A/N: Happy Easter, all!

SIBLING REVELRY

Chapter 3

Imperial Intelligence Agent William Barrows had enjoyed a respectable career for the past twelve years. The reward for his excellent service to the Empire had been an assignment to the Executor, a prize that was (literally) to die for. Miraculously, Agent Barrows still numbered among the living. He had not stayed that way for six interminable months by never failing—on the contrary, Agent Barrows failed regularly. No, Agent Barrows had stayed alive this long by making sure he was never, ever the one who had to deliver bad news to Darth Vader.

Such as this update from one of their spies in the field.

The update didn't contain any really disastrous tidings—on another day Barrows might have been willing to take the missive to Vader himself—but given the Dark Lord's foul mood ever since the Executor's detour to Nar Shaddaa last week, the slightest negative report was almost guaranteed to incite a peremptory execution. There was only one thing a man with a healthy sense of self-preservation could do.

"Ensign Mespa! Deliver this message to Lord Vader."

The young information systems ensign who had been responsible for starting this whole mess through his inadvertent biological discovery, and who had been on temporary duty with the intelligence section ever since, gave him an imploring look, but Barrows answered with a stern glare. He could not permit himself to feel sorry for the doomed ensign; one of them had to go, and it certainly wasn't going to be the senior ranking officer. The soon-to-be-late Kyler Mespa dragged himself out of his seat and surveyed the silhouette of the temperamental Sith Lord, prowling back and forth at the opposite end of the bridge. He gulped, and inched forward a couple of steps, before realizing that his route to Vader would take him past the information systems section—where he knew for a fact there were three other ensigns he outranked. And Barrows hadn't said how he had to get the message to Vader…

I'm saved! he cheered to himself, and marched to the ensigns' workstation. "Ensign Harl!" he said crisply. "Deliver this message to Lord Vader!"

Ensign Harl yelped as the message landed in his lap. He juggled it to the man on his left as if the thing singed his fingers. "Ensign Yarra! Deliver this message to Lord Vader!"

Yarra fumbled it to Ensign Chimmel, who searched around frantically, realized that he was the most junior officer on the bridge, and bleated a pathetic whimper.

"Be quick about it!" Yarra added, hauling the luckless Chimmel out of his seat and forcing him onto the walkway. By now every officer within hearing range was watching, and Chimmel had no choice but to start the death march towards Lord Vader. Two score eyes followed his every shaking step, anticipating a spectacular demise…

The tragedy-in-progress was interrupted when a speeding mouse droid collided with Chimmel's feet. With inspirational presence of mind, the ensign recovered his balance, pinned the mouse droid beneath a boot, and wedged the datapad in a slot on its back.

"Mouse droid! Deliver this message to Lord Vader!" he squeaked, then scampered back into the info systems pit. Up on the walkway, the mouse droid emitted a terrified squeal and hared off on a frenzied tour of the bridge, colliding with one other mouse droid and several officers, attempting to convince one of them to relieve it of its onerous task. At last its primitive processor managed to hatch a devious scheme. It dashed through the hatchway into the corridors outside the bridge and laid in wait until the unsuspecting Admiral Piett reappeared from his lunch break. Then it lunged forward and bumped into his booted toes.

"Message for me?" the Admiral asked. The droid's programming did not permit it to lie—so instead of the usual short medium-pitched beep that indicated yes, the cunning little wheeled mailbox made a slightly longer and higher-pitched beep, which was actually binary code for you sucker.

Piett, as intended, did not notice the difference. The Admiral bent down and retrieved the datapad from the mouse droid, watching in consternation as the little unit streaked away down the corridor with a melismatic string of gleeful beeps. Thing must have a loose wire. The Admiral turned his attention to the memo on the datapad as he strode through the bridge hatchway.

From: Intelligence Department

To: Lord Vader

Piett immediately switched the screen off. Admirals who hoped to collect retirement paychecks did not go around reading memos intended for Dark Lords. There must have been a mistake somewhere along the processing line. As he started towards Lord Vader, Piett hoped that the message wasn't anything important, or else some junior officer was going to have hell to pay.

"Lord Vader?" he asked, praying that he didn't sound too hesitant or terrified.

The Dark Lord turned slowly. Piett gulped. Clearly his superior hadn't gotten any less peeved over the lunch break.

"A message for you, my lord," he continued, as confidently as possible. "It was mistakenly delivered to me by mouse droid."

