WE'RE HERE.

The official unveiling for Project Stardust struck Luke as odd in multiple ways.

Firstly, it was scheduled for the day after Empire Day, yet it was subject to all sorts of secrecy. Only moffs, governors, trusted senators, the most respected admirals and other such favoured beings were allowed to attend. Luke and Leia, though still elated from their flight the previous night, shared a grimace when Vader mentioned they'd have to be on their best behaviour.

There was nothing Luke hated more than stuffy dignitaries. Even Rebels.

Especially not now, but he didn't want to think about that. Especially if he was in the same room as the Emperor.

The other reasons everything seemed off were extrapolated from the first. It was only the day after Empire Day; the festivities should barely be dying down. On Coruscant they were no doubt just as vehement. Why, therefore, would any demonstrations not be made to the masses?

Luke knew why.

Because the demonstration was military, something the censorship departments would never let the common citizens know about. And if it was important enough to occupy a space in the Empire Day presentations, then that meant it was something Palpatine had a personal interest in.

He'd tried to ask his father what Project Stardust was, before the event. Vader's mood had soured, he'd muttered, "An abomination," and that was all he would say on the matter.

So Luke knew nothing about what he was getting into when Mas Amedda ushered him and Leia onto the bridge of the Devastator. All the blast shields were down in this part of the ship, the viewports blocked; it made Luke oddly relieved to be able to see the stars again. They'd gone to unbelievable lengths to keep whatever this was a secret—the Devastator had even completed a short hyperspace jump to a nearby system to stay away from all the eyes watching Kuat—and none of it was helping Luke's nerves.

He felt cold.

He milled about the bridge like everyone else, waiting for Palpatine to arrive.

It wasn't long before he spotted a middle-aged man in a dark suit standing near the viewport, staring out at the stars with an unusual amount of wistfulness. Luke wasn't the only one watching him: a vaguely familiar man of the same age, wearing a white suit and cape, had his eyes fixed on him as well. Luke surveyed the man in white, trying to remember his name.

He had to admire his cape, if nothing else. It was wide and flared out in the same way all of Luke's did—he and Luke's father clearly had similar taste.

Luke rubbed the fabric of his own cape mournfully. He'd never admit it to his father, but he did genuinely like this new one he'd received for his birthday.

Krennic! That was the man's name.

Luke turned his gaze back to the first man.

He was standing by the viewport still, not quite in his father's favoured spot, but fairly close. The stars were bright beyond it in their dust clouds of blue and violet, but Luke got the feeling they weren't what the man was seeing.

He probed him gently with the Force. The only emotion he could feel was dread.

Interesting.

He stepped forward, making sure his approach was silent. The man jumped when he finally noticed Luke beside him.

"What a beautiful view," Luke said amiably, still paying close attention to the man's emotions. Though there was confusion there—many people got confused when they saw such a young Imperial—he was tense. And Luke's presence was only making him tenser.

Good. Maybe then he'd actually get some answers.

"I can't stop looking at it," came the reply. It wasn't a lie, but it was an evasion. Luke got the sense that this was a man who wasn't very good at outright lying.

Well. If he didn't want to lie, there was no harm in asking him directly.

"I don't suppose you know what this demonstration is of?" Luke didn't want to just rip it from his mind—that could get messy, especially if he turned out not to know anything.

"I— I have an idea," his eyes darted across Luke's stiff, black, military-cut clothing, and when he found no rank plate he settled for, "sir. But I wouldn't want to share it, for fear of being wrong."

Luke had been right. He was a terrible liar.

Luke, on the other hand, was not. "No harm in sharing it. There's no judgement here."

The man's gaze snapped to his, to the cape around his shoulders, and he heard one thought zip through his mind.

Luke's smile sharpened into something a little too eager, a little too forward. Well. If the man thought he was just the son of one of the dignitaries, here to try to establish a niche at court, that that was the only reason someone so young would be serving the Empire, then it would just be remiss of Luke not to take advantage of that, wouldn't it?

