CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Leia was roused from sleep in the early hours of the morning with news of the viral's release. Tag Massa explained the situation on the way, taking great pains to prepare her.

Nothing could, of course—not for that.

Even Han had turned away, cursing, outraged.

On every possible level it horrified Leia. That one human being could do this to another. That Madine, who had allied himself with the Alliance, would do it. That he would then send such images out over the HoloNet—that he would claim this was the work or the will of the Alliance...

That this was her brother.

Half the Council members were already awake, gathered around to watch the images in silence. Others were arriving by the minute.
Already comms were coming in from other units: what was happening? Was this real? Was the Alliance actually responsible for this? Were they monitoring the HoloNet—had they heard what was being said already, on official and unofficial channels?

Leia turned away, thoughts afire. "Get Madine on a comm line."

"We're already trying. We can only leave messages at set locations and wait for him to pick them up."

"I don't care how you do it, just do it—and pull the Council together. We meet in an hour."




It was unstoppable; within hours everyone in the fleet knew, incoming messages from other Rebel groups and outside contacts flooding the comms, so that Leia began to feel like they were under siege—and this was a fraction of what was happening out there. They could not support this action, and she knew it. The Alliance was losing credibility within its own fleet, let alone the galaxy at large. Rumors about who knew and who didn't, about who authorized what, were flying. Already she could see the Alliance fracturing into two camps; those who thought Madine's actions were justified, and those who knew that this was a step too far—that they didn't stoop to this.

She shook her head as she stared, struggling to concentrate on the galaxy map in her cramped office, Han close beside her as Tag reached through the holo to point to a star on the Hydian Way.

"Kwenn Station's here. Madine's first jaunt after rendezvousing with the Zephyr was here, at Agamar. That's where the transfer of non-essential staff took place—presumably where he got rid of anyone he didn't trust completely. We're pretty sure now that his next jump was another short one from there to the Raioballo Sector. That's where we eventually tracked his first HoloNet meeting with the Council back to; he was in orbit around Sinsang. It's highly industrialized and has a constant stream of incoming and outgoing freighters—nobody would look twice."

Han straightened. "Any chance he could still be there?"

He was, Leia knew, simply waiting for a direction to point the Falcon now, before he gunned the engines. If he didn't have one soon, she knew damn well he'd set off anyway.

"I very much doubt it." Tag shook her head. "He wouldn't stay more than a few days in any location, but Sinsang's inside the Empire's interdicted area now anyway. He'd be long gone before the search net reached him. Initial logic says he'd go further out, to the Braxant or even the Dolobian Sectors, but I wouldn't put credits on it."

Han too stared at the maps. "He's been forced to change his plan. There's no way he would have stayed that close to Kwenn for that first jump if he didn't have to."

Tag nodded. "We know he took a few heavy hits at Kwenn Station—one with the Wasp's shields down—and we know that the damage was repaired on the run, which is never ideal. Based on the proximity of those first few jumps to Sinsang and Agamar, I think the damage sustained may be forcing Madine to make only short jumps at the moment."

Han scowled, stepping forward. "If so, he chose the wrong direction. He could hide at Sinsang pretty easily in a freighter, but it's skirting the edge of the Unknown Regions. He could jump further out, but he's risking limiting his options 'cos there ain't much out there by way of hyperlanes, and the Empire would be expanding their cleared area the whole time. He'd be skirting the Empire's expanding safe zone and its Interdictors the whole way—that's a hell of a risk."

Leia felt a flare of hope as she rose to study the map closely. "Then he'd jump the opposite way, towards the Core worlds."

"Yeah." Han leaned in, bringing a pilot and a navigator's-eye view to this as he pointed out a vague route, thinking aloud. "Only as far as he absolutely had to, but in his boots I'd jump Corewards, hopin' to outrun the search line somewhere in the Inner Rim. There's a huge belt of planets on the periphery of the Expansion Region—that'll slow the Empire down. That's where I'd look to slip through."

Leia shook her head, her brief hope doused. "That's still a big tract of space."

"It's also the best bet we got, sweetheart," Han said gravely. "If Madine manages to get the Wasp past that bottleneck, we've lost him again. There's no way to track him in the time he's given us. The systems are just too close together after that point."

"Then we need to get ships there quickly," Leia said, squaring her shoulders.

"I have one suggestion," Tag said cautiously. "We tell the Empire what we know."

Leia turned, aghast. "The Empire?"

"If we're right, they're wasting over half their task force searching and clearing the wrong regions. If they targeted their forces on a slow sweep from Sinsang through the Inner Rim and everything turnwise from the Perlemian Trade Route instead..."

"You want us to actually tell the Imperials where to look? Why would they even listen?"

Han shrugged. "Fact is, there's no way in hell the Alliance could cover an area that size, even if you wanted to risk taking the fleet into the Inner Rim."

"I'll say it again," Leia held, "why would they listen to us?"

Tag had the decency to look down as she spoke, Leia noted. "They'd listen to us if we denounced Madine publicly—if we disassociated ourselves from his actions."

"The Alliance is already being torn apart from the inside by this, and you want me to issue a statement that will finish the job?"

"Madine's losing more support than he's gaining with this."

"It's splitting the Alliance down the middle."

"If I may, Ma'am, it's hardly down the middle. It's separating off the more radical element."

Leia glanced to Han. "Maybe I should do what Luke asked..."

Tag straightened, voice tightening. "The Emperor asked you to cut Madine free?"

"He said before this happened that if we didn't disown him we'd get pulled down with Madine, and the talks would falter...but if we do, it'll fracture the Alliance completely."

Han stepped forward. "Wait a minute, are you serious? If you cut Madine free, you cut that last line of contact, and lose all control of him. You know that."

"Han, I have a Council meeting in less than an hour. What am I supposed to say? Because of Madine, the Alliance is going to come under fire from all sides for hard-line tactics which, in truth, we didn't know about and have no control over. This will get universal condemnation—not just official, but right across the board. We'll lose any credibility, and rightly so—if it were us doing this."

Tag lifted her chin. "Well then, maybe it's time to admit that we're not."

"What if I took this to the Council myself, now. Everything—the meetings, the fact that Luke's my brother, everything. Then Madine has nothing, no hold on me, no way to keep me quiet."

Even Han balked, knowing as Leia did that it would be the loss of everything she had fought for and worked towards her whole life. "Wait a minute, I thought Luke said not to."

"He was just trying to protect me."

Massa, clinical as ever, had the knack for putting it into the bigger picture. "If you take the truth about your lineage to the Council now then whatever happens, you'll be removed from office, even if at first they claim it would only be until it can be investigated further. This is a huge admission and no matter what, it would hang over you like a cloud among your supporters. Your reputation and your leadership would be compromised at what you know yourself is a crucial time, and you'd certainly be removed from any involvement whatsoever in the Emperor's plight. Your opinion would be considered biased."

"My opinion is biased—I want him out!"

"So do I, but that doesn't make this the right time to admit your heritage. If the Emperor is killed, the disclosure not only gained you nothing, it damaged the Alliance and the Council irrevocably. Even if he lives, it places any future for the peace talks under threat, because your neutrality has been compromised."

Leia shook her head, past listening to the kind of flawless logic that Tag always maintained. "There are too many secrets here…someone's going to start speaking them eventually."












Luke came round slowly, struggling to surface, exhaustion and confusion dragging him back down as he blinked burning eyes. He moved just slightly, and the pain sang up his side and into his skull, making him gasp and tense against it momentarily, waiting for it to peak and subside.

Seconds ticked by as he counted down from a hundred, bright scarlet and white flares flashing in his vision, hands pulled to tight fists as they trembled against…marker!

His hands balled tight, Luke had felt the finger-long shard of broken plasteel he held pressed into his palm, and remembered that he had to mark the day…or had he done so already?

He needed to keep his sense of time. Here, with no natural light, it was difficult to mark the days, no way to judge when one day was up, and he knew he needed to keep that clear because Leia said he had fourteen days when she was here—or was it nine days… The drugs were beginning to take their toll and his mind was lapsing into long stretches of disorganized, exhausted confusion, so that he struggled to pull the relevant facts up now. Nine days or fourteen? Fourteen days…yes, fourteen, but she had said he'd had only nine days left out of fourteen. Nine days—how many days ago was that?

Again Luke remembered the plasteel shard in his hand and his fingers reached out to the hard metal edge of the canvas bunk he was lying on, a trail of deeply scratched lines rough against his fingers in the darkness. He counted carefully…fourteen lines; he'd been here seven days, plus today, which meant there were… The momentary mental pause stretched, and Luke let out a laugh in the darkness at his own inability to subtract eight from fourteen. His ribs ached against the action, shoulders spiking in pain, but he couldn't stop, loosing silent, hitched breaths as he tensed against stabbing twinges.

All this—all this caution and vigilance and planning, all these armed soldiers and strict procedures laid in place, all to hold a man who was, in this moment, incapable of basic math. It seemed insanely surreal, ridiculously amusing…

Somewhere at the back of his mind a small, logical voice said that this was the remnants of the drugs in his system. That this wasn't funny at all; that if he didn't get a handle on it, it would kill him… But it still took a long time for his silent, racking laughter to die down so that he finally stared ahead in the absolute pitch darkness, no idea whether his eyes were capable of focusing or not. As he thought to lift his hand before his face, he remembered again the shard of plasteel and the reason he was holding it.

How many days? Seven days; it still made him grin insanely, mind grasping at anything to deal with this situation.

Seven days; seriously, concentrate…seven days marked down. But he was still holding the shard in his hand—was it because he'd just scratched today's line into the bunk, or because he was still intending to do so?

No; he always hid the shard right away. He mustn't have used it yet or he would have pushed it back under the rough blanket to hide it with the others. He knew—he knew—how important it was to mark the days, to keep track. Hard though, here.

Food and water came irregularly when it came at all, and the lights of the cell were turned on and off at random, either glaringly bright or completely absent for hours or days without order or reason. But Madine, regimented military man that he was, always came in twice a day, early morning and early night, Luke suspected, so he had unknowingly become Luke's clock. Every time Madine came with the interrogator, when it was over and Luke was dragged back across the cell and chained onto the heavy bunk by his ankle, he would wait until he was left alone then fumble beneath the crumpled blanket for one of the half-dozen or so shards he'd retrieved from the vo-corder he'd shattered days ago, to scratch a single line into the rough metal of the bunk frame as soon as he could. Sometimes that was minutes later, sometimes it was hours, if the drugs had been bad or they'd tried a second dose. But it was something he knew he had to keep in perspective. If he lost that, he lost everything.

Lost everything… For the first time in too many years, Luke felt like he had something to lose here, and before that fear, the threat of a slow defeat by the drugs was terrifying. Palpatine had used them often on him, but only to subdue, or keep him talking, keep his tongue and his mind loose. Still, he'd learned the techniques to counter them—had taken the time to get to know about such things. But this was different, because now he had something to lose.

It had never, ever been a game, but for years he'd always worked hard to play tricks with his own mind to hold onto his sanity. Told himself that really, he had nothing at all to lose save his life, and as his old Master had said so very, very often, that was nothing. Now, a flare of titian red hair lit the darkness at Luke's thoughts of Mara. Of his son.

Lying hour on hour in the darkness, mind untethered and adrift, searching for some anchor, for something to believe in, something to cling to, he'd come to rely more and more on Mara…and that was a terrible thing. Because again and again, his tangled thoughts recalled those last few moments they were together. Even though at the time he'd thought that his words to her—that she should leave because she was the only one capable of finding him—were spoken for no other reason than as a persuasion to get her out of there safely, that wasn't the whole truth.

Because he knew absolutely that if there was any way in the galaxy that she could find him and get back to him, she would. And what should have been a moment of triumph in realizing just how much he truly trusted her, had transmuted into a bone-deep fear that she'd try to live up to his accidental admission of trust. That she'd come for him, and put herself and their child under Madine's gun.

Worse, now Luke could unknowingly give Madine that target in a few words uttered from a drug-haze. That fact, that fear, flared again in the darkness and Luke clamped his jaw against it, terrified that it would become a self-fulfilling prophesy—the more he thought of his fear of revealing it, the more it remained in his thoughts, and the more likely he was to speak it.

Stop thinking about it then. Stop thinking about her...

Luke turned over in the darkness, his barked and blistered ankle smarting, the binder there cutting into his skin whenever they used it to drag him forward or yank him awake, the open wounds beginning to infect in places, burning now. If he could just soften the edge of the heavy metal binder—Luke's thoughts went immediately to the only soft object in the room—the blanket he was laid on right now, too tired to bother covering himself despite the cold. Could he tear a strip to wrap about his ankle and…a slow smile came over his face as he glanced blindly across the pitch-black cell to the unreachable door…

Turning away from the lens at the far side of the cell, he reached with trembling hands beneath the metal a-frame of his bunk, and slid the anti-surveillance scrambler free. Quickly he lifted his hand to the side of his face as if resettling…and put the scrambler into his mouth, taking a few seconds to subtly position it between his back teeth. Then he counted to a hundred, so his movement was forgotten.

Without moving visibly, he bit lightly on the scrambler, activating it. Almost immediately the lights of the cell came on, but it took a good minute for the powered locks to release the vacuum between the doors and two soldiers to enter…then they were in the room, blaster rifles drawn.

Luke turned slowly to sit up on the edge of the bunk, blinking as if just waking as the first man in trained his blaster. He knew his name…what was it—think! Tinel; his name was Tinel.

The man lifted his blaster to ready-position. "Just stay right where you are. Keep sitting. Hands out where I can see them."

The second man, clearly on a comlink earpiece, went straight to the lens. "Caro, how's that? You got anything?"

Squinting in the light, Luke listened to one side of the conversation, keeping his face suitably confused, the small scrambler still between his back teeth. The second soldier pulled slightly at the short cable which went from the back of the lens into the curved wall, then paused. Finally he gave the lens a heavy blow with the heel of his hand—and Luke bit down just slightly, deactivating the scrambler in his mouth.

"Yeah? That got it?" The man backed off, waving a hand before the lens, and Tinel risked a glance back.

"Working?"

"Seems okay now."

Watched by Luke, the two soldiers backed out of the room, the lights dousing as they did so. Luke watched the door in silence for long seconds, then turned and lay down again.

He waited as long as he could stay awake before doing it again, the scenario running exactly as before. But this time when surveillance was down, listening closely to the staggered, grating release of the powered doors and judging the guards' entry time by their delay, Luke risked heaving the bunk's substantial weight about three inches closer to the door before throwing himself back down as if asleep.

When the soldiers had left, believing the fault corrected, he carefully hid the scrambler in the angle of the metal bunk frame as before and tried to get some sleep.













Mara lay wide awake in bed, staring at the soft shadows of the coffered ceiling in the cool darkness of the night, the hour so late it was early. She and Nathan had called it a night an hour or so ago, with messages of solidarity and support still amassing in ever greater numbers, and Mara had stayed in Luke's apartment to slink into his silent bedroom and slide beneath the covers of his bed, hoping that at least here she could sleep.

Instead, in the still silence and so close to all that reminded her of him, the images from the holo played over and over in her mind until her throat locked with stubbornly unshed tears. Seven days, it had said. Seven days, then they would…

She couldn't do this. She couldn't be here in the Palace, having seen those images. She knew what it meant to Luke that someone he trusted was in command, keeping watch…but it couldn't be her. It just couldn't. Not this time, not like this.

Nathan was right, Luke had placed her in power for a reason—one she'd never really considered before. One that she wondered whether even Luke himself had looked at too closely. He had faith in her; faith that she'd honor his goals and intentions. And she did—more than that, she shared them. She knew that now.

Now…too late to share that awakening with him—the fact that here, in the detention center beneath the Imperial Palace, at the very center of the old Empire that she'd served her whole life, staring at Wez Reece, a man whose views and actions personified the old regime, she'd had an epiphany.

She didn't want the old Empire any more. She didn't want a society where narrow-minded men like Reece prospered at the cost of others. Where those like him were encouraged to do whatever was necessary to maintain that absolute Imperial State without conscience, believing themselves and the regime they upheld above the law. She didn't want it back.

So it was no longer simply a question of trust, proud as she was to finally hold it, determined as she was not to betray it. It was a question of belief, of realization that they were her own wishes too… Which made her decision that much harder. Because still…still she couldn't do this.

At any other time—any at all—Mara would have knuckled down and got on with it. Would have opened that damn file, followed it to the letter and made in his memory the Empire Luke had given everything to guide into being. But this was the one situation he hadn't planned for, the one situation that Mara couldn't accept. For herself to be in power whilst Luke was still alive.

For her to remain here, helpless, whilst the realities of changing an Empire, even for the better, ripped them both apart.

Of all the ways she thought she'd lose him; years of his surviving at the very edge with Palpatine, disobeying and deceiving and occasionally just plain ignoring his Master for no other reason than to goad a response… All those hours and days and weeks spent in Nathan's medi-center listening to the steady pips of a life-support machine while Luke remained comatose… She glanced to the darkened balcony beyond the bedroom doors, remembering vividly the flash of horror at watching him step off from the edge—just step off into empty air one hundred-forty-four stories up, assuming that Mara would get there in time to grab him! Moments…so many moments when she'd thought that she'd been so close to never again seeing him, never again hearing his voice, his laugh, his quiet, dry wit. All those moments…and not one had prepared her for this. For those images. For the fear and the fury which alternately scalded and froze her to numb indecision.

Seven days…seven days and every one of those imagined fears would be made real.

And now this, this final spur: a brief message from Leia Organa, Commander-in-Chief of the Rebellion, denying connection or collaboration, or any part in the whole debacle. Madine was operating autonomously, she stated. There had been no authorization, no endorsement.

And wasn't that what Luke had said, on that last day—that Organa had helped him, that she'd told him of the trap? To Mara's mind that meant Organa had known about the trap and not informed Luke earlier, but if he'd wanted revenge he would have taken it at the time; Mara had seen what Luke could and would do to those he believed deserving. Had watched more than once when anger or provocation had finally slipped the leash on Palpatine's wolf—had privately wondered what, if any, control he'd had when he did so.

She questioned again why he'd waited there in the Wasp for Organa to come through; why he seemed always so patient with her, so tolerant. He trusted so few people—why her, the leader of the Rebellion against him? Of all people, why trust her?

The brief message from Organa had been a private rather than an official one, professing personal regret, her voice charged with that same mix of earnest sincerity and absolute commitment that so often animated Luke's own. Perhaps that was why he trusted her; because despite their political disparity they had always been kindred spirits, even Mara could see that.

Mara remembered only a few words of the brief message, one single fact overriding all else…because tacked on at the end of it, in the form of a simple reference, had been a contact frequency.

A way to get to Home One. Or to the same system, at least.

If even one Imperial Star Destroyer showed up, Mara was pretty damn sure the Rebel base-ship would be gone before they'd even opened a comm channel. But it hadn't escaped her mind that she could easily send six or eight Interdictors in first, strategically placed about the system, then take in Star Destroyers with guns blazing, crippling the Rebellion's elusive headquarters and taking any remaining Rebel leaders hostage, offering their release in exchange for Luke. Then the impossible task of trying to track one man at one spot on one planet in a galaxy of stars would all become academic. But even as she'd calculated the strategy, Mara knew she wouldn't do it, because that voice at the core of her being kept on asking the same question: "What would Luke do?"

And it sure as hell wouldn't be that; would probably be the polar opposite, in fact. Because Luke's words, mingled with the sharp, charged crack of close blaster fire in the landing bay that final day, still reverberated through her thoughts: "Don't let this derail it, Mara. Don't let a few radicals destroy six years of my life and everything I was pushing toward."

What she needed was a line of action which was more in line with the iron will but quiet voice that Luke had so often employed with surprising results in his dealings with the Rebellion. What she needed was a different strategy—and she had one. But to achieve it she needed help from the one person she'd never thought that either she or Luke needed, the one person in the galaxy that she'd never thought in a million years she'd ask for anything, let alone this.








Kiria D'Arca had retired to the privacy of her opulent apartments for the night when Mara arrived, but she rose immediately, entering the waiting room in a richly embroidered dressing gown of deep ruby red, her long black hair falling loose down her back, dark, almond eyes blinking rapidly awake.

"You have news?" It was instant, her fear. As dense and intense as the crimson robe she held in bunched gathers about her.

"No," Mara said quickly. "No news."

D'Arca didn't know about the message from Organa—right now nobody did outside of Intel.

For a moment the Empress seemed to wither, her delicate hands pulling tighter, her head falling. Then she pursed her lips and lifted her gaze, her face that perfect mask. "Then you have some reason to be here?"

Oh, this was going to be hard. "In the event of his absence, Luke left stewardship of the Empire in my hands…"

"I'm well aware of that, Madam Regent."

Mara clamped down on a sharp retort. "I was thinking…about what you said earlier—"

"I have as much right to be at those meetings as you do."

Mara halted, momentarily thrown. "What?"

"I have as much right to be at those meetings as you do, and I won't be sidelined, not even by the Regent."

Fierce, unyielding eyes held her own, and for once Mara recognized the value of that. D'Arca was tough and she was smart and she was cool under fire, gracious even, in a way that Mara would never be. The perfect Empress. And right here and now, that didn't seem such a bad thing.

Because Mara had a plan—and, Force forgive her, but right here, right now, it was more important than Luke's.

She shook her head quickly, not wanting to be derailed. "No, I'm not talking about the Chief of Staff meetings."

"Well then?"

Mara sighed, returning to the argument she'd run countless times in her own head now. "I gave my word to Luke that I would be custodian in his absence, and now…"

"You're finding it difficult to hold to that promise."

Had it been so obvious? "What's happened on Kwenn…it was all my fault."

D'Arca frowned. "Your fault?"
"I was bodyguard on that day. I shouldn't have let myself get separated from him. I was trying to call in help."

"No, you shouldn't have," D'Arca said firmly…then her voice softened just fractionally. "But I've read the debrief report. There were…extenuating circumstances. Wez Reece should never have been on that gunboat. We both know that he should already have been in an Imperial cell."

"But the fact remains, I was with Luke. I was responsible—and I should do something about it."

"As far as I am aware, Madam Regent, you are doing everything in your power. If I believed for one instant that you were not, you may trust that I would consider it my duty to tell you such in no uncertain terms."

"I was thinking about what you said—about relative strengths. About Luke always expecting those he trusted to act to the very best of their ability…and that's what neither of us are doing right now. Not even nearly. You can make all the speeches you want—and I'm not denying that last night's was an impressive one—but that won't find Luke and it won't get him back. And it can't continue like this."

"I think you underestimate the assets that the Emperor has left you, Madam Regent," D'Arca maintained. "He has assembled everything that you need to continue. The Emperor was an astute man, and he took great care to surround himself with every facet of aid that he believed he would need in his intent to hold the Empire together through any test. I look at those who attend your meetings on a daily basis and I see General Arco, who will always step back and remain detached because he knows that this will net the very best analysis of any complex problem. I see Commander Clem, who will staunchly hold firm and do his duty no matter what, very much the view of the establishment. I see General Reiss, promoted on his merits and not his connections, always pushing for action and, despite his rank, very much reflecting the view of the average military man. I see Admiral Joss, the tactician who looks to the greater picture and views all things in terms of objectives and results, the quintessential Officer. Closer to him, I see Nathan Hallin, who keeps his sharp wits well hidden and is forever the civilized conscience. And I see yourself…"

D'Arca paused, back straight, the unfaltering Empress, those dark, smoky almond eyes softening not a whit…which made her next words that much more surprising.

"You keep his feet firmly on the ground. You question everything, you push him constantly, yet…I believe that you are completely, unconditionally loyal—though not necessarily in the most appropriate ways. And I see myself, a conduit to the mindset and the collaboration of the most influential beings in the galaxy, with the political and judicious aptitude to use this in his support. For that reason, I will not allow myself to be removed from this equation. We are neither of us here for our ornamental value, Madam Regent, I promise you that."

"Do you have point?" Mara said brusquely.

"I am saying that even we are capable of working together when the situation demands, because like everyone else in the Emperor's close entourage, we were always meant to. He was, as I said, a very astute man, and I will not let you derail my intention to honor that."

"Have you finished?"

Kiria paused just a moment, her poised confidence unaffected by Mara's brusque words. "Yes, I believe I've said everything I wish to say."

"Fine, then listen." Mara lifted her chin. "Firstly, he still is an astute man. But the fact remains, he didn't plan for this. Maybe you're right, maybe Luke did assemble this team to continue his work if he were to…if he were gone. But he's not. He's still alive, and I can't be here any longer knowing that. As long as he's alive, I cannot do this. This is not my strength. I should be out there, getting him back. That's my strength; I trained for years as a soldier in Palpatine's Royal Guard, trained as an infiltration specialist, as an assassin, undertook covert operations working outside of the usual bounds."

D'Arca remained silent, so Mara pushed on. "I have a plan, and I should be the one to follow it through…but I can't do that from here. You're…you held it all together without the public even knowing until Madine put out the images…" Mara paused for a second; last chance to bail. "Luke…he told me that you'd gone to him with your suspicions about Wez Reece. He told me he trusted you."

"Kiria said," that was what Luke had told Mara; D'Arca had taken that information to Luke when she could so easily have remained silent, could have allied herself with a man who was offering to invest her as Empress in deed as well as name. Could have simply remained silent and waited to see what happened, giving empty lip service to both sides. But instead she'd taken that information to Luke. She'd backed him—was very visibly doing so again in the present crisis, putting her name and her House and her political savvy behind an absent Emperor.

She may be the best actress in the world—Force knew, Mara wouldn't put it past her—but Luke had invested Mara with vision beyond sight, skills that were still growing, and now, thrown together daily by this crisis, Mara knew what Kiria D'Arca was truly thinking and feeling—and she knew why Luke trusted her.

"I…need you to be here, the stateswoman, the public face, the diplomat, doing what you do best. Then I can do what I do best—because I can't do that from here."

Ever the consummate politician, D'Arca watched Mara steadily, face a mask. But her eyes—this close and free from make-up, Mara could see that they were glassy, rimmed in red, dark from loss of sleep, just like Mara's own—and that was what gave her the faith to push on.

"We each have our arena. Yours is here, stabilizing Luke's Empire. Mine is out there, making sure he gets back to see it. I'm asking you to take over the Regency."

Kiria remained silent. Mara had expected her to grin, to gloat, to show some kind of pleasure, however hidden. But in the moment she simply stared, lips pursed, brow puckered into a frown.

"You'd hold executive powers only," Mara said. "You can't rescind, change or redirect existing policy, but you'd be acting Head of State. You'd be the public and political face of the Empire and this crisis. You'd be…what we need right now."

Kiria's chin lifted a fraction. "Understand this; if you give me power, I shall use it. To Luke's aid—always that—but I shall use it as I see fit."

"Fair enough," Mara said. "I'd expected no less. But you understand this—you try anything, anything at all, any attempt to usurp, claim or redirect power, and that's it. I will come for you. If you give me reason, when this is over, I will come for you. And don't think for one moment that this Palace will protect you, because I have lived and worked here visibly and invisibly my whole life, under the reign of two Emperors. No matter how tight you think you have it locked down, I know easily a dozen ways to get in beneath the radar and move around freely even here, without anyone ever suspecting anything, and I will come for you."

Mara held D'Arca's gaze, meaning every single word of what she'd just said, and the Empress met that stony stare for a few seconds more before tilting her head just slightly in acknowledgement without ever backing down. "Fair enough."







The executive order was signed three hours later, with six witnesses, Nathan among them. The document had been quickly drafted in the last few hours, but it contained all the relevant details: Mara Jade, present executor of Imperial power, handed over the stewardship of the Empire in all its facets to Kiria D'Arca, until such a time as the Emperor returned. The transfer took less than fifteen minutes. Mara was aware that her hand shook as she signed the document, but in truth her mind was already on the upcoming mission; she fully intended to be gone at dawn.

Mara had already managed to retreat to the deserted Council Cabinet when Kiria—the Empress Regent—entered, motioning casually for Clem's ever-present bodyguards to wait at the door, as if it were something she had always done.

Mara nodded once. "I'll give you about two days."

"With what?"

"The guards—I'll give you about two days before they drive you insane."

"They are, I promise you, the least of my worries, Commander Jade."

The two women stared at each other for long seconds, silently readjusting the status-quo.

"Whatever you need for your mission, contact me directly. Anything at all," D'Arca said at last.

"I will. You need to…there are some papers—legislature that was already approved by Luke but needs confirmation to implement. Changes to the Recognition of Inalienable Rights and the Custody and Detention Statutes." Suddenly all business, Mara felt insanely like she was leaving instructions for someone to care for her apartment whilst she took a break. "They're in the Cabinet's secure file system. They should have been enacted eight days ago."

Kiria nodded once. "If they were part of the Emperor's planned revisions then they'll be implemented."

There was an unswerving finality to her decisive words. Mara nodded once, then started for the door. She was almost there before she turned about, unable to let this go unsaid.

"Let me just clarify; this isn't an alliance in any way, shape or form. It's a temporary truce, nothing more. When this is through, we go back to how we were. I still don't like you."

That flawless serenity remained typically unassailable. "I would say the same, Commander Jade—but I really don't think about you that often."

"Just so we're clear on that," Mara said. "I don't like you, and nothing that's happened has changed that. I think you're a good politician, but before you congratulate yourself too much, I happen not to like most politicians. I think you're scheming and manipulative, and I have no idea how you manage to look yourself in the eye every morning when you put those layers of paint on and string black pearls through your hair, knowing that you're insinuating yourself into the life of someone who doesn't want you there, but is too polite to say so. I just wanted to clarify that."

"Really? Well, since we're baring our souls, I find you irascible, stubborn, opinionated, gauche, tactless and patently unsuitable as a consort."

Mara stared, eyes ablaze, and Kiria arched those perfect eyebrows. "However, you're also loyal, determined and, surprisingly, intelligent enough to realize the best course right now and actually commit to it." The faintest pucker lined her smooth brow as she tilted her head, unmoved by Mara's glare. "…Don't make me add 'wasting time' to your bad points."

"So when I get back, it's business as usual."

"It is always business as usual, Commander," Kiria confirmed, holding Mara's eye.

"Fine." Mara nodded once and turned away.

She was at the door before D'Arca spoke again, always the one to get the last word.

"Oh and Commander Jade…until you actually have the Emperor, don't bother coming back."







Nathan's eyes grew wide as the door to his apartment slid open to reveal Kiria D'Arca, flanked by two Royal Guards. He backstepped quickly, uncertain. It had been less than an hour since D'Arca's investiture…this was the last place he had expected to see her.

"May I speak with you, Commander Hallin?"

"Yes, yes, of course." He walked quickly into his apartment, followed by Kiria alone, aware that she was glancing about at the widespread disarray. "Please forgive the…it's been a hard few days and…"

"Please don't apologize," Kiria said softly, the smallest smile touching her lips but never her eyes. She looked tired; drawn. Nathan had an idea he looked much the same.

She glanced to the ring she still wore on her index finger—Luke's ring. Nathan felt a burst of grief crush in on him at the memory of Luke's panic when he'd thought he'd lost it once before; sufficient that he'd been willing to face Palpatine down to retrieve it.

Kiria cleared her throat, but it gave no power to her voice. "I came because I wanted to be sure that you understood why Commander Jade handed over executive power?"

"She's explained her reasons, yes."

"We both felt that this was the more prudent course, Commander; it was joint decision. Commander Jade's abilities lie elsewhere, and mine are here. Together we can ensure the best possible outcome to this…deplorable state of affairs."

Nathan frowned, uncertain why she was bothering to tell him this. "Yes, I understand."

"I hope you also understand that I will do everything in my power to bring the Emperor back safely. Absolutely anything, without hesitation. I consider that my duty and my privilege, as well as my responsibility."

"That's good to know."

She nodded, pausing just slightly. "To that end, I'd very much like you to tell me everything you know."

A wave of anxiety washed over Nathan, his thoughts immediately of Mara, though he kept his face straight and his voice steady. "There's nothing you don't already know, Excellency."

She sat, doggedly unwavering. "Then perhaps you'd indulge me by going over it again. I've already spoken in depth with Commander Jade this evening, and she explained everything—her reasons, her responsibility…her failures. She very much blames herself, and I can well understand why. She now wishes to correct those mistakes, and for obvious reasons I would like to see that happen. To that end, I'd like to discuss the facts with you too—sometimes a fresh eye brings a new perspective."

Very aware that Mara would not have told the Empress one particular fact, Nathan went through everything: the trip out, the comm from Argot that came minutes too late, Mara's revelation of Wez's betrayal. Everything. When he'd finished, he sat staring at his hands, fingers entwined and clasped so tightly that his knuckles were white, acutely aware that he could afford no slip about Mara's condition before the Empress's shrewd eye.

"…and there's nothing else?" D'Arca said quietly. "Nothing that could give us any lead, anything at all?"

"No, nothing."

"You're sure? Anything could be of value at this point, anything at all."

Nathan let out a ragged sigh, guilt at Wez's actions still gnawing at him. How had he not seen it? "There's nothing else—nothing I know."

"Anything here, since you've returned? Anyone else's past actions which now seem out of place, in respect of all that's happened? Anything that isn't common knowledge?"

Again nerves burned in his chest, thoughts on Mara. "No, not at all."

"Any contacts who may have been overlooked?"

Nathan glanced up, glad to move the subject on. "Luke uses a smuggler group, but I don't know how to contact them."

"Smugglers?" There was the barest thread of distain in her voice though she sought to hide it.

"Karrde; Talon Karrde. He's their chief, and the only name I know. He was an information broker. Luke used them for intelligence; grass-roots stuff. They hired out the clean-registered small ships Luke used occasionally, but I don't think they ever knew what they were for. Luke's too cautious."

"Can you contact them—get their position—we could send troops out, bring them in."

"No. They had no set base and only Luke had the call codes. As far as I know they're not written down. Mara would have contacted them long before now if they were."

"We should follow that up. It may be nothing, but if they're mercenaries they're not above selling information from either side, to either side."

Nathan shook his head. "No, Luke trusted them. He's used them for years."

Kiria tilted her head just slightly. "As few people as the Emperor trusted, Commander, it turns out that it was too many. As much as I have faith in his judgment, I consider it reasonable that we detain any and all of those under even the slightest suspicion, until we have clarified their position. I'm sure you can understand the logic and the necessity of that?"

"I suppose." Nathan glanced down, nodding.

"Is there anything else, Commander Hallin? You were close to Wez Reece, you must know with whom he spoke regularly, his routines?"

"I really don't know more than I've already supplied Intel with. Right up to the day, I didn't know." Nathan glanced about the devastated room, drawers still open, their contents piled haphazardly on every surface. "And…as you can see, Intel have been rather thorough in their checking of my apartment. Twice."

The Empress's dark eyes skipped momentarily about the apartment in realization, "Commander Jade authorized this?"

"No, actually it had already been done when we arrived back on Coruscant. Twice. Mara was the one who stopped them from search number three."

"And you haven't spoken with Wez Reece since you arrived?

"No," Nathan said quickly. "No, I…I went down to the detention center with Mara but that was the day he told her about the vial, so it was all confusion after that. We needed to verify the viability of the contents."

"Of course," Kiria nodded gravely. "Viability?

"The vial had expired over a year ago—self-replicating drugs tend to have a short shelf-life for obvious reasons, and this was a tailor-made drug designed specifically to control Luke. There may have been little or no study of long-term viability or deterioration. If this was the only sample Crix Madine had to go on, he may be synthesizing drugs from a flawed template, which could instigate any kind of adverse reaction from reduced potency to harmful mutations."

Kiria nodded. "So you tested for this?"

"As much as we could. Everything to do with the drug had been destroyed at Luke's order almost two years ago, so we had no reference, no chemical breakdown to work from, nothing."

"But you have those results now?"

"We have limited results. In tests, the drug broke down in a sample of Luke's blood from my medical bank in around forty hours. It's fully effective for ten hours or so in the samples we tested, but after that it failed to maintain self-replication."

"And Wez Reece confirmed that he passed this vial on to Madine."

Nathan nodded. "He knew Mara had held vials of the drug originally, when Palpatine was alive. He must have checked at some point; had…had time to break the safe in her apartment—we were occasionally here at different times, and Mara in particular was never away from Luke's side."

The Empress tilted her head down, a scowl setting fine lines between her eyebrows as she lapsed into thoughtful silence, remaining still and silent for so long that Nathan felt his own fragile nerves fray ever shorter before she finally looked up to speak.

"So, to clarify, there was a tailor-made drug which was designed specifically to overcome the Emperor's abilities. A drug that was generated specifically for use against him." As she spoke, Kiria's tone and manner cooled and hardened to incensed accusation. "The Emperor quite rightly ordered all samples destroyed…yet Mara Jade not only kept some, but allowed it to fall into hostile hands…and then chose not to disclose that fact."

Nathan straightened, eyes wide. "But…you said Mara had explained everything!"

"I thought she had. Apparently not."

"Wait, it was a mistake, an oversight, nothing more."

"I see…and then she accidentally failed to pass this information on to the Emperor's own Intel department—the unit which is officially in charge of this situation?"

Nathan shook his head rapidly. "No, she would have made the information available when needed. She simply didn't want the knowledge of the drug's existence to pass into the public arena. Luke had always been adamant that…"

The Empress was already rising. "It is a pity that neither yourself nor Commander Jade shared his caution—or failing that, the ability to execute a simple order."

Nathan stood, panicked. "You have to understand that Mara…"

"No, I don't think I do. What I understand are the facts—and they are that even knowing it could put him at risk, Commander Jade disregarded a direct order from the Emperor and then compounded that error by withholding its existence, further endangering the Emperor and compromising any rescue mission which may take place. Either one of those actions is a serious breach of trust."

"Mara wouldn't…"

The Empress was already turning away, anger hardening that delicate face. "But she did, Commander. And now I'm left to deal with the consequences. And deal with them I will."

Nathan set after her as she made to leave. "Wait! Where are you going?"

He hurried behind, following her into the main hallway hoping to diffuse this…and stopped dead, facing a block of scarlet robes in the hallway beyond his door.

Six Imperial Guards were waiting to smart attention. It wasn't that which bothered him so much; even Luke often had two Royal Guards in tow. But the fact remained that when he'd first opened his door to Kiria, there had only been two. Four plain-clothes agents behind this wall of guards brought Nathan's eyes back to D'Arca with a frown of confusion.

"Forgive me, Commander Hallin, I should have clarified earlier; I came here to inform you that you were being detained in the Emperor's name until your status can be clarified or a case can be brought against you, on suspicion of aiding and abetting Wez Reece, a known insurrectionist. However, in recognition of your rank, past service and the trust the Emperor held in you, you are to be held under house-arrest. Don't give me cause to reconsider this allowance."

Nathan stepped out slightly. "Wait—you're arresting me? For what?"

She turned those guileless almond eyes on him. "Actually you were simply being detained, Commander. However, according to your own words, by negligence or device you allowed a dangerous, restricted substance to fall into the hands of a known subversive. Worse, you then intentionally conspired or aided in concealing that fact. Treason, Commander Hallin. You're accused of treason."

So shocked was he that Nathan stood in silence as she turned and walked away, only coming to his senses when she was halfway down the long, wide sweep of the grand corridor, two Red Guard and the four plain clothes agents remaining about Nathan's door. "Wait! I would never do that—you can't possibly think...!"

The guards closed about him as one of the agents—Dyso, Hallin thought he was called—stepped forward to press against Nathan's chest, pushing him gently but firmly back over the threshold of his apartment, clearly uncomfortable but intending to follow orders. "Please remain within the confines of the apartment, Sir. Don't make us take action."

He pressed the release to close the door from the outside, stepping back into the corridor beyond as it slid shut, leaving Nathan alone.





Mara was busy laying everything she thought she'd need out on her bed to make sure she forgot nothing, in preparation to be packed into a holdall, when the call came through. Immersed in her task, she almost ignored it, but hope that it could be a lead sent her reaching for her comlink. On the ID bar, it said simply, '9'.

Mara frowned, confused; it was one of the old call signs from when those around Luke had felt it best to keep their identity hidden, the connections scrambled and coded. She was pretty sure that this one was Nathan's.

"Nathan? What the hell are you doing using this frequency?"

"Mara, thank the Force! Listen- "

"Why aren't you using the internal comm system?"

"Because they've disconnected me—all my authorized comlinks are down. I remembered I had this one stuffed into an old boot in my closet. Listen to me-"

"Your comlinks are down?"

"Listen! Kiria was here, just a few minutes ago. I think I'm under arrest for treason."

"What?!"

"Mara, I think she's coming for you. You need to get out of your apartment."

"She wouldn't dare."

"…Oh, she looked pretty mad when she left here."

"Why would she be coming for me?"

"Because I…I told her about the vial."

A lead weight hit the bottom of Mara's gut, leaving her cold. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm sorry Mara—I'm so sorry—I thought…she acted like you'd spoken with her, she said you'd explained everything, that she understood now. I thought you'd told her. I didn't know, I didn't know she'd do this, I swear. We were just talking…I was just..."

Mara was rushing to pull the rest of her gear together and stuff it into the holdall. "Nathan, why, why would I tell her of all people? Why would I tell anyone that until I had to? I ought to come over there and bounce you off every wall."

"I wish you would, I really do. I might feel a bit less guilty. But there's no time, you need to get out—get out of the Palace. Now."





Nathan paced alone in his empty apartment, knowing that he'd be the last to hear anything, even if Mara did get out. If she didn't and they caught her, they'd be back pretty quickly, he figured. Either way, it seemed likely that he'd be in the detention center before the night was out, come to think of it. Irrationally, he paused, wondering what he should wear…

How long had it been? He glanced to the chrono on the wall; less than ten minutes—surely that wasn't right? He wasn't very good at subterfuge. Good grief, had it been like this all the time when Palpatine was alive? How had he coped? He was a nervous wreck—the slightest thing could probably-

A hand came down on his shoulder without warning, making Nathan jump a foot in the air, shouting out as he spun round. Mara lunged out for him and slapped her hand over his mouth, her head turning to the closed door. "Would you be quiet!"

She lifted her hand away as Nathan was still heaving for breaths, his heart pounding against his ribs. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Passages," Mara whispered quietly. "You have an exit in the window return of your study—the moldings hide it."

"Seriously? How long has that been there!"

"Really?" Mara whispered dryly as she returned to her entry point, Nathan following. "That's actually the most important thing going on in your life right now—that's the one thing you need information about?"

"Never mind. You got out okay?"

"Pretty much as they came in. Where's that comlink you were using?"

"I have it here. Mara," Nathan reached out to grab her arm as she reached the low, narrow entrance, his voice trembling half with fear and half with determination, "don't leave me behind. Don't leave me here to watch, helpless. Let me come. Let me help. I deserve that much. He's my friend and I won't abandon him and nothing you can do will make me, so if you're intending to just shout at me a bit and then leave, I should warn you that you're going to have to knock me out first because that's the only way you'll stop me from following you."

Mara turned nimbly inside the entrance to the body-width passageway. "That and the fact that you don't know how to open this door from your side when I close it."

"And that," he allowed quickly. "Mara, please—please don't leave me behind. I have to come, I have to."

Mara simply stared, face unreadable. "Are you finished?"

"Mara…Sith, Mara, let me come. Let me help—please."

"What the hell do you think I'm here for, nerf-brains?"




It turned out that Mara's allowance didn't extend to her cutting him any slack in her rant as they made their way through shoulder-narrow passages, barely more than head-height, within the Palace walls. Fortunately both Nathan and Mara were lightly built, though she seemed to move with typical smooth grace, even here. As he fazed in and out of his telling-off, Nathan wondered idly if people in the vast, quiet corridors beyond heard the mysterious ebb and flow of a woman's irate voice in the empty hallways when there was no one in sight, and perhaps put it down to a particularly irked ghost.

He should be feeling worse, he knew, but somehow a buzz of elation was rushing through him at the knowledge that they were on their way. After eight agonizing days waiting for Intel, they were finally moving. No leads, no news, but even like this, it felt good. Because if anyone could do this, anyone in the whole galaxy, then it was the woman jogging down the corridor ahead of him, furious and ferocious and radiating resolve.

"Are you listening to me?" she growled without slowing.

"Yes, of course I am."

"You realize what you've done, don't you? You've cut us loose. We're now operating outside the law and more importantly, without access to its assets. We're on our own. We're on our own with no access to incoming Intel and no manpower."

"That's really not good, is it?"

"What the hell possessed you to trust her?"

"Me? You'd just handed the Empire over to her!"

"Because it freed me up to go after Luke with the whole damn fleet in tow! Now we have nothing. No resources, nothing."

"What are we going to do?" Nathan rushed breathlessly to keep up as Mara moved through the narrow corridors at a jog.

"I'll tell you what we're going to do, we're going to call in that network that I know damn well that Luke must've had in place for years before Palpatine died. Chances are, everyone he trusted then will still be trustworthy now. They'll still be loyal to Luke and not the office of Emperor. You have a hell of a lot of comms to make as soon as we get airborne."

"How will we get airborne?"

"Commander Arco has a full unit of Intel ships assigned to him in their own landing bay in the North Tower—don't even try to tell me that Arco wasn't one of Luke's allies when Palpatine was still alive. He'll get us an Intel ship with Intel authorization and he can keep it quiet, for a few days at least. Then we'll need a new ship."

"Is that why you broke me out—because I could get you access to that network and you knew you'd need it? .........Mara?"

"Please—if I'd wanted you for that, I'd have taken the comlink off you in your apartment…I assume you have contact details on it?"

Nathan straightened slightly in the cramped space. "I wouldn't have handed it over."

"I wouldn't exactly have asked."

"Well then, why did you come for me?"

The figure sliding with nimble grace through the confined corridor before him was silent for long seconds. When she finally spoke, her voice gave not an inch. "We got him into this together…we're damn well gonna get him out of it together, you understand?"

A slow smile spread across Nathan's face. "I do…and thank you."

CHAPTER THIRTY 

They walked in and Luke roused, hands trembling, blinking at the rush of light. He'd not even nearly risen when powerful arms grabbed him and hauled him up and over to the table, pushing him down onto the chair and forcing his hands out before him, holding them tight as they clamped the binders around them though he hadn't the strength to struggle. He wasn't really together from the last session yet, his numb mind still tumbling in freefall, his chest still burning, limbs too heavy to fight as the medic Kalter walked in and straightened Luke's arm, the syringe already poised.

"This is not good," Luke murmured. "Not good, not good at all… This is not good."

"Just relax," said the medic. "There's no point in fighting it."

"You don't understand," Luke mumbled. "This is…don't push me to that edge…not good."

"Luke, you need to relax."

He tried to pull away, but the binders held him there as the medic worked. "It doesn't work, can't you see that, the drugs don't work because…I…st……"

Within seconds it became incredibly hard to say individual words, the concept of pulling a rational sentence together seeming insurmountable as his breathing slowed and every muscle fell loose. His head rolled as he slowly tumbled to the side, but unseen hands caught his flightsuit from behind and held him upright, head lolling.

Somewhere at the very edges of his consciousness Luke was aware of people talking, but trying to process what those words were was near impossible, each one lost to him the moment it was spoken.

Aware of the medic's eyes on him, Luke dragged a ragged breath into burning lungs as the room pitched and swam hideously, refusing to slow or stop. He tried to lift his hands to his head, but felt a jarring halt yank at his wrists and wondered distantly when they had tied them down; he didn't remember, couldn't summon even a fraction of the memory. All he could do was stare at disjointed images as he floated, the sound of his own trembling breaths filling Luke's ears.

Something…was important; something he'd been thinking about just moments before, something he knew he absolutely shouldn't say…someone…

It seemed hours—hour upon hour—before the medic leaned in again, lips phasing in and out of synch with the pale, reedy voice which emanated from them, as if from a great distance. "This is different, Luke—this is stronger, a higher dose."

Luke stared as a second face leaned in behind the first; some tiny, fragmented thought said, Madine.

They spoke, both staring at him, and all Luke could do was stare back as the room spun sickeningly, his lungs burning, every breath a struggle. He knew he was having to rally almost every conscious thought on taking the next breath, sure that if he didn't he would simply cease breathing, his lungs collapsing down and stopping, nothing he could do forcing them to draw air again…concentrate; breathe…

And still they just spoke on, staring at him as if… How long had they been speaking now—hours? Days? Was it a day? How long had he been like this? His mouth was painfully dry yet he had no concept of how to ask for water, how to string enough words together to make the sentence, no idea of how to swallow it if they gave it to him…

And still they were talking…still just staring and talking…how long now?

Words filtered through the thick haze as he stared. "…maintain...levels…"

"…dangerous toxicity…"

"Can't breathe…" Had he said that, words so quiet and broken? Breathe…remember to breathe…

"…come easier…trying...listen..."

Luke shook his head slightly in confusion and the world reeled again, his mind dulling further as the blood leached in a cold, seeping ebb from his head, leaving his skin numb.

"...on me." Kalter's hand reached in, seconds missing from the move as a hundred after-images strobed about it. One moment it was at the periphery of Luke's vision and the next it was close to his face, fingers snapping, incredibly loud. "…at me.

Luke, look at me. Concentrate on me."

"It…won't work."

Madine leaned in, face hard, the movement disconcertingly fast, causing Luke to recoil slightly. "Do you want us to give you more?"

"No, no more."

"Then tell me what I want to know."

"It won't work."

"Why?" The medic Kalter; too many people asking questions—too many.

"Because…" Once again, it became incredibly difficult to pull words and thoughts together, the drug's effects washing over him in waves.

"…codes from him—I know he…it." Madine's voice, clipped with frustration.

"Luke—Luke, look at me. Just me." Luke blinked rapidly as the medic leaned in, his movement disorienting.

"What shall we talk about, Luke? Let's talk about secrets."

His voice was calm and smooth and distant beneath the pound of Luke's own heartbeat as he shook his head, eyes lowering to the table before him, possessed of a desperate desire to collapse forwards and rest his head on it. But he knew someone would grab at his hair or his collar and shake him awake again; they always did. Instead he stared at the binders which held him, at the catheter which had been taped roughly to the back of his hand, at the part-used needle which rested on the table before the medic.

"Just the little secrets today, the unimportant ones. Things that couldn't possibly matter, you understand? These things don't matter."

Secrets; the word brought a touch of a smile to Luke's face, cracking drying scabs; he remembered—remembered the secret he had to keep. Mara—Mara and… Luke jolted slightly, glancing up at Madine. Don't think about it! Think about something else. Concentrate—think about something else…
"Luke, look at me, not him. Luke—we need to talk about what you know."

Secrets…Mara.

"Let's talk about numbers, Luke. I need a code that you know."

Momentarily Luke grasped at the question, at the chance it offered to turn his thoughts away from greater secrets…but weren't these secrets too?

He shook his head carefully. "No."

Kalter sighed, resting his jaw on his hand, elbow on the desk, and Luke envied him even this, when his own hands were forever bound and tethered to the table, pulling his arms forward awkwardly. The medic studied him for long seconds, and Luke clamped his lips, blinking slowly.

"Are you saying no, you won't tell me? You know that's not true, Luke. The longer we talk about them, the more likely you are to tell me—you know that."

"Perception…only..." Luke scowled, annoyed at the sluggishness rate that his own mind was dragging, aware of how slowly and deliberately he was speaking but unable to go any faster. "Drugs don't make you tell truth...they just make you talk. If I think they'll…make me tell the truth, then I'm more likely to tell it."

"These make you tell the truth. You know that."

"No…make me talk. You make me tell the truth—if you can."

The medic lifted the syringe from the table before him. "I think we'll give you a little more…"

"No—no, wait—wait!"

Kalter reached out and again Luke tried to pull back, but again the binders held him as he jerked away hard enough to bark fine curls of skin away where they dragged against his wrists. The drugs went buzzing through him and he let out a gasp, reeling, moments shuttering together with no concept of time, until that voice fazed slowly back in again, every other word lost.

"Do y…know how…long…been here…"

"Do I know that?"

"Yes."

"It won't work." What was he denying? He couldn't remember….

"I want you to think of the codes again, Luke—the codes you know… Think of the code named the Doomsday Code. Do you remember that?"

Codes! That was what…what they wanted. Had they asked already, or had he imagined it? "Doesn't exist."

"Yes, it does." Amusement in the medic's voice, patronizing and superior. "We know it's hardwired into the fleet, Luke. It can't be changed or overridden. It was a little insurance put there by Palpatine in case his fleet turned against him, we already know that—and we know you have it now."

"Too hard."

"No, I'm sure it's not. Just think of that one code—I'm sure you know it very well."

"No codes….. too many numbers."

"Too many numbers? No, you can remember this one."

Luke shook his head slightly. "Very long…got…."

"How long? How many numbers?"

"Very…v…" The drug was washing over him again, dragging him down like a riptide, nerves firing as he seemed to buzz, his skin crawling, reality falling back behind a darkening haze as his heart pumped loudly. If he could have, he would have brought his hands up to hold his head against the spin, but his limbs were too heavy and he had to concentrate again simply on breathing.

"How many numbers, Luke? You don't have to tell me the code, just the amount of numbers…that's safe to tell me. It's completely safe, I promise you."

"I…don't…"

"Just how many numbers—are they grouped?"

"…Yes."

"Yes? How many groups?"

Did that matter? If he told them, would that matter? He couldn't remember, couldn't comprehend whether that was important or not, knew only that he shouldn't tell them without quite grasping why. Was the code important? More important than…what? Something…someone...

"Mara."

The medic's face crawled to a frown. "What?"

Luke felt a slow smile take him. "Mara."

A second face leaned in, a blurred smudge. Madine; he shouldn't tell Madine…what?

"No, we're talking about the code—the Doomsday Code." Madine's voice was sharper, clipped with frustration. "How many groups? How many groups of numbers?"

"…seven."

"Seven groups. How many numbers in each group?"

"Very bad…."

"You?" That overbearing presence leaned away slightly, a grin splitting Madine's face open. "Yes, I suppose you are. Does it hurt?"

"… Burns."

"Burns? Painful, I imagine." There was no scrap of concern in that voice. "Would you like me to stop it?"

Luke grinned maniacally, ridiculously amused at the concept. "You won't."

"I will if you tell me what I want to hear. Then I'll stop it."

"If I tell…numbers you know it won't be...right ones." Had he said that? Admitted the thoughts going through his head: that he could give them anything, any numbers. He hadn't meant to—was he slipping?

"I'm sure you will, at first. But you know this won't stop until you tell me the right ones, and I know how much you want it to stop."

Luke smiled again. "Other questions."

"Other questions?"

"You'll just ask….other questions."

"Not today, Luke." Kalter leaned in again, voice so friendly and indulgent, when Luke knew it was nothing of the sort. "Today we'll stop and you can sleep. You want to sleep, don't you, Luke? You're tired, I can see that. You need to sleep. Or shall we continue…that would be bad, wouldn't it?"

"Bad…" Luke tried again to bring his hand up to his face, but it clacked where his wrist was chained to the table. "This is...bad."

Didn't they understand why? That they couldn't make an enemy out of him—not and live. Didn't they understand what he was—that if they pushed him to that edge, as Palpatine always had, he'd lash out?

The medic dripped hollow compassion. "Only you can stop this, Luke."

"You alone can end this." Palpatine's words, whispered long ago across grazed and bleeding skin, in a cell so similar to this.

Palpatine…the cell beneath the Palace, pushed to the very edge of endurance… That memory, that mindset, that moment— The coppery tang of blood a fine mist in the air, warm on his skin, and Palpatine, so clear in Luke's thoughts that he could have been standing beside him now, grinning that death's-head grin, yellow teeth against bloodless lips. "We are the same, you and I. Didn't I always tell you we were?"

Luke looked to the medic, trying to focus. To remember that face, to commit it to memory. "Oh, if I get the chance I'm gonna kill you."

"I don't think you're in a position to hand out threats, Luke."

"No…not a threat. Fact—I will do it. Too close…to that edge. I will do it."

"Stop it."

Luke grinned again; felt the split on his lip seep warm blood over chilled skin. "You're already dead—you understand that, don't you? Too close to the edge and you're a threat, and threats should be…never leave a threat at your back." There was no animosity in his voice, neither anger or blame, just the absolute knowledge of fact.

"We are the same, you and I… It runs in your blood."

"Luke, you're threatening someone who has the power of life and death over you."

Luke smiled loosely. "Dead…I'm sorry."

"Hey!" Madine's hand took Luke's jaw, turning him roughly about and making the room pitch and yaw sickeningly as Luke gasped against the chaotic disorientation, mind pulled from the moment.

"I want numbers—the Doomsday Code."

"No."

"Give him some more."

"He's too close to overdose." The medic…what was his name? Didn't matter; he was dead anyway. Just a matter of when.

"Do I look like I care?" Madine's voice came from the edge of Luke's perceptions, his frustration clear.

"Let me try something else. He's talking, he's just a little too together. Let's try some co-fralodiost."

