CHAPTER 4

I.

Lando Calrissian leaned against the bar with Chewbacca at his side. They were in the Corusca room of the Mistress of Staves casino, a gaming level second only to the Diamond room, which was private and by reservation only. Corusca was still a high stakes gambling area, and the floor was currently crowded with players. Lining the walls above was a balcony restaurant where people could dine and watch the action below.

Lando caught the barman's attention. "Kault, please. A '45 if you have it." The barman poured a glass and looked questioningly at the Wookiee. Chewie growled low and the server quickly moved on to the next customer.

"He always talked up this room," Lando said. "Watch for a bald head with a cranial implant." Chewie rumbled. "I'd agree with that. Not more than a couple of guys, anyway—wait," he said. "I got him. Come on."

They made their way through the crowds of players until they reached a Sabaac table near the far end of the bar. Lobot was sitting in front of a sizable pile of chips. A pair of Duros, a Bith, and a very inebriated Gamorrean all glared at him. The dealer looked bored. They came up behind the cyborg.

"Big night?" Lando asked.

Lobot half-turned in his chair and looked Lando up and down dispassionately. He picked up a data pad and typed for a moment. He showed the screen to Lando. YOU GOT AWAY, it said.

"Barely. I lost the whole pot to the Empire back there, but the Alliance has staked me and I'm back in the game." He put a hand on Lobot's shoulder. "I need a favor."

Lobot just stared up at him.

"I was hoping you could make me a couple of your galactically renowned documents."

Lobot just stared. Lando's smile faltered.

"Forged documents. IDs. Fake IDs, Lobot. Can you help me?"

He held up the pad. I LOST MY EQUIPMENT ON CLOUD CITY.

"Can't you replace it?"

A few more key strokes. I AM NOT CURRENTLY PLANNING TO REPLACE IT. IF YOU WISH TO PROCURE THE EQUIPMENT FOR ME, I WILL MAKE YOU YOUR DOCUMENTS IN EXCHANGE.

Lando sighed in exasperation. "All my accounts were frozen by the Imps. Can you stake me? I'm good for it, I promise."

I THOUGHT THE ALLIANCE HAD STAKED YOU.

Lando squatted down so that he was eye to eye with his former aide. "Lobot, we worked together for a lot of years. You know that Vader made me set up my oldest friend and then turned him into a damned popsicle in my own house. I hate myself for it and I need you to help me straighten this thing out. Am I getting through to the human part of—

Chewie unleashed a fierce howl towards the balcony, and Lobot and Lando tracked his glare to its recipient.

Boba Fett stood in full armor on the balcony, his wrist blaster aimed directly at them. Lando yanked Lobot out of his chair and to the floor as the bounty hunter opened up, raking blaster bolts across the green felt of the Sabaac table. The piercing sound of blaster fire sparked mayhem among the gamblers as they shoved each other out of the way and tripped over fallen chairs in their mad dash for the exits.

Chewie grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it onto its side, sending chips and abandoned playing cards into the air. The three took cover behind it. Lando whipped his cape back over his left shoulder and yanked a silvery BlasTech DL-66 out of the back of his waist band. He popped up over the rim of the table and snapped off as many shots as he could at Fett. The bolts chewed up the railing of the balcony, sending flaming wood chips ricocheting off of Fett's armor. The bounty hunter staggered back two steps and then extended his other wrist and fired a rocket-dart.

"Down!" Lando yelled. Chewie and Lobot tucked and rolled away from the table just as the rocket exploded, blowing the entire thing off of the floor and flipping end over end through the air. They scurried underneath another table just as it crashed back down, collapsing into smoldering pieces.

"Chewie, you armed?" Lando called over the din. The Wookiee had left his bowcaster back on the ship, but he reached into the satchel at the end of his bandolier and pulled something out.

It was a thermal detonator.

Lando flashed a grin and sent up a volley of covering fire as Chewie rolled out from under the table. He activated the detonator and lobbed the metal sphere onto the balcony.

Fett saw the device sail past him and didn't wait for the results. He kicked off of the railing and ignited his jet pack just as the bomb exploded behind him, incinerating the entire balcony and bringing the flaming debris crashing to the floor.

