Death Star II

"That blast came from the Death Star! That thing's operational!"

- Lando Calrissian

The Death Star II was the second Death Star battlestation to be constructed by the Galactic Empire. It was much larger than its predecessor, measuring over 900 kilometers wide, and was built after the destruction of the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin. Emperor Palpatine insisted on the reconstruction of the battlestation, as it was an integral part in his plan to destroy the Rebel Alliance, leaving the galaxy in the hands of the Empire.

The Death Star's superlaser was revealed to be operational before the construction of the station was completed, surprising the Alliance attackers during the Battle of Endor. The Alliance ground forces on the forest moon of Endor managed to deactivate the energy shield surrounding the battlestation, and the Rebel fleet proceeded to destroy the station from within, signifying the beginning of the downfall of the Empire.

Characteristics
"It is protected by an energy shield, which is generated from the nearby forest moon of Endor. The shield must be deactivated if any attack is to be attempted."

- Admiral Ackbar

Like its predecessor, the Death Star II was made of quadanium steel and equally divided into two hemispheres, which were in turn subdivided into 12 zones. The newest incarnation of this dreaded superweapon, however, had a monstrous diameter of over 900 kilometers, demonstrating the intellectual and physical evolution of the Death Star I. If completed, the planetoid would have likely boasted a hyperdrive system similar to the original, comprising 123 (or more, given the larger size) individual generators.

The second iteration of the battlestation was also designed by engineer Bevel Lemelisk, the original Death Star's designer. Lemelisk was executed for the design flaws in the final version of the destroyed Death Star I, but was cloned by Emperor Palpatine in order to redesign the superweapon, eliminating the flaws of the former battlestation. In the newest version, he added thousands of turbolasers while removing any external weaknesses.



The most important revisions to the Death Star design made by Lemelisk were made to take into account and eradicate the technical flaws of the original battlestation which had enabled it to be destroyed during the Battle of Yavin. The first major change made in this redesign was the elimination of the two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port that was used to ignite a chain reaction in the main reactor of the first Death Star, destroying it. This was greatly improved, from a defensive standpoint, in the new revision. Instead of venting gases out of a single port, millions of millimeter-wide exhaust ports were scattered over the surface of the station, each of which propelled a small amount of the excess heat and gases into the vacuum. The new system also took advantage of new highly-advanced protections and safe-guards that would seal the small exhaust ports in the event of any unexpected excess of heat or energy.

The second main advancement in the second Death Star battlestation was the improvement of its superlaser. Still located in the northern half of the battlestation, the much improved superlaser equipped in the second Death Star was much more powerful than its predecessor, and took only three minutes to recharge, in comparison to the 24 hour recharge required for the first Death Star's superlaser. In addition, while the first Death Star only had the capabilities to fire on very large targets, such as planetary bodies, the improved superweapon was upgraded with additional lower-power weapon fire options and targeting systems that were more suited for fine-tuned accuracy, while still maintaining great destructive power, in order to fire the powerful weapon on enemy capital ships. The increased external surface area of the new station also allowed for larger amounts of conventional armaments, such as turbolasers and other defense batteries, to be placed, further increasing the already impressive Death Star's defenses.

Construction
"Many Bothans died to bring us this information."

- Mon Mothma

Unlike the Empire's first Death Star, which, as a result of supply and design problems, took nineteen years to be considered an operational battlestation, this much larger Death Star took far less time, approximately two to four years, to construct. Methods of faster construction had been developed in the years since the original station's conception, added to the fact that Imperial engineers made sure to allocate enough space on the station for the maximum possible amount of self-replicating construction droids.

The second Death Star's building location remained secret from the Alliance, unlike the first station's construction site at Despayre. After the initial stages of construction, the station was put under the command of Darth Vader during its relocation to a new construction site in the Endor system. Endor was selected due to the massive concentration of strategic metals on the planets Dor, Eloggi, and Megiddo in the system, but the actual construction site was in geosynchronous orbit around the forested Sanctuary Moon, protected by a powerful shield generator on the moon's surface.

During the journey, Vader diverted the Death Star from its path to eliminate a large Rebel Alliance presence on the planet D'rinba IV. A Rebel strike team led by Corwin Shelvay was able to prevent the planet's destruction, but was unable to warn the Fleet of the superlaser's operational status in time.

At the new location of the battlestation, in the Moddell Sector, construction resumed soon after the superweapon's arrival. Recommissioned from his former position of Moff of the Quanta Sector, Moff Jerjerrod was placed in charge of supervising the final stages of the station's construction.