The medic leaned forward to the catheter on Luke's hand as another bloom chased through him, making his skin crawl and his tensed shoulders drop as he closed heavy eyelids, awareness of his body numbing to absolute stillness. His hands were shaking—he couldn't feel it, but he could hear the binders against the surface of the table.

"Codes." Madine.

"…No." Barely a whisper within a breath.

"Give him a minute, let it cut in."

Tired…

"Open your eyes—hey, open your eyes!" Madine slapped his face hard twice but Luke didn't react, rolling loosely with the blows.

"That's all right, let him keep his eyes closed." The medic, cool and unmoved. "Luke, tell me about the codes…seven groups. Are they numbers, letters, words? I'm not asking you to tell me the code, you don't have to do that. Let's just talk about what it's made up of."

"Equations."

"It's made up of equations?"

"One hundred…"

"One hundred equations?"

"One hundred…ninety-four, eighty-eight...eighty-two…" Luke fell back on the same technique, concentrating on counting down, knowing it would tune out the medic's questions…

Someone grabbed him and shook him wildly, hauling him halfway from his seat, and Luke opened his eyes, grinning into Madine's fury. "Seventy-six."

"You start with this again or I will turn you inside out, understand?!"

"Seventy…sixty-four…"

Another slew of movement; something hard and cold pushed beneath his chin, pressing painfully inwards. Madine smiled, a scarlet slash across his blurry face. "I pull this trigger and that's it, no more Sith, understand? The line ends with you, right now."

Luke smiled slowly. "No."

"No?"

"Too late."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Luke laughed…

The blow came from nowhere, far too hard to be flesh and blood—a split second of scarlet flared brightly, then cool darkness.






Kalter, who had half-risen when Madine had first grabbed Skywalker and hauled him upright, catching him a heavy blow across the temple with his blaster butt, watched the General throw him back down and storm from the cell. Leaning back into his own chair as he turned back to the unconscious man, Kalter dragged his fingers through his short-cropped hair, unsure whether he was frustrated or disgusted. "Frag."








Luke came round slowly, the drugs still prickling through his system and making his skin crawl, the harsh lights of the cell painfully bright. It took awhile to force dry, gritty eyes open, the desperate need of his body to rest slowly giving way to the realization that the medic was still sitting in the chair opposite, watching him. He blinked dully, dragging himself back to awareness by sluggish increments. When no one tried to yank him upright, it slowly percolated that the medic was alone.

It was a gaping, indefinite time before he managed to haul himself up to sitting, weaving unsteadily, risking turning his head slightly to look about him.

"They're gone. They got tired of waiting," the medic said companionably. He tilted his head, leaving Luke with the impression that the room was slowly slanting the opposite way. "You're a very stupid man, you know that?"

Luke grinned, head still spinning, gravity tumbling. "Made him leave though."

The medic laughed lightly. "Yeah, you made him leave. You think he's not gonna come back again?"

"That's tomorrow."

The medic nodded, looking down in consideration, and Luke tried to rally his thoughts, aware of just how sharp this man was, recognizing distantly that he couldn't say the same of himself as he struggled to keep his eyes open, slipping repeatedly back into numb darkness and jolting awake again.

"That's an interesting method you have to counter the drugs," Kalter said at last, voice sociable as ever. "Where did you learn it?"

Luke smiled loosely, glazed eyes blinking repeatedly. "You think…Empire doesn't use them? Palpatine probably funded their development."

"But how did you learn it?"

There was, of course, only one way—the most obvious of all. "They used them on me—he did."

The medic frowned. "Who did?"

"Palpatine—in the cell underneath the Palace." The words were out before he'd even realized what he was saying, but the look in his interrogator's eye gave Luke a small burst of self-satisfaction before he turned away, unable to deny the intensity of emotions raking through him at those memories. "I hated that cell. I hated that room… I hated him. Some days that was all that kept me going. I didn't know…didn't know hatred could be a strength. He taught me that."

"Why would Palpatine drug you?" The man tried to keep his voice level but the shock was evident on his face.

Luke turned away, the room turning a slow loop as he moved, nerves afire. "Why did Palpatine do anything—for control, of course. If I questioned or if I refused or refuted, anything, he'd drag me back down to that cell…" He trailed off, lost in memories made intense by the drugs. "They came every hour, day and night. Every hour. Twelve; always twelve of them."

He felt distant, mildly curious, as if examining his memories as if from afar. As if they had no association to him at all. "After awhile you stop counting how many times…you don't make a noise, you stop even trying to react. You just curl up in a ball and wait for it to be over. See, the hollow bars were the worst. They had shock-sticks and force-pikes but it was the bars…" He let out a small laugh at this, at the irony that something so simple could outdo all the technology. "It's the hollow tip; takes gouges out of you—just takes big gouges out of your skin. And then Palpatine, arguing, tormenting, provoking, until you just…you can't pull a rational thought together; you just can't do it anymore—you can't do it. You stop even trying. Stop caring. You just…stop. That's how I lost him. Right there in that damn white cell that I hated so much—that's where I lost him." His voice faded, remorse pulling him down.

"Who did you lose?" the medic asked, voice hushed in response.

"Luke Skywalker." He let out the name with a sigh of regret, melancholy and empty. Fascinated though; this was the first time he'd let his own guard drop enough to even consider these facts.

"You think I'm Luke Skywalker, but Luke Skywalker died in a cell underneath the Imperial Palace six years ago. Sometimes I think… Leia says sometimes she sees the wolf in her shadow…she says she sees the wolf standing in her shadow and sometimes I think, if I turn around fast enough, I'll see Luke Skywalker in mine… But I never do. I lost him in there—left him in there. I wanted to care, to feel something, some loss…but I couldn't even do that anymore. There was nothing left. It was all bled away a little at a time, beating on beating. I remember one time, I had…my hands were bound and I remember Palpatine taking the cord and pulling it across the table towards him, and he said, 'You understand, don't you—that everybody breaks in the end. There is no if; there's only when.'

"And I did, I knew that, but…as words. As warnings given to us as soldiers in briefings and lectures when I first joined the Alliance. But to be there…to be the one being taken apart hour on hour and day on day… See, I thought…I couldn't understand why he wouldn't just kill me. I thought he saw just one more Jedi; one more Rebel—I thought that was what this was; just torture and torment me until I died. I didn't understand, I didn't know what he saw when he looked at me."

"What did he see?" The medic's voice was less than a whisper, completely mesmerized.

"He saw himself." Wasn't that obvious? "How could he not? He saw his past reaching out to become his future. He saw his Wolf. He saw Darkness and destiny and his precious Sith dynasty."

"And what did you see?" the medic said, moved to ask in spite of himself.

"In him?" Luke glanced away, drug-hazed eyes amused and distant, a lopsided smile pricking the open gash in his split lips. "It doesn't matter. The same, perhaps—it was the same in us both, you see, we circled round that same flame…Darkness and destiny. The truth was, it didn't matter what I saw in him. It didn't matter, because I knew that one day I'd destroy him. One day his precious wolf would turn. I saw what he hid—I'd long since turned his secrets and his soul inside-out and seen an old man who was afraid and desperate but unable to back off from a power that he thought he deserved, thought he could control. But I couldn't control it, so I knew—I always knew he wouldn't. So you see it didn't matter what I saw in him or what he did, because I knew what haunted his darkest visions, I knew what he was afraid of. I knew it was me. I knew just how dangerous that made him...but truthfully, from the first time I left that cell, he'd ceased to be what really scared me."

"And what was that?" the man asked in a whisper.

A feral grin came easily to Luke's face, the slightest laugh, the barest pause. "He always asked me, 'Tell me your worst nightmare; tell me what you truly fear. What do you see in the dark when your demons come?' I never told him…I never once told him what I saw, that one thing which haunts my own visions and nightmares, that one thing that truly scared me." Luke blinked slowly, eyes falling in consideration of his own words. "I never told him the one thing I really fear, that demon I see in the darkness…is myself."





Kalter frowned, staring for a long time at the man before him who, drugged and bound and barely awake, had moved so effortlessly from powerless prisoner to brooding menace. "You killed him, didn't you?"

"From the moment I saw him, I knew I would." There was absolute, cold conviction in those detached, dispassionate words. "Maybe that was my flaw—maybe that was why I fell. I spent almost five years struggling against that; manipulations he'd wrapped about me like chains against my own absolute knowledge that I wanted him dead. I wanted to put a saber to his throat and ram the blade home. I wanted to be there—to be close enough to see the life dim from those yellow eyes. Wanted to know I was the one who'd done that. But every time I got even close to thinking about trying, he would drag me back down to that cell and beat it out of me. Year in, year out. Break me to pieces one more time…until I couldn't even remember what I'd lost anymore, let alone why that was important. But I knew...I still knew I'd kill him one day."

He turned to the face of his inquisitor, uncanny, mismatched eyes possessed of an insular calm and brittle composure. "He made me what I am, took everything that I was. Every hope, every future, he shattered the pieces and ground them to dust. Because they were nothing, he said; because I was nothing." There came the smallest dry laugh, no trace of humor in it, piercing eyes holding a disquieting clarity in that moment. "And now you think I'd be afraid to die…you think you can threaten me by saying you have the power of life and death over me. You don't understand—I'm already dead. I died a thousand times in a cell just like this…once more won't make any difference."













It wasn't going well. The present Council meeting onboard Home One was only minutes in, and already the arguments were starting up. The response to the images of the Emperor from the galaxy at large had been pretty much what Leia had expected: universal condemnation.

Despite her own uncertainties, she'd done as Luke had asked when she'd first returned from their meeting, and argued long and hard with the Council to officially state that the Rebel Alliance had no part in the Emperor's abduction. But again and again the Council had cited greater responsibilities; that if they did this, they were effectively admitting publicly that there was a split in the Alliance leadership sufficient that one faction would take this kind of radical action without the other's knowledge or blessing. And they simply couldn't afford to admit to that kind of crippling weakness. Duty, they said, came first.

And what could she come back with, already torn herself, between the need to protect the Alliance and the knowledge that doing so placed Luke at far greater risk. Risk…this wasn't a question of risk, this was her brother's life.

And now this.

He'd known, when he'd asked her to disavow Madine. He'd known exactly how this would go. And so had she. But he'd still pushed Leia to make the split between the Alliance and Madine public as soon as possible, regardless of his own fate. But then she'd come to realize that the values of the man who'd risked and lost everything to save her at Bespin hadn't really changed so very much; just the lengths that he was prepared to go to achieve them. And even that was tempered by her knowledge that he was asking nothing of others that he wasn't himself prepared to give—because he knew that it would be his own death warrant if Leia had publicly disowned Madine. The memory of his words, spoken with absolute conviction as he'd sat tethered, battered and bruised in Madine's cell, came vividly to mind: "You can't be associated with this, or everything we're trying to achieve will be lost—and I won't give that up to him, I won't let him take that away."

She wasn't blind; despite all that had happened the wolf still stalked through her dreams and stood in her shadow, but now…now, when she looked into its expressive, mismatched eyes, a greater resonance tugged at her soul.

When Alderaan had been destroyed, she'd thought she'd lost any possible link with family. To be given this chance now—not just an adopted family, no matter how much they meant to her, but a brother, a twin brother—this was incredible, was everything to her. But she couldn't abandon that which she'd fought for her whole life—and Luke didn't even want her to. Somehow that made it harder not easier; that he wanted her to stand by her beliefs. That deep down, they were his too.

How could she abandon someone who was so much a part of her that he understood that?

She'd already sent a private message to Coruscant offering sympathy and denying any part in this. It had been Han's suggestion to send it to the red-haired bodyguard who had always been seen close to Luke; it was, after all, the same redhead whom Luke had trusted enough to bring with him to every meeting. The message had been unofficial and untraceable, made and sent from Tag's offices in the Intel department with no one else's knowledge, and even at the time it had seemed pitifully little.

Tag spoke out now with her dependable firm resolve, bringing Leia's mind back to the moment and the Council's discussion back to its roots. "I will say this, Sirs; I can pretty much guarantee that General Madine is no longer interested in a trial. He wants an execution and he wants to put it out over the HoloNet…and I think he's going to do it. He's already put…contentious images of the Emperor out on viral. He's already said that more will be put out soon. I genuinely think that the next set of images will be an execution. Do we really wish to be connected with that, by even the most tenuous association? Can we afford to be?"

"We're finally taking decisive action," Commander Odig, always a strong supporter of Madine, cut in.

"We're giving protection and credibility to a radical," Leia countered firmly.

"Backing an unlawful execution, if this goes ahead," Rieekan added gravely. "We should withdraw any tie or support whilst we still have that option… it already looks like a knee-jerk response."

Even knowing that it was Luke's wishes, Leia still squirmed, backing off from that ultimate option. "We cut Madine free now and we relinquish any and all control of him."

"He's no longer following orders or policy anyway," Ackbar said in husky tones. "He's effectively…"

"Ma'am?" An aide stepped into the council chamber, stopping when he reached Leia. And now—of all times, now—came the comm Leia had been waiting on for almost two days. "General Madine's made contact."

Leia straightened as the Council fell to silence. "Patch it through, Lieutenant."



"General Madine." Leia tried hard to have her tone articulate only cool confidence and not her abhorrence of the man who held her brother now.

The susurration which travelled about the Council Chamber wasn't nearly as discreet, and she realized that despite her personal feelings she may well find herself the mediator here, trying to hold this together from both sides as the Council grew ever less inclined to trust Madine.

The man himself sat tall and straight, the slight flicker of the holo hiding none of his self-assured arrogance. "Ma'am, Sirs."

Leia felt her hands curl to fists, fingernails digging into her palms.

It was General Gall who spoke out first, another ardent supporter. "General, you have my respect, Sir. You've put the Alliance's name on everyone's lips."

General Cotta turned to him, her manner frosty. "You seem to think that's a good thing, General Gall."

Gall straightened. "You think it's not? We've finally elicited some kind of reaction—the news is on everyone's lips."

"For the wrong reasons," General Rieekan said tersely, never one to mince words.

"Wrong reasons? How could this do anything but further our cause?"

"Our cause?" Rieekan asked. "Those…images were supposed to further our cause?"

"Those images and words were intended to light a fire under the dour complacency that has spread in the last few years, General," Madine said forcefully. "Both in the galaxy at large and the Alliance itself."

"They certainly succeeded, General," Leia said with feeling. "Though I question whether they were a little too…inflammatory."

"The words were spoken with strong intentions and absolute commitment, Chief Organa," Madine said, tone hardening. "We seem to have let such things slide under recent leadership."

Leia nodded. "It's a pity that all those strong words of absolute commitment failed even once to mention the Alliance's cause or intentions—that its fight is with injustice that the Empire embodies, not the man who…"

"The Empire and the Emperor are synonymous," Madine cut in forcibly. "We strike out at one and we deliver a blow to both. Are we so toothless now that we won't even take a stand for…"

"Forgive me," Leia countered, cutting Madine off with a conviction all her own. "But I served in the Senate, General. I know when my hand is being forced by divisive words…and actions. You made a public statement on behalf of the Alliance and now if we don't stand by it we lose credibility. And if we do, we lose integrity, and with it any right to claim connection or commitment to the values of the Old Republic."

"We have a chance to turn the path of the galaxy—permanently! We hold the Emperor!"

"We are all very well aware of that, General." Rieekan didn't even try to hide his disgust. "We have seen the images."

"You're seeing only what you choose to. Look at the bigger picture! Right now I have in my possession the means to bring this war to an end—a decisive end, in our favor."

"By murdering one man?"

"Murdering? Let's talk about murder—I'm bringing a mass-murderer, a dictator, to justice."

"Justice! What gives you that right to do so like this?" Leia asked. "Who gave you that jurisdiction?"

Madine turned on her. "Perhaps you should ask Mon Mothma that, Chief Organa."

"The man you're so very eager to kill didn't execute Mon Mothma, General. However much we dislike the fact, however wrong we know it to be in principle, he arrested her and passed her over to the state. She was under Imperial jurisdiction, not his."

"He is the Empire!" Madine was almost shouting now. "Whether he took her to her fate or did the deed himself is splitting hairs. He knew what he was doing—what the outcome of any circus of a trial they held would be."

"And are we any better, for doing the same now," Leia argued. "Less, because you have no intention of offering even some travesty of a trial, do you…do you?"

Madine's voice dropped to a low growl. "I wonder if you could explain to us why exactly it matters so very much to you whether I execute a known dictator, Chief Organa?"

Leia fell to silence at the unspoken threat, but Rieekan was quick to step in. "We would defend any life for its basic sentient rights, General. Even the Empire recognizes those now."

"Shams to pacify the masses," Madine dismissed. "The Emperor has no intention of relinquishing even a fraction of his power. He's a new face for the same old regime."

Ackbar spoke out, glassy eyes swiveling to the holo. "If they are shams, General, then he moves mountains to give them every possible reality. A cunning trick on his part, to abolish the Slave Edicts and reintroduce inalienable rights." He was more entitled than most to cite such things, Leia knew, his own race having long suffered under Palpatine's Slave Edicts. "This is a new Empire and a new Emperor, General—and I never thought that I would find myself in the uncomfortable position of fearing that it may hold the moral high ground. Because of your actions."

Leia watched Madine's face harden; watched his realization that despite his advocates, he was being frozen out. Watched any chance to bring Madine back into the fold, and so gain access to Luke, slipping away from her.

"I think we all need to calm down," she tried. "What's happened since Kwenn is an emotive subject which has polarized our opinions, but it's by no means…"

"Kwenn," Madine bit out. "Why don't you tell the Council what exactly you were doing at Kwenn Station that day, Ma'am?"

Leia raised her chin, refusing to be intimidated again. Because this was it; this was the line she wouldn't cross. Every single time she gave ground and backed down beneath his veiled threats, she strengthened his perceived position and weakened her own. She did the very thing she had spent her life refusing: she bowed to the bully—she held silent when everything in her told her to speak out…and she wouldn't play this game any longer. Wouldn't give him that power over her. "Why was I at Kwenn? You know as well as I do, Madine… I was there to follow up unofficial talks with the Empire—peace talks intended to lead to a summit between the Empire and the Alliance. I was there to talk peace with the one person who you yourself just admitted could be held as a true reflection of Imperial policy—I was there to meet with the Emperor…again."

The tumult was instantaneous, swelling through the Council in a surge, General Gall going so far as to rise, his chair toppling unheeded behind him.

Tag Massa was on her feet in a moment, hands out before her. "Sirs…Sirs!"

Leia held firm, jaw clenched, heart pounding as the uproar continued.

It was long moments before it died down enough that Massa tried again. "Sirs! This was done with the full knowledge and co-operation of Intel. I advised Chief Organa to hold back on telling the Council the details of a dialogue that was in its earliest stages. I stand by that decision. Due to ongoing security leaks, the sensitivity of the issue and the fact that we had nothing concrete to bring to the Council, I advised the Chief to wait. She was acting on my recommendations."

Through her shock at the solidarity that Tag had unquestionably shown, Leia felt a thick pang of guilt shake her at the realization that if she went down, she would now take Tag Massa with her.

Distantly, she realized that in the first flush of commotion, Tag had leaned forward to pause the comline to Madine, so that the General's image had frozen, a smug air squaring his jaw as he'd stifled a grin.

General Rieekan was standing too, now, his hands out before him in a shushing motion, shouting to be heard. "Chief…Chief Organa, let me clarify this; you've met with the Emperor?"

The reasonable tone of his voice was almost instantly drowned out by Gall's outraged shout. "You actually stood in a room with him! When?"

Leia pointedly ignored Gall's outburst, keeping her eyes on Rieekan. "I've spoken with him, yes. That was why I was at Kwenn."

Gall was again quick to jump in. "Then I think we should all consider it very lucky indeed, Ma'am, that General Madine was able to intervene when he did."

She couldn't let that one pass. "What exactly are you saying, General Gall?"

"I am saying, Ma'am, that the Emperor always plays his games over a larger canvas. I'm saying, not surprisingly, that the Emperor cannot be trusted—that he's a well-known strategist and a consummate liar. May I remind the Council again how he removed the Alliance's previous leader—there was no direct assault on a Rebel base; it was a lengthy, carefully constructed operation carried out over an extended period designed to lure Chief Mothma out into a vulnerable position. I am saying, Ma'am, that I am concerned that he may be up to his old tricks."

"If he'd wanted to arrest or remove me, he's had more than one opportunity to do so, General. I've spoken face to face with the Emperor on three separate occasions, discussing terms that would enable the Alliance and the Empire to come together to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, on the strength of the new rights and edicts already instigated since he came to power. He wants to do more—intends to do more—and he wants our cooperation."

"For what?" General Gall challenged.

"He wants his troops presently committed to the ongoing conflict to be turned instead to policing the continued slackening of the Imperial Constitution. To do that, he needs all actions against the Empire to stop. In return, he was offering concessions and a staged…"

"Concessions!" Odig's voice dripped chary dismissal. "What possible concessions could he be willing to cede?"

"He's already given us more than you would imagine. On our first meeting, I asked for proof of his intentions. On our second meeting, I was given the co-ordinates for a moon at Endor. When I arrived there, in orbit around it and protected by shields…was a new Death Star. I witnessed its destruction, offered by the Emperor as proof of his intentions. I asked for more; he gave us Fondor—a very public concession."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Leia didn't miss the fact that she was now defending the Emperor's actions before the Council—and yet she didn't stop. "Now I'm asking you the very question he asked me when we first stood face to face; I'm asking you if you can put old prejudices aside and take this one chance, take this step in the dark? I'm asking you, Sirs, which is more important, a chance at peace and democracy, or our own outmoded sense of identity in, as Admiral Ackbar so rightly pointed out, a changing Empire? I'm not saying we capitulate—never that—I'm saying we go to the table and talk. I'm asking which one of us, in good conscience, can refuse. A wise man once said, 'It's not what you call us and it's not where we stand. It's what we do which defines us'. He was my…he was Bail Organa, and he gave his life for his beliefs. And I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that if he were here today, he would be the first to say that this is right; this is an opportunity as never before. It's not enough to have a goal…you have to find a path to get there. I believe that this is our chance—this is our moment, and it will never come again.

"Madine was right; in amongst all his bigotry and intolerance, he was right about one thing: we have a chance to turn the path of the galaxy. The question is are we brave enough to take it—are we big enough to look past our own prejudices, and take that first step in the dark? I confess, it took me a long time to look within myself and know my answer—and it's taken until this moment to know that whatever happens, I will never regret my choice. I'd ask you all to consider yours."

Leia took long moments to rest her eyes on every face at that table, then she turned and left the room, head high.

She was six steps down the corridor beyond before the shakes cut in.





By the time she'd reached her office, Tag was already running to catch up. As ever, the Intel Chief didn't waste words. "The debate's continuing—I have to get back in there. Meanwhile, Madine's still on that comline. I'll cut the link when I get back to the Council room. You should take it in your office, try to talk him down. You probably have until the meeting folds and Odig or Gall get a discrete distance from the Council Chamber before he knows what went on."

"You think I can talk him down?"

Tag pursed her lips, and Leia knew that the discussion she'd just walked out of had been a breeze compared to the one she was about to enter into.





Han stood as Leia entered her office close to the Council rooms. He was leaving shortly, Leia knew; he'd waited only to see if anything came of the Council meeting. "What the hell's going on in there, it sounds like a Wookiee wedding. I could hear the shouting from here."

Leia hesitated, looking to Han before she activated the comlink. So many times since she'd taken office, she'd told herself that she shouldn't allow her own feelings to rule her head for fear of losing perspective. Shouldn't allow herself to become involved at a personal level. Well, she couldn't get much more personal than this…and it felt absolutely, categorically right.

"You should get the Falcon prepped, and I need to take this comm. I'll tell you what happened en-route."

Han was already two steps to the door before he halted. "Wait a minute…en-route?"

"You got a spare berth on that rustbucket you keep claiming is so very fast?"

"What about all that stuff you said, y'know, bigger picture, greater cause, larger responsibilities?"

Leia arched her eyebrows over fiery eyes. "It'll all just have to stumble along a few days without me. I'm going to get my brother."




With Han gone, Leia activated the comlink and spoke immediately, giving Madine no chance to kick off. "Well, should I go back in there and tell them the rest? I'd like to do it to my own schedule, but if I have to, I'll work to yours—and I'll work damn hard to make sure I take all your little powerplays apart in the process."

Madine's eyes narrowed. "Powerplays? I haven't even started yet."

"Who the hell's side are you fighting on?"

"My own," Madine said, seeming very comfortable with that decision. "In view of recent events, I find I have faith in no one else's. And looking at things from that standpoint, I think that the convenience of our continued association is coming to an end. You are, frankly, becoming more of a hindrance than a help, and I have my own methods of dealing with those, as your brother will attest. Though not for much longer, I think. He too, is coming to the end of his usefulness. He has just one more purpose to serve."

Finally, now, knowing she could hold Madine back no longer, Leia issued the ultimate threat. "You do this and we'll disown you. We'll renounce you publicly. You do this and you're on your own, Madine."

Madine's face set hard and his chin rose. "Thank you, Chief; you've made a difficult decision so much easier. Because of old loyalties to Mon, I was struggling with my wish to resign my commission and thus hand a successful campaign over to a Council fool enough to keep you in power. And it will be successful; the Emperor's death will kick-start the war your docile Alliance seems unable to bring itself to muster without my intervention, and the information the Emperor carries would have supplied them with the means to end that war decisively. On their terms. Now you've clarified just exactly where I stand in this…new Alliance—and it is, as is so much of your Rebel Alliance, a deep disappointment but hardly any shock. I resign any link to the weak, pale little disobedience that the Alliance has become. I renounce any and all ties… I hereby resign my commission, Chief Organa."

"Wait! Madine…" But Leia was speaking to static, the line cut… along with any chance of controlling him. Sith, what had she done? Leia slumped forward, head in her hands; now they had nothing, no access, no control… Leia straightened quickly, realization pulling her from her despair.

She switched the comlink channel and Tag's voice came on reassuringly quickly. "Chief?"

Leia let out a shaky sigh, but when she spoke, her voice was firm and self-assured. "Tag, you need to have all of General Madine's access codes disabled right now. Everything. Seal him out of the system. Then we need to put out an official message stating that Crix Madine is no longer part of the Alliance. We don't advocate his actions or his intentions."

Tag frowned, the alarm in her voice tightly controlled. "He resigned?" She paused, calculating as ever. "…or was he dismissed?"

"By his own choice, the General's no longer with us—and we need to distance ourselves from his actions publicly."

Tag's voice tightened, her breath leaving her in a rush. "He's going to execute the Emperor." It wasn't a question.










In her office, that first flurry of commands executed and wondering whether to put a watch on Madine's known supporters, Tag Massa slumped back, momentarily at a loss for what to do.

She pursed her lips, jaw tightening as she ran the numbers. They should go after the Emperor—she should persuade the Alliance to do it by any means. If they lost him…

A coded call came in on the private comlink in her desk drawer and she fumbled to pull it out, shocked that it had sounded at all, a brief flare of desperate hope firing through her. "Yes?"

"I have a clearance code," the unknown voice said simply. "Felucia, Kashyyyk, Dorin, one-one-three-nine-three."

Tag heard the tremble in her voice as she acknowledged the code. "Confirmation is Dorin, Dorin, Skako, five-five-nine-zero-nine. Who is this—do you have a safe identity?"

The unknown voice ignored her question. "Give me a report?"

Tag barely hesitated; she was that desperate. "Madine's cut free; resigned his commission. As of now, I have no way to access the General and no control or influence on his actions, short of trying to claim allegiance and join him. Do you have any updates?"

"Sith!" The channel broke for a few seconds, and Tag knew the contact was relaying this fact to others, then it reopened with a static click.

"As a matter of fact, I do," the woman's voice said grimly. "I need fine co-ordinates and a clearance code for Home One…and I need access to dock."

"Here!" Tag hesitated. "You understand that if I do this, my cover is blown."

"Just get me in."









Leia sat in her office staring blankly at the opposite wall waiting for…something. Some miracle. Grief, let there be…

A knock at the door jarred her from her reverie and she straightened, blinking her eyes dry. "Come in."

Tag Massa entered, and Leia had never seen the woman look so afraid. She felt her own heart lurch, her mouth suddenly too dry for words.

"You need to come with me," Massa said, voice grave.

"Why?"

"You need to come with me, right now."

Leia rose, driven by the tone of Tag's voice. "Where are we going?"



They reached the supply hangar in silence before Tag turned to Leia, unsmiling. "I'm asking you to trust me on this. Talk to them—just talk to them."

Leia frowned, turning to glance about the familiar hangar…and there, in the far corner, was an unknown ship, a long-range scout-fighter hybrid. She walked forward without hesitation—was it bounty hunters, someone Tag thought she could trust…?

She got just two steps up the ramp before she saw the truth. A lithe redhead and a small, slight, olive-skinned man were standing tensely inside, eyes on the entrance. Leia went for her non-existent sidearm, tensing…

"Wait!" The man—Leia knew him as Nathan Hallin, one of Luke's aides—was already a half-step forward, hands out before him. "Wait, please."

Leia froze, eyes narrowing. "You have the gall to come here…"

"Chief, please—" Tag started, and Leia turned on her.

"And you! Letting them inside our shields! How did they even find…" she trailed off, the terrible truth occurring. "You…you gave them co-ordinates. When you sent my message, you added coordinates, didn't you? You actually gave an Imperial ship the co-ordinates of Home One. Did… Are you…" She couldn't even say it. How long had she known Tag—five years, six? "Tell me this is the only time."

Tag remained still, expression pinched and stony, eyes searching Leia's.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Leia couldn't believe she had the presence of mind to even speak. In all the years she'd known Tag, she'd trusted her; a gut feeling, a sense of shared purpose. "All along, it was you. You were the spy."

Tag shook her head. "I only…made my choices a year after The Heir surfaced on Coruscant—that was when he contacted me."

"Before that…?"

Tag shook her head again. "It was never him, Chief. Skywalker was never your spy...but I'm guessing you know that now. Your mole was a Communications chief named Leemarit."

"And you took over where Leemarit left off."

"Leemarit was Palpatine's spy. I only ever collaborated with the Heir—with Luke Skywalker—and I did so knowing that he had no intention of destroying us. I'm not a traitor, Ma'am, I'm a true believer—and I believe this is the way to accomplish peace...the only way. The loyalty I give to the Emperor is no less than the loyalty I feel for you and for the Alliance, and for the self-same reason; in the genuine belief that he will use it wisely. He told me that between you, you two would be able to broker a peace. He had—has—a vision and I trust him absolutely to bring it into being…and I see it as my duty, my mission, to do everything in my power to aid him in that. Don't think me a traitor, Ma'am. I was never that."

This was going too fast for Leia to absorb. Tag the mole… Tag, who had looked after Leia and backed her and…grief, she was backing Skywalker's choice for leader of the Alliance! That was why she'd looked after Leia so closely! That was why she'd become a confidante—to guide Leia's actions! To influence her choices!

"Did you ever believe in me?" There was simmering anger in Leia's words.

"Always, Ma'am. I have always believed in your vision and your standpoint. I always knew you had the strength to take us beyond the fighting."

"You betrayed me."

"I never once did, Ma'am. I always sought to protect and to aid you—and with you, the most basic tenets of the Alliance—"

Another thought occurred to Leia and she cut across Tag's words. "Why did you help him—you didn't even know…" she trailed off, and Tag nodded.

"I went on several missions with him when I was still a field officer, before I was recruited into Intel. I saw in him all that I see in you, Ma'am; all the same drive, the same honor, the same principles. The same intent. I was devastated when he was taken by the Empire. He didn't contact me for well over a year after he disappeared, and by that time I was already in Intel. But I'd known him, so I listened…I thought I owed him that. When I'd decided, well, I was in Intel—it was an easy job to scrub a few files and swap a few details so that officially, I'd never once met Luke Skywalker. Those were high-security special-ops missions we went on; practically no records were kept."

"Why did you listen?"

Tag raised her chin. "Because I didn't believe them—the rumors at the time. I'd fought beside him; you see people for what they are under pressure like that. You see them at their best and at their worst. I'd already trusted Luke Skywalker with my life more than once…and I believed I could trust him with my hope, my future and my galaxy. I knew him… that was what I did, Ma'am; I evaluated—intel, people; it's all the same…and even then I knew I was very good at it. And I didn't believe a word of what was coming out of Coruscant—but then, I had the luxury of choice. You were in a very different position. You were already being groomed for leadership and you couldn't afford that luxury of personal opinions, I understand that. I believed…I still believe I'm doing the right thing. Or maybe…I think Skywalker said when he first contacted me that he was asking me to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That was what gave me faith; he knew his error, even then. He still does."
"He's a very persuasive man."

"Yes, he is, Ma'am," Tag replied, holding Leia's eyes unabashed. "It's because he believes absolutely in what he's saying. And he's saying that between you, you and he can broker peace…and I believe him, absolutely. And forgive me, Ma'am, but I think you do too."

The redhead—the redhead Leia had sent the message to—straightened, her arms still folded across her chest, all business. "Well this is fascinating, it really is. Meanwhile the trail's going cold." She turned hard eyes on Leia. "What you said on Kwenn Station—were you serious?"

Leia frowned, and Jade lifted her chin. "You said you wanted to change all this—that you wanted to make it work. Well the only man who can do that is presently being held by one of your Generals…so I'm asking you again—do you really want to see this end?"

Leia remained silent, and Jade spoke again. "Luke trusted you—he always trusted you. Right from the very beginning, despite everything, he picked you out. He doesn't trust a lot of people, let me tell you."

"He never trusted me."

"He trusted you enough to step onboard the Wasp, even though he knew it was a trap."

Leia felt a twist of guilt lurch in her stomach. "We have people looking for the Wasp now. I have nine units at its last known location."

"Nine units?" Jade said dryly. "You might like to know that the Empire has one hundred sixty-five Star Destroyers, ninety-seven Interdictors, one hundred thirty-five frigates, three hundred corvettes…"

The slight man leaned in, voice no more than a whisper. "I think she gets it, Mara."

Jade raised her eyebrows, gaze remaining on Leia. "No, she doesn't. Because they won't do any good—Luke will still be just as dead. They won't be fast enough. He needs something else—he needs the one thing he was fighting so hard to bring into being. He needs cooperation...here, now, because we'll respond faster; this mix. What we believe in, which side of the divide we stand right at this moment, is immaterial. Luke was right, when it comes down to the wire, it shouldn't matter. Political views, personal standpoints…they divide us because a very clever and manipulative old man told us they should, and we were all gullible enough to listen and think it was important. But now something genuinely important has happened and compared to that…I don't care. I don't give a damn about all that politics—it's a difference of opinion, not a difference of intent. All I know is that right now, between the people in this ship, we've got the best chance of making this work. We have those closest to the problem, and therefore the facts, on both sides of the divide. We have everyone he needs right here... So I'll ask again, were you ever serious, in all those talks with Luke? Because if you were, you need to come with me right now."

The slender man coughed and straightened, clearly feeling he should be the mediator in this. "You should probably know that this is the nearest I've ever heard Mara come to saying please in my entire life."

Leia stared at Jade, unabashed. "You should know, this is the nearest I've come to listening to an Imperial in mine."

"Is that a yes or a no?" Jade said. "Because I'm on a schedule and we're wasting time."

Leia tilted her head. "What makes you think I'll let you leave?"

Jade didn't blink. "What makes you think you can stop me?"

Hallin took a tentative step forward. "Maybe we should all…"

"Quiet!" Both women said it at once, then glanced to each other.

Jade shrugged. "He talks a lot. Fortunately, it's generally useful stuff…eventually."

Leia licked dry lips. "If we do this, it's on my terms." Was she even considering this?

Jade shook her head. "If we do this, there are no terms. We do it. For Luke. We get him out, then we go our separate ways."

"I won't lead Home One into a dangerous situation, and I can't risk the fleet in close quarters with Star Destroyers."

"I'm not asking the fleet, I'm asking you. The fleet'll only slow us down."

The medic leaned in, speaking quietly. "Mara, we may need that backup…"

"There's a fleet looking for him already, Nathan—bigger and better equipped than anything the Rebels can muster. This isn't about numbers."

Leia raised her chin. "I thought you said he gave good advice."

"I said eventually," Jade maintained—but she paused. "You can keep your fleet updated—but you should know I've no intention of taking Luke out of one prison just to hand him over into another. And we travel alone; I'm not waiting for any fleet to synchronize before we make every move."

"Fine."

The redhead nodded. "Fine."

The silence reigned for tense seconds before Nathan Hallin stepped forward again. "Are we supposed to…shake on it?"

Jade turned to look at him for long-suffering seconds before turning back to Leia. "So, I understand your two-faced ratgash just upped and resigned." She turned to Tag. "How many days ago did you last peg the Wasp?"

"We're running a trace now, on a HoloNet link he used. But if he's just resigned he'll probably have jumped already and knowing Madine, chances are that he was bouncing his signal off a good half-dozen boosters and routers anyway." Tag turned to Leia. "I'll get the co-ordinates sent to you—they may confirm our earlier suspicions—but that's still an awful big area to start dredging for one freighter."

"We have a make and an ID broadcast code for the Wasp, taken at Kwenn, which is obviously fake," Jade added. "Presumably you have more?"

"I'll transmit everything we have," Tag said. "We don't have much on the freighter—it was one of the General's little finds—but I've been reading through Madine's recent technical personnel and requisitions and based on those, aside from the shields it hadn't been modified too much. I also have a list of all of Madine's fake ID broadcast codes."

Jade nodded, all business. "We also need a new ship."

Leia frowned. "What's wrong with this one?"

"This one is hot," Jade said casually. "The Imperial Military probably have our ID code by now."

"And why would that be a problem?"

"It's not…if we have another ship."



"You got another ship. And believe me, it's way, way better than this one." Everyone turned at the new voice as footsteps came up the ramp. Han Solo squared his shoulders, glancing once to the redhead before he turned to Leia. "Chewie's just gone to warm the Falcon up. We should get movin'; time's wasting."

Jade hoisted a bulky holdall onto her shoulder, resettling her holstered blaster as she nodded in approval, every inch the professional soldier. "A man after my own heart."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Madine walked into the observation room where the medic, Kalter, was slouched back on a chair, eyes on the virtual screen, watching Skywalker as he slept.

Kalter rose as Madine nodded, glancing to the screen. "Time to get him up. How long's he slept?"

"Densun says they hauled him up three times last night, sir; he did about an hour sitting at the table each time, so…maybe two hours sleep, max. That makes it nine straight days of two hours or less. Plus he got woken up three more times 'cos the lens was fritzing out again."

Madine nodded, looking briefly to the corner and the innocuous small plasteel box which housed the slave chip's range monitor—his little insurance policy. The single status light flashed green, the small receiver holding the power of life and death with a single coded pulse to the chip-charge implanted at the base of Skywalker's skull. If it no longer detected its presence within a set radius—or if Madine chose to enter the activation code—it would fire the chip-charge.

Kalter's attention was on his open medi-box, a variety of ampoules within. "I mixed up a new combination last night, changed the ratio of co-fralodiost to tricliptidine. It seemed to work pretty well in the last session—eventually."

Madine let out a grunt. "All it seemed to do to me was make him talk more."

"That's what we need."

"No, we need information. Time's wasting and I'm not interested in listening to his life story."

Kalter shrugged. "That's how this works. The more he talks, the more comfortable he gets speaking and the less he's censuring what he's saying."

"It's too slow. I need that code."

"It goes as fast as it goes, sir. You heard the recording, he's used to the drugs. Too used to them."

"Then give him higher doses."

"We're past safe levels already, and administering them way too often, even by Imperial standards. Go too far and he could have a psychotic episode that'll take weeks to pull him back from—longer maybe."

"Fine," Madine bit out, "then I'll ask the questions. He answers me."

The medic shook his head. "You get his guard up and that's actually when he starts falling back on method avoidances like the countdowns. Look at what he's actually saying and he doesn't give you any more answers than me. In fact given the last session when the co-fralodiost cut in, I'd question whether we're even asking the right things…"

"What does that mean?"

"It means that for a start, I don't think he was a spy."

"I told you not to pursue that line of questions," Madine rumbled.

"I didn't, sir. You heard the recording, he volunteered it."

"So you wasted time listening to him? We have just five days left before he's dead—I need those codes."

"I think it's very relevant. If he wasn't a spy…"

"It doesn't matter who he was. What matters is who he is now, and the information he holds because of that. Information that I need." Madine stepped forward to glance to the medi-box as he closed it down. "You're giving him twelve-milliliter doses, right?"

Kalter glanced down, lips pursing, his reticence obvious. Madine let out a low sigh; Skywalker was a piece of work, he really was, to start one of Madine's own troops thinking. He glanced back to make sure the door behind him was closed, then back to Kalter.

"Let me tell you something about the man in that cell, Lieutenant; he's one of the best agents I ever saw, a consummate soldier trained by Palpatine himself, and he'll do anything and twist anything to get what he needs. He'll find any weakness—anything at all—and use it. I know that without a shadow of a doubt because he did it with me for three years—and the rest of the Council."

Kalter looked up, and Madine nodded, confirming the whispers which had never quite gone away in the Alliance; that Skywalker had walked among them once. "They're all true, the rumors. He infiltrated the Alliance as a spy, and he did it to Command level. For three years he walked among us like he belonged and no one—not one person—suspected anything. You want to know how good he was? I promoted him to Special Ops status, I was one of the Council members who approved the recommissioning of the Rogues as a specialist unit on his request, gaining him access to all kinds of information. I even put him forward as one of Mon Mothma's bodyguards. I thought he'd be a General in five years; on the Council in seven. No one once questioned him, right up until he returned to Palpatine. Hell, there's still a few pilots out there from Rogue Group who don't believe it to this day. That's how good he is. He's doing exactly the same thing to you right now…and you're letting him."

Kalter's jaw tensed as he looked away and nodded—but it wasn't enough, Madine knew. He sighed, lifting the box. "Twenty milliliters, right?"

The medic nodded, understanding that Madine had made his decision, and wouldn't take him into the cell again. "Start him on ten, then ramp it gradually to a total of twenty. No more than that and no closer than eight hours between doses—seriously. That's already pushing it. Watch his breathing—and let him talk."








By the time Madine walked in with the medi-box, Skywalker was already tethered to the table, hunched forward, at the edge of his endurance physically if not yet mentally. Madine clamped his jaw as he slammed the box down hard on the table, annoyed that he'd lost Kalter to Skywalker's tricks; lost the inventive edge that the drug-specialist could provide.

Maybe it was time for a different kind of approach anyway.

He turned and walked to the surveillance lens to unplug it before looking to the soldiers who always stood guard in the cell when interrogations were taking place. "Outside."

Skywalker glanced about, wary eyes on the door as it cycled closed, the black eyes and bruises from his beating when they'd filmed the images two days ago still darkening, cuts still scabbing, though the swelling that had almost closed one eye had gone down. He kept his head down now, his breathing already so labored that it moved his whole frame with every breath.

Madine sat, opening the case and taking out the loaded syringe to place it on the table before him, seeing Skywalker tense at the corner of his vision. He took his time to put the case to the floor and sat back slowly, wrapping his fists one in the other before him as Skywalker watching him guardedly; good.

"Ready to start?" he asked levelly.

"You forgot your other half."

There was the hint of a slur to his voice and he blinked slowly; tiredness or residual drugs, Madine didn't know which.

"Kalter won't be back again—no more good guy, bad guy. Just me now."

No movement; no reaction. Madine leaned in and lifted the syringe, turning it about in his hands. "You should know that things have changed while you've been in here, Skywalker. Big-time—and not in your favor. It's time for a new game...I know you're so fond of them. Only you might not like this one so much, because it's my game. No Alliance involved, not any more."

Skywalker straightened slightly in the chair but his stony expression didn't change, leaving Madine to wonder if he'd been expecting this all along.

"That means no rules but my rules, and I'm guessing you can figure out just how few and far between they are. I want some real answers, and I'm not prepared to wait any longer, you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand exactly what you're saying." Skywalker nodded his head slowly. "It's all starting to fall apart for you, isn't it? I'm betting the Alliance couldn't drop you quick enough when they realized what you were going to do."

Madine sat back, squaring his jaw against the provocation. "I left them."

Skywalker glanced down, letting out a brief laugh. "So what, the Alliance is out of the picture and you're starting your own little faction, claiming this victory in its name?"

"I may just do that. Quite an opening statement, don't you think—the execution of the Emperor?"

Skywalker nodded slowly. "Too much of one for the Rebel Alliance."

"Because the Alliance is no longer the Rebellion. It's losing its way, becoming nothing more than a pale shadow of the Empire it was formed to fight against."

"The Alliance isn't becoming like the Empire, the Empire's coming closer to the ideals of the Alliance. We're relaxing laws, we're changing—it just takes time."

"And you just happen to remain in power while all that time is being taken? No, that's not going to happen any more; I'll take you down, then I'll rip your travesty of a regime apart."

"That's just barbed words—words are easy. What would you actually do? How would you—"

"I'll dissemble the Imperial military for a start. Take it apart—blow it apart if I have to."

Skywalker shook his head, but already he was beginning to slump, his voice weakening even as he pushed on. "That's not a policy, it's anarchy. It's a gut reaction. What do you put in its place, how do you maintain law? How do you ensure that the power vacuum you're creating doesn't fire up a dozen local warlords? What about criminal organizations like Black Sun—do you think you have more funds and facilities than them? What will you do when they start bankrolling individual Royal Houses who have a good chance at taking power in the vacuum you've created? That's assuming all those disgruntled Moffs don't simply start forming their own private little armies from those you've just dismissed. How do you police that new democracy when you don't even have enough troops to maintain order? How do you make sure it's not simply a manifestation of the highest bidder or the most influential..."

Madine rose, slamming his hands down, but Skywalker only smiled, head still lolling, looking to Madine through his tangled hair. "Or doesn't that matter? Are you exactly what you seem, Madine—just another anarchist looking for justification. For a way to hurt something that hurt you."

"You think you're so smart, think you're the only one who sees things on a galactic scale, don't you? Well I have news for you; I see things too, and I have plans. Big plans."

"If that was them, I'm not impressed."

"You think your execution is going to force me out of the Alliance and give your sister free reign? You couldn't be further from the truth. See, I've taken a leaf from your book; right now I don't need to be there to control them. I can still see what they need to push them forwards, and how to bring that into effect from right here in this cell. They've let themselves become complacent, thanks to your sister. They've let themselves be pushed further and further out into the Rim Systems whilst you put out empty shams of reform and ease the Alliance from everyone's mind—that's what you're doing, I can see that. They'll finish not with a bang, but with a whimper. Except that I'm not going to let you—in fact, I'm gonna use you to do exactly the opposite. Executing you and claiming responsibility on behalf of the Alliance will force everyone's hand. Our new Empress seems so touchingly concerned for your safety," Madine said dryly.

Skywalker actually straightened, voice hardening. "Leave her alone."

Madine couldn't hide the smile from his face at that reaction. "Do I detect concern? And here I thought you weren't capable of such things."

Skywalker reined himself back in, but the tension was still there, visible in his sharpening eyes, in his fingers curling about the metal cable that tethered his wrists.

Madine grinned. "If you ask me, she seemed a little too eager to step into your role, but I'm betting that if I execute you, she'll respond, if only because it's expected of her—and I'll take that, because it'll still kick-start the war that your sister's made the Alliance so very reticent to instigate and you know it, don't you?"

"You're wrong. It won't start a war—Leia won't let it."

"I don't think she'll be around. Unlike our vaunted new Empress who's just starting her reign, your sister's nearing the end of hers. See, I need an army to fight that war and take that victory for me—and she has one just ripe for the taking, whenever I'm ready…as well as a means to take it."

Madine had the satisfaction of seeing Skywalker blanch, realization opening dark-rimmed eyes. "You'll tell them who she is."

"That's right. When I'm good and ready, and not before. When I'm the only hope they have of stopping the avalanche. When they're realizing just how bad it can get—how little some slip of a barely grown girl can do to stop the war…then I'm gonna step in there and tell them one hell of a reason why she hasn't. Why she turned them all against me. I'll walk back in there as their savior because I'll have the means to victory. But to do that, I need those codes; I need the Doomsday Codes and I know damn well you have them."

Skywalker shook his head wearily. "They don't exist."

"Please, you've already said they do." He glanced to the vo-corder on the table. "You want me to pull the conversation up? One code, seven groups of numbers, that's what you said."

"Not that code. It never existed. It was only ever a rumor to keep the fleet Captains in line, another little game by Palpatine." Skywalker lifted his head to look Madine in the eye. "It never existed."

"I was a General, Skywalker—I was a General in Palpatine's army. I know the codes he had, the hard-wired overrides in every capital ship and every major installation. Palpatine was a paranoid man, he didn't like to think that anything was beyond his control, or his retribution. One code, seven groups of numbers."

"Doesn't exist."

Madine's eyes went to the syringe as he lifted it and began to turn it in his fingers. "Kalter told me the safe limits of this stuff. Told me what would happen if I went over them… How likely do you think it is that I'm gonna hold to them in this new game?"

Skywalker moved slightly but didn't speak as Madine continued to finger the syringe. "I should clarify that I don't care what condition you're in when I put you up in front of that firing squad. I couldn't give a damn. If you can't stand any more I'll have you dragged in there and shoot you in a heap on the floor—I'll shake you awake just so you can see that it's me holding the gun.

"Myself, I'd want the last view the galaxy ever saw of me to be standing straight and looking the men who held the blasters in the eye, rather than tied down and drugged up and covered in cuts and bruises for the sake of holding out just one or two more days." Madine paused to lift his eyes to Skywalker, who sat in a slump, his eyes on the syringe. "That's the choice you're looking at now—do you die by being stood up against a wall and shot or do you die like this, off your head and just waiting for the time that your heart gives out from another overdose. It's your choice. You're dead either way, and either way, you're sharing your last minutes with the rest of the galaxy. How many of them'll clap, do you suppose? How many will cheer? More importantly, how many will stand, outraged, and demand the reprisals that will kick-start my war and stop those spineless, pathetic people out there being able to hover safely on the sidelines and not get involved." Madine grinned, eyes alight as Skywalker finally met his gaze. "You and me, we're gonna start a war, Skywalker. What is it they say...a wind to shake the stars."

"Don't do it—don't start a war thinking you can control it… You want to see change, we can achieve the same things without-"

"Huttslime. I'm sick of hearing your rousing little speeches, Skywalker; they won't even scratch the surface anymore and they sure as hell won't save your life." Madine grinned as Skywalker stopped dead at the use of his name, the first time Madine had said it out loud. "Oh yes, I know who you really are. I got to wondering when I first started asking Solo about your cell onboard the Executor. Worked it out first time I saw those plans—why bother to go to all that trouble and complexity for a cell that worked like this one, otherwise? Why not fake it, if you were already an Imperial agent. But let me tell you a hard truth: I don't give a damn. I don't care who you were, I only care what you're worth to me now. You're the man whose death can spark a war. You're the man who knows the one thing that stands between me and returning to the Alliance in triumph as the General who can cripple the whole Imperial fleet in one fell swoop, and win that war."

"The fleet?"

"Imagine… I know the Doomsday Code can single out individual vessels by their call signs, but why bother? Why bother at all? If you have a weapon, you shouldn't be afraid to use it."

"The fleet holds the peace on thousands of worlds. It polices civilian populations, it keeps the criminal…"

"D'you think I'm afraid of a little anarchy? It's all grist to the mill—keeps your government occupied whilst we move; ties them down in details, limits their responses."

"You bring down the whole fleet and it removes any law. You'll never control it, you'd throw the whole galaxy into chaos, it'll spread like wildfire. It would be years of fighting—decades even. This needs to stop, not escalate—our children deserve the chance to grow up in a galaxy that isn't at war. I can give you peace by-"

"Your peace, on your terms. I'm not interested."

Skywalker shook his head. "Always the soldier—all you know how to do is fight."

"And you're a Sith—all you know how to do is lie."

"Listen to me, Madine-"

"I think enough people have listened to you, Skywalker. I think it's time to stop that—dead. You can't talk your way out of this one—you can't argue your way out or order your way out, like you have some divine right. There's no throne here. I don't give a damn who you were. It changes not one thing, because you still killed Mon."

"Mothma came after me…"

"That's right, she did—and I'll finish the job she started."

"She also wanted peace—do you really think she'd…"

"Don't waste your breath. You have so little of it left now." Madine smiled tightly. "Can't you just feel those seconds ticking away? Do you think this is what Mon felt in her last hours? Do you think you'll feel the same as she did when I stand you in front of a firing squad, have the same final thoughts whipping around in your head—do you think you'll have her strength when you face them, her courage?"

Skywalker glanced down, face falling to regret as his voice softened. "She was a brave woman..."

"Don't!" Madine slammed his fist down on the table, furious. "Don't you dare talk about her! Don't even utter her name! You killed her, you son of a Sith, you killed her! You're not fit to speak her name."

Skywalker remained still, flinching just once as Madine's hands came down on the desk, but holding his eye without shying back. "You killed her, Madine, just as much as I did...because you talked her into signing that warrant to make the assassination attempt, didn't you? You made her put her name to it. What did you expect me to do? You killed her just as much as…"

Madine lurched up to grab Skywalker by the loose flightsuit he wore, hauling him upright, his hands coming instinctively up in defense only to be jolted to a halt as Madine drew his arm back, hand curling into a fist.













Han slowed in his walk across the main hold of the Falcon, still stretching muscles wound tight half from sitting too long in the cockpit and half from worry.

They'd set out almost nine hours ago, heading for the narrow crossing-point close to the join of the Perlemian and the Hydian Way, on his and Massa's hunch that it would be somewhere in that closely massed sector of stars that Madine would try to slip the Imperial blockades. It was, Han had to admit, about as tenuous a link as he'd ever followed, and he had no idea what they'd do when they got there in two days' time. He was hoping that Tag Massa, who'd stayed behind to maintain the pretense that Leia was still onboard Home One, would have uncovered something to narrow the search by the time they got there.

With the uproar in the Council from Madine's resignation, Tag was now closely monitoring every single piece of outbound data from Home One looking for anything out of place; that single message sent by one of Madine's lackeys on the state of play, which would blow the Wasp's co-ordinates. Still, he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that time was ticking down—they were now on day ten of that fourteen-day deadline Madine had so confidently announced in the short holo-message and the fact was, even with their combined knowledge, the odd mix onboard the Falcon right now had painfully little to go on.

Now, as he headed aft to get something to eat whilst Chewie took the helm, Han paused in the main hold to stare at its one remaining occupant; Jade was sitting at the dejarik board, her attention centered on reassembling the impressive-looking rifle she'd clearly taken in pieces from her open holdall.

"Nice piece," Han said conversationally. "Tailor-made?"

She glanced up, cagey as ever. "Maybe."

"Stealth sniper," he said knowingly, pleased at the surprise in her eyes, though he kept his voice casual. "I've seen a few, with mercenaries."

"Not like this one," Jade said simply, working on the pieces with a practiced hand; Han bet she could've continued assembling that thing in the dark.

"Looks like it's had some use," he observed as he picked up the power coupling.

Jade reached out to take it off him and return it to the exact same spot on the table. "Not so much recently. But I think I remember where everything goes."

Han leaned loosely against the edge of the holo-table, studying the redhead. She had that same tough, no-nonsense sense about her that he remembered from six years ago in Luke's quarters in the Palace, but there was a brittleness to it now; an anxious vulnerability.

"So where do you fit into all this?" he asked at last. "And don't say you're his bodyguard, 'cos I wasn't born yesterday."

Jade arched an eyebrow. "How about it's none of your business."

"Hey, you're on my ship and we're going after my buddy. I think I got a right."

Jade paused in her work to look up. "Okay, I have a question for you…why are you helping Luke—returning a favor?" Han frowned, and she raised her eyebrows. "From when Luke broke you out of the Palace. Force knows, you both spent weeks planning it—or did you think I didn't know?"

"You didn't seem too eager to stop us at the time."

"I didn't think whatever the hell you were planning would work," Jade said pointedly. "Luke had absolutely no way to get out of his quarters and even if he did, as long as he had to waste time getting down to you in the main monolith, I thought I had all the time in the galaxy to stop him. I didn't expect him to pull that splitting up stunt."

"Neither did I," Han said with feeling.

"You didn't know?"

Han frowned, halfway between injured and insulted. "You think I'd've just left him there? He told me he was already out of the Palace, in the Falcon."

Watching Jade's eyes roll, Han realized it was only now that she understood that he hadn't let Luke risk his own life just to get Han out; he'd been as in the dark as everyone else. He watched a slow smile come to her lips as she nodded. "Figures."

Han grinned lopsidedly. "Drives you insane sometimes, doesn't he?"

Jade shook her head wryly—and with a smile on her lips, she looked pretty good, Han had to admit.

"You have no idea," she said dryly.

