Saga - Legends Reclamation (AU, Rebellion era, L/M, ensemble cast)

Chapter Five


Over the next few days, Luke managed to ask a few of the other pilots in his squadron what they’d heard about their upcoming tour of duty. He may not have had Mara’s espionage training, but it was an easy thing to work into the casual, bored conversations that led up to a mission for which no parameters had yet been given. It did him little good, though; no one else had heard anything either.

Then the activation call came, two days ahead of schedule.

“You know they’re just doing this to see if we can still scramble for battle after sitting around for months in a cushy assignment like this,” Hobbie said, shoving his clothes into a carryall.

“We probably should have seen it coming,” Luke agreed, packing his own things as quickly as he could. “Maybe we are getting soft.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mazen said, raising a contemptuous eyebrow as he pulled his fully packed bag from beneath his bunk and swung it onto his shoulder. “Some of us do actually anticipate obvious things. I’ll see you at the carrier—hope you get there before we lift.”

Luke and Hobbie both paused to glare after him as he left the barracks at almost a lazy pace. “Piloting talent is completely wasted on someone like him,” Luke said, resuming his own packing.

Hobbie shook his head. “There’s always one in every squadron. I don’t mind flying with him, but it’s all I can do not to vape him myself when we’re grounded.”

Across the large room, Tycho closed his own bag, then headed toward them, stopping alongside Luke. “Hey, have you heard any details about this yet?”

“No,” Luke responded, putting the last item into his carryall and closing it. “You?”

“Nothing solid,” Tycho said. “But this morning I overheard the quartermaster saying the first leg of our tour would be on the Executor.”

Luke straightened, a not entirely unexpected chill going down his spine. Mara had warned him that Vader was involved in this. Still… “Vader’s flagship. That’s…not exactly reassuring.”

“First leg?” Hobbie asked, frowning. “We’re not staying on the same destroyer for the whole tour? Why would we switch ships?”

Tycho shrugged, calm as always, but his eyes were worried. “I don’t know. Maybe it was only gossip. And even if it’s true, coming to Vader’s attention is supposedly a quick path to promotion.”

“Or retirement via strangulation,” Luke pointed out. “It’s not like he has a reputation for objectively assessing someone’s overall performance before deciding to get rid of them, you know. One mistake in his presence and it’s more than your career that ends.”

Tycho lifted a hand helplessly. “It’s not like we have a choice where they assign us.”

“Guess we better not make any mistakes,” Hobbie said, lifting his bag and starting for the door. “Starting with actually being at the carrier on time. Come on, let’s go.”

---

Alderaan shone like a jewel in the blackness of space, and Leia smiled as the Tantive IV made its approach. She would never get tired of that view.

Clearance for their shuttle to the surface was granted swiftly, and her mother was waiting for them at the landing platform. “My darling,” Breha said, holding her arms out.

Leia smiled and stepped into the embrace. “Hi, Mom.”

Winter curtsied. “Your Majesty.”

Breha smiled and held an arm out to her as well, and Winter joined the hug. Breha tightened her arms around them both, then stepped back. “Your father is waiting in the library. He’s anxious to see you both.”

Her eyes held a look Leia recognized. Fortunately by now she knew well how to maintain a calm front no matter what she was feeling, and her composure never faltered. “I look forward to seeing him as well,” she answered, mind racing ahead to consider all the possibilities as they entered the palace.

---

Nothing she’d imagined during the walk to the royal library had even come close.

“You can see the need to inform the Alliance,” Bail said, as Leia and Winter goggled over the datapad he’d given them. “And the need for absolute secrecy.”

“How could they ever have hidden this?” Leia asked.

“Palpatine has a great many resources at his command,” Breha said grimly. “Obviously, many more even than we had assumed.”

Winter looked up at Bail. “Do we know its weapons capabilities?”

“We do not,” Bail replied. “Though we’re fairly certain that this dish in the northern hemisphere is the emitter for a superlaser.”

Leia felt a shiver of dread run through her. “A superlaser of that size would put a Super Star Destroyer’s turbolasers to shame. A weapon like that—” She looked at her parents and saw her dread reflected in their eyes. “It could tip the balance irrevocably in the Empire’s favor. What can we possibly do against this?”

Bail and Breha exchanged a glance. “That will certainly be the next line of discussion for Alliance leadership,” Breha said. “Though what the answer is, I don’t know.”

“But first,” Bail added, “the Alliance must be made aware that such a threat exists. It would be too obvious for your mother or I to leave Alderaan right now. Leia, Winter, we must leave this in your capable hands.”

“Mon Mothma is at the base now, and should be for another week,” Breha added. “Plenty of time for you to get this information to her before she has to return to her Senate duties.”

“Of course,” Leia replied, and despite everything, she felt a thrill at being entrusted with a mission of such magnitude.

“One more thing,” Bail said. “In the face of such a threat, it may well be time to call in every ally we can. I want you to ask Mon if she agrees that we should contact General Kenobi.”

Leia inhaled sharply. “The Jedi Master you knew in the Clone Wars? He’s still alive?”

Breha glanced at Bail, then back at Leia. “This is as confidential as the plans for this station, Leia. This information must remain secret until and unless we decide to contact him. You know of Palpatine’s purge of the Jedi. General Kenobi only narrowly escaped it, and has been in hiding ever since. But if the Emperor has such a weapon as this, we may well need both his military skill and the guidance of the Force. If Mon agrees with your father and I that the time has come to recall him, we wish you and Winter to go to him with that message.”

Leia looked at Winter, who looked back at her, wide-eyed. They had grown up with stories of Bail’s experiences in the Clone Wars, and General Kenobi had featured in many of those stories. To suddenly have the prospect of meeting him, having him join the fight against the Empire…

“It would be our great honor to do so,” Winter said solemnly.

“Where will we find him?” Leia asked.

Her parents exchanged another look, this one edged with something she couldn’t identify.“He’s on Tatooine, near the settlement of Anchorhead. I’ll give you his coordinates,” Bail said. “But aside from you two, only Mon herself is to be entrusted with this, and only if she agrees that we should contact him.”

“We understand,” Leia said. “If she does agree, should we go to contact General Kenobi immediately?”

Bail sighed. “Possibly. I hate to have you girls miss the equinox festivities, but time may well be of the essence here. If she agrees, go ahead to Tatooine; if she has any reservations, come back here and let your mother and me know.”

Leia reached out to put her hand on his. “We will, Dad. There will be many more equinoxes if we miss this one. We’re happy to be of service to the Alliance.”

Breha stood and put an arm around Leia’s shoulders, squeezing her tightly. “You’re a good girl, Leia, and we’re very proud of you. You too, Winter. Tonight we’ll finish your preparations, so you can leave tomorrow. If all goes well, maybe you’ll be back in time for the festivities after all.”

Leia smiled and agreed, but her mind was already racing ahead toward her new mission. As terrifying as the new Imperial station was, her excitement at being chosen for such an important task and the thought of meeting the legendary General Kenobi was even greater. This would be a turning point for the Alliance somehow, she could feel it. And she would be right in the middle of it.

She could hardly wait.

---

The quartermaster’s gossip turned out to be right: it was indeed the Executor in orbit, and whose flight deck they were directed to. But even onboard, that was still all they knew. They saw their TIEs safely docked, surrendered them to the mechanics, were directed to their onboard barracks, settled in, and still they knew nothing of their actual mission goals. Luke and Tycho had a few quiet, speculative conversations those first few days, but remained in the dark. This wasn’t entirely unusual. Luke well knew that the upper ranks had the full data and intelligence and orders for any given mission, while the lower ranks were told only enough to do their assigned tasks. TIE pilots might be an elite, but none of them were command personnel, and there was no particular reason for them to be told exactly what was going on.

On the other hand, he’d never before had an assignment where he’d gone so long knowing nothing at all, either. And whatever the assignment was, it was extremely high level, enough so that even Mara, with a rank far beyond anyone else he’d ever met, didn’t know what it was, and was nervous about it. And even he knew that anything assigned directly to Grand Moff Tarkin had to be something big, let alone if Vader was also assigned to it.

Any one of those aspects would have been enough to unsettle him. All of them together, with the continued silence from command, was enough to leave him more keyed up than an eopie in a sandstorm.

It was on the fourth day that they were told to report to the flight deck. They assembled as ordered, along with the other two Coruscanti squadrons that had been rotated onto this tour of duty. But instead of heading to their ships as Luke had expected, they were directed to stand at attention, plainly awaiting an inspection of some sort. He exchanged a sideways glance with Tycho, who stood alongside him, only to see Tycho’s eyes flick away from him and grow wide. Luke followed his gaze, and felt his breath catch in his throat.

Standing in the now-open doorway of the flight deck stood Darth Vader himself.

The whole cadre of pilots snapped to even more rigid attention. Luke forced himself to breathe, thought about calm and shielding and Imperial discipline. The only odd thing here was that it had taken Vader this long to inspect troops temporarily assigned to his flagship; it had nothing to do with him at all. Calm, breathe.

Vader stalked before their assembled ranks, his cape swirling behind him, then came to a stop, fists propped on his hips, giving an excellent impression of glaring at them all despite the mask.

“You have been chosen for this mission,” he rumbled, “not only as a routine tour of duty away from being stationed on Coruscant, but because of your exemplary records of service. This mission is of the utmost importance for the Empire, and nothing but the best efforts in service to it will be accepted. Both exceptional and deficient performances will be noted.” He paused, the silence weighty, then continued: “We will now be leaving the Executor. I will lead; you will follow. You will be given further briefings as needed after we arrive at our destination.”

With that, he stalked off toward the front of the docking bay.

The deck officer stepped forward.“To your ships!”

Luke and Tycho exchanged another glance, then along with everyone else, dashed for their own fighters. In only a few minutes, Vader’s own TIE Interceptor lifted off from the bay, and Luke was grateful his own ship wasn’t in the row immediately behind Vader. The pilots of those ships would have had to scramble at top speed to be ready for his quick takeoff, and who wanted to follow Vader at a run?

They had managed it, though, and row by row, the squadrons left the bay and headed into space. He wondered what the destination Vader had mentioned was. TIEs didn’t have hyperdrive, so it couldn’t be far. They wheeled gracefully around the bulk of the Executor—

—and found themselves staring at a monstrosity.

“What in all the hells is that?” It was barely more than a stunned whisper, coming from Tycho on his private frequency.

It took a moment for Luke to find his own voice as he stared at the moon-sized mechanical sphere. His ship’s sensors read it as nearly 160 klicks in diameter—how could that be right? How could something like this even exist? This would explain the insane budget Mara mentioned, all right. “It’s a space station, it has to be. Where are we, do we even know? Is this anywhere near a populated system?”

“I don’t know. They have to tell us that much at some point, don’t they?”

“I think this whole mission has proved they don’t have to tell us anything,” Luke said grimly.

Tycho fell silent, and the sphere grew ever larger in their viewports as they followed Vader towards it. A docking bay door opened ahead of them, so tiny as to almost be unnoticeable on the massive surface. One by one, the TIEs slipped through the magcon field and landed in the bay, settling in place with military precision. Luke landed his fighter in turn, more careful than usual despite his distraction, well aware that as the first pilot in, Vader was in position to observe all the rest of them. He waited until all the fighters were docked, then disembarked from his TIE as the deck officer called for parade formation. He assembled with the rest, again flicking a glance at Tycho, who looked back at him uneasily.

Vader stood again at the head of the group, and even with his rudimentary Force abilities, Luke could feel the darkness emanating from him, oppressive and threatening, like an approaching sandstorm on the horizon, and he felt a shiver of fear. No wonder Mara avoided him. No wonder she had warned him to do the same. He checked his mental shields again and stood quietly, pretending unconcern.

“You are now onboard the Empire’s new mobile battle station, the Death Star,” Vader told them. Luke felt Tycho glance at him again at that, and didn’t dare split his attention to return the look. “This will be the Death Star’s first mission, an event that will live long in the Empire’s memory. Squadron leaders will report to their quartermasters in the adjacent ready room for barracks assignments. May you serve the Emperor with distinction on this tour.”

With that, he turned and left, his cape swirling dramatically behind him. Luke let out a long, slow breath, and turned slightly toward Tycho, raising his eyebrows.

This would be an interesting tour of duty indeed.

 

Excellent descriptions of the speculation about the mission details and the lead up to encountering the Death Star. I liked very much the crucial missions Leia and Winter are on, how it dovetails with "A New Hope" events but also is quite different in a vital aspect, specifically Luke's whereabouts.

 

A small thing - but of course the location would be referred to as a northern hemisphere, it's the size of a moon, hemisphere is the only appropriate descriptor

Oh no the angsty dramatic irony is here in full force

Okay I just started the X-Wing novels so I officially know who Tycho is now. Aaaah he's going to be aboard the Death Star?? My poor baby TIE pilot I just grew attached to yesterday

Also I love the phrase "retirement via strangulation" to refer to how Vader Vaders, especially as a phrase coming from his new underling / unbeknownst son because when else would Luke have the inclination to joke about his dad's mass murder sprees?

Eee my favorites are meeting each other sorta

*hesitant pat on terrifying skull helm*

I find Vader's dialogue very difficult to imitate, and this seems like a small thing amidst all these other about to collide story elements but this is pitch perfect Vader voice

THAT'S MY BOY

 

Nope. You're done trying to leave feedback here that's even slightly critical. Do not edit out a mod's edits again.

