Star Wars: Specters of the Past

By SSG Michael B. Jackson

Disclaimer: Star Wars and all associated characters belong, ultimately, to George Lucas, and aren't mine, more's the pity. Still, he's done a damn good job so far, so who's complaining?

Mara sighed once more and said, "Unfortunately, I knew Palpatine all too well. Sometimes, he could be almost childish about some things. And some children would rather smash a favorite toy with a hammer rather than see it go to a rival, right?"

Truly perplexed now, Luke and Leia looked at each other for a moment, and then Leia said, "Sure. So?"

"So," Mara said darkly, "I just found the plans for a hammer big enough to smash a galaxy with. And I'm pretty sure the little kid in question managed to give it a good swing before he was removed from the playground permanently."

Neither Luke nor Leia knew what to say immediately, but finally Luke found his voice and said, "Uh, that sounds more than a little ominous, Mara. Care to elaborate?"

"Not over an open com," she replied. "But I plan on taking the first available shuttle heading your way, so I should be there in a couple of hours. I'll fill you in on the details when I get there, and it might be a good idea if somebody got a hold of Admiral Kre'fey in the meantime. I know he's busy, but eventually we're going to have to schedule a meeting. He needs to hear this."

Leia sighed, and said, "I'll get on that. Hopefully I'll be able to arrange something by the time you get here."

"Sounds good then," Mara said. "See you all soon."

With that, she cut the connection, leaving Luke and Leia alone with one another again. Both were silent for a moment, and then Leia said, "Well, what do you make of that?"

Luke shook his head and said, "I wish I knew. But it figures." Then, smiling wryly, he said, "When was the last time we had just one crisis to deal with?"

Leia smiled as well, and said, "Right. Story of our lives, I guess." And then, sighing, she said, "Well, I suppose I might as well look up whoever the duty officer is this time of night and see about getting a hold of the admiral. Hopefully, with everything else he's got on his plate here, he'll be able to make time for a meeting."

Luke shrugged, and said, "I'm sure you'll be able to talk him into it. You're pretty good at that sort of thing, after all."

Leia gave a short laugh, and, as she turned to go said, "Thanks for the vote of confidence. And Luke?"

"Yes?"

"Try to get some rest before Mara gets here. I... know you try to hide it, but you still haven't completely bounced back from that amphistaff bite, have you? I mean, it's been almost a month, now, but- I can feel how tired you are. How run down you've been. You can't hide that from me."

Luke sighed, and said, "I guess I can't. And you're right; I'm still not completely well. In fact, I'm beginning to think I may never be. Jacen's anti-toxin saved my life, but I think some of the damage was permanent. But it doesn't matter; I'll manage."

"I know," Leia said softly, and then headed out the main hatch and down the ramp, leaving Luke once more alone with his troubled thoughts.

----------

When Mara's shuttle arrived, she was greeted by Luke and Leia, both a bit haggard from lack of sleep, a somewhat bleary-eyed Han Solo, who'd obviously just rolled out of his rack, and the twins, who, still having the vitality of youth behind them, appeared not to be bothered by the late hour. After a quick hug from her husband, Mara turned to Leia and said, "So? Any luck with the admiral?"

"Sort of," Leia said evenly. "Apparently he's way to busy to come over in person, or to set up a face-to-face meeting on the Ralroost. But, considering who was making the request, his aide said he'd be able to give us a few minutes over the secure fleet net to lay things out. All things considered, it's about the best we're likely to get right now."

Mara frowned, and said, "I guess it'll have to do. But the fact that he isn't prioritizing this high enough for a real meeting isn't a very good sign. I just hope he takes this as seriously as it needs to be taken."

Frowning, Han said, "Just exactly what is 'it'? And 'it' had better be good, considering what time it is."

Mara shook her head and said, "This thing is complicated enough I only want to try to explain it once. But don't worry, you'll get it all when I explain it to Admiral Kre'fey."

"Well, how about the short, short version then?" Han said a bit testily. "I usually at least like to know what system I'm headed for, if not the entire set of jump vectors."

