Executor Given

by SpellCleaver

Luke is sent to Kuat to sabotage the Executor on her first launch. But when Vader realises his son is there, he unwittingly does that himself. / Crack oneshot based on the Ever Given's stay in the Suez Canal.

Happy May the 4th!

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge or understanding of how space works, how the military works, how military equipment works, how military command works, how charges and EMPs work, how to fly a spaceship - the list goes on. This was really tough to write so just... ignore my blatant ignorance and embrace the bullshit.

Shoutout to the one who inspired and enabled this, and shoutout to everyone else who told me "that's an insane idea, do it" :D Love you all, and May the fourth be with you!

---

Luke had heard so much about the Kuat System, the Drive Yards it held and the sheer amount of ships they produced for the Empire. It was every mechanic's dream to work as a Head Engineer on one of their projects and it had infected even Luke, occasionally, when he was staring and dreaming at the skies. He was handy with a ship: imagine if, somehow, he could work here?

The sight of it as he dropped out of hyperspace from the Kuat Passenger Port and coasted towards the hangar marked neon on his scopes, eyeing the escort TIEs that came to flank him, was stunning. A great planet, wreathed in green clouds and ringed with a massive, massive orbital construction array. He couldn't take his eyes off it: dots of ships flew in every direction; lights blinked and winked everywhere he looked, like the stars beyond them; and he could see the great dagger shapes of Star Destroyers, ovals of different models of capital ships, wide and gaping hangars where traffic ferried in and out like sand through an hourglass…

It was a vista from a dream.

It was everything he'd ever imagined.

He was going to blow it to hell.

R2 warbled something beside him; Luke glanced at the monitor he was connected to, reading out the Basic text to be sure he understood right. His Binary was improving, but wasn't stellar. THE COMMS BASE ARE HAILING US.

"Patch them through, Artoo." He was in a small, unobtrusive little passenger ship, one that could barely fit him and his droid, and could hardly fail to show him off as a ratty, starstruck new hire here to try and make his name among the other millions who worked on the array. Nothing would go wrong at this stage.

He hoped.

Nothing had gone wrong since he blew up the Death Star a few scarce months ago, but he still worried. Even if this time he was just targeting one ship, not the entire karking station.

He flicked the switch when the comm started beeping and answered, "This is Vig Reneve."

"Vig Reneve, new apprentice for Workshop 1004?"

"That's me."

"Your ship name?"

"Imabari." He didn't know what the name meant; Han had acquired the ship.

"We have in our records that you have brought your own droid for this work, and will not be requiring one?"

Luke glanced at Artoo. The black and grey paintjob was fresh and unpeeling; when Artoo saw him looking at it again, he beeped shrilly in vociferous objection to having had it at all. But he needed to blend in with the Imperial droids.

"I do."

"Follow your projected course; a supervisor will come to meet you to assign you your quarters and show you your workstation as soon as possible. We're running a little slow today, however, so it may take some time."

"Because of the Executor's launch?" Luke asked.

The person sounded exhausted when he said, "Yes. Because of the Executor's launch."

When Luke followed his flightpath into the hangar, it took him right past that Super Star Destroyer—the first of her kind. She was in the distance, still, separated from him by an endless black expanse of space, criss-crossing ships and tugships assembling. She was still nestled between two arms of the construction ring, and it seemed to grow over either side of her like cubic fungus, but Luke gave her entire positioning a long, hard look as they flew by. The tugships meant to pull her through the narrow channel into open space were being set up, tractor beams and tow cables lashed between them, but Luke was still awed that they were going to drag such a large ship through such a narrow space at all.

He supposed they had done it a million times before for the standard Star Destroyers—but Executor was not standard, and it seemed arrogant.

Not that they would get that far.

Because he had the charges. He had Artoo. And he had backup Rebel operatives already on the rings, ready to step in if someone needed to finish it.

He was here to make sure the Executor never launched.

---

Admiral Ozzel was incredibly dull. He was not unintelligent, and his words were not wrong, but Vader had ceased listening to him almost a standard hour ago.

He frowned fiercely at the officers sitting in the pits of the bridge; they shivered and worked faster under his gaze, fingers blurring. He looked away, only to realise Ozzel had finally stopped talking, and was expecting a response.

"I need no blathering, Admiral," he boomed. "Your summaries of how you have organised the crew for this event are better given to Captain Piett than myself." Piett stiffened at being acknowledged—he'd been deep in conversation with Director Vilrein, probably in the hopes of not being interrupted—but did not object. "I simply wish to know that we will be ready to launch and depart on schedule. I have no time for all this pomp and ceremony; the Rebels are bold, and there is much work to be done."

Especially since his spies had brought him the name and a holo of the pilot who had destroyed the Death Star.

Luke Skywalker.

He had sensed him on the Death Star.

He had sensed him in the trench, there.

And he had sensed him glimmering at the back of his mind since, in a bond forgotten and unacknowledged, left to rot in his ignorance.

He had a son.

He had no time for ceremonial launches.

He whirled back to Piett and Vilrein, Governor Durron standing just behind them, surveying his shipyards through the Executor's broad viewports with arrogance. That arrogance flinched when Vader approached, cape snapping at his heels, but he only lowered his chin slightly—even as Vader condescended to him, and spoke to his subordinate first.

"Director Vilrein, I trust you can report that we will be ready to launch on schedule?" The threat of what would happen if they were not went unspoken, loud and clear.

She swallowed. "Yes, my lord. We are just getting the final few tugships into position and expect to start the ceremonial launch within two standard hours."

Ceremonial launch. What a waste of time.

"There seem to be fewer tugships than expected or warranted for a ship of this size; I am disappointed. And the reports I have heard about your tugships being incompetent and unreliable are false, I trust?" he pushed, trying to find a weak spot to take his ire out on. If something went wrong… if something delayed his hunt for Luke…

He would be very put out.

Vilrein swallowed.

It seemed that they were not, in fact, false.

"The ones assigned to the Executor are the finest pilots we have, and only the finest pilots are cleared to work at Kuat." Considering it was a grunt task, Vader wondered how true it was. Pilots were flashy, dramatic people; most of them sought glory, not unstable, poorly paid work under Imperial administration. "I assure you my lord, every single tugship is operating at its prime."

"There are thousands of them."

Governor Durron interrupted, in that same carefully jovial voice he always used. He was a broad-shouldered man, his joviality reminded Vader a bit of Dex in a previous life, if Dex had ever been obnoxious, and he clapped Vilrein on the shoulder with enough force that she winced. "Then I and my underlings have worked extra hard to vet each one and ensure they were up to task, credits allowing."

"Credits should have had no impact on the decision. The launch of the greatest Imperial flagship is to be celebrated and revered, not made into a laughingstock."

"And it will not be. My Drive Yards launch hundreds of thousands of ships every day, and we have never once failed."

"You have never once launched a Super Star Destroyer before now."

"We have never built one before now." That was an irrelevant point. "I assure you that we have hired the very best we could find, and employed as many of our tugships as possible. Everything will go swimmingly—or, the astronomical equivalent, of course."

"I hope you are correct, Governor. If your thriftiness in any way sabotages this ceremony," he turned away from Durron, until he was just a ginger blur in the corner of his eyes, "the Emperor will be most displeased. He is watching eagerly."

Durron blinked. "The, ah, Emperor? He will be arriving for the launch?"

Vader worked his jaw. "…no." He had put on one of his faux-sweet smiles when Vader had asked him that himself, and tutted as if Vader were a child. "He currently believes it"—safer—"more pertinent to remain on Coruscant and cater to the idiotic senators there, especially in the wake of the Death Star's destruction."

He clenched his fists, and did not bother to hide the wave of anger that lashed out from him, rattling through the bridge. Officers flinched.

Palpatine had made such a show about his own useless toy, scarcely talking about anything else for months and places all his bets onto that. And then when Vader had finally had the opportunity to have an actual, useful tool in his campaign against rebellion, he dismissed it out of hand. The man was more incompetent than he wanted people to believe.

Powerful, still. Influential, still. Dangerous, still. But not the Emperor the galaxy deserved.

Vader knew who that would be.

("Did that damage anything?" he heard Vilrein whisper to an aide. He didn't hear the response—something about cables, something about not having time to replace them, Vilrein muttering something like hopefully it should be fine…)

Durron nodded sagely, despite Vader's evident fury. "That is wise of His Majesty. The risk of Rebel sabotage—not that our security is anything less than flawless," he added hurriedly at the way Vader's helmet swivelled to look at him, "but the risk is higher here than on Coruscant. We are the heart of the Empire's military might."

"The bone marrow, perhaps," Vader corrected. "Do not presume to be the heart."

"Of— of course not, my lord."

Vader was hardly listening anymore, the mention of Rebel sabotage pinging warnings in the Force. He lifted his head to glance out of the viewports of the bridge, scowling at the long, broad viewports on the hangars and offices that lined Channel 5U3Z, the one the Executor was going to exit through. The hangars were stuffed to the brim with dignitaries, well-lit, the transparisteel shining crystalline against the darkness of space. He imagined that made it very difficult to get a good view out of the viewports, and found a petty satisfaction in that.

