3 weeks later
The Thirsty Shaak bar
Coronet City
Corellia
Aralina Silk glanced around casually for the eighteenth time in ten minutes and struggled not to fidget.
"He is late," she murmured to her identical twin sister, Brilani, who was cheerfully sucking down a glass of cheap Corellian ale.
"Relax, Ara," Brilani returned softly. "He said between midnight and three a.m. and it's only two."
Aralina took a deep breath and focused on relaxing muscle group by muscle group. Brilani was right, their contact wasn't actually late yet, but since they had been here for two hours and had been warding off males of various species for the entire time, she was getting sick of being here.
"Ladies!" a thoroughly drunk Dug crooned as he staggered over to their table on wobbly arms, "please let me buy you something better than that cheap ale!"
"I would be glad to buy you a hole in the chest," Ara hissed, lifting a blaster and laying it on the table.
The Dug looked at the blaster, glassy eyed, and then sensibly stumbled away. A moment later, a middle aged, dark skinned man with dashing good looks and a swirling red cloak rose from a nearby table, wandered over to the twins and said, "I've heard that the sentient mosses are particularly intelligent here."
Aralina suppressed a groan and responded. "I don't care how smart they are, I just want them to be purple."
The man nodded and sat down in the available chair as Brilani murmured, "Can I just say that is the most stupid set of identifying phrases in the entire galaxy?"
"I assure you they were not my idea," the man replied. "Do you have it?"
Brilani lifted a hand to her hair, carefully removed the clip which was keeping the platinum strands in place, and pulled out a storage chip from a hidden compartment. "It is all right here."
"It had better be," the agent said starkly. "I do not need to tell you that the individual who sent me will spare no efforts to track you down and kill you if you are playing us false."
Aralina leaned forward and covered her mouth with her hand to be sure that no one could lip read her words. "Let me tell you something; Palpatine told each of us that our twin was dead. Your boss is the one who brought us back together. I assure you we have no loyalty to the Empire and the Emperor. The data is solid. In fact, that faster Palpatine dies, the better."
"And when V...your boss does take him down, I'd love to meet his son," Brilani chirped. "He's cute!"
Their companion chuckled and rose casually to his feet. "I suggest you make yourselves scarce until the mission is complete."
"Don't worry, we will," the Silk twins chorused.
/
3 weeks later
Executor
In orbit around an unknown planet
Admiral Firmus Piett gazed out the front window of the Executor, staring down at the planet revolving below the great ship. It was a green planet with oceans and lakes, but based on scans of the surface, only lightly populated and there was no advanced technology. It seemed odd that such a pleasant planet, with a good atmosphere, would be so primitive.
Several weeks earlier, Darth Vader had ordered everyone off the bridge and had taken the Executor into hyperspace. The ship had traveled for several days and come out of lightspeed here. Since only Vader (and perhaps his son) had knowledge of their location, and since Vader had taken some of the navigational and communication systems off line, Executor and her crew were presumably safe from being attacked by Palpatine's forces; even if there were spies aboard, and there probably were, they would not be able to tell the Emperor of the ship's location.
A soft beep interrupted his musing. He looked down at his holopad and quickly read the message, then looked up to regard Captain Cratt.
"Where is Lord Vader?" he inquired as he glanced at his chrono. It was 1400 hours, which meant Vader was almost certainly touring some section of the great ship with his son.
"Lord Vader and Skywalker are in section 51G, sir."
Piett frowned at this. He knew Executor well but 51B was unfamiliar.
"Sanitation, sir," Cratt explained helpfully.
Piett sighed and nodded. "You have the bridge, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
Piett marched over to an officer's elevator, stepped in, and gave the order to 51G. It was a fair distance from the bridge, so even with the rapid movement of the elevators, he had a couple of minutes to think.
It had been several weeks since Lord Vader had discovered Luke Skywalker, destroyer of the Death Star, escape artist extraordinaire, his son, on Dachat. Since then, the young man had been locked up in an elegant suite on Executor, with a rotating group of the best Imperial troops on guard at his door at all times. So far, the boy had not made any escape attempts; Piett wasn't sure whether to be relieved or nervous about that.
The admiral did not pretend to understand the thought processes of Darth Vader, Sith Lord. If Piett had a son whom he thought for years was dead, only to pop up on the other side of a war after blowing up the Death Star, well, he wasn't sure what he would have done.
Given the young man's gifts, loyalties, and predilections, Vader seemed to be treating Skywalker sensibly. On the one hand, the young man was guarded very carefully at all times. On the other, Vader seemed to desire some kind of relationship, because he often could be found in Skywalker's quarters, and every day, he took the young Rebel on a tour of some section of the great Super Star Destroyer. They had toured the bridge, engineering, navigation, and spent four days looking at various ships. Today, it was sanitation, which seemed dull but the young prisoner seemed to find every aspect of the Executor entirely fascinating.
Piett wrinkled his nose slightly as the elevator door opened and the smell of trash impinged upon his reluctant nostrils. He had never, in all his time serving on the Executor, descended to the murky depths of the Super Star Destroyer to inspect the sanitation facilities. In an ideal life, he never would have been required to penetrate this section, but Darth Vader was here and had ordered Piett to personally inform him immediately of any progress in the plan to destroy the Emperor.