Accusations of nepotism had stalked Luke since he'd first picked up a lightsaber in the Empire's name. The accusers had generally shut up after the first death threat, but there had always been more and he expected there always would be. It didn't matter. He'd rise above them every time.

He held out his hand, that too-sharp smile still on his face, and said, "I'm Luke Skywalker."

He hadn't talked to his father about officially taking on that name again; frankly, his father had no say in the matter. He'd eschewed any say, first when he'd renounced the name, and second when he'd forced Luke and Leia to do so as well.

But they hadn't even told Palpatine that they knew, yet, and perhaps through the grapevine wasn't the wisest way for him to find out. Whether or not he already suspected, as Leia had said.

Luke toyed with the idea of taking it back, erasing it from the man's mind. Then he decided he didn't care. Leia would understand, and she was the only one whose opinion he cared about, anymore.

This was his name. His father, Palpatine, the whole kriffing galaxy could deal with it.

The man took his hand warily, but he clearly didn't recognise the name as someone important—which was half the reason Luke had given it. "Galen Erso."

The name triangulated with "Orson Krennic" and "Project Stardust" to spit out: scientist. He remembered now. Krennic had been elevated to his current position on the project years and years ago, after managing to secure the genius scientist considered perhaps the only person who could pull of such a marvellous feat of engineering. What that marvellous feat of engineering was, Luke had no idea, but that was what he was here to find out.

One thing was clear, though: Galen Erso knew exactly what they were about to see.

Luke took a breath and pulled the Force close, ready to probe again both verbally and metaphysically—

He sensed that oily presence approach just before the doors to the bridge hissed open.

He immediately threw himself to one knee, everyone else on the bridge following suit.

He fixed his father's and sister's positions in his mind. They were kneeling as well; Leia gave him a terse nod before they all bowed their heads, and the Emperor entered.

The tap of his cane against the floor, the rasp of Vader's respirator, filled the silence.

Leia nodded at Luke, trying to reassure him despite her own misgivings about the situation. It was clear something big was going on, something important, and she couldn't even begin to unpick the knot of anticipation, nervousness and dread in her stomach. But she wanted to comfort her brother, so she held his gaze until she felt his probe retract, his spirit settle. Only then did she bow her head.

She was one of the last people to do so, but who was going to punish her for it?

Palpatine limped into the room, the cane Leia knew full well he did not need clacking against the floor. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was aware her impatience was showing, but she wanted to know what was going on now; she couldn't be expected to sit through all this ceremony.

Palpatine must be expecting her reaction. He'd all but dangled the fact that there was something important going on she didn't know about in front of her, and he thought she wouldn't swipe at it? This was her future court. She should be aware of all the major ins and outs of it.

Finally, after an agonisingly long time, he stopped at the front of the bridge, close enough to where Luke and the man he'd been terrorising that his dark cloak swept over her brother's toe. Luke discreetly shuffled back.

Leia couldn't help but take slight offence that the Emperor was standing in her father's favourite spot.

The cane rapped once on the floor. The sound was stark against the silence; it took everything in Leia not to flinch back on sheer instinct.

"Stand, favoured citizens of the Empire," Palpatine began. His voice was quiet, but it carried, and Leia didn't miss how he managed to make citizens sound like servants. "You are here today because you have been deemed some of the finest minds in the galaxy. Your efforts have maintained security the likes of which was never seen in the Old Republic, whether they serve in the Senate"—only someone who knew him could hear the disgust in his voice as he said the word—"in the military, or anywhere else. And because of your service, you have been chosen to be the first to witness the power that will help shape the galaxy for generations, and will form the basis of the Empire in the years to come.

"This project is extremely dear to my heart," he continued, "and I have invested much of my time and attention into it for the last twenty years, and will continue to for the year it has left until completion. If that means other areas of my Empire have suffered, then that is my greatest regret, but in a moment you will understand as clearly as I do that it has been a necessary evil. All these years, all this work, it has been worth it, for the peace this Project Stardust will bring."

Leia still hated his guts, but she was hooked on what he was saying, now. What was he even suggesting. . .?

