A/N: Hello all! Ok, so I wanna start by saying: Happy (very) belated Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Kwanzaa, and every other holiday we're celebrating at this time of year! I'm thankful for a great many things, you wonderful readers and reviewers being among them! I wanted to get this chapter uploaded as sort of a Thx-giving day treat for everyone Thurs., but that didn't pan out; sorry! :) Also, I've had some questions/comments about the last chapter I wanted to address before getting started; so here we go!
Weirdsquirrelgirl: As always thx for reviewing! I'm really excited for when V/L do meet too; and I'm sure we can count on Vader trying to control him! He's Vader after all, right? LOL; I hope you like how that plays out!
Mireilles3: Thanks as always! I try to deliberately keep some tension between Spek and Ghost; I think it makes their relationship more interesting. And no doubt you're right and a fight is on the horizon….
Guest (2 of 3): I'm sorry you didn't like the last few chapters. All I can say is I have NO filler material in my fics and that these parts will not only play a part in the bigger story of Ep. V, but also in Ep.s VI and my version of VII—which there will be one of. So, we can just hope that as the stories continue it'll become more apparent why these parts exist and how they fit into the grander scope.
Everyone else: Thanks SOOO much for the love and reviews! It's so awesome to read how you all look forward to the next chapters! It really DOES make my day!
Ok, so that's about it…onward!
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SW Ep. V: Jedi Assassin Ch.14— Repercussions
Vader wasn't surprised when Palpatine led him to a very isolated throne room, sequestered in a cloistered corner of the palace, purposely hidden from the typical Palace traffic. It was bare metal; sparse and dimly lit—a stark contrast to the others on Imperial Center. Vader allowed no outward reaction, though he knew from experience why this chamber existed:
Punishment.
Hence the tall-ceilinged room's lack of opulence, only metal walls, and a short metal staircase leading to the black and silver throne set atop grated metal flooring. And it was far from prying ears who might catch the screams of those receiving their Emperor's wrath.
As Vader had in times past.
Vader wanted to hiss in anger but restrained himself- all metal for conducting electricity.
Vader had more than once felt his master's ire for daring to step out of line, or for anything resembling failure. In 18 years he had become well acquainted with the bite of Sith lightning.
The Emperor was an exacting master—and he never allowed Vader to forget it.
Vader clenched his jaw to keep the growl lodged in his throat. He reminded himself again the Emperor's own time was coming.
Palpatine ascended the wide stairs to his throne, and seated himself with the fluid motions of a serpent coiling to strike, and draped both arms over the chair's sides. He regarded Vader with a chilled gaze.
"Lord Vader"—and the dark lord resisted making any reaction to the unnatural coolness in his tone—"I believe you are aware an attack was made against the super ship?"
The super ship? The old man wasn't going to chastise him for the Temple slayings?
Vader steadied himself; the old man surely knew, but for whatever reason was delaying his hand.
His master was the shrewdest of strategists.
"I am aware," Vader tonelessly replied.
The other nodded. "The attack was carefully monitored," was the gleeful declaration, and when Palpatine grinned in triumph, a foreboding chilled Vader all over, "and we have begun the process of identifying the saboteurs at last."
Vader kept his bearing unmoving, though this revelation struck him like a typhoon.
Vader's thoughts reeled. He couldn't imagine just how the cagey old man had penetrated the Specter's network enough to gain such Intel, but it hardly mattered now. It was now a new kind of race; should Palpatine identify Specter's agents before Vader—and it was surely the boy; who else could it have been?—the old man would seize a daunting advantage against him.
Whoever wielded the most information on the boy's network and operatives would have more avenues for tracking the child himself—the boy's allies would provide a bottomless well of secrets and means to not only capture the Specter, but also to control him; once their names and faces were known.
The boy was so very flawed in his loyalty, after all.
"What was learned from their operation?" he inquired instead. Best to test his master's hand at once.
Palpatine offered him a thin smile. "A great deal," was the soft, but exultant response, "the dear Specter was kind enough to bring many of his allies." He leaned back and smirked. "I have ordered High Command to place their best covert intelligence officers to the task of deciphering every iota we recorded on the boy and his agents." He leaned back, and skull-like grin cracking his imperious demeanor. "It is only a matter of time now, Lord Vader, until the boy becomes ours."
Becomes mine, Vader silently corrected. "It is welcome news, my master," he carefully said instead.
Palpatine only gave him a tiny, discerning smile in return, making a small cringe of dread crawl up Vader's spine. A change of topic was in order.
"And the true super ship? No strikes have been made against it?"
Another smile. "No, Lord Vader, your vessel is quite safe."
Neither of them caught the figure in the over-hangs, watching—
And gaping in shock.
