Is it the hand that pulls the trigger that bears the full weight of the sin? Or he who made the gun to begin with? Theirs was the race brought down from the farthest heights by the Empire, but there were many who said he and his deserved all that had befallen them, if not more. It pained him, but he couldn't find it within him to blame those who did resent them, nor, after all that had happened, could he truly say for certain that they were wrong.

Really, by some standards they could be considered among the lucky ones. Most of the species targeted for conquest had been exterminated outright -- eradicated from the entire plane of existence as well as the face of their own planet. But his own people still lived, even if reduced to a fraction of their former number and pressed into slavery.

It was cold comfort, and in the end no comfort. The Irken Empire might not annihilate them while they were still thought to be useful, but there could be no doubt that the day would dawn that they were useful no longer. They might be Irk's most prized captives, but all it meant in the end was that they'd be the last ones to stare down the barrel of the Massive's genocidal cannon.

The cannon they themselves designed.

It was hideously ironic, and an old, old story. A cliché brought to horrific red life. In grasping for greater power and influence they had sown the seeds of their own destruction. It hardly mattered to outsiders that they had been betrayed, and how could it? How could they have expected anything less, after all? We should have built less and read more, he thought. Plotted less and gone outside more, while there had still been an "outside" to speak of. Most of the face of their planet had been converted into an especially hideous prison. He'd seen it -- been imprisoned within it, actually, he himself had led the escape of the two dozen high-security prisoners that had thought it would be better to die resisting rather than continue living under the heel of their gleefully evil oppressors. Most HAD died. There were now only five other members of his kind both alive and free, as free as you could get in a universe that included the Irken Empire.

Still it was guilt that had moved his feet more than courage, he knew, for he saw his own hand squeezing the trigger every time the news came of yet another culture obliterated by the Irkens he had once so naively considered his allies. Many races had bent their wills in service to the Empire, but only with a gun pointed at their backs. THEY had assisted the Empire willingly before they had realized the Irken machine had grown into a monster raging out of control, and by then it had been far too late to withdraw. Yet even when it became undeniable that the force they were working for had transformed into evil incarnate, there had been those who did not wish to withdraw from the alliance, for as the friends of Irk they were given an honor and esteem they had never known before. Though intelligent, they had not been particularly ambitious or even industrious, really, yet when guided by the hands of the Tallests and the minds of the control brains their technology had exploded in function and in popularity. Their name had risen almost as high as the Irkens', and become synonymous with advanced technology. For some, the fact that it was a name growing nearly as reviled as the Irkens' had seemed a fair price to pay.

It had twisted his insides to remember that for a time, but that part of him had since gone numb. If we committed the sin of arrogance, we are surely paying for it now. The increasing reluctance of their allies to be a participant in the wholesale slaughter of entire races had not gone unnoticed by the Irken Empire, and they sent one of their Invaders to their planet as well, while openly maintaining cordial relations. It was said that he had exulted to find he was expected to deliver them to his leaders, and that his had been the easiest mission of any Invader. He had not been the first to complete his invasion assignment, but only because he had spent the first few weeks simply enjoying the comforts their home had to offer before he bothered to simply turn their own weapons against them. The fact that they had not seen it coming was nauseating in retrospect. How could a race known far and wide for their intelligence be blind to a possibility even a rock should have been able to foresee? They had deluded themselves that their allegiance to the greatest evil the galaxy had ever seen would somehow save them from being ensnared in it along with everyone else. After years of unwavering dedication to the Empire the Irkens had laughed in their faces for their stupidity, and cheerfully whittled the population of 3 billion down to less than 10,000, mostly male and those thought to be the most intelligent… as well as acquiescent.

Acquiescent… well, they learned the truth of that soon enough, he thought with grim satisfaction. It was one of the few consolations he'd been able to take from the whole grisly aftermath. To be sure, they hadn't really trusted him even in chains, but he had been responsible for as much of their advancement as any of the rest, and more than most. They'd have executed him if they had known how much misery he'd have inflicted on them given a quarter chance, and he knew they'd happily torture him to death if they caught him now, but in the immediate aftermath of his planet's conquest, after they had brought him to his knees, their lust for the weapons they knew he could design for them had caused them to take a gamble on their ability to subdue him.

He was planning on making that their one fatal mistake.

He'd promised himself that he'd dedicate whatever might remain of his life to working for the Empire's fall, but it had never been his intention to take up a role of leadership in the process. When he'd worked for the Empire he now labored to destroy, he had admired the Irkens for their ability to direct while finding it a personal relief to simply follow orders, but almost immediately after their escape he'd suddenly found himself in the very uncomfortable position of being the one giving the orders. As the most prominent engineer among the fugitives, and the mind behind their getaway plan, they'd started to look up to him, and after they'd suffered so much already he couldn't bring himself to let his own people down. Then others had started to drift in as well, and he'd discovered to his chagrin that he was truly stuck, for as bizarre as it sounded, the fact that he had designed many of the weapons the Irkens had used to seize unparalleled control of the galaxy made others more willing to line themselves up behind him. After all, if he couldn't bring the Empire down, who else could? It really was up to him. If that was the price he had to pay to rid himself of the monsters he'd helped to create, he'd regard himself lucky. He considered much of what had happened to be his fault.

Publicly he'd vowed that those exterminated would be remembered after the Empire's fall, but in his own hearing it often sounded like a monstrously unfunny joke to boast of all the wrongs that would be corrected if only he was allowed to come out on top once more, when his success had been what caused the rise of the Empire in the first place. And it could make no difference to the dead whether their memory was honored or scorned, but there was nothing else he could do, and he had to do something. He was one of the only ones that was capable of doing anything, and as long as he was alive he still had to hold out hope that their victory could have meaning, and that their name could be redeemed.

Captain Lard Nar was one of the last free Vortians left alive, and for the honor of his people, for the pride of his own name the Irkens had corrupted and stained, he meant to see the Empire burn.

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-A/N:

I don't see the Vortian-redemption angle come up a lot in fanfiction which kind of surprised me. I didn't really notice it myself until a re-watch of the series and then going back over the unproduced scripts, but it leapt out at me then. When you have a guy who is described as one of the Empire's "finest minds," seen happily saluting his Irken superiors and proudly doing military engineering for them… then years later is seen trying to head up a resistance group to that same Empire that wound up imprisoning his people and using their technology – his technology – to subjugate or wipe out whole sentient races… you have a guy who's carrying around a really hideous amount of guilt alongside the rage. Of course the series would never have been as overblown and angst-ridden as this is when developing Lard Nar's character (I find angst much easier to write than humor), but there's no way they put in the bit about him having once been allied with the Empire unless they meant for us to think he's at least in part trying to atone for what he and his people did. It's not on full display in "Backseat Drivers" but it's definitely there.