back to Admiral Krell’s ship. But the reactor core is still primed to go into meltdown. The runner collides with the Imperial Star Destroyer destroying both in the process.

Characters

 * Damon Krell


 * Luke Skywalker


 * Viper Probe Droid


 * R2-D2

Locations
None

Ships

 * Blockade Runner


 * Star Destroyer


 * T-65 X-wing starfighter