 

It's fiction. Unofficial fan fiction at that. And marked "alternate universe." I get to rearrange and make up whatever details I want.

 

It's an AU, dude, just go with it. This isn't Lit.

 

Which is part of its deep fascinating appeal

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

Thank you! Definitely a few different factors at play here!

@vader_incarnate

Right? I did a fair amount of research on the Death Star for this fic (most of which I probably won't even wind up using ), and it did really bring home just how big this sucker is. It would indeed be an incredible engineering feat to build and attach a hyperdrive to.

That's never a good sign

Tycho is so great, Elli. Have you gotten to where he was in canon when Alderaan was destroyed?

It was interesting to think about how lower level Navy personnel must have gossiped about Vader and what it meant to be assigned under him, because you know there was gossip. But yeah, however gallows humor that gossip was, the "humor" aspect had to diminish quite a bit once Luke realized the relationship

LOL, he is just a lil bit terrifying, isn't he?

Aw, thanks When I first started writing this, I was a little bit worried about catching the voices of characters I hadn't written much, so it's really nice to hear I got it right with Vader

Headcanon: Anakin Skywalker was always going to be a bit extra, no escaping that, but then he was apprenticed to Obi-Wan "Never Miss An Opportunity to Let One's Robe Flutter Dramatically to the Ground" Kenobi, which later subconsciously helped to inform his mannerisms as a Dark Lord of the Sith

Actual EU canon: In NJO: Balance Point, Mara is slightly uncomfortable walking with Luke on Coruscant because he's wearing traditional Jedi robes and they tend to draw stares and she spent so much of her life as a shadow agent or a smuggler that she hates the attention. It's a good thing Luke didn't have as much of an affinity for capes as, say, Lando, or the Skywalker Extraness Opportunities that fashion choice would have afforded might have meant that Mara would never have appeared in public with him

@scienfictionfan
I’m adding to Mira’s edit and saying that you’re done here entirely. You have only posted on this story to find fault with it, and to tell me how wrong I am. You have broken the forum rules here to do that. Twice. When called on it by a mod, you edited your posts to hide those reprimands of your conduct, then searched me out on AO3 to repeat your original complaints there. I don’t know why this story bothers you so much or why you feel so compelled to “correct” me (about a pretend story I made up in my own head, so I am the ultimate authority on it and it contains what I say it contains), but I don’t appreciate it and I do not owe you constant explanations about why my alternate universe fan fiction doesn’t mesh perfectly with every freaking resource guide SW has ever put out. You had your chance for respectful dialogue and you squandered it. I can’t stop you from reading or replying, but I can and will ignore you from here on out. I’d suggest you move on.

 

Chapter Six


The swirling colors of hyperspace coalesced into trailing starlines, and then into the stationary pinpricks of realspace. Ahead of them was the orange bulk of the gas giant Yavin; at some distance was the smaller blue and green of its fourth moon.

“Winter?” Leia prompted.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Winter said, swiveling her chair toward the communications console. With a few graceful taps of her fingers, she transmitted the recognition code, and they waited. A minute later, the acknowledgement came through, along with coordinates for their landing space.

“Take us in, Vee-One,” Leia said, and sat back to watch their approach. The Alliance’s main base had recently been established on Yavin 4, and with so many personnel and resources in one place, everyone was using extreme caution to avoid drawing any attention to the system. To that end, her parents had suggested that she and Winter take a small Starwind-class yacht, with no crew other than a V1 pilot droid. A ship this size was far less likely to be noticed than a larger ship like the Tantive IV. Additionally, if they were sent to Tatooine to fetch General Kenobi, a random yacht wouldn’t be associated with Alderaan’s royal family.

Leia hoped rather fervently that Mon Mothma would indeed send them to Tatooine. As much as she had looked forward to an extended period of time at home, the revelation that General Kenobi still lived was a thrilling one, and she yearned to meet the Jedi Master that her father had always spoken so highly of. Surely Mon would agree the time had come to contact him, with this new battle station added to the Empire’s arsenal.

In only a few minutes, they were settling onto the small landing field they’d been directed to, just off to the side of the Great Temple. Leia rose from her seat. “Thank you, Vee-One. Initiate shut down, and watch the ship until we get back. Come on, Winter.”

Mon and General Jan Dodonna met them at the edge of the landing field. “Leia, Winter,” Mon greeted them, her usual warm smile edged with wariness. “I would like to say it’s good to see you both, but I have the feeling that if your parents sent you here, you come bearing bad news.”

Leia inclined her head. “I’m afraid you’re right, Senator. Alderaan has recently acquired intelligence about a new development in the Empire. My parents felt you should know immediately.” She glanced around; the landing field wasn’t as crowded as the main fields and hangars the snubfighters used, but there were still more people than she felt comfortable disclosing this information in front of. “Perhaps a more private venue would be appropriate?”

“Of course, Princess,” General Dodonna replied, gesturing for them to follow. “Right this way.”

Once they were all inside Mon Mothma’s private office, Leia yielded the floor to Winter, who, with her photographic memory, easily recited the details they’d learned about the battle station, as well as sketching the few images and technical readouts that had been attained. Leia watched, not Winter, but Mon and General Dodonna, and so she saw the subtly grim expressions that settled over them, the almost fearful glances they exchanged, and she knew that neither she nor her parents had overestimated the threat.

As Winter finished her presentation, Mon took a deep breath. “We did know that the Emperor had a large military project underway. Until now, though, we knew very little else. I had thought we had prepared some reasonable worst case scenario hypotheses, but I see now that we were wrong.”

Mon’s demeanor was as cool and controlled as it always was, but Leia had known her for years and could see how badly shaken she was, and it was unexpectedly unsettling to observe. “What can we do about it?” she asked.

“That is the question,” General Dodonna said, stroking his white beard thoughtfully. “We certainly have nothing that can stand up to it in a head to head confrontation, not even the entire massed fleet.” He looked toward Mon. “We need more information. There must be a weakness, something that’s been overlooked, or underestimated. No project that size can be carried out perfectly. We must intensify our intelligence gathering efforts.”

Mon nodded. “Agreed.”

“There was one other thing,” Leia said. “My father wanted me to ask if you agree that it’s time to contact General Kenobi.”

Mon turned to her sharply. “He’s told you of Kenobi?” She held up a hand, cutting off any reply that Leia might make. “Obviously he has.” She looked at General Dodonna. “Bail is very worried indeed if he’s gone this far.”

“And rightfully so,” Dodonna murmured.

Mon looked back at Leia and Winter, her gaze evaluating. “In the face of such a threat as this, and if your parents think it’s time, then I tend to agree. If ever the Alliance was in need of Jedi insight, it’s now. Did your father tell you how to reach General Kenobi?”

Leia nodded somberly. “We have his location and a contact code. Dad said if you agreed, Winter and I should go directly to him.”

The expression in Mon’s eyes was as serious as Leia had ever seen it. “Then that is what you will do. We’ll make sure your ship is resupplied for the journey.”

Dodonna, who had been looking more thoughtful than ever, leaned forward at that. “Or, if that mission can be delayed by a few days, we could perhaps solve another problem as well. Leia, Winter, where is General Kenobi?”

Leia glanced at Winter. “I’m sorry, General, but Dad said we were only to share that information with Mon.”

Dodonna nodded. “Very well. Tell me this, then: would a side trip to Kattada take you badly out of your way?”

“The Ralltiir business?” Mon asked, suddenly looking thoughtful herself. “Yes, that could work.”

Leia and Winter shared another glance. The Empire had recently bombarded and then occupied the planet Ralltiir; it was currently under a tight Imperial blockade. “Kattada would be a detour, but a relatively brief one. How would a visit to Kattada help—oh.”

“Smugglers,” Winter said quietly.

“Very good,” Dodonna said approvingly. “Kattada is home to some of the best smugglers in the galaxy, and importantly, we have reason to believe that the leadership of Kattada’s main spaceport, Haleoda, is sympathetic to our cause. We have medical supplies for the Rebel cells on Ralltiir, but we’ve been unable to devise a way past the blockade. It would be a tight fit, but we could probably get all the supplies onto your ship. It would be a great help if you could take them to Haleoda and negotiate with the leadership there to have them smuggled to Ralltiir. Then you could continue on to find General Kenobi.”

“Of course,” Leia said. The delay was disappointing, of course, but the situation on Ralltiir was critical, and any help they could give was desperately needed.

“Excellent,” Mon said, with a firm nod. “Jan, perhaps you would see to having the supplies both for Ralltiir and for Leia and Winter’s own mission loaded onto their ship while I give them the information to negotiate with Kattada’s leadership.”

Dodonna rose, but Leia spoke out before he could leave. “Just the Ralltiir supplies, General. Winter and I can get any supplies we need at Kattada. That way we can carry more for Ralltiir.”

Mon eyed her for a moment, then nodded at Dodonna, who nodded in return, then left. Mon pulled up a file on her datapad. “Here’s what you’ll need to know, girls.”

---

Luke’s squadron had settled in, run its first patrols, and was now off duty as the Death Star traveled through hyperspace, to an unknown destination. Most of the pilots were scattered throughout the Death Star, sampling its various entertainments and amenities. A few, he suspected, were in the pilots’ ready room with other off duty pilots, following the call of sabacc.

Luke found he had little appetite for such pursuits. Everything about this place made him uneasy, from the secrecy that had obviously surrounded its construction and the dearth of information they were given about it even now, to Vader’s presence, to the station’s very name. Surely the Emperor hadn’t built a giant armored hyperspace-capable space station and named it “the Death Star” just for show, had he?

No, it must have a specific purpose, but he couldn’t think what that could be, not without more information. He still didn’t know what its weapons capabilities were, or what class of hyperdrive engines it had, or even where they were going. The unanswered questions were like an itch in his mind, and worse, he couldn’t tell whether his uneasiness was just reasonable suspicion or some sort of prodding from the Force. Mara had explained how the Force could grant precognition in some circumstances, but with his limited understanding of such matters, Luke had no idea how to recognize if it was actually happening.

Eventually he’d found a small lounge along the outer crust of the station that featured a real viewport. There was rarely anyone but himself there, and he wondered if no one else had yet found the place, or if the station’s other draws were simply stronger than that of the familiar stars, or the occasionally disorienting blur of hyperspace.

Luke had always found any view of space soothing, though, and today he sat alone in the lounge, absently sketching Imperial City’s skyline in a flimsiplast journal and trying to puzzle through his various worries.

He glanced up in mild surprise as someone entered the lounge, but it was only Hobbie, who stopped just inside the doorway, looking with equal surprise at Luke. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out,” Hobbie said.

Luke shrugged. “Not hiding. You know I like to watch the stars.”

Hobbie made a face at the swirling mass of hyperspace beyond the viewport. “No stars in that mess.”

“It doesn’t bother me. Why are you here?”

Hobbie sighed. “Lost a week’s pay at sabacc.”

“And you came to drown your sorrows with views of hyperspace instead of heading to the nearest bar?” Luke asked, amused.

“No money for a drink,” Hobbie said mournfully, coming over to sit in the chair next to Luke’s. “You wouldn’t want to lend me any, would you?”

“Not really, no,” Luke said, going back to his sketch. “You know better than to bet with no reserve.”

Hobbie rolled his eyes. “Always good to have the comfort of a loyal friend in my time of need.” He watched Luke draw for a moment, then added, “It’s not like you to be so unsociable, Luke. Missing your girlfriend?”

Luke smiled without raising his head. “Still jealous you don’t have one?”

Hobbie melodramatically mimed being stabbed to the heart and fell draped across his chair. For a few minutes they stayed that way in companionable silence, Luke drawing and Hobbie sprawled in his chair, then the swirl of hyperspace beyond the viewport resolved suddenly into stars as the Death Star gave a slight shudder and fell back to realspace.

Luke looked up at the stars, then exchanged glances with Hobbie. “So where are we now?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Hobbie said, peering out of the viewport. “Is that a planet?”

“Yes,” Luke said, leaning forward. “Do you recognize it?”

“Looks an awful lot like Alderaan.” Hobbie frowned and looked over at him. “Why would we be taking a battle station to Alderaan?”

Luke felt a trickle of cold run down his spine. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“No,” Hobbie said slowly. “We couldn’t be using it against Alderaan. Why would we? Besides, it’s Alderaan. They helped found the Republic, for stars’ sake. It must be some sort of diplomatic mission…”

“On this thing? Would you assume diplomacy if it made orbit around your planet?”

“And we were already on the Executor,” Hobbie agreed. “Makes no sense to use this instead of Vader’s flagship.”

“It can only be a show of military force.” Luke stood and walked to the viewport, laying a hand on it. There was a sharp, steady tone ringing in his head, somewhere beyond hearing, and he had to concentrate on keeping his breath steady. He had been stationed on a base near an ocean early in his Imperial career; fascinated by water vaster than he could have imagined, he had waded into it at the first opportunity. He remembered the weight and pull of the water as he stood in it, the realization of how easily it could overpower him, drag him under with its relentless waves. The Force felt like that now, and it was hard to think clearly against the rising tide. Something was very wrong…

Hobbie came to stand beside him. “There are rumors that the royal family is sympathetic to the Rebellion. Do you suppose they’re true? Maybe this is meant to scare them?”

