Chapter Nine
Myr woke to the gray and pink dawn creeping above the twisted mountain peaks. The orange-purple glow of the sunrise mirrored the melancholy that had settled itself upon her heart. She went to the window of her sleeping chambers and watched as birds swooped to their nests to feed their young. The oblique spikes that formed the outer turrets were home to the various fowl that inhabited Vjun. Mother birds fed their young and life went on as if nothing had changed, when indeed it had. The galaxy had been turned upside down. The unthinkable had happened.
It had been five standard weeks since Darth Vader had perished at the battle of Endor. Myr moved through the motions of daily life out of sheer habit. All other servants had been let go and she was here alone, with the exception of the footman droid, whom she kept for any heavy lifting she might have to do. Celebrations all over the galaxy were on the holovid, but other than that, she knew nothing of what had happened in the fateful battle above the small, formerly inconsequential moon.
There were various stories from different sources all over the Imperial holovid channels, but all of them said essentially the same thing…that Darth Vader was a traitor and had killed the Emperor trying to either overtake the galaxy or giving him over to the Alliance. Myr couldn't reconcile the man who had inhabited Bast castle, the unyielding military mind and the most visible example of Imperial loyalty to the man that the holovids reported as a traitor to the Empire, the Emperor's killer. Whatever the circumstances, Darth Vader had indeed died.
And Luke Skywalker lived.
Lord Vader had stated specifically that his final directions were to be followed only if she heard that he had perished and Luke Skywalker lived. He had told her that she was not to open the last set of documents until she was safely at the residence he had mapped on the holomap. Even in her sadness, she was pleased by his trust in her. He was not a man known for the habit of giving the benefit of the doubt.
A strange sense of peace and completeness had settled over her once the initial impact of the news of Vader's death had worn off. If Luke Skywalker lived, if Anakin Skywalker's son lived, something powerful must have happened on the small moon, and she had the strangest feeling that she had personally witnessed events unfold in galactic history of the most epic proportions.
With renewed determination, she set about her preparations to fulfill Lord Vader's final wishes and made arrangements for transportation off of the planet of her birth. Now she waited. She waited for fate and destiny, Lord Vader's constant companions, to lead her to her purpose. She knew now that trust in the Force would show her the way.
If her time in the Dark Lord's employ had taught her nothing else, it had taught her to listen to her instincts. He had said as much once. "Trust in the Force. It will not lead you astray." A strange statement for a Sith to make, but he never used the terms "dark side" or "the Force" lightly. When Darth Vader had spoken of his "religion" on the rare occasion that he gave an oblique reference or explanation, it was simply referred to as "the Force", and most of the time, rather reverently. She hoped now that her trust in the Force would make the transport come before the Imperials.
XXXXXX
Myr sat looking out over the cold, gray mist through the large viewport in the study; the one Lord Vader had always looked out of, as if he were searching for something. A memory of a recent conversation with Lord Vader rose unbidden into her mind. In a moment of strangely subdued and unexpected dialogue during his last visit, he had quipped that winter just was not his season – he had never liked the cold. She watched as occasional patches of gold shone through the clouds, hitting the mist, creating tiny rainbows through the grayness. The weather had been strange this year as the cold winter season turned to renewal, as tumultuous as the state of the galaxy and the new order.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Lord Vader had seen some kind of premonition of his own death. It would not surprise her; he seemed to have the disposition of a seer. The directions left to her in the documents he had given her in their last meeting had an eerie fatalistic aura about them.
A light on the comm buzzed and Myr jumped. She had been sitting in the viewport of the study for so long, watching the mist move in circles, lost in memory and reflection, that she had lost track of time. The comm buzzed again, this time more insistently. The time had come. With a sense of finality, she grabbed the leather case that held the item Lord Vader had entrusted to her. She carefully tucked the snow globe case under her left arm and grabbed her one piece of luggage and called for the D7 footman droid.
When the D7 droid arrived, she gave him the message to her family and the final instructions from Lord Vader - the shut down procedure. When Dee Seven blinked in confirmation, she reached to touch his muted gray face.
"Goodbye, Dee," she said sadly. She left hurriedly only to stop one last time in the door of the study. Swallowing her tears, she turned resolutely and stepped into the hangar and her appointment with fate.
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The programmed nature of a footman droid is absolute loyalty. For many years on Vjun, households of the aristocratic families had depended on them for common household tasks, security, and nannies, among other things. Dee Seven, footman droid to Lord Darth Vader and sentry of Bast Castle had been modified even farther by his master after his purchase of the castle. It appeared sometimes to the droid that his master had a strange affinity for him, an understanding even. Footmen droids could be extremely dangerous if their charges were in danger, but they were droids, only doing what they were programmed to do.
Dee Seven had just finished shutting down the main power cells of Bast Castle when the shuttle arrived. A squad of Imperial troops blasted through the hangar door and made their way loudly through the halls of the deserted castle. Dee Seven moved quickly to initiate the security systems for the castle programmed into him so long ago. The white-clad stormtroopers overturned the statue of Darth Vader that had stood sentry at the center of the castle, and ripped draperies from the rods in the parlour. Imperial officers fired blaster shots into the ceiling and chunks of duracrete tumbled to the floor. All through the castle, obliteration reigned, accompanied by the orchestrated chaos of an Imperial garrison bent on the destruction of a traitor's home. Dee Seven worked hard to compute, what did it matter? His master was already dead.
