Note: I have not read the Servants of the Empire books and I probably never will; most of my knowledge about what is explored in this chapter and then on comes from the animated shows and Wookieepedia.
Coruscant glittered that night. It glittered every night, but with Luke's mind full of jewels and crowns and royalty, it seemed to be the epitome of all of that which he loathed.
He took his speeder and left it on the outskirts of the senatorial district; it was loud and unwieldy, but it could cover more distance than his bike. He used the speeder bike to get closer from there—it was something he'd been working on with the mechanic whose shop he worked at, an old, old bike that they'd finally managed to get up and running in some semblance of decency.
Then, they'd worked on how to make it totally silent.
So Luke slid along to the first senator's apartment: Senator Erialus, of Corellia. He wasn't the leader of this little circle, but he seemed to be the main source of funding, so he'd hit him first, and then he'd hit Leia, and then he'd... wing it based on what he found.
There were datachips in his belt. Gloves on his hands. A mask on his face.
He swallowed tightly, dumped his bike, and ran for it. He had fifteen minutes.
There was a guard on duty, of course, but it didn't take much work for Luke to dampen his presence, run along against the darkness like a fleeting shadow, and then press enough of the Force against his mind to just have him... look away. After that, it was right up the walkways and maintenance ladders—with a few hair-raising jumps—to get to the landing pad, where—
His boots whispered against the pad and he crept forwards. It was difficult to split his attention between the guard and the door, with the Force, but he had to be quiet, and—
The guard was looking away. For one instant, Luke released his grip on his mind and felt for the electronic lock on the door.
Felt the parts in the door, moving together.
Felt the wires, which bound it and the parts together.
Felt the alarm which would shriek if the mechanism lifted just a hair too far when the other safety measures weren't accounted for.
He planted his feet shoulder-width apart. Closed his eyes; took a deep breath. Lifted his hands, bunched the Force around him, and...
It hissed open.
Luke seized the guard's mind again before he could blink, then scoffed quietly. How arrogant was Erialus, that he only employed one guard to watch outside? Did he think his state-of-the-art door was going to stop assassins or thieves? Did he think his reputation would do that?
Luke crept in and out and was gone like a whisper of morning wind. The door hissed shut behind him again, he released the guard, and they both shook themselves and got back to work.
Space was a luxurious commodity on Coruscant, and one not even the esteemed Erialus could afford. The corridor ahead of him was narrow and short, opening up almost immediately into a larger, circular, central room. Luke paused while he was there, scanning, scanning...
It was a comfortable room, he'd give him that. Half of it was some sort of living room with large windows that overlooked the airlanes, furnished with plump sofas, decorated with dark red pillows and one white one. A thick carpet covered it all.
The other half of it was a raised, wide, crescent-shaped section of the floor with a holoprojector and conference table on it, a small office just off behind it. Directly ahead o Luke, on the living room side, a door led to what Luke was pretty sure would be Erialus's bedroom, a guest bedroom and his staff's bedrooms; another door just on Luke's right probably led to a kitchen—
Something hissed.
He jumped back in alarm when that white pillow bounded for his legs.
He huffed but did not relax. Frowned deeply.
It was... a tooka.
Of course it was a tooka.
It was looking up at him with grumpy eyes, spitting, but Luke... Luke knew how to deal with tookas. He scrabbled around in the compartments on his belt for a moment, then pulled out some of the spare treats from the ones he'd give to the those at the old shelter.
"Hey," he murmured, so quietly he was sure that only the tooka would hear him, punctuating his words with a gentle brush of the Force. "Hey, it's alright. I'm alright. Look at me." He put the treats in a small pile in front of him and backed away, around towards the holoprojector. "You don't want to shriek."
The tooka shrieked.
He winced. There was a grumpy noise—"that blasted tooka!" some guard muttered behind the door to the bedrooms, but no one came up. If it shrieked again, though...
Luke glared at the tooka. The tooka glared back.
Then, very pointedly, it lowered its head to the pile and started eating.