"I give you an end to this war that dogs us so persistently." His voice rose will every word. "I give you an end to petty rebellions by weak-minded fools who draw our attention away from the real problems in the galaxy. I give you the means by which the Empire, and all of us, shall reign supreme, as it was meant to be."

Leia shifted where she stood, something cold clawing up her spine. Such arguments sounded megalomaniacal, coming from Palpatine's mouth, but that wasn't what made her uncomfortable: what made her uncomfortable was that she'd believed it.

For so long, she'd believed it.

She was Leia, and that was all she'd ever needed to be. She was the daughter of Darth Vader, sister to Luke, and heir to the galaxy. She was the heir to the galaxy; that was everything she knew. It was where she was meant to be.

Except it wasn't.

She was Leia Skywalker, a farm girl from a backwater planet. The daughter of a senator and a Sith Lord, true, but what had she ever done to deserve the galaxy? What made her so much better than anyone else, when she was only now starting to understand how fundamentally flawed her perception of her reality had been?

She'd told Luke that they were better than the Inquisitors. He'd replied that he wasn't so sure.

She understood what he meant, now.

"I give you," Palpatine finished, gesturing to the space beyond the viewport with one, black-robed hand, "the Death Star."

Leia sensed it before she saw it: a massive, massive object emerging from hyperspace directly before them, the hundreds of thousands of workers aboard it each bright spots in the Force. She took a half-step forward, staring; a distant part of her registered that her brother had taken a step forward at the same time.

It was the size of a small moon.

That was the first thing Leia's shocked mind processed: it was a space station, a battle station, the size of a small moon. It was spherical, with a ridge running around it more or less at the equator. Kuat's sun caressed its surface: a hard, bright corona of light engulfed it as it turned, then a focusing dish revealed itself amidst that light, gleaming just as brightly.

A focusing dish?

What—

Palpatine answered her question before she even knew what she was going to ask. "This battle station has the greatest amount of firepower of anything we have ever produced. More than the entire star fleet combined. No system will dare support these terrorists now. . ."

Leia held her breath, sure the other shoe was going to drop—

". . .for fear of their planet's total annihilation."

—and it did.

Palpatine half-turned back to face his monstrosity, his arms cast out before him like he was praying to some destructive deity. "This is the power our Empire wields, my friends," he intoned. "We reign supreme in this galaxy. Each planet must accept that, and bow in their rightful place."

Or they will be destroyed.

Total annihilation.

The words, unspoken and spoken alike, mixed and muddled in Leia's shocked mind. She heard nothing but silence for long, long moments save for the hammering of her own heart, the rasp of her own breathing.

Then the applause came.

It sickened her to her core, even as she participated on instinct. Instinct: that was the only thing that kept her from betraying her sheer disgust at all this Empire was; that, and years of practise. Her horror remained locked behind shields, even from Luke, though it was no less potent for it.

Palpatine had built a machine to destroy life.

It was a blight upon the Force. It was. . . well, disgusting. It was. . .

. . .exactly the sort of thing he would do.

The bridge was a cacophony of noise. She stood there among dozens of the highest-ranking, most trusted Imperials in the Empire she served, and she'd never felt so out of place. Because—social expectations upon them or not—they supported this. She could sense it through the Force.

A project like this had to have been funded by rich people, the wealthiest in the galaxy; it had to have been worked on by the brightest minds there were; it had to have been helmed by the greatest organisers, the most effective planners, in order to get to completion. It had to have been a mammoth undertaking. . .

. . .and enough people were so ambitious, so arrogant, so avaricious that it had worked.

Leia had thought she could root out the corruption in the Empire. After the coup, once she was Empress. But who could root out all of this?

Every person who'd funded this?

Every person who'd supported it?

And what about every person who'd ever suspected its existence, or seen something suspicious, and just. . . turned away, let themselves wallow in their own self-righteous ignorance? What about the people who had turned and would turn a blind eye to such unquestionable evil, again and again and again, all for the sake of. . . what? Money? Ambition?

With the way this empire ran: their own lives, even?