The tone in his head grew sharper, and Luke blinked against the sudden feeling of being in a dogfight, under an enemy fighter’s guns. “I don’t—”

He flinched as a massive, blinding trail of light seared through space, burning afterimages into his sight, and focused on Alderaan, near the equator. He stared, uncomprehending—

The explosion began somewhere within him, he was sure, and he fell to his knees, gasping with a pain beyond anything he’d experienced, voices beyond number rising to a shriek that was just as abruptly silenced, and the viewport was entirely filled with fathomless light fading into sparks that danced behind his eyelids as he blinked against it, a ghostly scent of burning spreading acridly through his mind.

He tried to breathe through the shock, staring disbelievingly at the now empty space beyond the viewport. Hobbie still stood beside him, both hands flat against the viewport now, also staring, then he slid into a slow crouch and turned his stare to Luke. “Did that come from us?”

It took several attempts for Luke to find his voice. “What else is here?” He turned back to the viewport, looking desperately for the planet that had been shining there just a moment before. Surely, surely he’d imagined that flash…

“It’s gone,” Hobbie said hoarsely. “The whole planet—it only took one shot.”

Luke grabbed Hobbie’s arm, a sudden realization washing over him. “Where’s Tycho?”

Hobbie blinked, then looked as though he was about to be sick. “We can’t say anything. Are we even sure it was Alderaan?”

Luke sat down hard on the floor. “If it was, they won’t be able to hide it. Hell, if it was, they’ll be flaunting it. You don’t destroy a Core world to keep it a secret.”

“Destroyed a planet—” Hobbie sat down with a thump beside him and shook his head. “I wouldn’t have believed even this station could do it.”

“No,” Luke said, still stunned. That inaudible, excruciating shriek in his mind—had that been the death of Alderaan reverberating in the Force? He’d never felt anything like it…

The Force. Overcome with the sudden pain and shock, he hadn’t even thought about keeping any sort of shields up, and Vader was on this station.

He pushed against the lingering anguish, concentrating on the mental pattern Mara had taught him, slamming his shields back in place as quickly as he could. Had he broadcasted his reaction? Had Vader noticed?

He had no idea. All he could do now was try to keep tight control of his shields for the rest of this mission, and hope.

---

“So may it happen to all enemies of the Empire,” Tarkin said grandly. “You may fire at will.”

The Death Star’s massive superlaser flashed out, cutting a path through the void between the station and the planet, and with an explosion of violent brilliance, Alderaan was gone.

Tarkin turned to the bridge crew, and with theatrically severe pomposity, began, “This is the fate that awaits all Rebels and Rebel sympathizers…”

But Vader was no longer listening, focusing instead on that sudden flare in the Force, a whisper beneath the scream of Alderaan’s billions suddenly cut off, but bright and near in Vader’s perception. Somewhere on the Death Star itself was another Force-sensitive.

Surely an untrained one, to allow their shock and pain to reverberate so openly, even under an assault such as Alderaan’s death. Did they even know of their own abilities?

Vader narrowed his focus, chasing the fading burst of agony, trying to pinpoint it—

—there was a spark of self-conscious alarm, then the contact cut off as abruptly as it had begun.

Shields. The Force-sensitive had just put up mental shields. Which meant they were aware of their own abilities, they had received at least some training—and they were deliberately hiding from him.

Vader thought that over. A fully trained Jedi? No, not only would a Jedi have shielded their emotions better, but Vader would surely have detected their presence before now. A former padawan was also unlikely, for any old enough to be apprenticed would also have received sufficient training to shield better than this person had. A youngling—no. Vader cut that thought off sharply. The younglings had all died at the Temple.

Whoever it was, then, had not been part of the Jedi Order, but clearly they had encountered a survivor somewhere along the way, and received enough training to know how to shield, but not enough training to maintain that discipline in the face of a shock.

Finding them would be difficult; there were well over a million people on the Death Star, and whoever this Force-sensitive was, they had remained quietly hidden until the shockwave of Alderaan’s destruction had ripped through the Force, overcoming their shields. But Vader had a great deal of experience in tracking down and dispatching Jedi. He would find a way. He would discover who this Force-sensitive was, and learn who had trained them.

And then he would kill them both.

 

Vader's musings and realization ... Alderaan's destruction is enough to shatter even a Jedi Master's shielding Winter and Leia's mission has taken on a new urgency.

 

That's a lovely description. <3 And yes, now that it's not 3a I can see where they are.

So looks like we still need to get the full Death Star plans with the secret weakness and all!

A small thing, but I appreciate that Leia calls Bail "Dad" instead of something more formal.

Maybe a specific smuggler?

LOL maybe he just likes grand names, Luke. Though that does seem unlikely, doesn't it?

Yes you do.

I LOVE this description, for a few reasons including: (1) Luke has gone to the ocean, I just like that for him, (2) the description of the weight of the water and the realization of the vastness of it - perfect metaphor for this feeling in the Force.

Also a lovely description for a terrible thing. :-(

I did just consult the Wook for what Tycho was doing canonically when Alderaan was destroyed, this is awful, this poor man.

You know it must be bad when VADER is mentally calling him out for theatricality.

No Vader, no!

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

We'll see what happens!

@vader_incarnate

Aw, thanks! And lol, yes, Yavin it is

It does look that way

For all the formality of the life Leia must have lived (and for as briefly as Bail and Breha appear ), I really did want to convey that she had a genuinely close and loving family. "Father" and "Mother" just didn't feel right. I kind of love how frodogenic has her refer to Bail as "Baba", because there are as many different ways to say "Mom and Dad" as there are languages and cultures, and I like seeing that sort of detail reflected in the GFFA. But ultimately "Mom and Dad" seemed the best choice here, since that's what the Solo kids and Ben call Han and Leia and Luke and Mara, and in new canon, Leia uses the same terms in Leia: Princess of Alderaan.

Anyway, yeah, I wanted Leia to be much more casual around family, and Mon Mothma has been a close friend of the family since before Leia was born and adopted, so I assumed that Leia doesn't bother being formal with her unless they're on the Senate floor or something.

You never can tell

Palpatine really does have a taste for the dramatic. It's just that he doesn't skimp on the follow-through

I couldn't stop myself, Elli

Yay! I really like this bit, too. There's a detail in NJO: Balance Point where Mara thinks that Luke is still fascinated by water that doesn't have to be pulled from the sky by vaporators. It was my headcanon anyway, but I do like finding canonical support for my headcanons I can say that for myself, having spent years living both next to the ocean and in the desert and genuinely loving both, that it just makes sense to me that Luke would be forever fascinated by large bodies of water. Plus describing how the Force feels is always a challenge for me, and once that metaphor popped into my head, I was just so pleased. Remembering what it feels like to walk in the edge of the ocean helps me to better visualize how a Jedi would sense the Force, so that I think I can describe it better overall now

Thank you!

RIGHT???

lol, a fair point! Now I'm thinking that Vader has a quiet contempt for Tarkin's theatricality because it's more the pompously authoritative type than the swirling-cape-and-noping-off-to-nowhere type

What was it that one AO3 reader said? "Vader, you disaster trashcan"

 

Chapter Seven


Tarkin’s address came only an hour after the planet’s destruction. Everywhere within the Death Star, people came to attention to listen as he announced the Empire’s grand triumph over the Rebellion with the station’s destruction of Alderaan as a font of resistance, an example to all those who would defy the Emperor.

Luke and Hobbie had just found Tycho in the ready room assigned to their squadron, but in the event all they could do was stand beside him as the other pilots turned to stare. Squadron solidarity wasn’t exactly something encouraged by the Empire, but Tycho was well-liked and respected, and even the most fanatical of their fellow pilots who were ready to believe that Alderaan was indeed a hotbed of rebels that deserved destruction hesitated to show their approval in front of him.

Not that Tycho would have noticed if they had. Luke, watching him closely, saw his expression change from routine alertness to disbelief to dawning horror, but he remained at stiff attention, as unmoving as stone. Luke and Hobbie remained at his side through the entirety of the announcement, through Tarkin’s admonishment to remain silent about their mission until the Emperor chose an appropriate time to inform the rest of the galaxy, the announcement that they were en route to Coruscant to personally present their accomplishment before the Emperor, the commendation of all station personnel for their contribution to the elimination of Alderaan.

Even as the announcement ended and everyone else in the room relaxed back into their earlier pastimes, still looking sideways in their direction, Tycho remained at attention, eyes now blank with shock. Fortunately, the ready room was only down a short corridor from their barracks, and Luke and Hobbie were able to guide him, like a sleepwalker, back to his bunk. They stayed with him as the shock wore off and the quiet but desperate grief burst through his usual composure, and as the grief faded to despair and exhaustion.

Now—with the help of a bottle of Whyren’s Reserve that Hobbie had gone to the nearest onboard cantina to obtain and smuggle back into the pilots’ quarters, trusting that the journey to Coruscant would be long enough for the resulting hangover to wear off—Tycho slept at last. By unspoken but mutual agreement unwilling to leave him unattended, Luke offered to take the first watch and Hobbie collapsed into his own bunk for a few hours of sleep, and Luke had little to do but think.

He had never served the Empire out of any particular ideological loyalty. It had merely been a way off of Tatooine, a chance to escape farming and see the rest of the galaxy, and then after the deaths of his aunt and uncle, the only real option he’d had. For all that, though, he’d also never before been ashamed of his service. He’d believed that the Empire upheld order and at least some measure of justice. He’d passionately loved flying a TIE fighter, and been proud of his contributions to what he’d assumed was the greater good.

Now he could only see the destruction of Alderaan, over and over in his mind’s eye, the entire planet and all the life it had contained shattering into sparks and nothingness in the space of a heartbeat. He saw the agony in Tycho’s eyes. He saw Mara’s confusion and denial at the thought of her own exploitation. He thought of Vader’s menace, Tarkin’s cold smugness, the Emperor’s undeniable evil, from his abduction of Mara to his promotion and use of men like Vader and Tarkin, to his approval of a station meant to destroy entire planets.

However unwittingly, Luke had been an accessory to all these atrocities, ultimately serving the man who ordered them and a system that enabled them. He knew that now, and knew that continuing as he was, knowing what he did, was no longer an option.

He could resign his commission. He was a good mechanic and an excellent pilot; he could make a decent living somewhere, live a quiet life and leave all this behind.

Or he could try to make things right.

There was nothing he could do against the Empire alone, he knew that. He wasn’t a politician who could speak out against injustice and try to avert or remedy it. His military standing was far too low to even attempt any sort of change from within.

That left the Rebellion.

He knew of them, of course. Had even admired them in a way, even on the few occasions that he’d fought against them—admired the courage of their defiance, had thought that in another life, the romance of fighting against overwhelming odds would have been appealing.

Now it was no longer a romantic notion, but a swelling sense of necessity, a moral duty. If he was going to stand against the Empire in any sort of meaningful way, the Rebellion was likely his only chance.

But what of Mara? He loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone; he couldn’t imagine being without her. And she was thoroughly dedicated to the Empire and to the Emperor personally.

Of course, she was that way because the Emperor had had complete control over her upbringing, had instilled in her from earliest memory the utter belief in the nobility and honor of her service. If he could somehow break through that indoctrination…

Despite her position within the Empire, Mara was an honorable person who cared deeply about doing the right thing. She would be as appalled by Alderaan’s demise as he was, surely she would. And if she believed, as he now did, that they were supporting an Empire that was unjust, even evil, there was a chance that he could talk her into joining him in fighting against it.

He hoped, anyway.

---

The Death Star’s hyperdrive wasn’t particularly fast—far too much mass to propel at top speeds; it was still amazing to Luke that the engineers had managed to equip it with a hyperdrive at all—and the journey from Alderaan to Coruscant involved some difficult navigation through a section of the Deep Core, so the better part of two days had passed before they made orbit around Coruscant. By that time Tycho’s hangover had indeed worn off, but he was still barely functioning. Luke and Hobbie hovered over him in a way he’d never have allowed normally but now seemed entirely unaware of. Their squadron leader pretended not to notice any of it, and Luke was grateful for the uncharacteristic forbearance.

When the call to assemble in the docking bay came, Luke assumed it would be for all the TIE pilots on board, or at least for all the ones who had been rotated off duty on Coruscant. To his surprise, it was only his squadron who wound up standing at stiff attention in the cavernous bay. Their squadron leader walked down the line, inspecting them with eyes that carried more concern than they really should, which only added to Luke’s own worry. Why were they the only ones here? How was Tycho going to hold up under whatever they were about to do? What had the commander been informed of that was bothering him like this?

The commander paused in his inspection in front of Tycho, who was standing beside Luke, and asked quietly, “Are you fit to fly, Celchu?”

“Fit to fly, sir,” Tycho responded, but that meant nothing, it was the automatic reply of every pilot, regardless of their condition, and Tycho’s voice was still hollow and his eyes still blank.

The commander’s expression said that he knew this as well as Luke did, but clearly there wasn’t a choice to be had. “See that you are,” he said. “We’re not flying alone today.”

An odd thing to say, Luke thought, especially since no other squadrons were in sight. Then the bay doors opened. Oh.

Darth Vader strode in, imposing as always, black cloak billowing, and Luke realized that in his concern for Tycho, he’d again forgotten about his shields. Mara would kill him—if Vader didn’t beat her to it, he thought with a burst of grim humor. He thought about putting them up now, decided that the risk of Vader noticing that effort at close range was probably too high, and concentrated instead on making his mind as blank as possible.

Vader stood before them in silence for a long moment, clearly well aware of the trepidation his presence inspired and more than willing to enhance the effect. “Your squadron has consistently been given extremely high marks for performance. Today is your opportunity to live up to those evaluations. You will serve as my honor guard to Imperial City today. To your ships, and prepare for immediate departure.”

