Vader was smirking behind his mask, though his posture was schooled to be as it always was. He wasn't about to give Tarkin another indication that he was acting out of character. "What have you found out about the ship?"
"It was abandoned shortly after takeoff. I was planning to slice the computer, but it will take me several days to see if there is anything useful there."
"What about the Princess, could she have been on board that ship?"
"It is doubtful. I can further interrogate the crew of the Tantive IV, if you like."
"Do so. I want the plans for this station to be found."
"As you wish, Tarkin. I will have the prisoners transferred to the Devastator."
"Don't you want to interrogate them here, aboard the Death Star?"
"It will be more convenient to have them aboard my ship, since I sleep there. But I could torture them here."
"Well, if it's just a matter of convenience," Tarkin said. "You won't mind only having one up there at a time, will you? I would rather not spread my guard out too much."
"I have brig guards for my ship. It wouldn't have to change your routine any at all."
Tarkin finally conceded the point. "I'll have the prisoners transferred. Your crew will deal with them if they escape."
"They won't escape," he said, and turned and left, satisfied that he'd won this particular encounter.
He went to the office he'd been assigned while he was on board the Death Star. It was actually rather convenient, because if he'd been in his office on the Devastator, he wouldn't get anything done. There was something to be said for having an office where his children and grandchild couldn't reach him.
Luke worked with his sister on the exercises that Ben had assigned them. They were both in pretty good shape, but lightsaber combat was one of the most physically and mentally taxing exercises he'd ever run across. "That's not the way you taught me to do it, Unca Luke," Jaina said after watching them for a while.
"How did I teach you to do it?" he asked her, crossing his arms after he deactivated his lightsaber. It was really his father's, but he wasn't sure what exactly to do about that. Leia was using Ben's, since it was the only other one they had available.
Jaina jumped up and grabbed the lightsaber, but didn't turn it on. She seemed used to practicing with it off, so he permitted this. She went through the motions of attack and defense, but as she had said, they were different from what he was practicing now. "I didn't realize I was putting all three of you through training," he heard Ben's dry comment from behind him.
"Master Obi-Wan," Jaina said respectfully.
"Who taught you Ataru forms?" he asked her.
"Unca Luke," she said, glancing at him as she said it.
"Ah, well, then. Right now, Luke and Leia are learning Shii-Cho forms. I don't suppose you know those, do you?" Jaina shook her head. "Well, then, why don't we go find something so that I can fashion you a practice blade with while they do their forms?"
She nodded, handing Luke his lightsaber back and taking the Jedi Master's hand in her slight one.
He looked at Leia, shaking his head again at how easily the child beguiled even such a hard-hearted man as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Considering that, he had little hope against her. They went back to the intense training in silent harmony.
Vader was tired after a long day catching up on paperwork, but he had moved through it with a purpose, and that was protecting his family. He had set himself a goal, and having finished that, he'd gone on a personal tour of the facilities that housed the laser targeting system, and he had initially been dismayed at how the system was protected from accidental harm, but once he was past his initial shock, he started to see tiny flaws in the system that he could exploit. It would be possible to make something happen where he would not be directly blamed. He would be blamed anyway, that couldn't be helped, but if he didn't seem directly at fault, he could delay an argument with the Emperor until he had other people there to help take him down.
There was one of Tarkin's guards waiting for him outside his ship, and he made his way over to the man, to see what he wanted.
"Lord Vader, sir, the prisoners have been transferred back to the Devastator."
He remembered then that he'd requested that Tarkin return the crew of the Tantive IV to his brig. "Very well," he said, and continued on to his ship as the man hurried off to his own duties. Men under his command knew they served at their own risk, and that if they did well, he would reward them. Men who were not under his command feared him as the inhuman creation that the Emperor had intended him to be. It had been weeks, since Jaina had found him, since he'd killed anyone. He was sure that the crew must have been much relieved that he had found her presence such a distraction, though he was sure that they were keeping on their toes even more than usual. He thought he should perhaps check and ensure that they were in top form once they were off the Death Star.
He boarded the Death Star, and checked the brig to ensure that the prisoners were at least relatively unharmed, and that they were all accounted for, and under guard. He checked the guard roster, and seeing that everything was in order, he headed for Cargo Bay One.
Han was watching Jaina, not sure what he expected from her, but she was a fascinating person. She didn't seem to have any trouble expressing her opinion that he and her mother were her two least favorite people on the ship. Vader and Luke seemed to be fairly even in her consideration of favorites, and even Chewie ranked above Mom and Dad for her. It wasn't that she actually disliked either of them, for she seemed to get along fine with both of them, but more that she didn't trust that they wouldn't 'take her away.' Not that there was anywhere to go at the present, being inside a ship that was inside a ship that was inside a space station.