"How long until we will be ready for launch, Director?"

Vilrein jumped, but had the competency to rattle off, "One and a half standard hours, my lord."

"Make it one hour, or there will be consequences."

"Yes, my lord."

---

There was so much security in and around Channel 5U3Z for the Executor's launch, but there was also so much chaos that it was almost laughably easy for Luke, a single employee, to slip through the panic into hangars and structures attached to the Executor's vast sides, and plant his charges on her metal hull.

He… thought he remembered the layout of a Star Destroyer sufficiently to figure out where the important areas were. He'd been chosen for his obsession with ships and knowledge of most workings of a craft, but no one knew what these new Super Star Destroyers would look like; all he had to work off of was an enlarged blueprint of a standard Destroyer.

He was doing his best. They hadn't had many volunteers for this insane mission, but he still found himself fiercely wishing it wasn't just him and R2.

"Hey, Artoo?" he murmured. It had been one standard hour since they landed and gave their overseer the slip before he could greet them, half a standard hour since the announcement that the launch would occur in one hour, and he had barely planted half the charges. Getting through Kuat Passenger Control had taken longer than he or the Alliance had thought. "I think we should split up. You take these, and get as many as you can, and I'll do the others. We'll meet back here when it launches." He rested his hand on his dome affectionately. "Got it?"

Artoo spat an affirmative, and a prediction that he would be done before Luke had planted his first charge, and Luke grinned.

"Great. Then let's go!"

They separated, and Luke moved quickly down hallways bustling with frantic engineers, harried overseers, panicked troopers. He moved at the same half-jog, half-run everyone else did, their anxiousness infectious, and he planted at least three more charges that way. The buzz on his comlink at his wrist from Artoo told him it was going well on his end too; within the one hour they had left, they ought to—

The whole corridor rocked, and he was thrown into the bulkhead.

"Wha—?" he muttered to himself, turning to stare out the viewport at the up-close-and-personal view of the Executor's metal belly, to see…

It was moving.

It was shifting, bashing lightly against the metal structures that caged it even as they folded aware to let her free, shifting farther and farther along, rivets and great slabs of durasteel sliding past…

No.

They were already launching?

What—

An announcement cracked over the intercoms. "Stand by for the Executor's launch. Three, two, one…"

What!? No!

He stopped jogging and started running. Shouts of "Kriff!" and "Watch it, kid!" followed him, but he kept running, kept shoving past others, until he'd leapt up a horrible amount of steps three at a time and made it into a higher, wider corridor, with a decent view of the ship.

He still couldn't see the whole thing; it was massive, and he could only see a very narrow strip. But he could see the bridge, where it poked up above the mass of its body; he could see the tip of the dagger, in the distance, and he could squint to see a handful of viewports flickering as the last-minute workers on board ran back and forth. Tugships swarmed it, pushed and yanking, and…

There was no sound in space; he heard nothing. But with vivid, violent vibrations trembling through all the structures around Channel 5U3Z, the Executor's first movements nearly knocked him off his feet. His knees ached trying to stay upright.

He put a hand on the shaking transparisteel and stared as she kept moving, breaking loose of the towers and gantries she was docked to, watching them crumple back from her power as she began to stagger forwards. The tugships pulled hard, manoeuvring through the narrow channel and out into the vast system beyond, straight as a shot blaster bolt.

Until it wasn't.

Until a thousand tugships swerved at once—minutely, but noticeably to a pilot like Luke. He frowned at them. A lot had lost their cables in the tumble, and he watched them float through space like tentacles.

It was odd, but ultimately unmentionable. The ones still attached kept pulling, with visibly more strain, and she kept sailing onwards, her own thrusters engaging, nineteen kilometres of deadly power and Imperial might…

And then Luke could do nothing but stare, as all those kilometres of durasteel and dread tilted off course, twisted further and faster, at an almost ninety-degree angle, and collided with the side of the 5U3Z channel with enough force that Luke was thrown clean off his feet and onto the hard floor below.

---

Impossible ultimatum it may have been, that which he'd given Vilrein, but Kuat had risen to the challenge. The Executor was moving.

He took the immense weight of his attention off of his trembling crew and turned it to the quivering stars above them. The lights of Kuat drowned most of them out, but he could still make out a fair few—and they were moving. The ship lurched, the tugships ahead straining as their cables pulled taut, and then they were moving.

Finally.

The Executor was finally free. He could take command of her and go back to doing what he did best: hunting Rebels. Burning them from world after world, shattering their tentative spirit after the Battle of Yavin, reminding them that the defeat of some toy was not the defeat of the Empire…

And he would find his son.

Luke's name branded his mind, as did that holo of him; he would dissolve into dust before he had forgotten his face. He would find his son, and he would join him, and then all would be well in the galaxy. Vader would finally have a family.

In that moment of painfully emotional triumph, as the Executor soared in the starlight and his chest sparked with the first kindling of hope he had felt in a long, long time, he reached for their dormant, near non-existent bond. It was as fine as gossamer thread, and shimmered with Luke's power, and Vader sent his promise vibrating down it: Soon. Soon. Soon.

And he got a response.

As the Executor lurched again, he sensed bright shock, horror, reverberate right back down at him, until it pounded at his skull. Vader frowned: had Luke sensed that? Had he received his father's promise and rejected it? He reached into the Force to investigate. Had Luke…

No.

No, it was something else.

For a moment he stood stunned, a dumb smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Luke had not sensed his probe; that was not it. Luke was here.

On Kuat.

The sun was evident in the Force, now that he was looking at it, and he bodily turned to stare in its direction as he reached for him. He could hardly see one individual among all the assembled dignitaries, panicking workers and other beings cramming the viewports along the corridors on this side of the station, but he could sense him, and he knew exactly where he was.

"Admiral," Vader snapped.

Ozzel leapt to attention; he'd been idling by the viewport, staring out at the tugships. "Yes, my lord?"

"Make an announcement. There is a Rebel on the station. I want all troops converging on their position, but I want them alive and unharmed."

"We do not have access to the comlink frequencies of Kuat Drive Yards or their tugships, my lord," Ozzel replied smartly. "I cannot—"

Vader was already turning away from him, before he executed him for his smarminess if nothing else. "Governor Durron, patch me through to your emergency announcement channels immediately."

Durron jumped to obey. "Of course, my lord. Get me on the emergency channel," he barked into his comlink, "all frequencies."

There was a pregnant pause. "…all frequencies, sir?"

"Do it now. This is Lord Vader's order."

"Yessir."

Durron gave a proud smile and held out his comlink. "Ready to give the announcement, my—"

Vader snatched it off of him. "This is Lord Vader of the Executor," he boomed into it, so loudly that even Piett winced from the volume, standing a good few metres away. "There is a Rebel on Kuat Drive Yards." For a moment he considered giving Luke's name, but no; he would protect him for as long as he could. "Human male, pale-skinned, blond-haired, short in stature, young adult. I want him alive and unharmed, at any costs. Am I understood?"

There was a chorus of "Yes, my lord"s from multiple shocked officers, and a resounding silence from the rest. They had better get over their paralysis soon. He switched off the comm and held it back out for Durron.

But Durron wasn't looking at him.

He was staring at the viewports.

Vader followed his gaze—just as the Executor suddenly jerked and listed underneath them, careening sideways before somewhat stabilising herself.

Vader began, "What is the meaning of—"

When he saw the tugships again, he understood.

Half of them had come loose. And the other half were flying around in all sorts of erratic directions, their pilots frenzied and shocked, trying to regain course but being dragged by the Executor as her blunt, powerful thrusters lacked the finesse to navigate the channel and they keeled towards…

"What," he snapped, "is happening—"

"Something spooked them." Vilrein was at the viewports, staring, then looking at her datapad and glancing over an endless feed of panicked messages. "The way they all moved at once, they were shocked, they—" She snapped her gaze to Durron. "You transmitted Lord Vader's message on all frequencies?"

"Yes, of course—"

"Including the tugships'?"

Durron blinked. "…yes."

"If that blared out of nowhere, if the pilots lost control of their ships in shock…"

"Any adequate pilot would have taken such a shock in stride," Vader interrupted. "It should have been perfectly manageable."

Vilrein was notably silent.

Vader turned to Durron. "For your skilled pilots."

Durron defended, "Hiring as many as we do, one must let some standards lower in order to get enough of a workforce—"

Idiot.

Self-serving, conniving idiot. It seemed that the stories coming out of Kuat about accidents and laziness and sheer incompetence of their pilots had not been false; it seemed—

"My lord!" Piett warned, staring to the side viewports with horror on his face. "We—" He broke himself off. "Brace for impact!"

It seemed it did not matter, because the crisis was already in full motion.

Vader engaged the magnetic locks on his boots, even as all the officers and officials around him dived for something to hang onto, as the Executor collided with the side of Channel 5U3Z with all the fire and force of a thousand suns.