Luke swore viciously in his head as they ran for their fighters. Whether it was suspicion on Vader’s part or pure chance, this was much worse than he’d expected. It was a short flight from orbit to Imperial City, but he would make it under Vader’s eyes, without mental shields and with a wingman who was a shell of his usual self. He all but dove into his cockpit and began the startup sequence, hoping that Tycho was doing the same, hoping that Tycho wouldn’t think about Vader’s likely share of responsibility for Alderaan and snap, hoping any anxiety Vader might pick up from Luke himself would be general enough to be dismissed as the same anxiety the rest of the squadron must be feeling right now, to be under such personal scrutiny from the Emperor’s second-in-command.

Then Vader’s Interceptor blasted out of the bay, and the rest of them followed.

---

Vader was accustomed to a baseline of nervousness from those around him, particularly from those under his direct command, but there was something different this time. He pondered this as they drew closer to Coruscant’s surface. This squadron had in truth been the highest rated of those rotated off home guard duty from Coruscant; it was odd that any pilots of this skill level should be quite as nervous as what he was picking up, even while flying with him.

In the few minutes it took to reach Imperial City, he reached out with the Force to examine the sense of each pilot. It was just before they reached his designated landing field that the realization struck Vader, and the surprise of it actually made his hand twitch on the control stick, jerking his Interceptor ever so slightly off course before he corrected.

The Force-sensitive he’d sensed on board the Death Star was in this squadron.

Now that he’d pinpointed it, he wondered that he’d missed it before. The pilot was a bright glow in the Force—unshielded, Vader thought, and wondered at that, but somehow muted, as though he was trying to stay hidden in plain sight. He must have received less training even than Vader had assumed.

There was, however, little time to deal with the situation. The Emperor was expecting him immediately, and Palpatine never reacted well to anything less than complete and total obedience. He could, Vader thought as he settled his Interceptor on the tarmac, take the pilot with him to the throne room. Vader knew well enough how fleeting a thing Palpatine’s gratitude could be, but it had been a long time since Vader had brought a Force-sensitive before him, and Palpatine had always enjoyed the breaking of a Jedi, or a potential Jedi. Yes, that was what he should do.

Mas Amedda was waiting just beyond the landing field to guide him to the Emperor’s presence, and Vader turned his back on him in contempt as the pilots of the honor guard squadron exited their fighters and lined up at attention. As though Vader needed a guide, or a reminder of Palpatine’s leash around his throat. Amedda could wait the few extra moments it would take to deal with the mysterious Force-sensitive.

Vader stalked along the line, disguising his scrutiny as a routine inspection. Now the general level of anxiety was higher, and coming from more of the pilots; they’d expected him to go directly to the Palace, and were worried about what this further regard meant. Vader filtered out such mundane concerns with ease, focused on the glow at the edge of his senses—

He paused before the pilot from whom the glow emanated, and stared. The pilot in question remained at stiff attention, his gaze held straight ahead as was proper, but the spike of his alarm was like fireworks in Vader’s perception. Yet it was no longer merely the fact of the pilot’s Force-sensitivity which held Vader’s attention; it was the intense feeling of familiarity. Despite the uniform and helmet that completely obscured the pilot within, he was positive that he somehow knew this man.

Unsettled, Vader set forward again, completing his walk past the line of pilots until he stopped at the squadron leader. “Well done, commander. You can be sure that I will look to your squadron again for their fine service.”

The commander’s heels snapped together as he saluted. “Thank you, Lord Vader.”

With that, Vader turned away, toward Amedda and the Palace. No, now was not the time to deal with this. Something more was involved here than mere Force-sensitivity, and he wanted to know what. It would be a simple enough matter now. After he’d finished whatever final tasks his master had in mind for the end of this mission, Vader knew exactly where to find this pilot again. Once he understood why the Force rang so strangely around him, then he could decide whether to bring him to Palpatine’s attention, or to deal with the matter himself.

---

Luke let out a long, quiet breath as Vader left the landing field. That had been far too close. Vader had paused directly before him, hadn’t he? Or was the stress of the last few days making him imagine things? Before Luke could decide, the squadron commander, flushed with pride over Vader’s compliment, had ordered them back into their fighters. They were to head directly back to their Coruscant barracks and resume home guard duty until further notice. Luke wondered whether that meant their Death Star tour was truly over, or if they were just filling time until Vader was done here, if perhaps they’d be tagged to escort him back up to the station and go back on duty there.

That was a worrying thought. He wondered if Mara was back yet. He desperately wanted to talk to her, especially if he was going to be ordered back out. Too many things had happened for him to leave Coruscant again without updating her.

He’d comm her as soon as he landed at their barracks, he decided. And while he waited for her response, he had some ideas to quietly discuss with Tycho and Hobbie, as well.

---

It was late afternoon local time when Mara arrived on Coruscant. Her comlink chirped as she brought her ship into her customary dock near the Palace, and seeing Luke’s code, she was briefly startled. She’d long suspected that he was stronger in the Force than her basic training could really do justice to, but surely he hadn’t sensed her arrival from such a distance, and so precisely?

Then she saw the timestamp. It was an older message, just coming through now as her comlink came into range. He’d sent the message early this morning, probably when he himself had arrived back from his own mission, with the code they’d arranged but never before had cause to use, the one that signaled an urgent need to meet as soon as possible.

She felt a frown crease her brow. Why would he—

Her breath suddenly caught. Had Vader noticed him? Either his Force sensitivity, or his piloting ability, which carried the danger of bringing him into more regular contact with Vader?

There was nothing she could do about it now. The Emperor had already summoned her for an immediate personal audience, and she would be expected to file her report right after that. Neither could be delayed. To respond to his message now would only be a potentially dangerous distraction. She didn’t want the Emperor to sense any division of her attention, or risk bringing Luke to his attention.

She felt a surge of guilt at that; never before had she kept a secret from the Emperor. But she shoved the guilt deep down and tried to forget it. If the Emperor knew of Luke and his Force abilities, he might, however mistakenly, view him as a threat, and she couldn’t risk Luke like that, she just couldn’t.

It was fine, she told herself. She wasn’t disobeying any orders, and she wasn’t keeping anything important from the Emperor. Luke wasn’t a Jedi, he was a loyal Imperial. She was only protecting them both from a potential misunderstanding that could spiral out of control. And whatever was worrying Luke enough to use their emergency code, there was simply nothing she could do about it just yet. She would bury her distraction and concern, contact Luke when the day’s business was finished, and know what had prompted his message soon enough.

Taking a deep and hopefully steadying breath, Mara gathered herself and headed for the Palace.

---

She didn’t complete her post-mission responsibilities until late that night. Normally she’d wait a day or two after her return before contacting Luke, just to be safe, but his use of that emergency code worried her more than she wanted to admit, and he’d waited long hours for a response since sending it. The thought of his likely worry fed her own, and she gave up on her usual caution, tapping in his code.

The answer came back immediately, the code asking for verbal contact. That was another worrying change in routine. They rarely used their comms for any sort of discussion, only to exchange text details of their upcoming meeting times and places.

Fighting back a rising sense of dread, she tapped in his code and the call option, and again he answered immediately. “Mara, I’m glad you’re back. Can we meet tonight?”

“Tonight?” She glanced at her chrono; it was already near 23:00. Granted, there was hardly a square kilometer of Coruscant that wasn’t buzzing with activity every moment of both day and night, but they’d never met anywhere near this late before. “You aren’t on duty?”

“On call, but you know as well as I do how likely an attack on Coruscant really is. I can get away for a while, if we’re quick.”

Her first instinct was to argue. If he was discovered to be missing when he was on call, it would mean a serious reprimand at the least. The realization that he obviously knew that and was still willing to risk it made her agree instead. “The caf shop a block north of your barracks? I can be there in half an hour.”

“I’ll see you there,” he said, and disconnected.

---

Due largely to some reckless speeder piloting on her part, Mara managed to make it to the caf shop in a little over twenty minutes. Luke was already sitting on a bench to the side of the walkway. He looked convincingly nonchalant, but she could sense the tension he was hiding. He looked up the moment she came into sight, but kept up a good pretense of casualness, waiting for her to reach him. As she did, he stood up and took her hand, smoothly leading her to the quieter section of the plaza, and from there down a narrow alleyway. She followed silently, worry like a vise around her lungs.

Half a block down, he finally stopped and turned to her. “Did you see it in orbit?”

Mara blinked. “See what in orbit?”

Luke shook his head quickly, impatiently. “It must have been on the other side of the planet as you came in. Have you looked at the sky since you landed?”

She glanced up instinctively, but between the height of the buildings and the narrowness of the alleyway, only a tiny sliver of sky was visible. “No, I’ve been in the Palace. What should I have seen?”

“The secret project. You were right, we were assigned to it. It’s called the Death Star. It’s a hyperdrive-equipped battle station. You still haven’t heard any of this? The Emperor hasn’t told you?”

For a moment, Mara could only stare at him. “No. No, I haven’t—a hyperdrive-equipped battle station? How large are we talking?”

“It’s massive—a hundred-sixty klicks across. We were on its shakedown cruise. I haven’t heard anything about its mission or mandate from anyone other than our superiors, but they can’t possibly keep it secret much longer, and since we took it directly back to Coruscant and it’s still in orbit, I don’t think they plan to try. There’s bound to be a galaxy-wide announcement on the HoloNet any time now.”

She tilted her head, thoroughly confused. “A galaxy-wide announcement of what?”

“We destroyed Alderaan, Mara,” he said, the stricken expression in his eyes obvious and heart-deep. “We destroyed it. The entire planet.”

Mara sat down heavily on the stairs of the doorway they stood in, unaware she was even doing so until the impact jolted her spine. “That’s impossible.”

Luke sat beside her and took both her hands. “Yes. And we did it.”

Mara tried to take a deep breath; found she couldn’t, her chest too tight. “What exactly do you mean by destroyed?”

He looked as sick as she felt. “Destroyed. Utterly. I don’t mean a decisive battle, or some showy symbol taken down, or a garrison in the capitol, or even a city razed. The whole planet—gone, vaporized. I saw it myself. It only took one shot.”

Mara leaned forward against the roiling in her stomach. “That’s not possible,” she said again. “How—what could do that? And why? Even if we have a weapon like that, why would we destroy a whole planet? And why Alderaan?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know why. The official word given to us was that it was a Rebel stronghold, but why would that necessitate the destruction of an entire planet anywhere, let alone a Core world?”

Mara had been to Alderaan a number of times, and had always liked it. Alderaanians had merged cosmopolitan life and the natural world in a way few civilizations had ever achieved; their cities were never cold or barren-feeling, instead they felt as organic as the forests and mountains and oceans that bordered them. The Alderaanians themselves were overwhelmingly open and kind and refined, everything she’d believed model Imperial citizens should be. How many billions was Alderaan’s population? She couldn’t remember. And the wildlife, and the landscapes, and the countless millennia of culture revered across the galaxy…

“Alderaan was unarmed. They refused to have any planetary defenses greater than would be needed for a stray meteor or comet—Luke, are you sure?” He just looked back at her, wordless. She took a shaky breath. “Tarkin, then, or Vader, overstepping their authority. The Emperor would never—”

“Mara,” he said softly. “Mara. Could it even have been built without his authorization?”

She swallowed hard. “He didn’t like the Queen or the Viceroy. He always said they were stubborn holdouts loyal to the memory of the Republic. But this—he couldn’t have intended this.”

Luke squeezed her hands. “I know it’s hard to believe. I do, Mara. But what’s more likely, that Vader and Tarkin did such a thing on their own, or that they were following the orders they probably received the day you saw them leaving the throne room?”

Mara was surprised to find herself blinking back tears. Luke stroked her cheek gently, then leaned forward to whisper, "I’ve been talking to a couple of the other pilots. Quietly, but still.”

There was an unmistakable undercurrent to his sense that made Mara’s blood suddenly run cold. “Talking to them about what?” For a long moment, he only looked at her. “Luke,” she whispered. “Talking to them about what?”

“Mara, what if the Rebellion has been right all along?”

“That’s treason.”

“Yes. But what if it’s also right?”

Her breath was coming short now, and she tried to slow it. “Luke, please tell me you’re not thinking of defecting. Please.”

He leaned forward, his eyes as pleading as her voice had been. “Come with me.”

She shook her head instinctively. “I’m loyal to the Emperor and the Empire. I always have been.”

“Your loyalty does you credit, Mara, but does the Emperor deserve that devotion? Can he? The man who built and commands a planet-killer, and uses it?”

“Against insurrectionists—”

“You know Alderaan wasn’t that, even if there were Rebel cells there. Not even if the Emperor was right and the Queen and Viceroy were Rebel sympathizers themselves. How could anyone justify killing all those billions of people for the crimes of a few? For what? As an example to the galaxy? The example is, ‘everyone—everyone is potentially under a summary death sentence, at any time, over the actions of the few.’ That’s not justice. It’s not even a pretense of justice.”

“The Empire maintains control—keeps order.”

“At what cost? One of my squadmates is Alderaanian. He’s never been anything but an exemplary pilot in the service of the Empire, and look what he’s lost—what was taken from him, by the very people he loyally served. He lost his whole family. He was the only one off-planet when it happened.”