"You know, the whole time I knew him, I swear sometimes he just seemed to go from situation to situation. He got it down to a fine art."

Jade smiled again…then her expression turned pensive. "He's not the man you left there—you know that, don't you?"

Han shrugged. "He is to me. Just better dressed."

"You're wrong. He's still Luke but…"

"With an edge," Han said simply. It wasn't like he hadn't seen it.

"It's more than that. Do you…know anything about the Force?"

"I know it's got a lot to answer for."

"Luke's…the Force is split into two, Light and Darkness. In every single teaching I've ever read, both Jedi and Sith, it's always written that you are one or the other—you use one or the other side of the Force exclusively. I can't…I can't even tell you what Luke is—I don't think he could either."

"Same as everyone," Han shrugged. "A little bit of both."

"No, the Force doesn't work like that, it never has. Either you hold to the light or you get pulled down by the Darkness. There are no shades of gray, not in this."

"There must be a point at which light meets darkness?" Han asked. "That's where he is."

Jade was silent for long seconds, eyes falling, clearly lost in thought. When she spoke it was quietly; more hesitant than Han had ever seen her. "You can't stand there…you can't span that divide. You haven't seen him when the Darkness takes him. If he's pushed too far, when that balance fails…he snaps spectacularly."

Han sighed, uneasy, pushing her worry aside with a joke. "Yeah, you should see me working on the Falcon some days."

He paused as Chewie's holler came down the corridor from the cockpit, walking to the console in the main hold to activate the comm. "Hm."

Jade was instantly attentive. "What?"

"Someone's leavin' messages for me all over the place, asking for contact."

She straightened a little, voice tightening. "Who?"

It had already come out just exactly why Jade and Hallin had needed to lose their scout fighter when they'd arrived at the Alliance baseship. One more reason to avoid the Imperials, as if they needed one—and here, Han had been pretty much hoping that Jade's rank would buy them safe passage around that Imperial interdiction zone when they were looking for Madine. Jade seemed pretty confident she could count on a good portion of the military if she had to; he just didn't want to find out which ones she couldn't the hard way.

"Karrde." Han frowned at the short message, no more than a name and a comm code. "Where've I heard that name before?"

Jade was already on her feet and setting forward. "Talon Karrde?!"

Han glanced over, surprised. "Doesn't say his first name, but…wait a minute, I remember now, I saw him onboard the Patriot, right?"

Jade broke step momentarily. "When were you onboard the Patriot at the same time as Karrde?"

"Oh, er….some point—don't remember." Han swiveled his chair quickly back from the console, effectively changing the subject by leaning back to shout down the loop corridor, "Leia! Get up here."







They all sat crushed into the cockpit of the Falcon as the holo-transmitter there flickered into life on the channel they'd been given in the message…and Talon Karrde's face came into view. Han frowned, remembering the burly Corellian smuggler, his long, grey-tinged hair and thick moustache instantly recognizable.

"Solo," he greeted somberly—and already, Han could see those sharp eyes flicking about the holo that would be before him right now, obviously taking in the unlikely mix of Imperials and Rebels he was speaking to. Still, he held a neutral tone as he continued, far from fazed. "We met once, through a mutual friend, I believe?"

"That's right."

"I've been trying to track you down for several days now."

"I've been busy," Han said simply.

"So I see," Karrde replied, moving quickly on to business. "I believe we may be busy looking for the same person?"

"Very likely," Han allowed. "Care to tell me what you know?"

That wide moustache was curved by a smooth grin. "I was thinking more of a two-way exchange."

Han settled back, face wary, though in truth he wasn't too worried; Luke trusted this guy, and if Karrde had bothered to contact them, chances were he was reliable. Plus, they could use all the help they could get right now. "Well unless you know a hell of a lot, it'll be a short exchange. I could spend an hour tellin' you what we don't know, but I can fill you in on what we do know in about two minutes."

"I think I have two minutes to spare." Karrde's eyes flicked again across those he could see in the Falcon's cockpit, coming to rest on Leia. "I would assume you have access to more…across the board knowledge, given where the images on the HoloNet claim to have come from."

"We don't have him," Han said categorically. "The Alliance doesn't have him. We don't know if or how they're moving him around, and we don't know where they're holding him, or how. All we know is, the threat's genuine."

Karrde's face hardened momentarily. "Yes…I think that pretty much sums up our side of the fence too. We are, however, working on it."

"So…a little less than two minutes then," Han said. "Unless you got something else?"

Karrde stared for a few seconds longer, clearly considering his options…then sighed, leaning forward slightly. "I think I can pretty much tell you how they're holding him," he allowed. "Someone was in the market for a copy of the plans used to construct a specific cell not too long ago. A domed, double-walled cell built onboard the Executor with a very unusual spec…a cell designed to hold a Sith."

Han felt Leia jolt in surprise where she leaned against him…and in the far chair, Jade turned quickly, studying her a fraction too long with narrowed eyes as she leaned forward to speak. "That's the cell! That's the cell I saw in the Wasp's hold. It's a half-dome, like being inside a half-sphere. All the walls are curved and there's a double-skin with an inner and outer doors, connected by a short corridor."

Karrde paused. "Yes, it's to facilitate a vacuum between those inner and outer walls."

Jade nodded. "It was built so that if a Force-sensitive tried to blow out the interior wall, he'd open the cell to vacuum—explosive decompression—and it would knock him cold. How do you know details about it?" The last she aimed at Karrde.

"I was given a set of those plans by the Emperor to try to draw out who your mole was sending information to. We entered negotiations, then he pulled out before I met him—I assume he got a set elsewhere. I happened to…leaf through them yesterday, though, and I noticed that they require TSC, which should be easy to trace, since no one uses it any more."

"TSC…" Jade twisted round to Leia as a stray memory fired. "The alloy—the alloy stolen by your Rebellion in the Fondor raid about five months ago!"

Leia nodded. "That was…his operation from beginning to end. It was approved on the strength of it being a raid on the military shipyard. We didn't know that he was using it to steal something. What is it?"

"A super-strength alloy used in military bunkers," Jade supplied. "We didn't understand why it had been taken at Fondor because the product itself had been upgraded and replaced by a new product."

On the comlink, Karrde nodded slowly, putting the pieces together. "But the original plans for that cell were around eight years old and would have specified it, so your…unnamed man followed them to the letter. Better safe than sorry when you're trying to cage a Sith, I would imagine."

"Madine," Han volunteered, knowing the way things went in this arena; that some return of trust was needed here after Karrde had taken the time to contact them, and was himself volunteering information without reserve.

Jade turned to glare at him, but he ignored her.

"So it is Crix Madine," Karrde said with interest, everything clearly falling into place for him. "The viral I saw claimed this was on behalf of the Rebel Alliance." His eyes held meaningfully on Leia.

"It's not," Leia said simply.

"But he's one of your people?"

"Not any more. We're trying to get that fact out there now."

"I see…" Karrde said slowly. Still tying all the loose ends together, Han figured. "So it's true that your Rebellion has just publicly disavowed him—presumably because of this?"

"The Alliance didn't know what he was planning, and he didn't return to us when he'd done it," Leia said emphatically. "This was Madine's own actions, we had no part in it, and we can't and won't condone it now."

"Madine was always a loose cannon," Han growled. "We couldn't get rid of him soon enough, if you ask me."

"Really? I would have said that you got rid of him a few days too early. Why didn't the Rebellion simply nod politely and keep him happy until they could get a commando team together and take the Emperor from him?"

Han shook his head. "He's kept Luke well away from the Alliance. Has him on a different ship—a CEC Class Six bulk freighter that was running under the ID of the Wasp when he did the job, though I doubt it is any more. He went rogue a few days back; took his prisoner with him."

Karrde nodded. "I have the freighter's ID, though I didn't know whose show it was. We're…pursuing a few enquiries of our own to try to track it down."

Jade straightened, frowning. "How do you have the ID?"

Karrde shrugged casually. "It's been relayed from one end of the galaxy to the other for the last week or so."

"On secure Imperial channels."

"Whatever," Karrde dismissed.

Han leaned in, looking to break up the deadlock. "You get anything?"

"No, not yet, but hopefully I will shortly. As I said, I spoke to the man who wanted to buy those cell plans—twice in fact—and both times, it was through the Vendaxa Relay Station on the Rimma Trade Route. If he's still hacked into that station and using it to relay bounced messages, we'll try to backtrack the comm signals from there."

"A track like that would take days to cut in and slice," Mara said. "We don't have that long."

"My slicer tracked the message back to that relay when the original deal was being discussed," Karrde said. "We placed a backdoor access into the relay program then. When we're within sublight comm range we can access it."

"How far away are you?"

"A few hours. We just made a brief drop out of lightspeed so I thought I'd make another attempt to contact you."

"We have five days," Han said gravely.

Karrde blinked a few times. "Yes, I saw the holo."

"We're going through our own records, but Madine hasn't used the Alliance's official channels to get anything in this; he's too shrewd. Given time, we might pick something up but…"

"Ghent's fast," Karrde said simply, his brusqueness and confidence reassuring. "Plus he has standing codes to slice that relay station. Madine will presumably have used a modulator though—he always was a slippery fish. A clean, digitized voice sample would speed it up and give us greater accuracy."

"I can get one sent to you from Alliance Intel," Leia said immediately.

"Good. It'll be a day or so, but I think a list of every comm Madine made from that relay station may well be an enlightening piece of information."

Mara leaned in. "If you give us the frequencies Madine's using, I can pass that on to our Intel people too."

"Really?" Karrde asked levelly. "From what I've heard, you might not necessarily be listened to."

Jade straightened, her tone a dangerous mix of offense at his insinuation and annoyance that he knew her status in the first place. "Do you have access to classified codes?"

Karrde remained impressively unfazed, given the tone of Jade's voice. "I would say the codes we should be discussing right now are the ones that Crix Madine is using."

Han spoke up, more interested in what other information Karrde had than where or how he got it. "We think he might be somewhere in the Perlemian Crush," he said, of the cluster of close systems. "You got any guesses yet?"

Karrde frowned. "The Crush is barely clear of the present Imperial interdiction zone—I would imagine he'd be further out."

"He has a fault on his hyperdrive, we think. He's limited to short jumps. We know his first was to Agamar, then Sinsang. Trouble is, going after him is putting us at the edge of the Imperial interdiction zone too."

"Yes…" Karrde seemed to hesitate a moment, obviously turning something over. "I think I can help you with that. I have a high-level recognition code given me by the Emperor. If you broadcast it, you'll have unhindered passage anywhere in Imperial space."

"You're kidding me!"

"I've used it several times to pass in clear sight through military blockades and interdicted planets, and have never once been challenged." He glanced to Jade. "Presuming it's still active."

She shrugged. "I didn't know you had it, so I'm pretty damn sure Kiria D'Arca won't."

Han kept his eyes on the holo, wondering if anybody else had missed the inference that came with Jade's casual words; certainly not Karrde, whose shrewd eyes remained on her just a moment too long before he continued.

"I'll have Aves patch it through to you on a coded channel. Try not to do anything too imprudent when you're using it; I'd rather like to utilize it again myself." Karrde glanced away and nodded to someone out of pickup range. "We're ready to move on. I'll contact you on this frequency as soon as we have anything."

"Uh…" Solo paused, "thanks, Karrde."

"No problem. Oh…" the mercenary loosed the slightest of sardonic smiles, eyes flicking to Jade, "I will, of course, be billing the Empire for my time."





"So, useful to get that Imp clearance code, huh?" At the rear of the trail of tired people heading back through the main hold to their bunkrooms, even though they all knew damn well that none of them would sleep tonight, Han paused to speak to Jade.

"Provided it works," she allowed. "I'll run it by a friend in Intel before we use it—make sure it's still operative, and doesn't have a tracer on it."

"Useful friend."

"Luke's, not mine." She'd stopped to pick up her sniper rifle from the dejarik table, but she turned to him now, expression coolly calculating as she looked him up and down. "Apparently he has them all over the place."

Han grinned at the underhand compliment. "Nice to know I'm appreciated."

"I wouldn't go that far."

She hefted the long-barreled sniper-rifle onto her shoulder before she too turned to leave, and Han nodded his head at it. "Got it assembled then?"

"Pretty much." She hesitated, then surprised Han by holding it out. He took it, impressed by its balanced weight as he lifted it to stare down the sight.

"What's the prism?"

"It has a distance beam for focus, invisible to the naked eye. The prism sight lets me set the focus of the actual laser bolt. With a heat or motion detector on the sight, I can set it to pass unfocussed through walls without any visible damage, focused on a target within a room."

"No tracer then?" Han asked, of the visible tracer beam which enabled the firer to see where a standard blaster fired.

"Well that'd just spoil the effect, wouldn't it?" Jade said grimly, taking the range rifle back and re-shouldering it.

"I'm figuring you got a specific target for that thing?"

She lifted uncompromising green eyes to him. "Do you have a problem with that?"

Han affected a half-shrug. "I got no love of Madine. Never did understand what the hell was going on inside his head."

"Well then you'll be happy to know that this may be your chance to find out," Jade said tightly as she turned to leave, "because the first chance I get, I'm spreading its contents out on the wall behind him."

Han watched her go, grinning; yeah, he could see why the kid liked her.












Karrde rubbed thoughtfully at his graying moustache as he walked down the Wild Karrde's main corridor, lost in thought. For a self-confessed information-junkie, that had been a very interesting conversation.

He considered the unlikely group he'd just spoken to, freshly amused as one more of the Emperor's many secrets came to light, in the choice of those he clearly trusted. The Rebel Alliance's leader, no less…if he'd have been told it by someone else he would have laughed in their faces. Leia Organa seemed the immensely capable, no-nonsense type that had always fascinated him. She also seemed…unreasonably anxious, given whom she was trying to track down.

Karrde narrowed his eyes, considering that other little nugget this talk had brought to light; because everyone in that discussion clearly believed that the Emperor's given name was Luke. Karrde might still have doubted, but considering the people who'd been sitting around Solo when he said it, none of whom seemed particularly eager to correct him, he was inclined to believe.

And Luke, it seemed, was being held by Crix Madine, in a Class Six freighter, in a cell designed specifically to hold a Sith…which was strange, because when Karrde had spoken to him about that very possibility, the Emperor had seemed quietly confident that the cell couldn't hold him.

In that same talk he'd all but admitted that the original cell built by Palpatine had also been built specifically to hold him…which beggared the question: why would Palpatine feel the need to restrain his own Heir, the man whom he'd given the rank of Commander of the Fleet?

True, the Heir was sharp and he was calculating and, if the rumors were to be believed, when he needed to be, he was ruthlessly dangerous…but to Palpatine?

Ambition, of course, was a serious incentive, and with anyone else Karrde might have shrugged and nodded knowingly, but the Heir? No; he'd had no great desire to claim Palpatine's title—every single action he'd ever taken, before or since, underlined that fact.

Karrde knew all the theories, of course, but that was all they were—theories. One of the most enigmatic and powerful men in the Empire had appeared out of the blue aged twenty-one, with no history, no past, no explanation. No name. The scant facts that came to light in the following years were few and far between, but Karrde was a collector of information, and he'd come to have a vested interest.

The fragments of documents which passed hands for exorbitant sums said that the Emperor's Heir had been an Imperial Intel Commander in Palpatine's elite forces—an infiltration specialist who had been the Emperor's spy in the Rebel Alliance—and indeed, the occasional rumor that flared and faded from those who claimed they'd known him there bore it out. Karrde had also read the files Black Sun had on The Wolf…read nearly the same from Bothan Intel: undercover mole, special tactics, Carida-trained. Everything knitted. Not perfectly, but just enough conflicts and omissions to make a career as one of Palpatine's infamous Emperor's Hands seem legit.

The old Emperor's spy; his wolf, his protégé…or maybe not. Maybe Palpatine wasn't nearly as confident of his Wolf as he seemed, if he'd built that cell.

Karrde ran back through what little the reticent new Emperor had said about the cell when he'd spoken of its existence… Reinforced, double-skinned cell, originally built onboard the Executor a little over seven years ago, designed to hold a Jedi…only there were no more Jedi. Maybe if Madine had…

Karrde slowed, examining that last thought—because that was what the Emperor had said: a cell to hold a Jedi.

At the time, given the Heir's obvious insinuation that the cell had been made to contain himself, Karrde had made the obvious connection: for Jedi, read Sith. He remembered thinking it so clearly—that it must have been the ever-paranoid Palpatine making sure he could control his budding protégé. Had assumed exactly the same thing when speaking of Madine's replica cell with Solo. Had thought it again just moments ago; for Jedi, read Sith. But what if he was jumping to exactly the wrong assumption…

For Sith, read Jedi…

What if that cell had actually been built to hold a Jedi?

Only there were no more Jedi. The last one might have been alive seven years ago, when the cell had been built, but he'd fought and died for the Rebellion.

Fought for the Rebellion…as a pilot, wasn't it? The Rebellion's new hope, the hotshot pilot who'd destroyed the first Death Star with a single shot. All those rumors that he was a Jedi; that that was how he'd been able to make the impossible shot. What was his name…began with 'S'

He'd died on Hoth maybe three years later; Karrde remembered hearing rumors then reports. Remembered shaking his head, thinking that the first Jedi to reappear in over a decade had actually chosen to fight for the Rebellion, and they'd been fool enough to let him go out on front-line missions; gained and lost him within three years. What had his name been, the pilot who…

Karrde came to a halt in the corridor. Skywalker—Luke Skywalker!

A cage to hold a Jedi… For Jedi, read Sith… For Sith, read Jedi…

Luke Skywalker, the Rebellion's vaunted new Jedi…how soon after they'd pronounced him dead, had the Emperor's mysterious Sith Wolf come into existence? A year—less? Was that why Palpatine had felt the need to cage his Wolf?

And the spectacle at Fondor—the new Emperor himself showing up in the middle of a pitch battle, scoring a resounding blow…then letting the Rebels free.

Karrde walked mechanically forward a few more steps…. Leia Organa's face as she'd spoken today came abruptly to mind, earnest and determined and genuinely worried. The leader of the Rebellion against the Emperor—

He slowed… Rebellion. Rebel Alliance.

He remembered abruptly the Emperor speaking to him about Toprawa…about the Rebels' failure there. Remembered watching, fascinated, aware that it had been the most uncomfortable he'd ever seen the self-possessed Emperor, as he'd admitted to having hidden an error by the Rebels which had cost civilian lives…only he hadn't said Rebels, he'd stumbled over another word: Alliance. Not the Rebellion—the Alliance. Only Rebels called themselves that; no one else, just them.

Karrde slowed again, scowling without seeing, mind flashing through the facts as those final fragments came together, making his head buzz at the implications… What if those occasional rumors that there were still pilots in the Rebellion who swore they'd known the Emperor were true, not because he'd been a spy there, working for Palpatine, but because…

Luke Skywalker, the Rebel pilot. The hero who, as everyone in the information-selling business knew, had died at Hoth. That was the statement put out by the Rebellion itself; he'd died a hero, at Hoth.

But what if he hadn't died…what if the Emperor who'd admitted to Karrde that Palpatine's cell was built to hold him, was Luke Skywalker, the man who shot down the first Death Star. Because if you linked those two events then pretty much everything that the new Emperor had ever done made a twisted kind of sense.

Standing alone in the corridor, aware that he'd come to the kind of dangerous conclusion that could very well get him killed, Karrde's thoughts came slowly, one by one, to that single, burning question: if it was true—all of it—then what was he now? Was that present cell holding a Jedi…or a Sith?







It was another two hours before they reached Vendaxa, time which Karrde spent pulling dates from old reports and chasing up anything he could find on that dead Jedi's past...which was incredibly, implausibly little. The Empire, it seemed, had not only robbed the last Jedi of his future, they'd taken his past too. Was any of this true, or was Karrde connecting coincidences? It was easy to do when one had massed piles of data; lots of facts but few truths. There was absolutely no solid information out there to back this theory up, and probably just one person who knew the whole truth. Unfortunately, Crix Madine was doing his level best to make sure that the new Emperor took it to the grave.

Pulling his priorities into line, Karrde stopped outside Ghent's quarters, pressing the door release.

The moment it slid open, the young, blue-haired slicer jolted straight from the four screens he was presently staring at, all of them flicking to runs of code in the same instant. "What—I wasn't doing anything!"

Karrde narrowed his eyes, but let it pass. "I have a job for you—an urgent one, so turn off the fluff channels."

Ghent looked down guiltily, but Karrde continued, undaunted. "We're back at the Vendaxa Relay Station you sliced into a few months ago—you said you left a backdoor, right?"

"Hey, I ain't no amateur!" Ghent seemed slighted that Karrde would even bother to check such a thing.

"Good. I need you to get back in. You need to go over the relay logs from maybe a few weeks before you first sliced it to the present day, and look for anything on the same voiceprint or frequency you cracked before. I need to know if it's been used recently, what was said, where it was coming from, where it was sent to, and if anyone using that frequency has been using another channel."

Ghent scowled. "Would ya like to know what they had for breakfast that day too?"

"Would you like to remain in gainful employment?"

The slicer pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair to glance out of the small viewport at the tall, cylindrical bulk of the Vendaxa Relay Station, spinning slowly on its own axis a few hundred klicks from the Wild Karrde. He glanced back to the lists of code running on the four screens before him. "How important is it, cos I'm kinda in the middle of something here?"

Karrde made to lean back against the edge of the desk, but had to push the massed rubbish on it back first. The whole room was a constant tip, expensive state-of-the-art devices almost lost among sweet wrappers and hard-copy mags and abandoned plastique plates. Even the walls were crowded out with vintage swoop-racing one sheets, stuck over every available surface at every conceivable angle.

Ghent put his hand out in warning as Karrde pushed the mess back. "Careful with that stuff, it was expensive!"

"I know, I bought it," Karrde deadpanned, eyes on an old mug balanced on a high-tech alufleck dispersal housing, lights ticking on its fascia. "…is that mug actually growing?"

"It's fine." Ghent moved the old cup over a little, resting it on another surface.

Karrde grimaced, trying to look at the walls and keep his mind on the reason he was here. "How important is it? I could tell you it was of galactic relevance, but I'll bring it down to terms you understand, shall I? It's for the man who gives me all the credits to buy this constant string of new and very expensive technical toys so that you can balance old food trays on them. It's for the man who pays my wages, and therefore yours. It's for the man who keeps you in the…manner which you seem to enjoy, for some unknown reason. And it's for a personal friend."

Ghent looked up through his trailing blue bangs at the last. "I didn't think you had any."

"Why, because you're not one of them?"

The slicer seemed genuinely surprised. "Aren't I?"

"Not if you get this wrong, no."

"Is this the guy I do all the ciphers for?"

"Yes, it is."

Ghent grinned, blowing his fringe from his face. "Cool—I like that guy."

Karrde blinked once. "Just…who do you think that guy is, exactly?"

"I dunno—military, I guess," Ghent said with a shrug. "I always seemed to pass my stuff on to him near military bases. I'm not an idiot, you know. I work stuff out."

The last he said with genuine affront, making Karrde stifle a smile. "I'm sure you do. Your awareness of politics and the larger galaxy is…devastating."

Ghent grinned. "Be sweet if he was Intel or something—you know, a spy maybe—something cool."

"Yes, it would," Karrde stated flatly, and Ghent grinned as he spun his chair in a full circle, clearly pleased with himself.

He turned about, calling up new screens. "You want everything, right?"

"Even fragments—plus anything with any voiceprint from that frequency which you can pull from other messages or frequencies. I want to know where every single message came from and went to."

"Be better if I had a clean voiceprint to sample for the search. One that hasn't been encoded or compressed."

"Already on its way," Karrde said. "I'll get it sent down to you."

"Great. I can set up a subroutine to search for the voiceprint easy enough, but tracing outgoings'll take longer."

"They'll probably be coded too."

Ghent shrugged confidently—but then it was with reason, Karrde knew; otherwise he wouldn't have hired him.

"I got a few programs, I can untangle 'em and clean 'em up."

"How much longer to trace their end point?"

"Depends how many messages they sent and how far away that end-point is, and how many relays they used."

"Let me clarify," Karrde drawled pointedly. "You have one day."

"See, I was thinking maybe three or four."

"In four days, my friend will be dead—which I'm sure even you would agree, makes the message-tracing rather academic."

Ghent glanced quickly up. "Four days?"

Karrde held his eye, knowing that despite his not having recognized the beaten man, Ghent would have just put together the viral that was all over the HoloNet, and Karrde's last words. "Four days. Do this on time and you get to write home to your parents and say, 'Dear mom and dad, thought you might like to know that your son, the embarrassing dropout, just saved the galaxy'."

Ghent held Karrde's eye for long seconds…then looked away, grinning. "Ah, they'd never believe me."

"I know," Karrde said, rising to leave. "That's why I'll let you do it. If you can actually…" Karrde paused, his eye caught by one of the faded one-sheets on Ghent's wall. "Can I have this?"

He'd already torn it free, the door closing behind him as he left, by the time Ghent spoke out. "Hey—hey!"












Luke came round on the bunk, face down, the cell dark. For some reason, that amused him; that they'd bother to move him back to the bunk rather than leave him on the floor where he'd fallen. Then a blinding flood of panic set in as he leaned back, ignoring the spike of pain it caused, hands trailing along beneath the blanket he was lying on top of… still there—the plasteel shards he'd managed to hide when he'd broken the vo-corder were still there; they hadn't moved the blanket which covered them.

He fell back onto the bunk, rolling over onto his back, relief quickly overtaken by the fresh cuts and bruises, head spinning from the sudden movement.

Up; sit up and walk—don't get too stiff to run.

He sat up in stages, waiting for the room to settle to an even keel between each movement before he finally made himself stand, weak and shaking. His father's words came back to him, words he'd fallen back on so often in a cell so similar to this. "There are times when to exist, simply to survive, is the greatest victory of all."

He'd lived by that tenet for so long under Palpatine's grating demands… it had been all that he'd had left. But it never had been enough—not once. He'd wanted more. He'd wanted free will, not just for himself—for the whole galaxy.

And now it was falling apart; all that he'd planned and worked toward, all that he'd driven everything and everyone toward for years. All his work, all his hopes…they were being torn apart by the actions of one man, and it was Luke's own fault for not seeing it. He'd purposely goaded Madine for so long, allowed him to live and to fester, knowing he'd keep attacking the Empire. He was a soldier, not a politician or a dreamer. And in the company of dreamers, that had made him the easy target for Luke, the predictable one; the useful tool to split the Alliance in two to ensure he took only what was worth saving.

But he'd misjudged. Madine had gained the advantage and now Luke stood to lose everything…more than he'd ever thought he could. His eyes lowered as he dropped tiredly back to sit on the edge of the bunk, thoughts going to Mara; to the ultimate loss—and it hurt more than he'd ever anticipated.

Because of Madine, Luke would never see his son. The boy would grow up without ever having a father, as Luke had. Grow up feeling always that some vital part of his life was missing… Because of Madine, Luke's son would grow up in a galaxy torn by conflict and war.

For a moment he wallowed in this regret…

"There are times when to exist, simply to survive, is the greatest victory of all."

He remembered the words exactly; the timbre of his father's voice as he'd said them, the unspoken support, the faith in Luke's strength, in his ability to endure. In the absolute dead silence of the cold, empty cell, numb from exhaustion and drugs and grateful for the freezing cold which deadened the pain from cuts and scrapes and bone-deep bruises, Luke found himself seriously considering…

Perhaps this final victory was bought at a very different price. Because for the first time he began to wonder…could his death at Madine's hands buy more than his survival?

Madine was wrong; Leia wouldn't let this escalate—she wouldn't. And neither would Mara, as Empress—and Luke's death would make that title official.

His death could still polarize the Alliance, bringing those willing to talk to the table and rendering those for whom talks had never been an option to the outcast minority. It could buy everything he'd ultimately wanted—he simply wouldn't be around to see it. That didn't mean he didn't have faith in the two women he'd placed in positions of power.

And the truth was that if this continued, Luke knew he'd tell Madine everything eventually. Not just the codes, but about Mara as well. He knew he'd slipped again today and he hadn't even been drugged. His mind was numb enough from exhaustion and frustration and the last trailing tendrils of the previous session working their way out, that he'd slipped anyway.

His death precluded any risk: the codes, his son, everything.

Wasn't that what he'd wanted? He was closer than he'd ever been to realizing it, it simply had a cost involved…didn't everything? Shouldn't he be prepared to give anything to achieve his goal—hadn't he always claimed that, and believed he'd meant it? He was going to die anyway, in a matter of days...he could at least pull something from it—work to his own agenda, not Madine's.

The door cycled open with a last breath of vacuum from the corridor beyond, and Luke glanced up, bracing.

The young soldier Tam walked in hesitantly, a bowl in his hand. He looked once then turned quickly away, seeming reticent to even look at Luke again as he walked along the edge of the line painted on the floor. "Food."

Luke looked away, thoughts turning inwards. "I'm not hungry."

"You should…probably eat."

Luke looked back, and saw the young man glance quickly away. He wondered briefly what he must look like now, after… "How long have I been here?"

Again Tam looked away. "I'm not supposed to…"

"How long till my execution?"

The young man flinched, deeply disturbed, his denial automatic. "I don't know what you…"

"Tam, I already know they're going to do it." He couldn't keep the fatigue from his own voice; couldn't even be bothered trying. "Madine's told me many, many times."

The young soldier looked up, and Luke shook his head. "It's okay, just tell me. How many days, Tam?"

"Four days," Tam said quietly, confirming Luke's count. "I'm sorry…"

Four days…he wouldn't hold out for four more days, he knew that. He wouldn't. Decision made.

"I need to speak to Madine."




When the two soldiers came in Luke was already standing waiting, as close to the chair as the chain on his barked and bloody ankle would let him. They pulled him over anyway, pushed him to sit, then bound and tethered his wrists to the table. He waited, staring at his hands, holding his nerve.

Madine came in with his usual bluster, dragging his chair loudly behind him, and Luke looked up immediately, speaking quickly, wanting to lock himself into this path before he backed down. "Get your holo-link set up. I'll confess…I'll read whatever you want—on one condition: you do it now. You kill me when I've said it."

Standing opposite him, Madine smiled just slightly. "You got a death wish now?"

"You're right," Luke said, "I don't want to play these games anymore, I just want it over."

"I want the codes."

"The codes don't exist," Luke repeated, looking up, putting every inch of persuasion he could into it despite the hollow within him which should be charged by the Force.

Madine's eyes narrowed momentarily as he looked down at Luke, then he glanced once to the lens in the corner. Without hesitation he drew his blaster, leveling it at Luke's head, and Luke tensed but held still, feeling his jaw tighten as Madine spoke. "Right now?"

"Right now." Luke stared without blinking at his tethered hands, breaths coming short and fast.

The blaster pressed closer as Madine leaned in. "Say everything you did was a lie."

"Everything I did was a lie."

"Everything you are is a lie."

"Everything I am is a lie." He could hear the pound of his heart in his words.

"Say, long live the true Rebellion."

"Long live the true Rebellion."

The blaster pressed a little closer, and the sound of the safety snicking free grated through Luke like a rough blade.

"Say you want me to pull the trigger."

"I…want you to pull the trigger."

The outburst was incredible, an explosion of noise to Luke's overwrought senses, his whole body jarring—

as Madine kicked his chair away, pulling his blaster back at the same instant. He let out a rough, mocking laugh that bit deep into Luke's tattered nerves, chest frozen to breathlessness.

"Not interested," Madine said at last, still grinning. "Oh it's going ahead anyway, we gave a date for your execution on the viral we put out. But first, I want those codes."

He backed up as the other soldiers left. Luke stared at his hands, not yet able to pull himself from the edge enough to lift his head or speak as Madine looked him up and down, words laced with sardonic concern. "You really should try to get some rest. Long day tomorrow…and you look dead on your feet."




The door grated closed, the hiss of the vacuum beginning seconds before it slammed, leaving Luke tethered to the table and staring at his hands, every muscle locked to absolute stillness, every heartbeat a punch to his ribs, reality a distant haze.

The cell fell to darkness and Luke's frayed nerves jolted once at the jarring change. It was a long time before he became aware of the fact that he was sitting bolt upright, muscles still so taut that he'd begun to sway slightly forward and backward as they pulled in contention. Thoughts came back slowly, hazy and muddled but sharpening to an almost painful clarity, one single memory settling out of the mass of adrenaline-fed thoughts…

His father. His father's death… And for the first time, with it came Luke's slow, total, bone-deep understanding of Vader's actions on that final day, a perspective that until this moment, Luke could never possibly have comprehended—though now it seemed the most natural, innate thing in existence…

Because for the first time, Luke's perspective was that of a father, who would do anything—anything at all—to make his son's way in life easier. To protect him.

Was this what Vader had felt when he'd faced Palpatine? Had it been for Luke and not because of him, that he'd died that day? Had it been a choice?

Nathan's words came razor-sharp to Luke's reeling thoughts: "…Give him this; this claim, this resolve, this decision. Give him this and be proud of him—because that's what he would have wanted."

Luke had been truly willing to do the same here, tonight, believing that his own son would understand one day that Luke had done this willingly. He would hate to think for one single second that his son would ever hold himself responsible…

"Give him this and be proud of him—because that's what he would have wanted."

He remembered his father's words long ago, plucked from memories and moments with a clarity given only at this edge…

"The Darkness has not taken away what I feel for my son… No matter how at odds or how powerful the Darkness, I cannot deny it. This is stronger."

This is stronger… Had his father, in the last, committed a selfless act of his own choice, to free Luke's hands…and in doing so, stepped beyond the Darkness that had bound him for so long? And if his father could do that…


Luke sat in the darkness, head spinning, stomach churning, holding it all together by nothing more than force of will because he'd be damned if he'd hand the Empire over to Madine. Damned if he'd die on that bastard's terms.

That same willful obstinacy that had always been at his core flared within him and he laughed, feeling scabs crack and twinge, remembering his father's fierce pride… "You will look for a path, you will find a way, and you will make it happen."

The demon—that demon that he saw in the darkness, that unbreakable, inexorable creature that Palpatine had forged from the shattered fragments of Luke Skywalker, that Darkness which Palpatine had bound inescapably within him… "We are the same, you and I. Didn't I always tell you we were?"

His father's words came in reply, old reassurances against Luke's constant doubts…

"If Darkness could claim you it would have done so long ago."
"How do you know that it hasn't?"
"Darkness would not ask. Darkness would not care…
You are slave to no one, Luke—neither Palpatine nor Darkness. You are beyond both. Understand that…"

Could he be both—could he step beyond existing lore, take what strength he needed from the Dark path he'd walked, and survive, intact?

"…if Darkness could claim you it would have done so long ago... You are slave to no one, Luke—neither Palpatine nor Darkness."

The demon, that hated demon was, Luke knew, the very thing which was keeping him alive now. That dark, detested past had honed within him the tenacity and the willpower and the edge to survive.

And he reached for it; for the first time, he reached for it with the belief that it might save and not damn him. For the first time, he clung to it like a lifeline. It wouldn't pull him down because he wouldn't let it. He was, in every possible way, at the very brink: of life and death, of Light and Darkness, of realization...of choice.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Han leaned back in his chair as he turned away from his quick check of the status console in the Falcon's main hold, and towards the dejarik table, where Leia and Jade sat to either end of the L-shaped acceleration couch, with the medic Nathan Hallin hunched down slightly and looking suitably nervous, considering he was dwarfed by a seriously short-tempered Chewie to his left.

After the information exchange yesterday with Karrde, people seemed a little more willing to come clean, so the day had started with everyone gathering in the hold to look at the standard plans for a CEC Class Six freighter and start to try to figure out what the hell they were going to do if they…once they actually found Luke.

"Okay…" Jade was first up, running her hands through her russet hair. "The first thing is, whatever you think he can do because he's Sith, he can't—not there."

Leia nodded. "Ysalamiri."

"Yes…how do you know about them?" Jade's surprise turned instantly into narrow-eyed suspicion.

"Madine told me. He has them in…in plexiglass bubbles at ceiling level all over the ship. I think he had some being carried on some kind of portable frame, too."

Jade nodded, mollified. "He can move them around, they're small enough—and as long as Luke's inside their influence, his connection to the Force is severed. That holds true through floors, ceilings, doors…you may not be able to see one close to him, but it could still be influencing him."

"How big an area are we talkin'?" Han asked.

"I don't know…six meters, maybe ten."

"Well, which is it?"

"I told you, I don't know. It doesn't seem to be a constant and not surprisingly, we weren't in the mood for a little leisurely experimentation last time. The other side of that is, Madine's men don't know either. There's no man-made sensor capable of assessing it, which means they can't know if or when Luke has access to the Force, once we can get him moving. Unless they actually have a live ysalamiri laid at his feet, they have no way to be sure."

"I didn't see one in the cell he was in," Leia said.

"Probably it was on the outside somewhere," Jade replied. "I told you, their influence works through any substance. Under those conditions, they'd keep them beyond reach. That way there's no chance of him getting to them."

"Okay, we see any of the little…hairy…lizard-snake-things, we shoot 'em, right?" Leia had given Han a description of the things, and really, that was as close as he ever wanted to get. Wildlife wasn't his thing, even when it wasn't likely to get someone he knew killed.

Jade nodded. "The fewer there are, the smaller the area they can cover and the more likely they are to leave gaps without even realizing it."

"I think we have a bigger problem, too," Leia said, eyes on the ship's schematics.

"We're talkin' aside from the forty or so professional soldiers shooting at us?" Han asked dryly from his seat across the bay.
"Forty's not too bad," Jade shrugged.

"It's a little bigger than my lucky number, which is zero," Han maintained. "Never yet gotten shot with those odds."

"We might yet have time to get a full strike team onboard," Leia said.

They'd been updating the Rand and the Zephyr of their path every time they came out of lightspeed for a route change, and both Rebel ships had strike teams onboard, but right now both ships were roughly a day behind the Falcon, which was coming dangerously close to the leading edge of the Imperial search teams as they passed from the Mid Rim to the Inner Rim. Everyone was now quietly aware that they were relying on the code Talon Karrde had given them, and it did nothing to cool the general atmosphere.

Typically though, Jade wasn't willing to wait. "Once we see what's going on, we can make the decision as to whether to go in or wait for backup. But until then, we should assume we're going in alone." She glanced to Han. "If we do it right, they won't know we're there until we're leaving, which makes the number irrelevant."

Han leaned back, unoffended. "It's not the amount of guys shooting, sweetheart, it's how good their aim is."

"Which is true of us, too," Jade said confidently.

Han's eyes drifted towards the slight, well-spoken medic, who jerked straight. "What?"

"Nothin'."

Understanding the unspoken inference, the medic folded his arms as he leaned back. "You'll be thankful of me if you get shot."

"I'd rather be thankful of you because I didn't get shot, thanks."

"I think we may well need a medic," Leia said somberly, bringing all eyes to her.

"Throw it out then," Han said. "Might as well hear 'em all."

Leia hesitated a moment. "I think they've put a slave chip in Luke."

Jade tensed instantly. "Why say that?"

"He…when I spoke to him onboard the Wasp, Luke leaned forward at one point, to rest his head on the table… There was blood on his collar and in his hair, a lot, from a single wound at the base of his skull—that's where they put them, isn't it?"

Han let out a rough sigh. "That's where they put 'em."

Jade leaned her arm onto the dejarik table to rub her forehead, voice grim. "I saw that, when he was face down in the holo."

"Plus one of the soldiers said something about…Luke couldn't go outside of ninety meters, something like that."

"Ninety meter radius," Han said with a nod. "That's pretty limited. How big is the Wasp?"

Jade glanced to the plans. "One hundred-eighty."

"Great, so we can't actually get him off the Wasp without killing him."

Jade turned to Nathan. "You can cut it out."

Han shook his head. "You can't remove them surgically, not without disarming them first. They trigger on contact with air. Some of 'em trigger on sudden changes of light or temperature." He shrugged as all eyes turned to him. "I knew a few slavers in my time…Jabba dealt and dabbled regularly. I saw what happened when one of those things went off once as well."

"Is it survivable?" Jade asked too quickly.

"Not if it's at the base of his skull," Han said, shaking his head, trying to ignore the cold weight settling in his stomach. "The guy with it in his shoulder didn't survive; dropped him like a blaster shot…he never got up again. Blew a hole in his back big enough to put your fist in. I think he bled out—or maybe it was shock."

Leia turned anxiously to Hallin. "How quick could you get one out if you had to?"

The medic shook his head, his disgust obvious. "Captain Solo's right, they're millisecond-accurate—they're designed to prevent just this kind of tampering. I don't know a lot about them really—they're seldom covered in medical papers. I do know that without the code to deactivate it before extraction I would need to know the make as well as the type and model, so I could know what its specific anti-tamper properties were, and even then it would have to be removed under specialist conditions. At the very least, they're generally removed in a dark, airless atmosphere by surgical droids."

Han straightened. "And even if he could cut it out there and then, you're assuming we can get to Luke before Madine just triggers it remotely."

"So we go after the transmitter," Jade said, refusing to be discouraged. "What does it look like, is it portable?"

"Not big." Han hefted both his hands a short distance apart, as if he were carrying it. "Could be wired into the ship's power supply, could be portable. Smallish box, plain, a couple of status lights and usually a numeric keypad on top."

"We need to split up and do this quietly," Leia said decisively. "Two of us go after the transmitter, three go to get Luke out."

"Someone should wait on the Falcon," Han said. "Keep our escape route clear."

"Two and two then. Quietly, until we know we have the transmitter box."

Hallin frowned. "But…having the box and deactivating the chip are two different things."

"But if we have control of the box, no one's able to come in and trigger it manually. All that leaves is for the second team to get Luke."

"But not take him off the ship, unless that transmitter's portable," Han reminded pointedly. "We need to stay within ninety meters of that box. If it's wired in, we could be stuck there anyway."

Everyone fell to silence again, searching for a way forward in a situation that, deep down, Han knew damn well they'd be lucky to even locate…

Sitting well away from the table and staring mutely at the plans, Han's eye was caught by the repetitive movement of Jade's hand, rubbing in circles over her stomach. She glanced to him, and in that second he saw the absolute dread in her eyes, the desperate fear…then she looked down, expression hardening as she pulled her thoughts to the task at hand, the consummate soldier.















Luke woke to the sound of the doors cycling open, a fresh gust of cool air replacing the stale atmosphere of the cell. Half-awake, he was yanked up and back off the bunk with enough force to push the air from him in a gasp, aching shoulders taking the strain, wrenched muscles pulling, legs cramping, unable to take his weight in that moment. Dragged to the table again, he was hauled roughly down though he never resisted, his hands forced forward to the restraints…

Then they backed off and Luke was left alone sitting at the table, uncomfortably balanced, his arms at too much of a stretch for his shoulders to maintain the position without a tremor setting in. He waited…

Too long without respite, his failing body sagged, head beginning to loll, shoulders slumping… Someone grabbed at the collar of his flightsuit from behind and shook him roughly, pulling him straight and forcing him upright. He sat up. The tremor set in. He waited…

Again.

Again.

That insular silence overtook him again as his body numbed, senses failing, a single tone blotting out his hearing, head beginning to drop. He tried to lift his hands to rub tired eyes, but they jerked to a halt almost immediately, an unwelcome reminder.

He waited…

A shadow moved over him in a flurry of noise, and Luke forced gritty eyes open to see Madine dragging a chair in to sit at the table. "Outside," he said to the soldiers.

They turned without looking back and the door closed with a hiss of vacuum as the corridor beyond depressurized.

Madine dropped a vo-corder onto the table before Luke, its clatter loud in the silence. He sat, a stony expression hardening his eyes as he stared for a long time at Luke, and Luke waited, jaw clamped, trembling twitches in tense muscles betraying his exhaustion.

On the table between them Madine placed two syringes of pale milky-white fluid, giving Luke long seconds to see them and consider the implications before he reached out and pulled the vo-corder closer to key playback:


Luke heard his own voice, words he didn't even remember speaking, sounding dragged and drowsy.
"Seventy…sixty-four…"
There was a sudden upheaval in the recording, a clamor of noise, the obvious clatter of a chair over hard floor, momentary interference as the vo-corder must have been knocked, then Madine's voice, raw with frustration. "I pull this trigger and that's it, no more Sith, understand? The line ends with you, right now."
Luke's own voice again, a smile audible in the slurred word. "No."
"No?"
"Too late."
"What the hell does that mean?"


Madine reached out to pause the vo-corder, keying for a new entry as his eyes came up to study Luke, who sat absolutely still, face expressionless.


His own voice again; this time he remembered speaking the words, only days ago…
"This needs to stop, not escalate—our children deserve the chance to grow up in a galaxy that isn't at war. I can give you peace by-"


Madine stopped the vo-corder, and in the silence Luke listened to the whistling buzz of his blood in his ears as Madine re-keyed it.

"I pull this trigger and that's it, no more Sith, understand? The line ends with you, right now."
"No."
"No?"
"Too late."

Then,

"…our children deserve the chance to grow up in a galaxy that isn't at war."


Madine settled his weight as he leaned forward, elbows on the desk, one fist clamped inside the other. Luke kept his eyes down as something seemed to collapse within him, aware of Madine's calculating gaze, held for long minutes as the silence crushed in.

"I think there's something you're not telling me," Madine growled at last, lifting the first syringe. "Let's see if we can remedy that."














The call came in late, but no one was sleeping anyway, everyone waiting…what else could they do? Biting back her private anxiety, Mara slid onto the acceleration couch beside Nathan, Organa and Solo to his left, the Wookiee muscling in at the end.

"He's been on a rather circuitous route, your General," Talon Karrde said in that dry, level tone as he glanced to the side, obviously consulting a second screen. "He seemed to be heading out toward the Unknown Regions then thought better of it and turned Core-wards. The first series of messages originate from Sinsang in the Raioballo Sector, as you said."

"Yeah I know I said that, I was there at the time." Tired and tense, Solo was eager to usher Karrde along, and Mara couldn't blame him.

"Then we extrapolated ten comms from the Borosk asteroid belt." Karrde glanced up to the holo lens. "Very independent man, your General. Doesn't like to call in a lot of outside help. Eight of those calls were ship-to-ship, to an unknown vessel in the Bajic Sector. We've tried to crack them, but it's a clever code system—Ghent's still working on those."

"That was us," Solo said, breaking every Intel rule Mara had been taught by giving up the fact without hesitation. "He was speaking to the Alliance."

"Ten messages?" Leia Organa frowned, turning to the Corellian. "We only have three logged."

"Not surprising," Karrde said dryly. "He used a total of four different call frequencies and three different ciphers, all to that one location."

"You decoded them?" Organa asked, amazed.

Mara made a silent note to make sure she stayed in contact with Karrde, understanding now why Luke used him.

"Only enough to tag Madine's voice." Karrde moved quickly on, glancing to the side as he read from his screen again. "His next jump was to Telti in the Inner Rim—there's a moon in-system of the same name which has an extensive droid manufacturing facility. A mid-bulk freighter would have seemed very much at home there. Dates put him there when he released the first viral. He'd changed the freighter's name and its call frequency, but we got a positive ID on four separate messages coming from there, two going to the Quence Sector and two to Tholatin in the Mid Rim, or one of its moons."

"The holo was sent out from Telti?" Mara asked.

"No—well, we don't think so, the viral's origin was too well hidden code-wise. You'd need a guaranteed early-generation copy to pull that kind of information. My slicer Ghent thinks it may have been a sealed packet within one of those four outgoing transmissions, but was actually distributed across the HoloNet from another site entirely."

"The Quence sector stuff was to the Alliance fleet," Solo confirmed again. "That's where we were at the time."

"From there we lose him I'm afraid," Karrde admitted. "He stopped using the Vandaxa Relay Station, but that was only two days ago. Ghent's left a tag in the system, so if Madine uses that relay again we'll know instantly."

"Well then, that leaves us just one place to go," Solo said, leaning back as the Wookiee keened a confirmation.

Karrde nodded. "Essau's Ridge."

Organa frowned. "Essau's...?"

"Essau's Ridge," Solo repeated. "It's the one built-up area on Tholatin. If there's a shady deal going on anywhere, you can link it back to the shadows down in Essau's Ridge eventually."

"I know a few people there, I'll see if I can dig anything up." Karrde's tone had a finality to it, but as Solo reached out to pull the switch Nathan leaned forward from beside Mara, hand out.

"Wait! Did you say you had a slicer onboard?"

Mara could have kissed him, realizing where he was heading.

Karrde paused, uncertain. "Yes."

Nathan glanced around nervously, then back to the holo. "Because they've put a slave chip in the Emperor."

Karrde's face hardened to cover his unease. "You're sure?"

With the information out now, Mara leaned forward. "Pull up the HoloNet images—look at the back of his collar when he's lying face down before they turn him over."

"Wait." Karrde reached slightly to the side, working a keyboard to bring up the image as he glanced away. "Aves, go and get Ghent."

The silence stretched as Karrde remained still, clearly studying the same images they'd all stared at repeatedly today. "Looks like it. Slave chips are problematic."

"No kidding," Solo said dryly as he glanced to Mara. "I hope you're not gonna let him charge you for that little nugget."

"Can you decode it?" Nathan asked.

"Yes, but it takes around nine hours, even at a push, and I'm assuming you may be on a tighter schedule than that. Do you know how many people have the trip code?"

Solo shook his head. "Knowing Madine, not many."

Karrde tilted his head. "Thank you for that useful little nugget."

"Let's say we can pretty much guarantee it'll be more than one but less than five," Mara said grimly. "And since we don't know who they are, taking out the people who have the trip code instead of the box itself isn't an option. We also think it has a range of just ninety meters."

Karrde's lips narrowed. "Wait there."

The line cut, and everyone waited in tense silence before Nathan, playing nonchalantly with the controls of the holo-table, muttered beneath his breath with that particular tone of self-righteous offense that only he could ever muster, "So not everything comes down to whether you can shoot straight, then…"

Solo made an exaggerated turn, leaning back to give the full glare. "Listen, ya little Kowakian…"

Nathan was saved from the rest of Solo's diatribe when the comm fired up and Karrde reappeared, seeming no less relaxed "Ghent thinks he can make a ghost box."

Beside Mara, Organa leaned in. "A ghost box?"

"It's a box of tricks that, if you can get it close to the original, will sample the signal, create a loop and transmit it again as if it's the real source. It enables you to emulate the code so that you can go outside the range of the original. Keep it close to the Emperor and the chip won't trigger."

"But?" Mara prompted, knowing from his tone that there was more.

"But…if the original is a more expensive set-up with a tiered code, apparently it may generate a repeating flux every so often within that code. If the ghost box doesn't sample the original signal at a point when it's incorporating that flux, it won't have it as part of the fake signal, and when the slave chip doesn't receive the flux at the correct interval, or if the interval timing is wrong…"

"How widely spaced are the fluxes generally?"

"Ghent's checking now. He's done this before once and he seems to remember the pulses being around six hours apart, so that's a good window of opportunity."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Solo said hopefully.

"Unless it's due to make the pulse a minute after you switch signals," Nathan said, sitting back. "That's the gamble, isn't it?"

Karrde nodded somberly. "That's the gamble."

"Wait a minute," Han added. "Your guy's done this once!"

"You're landing in Essau's Ridge," Karrde said smoothly. "If it bothers you, you'll probably be able to source two or three slicers who are capable enough to make and sell their own version of a ghost box. I can guarantee you that none of them are even a patch on Ghent's abilities." There was a brief pause as Karrde looked down to the desk before him, tone long-suffering. "Stop grinning, Ghent."

Organa turned. "Nathan, how long to take it out surgically? We can hold back until the Rand arrives—it's less than a day behind us and it has a full medi-bay. It can be set up, ready to go."

"Less than an hour, I'd imagine. But every minute we run the slave-chip on the fake signal, we're tempting fate."

Mara turned back to the holo. "Are there any other options?"

Karrde glanced about above the level of the HoloNet lens, clearly looking to those onboard his own ship, but shook his head. "No, slave-chips are really only designed to do one thing, so they tend to do it very well. Are you assuming that Madine's freighter will be alone?"

Solo nodded. "Yeah, he doesn't play well with others."

"How many onboard?"

"We're not sure—he took out four units, all Special Ops and all presumably loyal to him, which is sixty soldiers, but the Bothans have reported seeing a dozen of his men on Ord Mirit, just outside the Core Systems, and at least four on Commenor. They were on the Tishi, which was one of the four Alliance-owned shuttles onboard the Wasp, so we know they came from there."

Mara frowned, turning from the holo. "When did you hear that?"

"About an hour ago, when we dropped out of lightspeed for the course change."

"And when were you intending to tell us?"

Solo straightened. "Just as soon as your damn Empress stops pointing her finger and her fleet at us!"

Nathan leaned forward to subtly block Mara and Han's views of each other. "Perhaps we could concentrate on the matter at hand and leave the whole galactic peace thing until we've got those who can actually do something about it sitting at the same table?"

Mara leaned back, aware that Solo had a point. "She's not my Empress…" she muttered at last.

It was Karrde who broke the deadlock. "Could we get the type and call-signs of the other shuttles from the Wasp?"

Leia Organa nodded. "We'll get that to you." She turned pointedly to Mara. "And to you."

"Thank you," Karrde said smoothly. "Forty Special Ops soldiers—I hope you have a lot of artillery for back-up."

He didn't need nearly the length of silence which followed to work it out.

"We have plenty of back-up," Solo said at last. "Trouble is, it's almost a day behind us."

"I see… We're heading towards Essau's Ridge ourselves, as it happens," Karrde said casually at last. "Perhaps we can meet you there?"

Mara's eyes came back to the holo, wondering how, of all the smuggling groups in the galaxy, Luke had found Karrde. Most would have nodded and said, 'Good luck.' She doubted very much that it was coincidence that Luke had decided to use Karrde's group—or maintained that connection when he'd become Emperor. He'd seemed always so capable of bringing out the best in people, simply by having that silent, stubborn, steadfast faith in them—sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances. She leaned back, seriously considering for the first time… What if he could have brought about peace, with that same dogged commitment? If anyone could have achieved that, it would have been Luke…

And why had she just thought about him in the past tense?

Her heart pounded at that, throat constricting. So many times she'd mercilessly upbraided others for it, yet the more they closed in—the more those hours trickled by and those problems grew—the more she knew that she was silently bracing for the worst.

I won't let him go… Ignoring those around her, Mara shook her head, jaw clenching. You want to see stubborn, Skywalker? I'll show you what stubborn really is.

"How far away are you?" Solo's question pulled her from her reverie as Karrde glanced off-screen, and Mara could make out a man's voice just beyond mic range.

"Aves tells me we're less than a day away if we push our engines—maybe early evening tomorrow. You?"

Solo glanced to the hold ops console, making mental calculations. "We're already heading towards the Crush…mid-afternoon, probably. That gives us a day and a half to actually find him."

Karrde nodded somberly. "Take any berth. We use the Ridge a lot, I'll find you."

Solo nodded. "We'll see you there. Oh, how many are you bringing to the party?"

"Six, onboard the Wilde Karrde. Actually five; I wouldn't give Ghent a blaster if my life depended on it." Karrde shrugged into Han's silence, voice laced with his usual dry wit. "Try not to think of it as five people—look upon it as doubling your numbers."









It was the early hours of the morning when Mara walked into the main hold, automemo in hand. Still awake and sitting in Nathan's cramped cabin, they'd noticed a few minutes ago that they'd dropped out of hyperspace. Probably a course change, but it was the ideal opportunity to get the information about the Wasp's shuttles to Admiral Joss, so Mara had headed over to the main hold.

As she entered, she glanced to the dejarik table where Solo was slouched into the acceleration couch, the HoloNet winding down to static as he deactivated it. Leia Organa was sitting up close, her weight resting against him, his arm casually thrown across the back of the couch and her shoulders. The easy intimacy fired a gaping, desolate loneliness in Mara which took her completely by surprise.

"Sorry." She glanced quickly away, wishing she hadn't told Nathan she'd do this now. "I was just going to ask about the call signs for the shuttles."

"Your friend the Scarlet Empress is out and about again," Solo said dryly, nodding to the deactivated holo-emitter. "She's all over the HoloNet news channels, doing walkabouts again today. Apparently our Scarlet Empress…'takes strength from her people'."

"I told you, she's not my Empress," Mara reiterated. Still, she knew this was Solo's way of an apology for their earlier flare-up. She was starting to figure him out, mostly because he was a lot like herself—and for people like them, the fact that they were still talking at all was as close as you got to an apology.

"Scarlet Empress," Mara scorned at last, leaning back onto the hold's Ops console. "I bet she started that herself."

There'd been countless images of D'Arca in the last week, always wearing white, walking amongst her people, the multitudes who had taken up a vigil outside the Palace gates, Victory Square lit by thousands of candles every night. And Kiria D'Arca, walking among them every day soon after dawn, looking so fragile and so very sincere.

"She's sure startin' something," Solo said wryly.