"Han does kind of have a point," Luke said quietly, following as his wife turned and started heading for the medical frigate's communications room. "We'd all probably be better able to help out with the admiral if we knew what was going on."

Mara sighed, and said, "Ok, point taken." Then, running a hand through her hair quickly, she said, "Basically, what I found were the plans for a doomsday device. I don't think there's any other label that fits this thing. I mean, it makes a Death Star or a Sun Crusher look like a little kid's toy by comparison. And it's not something that's designed to be used tactically; the only thing it's good for is destruction on a massive scale. According to the plans, it was locked into the Emperor's 'dead-man switch' system, and would've begun operation not long after his death. The name of this thing, by the way, is Project Star-Hammer. That ominous enough for you?"

Slightly puzzled, Han said, "Uh, Mara, I hate to mention this, but- the Emperor's been dead for over twenty-five years. Last time I checked, we were all still here. Doesn't that shoot kind of a big hole in this Star-Hammer of yours?"

Mara shook her head and said with just a bit of irritation, "I said it was complicated, didn't I Solo? It- well, hell you'll hear it all in a minute. But from what I read, twenty-five or thirty years might be just about right. This thing's got what you might call a long warm-up time."

Han snorted, and said, "That's an understatement."

----------

Inside the com center, Mara and the others were seated around the main holoprojector, which currently had a split display going. On one side was an image of the Bothan admiral, a thoughtful expression on his face, and on the other was an image of two spherical, ringed objects, currently frozen on opposite sides of the projection field.

"So," the admiral said slowly, "just what are we looking at, Master Skywalker?"

Using a laser pointer, Mara highlighted one of the spheres, causing the image to expand. "Each of the spheres is a neutron star," Mara said. "I'm sure you're familiar with those, sir?"

The admiral nodded, and said, "Supernova remnants. They're what's left of a star about, say, two or three times the mass of Coruscant's primary. Too big to just quietly fade away into a white dwarf, and too small to collapse into a black hole."

Mara nodded also, and said, "Right. And made of mostly solid neutronium, the densest semi-normal matter in the universe. Each one of these is only about fifteen or twenty kilometers across, but they both mass at least half of what they did when they were main sequence."

The admiral frowned, and said, "All very interesting, Master Skywalker, but how exactly do these fit into a 'doomsday device'?"

Mara cocked her head slightly, and said, "Have you ever heard of a gamma ray burster, Admiral?"

"From what little astrophysics I recall," the admiral said slowly, "it's a very bright flare of gamma radiation, isn't it? Caused by a huge explosion of some sort, I think the going theory is. But if I remember correctly, those are remote and ancient events. The only ones ever observed have been billions of light-years away, which also makes them billions of years old. Hardly relevant to anything in the present, I'd think."

"More relevant than you'd think," Mara said slowly. "From what I understand, the astrophysics community thinks that bursters can come from a few different sources. Some of them give longer bursts and some shorter. But all of them produce a huge amount of energy. In fact, for a very short time, a gamma ray burster actually outshines the entire rest of the universe put together."

"Huh!" Han said from his seat. "Doesn't sound like something you'd want to be too close to when it went off."

Mara shook her head, and said, "Not really. Basically, it's just the biggest damn explosion you're ever likely to see this side of the Big Bang. And that's what this thing is designed to produce."

Still frowning, the admiral said, "And how exactly is that, Master Skywalker?"

Highlighting the ring-like structure around one of the neutron stars, Mara said, "This is the heart of the system, sir. This ring, orbiting close in, contains, among other things, a massive gravity polarizing system. Now, notice the scale of this thing, sir. The ring orbits about a hundred kilometers out from the star's surface, so that gives it a circumference of a little over six hundred kilometers; this thing isn't small." Mara paused for a moment to let this sink in, and then continued. "Now, aside from protecting the ring itself from the tidal forces that close in, the system also acts as a huge sub-light engine. It distorts the star's gravity well so that the whole thing sort of 'falls' in whatever direction the ring orients it, and the system draws it's power directly from the star's gravity. As long as the star has mass, it has power."

