Leia unlocked the doors to the docking port and wasted no time in heading for her ship, where she collapsed onto her bunk in the sleeping quarters and buried her face in her hands.
She didn't know if she should look at what was on those datachips.
Did she trust Tsabin? No.
Did she want to look anyway, because curiosity was eating her alive from the inside out? Absolutely.
She spent several hours putting it off, distracting herself with inane tinkering to her ship.
And when she gave in, she spent several hours combing through the datachips.
There was so much here. And— and she loved it.
Senator Amidala's voice—in writing or in the Senate—sounded as cool and clear as the waterfalls of this very planet, her reason impeccable but not lacking emotion. The orator and trained politician inside her marvelled at her skill—and logic—even as she grew more and more afraid.
Because this conflicted with everything she'd ever been taught.
Padmé Amidala was the antithesis to Sheev Palpatine.
Leia opened one of her essays. Tsabin's foreword noted it as a letter written to the leader of a planet that was debating joining the Separatists.
Amidala wrote, An old friend of mine once said to me that loyalty to the Republic—to democracy—is paramount. I know that our democracy has failed you in the past, as it failed me when I was forced to take personal action after my home planet was invaded so long ago, and I will not pretend it will not fail us both in the future. It is a system of government invented by fallible sentient beings, after all, and nothing we can create is ever perfect.
At the time, with this in mind, I challenged my friend to answer what we should do if the democracy we serve does not return the favour. His answer was that we must work to restore the democratic process. Because democracy at its best is, in my humble belief, the only true representation of what is best for the people. And if it is failing in its duty then it is our duty to improve it.
Many have called me an idealist for thinking such things. But why would I have joined politics at as young an age as I did if I was not an idealist?
The majority of Separatist senators have just and noble intentions in mind. I believe that. But just as strongly I believe that the solution to fixing a flawed system is to cooperate and compromise with each other and improve it, not to burn it down simply because it was as flawed as all things are.
I am not in this position to destroy. I am here to create—aren't we all?
And I wholeheartedly hope that whatever the Republic creates next, you and your system will be a part of it.
Leia blinked.
She read it again. Then she read Tsabin's afterword.
Apparently the letter was only a draft, and had never been sent—barely five days later, Padmé Amidala had been declared dead and the planet she was writing to had been punished the same way all Separatists and their sympathisers had.
Leia set down the datapad and stared at her fingers, entwined in her lap.
That was hardly the first thing she'd read or watched that had. . . chilled her.
No. Not chilled her.
Touched her.
I am not in this position to destroy.
This woman who didn't want to destroy was the current leader of the greatest terror threat the Empire had ever seen. Yet the words rang genuine to Leia.
So—
How—
Had her stance changed so drastically in the last seventeen—nearly eighteen—years?
It wasn't infeasible.
Leia shook her head—and her hands. Her hands were shaking. She clutched them tighter.
How could she. . . relate. . . so much to something such a terrible woman was saying? How did Amidala sound so passionate but also so logical? How could she say things like that in this letter—and many other letters, and speeches, and essays, and bills—then turn around and attack Kuat the way she had, sowing discord throughout the galaxy she'd sworn to serve—
Only, that hadn't been her, had it?
Luke had worked it out. Those Rebels—the Velts—had had nothing to do with Amidala. They'd been working with Saw Gerrera.
Leia knew as well as anyone else in the Emperor's inner circle that nearly all of the attacks the Imperial news decried as violent terrorist activity were actually carried out by Gerrera and his Partisans. She knew they were a splinter faction of the larger Rebellion, not necessarily representative of the main whole.
But whenever she'd wondered about it, Palpatine had assured her that the larger Rebellion was planning something larger, more violent; they were just quieter about it. Their massacres were at bases meant to be secret, so secret that the public—and even she—wasn't allowed to know about them. They had no choice but covering them up, and to prevent people from incorrectly believing the Rebellion harmless, they'd used Gerrera's attacks as 'proof'.
It had seemed reasonable.
Yet it was now occurring to Leia that even now, with her clearance almost on the level of a Grand Moff's, lesser only to her father and the Emperor, she had no idea what the Rebellion had actually done.