Mara closed her eyes against the pain in his, and let her head sink in despair to rest against their joined hands. Luke leaned down to drop a kiss on her hair, and whispered in her ear. “Come with me.” She remained as she was for a long moment, then sat up and just looked at him, silent and torn. He lifted a hand to her cheek. “Think about it. Promise me.”

She nodded, at a loss for words. Defection was unthinkable, but so was losing Luke. If he was determined to leave, could she possibly follow? She didn’t think so—and she could no longer imagine a worthwhile future without him, so where did that leave her?

“I have to go,” he said. “Before I’m missed. As far as I know I’ll be off duty all day tomorrow. Comm me as soon as you can, and I’ll meet you at that little park behind the civil affairs complex. We can talk longer.”

She nodded again, heartsick. He leaned in to kiss her, then stood and slipped away. Mara sat for a long time alone in the darkness before she could summon the composure to do the same.

 

Marvelous conversation between Luke and Mara. His reasoning is undeniable and the evidence clear as crystal. Mara's world view has been shattered permanently, her ideals and ideas about the Empire and the Emperor and what they would allow and even mandate totally turned upside down. Still, her choice won't be an easy one.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha
Thank you! Mara's definitely in a tricky place now

 

Chapter Eight


It was surprisingly early the next morning when the summons came. Mara made her way to the throne room, wondering what the Emperor could want so soon after yesterday’s extended audience. Clarification on the report she’d filed last night? Maybe, but it had been such a routine mission, there really weren’t any interesting details likely to catch his eye. A new mission already? That was unusual, but possible. She hoped that there would be time to talk to Luke before she left, if so.

Thinking of Luke meant thinking of Alderaan, and of Luke’s proposition last night, and suddenly Mara felt physically ill. Don’t think of it. Not a single thought, not a single reaction. It never happened.

She breathed deeply, calming herself as though she was about to go into battle. She could do this. Everything she did as Emperor’s Hand involved staying calm in tricky situations, and even though the Emperor would sense if she had active shields up when she faced him, she’d certainly learned how to be a good actress during years of undercover work. Anyway, whatever he wanted to talk to her about, it was probably entirely routine.

Amedda was waiting for her in the hallway outside the throne room, something unusual enough to start a quiver of worry deep within, but she quelled it ruthlessly and entered the throne room at his gesture, another flash of worry igniting as she saw him close the door behind her as he stayed outside. Don’t think about it.

She walked the long path from the door to the throne itself, then dropped to one knee and inclined her head. “My lord.”

“My child,” the Emperor replied. “Tell me, who were you with last night?”

Her hard-won calm shattered like thin ice beneath a hammer. Mara froze, staring at the floor, unable to lift her head. It was a long moment before she managed to take a breath to answer.

“My lord?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“It’s a simple enough question, child,” the Emperor said, his voice cold. “Who is it that you’ve been meeting so clandestinely? Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

Mara looked up at him, suddenly desperate with fear. “I—” then stopped, knowing that to deny it would make everything worse. If that was possible. She swallowed hard. “My—my lord, it’s only a TIE pilot I met at a reception—we were only talking—”

The Emperor raised a contemptuous eyebrow. “In secret? At such an hour? Do you think me a fool?”

A violent tremor ran through Mara. “No, my lord—”

“Let us have this understood between us, child,” the Emperor said sharply, leaning forward. “You are young and foolish, but much has been invested in your training, and this is the first time you have given me reason to doubt your dedication, so you shall be given a chance to redeem yourself. I care nothing for your dalliances—” the word was dripping with contempt, and Mara felt dirty, and for a traitorous heartbeat she hated the Emperor, hated him for insinuating that her love for Luke could be something tawdry and indecent “—but if I ever again think, even for a moment, that your loyalties are divided, the consequences will be severe. Proceed with extreme caution, Mara. Consider each choice you make as though it could be your last.”

He sat back again, his yellow eyes fixed on her, his expression harsh. The spark of hatred she’d felt dissolved into fear and she stared back at him, shivering uncontrollably, knowing she should respond but unable to form the words.

“Nothing to say?” he asked scornfully. “And to think of the rank you have been given, the responsibilities and privileges. If you wish to keep any of it, child, you will carry out this mission in an exemplary manner, with no hint of divided attention. Listen carefully. Bail and Breha Organa have been eliminated as a threat, but their daughter is still at large. Leia Organa is a leader of the Rebellion like her parents before her, and this warrants the death penalty. The Rebellion is Lord Vader’s remit, but in the case of a young woman like the Princess, you are likelier to get close. She was seen on Kattada very recently. Go there immediately, and carry out my will. I expect you back as soon as possible, with a report of complete success. Now get out of my sight.”

Mara was trembling so violently now that she nearly tipped over as she stood, but caught her balance at the last second, straining fear-tense muscles with the effort. “My lord,” she whispered, and backed out of the throne room.

Amedda had disappeared from the hallway by the time she exited. The Royal Guard outside the door were motionless and inscrutable as always beneath their hoods and robes, but Mara could sense their interest as she passed. Small wonder, as she was still shaking visibly. She had to get control of herself. One did not wander the Imperial Palace in such a state, let alone someone of her rank, and there were people here in the Inner Court who would recognize her. To display vulnerability before people such as these was to paint a target on your own back. She knew this perfectly well—and she still couldn’t stop the tremors.

She walked two hallways over from the throne room, eyes straight ahead, pretending she was fine, everything was fine, then there it was, the corner where she knew the security cameras didn’t quite overlap. This was by design, and Mara made quick work of the hidden latch in among the elaborately carved wood panels, then slipped inside the secret tunnel, closing the door swiftly behind her. She got ten meters in before her knees gave way and she sank to the floor, arms wrapped tightly around herself in a futile attempt to stop the shivering.

The Emperor had never spoken to her like that before. She’d known, of course, that he could be harsh—but that was to traitors, to criminals and insurrectionists. She had never been anything but loyal and obedient. Never once had she shirked her duty or compromised her loyalty, not even for Luke—nor had Luke ever asked her to. The injustice burned, not merely injustice toward her, but toward him, and she found herself furiously angry on his behalf, even through her fear. He had never once asked her to do anything the Emperor would have disapproved of—

Mara stilled in a heartbeat, the shivering disappearing as though it had never been. He had never asked her to do anything the Emperor would have disapproved of—except the ultimate betrayal. And yet—

And yet, he’d only asked that after Alderaan. After the destruction of an entire planet, billions of people, a culture revered across the galaxy. And why had Alderaan been destroyed? “Bail and Breha Organa have been eliminated as a threat.” The Emperor had admitted it to her openly. All of Alderaan, killed to eliminate two people. She had always before believed in the Emperor’s wisdom and justice, but there was no way to defend this atrocity. And now he wanted her to assassinate the daughter of those two people, a girl hardly older than herself, who had just lost her parents and her entire world.

And he’d all but threatened her own life, as well—and for what? Mara had served loyally her entire life, she hadn’t failed in any way, she had contravened no mandates. He had never forbidden her to have a friend, nor a romantic relationship. And he’d dismissed Luke and her love for him as though they were nothing, and he had no right.

He had no right. She was furious again, furious enough to think such blasphemy and mean it, with every cell, with every fiber of her being. Luke was the best person she’d ever known, he was kind and honest and open and generous and he loved her for her own sake and not what he could gain from her or use her for. How dare the man who could order the murder of an entire planet slander someone like Luke?

And even now Luke was probably waiting to hear from her, hoping she would choose to leave with him even at the cost of her service, her position, everything she’d ever known. And on the other side of the equation was the Emperor, who expected her to heartlessly discard Luke, return to a mechanical life empty of joy, and then return to report on another dutiful murder on his behalf.

Mara stood, and made her way through the passage to the floor where her apartments were located. By the time she entered the Palace proper again, twenty meters from her own door, her mind was made up.

---

In her apartment, Mara went to the refresher, where she splashed water on her face, then left the water running. She lifted a small towel from its rack but carefully let it slip from her hands, then crouched to retrieve it. Between the towel and the base of the sink, out of line of any of the possible cameras she now suspected might be in her quarters and with the water adding sonic cover, Mara quickly let her comm drop from her sleeve where she’d hidden it while in the secret passage into her hand and sent the emergency code to Luke, then tucked the comm back into her sleeve. Standing, she turned off the water, dried her face and hands, hung up the towel, and headed for her bedroom.

Once there, she opened her usual bag and surveyed its contents, grateful that she hadn’t bothered to unpack last night. It still held a small but versatile assortment of clothes, a large stash of unregistered credit chits containing various amounts in various currencies, a datapad, a small blaster with extra power packs, her lightsaber, and a variety of IDs. Along with what was already in her ship, it would more than do.

She strapped her usual sleeve holster on and secured its blaster, and slung the bag over her shoulder. Without a second glance, Mara left her apartment for the last time.

---

Mara found Luke sitting under their usual tree in the park, gazing into the distance and drumming his fingers impatiently against his knee. He looked her way, and she saw his eyes go wide as he saw her bag.

She was walking swiftly enough that she was at his side almost before he stood up to greet her. “Are you still willing to defect?”

Luke inhaled sharply. “Are you?”

“We don’t have time for this,” she said impatiently. “Are you?”

He took her hand and held it tightly. “That depends on you, because I won’t leave you.”

She ferociously blinked back the tears that suddenly threatened. In the end the decision that had seemed so impossible was the easiest thing in the galaxy. Funny how that worked. “Yes, I’m going. But we have to do it right now, or we won’t have another chance. Do you trust me?”

His eyes were combat-intense now. “You know I do.”

“Do you trust the other pilots you were talking to about this?”

“Yes.”

“Get them and meet me at the Galactic City spaceport in an hour, Krenth section, docking slip 98. Don’t bring anything you don’t absolutely need; I have the credits to replace whatever we leave behind once we’re someplace safe. Make it look casual. If anyone suspects you before we’re off-planet that’s it. All our lives depend on getting a decent head start here.”

Luke took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll see you there. I love you.”

Mara took his face in her hands and kissed him, hard. “I love you too,” she said, stepping back. “Hurry.”

---

Once Mara herself arrived at her ship, tucked quietly away in a slower part of the spaceport as always, she stowed her bag and made a show of all her usual mission prep, checking her weapons and data caches, running a preflight check, bringing up data on Kattada on her ship’s data console and spending ten minutes pretending to read it. In truth, she should have spent that ten minutes actually reading it. Though she was no longer going there for the Emperor’s reasons, she still should know the basics of the place if she wanted to achieve her own objectives. Her stomach was churning with uncharacteristic nerves, though, and she could only bring herself to pretend concentration, not summon the real thing. She could do that sort of prep work once they were well clear of Coruscant.

After she’d done all the things that would make this look routine if she was being watched, she went about eliminating the potential watchers by going again to her control console and pretending to run a final check on the hyperdrive. Ever so carefully, she bumped the next switch over from hyperdrive controls, disguising it as a clumsy lean on the panel. With her ship’s jamming field activated, she initiated a hull scan, and grabbed the handheld scanner she’d casually dropped on the copilot’s seat earlier. Galactic City was one of the slower large spaceports in the capital, and oversight tended to be somewhat lax, which was one of the reasons she often docked here. In her line of work it was far easier to stay inconspicuous in the first place rather than deal with the cleanup once you were noticed.

Hopefully that tendency toward neglect would work in her favor now, too. She ran a thorough scan for listening or tracking devices on the interior of the cockpit, then began working through the rest of the ship as quickly as she could. If the spaceport control was operating at its usual levels, she should have just long enough to complete her scan before they noticed the jamming and sent someone to check on it.

No one had approached the ship by the time she returned to the cockpit. She breathed a sigh of relief and switched off the jamming. The comm unit crackled to indignant life: “—port Control, you have initiated unauthorized jamming. Please discontinue. If this does not cease immediately, we will send a repair team to your docking slip.”

“Sorry, Control,” Mara replied, lacing her tone with embarrassment. “Hit the switch by mistake when I was running a routine check. Didn’t realize it until just now. Jamming is discontinued.”

There was a silence just long enough for her to imagine the controller rolling his eyes at the thought of such an incompetent pilot. “Copy. Please exercise more caution in the future.”

“Copy, Control.” Mara felt a surge of satisfaction—it had been a gamble to hope they’d make an attempt to break through the jamming before sending a team, but one that had paid off—and flicked off the comm. Just barely in time, as she sensed Luke’s presence approaching. She left the cockpit to disembark, waiting beside the boarding ramp and as far under the ship itself as she could get, watching. It was only a couple of minutes before Luke approached, along with two other men. Mara found herself relieved; it wouldn’t have been out of character for Luke to talk an entire squadron into something like this, and then what would she have done?

She stepped out of the shadow of the ramp and lifted a finger to her lips, then tilted her head toward the ramp. Luke and the others strolled directly aboard, a slight tension in the way they held their shoulders the only sign that they didn’t belong. Mara was suddenly proud of his casual self-possession, and his presence of mind in choosing similarly sensible people to confide this plan to. Maybe they’d actually manage this after all. She glanced around, confirmed that no one was in sight to have witnessed their meeting, and went aboard herself.

Luke and the other two stood well to the side of the entrance, out of any line of sight from the outside. Luke raised his eyebrows at her as she entered and closed the ramp beside them. She shook her head slightly, put a finger to her lips again, and nodded toward her small conversation area. The three of them went to sit and strap in, and Mara headed back to the cockpit, strapping in herself and turning her comm on. “Control, this is DA-528491 in docking slip 98, requesting permission for departure.”