The bounty hunter flew straight at them, firing his wrist blaster as he closed the gap. Chewie stood his ground and roared as a bolt singed his arm, setting that section of fur on fire. Fett had both fists out in front of him, and made to ram the Wookiee clear off of the ground. At the last moment, Chewie turned and bent his knees. He caught Fett as he soared by and used his momentum to throw him over the bar. Fett screamed as he smashed into shelves of liquor bottles, through the mirror behind them, and through the wall itself into the next room. He rolled to a stop amidst the rubble of plaster and broken glass.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Lando said. He strode towards the fallen mercenary, blaster in hand. "He looks just about ready to—

Chewie growled a warning and pulled Lando to the ground. A jet of flame shot out from Fett's position, engulfing the hole in the wall and setting the bar itself on fire. With all of the liquor going up, they were completely cut off by the inferno. They could just make out Fett stumbling away from the fire, and then he was out of sight.

Chewie helped Lando to his feet. Lobot was crawling out from under the table and towards the exit. "Damn it!" Lando said. "Come on, come on, we have to get to the Falcon before Fett flies out of here."

II.

Onboard Imperial tanker ship 684, Mara Jade sat in the copilot's seat and drummed her fingers on the armrest. The Bith authorities were taking their sweet time launching their own tankers to accept the fuel transfer. Her ship was part of a six-tanker convoy working the Rimma Trade Route. They were currently holding orbit of Clak'Dor VII like a domestic herd waiting for their shepherd.

But while the other tankers were certainly nerfs, Mara's was the wolf in the fold. In addition to having enhanced shields and a grade-seven sensor array, the entire tank section was retrofitted to hold a concealed TIE fighter deployment rack, currently occupied by thirty-six fighters. At the push of a button, Mara could blow the top portion of the tank off and the fighters would launch moments later.

All they needed was a target.

She turned to the pilot, a naval officer who had been transferred to her command by the Devastator. "Long-range scans are still negative. Anything on short-range?"

"Nothing firm, ma'am."

Mara frowned. "You have something that's not so firm, Lieutentant?"

"Yes, ma'am. There's some ionization on the far side of Clak'Dor V, but sensors can't pin it down as starship exhaust."

"Lieutenant?"

The pilot kept looking at his instruments. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Lieutenant," she said firmly. He looked up at her.

"Our mission is basically to sit around hoping to be ambushed by rebel fighters," she said. "Am I wrong?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well thank the Emperor," she said. "Because here I thought I might be on the wrong ship."

He held her stare for a moment and then turned his chair back towards his control panel. Mara jabbed her left hand into his headrest, sending the chair a half-turn back towards her. She leaned in close.

"And because I'm not wrong, and because we are out here hoping to be ambushed, you will report any and all unexplained, unidentified, and un-fracking-pinned down readings to your commander as soon as you lay your vacant eyes on them. Clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said with parade-ground stiffness. His eyes were as round as two moons and they were welling up at the corners.

Mara's own tone was quiet and tired. "Good, Lieutenant. Carry on."

This was the problem in the Imperial fleet. From bottom to top, communication flowed like a slow stream on the north pole of Hoth. A fleet commander had sufficient authority to remove, demote, or execute any crewmember found to be performing at a level not to said commander's satisfaction. As a result, crewmembers and junior officers would never approach their commander with a suspicion, a theory, or heaven forbid, a question, because if it was judged to be unwarranted or unworthy, the crewman might well be blown out of an airlock for his initiative. The commanders were being led by example, and that example could be traced back to one individual.

Darth Vader.

Lord Vader's lightspeed temper and his first failure/last failure policy was the stuff of legend in the Imperial military. Vader's flagship, the Executor, had a senior officer mortality rate unsurpassed even by that of the Clone Wars, despite the absence of a full-scale war. He went through two admirals a year on average. Despite the prestige of commanding a Super Star Destroyer, most of the best captains avoided that command like the plague. Devar said there was a pool in the fleet to see how long the newly minted Admiral Piett would last. At any rate, the state of affairs was that the Empire's best and brightest often kept a low profile to avoid being tapped for the 'honor' of serving under Lord Vader, while pompous fools like Marcan Griff and Kendal Ozzel rose to the occasion, convinced by the spoiled unaccountability of their youth that their position amongst the aristocracy and their 'inborn talents' would shield them from Vader's wrath. As it turned out, their talent wasn't so inborn, and their windpipes crushed as easily as a common cadet's.