---

Luke had barely dragged himself back to his feet when the announcement started blaring. Later, he would muse that didn't they have bigger things to report at that moment? But for now, he was dazed and shocked, he could barely roll over to stare at the damage the Executor had done to the other side of the channel, and it took a few repeats of the announcement over the intercom to realise what they were saying.

"Rebel on the station. Repeat: Rebel on the station. Young adult male, short, blond and pale, wanted alive and unharmed by order of Lord Vader…"

It took another few repeats to register that that was him.

If he had been wiser, he would have pretended it wasn't.

If he had been less shocked, he would have thought through his situation more carefully.

As it was, he immediately sprang to his feet and legged it.

There were shouts, of course. His behaviour wasn't just suspicious, it sang REBEL in a shrieking, high-pitched tone and dazzled a bright red spotlight on his sprinting form. And the corridors were full of people, every single stretch; this had been a bad idea. This was a terrible idea. There was nowhere to go, nowhere he could shake all these dozens and dozens of people in this stretch of corridor alone, and even as most of them were civilian engineers who just stared at him in horror, even as the few who were brave enough to make a lunge for him were batted away on a raw, rushed instinct—the Force felt cold and uncontrolled as he did so, like some great icy bird had wrapped its wings around him and fixed him with its pale gaze—he could hear the thundering steps of troopers echoing at both ends of the corridor, he could hear modulated staccato voices barking orders, he could hear—

He was still running at a flat-out pace, so he nearly fell over when he stopped in front of the fresher door so suddenly that the polished floor flew under his feet. Two seconds of fumbling with the door controls later he was in, it was locked, and he was staring around the cool facility with a racing heart.

Then he cursed himself for his stupidity.

The door was locked.

The door was locked.

There were troopers on the other side, he could hear them nearing him, he could hear their voices…

"He's in there! Get the door open!"

Someone went to open it but, of course, it was locked.

"Come out, Rebel, or we'll drag you!"

Ah yes. That was an attractive option.

Someone tried the door again. It beeped disapprovingly and didn't budge.

"Blast it! Get that open—"

"—don't hurt the Rebel, Lord Vader wants him alive—"

"—he'll still be in good enough shape for interrogation, don't worry—"

The sharp pew and hiss of the blaster unloading into the control panel crackled loudly enough that Luke flinched, and backed away from the door. Nothing happened.

"You've gone and locked it even further!"

He glanced around, brain bubbling with a thousand thoughts—most of them derogatory. He felt like someone was watching him, like the Force itself was waiting on his decision, like he was trapped here waiting for a death knell—which he was—and like there had to be more, he just had to look…

His gaze drifted up.

How many stories had he read, he mused dryly, about the young adventurous boy who went out to see the stars, and found himself crawling through the ship's ventilation shafts?

By the time the troopers finally bust the door down, he was gone.

---

R2-D2 didn't know what all the fuss was about.

It was convenient. The Executor was already half-sabotaged and floundering; they had less of a job to do. For now, he simply had to continue doing that job, patiently and dutifully rolling past screaming organics to trundle into the crash areas and plant even more explosives on the Executor's warped and battered hull.

It was good that Master Luke had taken the other side of Channel 5U3Z, so R2 could take this one; organics were more fragile than droids, and all the metallic dust in the air may have clogged his systems or corrupted his gears. Not to mention that with the Executor smashing through the shields and the wall, the airlocks had been compromised and it was exposed to a vacuum. He would have died.

R2 had no such weaknesses, and thus he must play the hero. As always.

He opened the compartment with the detonators in, unfolded his extender arm and neatly tossed the charge onto the side of the ship. The great empty hangar was abandoned by all organics, droids not yet sent in to clear up the mess.

He trundled out easily, and went to plant the next charge, even as the overhead speaker shrieked that Master Luke was in danger.

Of course he was. Neither of his makers had been averse to danger, either.

R2 would have to play the hero for him as well.

---

"Damage report, Captain!"

Admiral Ozzel leapt up from where he'd been sent sprawling, incensed and reaching for his datapad. Vader had not asked for him, but he appreciated that the man did his best to glance over the scrolling numbers on his datapad anyway and report.

"Large swathes of the starboard side have been crushed, numerous corridors' life support destroyed and exposed to the vacuum. Emergency blast doors have engaged but only contained some damage."

"Casualties?" Piett asked.

"None so far—the majority of occupants of this ship are in the bridge tower, or near the central reactors, which remain undamaged by this Rebel attack."

"Rebel attack?" Vader scoffed.

Durron barked, "What about the station?"

Ozzel turned to him, with an expression that screamed his distaste at being ordered around by someone not in his chain of command, but before he could Vilrein cut in, staring at her own datapad. "A few injured, no casualties so far. The majority of spectators were above the crash site and promptly evacuated; those that were exposed to the vacuum or debris are in the process of being rescued by droids and moved to medical—"

"But the station? What damage was taken? What have the Rebels done?"

"This is not the Rebels' doing, Governor," Vader boomed. "This is yours." He could still sense Luke, moving through the station, panicking and panicking—that announcement had been the most efficient way to find him, but it had had some side effects.

His son was running and his ship was stuck.

His ship had crashed.

"I will be launching an investigation into this!" Durron announced. His voice was a squeak, but he still had so much nerve. "The moment we find out who is responsible—"

"You are responsible. Your pilots are painfully incompetent and poor at their jobs."

"My lord, you are the one who redirected all our resources to search for a single Rebel—"

Vader cut him off. This was in no way his fault. "That is irrelevant! If your pilots—"

"Sir, I object—"

Piett interrupted Durron with absolutely no remorse. "Sir, we've been trying to hail the station. They're dealing with the damage and breached airlocks for now, but they intend to have the remaining tugships re-attached to the Executor's hull to try to dislodge her."

"With all the grace of a charging reek, I have no doubt."

"We have limited options, my lord."

"Thrusters?"

"Too powerful. We'd end up crashed into the other side of the channel if they worked, and enough were damaged in the first crash that we're not even sure they will work at all the way we need them to."

"Perfect."

Piett blinked. "My lord?"

"If they are damaged, they will not be at full capacity. Therefore it will be easier to navigate our way out of the channel and move to a more convenient position to enact repairs."

Piett's face stilled in a neutral frown.

He clearly had no idea how to respond to that stroke of genius.

That's not how that works, floated through the Force, but it was thought by so many officers on the bridge at once that Vader couldn't pinpoint where it came from. Pity.

"You would prefer to wait for Governor Durron's tugships?" They had failed him once before. Their very construction had been compromised; the cables had snapped free. (Vader suddenly remembered that he had damaged several of them in his burst of frustration earlier, and resolved not to think about that.)

It was Ozzel who had the sheer nerve and buffoonery to say, "Yes, my lord. We would. It would be less of a death sentence."

Piett blanched, and hurriedly tacked on—"If the tugships fail again, even lacking any loud noises or surprises, the thrusters remain an option."

Vader had to begrudgingly agree to that.

And he had not flown a capital ship as large as a Star Destroyer since he'd crashed one on Coruscant, before… everything. He would require the time to familiarise himself with the controls once more.

Not that he was going to admit Piett was right.

"Acceptable," he said.

---

It was so stuffy in the vents. He had to stop several times to cough, gasp in air, before he could keep going, and every time he heard a shout or voice from below, he froze.

He didn't know how the stormtroopers could track him through the vents when they were such a dense, complex network of tunnels—he definitely didn't have the slightest idea where he was going—but he get moving as fast as he could anyway. Anything to put as much distance between him and his pursuers as possible, anything to get back to the meeting point with R2 so they could get to a ship and escape…

At one point, he was carefully lowering himself down a narrow, vertical shaft when an announcement reverberated all around him, vibrating right into his bones:

"Target is in the ventilation shafts. If seen, report immediately to the nearest trooper; troops will be stationed at all major junctions and access points to the system."

Luke lowered himself down the shaft a little faster.

He kept sliding along for what felt like an age, and when he came across the fifth, twelfth, twenty-sixth grate underneath him, he finally hesitated. He had no idea where he was going; he couldn't stay up here forever; he was exhausted, his arms aching and shaking, and they would catch him if he only stumbled out when he was literally too tired to run.

So he paused at that vent, tentatively stretched out with the Force—at least, he hoped that was what he was doing—and pressed his ear against the metal grate to listen. That same gaze that had been tracking him only intensified its regard, but he paid it no attention.

There was only a faint murmuring underneath him, of distant footsteps whooshing back and forth. He frowned and, agonisingly careful, removed the grate to place to the side, then peered down.

It was a closet full of cleaning supplies, it seemed.

Thank the Force.

He stuck his legs through, still watching the Force—life forces flickered by, but they didn't seem to have a purpose leading them here—then dropped into the room with barely a thud.

He glanced around him. The closet was tiny, and his shoulders brushed both the door and the back shelf as he shifted, twisting around to check where he was. There was a bucket and mop, replacement parts for a cleaning droid, as far as he could see, a shelf of uniforms…

There.