Attack military instalments? She knew about that.
Send in spies to steal military secrets? She knew about that.
Assassinate her, Luke, her father? She knew all about that.
She'd never stopped to realise that all the targets were technically military.
This wasn't terrorism. This was warfare.
Warfare to reinstall a system Amidala had had such faith in. . .
It is a system of government invented by fallible sentient beings, after all, and nothing we can create is ever perfect.
Palpatine's tales of a Republic corrupt from the bottom up, of senators who loved money more than righteousness, of a system that nobody believed in. . . they all crumbled before Padmé Amidala's impassioned words.
Amidala had been a pacifist—to an extent. These files were making it clearer and clearer that she'd turned more towards violence after the Invasion of Naboo thirty years ago. Yet she'd still been a staunch opponent of the Clone Wars, and advocated for defence more than attack.
The Rebellion was built on unexpected attacks.
Had the formation of the Empire pushed her to abandon all her ideals?
Leia's eyes caught and snagged on one line: We must work to restore the democratic process.
No. It hadn't.
She hadn't abandoned her ideals. In fact, fighting against a dictatorship—no matter how much more effective it was than the democracy that preceded it—was actively in line with them.
Leia squirmed. She didn't like where this was going.
She didn't like having her views challenged like this, someone to whom she owed no loyalty, no attention, no trust, swaying her ideas like they were flags in the wind.
She wanted Luke. He'd help her understand all of this.
She reached for his mind, but there was just that same hollow distance as always.
So she kept reading instead.
Her fundamental truths kept crumbling.
Clearly not everyone had supported the then-Chancellor's unusually long service: Amidala had drafted a call to reinstate term limits.
(Amidala, who had refused to amend Naboo's constitution so she could serve longer as queen, and stepped down. . .)
Clearly not everyone had considered the clones as little more than slaves, as her father had always ranted about: Amidala had drafted several bills advocating for their personhood.
(The Empire had phased the clones out of service once they weren't needed to exterminate Jedi, and left them to rot in their guilt over what they'd done. . .)
And clearly not everyone had been indifferent to the slavery in the Outer Rim, something Leia herself had always scorned them for: here, right in front of her, were drafts of bill after antislavery bill after antislavery bill.
(Palpatine had quadrupled the amount of slavery in the galaxy. . .)
It was several hours later that she finished, head swimming from all the information—and doubts—she'd absorbed. She didn't like doubting herself. She didn't like this at all.
She opened one last document and froze.
There, stark against the white screen of the datapad, was a comlink frequency.
The name next to it read, Sabé.
Tsabin.
Sabé.
Padmé.
Padmé Amidala had had several handmaidens as Queen of Naboo, hadn't she? Not to mention quite a few more as Senator.
And hadn't they all changed their names to reflect hers?
But Leia had already known of Tsabin's involvement with Amidala. That thought was quickly shunted aside when another, more pertinent one came to the forefront:
Wouldn't someone as loyal as a handmaiden support their previous friend and ruler in anything?
Even, say, high treason?
Was it beyond the realm of belief to consider that Tsabin—Sabé—was a Rebel?
Leia thought back to the way the woman had held herself, the shielding on her mind, her careful, considered manner.
Oh yes—she was definitely a Rebel.
But did that mean. . .
Had— had Tsabin been trying to recruit her?
That was ridiculous. The thought that it would ever succeed was ridiculous—
Right?
Leia switched off the datapad and stuffed it into her bag, pointedly not looking at the comlink frequency. No. She wasn't going to comm her. Even if she could get more information—maybe even Amidala's location—out of her.
She needed to think first.
She reached for her comlink anyway, and typed out a message.
More than anything, she needed to talk to Luke.
Luke's comlink gave a soft ping while he sat at his desk poring over yet another stack of paperwork Horada had dumped on him. There'd been a distinctly evil look in her eye as she did so, and now he had no shame in diving for the message immediately.
Anything for a distraction.