Vader stared at him a long, hair-raising moment before deigning to take the message. Definitely peeved. Oh, yes…

Piett waited one or two heartbeats before noticing that the edges of the datapad casing were beginning to crumple in the Dark Lord's grip. Very quickly and even more inconspicuously (it was a difficult art, but Piett had mastered it), the Admiral slunk away to the opposite side of the bridge, well out of range of the explosion that was sure to occur any second. Scarcely had Piett managed to immerse himself in discussion with one of his lieutenants than the businesslike hum of the bridge was silenced by a portentous crack. All eyes involuntarily flicked over to Vader just in time to see a stream of shattered datapad components rain out of his massive gloved fist and clatter across the deck. There were a few fatal moments of silence. Vader's impervious gaze swung like Death's scythe over the assembled officers.

"Agent Barrows," he growled.

Barrows' courage failed him after three steps; with a yelp the man spun around and fled the bridge. Vader merely extended one hand. The white-faced Barrows reappeared, being dragged back down the length of the bridge by one inexplicably suspended heel. Every officer twisted back around and stared at his work console with zealous intensity. None of them knew what had been in the message, and few of them had any idea what Agent Barrows' sin had been, but all of them could predict what was going to happen next.

True to form, the Sith Lord dispatched the unsatisfactory agent in short order, and then ordered the entire intelligence section up in front of him. They all counted themselves lucky to escape with nothing worse than bone-chilling mental images of the traumatic fate they could expect if any of them again dared to communicate classified information via mouse droid. Satisfied with their collective terror, Vader dismissed the intelligence officers and stalked from the bridge to his quarters, where he could contemplate the message without inadvertently killing any undeserving personnel.

Neither of his children had ever shown up on Nar Shaddaa, and now his spies reported that Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were refusing to accept any more messages via the Rebel channel he had discovered. And just in case that wasn't bad enough, his spies had also included a security holo of the two eating together—eating alone together—in a Rebel mess hall, and even kissing each other goodbye.

Clearly, the direct approach was not going to work. He punched a dent into the bulkhead with a durasteel fist, berating himself for not having realized this from the first. Of course neither twin would listen to him—they were, after all, on the opposite side of the war. He would just have to use more creative methods…

According to his Alliance personnel file, Fred Antilles was an average fun-loving Alderaanian who had lost his father, mother, sixteen younger siblings, fifty-five cousins, three hundred and ninety-two classmates, and pet nerf pup in the explosion of that star-crossed world, and had subsequently joined the Rebellion as an intelligence analyst. It was typical, if slightly farcical, story, much like Fred Antilles himself.

According to his Imperial personnel file, Fred Antilles was Karlino Van Hermahutt, Imperial spy extraordinaire.

Okay, so maybe he'd tacked on the "extraordinaire," but with this latest ultra-classified assignment from Lord Vader himself, Karlino fancied that he might deserve the extra honorific. It was, admittedly, a very off-beat assignment. Karlino readily acknowledged that he had no idea how convincing Leia Organa to break up with Luke Skywalker would further the cause of the Empire. But Darth Vader seemed to think it was a matter of supreme importance. Who was he to argue military strategy with the commander of the Imperial Navy?

So, in the guise of the unassuming Fred Antilles, Karlino set to scheming up ways to weasel into the confidence of the Princess and the commander. Being an intelligence analyst, his line of work didn't bring him anywhere near the starfighter hangars or Commander Skywalker. He would therefore have better luck with the Princess. But how? He'd never had anything to do with the woman personally before, and inventing reasons that wouldn't look suspicious to her wasn't going to be that easy—

"…Sorry, Jak, you'll have to wait a few minutes," an analyst on the other side of the processing room announced, "I've got to run this report up to Princess Leia—"

"Hey!" Karlino bounced up with all the gangly eagerness the Rebels had come to expect of Fred Antilles. "I'll run it up for you, don't worry about it!"

The analyst hesitated halfway to the hatch. "Um…that's okay, Fred, really—"

"No, no, I got it!" the man locally known as Fred Antilles insisted, weaving through the workstations and snatching the datapad. "Seriously! You can get back to whatever Jak needs." He waved the datapad at Jak, who pushed the fur out of his eye and clicked a claw in amusement.