“DA-528491, permission granted. Please follow the guide signal until you’ve cleared the atmosphere.”

“Acknowledged,” Mara said, and lifted off. She’d already programmed the jump coordinates into her navicomputer, and as soon as they’d cleared Coruscant’s gravity well, she pushed the drive lever and they were in the relative safety of hyperspace. Mara sat back in her seat, closing her eyes and letting out a long breath. It was only the first step along a dangerous path, but now that they were off-planet, they at least had a chance.

She let herself sit and just breathe for another minute, then went back to the conversation area. All three men were still strapped in, but steadily watching for her arrival. “We’re in hyperspace,” she said—unnecessarily; pilots all, they surely already knew that as well as she did. Still, you had to start a conversation somehow. Luke silently raised his eyebrows at her again. “Oh, sorry. Yes, you can talk now. I checked for listening devices before you arrived, but I wanted to make sure we were in hyperspace first so if I missed one, it couldn’t transmit until we were well away.”

“That’s my smart girl,” Luke said, unstrapping himself.

Mara sighed. “Do you want to start this off by getting punched?”

Luke grinned irrepressibly at her, then sobered. “Why would you think your ship was bugged? Is it usually?”

“I have no idea,” Mara said, the betrayal fresh enough to send a pang through her. “But since my apartment apparently is, it made sense to check my ship. He knew we’d met last night, Luke.”

He didn’t move, but his alarm spiked through the Force. “Did he—no, he couldn’t have known what we talked about, or we’d never have made it off-planet.”

Mara snorted, briefly amused despite herself. “If he’d known what we talked about, I’d never have gotten out of the throne room alive.”

Luke stood and stepped forward to put his arms around her, and she allowed it despite the curious gazes of the other two men. “I’m sorry, Mara. I shouldn’t have put you at risk that way.”

Mara shrugged, then stepped back out of the embrace. “I’m the spy, not you. It was my mistake. But I didn’t think—” She sighed. “I thought I was trusted. It never occurred to me that he’d be watching me, too.”

A throat cleared behind them, and Luke turned back toward his friends. “Right, sorry. Mara, this is Hobbie Klivian and Tycho Celchu. Guys, this is Mara Jade.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mara said, looking them over. They were both wearing somber expressions, but considering they’d all just put themselves under a death sentence if they were caught, that was probably to be expected. More compelling was the fact that Luke had chosen them to share his defection plans with, and to bring along when the opportunity arose. She trusted Luke’s judgment, so she would trust them.

“Pleased to meet you as well,” Tycho said.

“Throne room?” Hobbie asked.

Mara looked inquiringly at Luke, who shrugged at her. “There really wasn’t time to explain all that.” He turned back to the others. “Mara is—was—a special undercover agent for the Emperor.”

Tycho and Hobbie blinked at him, then turned to stare at her. Mara shifted uncomfortably beneath their regard. She was used to seeing awe or even fear in people’s eyes when she identified herself as the Emperor’s Hand. It had never bothered her before—she’d in fact accepted it as her due—but now, seeing it from people Luke considered friends, it felt like a reproach. “Was,” she said.

Hobbie looked back at Luke. “You didn’t say she outranked us all. Let alone by that much.”

“She can thoroughly kick your butt, too, so you’ll want to be a good guest on her ship,” Luke replied. “Like I said, there wasn’t exactly time for long explanations.”

“Why are you defecting, then?” Tycho asked her quietly.

Alderaanian. The word appeared fully formed in her head, for no reason that she could imagine, and Mara frowned briefly before realizing and looking toward Luke. His gaze on her was intent, and he flicked a glance at Tycho, then back at her.

“Oh,” Mara said.

“‘Oh,’ what?” Hobbie asked.

“Nothing,” Mara said, then turned cautiously toward Tycho. “The same reason all of you are. I didn’t know about the Death Star until Luke told me. If that’s what the Empire is, then I don’t want to serve it any longer.”

Tycho nodded silently.

“So where are we going?” Luke asked, glancing at Tycho again with concerned eyes before taking Mara’s hand and drawing her toward the conversation area to sit back down with the other two.

“Kattada,” Mara said. “That’s how I had the opportunity to leave: the Emperor ordered me there.”

Hobbie frowned at her. “Am I missing something? We’re defecting by going where the Emperor expects you to be?”

Mara smiled tightly. “What better way to give us a head start? Clearly he has no qualms about spying on me. If he’s watching me now and I don’t show up at Kattada, he’ll start looking for me right away. But if he’s watching me and I do show up at Kattada and leave a trail that makes it look like I’m following orders, then we have some breathing room.”

“What are your orders?” Luke asked quietly. There wasn’t a hint of accusation in either his voice or his Force sense, but Mara felt flooded with guilt regardless.

“I’m supposed to find and assassinate a target,” she answered, just as quietly. “Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.”

Tycho looked up sharply, his distant air gone in an instant. “The Princess? She survived?”

“She did,” Mara said. “According to the Emperor, the Queen and the Viceroy were leaders of the Rebel Alliance, and so is the Princess.” She glanced at Luke. “I do plan to find Leia Organa. I plan to find her and offer our services.”

Luke smiled at her, a proud smile that warmed her almost as much as the affection he was radiating through the Force. She smiled back, then turned to the other two. “Once we land, we’ll need to move quickly. We need to be as far away from Coruscant as we can by the time the Emperor realizes I’m not coming back, whether we’re with the Rebellion by that point or still following Leia Organa’s trail, and there are things that have to be done before we can leave Kattada. Here’s what I’m going to need from each of you…”

 

Superb and intense conversation with the Emperor which totally opened Mara's eyes. Excellent reflections on her part and once she makes her decision, she is full steam ahead and very clear and strategic. I adore her outrage is as much if not more so on Luke's behalf.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha
Thank you! Mara doesn't mess around

 

Chapter Nine



Several hours later, they’d sorted the first stage of their plans, Mara had given a tour of her small but well-equipped ship, Luke’s natural outgoingness had set everyone else at ease despite the seriousness of the situation, and, after depositing their bags in the ship’s second cabin, Hobbie and Tycho had begun a sabacc game. Mara shook her head over a sabacc deck falling into the “necessities” category when packing in a rush, but Luke only laughed. “Pilots,” he said, as though no other explanation was needed.

“Ever played sabacc before, Mara?” Hobbie asked, eyeing her speculatively.

Luke snorted. “I would pay to see that. But later; I need to talk to her first. Your cabin, Mara?”

“Sure,” she said, relieved. Tycho and Hobbie were nice enough, but they were still strangers to her, and it had been weeks since she’d had the chance to talk to Luke for more than a few minutes at a time. She led him back toward the main cabin, which, like the other, was a small room featuring a set of bunk beds and not much else. The rest of the ship, everything devoted to her work as Hand, was customized within an inch of its life for maximum efficiency and performance, whereas the small area that could be considered personal remained sterile and untouched. Had she ever even noticed that before?

She sat on the lower bunk as Luke closed the door behind them. “I actually haven’t played sabacc much,” she said. “They probably would beat me.”

“I very much doubt it,” Luke said. “They’re pretty good, but I’d bet on you.” He set his own bag on the floor beside the bunk and sat down next to her. “What aren’t you saying?” he asked gently. Mara looked at him, and he looked steadily back at her, undeterred. “I didn’t convince you last night, no matter what you say to Tycho and Hobbie. I know I didn’t. And then today you were suddenly determined to leave immediately, already packed and half on your way, before I’d said a word. I was all prepared to do anything I had to to convince you, and instead you were almost dragging me along. What did the Emperor say to you that changed your mind so completely?”

Mara folded her arms across her chest, leaning back against the bulkhead and gazing across the cabin at nothing rather than looking him in the eye. “He—” she stopped, took a breath. “Before he gave me this mission, he asked who I’d been with last night. I didn’t tell him,” she added, catching his raised eyebrow in the corner of her vision. “I just said it was a pilot I’d met. And he—he was angry. Beyond angry. Telling me that my next wrong choice could be my last angry. Because it was a division of my loyalties, he said. He said I’d be given a chance to redeem myself.” She could hear the bitterness in her own voice, and didn’t care. “By never seeing you again, by never having any other personal attachments again. Only my duty.”

Luke slid his arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side. She leaned into the embrace, still not looking at him. “You were right,” she said. “You were right about it all. You were right about how he used me. You were right about him ordering Alderaan destroyed.”

“You always deserved better than him, Mara,” Luke murmured, and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry.”

Mara sighed. “I just couldn’t do it, Luke. I couldn’t stay and keep killing for him, not after Alderaan. If he was who I thought he was, the Death Star wouldn't exist and Alderaan would still be here. If I could misjudge him that badly—”

“If he could lie to you that badly,” Luke interrupted, quietly but firmly.

Mara tilted her head in acknowledgment and continued, “—then what else was a lie? Every other mission I’ve gone on—maybe some of them deserved what I did, but how many of them were lies? How much blood is on my hands not because of justice, but because of lies? And how was I supposed to believe that he ever really valued me, if he was so ready to threaten my life for the first thing I ever did that upset him?”

“I’m positive he valued your skills, Mara,” Luke said gently. “You are brilliant and capable and talented and I have no doubt you were a highly valued agent. But you deserve to be valued as a person.”

Mara laughed, and even to her own ears it sounded more like a sob. “You’re the only person who ever has, I think. I’m not sure I even realized that until the Emperor made me choose between him and you.” She sat back to look at him, and lifted a hand to his cheek. “I couldn’t give you up, Luke. I couldn’t go back to a life without you.”

He took her hand in his own and kissed her fingers. “And I couldn’t have left you behind. We’ll make our own life, then.”

“As fugitives with nothing to our names but what we can each carry in one bag,” Mara said with a rueful smile.

Luke smiled back. “It’s people that make a life, Mara, not things. We’ll be fine.”

“So what did you bring, then?” Mara asked, nodding toward Luke’s small carryall, suddenly curious.

He followed her gaze and shrugged. “A couple changes of clothes, ID, some credits, a holo of Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. It’s not like I had all that much to begin with.”

“I’ve never seen a holo of your aunt and uncle,” Mara said thoughtfully.

Luke bent down to open the carryall, pulled out a tiny holo projector, and flipped it on. A palm-sized holo appeared, featuring an older couple. The man looked gruff and rugged, but had kind eyes. The woman was smiling, and Mara thought she could see the sort of personality that would have raised someone to turn out as Luke had.

“They look like nice people,” she said.

Luke smiled at the holo, but there was an edge of sadness to his sense. “They were. I wish I’d been more grateful at the time.” He clearly felt Mara’s surprised eyes on him, and turned the slightly sad smile to her. “I was a kid,” he said. “I was self-centered the way kids usually are. I complained way too much. I made it clear that I was planning to leave the first chance I got. They worked so hard—they weren’t as old as they look in this holo. It’s hard to survive on Tatooine. And I dismissed everything they worked for, and complained about what I had. I regret it every day.”

Mara rested a hand on his arm. “I’m sure they knew you didn’t mean it. They were kids once, too.”

“They were much more dutiful kids than I was,” Luke said with a sigh, turning the holo off and tucking it carefully back into the bag. “But yeah, I think they probably did. I tell myself that. Most of the time I even believe it.”

Mara leaned her head against his shoulder. “Do you think they would have liked me?”

“They would have,” Luke said, taking her hand. “Aunt Beru would have loved you, and baked special batches of pastries for you. Uncle Owen would have been impressed and told me you were too good for me. He would have been right.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mara said, lifting her head to smile at him.

“I’m not. I guarantee you that’s what Uncle Owen would have said. He never minced words. You two would have gotten along beautifully.”

Mara laughed. “While you and Aunt Beru were taking care of the baking, no doubt.”

“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent baker,” Luke replied with a smile. “I’ll make you one of Aunt Beru’s recipes one day.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Mara said, leaning back against the bulkhead.

His sense in the Force felt suddenly laser-focused on her, and Mara glanced at him, surprised by the intensity in his eyes. “Marry me,” he said.

Mara sat straight up. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Marry— That is an insane idea, Luke.”

“More insane than what we’re already doing? I love you, and I trust you a damn sight more than I trust either the Empire or the Rebellion. Why shouldn’t we get married?”

Mara shook her head. “It’ll put you in the Emperor’s crosshairs too. I can’t do that to you.”

He raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Oh, yes, I’m sure if he finds us together he’ll definitely spare me as long as we didn’t sign a civil contract. Good plan.”

“Luke—“

“I’m not leaving you unless you want me to,” he interrupted. “And I think we just decided that we’re staying together, so if I’m targeted by mere proximity to you, well, that’s a foregone conclusion. So let’s make it official. Marry me.”

Mara tilted her head, ready to object—but wasn’t he right? Hadn’t they chosen each other over everything else in their lives? Hadn’t they just committed to building a new life together anyway? Didn’t she already know that she wanted to stay with him always? “Oh, what the hell. Sure, let’s get married.”

Luke laughed. “Exactly the romantic response every guy dreams of for this moment.”

“Shut up,” Mara said with a grin, and pulled him close.

---

Kattada was a beautiful planet, with a balmy climate and famously lovely beaches. It made for a sharp contrast with Coruscant’s endless metal and permacrete, and Mara wished briefly that they’d been able to visit it under ordinary circumstances, with time to actually enjoy the lush surroundings. Then she dismissed the thought; there was no time for any distractions. The sooner they were gone and the farther from the Core they ran, the safer they had a chance of being.