Luke sighed, and went for the holoprojector. He'd start here, then the office, but if this was for holoconferences...
"You," he told the tooka sternly, "be quiet."
It did nothing. Just pointedly jumped up onto the raised section of the floor, then up again to scamper along the table.
"If the datachip slot is full of hair I'll know who to blame," he muttered, then lit up the holoprojector and started to sort through some of the files, downloading as many on his chips as possible; the Rebellion could crack them later. The tooka rubbed its head against his arm while he worked, the blue light blinding him and reflecting off its white fur—fur which it left white and bright against his black clothing, for Force's sake—
There. These files were all business calls to Moffs and Governors—though he did note that there were... a great many comms between Senator Falynn and Empress Leeya of the Regency Worlds. Falynn was the Senator for Arkanis—Leeya's throneworld—right? What was going on there...
The tooka purred.
"Oh, for—" He firmly lifted the tooka and placed it on the ground. It slashed at his leg with a huff before stalking off.
He rolled his eyes, and plugged in the datachip he had. "Arkanis..."
He peered through a few more of the files, raising his eyebrows. He'd never heard of any of these, which he supposed was the point of them being Imperial secrets—would he be privy to them, now that he was prince? Did he even need to skulk in the shadows like this?—but... Project Pax Aurora. Project Stardust. Project...
He raised his eyebrows.
He had a bad feeling about all of this, but...
Project Harvester.
What was this?
He selected that file; it bleeped red, and asked for a password. He cursed. Tried to select another one.
It bleeped red and asked for a password.
The noise was quiet, but irritated the tooka. It yowled.
"Shut up, you blasted beast!" a gruff voice shouted from the direction of the kitchen. Luke grimaced.
The cat yowled again.
He didn't wait for the guards to decide to come in and shut the tooka up themselves. He closed the files—Arkanis, Project Harvester, Arkanis, Project Harvester—and just glanced around for anything else that might be worth stealing. He didn't have time to root through the office, unfortunately, and after Erialus realised someone had accessed his private files he'd up security, so he doubted he'd get another chance at this.
But there were other senators.
And Luke would definitely not get another chance if he was caught.
He scanned the room, briefly. Erialus was rich, certainly, but that manifested itself in opulent, lavish furniture, and posh wall hangings; as much as Luke would like to steal one of his fancy paintings or sofas, he wasn't sure he had the means right now...
A speeder flew past the window; its lights shone right into the living area. The window glass sparkled, and so did something else.
Luke lifted his gaze.
Dangling above the living room table, chock with diamonds hooked onto a metal frame, glittering in the artificial lights implanted in and around them... was a chandelier.
Well, Luke thought. That'll do.
Those diamonds looked expensive.
He stepped closer, and narrowed his eyes at it. He couldn't just take the whole thing—it was too big, and absolutely would not fit in his pack. But...
He could...
He closed his eyes. Touched the Force again, just like Leia had taught him, but tried to focus on that nitpick that he'd always struggled with: finesse.
And control.
The crystals tinkled against each other as he wrapped the Force around them, lifting them gently, gently...
He took in a deep breath, staring. Shrugged off the backpack he was wearing and opened it wide.
"Did that beast climb onto the chandelier again?" the guard's voice snapped. Luke wondered idly why they were in the kitchen and not the living area itself, where most of the stuff that needed protecting was, but perhaps they were in there for a midnight snack.
"What the hell makes you think that?"
"Can't you hear that?"
They could hear the diamonds clinking, but Luke wasn't skilled enough to stop that. He just hoped, and prayed...
"That's it," a voice said, "that blasted tooka is always causing me trouble—"
Luke barely had the time to dive behind the sofa, keeping his grip around the diamonds hovering in midair like a vice, and hold his breath.
A door hissed open. Heavy footsteps marched out.
Don't look at the chandelier, Luke thought desperately, squeezing his eyes shut. There was no disguising the cloud of diamonds that now hung around it, rather than on it. Don't look...