And so here she was, waiting to be jumped by the same starfighter squadron that killed the Death Star, and her pilot was holding back information because he was afraid she might punish him for wasting her valuable time. This was indeed the problem in the Imperial fleet.

She had delicately waded into this line of thought with the Emperor, but he always steered her away from the issue, deferring to Vader's judgment on how best to manage the military. Vader was, after all, his chosen apprentice.

Mara did not lose any reverence or respect for the Emperor as a result of his attitude. He was shaping the future of an entire galaxy. He didn't have time to be concerned with the day-to-day operations of soldiers.

But what Mara couldn't come to terms with was a pair of questions:

Why Vader?

Why not me?

"Ma'am," the pilot said. "Short-range sensors detected hyperspace signatures near Clak'Dor V—

A dozen fighters dropped out of lightspeed.

III.

Luke Skywalker sat in the pitch black cockpit of his X-Wing starfighter, watching the steam of his breath drift across the moon filling his canopy. He and the other eleven members of Rogue Squadron each lay in wait with their engines powered down and their life support systems operating at the lowest possible level.

On the other side of the moon was their intended target: six Imperial fuel tankers carrying full loads of Tibanna gas. It was enough fuel to keep the Alliance fleet moving for three months. And according to recent intel, the Empire had just reallocated half of its escort ships to other assignments, making the tankers easy pickings.

A single light blinked on Luke's control board. It was their local agent making contact. He activated his comm. system, but left all other systems inactive. On the small display screen, a set of coordinates appeared, along with a brief message tailored to Luke: 6 BANTHAS, 6 TUSKENS.

Luke pinged the rest of the squadron and they each powered their comm. units. He transmitted the agent's text message, along with one extra line: COLD START IN 20- FOLLOW ME TO JUMP POINT.

Luke took a slow deep breath and closed his eyes. He started a mental count to twenty and opened himself to the force. He could feel the familiar auras of the pilots to his portside, and the great mass of the moon just ahead.

Things you will see. Other places:

He was in a cold forest at night.

The future:

He could hear that terrible breathing coming from the darkness.

The past:

A crimson blade slashed through his flesh.

Old friends, long gone:

A carbonite slab hung in painful silence—

Luke's hand shot out and hit the main power button exactly on time, as though directed by an independent consciousness. He was pulled out of his vision, but his senses still felt attuned to the force. He looked to port, and saw the main engines of the rest of the squad light up red. His control board lit fully—all systems were go. He fed the coordinates into the navicomputer.

"Here we go, Artoo. Hold on tight."

He stepped on his starboard rudder pedal, bringing the nose around right, and went full throttle. He burned hard around the moon's atmosphere, using the gravitational forces to boost his speed. His cockpit vibrated and Artoo's cry of exhilaration could just be heard over the engines. His squadron was right on him, like a flock of hawks soaring across a killing ground. When they shot around the moon's other side and broke orbit, Luke immediately pulled back on the hyperdrive lever and made the jump.

In-system jumps were tricky. The computer had to handle reentry because human response time was too slow to do it manually. From Luke's perspective, upon pulling the lever, there was a flash of light, and then he was diving straight at the tankers.

Luke hauled back on the stick and pulled up hard to avoid collision. He skipped off of a tanker's shields like a stone on the water, and tore past a TIE fighter escort, probably before its proximity alarm even had time to announce his arrival. He checked his rear display and saw the rest of the squad narrowly avoid collisions of their own. Luke broke radio silence.

"Rogue group, Rogue Leader. Lock S-foils in attack position. Take out the eyeballs first and no torpedoes near the tankers." Luke flipped a switch on the upper right of his canopy and the four wings separated for maximum blaster efficiency.

The pilots all signaled acknowledgments and teamed up into pairs to take on the TIEs, which they outnumbered two-to-one. Between strength of numbers and the element of surprise, the eyeballs were dust in under a minute and no pilot needed to waste a torpedo.

"Nice work, guys," Luke said. "Begin phase two. Three and Seven, take your flights in and hit tankers five and six. Leaders, hit the cockpits once the shields are down—just like the sims."