Exactly what he needed.

It was tight in the closet, but he scrambled out of his drab engineer's garb and replaced it with a janitor's, brushing the dust that had clung to him as best as possible. A hand went up to smooth his hair—he was sure it was a mess, after that scramble through the vents—but it was too dark to really tell if it helped, and he didn't have a mirror anyway.

He just… fixed the janitor's cap on his head and hoped no one would notice. His hair was too long for most standard jobs in the Imperial military or related disciplines; he was lucky he'd left before the supervisor had met him in the hangar, or he might have seemed suspicious purely based on that. But perhaps no one would notice.

During a moment's pause, he shook his head and tried to gather his thoughts. He was on the run. The Imperials had figured out he was here, somehow; he had no idea how, and he had no idea what they knew. Did they know he was here to disable the Executor? Did they think the disaster with the Executor was his fault?

How had they crashed the Executor without him?

How? What the kriff?

What was he supposed to be here for, then, anyway?

He took a deep breath, suddenly feeling very claustrophobic in here, and hit the release to the door.

Nothing.

Eyes wide, he tried again.

Nothing.

It was locked.

Of course the closet he'd dropped into was locked.

Before his heart could keep racing again, he paused, and tried to reach for the Force again. He really hated the cold focus around him that he felt every time he did, but when he reached for the lock…

It twitched. A light flickered. But when he tried to open it again, nothing happened.

He let out a sharp sigh. Hit it again. Nothing happened.

"No," he muttered. It was only so long before they found him—well, no it wasn't, it was a big station and they had a lot of vents to comb, but that might be a problem as well. He could escape through the overhead vents again, he supposed, though getting back up there would be a problem; he could sit in here and starve. Or…

Footsteps were approaching.

He'd barely registered them when the door beeped, and it slid open.

The poor janitor barely had a chance to drop his jaw before Luke barrelled out. The man tried to stop him—being trapped in a closet was highly suspicious—but Luke didn't even flinch; he tore himself free from his grip and tackled him around the torso. They both hit the floor, rolling. The guy went down hard, out cold for a few precious moments, and Luke nabbed his code cylinder, heaved him into the closet while the corridor was empty, and locked the door.

He was coming to by then, but his panicked shouts faded quickly behind Luke as he took off down the corridor at a brisk pace, smartly positioning his cap over his head and lowering his eyes when he turned a corner. People brushed past him; no one spared him a second glance. He heaved a quiet sigh, turned another corridor—

"Intruder spotted in corridor 23321, wearing the uniform of a janitor. Repeat: intruder spotted in corridor 23321 in a janitor's uniform. Intruder is a young human male, blond, pale-skinned, short…"

Luke flinched when the voice first blasted over the intercom, but he made a painstaking effort to keep walking even as it blared his disguise, his appearance, his near-location…

He'd forgotten to take that janitor's karking comlink.

He could feel gazes on his back but he kept moving as if he knew where he was going, with a purpose, with intent. He turned another arbitrary corner and found himself in a corridor that lined Channel 5U3Z, one wall taking up by transparisteel looking onto the utter disaster that was the crash. His mad scramble through the vents had taken him all the way to the other side of the channel, it seemed, and as his gaze followed the elegant hull of the Executor, it was embedded in the station just up ahead, slightly below this corridor. He winced.

"You there! Halt!"

The sound of a stormtrooper's modulated voice shot terror through his spine, but he forced himself to stay calm this time. Sprinting down the corridor would just engage him in another fruitless chase; he needed to face them head on.

So he stopped walking, back stiff, and turned to the trooper squad approaching him. "Yes?"

"You match the description of a wanted fugitive. Come with us."

"Where?" he asked, feigning confusion. "I'm an employee of this station."

"That may be so, and then it's in your best interests to come with us."

"I'm an employee." He nodded at the one with the datapad, even as he heard blasters bristle. Vader's order had been to keep him alive, Luke thought self-deprecatingly; he hoped they were set to stun. "Look me up."

"Name, then?"

"Vig Reneve." He resisted the urge to bounce on the balls of his feet and slid his hands into his pockets. The fingers of one hand fisted around the detonator for the charges—the EMPs; the other was for the explosives.

He couldn't do the explosives; R2 might not be finished distributing them, and if he wasn't then that little droid would be blasted straight to the hells.

But the EMPs… if he could get them to knockout the Executor's systems as well as some of the electrical workings of the station itself…

The trooper grunted. "Vig Reneve is an employee alright, but he—you —vanished from the hangar before your supervisor could meet you. We're placing you under arrest for suspicions of Rebel activity."

Luke shook his head, clutching the detonator tighter. "No, that can't be right."

He saw them hoist the blasters higher, already decided on what to do, and then he flicked off the safety cap and hit the trigger.

The thunderous wave that swept through the station was tangible. The lights overhead flickered and died; the hissing of the vents ground to a halt; when the troopers pulled the triggers of their blasters, nothing happened. They were dead metal in their hands.

"What—"

Luke bolted.

"Hey! Come back!"

"Get that kid!"

He ran faster than he'd known he could, whipping past wide-eyed engineers and feeling his cap sail off in the stream. That blast wouldn't have taken out R2, he was pretty sure, his friend had assured him he was built differently and insulated against such things, so he needed to find R2, and then they needed to get out of here—

Left. Right. He followed the path of least resistance, where he sensed the fewest people were; he slammed shut blast doors behind him with the Force and kept them there for the troopers to pry open with the power down, desperately trying to buy himself some time. It was only so much. Their footsteps kept thundering after him.

So he just kept running.

---

Amidst the chaos, it was ultimately not difficult for R2-D2 to find an unmonitored airlock, force the doors open, and trundle out into open space. His rocket boosters had not been used or even maintained in years, so he could only manage short bursts with them at best, but it was enough to latch onto the nearest tugship. The pilot had already ejected, probably into another airlock. Good.

R2 settled into the slot for droids, and started flying the ship towards Luke.

---

Piett and Vilrein spent an irritatingly long time conversing with the station's security and their repairs team; the tugships had been thrown into chaos by the disaster and driving the thousands back to their stations was problematic. Vader had no patience for it.

Which was why it was good that the Executor's controls were so… challenging. They required his full attention.

They were unfamiliar to what he had been accustomed to under the Republic.

He was Darth Vader. He could fly anything. And the Empire's distinction from the Republic was a virtue, not a vice: they were more efficient, in government, military and even ship design; they were better, not mired in corruption or bureaucracy or the pointless safety measures so many Republic ships had had; they were superior in every way. Anyone could see that. Luke would see that in time, once he had him, and he was allowed to see the grandness of the Empire beyond what scrappy hand it had on the dustball he'd grown up on.

The issue remained: he did not know how to fly this ship.

Nor were the controls labelled. Which was good. More efficient.

To his great reluctance and shame, he found himself pulling up a diagram of the Executor's controls on his datapad; none of his men dared come close enough to see what he was studying so intently, anyway. It seemed he was seated at the panel which controlled the internal comms and security overrides. It did not have any effect on flying the ship at all.

He subtly scooted over to the next chair. He could feel the eyes of the officer's whose seats he'd stolen on his helmet, but he did not acknowledge them.

Ah. Here he was. He ran his gaze over the controls, taking them in, fitting his hands around them—they were built for smaller, flesh limbs it seemed, but that was of no consequence so long as Kuat Drive Yards had not made this frail enough to break easily—and got accustomed to the feeling. The other pilots side-eyed him but didn't interfere as the ship wobbled, not quite enough to break free from the structure.

Good, that they minded their own business. The massive hunk of crumpled metal stretching across the bridge viewports was mocking enough.

He released the controls, glancing back down at the buttons and series of commands to engage movement, running over their uses in his head—

When the whole ship shuddered.

His stolen chair was grounded to the floor, thankfully, for times like this when the artificial gravity was not enough; he simply jolted where he was seated, rather than be unceremoniously tossed across the room for the second time in mere hours. Durron was not having a good day for that.

But he did not spare the fool of a governor another thought as he stretched out with the Force. What was that? What had happened? Who dared attack his ship again—

Or. Rather. Who dared attack his ship when it was already weakened?

The Force did not scream the answer; it did not need to. It merely amplified Luke's own panicked mental shrieking as he rampaged down corridor after corridor in his flight from the authorities.

Vader almost laughed.

The feeling went away immediately when Piett cursed. Loudly. "That was an EMP blast."

"What?" He twisted in his seat to glare across the bridge at him; he realised abruptly that sitting down, he was shorter than Piett. Only slightly, but he stood anyway.

"Whoever that was—"

"The Rebels," Durron intoned viciously. Vader ignored him: it was one Rebel singular, as far as he could tell, and he had no interest in condemning him.

"—set off an EMP along the Executor's hull. By my guess, the majority of the charges were lodged near to areas embedded in the station, meaning…"

"Meaning what, Captain?"

"Power is out for large swathes of the ship. And for the station."

Vader frowned. He sensed there was more. He also sensed Luke's lunacy, but he was trying not to let that distract him from what the Force was telling him. "And that means…?"