There was a screech, and a yowl, and—
"That demon beast!" the guard roared, and staggered back when a white torpedo barrelled at him, scratching and screeching. He fled back to the kitchen, leaving a few droplets of blood in his wake.
Luke let out all his breath in a laugh. Or maybe more of a huff.
Then he tilted his hand, flexed his hands, and the dozens of little strings of diamonds flew neatly into his backpack. He zipped it shut. When he picked it up, he grunted at the weight.
And, leaving the metal framework of the chandelier swinging on the ceiling behind him, he crept back out of the apartment. If he hadn't been dedicated to staying quiet, he'd have been whistling to himself.
Next up: an attack on the Organas. Leia ought to have left out something valuable that was small enough for him to steal, and he'd visited her Coruscant residences enough times as her friend that he knew the layout and security perfectly well; this one shouldn't be too hard. It shouldn't take up too much time, and he had other places to hit tonight.
So he dumped the chandelier diamonds in one of his hidey holes around Imperial City, took the bike along a tiny bit to the next starscraper, and up to the right level. Leia's place was nice— smaller than Erialus's but more cosy—but there were fewer places to hide his bike in and around it. He just dumped it in a dark maintenance scaffold and hoped no one came along to notice.
Then he made sure his mask was secure and clambered up.
Leia had two guards on duty on the landing pad, but they were unarmed—the great Alderaanian pacifism that he'd thought she'd forsaken for something more effective in action, he supposed. He raised his eyebrows; he wasn't going to hurt them anyway, but he doubted an assassin would be that kind.
He crept around, taking cover behind one of the speeders on the pad, watching them closely. The Force stirred around him—he could sense Leia, asleep in there; her aides, also unconscious; some more guards inside...
He nearly lost his balance when he resurfaced from the Force, and grabbed the speeder to stop himself from falling. He hit it too hard; there was a thud—quiet, but loud in the night.
"Did you hear that?" one of the guards said. Luke took a deep breath, ready to creep away...
"Yeah I did," the other guard agreed. "Sounded like it came from over there."
He gestured... right in the opposite direction to Luke.
"C'mon, let's go check it out," they said. Luke frowned. Both of them? That seemed lax...
Experimentally, he used the Force to tug on one of the other speeders, giving that a grinding and clanking noise, louder than the one before. They ignored that.
Luke rolled his eyes.
He went up to the door and it took less than a moment to get it open. And when he did...
"Subtle," he whispered. Leia was right there, standing in the middle of her living area, raising an eyebrow at him, as regal as ever despite the fact she was wearing a long white nightgown that, truth be told, looked almost identical to her princess garb. Beside her, on the table, was that blasted bejewelled jester's hat they'd been joking about. "Really subtle."
"You can take off your mask in here, we sweep through the place for bugs at midnight every night and there are none," was all she said, taking a seat on one of the sofas and patting the cushion next to her. "Besides. I thought that with all the places you'd be breaking into tonight, I'd tell the guards to go easy on you."
Luke reached up to pull off his woollen mask, grinning and grimacing at the sensation of fresh—or rather, conditioned—air on his face. It felt lovely. "I appreciate it," he admitted. "But that's not all there is to it."
She scoffed. "Why are you like this? Can't I want to do something nice for my friend?"
"I'm sure you also want to talk to said friend about recent developments, in the comfort of your own home."
"This isn't home," she grumbled, but sighed. "Yes. Fine. I also stayed up late so I could talk to you about this whole Imperial prince thing—see how you're feeling about it."
Luke winced. "You are gonna hate yourself in the morning."
"No," she said fiercely. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and yanked him down to sit on the sofa next to her, her gaze sharp and worried. "I won't. Are you alright, Luke?"
He looked away. "I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet," he said quietly. "Except my father, and that was more of an argument."
"What does he think about it?"
"He didn't want me to do it. Then he went to talk to the Emperor about it and now he wants me to do it." He almost drew his legs up onto the sofa so he could hug his knees, but he didn't think Leia would want him tracking the dust and grime on his boots onto her cushions as well as her carpet. "He has no spine," he said bitterly.