Leia Organa was still staring at the spot the HoloNet had projected into, lost in thought. "Did you hear her speech in response to the Alliance's disavowal of Madine? It was good—she's very good—she never once directly said that we were still to blame. She was going for the 'Alliance is turning on its own now,' line. Says we're breaking apart under the pressure that her military's putting on us."

Mara raised an eyebrow. "Her military?"

Solo shrugged. "Last time I checked, she was Empress."

"In name only—only ever in name."

"Seems to have it pretty much sewn up to me."

"The D'Arcas…" Organa shook her head, still scowling at the deactivated HoloNet. "Don't get me talking about the D'Arcas."

Mara felt a surge of interest at her depreciating tone. "No, please do."

"New power in an ambitious old Mid-Rim family, who made their wealth and climbed the ranks by backing Palpatine. I can't work out what Luke was doing marrying her in the first place, other than…" Leia paused, eyes flicking to Mara in question.

Mara allowed a slight tilt of her head, and Leia straightened.

"A political marriage!"

Solo too sat straighter. "A sham?"

"A contract," Mara corrected. "To bring the Royal Houses into line."

"Well, she did that alright," Leia said wryly. "But still…no, I don't think Luke would place her in the line of succession just to gain control of the Royal Houses. He knows it would be putting the old regime back on the throne and that's not what he wants."

"He didn't…I did."

"You? How could…"

Mara remained still, holding Leia's gaze as she watched those astute brown eyes start to piece it all together…

"You were Regent? You were Regent," Organa repeated, "and you handed over power…to Kiria D'Arca!"

"What else was I supposed to do?"

"What Luke had presumably asked you to—because I don't think for one minute that it was this!"

"I am doing what Luke asked me to! I'm trying my damnedest to make sure that everything he intended comes about—and the only way I know how to do that is to get him back, because he is the only one who can pull this off. But to get him back I had to be free from Coruscant, and to be away from Coruscant, I had to put someone in charge who the populous would accept and stand behind. I had to put someone in charge who seemed the logical choice, and who I know damn well will defer when Luke comes back. D'Arca tried to help Luke with the ring—that was all her doing. She pulled the Royal Houses behind him with that, and she has the populous eating out of her perfectly manicured hand with this wronged wife routine she does so well. Scarlet Empress," Mara repeated contemptuously.

"So, wait," Solo drawled. "If you don't like her, why d'you give her power?"

"Because she was the right person to give it to, strategically," Mara defended. "She thinks in political terms and we need that right now—Luke does. Look at what she's doing! She knows how to rally people to the cause."

"Hell yeah," he said derisively. "She's made Luke into a martyr and he's not even dead yet."

"I'm not going to let all Luke's plans fall apart. He told me not to, and I won't. He married Kiria D'Arca because he needs the Royal Houses behind him when changes begin to happen, and if that means I have to give her a little extra rope right now then so be it."

"A little extra rope?" Organa asked. "She's put out a warrant for your arrest as a traitor!"

Mara shook her head. "She won't take power from Luke, I know that."

"But what happens if Luke doesn't come back—what happens if that control is gone? Did it not occur to you that if Luke had wanted to risk turning power over to her, he would have placed her in the line of succession himself? Everyone already looks to her as the public face of the Empire now the Emperor's gone."

"He's not gone!"

Organa sat forward, wide awake despite the late hour. "When you passed over power, did you sign a document?"

"Yes."

"Who drew it up?"

"I don't know." Mara heard her own voice sharpening at the cross-examination. "I asked for it to be drawn up and I read it, all of it. Kiria has limited powers—I handed executive power over to her, but it was only in the absence of the Emperor."

"In the absence of the Emperor? Did it make reference to an interregnum, a break in the chain of monarchy?"

Mara blinked. It was easy to forget that the woman sitting before her, wearing fatigues and traveling on a tramp Rebel freighter, had been a member of the Alderaanian royal family with a background in, and years of well-versed knowledge as, one of the ruling elite. And as such, this would once have been her arena. And if she was worried right now, then maybe Mara should listen…

"If the document didn't refer specifically to rule during an interregnum—a temporary break in the line of monarchy—then failing any other document coming to light, it effectively becomes the line of succession." Leia's shrewd gaze held on Mara. "Did the transfer of power contract you drew up limit her access to any existing documents?"

Mara shook her head. "She's loyal to Luke…I know she is."

"But you have to admit, with you out of the way, it clears her path—and now you can't go back." Organa's eyes narrowed astutely. "I know the D'Arcas, they have absolute loyalty to their sovereign—that's what got them where they are. But they're an ambitious family. This isn't about whether they'd overthrow the legitimate Emperor—they never would—it's about whether they'd have the nerve and the authority to step up into the power vacuum if he was gone."

"If he didn't trust them, Luke wouldn't have given them that kind of…"

Realization, when it came, was a surge of panic which threatened to engulf Mara. Here she was, reassuring herself that Luke would never have given the D'Arcas this much power if he'd believed that there was any chance they'd do this—

But he hadn't given them this opportunity…she had. In fact he'd had a lengthy contract drawn up before the marriage specifically to ensure against it. And now…now, Mara had done the one thing that Luke had deliberately avoided: she'd given them the mandate, the legal claim. Leia was right; Luke had kept them from the line of succession by choice, but this was the one thing he'd never allowed for in his dealings with the D'Arcas, because he would never have allowed it to happen in the first place.

Mara pushed to standing, hand before her mouth as she remembered Kiria's claim at Mara's suggestion that she take temporary power—remembered the brightness of her eyes, the quickening of her voice: "Understand this; if you give me power, I shall use it…"




"It will be fine." The solid, reassuring tone of a new voice brought Mara's head about.

Nathan was standing in the loop corridor, how long he'd been there Mara didn't know. But he shook his head now as he walked forward, voice soft and strong and very sure. "It will be fine because Luke's coming back, and that renders all of this a moot point." He came to a halt before her, hand on Mara's shoulder. "He is coming back."

Mara let out a long, shaky breath. "Well, now we have to get him back."

"As opposed to before, when we were just coming here on the off-chance, because we had nothing better to do," Nathan said dryly, a twist of shared amusement lighting those big brown eyes—and Mara couldn't help but smile.

Still, she felt a fresh pang of anxiety as she looked at the hold's occupants, a rag-tag mix of wary enemies held together by nothing more substantial than their concern; their need to find one man.

And the truth was, already they were beginning to discuss what would happen when they didn't…

She felt her head shake as the weight of what they were trying to do came crashing down upon her, the words escaping unbidden. "We're not going to make it, are we?"

"Yes, we are. Mara, we know where we're going now—we'll be there in twelve hours." There was comfort in his absolute tone…but not enough.

"We'll be in the Tholatin System," she corrected, blinking as her eyes misted. "After that…we have no idea—none at all. We have less than forty hours to find him, in a system with seven planets and nine moons. How likely is that?"

He squeezed her shoulder again. "About as likely as an Emperor and an assassin? Or how about that Emperor having once been a Rebel pilot?" He smiled gamely. "Besides, you know Luke; unlikely is his specialty."

Behind him, Solo let out a brief laugh. "I thought gettin' in trouble was his specialty."

Nathan gave Mara's shoulders one last squeeze, then turned. "I think that's more his raison d'être."

"Don't get me started," Solo said easily.

"I actually came for the callsigns of the Wasp's shuttles, to pass on," Nathan said, taking the automemo from Mara's hand. "Madine's men were clearly heading Core-wards, which makes it likely that Imperial enforcement could pick them up. I'd very much like to know what they're doing."

"Yeah, you and me both, pal," Solo said, straightening.

"I can get them—" Mara started.

But having taken it from her, Nathan was unwilling to concede the automemo now. "If you want to do something useful, you should eat, since you're up anyway. You think I didn't spot that you skipped dinner?"

"How is that useful?" Solo asked.

His back to the Corellian as he'd turned to Mara, Nathan's eyes widened. "Because… Mara's…hypoglycemic."

Mara straightened. "No, I'm not!"

"Yes, you are…it's just that your judgment's impaired right now because you haven't eaten."

Mara knew exactly what he was doing, of course, but she had no intention of taking on an imaginary medical condition just because Nathan had talked himself into a corner again. "No, it's not."

"See, now you're getting aggressive."

"Seriously," Solo deadpanned, "are you an actual medic? Or are you a medic in the same way that you're useful in a gunfight?"

It was Leia Organa who salvaged the situation by rising and heading for the short corridor that led to the Falcon's cockpit. "Let's get you those shuttle ID's, shall we, Nathan? You might just have time to pass them on before we go to lightspeed."





Throwing a withering glance at Solo as he passed him, Nathan followed the dainty ex-Senator down the corridor, marveling that she could be elegant even here, dressed in fatigues. Fortunately, her smalltalk was also a tad more refined than the Corellian's, taking Nathan's thoughts off his gaffe with Mara.

"You have quite a turn of inspirational speech there, Nathan," she said conversationally as she sat in the pilot's chair, pulling up details from the side-console. "You should be a politician."

"You know, someone else said that to me recently too."

She turned, huge chocolate brown eyes so expressive. "Luke?"

He glanced down, suddenly uncomfortable. "Yes."

"Do you…believe what you said back there?"

"I believe I should believe—for myself, and for Mara." When Leia was silent for long seconds, Nathan felt the urge to move the conversation on quickly, before she pressed him further. "I wonder, can I send the message directly from here?"

Accepting of his avoidance, she turned, leaning over the console. "If you want to put in your contact code, I can send it from here." She frowned, glancing at the small screen. "You have an incoming message too."

It was from Joss, of course, an update confirming that he could detach three reliable Destroyers from the search fleet without alerting Coruscant as to why, and have them at the Crush in just under two days, another six already being deployed along that same axis, to be available less than a day later. There was one more piece of interesting information in the message, sent on from Commander Arco, still on Coruscant: two days ago, the Imperial shuttle Nathan and Mara had been traveling in had shown up on a routine check of the shipping lanes in the Corellian Run. In line with her command, the fact had immediately been brought to the Empress's attention…and she'd given the order to let it pass unmolested. Interesting…

When he looked up, Leia Organa's searching eyes were still held on him, disconcertingly sharp. "May I ask—Mara Jade, she said Luke had placed her as Regent?"

Nathan glanced quickly down. "Yes, that's right."

"I'm…confused as to why she wouldn't follow through on Luke's command. I don't think it's out of lack of loyalty." Leia hesitated slightly, her next words rising just slightly in pitch, the sense of a discreet question behind them. "Quite the opposite…"

"I might ask the same of you, the Commander-in-Chief of the Rebellion."

Leia frowned, glancing away just a fraction too quickly. "I'm here because of our meetings. Because I…I think Luke was sincere in his intent. We'll get him out, then we continue the talks and we sort this out—everything, once and for all."

"Everything?"

"Everything. We'll open formal negotiations, put his schedule in place—for as long as he's instituting changes towards democratic reform, the Alliance will honor a ceasefire."

"Ah," Nathan nodded slowly, putting this together with all that he already knew and finally seeing the larger picture. What Luke was really up to, what he intended…all of it.

Organa frowned, those soft, smoky eyes calculating. "You didn't know."

Nathan shrugged, wondering why he didn't feel more shocked; the answer, of course, was obvious. "I…expected as much—more so, as time went on." He managed a cavalier grin. "Though you never really know with Luke."

Leia smiled, glancing down as she tipped her head slightly to the side—and it reminded Nathan of someone so completely, but he couldn't quite grasp who…

"You know him well?" she asked.

"Well enough to know how little anyone really knows him."

"I thought I did, once," she said distantly. "I just… Why Mothma? Why did he go after her?"

Nathan sighed. "You want the truth? I think Luke offered the same deal to Mothma that he offered to you…and I think she declined. The assassination attempt…it clarified for Luke that the old leadership would never solve this, on either side of the divide."

"Mon was a great stateswoman…"

"Who signed an order sanctioning Luke's assassination. Everything changed for Luke after that—that's when he began taking matters into his own hands, because he knew it needed new leadership on both sides without the prejudices of having seen the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire. He wanted a new start, and he couldn't guarantee that unless the old leadership was gone." Nathan paused, studying her face, pinched in consideration. "What do you think it was?"

She didn't look up. "Revenge."

"No, I think you know him better than that."

"That's just it; I want to believe I do, but…" She trailed off, uncertain.

"He'd been in contact with you for so long already, but he'd never moved, never made face-to-face contact at a time when, for him, it would have been so much easier to do. I think he knew he couldn't move with Mon in power because he knew she'd reject him, and he had no idea of what to do to break the status quo. I can tell you for a fact it never once occurred to him to take the offensive and remove Mothma without reason—not once. He moved only when Mothma had moved against him, when she'd tried to kill him. That truly did change everything—more than you could possibly know. Luke believed he had to remove Mothma and put you in power. New leadership; someone whom he trusted, someone whom he thought he could make this deal with."

"He could have tried harder with Mon. He didn't have to do what he did."

"I told you, everything changed for Luke."

Leia watched him for long seconds, uncertain… "No…no, he was already serving Palpatine—he'd just been named Heir."

"I spoke to him about that when he was still in the medi-center after the assassination attempt…you know he was in a coma for twenty-three days; that we almost lost him on that first day. He had four seizures on the operating table due to hypoxia; his heart stopped three times. Twice we rushed him back into surgery when he was bleeding out—internal hemorrhaging. He had a total of eight operations in that first week. The initial trauma surgery was sixteen hours. It was just short of three months before he left my medi-center, almost two more before he could walk."

Organa had the good grace to look down, frowning.

"When I asked him about being named Heir…he told me that he thought Palpatine had done it to force a reaction from the Rebellion, that he wanted to drive that final wedge between yourselves and Luke because…" Nathan trailed off, the facts becoming obvious.

Organa shook her head. "No, the man I knew wouldn't have turned on Mon, even if he believed it was for the greater good. He would have found another path."

"Perhaps," Nathan allowed. "Perhaps he's not quite the same—how could he be, given all that's happened? But I'll tell you this: I know for a fact that when he fought for your Rebellion, he believed absolutely in what he was doing, would have given his life for those beliefs. You—forgive me—you abandoned him, turned on him, tried very hard to kill him…almost succeeded. And yet he still believed that given the chance you'd make the right choice—wanted to try, to give you every opportunity, even at his own risk. Despite everything, he still wanted to trust you…he still does. Now tell me again that he isn't the man you knew."















The first thing Luke felt was the sharp, dragging sting of a needle being pulled free of his vein. Slowly his dull eyes pulled grey walls into focus. It took long seconds for the blur hovering over him to coalesce into the form of Madine stepping up and back.

Luke tried to turn the Force inwards, searching for focus, but nothing came, no swell of power answered his call. He closed his eyes and the world swirled sickeningly around him so that for a few seconds he was sure he was falling.

He caught himself with a jolt which ran the length of his body, head still swimming, heart pounding in his chest.

Madine spoke but Luke couldn't work out the words, attention still held by his futile search for connection, any sense at all, no matter how faint. He wanted so much to hear it, to sense it about him, the beat of the universe; craved it even if it gave him no aid, just to be complete again. Without it, he felt so much as he had in his youth, as if some vital part of himself were missing, some deeper connection unanswered.

Some deeper connection…

The burst of adrenaline which accompanied this gave Luke the energy to try to rise, and he rolled to his side whilst the room whirled in blurred waves. Gritting his teeth against rising nausea Luke pushed up, unable to resist the urge to bring his hand up to hold his head still against the spinning, eyes closed, all too familiar with this thick haze, this particular queasy, aching, heavy-limbed dullness…

He opened his eyes, trying hard to focus on his hands before him…why were they free? He looked past them to the far side of the brightly lit cell as the walls crawled, distorting beyond his failing vision's ability to process—and suddenly he was falling again, everything whipping away. He clutched for the table to stop himself…then realized it wasn't there; he was sitting on the angled iron at the edge of his bunk—

And no one was there…he was alone in the bright cell—had someone been there at all?

His mind sharpened again too quickly, and Luke knew the drugs hadn't been real; it was a flash-back, a momentary aberration… He tried to stand, the chain about his ankle barking skin and open wounds as it fell in a coil to the floor and he staggered helplessly to the side, the room tilting. Not real…it's not real.

His shoulder scraped into the curved wall, head hitting hard enough to create a flash of bright white in his vision, and Luke felt his legs give way as he dropped to the floor, reality reeling. Unable to fight the overwhelming urge, he lay down before he passed out, curling up, the gritty, uneven floor cool against his face. He closed his eyes for just one second…

Old dream...this was an old dream; he was still laid on his side as he had been in the cell, but now the ground was cold and rough and damp. Tall, twisted trees rustled in the night's cloying breeze, which gave no relief to fevered skin. As the leaves trembled he heard whispers within them, tumbling through the trees in brief, broken fragments, carried on the wind. Words, moments, memories whipped up like zephyrs, lucid for one intense instant then gone the next, falling away and losing clarity as they collapsed to the power of the rising storm…

Then a light, soft and warm, like the reflection of the sun into the deep darkness of a cave, a gentle reassurance of the warmth of the day, just steps away. But this light came from a form which crouched beside him in the wild darkness, a figure in white, a soft cowl covering rich, mahogany-brown hair… Leia—Leia as he remembered her when he'd first set eyes on her, in her senatorial robes of pure white—pure light… And she reached down to touch his face with such compassion in her eyes. But even as she reached out she faded, so that by the time her hand touched him it had so little substance that it passed through him, a cool tremor across heated skin.

And the dark forest and the cool earth settled to nothing, insubstantial as ever. Only the storm remained, contained within his ragged breath and pounding heart and desperate fear that something…something…

Luke opened his eyes and he was lying on the floor several paces away from his bunk, curled up on his side, numb from the cold…and he had no idea, none at all, of how he'd gotten there.

He pushed himself to sitting but had to remain still for long minutes before he even tried to rise enough to stumble back to the canvas bunk, the thin blanket pitifully inadequate. He dropped down, rolling onto his side to curl up… Hard shards hidden beneath the blanket dug into his hip and leg and for long moments Luke struggled to remember what they were…

Fragments of the vo-corder, gathered from the floor when Luke had thrown it there many days ago, shattering its casing. Hard-won items, bundled into his faded flightsuit as he'd been knocked down among them. He remembered now, remembered his intention—the door. They would hold the door seal open if he timed it right—just enough to break that seal. He brought a trembling hand up to massage his forehead, drained, remembering that he had to use the scrambler to move the bunk again tonight, a fraction closer to the door. If they kept him like this, it would make no difference in the end. The desire to close his eyes and sleep was monumental...just for a moment...just one moment.

Do this because you swore you'd not give Madine this win.

When he closed his eyes the room spun dizzily and he gritted his teeth. He didn't care. He didn't care any more.

Do it for Mara.

The barest smile came to his split lips at the thought of forest green eyes, vibrant as a new leaf in sunlight, and a flash of brilliant russet-red, every shade from warm blond to darkest auburn… Do it to see if your son will have that hair.

Your son…

Madine's face came abruptly to mind, smug and knowing: "I think there's something you're not telling me."

The two syringes on the table…

Too much; this was a reaction to too much of the drug. Madine had overdosed him to try to get the truth…and the terrifying thing was, Luke had no idea if he'd told him. All he had was one fact, and he clung to it now:

Mara was half a galaxy away, safe on Coruscant.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Mara sat wide awake on the battered acceleration couch in the Falcon's main hold, unable to sleep through the dreams any more, thoughts racing. They had forty hours to find Luke—forty. She was now beginning to count the time in terms of hours and not days.

It was the tightly battened-down sense of suppressed panic at that realization which was tearing through her thoughts when Leia Organa came stumbling sleepily into the main bay in the early hours of the morning, both women looking at the other in surprise.

Pulling her coat tighter over her worn sleepwear, Organa flicked her thick mane of loose dark hair back to glance through tired eyes at Mara. "Can't sleep?"

Mara looked down to the cup of caf before her. "Weird dream."

Organa nodded. "Me, too. Any more of that?"

Mara tipped her head towards the Falcon's basic galley. "Help yourself."

As an afterthought, when Organa returned to sit to the far side of the scratched and battered holo-table, Mara added, "Probably best not to tell Nathan I'm drinking caf or he'll gather your whole ship's supply and vac it out of the airlock."

Organa frowned. "That's one strict medic."

Mara realized instantly what she'd done in her tired state, but kept her face straight. "Well, you know, he's very into…his...health-kicks."

Organa raised one eyebrow at that, but said nothing, and Mara rushed to move the conversation on. "So what was your dream?"

"Wolves," Leia said, staring at her mug. "Or rather, my wolf."

Mara's whole body twitched as she worked to keep her voice neutral. Her own visions of the wolf had come again tonight, breaking through her sleep…but why would Leia Organa dream of the wolf…how? "You dream about wolves?"

Organa's eyes stayed on her drink as she twisted her heavy hair into a loose coil over her shoulder. "I dream about my black wolf—not in a bad way, not any more. It's always there though, standing in my shadow. But tonight it…"

"Tonight it disappeared," Mara finished knowingly, bringing Organa's eyes to her own.

Leia nodded. "Tonight it… I couldn't touch it, couldn't feel it—it was like a hole in the galaxy exactly that shape. It's always been there, the wolf, for so long now. So completely, utterly real; sometimes it was the most undeniable, abiding thing in existence, but tonight… Tonight…it was like the ghost of a memory…it faded away beneath my hand."

"It's Luke, isn't it?" Mara said evenly. "The wolf…it's Luke."

Organa looked quickly away, her long, dark hair falling in a rich tumble of loose, mahogany-brown curls to veil her delicate face—and Mara blinked; blinked again…

It took long seconds for her to track down the jolt in her memory as Leia Organa's hair had fallen in a drape of dark curls. Long seconds to chase down the memory of another woman with the same elegant, round face and big, serious brown eyes framed by that incredible mass of dark auburn hair…

The holo on Luke's desk: the delicate old tarnished silver holo-projector, the woman's image:

"I'm fat."
"You're glowing."

She stared, just stared at Leia for the longest time, running the facts over and over in her head…and something else, some deeper knowledge, some flare of comprehension that buzzed within the Force itself…

They were related—Organa and the woman in the old holo—mother and daughter, Mara was almost sure of it. She frowned; but why would Luke have a holo of Leia Organa's mother on his desk? He had so very little that he kept as his own, why bother to…

Something more, something bigger… That moment; the feeling that Luke had tried so often to describe, but nothing had done it justice—that sense of the galaxy itself holding its breath in anticipation…

Mara's own thoughts, just seconds earlier, played through her mind: Why would Leia Organa dream of the wolf…how?

How?

"Don't—Annie, don't, I look terrible."
"You look beautiful."

The man's voice from the holo-projector, deep and soft but still very young, with a loose, easy Rim-world accent.

…"Annie, don't"…
…"Annie"…

And Luke's words, quickly spoken in the Wasp's hangar bay; that loose Rim-world accent: "Mara—Anakin; his name should be Anakin."

Anakin; Annie…

"…carry you in my pocket everywhere."
"Really? Then take this: I love you, Annie. I always will."

The holo on Luke's desk was of his mother, taken by his father. Luke's father, before he'd become Vader. Luke's mother…with those same big brown eyes, those same delicate features set in that same rounded face as Leia!

No. The odds against it were… But then, it explained so much. Luke's choice of Leia, his absolute trust of her. How many people did he actually trust to that degree—how many could he have forgiven for what Organa had done?

And Leia Organa; her decision to leave her precious Rebellion even for a short time to come in search of the man who should be her mortal enemy… What were the chances of that? How much persuasion had the woman really needed?

Organa was looking at Mara now, a frown creasing the point just above the start of each eyebrow, so much like the woman in the holo…

Mara remembered again the Force-vision that Luke had so carefully led her through; remembered the power of it, infinitely vast, like the turning of the universe, dragging all things in its wake:

Twin suns, a blood red moon, everything changing, old loyalties tested...
Binary suns eclipsing, fading into twin rings carved into gold, interlocked, interbalanced, interdependent.

The throne, Luke had said: the Seat of Prophesy, its huge backrest comprised of two suns, back-to-back…and the inscription beneath the base of the throne, engraved in the shape of interlocked rings. Two rings, two suns, two rhymes, two, two, two…

A vast sweep of possibilities tangled about and among them, all futures tracing back to this.

By the time Mara spoke she was absolutely, unquestionably sure.

"You're Luke's sister."

Those dark eyes opened just a little wider and Mara sensed the buzz of shock from the woman sitting opposite her.

Organa remained silent for long seconds, a thousand denials and refutes clearly crossing her mind, and in the end, Mara decided to save her the trouble. "I've seen the holo of your mother that Luke keeps on his desk—you look a lot alike…and anyway, I can read you in the Force. Luke taught me."

"You're Force-sensitive!"

"And so are you. But you knew that already, didn't you?" Mara shook her head, remembering all her little moments of dismissed insight. "I should have known…"

Leia shook her head. "No. I didn't."

Mara glanced quickly to her, and Leia leaned forward to rest her head in her hand, looking to Mara through her spread fingers, amused and chagrined, as if still playing the idea around herself. "I found out through a blood test…Luke didn't even know. I have no idea why they kept us from one another, kept us apart."

"Wait, he didn't know? When did you tell him?"

"When…when I went to speak with him onboard the Wasp. I went to ask questions and he knew less than I did."

"So…why did he help you—before that, why did he trust you?"

"Why did I trust him?" Leia shook her head. "I didn't want to—I really didn't want to trust him. It went against every logical reason. I risked everything…I still am."

"So did Luke." Mara glanced down, her heart contracting—because he could yet lose. And then what would she do?

She remembered long ago, laying hidden with him in the silent anonymity of the night, skin to skin. Remembered his words, quiet and leaden, laced with tightly bound fear.

"Someone once told me that I could only destroy that which I loved." It was the nearest he'd ever come; admission, if only to deny.

She'd lifted her face to his. "You know I…"
"Don't say it. Don't ever say it."
"Why?"
"…What if I've cursed us both already?"

They'd never once uttered it, both holding always to that pact as if it afforded some secret protection…but it hadn't. And now…

Now she was terrified that it would be one of the greatest regrets of her life.













Luke woke to the sound of the doors cycling open, a fresh gust of cool air replacing the stale atmosphere of the cell. He braced as they came forward and manhandled him to the table again, hauling him roughly down though he never resisted.

Hands dragged forward, forced into the restraints.

Wait…stomach cramping, shoulders aching, arms trembling…

Too much tension, this position. Muscles burning, he tried to lift his hands to rub tired eyes, but they jerked to a halt almost immediately, a reminder of his vulnerability.

A shadow moved over him, and Luke opened gritty eyes to see Madine dragging a chair in to sit at the table.

"Outside." The soldiers turned without looking back and the door closed with a hiss of vacuum as the corridor beyond depressurized.

Luke turned his gaze back to Madine, who stared with shrewd amusement. "Tired? Nothing to say today, huh? Let's see if we can't get you talking."

On the table between them he placed two syringes of pale milky-white fluid. He gave Luke a few seconds to really see them and consider the implications, before he spoke out.

"So what do we start on today, Skywalker, your heir or the codes?"

Relief seeped through Luke as he let out a long, low sigh, head dropping as his shoulders sagged, the tension which had been winding ever tighter since their last session loosing slowly. Because he hadn't told Madine about Mara—couldn't have, otherwise Madine would have mentioned her by name just now; would have been taking this opportunity to rub it in Luke's face. Desperately tired, completely drained, Luke grabbed at the reprieve, a brief, slow laugh coming to the surface as he lifted his eyes to Madine.

"Care to share the joke?" Madine rumbled.

Luke shook his head. "No…no, I think I'll keep this one to myself, thanks."

"You're pretty big on keeping secrets, aren't you?"

"Maybe you're just really bad at getting them out of people," Luke said, eyes back to the syringes. Goading Madine right now was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but Luke needed to guide the questions away from Mara. "Or maybe the codes you're trying to get just don't exist."

"Seven groups of numbers—you said that already."

Eyes narrowing, Luke leaned back as far as his tethered hands would allow him, which wasn't far. "This isn't about the codes, is it? Not really. This is about you and me. It all comes back down to that one fact, for you—that the galaxy's not big enough for you, me, and your ego."

Madine reached out to the first syringe. "Are you gonna tell me what I want to know, or are we gonna keep on using you as a pin-cushion?"

Luke said nothing, just stared, and Madine shrugged, lifting the syringe to his mouth to pull the cap from the needle as he reached out to hold Luke's arm steady.

Luke tensed, trying futilely to pull his bound arm back, unable to stop himself from letting out a yell half-frustration and half agitation.

It took only seconds for the drug to rush through him, the familiar cold, numbing trail seeping in its wake to leave every limb impossibly heavy as Luke slowly stilled, head spinning as gravity distorted, tumbling into freefall.

"There you go…gliding already, huh?"

A distant voice, small and hollow to Luke's hearing.

"You know, this is co-fralodiost—frost, they call it on the streets. Takes years to get off it I'm told, and we've been using it as the base for all the special little cocktails we've been mixing up for you in the last few weeks—that and the stuff Wez Reece so kindly provided. I'm thinking maybe we'll try you without anything for half a day now, huh? See how strung-out you get."

Luke blinked slowly, forcing concentration. "Straight line…"

"What?"

"Straight line—gotta keep a straight line in… mind. Keep your mind in a straight line, from A to Z."

Madine frowned. "Don't start that stuff on me today."

"A to Z… Y… X…"

Madine's head tipped, lips narrowing in annoyance. "Alphabet today, huh? Makes a change from times tables."

"V… U… T… S…"

"So, Kalter told me the trick was to break your train of thought. Cut in; make you listen to me, not yourself."

"R… Q… P…"

Madine pulled a small object from his pocket to hold it up before Luke's blurred eyes: a compact metal handle, half the length of his finger, fine slats cut diagonally across it. Luke glanced just once, not bothering to even try focusing on it. The hand holding the object moved slightly and a short, wide, wickedly sharp blade sprung free with a metallic snick, its fine, tapered point catching the light.

"How's this for breaking a line of thought," Madine growled. "Next letter you say, I'm gonna carve it into the back of your hand.

Luke slowed to silence, eyes on the blade. It was short, the blade itself no more than half a finger in length, its chamfered cutting edge almost the width of the blade. It looked old and well-used but even to his ill-defined vision, it looked razor-sharp. He sighed slowly.

The blade came closer to his face, blurring to a hazy flash of metal as Madine spoke. "Think carefully now, 'cos you got a hell of a lot of alphabet left to go."

In the tense silence, Luke blinked slowly, bringing his eyes to Madine's, and the older man nodded once, lowering the knife slightly. "Okay then, let's call that a win, shall we. Now, codes…"

Still slowed by the pull of the drugs, Luke turned unsteadily away to look at the curve of the roughly plastered wall. "…N…"

Madine didn't hesitate. Taking Luke's wrist he pushed his hand flat, holding it tight whilst he carved the letter with three fast strokes, deep enough that Luke felt the blade alternately skip then drag as the tip grated against the bones in the back of his hand. His back arched as he reflexively wrenched back against the restraints, pulling in a sharp breath, the tight cords straining against his desperate pull without giving a fraction of an inch.

Piercing heat bloomed damp over the back of Luke's hand as he clamped his other over the injury which throbbed in time to his heart, the gaps between his fingers and the table beneath them already wet to the touch.

Madine watched, waiting for long seconds until Luke's fast, short breaths slowed just slightly.

"That is a very messy wound," he said at last, shaking his head as he lifted his eyes to Luke's, completely unmoved. "Want to go for the next letter—or do you want to talk codes?"

Luke's eyes narrowed, pain and adrenaline giving him a burst of clarity. "Go to hell."

Madine shook his head. "Wrong answer. Should've picked something shorter at the very least."

Luke yelled, trying in vain to pull free, the cord holding him immobile as Madine grabbed for his arm and brought that razor-sharp blade down.












It was late afternoon local time when the Falcon landed on Essau's Ridge, the Wilde Karrde just a few hours behind it.

Now Leia was gathered with everyone else round the holo-table onboard the Falcon, staring at the innocuous black aluflex housing which held their only hope of keeping her brother alive.

"So that's it?" Han asked, typically unimpressed.

She could blame him on this one. The plain plasteel box was about twice the size square of the numerical input keypad on its top, with a handle to one side and three small lights, all red.

Karrde had brought his worryingly young slicer, Ghent, with him, and Leia had watched the young man stare, completely besotted by the striking, curvaceous Jade. He'd even sidled nervously up beside Mara when they'd gathered round, torn between adolescent adoration and timid fear.

Now, he felt the need to defend himself, and as Mara turned expectant eyes on him he raised his chin, indignant. "Hey, you're looking at cutting edge stuff here."

"Yeah, I don't like cutting edge," Han said tetchily. "Too many times that's another word for unreliable."

"It'll work," Ghent maintained, trying a brief grin at Mara, who had lifted the box for closer study, oblivious to her admirer.

Glancing up, Mara threw it to Leia, who caught it as Ghent reached out nervously. "Hey, careful with that thing!"

Mara turned to him, and the slicer tried another thin grin. "Not you."

"So, how do we know when it's mimicking the code?" Leia asked. Her knowledge of the Wasp's layout and the specific whereabouts of the control room she'd glimpsed on her visit had meant that she'd volunteered to go after the emitter box. Han and Mara would be heading up along the Wasp's starboard loop-corridor to come to the cell by another route, whilst Karrde and his group headed from the front back.

Ghent leaned forward. "Press and hold this button, then…see these pinlights? They'll flash as it's trying to sample, like it is now. Keep it pressed until all three lights turn steady green—that's when it's got the sample. Do not turn the real transmitter off or take it out of range until all three go to a solid green."

Han leaned in. "So when we get the green light, we could theoretically destroy the original?"

"Oh, big no," the slicer said.

"Because?" Mara prompted.

"I need the original intact—I still need the intact program to slice, and find the deactivation code for the still-active slave-chip. This mimic box is just receiving and sampling the outgoing transmission, it's not copying the code itself. Also they sometimes have an anti-tamper on the original transmission box. If it's destroyed and sends out the trigger-signal at the same time as the ghost box is transmitting, I wouldn't like to put credit on whether the slave-chip will respond to the original signal or the fake. I also don't know what'll happen if the slave-chip is triggered by inputting the code into the original box whilst the fake is still transmitting—it may trigger the chip, it may not."

"Great, could you be a little vaguer?" Han drawled.

"Hey, this is cutting edge stuff," the slicer repeated, indignant, though his defense was aimed at Mara rather than Han. "Nobody can slice a slave-chip, they're notoriously hard to fake. And this is nothing—if you get him out, we've still got to break the original program to get the deactivation code."

Mara crossed her arms. "So what's the actual advantage of having this again?"

Ghent shrunk back a little. "Well, once you get the ghost box working, I guarantee you can go out of range of the original transmitter and it won't blow the slave-chip. Stay out of range of the original, and it doesn't really matter if someone triggers it or not."

Karrde straightened. "We'll make our way towards you from the front of the Wasp. We can take the original transmitter straight onto the Wilde Karrde and out of range. Ghent can start working on it immediately."

Because he was known locally, it had been decided that Karrde's part in the still-loose plan was to make an open approach to the Wasp on some excuse, to draw attention. It made perfect sense then, for his group to take the box. Still, Jade seemed less willing, though she was cutting Karrde a lot more slack now, Leia knew, her tone professionally assertive rather than antagonistic.

"No offense, but I'm not letting that original box out of my sight."

Hallin straightened. "Wait a minute, what do you mean out of your sight? You'll be on the Falcon, keeping our exit clear."

"Nathan, you were there when we drew straws; Chewbacca's staying on the Falcon."

Sitting opposite Leia, Chewie straightened slightly, obviously hoping this was his chance to get back into the action.

Nathan seemed to think the same. "Yes, but…surely it would make more sense for you to…"

"I'm going."

"But…" Mara straightened quickly and turned what Han had already labeled her 'redhead glare' on him, though despite standing just eye to eye with her, the medic held his ground admirably, Leia thought. Hallin frowned, glancing at Leia and Han before looking back to Mara. "I just thought you should probably, you know…stay here."

"Really? And why is that exactly?"

"Well, you know…"

"I'll tell you what, Nathan," Jade said dryly, taking her blaster from its holster and laying it on the scratched dejarik table beside the aluflex box, equidistant between the two of them. "Here's my gun. If you can take it from me, without me at the very least giving you concussion and probably broken bones, I'll stay here."

Leia glanced at Han, fascinated, as both turned back to watch.

The medic lifted one hand and for a brief, unbelievable second Leia thought he was actually going to try…then he wiggled his fingers, backing up a step. "I'll just…right."








Day ticked round to night, and Mara had taken to pacing the Falcon's crowded hold so that Nathan couldn't catch her i private to try yet another attempt at dissuading her from going onto the Wasp.

Running out of time—they were running out of time. They had ten hours now and nowhere to go. So close, and nowhere to go.

The navigation charts to the Tholatin System had been pulled up on the holo-table to project the three-D image above it, whilst everyone gathered round to stare as if something would just pop out of the holo at them. It was a mid-sized system and though only Tholatin itself was inhabited, and that only at Essau's Ridge, it was still packed with five planets and nine moons. Eight of those mineral-rich moons were presently being mined, meaning a constant flurry of ships and comm signals traveled in and out of them, to complicate things further.

So they sat, waiting for word from Karrde, who was chasing up contacts in the Ridge, and Solo and the Wookiee had been out and back twice already, looking for leads.

But the Wasp wasn't in the Ridge. Mara knew that absolutely now, knew it in every fiber of her being—it wasn't on Tholatin. She couldn't read Luke's familiar presence anywhere here. And yes, he'd be hidden by ysalamiri, but still, one thought kept gnawing at her: that maybe he was dead already…maybe that was why she couldn't sense him.

So she paced the hold as everyone else sat around the holo, knowing that they could make it to one moon, maybe two if they chose those closer in, and trying to narrow the options down by logic. Mara glanced again at the holo, hardly hearing the voices of the others as they argued possibilities, desperate for something, anything to give them a direction…

And she paused, staring at the system anew, its nine moons and five planets rotating real-time in the complex 3-D representation, the noise and the arguments and the debates fell away, and a single tone sounded from somewhere within her, raising the hairs at the back of her neck.

Leia turned, an involuntary shudder taking her in that same moment… and gradually, in one's and two's, those around the holo fell to slow attention as Mara walked to the holo-map as if pulled by a tether.

There—it was right there!

All her attention was centered on a dead, rust-colored moon in the holo, its atmosphere long gone, the dust of its pockmarked surface blush red. When she tried to speak, her voice was a hoarse whisper. "That moon—what's its name?"

Han frowned. "That's Lua Vermilla; nine hours flight."

Lua Vermilla…Bocce…it meant 'Red Moon.'

Red moon. The vision she'd had the very first time she'd seen Luke call the Force to him, long before he'd served Palpatine, flashed crystal-clear in her mind—

The howl of the prowling wolf. Twin suns, an ashen moon seared blood red, everything changing, loyalties challenged, allegiance resolved…

A blood red moon…

Red moon. Was the answer there even then, events already set in motion like the cogs of a lock falling home? Had the Force long since given her answers to questions she hadn't yet known to ask?

Red moon. Realization tingled up her spine and resonated absolute, undeniable knowledge in every single fiber of her being.

"That's where they are," she said, knowing it utterly. "Right there."













Luke came to already tethered to the table, back and shoulders aching, the pain knifing across them when he tried to lift his head. The table was still crusted with the dried remnants of the blood from his still-scabbing arm and hand, the fabric of the scuffed and filthy flightsuit marked by seeping scarlet stains where it stuck to the wounds.

Madine was sitting opposite him, leaning back in the chair slightly, fresh and awake, wearing a combat jacket and a crisp, clean shirt, so Luke guessed it was already another day.

Slowly, stiffly, he straightened to sitting, wondering if he'd been left tethered overnight…

Madine leaned back, the chair creaking slightly. "Good morning."

Morning…

"Thirteen."

"What?"

"Thirteen; day thirteen."

Madine smiled. "Unlucky for some."

Luke let out a small, breathless laugh. He felt numb and disjointed, disconnected from reality, but lucid; no drugs yet—or not too many to deal with. It was difficult to distinguish any more.

"I thought we'd talk about your heir today."

Luke looked down too quickly, making the room lurch about him. "I don't have one."

"You've already told me you do."

The chipped and stained surface of the table began to crawl and distort in Luke's vision. He shook his head just slightly. "No, I didn't."

Madine grinned, voice mocking. "You think not?

"I didn't tell you anything." Luke was aware of sagging slowly forward, already exhausted, tensing every so often against stomach cramps. Too long without the drugs—or too long with them, it was hard to tell.

"I didn't need specifics. It was enough to know it was true, and that was written all over your face. After that it wasn't hard to work out; I just looked to Coruscant and the woman you put in power. You wouldn't put anyone else before the mother of your child—you know she'll hold the Empire for it until it comes of age." Madine loosed a snide smile, leaning back again in the chair. "Vested interest."

Luke remained silent, the first tingle of panic beginning to kick in.

"I hope you said goodbye to her before you left. If not, I have a team heading over to Coruscant right now… I'll ask them to pass on your…regrets."

Luke was on his feet before he realized it, launching forward. The tether stopped him dead as he yanked against it, ignoring the pain that sliced up his arms, "Call them back! Withdraw them!"

Madine laughed into Luke's struggle. "Look at that. First time I've seen some kind of real human emotion in you, you know that?"

He glanced up, and two sets of strong arms came in from behind Luke, pushing him back down against his struggle. Still fired with anger, Luke half-turned to lash out with the heel of his bare foot now that they were close enough, catching the nearest man a hard, sideways blow across his kneecap and having the satisfaction of hearing the crunch as his leg gave way awkwardly...but in the end it was the same. He was weak and exhausted and tethered, and with heavy blows and brute power, they forced him back down.

Madine waited, watching until Luke was subdued. Then he smiled again, eyes narrowing. "All this time, we shouldn't have been talking about one or the other—we should have been talking about both. I'll make you a deal, Skywalker; give me the codes and I'll call them off."

Still gasping, Luke looked up, torn. Memories of Mara's face, of her smile, of her voice—a thousand moments tumbled in his thoughts, made intense by the drugs that tore through his system on the back of this rush of adrenaline. Her words, her strength, her absolute faith: "I trust you."

"I can't—I can't give you the codes."

"Too bad." Madine stood and turned away.

"Wait!"

Madine paused, looking to him. "The codes."

"I can't!"

"Then she dies—and the baby with her."

He couldn't lose Mara, he couldn't… But he couldn't give up the fleet and seal the fate of hundreds of thousands of beings on both sides of the divide. Couldn't consign the galaxy to another war on the scale of the Clone Wars, couldn't give Madine that kind of power.

"Don't—don't ask me this."

"I just did. All I want now is your answer."

Luke dropped forward, helpless, the weight that pressed down on him so great that he could barely breathe, let alone speak. His head fell forward into his hands on the table, lost.

"You son of a Sith...you're not gonna tell me, are you?" Madine's voice was half-amused, half-disgusted.

"I can't tell you." Luke shook his head without lifting it, face hidden, knowing any appeal was futile but unable to do otherwise. "Don't—please don't do this. Anything—I'll do anything you ask...just don't do this."




Standing halfway between Skywalker and the open door of the cell, Madine stared for long seconds, watching a man broken and desperate but unable to comply. He felt a slow grin take him, knowing that Skywalker had no abilities here; no way to know a lie if it was told…and the temptation was just too much.

Walking to the side of the table he leaned close to Skywalker, voice no more than a whisper. "We already did it. She's already dead."

Head still in his hands, Skywalker stilled to silence, not even a breath escaping him.

Madine smiled. "She really shouldn't have kept walking among the crowds like that. But you know, she wanted to do it so much…rally the people to her cause. She was wearing your ring, you'll be happy to know. The one I pulled from your hand."

Still no reaction, Skywalker ominously still.

"Dressed all in white. Quite fittingly symbolic really—another innocent to the slaughter because of you...two, in truth. You can't get much more innocent than an unborn child, can you?"

Skywalker launched up to strike out as the chair clattered away behind him, letting out a yell of desolate, uncontained fury, his rage such that he actually dragged the heavy table forward by the binders at his wrists.

Madine took a fast step back beyond his reach, watching with the barest of self-satisfied grins as the two soldiers behind Skywalker stepped in to restrain him, forced to kick at the back of his knees to drive him to the ground. He pushed up again immediately, raw aggression giving him the power to drag the weighted, cumbersome table forward again until the soldiers took him down, one of them landing a kidney-punch this time that truly dropped him, leaving him doubled over, gasping and breathless.

"One more," Madine said, emotionless.

Tinel sent a heavy blow to Skywalker's head from above and to the side with all the power of his arm and shoulder behind it, and Madine watched his body sag further, head rolling, shoulders slackening. When he was sure Skywalker couldn't rise, he walked calmly around the side of the table to crouch beside the gasping, semi-conscious man.

"For Mon," he whispered. "Now we're even."

For long seconds he remained close enough for Skywalker to lunge at him, hoping he would. But all fight was gone—and not because of the beating, Madine knew.

He stood, using his booted foot to push Skywalker off-balance and watching as he collapsed sideways at the full stretch of his tether, then turned and left the cell, satisfied.















Less than an hour; they were less than an hour from Lua Vermilla, and Mara was pacing through the Falcon's main hold in search of tools, her saber in her hand. Her heart contracted at the memory, still fresh enough to sting, of Luke giving it to her in that gracious, understated way of his. "I thought you deserved something with a little more elegance."

She paused, realization of what she'd just seen from the corner of her eye turning her about. Solo sat at the holo-table, a blaster disassembled on its surface, the components scattered about as he tinkered with the main relay.

"Please tell me that isn't your blaster?"

"It might be…" he said, wary.

"Solo, we're less than an hour from reversion. Why did you pick now to start messing around with that thing?"

"I have to tinker when I'm nervous."

She paced back towards him, sitting down on the curved acceleration couch and beginning to sort through the parts on the holo-table. "There's the same broken sub-particle scrambler under your seat right now, that was there when the Falcon was first brought to Coruscant. You couldn't have pulled that out?"

"Hey," Han said, bruised. "I can reassemble this blaster in about six minutes—in the dark."

"Fine, do it now. I'll time you." She handed the disassembled stock to him meaningfully.

Han took the stock, nodding toward the saber she still held in her other hand. "Something wrong?"

Mara glanced down. "Oh, the latch on my belt's a little loose. I was…" She broke off, realizing what he was saying.

"I guess we both tinker when we're nervous, huh?" Solo smiled.

"You'll notice my lightsaber is in one piece. Unlike my nerves, with you around."

She looked meaningfully down at the table again and with a sigh, Han leaned forward and took the blaster's main power pack, attaching the feeds. "What've you got that thing for, anyway?"

Did she tell him? Luke trusted him, and in truth, Mara was starting to feel the same, but still… "It's for Luke—when we find him."

Han looked down, frowning as he loaded the recoil bolt. "Y'know, he may not…I don't think he'll be in any shape to…"

"I know that." Mara heard her own foot tap staccato against the deck plates. She put the saber down quickly, as if it were hot.

"Worried?" Solo's voice was deceptively casual.

"Hardly," she dismissed unconvincingly.

"I'm worried. Worried that we're gonna come out of lightspeed into some dark speck at the far side of nowhere and have wasted nine hours getting there."

Out of habit, Han licked his thumb and touched it over the points connecting the live feed of the power pack to check it, jerking back at the small shock he received.

Mara frowned at this, but picked up the dismantled barrel from the dejarik table and slid the compensator back in place, twisting it to lock it home. "You think there'll be nothing there?"

The thought had occurred to her too, numerous times—that she was resting everything on some vague memory of a distant vision…

Han shrugged, latching the body to the blaster butt with a reassuring clack. "I'm just saying we should be prepared for it, that's all."

"I'm prepared for his not being there. I just don't know if I'm prepared for…"

She broke off and Solo sighed deeply. "We shouldn't get dragged into trying to second-guess what they have or haven't done to him."

Mara shrugged this away, not wishing to be made to think about it again. She'd spent enough sleepless nights and fraught days combining her imagination and what knowledge Imperial Intel had of Madine and his legendary temper. And even allowing for the ysalamiri, since Madine had managed to keep Luke where he wanted him, she figured he must indeed be using the drug…which meant that Luke would probably have realized the truth by now…

She fell to silence, relinquishing the barrel of the blaster as Solo took hold of it to slide it into place, latching the heavy side-sight into position and attaching the power line.

He held up the blaster, squinting down the now-active sight. "There, see? It took what…minutes."

Mara dragged her thoughts back to the present, arching her eyebrows at him. "Did you actually do anything to it?"

"Sure I did. The contacts get a bit of build-up on 'em after a while. I gave 'em all a clean."

Mara glanced to the empty table. "With what?"

"Best cleaner known to man—spit and the edge of my shirt."






"What have you got?" Leia Organa asked from her position in the gunnery chair of the Falcon's cockpit, as Mara stood to get a better view of the dusty red moon.

"Three Destroyers within hours, and an Interdictor a little further away," Nathan replied from the cockpit comm, glancing once to Mara. "Another six Destroyers nineteen hours later—though if we get the Emperor, obviously every ship in the fleet will come."

It wasn't bad, she knew. She'd already told Nathan privately that whatever happened, he wasn't to leave Luke's side if—once—they got him. He was carrying a tracker, the frequency of which had already been passed on to Admiral Joss. In truth, she trusted Solo and Leia Organa to see this through—Karrde even—but there were about to be a lot of Rebel and Imperial ships—and therefore a lot of jumpy military-types with ideas of their own—in close proximity very soon. Since Luke needed immediate surgery to get the slave chip out and the two small Rebel ships were already here, that would be where they headed initially, but knowing they had an Interdictor closing in would be…reassuring.

Solo glanced back to her as they made high orbit around Lua Vermilla, heading for the only known settlement, a selenium mining colony whose location had been provided by Karrde, now flying off their bow in loose formation. "Interdictor would be pretty useful in case we spook them."

"We can't risk waiting—that would put us well into the fourteenth day. We'll go in with Rebel troops," Mara said firmly. The Sol and the Zephyr were an hour behind now, and at this point, with only two hours to midnight and the start of the fourteenth day, when Madine had publicly promised the execution of the Emperor, if Rebel troops were the only ones Mara had, then they were what she'd go in with.

Madine wasn't about to drag Luke up on the stroke of midnight, she knew that, but still, Mara was fighting against the increasing urge to act.

The three units of Rebel soldiers onboard the Sol and Zephyr would put them on roughly equal footing with Madine's men, and their arrival in an hour would put the planned strike close to midnight, a good time for this kind of hit-and-extract, when people were at low ebb. It might buy you maybe ten minutes with a professional Special Ops team…but she'd take that advantage if she could get it.

Right now, they needed to lock down the exact location of the Wasp, and Karrde's contacts had said there were, not surprisingly, bulk haulage transports on the mining colony's pads. They needed to do a slow pass and work out the logistics of the terrain and the strike, to be ready to move the moment back-up arrived.


When the Falcon cruised over Lua Vermilla's only mining colony at high altitude just minutes later, Mara was braced for the fact that there may be no Class Six freighter among the transports …what she wasn't prepared for was four of them, among another five battered freighters, all on pads around the main building.

Solo cursed roundly in Corellian. "Well what the hell do we do now?"

"Did you get readings?" Nathan asked, standing to get a better view as they passed. "Any have a high power signature?"

The Wookiee keened a reply which Solo translated, eyes still on the receding pads as the Falcon tipped to keep them in view as long as possible. "All active, all running similar power."

Mara leaned forward to the Falcon's comm. "Karrde, you recognize any of those freighters as regulars?"

"No, none."

Solo turned to her. "Don't you recognize it?"

"Hey, it was a gray Class Six bulk freighter with a few mismatched panels—after ten years of use, they all look the same."

"Lifesign readings on them all?" Leia prompted without turning from the viewscreen.

The Wookiee growled another positive.

"Wait, the Wasp's sublight engines!" Nathan prompted. "Weren't they partially dismantled when you saw it at Kwenn Station?"

Solo turned back, he and the Wookiee leaning forward. "They've all got sublights…next idea?"

He didn't say the one thing they were all thinking, Mara knew—that maybe it was none of them.

The Wookiee let out another low keen as Solo sat, trying to remain optimistic. "Yeah, I guess if you had an assembled set onboard ready, you could float 'em out in open space and install them in three or four days, if you had a coupla' dozen men to spare."

Mara frowned, eyes on the freighters…a dozen men to spare—which he did. Plus the space to store them in one of the bulk freighter's holds.

A dozen men…

"Wait a minute…" She rose to stare as Solo banked the Falcon in another wide arc, keeping the freighters in view without getting too close. "The last freighter, the furthest out…how many lifesigns?"

Han translated Chewie's grumbling growl. "Maybe forty, spread out."

Mara shook her head…because she didn't get one. Not one. In fact she wasn't getting any reading in the Force at all from the last freighter. It was a complete blank, like a flaw in her senses, a bubble in her perceptions. "There—that's it! That's the Wasp!"

Solo frowned. "How the hell do you work that out?"

Leia turned, hopeful. "You sure?"

Mara nodded, keeping her voice firm to convey her certainty. "That's it."

Leia turned to Han, who stared at her, disbelieving. "Seriously—we're doing this just on numbers?"

Her answer was to lean in to the comm. "Karrde? We've got it pinned as the last Class Six on the pad—the furthest out."

"We'll do a low pass on her port side," Karrde replied. "See if we can give you the lie of the land."

"Don't get too close—and don't get caught scanning it. We don't want to start this party 'till the back-up arrives." Solo kept the more recognizable Falcon back, staying high as the cockpit sensors received reams of information passed on from the Wilde Karrde: shields, visible gun emplacements, power and heat-spots within the Wasp.

Mara's eyes moved from the reams of valuable data to the Wasp far below...something... She stared...

Leia leaned past her, studying the distant landing pad. "Can we set down on the far side of the mining complex? We have troops an hour away, we could take the complex first."

Mara barely heard the words, eyes locked on the freighter. Something... She remembered sitting cross-legged, Luke spending the fifth night in a row teaching her to listen, to be willing to be led by the Force sometimes, a hard thing for her to do. Remembered his words as he tried to lead her on, "Sometimes it's so subtle...like seeing a star by not looking directly at it."

"Too many chances for Madine to be alerted." Solo's voice, a distant distraction. "We're better setting down just over the bluff and walking it with rebreathers. We've got reasonable gravity, just no atmosphere."

Something…on the tip of her tongue, like a thought that wouldn't come. "...like seeing a star by not looking directly at it." She closed her eyes, closed out the physical, the tangible, the props she'd always turned to and depended on... Something...

The feeling rippled up her spine, setting the hairs of her arms and neck on end in a cold tremor as she turned, seized by a fear so intense it constricted her throat and reduced her voice to a broken whisper. "Something's wrong."

Leia turned instantly. "What?"

Mara was already backing out of the cockpit at speed, Leia Organa close on her tail as Han craned back from the pilot's seat. "Something's very wrong. We need to go now—right now!"

"Now?" Leia asked, as they came to a halt at the end of the small corridor to the main hold. "We can have a full task-force here in one hour. Specialist troops with specialist equipment."

"We can't wait—we go in now." Mara was shaking her head, driven by some force stronger than the logic in Organa's words, knowing absolutely. She lowered her voice, her words for Leia alone. "Tell me you don't know that…actually stop and just listen. I know that you can feel it at the pit of your stomach, that it's whispering right now at the edge of your thoughts. I know you can sense it…that you can touch the Force. Listen to what it's telling you."

Leia hesitated. "How can you trust it so much?"

Mara understood her completely. Even aware of its presence as a background noise, all through her life she'd associated the Force so completely with her old master, Palpatine. Now, with Palpatine gone, Luke was the benchmark she looked to and associated with the Force…and so the answer was obvious.

"How can you not?" she said simply.

Leia frowned, eyes skipping the Falcon's bay as she tried for the very first time to actually listen to that voice, given permission in some strange way by Mara's own unwavering faith...

So close to her, Mara sensed the movement of her thoughts as she tried to grasp at this common bond. As she experienced that moment of vertigo, of narrowing options and widening risks… Lua Vermilla…red moon…blood red moon…blood red…blood…

A surge of nausea, a moment in freefall, as Mara's own throat constricted again in empathy with Leia's comprehension. Leia gasped, reeling about to stagger a step back down the short corridor to the cockpit as she shouted to Han, eyes wide. "We have to go in!"

"Wait a minute, what happened to planning a—"

Reaching him, Leia grabbed his shoulder, voice rising in fear. "Han, just do it!"













Luke lay on his side in the cell, tired and breathless, shivering constantly, stomach cramping. But this was it—he had nothing to lose. He'd held off so long because he knew the odds were against him, but now…now odds didn't matter. He knew damn well that his odds of escaping were practically zero, and even that small margin of chance would be nullified if Madine triggered the chip he was pretty sure was nestling against his skull.