"Communications are down," Vilrein finished. "We can't contact the tugships."

Durron turned his head to stare at her, but it was Ozzel who uttered, "So we are stuck here until the power is restored?"

Piett said, "The tugships will not be retrieving us, no. Many of them were caught in the blast—"

"Were all of the thrusters damaged?" Vader interrupted.

"Not all, my lord, but many of them on the crash-side of the ship likely are."

"Then it is of no consequence. We will continue with my plan."

Piett blinked nervously. "That you, ah, are to fly the ship yourself, my lord?"

"I am a capable pilot. It will not be a problem."

Ozzel looked like it was physically paining him not to argue, but argue he did not. Good. There was nothing to argue with.

"Prepare for launch, then," Vader ordered, and ignored the panicked glances being shot around the room as he turned back to the console, ran his gaze over the station—and froze.

From here, a little way ahead, he could see the individual corridors of the station, lit up bright against the dark metal like luminescent capillaries. He could see the blood cells, the workers, bustling up and down them. And for those close enough, he could see their faces; make out individuals.

Especially when said individual was a supernova in his awareness, even without the bright hair that shone under the harsh artificial lighting. Even if he hadn't been haring down the corridor towards him at subsonic speeds, an entire squad of troopers running after him. Ringed stun shots dyed the light blue with every flash.

Luke.

For several precious moments, he could do nothing but stare. It was the first time he'd seen his son in person, and it felt so real, even if his face was the size of a pinhead in the distance. That was his son. That was his boy.

Forget the Executor. She was important, but she had other custodians.

His boy was right there.

"I am altering the plan," he boomed suddenly. "Piett—you will be the pilot."

Piett nearly jumped out of his skin. "My lord, the pilots—"

"May assist, but I want you in charge of the operation. Admiral," he turned to Ozzel before the man could feel miffed at being delegated past, "monitor any communications between us and the station, or even us and the rest of Death Squadron, until the Executor is clear."

He said it as a certainty. It was a certainty. They needed to stop their high-strung fussing. "I expect results," he reiterated.

"Of course, my lord."

He was out of the room and off the bridge before Durron could even voice his ringing question, "But where are you go—"

The doors hissed shut, cutting off his words. Vader took a sharp right, wove through several side passages, until he found the emergency airlock nearest to the bridge. One set of blast doors were still working, and sealed behind him, but the next pair were not.

He sliced through them with his lightsaber and left a large, smoking circle of durasteel in his wake as he stepped into the airlock, stood himself in front of the hatch, and peered out of the transparisteel pane above the release clamp. Several tugships were drifting dead in space outside; those were useless to him, except perhaps to pull himself from one to the other, which was a far more undignified way than he wanted to approach his only son with. There were others farther away, seemingly still with power, so he reached out with the Force towards one of them, and then—

One was already moving in his direction.

Piloted by… a droid.

When he squinted, it was a familiar droid, at that.

Perfect.

He seized it with the Force, and dragged it towards him. Though space carried no noise, he imagined R2 was shrieking.

Then he seized his lightsaber, carved through the seals and the clasps, and watched the hatch be sucked off the wall into the vacuum beyond.

There was an immediate, intense sucking, and even with his boots magnetically clamped to the floor, Vader's cape whipped out like grasping fingers, clawing for freedom in the night. He disengaged the clamp on one boot to take a step forward, then re-engage; repeated the same with the other, until he was perched on the edge of oblivion.

R2's stolen tugship quivered right in front of him. Luke's shining star moved fast towards him position here, about to pass him. His respirator was connected to a limited oxygen supply and his suit was sealed; he would survive a limited exposure to the vacuum.

He disengaged the magnetic seals on his boots and leapt, letting the vacuum yank him out. The silence was deafening as he gripped the top of the bulky ship, let his respirator wheeze recycled air into his lungs, and let R2 fly them onwards.

He stood atop of it like an avenging angel and watched the searing white corridors hungrily.

---

Luke's lungs were burning but he wouldn't stop running. His one blessing was that the EMP charges had interfered with the electricity in more unpredictable ways than he'd anticipated: unlike the Death Star, they couldn't shut the blast doors on him.

Though his attempts at yanking the Force to shut the blast doors on them were only partly successful, it had to be said. Whatever.

Still, he kept moving. He could feel the detonator jiggling in his pocket but he didn't dare reach for it just yet, not when he could just as easily drop it at the speed he was going. The stun blasts sailed over his head as he ducked, zigzagged, and kept running.

He skidded to a halt at the end of one corridor and took a sharp left down a hallway he sensed was less crowded; the closer to the crash he came, the more he found areas that had been evacuated of civilians. Which was good, if he had to be caught in a fight, but if he accidentally got tossed out a faulty airlock or impaled on shattered metal, he'd be no good to anyone.

The corridor he rocketed into was close to the crash site—close enough that it ran right along the channel, the transparisteel gleaming with its broad vista of the channel, the space beyond, and the utter catastrophe that had gone down. The Executor was big enough that she seemed to be an entire wasteland of metal—a barren desert to rival Tatooine.

Of course, Luke only had a few minutes to take that in, considering he was fleeing for his life.

He slipped and nearly lost his balance at one point, just as a shot sailed over his head, and had to gape at his luck. He heard a frustrated trooper snarl, then something hit him.

The force of the throw nearly knocked him over but he caught himself before he fell too hard. The item—a blaster, he'd tossed his blaster?—clattered to the floor next to him. He grabbed it and kept running.

That trooper cursed. That had been a poor plan.

He kept moving, eyeing the blast doors up ahead. The lights above him were blindingly bright, and white; this area hadn't been hit by the EMP blasts. Either it was a part of the Executor not bugged, or the blasts had been entirely directed into the ship, or—

He didn't know, but the blast doors were coming up, and when he was ten paces away he shot the control panel and leapt through the closing doors. They shut behind him.

He kept running, only to be pulled up short. The blast doors in front of him slammed shut.

He frowned, making for the button, but the light flashed red. Locked.

What?

Unlock.

He tried, but they were stuck firm. And there was no way out of this section of the corridor except the doors he just ran through. The doors holding back the stormtroopers.

Kriff.

He smacked the panel again, but there was no luck. So he hoisted his blaster, switched it off stun, and levelled it at the door. He could hear the pounding on the other side as they tried to fiddle with the overrides, unlock it…

And then he heard the hiss.

Cool air swept through his hair as the section of corridor decompressed, and the blast doors opened.

Oh. That had been an airlock; the corridor was a dead end. That made sense. And the airlock had been in use, so he couldn't open the door or risk exposing himself to the vacuum and…

The hissing noise hadn't stopped.

Only now, it was more like rasping.

He turned around, gripping the blaster tightly, and came face to face with Darth Vader.

His breath hitched in his throat. For a moment, he was utterly frozen.

Vader seemed to be in the same predicament. Tall and ghastly as he was, he loomed like a statue over Luke, the shadow of his own death coming to drag him away, but he did not move. His hand twitched to reach out to him, then stilled; Luke could feel his burning gaze on his face.

The Force clanged with triumph.

Then there was a shriek and R2-D2 barrelled into Vader from behind and stabbed him with the lightning rod.

Luke snapped out of it as Vader staggered, R2 still shouting his war cry, and he stumbled back towards the other doors, raising his blaster and shooting, shooting, shooting. Vader was distracted by the droid but his hand and helmet still snapped up to fixate on Luke, catching the bolts on his glove. They fizzled out with barely a spark and Luke gasped, moving back faster and faster. He stared—glared at Vader—and just kept firing—

Until the doors at his back hissed open too and pain shot through his arm.

He shouted. The blaster jumped out of his grip and he stared out at the furious red gouge in his bicep, tears springing to his eyes.

That blaster had not been set to stun.

He was barely aware of the snapping noise as that trooper's hand, arm, then neck broke, and Vader summoned his blaster to hand and shot him for good measure. Luke just stumbled away. Towards the wall, but away from Vader, away from the troopers, so he was no longer trapped in this horrible crossway…

With his left hand, he fumbled for the detonator in his pocket, and held it up.

"Don't come any closer," he gasped out. "Don't—or I'll trigger it."

That threat seemed to have no effect on Vader at all. His gaze was still intent on him, studying him, and his fury was thick in the Force. Only the troopers paused, glancing to Vader for instructions. They pointedly did not look at their comrade's dead body.

Vader stepped forward.

"Don't!" Luke shouted. "I mean it! Don't come one more step—"

Vader came one more step. Close enough to almost reach out to touch his cheek.

Luke flicked off the safety and thumbed the trigger.

The world shook; fire and brimstone erupted beyond the transparisteel viewports. Luke lost his balance as the corridor lurched underneath him, and an attentive trooper's stun blast hit him on the way down.

The last thing he remembered was large, cold hands catching him, and then oblivion.

---

Piett sat in the pilot's seat and tried not to freak out.

