The Emperor's Son Prologue
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- The God of Sleep Has Made His House by Current 93
When Sate Pestage hears his comlink go off, he presumes the Emperor needs him. And he'll always aid his Emperor. Always.
"Sly Moore?" He furrows his beetle-black brows when he sees the name on the screen. He has not seen the Emperor's secretary since last New Year Fete Week. He knows that she hasn't fallen out of the Emperor's favor or else he would've taken care of her by now. The last thing he heard about her was that she was retiring to the Ghost Nebula and that was over six months ago.
"Maybe she's tired of being Queen of the Empire and wanted some R&R. Getting banged every night by the Emperor must've worn her out." Kinman cruelly remarked and laughed when Sate turned furiously red.
"Please, Palpatine would never go for someone as…unusual as her." He recalls retorting back before angrily storming off for his office.
"Moore, why did you comm me?" He hears the crackling sound of static like Moore is in another galaxy.
"Get to my manor on Ghost Nebula. I've sent you the coordinates." He hears the datapad on his desk ping with a message.
Ghost Nebula takes about half a day in hyperspace to reach. I'm not wasting twelve hours for her. He plans to tell her exactly that.
"It's for Palpatine." He sits right up in his bed.
"Hurry." Her paper thin voice whispers, and the line goes silent. He slips out from his lavender sheets and quickly dresses.
His Emperor needs him.
The fog is thicker than the darkness of Umbara; it roils the dim land like a plague. Sate lands blindly on the coordinates that Moore gave him. He's happy to hear the clunk of solid ground and not the gnashing teeth of some hidden monster.
He walks down the landing ramp. There's tension in his limbs, not from the unknown creatures lurking in the fog, but from Moore's message.
"It's for Palpatine." Those words have almost as much power over him as the Emperor.
What's for Palpatine? Was it a special mission? Was it an ancient Sith relic? Why did she call me? Is it connected to me? Connected to me and Palpatine? Between him and the Emperor is…service. He serves Palpatine like the best assistant that he is and gets nothing but the satisfaction of serving such a great man.
He collects such greatness like a jar of moths.
A spine-chilling smile. A flash of bone-white skin. A whisper of Faustian seduction.
Will Moore break the jar and release all of his moths?
He scoffs.
I won't allow…that ghost of a woman to…to—
He curses when the toe of his booted foot smashes against a stone step in the sea of mist. He is just as blind planetside as he was in the landing, so he had to rely on his sense of touch (and pain) to navigate his way up the winding, ancient steps.
Once he reaches the top, the mist lessens for him to make out the outlines of a crumbling manor. The manor reminds him of abandon mansions in gothic horrors; there is the stereotypical a thousand pointed-arched windows that act more like mirrors into the manor's evil soul than letting actual light in. There is the dingy gray paint that has peeled after centuries of horrible weather and massacres. It also unnervingly huge enough to suggest that a hundred people could dwell in its strange halls, but there's really only one occupant.
He makes his way to the door, a wooden monstrosity that needs two ghoulish doorknockers, and is surprised to see it wide open. Like Moore knew he would actually come.
He takes a quick glance inside; he sees the tiny flicker of a candle on a table that is a meter away from the door. He touches the knife he has hidden up his sleeve and goes inside for the same reason he came to this Dark World.
For Palpatine.
The candle, upon closer inspection, is a tealight. Nowadays, tealights are used by religious organizations or as decoration. Palpatine used to keep his tea pot warm with them when he was a senator; sometimes, he would look up from his datapad to watch the fire consume the tiny white candles. The tiny fires, red and gold like Palpatine's hair, teased heat into the Tyrian pot.
He takes the tealight and knows that the small flame is like a firefly, only providing enough light for him to see a centimeter in the dark sea.
He moves slowly for he does not know where to go. His eyes dart around, expecting to uncover some hidden danger. Or Moore.
Gray are the walls. Gray are the floors. Gray are the cobwebs. Gray, gray, gray everywhere. Just like Moore's cloaks. He frowns deeply at the bland color.