"We must've got that from our birth mother, then," Leia said.
Luke blinked—both at Leia acknowledging her biological relationship with Vader, even if it was only to scorn him, and the thought itself. He huffed a laugh. "Padmé Amidala certainly wasn't lacking spine, no."
"Padmé Amidala?" Leia's eyes blew wide. "You mean— she—"
"Yes." He smiled broadly. "She was our mother."
Leia blinked fiercely for a moment. "Okay. Okay. Give me a minute, then I'll be right back on topic."
"We can talk about this later," he offered.
"We will talk about this later, Luke Skywalker, don't you doubt that for a moment." She took a deep breath, then said: "Anyway. So, he supports you becoming the Prince?"
"I think he wants me to become the Emperor." Luke utter disdain for that idea came through in his voice, his face, and the Force. There wasn't much else he could do to make that clear.
Leia picked up on it, this time. She put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Luke," she said. "I know you're not cut out for politics."
"No. Definitely not."
Leia's hand on his shoulder shifted grips, then; she pulled him in so she could hug him, resting her head on his other shoulder. He closed his eyes.
"You know... you don't have to," she whispered. "I know Han offered you a way out, in case things went south—and if you want, you can always straight up join the Rebellion. Or we can arrange to find you a place to leave, and lie low, on Alderaan or Chandrila or anywhere else. You don't have to stay with Vader and Palpatine any longer."
"I love my father," Luke said, and his voice broke.
Leia squeezed him tighter. "I know."
"And he loves me," he continued, scrunching his eyes shut even tighter as tears started to seep out onto his cheeks. "He'd mobilise the entire blasted navy looking for me if I vanished, and he certainly wouldn't let me leave with his blessing. And then it would get caught up in all the publicity anyway—Vader's son, rebelling. The named Imperial prince, rebelling. I hate this."
"I know, Luke."
She did. She'd been a princess all her life. A lot of his aversion to the idea may be totally alien to her, but the rest of it... she understood completely.
"I don't want to be a prince. I don't want to be a Sith." He tried to breathe evenly, but his chest was racked with sobs. "I just want to help people."
"And I know that whatever you do," she insisted, "you will find a way to make that happen."
She drew back, but clasped his hands before they could escape, and met his gaze head on.
"I love you, brother. I have faith in you. And whatever you do—whether you want to leave with Han, or join a Rebel cell, or go into hiding and enjoy your life without this war... I know you'll find a way to do whatever you can to make things right."
"You forgot one option," he said, head bowed, hands clenching around her delicate fingers. "Staying here and weathering the storm."
She blinked. "Are you considering that?"
He paused... then nodded. "There's something I found in Erialus's files," he said. "Something called Project Harvester, something to do with Arkanis—maybe the Regency Worlds, or the academy there. But it looked important, and I have a bad feeling about it..."
Leia kept her gaze steady on him as he swallowed.
"If I become prince, I might get clearance to access this information," he said. "And I could give it to you so much more easily than I'm doing now."
She said nothing, at first. Then she said, "Is that what you want?"
He hesitated again, then nodded. "Yes. I want to help, as much as I can. Even if it means going into the gundark's den."
"Even if it means putting up with Sith training?"
He swallowed. "Even then."
Leia bowed her head for a moment and squeezed his hands. "You're so brave, Luke," she said. "You know you don't have to be brave all the time, don't you?"
He smiled, and squeezed them back. "I know." Then he let go, and stood up. "But I do have to be brave tonight."
"Don't forget the jester's hat," she quipped, tossing it at him. "I also put out some convenient jewellery for you to rifle through."
He smiled and caught it. It was heavier than it looked—he imagined old, Alderaanian court jesters wearing this, the lights dazzling off the diamonds, and wondered how quickly their necks had become stiff.
"Thank you," he said earnestly.
"Of course, Luke. You're my brother." He loved hearing the way she revelled in the word.