After another short pause, Mara said, "Now, both neutron stars are equipped in the same way, and the idea is pretty simple. They're set on a collision course, given a good enough run to get up to relativistic speeds, and then Wham! When they collide, you get a short-period gamma ray burster. Guaranteed to be lethal to anything within several thousands of parsecs. But that's not all."

"Not all?" the admiral said in surprise. "Isn't that enough?"

Shaking her head, Mara said, "Not for Palpatine. I mean, sure, setting off something like this anywhere inside or near the galaxy would eventually sterilize just about every world you or I have ever heard of. But gamma rays only travel at light speed, so it would take at least fifty thousand years for the effect to propagate over the whole galaxy. Not only that, but even after everything had been wiped out, it's doubtful that it would be a clean sweep. Something somewhere would survive, and life would eventually get a fresh start. For Palpatine, that just wouldn't be good enough. Scorched earth meant scorched earth to him."

"Assuming that's the case," the admiral said a bit skeptically, "How exactly do you improve on the biggest explosion short of the Big Bang?"

Pointing once again to the ring structures, Mara said, "That's the other thing the rings are for, sir. In addition to all the gravity polarizing hardware, each of them is basically a big, one-shot hyperspace motivator, designed to be powered by the initial explosive wave of the burster. The rings will be destroyed along with everything else, but before they are, they'll shunt the entire explosion into hyperspace, where it can propagate out over the galaxy almost instantaneously."

"Now, wait a minute," the admiral said perplexed and just a bit annoyed. "What good would that do? What effect is an explosion in hyperspace going to have on anything in real-space? I mean, I'm sure that this thing could disrupt shipping all over the galaxy, but I hardly think that would've been worth the Emperor's time!"

"Mass shadows," Mara said flatly. "Think about it. All massive objects, stars, planets, whatever, cast a mass shadow into hyperspace. We all know that, because we've all flown at one time or another, and a mass shadow isn't something you want to get close to unless you want to come out of hyperspace in a hell of a hurry, probably with your motivator blown. But think about it. If a mass in real-space can effect you in hyperspace, then it must be interacting with hyperspace somehow, if only weakly. And if that's true, the reverse is also true."

"So what are you getting at?" Kre'fey said curiously.

"Anything that's massive enough to cast a mass shadow will absorb some of the energy of that blast," Mara said. "And the bigger it is, the more energy it'll absorb. From the calculations on that data module, it looks like most of the planets in the galaxy will soak up enough heat from this to turn their surfaces molten. But that really doesn't matter. It's kind of a moot point when you consider that the stars those planets are orbiting will have their core temperatures driven high enough to cause them to go nova. And it'll happen everywhere basically all at once."

An oppressive silence enfolded the room for a long moment after this, and then the admiral said, "You believe that this... Star-Hammer could actually work, Master Skywalker?"

Mara nodded, and said, "According to all the data on that module it could, sir."

"And do you believe it was actually built? Or was it simply a design concept that the Emperor amused himself with?"

Mara sighed, and said, "Admiral, Emperor Palpatine wasn't the sort of man to content himself with design concepts. The Death Star got built, twice, in fact. The Sun Crusher got built too. So yes, Admiral, I have little doubt that this thing got built as well."

"If that's so," the admiral said slowly, "then why are the two of us having this conversation? The Emperor has been dead for quite some time now, and the galaxy still seems to be here. How do you explain that, Master Skywalker?"

"Admiral," Mara said just a bit impatiently, "As I'm sure you noticed, both of those neutron stars have to be shoved through real-space, all the way to their impact point. You don't normally find neutron stars stacked end to end within a parsec or so of each other, so there's a lot of distance to be covered, all at sub-light speeds. According to the data module, cruising speed for this whole ungainly rig is supposed to be about eighty percent of light. Now, there are several potentially usable neutron stars cataloged on there, all in a small globular cluster about three thousand parsecs to galactic north. The two nearest to each other were about forty light-years apart, so at that speed, you're talking about somewhere around twenty-five years from launch to impact. So, in other words, we're just now entering the window of possibility, sir."