Palpatine would never…be with her. She's not his type. She's not fashionable. She's bland. She's not beautiful. She's cold. She's quiet. She's nothing. But Palpatine entrusted her with something.
"It's for Palpatine." Her voice, like the rattling of brittle bones, fills him with white, hot anger. He wishes that the tealight was a torch and he can just set the entire decrepit manor on fire.
Let the ghost burn in her tomb.
His dark fantasy is cut short by a wail. He nearly drops the tealight when he distinguishes the wail.
It's a baby's cries!
He runs towards the cries. His mind reminds him that this could be a trap. Moore left the door open, left a lit candle, and now, suddenly, there's a baby crying in this haunted place! This. Is. A. Trap!
But he's sprinting, and the cries get louder.
Those cries are real. Doctored cries have a slight static sound like speakers unable to handle powerful sounds. These cries sound exactly like my baby cousins' cries! Howling for their first breaths!
He knows that baby is real, and he'll save it from her. Has she gone mad? Is she going to sacrifice that baby? Was that what she meant? Is she going to sacrifice a baby for Palpatine!?
He reaches the room that is the source of the crying. A gray door separates him from the baby. He goes for the door knob and turns it, happy to hear no resistance. Bright lights blind him for a moment. But only for a moment.
Oh Force…
He sees Sly Moore naked on an operating table with a distended belly and legs in stirrups. The baby, the baby whose cries he heard, is right between her outstretched legs. It is coated in thick, red blood and crying; its umbilical cord has not been cut.
Blood…so much blood. Too much.
Blood is still coming from between Moore's legs. Far too much for the…the—
"Pestage." He finally peels his eyes from the blood and looks up at Moore's face. Her face is white, whiter than Palpatine's skin, and lined far more heavily than Palpatine's. Her lips are cracked like her voice.
"He's Palpatine's." Are her last words. The baby's cries turn into mournful mewls like an orphaned gualama.
He takes out his knife, goes to the baby, cuts the umbilical cord, and takes the bloodied baby boy to the sink.
The baby needs to be cleaned. He manages to think again. He turns the handle and waits until the water is lukewarm to wash the baby. The baby squirms as the water cleans him of his—Moore's blood.
White hair like Moore's. Three green eyes like no one's. And…His heart breaks, but his mouth speaks.
"Oh Force…you have his nose."
Author's Comments- Here are the links:
This wonderful site helped me figure out how long it would take to reach the Ghost Nebula from Coruscant and it took a little more than half a day if the person went at 29 hyper speed, which I don't know if that's an impossible speed or slower than the average ship, so let's say Sate has a very speedy ship: a href=" navcomp/"Link/a
For those of you who are starting this series from chronological order, or this is your first time encountering this series, here is an image of Triclops. In Legends/Expanded Universe, Triclops is the biological son of Sly Moore and Emperor Palpatine via a genetic experiment. In Legends, his father gives him to the Prophets of the Dark Side who train him as an Emperor's Eye. And eventually he disappoints his Dark Side Mad father and becomes a slave in the Kessel Mines. Needless to say, his life continues to get worse and worse after that. However, this is an AU where Palpatine chooses to give him to Sate to raise: a href=" . /starwars/images/7/78/Triclops_ /revision/latest?cb=20130913192216"Link/a
Woo-hoo, I finally get to the origin story of how Sate gets Rama. Man, this took forever to write because I just did not know how to set this chapter up since the Wookie gave me scant details surrounding the circumstances of Rama/Triclops's birth; all I really have is that Sly Moore died giving birth to him on Ghost Nebula and that it was a genetic experiment. So bright side is that Sly and Palpatine didn't have sex to make Triclops/Rama, but Sate does not know that and just agonizes about that in the next chapter. Also, Palpatine meets his newborn son and has some decisions to make!
Also, huge thanks to Darth_Videtur for rp-ing this AU with me because this is quite an interesting AU I'm delving into.