"I love you too," he told her automatically, and she smiled brighter than the stars.
He hit three more politicians' residences that night: Senator Anchal, of Christophsis; Senator Tseen, of Eriadu; and Governor Thanas of Rodia. They all represented worlds in the Arkanis sector—or, almost all of them, most of them in that area—and Luke found it... strange. Suspicious.
Perfect to investigate.
The last person whose residence he hit was Senator Falynn's herself.
It was more pointedly... different to Erialus and Leia's ones. Force, it was different to the others he'd broken into tonight. Not just because it was very little like the design and layout of buildings in Core World cultures, but because it revelled in its individuality. Arkanis was the capital of the Regency Worlds, the throneworld, full of harsh architecture and harsh lines and harsh weather. It was a welcome break from Imperial monotony.
Unlike most of the other apartments, this was not simply some block in the starscraper. It was the apartment at the very tip of the starscraper, the highest point on the building, one of the highest levels itself. That spoke of wealth, and wealth spoke of importance.
It also meant, most likely, that Falynn would have a skylight.
So. Instead of parking his bike near the landing pad and going in through the front door... he flew right up to the tip, where the air was fresher than most of Coruscant had seen in millennia, and...
There. He smiled.
It wasn't a skylight.
Instead, it was more like a cap of glass. The ceiling was the skylight. The rounded tip had a whole balcony dedicated to it, the shining transparisteel roof letting in every glimmer of Coruscanti sun- and starlight, with a turbolift to access it on the right hand side. The whole thing was protected by a shimmering blue shield—understandable, that was a luxury that Falynn probably did not want to advertise, or a security risk she didn't want to run.
But if there was the shield up here, that sort of quality shield would be expensive. Luke doubted she would shell out to have extra guards watch the skylight entrance as well as her main entrance at night. Not when her shield kept her safe from nearly everyone.
And it did. From nearly everyone.
Luke's eyes scanned the scene, his bike hovering in midair. Coruscant glittered below him; the wind tugged at his hair; the drop beneath him was dizzyingly long. But he gave none of it a thought.
This quality of shield... it would have a generator nearby. It would have to be nearby, which meant...
He fixed his gaze on the turbolift capsule—the metal frame around it. And sitting snug atop it...
Luke closed his eyes. Felt for the generator. It hummed and whirred—not in the Force, but he didn't need the Force to tell him how to work machines. He found the switches, found the failsafes, the overrides, and...
Switched them off.
The whirring died. The shield vanished.
He grinned, and swooped in.
He could see most of Falynn's living area directly under his feet, through the transparisteel, under the artificial light of Coruscant that blocked out most stars.
It was all sharp angles and strange shapes he was unfamiliar with. Chairs rather than sofas, with a table next to each one, and patterns on the carpet that looked hauntingly familiar.
Luke didn't know much about the Arkanis sector—apart from the fact that he'd wheedled out of his father exactly once that Tatooine was his homeworld, was where Obi-Wan Kenobi had been trying to take Luke before Vader had found him, and Luke had researched everything he could about the place in response—but he did know that they were... unique.
The Regency Worlds were bound together by their monarchy, their empress, even if they were allied with the Empire. But what had the Emperor involved these worlds in that was so secret it had to be hidden away from the prying eyes and delicate sensibilities of the Core? Arkanis was home to an Imperial academy; was that it?
He crept along the skylight, hating the way the transparisteel curved under his feet, feeling like he was about to slip any second. He didn't. He got to the turbolift, and... well.
Hit the button to summon it.
It chimed, and he stepped in quickly, closing the doors behind him instantly. He watched his speeder bike vanish behind them, his backpack heavy on his back, and wondered why he felt so cold.
He closed his eyes, and stretched out his senses.
There were one... two... shavit.
There were five guards milling about. A few of them had tensed when they heard the turbolift engage, but done nothing; perhaps it wasn't unusual for this to happen, for Falynn or an aide to take a midnight look up at the stars if they couldn't sleep, but still. They were well-trained, they were dedicated, and the moment they clapped eyes on him there would be hell to pay.