The admiral was silent again for a moment, and then, looking around the group assembled with Mara, said, "And the rest of you? Do you concur with Master Skywalker's conclusions?"

They all nodded, and Leia said, "I think, Admiral, that if there's even a chance that this thing is real, we have little choice but to proceed as if it were."

"Leia's right," Han Solo said emphatically. "I mean, this isn't just one planet or even one system we're talking about going up in a blaze of glory here. It's the whole stinkin' galaxy. So unless you want to start investing in lava-resistant sandals and industrial grade sun-block, we probably should do something about this."

Everyone else murmured his or her agreement to this, and the admiral was silent again, considering. Finally, he sighed deeply, and said, "Well, I have the data, now that you've beamed it over. I'll have my people go over it, and I'll pass this on to higher. But this is probably going to take some time, and, considering all the other operations that are going on right now, I'm not sure what we'll have to work with. Still, I'll do the best I can. May the Force be with you all."

With that, he cut the connection, leaving a very unsatisfied group clustered around the holoprojector.

"That went well," Han said sardonically.

Mara shook her head, and said, "Yeah, real well. This is just what I was afraid of."

Luke nodded slowly, and said, "They've got so many ferocrete problems on their hands right now, they're not going to be in any hurry to jump at something like this."

Frowning, Jaina said from her corner of the room, "But, Uncle Luke, how can they not? Don't they get it? If this thing is real, and we don't do something about it, then none of the other problems is going to matter! Mopping up the Vong who haven't surrendered? No problem! That one will be taken care of! Providing relief for all the liberated Vong-formed worlds? No worry! None of them will be suffering anymore! If I can see it, can't they?"

Jacen shook his head slowly, and said, "C'mon, sis, you know better than that. If the people in charge always focused on what they should instead of what was right in front of their noses, we'd have beaten the Vong right at the beginning. For that matter, the Old Republic would probably still be around, and there never would've been an Empire. Politicians are far from perfect."

Raising an eyebrow, Leia said, "Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, son."

"Mom," Jacen said abashedly, "I didn't mean-"

Smiling now, Leia said, "I know you didn't. And you're right. Some politicians have a lot of trouble getting their priorities straight. Trust me, I know."

Before anyone could think of a reply for that, Luke's wrist-com gave a sudden buzz, and, answering, he said, "Skywalker."

"Master Skywalker," Doctor Morell's tinny voice said. "Are you anywhere near the rest of your family?"

Frowning, Luke said, "You could say that, Doctor. Why, is there news?"

The doctor hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Yes, there is. And I think that, upon the discretion of you and your sister, all of you should hear this. Your mother included, I'm afraid."

Feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach, Luke said, "By your tone, Doctor, I gather it's not good news."

The doctor sighed, and said, "No, not really, I'm afraid. But- Well, it's something we need to discuss in person. How soon can you be here at the med bay?"

"Give us about five minutes, Doctor," Luke said, already striding resolutely for the door.

----------

They met Doctor Morell at the door to the ICU where Padmé had been transferred the night before. Wordlessly, he lead them inside, through the doors and through an osmotic sterilizing field, and finally to her bedside.

At the moment, there were a number of osmotic IV lines attached to a 'main-line' feed at her neck, and she still wore an oxygen mask as she had the night before. Multiple instruments stood at either side of the bed, their overlapping scanner fields monitoring every nuance of her life functions. In the center of it all, she lay, changed now into a hospital gown, her eyes closed in gentle slumber.

'She does look like an angel,' Leia thought to herself, a lump in her throat as she approached. Behind her, the other members of her family pressed close, both to get a better view of Padmé and to draw comfort from one another.

From the other side of the bed, Doctor Morell reached out and gently shook Padmé's arm. She stirred slowly, and then, eyes opening reluctantly, looked up at him. Her eyes widened briefly then, and she said, "I can see. Doctor Morell?"