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Luke nearly fell off the rafters he was perched on.
'True super ship!?' What 'true' super ship?
His insides wrenched at the realization of what they were implying….
He pressed back against the icy wall, nestled between the metal structure and the eaves sweeping across the curved ceiling in a web-formation, his dark clothes blending him into the shadowy pools.
It had been a gambit, following them, but had he hacked into the cameras to observe them instead, then he would have been risking another kind of detection anyways.
And surely Noc was already inside the Imperial network. No; it had been best to rely on his own tricks of mental concealment.
Ghost wasn't the authority on Fallanassi and Jensaarai training after all.
He quickly squashed his feelings of shock and disbelief, drawing on psychic patterns that would help him conform to the overall mental ambiance around them. Sith could sense both presences and emotions, after all, but thankfully it was drawing near to midnight—Empire Day.
Luke could pick up the guests' emotions outside were increasingly excited and jubilant as they counted down to Empire Day; he mixed his agitation into their enthusiasm, effectively concealing it.
"Then the super-ship will be completed on schedule?" Vader questioned.
Below Luke, and to his far left, the Emperor nodded majestically. "Indeed Lord Vader, in only a couple days the super-star destroyer will be finished and you shall utilize it to hunt down and destroy the rebellion, once and for all."
Luke swallowed hard, feeling a wretch surge up his throat. The shadows he had melded to seemed to rise up over him, looming all around as if to crush him with this terrible truth.
He had failed; they had attacked a decoy, a false super-ship, Palpatine had tricked him and he'd fallen for the ruse.
And now Vader would unleash the might of the true super-ship against the rebellion—
And it was Luke's fault. It was entirely his fault.
People would die; rebels, good fighting men and women. People who had risked all to liberate the galaxy from the nightmarish Sith regime.
How many would be doomed now because of his blindness?
He shrank back, reflexively seeking the secret entrance he'd utilized to trail them. He'd heard more than enough. He couldn't risk his emotions exposing him, least of all now; his feelings were rising up to fight against his masking as the gut-wrenching truth assaulted him full force:
He could scares believe it; this was his first real failure; after years of perfect operations, perfect anonymity, perfect planning—all securing perfect success.
And on the tail of that epiphany came another awful insight: -it was because of his father; he'd been so fixated on any new opportunities to track Anakin Skywalker that he'd surely missed the warning signs that the operation against the super-ship had gone too smoothly.
Palpatine had blind-sided him—again. Luke ground the heels of his hands into his closed eyes before feeling the opening in the wall where the secret doorway was yawning in wait for him. He soundlessly shimmied to it, devastation numbing his body all over.
As he walked the clean, well-lit corridor, he wordlessly thanked Link and Mouse for uncovering the schematics of the Palace, including its more ambiguous sides-like the system of hidden passages that wound all through the pyramid-like structure.
He halted before the exit, unseen behind a massive statue of the Emperor himself, carved from black marble in a side room that was unlit. Beyond the ante-chamber the great hall erupted with deafening applause and cheers. Midnight must have just fallen then, Luke deduced. His throat closed in agony.
It was his Life Day; he was eighteen, legally a man on most worlds. He sighed. He'd concluded another year failing to find his father, failing to uncover what had truly killed his mother; but now?
It was far worse; he'd failed every year as Luke Skywalker, seeking to unravel how his family had fractured and fallen apart, but as the Specter, he'd never failed, not even once.
But now, he'd begun his year of manhood with his first—and greatest—failure; but as the Specter, who never failed.
He carefully left the area, forcing a smile to blend back into the party hiding how hollow he was inside.
He had to find Ghost, fast.
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After Vader and the Emperor had departed, Ghost had watched Luke shadow them.
Even as sense ranted inside of her he was taking foolish risks—again—intuition informed her quietly that no, his actions was necessary.
And so, she had pulled out her bejeweled fan of lace and silk, fanned herself delicately and fluttered her lashes at a baron passing by.
He'd instantly come running.
Of course, other men had gathered around, and Ghost had charmed information silkily out of the lot of them; fortunately none of them realized that the glittering gems in her fan were in fact tiny camera lenses, sensors and audio recorders, and the wiring was perfectly concealed as the lace patterns woven into the silk.
She gestured easily with it as she laughed and conversed, the cameras were all micro-installed into the facets of each stone, ergo the more she moved the fan around, the more angles it captured holo-vids and pics of all present.
Easier to monitor and track potential targets; and of course espionage was all inclusive in general.
Ghost repressed a grin. She wouldn't want anyone to feel left out, after all.
A hand touched her shoulder. Icy skin chilled her through her thin sleeve. She turned.
It was Luke; and his face was a mask of levity, but his hands were only cold when he was upset.