He knew how to fly the ship, of course—more so than Lord Vader, at least, judging by how long he'd spent puzzling over it. Piett had heard that the man—if he was a man at all, and not some god—was terrifying, that he was brilliant, that he was awe-inspiring. Piett did not feel entirely inspired, after his few days of interaction with him, but perhaps that would come. The stories insisted it would.

The stories also insisted he was a good commander, and not utterly insane.

Even so. He was Piett's commander, and Piett had a job to do. And it was… theoretically possible to do as he'd proposed. He supposed.

They didn't have many other options, with the EMP knocking out their communications. They could wait for them to be prepared, but Lord Vader did not seem to be a patient man. God. Whichever.

And if they'd lost enough power in the Executor herself that they couldn't… well, that just meant there was no harm in trying, didn't it? Nothing could get any worse than it already had.

He sat down and cleared his throat. The ship was still humming underneath him, though the tune was offkey—she was injured, of course—so he just ordered, "Lieutenant Aladraf, engage the starboard thrusters. All of them. Seventy percent capacity."

He glanced at the readouts, hoping for scanners; no such luck. He glanced out the viewport and prayed.

"Kaarz, port aft and belly thrusters, five percent capacity."

They dutifully obeyed, and the ship hummed, whirred, then shifted. There was an almighty grinding noise, the stars trembled in their positions, and then… they were moving…

For a moment his chest burst with light and relief, his face started to beam, as he watched the crumpled metal landscape outside move aside, shift. They were moving—

There was a crunch, another grind, and they shuddered to a halt.

The wrong way.

They had been moving the wrong way. He half-spat, half-sighed, and threw his hat to the ground. An officer stared at him like that was the most scandalous thing that had happened all day.

Aladraf said, "Sir, we have embedded ourselves farther into the—"

"Yes, yes, I can tell." His shoulders ached. He wanted to scream.

So much for not getting worse. Of course it could get worse. Of course the greatest military and technological achievement of the entire Empire would get wedged in the channel like some— like some— he could not think of a clean metaphor to speak of.

What next, the Emperor would call demanding an update?

He shot a nervous look at his comlink, resolved that was Lord Vader's problem if it happened, and laid his hands on the controls again, shifting into position.

"Again," he said. "Two percent on the port belly thrusters, ninety percent on all the starboard thrusters. Clearly enough of them are knocked out that…" He trailed off as he glanced to the side.

Was…

Was Lord Vader…

He was not going to think about that.

He had not just seen Vader glide past on a tugship with his cape flapping behind him—in a vacuum? How!?—like some historic Alderaanian knight on a steed, and he was not going to process it.

He shook his head. "Again, he repeated. Two percent port belly, ninety percent all starboard. Three, two, one, launch."

There was a sharp scoff behind him. He would recognise Ozzel's disdain from a mile away, but he ignored it for now. He had a job to do.

The Executor did not move. She was trapped between the two forces, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Piett thought she might rattle apart.

He gritted his teeth.

"No port thrusters. Starboard at one hundred percent. Three. Two. One—"

Light travelled faster than anything else. It was the yellow flash that had him whipping his head round even as his mouth formed, "Launch," so he had time to change it.

"Port thrusters, fifty percent."

Then the explosion blasted against the side of the ship, and they rocketed back on a wave of fire.

---

Luke didn't know how much later it was that he came to, but he was in a bed somewhere. And that bed was pressed up against a vast viewport that showed Kuat twinkling beyond, close enough that he felt he could reach out and touch it.

What.

Where was he?

Why was he here?

He shot upright in bed, grimacing as his head pounded. There was a tang on his tongue—he'd been drugged? He only remembered being stunned…

Stunned.

Vader towering over him.

The stormtroopers chasing him.

The Executor crashing—

He stared out the viewport again, and this time if he craned his neck he could see the body of the ship below him, swarmed by more repair ships and crafts than flies on an eopie's corpse. Kuat glittered beyond them, and if he wasn't wrong, this was still the 5U3Z channel they were in, but not…

Well. They didn't seem to be crashed any more.

What had happened?

Why—

His endless questions crashed to a halt when the door slammed open and an Imperial officer in sharp, spotless uniform marched in, pausing when he saw Luke.

"Apologies for waking you, sir," he said. Sir? "Your presence is required on the bridge."

Luke blinked. "What."

"Your—"

"Why would it be required on the bridge? I'm a R— random engineer."

"You are Vig Reneve, correct?"

Luke opened his mouth to object to that, then cursed himself for a fool. "Yeah, I am." He tried to sound older, more mature, grumpier, as he said it, but the officer just beamed fondly at him like he was a lost puppy.

"Excellent! Come right this way. They're waiting for you!"

His head was still fuzzy. They had definitely drugged him. "You definitely drugged me."

"You were injured. I hear you spent a little time in a bacta tank; that's probably how you're feeling."

Luke had spent time in a bacta tank and he knew that was full of poodoo. The officer's words, that was. "Injured?"

"You were attacked by Rebels, were you not? How's your arm?"

Perfectly fine, perfectly healed, but it had been a stormtrooper who shot him.

"Where am I going and why?" he interrupted, finally standing from the bed. He was still wearing his sweaty, stinky engineer's clothes, scorched from blasterfire in some places. Someone had taken the time to put him in a luxurious bed with a large viewport but leave him in these?

The officer didn't bat an eyelash at his attire. "The bridge, of course. Come with me." And then he took Luke's arm and pulled him along.

The Executor's corridors were lit by emergency lighting in a lot of places, and Luke felt a half-grin, half-grimace consume his face at the sight of it. Ah. Even if he and R2 evidently hadn't disabled the ship totally, they'd done some damage.

"What happened to my droid?" Luke demanded, stiffening. He still wasn't convinced this wasn't one massive trap—the guy was Imperial, after all—but he had no idea what the point was. It would take zero effort to toss him out an airlock and watch him burst.

"Your droid?"

"Blue and white astromech."

"Oh! He was taken away to receive a medal. You'll be receiving a medal too, of course, but you were injured and you know what the Imperial media is like, they didn't want to broadcast about a droid, so he was given his in a more stately affair—"

"A. Medal?"

"Yes. In fact, my friend was there when they took him aside to get polished up. Her binary is only passable, but she tells me that apparently the droid was saying this is far from the first medal of valour he's ever received, and won't be the last, though he proclaimed it was the most insulting one for whatever reason. And she said she thought the descriptions of his many other feats sounded like war crimes according to the Aldera Convention… Well, I don't know, and I imagine you do. You have a spunky little droid there."

Luke, whose head was still spinning from the drugs wearing off, fell over.

"Oh! Oh, right. I apologise most sincerely—"

"You're like a human Threepio," he said aloud.

"I'm what, sir?"

Sir.

What?

The officer shook his head. "It's of no matter; we're late anyway. But we're here." They turned a corner, and Luke's dazed eyes blinked.

Then blinked again.

Oh, kark.

The doors to the Executor's bridge were wide open before him, and the bridge bustled with people. Technicians repaired circuits and consoles, officers milled around supervising them, and press—journalists! Press people!—stood with holocams glaring light, babbling to one pale-faced officer or another.

Before his officer escort tugged him onto the makeshift stage, Luke could hear the dreaded respirator but he couldn't see it. Now he could see him out of the corner of his eyes, lurking like a large mynock by the comms stations.

A journalist turned around, eyes wide. "Oh? Is this—"

"Vig Reneve," the officer said proudly. Luke gave an awkward smile and a wave; the journalist looked unimpressed. "The hero."

"Excellent. Get him in front of the holocam."

"What—"

"Citizens of the Empire this is Rein Largo, coming to you live about the Executor on Kuat, continuing our segment on this marvellous ship's tumultuous first journey to the stars. What challenges happened here today are a shining example of what the Empire's might can do against a threat when working together"—he swept a dramatic arm around the veritable army of techs—"and this young man here is a prime candidate to discuss: Vig Reneve, the engineer and explosives expert who got the Executor freed from her little jam, despite the danger of the Rebel saboteurs still running loose."

What.

Explosives expert?

"Mr Reneve, what would you like to say to the galaxy about this monumental incident?"

Largo's blue eyes bored right into him. Luke just said, "What?"

Largo's winning smile faltered, but he plastered it on with twice the force and beamed at the holocam. "The Executor was freed by a number of factors working together, showing the sort of unity the Empire is so powerful from, but Reneve here—other than Captain Piett—played perhaps the most important role. Working independently, knowing that the Rebel saboteurs would likely attempt to board the Executor or further damage it, he planted charges near areas along the station that he calculated they would go to. Once they triggered their EMPs, he moved in to catch them in the act of sabotage itself, detonating his own charges and killing the saboteurs before they could do more damage. The force from the blasts helped provide the extra kick she needed to get free, with Captain Piett flying her, and now she stands ready to receive minimal repairs and get back to combat the Rebels who wanted to take her out!"

He turned back to Luke, teeth now slightly gritted. "Mr Reneve, would you care to comment on your daring plan, or how you knew it would work?"