The doctor smiled gently, and said, "That's right, Padmé. I told you your sight would come back soon, didn't I?"

She smiled in return, and said, "Of course, Doctor. I-"

But then she noticed the others standing beside her, and, eyes widening again, fixed her gaze on them. "Leia?" She said wonderingly, looking upon her daughter for the first time in nearly fifty years. Then, looking over her shoulder to the sandy-haired man who wore a still-boyish if somewhat timeworn grin, she said, "Luke?"

Both of them smiled, and Leia said, "It's us, Mother. The doctor asked us to come back. He... has some news for us."

Padmé frowned slightly, and said, "The way you say that tells me that it can't be good." Then, looking back to Doctor Morell, she said, "Can it?"

The doctor sighed, and said, "I'm afraid not, Padmé." Then, pausing to compose his thoughts, he said, "On the plus side, we're fairly certain that we've found the root cause for the... complications that seem to be arising. Unfortunately, that cause is something that we can do very little about."

Han Solo frowned, and, stepping up slightly, he said, "Now, wait a minute, doc. After thousands and thousands of years of 'medical progress', you mean to tell me that this lady's got something you can't cure? I don't know about anybody else, but I think I'd like a second opinion."

The doctor shook his head slowly, and said, "Captain Solo, as much as I wish it weren't so, there are still things out there that we just don't have any real way to fight. And what Ms. Padmé has unfortunately falls into that category. There are, however... treatment options."

"Doctor," Luke said wearily, "Maybe you should tell us exactly what's going on here."

The doctor nodded, and said, "We ran just about every test conceivable last night, and what we found was that- well, systems all over your mother's body were just... failing. Not catastrophically, mind you, but a little bit at a time, their efficiency just slowly dropping for no apparent reason. Circulatory, respiratory, renal, liver functions, endocrine, all of them. Eventually, we traced this to some very subtle genetic damage, a bit like what you'd expect from radiation poisoning, but not quite right for that either. And then we realized that the damage was ongoing. There was something in her system that was slowly eroding the integrity of her genetic structure. Finally, we found it."

"Go on doctor," Leia said in small voice. "We need to know."

Looking down momentarily, the doctor finally said, "It's a viroid of some sort, just a tiny piece of RNA really. So small as to be nearly invisible, but extremely single minded in what it's doing. And terribly efficient. We weren't able to culture it, but, from it's behavior, I'd... have to say that it was engineered in some way, most likely to go specifically for your mother's DNA. And there's more, I'm afraid."

"Go on, Doctor," Padmé said quietly.

"This viroid has proven to be extremely resistant to any and all of the standard treatment methods we've tried. It almost seemed, in fact, to be... adapting to whatever we threw at it. That sort of behavior seemed somehow... familiar to me, and so I checked on a hunch." He paused for a moment, recollecting, apparently, and then said, "When I was just out of medical school, you see, I was conscripted toward the middle of the Clone Wars. The first posting I had was at a Republic Mobile Surgical Unit, a Rimsoo, they were called, on the planet Drongar. The only thing worth having on the entire planet was a local weed called bota that just happened to have amazing pan-species medicinal value, but in time even that dried up. Now, before you ask, the point of this is simply that every life form we ever cataloged on Drongar had one property in common; genetic adaptability. We even coined a term for the phenomenon: adaptagenic biology. And this viroid, you see-"

"Fits the same pattern," Jacen said, nodding slowly. "So you think this germ is from Drongar, Doctor?"

Doctor Morell nodded, and said, "Originally, I think. But I'm sure it's been altered; tailored to your grandmother, as it were. That kind of expertise is hard to come by, but it did exist, even then. And I'm quite sure Emperor Palpatine had no problem getting his hands on anything he wanted."

Standing behind her mother, Jaina clenched her fist angrily, and said, "So this was deliberate? That Sith-licking bastard did this to her?"

"Whoa, Jaina!" Han said mock-chidingly. "You've been spending a little too much time around the troops, kiddo. You're gonna blister your grandma's ears with language like that. Or at least the good doctor's here."