And this Leia sent him was certainly distracting enough. She wanted more information about Padmé Amidala? Not to mention some of the recordings and holos she was sending, one at a time. Speeches and essays and letters, snippets of video from her time as queen and in the senate. He frowned.
Add them to the file, her message read. Can you check through, see if there's something I missed?
"Anything for my darling sister," he said under his breath, but sighed. Then he reached out a hand to shove the other datapads he was supposed to organise away.
As he did, he actually looked at the headings on a few of them. It was just standard paperwork, but it was his father's name that caught his eye.
Twelve officers executed for poor conduct and incompetence in the last cycle, sentence carried out by Lord Darth Vader.
His hand unintentionally stilled.
He knew what the pretty words were covering up. His father's standards were brutally harsh, and he was equally brutal in exacting them. It shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did—it wasn't like he hadn't known of it, hadn't seen it happen, before. And it wouldn't have bothered him, if it weren't for. . . that word.
Executed.
And he thought. . .
I refuse to kneel before a tyrant and his executioner.
He didn't know what he thought. He'd always known about Vader's behaviour—he'd endorsed it. If his father thought it was right, then it must be.
Why was he having doubts now? It wasn't just because of Teela Velt's impassioned words, he knew that much. He'd had hundreds of speeches spat at him by hundreds of Rebels; they had never burrowed quite so deep.
What in the galaxy had happened which caused him to doubt his father so much—and, by extension, himself?
He didn't know.
No. He did know. But he didn't like thinking about it.
But researching Padmé Amidala was hardly going to help, because that was intrinsically tied up in it—
He transferred one of the videos Leia had sent him to the computer screen and watched it play out. Amidala stood in Naboo's senate pod, as she had in so many holos of her that they'd dug up. She was giving a speech—something about the Clone Wars, but it wasn't clear from the recording what. Once she was finished she didn't take her seat again; rather, she turned around to head out of it, where a man seemed to be waiting for her.
Luke paused the video.
Something about that man. . . the way he stood. . .
He zoomed in on the image. The figure was tall—much taller than the senator, even with her hairpiece—and wore dark robes, cut in the style of a Jedi Knight. Sure enough, there was a shape that might have passed for a lightsaber in the grainy quality.
Luke squinted and scrutinised the man's face.
It too was blotchy and blocky, with the blue light of the holo disguising his colouring. But the way he stood, angled to block the senator from prying eyes, the way she tilted her head back and half-smiled, half-smirked at him. . .
Something was important.
So Luke scrutinised him further.
Nose. Mouth. Eyes. Eyebrows. . . and there, bisecting the right eyebrow, was a deep scar.
Luke had rarely seen his father without the mask, but he had seen him.
It was odd to see his younger, unburned self here.
He played the holo again, and watched the man's mannerisms just as carefully as he had before. They matched his father's, for sure.
And looking at how the two interacted. . . the features clearly visible in both Luke and Leia. . .
If he hadn't been before, he was even more convinced that Padmé Amidala had been his mother.
And that man was his father.
Who had he been? Who was he?
Who was Luke?
He spent the next standard hour searching for any Jedi who matched the profile of the man in that holo, but to no avail. And when he finally walked out of the Archives, his head spinning, he almost didn't notice the woman who walked across the corridor opposite him.
"Ja— Sixth Sister," he corrected, berating himself for the slip. He hadn't told her what he'd found yet and he didn't want to prompt too many questions.
She ignored him, and kept walking.
"Wait!" He jogged after her, and stopped when she did. He wanted to cringe at the withering glare she shot him, before he pulled himself together. What he was about to say made him seem soft enough as it was. "I just— I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for yesterday."
Then was a beat of silence, her shock clear, then—
"Don't be," she snapped back. "I led you into it. And you gave me the information, so we're even."
Funnily enough, that did not sound like forgiveness. "I embarrassed you when I didn't need to," he pushed. "And I'm sorry." His skin crawled every time he thought about it—he'd felt like—
"I said, don't." She glowered at him, and Luke noticed a red rim in her yellow eyes that he hadn't seen before. "It was embarrassment. I was punished for losing, and had to fight through pain and anger until I found the dark side again and won. That's my training." She kept walking. The windows in the corridor showed the beginning of sunset on the horizon, Coruscant's many satellites hanging like beacons in the sky.