But now it was different…because now he didn't care if he got off the ship. All he wanted was a chance at getting to Madine, and he wouldn't get that from the inside of a cell. For that, he was willing to risk everything—in fact right now, for that, he'd willingly throw it all away.

He didn't care what it cost, didn't care what else happened; because of Madine, he had nothing to lose…nothing.

He waited as long as he could after they fed him. That always seemed to be late evening, and he wanted it to be well into the night before he moved, so the guards would be at their most tired. Though in truth really he had no idea; his thoughts had been hazy too long, and his sense of time had been one of the first things to go. That and his sense of balance—which could turn out very bad. But it all came down to this: he had nothing to lose, and he'd rather be shot on the spur of the moment whilst trying to escape, than feed Madine's carefully timeframed plans. Trade everything for just one chance...that one chance at the man who'd taken everything from him in a few whispered words…

"We already did it. She's already dead. Another innocent to the slaughter because of you...two, in truth."

He'd spent the time with his back to the lens, using one of the plasteel shards to start a rip close to the edge of the rough blanket he had, slowly gathering it to him as he pulled the narrow ribbon of cloth free from top to bottom, giving him a long, thin strip. Then he did it again, exactly as before.

Still lying as if in sleep, he took the splintered shards he'd managed to salvage when he'd shattered the vocorder's housing and knotted them at regular intervals into the strips, struggling against shaking hands. Wider than the strips of cloth, the solid pieces stuck this way and that from their binding. He bundled them up, plagued by doubts…not about this; he knew this would work. If he could throw the cloth strip close to the closing door as the vacuum kicked up, the vacuum itself would do the work for him; it would drag the loose end of the cloth with unerring accuracy through the gap, no matter how narrow it was—until one of the shards got stuck in the closing gap, disrupting the seal just slightly.

Vacuum was a searching thing; it needed only the tiniest ingress to fail…leaving his cell open to the power of that vacuum from the double-wall beyond. And the longer that seal was held open even slightly, the more it would decompress his cell, reducing it to near-vacuum…and the more that vacuum equalized, the less the pressure on the door, and the easier it would be to pull the shard free, leaving his cell in vacuum even if the short corridor beyond was repressurized. So when somebody opened the cell door into that vacuum…

Rapid decompression. He'd seen it a few times, when airlocks failed on old ships. Had gone through the training for rapid decompression when still flying with the Rogues…actually gone through it for real once, when damage had blown the canopy of his X-Wing in space…wearing a full pressure suit and with his oxygen mask strapped hastily in place.

He wouldn't have that this time. This time would be very different.

Which was why his heart was hammering against his ribs when he reached out to run his trembling hand along the underside of the heavy bunk frame. He pulled the scrambler free from its hiding place and sighed, dragging his thoughts into line and listening to the click in his breathing caused by the strength of his own irregular, pounding heart.

Groggy, dizzy, unable to hold on to a thought for more than a few minutes, he knew it had to be now or never.

Fumbling the scrambler into his mouth, Luke bit down and activated it.

On cue, the two night-guards arrived to hit the surveillance lens, thinking they were correcting the same fault, as usual. As usual, Luke sat up on the edge of the bunk to stare at them in silence, the heavy chain about his ankle chinking as it dagged against the movement. As usual, he bit down and deactivated the scrambler, watching them as they walked from the room…

As the door closed Luke bit down again on the scrambler in his mouth, reactivating it instantly, holding it in his mouth as he worked.

With surveillance out again and the door on its automated closing cycle, Luke dragged the plasteel-studded strip free and threw it, keeping hold of one end. It unfurled like a living thing, the soft tip reaching to the nearly closed door… In an instant the vacuum took it, dragging it into the closing gap.

The third plasteel fragment caught with a tortured crunch, interrupting the seal by the smallest degree. Triumphant, Luke launched himself forward toward the door, knowing that his continuing incremental movement of the heavy-framed bunk every time he'd deactivated the surveillance would enable him to reach it with the chain about his ankle at full stretch.

The compromised seal was already marked by the sharp hiss of air as the vacuum outside, designed to vacate only the gap between the inner and outer walls of the cell, began to exert its influence through the failed door seal and into the cell itself.

Crouching at the door, already beginning to feel the change in barometric pressure as the vacuum worked to purge the air from the small cell, Luke prayed breathlessly that he was right about it being insufficient, and so unable to crush the door completely closed before it had purged the cell of air. Worried at the rate at which it was clearing the cell, he began breathing in short, fast breaths. This was deep-space-piloting one-oh-one; you could survive longer than you thought in a vacuum, but you needed to close down the body's natural breathing cycle by lowering its carbon dioxide levels—you needed to hyperventilate.

Already dizzy, Luke dropped down, face close to the barely open door, hearing the final locking cycle of the outer door as the gearing system for the inner door to his cell tried without success to seal. Close to the failed seal, he breathed the remaining oxygen that whistled through at an alarming rate; if he was wrong and the vacuum was sufficient, this could be a very short and embarrassing escape effort. He was gambling on two things: firstly that, since they'd put conventional locks on the doors, he was pretty sure that the vacuum pump here wasn't quite to the original spec, and secondly that even in the original, the decompression rate wouldn't have been lethal for the simple reason that the cell had originally been designed to decompress rapidly enough to knock him out. The original designer had wanted him alive.

Dragging in his last few breaths and feeling the increasing pull against his lungs, it occurred to Luke to wonder belatedly whether this escape attempt was a legitimate, reasonable theory based on vacuum mechanics and two weeks of close observation, or a patently ridiculous notion based on the strung-out delusions of endless drug cocktails and two weeks of sleep deprivation. It also occurred that it was a little too late to be thinking that.

He grinned at the thought, cracking the fresh scabs on his face, ridiculously amused; delirious—he was getting giddy. Lightheaded, he took his last few breaths as those final whispers of air trailing away, and with them the noise of the door's still-straining auto-close mechanism. Flight instructors taught that you had roughly fifteen seconds of useful consciousness in vacuum, maybe the same of semi-aware disorientation. He had to exhale slowly to avoid massive damage as the vacuum expanded the oxygen in his lungs, but he couldn't empty his lungs completely. Deep-space piloting; he had to remember that, to the point of passing out—don't exhale completely and don't inhale, no matter what. Forget that and you die.

Bracing his feet against the wall, still exhaling slowly to relieve the pressure on his lungs as the oxygen within expanded, Luke kept tension on the strip of cloth, waiting to feel it loosen as vacuum equalized the pressure on the door. The fresh scabs on his arm began seeping blood again as it was pulled to the surface under negative pressure; near vacuum now.

Breathe out slowly. Don't take a breath.

They must be panicking now; they'd surely realized outside that something was going on with the vacuum…did they actually have a way to monitor it? Should've thought of that sooner…

Feeling the pull on the strip of blanket ease, Luke wrapped the cloth strip about his body to gain enough force to pull it clear and yanked with all his remaining strength, pushing off from the wall with his legs. The door's auto-mechanism clanged shut as he pulled the obstruction free and fell onto his back, the world already hazing to a muzzy blur.

Breathe out slowly…

Time dragged, the inability to breathe leaving Luke feeling like he was drowning on dry land, though he knew if he took a breath now, it would probably kill him on recompression…

His hands and feet numbed as his body went into barotrauma, cutting off oxygen to unnecessary extremities.

Breathe out…

Noise, muted and thin, weak vibrations in the near-vacuum as the corridor beyond the cell door now recompressed, the cell itself contained in its decompressed state by the sealed inner door, no air within. Numb, inky shadows seeped in from the corners of Luke's vision, panic rising as the pull on his lungs grew ever greater, more difficult to hold against.

This is okay, you knew this would happen. Don't breathe in…

Weak sounds, muffled by the closed inner door and the near-airless vacuum of the cell. Shouting, the shuffle of feet in the recompressed corridor as the guards reached the inner door, waiting for the powered inner lock to release without knowing that the cell was now a vacuum.

Don't breathe in…

Hands bluing already, numb. Awareness fading; were they still there?

Don't breathe…one second longer,

A memory triggered, a dream long ago of falling, of drowning in deep water. His lungs were burning now, the pull against them incredible, consciousness failing—

One second longer—

Open the damn door!

Just one second longer…

His lungs were depleted, the barest breath held to protect them from recompression, his chest locked against the incredible need to breathe, the pressure phenomenal, blurred vision fading to nothing…

The indistinct light to the side of the door flickered from red to green as the lock released—

The door was wrenched inwards by the force of the vacuum within the cell, its upper hinge breaking free as it rebounded violently against the wall, the intense inrush of air into the vacuum dragging both guards from their feet to throw them bodily across the cell as Luke's last vestiges of consciousness were ripped away by the force of the rapid recompression…


.......

Pounding heart…mottled light, dim and dizzy… Luke dragged in a huge gulp of air, voicing wordless sounds, gasping, struggling—

Up; get up!

He rolled as he rose, trying clumsily to get his feet under him, ears ringing a single tone as he pushed with tear-blurred eyes towards the crumpled huddle that was his guards, heaped against the wall nearby, very still.

Get up!

He crawled a pace, trying to push upright. The world skewed drunkenly about him and dropped him to his hands and knees again with a yell of frustration.

"Up!" he yelled it aloud, forcing himself forwards, staggering upright and to the side as if the floor were tilting.

His first grab at the blaster on the floor near the unconscious guards missed completely and he dropped again to one knee, muscles trembling, dark scarlet drops splashing to the floor from his nosebleed. This time he got it, numb, unsteady hand struggling to hold it so that he had to take its weight in both hands and rest the muzzle against the chain that still held him pinned to the heavy bunk, which had also been dragged the length of the cell in the rapid recompression, a scarlet line cut deep around his ankle where the binder must have cut in as it yanked him back, unconscious. He fired two shots into the chain to shatter it, free for the first time in two weeks.

Lurching up he staggered to the door, shaking his head to clear it, hand out to the doorframe as he almost fell forward, struggling to stay upright.

Then he was through, out of that damn cell! Still giddy, he let out a wild laugh; he'd done it! He'd said he'd walk out of there and he had!

He glanced about, vision clearing. He was in the main bay, maybe four times the size of the outer wall of the cell. Exits; needed an exit before this place started filling up. The implosion would have been silent, but there were surely alarms sounding somewhere. Clutching the blaster, Luke set forward at a loping run, keeping to the edge of the bay, his course erratic as he leaned on the wall for support every other step.

He glanced about him, no idea which way to go, knowing only that he had to be away from here; seconds, he probably had seconds now before they came…

Then he was into a corridor, adrenaline pumping, needing the support of the wall only every five or six staggered steps, the blaster loose in his hand. He couldn't hear an alarm, but then he could hear little beyond a single tone, the recompression probably bursting his eardrums. He brought his hand to one, then looked; no bleeding. He didn't bother to check his nose, the taste of the blood still strong down the back of his throat, making him swallow every few seconds.

End of the corridor. Choosing a direction at random, he glanced down the new corridor and saw a security lens at roof-level. Hauling the heavy blaster up he shot it out, needing six shots to hit it even with his weight resting against the wall behind him.

It occurred to him to wonder where his scrambler was; he must have dropped it in the blast. That meant he needed to use the blaster to take out surveillance, as well as any ysalamiri he saw.

Intentions seeped slowly back into his consciousness; he needed a loop corridor, so that if he took out any ysalamiri and lenses he came across as he went, then eventually he'd come back to the same point he'd started, with Madine and his soldiers still in tow…but without any ysalamiri.

He stumbled on, unsteady on his feet, knowing he was running on adrenalin and knowing it wouldn't last. But that was all he wanted, now—that one chance at Madine…that one chance.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

His breathing ragged, his path weaving as he used the wall for support every few steps, Luke was aware that he was already losing what little adrenaline had sustained him this far, losing the battle to stay upright, to stay conscious…and all the while he was waiting for the slave chip to trigger.

Didn't matter—it didn't matter any more. He needed to take out as many ysalamiri as possible and disguise that fact beneath general chaos and darkened corridors with shot-out lights, then cross the ship and double back on himself from a loop corridor so that he'd be in a Force-infused area by the time they caught up with him—and he needed Madine to be there when they did, so having them know roughly where he was because the ship-wide security lenses were going down wasn't a problem. It didn't matter how many soldiers Madine had with him then, men who were willing to kill on command, who had made Luke's life hell and watched him slowly crumble.

Beneath the single tone that still sounded in his muted hearing, Luke began to hear muffled shouts; soldiers, closing in…

Gunfire…was that gunfire? Who was shooting—why? He staggered on away from the noise, turning a corner and taking out the next lens, needing seven shots this time, breathless and unsteady, unable to keep the blaster level. Didn't matter. Just get to Madine...for Mara. Just that; they could trigger the chip when he'd had Mara's revenge.








Running down the port corridor, Leia flinched as the shipwide alert blared out, then recoiled again as Nathan, just behind her and holding the ghost box, clearly jumped so much he triggered the blaster he was holding in his other hand, shooting a hole in the scuffed floor.

She turned, but Nathan was way ahead of her. "I think it'd probably be better if maybe I run ahead of you," he said diplomatically.

Leia pulled out her comlink, pressing for the channel they were all using as she picked up her pace again. "Han, did you trigger the alarm?"

The earbud crackled to life in Leia's ear. "No, we thought it was you."

Mara had supplied the earbuds from what Han had already come to call her 'bag of tricks,' though she'd been right in pointing out that they'd enable everyone to monitor the open channel with their comlinks silent, thus not giving away their positions in a stealth operation…which seemed a bit academic now, Leia reflected.

Karrde's voice cut in, typically droll. "I'm confused—weren't we supposed to be doing this quietly?"

"Yeah," Han replied, "change of plan...apparently."

The next second Leia heard blaster fire over the open link as Han shouted out. She and Nathan came to a halt, watching each other, eyes wide.

The earbud registered the scuffle of boots and fabric then more shots…the high-pitched whine of ricochets; jarring backfeed as the comlink hit something.

"Han...Han!"

"We're fine…"

Leia breathed again at the sound of Han's voice. "We're good here—all good. Brief disruption, s'okay now."

Nathan leaned in. "Is Mara okay?"

"Yeah, aside from being annoyed—at you that is, not the guys who were shooting at her, for some reason…wait..." He paused, and the comlink went to distant talk between the two of them, then, "Really? … Seriously? Okay, we need to spread out. Karrde, stay forward of the main hold and keep moving. We'll start heading back from here."

Leia scowled. "Wait, Luke's cell is in the main hold."

"I'm sure it is, sweetheart, but we just picked up a comlink that one of Madine's lackeys won't be needing any more, and word on their frequency is that Luke's out already."

The alarm, Leia realized.








Luke backed quickly up the side corridor, hand snaking about the mouth of the soldier he'd dragged back with him as he fired three fast shots into his back. The man slumped down and Luke grabbed him by the scruff to pull him back further, heaving him into a side room…just in time. Another group of six soldiers ran down the main loop corridor ten paces away as Luke remained crouched in the dark room, not even risking standing to close the door.

They passed, and he remained still, huddled down on the floor for long seconds, trying to get his breath back. He needed to get moving. He couldn't afford to stay in one place, it was too easy to get hemmed in. He frisked the body and briefly considered taking the guard's clothes to buy him a second of anonymity, but in the end settled for the stiletto knife the soldier had in a sheath at his hip…

Luke remained still, head down, chest rising in labored breaths. Up, get up.

Too hard—he was running on empty, completely drained. The immense urge to just lay on the floor where he was in the shadows of the room was overwhelming, involuntary reflex dragging him down to repair a failing body, his muscles loosening, succumbing physically even as he fought it mentally.

Get up…

It was the shipwide alarm which finally brought him to his feet as he glanced about, cursing as he staggered forward a step to hold onto the doorframe. He stepped out into the side corridor…and stopped dead as another five guards ran down the main loop corridor just paces away, backstepping at speed to press himself against the wall, what little he could hear of their passing drowned out between the decompression damage and the claxon's droning tone.

They ran on as a close group, not even bothering to check the darkened doorways of the side corridor, attention ahead as Luke held to the shadows.

He breathed again as they passed, lightheaded, waiting long seconds before he pushed himself off to check both ways down the dark, empty side corridor.

Keep moving; get back onto the loop corridor and double back, heading aft…

Hand to the wall for support, Luke shouldered his blaster and turned into the main loop corridor…and stumbled instantly into a soldier, running to catch up to his companions. The soldier's blaster lifted, swinging round for a body shot as Luke looked into his face… It was Tam. Tam, taking a breath in, pulling his blaster round…

Luke was close enough to reach out and bat the blaster muzzle aside. "Don't! Don't shout…"

But Tam's eyes were ahead on his companions, his lungs full—

Trained endlessly in close-quarters combat by Mara, Luke reached a hand out to wrap about the back of Tam's neck and yank him in, burying his face quickly into the joining of Luke's shoulder and neck to muffle the cry, the knife in Luke's hand coming unerringly up to embed just below Tam's ribs, pushing high into his chest cavity with deadly force, the rasping drag of the blade offering little resistance against the power of the blow. Tam's body stiffened as he made a pitiful yelp, blaster clattering to the floor.

"I'm sorry," Luke whispered, still holding the dying man's face to him to muffle his shocked cry as they slipped slowly to the ground together, Tam's limbs falling loose as a last rattling gasp escaping him. "I'm so sorry."









Mara and Han were running at full-tilt through the Wasp, Han carrying his blaster whilst Mara had her rifle shouldered and an Imperial standard-issue E-11 cradled in her grip, safety off, her lightsaber bumping at her hip as she ran.

The trouble was, they had no specific place to run. They should have been heading for Luke's cell located in the main hold to the center of the sizeable cargo freighter, but their first run-in with Madine's troops—already armed and on alert because Luke was out—had proved that pointless.

So now they were just running, equally pointless to Mara's mind, unless you counted avoiding the six or eight Special Ops troopers who were on their tail after the amount of noise they'd made bringing down that first surprise group. But until they could get a fix on Luke, there was nothing else they could do.

They seemed to move in and out of the ysalamiri's influence a few times, so that Mara could sense the Force in brief, disconcerting waves, like coming up from water and being doused beneath it again as her senses flared and faded in quick succession, each one a brief shock to the system, like a blow to the gut. Thus far, she'd kept her abilities to herself, and if Solo was wondering why she slowed a few stumbled steps every now and again, he at least knew that now wasn't the time for questions.

In the brief time she'd been training with Luke, she'd constantly pressed him to coach her further with the lightsaber he'd built for her, and he'd always refused. She could already use a lightsaber, he'd told her—she should train her mind first, then they'd go back to the saber. Instead he'd spent hours simply teaching her to open her mind to the Force in any situation, learning to trust and listen to her background awareness of its presence, even under stress. At the time, she'd thought it a waste; now, she blessed its value. Running full-tilt down the corridor, attention split, eyes on every door and corner and wary for traps, she could still sense its intermittent influence…but she couldn't yet sense Luke.

It hadn't helped that the groups of soldiers they'd run into always had at least one ysalamiri with them, but on the plus side, if Mara knew that a bubble would mean soldiers…

She let out a gasp, stopping so suddenly that Solo nearly barreled into her from behind, barely aware of the curse he uttered in Corellian. Turning quickly about, she stumbled into him as he backstepped, indignant.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"The bubbles!" Mara said into Solo's obvious confusion.

"Bubbles?"

"Rifts—rifts in the Force caused by the ysalamiri—we need to follow them."

"Wait a minute, that's towards the soldiers," Han said doubtfully.

"Yes! And where are the soldiers with ysalamiri going?"

A slow smile spread across Solo's face. "Towards Luke—they'll take the ysalamiri towards Luke."

As long as she could detect the massed bubbles, as long as she stayed close to the main concentration, chances were, they were running towards Luke. "The gaps are at the front of the ship and the ysalamiri bubbles are towards the rear."

"How the hell do…" Han's narrowed eyes returned to the lightsaber Mara wore at her belt. "Now wait just one minute, Red…"

But Mara was already running. "You coming or not?"




Han stared after her a second, shaking his head as he muttered under his breath, "Great—there's three of 'em in the whole damn galaxy and I know 'em all personally."
He set off at a fast pace, running to catch up.









Leia came up slowly on the closed door she remembered as the observation room when she'd last been taken through the Wasp. Backing off to the far side of the corridor to get a clear line of sight, she nodded for Hallin to press the door release.

Already wary from the alarm, the two soldiers within turned immediately, reaching for holstered firearms.

Leia dropped the first man instantly, though their alertness meant that the second had drawn his blaster and picked off two fast shots before she brought him down. Her eyes went immediately to Hallin, who had doubled over, crying out as the shots fired.

"Nathan, are you okay?!"

"Fine, I'm fine." He was shaking his hand as if to regain feeling, studying it closely, though Leia could see no mark. "It must have glanced off the edge of the doorframe or something—I thought it had clipped me, that's all."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Leia had to smile. "Believe me, if you get even a glancing blow from a blaster, you'll know about it."

He grinned, reaching out to retrieve his blaster and the ghost box, both dropped in the shock of the moment. "Well this is my first front-line experience. I mean, I'm not entirely new to the whole action thing—I have known Luke for six years now," he added, as if it were explanation enough in itself—which actually, to Leia, it was. "But I tend to be the one who listens to what happened afterwards rather than, you know, be in it."

"No, really?" Leia helped him up, glancing both ways down the corridor, eager to get out of sight and trying hard to keep the wry amusement from her voice. "I'd never have guessed."

Bundled into the room, Nathan stopped dead almost immediately, eyes locked on the two bodies, so that Leia had to step round him to get in. She glanced about the empty room and at three two-D viewscreens, one showing a view of Luke's empty cell, two others the bay in which it sat, the cell doors wide open. It looked like Han was right; in the cell, the heavy bunk and table Leia remembered from her brief visit were on their sides against the far wall, the cell in obvious disarray.

Leia turned away, eyes scanning the observation room…and to the far end, hard-wired into the console itself, stood the small, square emitter-box, a keypad set into its upper surface above a single light, glowing steady green.

Right where it should be—how often did that happen? She smiled, walking quickly toward it, "Nathan, give me the ghost box… Nathan?"

The medic glanced up quickly from the two dead guards as if suddenly realizing Leia was speaking to him. Taking a wide arc around the bodies, his eyes remaining on them until he reached the console, Nathan finally pulled himself together as he placed the box on the surface, close to the original. "Okay, red light…"

As Nathan pressed the switch and they both watched the red light, Leia realized she had no idea how long it would take for the ghost box to sample the signal from the original. Was it seconds or minutes? She glanced to the door then back to the box—

"Wait," Nathan said quietly, "shouldn't it have three lights lit?"

Leia felt the breath leave her in a gasp. "Why is there only one?"

"The blaster shot," Nathan's voice rose in panic. "I told you I felt a shock!"

"It hit the box?"

"I don't know."

Leia abandoned her blaster to pick the box up, turning it over to look for damage, frantic. Nothing was visible. Putting it beside the original emitter, she pressed the button again at the same time as she lifted her comlink, heart in her throat. "Karrde? Karrde, come in."

The hushed hiss as the door slid unexpectedly open turned them both about. Leia scrabbled for her blaster as Nathan brought his to bear…

His shot went wide—Leia had no idea whether it was by mistake or on purpose—exploding into the doorframe beside the soldier and making him flinch away.

"Stop!" Nathan shouted, his yell somewhere between demand and outright panic.

The big, heavy-set soldier froze, his hand lifting away from the sidearm he'd been reaching for.

Leia had her blaster by now, as she stepped clear of Nathan. "In—close the door and lock it, then move back against the wall."

The big man backed up slowly in silence, sharp eyes flicking between Leia and Nathan, face calm and collected; a professional soldier sizing up the threat.

"Nathan, take his gun."

Nathan stepped forward and reached for the sidearm at full-stretch, forcing Leia to step deftly to the side when the medic accidentally put his own body between herself and her blaster. Keeping the gun trained, Leia silently cursed the medic for not taking the shot when he had it, because she couldn't bring herself to do it now, when the man was unarmed. Which left them in a small room with what was clearly a very capable soldier. His shrewd gaze moved from Leia to the viewscreen of the empty cell, then to the ghost box on the console, taking everything in.

Realization of Karrde's voice in her ear divided Leia's attention. "Watch him," she said as Nathan backed up, placing the seized blaster on the console behind her. "If he moves, shoot him—and make sure it's him, this time."

Leia fumbled along the console without risking looking away until her hand hit her comlink. Thumbing the speaker, she spoke. "Karrde? We have a problem. The ghost box took a glancing hit—there's no visible damage but two of the status lights are out. Something's shorted."

Karrde's voice was reassuringly unflustered. "Hold on, I'll patch you through to Ghent."

"Han," Leia tried. "Do you have a position on Luke?"

"Nobody has a position on Luke." Han sounded as frustrated as she felt right now. "We think they're talking about him being near the main loop corridor, but they've designated areas and corridors by numbers, so they could be talkin' about anywhere."

A single pip indicated another speaker and Leia changed the channel.

"Um…hi?" Ghent's voice bought Leia's undivided attention.

"Ghent! The box took a shot and we can't sample the original emitter's frequency. There's only one light and it's red."

"One? Which one?"

Leia glanced to the box. "First one."

"Okay, well, you have power, that's all… Turn the box upside-down. You see the inset slide-switch?"

"Yes."

"That's power—turn it off and restart it."

"That's it," Leia almost yelled. "Restart it? That's the best you have?"

Karrde's voice cut in across the open channel, taking charge. "I'm already dropping back to pick up Ghent—we'll be on our way to you within minutes."

"Hurry, we need to get this thing working."

"Sooner than you think." The soldier's low voice turned Leia around, and he tilted his head, his hands still held up. "If he crosses the Wasp's boundaries, he's dead. That's—"

Leia leveled her blaster. "Shut up!"

The big soldier jerked just slightly, clearly having already marked Leia as the greater threat.
Nathan's attention was on the box, which he'd deactivated then reset. "Still one light—something's fried. It must have taken the hit."

Leia half-turned, her own voice tightening. "You take the chip out surgically, then."

"I can't do that, not without the code to deactivate it first. It'll trigger."

"We have to do something!"

"Well, as long as we're in here, no one else can get to the box to trigger it," Nathan reassured.
"And if Luke's already out and running, he could step out of the ninety meter radius at any time! We need the code now!"

"Four three nine, zero zero six three two." The soldier's voice was quiet and composed.

Leia turned. "What?"

"The deactivation code—it's four three nine, zero zero six three two."

Nathan turned immediately to the emitter.

Wait!" Leia said, hand out. "It could be the code to blow the chip."

"No," the big soldier said simply. "I left my post and came here to disable the slave-chip."

Leia shook her head. "Why should we trust you?"

"You're running out of time," the soldier said coolly. "The chip has a ninety meter radius, you know that. I can tell you for a fact that ninety meters is the center-line of the fore and aft docking bays, 'cos I'm the one who measured it out. If Skywalker crosses either bay, he's dead."

"So we just blindly put in any code you give us?"

"Wait." Nathan took a half-step forward, eyes on the soldier whose bulk dwarfed him. "...Skywalker?"

The man pursed narrow lips as he nodded. "I know who he is—was. Still is, maybe, underneath it all. Y'know, I joined Madine's Special Ops because I figured I'd got a pretty good idea of where the galaxy should be heading... Thing is, the more I've seen in the last two weeks, the less I think Madine's the one who'll get it there…and…Force help me, the more I think maybe Skywalker is. That's why I came to deactivate the slave-chip."

Leia wavered, aware of all that this man had done on the strength of his loyalty to Madine, of the leap of faith he was making here—if he was telling the truth.

Could she do the same—take that leap of faith? At the end of the day, they were both Rebel soldiers, and they were both fighting for the same thing...

She turned to Nathan, heart in her mouth. "Put the code in."

He didn't need telling twice. Still, Leia held her breath as he did so…

The original emitter's steady green light blinked three times…then turned to red.

"You can turn it off now," the soldier said levelly. "Myself, I'd put a shot through it, just to make sure."

Nathan turned, face still pale. "Thank you...?"

"Kalter," the soldier said, straightening. "My name's Nilo Kalter. I'm the unit medic."








Madine was passing orders by comlink as he walked purposely forward, blaster rifle shouldered, the distant sound of a firefight rolling down the corridors. "How many intruders?"

Whoever they were, they'd split up into small groups to come in at several different points, forcing Madine to split his own forces to deal with them, when he should have everyone committed to tracking Skywalker down right now.

"Which corridors are down?" Madine asked of the ever-increasing gap in surveillance. "Start shutting down bulkhead doors from sixteen aft and don't release them until you have all-clears from the forward units. Keep the skirmishes separate—don't let intruders close up or get behind our position. And track down Tinel and Kalter—I want to know what the hell's going on!"

He had the option to detonate the slave-chip, of course, but he didn't want to do that unless he had to. It'd be a waste when he'd gone to all this trouble to advertise a firing squad and set the stage so perfectly. Still, if Skywalker did cross the slave-chip's boundary limits…

"Do we still have surveillance in the fore and aft bays? Enhance the image quality and set them to record. If we have to, we'll use that." He didn't particularly want to have to put out the image of the Emperor getting halfway across one of the bays then being brought down when the chip in his head blew—he had something a little more theatrical in mind—a little more official. But he'd use that, if it was all he had.

If he could just corral Skywalker into that rear bay, where everything was already prepared… All he had to do was keep the son of a Sith heading aft. "Ops, close the aft bay doors but don't lock them. If they open without my telling you it's us, let whoever's trying in there through, then lock 'em down."

This could work quite well. The more agitated Skywalker was when he got there the better. Make more of a spectacle if the Emperor was shouting and railing when they stood him up against the wall and turned their blaster sights and the HoloNet lenses on him.

Madine glanced to the soldiers moving in neat formation down the corridor ahead of him, slowly herding Skywalker toward that aft bay…six men, plus himself. Seven men was enough for a firing squad, right? Yes, this could work perfectly.









In the surveillance room, Leia was grinning, laughing, dizzy almost, the relief was so great. "Han—Han, do you read me?"

"Yeah."

"Luke's—the chip's deactivated, the original box is disabled, it can't trigger."

"Yes!" Leia heard the yell from Mara, who must have heard the news in her own earpiece, the first time she remembered ever hearing her in high spirits—and she had to smile, because it was so clearly the exact same outburst of feeling that Leia felt every time Han made it back to land his A-Wing on the hangar-bay floor after a combat sortie. Just who did Jade think she was fooling with her whole bodyguard routine?

Han's voice came back on, his own grin obvious. "You got the ghost box working?"

"No, we…we had a little help here. Lieutenant Kalter gave us the code."

Han paused just slightly. "One of Madine's men? Cos if it is, ask him about the damn corridor codes."

Nathan turned to the soldier, who was standing like a sentinel at the back of the room. "You know the codes, don't you—the corridor numbers?"

Kalter lifted his chin but remained silent, and Leia stepped forward, fierce and desperate. "You said yourself that you'd come up here to deactivate the slave-chip, that you believe Luke—well then help him. You're a member of the Rebel Alliance—we don't just stand by, we fight for what we believe in!"

Kalter turned those shrewd eyes to Leia, studying her closely, his voice quiet and steady. "Tell me this: you know who he really is, don't you, Ma'am? All of it."

Leia hesitated...

It was Nathan who spoke. "Yes, yes we do."

The man nodded slowly. "And Madine...he knows the truth too, doesn't he? He always did."

Leia nodded. "Yes, he always did."

The burly soldier shook his head slowly, lips pursing as he let out a brief, dry laugh. Leia watched him tensely as he stared at the monitor of Luke's empty cell, considering…

Then those wide shoulders loosened slightly, as if finally at ease with the hard decision he'd made, and Kalter stepped forward, keying the console to bring up new images to the other two screens.

"We can patch into Madine's comms from here. Skyw…the Emperor's close to the main loop corridor, we think. He's been shooting out the security lenses in a large area just aft of the central bay since he got out. Madine's trying to close off the ship in sections, and bring all the ysalamiri back to his position."

Leia was already leaning in, studying the blueprint Kalter was pointing to. "What about Karrde—our people at the front of the Wasp?"

"They're keeping two units busy. One unit's already engaged your second group—"

"Mara and Han," Nathan supplied, glancing to Leia.

Kalter nodded. "Well, another unit's moving in on their position. Troops are out in units of six. There're two units still on Skywalker's tail."

"We need to get Han and Mara past those three units to Luke," Leia said. "Do you have a location on him?"

Kalter paused, listening to the comm chatter. "Not specifically. We can guess, 'cos of the surveillance lenses, but he's doubled back a few times already, and he's using surveillance-free side corridors a lot."

"Wait," Nathan said. "You said they were closing down parts of the freighter. Do you have any access to the doors they're opening and closing from here?"

Kalter's eyes went to the console, pulling up new screens. "Some, not all. Emergency bulkheads mostly, starboard side."

"Which side do we think Luke is on?" Leia asked breathlessly.

Kalter nodded. "Starboard."

"Can we keep the troops off his back and keep him heading aft?"

Kalter was already working on the keyboard, the Wasp's blueprint now highlighting a smattering of doors marked red or green along its starboard length. "Maybe…if he stays on the main loop corridor."

Leia was already lifting her comlink. "Han, you need to head aft as quickly as you can. Be aware, you have three units in your way—stay on the outer port side corridors and you'll go round them, then come in on the aft bay from there."

"We're on our way," Han assured, his voice hitching as he ran.

"We're going to try to herd Luke towards you and to that aft bay, which is away from Madine's troops. He's on the other side of the ship to you, we think, but we have access to some of the bulkhead doors. We'll try to guide him in and keep the troops off his back."

"You know where Madine is?" Han asked.

Leia glanced to Kalter, who pursed his lips, eyes on the blueprint as he listened to the stream of information from the console. "He's with Unit Two—that's the closest unit, coming in straight through the blind-spot Skywalker made in surveillance. Skywalker doesn't seem too eager to get anywhere, he's just…sticking to the same area, crisscrossing the ship."

Leia frowned, studying the images. "Why would he do that?"

"I dunno, but he's got six men coming up the main loop corridor and six more just off it, coming in from port-side. They close that net whilst he's in one of the linking cross-corridors and he's trapped between them."

"Can we close any doors, shut them off?"

"We can close off the cross-corridors, seal out the unit coming in from port-side."

"And Madine's group?"

The big soldier pursed his lips, shaking his head. He didn't need to speak.









Luke turned the corner into an outside corridor, the narrow, misted transparisteel viewpanes giving broken, hazy views of a red dust landscape below; absolute night with no flicker of diffraction—no atmosphere then. No trying for an airlock and drawing Madine out.

Turning back in to head down a side corridor towards the area he knew he'd already cleared of ysalamiri, Luke took aim and fired into another of the ceiling-height ysalamiri globes…and faltered, his legs crumpling beneath him in shock as a mass of long-dulled senses flared into being, his hands going to his temples at the overload of information coursing through him even though it was an isolated sliver of contact—the space between voids, a crack in the blanketing influence of the ysalamiri.

He must be on the edge of the space he'd already cleared. Until now the ysalamiri were sufficiently overlapped that even shooting them down, Luke had never been outside of their influence—now, he'd finally doubled back onto the very edge of the area he'd emptied, separated by a single wall from the corridors he'd already cleared.

Even here, in this locked-in pocket of insight, he sensed soldiers close by, just within his perceptions. Conscious minds came into razor-sharp clarity as he focused, old habits coming instantly to the fore; a mass of thoughts, feelings and intentions. Resolute, unyielding, tense—

Then just as suddenly they were gone, and Luke knelt huddled and blind in a void, cold realization knifing up his spine; because he hadn't moved. He hadn't moved into the bubble, the bubble had moved over him—which meant they knew where he was…and they were bringing ysalamiri with them. And they were very close.

He needed to back up further into the area he'd already emptied, find a larger clear spot where he'd have access to the Force to hold his ground. The next cross-corridor was long enough and it should be clear—if he waited in the middle, the soldiers carrying ysalamiri would be visible to either end before Luke was within their influence. He'd have a clear shot to take them out.

Forcing himself up, Luke staggered round the curve to the longer cross-corridor he knew he'd already cleared of ysalamiri… Quickly; one chance…

He rounded the curve…to see the blast door to the cross-corridor come slamming down.

"No!" Luke brought his blaster up, putting four fast shots into the door panel…and only one fired. He glanced down; the blaster was empty.

It was empty, and he was facing a locked door to the corridor he knew he'd cleared! He leaned on the door, looking through the small viewport to the safety that was just feet away and now completely unreachable. He would have had them—he would have been in the ysalamiri-cleared area and had them!

Chest heaving, taking his weight on the wall to keep himself upright, he tried to see the mechanism behind the access panel that his first shot had blasted free, but they were too close; he couldn't waste time trying, and he knew it. He had to move on—find another way to double back. A few shots sounded, and Luke frowned, deranged mind struggling to work out what they could be shooting, then he pushed himself off again. Another way; keep heading aft and try to find another way back to the area he'd cleared.

He set off at a slow stagger, one arm to the wall, abandoning the empty blaster to fall to the floor unheeded.








"Back, back, back!" Mara was backpedaling wildly as Han opened up with his blaster, picking off one of the six soldiers they'd run into in the winding corridors, all reduced to darkness in this stretch, random shots seeming to have been fired into walls and floors already, debris everywhere.

A volley of shots splashed off the far wall as he backed round a corner and out of the line of fire, a flare of blinding light in the darkness as he flinched back, trying not to look.

"You know, you don't have to keep repeating it," he half-yelled to be heard over the noise of the gunfire in the enclosed space. "Once would have done it. In fact, the guys shooting at us pretty much did the trick."

"Well, you didn't seem to be moving very quickly," Jade said dryly as the gunfire intensified.

"We got round the corner in one piece, didn't we?"

Jade leaned back against the wall a moment, her attitude one of concentration. "No ysalamiri here."

"What?"

"No ysalamiri."

"Well that's great," Han deadpanned. "I gotta say, from my point of view, their absence is more than made up for by the angry guys with the blaster rifles."

Jade's head was tipped forward, eyes closed. "I can't sense Luke."

"Could you maybe do this after we've dealt with the guys with the blasters?"

Leia's voice came over his earpiece. "Han?"

"Yeah?"

"You need to get to the aft bay and cut across it to get starboard, where Luke is. We've locked down the cross-corridors to keep Madine's men back, but they've just locked the console we were using out of the system. We have no control over the doors and no access to surveillance any more. We're out of the loop, you're on your own."

"You okay?"

"We're fine, but we're bugging out of here. We'll head aft to your location."

"Okay, we're close to the bay."

"Han, there's still one unit of soldiers right on Luke's tail—Madine and six others, all armed."

"We'll get to him, don't worry."









Luke leaned against the doorframe of the aft bay as it opened, chest heaving. Pushing himself off, he made it five or six steps into the main bay before the doors he'd just come through closed down, the panel beside them flashing red as it locked. Luke glanced quickly to the doors at the far side of the wide bay, but even if they'd been open he wouldn't have been able to run for them, and already they were slamming down, their status light flicking from green to red, locking him in. They'd trapped him in here…with ysalamiri. No Force here.

Glancing about the brightly lit bay he was another step forward before he realized what he was looking at.

To one side of the wide hangar, the wall and floor had been painted white, large arc-lights stood on tall mounts and connected to portable generators, facing the whitewashed wall.

Stood at regular intervals, pointing towards the makeshift setting, were three tripod-mounted lenses.

For long seconds Luke stared, knowing what this was…then he blinked, turning away and pushing the image from his thoughts with a quick shake of his head—

And the bay door behind him cycled to green and opened.

They came in without pause, in practiced configuration: Madine and six soldiers, blasters raised. Backing up, Luke stepped towards the center of the bay as they widened into a loose semi-circle and moved to one side, clearly trying to herd him towards that whitewashed wall.

Gritting his jaw, Luke stopped and held his ground; if they wanted him in front of that wall then they'd have to drag his carcass there.

Madine took a step forward and for a scarlet second Luke seriously considered running for him…but he wouldn't make it; wouldn't get close. He sighed, but tired as he was, he straightened before them, knowing this was as far as he got.

This was it, end of the line.

"Stop!"

Madine froze, hands splayed out as Luke backed up another two steps, and he broke pace, uncertain.

"Listen to me, don't step back. You step past the red line on the floor and you're dead, understand?"

Luke glanced down—and just as it had been in his cell, there was a rough red line painted across the landing-bay floor.

"You step beyond that and you're dead. You have a slave-chip up against your skull and that's the limit of its boundary. Go past the line and it triggers." Madine took another step, hand out in some twisted travesty of concern. "Just come forward towards me."

Luke glanced to the side, to the whitewashed wall prepared for an execution. "And to that? I don't think so."

"That's a possibility. You cross that red line and it's fact—you're dead."

"You've gone to an awful lot of trouble for a possibility." Luke took a staggered half-step back, more out of exhaustion than choice, his heel to the line.

"It was a threat, nothing more. I wouldn't have done it."

"Please."

"You know I wouldn't. I still want those codes."

"So what you're actually saying is, 'Step forward and I'll take you back to your cell'?"

"Skywalker…"

"No. No, this game's over." He had nothing left to fight for any more, no reason to care—but he'd be damned if he'd die on Madine's terms.

Heel to the line, Luke let out a slow breath…and stepped back.



Standing stock still, chest heaving, every muscle adrenaline-wired for the blazing flare of death that didn't come, Luke stared at Madine…

And stared.

He took another step back…then another, eyes still fixed on Madine's face—on the shock and the confusion which twisted it unchecked, a mirror of Luke's own turmoil.









Mara fell against the controls for the aft bay, knowing already that they were locked, the status light glowing red.

"Come on!" She slapped uselessly at the locked-out controls, fear and fury rising.

They'd come back into ysalamiri-blanked corridors not soon after they'd cleared the last soldiers from their tails, the corridors here unmarred, but Mara's brief excitement at seeing the bay door was quickly crushed.

Solo came up beside her, breathing heavily. "Locked?"

"Locked down and locked out. We're not getting in from here." Mara glanced up, remembering the upper bay, but knowing it would take too long to backtrack to a point where they could get up a level and to an entry that would probably be locked down anyway. The memory of her own escape last time burned in her mind. "I'm not leaving you here."

She remembered climbing the narrow access ladder to the overhead hatch between the two bays, losing sight of Luke in the tangle of criss-crossed tracks and gantries at ceiling-level… Gantries!

The jumble of track systems at ceiling height came abruptly to mind, tracks for the bay's automated cargo crane. And where there was an automated system, there was an access hatch for repairs. Mara backstepped, scanning the corridor at roof level as she set down the corridor at a jog.

"What?" Han was staring at her.

"Access—look for the access hatch for an automated cargo crane."

"Right!" He set off in the other direction, eyes flicking between the ceiling level and the corridors ahead, watching for more soldiers. "Here—I got it!"

Mara came running back, following Han's gaze to an inset hatch almost at ceiling level. "Give me a boost."

Han was still glancing about. "There should be a…here." He pushed against an inset panel and a series of slits pulled back in the wall paneling, creating a basic ladder.

Mara glanced to him, and he winked. "Not my first stock freighter—or my first rescue."

She was already up the ladder, pressing for the latch release. "It's locked."

"Move back, I'll shoot it out."

"No, if Madine's in there with Luke …"

He pursed his lips. "Fine, get out of the way, I'll hotwire it."

Mara looked, dubious. "You can hotwire it?"

"I can hotwire anything, sweetheart—if it's got wires, I can strip 'em and rip 'em."







Mind numb, still reeling from the simple fact that he was still alive, Luke tried to drag some kind of composure from the shock, thoughts coming back from the edge, racing on adrenaline.

He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead, and all that meant was that he'd die in a few minutes time on someone else's terms, not his own.

The braced soldiers straightened as Madine pulled his lip back in fury—

All that was left to Luke was a bluff… He forced himself straight, feigned his voice steel, wondering if they would hear the tremor beneath it. "Look at that—didn't work. Did you think it would—did you seriously think I'd back over the line if I didn't have access to the Force?"

Madine glanced up to the distant ceiling of the hangar, and Luke knew instantly what he was looking to—ysalamiri. The cage must be high in the ceiling space, well out of Luke's reach.

A gun…he needed a gun—but the only seven in this bay were pointing at him right now. The only seven…

"Get your hands up," Madine growled, blaster leveled.

Luke tilted his head in open threat, pushing the bluff. "Don't. Don't make me attack, because if you do I'll kill you all, understand? No holding back—it doesn't work that way. You know what I'm capable of, and believe me you have nothing that can stop me. If I let it loose, if I give it the power it needs, I don't control it. It controls me. The first man who pulls his trigger seals all your fates. He kills you all."

The soldiers moved and braced, betraying their unease.

"He's lying," Madine said. "He can't do anything…look at him. You've seen your Sith Emperor bleed—now you'll see him die."

"Don't be a fool, Madine. It's over—just walk away."

"I will...when this is done. You sure as hell won't."








Balancing on the narrow inset rungs of the high ladder, Han worked feverishly, baring wires and twisting them back, sparks flaring occasionally as he crossed-wired.

"Would you get out of the way!" Mara rasped from below, impatient.

"Listen, doll, I was hotwiring these things before you were walking."

"Yeah, well obviously they've gotten a bit more sophisticated since then," Mara retorted—just as the small hatch finally slid back.

She was up the ladder in seconds, already edging out onto the maze of crossing gantry crane tracks bolted to the bay ceiling when, with a brief jolt of recognition, she heard voices below. Mara slid into a crouch, taking Han down by his wrist as he crawled onto the gantry.

Far below was a grim standoff; Luke, his hand out in warning to seven soldiers, all armed, all their blasters pointing at him.

She glanced up and about. "No Force," she whispered urgently to Solo. "No contact anywhere here."

He leaned out, his own voice no more than a hoarse whisper. "Madine's with them—that's not good."

Madine! Mara inched forward, balancing the length of her body along the high tracks to look down as she pulled her rifle from her back. She edged further out, lying flat on her stomach and lining him up in the crosshairs…then reluctantly pulling away to briefly skim the rifle's sight across the other men far below. "They're not wearing ysalamiri frames…they're somewhere around here though."

Using the rifle sight as binoculars, Mara panned across the bay at ceiling level, searching the endless projections along the roof, the distant corners, the upper walls, the outcrops and complex support struts for the crane tracks, and all the time something was niggling at the back of her thoughts, something that wouldn't cut through her suppressed panic.

Solo grabbed her ankle and yanked her nearly off-balance, and Mara was about to turn on him when he shushed her, freezing. Far below, Madine glanced up, looking not to the shadows where they were hidden but to the center of the wide ceiling…before looking back down again, his words lost over the distance though his dismissive tone remained.

"We'll never take 'em all down if they start shooting," Solo whispered. "If you take one shot with that rifle it'll set 'em all off."

"Sniper rifle," Mara murmured distantly, eyes roving the massive space. "Remember?"

"Yeah, it doesn't matter how silent it is, they still fall over and die. That's always somethin' of a giveaway. As soon as the first guy goes down, the other six start shootin'—and they got just one target."

Seven… Mara frowned, frustrated, struggling to lock down that feeling, to remember the significance…

Seven men…

It hit her like a broadside, like a physical blow: seven men; Luke's vision—the one that had thrown him so completely in the dead of a Coruscant night, months earlier.

Seven men he'd said; a vision of seven men at his back with rifles aimed… He'd seen his own future—his own…






"This is private revenge, Madine." Breathless, struggling to remain upright, Luke leveled the accusation for everyone to hear. "This is you wanting to hurt someone because they hurt you—and everyone here knows it."

Stung by the accusation, Madine turned just slightly. "Lift your damned blasters! That's an order!"

"Is this your Alliance?" Luke glanced to the assembled soldiers. "Is this really what you're fighting for? Is this your justice—to torture, to condemn without trial…to shoot an unarmed man?"

"This is justice," Madine growled.

"Your justice, your way…well let's see just what that justice really is." Luke turned deliberately round, every muscle taut, putting his back to them, eyes on the far hangar door.

"Turn back," Madine warned.

"No. If you want to shoot me, you'll shoot me in the back…or rather, you'll try."

"Don't think I won't."

"I told you, this game is over, Madine. I'm leaving." Luke took a single step to the far hangar doors…and the sound of a firing pin locking open tripped every nerve in his body, halting him. "You do this and you kill them all, Madine. I can't misfire that many blasters and I can't pull that many hands free in time—that's not how it works. All I can do is stop the men behind them. Permanently. You kill them, not me. Your choice."

"Fine, go ahead, right now," Madine goaded to Luke's back. "…No? You have no power here and I know it—nothing."

Nothing…the memory of the vision, came back to him...

Trapped within that empty bubble in which the Force simply didn't exist—and everything was still, like time itself had stopped, reality clambering at its edges, distant and obtuse.
All that was within the still silence of the bubble was Luke…and the throne.


"A prophesy…" Palpatine's words, six years ago. "Carved into the throne is the key to a power capable of changing the course of the galaxy."


"Do you believe in destiny, Jedi?"
"No… The future's undecided."
"Some things are fluid—but some are locked in. Inescapable."
"Nothing is inevitable."
"Is that what you believe—or what you hope?"


Seven… Seven men, weapons drawn. Seven minds impenetrable in that still bubble, their very existence blanked in this Force-empty void.
A shout, the word a burst of barbed hate, filling the void completely, the bubble shattering, Luke jerking back as the word became action;

"Fire!"
That first shot coming towards him, the searing, shattering jolt…

Mara stayed with Luke as he drifted in and out of consciousness on the trip back to the Falcon, passing shuttles from the Rebel ships Zephyr and Sol, who had arrived to take over the fight.

Nathan had fussed around Luke as they'd laid him on the narrow medi-bunk onboard the Falcon, grumbling at old instruments and faulty scanners and bemoaning the lack of IV fluids, completely in his element.

Han and Leia had set off for the cockpit, he to get them airborne and she to arrange for the medical bay onboard the Sol to be freed up, and as Nathan finally settled down it was the Wookiee, Chewbacca, who surprised Mara by remaining behind for long moments to lean in and gently rub his leathery knuckles down the back of Luke's cheek, whuffing unknown words to him, though Luke remained unconscious.

By the time they were airborne, Mara had dragged the only moving chair across the hold to sit beside Luke. Every time he woke he would drift for a second then jolt awake, eyes wide, searching for her, and Mara would squeeze his hand, smiling and murmuring reassurances as she watched the strange sight of a smile grace his battered face when he saw her, knowing she was real, drifting again almost instantly.

It was the two glancing heavy-weapons shots to the Falcon's shields which pulled him back to real consciousness as Mara stood, glancing about… The next second the Falcon lurched awkwardly to the side, artificial gravity only just keeping pace.

Luke was already pushing himself up. "That was weapons-fire."

"Stay there," Mara said, already heading out of the hold. "I mean it! Nathan?"

"We're staying right here."

She reached the cockpit in seconds, Han and Chewie both at the helm, Leia leaning forward over the cockpit comm desk. The visible beam of another heavy-weapons laser seared across dark space before them, lighting the cockpit momentarily as everyone within flinched.

"What the hell's going on?" Mara yelled.

"Three Star Destroyers just came out of hyperspace and ordered the Sol and the Zephyr to heave-to," Leia said, half-turning. "The Captain of the Rebel ship Sol opened fire on your Destroyer Tempest, and it just returned fire. I'm trying to raise the Sol now."

Another wide beam flashed past the Falcon, making Mara flinch. "Why did they fire on us? Aren't we transmitting Karrde's code?"

"Yeah," Solo answered casually without turning round. "They're firing on the Sol, we just got in the way."

"Is the Sol transmitting the code?"

"It wasn't."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because there were no Star Destroyers here when they arrived." Han's tone summed up his opinion of the Sol's reasoning.

Mara leaned back to touch Leia's shoulder. "Don't let them put the code out now. If they do, the Tempest will assume it's a Rebel code and fire on us too."

"I can't get through to them," Leia said. "They're not acknowledging our hail."

Another barrage came from the Tempest, rocking the distant Rebel ship.

"That was a direct hit," Han said gravely, leaning forward. "This is turning into a firefight."



"Then someone should stop it."

Everyone turned to see Luke leaning hunched against the cockpit's doorframe, pale and drained.

Mara gave Nathan a withering look as he shrugged helplessly from behind Luke's shoulder. Luke stepped shakily to the comm console as Leia gave up the seat, letting him collapse down into it. Reaching over the controls, he flicked the switches with old familiarity.

"ISD Tempest, this is the freighter Millennium Falcon transmitting a security protocol. Our recognition code is four-nine-nine-five-three. Come in?"

Pausing for a response, Luke realized that everyone was staring and glanced about, his eyes finally resting on Han. "What?"

Han grinned inanely, glib melodrama hiding genuine pleasure. "Just, y'know…good to see you back at the controls."

Luke glanced away, uncomfortable even with this, Mara knew. To hide it, he toggled the sticky transmit switch several times. "I can't believe you haven't fixed this yet."

"Hey, you had her three years, junior," Han accused indulgently.

"She's not my ship," Luke replied in kind.

"Millennium Falcon, this is ISD Tempest. Please transmit that code again?"

Luke turned, all business. "I repeat, the security protocol is four-nine-nine-five-three. Put me through to the Captain—now."

The line cut and silence fell again. Always one to break it, it was Han who leaned back in his chair again, voice cagey. "So, uh…can I quote that recognition code too?"

Luke didn't turn. "Are you Emperor?"

"…No…but I know the code now."

The comm crackled to life again. "Millennium Falcon, this is Captain Murai of the Imperial Star Destroyer Tempest. I don't know where you got that code but you're ordered to stand down shields and weapons immediately, kill your engines and prepare to be boarded. Consider yourself under arrest for treason."

"Treason…" Luke leaned in, voice gaining strength and authority. "I'm not sure that's even possible."

"Wh…who am I speaking to?" The officer had lost none of his bluster.

Luke's own voice cooled by degrees. "You are speaking to the Emperor, Captain Murai, and I'm ordering you to stand down and disengage. Recognition code is Braxant-Raioballa-Atrivis-Lahara, voice sample is, 'meus vox vocis est meus key—agnosco mihi.'"

There was the briefest pause as the codes and Luke's voiceprint were verified, and this time when the Imperial Officer came back on, he couldn't have been more accommodating, voice tinged with a satisfying edge of bewildered alarm. "Excellency! I had no idea that… Sir, do you require assistance?"

"I have all the assistance I need, thank you, Captain. The Sol and the Zephyr were already in attendance when you opened fire on them."

"Sir, I had no idea! I apolo…"

"I will be boarding the Sol very shortly, Captain, and I don't expect to be under fire from my own navy at the time. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Excellency!"

Luke shut down the link, pushing himself up as he turned to Leia, his voice already losing power. "You might want to tell the Sol to stand down too."

Leia stared, uncertain. "You're still boarding the Sol? But you have three Star Destroyers here now. Their facilities are…"

"It has to be a Rebel ship." He let out a brief half-smile, exhaustion already beginning to overtake him again. "I want this to be seen to be a joint operation, the Alliance has to be involved, especially now."

As he spoke, Luke's hand went to the console, then he collapsed back into the co-pilot's chair, skin waxen.

Mara crouched beside him, seeing him fade. "Luke?"

"Whatever happens, I leave here on a Rebel ship, okay? I just need to…rest a..."

She smiled as his eyes fluttered closed, still fighting to the very last second.

Nathan was instantly there to check, but he was settling back to his usual self with Luke's return, and if Nathan wasn't panicking, then Mara knew Luke must be essentially okay.

As it was he glanced up. "Let's get him to your medi-bunk…and get the Falcon to the Sol, or we'll all be in trouble when he wakes up."













Leia stood in the small medi-bay onboard the Sol, staring at her brother, still unconscious but stable. The gruff-voiced Mon Calamari medic had ordered everyone from the room early on, only Hallin remaining, even Leia bundled into the corridor beyond.

Leia had been dragged to the bridge almost immediately to oversee the capture of the Wasp when Madine's soldiers had finally rallied, and the news wasn't good, many having made it to the Wasp's shuttles to escape. But she was back down at the medi-bay the moment it had subsided. Now she was alone with the Sol's Mon Cal medic, the room quiet, Luke pale and drawn, finally hooked up to the fluids he'd needed.

"Exhaustion, dehydration, and some serious cocktails of drugs," the Sol's medic said soberly. "Plus he's faced some heavy physical punishment. But he's young and he's fit—nothing that won't mend."

Though he'd obviously recognized who he was treating, the medic had said nothing, rotating huge eyes to glance once to Leia, before going stoically on with his work.

"He's been sedated—give his body time to rest and repair a little—but…I'm moved to wonder what we'll be doing with him when he comes round, because I'd rather he wasn't marched down to the detention center."