Piett did not mind killing off Palpatine. Indeed, he looked forward fervently to the day when the old man was dead, partly because Piett thought Palpatine was a pretty lousy leader, and partly because the Admiral had thrown in his lot with Vader and thus would die extremely unpleasantly if he was captured by the Emperor's minions.
Piett strode down a corridor, turned right, turned left, and came upon his black masked superior, who was standing next to Luke Skywalker. The young Rebel/Jedi/son of a Sith was chatting happily with Commander Elron, who wore a dazed and nervous expression. Elron, Piett knew, was in charge of the sanitation for the entire ship, which, while not exciting, was a vitally important task. There were literally tens of thousands of Imperial troops aboard the Executor, and they produced a great deal of refuse.
"The sanitation systems reclaim and recycle as much as possible, of course," Elron declared, keeping his eyes on Skywalker's face, presumably because looking at Vader was too nerve wracking. "Anything that cannot be used is dumped before jumping to hyperspace."
"To reduce load," Skywalker agreed sunnily. "That makes sense."
For the 89th time, Piett glanced from Skywalker to his father and back again. The young man was always manacled when outside his quarters, and he had a shock collar on as well. Vader accompanied the youth whenever he was roaming Executor's long halls, and several guards were standing by. Piett occasionally wondered if this long period of compliance was an attempt on the prisoner's part to lull them all into a sense of false security. If so, it did not appear to be working. Piett knew his superior's body language, and the Sith was always a little tense when the boy was outside his cell.
"Do you have much trouble with dianogas?" Skywalker inquired curiously.
Elron blinked and shook his head, a condescending look on his face. "There are no dianogas in trash compactors in Imperial facilities and starships. That is a myth."
"Well, one nearly ate me in a trash compactor on the Death Star," the boy returned brightly, "so I'm afraid you are wrong."
There was a strange snort from Vader's helmet and the great hand reached out an urgent hand to touch his son's shoulder. "I trust you are exaggerating, son?"
"Not at all," Luke Skywalker replied with an amused smile. "As you know, we broke Leia out of her cell on the Death Star and then got cut off from our escape route by stormtroopers, so Leia shot out the grate for the trash chute, and we jumped in, but the door out was magnetically sealed so we were stuck. Then I got attacked by a dianoga and dragged under, but the trash compactor started closing in, so it released me to run away, and we nearly were crushed, but R2 was hooked up to the Death Star's main computers and shut down the compactor before we were squished, which was good because it was a close thing. Then R2 opened the door."
Admiral Firmus Piett stared glassy eyed at the young man and forced his hanging mouth closed, horrified at both the young man's run on sentences and his casual referral to a near death experience. How had Skywalker survived for 23 odd years?
"You have been entirely too reckless, Luke," Vader admonished, obviously thinking along the same lines of his admiral. "You and your sister could have been killed."
"Well, yeah, but if we'd been caught, we would have been killed too."
"You would not," the cyborg contended, "once I knew your name."
"Eh, maybe. Anyway, it worked out, naturally enough. I say naturally because when two Skywalkers are present, madness of some sort usually reigns."
"My lord," Piett said softly, handing over his holopad.
Vader read the message and nodded with satisfaction. "The next step is complete, Luke."
"Great!" Skywalker exclaimed.
/
Darth Vader's palace
Imperial Center
5 days later
Lando Calrissian gazed around with a mixture of awe, anxiety, and greed at the décor and furnishings of the top level of Darth Vader's palace. The cyborg seemed an unlikely candidate for appreciating art, but there were various treasures adorning random alcoves and walls; perhaps the items were gifts from people eager to curry favor with the Emperor's second in command?
He turned a corner and stopped abruptly, shaking his head in amazement.
"Now that is just adorable, don't you think?" he asked his companion.
Winter Celchu of Alderaan, close friend to Princess Leia Organa, shook her head in amazement. "I confess to profound amazement. I did not imagine Vader had such a sentimental streak."
The painting of Luke Skywalker was large and, based on the scrawl on the corner of the image, created by master artist Wray Tinte. It must have cost thousands of credits!
Or, Lando thought cynically, Tinte had sensibly given the Dark Lord of the Sith a substantial discount.
"I wonder if he'll have Tinte paint a picture of the Princess," he murmured.
"Perhaps," Winter responded, sounding amused. "But come, we have much to do."
"Right. According to the map provided by the Silk twins, the main control room of the palace is ... ah yes, here we are."
Winter walked carefully into the room and gazed around, her hand on her blaster, but all was silent and empty. This was no great surprise; with Vader now in open rebellion against the Emperor, all employees had no doubt run for the nearest underground hideout. The outside of the palace was being guarded by Imperial troops, of course, but the Rebels had infiltrated the palace using a hidden set of corridors built for the Emperor's Hands, special Force Sensitive agents who were loyal to the Emperor.
Except that the Silk twins, formerly Emperor's Hands, torn apart by the Emperor's machinations, had turned against the despot once Vader revealed to each that her womb mate still lived, in spite of the Emperor's lies to the contrary.
There really was something about family, Lando mused. It made people do crazy, stupid, heroic things.
"Ok, here are the ventilation shafts," Winter murmured.
"Let's get to work," Lando said.