"Copy that," Wedge Antilles said. "Two flight, on me."

"I'm on it," Hobbie Klivian said. "Three flight, on me."

Both of Luke's flight leaders led the other three fighters in their groups on strafing runs, chipping away the tankers' shields with laser bolts.

"Okay, one flight," Luke said, addressing his own group. "Let's pass up and down the ventral hull of number four and hammer the shields. Avoid the blaster turret up top."

Luke went in first, putting his lasers into rapid cycle mode. All four wing cannons fired in turn, the bolts leaping out in a rotating pattern and splashing against the shields.

The rest of Luke's flight followed suit. They emerged beyond the nose of the tanker, well below the firing radius of the dorsal turret, which spat heavy laser blasts too far above their trajectories to be a threat. He checked his sensors and they showed the tanker's shields to be at forty-eight percent. "Okay, one flight—one more ventral pass from bow to stern and then cover me while I make my run on the cockpit."

Luke got two acknowledgments from his human pilots and one growl from Lak Sivrak, a Shistavanen Wolfman. They all ran the length of the ship again—this time Luke did not fire, but kept his eyes glued to the sensor readouts. He watched the shield strength steadily decline under the X-Wings' assault. Seven percent, four percent, one percent—

"Cease fire!" Luke called out. They couldn't risk blowing the tank once the shields came down. The rest of one flight flew past the rear of the ship to a safe distance while Luke pulled up around the stern in a tight arc and ran down the dorsal spine towards the cockpit. The turret cannon was rotating towards him when he vaporized it with a single blast from his cannon.

"Artoo, slow to ten percent speed and kill the engines—maneuvering thrusters only." The droid complied with a few hoots and Luke's fighter drifted leisurely along the top of the ship towards the bow. Luke fired maneuvering thrusters until he had come around one-hundred-eighty degrees, and was coasting in reverse. A few moments later, he floated past the bow, with the nose of his X-Wing facing the large cockpit canopy of the tanker. He thought he could make out the panicked expressions of the crew inside.

"May the force bring you peace," Luke said softly. He nailed the canopy with two laser bolts. The decompression within blew the transparisteel clean off, and three bodies flew out into space with it.

"Flights two and three, how does it look?"

"It's good, sir," Hobbie replied. "Our Bantha is adrift and waiting for its new master."

"Rogue Three?" Luke asked.

"We're set, boss," Wedge said.

Luke checked the status of the three tankers they hadn't attacked. They were burning as hard as they could away from the battle. Something felt wrong.

"All right—begin phase three. Leaders, deploy astro-droids to the tankers. Rogue ten, I need you to switch positions with me and send your droid over."

"I copy," she said, and maneuvered herself to the tanker's nose.

"What's wrong with your astro-droid, sir?" Tycho Celchu asked.

Artoo blatted indignantly. "I could never get his thrusters working since I got him four years ago," Luke explained. "The techs think it's a software problem, but I'm not willing to have his memory wiped to fix it."

As the main body of Rogue Squadron maintained a perimeter around the three tankers, Rogues Three, Seven, and Ten ejected their R2 and R5 units and the droids used their thrusters to head into the vented cockpits of the tankers. Once they made their way inside, they magnetized and began preparing the navicomputers for hyperspace jumps back to the Alliance rendezvous point. Luke's uneasiness increased, and he fought the urge to order his team to hurry.

With a burst of light, an Imperial star destroyer winked into existence a few thousand kilometers away. It began launching its TIE fighters.

"Backup just arrived, lead," Wedge said.

"I see it. Get those droids back in their sockets fast." He watched as the small, cylindrical droids propelled themselves out of the tankers and back towards their X-Wings. "Time to tanker jumps?"

"One minute," Wedge answered.

Luke looked at his tactical display. The destroyer wouldn't be in range for more than two minutes, but the TIEs would close the gap in forty seconds. If the droids were on their games, they could be locked in just before that. This was going to be close.

"Okay, all Rogues not waiting on an astro-droid, come about and target the eyeballs. Prepare to fire both tubes. Set for proximity detonation and go for the center of their formations."