"What are you drawing, kid?" he asked as shapes began to emerge from the color sticks onto the paper he'd been able to scrounge up.
"Granda's ship," she said, indicating a blue, vaguely triangle shaped object.
"And what's this?" he asked, indicating something black.
"Granda."
"What about that?" Han queried, asking about another figure.
"It's a Jedi."
"One in particular?"
"No, just a Jedi," she said, and she drew more similar figures.
"Do you know some Jedi?"
"Some. There's Mara who came to see us with Unca Luke once, and Katarn, and Corran," she answered, still coloring.
"How do you know so many Jedi?"
She shrugged. "There are more out there. Unca Luke was talking about setting up a school, and I was going to get to go, except," she stopped coloring, and folded in on herself again.
"Except what?"
"I came here. Can I still go to Jedi school here?"
"Well, we have a teacher and the common room can be your class room, so I guess this qualifies as a school. You just have to share the old fossil with Luke and Leia."
"Ok," she said, picking up green color stick, and drawing a figure that looked like the Jedi. She gave this one brown hair.
"Who's that?"
"Corran," she answered.
"Why does he get to be green?"
"He wears green robes."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "He talks like you."
"What do you mean he talks like me?"
"Granda talks like Unca Luke. Mommy talks like Aunt Winter. Corran talks like you."
"You mean he's Corellian?"
She thought for a moment, and then said, "Yeah."
Vader didn't quite understand the loosening of tensions throughout his body as he approached the ship that held his family, but most especially the ones closest to his heart. He walked up the ramp, and had anyone who did not belong to his crew asked, they would have been told he was doing very thorough searches of the computer databases to see if this ship could be connected in any way to the Rebellion, and any other piece of information he could dredge out of it.
Vader, his crew would have said, took the emptiness of the ship personally. Him taking things personally tended to get people killed. Anyone asking about the ship would have been warned to keep a good distance from it, too, just in case Vader thought someone was taking an improper interest in something that was already upsetting him.
But the crew knew the score. No one had said anything about Jaina, not to him, and not to anyone outside the ship. They talked among themselves, but ship gossip was impossible to stop or even exercise any measure of control over, and they had apparently come to the conclusion that Jaina was a good influence on him.
They were right, but it brought many more questions to the surface, and no one had yet gathered the courage to ask him. He could feel the undercurrent of questions when he spoke to his men, but he didn't have any more answers than they did, so he avoided the questions entirely, and his crew avoided asking them.
"Granda!" he heard as he was about halfway up the ramp, and he braced himself for her exuberance. She propelled herself into his arms, and he caught her, and the ice around his heart that had built through the day melted into oblivion, and she chipped away at the permafrost around his soul.
He held her tightly as she started excitedly chattering about her day, how Obi-Wan had worked with her to fashion a practice blade, and how she was going to be in 'Jedi School' with Luke and Leia. He only half listened to her, just savoring her soothing presence. "Granda, you're not paying attention," she chastised him.
"I'm paying attention to the most important part."
She giggled, "What's that?"
"The part where you're in my arms, and in my heart."
"Granda," she said, "But what about what I'm talking about?"
"If it's important, tell me again, and I'll listen this time, I promise."
"It is important," she insisted.
"All right, then," he agreed.
Luke was working through the velocities, as Ben called them, with Leia at very low speed. They were both new to the whole Jedi thing, but both of them felt comfortable enough with the first couple of series of velocities to test them out against each other. They worked through the sequence once, then again. "Want to speed up?" his sister challenged him.
He nodded, not to be outdone by her enthusiasm. "Sure, a little."
"Just a little?" she teased, but as they set into work, it became apparent that neither of them was ready to do more than just a small increase in speed. It took so much of their concentration that they didn't hear Jaina squeal and launch herself headlong down the ramp at her grandfather, nor any of the subsequent conversations.
Sweat was pouring off of both of them by the time they were done with their second series, and Leia put her hand up. "Enough."
"I would have said it was enough an hour ago," Obi-Wan commented from the doorway.
They turned, looking at their audience, which included Jaina and Anakin as well.
"You are your father's children," he said with a sigh. "Go clean up before you both start smelling like a herd of bantha."
"Yes, Master Obi-Wan," they said together, and then they giggled.
"I don't deserve them, you know," he heard their father say.
"If you can make things right with the galaxy, perhaps you will change your mind," Obi-Wan said.
"Perhaps," he agreed, sadly, still not believing.