And what about her father?

The knowledge stopped Leia cold.

Her father had known about this.

An abomination, he'd called it; Leia did not disagree. But even thinking that, he'd let it happen anyway, allowed Palpatine to get away with it. How many times had one of his classified missions been to the building site of this Death Star? How many times had he willing gone off to aid the production of such a repulsive item, lying to them about what he was doing with the usual pretty words? Peace. Justice. Security.

This is not justice.

How many times had Leia let him?

How many times had she turned a blind eye herself?

She turned her head. Luke tried to catch her gaze, but she couldn't look at him. Not right now, not with these thoughts; not with how he'd reacted the last time she'd confided in him about such a thing. Her eyes sought out her father, but the moment Vader turned to meet her gaze as well, she looked away.

She swallowed.

Her father had been wrong.

He had been wrong when he killed their aunt and uncle and stolen their memories of it, withheld their identities. And he had been wrong now, in supporting this monstrosity, and deceiving them about it.

So what if. . .

What if. . .

It was a quiet, treasonous voice in her head that spoke, but Leia couldn't bring herself to silence it.

Not now.

So what if he's wrong about the Empire and the coup, as well?

Luke barely heard what Palpatine said after that, desperately trying to catch his sister's eye. She was as pale as bone, still in a way she never was, and she was definitely avoiding his gaze.

After what seemed like an age, Palpatine dismissed the gathering, and he shot straight for her. He snagged her wrist before she could flee the bridge.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, falling into step with her through the halls of the Devastator. He nudged open their twin bond to let some of his concern—and disgust at what they'd just witnessed—seep through.

She relaxed marginally, but she remained tightly closed off in the Force.

"I'm fine," she said aloud. Then—mentally, because there were security holos on the Devastator—I can see why Father called it an abomination.

It's horrific, he agreed. He cast his senses out to pick through the Force for surveillance cameras; a small, empty board room nearby only had one. And it was faulty.

He touched Leia's wrist lightly, tilting his head towards the door. After a moment, she shook her head.

"No," she murmured. "I— I want to think about it myself, first."

He nodded. He could understand that. He still hadn't fully opened up to her about Skystrike. He hadn't yet decided what it meant to him, but. . . he thought he might have now.

Watching her go, he had to admit: That was the part that scared him the most.

Leia would never admit it, but she knew the frequency to Sabé's comm off by heart by now. She keyed it in on reflex, desperately trying to stop her hands from shaking.

As always, the woman picked up within moments. Leia wondered if she considered her a priority, or something. "Leia?"

"They've made a Death Star," she blurted out, just self-conscious enough to keep her voice down. Otherwise, she had no control of what her body was doing; she bowed her head, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. They were wet.

Sabé didn't push for answers; maybe she thought Leia would clam up if she did.

She wouldn't have, but she was grateful for the silence anyway: it meant nothing interrupted the cascade that was already unintelligible enough as it was.

"I— we had a plan, me and Luke and Father: we were going to kill Palpatine, because he's a blight on the galaxy, and then I was going to be Empress and I could change things, all the shit that that's so kriffed up in this Empire, but— Then there's a Death Star, and everyone was applauding it, and they supported it, and that was everyone in the upper echelons of the Empire. Everyone supported it. My own kriffing father never did anything to stop it, for all that he preaches about it being an abomination or disgusting, and—" She took a deep breath for the first time since she started. A massive tear spilled down her cheek, hot and flooding. "There is nothing worth saving here."

It felt like tying a noose. The sheer act of saying those words— And she could see the finality they brought about, the death knell. The snap of boots against permacrete as the firing squad lifted their blasters, the snap-hiss of the lightsaber shooting through flesh only—

Whose death did it herald?

Palpatine's? Her own? Luke's?

Her father's?

I've been having visions of your father's death. . .

No.

No—she didn't know what the future would hold, but she would not lose any more family.

"There is nothing worth saving in this Empire," she said again, stronger now, "and I want to help you tear it down."

Just because Leia had decided not to use that small board room, didn't mean Luke couldn't. And he did.