“You all remember your assignments?” she asked, as she brought the ship into the docking bay.

“Aye, captain,” Luke replied from the co-pilot’s seat, throwing her a grin.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Stop enjoying this.”

“What?” He lifted his hands in a gesture of exaggerated innocence.

Mara rolled her eyes, but let it drop. She really didn’t feel like explaining their impulsive engagement to the other two, and if she pressed Luke on his incongruous good mood, he’d almost certainly let it slip. Tycho and Hobbie were surely accustomed to his usual cheerfulness, and even so they’d already given him some odd looks. Instead, she glanced at them expectantly, and they nodded.

“Okay,” she said, shutting down the main drive. “Get to it, then. I want to leave as soon as we possibly can.”

Tycho and Hobbie headed out of the cockpit, and Mara turned again toward Luke. “You’re going to give us away,” she hissed.

He only smiled at her. “I’m not, either. They’ll just assume I’m happy to be with you. Which I am. Besides, they’ll wind up knowing eventually.”

“‘Eventually’ is not today,” Mara said, unstrapping her crash webbing and standing. “And we don’t need any distractions today. Dial the glee back a bit, Skywalker.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Luke replied, standing up and wrapping his arms around her. “Have I told you yet today that I love you?”

“Yes, several times,” Mara said, smiling despite herself. “I love you too. Now wipe that smile off your face and go get us a new ship.”

He leaned down to kiss her. “One new ship, coming right up. You be careful with your own assignment.”

“I’m always careful,” she said, disentangling herself reluctantly and picking up her bag. “Let’s see if we can get off this planet before sundown.”

They passed Hobbie on their way through the ship, as he busily packed up the extensive datacard library Mara kept onboard. He would pack her weapons cache and the rest of their supplies afterward, to transfer to the new ship Luke would buy. Tycho had already left, in search of a buyer for this one. Mara still hadn’t found any tracking or listening devices anywhere on the ship, but she was deeply uneasy after the realization that the Emperor had spied on her without her ever suspecting, and was unwilling to take the risk of continuing their journey in a ship he’d have known to be hers.

At the bottom of the boarding ramp Mara reached out to quickly squeeze Luke’s hand. He smiled and sent a wave of warm affection through the Force, and they parted.

Now to find Leia Organa.

---

Mara spent the next few hours balancing her time between trying to pick up Organa’s trail and trying to leave her own trail marking her efforts, for whatever spies the Emperor might have here to find and report. It was tricky work; Organa was clearly no fool and had stayed largely unnoticed during her time on Kattada. The information the Emperor had provided her for this mission made it clear that it was largely a matter of luck that Organa had been spotted at all, an embedded Imperial spy who happened to recognize her in one of the capital city’s main markets the only reason her presence had been noticed and reported.

That spy—who for all Mara knew had been informed of her own impending arrival and might even now be watching her—had already checked the incoming and outgoing traffic logs for ship registrations and pilot names, and had found no mention of Organa, nor any obvious Alderaanian connections to any of the ships that had recently landed during the time that Organa had been spotted. The princess had been seen with a woman her own age with white hair, likely her adoptive sister, Winter Retrac. After all, if all the Organas were Rebel leaders, it would only make sense that Retrac would have been involved as well. The spy who first saw them hadn’t recognized Organa’s companion, so Mara ran some searches of her own just to be thorough, but as she’d expected, Retrac had also been cannier than to use her real name. Next Mara made some inquiries of sellers in the market after women of Organa and Retrac’s descriptions, but although a few people did remember them, no one had any information on their whereabouts or destination.

Finally, Mara visited the capital’s communications center, and accessed an innocuous-looking account that actually served as an info dump for Imperial Intelligence, and downloaded the data within to a blank datacard, then erased the original files. Finding an open air cafe with the right level of visibility was her next task, where she took an easily-seen table, ordered a local tea, and set about decrypting and analyzing the data she’d recovered.

It was with an odd mixture of disappointment and satisfaction that she made her way back to the docking bay to meet the others. She’d left a trail likely to convince any observers that she was dutifully following orders, but as for actually finding Organa’s own trail… Mara sighed. Well, she’d found other, equally sharp quarries. She could track down Organa, too, given enough time. Whether they’d have that time was an entirely different question.

---

The others were playing sabacc again in the ship’s conversation area when she returned, looking up as she entered. She flopped rather ungracefully down beside Luke. “How’d it go?”

“Good,” Luke answered for them all. “I have a ship two bays over, we’ve already moved everything there—though I expect you’ll want to double check that yourself—and Tycho has a buyer coming by in half an hour.”

“For a shamefully low price,” Hobbie said, with the air of someone repeating a well-worn argument. “This ship is top of the line. We could have gotten better.” He looked reproachfully at Tycho. “Next time, I’m selling the ship and you’re doing the packing.”

Tycho looked at him sideways. “The point was to leave quickly, not turn a huge profit. Would you be happy if Intelligence picked us up while I was haggling?”

“Tycho’s right,” Mara said, leaning an elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand. “Credits aren’t an issue. Getting away from the Core is.”

“How’d you do?” Luke asked her.

Mara made a face. “Not as well as I’d hoped. I’ll tell you when we’re on the new ship. Right now, let me tie things up in here.” She waved him back as he made to rise with her. “Finish your game, it’s nothing you can help me with. Let me know when the buyer gets here.”

She went to the cockpit and triggered a wipe of the ship’s computer system: all the basic hardwired functions and data would remain intact, but any more identifying data she’d ever used or stored would be erased. Then she went through the ship, double checking that nothing of value had been missed in the transfer. By the time Luke came to the cockpit to inform her that Tycho was outside finalizing the sale, everything had been finished, and Mara sighed and patted the control panel in front of her. “Thanks for everything,” she told the ship. “You be good for your new owner, now.”

Luke half-smiled at her, his sense humming with sympathy. “She was a good ship.”

Mara stood, and pulled her loose wrap over her hair. If Intelligence tracked down and seriously interrogated the ship’s buyer, she could still be identified through a basic description, but if someone only made casual inquiries, there would be no record of a red-haired woman in connection with the ship. It would do for now. They would work on really going to ground in the next few stages of their escape, whether they found Organa or not.

“She was,” Mara answered Luke. “But it’s time for a new start.” She took his hand, and together they left the last vestige of their Imperial lives.

---

Mara insisted on lifting off and making a short hyperspace jump before filling them in on what she’d learned. “If we need to go back, we can go back,” she said. “But if we get cornered on the ground, we might not get out. Better to be in space.”

Afterward they sat around the small game table in the new ship’s conversation area as Mara summarized what she’d learned. It was, as she’d warned, disappointingly little.

“Basically, I’m sure she was there. I’m sure her adoptive sister was with her. I’m sure they’ve left Kattada. But they clearly know their way around undercover work, and there’s no obvious indication of where they’re going next. An Imperial spy recognized Organa in the marketplace, tailed her, and reported what he’d overheard, but either Organa and Retrac were speaking in code to avoid exactly this, or they really were having an ordinary discussion at the time, with no important information conveyed. One of them mentioned Raltiir—”

“Can’t be going there, they’d never get past the blockade,” Tycho murmured.

“Exactly,” Mara agreed. “There are suspected Rebel cells on Raltiir, they may well have been discussing that, but it seems unlikely they’d be trying to go there, at least undercover. If the princess was traveling openly as herself, using her senatorial immunity, it would be a possibility, but as it is, I think it was a passing mention. No help to us. And the rest of the conversation was mostly about procuring supplies.” She looked back at the datapad, skimming the report. “Food, water, fuel, nothing special. Retrac mentioned taking the Corellian Trade Run, which, okay, that helps rule out a fair amount of the galaxy, but there are an awful lot of planets along the Run. They’re meeting up with someone, wherever they’re going; Retrac asked if they were going to send a signal to him—whoever “he” is—before they arrived, and Organa thought it was better to wait until they were planetside. The last the spy heard before he lost them was Retrac saying they would have to be careful, and Organa replied that as long as they had enough water and watched for sandstorms, they’d be fine.”

“Sandstorms?” Luke said sharply, sitting up straighter.

Mara glanced at him, then realized. “No. You don’t think—”

“It’s off the Run,” Luke said, tapping his fingers restlessly on the edge of the table. “It can’t be the only planet along the Run that has sandstorms—”

“I thought you said there was hardly anything there. Why would they go there at all?”

“If they’re meeting someone, it’s pretty ideal for staying unnoticed. Either you meet in the open desert where no one lives or you meet at one of the bigger cities that are mostly hotbeds for smuggling anyway, where people tend to look the other way and mind their own business. Or maybe the person they’re meeting chose the place, not them.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Hobbie said dryly, “but would you care to fill us in on this great epiphany you’ve both had?”

Luke looked at Mara, then to Hobbie. “Tatooine. There were regular sandstorms on Tatooine.”

Tycho leaned back, looking thoughtful. “My first question would also be why they’d go there, but I guess you just answered that, didn’t you?”

Luke looked at Mara again; she looked back at him. “There are a lot of planets along the Run,” she said slowly. “And we don’t even know for sure that their destination was along it. They could have been planning to jump off it for a smaller route somewhere along the way.”

“And like I said,” Luke added, “Tatooine can’t be the only planet along that direction that gets sandstorms. It just can’t be.”

“It’s still our best lead,” Hobbie said. “Unless you want to try Raltiir.”

“Definitely no sandstorms on Raltiir,” Mara said distractedly. An intangible compulsion was beginning to tug at her, like a distant beacon light just barely seen through thick fog. She knew, of course, that the Force could give direction to your actions, if you were attuned enough to sense and follow it accurately, but her training had focused almost entirely on her communication ability and the more practical aspects of the Force, like sensing deception or speeding up her reflexes. Would she even recognize it, if the Force was beckoning to her? What if she was mistaken, perhaps feeling drawn to Tatooine merely because of its connection to Luke?

Still, even from a purely practical standpoint, Hobbie was right. It was their best lead at the moment.

“Wherever we wind up going,” she said, “we need to leave soon if we want to have any chance of catching up with Organa. And since we don’t have any specific information, we’ll be taking our chances either way. Tycho, you pull up a map and start making a list of all the habitable planets along the Run. Hobbie, you look for known alternate hyperspace routes that branch off of it, and habitable planets along them. Luke and I will research the climates of as many of those planets as we can. If we don’t find a better option in an hour’s time, we set course for Tatooine.”

 

Brilliant discussions. Your attention to strategic details is excellent, as they weigh possibilities.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you!

 

Chapter Ten



Tatooine, Leia decided about ten minutes after landing, was awful.

“How exactly do people live here?” she asked, tugging her cloak more tightly around her against a sudden gust of stupidly hot wind. Truthfully, she wanted nothing more than to discard the cloak; it went against every instinct she had to put on more clothing in heat this intense. But all her research had said the same: in a desert like this, bare skin led to disaster. You might feel better briefly, but you’d succumb to sunburn and heat sickness that much more quickly, especially if you were unaccustomed to such a climate. The sunlight, wind, and sand frequently whipped up in that wind were all too harsh; if you must leave a permanent shelter, you’d better create a temporary one with your clothes. And looking around, all the natives here did exactly that, wearing mostly light-colored, loosely woven clothes such as those Leia had donned, and pretty much covered head to toe.

But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Beside her, Winter somehow managed to look composed and elegant even in nondescript, loose desert wear, and with her hair thoroughly rumpled from that last gust. She ran a hand over it as it shone brilliantly in the startlingly bright sunlight, then sighed as she clearly gave up on restoring it to any sort of order. “It’s home to many of these people, your Highness,” she said, fishing in a pocket for an elastic band and quickly twisting her hair into a loose bun and securing it. “I imagine it means as much to them as Alderaan means to us.”

Leia made a face, even as she was ashamed of herself for doing so. Diversity and acceptance were the galaxy’s greatest strengths, and Tatooine deserved to be valued as much as any other planet, and its inhabitants given the same respect as everyone else. Of course the people who lived here would love their home, and see the nuances of beauty that eluded Leia. Still, she’d never been so hot or dusty in her life, and she decided that deserts were emphatically not her first choice of climate.

“Well, I guess we’d better rent a landspeeder. It’s for sure we’re not walking all the way in heat like this.”

“Buying would be better,” Winter pointed out. “We don’t know how long this will take. It would also minimize our interactions with locals and any paperwork trails.”

“Good point,” Leia admitted. She looked around. They stood along the side of a nondescript, sand-colored building in the shade of a wide overhang while Mos Eisley bustled around them. A few passersby glanced their way as they walked past, but most ignored them entirely. Leia looked back down at her datapad. “Closest speeder lot is two blocks east. Let’s go.”

A two blocks’ walk in this oppressive heat was enough to leave Leia drenched in sweat by the time they arrived. Granted, the wind that whipped her cloak irritatingly around her also evaporated the sweat pretty quickly, but that left the exposed skin of her face feeling gritty with salt and grains of sand that had stuck to her before the sweat evaporated, and even the skin that was covered felt as though it might actually be cooking beneath the suns’ rays. A drop of sweat ran into her eye and Leia blinked fiercely to erase the sting.

“There,” Winter said, lifting her chin slightly to indicate the speeder lot off to their right.

Another gust of wind—how could wind be so hot—sent her cloak rippling around her, and Leia sighed as they turned toward what had to be the main office.