How he knew his plan to sabotage the Executor would free her instead? "I… didn't…"

"So it was a leap of faith? You could have done a great deal of damage."

"I… did?"

Largo blinked, jaw clenching again. "How would you describe the adulations you've received since then? You're being hailed as a hero."

"Baffling." He bit his tongue as even his officer escort shifted nervously beside him, then. "I mean… an honour of course, but…" He trailed off as his eyes drifted across the bridge, and landed on Vader.

Vader was staring right back at him.

"What?" he asked emphatically, staring right at him, and Largo gave up.

"Thank you, Mr Reneve! Now we move on to talking to the Captain Piett, the great pilot who flew her to freedom, and—"

Luke zoned out his chattering as the officer gave a quick sigh. "That was all you were needed for, I think. At least for now. Come back with me."

He didn't wait for Luke's response, just took his arm and dragged him towards the doors again. Luke snapped his gaze around the room, from Vader's stoic scrutiny to Largo's stream of nonsense, to the mentioned Captain Piett.

"Now, that was an epic flight you carried out, sir, I must say. And we hear you used to hunt pirates? How would you say a dashing adventurer like yourself found yourself in this situation, and how you made the most of it…"

Captain Piett, whose face turned to colour of durasteel at the phrase dashing adventurer, mouthed to himself, What?

Then the doors to the bridge slammed shut and, utterly baffled, Luke was dragged back to his bed.

---

It felt like a few hours that he had in his room before he was interrupted again—this time with a screech—so he had plenty of time to look around, as his head cleared and he could examine everything that was happening with more clarity.

It wasn't a small room, and that spoke wonders on a ship. Luke felt almost ashamed indulging in the luxury of quarters that couldn't be traced in five paces. He sat on the bed, large, soft and adorned with a thick, woollen blanket, an empty wardrobe on his left. The bedroom was blocked off from the rest of the quarters by a screen, but the rest of the quarters didn't hold much: a sofa before a viewport, a well-stocked fresher, a storage closet. He hadn't explored any of the many panels in the walls just yet—wasn't sure which would be sealed shut or which would be just most cupboards, or perhaps a fridge—but one thing that struck him firmly about the quarters: they were… plain.

In his extensive studies of a standard Star Destroyer's layout, Leia had told him that those warships often held one or two fine rooms for dignitaries travelling with the ship, senators or moffs or anything above or below that the captain couldn't justify assigning to a standard officer's bunk. This seemed to be one of those. Was he being hailed as worthy of a dignitary's quarters because they thought he was a hero? And why did they think he was a hero at all?

Shouldn't he be in the brig?

That wasn't what bugged him, though.

What bugged him was the blanket.

He ran a hand over it. The sheets on the bed were dull grey, Imperial standard; the walls were the same grey, and so was everything else. They adhered to the Empire's entire aesthetic, probably meant to remind whatever dignitary who came exactly which powers they were dealing with.

But the blanket was a pale blue. The same as one Luke had had when he was a baby, handmade by Aunt Beru, used and hugged, and dragged around and washed and sun-bleached so much that it had faded to near white. This blanket was thicker and larger, but the colour set a chime deep in his chest. He swallowed.

The colour meant it stood out sharply in this monotonous room.

So did the soft, patterned cushions piled high on the sofa.

So did the colourful array of toothbrushes, flannels and towels provided in the fresher.

So did the rug in the main entrance, stark against the chilly grey floor, adorned in the colours of the Tatooine sunset with geometric shapes of circles and stripes. He wondered for a moment if it was a stylised artwork of the twin sundown, but… no. Surely it couldn't be.

Here, he was Vig Reneve. Not Luke Skywalker. It couldn't be.

But still, he held that feeling close: that these were generic quarters, but someone had begun to try to make them feel like a home.

What could that mean?

He didn't have any more time to debate it, however.

The door opened again, so fast he jerked out of his thoughts, ran around the corner of the screen to get a better look, and gasped, unable to stop the grin that consumed his face. "Artoo!"

The droid shrieked his discontent, spinning around to stab the officer leading him in, but the woman dodged nimbly and shut the door. Luke listened closely, and was disappointed to hear it click.

Locked.

So they didn't trust him, after all.

But that didn't matter for now. R2 was here, R2 was safe, and he fell to his knees in front of him. The sunset rug was soft underneath him.

R2 did not resist as Luke threw his arms around him. He just beeped gently, allowed the embrace with an extra chirp of affection, and prodded him with his rod when he wanted to be free again. Luke let go.

"What happened to you? What's happening? The last thing I remember is Vader—and triggering the detonators—and Vader, you came in with Vader—"

R2 immediately took offence, and chattered that no, he did not come in with Vader. Vader came in with him.

"Is there a difference? Why were you with him? What's going on? Have you spoken—" Luke's gaze caught on a shiny button-like thing on R2's front that he hadn't seen before; it was perhaps the size of Luke's palm, a gleaming gold to match C-3PO, and was inscribed in High Galactic, circled around the edges: for services to the navy. "You have a medal?"

That officer had told him he did, but—

R2 beeped that he had several medals, actually.

"I've never seen you with a medal before."

Well, just because he had never been awarded them, because the Republic was strapped for credits and Anakin was always running about one place or another, never stopping long enough to recharge, or get an oil bath, or have a ceremony acknowledging whatever insane stunt he'd pulled. And technically he had received a medal at Yavin, he had been important in that victory too, but droids weren't as vain as organics and didn't need to display them on their persons or in a ceremony, despite this newest embellishment; the Empire did not respect droids as much as the Alliance did, which was a low bar already, and Anakin had ordered them to put it on him before he could object to the gold, which really, he should expect no less than this hideous gold from the creator of C-3PO but just because R2 made his acquaintance did not mean he shared that droid's abhorrent taste—

Luke blinked. "Wait. Stop."

R2's tales of his lack of droid vanity trailed off as he beeped a question.

Luke raised his hand to R2's dome, to steady himself and to steady the string of chatter, and found his fingers were trembling. "Did you say Anakin?"

R2 froze. He rotated his dome in an impression of the humanoid no.

"I— I know my Binary isn't fantastic, but I know you said Anakin, Artoo."

No. R2's dome kept rotating back and forth. No he hadn't. Not at all.

"I know—"

No. Nope. Nuh uh. Never.

"Artoo, please. I'd think it was a different Anakin, but you're acting odd, so I guess it is my father you're talking about?"

Of course not, and this wasn't a conversation they should be having anyway; Luke should forget about it before he got his circuits in a twist.

"Artoo. Please." His voice trembled as much as his hand did, now. "Is my father alive?"

R2 was quiet for a moment. His pincer extended to awkwardly stroke Luke's sleeve; Luke knew R2 was trying to comfort him by imitating how he and Leia comforted each other. He appreciated it.

Then R2 trundled over to one of the panels Luke had not yet investigated, opened it, and out popped a holoscreen.

"What…?"

R2 plugged himself in, and text scrolled across the scene. I DO NOT TRUST YOUR LIMITED LANGUAGE FACULTIES TO ADEQUATELY UNDERSTAND THIS.

Despite himself, Luke chuckled. "I'm not that bad."

YOU ARE AN ORGANIC.

Point taken.

"Alright then," Luke said. The side of his mouth quirked, but he aborted the motion before it could form either a smile or a frown. "Tell me what you know about my father."

JEDI SKYWALKER, ANAKIN, WAS MY PRIMARY MASTER FROM YEAR: 7756 TO YEAR:7759. GALACTIC STANDARD CALENDAR.

"Uh." Luke flushed in embarrassment. "What's that in Imperial standard?"

YEAR: 3 BFE TO YEAR: 0 BFE.

Luke nodded. "Alright. That's… just before I was born."

CONFIRMATION: THIRD-LAST CONTACT WITH ANAKIN IS DATED HOURS BEFORE YOUR MAKING. SECOND-LAST CONTACT WITH ANAKIN, CORRUPTED BY A VIRUS NAMED dark side, IS DATED THREE DAYS AGO. LAST CONTACT, ONE HOUR AGO.

His head was spinning, there was so much to take in here, but, "Corrupted by a virus…?"

HIS SERIAL NUMBER HAS CHANGED TO: LORD VADER, DARTH.

Luke stumbled to his knees.

What.

"What?"

REPEAT STATEMENT: SERIAL NUMBER—

"No I heard you—read you—right the first time. Anakin, my father, is…" He sucked in a breath. "Is Darth Vader?"

AFFIRMATIVE.

Luke scrunched his eyes shut. He took several more breaths. "Artoo. What… what does this mean?" His head wasn't just spinning, his head was in a nuclear reactor, everything was moving at the speed of light and colliding and exploding. He couldn't think.

"What do you think it means?"

He flinched at the booming voice, and whipped his head around, just as the door slammed shut behind Darth Vader, dark lord of the Sith.

Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight.

"Former Jedi Knight, Luke," Vader corrected gently.

Luke stared up at him. "What the kriff is going on!"