Luke got his acknowledgements and watched the approaching targets on his heads-up display. The HUD crosshairs eased into the middle of the lead TIE quartet. He let fly both torpedoes. He saw the flaming tails of his other pilots torps moving parallel to his.

When the projectiles neared the center of the incoming formations, the eyeballs banked hard apart to avoid the blast. Their levels of success varied from partial to none at all as some of them were completely blown apart while others lost part of a wing or were peppered by molten shrapnel. In any case, the barrage bought Rogue Squadron the seconds they needed.

The three tankers made their jumps in staccato flashes of pseudomotion.

"Ten locked with astromech."

"Three locked."

There was a pause. "Seven?" Luke asked.

"Seven good to go," Hobbie came back.

"Then we're out of here. Make your jumps now." Luke checked the navicomputer. "We're good, Artoo?"

He beeped an affirmative. Luke threw back the hyperdrive lever for the second time inside of ten minutes. He was pulled back into his flight chair and squinted at the tunnel of light that encompassed him, and was on his way

It was a perfect mission. Big prizes, no damage, and no casualties.

All that being so, Luke still felt a threatening hostility lurking just out of reach—something totally separate from the arriving star destroyer. He couldn't help but feel that they had narrowly dodged a very large blaster bolt.

IV.

Deep in the black silence of space, on the decimated planetoid of Polis Massa, Darth Vader trembled as he experienced every facet of human emotion simultaneously.

He gripped the edge of the desk so tightly that there were indentations in the metal, and the surface itself had warped and bowed. Every nerve ending in his body, natural and synthetic, was firing at its peak.

On the computer monitor in front of him, Padme Amidala—Padme Skywalker—who had died that day on Mustafar—

It seems that in your anger… you killed her.

—was giving birth one day later. Giving birth to his son.

He checked the date and time on the upper right corner of the sickbay log for the fiftieth time and confirmed that it was the next day. One day after Obi-wan had maimed him and left him for dead on the bank of that volcanic river.

Padme had died with his son in her womb. His son had been born. He had known these things.

But this was no miracle post-mortum delivery or convergence of the force. Padme survived Mustafar and she had given birth here on Polis Massa the next day.

I didn't kill her.

On the feed, Padme arched her neck and screamed. A second later, Vader heard the most remarkable sound of his existence. The soft crying of a new born baby. His baby.

The medical droid was holding the infant. It was a boy, and through the child's squinting and tears, Vader could see brilliant blue—blue like the ocean that the desert Skywalkers imagined, but had never expected to see.

Luke, he thought.

Luke, Padme mouthed on the feed.

He realized at that moment that there was no sound in this vacuum. The crying he had heard—that gift—had sprung from elsewhere. He didn't question it. There are times when a thing of beauty comes to you, and you don't ask where it came from, or why it left shortly thereafter. You're just thankful for the experience, and for the way it redefines the boundaries of what you think of as life.

The Dark Lord of the Sith was not a man who could think of things in this way—perhaps he was not a man at all. But he wanted to hold on to this sensation of creating life. He wanted to cradle it in his mechanical fists a little longer, and clutch it to his armored chest.

Padme was now holding her baby boy lovingly. Suddenly, she tensed in pain again and looked to the medical droid—

There was a burst of static, and screen went black, save for one line of text:

DATA FILE INCOMPLETE.

Vader erupted.

Monitors throughout the control room exploded, shooting glass shards through the zero gravity environment. Metal equipment casings crushed in on themselves and furniture bolted to the deck was ripped free and flung into the ceiling. Vader called his lightsaber to his hand and began slashing apart anything that was left.

The entire explosive episode occurred in complete silence. His cape rippled gently as his arms pumped up and down and side to side, dicing everything in his path. Small pieces of metal and glass soared in every direction, bouncing off of walls and his own body. He finally stopped, his shoulders rising and falling in exertion he hadn't felt in years. Debris glided serenely throughout the shambles of the room. Vader floated in the center of it, a black island of rage in a sea of chaos. He remained that way for quite some time.

When he finally lowered himself back into his TIE fighter cockpit, he had come to a resolution. It was as simple as it was decisive:

I am going to find my answers.

I am going to get my son.

And when I have those things, I will bring them before the Emperor.

And then he will answer.

To be continued...