Dee made his way to upper levels of his master's private chambers, blaster bolts bouncing off of his muted gray coverings. He turned to lock his lasers on the intruders when he was hit from above by a falling chunk of the duracrete ceiling. For a moment his sensors blinked in and out, and he went into manual override. This meant he was no longer armed and at best could only hope to carry out his orders. He reached the entrance of Lord Vader's private chambers and initiated Level Nine lock down procedures, the highest level of security – and self-destruction. In moments, a shield would cover the hyperbaric bed and the marble slabs of the floor would implode from the inside as poisonous gas leaked from the obsidian blocks.
The sound of Dee's circuits hissing and spattering under the barrage of duracrete falling caused him to pause momentarily, but he continued on, determined to honor what he was programmed to do. His master had seen to his programming personally and he would not let him down. Dee saw the hyperbaric bed from security screen just before the image blacked out from the security procedure. His sensors noted curiously the small holo flickering on the side of the bed. This was his last deliberation as he saw level-nine confirmed. His permanent damage sensors beeped and the red light on his chest plate blinked out as he slid down the wall outside the entrance to the personal chambers of Lord Vader, oblivious to trembling walls of the falling fortress.
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The planet of Naboo was beautiful, like something from a faerie tale told to children on her home planet. Everything was colorful and vibrant, and the air smelled of wildflowers and the spray of the many waterfalls that surrounded the city. It was so unlike the bleak, morose atmosphere of her home that it took Myr a moment to get her bearings. The planet entranced her. The sun shone so brightly it hurt Myr's eyes, and she shielded them until she could get used to the intensity. She watched as long-eared sentients and humans went about their day, all of them oblivious to the beauty that their planet held.
Myr stepped off the transport in Theed and consulted the holomap contained in the instructions given to her by Lord Vader. Her destination was in the remote mountains to the Northeast of Theed. She shut the holomap down and put it back in her pocket in the fold of her robe, and called for an air taxi.
The air taxi arrived at her destination and she paid in the unmarked credits taken from the account set up in her name when she closed it out for the journey. She stood for a moment at a loss for what to do when a she spied a gondola with faded yellow and red paint tied to the dock. Grabbing her luggage, she moved to the dock bay that held the gondola. She looked around for any sign of an owner or paddler and saw none. She was about to sit on the bench and consult the holomap again when a middle-aged man approached her.
"Hello, Milady. Are you looking for someone?"
"Oh, no. Well…yes, I think so," Myr faltered. She wasn't sure she had read the directions in the holo right. The gondola had the appearance of being docked a long time.
"I'm supposed to be going to the Mountain Country," she explained. "There is a residence there…"
"You mean Varykino," the man looked at her astutely.
"Yes, Varykino," Myr said, a little surprised by his knowledge of something that she had taken to be so secret.
"Well now, not just everyone gets passage to Varykino, Milady. No offense," he shrugged.
"Oh, yes! Yes, I know! I have a code," Myr offered, she started to pull the holomap out then stopped, cursing herself for her naivety. "Who are you?"
"My name is Gideon Accu," he said, holding his hand out to her. "My father, Paddy, used to row this gondola for the owners. I took over his position on staff when he died."
"I'm Myr. I'm the...an employee of ..," she stuttered, grasping for a description that might save her from possibly being hauled off to the nearest government official upon hearing the identity of her former employer.
"The code?" Gideon asked, raising his brows.
"The code?" Myr said in confusion. "Oh, the code," she blushed. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired from my journey and a little unused to all of this. This is my first time away from my home."
Gideon shifted his feet and looked down at her with a patient, but bemused expression. "You'll be having a code if you are to go to Varykino. Even though the owner's are deceased, the staff is still very loyal. The place is kept up and security has always been tight. They've been left instructions," he said warily.
"Now, you don't look like the type to be a spy for our recently deceased good Emperor, but one never knows," he chuckled and looked down at her good-naturedly.
Myr relaxed as she realized he must be employed by the estate. "No. I'm not employed by the Emperor," she said with a smile. "Actually, I'm not employed by anyone….now."
"What brings you to Naboo?" Gideon asked sincerely.
"I…I'm carrying out the last orders of my… my former employer," she said guardedly. "I have some things to return to…to his family."
"Yeah, we never saw much of him," Gideon said shrewdly. "He never returned after his wi-… after the war."
Myr gasped. "You know who I'm here for," she whispered, her fingers unconsciously went for the leather case beside her on the bench.
Gideon eyed the case astutely. He looked back up to her face. "You never did tell me the code."
" 'Japoor'. The code is 'japoor'," she said breathlessly, her eyes never leaving his.
Gideon nodded and motioned to the gondola. "Shall we go…Myr, is it?"
To be continued…