It reflected odd light across the contours of her helmet as she slid it closed and said, "The only difference here was that it was you doing it, not Vader."
He'd always known his father did that. It was one of the many things he'd never thought about until now.
The same feeling from earlier manifested in his gut. Executioner.
"So don't worry, Luke. You're doing everything right. He's definitely proud of you."
She stalked off, the Force agitating in her wake, leaving him standing there with her parting words.
They weren't as much comfort as he wanted them to be.
Luke hadn't replied with his analysis of the situation by the time Leia woke up, so she decided to clear her head by wandering around Theed some more. Who knew: she might find something of value.
The teal top and blue trousers she donned were just as fashionable and inconspicuous-only-on-Naboo as her top from the previous day, but she found she preferred this outfit much more. The sleeves and shoulders had indigo embroidery on them in the shapes of flowers and birds; for once, when she sensed people noticing her, it was because they liked her clothes and not because they thought she was a threat.
Until she passed by an artist's studio, and froze.
There was tension in the Force. It wasn't directed at her—well, not directly. The Force was being vague, which was an intrinsic part of communing with the Force, but she still felt a flash of resentment at the thought of how clear Palpatine's foresight could be. She grabbed that resentment, held onto it and let it fuel her, until the world sharpened and she could hear that tension like a scream in her ears.
Turmoil, just a few streets over. Violent turmoil, on par with what she'd sensed when she and Luke had first descended into that mess on Kuat, unlike anything she'd ever expected to find on Naboo. In Theed.
The Naboo were pacifists.
The sounds of the turmoil were just starting to reach this street now. The artist looked up in her studio, alarmed; several patrons of the café a few doors down looked startled; someone on the upper floor of a residential building stuck their head out the window. The noise was like a chanting, shouting—angry, aggressive shouting.
Leia didn't know how far away it was. The sense of it spun in the Force, the anger scorching when she tried to reach for it; she flinched back. Then she lifted her head and set her chin.
Several people in the street gasped as she drew her lightsaber from her bag and lit it—then screamed as she jumped, further than any human should be able to. She perched on a windowsill on the second floor, then leaped again, across the street, to catch the edge of the roof and haul herself onto it.
The Naboo's penchant for domed buildings was working against her; her hands scrabbled for purchase. She barely found it, but she found it nonetheless. Then she scrambled to the top, and looked around.
She was high enough to see this entire quadrant of Theed, the streets unfolding under her feet like she stood on a map. And she could see where the commotion was coming from—several places, in fact.
Riots.
Riots had broken out. In Theed. On Naboo.
Smoke rose from each pocket of chaos, and it was by that which she tracked their moment, towards the centre of the city, where they converged on—
On the Palace.
She slid off the roof, softened her landing with the Force, and sprinted.
She needed to get there quickly.
Someone shouted after her but she made it to the Palace ahead of the riots, out of breath, tracking their movements through the Force. There was something intentional about the paths they were taking, something calculated, and she didn't like it one bit.
The moment she entered the courtyard a guard trained his blaster on her.
She ripped it out of his hand and sent it scattering across the floor.
The rest of the guards milling about fixed their blasters on her.
"I am an agent of His Majesty the Emperor," she got out through ground teeth, lifting her hands. She didn't have time for this. "There are riots moving this way, and I have come to assist you in crushing them."
"We've got this under control," one of them said. Leia recognised him as the leader based on the others' body language in response to when he spoke. "And ma'am, if they're headed this way, you should probably leave the area—"
Leia scoffed, then turned her back on them.
Fine.
If they weren't going to listen to her, she'd deal with this herself.
She strode out of the courtyard, mind-whirring. She had her tiny blaster, she had her lightsaber, and she had the Force. Would that be enough?
No. Not with only one person.
But if she could delay the riot long enough for the guards to get the Queen of Naboo to safety and barricade the Palace. . . that would be enough.