Resources that could not be produced locally were secretly ferried to the distant world from all over the galaxy along the Sanctuary Pipeline, with some of the materials shipped to the area on three hundred ships from Prince Xizor's civilian company Xizor Transport Systems. It is unclear what percentage of construction material the XTS haulers carried, or whether the outsourcing was genuinely necessary. Emperor Palpatine not only anticipated Xizor's decision to pass on the location of the Death Star II to the Rebel Alliance, but even leaked his personal schedule so the Rebels would know when he would personally be aboard. This may have been the sole reason for his involvement of the Falleen in the first place.

IG-88A, a droid bounty hunter, had uploaded his consciousness into a computer core that was in transit to the location of the second Death Star. When the computer core was installed into the battlestation, the entire Death Star effectively became IG-88A's droid body. He took control of the computer systems on board the station, and planned to use the superweapon to further his Droid Revolution. Although many incidents of computer commands being executed autonomously occurred, they were simply documented as technical faults and glitches. Emperor Palpatine was the only one to recognize any strange happenings, as IG-88A played a joke on the Emperor by shutting doors in front of him.

Acquiring the Death Star II plans
"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design."

- Emperor Palpatine

The first bits of information linked to the construction of the second Death Star came by way of Imperial defector Commander Zaletta, hoping to prove his integrity to the Alliance. High on the Imperial command structure, Zaletta had a vast knowledge of secret Imperial projects. He informed the Alliance of a secret Imperial research facility in the Kuat system testing a new experimental reactor system, which was likely connected to the Death Star. Next, he informed the Alliance that a massive Imperial convoy was to pass through the Eidoloni system. It was discovered that the convoy, which consisted of XTS cargo freighters and was protected by a very large escort including the Victory II-class Star Destroyers Protector and Vanguard, was carrying construction material. The convoy was, unbeknownst to the Alliance at the time, headed for the Death Star II construction site over the forest moon of Endor.



The actual plans concerning the existence of the Death Star and its location first came into Rebel hands via the devious scheming of Prince Xizor, under authorization of Emperor Palpatine. It is uncertain though, if the Emperor did not first concoct a similar plot, and only allowed Xizor to believe it was his own idea in order to use the criminal leader as a pawn. Xizor leaked information of a massive construction project being undertaken by the Empire to the Bothan Spynet through a female Black Sun contact, which likely was his own personal aide, Guri. The Bothans first attempted to learn of the details of this project by bribing a high-ranking Imperial officer into allowing them to infiltrate a slicer droid into the Coruscant computer network to locate and copy the plans, though this plan failed. They did, however, learn that that project details were being held in closely guarded special computers, of which one of these was being shipped secretly from Coruscant to Bothawui disguised as a simple freighter carrying fertilizer. Koth Melan, a leader of the Bothan Spynet, chose to relay this knowledge to the Alliance for free, rather than sell the information as Bothans were known to do, out of disgust for the execution of his father by the Empire. Luke Skywalker and Dash Rendar, along with a group of Bothans with Alliance sympathies, planned to intercept the Imperial freighter Suprosa at Bothawui and steal the secret computer.

Skywalker, in his personal X-wing, and Rendar, in his YT-2400 light freighter Outrider, were joined by a dozen BTL-S3 Y-wing starfighters piloted by the squad of Bothans and Alliance pilot Ace Azzameen. They successfully intercepted the Suprosa as it exited hyperspace, but quickly learned that the seemingly defenseless freighter was in fact heavily armed and shielded, and instructed not to surrender its cargo without a fight. The freighter managed to launch a single Diamond Boron Missile, which destroyed four of the Y-wings. Before Skywalker and Azzameen managed to subdue the freighter, six Y-wings were destroyed in total, including all twelve Bothan pilots on board. Rendar then boarded the Suprosa with a group of Bothans led by Melan to capture the computer. The resistance of the Suprosa was to ensure that the Alliance did not believe they had acquired the information too easily, thus suspecting it to be compromised. In order to prevent losing the supercomputer to a self-destruction device, Melan took it to the Bothan colony world of Kothlis to be decrypted by a special team. Inside a safehouse on Kothlis, Bothan technicians working on the computer had just tapped into its data when a group of bounty hunters blasted into the facility looking for Skywalker, unaware of the computer's existence. A single Bothan managed to escape the safehouse and the planet with the computer along with Borsk Fey'lya aboard his personal shuttle, Fey'lya's Pride, just as Darth Vader and his personal flagship Executor arrived in system along with the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer Avenger.