There was someone he needed to talk to.

He'd wondered, he remembered, how many people in the upper echelons of the Empire would object to firing on an unarmed transport.

After the applause at the Death Star, he had his answer:

Not enough.

Not enough for it to be worth it.

If they had no objections to firing on an unarmed planet, that just went without saying.

So Luke had a decision to make.

He was always chided for being reckless, for not thinking before he leapt, so he took a moment to consider his options.

Stay with the Empire. Keep doing what he was doing. Stay with his father, his sister; participate in the coup, and hope he could. . . disassemble. . . this sadistic, selfish trend in the Imperial elite.

But the Empire wasn't a machine he could take apart and put back together. He knew that. Whatever he did, no matter how he tried to change it. . . this trend would continue.

His other option. . .

He tapped Ahsoka's frequency into his comlink and waited for a response.

This was a false dilemma. He knew that. There were other options, ones that weren't quite so drastic, which didn't have the end of the galaxy as he knew it as the only thing to measure against.

But the thing was: it wasn't the defection that made his soul riot just thinking about it.

It was the thought of standing by and deciding to stay.

Because, as much as he wanted to pin everything on Palpatine, this was not the work of one man. The problems ran deeper than that.

The Empire he served had built something to destroy entire planets. Hardworking sentient beings had put their lives' work into something that was nothing more than a machine for destruction. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people had used Palpatine's work and embraced it, made it their own; they had turned militant totalitarianism into a chance to advance and succeeded, building a death machine to maintain that stranglehold on everyone else. Every person that had been in that room as it was revealed was guilty of it.

Tarkin, muscling in to drag more systems under his control.

His father, executing anyone the tyrant thought stood in his way.

And Luke and Leia, who'd stood by, who'd done whatever was asked of them without question, without considering the long term effects. . .who'd enabled this.

The Empire was not as the Emperor made it. One person could have all the power in the galaxy, but they could never change every heart and mind. Palpatine had set the ball rolling, but it was the people. . .

. . .and the system that put them in power. . .

. . .which made it so toxic.

Nothing in politics was simple. That was why he had stuck to the military.

But one thing was:

Luke could not stand by any longer.

Sabé's silence betrayed just how shocked she was, but there was a joy behind it as well. Leia tried not to think about that.

"I'll do what I can—I know you might not want a literal Sith rubbing shoulders with your soldiers, but I can fight, I'm highly placed, I— I can spy." She swallowed, throat drier than the breeze through Mos Eisley. "There. I can spy, pass on important information."

Sabé was clearly trying very hard to keep her calm, but her shock was still evident in her voice—the Amidala-like monotone she was forced to revert to—as she said, "That's. . . very useful."

"Here's my first piece of information: Palpatine went and built a kriffing Death Star." Leia was well-aware she was babbling. She hoped Sabé could keep up. "It's a massive space station the size of a small moon, it has enough firepower to destroy an entire planet at full potential. It was in the Kuat system until minutes ago, then it jumped to hyperspace back to wherever it's being constructed—I don't know where that is, but I can try and find out—"

"Okay," Sabé said. Her voice was still too calm, like the surface of a riptide. "Okay, that's— This is brilliant, that you've told us. But," she lowered her voice, "the power to destroy entire planets?"

The same horror that Leia had felt—that Leia had felt Luke feel—was reflected in her voice.

"Luke?" Ahsoka said, sounding like it wasn't the first time she'd said it. He wondered how long he'd been lost in his own thoughts.

He took a deep breath, skipped any pleasantries, and said it. "I'd like to defect to the Rebellion."

The words were out before he could think on them in any more detail, because the more they thought about them, the more they were true.

His father might be willing to support this, but Luke was not his father.

And, for the first time in years, he did not want to be.

He might kill him. No, he wouldn't—what had Luke told Ahsoka before? He was more important to his father than the Empire.

At least, he thought, a thoroughly insane plan starting to form in his mind, he hoped so.