A bell rang as Winter pushed the door open. There was some sort of cooling system working within, but even inside it was still hotter than Leia was used to. She huffed irritatedly to herself and headed toward the lone employee, a young woman a few years older than herself, leaning on the counter reading a datapad.

“We’d like to buy a landspeeder,” Leia said. The woman looked up from her ‘pad and ran an assessing eye over herself and Winter.

“Price range?”

Leia hesitated. One thing she hadn’t researched was the average price of buying a landspeeder in Mos Eisley, and while money wasn’t actually a consideration, to say as much would likely rouse the woman’s interest. Nothing about this area of Tatooine seemed to speak of wealth, and Leia really didn’t want to stand out. General Kenobi had stayed hidden here for two decades; she wasn’t about to risk blowing his cover with an amateurish extraction. “Negotiable,” she said. “If it’s a reliable vehicle.”

The woman behind the counter tilted her head. “All our vehicles are reliable. For in-town use, or heading toward the Wastes?”

“Both,” Leia replied. “We have some friends in the outskirts; we’d rather not break down on our way for a visit.”

“Sure thing,” the woman said, pushing herself away from the counter. “Right this way.”

Leia started to follow her, but was stopped as Winter grabbed her upper arm and held her fast. Leia turned, frowning, but Winter’s eyes stayed fixed on the small screen on the office’s side wall, where a broadcast of HoloNet News was playing. Leia looked toward the screen herself—

“—I repeat,” the anchor on the screen said, her voice breathless in what seemed to be genuine shock, and Leia frowned again; HoloNet News anchors tended to be nothing if not dispassionate— “His Imperial Majesty Emperor Palpatine has announced that the planet Alderaan has been destroyed by a new mobile battle station on its inaugural tour—”

Leia’s breath froze within her as her vision narrowed until all she saw was the burning afterimage of the HoloNet screen, her surroundings fading into nothingness around her. Winter’s hand tightened around her arm to the point of pain, and her breath was beginning to quicken. Leia had a sudden and horrifying image of one or both of them having a dramatic breakdown right here in this dingy speeder lot office. Winter sounded close to hyperventilating, and in her mind’s eye Leia saw herself on her knees and screaming, a scream that would never end if she let it begin.

“Don’t,” she whispered harshly to Winter, far more harshly than she meant. “Don’t you dare.”

“What was that?” The lot’s clerk had stopped at the office door, looking back at the customers who’d failed to follow, and her eyes followed theirs to the screen. She raised an eyebrow as she listened for a moment. “Well, that’s a new one, even for the Empire.” She looked at Leia and Winter, still standing motionless in the middle of the room. “Don’t worry about it,” she added, in what Leia thought was probably meant to be a reassuring tone. “They’ll never bother about us out here in the Rim. Let the Core planets fight it out among themselves.”

An icy calm fell over Leia. As though she was observing herself from a great distance, she saw herself turn, linking her arm casually with Winter’s and smiling at the employee. “You’re probably right,” she said. “Now what about that speeder?”

---

Half an hour later they were well outside Mos Eisley and headed toward General Kenobi’s residence, with no memory of how much she’d paid for the speeder they were in or how the transaction had happened at all, when Leia parked the speeder in the middle of the endless nothingness to hold Winter as she sobbed. Leia herself stared over Winter’s shoulder into the distance, her eyes dry and her heart hollow.

If it was true, nothing could change it. If she started crying herself, she would never stop.

She had promised her parents she would find General Kenobi. She had promised to help the Alliance and fight against the Empire. And Bail and Breha Organa’s daughter kept her promises. She would bring General Kenobi back to the Alliance, and if it took every day for the rest of Leia’s life, she would see the Empire dragged down into oblivion and find a way to install the just galactic government her parents had always fought for, and Force help anyone who tried to stand in her way.

---

The hut was exactly at the coordinates her father had supplied: a tiny, shabby, sand-colored thing perched near the edge of a low mesa far out in the wilderness. It looked deserted, which was even more worrying after her attempted call on the frequency they’d been supplied had gone unanswered. The possibilities ran incessantly through her mind: General Kenobi had died. He’d left. His identity had been uncovered and Imperials had taken him. He’d gone mad in the isolation of this desolate place. Any or all seemed possible at this point.

She parked the speeder a short distance away, then reached over to squeeze Winter’s hand. Winter’s breath shuddered as she inhaled, but she lifted her chin determinedly. “I’m fine, your Highness.”

Not really a princess anymore if Alderaan itself is gone, am I? Leia took a deep breath of her own and forced a smile. “I know. We’ll get the General and go back to Yavin. There’s always a home for us with the Alliance.”

Winter blinked, a pained expression swiftly crossing her face and just as quickly suppressed. She nodded, blinked again, and looked off to the side at the endless desert.

Please let him be here, Leia thought to the galaxy at large as she climbed out of the speeder and headed toward the hut, Winter trailing just behind her. Please, just this one thing.

The silence around them was all-encompassing, pressing down on her and making her feel ever more hollow. He had to be here, please, she’d promised she’d get him…

Coming up on the tiny dwelling, she steeled herself and knocked loudly on the rough-textured door.

More silence was the only answer, and Leia’s eyes drifted closed against the disappointment. Long moments ticked past. She lifted her hand to knock again—

“Why, hello there,” called a voice from behind them.

Beside her, Winter startled, and Leia spun around quickly. An elderly man in a brown cloak had just crested the far edge of the little mesa the hut sat upon, coming toward them with an easy stride that belied his age. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he added as he drew close. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone at the house; I’m afraid I don’t get many visitors out here.”

Leia blinked at him. Could it be? She had thought that General Kenobi and her father were nearly the same age, yet her father looked—had looked, she corrected herself painfully—so much younger than this. Then again, if any climate could age someone prematurely…

By the time Leia had finished the thought, the man had come up beside them. “Tell me, young ones, what brings you all the way out here to the edge of the Wastes?”

Leia exchanged a glance with Winter. “We’re looking for a friend of our father’s: Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

The man’s eyes widened, and he looked at each of them carefully in turn. “And who might your father be?”

Leia swallowed hard. “Bail Organa.”

The man’s eyes widened even further. “Leia,” he breathed.

“General Kenobi?” Leia whispered.

Slowly, the man reached his hands out to cup Leia’s face; caught up in the moment, Leia allowed it. “My child,” he whispered. “It’s been so long.” He scrutinized her face. “You’re the image of your mother. Look at you, all grown up.”

Winter looked at Leia, then back at the man. “Then you are General Kenobi?”

The man stood back to look at them both again. “I am Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he said. “But the war in which I held that rank is long over.”

“Master Kenobi, then,” Leia said, determined to be as respectful as she knew her parents would have wanted her to be.

The General smiled sadly. “So, too, is the Jedi Order over, Leia. Call me Ben; it is the name I’ve carried for two decades, and as valid as any.”

Leia glanced helplessly at Winter. “Master Kenobi…”

He patted her shoulder gently. “Ben, my dear. Come inside, girls, it’s far too hot for visitors like you to be standing outdoors for so long.” He opened the door and waved them both in ahead of him. At a loss, all Leia could do was enter the little house.

It was just as small as it looked from the outside and nearly as shabby, but ruthlessly tidy. Stuffy, too, in the heat. General Kenobi went to a small cooling unit set in the wall and flipped a switch. A low mechanical creak echoed through the room as the unit chugged reluctantly to life. “It will only take a few minutes to begin to have some effect,” he assured them. “One of the benefits of having a small dwelling. I rarely turn it on, myself, but clearly it still works.” He patted the unit almost affectionately. “Sit down, let me get you something to drink.”

He disappeared through a darkened doorway along the back wall. Leia and Winter sat awkwardly on small stools, looking around the room, at each other, around the room again. General Kenobi reappeared holding a large pitcher and three cups in a nested stack; setting them all down on the room’s one table, he poured and handed each of them a cup, then filled his own and sat down himself. “It’s only water, I’m afraid, but I keep some chilled always. One must have some creature comforts, after all.”

Leia glanced around the tiny, bare room again and thought of the sparkling towers of Coruscant and the elegance her father had spoken of the Jedi Temple having, and pity on top of her own sorrow combined to close her throat, thirsty as she was.

General Kenobi’s eyes were sharp on her, and too late, Leia remembered how Jedi could read people’s emotions. She took a steadying breath. “Master Kenobi—”

“Ben,” he corrected mildly. Leia looked despairingly at Winter, and General Kenobi smiled. “It is no disrespect, child. If it makes this weigh more lightly upon you, think of it as protecting my identity. You certainly cannot risk calling me General or Obi-Wan outside of these walls, and old and out of touch though I may be, somehow I doubt your father has sent you all this way simply for a social call. But before we leave, perhaps you would introduce your companion?”

Leia sucked in a sharp breath; had she really failed to do even that? Her mother would have despaired of her manners. She thought briefly of Breha’s warm eyes and gentle smile, and slammed down that line of thought with all her strength. “My apologies, Mas- Ben. This is my adopted sister, Winter Retrac.”

General Kenobi lifted an eyebrow. “Sheltay Retrac’s daughter?”

Winter’s eyes brightened for the first time since they’d entered the speeder lot in Mos Eisley. “You knew my mother?”

“I did indeed,” General Kenobi said with a nod. “A kind and sharp-witted lady she was, too.” His voice gentled. “Has she passed, child, that the Organas have adopted you?”

“Yes.” Winter seemed to wilt again, looking to the floor. “She died when I was very young. I really don’t remember her.”

General Kenobi reached over to pat her hand soothingly. “My condolences, Winter. She was a lovely person, and would be very proud of you. She was very close to the Organas. I’m not surprised that they would have taken you in. Fortunate for you, but also for them, to gain another talented daughter.”

Winter blinked rapidly, but to no avail. One tear slid down her cheek, then another.

“Winter,” Leia whispered, her own voice choked.

“I’m sorry, your Highness,” Winter managed, swiping at her eyes.

General Kenobi set his glass back down on the table. “Girls,” he asked very gently, “what is it that grieves you both so?”

Winter buried her face in her hands, and Leia looked down into her water glass, holding it so tightly that her knuckles whitened. “We—” Her voice broke, and she swallowed before trying again. “We were in Mos Eisley early this morning, and heard an announcement on the HoloNet that the Emperor had—had destroyed Alderaan.”

The blood seemed to drain from General Kenobi’s face as he stared at her. “Destroyed—” He stood up abruptly to pace around the room, then turned back to her. “Several days ago, there was a serious disturbance in the Force. I feared that something terrible had happened, but I never thought so far as that.” He paused for a long moment, and Leia desperately feared the words she knew would come. “Your parents…?”

Leia took a deep breath and stared harder into her water glass. “They were on-planet. Preparing for the equinox festival.”

General Kenobi sat down heavily. “Leia, Winter. I am so sorry.”

A lone tear escaped before Leia could stop it, and she wiped it away angrily, lifting her chin. She would finish this mission, she would. She would not break down. “General Kenobi, my parents decided to send us to you upon receiving word of the—the very battle station that almost certainly destroyed Alderaan. Our intelligence sources confirmed that the Empire had nearly completed a battle station the size of a small moon, with what we assumed was a superlaser dish of unprecedented size. They didn’t know what the Empire intended, but felt that the Alliance would need your wisdom and skill to help counter such a threat. Mon Mothma and General Dodonna agreed, and are waiting for you at the Alliance’s main base. Will you come with us to join the fight?”

General Kenobi looked at the floor, then back up at her. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Of course.”

Leia stood up, trying hard to avoid his eyes. “Good. Our speeder is out front, we can leave as soon as you’re packed—”

“Tomorrow,” General Kenobi said gently. “Tomorrow, Leia. We wouldn’t get to Mos Eisley before sundown, and it’s far too dangerous to risk the open desert in the dark. There have been too many Tusken sightings. We can leave at first light.”

Leia stood very still, then sat down slowly. “As you say, General Kenobi.”

The understanding in General Kenobi’s eyes was almost as painful as her own thoughts. Perhaps sensing that, he stood to gently pat first her shoulder, then Winter’s. “You girls relax while I go pack, then you can help me make some dinner and set up a bed for you both in here. Sunrise comes early this time of year; we should get some rest while we can.”

Leia nodded at the water cup she still held. She could manage self-control for a few more hours.

She’d better be able to, anyway. There was a lifetime of it ahead of her.

 

Excellent catching up with Leia and Winter and poignant talk with Kenobi

 

Okay, I typed out commentary for chapter seven three times over the last couple of weeks and then the boards ate my drafts, because I am apparently not very good at completing posts when I've started them, so let me just summarize:

- Poor Tycho, and absolutely in character and heartbreaking for Luke to be so worried about his friend that he forgets to shield when encountered with -

- VADER, my other favorite!! Aaah, you terrible murder cyborg, I love you. And also you're terrible, and those thoughts about taking Luke to the Emperor are terrible, I'm so glad you didn't do that, and YOU WILL BE TOO. Eventually, I hope. That's usually my favorite part of your character arc anyway

- I also really enjoyed Luke's rationalization, about leaving the Empire.

Because of course he wants to fix things, that's our sunshine boy.

- Mara and Luke's conversation feels so true to character for both of them.

Mara in denial, Luke walking her through the logic. Never pleasant to have your reality so thoroughly shattered.

I'm going to superstitiously submit this comment now and come back and edit it with more for the rest of the chapters later because I don't want this to get eaten by the boards again.

 

Have I already mentioned that I'm loving this? In case I haven't, I'm loving this.