Struggling? Well, its always a struggle to write the "connecting" chapters, where I know where I have to go from here, make sure I don't forget anything, and don't have any real action set pieces to move things along.
But yeah, it is hard writing dialogue for Vader sometimes, because he doesn't have a lot of it in the original trilogy, if you think about it. And when he does speak, its usually in cool quotable one-liners. Basically, I don't think Vader thinks he's evil, so its sometimes tough to pass off noble sounding stuff for him. It passed my wife's laugh test, so I released it.
You are correct, I had a few paragraphs describing his landing and whatnot, but it got cut to make things snapier. Already too much talking in this chapter. So he's on some sort of shuttle pad, and he just set down on it. Yeah.
And Guri will be figuring (heh) heavily into the cast of characters and the plot of things to come. I like her because she's a blank slate for us. We know she likes challenges, she's bad ass, and she's beautiful, but that's about it. I also like her potential with interaction with the rest of the cast.
Glad you liked it. Nine will be out soon, and we'll get the first taste o' trek.