Vader was sent to Kothlis by the Emperor both to collect Skywalker, who was being held prisoner on the planet by the group of bounty hunters, and also to further make it appear as if the Empire was genuinely concerned with the loss of the stolen computer. The shuttle transferred the lone Bothan and the computer to the CR90 corvette Razor, which was stationed near Kothlis II, a Rebel outpost platform in orbit over the planet. The two Star Destroyers destroyed the Kothlis II facility, but were unable to prevent the Razor and the Death Star plans from escaping into hyperspace. However, the Avenger soon caught up with and captured the Razor a short time later, although the Bothan fled desperately with the supercomputer aboard an escape pod. The pod was picked up by the civilian Dreadnaught cruiser Mercury, from which it was transferred to the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser Independence, where the data was finally secured and decrypted, and the existence of the Death Star realized.



In order to confirm the newly acquired information on the second Death Star, a group of Bothans covertly infiltrated the Death Star II construction site in the Endor system aboard three freighters disguised as cargo haulers. There, they determined that construction was indeed taking place over the Forest Moon of Endor, that the battlestation was being protected by an energy shield projecting from the Sanctuary Moon, and that the Death Star's main superlaser was not yet operational, though this final piece of information would turn out to be false. As these Bothans were returning to rendezvous with the Alliance fleet with their reconnaissance data, they were stopped by the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer Accuser and the Immobilizer 418 cruiser Grappler as part of an Imperial Customs patrol searching for the spies. A flight of X-wings and A-wings attached to the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser Liberty arrived and managed to drive off the Interdictor cruiser, allowing one of the Bothan freighters to escape to the Alliance fleet. The remaining two ships were destroyed by the Accuser and all Bothans aboard were killed. Still, the deaths of many Bothans enabled the Alliance to coordinate the attack that destroyed the second Death Star.

Battle of Endor
Soon after learning of the secret location of the unfinished second Death Star, the Alliance formed battle plans for their assault on the station above the forest moon of Endor. There, the orbiting Death Star was protected from any external attacks by a surrounding energy shield projected from the moon's surface. It would have to be disabled before any forces could engage the battlestation itself.



With that in mind, the Alliance split their forces into two teams, each with separate goals. A small ground squad, consisting of General Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, the droids C-3PO and R2-D2, and numerous other Rebel commandos, was dispatched down to the surface of the forest moon of Endor, with the goal of disabling the energy shield which made the Death Star all but invulnerable. The Alliance fleet would then arrive to destroy the main reactor of the Death Star from the inside.

Eventually, the ground team succeeded in destroying the shield projector, with the help of the indigenous Ewoks, allowing General Lando Calrissian and numerous starfighters of the fleet to fly into the unfinished superstructure of the battlestation, in an effort to destroy the station's hypermatter reactor core. The pilots flew through a very tight passage to the center of the massive station, and detonated the core with well placed concussion missiles and proton torpedoes. The explosion created a reaction which destroyed the space station completely.

The explosion of the station's hypermatter core created a minor wormhole at its collapse. Some of the station's wreckage would pass through said wormhole, including Darth Vader's right glove. While some debris ended up on Mon Calamari, it is believed that more was dispersed throughout the galaxy. The wreckage that did not enter the wormhole presumably remained in Endor's orbit or fell to the moon's surface.

Behind the scenes
There are discrepancies regarding the size of the Death Star II, which has generated some controversy. The West End Games RPG initially claimed that the second Death Star had a diameter of 160 kilometers. The majority of Expanded Universe material since then has repeated this number, although the Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy fact book, via detailed scaling of the station in the film and statements by ILM visual effects designer Richard Edlund, show that the second Death Star was actually over 900 kilometers in diameter. The Official Site's Databank updated its article in 2008 to reflect the higher number. Star Wars Insider 105 also included this size. The specifications above may hold some discrepancy as well; these figures are for the "incorrect" undersized version. They would be closer to what would be carried by the first Death Star. The proper figures for the second Death Star may be several orders of magnitude higher.

If the players do not win the Interactive Video Board Game, Darth Vader destroys D'rinba IV. However, since the in-game objective is to prevent him from doing so, the outcome due to failure results in an apocryphal version of events as regards canon.

The Death Star II is also used as the logo of Wookieepedia.

Non-canon appearances

 * The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition
 * Return of the Ewok
 * Star Wars: Demolition
 * Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi
 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
 * LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
 * The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition
 * Star Tours
 * A Wookiee Scorned