"We'll be handing him back to his own people," Leia said firmly. "We don't kidnap leaders we're trying to negotiate with, we don't treat any prisoner like this, and we certainly don't organize public executions. None of this is our doing, and I won't have the Alliance connected to it."

The medic nodded as he let out a rough breath, seeming more reassured than anything else—which was good; she knew she could trust him.

"If that's the case then there's something else you should probably know about…this particular patient," the Mon Cal stated, voice neutral. "I have another list here—a separate one."

Leia frowned, uncertain what the medic was getting at but knowing from his tone that this was important. "Go on."

"I did a full-range scan." The medic turned glassy eyes down to the automemo he was holding. "This lists the injuries sustained during the last six years or so, discounting the present ones I just mentioned. All these occurred three to six years ago, though I'd estimate the majority are between four and six years old."

He held her eye for a short while before looking back down to his automemo, voice grave. "Both his clavicle—his collarbones—have been fractured at separate times, the left twice. His jaw's been dislocated twice and broken once. His right eye socket has been shattered and repaired. His left shoulder has been dislocated more than once causing deep tissue, nerve, muscle and ligament damage. He's had compound fractures to the ulna of his left arm and repeated dislocations to his left wrist. Most of the bones of his left hand have been broken- carpals, metacarpals and phalanges, some repeatedly over the several year time period, as have many of his ribs. He has damage to five vertebrae, all of which have been treated, but weeks after the fact. There are hairline cracks to the tibia and fibula of his right leg, inflicted at different times, and his left ankle has been dislocated, probably twice. The left fibula has incurred a severe compound fracture at some point—it's been pinned and the bone laminated to repair it, the damage was so severe. He's had repeated lacerations over the whole of his body with dermal, sub-dermal and deep-muscle damage; some were sutured and repaired, many simply left. Deeper scans show he also has scarring from several internal injuries, most of which are concurrent with violent trauma."

The Mon Cal paused, looking to Leia for long seconds, then turned his eyes down again. "As I said, time-point scans show that these injuries are clustered time wise—so he probably went six months with no injuries at all, then many were inflicted at once over a very short period—a few weeks perhaps, we can't be more specific than that. But they're always clustered in this way. The injuries are very easy for us to trace because most weren't dealt with at the time of injury. There's evidence that bone-knitters were used on the fractures and sutures on the worst of the wounds, but judging from the repair, I'd say it was many days, probably weeks, after the injuries actually occurred."

As he doled out this shocking liturgy, the medic reached down and lifted Luke's cover down to his waist—and Leia inhaled, appalled, eyes to his chest. She was a half-step back, hand to her mouth before she knew what she was doing, seeing the heavy scars criss-crossing flesh, some deep, some raised, all pale with age.

So many. Too many to count.

"Luke…" she whispered, dismayed. So many scars.

"They cover his whole body," the medic said grimly. "As I said, they're grouped to separate, brief time periods over several years, as far as I can tell. No particular reason—they're not medical and they follow no pattern. This is heavy scarring from severe injuries—the lesser ones will have faded long ago. I've…seen this kind of thing before, of course, though this is unusual in its extended time period." He set his head to one side, some allowance made in his voice now. "You understand what I'm saying—that I believe this was...punishment, torture perhaps."

The power of the word forced the breath from Leia's lungs. This was what haunted him—this was what she saw in the shadows of his eyes—how could it not?


She was in the corridor before she realized what she was doing, taking Jade by the arm and forcibly pulling her away around the corner. Jade twisted free, scowling.

"What the hell?"

"Luke," Leia said. "The medic just told me what happened to Luke."

"Is he all right?"

"In the past—I'm talking about in the past—four years ago, maybe six."

Mara's chin rose a fraction, mouth hardening, and Leia felt her anger rising. "You know, don't you—you know what they did."

"So now suddenly you're outraged. You, who left him there in the first place—just abandoned someone who bought your freedom with his own. You, who leads the Rebellion that tried to assassinate him. Do you want me to go on—because I've got more. How about your handing him over to Madine? You didn't seem so very outraged then."

"I want you to tell me the truth," Leia said, holding her anger in check. "I've just been given the facts, now I want to know the whole truth."

Mara glanced away, suddenly subdued. "You have no concept of what he endured to keep this much of himself."

"I'm beginning to understand," Leia said quietly.

"No, you don't," Mara said unequivocally. "Nobody does. Until you've faced Palpatine head-on, you have no idea of just how punishing that can be, mentally and physically. Palpatine took him apart more than once. Took him to pieces, you understand?"

"Palpatine? I thought…I thought it was his father."

"No, Vader tried to protect Luke…in his own way, I suppose," Mara allowed.

Leia's anger cooled several notches as she considered this, for the first time finding something in the wraith that had been her father that she could actually understand. But she couldn't forgive—not yet. "Well then, he didn't try hard enough."

"I've told you," Mara said, shaking her head, "you didn't know Palpatine. You don't know the power he held, his willingness to use it. That close to him…everything, everything went exactly to his command. Everyone followed it to the letter, without hesitation. How do you think one person can stand against that? You all spent your lives hiding out here in the Rim Systems, running from place to place, always on the move, always underground, an endless effort to stay ahead of him and he still dominated your daily existence. Whether through his military or his influence in the Royal Houses or his civilian governors or his control of the banks or of free passage… Borders, taxes, you name it, he controlled it—completely.

"Now imagine standing next to him—imagine having all that power and all that authority and all that strength of will turned on you and you have nowhere you can run. There's nowhere you can hide—he'll come for you, and he'll drag you back, and I promise you he'll make you wish you'd never been born. And in the end, you'll do what he ordered you to anyway, one way or another. Vader couldn't protect Luke—nobody could, Luke knew that." Mara paused, as if studying her own words as she spoke them. "He did what he had to just to survive… And you of all people should be grateful that he did, because if he hadn't, you'd be long dead and your Rebellion would still be some insignificant justification for Palpatine, an excuse for him to put more and more laws into effect in the name of the public protection."

"I fought Palpatine all my life."

"And yet you still needed Luke to remove him—or do you seriously think you could have managed that otherwise. And you did your fighting with an army at your back; Luke had no one. Every single time he faced Palpatine, every time he argued or questioned or challenged, he did it alone. I couldn't help him…nobody could. Every step he took, it was absolutely alone. That's what you're seeing when you look at those scars; you're seeing Luke Skywalker breaking through the surface of Palpatine's Sith. You're seeing a battle fought because he couldn't—wouldn't—quite let Luke Skywalker go. And then you actually had the gall to stand in front of him and question his commitment, his motives… You have no idea what he's already given to get this far."

Leia glanced down, genuinely chagrined. "I want to believe in him, it's just…every time I see him, I get some sense of… I think he believes in what he wants to do, I really do…"

"He does."

"I just…sometimes…I don't think he believes in his own motives."

"Because of Palpatine! Palpatine manipulated and dictated to him for five long years, and I can tell you from personal experience, that's a hard thing to climb out from under—more so for Luke, because Palpatine had to control him completely."

"Do you think that Luke can step back…from what he's become?"

Mara sighed, glancing down, all bluster lost. "I don't know. But I do know that Luke's not the thing that Palpatine wanted him to be. He never was… That's why he has those scars."




Returning to the silence of the still-darkened medi-bay, Leia wrapped her arms about herself as she watched her brother sleep, alternately trying so hard to forget the sight of those scars, then forcing herself to remember; to incorporate it into her concept of all that he'd become. All that he'd dealt with alone and tried to overcome. Nightmares made into memories: harsh, brutal, biting—devastating.

She remained as the night wore on, watching her brother as Nathan Hallin and the Sol's Mon Cal medic buzzed in and out constantly, and Mara Jade never strayed further than the corridor outside. But occasionally Leia had time to herself to simply stand and watch her brother, and internalize everything that had happened.

She knew, of course, what had transpired in the hold of the Wasp; Han had told her in broken, incredulous words what Luke had done, and she'd sent troops back to the commandeered Wasp to retrieve the security images, guided by the medic, Kalter. Had seen for herself what her brother could do. What happened when Palpatine's Sith wolf broke through all of Luke Skywalker's painstakingly created shields. Was that why he has them, she wondered? Was that why he maintained that distance, that detachment. Was that what held the wolf at bay?

Because she knew now what Luke had warned her about.

But she also knew now what Palpatine had done, to create the black wolf which prowled her dreams.

She was still standing like that, still trying to sort through the knot of feelings that were welling inside her, when a long slice of light cut a strip into the darkness as the medi-bay door slid aside and Han entered. He walked up beside her without a word and wrapped his arm reassuringly about her, pulling her close. She leaned into his silent strength for a few seconds before straightening, her hand resting on Luke's arm as she turned to Han, eyes glassy with tears at the mass of emotions which tangled within her.

"Han Solo," she said, smiling, "I'd like you to meet my brother."

Han let out a quiet laugh. "You think he's gonna lamp me for leadin' his sister astray?"

Leia smiled, eyes remaining on Luke. "I'll put in a good word for you."

They were silent again for a few moments, both staring at the battered, sleeping man before them, Leia lost in long-gone memories. It was Han who broke the silence, shuffling uncomfortably. "Did you see the images from the Wasp?"

"Yes." What else could she say?

"You know they were gonna fire on him."

Leia sighed, the scene running again in her head, incredible, unfathomable…deeply disturbing. "He did what he had to, just to survive." Jade's words a few hours earlier.

"Do you think he could have stopped them all like he stopped Madine?"

"I dunno. I do know that when I was running through that ship myself, I wasn't aiming to wing any armed soldiers I met…were you?"

Leia remained silent, that macabre confrontation replaying again. Living, breathing men atomized in a single, scarlet instant.

She remembered the moment when it had occurred to her onboard the Wasp to question whether the Emperor she now negotiated with had actually once been Luke Skywalker—the Luke Skywalker she knew. If that barely grown, good-natured, easygoing man she'd know from Tatooine had been real, and had been forced to endure all that had happened during the last six years.

What would it have done to Luke Skywalker, to have lived this life…faced these trials?

She'd known even then that it wouldn't have broken him, not Luke. But it would have changed him, she knew. Forced him, just as Mara Jade had claimed, to become something else, simply to survive. Was that what Leia was looking at now? Or was she simply letting her heart rule her head?

All she knew was that something whispered as it always had. Something warmed her soul and froze her heart in the same instant, wrapped about by the abiding recognition that long before she'd known the truth, she'd held a deeper knowledge that they were bound together somehow, she and the wolf.

"C'mon." Han squeezed Leia's shoulder as he guided her away from her vigil, but she leaned back against his pull, unwilling to leave.

"Where are we going?"

"I'm taking you to get somethin' to eat—I don't want your brother gettin' at me for that as well."

"I'll eat here."

"You know you're hoggin' him, don't you?" Han said good-naturedly. "Mara 'I'm just a bodyguard and if you try to say any different I'll floor you' Jade has been waiting with varying degrees of impatience out in that corridor for the last two hours. I can actually see smoke startin' to come out of her ears."

"I'm his sister!"

"I know, sweetheart," Han said in sympathetic tones as he turned her smoothly about. "And Force help him, 'cos already you're tryin' to dictate his life and he's not even awake yet."











It was the early hours of the morning and everyone slept, the events of the last week catching up on them all now that their adrenaline was spent. Only Mara remained in the still silence of the darkened medi-bay, nursing a swell of silent contentment as she watched Luke's eyes flicker in sleep, sensing the undercurrent of his presence within the Force, soothing and diffuse.

Even Nathan had left to get a few hours sleep, though not before he and Mara had quietly discussed how exactly they were going to bring Luke up to speed without his immediately wanting to get up and do something about it.

The way Mara saw it, there were three sticking points: firstly, the fact that Madine and around a dozen of his SO troops had managed to board one of the Wasp's shuttles and break free, escaping to hyperspace. Secondly, how exactly were they going to broach the whole subject of Kiria D'Arca arresting Nathan and intending to arrest Mara, and thirdly…well, she'd have that conversation on her own with Luke, Mara supposed, nerves fluttering in her stomach at the thought.

The Force quivered in a subtle shift which brought her back to the moment as Luke's eyes fluttered open. He glanced quickly about, tensing to rise in the same instant as Mara stood, and she watched his shoulders slacken again as he saw her, and felt her own smile radiate through her entire being. "Welcome aboard the Sol," she said, knowing it would be the first thing he asked.

He glanced about again, blinking slowly, pulling his thoughts together. "Are we guests, or…"

"Well, we're not in the brig and the ceasefire's holding. And we now have nine Destroyers in close proximity, and more on the way."

He slumped back. "No, you were right to only bring three—order the others away for now."

"Well, I can try," Mara said, standing and slipping out of her boots as she lifted the blanket of his high medi-bunk, suddenly feeling she wasn't nearly close enough to him. She shook her head as he looked quizzically to her. "Long, long story. Move over."

Luke glanced to the corner of the ceiling, eyes remaining on the lens there as he spoke. "You know they have security surveillance in here, don't you?"

Mara didn't even slow down. "You know I learned how to deactivate those systems when I was twelve, don't you?"

"Now that is an education." Luke grinned tiredly, the sight macabre on so beaten a face, as Mara climbed into the narrow medical bunk beside him.

"Anyway, they've run a tracer over you, because you're sending half the medical sensors haywire—apparently at some point you swallowed some kind of scrambler and it's cutting out all the medical gear and the surveillance near you. I'm assuming it's the one that Leia says she gave you."

"That's where that went!"

"Yeah, you'll be seeing it again in three to five days. Why did you have it in your mouth?"

"Long story."

Mara settled against him—and paused as he tensed, hands to his stomach, worried she'd hurt him. "What's sore?"

"Nothing, it's just cramp," he dismissed too quickly. "I don't care."

They lay for long moments in contented silence, as Mara made the most of the lull before whatever the hell the next storm would be, because with Skywalker, she knew it couldn't be that far away. She leaned back again, voice dry.

"You know, I know that you like playing sabacc, but if you could use something other than your own damn neck occasionally…"

Luke managed a half-smile. "Well, if you played sabacc with me more often over a table, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to play it big-scale like this."

"Yeah, nice try, flyboy. I'm still not spending the one quiet evening in every blue moon that we get together letting you fleece me out of yet more credits with sabacc."

He shrugged. "Well, at least now you'd have an even chance…"

Mara frowned, then her eyes widened in realization as she straightened slightly to look at him. "You said you didn't use the Force!"

He grinned, blue eyes bright against the deep bruises beneath them. "I know. I can't believe you bought that."

"You are so very lucky you already have broken ribs right now," Mara growled in mock indignation, settling against him again.

They fell back into that comfortable silence, as Mara began to drift in the soothing darkness…



"Have you contacted the Patriot yet?" Luke murmured at last.

"Wow, you sure know how to sweet-talk a girl," she uttered wryly.

"I need to make arrangements for the HoloNet to be there for the handover and for Home One to…"

"You've been awake three minutes—don't start jumping back into it all already, Skywalker," Mara scolded lightly. "We've managed just fine for the last two weeks. One more night won't make any difference."

"I just need to organize a few things, get them underway. I need to make sure that the Rebel ships get safe passage—but you can do that—and we need to choose a hand-over point for…why aren't you in the Patriot, anyway?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow."

He hesitated a second then let it go, tensing against some unknown ache before continuing. "I need to see Leia—Home One should be there at the hand-over. That could mean a few days' wait, right? Where are we? You need to move the main fleet out of the…"

"Okay, maybe we do need to talk about that a bit," Mara allowed. "I'm not presently in command of…well, anything."

She felt the bristles of his chin brush against her hair as he looked down. "You're…what?"

"I left Coruscant to… Look, it's a long story, all right? Suffice it to say, Kiria D'Arca is Empress in more than title right now."

She felt Luke's head fall back, his voice conveying that something had just come clear. "Kiria held power."

"Not my best decision, I know, but…"

He straightened slightly to look at her. "Wait a minute, she's Regent right now? I thought the Empress…I thought Kiria was dead?"

"Dead? No, why would she be dead?" Mara sat up a little. "What, did you think I'd just kill her the moment you were gone? I'm insulted!"

"No, Madine said…" Luke collapsed back down, shaking his head. "Doesn't matter—it doesn't matter."

They were silent for a few moments more, though this close to him Mara could sense his thoughts buzzing now, tired as he was. Eventually he could resist no longer. "No wait, it does matter. Why aren't you Regent—are you saying Kiria is?"

"Kiria is, I'm not. I handed power over to her to come after you when we saw…the images. I didn't know she'd just turn around and arrest Nathan."

Luke struggled to sitting as his voice rose. "She what!"

"Okay, I meant to ease you into that one a little gentler…"

Luke was already throwing the blanket aside.

"Wait." Mara grabbed at his arm, pulling him easily back, so weak was he still, his arms wrapped about his stomach. "What exactly do you think you're going to do about it right now?"

"I'll see what comes to mind between here and the comm room."

"Luke, seriously—are you going to have that conversation on a Rebel comlink? Besides, the comm room is all the way over on the other side of the ship, and frankly I don't think you'd make it that far," she added dryly.

Luke let himself be pulled back, his flare of anger already subsiding—though having been lectured by Nathan on the inadvisability of going off to secret meetings with insufficient bodyguards every single time he'd opened his eyes onboard the Falcon had probably helped, Mara reflected.

"Seriously, she arrested him?" Luke repeated, though his voice had more amusement than fire now. "For what?"

"You know, I'm not entirely sure. The specifics didn't really come up when I was busy busting him out of his locked apartment."

They settled again, and Mara listened to the sound of his breathing, feeling the pulse in his neck beat against her cheek.

"So how are you feeling?" Luke asked at last, eliciting a quiet laugh from Mara as he added, "What?"

"Only you could lie in a medical bay, in this state, and ask how someone else was feeling, Skywalker."

"I mean…I dunno, weird eating habits, that kinda stuff."

Mara was silent for long seconds. "When did you work it out?"

"About a week before Kwenn."

"Thanks for passing that on."

"I thought you knew and weren't telling me."

"Why would I not tell you?"

"I don't know—I figured maybe you were waiting for your moment, or maybe you were trying to decide…if it was the right thing."

"Do you think it's the right thing?"

"I think…" He paused, searching for words, and Mara held her breath. "I think it's amazing and incredible and…admittedly a little surprising… But I can't tell you how much it means to me—or how much you do, for that matter."

"You didn't always think that way about it," she said quietly. "Otherwise you would have said something."

"I do now," he said earnestly.

"So…" Mara said after another long pause, "where exactly does that leave things?"

"What things, exactly?"

"You and me things…you, me and junior things. You, me, junior, and Kiria D'Arca things."

Luke sighed. "You tell me?"

"Nobody tells you anything, Luke Skywalker," Mara said knowingly. "So spit it out."

He paused a good while, clearly playing things through in his mind. "Does Kiria know I'm here?"

"You spoke to the Captain of the ISD Tempest, remember? Half the fleet's turning in our direction right now."

"But is it public?"

"… No. What are you thinking?"

"I need to speak to Leia. Ask her to contact Kiria directly and make her an offer."

"To do what?"

"Get rid of me. Kill me, in exchange for concessions from the new Empress. Theoretically I'm a headache to the Alliance and if Kiria's really looking to secure her own rule, I'm sure as hell an impediment to that, too."

Mara leaned back slightly. "You want to try to make her condemn herself by her own actions?"

"If Kiria accepts and we hold proof, then I have a legitimate case against her without losing too much support from the Royal Houses—I hope. This has to be on lawful, justifiable grounds—reasons the Royal Houses would accept. If I lose that support, even temporarily, this could all collapse like a house of cards."

Mara remained silent for long seconds, thinking. "That makes perfect sense," she allowed, nodding, "and not a word of it is true, is it?"

Luke frowned. "What?"

"That's my measure of you now, Skywalker, you know that? If it's all perfectly rational and reasonable, then it's not what you're really thinking."

Luke gave the barest of amused smiles. "You're saying I'm neither rational nor reasonable?"

"No, and you're getting off the subject. Nathan pointed that handy little fact out to me; that if you don't want to answer something, you always come back with a question."

"So now suddenly Nathan's your guru?"

"You did it again."

"I…" Luke paused, then seemed to relent slightly, his head falling tiredly back onto his pillow. "I've forgotten the question now."

"Nice try. I was saying that your method for dealing with Kiria was too perfect—so spill it."

Luke sighed. "I have to give her this chance, Mara. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt."

"You remember that she arrested Nathan, right? A minute ago you were apparently willing to walk back to Coruscant—in a medical gown, I might add—just to face her down."

"Did she actually have him marched down to the detention center—did she have the arraign read to him?"

"Brace yourself, but I don't think she feels any particular need to be as legally correct as you are."

"Because it sounded to me like you said she confined him to his quarters."

"With guards outside."

"Seriously, tell me what she's done wrong—tell me one thing that would even begin to form a legal case against her?"

"While I might just give her that locking Nathan up would always help any situation..." Mara paused—but the fact was that D'Arca hadn't put a step wrong. She hadn't—ever. Even now, Admiral Joss had said the main fleet was already being reassigned along the Perlemian Trade Route in the Mid Rim, though there were, as yet, no public reasons given as to why.

She'd performed flawlessly when the chips were down and Luke was in trouble. Enough so that Mara had been willing to hand the Empire over to her—albeit temporarily—because she'd known that…damnit, she'd known that Kiria would do the right thing. She'd rallied the Royal Houses, she'd held the Empire together… Yes, Mara didn't like the woman personally, but…

"Mara, Kiria knows the Royal Houses better than anyone else. She knows the mood on the ground, she knows how they'll react because she'd do the same. She knows what they need to keep them willing, to move them forward with the new regime, and she's willing to use all that in our favor. I need that…so I guess the question is, can you live with it?"

"You're asking me?"

"Yes."

Mara thought again on Luke's ring…that was pretty inspired. She narrowed her eyes. "Are you asking me if she can stay—or are you asking me if she can stay with you?"

"With me? There never was a with me, Mara. There never will be."

"You're sure?"

"Aren't you?"

"You're doing it again."

Luke grinned this time, tipping his head in acknowledgment. "It's habit, that's all. You get habits like that when people take every passing answer you ever give and translate it on a galactic scale."

Mara nodded as her own lips crooked into a knowing smile. "I actually think I know what you mean… Scary isn't it?"

"You get used to it," Luke murmured sagely, the tired allowance in his voice hinting at his realization that Mara had now experienced, however briefly, what it was to rule.

"Well, having gotten used to one facet of how you think, let's go for another shall we?" Mara tried. "Tell me what you're really thinking about Kiria D'Arca."

"What I'm really thinking?" Luke sighed as if bracing himself. "Okay, firstly, I'm thinking that Kiria will turn Leia down…or I'd be very surprised if she didn't. But if she does turn Leia down, I'm hoping that'll set your mind at rest."

Mara smiled, though he couldn't see. "So you're just doing this to help me sleep at night?"

"And me," he leaned back slightly to look her in the eye, "since I'm assuming we'll both be in the same bed."

Now that really made her smile.

Luke dropped back onto the pillow. "Secondly…I know that I need Kiria to make this work, for all the reasons I've already said. I can't tell you how integral that ability to tap into the Royal Houses is right now, to everything. Changes are picking up momentum and this little episode may well be nothing compared to those we have in store. Kiria can hold the Royal Houses steady..."

"You have the military to control the Royal Houses."

"Mara, half the leading military and all of the Regional Governors are the Royal Houses. Most of the ranking military Officers and Moffs come from that strata of society. I simply don't have a big enough pool of officers or diplomats who've made it on their own merit to change the system yet, and I'm not gonna just exchange one bad system for another. Better the devil you know—and can control. Kiria gives me a huge advantage in terms of influencing the Royal Houses and therefore a good portion of the military, and that's one great big headache less to worry about. Now's not the time for any change that isn't absolutely necessary. And she and I both know exactly where we stand with each other—we always have. I need her, and she needs me—politically."

"Politics," Mara growled. "Why can't someone else do the damn politics for awhile."

"I'm working on it," Luke said. "And if it makes you feel any better, I'm guessing that Kiria will be panicking big-time right about now because of what she did to Nath. Knowing Kiria, she'll be working very hard to translate that into a trade-off, if she thinks she can buy your continued silence."

"Wait, why would she think I wouldn't have told you already?"

"Because she's a political animal. She'd assume you'd be holding that kind of knowledge in reserve to see what it's worth, as she would."

Mara smiled, knowing that having arrested Nathan was only half of that particular headache for Kiria D'Arca. "And you're going to keep quiet about knowing, because as long as she thinks you don't know, she's still in a corner, right? See, now, this sounds like fun."

"Welcome to politics," Luke said dryly—then his voice turned serious. "Mara, we have the opportunity to push things forward so much on the back of all this—but for that I still need Kiria. So you see we're back to the same question… Where exactly does that leave things—you tell me?"

Mara stilled to silent consideration. "I suppose to get rid of her now, after all this, would be a little ungracious in the public's eye, especially for the Emperor whom they think can do no wrong right now."

She heard Luke's teasing smile in his voice. "Do no wrong, huh?"

"In the public eye," Mara underlined dryly.

"Strictly public, then?" Luke asked in kind. "Well, if I stated the fact that yes, I am sure that there never was or ever will be a with me in regards to Kiria D'Arca…does that earn me a few points in Mara Jade's books too?"

"I'll think about it," Mara said. "Besides, if you need someone in the Royal Houses that much you'd just have to replace her anyway, wouldn't you? Even if you got rid of her, you'd be going shopping when we get back to Coruscant."

"I'd…find a way to work round it somehow."

"Please—come to think of it, the moment it got out that you were back on the market we'd have every frip and airhead with a drip of blue blood hanging round the Imperial Palace again. I gotta give D'Arca that: she keeps the boards clear, doesn't tolerate any gold-diggers."

"You're all heart."

Mara shrugged elaborately. "Credit where it's due. And that sassy little cheerleader from the Inigo family has been particularly persistent. She so very has her eyes on you."

"Which one is she?"

"The one who was trying her best to cut an inroad actually on your wedding day. I was watching her on security footage."

"No, don't remember."

"Green dress."

"No."

"Grief, how can you not remember, she was barely in it!"

"Oh wait, I remember her!"

Mara had already half-turned before she realized he was teasing her.

"You know, you've got to have a little faith, Mara. I can't stop speaking to every female member of every race just 'cos it makes you antsy."

"In my defense, you did marry the last one you got speaking to."

"Touché," he said easily—then his tone turned serious again. "Tell me you can't live with Kiria being there. Tell me it means that much to you, and she's gone."

"It means that much to me."

Luke sighed just once, but his voice was committed. "Then she's gone."

Mara blinked, surprised, pushing up onto one elbow to look him in the face. "Really? I thought you said you couldn't do this without her?"

"I can't…but I can do it without you even less. So she's gone—my word."

Mara stared for long seconds…then pursed her lips, resigned. "…Fine, she can stay."

"No, it's okay, really—"

"Don't start, otherwise I might just change my mind."

"…Sure?"

"Whatever. Greater good and all that," Mara said as she settled back down against him, more deadpan than she really felt. Suddenly suspicious, she glanced up to his battered face. "You are the most… Did you do that on purpose?"

"No, I'd've asked her to leave."

"You just said you needed her to stay."

He shrugged, wincing slightly as his battered body complained even at this. "Calculated risk."

Mara glanced away as she pressed closer to him, smiling in spite of herself. "Fine, all right, we will play more sabacc, okay? On the condition that you stop playing it big-scale… Are you happy now?"

"..Yeah…" Luke paused just slightly, a slow smile creeping across his tired face. "…Yeah, I think I am. You?"

"I think I can live with that." Mara nodded slowly, thoughts going back to Kiria… To General Arco's communiqué saying that the Empress had been given the opportunity to arrest Mara and Nathan when their shuttle had been spotted just two days out of Coruscant… Yet she'd given the order to let them pass, unopposed. "And anyway, we had words when you were gone—quite a few, in fact. I'd say we've come to our own particular arrangement, D'Arca and I. Doesn't always work, but when it does, it gets results."

Luke nodded, eyes closing as he let his head drop back…then frowned, looking quickly to Mara. "Wait, you had words?"

"Yeah."

"You and Kiria?"

"Yeah."

"About me?"

"I think you came up in the conversation." Mara grinned. "Worried?"

The man who had dueled Darth Vader, faced down Palpatine, ruled an Empire, and was now working to broker peace on a galactic scale nodded without hesitation. "Yeah, very."













"Good morning."

Still muzzy, Luke opened his eyes at the greeting, to see Nathan hovering over him, staring solicitously.

"Your nose is broken."

"Yeah, I know," Luke said, easing up and squinting in the painfully bright light. "I was there when they did it."

"You also have…"

"Wait, don't tell me," Luke said quickly. "I seriously don't want to know. Tell me what's happening outside."

"Well, Mara's gone to find the mess hall, but…"

"No, I mean the galaxy, Nath. Big picture."

"Oh. I think Organa's been putting together a summary for you—you know, she's as bad as you when it comes to never turning off. I don't think you two should work together, you'll just egg each other on. I can't imagine what you'd do between you if you got started. Oh, she sent that offer to Kiria D'Arca as you asked last night, on the frequency you gave her. Put forward that rather…interesting proposal to remove you entirely. Why are you squinting?"

"Planet-sized headache," Luke dismissed. "Any reply?"

"Not yet. But Admiral Joss tells me that the main fleet received new orders a few hours ago. Their mandate's to converge on the Tholatin System and blockade it so nothing gets in or out. They've been ordered to identify and detain a Rebel freighter named Sol—though ever the politician, she apparently used the word, safeguard."

"So she'll send her reply when she's sure she has the system locked down."

"Perhaps you should board the Tempest now—it's still off our bow."

"No, I'm staying right here."

"Is this a bad time for me to point out that the last time you boarded a Rebel freighter without sufficient security, they did this to you?"

Luke couldn't help but smile. "It hasn't stopped you the other dozen times, Nath. Can we turn the lights down in here?"

Nathan backed up to lower the lights. "Do you need a painkiller? They haven't given you anything because…well, you still have quite a few other drugs in your system."

"Painkiller would be good," Luke admitted uncharacteristically. "And something for nausea."

"I'll speak to them."

"Thanks. Then you need to get onboard the Tempest and head out to meet the Patriot."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I need you onboard the Patriot by the time Leia returns to Home One."

"Leave?" Nathan's eyes widened. "Do you know how long it took me to find you?"

"Nath, for once in your life could you just…" Luke broke off, doubling over as his stomach cramped painfully.

Nathan stepped quickly forward to rest one hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong, what's hurting?"

"Nothing, just cramps."

"I'm not going anywhere—I'm your physician and you need me here."

Luke shook his head. "Nath, listen to me, because I'll tell you this as many times as I have to until you understand: I don't need a physician. I need a Chancellor I can depend on. One I'd trust implicitly because I know that he knows my mind and what my choices would be."

"Send Mara—she's a Senior Aide too."

"You're saying if something goes wrong onboard the Sol, you're gonna be more useful here than Mara?"

"…Possibly…"

"And I can tell her you said that?"

"…no…"

"Nath, I need you onboard the Patriot far more than I need you here, I promise you. And I need you there under an official diplomatic banner." Luke tried his most persuasive smile. "Even I need friends in high places sometimes."

"So does that mean that if I become a Chancellor, there's a chance that you might listen to me occasionally?"

"That's why they call them chancellors, Nath." Luke caved a little at Nathan's pointed lack of amusement. "Anyway, I always listen to you."

"But is there any chance that you might listen to me and actually take my advice?"

"Possibly, some of it… There's always that chance," Luke said gamely. "I guess you'll have to try it to see."

"If I go—if—you need to promise me you'll not try to push yourself, and you'll do as the medic here says."

"I promise."

"And mean it."

"Fine, whatever, Nath."

"And don't try that I'm indestructible tone on me," Nathan chided good-naturedly. "It loses a little of its impact when it's accompanied by two black eyes and a broken nose."

Luke smiled weakly as he collapsed back. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

"You are an impossible man," Nathan said wryly, "and it's good to see you in one piece, my friend. After…Wez…"

"I'm sorry, Nath—sorry I couldn't tell you."

Nathan shook his head in dismissal, clearly not yet able to talk about Wez's actual betrayal. "Why did you let it go ahead?"

"I needed to be sure. I needed you to be sure…I couldn't lose you as well as Wez."

"Mara told me you knew when you went to Kwenn Station that something was wrong."

"You and Mara are talking way too much."

Nathan grinned, but only briefly. "I should have known. You were like a caged nek all that morning—and you didn't want Mara to go… I talked you into that, didn't I?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Nath," Luke quickly dismissed Nathan's guilt, knowing he'd dwell on it otherwise. "I changed my mind, that's all."

"And you couldn't have changed it to not going at all?" Nathan asked wryly.

"I had to give Wez every chance to back out." Luke shrugged, trying to make light of it at Nathan's guilty face. "Hey, if I'd've known Madine was involved, I might not have been as willing to spring the trap."

"No, you might not," Nathan said. "But you'd have done it just the same, wouldn't you?"

Luke didn't reply—but then Nathan knew him well enough to know that this was an answer in itself.

"Thank you," Nathan said simply at last. "You take insane risks, you know that?"

Luke smiled, easing himself to a more comfortable position, his whole body aching. "I prefer to call them calculated."

"Yes, I think you got the figures a little out on that last one."

"Hey, I didn't say I was good at the math."

"Perhaps you should let me calculate the odds of this new little diversion then? Particularly since I'm apparently a Chancellor now."

"Does that mean you'll take it?"

"Do I get a larger apartment?"

"You can have mine if you'll take the damn job."

"I think something a little less ostentatious in the South Tower will be fine… Plus an explanation of just what you need me to do so very much."

"I need you to go out to meet Kiria. She'll be coming in on the Patriot by now, I'm guessing."

"She hasn't sent her answer to Leia Organa yet."

"Because she's nervous about Leia following through on her threat and killing me as soon as Kiria dismisses the deal." Luke dropped back onto his pillow, tired and dizzy. The room had begun to spin slowly, reminding him all too vividly of the cell onboard the Wasp. "She'll want to buy as much time as possible to get Destroyers in position and interdict the system before she answers."

"Maybe she has a point. They're not all as amenable as Organa."

"They're not all Crix Madine either." Luke sighed, running out of steam to argue. "Kiria D'Arca's useful because she knows the Royal Houses…well, Luke Skywalker's useful because he knows the Alliance, and I'm telling you this…they will return me, and this may even get them into talks, with your help. Nath, I've spent the last year and a half working to persuade everyone that the Rebel Alliance aren't so very different from us, and angling to reintegrate them. I'm not losing all that because of Crix Madine. If we do a public transfer from a Rebel vessel to an Imperial one—if people see that, because the Holo-press are in attendance—I think it'll diffuse a lot of the damage he's done."

"What do you need me to do?"

"I'll travel to the nearest planet on the Sol. I want you to board the Patriot and liaise between Leia and the Empire—that's something I can't trust Kiria to do. Confirm a date and place, and make sure that Home One attends—and that the Holo-press are there." Luke smiled wickedly. "All those restrictions lifting—let's actually give them something to report."

Nathan hesitated. "You should probably know…last time we met, Kiria arrested me for treason."

Luke leaned back, exhausted but still smiling, eyes closed. "Well then, feel free to gloat a little—you're officially pardoned and you've been promoted to the rank of Chancellor. Tell her if she wants it in writing I'll come and scrawl it in indelible ink all over that damn marble receiving room that she loves so much in her apartments."

Nathan smiled. "Maybe I'll paraphrase that to, 'He seemed somewhat displeased at certain of your actions,' if you don't mind."

"I think mine sounded better, but whatever." Luke stiffened, hands going again to his cramping stomach, though he tried hard to hide it, aware that he still looked like hell, and Nathan, ever the medic, wouldn't leave if...

He glanced up quickly as Nathan stepped closer. "Close the door, Nath. Is this scrambler still working?"

Nathan did as he was asked, nodding as he returned to the bed. "Yes, it is."

"I need you to do something for me…without arguing."

"What?"

Luke brought his hands up to drag them back through his hair, aware of how badly they were shaking. "On the ship…one of the drugs they were using with the SK that Reece had given them was Frost."

Nathan's expression hardened in disgust. "Fralodiost, yes. There were still traces of both, as well as traces of Amo-tricliptidine, in your bloodstream when we got you here—and in your liver and kidneys."

Luke hesitated. "Would the medi-center have any?"

"No, they'd never stock a…" Nathan halted, realizing. "You want me to give you a highly addictive narcotic?"

"No, I want you to buy me three days, until I get back to the Patriot. I need that time, Nath—I can't deal with this now, not with everything else that's happening."

Nathan shook his head. "I'm not… I really don't know. Luke, I can't give you fralodiost, it's highly addictive and injurious."

"Nath, I need something to counter this withdrawal—just until I get back to Coruscant, that's all."

Nathan sighed, deeply worried. "How often did they give it to you?"

"Often enough that I need it now. I really need it. I have since the first time I woke."

"Do you know how much?"

"No, it was mixed with the SK. Combined, they were maybe forty milliliters to start…by the end, I think it was eighty."

Nathan let out a low breath, shaking his head.

"Three days… I need to buy three days, you know that." Luke shook his head. "I can't stop yet, not when I'm this close. Nath, I need those three days."

Deeply unsure, Nathan relented. "I can synthesize something from medicinal ryll and co-fralodistillate which will dampen withdrawal symptoms and control the cravings with…minimal effects. Take it last thing at night and you can sleep through the symptoms." Nathan's face became serious, stern lines etching his brow. "I'll give you enough to last until you come back onboard the Patriot; one dose a day, no more."

Luke nodded, letting out a breath before looking back to Nathan. "And no one knows—and I mean no one. Not Leia, not Mara, no one."

"I understand."

"Can you get the drugs without anyone knowing?"

"Yes, I think so."

Luke sighed, hands dragging through his hair again. "…I should rephrase that: after a day and a half without anything, can you get the drugs right now without anyone knowing?"

Nathan straightened. "I'm sorry, yes…I'll get on it."

Luke nodded once. "Then you need to get onboard the Tempest and get to the Patriot as soon as you can."

"I'm on my way—as long as you promise to remain in the medi-center, do as you're told, and rest."

Luke let his head drop back onto the pillow, the room still spinning. "Deal."

Nathan turned to go. At the door he paused, turning back in wry realization. "You have no intention of keeping that promise, do you?"

Eyes still closed, Luke's smile turned into an easy grin. "Welcome to the wonderful world of politics, Chancellor."













When Leia entered the medi-bay late that afternoon, it was to see Luke sitting upright, the Sol's Mon Cal medic leaning over his back as he pulled surgical sutures free. Immediately upon seeing her, Luke straightened, uncomfortable.

She waited in silence until the medic had finished, gathering his apparatus to leave quickly and without comment. Alone now, she offered the obvious, hoping to set this to rest by referring to it openly. "I've seen the scars—all of them. I know what they are; Mara told me."

Luke shrugged the medical sleep-shirt back on in silence, seeming resigned rather than embarrassed or defensive. But then what could he say, Leia supposed?

Seeing him struggle to pull the shirt over stiff shoulders Leia stepped forward quickly, but he shook his head. "I'm fine. I don't need help."

Pale, mismatched eyes glanced quickly to her then away, the deep bruises beneath making them seem impossibly blue. Memories of their escape from Bespin fired for Leia, when she'd tended a bruised and battered Luke after his ordeal with Vader…though at the time Luke's trials had only just begun; she knew that now. She was struck quite suddenly by how easily she could go back to that moment and that mindset. By how similar he looked, hardly a day older, though it seemed that centuries had passed.

Quite suddenly her eyes were blurred by tears at the ache within her for the friend she'd lost, a place in her soul that no one else could fill.

He glanced to her, clearly uncertain whether his words had caused this. "Leia?"

"Do you remember in the medi-bunk onboard the Falcon, after Bespin?"

His voice was quiet, still weak from exhaustion and injury…but something more was there; some openness of his own. "I remember."

"Do you…think we could pick up from that point again?" Leia asked tentatively. "Just…pretend everything in between never happened?"

He was silent just for a moment, and Leia held her breath, clinging to the hope that…

"No," he said at last, the word broken by regret. "No, that man's gone. I'm sorry."

Leia shook her head as she stepped closer. "I don't believe that—I don't believe he's gone, just…lost. Broken perhaps. We can find him, fix him again, make him whole."

"I don't think so. He lost too many pieces along the way." Again that momentary silence, his voice laced with regret but certain, now. "You can't rebuild what's gone forever."

He looked to her, and in that moment—just for a few seconds—all those shields fell and Leia saw in his eyes the man she'd known, the same insecurities and doubts and hopes and…no.

No, he wasn't the same—and he was right; he never would be.

His face turned down, and when he spoke his composure had returned, the slightest sigh beneath his words touching on deeper emotions. "You want something that doesn't exist any more."

"Don't you?" When he didn't reply, she stepped closer, not willing to give up so easily. "Hope is the…"

"Hope is the first thing you lose," he said quietly across her words, the honesty in his voice reaching deep inside her, touching her soul in a way that made it bleed for him. "Hope is the first thing they take."

A slight, self-depreciating smile touched the corners of those scarred lips, though he wouldn't meet her eye. "Trust…trust and faith you give away. You give it to those you value and you hope they'll give it to you in return."

He shrugged, and as suddenly as it had materialized, his momentary vulnerability dissolved again, locked away behind those shields… But she knew now why the shields were there; what unhealed wounds they protected, as he spoke again.

"But like hope, they're finite…and when you have none left, then you've learned your lesson."

He didn't say more, didn't need to. Leia had taken her share of both from him, she knew; exacted her own price.

"I'm so sorry." It was all she could find to voice her regrets, pitifully inadequate before the depth of emotion which moved her.

"For what?" he said easily, tone that perfect facsimile of dismissive amusement, even now, as he began to tire. "For making me Emperor?"

Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away, making him glance uneasily to her. "Don't—don't make light of this. I have…no idea what to say." It was all she could offer before this truth.

Luke looked away. "There's nothing to say. It was a long time ago."

"But you carry it with you every day." How could he not?

He smiled slightly, though he was clearly fading as his head fell back onto his pillow. "Of all the things I carry, that, I promise you, is the lightest."

"You could have told me," Leia said quietly, but he didn't speak, eyes closed now, still exhausted. "I was just trying to do the right thing," she added softly. "To look at the greater implications."

He laughed just slightly. "Following your head instead of your heart."

Leia frowned. Wasn't that just exactly what she'd been worrying this morning—that she was letting her heart rule her head? "Is that so wrong?"

"No, it's just…something I read once," he murmured. " 'She balances the fate of worlds whilst head and heart make war.' "

She stared, not understanding, either his words or the wry amusement beneath them. "Poetry?"

"Prophesy." He shrugged at Leia's unspoken skepticism. "I don't believe them either…or I won't be bound by them, at any rate. I have my own intentions." He opened his eyes suddenly. "I need you to do something for me."

"Go on?"

"Home One has to be there when I return to the Empire, it has to be seen."

"Home One?" Leia glanced down. "It'll be hard to convince them if there are Imperial Destroyers there."

"Go back—persuade them. Tell them I'll personally guarantee their safety. They'll need to do this when the talks begin anyway, and if they do it now, it's a public statement of shared intent. You need to distance the Alliance from Madine's actions—this is how you can do it."

"Let me tell them who you are, who you were—the truth." He was already shaking his head, but Leia pushed on. "Luke, what do you have to hide any more? The real truth would be a huge incentive to sway the Alliance."

"But it would lose me the Empire. Completely. We'd be back to square one, only worse, because there'd be a huge power struggle to gain control, maybe even a knee-jerk response against the Alliance."

"You don't know that."

"I hold power in the Empire by being what they believe me to be, I hold it together on the strength of what they think that I am: Palpatine's heir. Do you seriously think that anything less would keep the military together, hold them in check—contain them through the change? You think the military would fight to keep an ex-Rebel in power when the challengers to all this change start speaking out? You think the Royal Houses, who stood behind Palpatine for three decades, would stand for that? Everything that I've built, I'd lose."

"At least take your own name back. Luke, there's nothing left—there's nothing left of your past anywhere. No one would know who you were based on your name anymore, so few remember you. Take it back; take your name back."

Luke shook his head. "I don't care if they know who I am, it doesn't matter any more. It doesn't even matter if they understand why I'm doing this. What matters is that somebody does it."

And how could these be the words of a Sith, Leia thought? How could he believe himself to be such, listening to his own words.

"And they can never know that we're brother and sister," he warned, voice hard. "Ever. If they did, you'd lose the respect and the support of your people and the power base you've built. Everyone would believe that we were only ever setting up a dynasty to rule, one way or another. That it was all political games."

Leia sighed, looking down. "Maybe I don't care."

"Yes, you do, because it'd take apart everything we've worked so long to build, and that's bigger. We know—that's enough." He smiled. "And anyway, I need you. I need you to fight me. Every step of the way, every single day, I need you to fight me and question me, if only on the political stage. I need you to do what I know I'd never let anyone else even attempt—what I'd take them apart for trying. I need you to push me, I need you to challenge me. Make me do the right thing. I need you to be my conscience."

"You don't need my conscience, you have your own—that's what's got us both to this point."

Luke glanced down, thoughtful. "My Master used to say conscience was a weakness to be used in others and conquered within myself. And I did so—because I wouldn't let him keep on using me."

Leia frowned. "Your Master?"

"Palpatine." There was no hint of apology in his voice when he looked to her. "Because he was my Master. He made me what I am, good and bad—and if you don't want to believe that, then answer this…did you trust the wolf in your dreams, before you realized it was me?"

Leia remained silent, knowing the truth, and when Luke looked quickly down, she wasn't sure if it was victory or disappointment she saw in his face. "I told you before, don't deceive yourself. Don't think for a moment that this will be easy, or that I'll simply give you what you want, or agree with anything you say on how to move forward. There's too much of Palpatine's wolf here. You ask me if I can go back—you don't understand how well he taught his lessons… There's nothing left to go back to."

"You're not a wolf," Leia said categorically. "And you're certainly not Palpatine's wolf, no matter what he did or didn't do."

"You're not looking closely enough," he said dismissively. "I'm seldom as obvious as my actions onboard the Wasp."

Leia glanced momentarily away, the macabre deaths of Luke's jailors playing again through her mind. Did he know she'd seen the images?

She looked back to coolly calculating eyes, as he spoke. "You told me once that for a wolf I rarely bared my teeth. That doesn't change the nature of the beast."

"I also said that you do only what you perceive as necessary."

"You're right; and I always will—so I'll say it again: that makes me the most dangerous wolf of all."

Leia held her ground, unfazed, becoming more used to these quicksilver changes in temperament now, a method to push others back to a safe distance, whether he knew it or not. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You want to understand me? That's who I am—that's what Palpatine made me. I will always be the wolf to some degree. I can control it, most of the time, turn it to my own use… But not every time. You need to know that."

"Mara trusts you."

"Mara's…selective in what she chooses to see."

Leia lifted her chin, frustration setting in. "Mara may see what she wants to see but you know damn well that I don't. I weigh up the facts and I make my own decisions and come to my own conclusions based on them, and I'll tell you this—you're not Sith. Or do you think for one moment that I'd have come back to that table and tried to negotiate with a Sith? You once said to me that our meeting would never have happened in Palpatine's reign, and you're right. But that's not only because he never would have initiated it. The fact is, I never would have gone back to that table a second time, because I never would have believed it could have worked—not with him. With you, I did. I still do. And I'm not talking about all this—everything that we know now. We didn't know it then, and yet we both came back to that table."

"I sat at that table trying to decide whether to destroy you or not," Luke said with raw honesty.

"I'm sure you did, and you know I did the same… But you didn't do it, did you? That's the fact: you didn't do it."

"That doesn't change what I am."

"No, only you can do that. And don't tell me that you don't want to, because I won't believe you." She stepped forward, her voice softening slightly. "Luke, you said you were so far from the light that you didn't know where to turn to look for it… Don't you realize—you've already started walking towards it…and I won't let you turn away."

He shook his head. "Don't—don't trust. I don't want blind trust—that's no use to me."

"Then what do you want?"

"I told you, I need a conscience, someone with the same end goal as I have, but who'll question my motives and my actions every step of the way. Someone with the nerve and the power to challenge me, to hold the wolf in check."

"And you think that's me. Why?"

"Because you're my sister. You have the same abilities I have—you just need to learn to use them."

"No." Leia shook her head. "More basic than that."

Luke frowned. "What?"

"You came to me. You could have chosen anyone but you came to me, long before you knew what we were to each other. Why? Because you trusted me. You believed in me, in my judgment. That's the fact, isn't it?"

He took a breath to speak, but Leia was on full form now, shaking her head. "Well then have faith in it now. Have faith in my convictions about the man that I believe in, and because of them, maybe have a little faith in yourself. Yes, I saw the images in the Wasp's hold—I ran them back a little earlier too… I watched you back over that center line believing you would die, for no other reason than because you didn't want to give Madine what he wanted—the means to start a war. Isn't that the truth?

"You're the same man you always were, Luke Skywalker, and I know it. I believe it. Otherwise why would you bother with all this, when you already have power? Why put that on the line? You're still trying to get that peace you were fighting for when you were eighteen, aren't you? You're still willing to give up everything for that greater cause, one which always looked outwards, to others. You're trying to do what you believe is right—you always were. You removed an Emperor who ruled by force and you're slowly dragging his Empire back to a democracy, giving freedom and rights back to the people. That's what's at the core of you, when all else is stripped away, and that's who I believe in." Leia paused, quoting again the words that Luke had challenged her with on their first meeting. " 'It's not what you call us and it's not where we stand. It's what we do which defines us.' If you're going to brood on something, brood on that."

She leaned forward, hand reaching out to gently brush the long, loosely curled hair from his forehead. He leaned back, disconcerted rather than offended, but she smiled, voice turning gentle. "And then get some sleep."

She turned, wanting to give him the rest he so clearly needed, but paused to glance back from the door. "Perhaps you're not Luke Skywalker any more, but I can tell you this, Excellency… Luke Skywalker would have been proud of you."





Alone again, Luke pondered Leia's words, her very existence the one proof that overrode all others, because she was his sister. The blood in his veins, the inheritance, the legacy…all this he shared with her.

Was that why he'd found it so necessary over the years to keep her in his life in one way or another, some distant empathy sounding that pitch-perfect refrain at the very edge of his consciousness?

His sister, his twin. She was a part of this heritage, his legacy, and she was just and fair and good…and so he'd held that potential too. However twisted by Palpatine, he'd held that potential… and so, therefore, did his unborn son. And that was good enough for Luke. That was everything.

For his son.

For himself…Luke thought back to that moment on the Wasp, to the way that he'd killed the soldiers about Madine, the men who had tormented and tortured at Madine's command. It wasn't until he saw Han's face as he'd come down into the bay, sensed his hidden wonder and deep unease, that Luke had even bothered to think about what he'd done to Madine's men, realizing that he'd killed them in the same way he'd killed the guards who had tormented him on Palpatine's behest when he'd first turned to the Dark Side—ripped them to shreds in the blink of an eye, at the speed of the thought.

Then, the action had seemed so momentous—a life-changing act. Now, it seemed nothing at all, dismissed already. He pondered this for a long time, studying it dispassionately against Leia's claims, wondering again how far he had fallen without even realizing it.

Remembering his drug-induced admission to the medic: "The one thing I really fear, that demon in the darkness, is myself…"
It was his burden to carry, the result of Palpatine's flawlessly executed work. No matter what anyone else believed, he still knew the truth. But he wouldn't be bound by it; would push the wolf back down to walk in his shadow once more. Staring out of the medi-bay's small viewscreen, he watched the dawn race across the surface of the distant rust-red moon where he'd so nearly lost everything, the bright light of dawn chasing back the darkness of another night…but only ever holding it at bay. At this distance it seemed so tranquil, so serene. Perfect night and pristine light. He smiled, realization granting a strangely calm acceptance; that was where he lived his life now, he knew—where he always would. Balancing forever on that knife-edge, at the very brink of the dawn and the darkness.

If that meant he had to learn to deal with the wolf, to fulfill the oath he had sworn against a vindictive old man's ceaseless ambitions, then he would. He could. Maybe there was a wolf in his shadow…but it would damn well learn to walk to heel.













It was well before breakfast when Mara entered the medi-bay, but Luke was already sitting up. He still looked like hell, but was starting to make the effort to hide the fact, which meant that he was on the way to mending, she knew.

"Well, Kiria's come back with her reply, and it's a pretty categorical no," Mara said, much as it pained her. "And just to clarify that, it arrived with nine more Star Destroyers and two Interdictors. Leia's passed on the fact that she made the offer at your behest, and the codes you gave her, as well as the planet you want the actual transfer to go ahead on. Arco's already contacted me to say that preparations are underway for the fleet to converge on Serenno for your return. The Scarlet Empress has, once again, managed to come out whiter than white."

"Disappointed?"

Mara shrugged, climbing onto the bunk but sitting on top of the sheets. "Maybe a little."

"Did she ask to speak to you?"

"No, why?"

"She will. She's not gonna stay very whiter than white if it gets out that she tried to arrest Nathan, and she knows it."

Mara nodded, wondering privately why she hadn't yet admitted that D'Arca had been about to arrest her too. But she didn't want to be the one to load anything more onto Luke right now. Sitting up, his arm around her as she leaned in to him, he seemed to be improving, but she'd also seen his frailty when he tried to walk more than a few steps, the stiffness and obvious pain which slowed his every movement…and those were the injuries she could see. He remained, as ever, one of the most resilient people she'd ever met—and she had to wonder what that cost him, deep down.

He squeezed her gently, breaking her line of thought. "I'm fine."

"I didn't say you weren't. I did, however, promise Nathan that I'd make sure you kept your end of his bargain."

"You know, I'm not sure I like this two-prong attack you pair have going."

"Learn to live with it." Mara smiled. "Leia said she'd stop in before she and Han set off back to Home One."

"Good."

"Han didn't want to go. He made the very good point that if you're determined to have Home One at the handover, we could all travel back to Home One onboard the Sol, then go on to the handover point."

"He already told me, but I don't want to arrive at Home One on a Rebel vessel…let's not tempt providence too much," he said wryly. "We'll stay onboard the Sol to travel to Serenno and meet the Patriot and our fleet there."

"They're already arguing about how many ships each side can have in orbit and planet-side," Mara grumbled. "I'm not happy about this at all."

"About what?"

"Han and Leia leaving. Have you spoken to the Captain of the Sol yet?"

"No."

"And you don't think that's odd? Convention aside, the Captain of some third-rate Rebel freighter has the Emperor onboard and she doesn't even bother to come down here to speak to you."

"Well, I'm still her sworn enemy."

"Oh, you remember that, do you?" Mara raised an eyebrow, half-turning to him. "I wasn't entirely sure any more."

"But that's what the talks are for," Luke continued smoothly.

"Yes, but the talks haven't happened yet—in fact, forget happened, forget even started—no one even knows about them yet. Which means as far as Captain Varo is concerned, you're still her enemy."

"Well then, that's what I have you for."

Mara turned to glare for a few seconds, but Luke only smiled, and she knew there was nothing she could say that would dissuade him. "You're missing a tooth, you know that?"

"Can you tell when I talk?"

"No, not really, it's too far back. Only when you smile." Mara shook her head wryly, leaning back against him again. "Seriously, you're worried about a tooth? Have you seen what you look like?"

He moved against her, and she heard the rasp as he rubbed at the stubble on his chin. "I know I need a shave."

Mara shook her head at the subtle shift of subject. "Yeah, 'cos that'll sort it out."

She paused…but she may as well get it over with, whilst he seemed in an amenable mood. "And speaking of sorting things out, when were you going to tell me about your sister?"

Luke tensed slightly against her, though when he spoke, the exasperation in his voice was clearly feigned. "People are talking way too much around here."

"Actually she didn't tell me," Mara said without turning. "I worked it out. The holo on your desk…it's your mother, isn't it?"

For a moment he remained silent. Even now, with her, he still avoided intimacy, instead deflecting it with humor. "I hope between all your rummaging through my personal holos…"

"You have one."

"You only found one?" Mara nudged him at the affected mix of surprise and relief in his voice, and he grinned, settling back as he returned to the point. "So in between not finding all my personal holos…"

"One of them'd better be of me."

"In between that, did you actually open up that document I told you to?"

"You know, I can't help but reflect on how typical it is that you're more willing to talk about State secrets than you are about your personal holo collection."

"I was just wondering how you knew about the talks with the Alliance."

"You were already talking to Leia, and that whole 'Draw the Rebel leaders into a trap' thing was way too neat and plausible. I just reapplied 'Luke-logic' to it. That, and the fact that Leia told Nathan."

"So you didn't open the file?"

Mara still stared straight ahead, at the far wall, uncomfortable. "You said open it if something happened to you…well, you're still here."

"You're telling me you didn't read it when I'd given you the code?"