The analyst dithered for a second or two, then shrugged and settled back down at his console. Karlino congratulated himself the whole way to the Alliance High Council Boardroom, then had to stand around waiting for nearly fifteen minutes before the Council members ended their daily meeting. He nodded as the enemies of the Empire filed by—Mothma, Madine, Ackbar, Dodonna, Rieekan…

"—ah—Princess!"

He hadn't known someone that short could walk that fast. She was halfway down the corridor before he even realized she'd come out of the briefing room. She stopped and spun on her heel, all business. "Report for me? Good. Thank you."

And before he could get a word in edgewise, she was at the other end of the corridor and stepping into the turbolift.

When the next report needed to be delivered to the Princess, Karlino had an alternate plan of attack. He waited a few hours on the report until the ship's night cycle started—then he took it straight to the Princess' quarters. That way, she couldn't give him the slip. He marched up, datapad tucked deep into a very full briefcase so as to provide additional delay, and punched the chime outside her quarters. The door slid open, revealing the short brunette. She looked as brisk as ever, despite putting in an over-full workday. She also looked ticked at being disrupted during her off-hours.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Princess," he said, reciting his well-rehearsed story. "But this report only just came in for you and the senior analysts seemed to think it was something important."

"That's all right, Mr. Antilles," she said, glancing at his hand.

"Here—oh! Sorry, it's in my bag," he said, and proceeded to rummage. "Hope I didn't disturb you," he added amiably. "Long day?"

"Not so bad," she offered. "I saw a friend at dinner."

Karlino/Fred rummaged more slowly. "Not Commander Skywalker, by any chance?" he asked.

She narrowed her eyes just a smidge. "Yes, in fact."

Karlino gave his most awkward Fred grin. "Oh, I'm a big fan of Commander Skywalker," he beamed, leaning back on his heels and pausing his rummaging. "Have you two ever—"

"Ah, I see that datapad," the Princess cut him off. She reached down into the bag and pulled it out. "Thank you, Mr. Antilles."

Fierfek, Karlino thought as the door hummed shut.

"Princess! Fancy meeting you here!"

Leia looked up from her very late and lonely dinner. It was that over-eager analyst again. Fred Antilles. Leia might have told him to take a hike, but he was Alderaanian. And she was the Princess of Alderaan (or whatever was left of it), so she supposed she had to be polite at the very least.

Not that Antilles needed much in the way of encouragement. He had already plunked his tray down opposite hers. Maybe she'd advise him to beat it after all. She'd been planning on meeting Luke in a few minutes; he'd worked the late duty shift in the hangar and would just be finishing up. "Mr. Antilles," she said, with a grudging smile. "You're up rather late."

"Well, when duty calls," he grinned, shoveling in a forkful of whatever goo they'd served him. He had a very cheerful look. Leia might have liked him. But she'd been a little suspicious after the supposedly urgent report he had delivered her turned out to be a standard briefing on the culture of Mytosia, a world that had expressed vague interest in joining the Rebellion. So she had checked quietly with the senior analysts. It transpired that that Mr Antilles had been given the report to deliver to her several hours earlier.

Evidently, she had acquired an amateur stalker.

She had mentioned it to Luke earlier when they had arranged to meet at the mess hall. A wicked smirk threatened to crack her composure. On second thought, she'd better do all she could to get this guy to stick around. Luke was going to enjoy this. Crying shame Han wasn't here, too.

"I certainly admire your dedication," she said warmly. "The Rebellion could use more people like you."

Behind a mouthful of slop, Karlino indulged in a diabolical grin. Hah! If only she knew!

"Thank you very much, Your Highness," he gushed instead. She seemed to be in a talkative mood; he'd better take advantage of it. "Means a lot coming from you," he added. "You know, one Alderaanian to another."

"We Alderaanians certainly need to look out for each other," the Princess agreed. "There aren't enough of us left."

"You know, I've been thinking," Karlino added. "Now, just as one Alderaanian to another, Princess—I really don't think you and Commander Skywalker work."

The Princess blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Warming to his subject, Karlino missed the soft tap of approaching footsteps. "You and Commander Skywalker," he repeated. "It just won't work out."

"I'm sorry," the Princess said, glancing over his shoulder with a faint grin, "but what do you mean by 'me and Commander Skywalker'?"

"Aw, Princess, you don't need to worry about keeping secrets," Karlino assured her. "The whole ship knows."