So before they did, he felt their minds with the Force. Thought of what Leia had done to him at the academy, when he'd stayed up too late stressing over an exam or letting himself get too distracted to sleep. There was... a part of the mind, and a suggestion that worked on it—
They slumped to the floor, unconscious.
When the turbolift stopped, the doors opened on a corridor littered with two unconscious guards, wearing the teardrop emblem of Falynn's family, he assumed. He peeked into the living room he'd noticed under the skylight; there was one unconscious there, too. He peered further down the corridor, tiptoed after his gaze, and around the corner.
There were two more guards. One was unconscious in front of a closed door, the gentle, calmed presences behind it telling Luke that that was Falynn's bedroom. Her study would probably be in there; near to where she slept, in her personal quarters, and close enough that the guard could protect both at once.
But the fifth guard was slumped outside a seemingly innocuous painting further down the hallway.
It... did not fit the style of the rest of the apartment. The rest of the apartment was alien but familiar in a weird way; it felt to Luke like a home he'd half forgotten. That painting—twin paintings, in fact, of Emperor Palpatine and Empress Reeya, garish, done in stark blacks and red and blues and golds respectively—did not suit the decor at all.
And yet they warranted their own guard.
So he went up to them, and felt around the frames.
There was a latch. Right to the left of Reeya's right hand—a hand which held... what looked like a lightsaber, whatever the symbolism of that was. He flicked it, and—
The wall swung inwards.
He gaped.
But not for long. The wall—made of something lighter, thinner than the other walls, he now realised; a door, a secret door—swung inwards to reveal a room in darkness, whose lights came on the moment he stepped forwards. A computer terminal, a desk, a row of shelves stacked thick with datapads and flimsi books...
Exactly what he needed.
He stepped in, and let the secret door close behind him.
"Project Harvester," he muttered to himself. He doubted there were cameras in here—one did not go to all the effort of hiding a place only to then tape every moment of interaction inside that place—but he kept his voice a whisper nonetheless, his mask still firmly in place. He crept forwards, and tried to access the computer.
Project Harvester. Project Harvester...
It bleeped. A password was needed; of course. He could crack it if need be, but that would take longer than he felt comfortable with, and he didn't know how long it would take for the guards to wake,
So he tracked his gaze across the shelves, and froze.
Could he be so lucky?
Could Falynn be so arrogant in her security that she'd really just leave a datapad and a box of datachips labelled Project Harvester on her shelf?
He supposed that was what Imperials were like.
Very, very carefully, he reached up to grab it, bringing his heels back down lightly to mask any sound. There wasn't much in the file—just three datachips, labelled Erialus, and a datapad. He switched on the datapad; that asked for a password as well.
He was sure the Rebellion would have people who could crack it, once he got it to them.
He glanced around the office He could probably find more information in here. He knew he could find more information in here. Things that could sever the ties between the Regency Worlds and the Empire for good, things Leia and their mother would've known how to wield, but Luke did not.
But it was not Leia or his mother here.
And it was not them who had to escape before the guards woke up.
So he just palmed his stolen datachips. Shoved them and the datapad into his backpack. And then he skedaddled.
Out of the secret room. Down the corridor...
To where one of the guards was already pushing himself to his feet.
His eyes blew wide when he spotted Luke. "Hey, you—"
Luke dove into the turbolift at the same time as he smacked him with the Force. The man flew back with an oomph; the turbolift doors closed and Luke sighed a deep breath, heart jack-hammering in his chest—
The lift rocketed upwards but he didn't dare relax, not for a second. He could sense the commotion below, hear them shouting through the metal walls of the lift, but the doors were opening, thank the Force, and then—
And then—
And then they stopped.
Overridden.
He jerked his head up. No, no, no, no—
He got his hands into the gap—it was about as wide as his palm, nowhere near narrow enough for him to fit through—and yanked and yanked and yanked—
There were boots pounding on emergency stairs. No. No, this wasn't how it was going to end, he wouldn't let it end this way, being caught and unmasked and—
—dragged in front of his father and having to explain all of this—
—NO.