She scaled the walls of the courtyard, one of the climbing plants proving to be a very useful handhold, and dragged herself once again onto a position overlooking several streets. The small riots had all converged into one by now and were marching down Palace Plaza to— What? Storm the building?
Leia crept closer to a tree, flattened herself to her belly, and hoped no one noticed her.
She watched the leaders of each faction just melt into the crowd as it converged. It was a good mix of people who were marching: there were the well-dressed Naboo and Gungans, perhaps resentful enough of the Empire and drunk on their own righteousness that they thought this might lead to anything but their death; thin, skeletal beings who dragged themselves along only by the fire of their anger, whose uniforms identified them as spice miners from Onoam and Veruna; and lastly there were the others, an eclectic mix of more species than Leia could count, who held themselves like they knew what they were doing and seemed to be the ones in charge. Leia squinted, hoping to get a closer look.
There was a flag-bearer at the front. She narrowed her eyes, then pursed her lips together and focused, tugging on that little piece of cloth until it unfurled. . .
She didn't recognise the symbol at first. It was a red arrow, more or less, on a white background, pointing to the bottom left.
The it hit her.
The symbol of Saw Gerrera's Partisans.
Had he organised this? Why? What was there to gain from seizing Naboo?
It was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer: Prestige.
Fear.
Recognition.
If they could strike at the heart of the Mid Rim world that had birthed the Emperor in the first place, they suddenly became a real threat. More people would fear them, cave to their demands; more people would flock to them, seeing them as more effective than the main Rebellion. What would they do? Burn the Palace? If they could kidnap the Queen. . .
They couldn't kidnap the Queen.
Leia wouldn't let them.
And a riot wouldn't manage to pull that off. More probable this was a distraction for the main show going on indoors. She briefly considered heading in to protect Her Majesty herself, but judging by the courtyard guards' reactions, her presence would not be welcome.
So she'd better deal with this as quickly as possible, so the guards could go back to protecting the Queen as quickly as possible.
She fixed her eyes on the flag bearer. He was a Tognath, wearing the mask needed for him to survive in an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
With a flick of her fingers, she yanked him into the air by the throat and threw him into the crowd.
The flag fell, trampled by a dozen appendages.
The Tognath still clutched his throat, gagging and flailing and screeching with enough urgency to distract the people around him—including the leader. She, a stocky, blue-skinned Twi'lek, paused to frown down at him.
The rest of the procession halted when she did.
Leia took one moment to be mildly impressed by the fact they were so under the Twi'lek's thrall, then opened fire.
The first shot struck the Twi'lek right between her lekku; she went down in a spray of blood.
Someone screamed, and there was chaos.
Some of the rioters—particularly the Naboo—turned and fled amid the screams.
Leia drew in their sudden fear, apprehension, then held out her hand. The Force rolled towards them like a tsunami. The wet crackle of bones sounded above the shouting, and lives winked out in the Force.
She fired again. The next most senior-looking leader got a bolt to the back of his head.
One rioter—a miner, by the looks of him—jerked his head up in her direction, and caught sight of her. He shouted to his companions; she gave him a bolt between his eyes for the trouble. But it was too late.
A bolt hit the wall beneath her; she flinched instinctively. Yanked herself to her feet, leapt off the wall, and fired several more shots into the crowd.
They hit their targets with a painful accuracy.
But so did someone else's: pain burst in her lower leg.
She grunted, glancing down quickly enough to see blood soak her trousers. She scowled.
She'd liked this outfit.
No time to dwell on that now. She'd helped the best she could, she'd wiped out half the rioters and reduced the threat to the Queen's life. If the guards were too incompetent to handle it from here, then they almost deserved what happened, in Leia's book.
Now, to reduce the threat to her life, she needed to scram.
It was hard running with a blaster wound in her leg. After the first street, glancing back to see a few furious Partisans—probably angry at the loss of their leader—hounding after her, she risked taking a minute to rip some of the cloth off her t-shirt to staunch the bleeding. She gritted her teeth against the pain.
Then the Partisans were on top of her.
The first one fired a shot, and they didn't live long enough to fire another one. Her lightsaber was in her hand and lit before the blaster had even finished recoiling; the bolt flew right back to shoot the Aqualish through the face.