"Did you really think I would?"

She felt him turn slightly to look at her. "Mara Jade, did you not read it because you were getting superstitious?"

"No!" She let out the word in a rough, dismissive laugh.

"You did!"

"Hey, I'm pregnant! I'm allowed leeway!"

He settled back again. "Okay, I'll give you that one."

"One? I get to use that for the next six months."

"Yeah..." he said, apprehensively, and she turned to study him.

"Worried?"

"No…" He smiled at his own bravado. "Yes. Just…you know, the fatherhood stuff— worried about whether I'll be a good role model."

"Role model?" Mara laughed. "Luke, you're the Emperor!"

"I didn't mean that," he dismissed out of hand. "I mean…a good father."

"For him, you will be."

He looked away again. "You don't know that."

"I do," she said, absolutely sure. "Because I know you—and so does your sister. Leia said…"

"She's wrong," Luke said categorically, clearly with more force that he'd meant. He sighed, looking down. "I can't change what I am, Mara."

"People can change—I did. Or do you think I'm the same woman who would back Palpatine now?"

He pulled her back down, and she nestled against him as he spoke. "No. But then, I think you always were this person. You didn't change, you just had to…find yourself."

"Well maybe you've always been Luke Skywalker. Palpatine didn't change you, Luke, you just have to…"

"Find that out again." He smiled at her tenacity, but she heard the brittleness behind it, the weariness as he prepared to throw himself back into the fray again.

He was, as ever, that same complex contradiction of inconceivable power and genuine conscience, Mara knew. But he was balancing on a knife-edge, a position he couldn't possibly maintain. Something had to change—something had to give. It had always been Luke, Mara realized—she'd always expected it to be. Ever since that hotheaded Rebel pilot had arrived on Coruscant, she'd continually expected him to simply adapt to his new life. But then he seemed always so fluid, so capable, so resilient.

Well now it was her turn…and when it came right down to it, it wasn't hard at all. What had he said to her once? That it was all about recognizing what you wanted—what really mattered to you—and accepting what you had to do to gain it.

Because if she said this, she had to mean it, Mara knew. She had to be absolutely prepared to back up her words…and she finally was. The last few weeks had clarified for Mara what was truly important; had taken all those ambitions and expectations which were left over from a past before she'd ever even known Luke, and percolated and clarified them with devastating effect.

And so she truly, truly meant it:

"Let's leave. Let's just leave now. Nathan's already gone, Leia and Han will be gone in another hour—we could just take a shuttle and head for open space. To hell with the Empire. Leave it. Give it to Leia Organa if that's what you want. Give it to Kiria D'Arca. I don't care anymore."

She felt his chin move slightly from where it rested against her temple, the stubble sharp and gritty and wonderfully reassuring in its imperfection.

"And leave everything behind?"

"Everything. We don't need it."

"Your past, your Palace…your Emperor?"

She shook her head, completely, utterly sure. And how incredibly easy it was, to be this sure—how right. "It's just stuff. Just baggage. It's not you. You're what I want—to hell with the rest."

A slow, gentle calm rolled over him like a heatwave, warming him clean down to his bones as tense muscles relaxed against her, the quiet peace radiating from him wonderfully infectious to Mara's senses. She smiled as she wrapped her arms and her thoughts tightly around him. Nothing was worth more to her—nothing.

"Look at that." She smiled, eyes blurring with tears which she blinked away. "Still growing."

"Still crazy," he murmured, but she could hear the joy in his words.

"Whatever."

He squeezed her again and she leaned into his embrace, holding tight. Which was just as well, because his next words would have floored her.

"I think maybe we should stay a while yet. I'm not done being Emperor."

She leaned back, shocked. "Stay?"

He shrugged, a shadow of a smile on his lips. "Why would I leave now—it's just getting interesting. Let's see where we can take it."

Mara sniffed away her tears, suddenly suspicious. "What do you mean… You're going to use this, aren't you—that's what this whole Serenno transfer is. You want to use it to push change through."

"I can't do it without you, Mara. You're my cornerstone—you're my strength."

Mara arched her eyebrows. "Oh, you have your own strength, Luke Skywalker."

"I trust yours more."

Trust. Mara felt the smile come to her lips at that; felt it settle like an embrace about her. Funny, he still had the capacity to throw her—somehow that was incredibly appealing.

He grinned, and when he spoke it was with that soft Rimworld accent that she loved. "I'm gonna change the galaxy, Mara—and you're gonna help me."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The detention levels onboard the Patriot were clean and functional and blank, like a thousand others in the fleet, Nathan supposed. The door to the interview cell was marked by two guards, who stood to attention as he neared, his heart pounding, suddenly uncertain if he could do this. The last time he'd halted at his point, unable to go through with it, but this would be his last opportunity, one way or another, and Nathan knew he couldn't leave it like this.

Still, it was cripplingly hard to move forward as the cell door slid silently open.



Sitting at a small metal-topped table in the interview cell, Wez Reece lifted his head, eyes betraying a brief moment of surprise as Nathan stepped inside, though his tone when he spoke was loud and full of bravado. "I wondered when you'd wring up the guts to come down here, Nathan."

Hovering close to the entrance, Nathan remained tense and silent, suddenly breathless.

"Well, come in—or do you think I'll make a lunge at you?"

Squaring his jaw, Nathan nodded once to the guard, who turned to leave them alone, then walked forward with exaggerated calm and sat at the far side of the table, finally lifting his head to look Reece in the eye. "I've come to tell you what's happening, Wez. You were brought onboard the Patriot because we're on our way out to Serenno. Tomorrow, we take a small contingent down to the planet to formally receive the Emperor back on board. You didn't kill him. You changed nothing. I wanted you to know that, too."

Completely unrepentant, Wez shook his head as his eyes traced the surface of the nondescript table which stood between them, lost in thought. "I keep looking for the point when I should have realized, keep looking back for something… And you know, a single moment keeps on coming to mind so perfectly that I wonder if he planted it there just knowing this day would eventually come…"

Nathan held to a tense silence, not wanting to be drawn in.

" 'What will I do without you,' that's what he said to me." Wez gave a brief nod of his head as he relaxed back into his chair. "Five months ago, that's what Skywalker said to me, when I gave him the datachip of the Sterling that I'd copied and was smuggling back into his office. I remember it exactly. I hadn't even handed the stolen files over yet." He laughed, momentarily trailing off, lost in his own thoughts, then glanced sharply back to Nathan. "So you see, you're blaming me, and Skywalker could have stopped it all… He could have stopped it all there and then."

Nathan shook his head. "He shouldn't have needed to."

"But he could have stopped it."

"So could you."

Reece laughed again, but it had that agitated edge. "It was always me or him, wasn't it, Nathan? I gave you every chance to help me, every chance to admit Skywalker was wrong, that he was out of control. But I always knew it would come back to that: me or him… And I always knew which way you'd jump."

"In view of your actions, I find myself very proud of your certainty about that."

Reece lifted his chin. "I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. I regret only that I didn't succeed."

"Wez…"

"He's not what you think he is." The warning was undisguised, urgent almost.

"Perhaps not, but…"

"You listen to me." Wez straightened quickly enough to make Nathan jump, his voice deadly serious. "He's not what you think he is. He's a dangerous man in a position of power, because you will never contain him. Nobody will."

"By contain, I presume you mean control?"

"You think I did this because I wanted power?" Reece rubbed at his eyes, tired and irritated.

"Didn't you?"

"No! I did it because I wanted to see power in the right hands."

"By right, you mean those that you personally approved of?"

"Yes! The biggest mistake Palpatine ever made was to teach Skywalker how to rule—how to use and wield power to his own ends…his own. If no one else was guarding the tenets of the Empire, then it was my duty to do so. I did this for what I believe in."

"And what was that, Wez?"

"The Empire! The real Empire, not this—this weak, half-hearted collective where we negotiate with Rebels to…"

"And what were you doing, in passing information to Madine?"

"I was using them! Using them, that's all, to remove an Emperor who was flawed."

"Flawed?"

"Yes! Nathan, he's dismantling the Empire a piece at a time—he's giving away every strength and advantage we have."

"He's reinstating freedoms that should never have been revoked."

"He's taking apart all that made us great—knowingly. Intentionally." Wez shook his head. "I didn't want power, I never once wanted that. But I wanted to see someone in power who would maintain the Empire as it should be."

"So you were removing him to put Mara on the throne? She was the next in line…"

"Yes! I was putting a staunch Imperialist on the throne. Someone who had already proven their worth, who had dedicated her life to upholding the values of the true Empire. Someone who had the drive to maintain it as it was at its height and a reason to turn on the Rebels…"

"You thought…" Nathan sagged in realization—it all made a terrible, sick sense. "You thought that if you sold Luke out to the Rebels and they killed him, she'd turn on them. That's why you gave him over to Madine, because you knew Madine would kill him outright when Leia Organa probably wouldn't."

"She followed Skywalker because she was a loyal Imperial, like me, but she'd eventually have realized; she would have known with a soldier's eye that Skywalker's actions had only ever weakened the Empire—would have had that fact proven to her, by his death. There'd be no treaties, no dividing of power or diluting of tenets. She would have reversed its slow corruption, she would have listened to me."

"And what about when she stopped listening? What about when she started to follow her own choices, when her decisions failed to live up to your exact requirements, Wez? Would you have removed her too, just as coldly?"

Wez glanced down, mouth a hard line. "There are others… Those who still have that purity of vision, who understand the institution that the Empire embodies, the importance of that authority and stability. Those who know what's necessary to maintain it. Ideals worth following."

Nathan shook his head. "Don't you see, Wez; you're still trying to take power, you're simply trying to do it from behind the throne. You're putting the person you want on the throne…the person who fulfills your personal idea of…"

"The person the Empire needs!"

"No, you're wrong. You're so wrong. This is just your own misguided little power trip—this is a way to hold power but still be safe, because if it goes wrong, if it doesn't live up to your expectations exactly, then it's not your fault. It's never your fault, is it? You never have to take that responsibility yourself, so you can keep on blaming someone else for your own unrealistic expectations. That Empire doesn't exist, Wez…and I don't think I'd like it if it did. I don't think I'd even be here…and I hate to disappoint you, but I don't think you would either. You said yourself that Luke knew, and you're right, he did—he'd known for months, but he did nothing because he wanted to give you every chance to redeem yourself. He wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you think Palpatine would have done that? Do you think any leader who was driven enough to lead your ideal Empire would have given you that continued opportunity?"

"I would never have renounced an Emperor that strong," Reece said stonily. "If the true Empire still existed..."

"Your Empire never existed, Wez; it never could. It was too dependent on the foibles of Palpatine. You saw some ideal that never existed."

"It existed in the glory days, in the height of-"

"No, it never did, except in your head. If Palpatine's totalitarian Empire was so perfect, then why did you help depose him, tell me that?"

"Palpatine was old, he'd lost his way, he no longer upheld the values he'd sustained at his height. That didn't mean his theory of an Empire was unsound."

"Palpatine's Empire was a dictatorship, absolute, divine rule based on some twisted concept of Blood Royal—did you uphold that?" Nathan heard his own voice rising in frustration, though Wez held firm.

"Yes!"

"Yet you helped depose that Emperor!"

"He was flawed, not his ideal! Not his bloodline."

"So how does Mara represent your autocracy?"

"There is no true heir—no continuation of the Blood Royal. But Jade was still an Emperor's Hand; she had Sith blood! Skywalker has no more right to rule than her, no greater claim. At least Jade understands the necessity for strong leadership. She has as much of a right to sit on Palpatine's throne as Skywalker ever did."

Nathan hesitated for long seconds, knowing the truth, weighing the risks…and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and controlled. "Blood Royal, Wez."

"What?" Wez snapped.

"Blood Royal: the right to rule by bloodline, by heritage. You just said you believed that principle."

"Palpatine had no heir—he named Skywalker because he was Sith, not because he was Blood Royal."

"You want the truth, Wez? You want a real secret to take to the grave?" Nathan met Wez's eyes, deadly serious. "If you uphold Palpatine's rule of birthright by bloodline then Luke's claim, like his connection to the Force, ran in his blood."

Reece quietened, his question unspoken...and for the first time ever, Nathan dared to say it aloud. Spoke the secret he'd carried alone for so long, to the ears of a man he knew would be dead by morning. At least half of it Wez already knew; he had, after all, been there at the time.

"The day Palpatine died…you remember, it was absolute chaos. Luke was badly injured and needed major surgery, you were trying to get reliable stormtroopers down from the Patriot and to remove potential threats. Trying to distance any overly loyal Red Guard and to freeze the lockouts on the security and information systems before someone realized and activated them. You also had to hide the evidence of the duel…and Palpatine's body. That came to the only reliable place that it could be stored for disposal—my medi-center. Remember? When I came out from Luke's surgery, you'd already had Palpatine's body removed… But you see, by then I'd done as Luke had always ordered me to, should the opportunity ever arise: I'd taken samples—genetic samples."

Nathan shrugged beneath Wez's complete, reluctant attention, continuing quietly but without mercy. "He'd given the order years before, to check for any patrilineal link. Years earlier Palpatine had told Luke that they shared a direct blood connection, but Luke had never repeated it because he didn't believe it…didn't want to. Was horrified by the concept. By the fear that if he was of that bloodline, he'd be tainted by it. He told me just once, within days of Palpatine telling him, then he never spoke of it again." Nathan paused, studying his own hands, tightly wrapped about each other. "Time passed… Events…overtook him. Luke would never acknowledge that line of descent without proof, and with Palpatine dead and his body cremated, he believed there would never be proof. But you see, I did do those tests…and then I destroyed the data and all of the samples. That was my decision. Rightly or wrongly, I made that choice. Luke was about to come to the throne, and he was already paralyzed by self-doubt at the thought that he might be Palpatine's genetic heir—and so…I took it upon myself to make sure that he never had to deal with a hard truth which I honestly believe would have destroyed him."

Wez was already recoiling, knowing what was coming, as Nathan lifted his eyes. "You see, there is a direct, traceable patrilineal line between Luke and Palpatine. How that's possible, given what he told me, I cannot tell you—but then I can't explain so many aspects of the Force. This is just one more, both fascinating and disturbing. I could, however, predict exactly how Luke would have taken this news—and it would not have been well."

Wez shook his head in denial, voice no more than a whisper. "Skywalker was Vader's son."

"Yes, he was. Palpatine, Vader and Luke were three generations of the same genetic line, Wez. Palpatine's vision was always to create an Empire with a single, uninterrupted lineage at its head; a dynasty. Not a Sith Dynasty, but his dynasty. That was what his Empire was truly about—his own petty little grasp at immortality. And I won't see Luke destroy himself or his future, simply because he wants to thwart the malicious, obsessive ravings of an old man. Rightly or wrongly, I now hold that secret. I know that I have to trust that Luke will never think to seek it out within my mind, and if he did, I alone would have to answer for my transgression. But if he doesn't, I swear to you, I'll take it to my grave without hesitation, the fact that Luke is the true heir to the Empire, in every sense."

"Why didn't you tell me?" It was half accusation, half appeal.

"I might ask the same of all you held hidden," Nathan said, strangely removed from Wez's dismay now, so that when he continued it was almost an apology. "It's a solemn oath we all take, Wez. A physician never divulges information regarding his patient; Luke's medical history was part of that."

"… Blood Royal..." It was all Wez could manage.

"So you see," Nathan said evenly, "by your own actions, you were taking apart the very essence of your true Empire."

Wez glanced down, bewildered, all his bravado spent, and Nathan felt some spark of pity for the man whose beliefs and allegiance were hopelessly irreconcilable at the realization of this one fact.

Feeling that he had to offer some kind of solace, even here, Nathan sighed. "But that line would, I suppose, have been ensured anyway, with a new generation."

Wez looked up. "D'Arca?"

Nathan frowned. "Mara…a boy, we think."

He waited in silence for a long time, but Wez seemed to have nothing more to say—and finally, Nathan knew he himself had only one thing left to voice.

"The Emperor will be back onboard nine hours from now. I…doubt he'll be very forgiving. Not only did you place him in the way of danger, you also involved Mara and their child." Nathan searched Wez's eyes as he lifted his head. "What I do in coming here…perhaps I do it for myself, for a past that I still need to believe existed, despite everything. Not because I condone what you did in any way; understand that. But I know Luke, and I know that when he gets back, he'll come for you…" Nathan glanced away, eyes suddenly glassy. "Time to go. When I see Luke tomorrow, I'll answer for my actions here tonight…but I can't answer for yours, Wez. I thought if we spoke…" He looked down, shaking his head. "Goodbye, Wez."

Nathan rose quickly, suddenly needing to be gone, aware of Wez's eyes on his back as he stared resolutely at the door waiting for it to be opened. He never once looked back.




With Nathan gone, Wez felt his shoulders slump as the air left him in a sigh, taking all his certainty and his bravado with it. Dispirited, he lowered his head as he ran his fingers through his hair…and his eye caught something on the table before him, where Nathan's hand had been…

It was a single pill.

He didn't need to ask what it was for.












"This is Commander Jade onboard the Rebel vessel Sol, come in please?"

Nothing…again. Mara turned to Luke, who was standing a few paces away wearing civilian clothes—white shirt, tan trousers and battered brown leather boots which buckled at the ankle and knee. It was, she realized, literally years since she'd seen him in pale colors…they suited him.

What they didn't do was disguise any of his frailness as he limped across the Sol's hold to drop down onto a packing crate as a chair, exhausted after only a few minutes of walking through the ship. His bruises were paling but still obvious, his skin ashen in the bright natural daylight which was flooding in through the Sol's lowered ramp from Serenno's sun, the freighter having been planetside for less than an hour.

It had all been arranged in the last two days whilst they had been en-route to Serenno: time, ships in orbit, troops in the area… Every detail had been argued and agreed and hastily arranged for the return of the Emperor from Rebel to Imperial hands, right down to the distance which would separate the two contingents on the ground, to either end of a wide landing strip in the commercial quarter…

And then about an hour ago it had all begun to fall apart.

Mara wasn't so much surprised as annoyed. Though all the details had been argued out on amicable terms by Rebel and Imperial teams led by Nathan and Leia Organa, it was still Kiria D'Arca who led the Empire, the Patriot already in orbit around Serenno for a full day by the time the Sol had arrived…and as ever, despite this being a supposedly low-key, unannounced handover, Kiria didn't travel light.

As agreed, the Imperial contingent had nine Destroyers in low orbit—a bit of an early giveaway to the casual passer-by that something was happening, if you asked Mara. As also agreed though, the Empire had landed only three Nubian diplomatic yachts and its main Consular Ship, to the north side of the massive landing strip on Serenno, all very visibly bearing the Emperor's personal Seal, the Lorric—so called because Luke's emblem incorporated that well-recognized image of a lorric-willow wreath behind twin sabers—emblazoned across their polished hulls.

With the yachts, as agreed, were two wings of I-TIE's—one wing airborne, the other in parade-ground assembly—one wing of blastboats, and a total of 260 military personnel, also as agreed. The whole area about them had been cordoned off with military precision, and flags had been raised in neat rows—the Lorric, the Imperial Seal, the navy Jack—the Lorric still flying at half-mast as it did across the Empire, awaiting the return of the Emperor… And all Mara could think as she stared at the distant encampment from the viewpane in the Sol's medi-bay was, Luke'll never walk that far.

For the Empire, this was barely a presence—certainly a considerably restrained response to the safe return of their Emperor. Still, with the Zephyr in orbit and the Sol, the only Rebel ship presently on the ground to the south side of the landing strip, and sporting a total of forty-six troopers and twenty-three staff, the Rebels were probably feeling more than a little outgunned right now.

Captain Varo had been consistently less than cooperative since Leia's departure, and Luke had voiced his suspicion more than once that Varo had at the very least, some private sympathies or loyalties to Madine. A few subtle questions on Mara's part had easily uncovered the fact that Madine's escape shuttle had chosen a route that took it nearer to the Sol than any other ship present—yet it hadn't been fired on.

Telling Luke that fact meant, of course, that it had all come out about Madine—that he wasn't in custody, either Rebel or Imperial—that he'd in fact escaped with over a dozen men within an hour of the Falcon leaving the Wasp. If he hadn't been so weak, Mara suspected Luke would have commandeered a shuttle and gone after the General himself, so incensed was he. The only thing that allayed her worry was his admission that he'd seriously considered it already, and decided that it really wasn't the kind of diplomatic event he was working towards here.

Instead he'd made repeated requests to speak directly with Captain Varo, who'd adamantly refused—apparently she had problems with 'some Sith rummaging through my mind.' Mara had to admit she would've been insulted if it wasn't for the fact that it was exactly what Luke had intended to do.

So all in all, it was already a shaky situation.

Then as they made orbit at Serenno, the first rumbles about this most unusual combination of starships got out onto the HoloNet—and the local holo-press arrived…in force.

By the time the Sol was cutting into the atmosphere above the agreed site, yachts belonging to the Great Houses of Serenno were dotting the sky…then those of the Royal Houses of Phindar and Gala, a few hours away on the Hydian Way hyperspace route. Then Bandomeer, then Garos and Sundari, then Berusa and Chaila…in fact, anywhere that was within reaching distance of Serenno.

By now, with Home One and the rest of the Alliance contingent still an hour away, and only the equally under-equipped Zephyr in orbit to back the Sol up, Captain Varo was past uncooperative and well on the way to panicking.

And the arguments had started. Mara hadn't been there to witness the minutiae, but she knew that Captain Varo had accused the Imperial contingent of political maneuvering. The Empire had voiced its indignation…and so on.

They could, of course, leave any time, with or without Captain Varo's permission. Even in this state, Mara was pretty sure that Luke could have ramped it up sufficiently to get out of there at a push…but this was diplomacy, and apparently running roughshod over your deliverer's military protocols and the pre-arranged schedule was bad form, Mara reflected dryly.

Which didn't, as it turned out, seem to stop Captain Varo.

A full three hours before the agreed time of the transfer, with Home One not even in orbit yet, Varo's Aide had come down with a detail of four Rebel guards to tell them that they were to go now.

Which was why they were sitting in the hold just out of view of anyone outside the ship, gazing out over the long strip of dark permacrete and preparing to make that long walk to the Imperial contingent—who, because Mara couldn't raise them on her comlink, had no idea they would even be on their way.

Therefore no Imperial honor guard to accompany the Rebel soldiers, no crowd control, and no protection. Just she and Luke…and those growing crowds outside, as word spread among the populous that something was going on, though Sith knew how.

Commander Werth, the senior officer of the Sol's task force, was speaking quietly to the four armed soldiers who were clearly going to accompany them on the long walk across the landing strip, giving last-minute orders.

Mara walked casually over to the still-seated Luke, who was watching Werth just a little too closely.
"Varo wants us out now because she thinks she can control what's seen if she does," he murmured quietly, eyes still intent on the back of Commander Werth's head. "We get four armed guards."

"Barve," Mara sniped with feeling, glaring at Werth.

"No, he's just panicking because he's responsible for this and it's getting out of hand. It's Varo who's changing things, as far as Werth sees it. She's the one looking to make us walk out alone down that landing strip, with armed Rebel soldiers to either side of us. I'm guessing she wants this to look like some kind of prisoner-handover, like the Alliance is making some kind of concession."

"With all that hardware in orbit and on the far side of the landing strip?" Mara asked, doubtful.

"Yeah, but no one's gonna see that when they show the images of the Emperor walking alone down that permacrete runway. They're just gonna see a single man making a solitary walk down a wide, empty walkway. No honor-guard, no trappings, nothing."

Varo was, Mara realized, working to her own private objectives here. She was looking to undermine the office of Emperor, using the Holo-press images to reduce the unassailable Emperor to a very ordinary stature, injured, isolated and unsupported, surrounded by Rebel soldiers and marched across the landing strip like a prisoner.

"We could refuse to go?" she suggested, aware of the ominously silent crowds beyond the Sol and knowing damn well that Varo was intending to send the Emperor out there before his Imperial Guard could arrive—that was why her comlink was being blocked.

There was humor in Luke's quiet voice. "Yeah, 'cos getting physically forced out onto the runway always looks good. That's the image we're going for here."

Mara smiled just slightly, looking back to her comlink. "Well, let's see if we can at least get our own guards to meet us halfway, since they..."

"No, wait." Luke reached out to push her hand down. "If we can't get them here for the beginning I'll do the walk with none at all."

Mara glanced quickly up. "Luke, this isn't Coruscant, we don't know what the crowd out there is like. It could get ugly very, very quickly this far out."

"It had to be this far out. If it had been closer to the Core Systems or the Colonies, people would have said it was a publicity stunt. It had to be a backwater world."

Mara frowned, still wary. "There are a lot of people out there, and you don't know how they'll react, or have any control over this situation. That's what Varo is banking on and you know it."

Luke shook his head, adamant. "One way or another, Varo's made sure we start this walk without Imperial guards. If we have them meet us halfway, it looks like a prisoner handover, or like we were unprepared—or worse, that we're expecting trouble. I can't use any of that. I came here to say something, and I'm sure as hell not gonna be end-run and have that taken from me by some second-rate freighter Captain with a grudge to bear."

The Sol's remaining soldiers trooped through the hold on their way outside, sparing curious glances at Luke, who stood, not wanting to be perceived as weak, even here, Mara knew. She watched them step out into the bright sunlight and begin to spread out, and realized what they were doing—that the crowds had become so great that Werth had seen fit to use his men to try to keep them back. Squinting, Mara risked taking a step or two closer to the ramp, to see the crowds. There were twice as many as when they'd entered the hold, and she'd been worried at their numbers then. More worryingly, they stood in unsettling silence, eyes on the freighter's open ramp.

She backed up, apprehensive. "Seriously, I'm not sure we should…"

She broke off as a soldier ran forward across the bay, and Mara saw what had been holding this up: in his hand, he held a walking stick. Commander Werth took it and walked quickly to the Emperor, seeming almost embarrassed as he held out the stick. "Uh…you…seem to have trouble walking…Sir."

Luke looked at the stick for long seconds, his voice cool. "I'm fine, thank you."

Mara knew why he wouldn't take it—but she also knew how weak he still was. "Luke…"

"No, absolutely not."

"You won't make that walk without it."

"I'll damn well walk out of here."

Werth squirmed. "Sir, I'm instructed not to let you leave the ship without it."

Scowling, Luke took the stick—and Mara couldn't believe that the man seriously thought that it would make it even as far as the end of the ramp in Luke's possession. Still, this was it. They were up and moving, their Rebel guards stepping out first and waiting expectantly.

Luke leaned in to Mara as he set forward. "When you get to the end of the ramp, slow down and hang back," he murmured. "Let's see how much we can spread our guards…make them seem a little less like..."

"Guards?" Mara asked dryly.

Stepping to the end of the open ramp, Werth gestured with his hand. "…Sir?"

They set forward and, with no ceremony whatsoever, they were out, bright daylight warming Mara's skin for the first time in weeks, making her flinch even as she tried to keep her eyes on the crowds, a mass ten deep of curious eyes and still faces—and absolute silence.

She didn't even have a gun. If someone lunged forward from the crowd…

Her thoughts were brought back to the moment by the clatter of the walking cane Luke had been given, falling away as he stepped out onto the ramp.

Watching those crowds, it was a hard thing to force herself to slow back out of reach of him, so that Luke stepped alone down the wide walkway, struggling to suppress his limp. But the four soldiers, uncertain what to do, widened their positions in an effort to stay with them both.

They walked through the crowd in eerie silence, nobody moving or making a sound, as Mara's heart pounded so loud that she was sure the hushed crowds could hear it. She looked down the long, wide strip of dark permacrete as mute, serious faces leaned in from either side. The distant Imperial ships were eight, maybe ten minutes' walk…too far.

From the corner of her eye, Mara saw the small object thrown from somewhere near the back of the crowd towards Luke—

Reaching out with the Force, she almost made to deflect it, sensing a flare of focused power as Luke did the same… But just as Luke did, she stopped at the last moment as she recognized it, and it fell to the ground before his feet, drawing everyone's eye.

A single branch of lorric—the same laurel which embellished Luke's own flag—lay bright green against the dark permacrete.

Surprised, Luke glanced momentarily into the crowd, but walked on. Then another branch was thrown, landing on the permacrete before him…then another. Then a flower, intense yellow, fell on the dark ground of the wide path. The woman who threw it stood to the front, behind the barrier of Rebel soldiers, and Mara watched, amazed, as Luke looked to her, still walking slowly on. Staring in silence, the woman lowered her head in a half-bow.

A second scarlet flower landed close by—then another lorric branch… Then, as Luke slowed to glance again into the crowd, someone began to clap.

Then another person, then another.

Then someone was bold enough to shout out their encouragement.

Slowly, as a tide turning, the crowd began to shout and cheer, and more and more lorric branches and flowers began to line the path as their Emperor walked slowly on, an intense perfusion of bright laurel green against the dull black permacrete, so many that they eventually began to cover the stark road…









Home One came out of hyperspace into Serenno's high-orbit, the Rebel Alliance's leading Council, military and civilian, having gathered in the Council chamber in preparation to be shuttled down to the surface for the return of the Emperor to his own people in—Leia glanced to the chrono on the curved wall—two and three-quarter hours' time.

She turned to Han standing beside her, starched and smart in his best uniform. "We're late," she murmured, smoothing her own diplomatic gown.

Han turned to the chrono. "No, we're two and three-quarter hours early. Plus these things never start on time anyw—"

He never finished. Commander Sumar and Tag Massa came bursting into the room. Tag headed straight for the HoloNet link and activated it, and Leia turned to Sumar, the Comm Chief, as he mouthed, breathless, "HoloNet…"

Everyone twisted about as the image flashed up in a flare of static.

"…repeat, you are seeing these images live from Serenno in the Outer Rim, where a massive Imperial presence is building up, both in orbit and planet-side, and we have sources saying that the Emperor is here…"

"Wait…what!" Han said.

"Is this now?" Leia stuttered. "What's going on, is this now?"

Tag looked to Leia. "This is going out live over the HoloNet right now…it's on twelve channels and rising."

"Get Captain Varo on the comm. Who's the ground officer?"

General Cotta spoke up. "Would that be Commander Werth—is he attached to the Sol?"

"Get him on a comlink."

"Look!" Han said, eyes locked on the holo-link.

The remote lenses zoomed shakily in from an aerial view of the landing strip where the event was due to have taken place almost three hours from now…and emerging from the Sol, with just four soldiers about them, were two figures—a man followed closely by a woman…with a flare of copper-red hair.

"We think…can we get a confirmation on this? We're trying to get closer now. We actually think you're seeing live images of the Emperor coming from an unidentified—possibly a Rebel—vessel, the first time he's been seen since his abduction…"

Beside Leia, Tag stiffened. "With your permission, Ma'am, I'll take a detachment and head down to the Sol now."

"Quickly," Leia said, unable to take her eyes from the HoloNet images.

It was Han who voiced the question everyone was starting to wonder as he leaned in, trying to make sense of the slightly blurred images, zoomed in from long-range. "Why is the permacrete changing color?"

"Look," Cotta stepped closer, "you can see it changing…"

"Is that…?" Han too squinted. "Where are they getting the laurels from?"

"Does it matter?" Rieekan asked.

Turning back to the HoloNet, Leia suppressed a smile.









Luke glanced to the side, realizing that the crowd was beginning to deepen as those whom he had first walked past outside the Sol began running along the back of the twenty-deep throng to keep pace, the surreal scene unfolding about him as he walked on slowly, his back beginning to straighten, gaining strength from the support of the crowd, in spirit if not in body. And still more flowers and laurels were being thrown, an ever-denser carpet of verdant color.

The Rebel soldiers who had been sent out in force from the Sol to control the crowds were struggling to hold them back now, people clapping and shouting, arms reaching out through the soldiers, jostling them forward.

And that carpet of fresh leaf green was spreading ten or more feet before them, scattered with bright flowers and the pale creamy blossoms of the lorric.

A woman leaned out, calling out to him but being held back by the struggling Rebel guards.

Luke slowed and turned as she held out a flowering lorric branch, smiling proudly. "Please, Excellency?"

Smaller than he, with short, auburn hair, she had a warmth to her smiling eyes which lit her whole face as he moved toward her, ignoring the soldiers entirely as he walked between them, his attention on her alone.

"What's your name?" Luke asked easily, his smile pulling at still-healing scars.

"Meshelle, Excellency. My name's Meshelle." She beamed as she said it, ducking her head slightly, no idea whether to bow or not, just excited; proud to be there, to be talking to him.

Luke took the branch, nodding, and as she reached tentatively out to him he smiled again, heartfelt and unguarded, and took her hand in his. "Thank you, Meshelle. I will always remember you."

The press auto-lenses swooped in, jostling for position as he enclosed her hand within both of his own for a moment, the image fed live onto the HoloNet.

Then the Rebel guards closed quickly and she was pushed back into the crowd, already lost…

"Excellency?" A soldier, one hand pressed over his ear to hold out the noise of the crowd as he listened to a comm feed, held his hand out, indicating the lorric branch.

"It's just a laurel branch, do you really want to take it from me?" Luke asked easily. "Do you intend to start a riot over something this trivial?"

The soldier hesitated then held out his hand, apologetic almost. "I'm sorry, Sir, I have my orders…if you please?"








On Home One, surrounded by the Council, Leia was horrified. "No—who gave the order to take the laurel?"

General Dean, having finally gotten through to the Sol, sighed behind her. "Commander Werth told his soldiers not to let the Emperor take anything from anyone in the crowd."

"No!" Leia said again, shaking her head as other voices began to speak out about her, already realizing that this was turning into a media event. "Contact them now—tell them not to take it from him."

"This is bad…"

"Too late."

"Get him away from the crowd…"

On the live HoloNet image, shot by auto-lenses from almost above the crowd, the Emperor handed the branch over, head tilted to one side as if in amused allowance, then turned calmly away. The crowd hissed and booed at the guard's actions as the Emperor walked on, allowing himself to be politely but firmly encouraged to a central position away from the crowds by the Rebel soldiers. A second set were falling in on either side now, separating him from the swelling crowds completely, though he seemed oblivious to the mounting security. After a few moments, the Emperor lifted his hand slightly just level with his chest—and the crowd went wild.

There, being twisted between his fingers, was the flowering tip of the lorric branch he'd been given, broken off as he'd spoken with the guard.

The exultant cheers of their approval echoed around the Council Room onboard Home One, everyone gathered about the HoloNet, their voices mingling in dismay behind Leia as she only half-listened, her attention on the live images.

She knew Luke…and as a member of a Royal House herself, she knew that anyone in his position would, by now, have long familiarity with this kind of massed crowd. She also knew his ability and willingness to manipulate his image to his own advantage. She'd warned them not to do this when it had been suggested early on in the negotiations by Commander Odig—not to try to use him. Warned them they were playing a master at his own game.

The HoloNet cut to an aerial view as the crowd surged forward, becoming harder and harder to hold back, so that what was once a wide, empty walkway probably intended by Captain Varo to emphasize the smallness and isolation of the Emperor, had become a narrow strip thick with thrown lorric and flowers in jewel hues, the hovering press lenses pulling back in order to show the heaving masses as they closed in behind the small entourage or ran to keep pace, their numbers increasing with every minute as anyone who could get there by any means seemed to be arriving, speeders and swoops taken close to the edge of the crowds then seeming to be simply abandoned by their occupants, skiprays and hoppers dotting the sky, the atmosphere energized.

"A hundred channels," Han said, grinning.

Leia half-turned. "What?"

"The live broadcast—Sumar just said it's being transmitted on over a hundred separate HoloNet channels now."

"What have we done?" Odig murmured, face in his hands.

"Congratulations, Commander," Leia stated dryly. "You've created the galaxy's first democratically endorsed Emperor."









Mara walked ten paces behind Luke, aware of the spontaneous excitement of the crowd, at once terrifying and exhilarating and awe-inspiring.

Despite his worsening limp, Luke walked with his head high and his back straight, taking his time. He played the game as he always had, responding to the crowds, putting forward the image they so wanted to see and he knew it. Despite everything, irrespective of his clothes and his limp, his battered face and his slow step, he was absolutely, unapologetically the Emperor—and the crowd loved him for it. Still, Mara was beginning to panic as the walkway before them narrowed to a green-carpeted path, the small contingent of Rebel guards from the Sol augmented by other, unknown soldiers in Rebel uniforms, now forced to link arms to hold back the crowd, hard-pressed to keep the path ahead open as people surged closer, arms reaching out between the guards to brush at their Emperor's clothes as he passed.

Finally the Imperial encampment was in sight, the gleaming Nubian transports reflecting the sunlight, Luke's Imperial crest of lorric wreaths emblazoned on them. The beleaguered Rebel soldiers gave way to Imperial Guards already forming up in sufficient number to provide an organized barrier three-deep, holding the crowds at bay up to the start of the fenced encampment.

No longer bothering to hide his limp, Luke quickened his pace just slightly to reach the Imperial enclave as the crowd became near-uncontrollable, Mara just passing through the perimeter gates as they closed completely, remote cameras pulling back to take in the massed scene, sending it to every planet in the Empire.

Luke paused for Mara to walk level with him, but she shook her head infinitesimally; this was his moment and he should take it alone. He winked once at her, incredibly boyish and mischievous in the moment, as if his best trick was yet to come. Then he turned again to walk slowly and confidently through his guard, hastily assembled when the Imperial encampment had realized that their Emperor was already on his way.
Scarlet-clad Royal Guard formed the front line of the huge honor-guard, ten-deep in stormtroopers. Further back behind the main Consular Ship were the Royal Yachts of any House close enough to attend the impromptu event, dozens more crowded into the sky above the cavalcade to show their support for their Emperor.

Nodding, Luke walked slowly through his own troops, giving them the same gracious attention he'd afforded the crowds, though Mara could see that his breath was shorter now, what reserves he'd had failing. Imperial representatives and members of the attending Royal Houses bowed low as their Emperor approached. From somewhere, an Aide appeared with a formal, styled jacket—one of Luke's own—and he shrugged it on, but didn't fasten it.









Onboard Home One, many Counselors were not able to look anymore, turning away in dismay. Others were tied to the screens in morbid fascination, the sound of the crowd still deafening, so that excited local reporters—the only ones on hand for the event—had to shout to be heard.

"Get on the ship," someone whispered behind Leia, hurrying him on. "Get on the damn ship."

"He's not that stupid," General Hart said. "He'll milk this. Hell, I would."

Other Department Chiefs and Council members joined in now, voices low with apprehension.
"No…get on the ship."

"Can we stop him? Can we cut the broadcast?"

"Are you insane!"

To the front of the Imperial enclave, before the impressive backdrop of that massive Consular Ship and multiple Nubian yachts bearing the Emperor's insignia, a suspiciously pre-prepared dais had been hastily assembled, and Leia watched the Emperor pause as he stepped onto it, the crowds behind the barriers still cheering wildly as the remote news lenses zoomed in.









Luke could hardly fail to miss Kiria D'Arca, dressed, unusually, in a flowing white gown but with a long, crimson tabard of richly embroidered velvet over it, the ruby encrusted coronet she'd worn at their wedding setting off her striking formal dress. She stood straight-backed and smiling proudly on the dais, a few dignitaries behind her; no military in the group, Luke noted as he stepped up.

He turned to look for Mara, glancing over the heads of the stormtroopers, and the crowds roared as he came into view again on the dais, the surge of noise amazing.

Kiria smiled just slightly and, to the cheer of the massed crowds, did nothing more formal than kiss the Emperor lightly on the cheek. As she leaned in, he heard her quiet whisper in his ear: "Speak to them…don't say this isn't what you wanted."

He glanced down as her hands, resting against his collar when she'd leaned in, clipped a tiny pick-up mike there. From within the ship a public address system had appeared, hurriedly activated.

Kiria smiled just slightly. 'I told you—perfect partners,' she mouthed without speaking, eyebrows raising expectantly over teasing eyes as she stepped back.

Luke held her eyes as he hesitated for a second, then turned and lifted his hands to speak, though in the moment, he was forced to begin three times before the crowds silenced, an expectant hush falling over attentive faces. Abruptly Madine's words came to mind, spoken with such contempt in the cell onboard the Wasp:

"Sticks and stones'll break my bones but words'll never hurt me. Let's try that out, shall we? You can have the words, I'll have the sticks, and we'll see who bleeds first."

But it wasn't who bled first that counted—and Luke would take the words every time. Because he'd long since learned they had a power all their own.




"I am indebted to you, every single one of you. You have restored my faith and my hope for the future… Today, I see free beings of all beliefs standing together. I see Rebel soldiers who came to the aid of an Emperor—I see Imperial soldiers and citizens proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. You are all the Empire—this is the Empire you have created, the Empire you continue to create, and you should be justly proud of your efforts."

The tumult within the massed crowds rose in a swell, forcing Luke to pause again until it slowly subsided.

"Today begins a new era of tolerance. We are not so very different, those of us who stand here. That my abduction incited outrage from both Rebel and Imperial viewpoints is a humbling notion, a reassuring one…an inspiring one. Because we are all members of the same galaxy; we believe in the same things, the same inalienable rights, the same unacceptable practices. We are all outraged by the fanaticism of the few, and encouraged by the tolerance of the many. If there is one thing we can all carry forward from this event, let it be that. Let it be the knowledge of our own diversity within our shared aspirations toward integrity, whoever we are and whatever we believe.

"Like the Empire, the Alliance is not the single entity the past would have us assume. Like the Empire, it is a collection of many views and tolerances. Many hopes. The treatment of one man, broadcast to many, clarified those beliefs, and just what we were prepared to do to maintain them—and what not. It reminded us all what it is that we struggle toward…justice, compassion, tolerance—the very essence of freedom. At the end of the day…it was soldiers from the Rebel Alliance who reached me first. Soldiers from the Alliance who came to my aid, risking their lives in the true spirit of that which they believe: integrity, equality…justice. They saw something in this new Empire which was worth fighting for...a chance for change. Regardless of old enmities and past deeds, they came because they saw something in this evolving Empire that they were willing to give their lives to help perpetuate. They saw hope. They saw a future. One which we can all pass on to our children. One without war or divisions, one without past prejudice or future intolerance. They saw the Empire I am building—the Empire we all build, every hour of every day. A future that we have all laid the foundation for, by our actions in the past weeks.
"Today is the culmination of months of negotiations between the Empire and the moderates of the Alliance. The clarification that even within the Rebel Alliance, the militant few cannot stamp out the voice of reason. I was abducted to derail those negotiations, to curtail the announcement of open talks between the Moderate Alliance and the Empire, and to induce yet another escalating cycle of hostility and bloodshed.

"But they did not stop it. They cannot stop it…because it is in the hearts and the hopes of everyone here… A united Empire, joined for a single purpose, looking toward a single goal. Democracy. I will call no man my enemy if his mind is open. I will call no man my enemy if he listens, and debates.

"To those among us who will claim that we are too different in our views, that we cannot work together and achieve anything, I am here today as proof that we can. I am here today because we already have. The differences we have are in our minds, not our hearts. The differences we have are an asset to be praised and the tolerance we show is the ultimate strength.

"We have, so many of us, lost so much to this war. Watched the future which we were so sure was ours, stolen away forever. We have cursed it and we have railed against it on both sides of the divide, though we knew deep down that we only fed the fire in doing so."

Luke shook his head, looking out into the massed crowds. "I will feed it no longer. In tribute to all those who have given so much, willingly or unknowingly, I will feed it no longer. I will not serve the ends of the zealous few, and I will ask no other to do so in my name.

"We have a long and hard path ahead of us in this quest, but I hope...I intend one day soon, to stand before you announcing a new ethos, a new way. Self-rule, the innate right that each of you has, to determine who will govern the Empire that you help to build. I believe that you will make this possible. That we will all take that hope and shape it into reality.

"You have restored my faith when it faltered, and I thank you all for that. You should be justly proud of your actions—you should tell your children with pride of your part in the making of a free and just Empire."

He paused, the silence hanging in expectant anticipation. "I will take forward with me the memory of this moment. Everything else pales into insignificance."









The cheers of the crowd outside rolled in a swell through the hull and the corridors of the Rebel freighter Sol whilst those gathered about the Ops room watched the live feed on the HoloNet, hearing that cheer all over again with a few seconds' delay as it was broadcast across the galaxy.

Having landed just minutes before with the Zephyr and the Paaliaq, Tag Massa had been too late to do anything but board the Sol and watch with the grouped senior officers, aware that she was seeing history in the making, close enough to be part of it yet still, ironically, gathered round the HoloNet projector with everyone else.

In the image, the Emperor bowed slightly but formally, before standing for a few moments in acknowledgement of the crowd, his ever-supportive wife beside him, a scarlet tabard covering the pure white which she'd claimed she would wear until his safe return.

Finally, he turned and walked into the consular ship, the perfect rows of Imperial troops filing in behind him as the rows of Lorric pennants rose to full-height. Smaller fighters began to lift off to run cover as the heat-haze from the Consular Ship's engines rippled the air, fluttering the rows of flags behind it.

In the Sol's Ops room the officers about Captain Varo stood in mute silence, watching images of the ships taking off in perfect parade-formation, intercut with long pans over the crowd who chanted and yelled, unwilling to disperse, still high on the massed atmosphere.

"Well, that was a disaster which just kept gathering momentum," Varo said at last, disgusted.

Beside her, the blond-furred Caamasi captain of the Paaliaq, Ateya, glanced briefly to her before turning to the other officers present as if she hadn't spoken. "Was he serious—the Emperor just made a very public offer to come to the table with the Alliance."

"Who exactly are the Moderate Alliance?" Commander Dietz asked.

"I would imagine that would be us, Sir," Tag supplied, offering subtle guidance, as ever, quietly eager to circulate the facts as soon as possible. "A differentiation, perhaps, between ourselves and General Madine's faction."

"Did we record that?" Ateya asked, eyes still on the holoscreen. "Go back—he said months of negotiations, didn't he?"

"I believe you may wish to speak to the Council about that, Sirs."

Everyone turned and Tag glanced down, the perfect picture of studied consideration and understated confidence. "Chief Organa has already had several meetings with the Emperor towards this goal, as the Council is aware."

"…What!" Shock gave Dietz's voice volume.

Tag turned coolly on him, neatly deflecting the blame, as it had always been her remit to do, from the woman who she knew would lead the Alliance in this as no one else could. "You should understand, Sir, that I advised her against making the facts known too early, for obvious reasons. The decision was made on both sides to wait until some form of universal acknowledgement could be made. It seems the chair has been very publicly pulled out for us to sit."

Ateya raised her snout as she turned dark, glassy eyes on Tag. "How long have they been in talks?"

"Sufficiently long that I believe the Emperor is genuine in this offer."

"This is outrageous," Varo declared tersely.

"Outrageous? This is surely what we've always sought, Captain Varo—or am I wrong?"

"We're actually even considering speaking to him based on this…this publicity stunt!"

"Is it though?" Ateya remained the voice of reason, as Caamasi so often were. "Remember the Fondor Shipyards…the release of all our troops? What did he claim at the time that it was?"

"A public statement of Imperial intent," Commander Pierce said levelly, eyes remaining on the images as the noise of the nearby crowds still filtered through the ship. "That's what he said at the time. I was there, listening, when he spoke to Chief Organa."

"Chief Organa had already spoken more than once to the Emperor by that point, on behalf of the Alliance. I suppose it does no harm now to tell you that Chief Organa had told him that she was looking for a gesture, made in good faith. All things considered, I believe that it's our turn to provide such an undertaking now. Our turn to prove that we are more than blinkered extremists." Tag glanced to Varo, her inference clear.

"I say we should talk," Dietz said decisively.

Varo turned on him. "This is ridiculous—intolerable."

"What, the chance to end a three-decade-long civil war?" Pierce asked.

"The fact that a few smooth words and empty promises can turn your heads so easily."

"Words cost nothing," Captain Ateya said in agreement with Pierce. "Bearing that in mind, I think we should enter talks."

Tag watched in silence, knowing that this same discussion was being echoed on every Rebel vessel in space right now, the news traveling like wildfire.

"I'll be damned if I'll negotiate with him—ever," Varo snapped, though she was clearly in the minority.

"It's your right to say that, Ma'am," Tag said levelly, laying the seeds of contention by dropping a public suggestion of the split which she knew the Emperor had always intended, stoking the fire that would instigate the separation of the tolerant many from the minority radicals. "It's also your right—and your duty—to step down if you find yourself unable to serve the views of the organization you supposedly represent."

Tag's comlink chose that moment to chime and she glanced at it, then back to the assembled officers. "Home One's just made geostationary orbit with Chief Organa presently aboard, Sirs—I'm sure she and the Council will field all questions, then we can do that for which we've always fought: we'll put it to the majority vote."

"Is there really anything to vote for?" Captain Ateya asked, looking round. "Isn't this what we've been fighting for all this time?"

Tag smiled just slightly, an elated buzz warming through her as she nodded her head. "I believe so, Captain, I really do. But I know the Chief, and I know she'll wish to put it to the vote anyway… Then we can begin preparations to enter into formal negotiations."









In the safety of the Imperial Consular Ship, Luke leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, trembling with exhaustion. Kiria snapped her fingers to usher the waiting medics forward, but Luke waved them away, leaning one hand on Mara's shoulder as he walked slowly toward the medi-bay, Nathan closely attentive.

"How many, Nath?" he asked weakly without turning.

"I'm sorry?"

"How many—in the crowd?"

Nathan was silent for a moment, then, "A dozen, all near the beginning. How did you know?"

Luke shrugged. "It was a little too perfect. It felt orchestrated."

"Only to you, I assure you," Nathan promised. "For the most part, it was spontaneous. We simply provided a little impetus."

"And the foliage?" Luke asked wryly, leaning against the medi-bay examination bed, drained.

"We may have provided a few sellers," Nathan said contentedly. "Local suppliers, of course—just in case they check." He shrugged as Luke glanced to him. "I would."

Luke smiled as he finally dropped back onto the medical bed; it felt impossibly good. "Don't ever tell me you weren't born for politics, Nath."













Mara was leaning against the far wall in the dim outer room of the medi-bay, watching through the wide plexiglass screen as Luke slept in the darkened room beyond, his hair still slick from his overnight immersion in bacta. He hated the stuff, Mara knew, but Nathan had somehow persuaded him to acquiesce, though what bribery he'd used she couldn't imagine.

Maybe it was just the medic's impressively dogged ability to wear people down, because the moment Luke was in bacta Nathan had turned his attentions back to Mara, scanning her then nagging her relentlessly until she'd let him give her a tonic shot, before ordering a 'balanced meal' delivered to her quarters and hustling her off there to rest.

Which she'd done for all of five hours…then she'd redressed and sneaked back into the medi-bay to watch Luke flinch and twitch to unknown dreams in the bacta, aware as never before of those same smoky nightmares at the corners of her own perceptions, but unable quite to either see or disperse them.

Now though, he slept quietly, the bruises and countless nicks and cuts gone as if they'd never existed, only the deeper surgery scar from the removal of the slave-chip and the deep infection of his ankle remaining. Mara tilted her head as she watched him, a smile coming to her lips…then fading as she narrowed her eyes, turning to stare at the door into the main medi-bay just seconds before it opened.

Kiria D'Arca stepped into the room, her long ruby gown rustling in the silence, subtle flickers of rose gold within the embroidery catching briefly in the light from the corridor beyond.

She was two steps forward into the darkened room before she realized Mara's presence in the shadows, turning as she started.

Mara folded her arms, head tilting. "Come to arrest me?"

It took the Empress no more than a second to regain her poise. "Why, have you done something else?"

"I thought you weren't finished from last time."

Kiria's expression cooled, but she turned away, looking instead to Luke. "Has Hallin said when he'll wake?"

Mara's eyes stayed on Kiria for a few seconds more, then she turned back to Luke. "He says a while yet."

"He looked dreadful," Kiria said with feeling before turning to Mara, tone as uncompromising as ever. "You should have gotten him out sooner."

"He got himself out actually," Mara said coolly. "We just picked him up. And we would have been there a whole lot sooner if we'd been traveling with Star Destroyers, not avoiding them."

Kiria turned back to the sleeping figure, unmoved. "Perhaps you should remember that next time you choose to disobey a direct order from the Emperor."

"Perhaps I should remember it when I'm writing my report of this whole incident. Which do you think I should use, obstruct, impede or just plain hinder? Or maybe all three."

In the low light, Mara actually thought she saw a slight smile from the Empress…even heard it in her voice when she spoke. "And so on, and so forth." Kiria was silent for a long time, her eyes never leaving Luke. When she spoke, there was a rare allowance in her voice. "You did well to find him."

Mara straightened, uncomfortable. Having nothing to say to that, she finally settled back against the wall once more to watch Luke sleep for a while. When Kiria didn't leave, Mara finally allowed without turning. "I guess…the stuff you did was…appropriate."

"Did you think it wouldn't be?" Kiria said quietly. "Or did you simply hope it? I'm afraid you won't get rid of me that easily, Commander Jade. The Emperor is moving from strength to strength, and I intend to do so with him. I also intend not to add to his burden at this or any other time."

"Really," Mara said dryly, "so you're leaving then?"

"I'm speaking in terms of not wishing to bother the Emperor with the unimportant trivia of all that took place in his absence."

"Ah, is that what you're calling it now?"

"We could stand here and argue till dawn, Commander Jade, and it would only ever be dancing around the relevant discussion that must come eventually."

Mara tipped her head. "Go on?"

"The truce we have—I'm suggesting that it stays in place a little while longer."

"Interesting," Mara said vaguely, remembering Luke's confidence that this offer would come—he could be maddeningly right sometimes.

"I'm sure you'll agree that everything that's happened paves the way for a little…furthering of our entente cordiale," Kiria said smoothly.

"I thought the deal was, I got Luke back, you kept things ticking, end of deal."

"I have a new deal—and frankly I don't think either of us can afford to pass it up." When Mara remained silent, Kiria continued. "What I'm saying, is this: we each have a secret about the other…I know about the vials, and you know about what I intended that day. There's an obvious solution here, don't you agree?"

"Hey, what I did was an error of judgment. You tried to arrest me!"

Kiria turned, long lashes a smoky line over almond eyes. "And you have some proof of that fact? You know as well as I do that the Emperor will not act against an individual without tangible, legitimately binding proof. That is the Empire he's creating, and he's already illustrated just how much he is willing to suffer to uphold those values. And I believe that all of the guards who detained Nathan Hallin have coincidentally been reassigned far from Coruscant. Though I'm not certain, of course—in all the upheaval, I understand certain guard rosters were lost."

Mara nodded. "How very fortunate."

"Isn't it?"

"I don't need proof. I can just…" Mara hesitated; she'd almost said 'look into your head,' but stopped herself in time. D'Arca didn't need to know that. "I can tell Luke, and he needs only to be near you to know the truth, you know that. If he asks you face to face, do you seriously think you can lie to him?"

"What I was doing, I believed was right for the Emperor. If he chose to look into my thoughts, he would realize that too."

"Really?" Mara asked, looking to cut the Empress down a strip whether it was true or not. "Well then, why are you so damn reluctant to tell him?"

"I told you, I wish to avoid troubling the Emperor unduly. All you would do in bringing this up is to place him in an untenable position, because the truth is that he still needs me."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?"

"As sure as I am that, for whatever reason, he has not grown bored of his little trinket yet. Though that may change if the ugly truth came out—because the whole truth would come out, I promise you. His little trinket wouldn't remain untarnished. And at the end of the day, all we would have succeeded in doing is alienating the Emperor on both our parts, and providing one more proof that we're incapable of simple self-restraint—even when we're both aware that this is the most inopportune of times… Hardly a flattering image, I'm sure you'll agree."

"And Nathan?" Mara asked. "How exactly do you think Nathan will feel about this little…deal?"

"I have already spoken indirectly to Nathan Hallin of this, and I believe he understands the need for stability. He will, I'm sure, be quite the statesman, given time…and no matter what else, I'm beginning to realize that Nathan Hallin will always do whatever he believes is best for his Emperor."

"A pity you didn't realize that before you arrested him."

Kiria ignored the bait. "I recognize in Hallin someone who is determined to be of use to the Emperor and to the society he is building. In you…I see a bodyguard, nothing more."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If you must remain, then at least try to learn to be of value to him…learn how to play the game."

"I'm guessing that a rough translation of that is, keep my mouth shut, right?"

"A little…diplomacy wouldn't go amiss either."

"And you just happen to know that kind of stuff, right?"

"If you think I'm interested in teaching you, then you're mistaken. I'm simply offering a method by which to ensure that your remaining time here will be minimally damaging on all sides. There is no need for either or both of us to go down in flames. Granted, there's every chance he'll eventually forgive us, but if there's one thing I've learned about our Emperor, it's that he doesn't trust easily—and if that trust is broken, it takes a long, long time to heal."

"You think you know all the angles, don't you? All those answers neatly in place."

"I think I know the society which I inhabit, Commander Jade."