Because this was insane. Complete and utter madness, bantha poodoo. This naive idealism wasn't what his father had taught him—it wasn't what his uncle, long forgotten and missed, had taught him. It was the sort of idealism. . .

He suppressed a laugh.

It was the sort of idealism a Rebel would have.

"Yes," Leia confirmed grimly. "It— it's an abomination. Entire planets."

Sabé breathed out slowly. There was a tapping sound in the background—Leia realised suddenly that she was writing this all down. Everything Leia had told her.

Everything Leia had told her.

Cold drenched her. What was she doing? She'd just betrayed her father, her brother. . .

. . .and all she felt was relief.

Luke would understand. It had been ages ago, but he'd promised her that he would understand.

I'd do my utmost best to understand why. Because I know you, I love you, and I trust that if you believe something's the right thing to do, then there's a good chance it is

I'm on your side. I don't care which side that is.

He would understand, she resolved fiercely. . . but unable to still the wobble in her bottom lip at the thought of what might happen if he didn't.

". . .you're serious." Ahsoka's voice was flat.

"Absolutely. I'm highly placed; I'll be a good spy." Then, fiddling with his hands, he joked, "And my eighteenth birthday was yesterday, in case you object to minors signing up." Though if so, the Spectres were very hypocritical—

It did as it intended: Ahsoka laughed. She sobered up again a moment later, but she had laughed.

"What brought this on?"

Luke chewed at his bottom lip. "Palpatine's latest project. It's called the Death Star, and. . . you're not going to like it. It's an abomination."

"What is it?" She sounded wary.

"It's a battle station with the power to blow up planets."

She was quiet for a moment, processing that. "And you have a problem with it?"

"Of course I have a problem with it!" He struggled to keep the offence out of his tone. "I'm not a monster."

Silence.

Something cold wrapped itself around Luke's heart.

". . .and your father? Is he opposed to it?"

Yes, he made to say—but no was just as true. His father, for all his bluster, had never made any move against it.

So either he approved of it, or he was a coward.

Luke didn't know which he'd prefer, but he did know which was more likely.

"Don't," he said at last. "I— I don't—"

"I understand. Your father and sister—"

"I said don't." He didn't want to think about Leia.

She was the one who'd been starting to have Rebel sympathies, he knew. They'd started discussing it. . . and then he'd fled to Skystrike and committed treason, and suddenly it was too difficult to talk about. But theoretically, she should approve.

Theoretically.

But. . . she'd lit a match. He'd burnt the house down. There was a difference.

What had he said, when she first voiced her doubts? I'm on your side. I don't care which side that is.

What had she said? Likewise.

She. . . she would understand. She had to. He'd explain it to her, later. Just. . . not now.

Not now, when his resolve was already fragile enough as it was.

"Alright," Ahsoka said. "I have to go now, but I'll be in contact as soon as possible, if you can get more details for then. . ." A pause. ". . .Fulcrum."

He wanted sure whether to laugh or cry at the codename. He was doing this. He was doing this.

"And. . ." He could hear the smile in her voice.

The tapping had stopped.

Sabé said, "Is there anything else you can tell us about this 'Death Star'?"

Leia took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "Much more. It's codenamed Project Stardust, it's been in construction for as long as the Empire's existed, it'll be completed in a year. . ."

She rattled off everything she could remember, listening only to Sabé's hums of acknowledgement every time she wrote down a new piece of information. After a while, she was done.

"That's everything."

"Alright," Sabé said. "I'll get back to Padmé with this. And, in this meantime. . ."

She paused, but Leia could hear the smile in her voice.

"Welcome to the Rebellion."

The human woman sitting in a small office on Dantooine reread the files again. Two reports: submitted by two completely different women, whom she knew for completely different reasons, both dear to her heart in many ways. The reports had been unconnected. . . but their contents were identical.

Sabé's excitement was palpable. So was Ahsoka's.

Padmé's was too.

She reread them. Again. She'd received them hours ago, and despite the nightmarish things they promised to reveal, this planet killer. . . she could not stop smiling.

Luke and Leia, entirely of their own accord, had decided to come home.