Bad news from his quiet observing then. Figured.
"Might I steal my cousin for just a moment?" he pleasantly asked the group of fashionable tyrants around them.
Of course his honeyed tone left them no ability to disagree, so most of them only joked that it be "only a moment," while others just glowered at him from behind their champagne flutes.
Luke pulled her gently away and they put on the façade of light conversation until Ghost could maneuver them discreetly to a cloistered corner near the hors d'oeuvres and glistening M'velan punch bowl.
The bowl was tiered and shaped like graceful long-necked birds taking flight, each of their backs rounded basins for punch to flow down in layered waterfalls. It would provide cover for their conversation. Ghost pretended to fiddle with her fan when in fact the Gu'lanken ivory handle was imbedded with a module to send out a series of audio waves that would impede their conversation from being recorded.
And she subtly turned Luke so both of them face away from the cameras in the palace chamber.
No audio recordings possible.
No visuals either; ergo, no lip readers.
All right; now she could ask.
Luke made a point of pouring her a drink as she asked him with only a look. She took her drink as he retrieved one from the waterfall for himself.
"I have news," he whispered from behind the glass. Ah; an added precaution; good.
It was harder to read lips from behind a flute.
A couple walked by and she and Luke laughed at some non-existant joke until they were clear again.
Ghost only waited. No need to ask the obvious "what?" question.
A sullen, haunted look passed over his face. "I heard what they said"—and why did Luke sound so forlorn?—"the super-ship all this time was a"—
BOOM! BOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom!
All around them explosions went off and Luke instinctively grabbed Ghost and the dived under the table.
And was that the roar of something Ghost heard bellow over the explosions and raucous screams and breaking finery?
Ghost yanked the handle out from her fan, to reveal the slick knife concealed within, and Luke pulled his cuff-links off, pressed them and rows of small metal teeth popped out.
Throwing stars.
They pulled up the table-cloth and watched as smoke billowed from gaping holes in the walls all around them…and massive, shadowy formations appeared in them.
Blasted marble debris scratched and clanked as the figures came into the dimmed light.
Overhead shattered lighting crackled and sparked.
Ghost's eyes narrowed, she noticed Luke's posture tense up.
Their attackers emerged, weapons drawn.
They were creatures and beings that were clearly once human. Most of them had four arms.
And in each was a massive blaster or long blade.
A human woman screamed, and the creatures opened fire.
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Vader re-entered the gathering chamber just before the explosions sounded.
The dark side blared in his mind a second before walls ripped apart all around him, sending guests and nearby servants flying from the force of the detonations.
Vader remained fixed in place, anchored by the dark side. Only his long cape billowed and snapped as the walls erupted and threw blinding debris clouds everywhere.
Vader's optic lenses compensated, automatically activating heat and night vision, as well as UV scope.
While the guests groped around them, coughing in thick onyx clouds, Vader drew out his lightsaber.
He sensed danger all around him.
He wondered, briefly, why Palpatine had not electrocuted him in the metal room again, and had surmised that perhaps the old man was merely reminding him that he could have, but for whatever reason, did not—until this.
Had Palpatine known?
Vader had no time to wonder further when the human-like creatures came forth.
Briefly he cursed himself for not having his second lightsaber on hand. Being after being poured into the large room, pulling weapons out from their tattered clothes and unleashing gore on the polished guests.
Vader dived into the fray.
The dark lord frankly couldn't care less how many perfumed courtiers were hacked down by the attackers, but Vader would not allow Imperial Center to be a target, no matter what.
Especially when Vader himself was known to be planet-side; he and the Emperor both.
An attack on Empire Day when both Sith were present was clearly a challenge, and Vader knew all too well how to respond to being challenged:
Strike them down without mercy.
And so Vader advanced, merging into the black, swirling clouds, his saber a blood red beacon of death, contrasting against the dark.
Its deathly hum resonated against the growls, roars and screeches of the attacking man-beasts.
Vader hacked down a four-armed man with boney spines down his back and swollen, mutated lime skin before impaling the face of a man with tan-orange skin and massive horns jutting from his nose, chin and brows when blaster fire sounded from behind him.
A navy-black man with bat-wings hanging from his arms came from nowhere, diving at the dark lord, only to be shot in the face by someone behind Vader.
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A/N: Ok, so this is where I'm ending it for now. I know, I know, we're STILL not back with the rebels, but this battle sequence has to finish and then we'll get back to Hoth, promise In the meantime please enjoy and leave a review! Have a happy new year if I don't post before then. In other news, I'm trying to get back into college spring semester, so any prayers you can send my way for that to happen would be awesome, and also I'm going in for promotional training for my job in 2 weeks, so prayers for that too would be great. Thanks!