"Inquisitor," a human Partisan hissed, eyeing her red blade.
"Don't insult me," she spat, and shot him.
The rest shot her all at once and there was nothing she could do except dive out of the way, hope she didn't die, and run for it again.
Once she was out of point-blank range, she could guide the bolts away from their target, missing her and hitting the street instead, but they just kept coming.
So she just kept running.
The wound was hurting more and more—she wasn't doing it any favours, she suspected, putting this much stress on her leg, but there wasn't much she could do. She was nearing the docking bays now, but even once she got aboard and blasted these idiots to smithereens with her borderline illegal cannons, she wasn't sure she had decent medical supplies on board. Well, decent enough.
She ducked her head as another bolt barely missed her.
Worry about that later.
A bolt came for her body—her lightsaber snapped back, deflecting two into the ground in quick succession. The docking bays were in sight now, looming straight ahead; she near-slammed into the door, jabbed the key code to opened it, and dashed inside.
The doors slid shut on her pursuers with a hiss.
She let out a hiss herself. She closed her eyes, scrunched them tightly, and took a deep breath.
She'd had worse injuries, but kreth this one hurt.
She limped up the boarding ramp and collapsed onto her bunk in the bedroom with a sigh. Digging the medical kit out from under her bed and applying bacta to the wound helped ease her mind somewhat, but her thoughts still whirled by faster than she could understand them.
She couldn't stay on Naboo.
If any of the rioters survived or escaped, they'd be on the hunt for her. She couldn't very well start digging for information about Amidala when both the authorities and the populace knew she was an Imperial agent—if that angle had worked, she would've started with that. The entire point of Palpatine sending her was subtlety, which just made the fact that Tsabin seemed to see right through her even more concerning. . .
She needed to investigate other areas where Senator Amidala had been linked.
Coruscant was her next best bet, but she lived on Coruscant, literally in the woman's apartment. If there'd been anything to find there, she would have found it already.
If there was anything more to find there, Luke would find it.
Maybe, she mused, hopping across the room to the desk her datapad lay on, there was something to be found in Amidala's writings?
Amidala had been connected to a great many planets. She'd created the Mid Rim Cooperation for Bromlarch after its aqueduct was damaged, and that led to a strong alliance between other Mid Rim worlds and many in the Core as well. She'd had a brief romantic relationship with Senator Rush Clovis of Scipio, but he was dead and Leia doubted the rest of the Muuns had anything to say on the matter.
Alderaan and Chandrila had also been close allies of hers—and their senators were still alive for her to question.
But the point was that they were close allies. If she started stirring up dust in her investigation, it might alert Amidala that she suspected she hadn't died with the Republic.
Leia's leg twinged; she thought back to what had just happened.
Forget about not stirring up dust.
So. Alderaan and Chandrila were both perfectly viable options, and when she got there she'd grill every tiny detail out of their senators. But both were in the Core, and would require a good few days' worth of hyperspace travel to get to. If there was a closer source, one she could research briefly just to get as broad an idea as possible. . .
Tatooine.
The name scrolled across her datapad almost casually, Amidala's mention of it in this letter a throwaway line. When I was on Tatooine, I saw injustice unlike anything we have on Naboo. . .
It was a long shot. She probably wouldn't find anything. But Tatooine was only a day's travel away, and she couldn't deny something felt. . . right about this. She'd been assured by her father, the Emperor, every person who'd ever been there, that Tatooine was a deplorable place full of deplorable people, as far from the bright centre of the galaxy that one could get.
But she wanted to go.
She decided it was the Force, but a part of her knew it wasn't. A part of her knew it was more memory, long-buried and long-forgotten, pushing its way back to the surface.
A thought flashed to mind: a seven-year-old and her twin brother, climbing into their father's lap, confused and afraid. I keep dreaming of a desert. . .
Yes, she decided, pushing herself to her feet and heading for the cockpit. She'd go to Tatooine, whether she could learn anything about Amidala from it or not.
And maybe then she'd work out what her mind was trying to tell her.