The Princess's faint grin had become a knowing smile hovering around her lips. "What does the whole ship know, Mr. Antilles?"

"Well—it's pretty obvious that you and Commander Skywalker are—"

"—Very good friends?" a voice suggested behind him.

Karlino twisted at the hip. Sure enough, Luke Skywalker was standing behind him, decked out in an orange flight suit, half-unzipped with the sleeves tied around his waist. "Um—I—"

Skywalker grinned and clapped him on a shoulder. "I really don't think you need to worry about the Princess' love life," he said, circling the table and sitting next to her. "She can take of herself." He swung an arm over the Princess' shoulders. The other dropped atop the hilt of his lightsaber.

And just in case she can't, Karlino reflected glumly, you will. Right. Got it.

"It was nice talking to you, Mr. Antilles," Leia said.

Karlino realized it was time to cut his losses and extricated himself. It had ended unfortunately, but in retrospect had been a valuable conversation. The Princess' stubbornness was to be expected. At least he'd planted the idea. Besides…he could still observe. With any luck they'd get into a spat or be annoyed by one another. He needed all the ammunition he could get.

"So that's Mr. Antilles, huh?" Luke eyed the departing analyst.

"In the flesh," Leia said, stirring her tea.

"Guess he thinks we're an us."

Leia snorted. "Guess he's not such a great analyst." She glanced up. "No offense, Luke."

"None taken," he said. "Hey, I was talking to this girl from Blue Squadron—"

"Oh-ho…"

He frowned, indignant. "Not like that. Anyway, she used to run a jewelry shop on Alderaan with her parents and she's been making memory rings for people."

"Memory rings?"

"Yeah. She takes the spare solder from the mechanics and makes these rings and engraves them with names. And—don't get me wrong, it's nothing romantic—I just thought you might like one."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object, which he promptly dropped on the floor. With a soft curse he dove off the bench and crawled under the table to retrieve it. Then, once he'd pulled himself up to his knees, he produced a beautiful little silvery ring. He flipped it over and pointed out the word etched inside the band—Alderaan.

"Oh, Luke, that's so sweet of you!" she breathed, wrapping him in an enthusiastic hug.

"I think you're supposed to wear it on your middle finger." He climbed back onto the bench. "Hope it fits, I had to guess at the size."

It turned out to be too large for the middle finger, so she slipped it on the next; a perfect fit. "Good guess." She stretched her hand out for examination.

He held up his left hand. "I got one myself." He tugged it off to show her the Owen and Beru Lars impressed on the underside.

Leia turned it over and admired it before sliding it back on his finger. "These are such a great idea." She beamed up at him. "Thank you, Luke."

On the opposite side of the mess hall, well out of hearing range but peering craftily through the lens of a holocam built into the tines of his fork, Karlino Van Hermahutt, alias Fred Antilles, gaped in horror.

Vader was prowling the bridge once again. The Executor was hunting down a Rebel enclave in the Bybroni system, but the Dark Lord couldn't have cared less. There had not yet been a report from the agent he had commissioned to break up his son and the Princess. He could only hope that no news was good news.

"Er—my lord?"

Vader glanced down. It was the officer he'd promoted to command the Intelligence Section after the demise of Agent Barrows. "Yes?" he demanded.

"A report from your agent within the Rebellion, my lord." The officer handed him a datacard in a hand that shook only slightly. Vader ordered himself to refrain from killing the fellow as long as possible. After all, most personnel in the Imperial Navy required multiple sets of underwear per day if asked to work with him.

In the not-unlikely event that the datacard contained another report of failure, Vader decided to view it in his quarters and preserve the lives of his bridge officers. There were two holo files. He ignored the one marked "Read First." That was doubtless just a protracted excuse for whatever bad news was in the second file.

The screen lit up with a recording, taken via personal holorecorder from the way the image wobbled. It was a wide shot of a mess hall. Vader watched intently as the focus zoomed in on a pair of figures sitting side by side at their own table—Luke and the Princess. They were laughing about something…quite innocently, it seemed—

Then Luke reached in his pocket, disappeared behind the table for a second—and the next thing Vader saw was his son, on his knees, offering a ring to the Princess.

Who flung her arms around him and put the ring on her ring finger.

Just before the temper tantrum started, Vader reflected on how lucky his bridge officers were that he was so considerate of their lives. Otherwise there would have been a great many vacancies on his staff.

tbc...