Before Vader could berate him for his language—and from that finger that sprang out to jab in his direction, he was about to—R2 screeched worse. He unplugged himself from the holoscreen, and shot across the floor, ramming into Vader again with enough force that Vader actually had to stumble back a few steps.

"Artoo—" Vader said in a warning tone.

R2 didn't let him get a word in edgeways. He shrieked and shrieked and shrieked—Vader had hijacked his ship to hurt Luke, Vader had implanted him with a medal, Vader had left him behind on Mustafar, Vader had—

"I hijacked your ship to get to Luke, before the stormtroopers hurt him," Vader correctly fiercely, finally lifting a hand to freeze him in place. "Do you object to that use of your convenient shuttlecraft, droid?"

R2 just shot back that it was him who had put Luke in the centre of attention in the first place, it was his fault—

"I had no intention for him to be hurt. He is my son. I am going to protect him from all hurt." At those words, Vader swivelled his head to trap Luke in his gaze again, and Luke suddenly sensed what he hadn't sensed beyond the intensity, before.

Protectiveness.

Those cold wings he'd sensed in the Force since he got here settled around his shoulders in a peculiar imitation of affection.

Even R2 had been pacified by that, his loud objections quieting to squeaks, but he still warbled an irritated question on whether he would be reclaiming all of his children with the same ferocity.

"If you are speaking of Threepio, I am his Maker, not his father, and I really do think he will appreciate that gold medal you sport."

R2 stilled in surprise, and went quiet again.

Luke knew him well enough to know when he was hiding something.

But then he launched into another flurry, and Vader's amusement was tangible even from here. "If you object to the medal so much, I can have it replaced with a restraining bolt."

R2 huffed that the sheer nerve of this was what should have clued him in to Anakin's survival from the start, that he would get the medal removed, that perhaps Anakin's own suit would look a little better jazzed up with some obnoxious gold himself; if there was any worse colour on a droid or cyborg than gold, it was black, which was why he wanted to get this tasteless Imperial paintjob off of him as soon as possible—

No one was listening anymore, though.

Luke was looking at Vader, and Vader was looking back.

"Artoo," he finally said. "Go to the droid's socket and power down. I would like some privacy with my son."

Luke expected more of a fight, but there was none, to his shock; R2 paused, beeped something he didn't understand, then trundled over to panels. One slid open to reveal a stand for charging droids; R2 rolled atop it and whirred, the lights on his carapace winking out.

Luke said, "I think I could use some hints about getting him to listen to orders."

"He only listens when he wants to. But he is more sentimental than he allows himself to think." Vader's tone was fond, and Luke idly thought that that statement could apply to more than one person in the room. "Too many years without a wipe."

"Ah." Luke didn't really know what to do; he fiddled with his hands, and the bottom of his shirt, and did not meet his eye.

"If you are hungry, a droid will be up in approximately an hour to bring some rations. I would provide a full meal, but the Rebels' EMP blast took out our kitchens and we are left regrettably bereft." There was the amusement again.

Luke lifted his child. "I am the Rebel who set off the EMP. That's my EMP."

"I am well aware of that, son."

"That reporter certainly wasn't."

"He was not meant to be. I am not about to advertise to the galaxy that the boy I rescued, my son, is a Rebel. That would just put you in danger and people would blame you for this disastrous event. People have already suggested attempts to sue me for the damage. It has cost billions of credits for the damage, the Empire's prestige, and the repairs that have already been enacted."

Luke snorted. "It's not like the Empire can afford to lose any more prestige, I guess. Not after the Death Star."

"Indeed. Imagine if it got out that you were present for both events."

"This one," Luke said loudly, "wasn't my fault!"

"You seem bitter about it."

"Well—yeah! I was supposed to blow the Executor to the suns! Well, sun singular here, I guess. But you beat me to it and now I have no idea what's going on."

Vader stood up straighter. "I did not beat you to it, Luke. None of this is my fault whatsoever. I have informed the idiots who tried to hold me accountable as such."

"You seem unsure about it," Luke shot right back.

"You…" Vader huffed. "You are much like your mother."

Luke didn't realise he'd been smiling faintly until it faded.

"Ben said you killed my father," he said. "Not that you are my father."

Vader was silent for a moment, and Luke wondered what that flash of confusion meant. "And who do you believe, young one?"

"Well, you haven't killed me yet. Though whether that's for some nefarious Sith reason, I don't know."

"Nefarious Sith reason?" Vader sounded amused.

"You dragged me in front of the holocams. That was weird; you still haven't explained that."

"I told you, I had to make up a story which justified why I have not yet killed you, and presenting you to the press as the hero makes that more convincing—"

"It also makes it harder for me to run back to the Alliance."

Vader tilted his helmet. "Yes," he allowed. "I do admit that was also a factor."

Luke narrowed his eyes. "How do I know you're not just grabbing a Force-sensitive to use somehow, huh? Ben said my power could be useful."

"It could. But I would not crash my newly launched Super Star Destroyer just to get hold of someone who could be useful, my son."

Luke blinked, and tried to ignore the flutter in his chest. That… hearing that his father, his living father, wanted him…

He couldn't manage anything more emotional, but he got out, "So, you did crash it?"

"I never said—" Vader cut himself off. There was a low, swooshing sound with the respirator, and Luke realised he was laughed. "…perhaps," he conceded. "But woe betide the fool who attempts to sue me for it."

Luke, despite himself, laughed as well. Then stopped.

This was so much.

"You're Darth Vader," he marvelled. "You killed Ben."

Vader wheezed. "This mysterious 'Ben' is Obi-Wan!?"

"You killed— I don't even know how many people! What." He stumbled over to the sofa. He… he could hardly stand up.

The cushions were squishy and comfy, though.

"What is going on?" he whispered.

He didn't know how to feel.

Everything had been… so insane. And now he was here, joking with Darth Vader about that insanity, and…

"You may need time to adjust."

"What's going to happen to me now? What did you do?" Luke glared with a sudden heat, and he felt instantly guilty when he saw Vader physically stumble back.

"I had the stormtroopers stun you. You were kept drugged to ensure you did not escape while the Executor was still stuck in her plight, and it took a standard day for Kuat to finally steer her back into a functional dock on the station, in order to enact the necessary repairs. In this time, I told all stormtroopers that you were an undercover agent of mine tasked with uncovering the Rebel insurgency, which you did a little too late to fully save the ship from her troubles. Claiming you were injured, I had you kept in here for a few days while the situation was handled and we decided what story the holonews would be told."

Luke scowled. "That's all utter bantha poodoo. No one's gonna believe that."

"That reporter seemed perfectly enthused, did he not?"

Luke had to concede the point on that one.

"The holonews was sold a different story, however. For now, as much as the galaxy knows, you are Vig Reneve, decorated engineer who was in the right place at the right time to stop the insurgency. Various Imperial forces know you are actually one of my agents, working on a tipoff. Only you and I know the truth." He turned his head towards the droid charging station. "And Artoo."

Luke shook his head, trying to process all that. "That's a lot of lies."

"Welcome to the media."

"Welcome to the Empire, you mean."

"You think your Rebel Command do not lie to you?"

"No, I—" He grimaced, and decided to drop the subject. "What's going to happen to me now?"

Vader paused.

He stepped up to Luke, and cupped his cheek in his hand. Luke, sitting on the sofa, had to crane his neck to meet Vader's gaze, but he leaned into the touch. The other hand went on his shoulder, gentle and firm.

"I do not know," he admitted. "As I said, you may need some time to process this."

"I may need some time to process this entire situation."

"I concede that that is… reasonable."

"You crashed your ship." Luke huffed, and covered his face. "Oh, stars, you crashed your kriffing ship. And you say it was for me?"

"Everything I have done since I found out about you has been for you, Luke."

And there was so much to unpack there, so many questions still to ask, but now his heart was full to bursting again, now Luke took his hands away from his face and wrapped his arms around Vader's torso instead.

Vader jerked, and Luke got the feeling that were it not for the respirator, his breathing would have hitched.

"I can't believe you crashed your ship." His voice was muffled by the cape.

"Indeed." Vader paused, then said, "I… would like us to stay together." He added, more teasingly, "We have already indirectly caused mass damage of military hardware twice when we were apart. It would be safer for the galaxy."

"Indirectly? Nothing about the Death Star or this was indirect, Father." Before he could dwell on the title, before he could analyse the way Vader's grip on his shoulder tightened, he continued, "And technically, we were apart for nineteen years without anything happening. It seems the destruction happens when we end up within a parsec of each other."

"I have no patience for Jedi point of views."

"It's not a point of view, it's an observation."

"Well, even if it is indeed accurate, I do not care. I am willing to let you destroy the Empire if that is a side effect of us staying together."

Luke froze. Then pulled back and grinned up at him.

That sounded like a plan.

Vader backtracked immediately. "That was not intended literally—"

"I'll stay," Luke said.

Vader cut himself off faster than Fixer trying to thread the Needle. "Thank you."

"Besides, considering you're the one who crashed the ship, you're more likely to do that than I am."

Vader sighed.

"Not if I already have you beside me," he said, "my son."