"And of course, I don't?" Mara provided acerbically. "It may interest you to know that whilst you were wafting around that society you place so much store in, if you'd've had the wherewithal to look around occasionally, you might have seen me just quietly mingling. Because I didn't grow up simply in that society, I grew up at the very center of it—in the Imperial Palace itself. And brace yourself, but I happen to have friends in the Royal Houses too—ones I can actually trust. Ones who were brought up with and understand all the self-centered powerplays that go on in your elite little clique. And speaking of tarnishing reputations, while we were out retrieving the Emperor, my friend and I were still watching you…and she tells me that you were warming up for a coup, with all your careful removal of any opposition."

Kiria shrugged, unoffended. "I was placing certain insurances in position, yes. Anyone would have done the same in any similar situation, to ensure the smooth continuity of the Empire. Interregnums are dangerous things."

"Smooth continuity!" Mara scoffed. "With you at its head, no doubt."

"If need be. Rather me than some unknown Moff—or worse, power struggles and civil war. I could ensure that continuity more than you realize."

Mara shook her head. "Well, don't you just have an answer for everything."

Those perfect rosebud lips lifted. "You say that as if it's a bad thing."

Mara's eyes narrowed, but she was tiring of this game, and the truth was, D'Arca had already conceded in putting the offer forward. "You want to compromise? You want some kind of insurance against this particular run of spectacularly bad decisions? Fine."

Kiria's eyes came momentarily to hers, and Mara shrugged. "Let's just say a lot of things have cleared up for me in the last few weeks, including my own future. And yours, as it happens. Luke says he needs you to hold the Royal Houses in line when the changes start happening, and if he thinks he needs you, then that's good enough for me—for now. As far as I'm concerned, you can stay."

Kiria arched one perfectly manicured eyebrow. "How very gracious of you."

"But understand this—I'm watching you, and the moment I think you're no longer acting like the asset he believes he needs, this deal is over. Just remember that the next time you're working on that smooth continuity."

D'Arca wasn't fazed in the slightest. "Then we have an understanding?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Mara said coolly. "Compromise, maybe."

Kiria turned to look again to Luke's sleeping form as he shifted slightly. "A wise man once told me that compromise was good; compromise he understood."

Mara frowned for a few seconds before realizing whom she was speaking of, and had to let out a quiet laugh. "This from the man who didn't like the way the galaxy was run, so decided to change it."

Kiria too smiled just slightly. "I suspect our idea of compromise may differ a little from his."

Mara nodded in wry agreement. "I deeply suspect his idea of compromise is, 'Everybody do what I think is best, and somehow I'll make you think it was what you wanted too.' "

Kiria nodded, amused, and Mara wondered if they had just shared another like-minded moment; that made two in the last year—she was getting worried.

She shrugged, not wishing to think about that. "I guess a little informed compromise is warranted right now, huh?"

"This is so much more than that, Commander Jade—this is how affairs of state work. We each now have a vested interest in holding our silence…and a common link. Governments and social contracts are all well and good, but this is what holds and sustains those who dictate such things. This is what drives them."

"I thought it was the common good?"

"Don't be naïve. Alliances are seldom formed on such altruistic reasons as good will. But it can slowly become that way—when one feels one can trust one's...acquaintances."

"Let's not get carried away here, shall we?" Mara said dryly.

"You will find that there's nothing cements any alliance like mutual reliance."

"Which we suddenly have, because if you rat on me, I get to rat on you, right?"

"Not exactly the words I would have used, but essentially, yes."

"And what phrase would you have used?" Mara asked.

Kiria's ruby lips lifted into the sweetest of smiles. "I would perhaps have said, welcome to the fascinating powerhouse of Palace politics, Commander Jade."

"Really?" Mara tilted her head. "I think it might be a short stay. In fact, I think that mutual truce might be over about when I finish this sentence…I'm pregnant."

Kiria blinked slowly, and Mara had the satisfaction of seeing that perfect visage of serene beauty crack just slightly before she regained control.

"I see…and the Emperor..."

"Knows."

"I see."





Watched by the Emperor's endlessly irascible mistress, Kiria's mind raced to process this fact and analyze it past the momentary blinding burst of alarm, determined not to flounder before her adversary. Unthinkingly, she smoothed the folds of her gown, tucked a stray lock of hair back beneath the elaborate headdress she wore, all the while weighing unwelcome facts against her projected intentions…

And the game wasn't over—not yet.

The Emperor's trinket was bearing his child…an unfortunate circumstance, and since the Emperor knew, an essentially unchangeable one. But at the end of the day, she was only a mistress, and Kiria's position remained the same; she was Empress, which meant that if she bore a child, unless the Emperor specifically ruled otherwise, it would still be the legitimate heir. The whole galaxy had seen her step into her husband's role on the very day that his abduction had been made public. She was the one they had seen, not Jade, who had only ever worked out of sight, and disappeared completely when the truth was out, unnoticed by all. Jade's child could even be publicly acknowledged—though she doubted the Emperor would ever be so impolitic as to do that—and it would still remain of lower hereditary status than any child Kiria bore as Empress, ensuring the continuity she intended, contrary even to... A thought occurred which prompted a small, dry laugh. "So Palpatine wins by default."

Jade frowned, eyes narrowing. "What?"

"It was what he always intended—didn't you know? He said I was the perfect Empress. For all the reasons I've always claimed and Luke acknowledged, I was the ideal choice for Empress… But he said that the price for his allowing me that position would be that you bore the Heir."

Jade too laughed bitterly at Palpatine's achievement of his goals, in maneuvering all concerned into his chosen line, even from the grave. "I think Luke may have a surprise or two left for the old man yet."

"The dissolution of autocracy? True, I don't think Palpatine planned for that," Kiria allowed, amused. "I admit, I didn't know myself immediately… Oh, I thought our fresh, young Emperor would make changes when he came to power—maybe even radical ones, increasing liberties and justice in the constitution, that kind of thing. But you'll notice I didn't look too surprised standing on that dais behind him today. You'd be amazed how quickly the greater picture becomes clear when you have access to that wonderful archive bank as de-facto Head of State—even for a short while. And if he wants to bring some petty little Rebellion into line rather than simply destroy them, then that's his prerogative, of course."

"So you're still…"

"Backing him? Yes."

Jade's voice lowered warily. "So, what, do you know something I don't?"

"Very probably," Kiria said easily. "I may even know something Luke hasn't considered, in this instance. I know it because I have lived my life here, among the echelons of power, and I know what changes with greater events—and what will not. You see, whether he holds the throne or not, Luke will remain at the head of one of the most significant Royal Houses ever created. I came into this marriage bringing loyalties and connections and affiliations and support, all of which were invaluable to Luke. What he doesn't realize is just how many connections and loyalties he himself commands—whether he is Emperor or not. His influence extends now to all the Royal Houses, the military… This fledgling government he seems intent on creating, even it will owe its very existence to him. In his resolve to create a stable platform from which to work, he has created the most powerful, influential, all-encompassing Royal House in existence. You are thinking in very narrow terms when you think of him as Emperor, Commander Jade. The dynasty and the legacy he has created will not cease to exist simply because he takes a step back—if that is even possible."

"I think he's pretty conclusively proven that if he says something's possible, it will become so—even if he has to make it so himself."

"For once, I think you're right. But I also look at what he's done, the choices he's made, the variables he's allowed for, the options he held in reserve but never played… And I know the man. I know that he is possessed of a determination that this will be a smooth transition from absolute rule to democracy. And if that's what he intends, it may not be nearly as easy to extricate himself from center stage as he hopes. No, I think I will be admiring that same magnificent view from the balcony of my apartments in the Imperial Palace for the foreseeable future."

"I think you'll be surprised," Jade held. "If Luke wants to step down, he'll step down."

"I think the relevant word in that sentence is if," Kiria said knowingly.

Jade's hand came to rest subconsciously on her stomach, and Kiria glanced down incrementally. "You're wondering where your child fits into all this? Then let me tell you: it doesn't. Oh, there's room in the legacy I've just described for a mistress—there are many hundreds of such through the history of most Royal Houses…though I couldn't tell you the name of any of them. They fall back into obscurity very quickly once a legitimate heir is born."

"You seriously think he'll..." Jade shook her head, amused. "You don't know him as well as you think."

Kiria smiled gracefully, dimples settling in delicately rouged cheeks, an imperfection which she always felt added a human touch to flawless beauty. "Perhaps—but I know myself."

Unimpressed, Jade lifted her chin in defiance, every bit as fiery as her titian hair implied. "You're not the threat you think you are, Kiria D'Arca—not even nearly. You want your name in the history books? You want that title, that recognition? Take them. You want that damn precious coronet you're wearing? Fine, have it. It's just a heavy collection of cold stones that catch the light and make people look occasionally. And the kind of people who are blinded by a little sparkle are not the kind that I'm interested in impressing. It's the man I want, not his position." Jade smiled, clearly taking great delight in throwing Kiria's words, from their very first meeting, back at her right now. "You can keep the title, Excellency, I have no need of it; I have the man."


She turned to stride from the room, head high—then paused to glance back from the doorway. "That truce still in effect?"

Kiria flashed her most dazzling smile. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Because nothing had changed. Her Emperor was back in one piece. He still had his little trinket in tow—Jade may even have managed to secure a more solid standing and status than Kiria had intended—but the Emperor still needed Kiria, and so her own position remained assured. She even had a truce in place now which would protect it...and she had, of course, every intention of changing that status-quo, given time.

"As I said earlier, Commander Jade…welcome to Palace politics."













The first thing which struck Luke when he woke was that nothing hurt. He would have remained like this, eyes blissfully closed, just savoring the moment, if he hadn't sensed Kiria's presence close by.

When he looked up she was standing attentively close, the deep ruby hue of her impeccably bias-cut gown striking in the calm, pale tones of the medi-bay.

"Welcome home," she smiled, voice velvet. "Or rather, to the Patriot—but then you've always considered the military more of a home than Coruscant anyway, haven't you?"

"Neither are, actually," Luke murmured, voice hoarse.

"Reticent as ever." Kiria smiled as she reached to the side table to pour him a glass of water. For a second she paused, and Luke thought she might try to hold it to his lips, so lifted himself quickly upright—too quickly as it happened, his head spinning.

He gritted his teeth, pressing the control to lift the bed behind him then holding out his hand for the glass. "News?" he prompted.

"As you hoped," Kiria said, taking her cue from his businesslike tone. "I'm sure you have your own sources who can give you more detailed accounts, but Intel sources report that the Rebel Alliance is beginning to polarize, splitting off into moderates and militants as they prepare to vote. That is what that speech was intended to do, isn't it?"

"More or less," Luke admitted. He looked sharply to Kiria. "But I also meant it."

"I'm very glad you did," Kiria said smoothly. "Otherwise your actions over the last year or so would have been rather…puzzling." Luke kept his eyes on her, and she shrugged just slightly. "Hindsight—and a week's access to all those important documents—is a useful thing."

"And you're still here?"

"Why would I not be? I told you a long time ago that I would back you in your choices."

"And House D'Arca? I'm not sure your father will be quite so steadfast."

"My father ceased to be the power behind the House D'Arca the day we married, and you well know it. We will remain your lasting allies."

"Thank you," Luke said—it would have been petty not to.

His thoughts went briefly to Mara, curious as to whether Kiria had tried to strike a deal yet, though to ask her now would have been tantamount to an admission of knowledge which would have rendered the deal obsolete. Since it appeared to be keeping the peace right now, he felt no need to push it. It would come out eventually, he was sure, but meanwhile, he fully intended to savor the tranquility.

Glancing down, Luke noticed for the first time the ring on Kiria's finger. She followed his gaze and lifted her hand, rubbing her fingers over the ring. "You'd like this back, I suppose?"

"Yes." Mara had told him what D'Arca had done when the ring had arrived, and all that it had achieved, and he didn't now want to seem ungrateful, but this was important…and with Kiria, one could leave no ambiguity. "The ring—it's Mara's, if it's not on my finger. You should know that."

Kiria lifted her chin. "She never asked for it."

"She shouldn't have had to."

Kiria tried a full-lipped pout. "And what do I get?"

"You get fifteen properties, including estates on Coruscant, Teyr and Commenor, staff to run them, protection, a generous annuity for life and my…undying gratitude."

Kiria lifted her hand to study the blue-stone. "But it is a very nice ring."

"Which isn't yours."

Smiling, Kiria slipped the ring from her finger. Still, when she handed it over, Luke could detect a trace of genuine reluctance.

"I actually did like to wear it, you know."

He took the ring, returning it to his little finger, uncomfortable in all that he asked of her. "I know."

Kiria hesitated. "And I did miss you."

Luke kept his eyes on the ring, deeply ill at ease, and seeing this, Kiria brightened with her usual indomitable manner. "I had no one to buy jewels for me."

Luke laughed just slightly, aware of what she was doing. "I'm sure you can buy your own."

"But it's not nearly as much fun as when you give them to me," she teased lightly. "And besides, I happen to think I earn them. I look on them as tangible proof of trust."

"I wouldn't use that as your validation if I were you," Luke warned gamely. "You might find yourself with less than you imagine."

"I think you'll be surprised."

"I'd be very surprised," Luke said levelly. "I've never once trusted you in the past."

Kiria smiled, redoubtable. "A new start, then?"

Luke looked down. "It may not be the one you want…Mara's—"

"Yes, I know. She told me."

Luke hesitated, and Kiria pushed on decisively.

"You still need me."

"Yes, I do," he agreed, meeting her eyes. "And you'll still stay because you think you can change me."

She flashed that perfect smile, ruby lips against warm, caramel skin. "Perhaps I'll surprise you again."

She held his eyes for a few seconds longer, then withdrew with her usual timely grace, leaving Luke alone to drop back onto his pillow, still exhausted, unthinkingly using his thumb to rotate his mother's ring about his finger as he'd always done, prizing the feeling of completeness now that he had it again.

Mara had explained already what it had gained for him, and…it would be nice to think that his mother had been watching over him through this. That in some way, her ring had helped protect him. Helped hold together the Empire that his father had created from the mire of civil war, and then granted Luke the impetus to scour from it any hint of Palpatine's involvement.

Would she approve now, he wondered? Would she delight in watching the first steps of this fledgling Empire away from autocracy and toward democracy once again? Surely so. His thoughts went to the only holo he owned of her—to that cascade of walnut hair that her daughter had inherited, amongst other traits. His father had always held that Padmé had been a good and just person…and she was part of him, just as his father had said. Just as she was part of Leia, she was part of what had made him. She too was part of his legacy. She too had saved him, in the end.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Leia stood on the wide terrazzo-marble balcony of the stately Imperial Palace, its pale honey hue reflecting the midday sunlight, a strong autumn breeze flicking stray strands of hair loose from the plaited and coiled formal style she wore, tiny seed-pearl pins holding it in place. She gazed out over the breathtaking vistas, head still spinning, as much from the fact that she could stand here at the seat of government once again without fear of persecution as from the dizzying views.

It was barely three months since Luke's grand vision had been made public, and today she and other moderate Rebels had been present when the Emperor had made his formal speech opening the Peace Summit—the first time in decades that diplomats faithful to the Old Republic had been legally present on Coruscant.

In it, he'd pledged a tract of land close to the Imperial Palace at the heart of Old Coruscant which had, for almost thirty years, been a massive military barracks compound. On the very first day of talks, Luke had opened with the announcement that this barracks complex would be dismantled to clear the ground for a new civic building. He'd gone on to both offer and demand concessions as a condition to talks, and to clarify the principles, conventions and agendas that would bind all present, before he closed by voicing the hope that by the time the building was complete, those who had attended these talks today would have the honor and the responsibility to both name and nurture it.

The site had, thirty years previously, been the location of the Old Republic Senate.

Leia allowed herself a wry private smile. Her brother, she had to admit, had a flair for the persuasively, inspirationally theatrical.

And the historically significant. Because today everyone knew that they had, in effect, witnessed the creation of the new Imperial Senate.

Imperial Senate…a contradiction in terms, she mused; but then no more so than the man who had instigated it.

He stood alone now, as she'd learned in the last three months that he often did, even when surrounded by people, remaining subtly apart from those present as he leaned on the carved marble balustrade of the balcony which led out from his private quarters. They had a few hours before the official inauguration dinner was to commence, members of all parties convening for the momentous event, and she and Han had been quietly approached by the newly inaugurated Chancellor Hallin, with a very private invitation to the Emperor's residence.

Feeling slightly guilty at disturbing his privacy—not surprisingly given his life, he seemed to have developed the unique ability to emit an invisible 'leave me alone' signal—Leia nonetheless set forward to…to her brother.

As she came to a halt beside him, she noticed that he was staring thoughtfully at the small wooden box which he held, plain and unadorned and no larger than a clenched fist.

Leia smiled, leaning against the cool stone balustrade. "What's that?"

He glanced up from his reverie as if only now realizing she was there, his mismatched eyes holding a startling intensity, his face, his whole demeanor dark and withdrawn…then in an instant it was gone, like a cloud passing over the sun, and he smiled—and was instantly the pilot she'd known so well.

"Nothing." He turned the small box over in his hands as he shrugged. "Nothing important."

Leia frowned, curious, eyes going back from Luke to the box, and he smiled again, loosening the tight lid with a grinding turn and handing it over to her.

She took it and peered within…but it contained nothing more than a fine grey ash. Leia looked back to him in wordless query, but he only shrugged again.

"See—it's nothing at all."

"Then why do you keep it?"

He stared at the box for long moments…then nodded just slightly, as if some private decision had been reached. "You're right. Throw it away."

Leia glanced at the pale ash in the box once more, instinctively aware that something of great import was happening here, but unsure what it was. Watching him closely, she held it out over the edge of the balcony…

There was something in his eyes as he watched, something mischievous and tentative and wicked and vulnerable all at the same time, so that Leia frowned, uncertain. "Are you sure?"

He nodded again. "Empty it."

Leia turned it upside down and the pale ashes tumbled free, a momentary cloud which instantly scattered, carried away on the high wind.

She watched them for an instant, but it was her brother who took her attention. Some deep change came over him, his gaze, his whole body and awareness following the path of the ashes as they dispersed, the wind whipping them instantly away though he remained attentive, staring in silence as if he could still see them as they scattered. For a long time he was still, eyes on the distant skyline as the wind whipped at his hair, that shadow coming over his face again, a melancholy quietness taking him…

Then he turned sharply, and Leia felt the box in her hand fragment and disintegrate as the wood collapsed into itself as if under massive pressure, reduced to dust and splinters in a single second though not one even scratched her skin, the power and energy of the act leaving them warm in her palm. Startled, she opened her hand—and the wind took the fragments, whipping them away, the pieces too fine to follow and gone in a blink of the eye.

She stared at Luke, sure now that something of great consequence had just happened but unable to fathom what. But he smiled, and it warmed his face and his sense—she felt it quite distinctly.

"It's nothing," he reassured again. "Nothing important. Not anymore."

He turned and paused, crooking his arm in invitation, and Leia didn't need to see the ever-attentive Mara Jade's surprise to know just how hard Luke was trying. Every now and then in brief, self-conscious bursts, he tried so hard to be what he once was. Not all the time, and not always successfully; he knew that as well as Leia did. But it didn't matter—she had enough faith for both of them, and for now that was enough. Maybe he was right and he would never again be the man he'd been when Leia had lost him, but she knew absolutely that he would never be the man that Palpatine had sought so hard to create. And that too, right now, was enough.

So she smiled as she stepped forward, slipping her arm into Luke's and allowing herself to be led back into the grand drawing room where Nathan, Han and a suspiciously loosely-dressed Mara stood in easy conversation. It was an open secret, of course, though most seemed to think that the child was Nathan Hallin's. In fact, Leia was pretty sure that the only people who knew the truth were the people in this room—and Han had now managed to go a whole forty minutes without making typically indiscreet mention of the fact. Leia was proud of him.

"Hey, Kid…" About as uncomfortable as any smuggler would be in a tailored military dress uniform, Han stepped to Leia's side, fingering his high collar as he glanced to the balcony where she'd just emptied the ashes, his words betraying his close attentiveness to…well, it could have been either of them, Leia reflected. "Puttin' out the trash there?"

Beside her, Luke seemed to allow himself a private smile. "Somebody had to."





Once, just once more, Luke allowed himself to half-turn and glance back into the darkening sky where Palpatine's ashes had dispersed—at his sister's hand, not his own. A flash-image lit his thoughts—of the vow he'd made to Palpatine in that fateful duel, hurled with such desolate fury at his father's murderer. "Luke Skywalker would have killed you, but that's not enough for me, not anymore—you taught me that. So when I take your power I'll dedicate it to removing every single trace that you ever existed... And then I'll take your ashes and scatter them to the winds... All that work, all your ambitions, your power, your precious Sith dynasty, all reduced to nothing. Dust in the wind."

Dust in the wind. He should have felt something more perhaps, at this final achievement of all that he'd pushed toward for so long, the oath he'd made to Palpatine with every fiber of his being in retribution for his father's death. He wanted to feel more, some sense of completion, of finality, of triumph…but his thoughts were already elsewhere—on the future and where he and Leia could take this fresh new hope, rather than the hollow fulfillment of that bitter oath. So in the end, the vow which had shaped and driven him for so long amounted to nothing more substantial than dust in the wind, scattered and diffuse and instantly gone.

Awareness of his sister's close curiosity pulled him back from darker thoughts and Luke smiled, his attention on Leia once more. "We should find you a residence on Coruscant," he said at last. "Something close to the new Senate, when it's made operational."

"We've only just started the summit and already you're planning a Senate," Leia said wryly.

Luke glanced to the balcony, knowing that far below, the first heavy construction droids were being assembled in preparation to dismantle the heavily fortified complex of military barracks which stood guard at the perimeter of the Imperial Palace. "I can see it exactly…from the main spire right down to the floor underfoot."

For some reason he didn't truly understand yet felt driven to do, he'd ordered the two halves of the stone circle which had always rested beneath Palpatine's Sunburst Throne to be taken up and stored for transportation to the new Senate which would be built in their place, in preparation to be laid in the center of the main Senate chamber, recombined into the single complete circle that Luke had briefly seen, in that vision long ago in his Master's Throne Room.

It gave him immense pleasure to know that it would remain forever at the very center of the Senate that Palpatine had devoted so much of his existence towards dismantling. Somehow, like the dark, rust red disk set within a pale cream ring, the act felt like the last circle combined and completed; the last of the prophesy fulfilled. He would, he knew, smile every time he saw it, knowing from where it had been removed. And he intended to see it a lot in the upcoming years, as the fledgling Senate formed—and for Leia to do the same.

And she wouldn't be alone; other moderate members of the Alliance Council would be with her. Others still, of a more military bearing, had already been plucked from their present Alliance positions and placed in innocuous positions within the Imperial fleet. A few years to settle everyone to the notion, and he'd be able to quietly promote them to high-ranking positions—and in doing so, create the shortcut which would enable him to break the Royal Houses' present stronghold on the upper echelons of the military.

Leia shrugged, leaning into him. "Oh, it's fine—I don't intend staying on Coruscant that long."

"No," Luke said ruefully. "Neither did I."

She was always his key player. He'd always needed her. For himself, for the galaxy…for that damn prophesy to be finally put to rest. Luke felt a brief pang of regret that his father had fulfilled the prophesy and never known; had created that balance, that symmetry in his son and his daughter. Twins, different aspects of the Force existing in equilibrium: dark and light, power and conscience.

But to complete the prophesy, Luke needed to activate that potential—needed to give Leia the same power as himself. So he would train her, as Yoda trained him; as a Jedi. He could remember Master Yoda's lessons, could place himself back in that mindset, albeit temporarily. Give her the power to stand against him, personally and politically, to balance him.

He needed someone to counter his own abilities, and it couldn't and shouldn't be Mara; he didn't want to be placed in contention against her even once. As Nathan had so diplomatically pointed out, despite their combined efforts, they were explosive enough without any extra incentives.

So he'd needed another Force-sensitive—but not just any; one who had more invested in maintaining this balancing act than simple friendship. Leia would have the strength and the standpoint to counter him, and the commitment and the relationship never to try to overthrow him—not seriously, at least. And he knew that he would allow her more leeway than any other, because of who she was. The temptation to eventually turn on anyone else would, sooner or later, come into play and he knew it. Whatever else he was, he was still Palpatine's Wolf.

But his sister would balance him, as the prophesy had said; where he was power, she was compassion. He had the initiative to counter her doubts, the drive to balance her cautious reserve, but she was the conscience to balance his temper, the restraint to curb his impatience…if he gave her the power. And he would; had started already, because without it, he couldn't continue. Without it, he would tear himself apart and he knew it. That was what the final vision of the throne had meant—the knowledge that if he sat on the throne, if he took that power alone, it would destroy him. But the natural balance was right here…it had been all along.

Would it be enough to counter all that his old Master had carved into him? He doubted it—though Leia had already voiced her hope that it could. It was, Luke suspected, her main motivation in agreeing to be taught. Perhaps she was right…

Because for the first time he genuinely believed he had something to temper the Darkness within, something to give him the confidence to act without Palpatine's shadow hanging over him. Something to hold the wolf in check.

Let the Darkness sit in his shadow; he would have the light to keep it there.

And he had Mara…he looked across the airy, opulent room and she turned instantly from where she stood speaking with Nathan close to the door, ever the bodyguard, even now, despite the ambassadorial robes which both wore. He'd noticed that her clothing had changed again in the last few weeks, looser, less form-fitting pieces the order of the day—though he was pretty damn sure that she had at the very least one blaster concealed in their folds somewhere, and her lightsaber of course; strictly for sentimental value, she claimed.

She raised her eyebrows as her head tilted in laconic question, but he only smiled slightly, admiring her, unabashed. Mara, whom he thought he could never trust again…and who, as it turned out, he'd trusted most of all. Mara, who'd been his strength even when he didn't realize it. He glanced down once to her stomach, and she ran her hand lightly across it, an unspoken language for a private passion. Where they went from here he didn't know—but he knew they'd travel together. They always had.

And his son—Leia had given his unborn son the most precious gift of all: choice. That alone would have bought her immunity even from his capricious nature. His son would grow up to a whole galaxy of promise and possibilities, all the potential in the worlds, all the choice—and in a galaxy where everyone had those same freedoms. Between the people in this room, they would make sure of it.













Just one day after the launch of the Peace Summit, the Emperor's plain-spoken opening address assuring his enduring status as the man of the hour and champion of the people, Talon Karrde stood before the bank of tall glass doors in the Emperor's private office within the Cabinet of the Imperial Palace, gazing out at the magnificent sight of the sleeping ecumenopolis. A cool, low autumn mist lay between the blue-tinged buildings in the early morning light, the tallest spires reaching through the still haze of an early frost.

It was, he had to admit, an inspiring view, seen from an extraordinary building.

Just for a second, he wondered what it must be like to look out from this palace and know that all that you can see, you possess. To stand here in the dead of night and look up at the stars and know that your word commanded them, every single one.

Would he trade places with the Emperor, given the chance?

Not for a second. Knowing the man, knowing the price he paid every single day, Karrde could safely say that he was grateful to the soles of his boots that in an hour or so's time, he would turn around, walk out of here, and leave it all behind.

The Emperor, however…could he ever walk away? Would it ever truly be possible, despite all of his carefully laid plans?

He would—in an instant, if he could. Karrde had always seen that in the young man's eyes. It was one of the reasons he liked him. But deep in his heart of hearts, Karrde suspected that the Emperor would never get the opportunity he was working so diligently toward…and deep in his heart of hearts, Karrde suspected that Skywalker knew it too.

The door behind him slid open and the man himself walked through with an easy smile and, as ever, a hundred shields in place, visible in the fine lines to the edges of those distinctive mismatched eyes, and the tight set of his jaw, even when he spoke to those he trusted.

Karrde sketched a quarter-bow, never very comfortable with protocol, though the Emperor had never once called him on it.

Three months since his ordeal, the Emperor was fully recovered, though Karrde had heard that he'd apparently thrown himself back into the grind of governing his Empire on the very day he'd returned, much to the exasperated frustration of his long-suffering medic, Nathan Hallin. Perhaps that was the reason why the man had taken up a change in vocation, to diplomacy, no less—one had to be pretty desperate to go into that, Karrde reflected ruefully. Then again, anyone who managed to retain their cool when dealing with someone as quietly stubborn and endlessly unpredictable as the Emperor would probably find diplomacy a step down in pressure, even now, with the Rebel Alliance on Coruscant and odds-on expectations that a real, working, provisional Senate would actually be in existence by the turn of the year!

Comfortable enough to simply strike up a conversation with the man who was capable of pushing all this through by strength of will alone, Karrde gestured with a nod of his head back across the cityscape. "That's quite a view."

The Emperor glanced to the balcony. "Is it? I suppose so."

I seldom have time to look, was the casual inference. Still, the Emperor set forward onto the wide, marble-floored balcony and Karrde joined him, both men stopping at the carved balustrade to look out over the mist-wrapped city as the day crept over the broken horizon.

"I hear there are another series of reforms set to come into place—to go with your new legislative building, I presume," Karrde said into the silence.

"You hear too much."

"That's why you pay me so well," Karrde pointed out easily, eyes still on the city.

"I'd offer you a staff position to see if it would cut my costs, but I doubt you'd take one."

Karrde smiled, glancing down the sheer drop to the lavish, white-frosted roof gardens of the main Palace far below. "You know me, stubbornly independent."

"Or just plain stubborn," the Emperor said without malice. "Fortunately I know where you're coming from on that one so I won't ask again—though the offer's always on the table, you know that?"

"Thank you," Karrde replied, and meant it. "I hope this won't interfere with our existing arrangement?"

The Emperor shook his head, turning again to the endless city about them. "Business as usual."

"I don't think it's ever that, with you."

Skywalker half-turned, voicing mock offense. "What—I have a plan."

"Hardly the one everyone thought though, was it?"

The shade of a smile traced his lips. "Still isn't, just between you and me."

Karrde froze at that, a thousand potential possibilities coming to mind. "You, uh…wouldn't care to elucidate, would you?"

For long seconds the look in those mismatched eyes said that he just might…then it melted easily into a teasing smile, and he turned away. "I'll keep you updated."

"I'm sure." Karrde lifted up the lightweight folder he carried, holding it out to Luke. "I brought you a present—actually I brought you two, but this one's something and nothing, relatively speaking."

His words were dismissive, though his tone was anything but. The Emperor accepted it with obvious confusion, uncertain what it could be. Inside was a folded sheet of flimsiplast, dog-eared and ripped and yellowing with age, but obviously kept with care.

Warily opening the delicate, torn-edged sheet, looking suspiciously like he was defusing a bomb, the Emperor studied it…and stared in still silence.

Karrde watched his face closely, noting the slightest of momentary lines creasing that still-youthful forehead into a brief frown, though that was the only reaction and it lasted all of a second. Intensely aware of the uncanny, kinetic stillness which had wrapped about the Emperor, Karrde continued talking, wondering momentarily if he'd done the right thing.

"Ghent, my slicer, he follows swoop racing. Not the government-approved, squeaky-clean version—no offense," Karrde added, knowing the Emperor would take none, particularly in view of what he was looking at right now. "He prefers the real thing. Thrown together death-traps on out-of-the-way Rim planets where they can pretty much get away with anything, as long as they can clean the stains up afterwards."

Karrde gestured with his head, keeping his voice cool and casual. "He collects the vintage flimsiplast racing sheets too—the itinerary one-siders they used to post up on the day."

The Emperor glanced up at him and Karrde shook his head, rolling his eyes. "I have no idea why—don't ask me. I think he said he likes the old graphics. He has them on the walls of his quarters onboard the Wild Karrde. This one's almost ten years old, from some Rim planet called Tatooine. He picks them up on the HoloNet…all those restrictions lifting." Karrde leaned over slightly as he gestured with a finger. "It caught my eye right…there. The list of swoop racers for the second session identifies a swoop owned by a mechanic named Laze 'Fixer' Loneozner…the pilot is listed as Luke Skywalker, from Anchorhead on Tatooine. Local boy, presumably."

Skywalker—and Karrde was pretty sure now that this was the same Skywalker—made no move, and in the high wind it was impossible to tell whether the stained old flimsiplast sheet trembled in the current of air or in the grip of its holder.

"I thought you might like it," Karrde said neutrally, certain that it was everything it appeared to be. "I'm sure Ghent won't miss it and you do pay his wages after all…in a roundabout way."

He'd expected the Emperor to rip it up; destroy it beyond recognition and scatter the pieces to the wind. But he refolded the old flimsiplast sheet very carefully and replaced it in the folder without looking up.





It had crossed Luke's mind to deny it, of course—to say it was a coincidence and ask the mercenary whether, now that he thought he knew the Emperor's name, he was going to bring him every scrap of information with any vague similarity. He could quite easily reach into the Force and make the conviction stick; make sure Karrde believed it irrelevant. Could just as easily reach into the man's mind and remove any memory of the name entirely. But it seemed petty and graceless after Karrde had gone to the effort of handing the sheet—the only reference to his old name and his old life that Luke had seen in almost a decade—over without conditions. The smuggler could easily have kept it; as a piece of the puzzle relating to the seemingly unassailable Emperor's past, it would be incredibly valuable on the underground market.

"Thank you," Luke said at last, the frosty air misting his words. "That's…very interesting."

They both turned to look out over the city again, frigid, frost-sharp shadows shrinking back before the chasing dawn, the endless buildings given jewel-bright embellishment from lights scattered across their hulking forms as the city woke.

"So, who was Fixer?" Karrde asked at last, his tone light.

Luke allowed the slightest of smiles to turn up the edges of his lips and sound in his quiet voice, knowing that the mercenary was just chancing his arm now, out of curiosity. "I'm sure I have no idea."

"No," Karrde said mildly without turning. "Of course not."

"Though I'd like to think he's in a cantina somewhere in the back of beyond right now, buying a drink for Jorj Car'das."

Karrde tensed almost imperceptibly at the casual reference to his own very private past, a twitch of that thick black moustache giving away his hidden smile. "Let's hope they get fall-down drunk and stay there, shall we?"

They remained in companionable silence for a minute or so, a new understanding reached and a few more shields dropped in comfortable response.

By both men—although each saw this only in the other.




There was a polite knock at the door in the room behind them, then it slid aside, and Karrde watched the eternally nervous adjutant Turis set forward and bowing politely, a comlink in his hand. "Excuse me, Excellency, Commander Clem is requesting a word?"

"Oh, that must be your second gift," Karrde said, turning to the Emperor in a perfect feint of nonchalant realization, though the man probably knew that it was the reason he'd come today. "I left it in the care of Clem; it's probably been transferred to the Palace by now."

Karrde smiled as the Emperor set his head on one side in question. "I'll leave you with this one," he said mysteriously, sketching another uneasy bow as he made his retreat.

Despite all of the Emperor's actions and intentions, the mercenary knew him well enough to know that whilst the second gift he had delivered today would be very much appreciated, it wouldn't enjoy the same gentle treatment accorded that old swoop race one-sheet from some remote Rim-world planet. Like the incomparable palace which stood with such formidable grandeur at the center of the galaxy, for every elegant, accommodating façade and smooth, sophisticated front, there were still dark and dangerous shadows within the man who so seamlessly kept the palace, the galaxy, and very probably the fledgling Senate turning to his tune.

Let others run themselves ragged trying to separate and classify, and convince themselves that he was this or the other. Like all of those in the Emperor's close entourage, Karrde knew that the man who owned the Empire was a complex, compound twist from circumstance to circumstance, moment to moment.

In a way, curiosity prodded him to stay, to see just how vindictive the Emperor could truly be when he wished—and he would be when he saw Karrde's gift, obtained at great effort in a way that only an organization like Karrde's could do, as comfortable in the sewers of any city as it was in the spires. Which was why he would never take up the Emperor's offer; an official position would negate all of that and he would essentially become nothing more than another advisor.

No, he was better off where he was, doing what he was best at. The second gift was proof of that.

And he shouldn't stay, not for this. This was a private matter.












Luke stood, composed and impassive, in the ostentatious extravagance of the Grand Stateroom. It was a room he seldom used, representing the very apex of Imperial affluence and opulence, a no-expense-spared testament to the excesses of Palpatine's Empire, as only his old Master could demand. He'd chosen the room with great deliberation, intending to convey subtle messages even in this, wishing to uphold his visitor's opinion of him, however incorrect.

He shouldn't, of course; shouldn't play this particular game…

But the Darkness in his shadow whispered with his old Master's voice, and he couldn't quite refrain—not every time.

He sighed deeply, and his breath misted against the cool of the early morning, the first trace of winter catching it as a pale haze on the cold of the transparisteel window pane he stood before, highlighted by the radiance from external arc-lights which illuminated the imposing hulk of the Imperial Palace for miles around.

On impulse, he stepped a little closer and let out another breath, misting the frigid pane before reaching up to scribe in the haze with his finger:

And he balances on the biting blade, whilst devils and angels whisper.

Still in mind and body, he studied the words he remembered from the Seat of Prophesy as they faded to nothing… Then in a blur of motion, he turned about and quickly sat in the large, carved chair which faced away from the room, as its tall doors slid back into their housings.





His wrists bound, Crix Madine was dragged by scarlet-clad Palace guards into a cavernous room, luxuriantly furnished and hung with a magnificent run of complex, elaborate tapestries. A long bank of floor-to-ceiling windows inset with stained glass and banded by delicate copper in fine, fluid lines, spilled wide blocks of artificial light into the room from an unknown source outside. It hit lustrous beaten palladium panels high in the ornately coffered ceilings and mirrored in radiant refraction across the pale marble floor of the vast chamber, the polished stone reflecting it up so sharply that for several seconds, Madine failed to notice the dark-clothed man who sat alone in one of the two carved arm chairs set before the bank of windows, gazing serenely out over the waking city.

He realized only when he was pulled almost level with him, and the man turned just slightly, level voice mild and amused.

"General Crix Madine. It's been a while."

Madine froze, held firmly in place by the guards. "Not nearly long enough."

"Oh, I'll bet. Take a seat."

The Emperor gestured casually and Madine was manhandled partway to the opposite chair before his captor spoke out again quietly.

"No…he can sit on his own."

Madine twisted free as the guards' grips loosened, and for long seconds he stood stubbornly, eyes on Skywalker, who held his gaze unblinking. In the loaded silence, the only noise came from a quiet staccato as Skywalker's fingers tapped against the carved arm of the chair in which he lounged… Madine held out a few seconds more as that tapping slowed before, gritting his teeth, he sat in the ornate damask chair.

The Emperor nodded to the guards without looking then waited, eyes on Madine, until they had left. When Madine held his silence, Skywalker glanced just once to his creased and crumpled fatigues. "You look a little tired, Madine. Life on the run not to your liking? A little different, I know, abandoned out on a limb with no back-up and no one left you can rely on."

"I have nothing to say to you," Madine grated.

"Not true," the Emperor admonished gamely. "As I said before, I always thought we had so much in common, both having stood either side of the fence, as it were."

That touch of a smile pulled at the long scar down Skywalker's cheek, still filling Madine with a rush of pride that he had helped put it there—a permanent reminder that the Emperor's enemies had teeth. Madine turned icily away to stare out of the windows.

"Does it bring back old memories?" the Emperor asked, following Madine's gaze to glance out over the city. "I understand you spent a lot of time on Coruscant…gathering information to take with you when you defected to the Alliance, no doubt. I hope it was useful."

"It was very useful."

"Not useful enough, apparently. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

"You think that means you've won?" Madine sneered.

"Only the battle, not the war. But that's in hand."

"You'll never win."

"Thank you for that considered advice. I think I'll continue with my plans anyway."

uncertain what this was, madine paused just slightly. "What do you want?"

"Just to talk, no sticks or stones."

The slightest chink of confusion flashed across Madine's thoughts, and Skywalker smiled coolly.

"That first night on the Wasp—you said… 'Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you.' Surely you remember? I do." Skywalker turned slowly away, voice quiet and even. "You were right, of course, with your sticks and stones. But what if…" Those uncanny, mismatched eyes came back to Madine, so intensely bright they seemed almost to glow in the dawn light.

"What if words can break you too?"

"Only if I believe them—and I've never believed a word you said."

"Which is ironic, because I generally tell the truth. Lies are so…unnecessary. Though I did lie when I said there was no such thing as the doomsday code—but then you knew that."

"Care to tell me it now?"

Skywalker smiled dryly. "No, not particularly."

"So you only do the truth thing when it suits you."

"Extenuating circumstances. I'm sure you can understand that—or would you care to tell me the communication codes and whereabouts of the sad, ragged little mob of anarchists who still follow you?"

"I'm not telling you anything. You can go to hell and take your whole stinking Empire with you—may you all rot." Madine blurted the words as a curse.

"What an angry, narrow-minded, vengeful man you are," the Emperor observed dispassionatley, voice was tinged with amusement.

"And you?" Madine countered, refusing to be intimidated.

"I wouldn't say I was narrow-minded. Ruthless, when I have to be… Explosive, so I'm told—but seldom narrow-minded. One loses one's way too quickly if one can't see every path. Besides, it negates the game."

"Is that what this is to you, a game?"

"Always," the Emperor said without hesitation. "Take it too seriously and it'll destroy you. Eat away at you and burn you up to fuel its fire."

"Did it still feel like a game on the Peerless, when the bomb went off? Did that amuse you? Or did it just plain hurt?"

Skywalker stared for long seconds before answering—but when he did, his voice was as calm and detached as ever. "Yes, it did. Very much. But it hurt a great deal more that I lost forty-seven men in that explosion."

"I very much doubt that."

"Although it was a small consolation that you lost your infiltration team, too. You should learn to take better care of your men, Madine, particularly since you have so few at your disposal now, Intel tells me. They rely on you—on your judgment. Place their lives in your hands. That's quite a responsibility to carry, the knowledge that their safety lies completely in your decisions."

Madine remained silent, not rising to the bait, knowing what Skywalker was talking about. That moment onboard the Wasp was burned into his memory and had razed through his nightmares too many times already.

Skywalker glanced casually away. "But then maybe you think agents are easy to come by."

"For me," Madine said confidently. "There are always people willing to fight, willing to inform on your Empire."

"I'm sure. Though I was talking for both sides of the divide."

"No—there was no one in the Alliance."

"You know that's not true," Skywalker countered. "As to who…you'd be surprised. Aside from Leia, of course. It's a pity you never went public with that. Don't get me wrong, it's a useful thing to have that much on your opponents, but now—now it's just another lost chance."

"Maybe not. You might well get a shock when news of my death comes out…might want to think twice about making any rash decisions."

Skywalker's dry smile never touched those icy eyes. "If you're intending to make a threat like that, you'd better have something to back it up with—which you haven't. Never try to bluff a Sith, Madine…unless you have some handy ysalamiri hidden close by again? No? How unfortunate. Another secret I'll do my level best to make sure you take to the grave with you." Skywalker resettled, cold amusement in his voice. "So, aside from Leia: agents, past—those right under your nose... Funny, it's never who you think, is it? Well, it's never who you think, anyway."

"You don't know what I thought."

"On the contrary, I know exactly who you thought was working for me. You told Tag Massa so often that it was Solo, she told me that in the end, she had to open an Intel file on him."

Madine gritted his teeth, well aware that Skywalker was now freely providing the kind of information he'd withheld at any cost onboard the Wasp, his blood boiling at the mention of Massa's true loyalties, and her part in his downfall. If he'd sent any other person to check on Organa's DNA test... But she'd always been so reliable, with an impeachable record long before her predecessor had…. He stopped dead, eyes widening at the full implications of Massa's betrayal.

"Odin Latt," he murmured of the Alliance's previous Intel Chief, whose untimely death had placed Massa in command. So she'd been Skywalker's agent even then.

"See, you can work it out—a little late, but still, you saw the link in the end."

"How did you get to her?"

"We ran quite a few missions together in the year or so following Yavin—before you'd even defected to the Alliance. The Rebellion was pretty scattered at that time, constantly on the run, lots of small units that combined and separated according to the mission. So few records were kept—and what little there were could easily be accessed and altered at a later date, especially by a rising Intel Officer assigned to Home One and wanting to give themselves a spotless past." Skywalker set his head to one side. "C'mon, Madine; you're the strategist, and that is my style after all. To recruit people or place spies in positions of less intense scrutiny and leave them there unused for a while before I finally removed their superiors and—look at that—suddenly they're in a position of power…and value. I did it so often—with Leia, with Commanders and Moffs in the Emperor's fleet before I ousted him." He paused in mock consideration. "If you'd had a reliable Intel Chief, they might have told you that…but there's that stumbling block; you didn't."





Muscles strung taut beneath his perfect façade of calm indifference, Luke watched Madine boil at just how far the Alliance had been infiltrated for so long; how pointless all his efforts to find the renegade informer among them had been, hatched as they were by himself and the Alliance's own Intel Chief.

And here it was…everything that Luke had waited for. Everything he'd wanted—needed. Because whatever else he was, he couldn't ever quite step free of the wolf Palpatine had invested so much in creating. Or perhaps he didn't want to—not when it felt this good.

"I had to have someone to look after my main player. I spent a great deal of time and effort getting Leia to the point where she would be of value—I did, after all, remove Mon Mothma to put her in power. You should know that I told you the truth when I said that I'd never have removed Mon if she hadn't signed the assassination order you proposed. Because of you, she died. No validations here, no chains at my wrist. I'm free to say exactly what I want—to tell all those hard truths… Because of you, she died, Madine. Remember that."

"You're lying."

"I told you, I seldom lie. Leia was always my key, and Mon the obstruction that held me in check, until you…you flung the doors open wide and invited me in, Madine. You made it all possible—you made it easy. Leia on her own would never have been enough to achieve what was necessary, even with Mon dead. I needed something more, something with which I could rip your precious Rebellion in two and take only what I wanted. Only what I deemed worthy to survive… I needed something to unite my Empire and break apart the Rebel Alliance, and you…you handed it to me on a plate."

Luke shook his head disparagingly, his roguish smile carefully calculated, manipulating the truth just enough to feed all of Madine's fears and paranoia. And even now, even when Luke had admitted to him that he'd twist the truth to his own ends, Madine still gulped down every word, because it fed those expectations. And Luke kept on feeding them, because it still wasn't enough—not yet.

"An attack on the Imperial Sovereign? No one would tolerate that, Madine. You made an attack on everything they knew…and you triggered the inevitable knee-jerk reaction. The inhabitants of a thousand planets saw their Emperor bleed. They watched him take the moral high ground in the face of outrageous provocation. Before, I was their Emperor…now I'm their leader. They'd follow me anywhere, thanks to you.

"You should be grateful; if I'd wanted to, I could have used it to obliterate the Rebellion entirely. They would have had no place to run, no place to hide. But I needed them—some of them. I just needed them under control. I needed them, if not loyal then at least amenable, contrite…humiliated. And everything that you did took me closer to that."

Luke paused, allowing Madine the time to absorb this, and himself a moment of surprise at his own calculating rearrangement of fact and insinuation. How much was true and how much distorted or withheld just to see his enemy squirm? How much himself and how much Palpatine's wolf?

Because the man who had given Leia the authority she needed to counter him, and stood before the Peace Summit yesterday to give a speech pledging her Alliance and his own Empire the freedoms they so cherished, was also Palpatine's Sith advocate. And that man was all too aware of how easily those same actions could still enable him to take complete power, even now. He stood as he always did, poised at the very brink between dawn and darkness. Balanced on the blade.

All he knew for sure was that in this moment, he needed this. For this moment at least, he slipped the wolf's leash free.

"…You're lying..." It was all Madine could muster in the face of crumbling certainty.

"I've told you, I have no need for lies, reality is so easy to manipulate…and so much more enjoyable." Luke smiled, feeling it pull at the familiar scar on his lip. He'd had more than a few inflicted by the man sitting opposite him. It felt immeasurably good to give one back. "Funny…turns out that words can cause all kinds of damage too, doesn't it?"




Madine stared, unable to muster any further anger against the sum of these damning claims. Had it all been manipulations? He'd always himself been the strategist, the master tactician who constantly led whilst others trailed behind. Had he failed so entirely to see this final play by Palpatine's savant? "You couldn't predict those responses…"

"It was so obvious. You didn't see it because you broke the golden rule, Madine; you lost perspective. You made it personal—your claim, not mine."

The Emperor settled back into his stately chair, coolly impassive tone as sharp as any blade. "I wanted you to know that before you die—that it's all been for nothing, because I own your precious leadership. I own your Rebellion. I wanted you to understand that it was your own petty need for a very public revenge which gave me that victory. I wanted you to feel the ground crumble from beneath your feet, and know that it was because of me. You see, this is revenge, Madine. Real revenge. Believe me, I know. I know what really hurts… I know every single lesson because I was taught by a master. Going after the individual, hurting them because they hurt you, wanting to draw blood publicly for all the galaxy to see, that's nothing. Not an actual waste of time and energy but certainly an opportunity missed. Revenge—real revenge—is to take from your enemy what they value most and destroy it. Break it apart a piece at a time and show them the shattered shards before you finally kill them. You came after me, Madine, it was you who claimed this was personal…so now I take everything from you. Everything. And no one else will ever know except you and me. Real revenge doesn't require an audience…"

Those penetrating, mismatched eyes held Madine's for long seconds, shrewd and sharp and preternaturally bright…then the Emperor settled, his voice loosening just slightly. "My Master, he always thought that it did—I disagree. That's simple conceit—vanity, pride. Pointless emotions that nevertheless reveal to everyone just exactly what's going on in your head. No, I conduct my private life behind closed doors. I have nothing to prove and I certainly have nothing I intend to give away."

"And Mon Mothma?"

The Emperor shrugged. "Mothma's public execution was nothing to do with me. How Palpatine chose to mollify his own injured pride was his affair. But as I said, she did have one last use to serve, even in her removal: her capture bought me the freedom to go after the rest of her Rebellion." He leaned forward as if imparting advice. "Never waste your opportunities."

"Bastard." The word was from Madine's lips before he'd even thought it—but the Emperor only smiled, unoffended.

"At the very least."

"Someone will stop you—even Organa will turn on you, when she sees the truth."

For a second—for a split second—Madine saw that perfect façade crack just slightly, the Emperor's voice distant as he spoke. "Maybe. The truth is a slippery thing…sometimes I don't even know it myself anymore."

"That's because you use it so rarely."

Skywalker grinned, seeming to recover his poise in the face of familiar condemnations. "Perhaps she'll reform me; she seems to want to."

"You're way past any hope, Sith."

"That's what I told her." He smiled as if in genuine agreement—then seemed to stumble again, considering. "But she has faith…which is a strange thing."

"Faith in someone like you, is."

But as ever, it was hard to land an insult on someone who clearly thought so little of himself. Skywalker gave that easy, calculated smile, the one that made him appear so unassuming. "It is, isn't it—and with so much hard evidence to the contrary… Yet people still do it—I have no idea why. I have no such faith, it was beaten out of me a long time ago… I seldom miss it."

For a second he faltered, seeming lost, and Madine didn't even hesitate to strike. "I don't believe you ever had it—how could you…Vader's son."

That brought Skywalker's eyes up. "My father was at least trying to stabilize, to build…you know only how to destroy."

Madine lifted his chin. "And you?"

"I know how to do both very well."

"I hope you're proud of yourself," Madine growled. "I hope you can sleep at nights."

"Seldom." That roguish smile lit his face again. "But that doesn't seem to stop me."

"I should have killed you when I had a gun to your head."

"Yes, you should have—I told you more than once to pull the trigger. But you just couldn't let it be over that easily, could you? You had to string it out for your own personal gratification. Myself, I would have pulled the trigger and walked away…and slept very well that particular night."

"No, you had the chance to kill me and didn't."

"Timing, that's all. A trick of the fates." A cold, feral edge took Skywalker's expression from self-possessed to menacing in a single blink of mismatched eyes. "Be grateful—if I had taken that chance to kill the man who'd threatened the life of my son and his mother it would, I promise you, have been a slow and visceral affair."

Without warning Skywalker launched forward, a blur like a striking snake, making Madine jerk back in shock with bound arms rising as Skywalker's hands hit the seat to either side of his head. A slow, sadistic smile came over Skywalker's face, voice little more than a whisper but easily heard, so close was he.

"You understand—the moment you did that, you were dead. But here's the thing—I'm not going to be the one to do it, Madine. I know myself, and I know that if I so much as touch you, you're dead. Because I won't hold back...I wouldn't be capable, simple as that. I'd turn you inside out, I'd rip you limb from limb... I'd open up your ribcage and smear you all over that chair you're trying so hard to disappear into right now. I couldn't kill you fast enough...and I could never kill you as slowly as I'd want to."

In a single, fluid movement he pushed off and withdrew to settle into his chair without once taking his eyes off Madine, composure perfectly reinstated as if it had never cracked. "But you see, unlike you I can still differentiate between personal indulgence and necessity. I need to know what you know. I need to know that every trap your little band of miscreants has laid centers on me, not my son or his mother…or the Empire I'm creating on the ashes of your sad little dreams… And I'm sure I'll read about it all eventually, when the interrogators have finished with you."

Madine shook his head. "I don't have the answers. I just give them what they ask for and send the units out."

"You don't care what damage they do."

"To your Empire, no—or your Empress."

Skywalker's chin lifted just slightly. "So you still determine the targets?"

"That's right—and she's still a viable target as far as I'm concerned. It's still two birds with one stone, and this is still a war."

"No, it's not—not any more. But that won't stop you sending your teams, will it? I doubt they'll be successful…but if they are, we'll hang black pennants and fly the flags at half-mast, and people everywhere will feel justly outraged that their Emperor has lost the wife who fought so hard to gain his freedom, at the hands of the same anarchists who tried to murder him… But just to clarify—that would be only the one bird…and you'd be more than a little off-target."

Madine hesitated as Skywalker let that cold, confident smile widen. "You're sending them after the wrong woman, Madine...and you want to know the worst part? You had the real one standing in front of you...she was right there in the bay onboard the Wasp when you had a blaster in your hands."

Madine frowned, the ground pulled from under his feet again as his mind scrambled to comprehend, but the only woman he'd seen in the Wasp's hold was Jade. She clearly had a history with Skywalker, of course…but as a mistress; as an anonymous passing amusement whilst D'Arca remained Empress. It was she who'd ruled in his stead, she who, with her Royal blood, carried the Emperor's…

Madine glanced up, eyes widening at Skywalker's taunting smile.

"You could have killed Jade—and so my son—right then…and you and I both know damn well that if you had, it would have stopped me dead. You were so close, Madine—even if everything else had've fallen apart, you were still so close. She was right there. All you had to do was get past your own narrow preconceptions of who you wanted me to be. Who you needed me to be, to validate your own actions. All you had to do was be able to turn that gun away from me…but you couldn't do that, could you? You lost sight of the larger picture…" The Emperor paused just slightly. "So let me clarify one last time just what that cost you… I have my Empire, I have the Alliance...and my son and his mother are safe and sound and, for now, completely anonymous."

Madine felt himself slowly collapse as Skywalker continued to taunt in amicable tones, as if this were some shared joke, all part of his game. "You know you could have lived out your sad little life believing you were fighting for some greater cause and I would never even have noticed you, Madine. But you were the one who proposed my assassination—then like a fool, you brought yourself to my attention all over again; imprisoned and interrogated me, threatened those close to me for your own petty, blinkered satisfaction. You made it personal…and I can't let that pass. As I said, we have so much in common. Except one thing, of course—I've won. You've lost—in every possible way, you've lost… You lost your way, you lost your reputation, you lost your protection, your comrades, your status, your backing...you lost your war. So you tell me," those piercing, pitiless eyes sparked with barbed amusement, "doesn't that just break you up inside, Madine—and not a stick or stone in sight."

He pressed a small, etched silver comm on the low table beside him, and the far doors opened immediately for Palace Guards to march purposely forward, as Madine stared ahead without seeing. He was barely aware of being hauled upright as Skywalker rose to leave, dismissive now, smoothing the line of his impeccably fitted, high-collared jacket.

"You'll excuse me, but I have an Empire to command and a Rebellion to dismantle. And your misguided, tattered little band of anarchists won't simply run themselves into oblivion. You're small fry, Madine—that's all you ever were; unfinished business which dovetailed neatly into the larger picture. A minor amusement. I won't be there for your execution when they think they've dragged all the useful information they can from you, I'm afraid—I have more important things to do. But you can go to your death knowing that you entertained an Emperor for a full…" he glanced momentarily to the huge faceted chrono high on the wall, "what…ten minutes? So your life hasn't been a complete waste."

Skywalker passed him...and Madine launched forward with a wild yell, bound arms outstretched, fingers tensed to claws—

Palpatine's Wolf didn't shy back, didn't even flinch as the guards grabbed at Madine, grappling him to the ground so that his last view of his enemy was with the world on its side as he was held down, the Emperor not even bothering to glance back as he walked away.