The Force barrelled out of him in a wave and the doors buckled.
He cringed bodily at the sound, the vibrations of that screech, that tear, that horrible, horrible, horrible scream of metal—but—
The doors buckled outwards like a bomb had hit them. Like they were lips, or the metal petal of some folded flower, or—
There was no time for this.
The boots were still on the emergency stairs; there was the beeping of key cards, of permissions denied and granted, and he lunged through the gap his outburst had left.
He hit the domed skylight hard and rolled, automatically, planting both his hands flat on the transparisteel to desperately try and stop himself.
He scrambled to his feet. A stun bolt soared at him. He rolled again, dodging, then got up again and dived for his bike.
He'd barely slung one legs over it, his backpack bouncing on his back, before he gunned the throttle and sped off into the night.
They gave chase. Of course they did. But Luke lost them easily; the chaos of Coruscant was his friend. It was the Empire's enemy.
He retrieved the diamonds and the jester's hat and everything else he'd stolen that night—it had been a long night—and hid them somewhere closer to home again, along with the datachips and pad. Then once he got home, he blasted himself with water in the fresher for two minutes—the longest he'd let himself—then crawled into bed as the sun came up.
When his father came to check on him, he did not wake—just kept snoring on, blissfully unaware of where, exactly, his father was headed.
Vader slept poorly that night. He was constantly bombarded by panic, by fear, by exhilaration; he dreamt he was flying, but the speeder wouldn't turn left when he wanted it to and then he flew too fast and Padmé—or was it his mother?—tipped out of the left door and he couldn't turn to save her—
He woke with a start, grumpy but almost grateful to the insistent chime of his comlink.
"My lord," said the breathless aide with an Outer Rim accent that had him instantly scowling. "I regret to interrupt you, and extend my deepest apologies—"
"Get to the point," he growled. "My patience is not infinite."
"Of course, my lord. My lady," the man swallowed, "Senator Falynn of Arkanis has reported a break in to her Coruscanti residences—she suspects it was the Rebel thief, Angel. They have stolen important data on Project Harvester."
If Vader had still had eyebrows, he would be raising them. "Project Harvester?" The Inquisitors—their scheme to train Force-sensitive younglings? That seemed... odd for Angel to go after.
But then—
"One of the guards reported having some... unknown power used on him, which my lady believes may have been the Force."
Angel was Force-sensitive, after all. And Vader supposed that that program was in the interests of every Force-sensitive not under Imperial jurisdiction.
And even the Force-sensitives who were under Imperial jurisdiction... Vader swallowed. No matter nightmares about speeders and falling; too many of his nightmares had been about what if Obi-Wan had escaped with Luke, and the Inquisitors had found him and taken him to Arkanis before Vader had.
"I will be there shortly," he boomed, "to inspect the place."
He dropped into Luke's room to check on him first. His son was sound asleep, his hair and pillow damp—had he showered before going to bed again? That was like him. He'd have a stiff back in the morning...
Vader turned and left, heart clenching as tightly as his fists. The sooner he caught Angel, the better.
The sooner he caught Angel, the sooner Luke could be safe.
But as he went through Senator Falynn's residence, and inspected the impressively powerful blow dealt to her turbolift... as he went through Tseen and Thanas and Anchal's residences where break ins had been reported and combed for clues there... as he went through Senator Erialus's to a backdrop of a squawking senator and on-edge guards...
"They stole my chandelier!" Erialus was shouting at anyone who would listen. Vader had to admit to being amused by that; it would've been the showiest thing in the room, and possibly the most expensive, and maybe even the most difficult to steal. Whoever Angel was, they had a wicked sense of humour.
But as he turned to look at the white tooka sprawled all over the sofa, leaving white fur all over the floor and Vader's cape... he didn't think he had much to go on for catching Angel at all.