As Jaina blushed guiltily, Padmé just smiled gently, and, winking in her direction said, "I've heard worse. Sometimes out of my own mouth, no less."

Jaina giggled at this, feeling a sudden rush of warmth for this wonderful woman, her grandmother. Oh, how she hoped she'd get the chance to truly know her! And to love her, for years and years to come.

Doctor Morell, a bit discomfited by Jaina's remark, said, "Ah, well, to answer the question, yes, it was deliberate. There's no doubt of that. In fact, it's more than likely that the viroid was delivered along with the drug cocktail the carbonite block's thawing mechanism introduced. That seems to best fit the facts that we've so far gathered."

Standing at Luke's side, Mara sighed, and said, "It figures. That sounds just like his style." Then, looking to Padmé, she said, "Oh, and I'm Mara, by the way. Your daughter-in-law, so Luke tells me."

Padmé looked up at her, grinning impishly, and said, "It looks like my son's done pretty well for himself, then. And thank you for giving me such an adorable grandson."

Mara blushed just slightly, realizing that Padmé wasn't just throwing about pleasantries but meant what she said. She decided right then and there that she liked this woman, no small thing for Mara, and would do anything in her power to help her. Not that she wouldn't have anyway, considering who Padmé was, but her heart was firmly involved now.

"So," Luke said slowly, "What's the bottom line, then, Doctor? What's the prognosis?"

Doctor Morell was silent for a moment, considering his answer, and then said, "To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to stop the viroid's advance. The only remedy I could even imagine having any effect would be the bota I mentioned earlier, and it just doesn't exist anymore. The native form of the plant mutated into a useless state just before we pulled out from Drongar, and, in fifty years, all existing stockpiles of the original bota have long been exhausted. So I'm afraid the best we can do is to slow the disease's progress, and take up the functions of the systems it's disabling artificially."

There was a long moment of silence following this pronouncement, and then Leia said, "You mentioned a course of treatment, Doctor. What did you mean by that?"

The doctor sighed, and then said, "The one system that seems to be unaffected by the viroid is your mother's central nervous system. Peripheral nerves are being effected, but not her brain or spinal chord. I'd... almost have to say that this was deliberate on the part of whoever modified the viroid, and it does leave us... one course of action."

Feeling a curious foreboding, Padmé said, "And that would be, Doctor?"

Steeling himself for their reactions, Doctor Morell said, "As I mentioned before, we can take over the functions of the failing systems artificially. Mechanically. At first, this would be done externally, but eventually, implantable prostheses could be manufactured, and an overall support system could be fashioned. This would, in all likelihood, I'm afraid, end up taking on the form of some sort of full body support suit. It could be made comfortable, and aesthetically pleasing, of course, but..."

The doctor's words trailed off there at the expressions of sheer horror he saw on all the faces turned toward him, and, knowing a little bit about the Skywalker family's history, he knew why.

For their part, the entire Skywalker/Solo clan, Padmé included, suddenly realized just how twisted and deep the Emperor's game had run. Rather than simply wanting Padmé dead if she ever slipped out of his grasp, he'd wanted something far, far worse. He'd wanted her to face the choice of either dying lingeringly and painfully, or living on as something that she'd never be able to bear.

As this realization cut through them all, Luke thought that, just for a brief instant, he could hear the barest hint of all too familiar laughter ringing in the Force around him. And to judge by the uneasy looks he saw from Leia, Mara and the twins, he wasn't entirely sure he'd imagined it.

Ok, end of chapter 5. So, is this twisted enough for you yet? Don't worry, though, I love Padmé just as much as the rest of you. It just wouldn't be much of a story if I didn't put the characters through sheer hell, though, now would it? Also, any reactions to the Star-Hammer? It seemed Star Wars-ish enough to me, and I think it's the kind of toy Palpatine would like to play with, so let me know what you think. In chapter 6, we'll start to see what, exactly our heroes plan on doing about all this, so stay tuned, and PLEASE review!