Hello! Welcome to my newest fic. I've been thinking a lot about vampires lately, between Dracula Daily and First Kill (both of which I'm mildly obsessed with), so this fic sprang into being a few weeks ago when I woke up from a nightmare about being stalked by vampires through a ferry myself.
Warning: This fic gets dark. There's a lot of death, a lot of blood, and fun vampire things like mind control and eating people. Please take care of yourself.
I've also tried my hand at writing romantic/sexual attraction in a major way for the first time ever, which I really struggled with, so let me know how I did! All in all, I've had fun wrestling with this fic so far - it's a new genre for me - and I hope you have fun too. I don't have anything written out in advance, so the updates will happen when I write the next chapter, instead of on a weekly schedule like my other fics.
If you've read this far into the A/N, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy :D
Etesun's primary spaceport was full of life and light, even underneath a blanket of eternal night. Still, Luke was struggling to see. He'd grown up on Etesun's day side, where the sun never set, and the ground was thick with green grass and moss. The strange net of mines, quarries, and spaceports that mapped out the night side was an alien planet to him.
He could just make out Threepio's shining chrome head as the speeder he and Leia had dropped them off in retreated in the long snake of speeders through the spaceport. Leia's head wasn't beside him; she was bent over double. Luke grimaced. The Corellian flu wasn't a joke; even if it wasn't infectious at that stage, she shouldn't have come to see them off.
Artoo chirped beside him, bringing his attention away from the last, retreating piece of home and into this strange new world. "You're right, Artoo, they'll be taking off in an hour. What bay do the night ferries take off from? Wait, don't tell me."
He peered upwards and scanned the holo displays that shone above them. The constant stream of names, places, numbers, timetables was baffling; he couldn't pin down their one, or even which board to look at...
The fact that he was not used to shielding against the thoughts and emotions of this many people was not helping.
"Night ferry to Corellia… Bay…" Artoo chirped again. "127. Great. Thanks." Artoo beeped apologetically; Luke waved it off. His annoyance came from the childish excitement over going off-world for the first time. Shame heated his cheeks.
He wasn't here on an adventure. He was here to save his father.
"Where will that be?" He scanned the terminal again, gaze landing on a sign directing passengers to bays 200 through 350. Artoo waited patiently this time as he searched for the correct one—bays 100 to 150—and kept up with him when he turned on his heel and took off.
The crowd, previously milling around like idle flies who thought there must be fruit in the room but weren't sure, knotted into bottlenecks in the corridors. Luke sighed and resolved himself to wait as he shuffled forwards with everyone else, palming his tickets in his hand and grasping them in his fist. Hot bodies crushed against him in the bottleneck; he ignored the way his heartrate skyrocketed at the close contact.
He knew now why his father had taken the night ferry, whenever he left Etesun on his business trips. Those monsters that he'd been hunting couldn't abide the touch of starlight, or the radiation it held; it was like the damage it did to human skin, but infinitely worse and rapider. Luke's home of sunlight would be their nightmare; this place would be their dream.
When they weren't showing their teeth, they looked like any regular humanoid, Luke knew. They could be any of the people around him, crushed against him, and he wouldn't know it. His heart pounded in his ears.
He knew that he shouldn't use the Force, but he touched it anyway. Subtly pushed a few people away from him and maintained that bubble. It was always risky in a galaxy ruled by the Empire, but it made him feel safer. He wasn't defenceless. He had the Force. And three blasters in his backpack, stolen from his father's store that he and Leia pretended not to know about.
Anakin took this trip every time. The night ferry: leaving from the darkness on Etesun and landing on Corellia during the night, local time. From there, there were other connections to vampire hotspots—the night side of tidally-locked Gorse, the pitch-black depths of Coruscant, dead planets in the Deep Core and the Outer Rim that lacked a star, even Corellia itself. Luke had to retrace his steps, no matter the danger. At least with Artoo, he had support.
Except Artoo was gone.
Luke stumbled, lashing his head around to look. "Artoo?" he called. He elbowed back through the crowd, earning some dirty looks from a Twi'lek mother and son. He shot them an apologetic grimace. "Artoo, where— where are you?" In times like this he wished he were as tall as his father. He craned his neck to look above the crowd, but there were too many, and it was too dark, and—
A light shone on a metal dome. He spun to look at the droid full on; it was Artoo, barrelling towards him.
"There you are!" Relief bled through his veins. "I thought I'd lost you." Artoo was kind enough not to comment on the fact that he should have been keeping an eye on him in this sort of crowd; Luke had figured that out on his own. He put his hand on his dome and didn't intend to remove it. "Come on, let's keep moving."
When they reached Bay 127, they still had to wait in a queue to get through the gate. A single Imperial officer stood operating it, her cap smart on her head, shielded behind a transparisteel wall. The travellers snaked towards her; she checked their passes and tickets before hitting the button to allow people through.
The queue was long enough that Luke felt comfortable just sitting himself down to wait for it to move forwards, cross-legged on the ground. His feet ached from all this standing around already; he couldn't wait to get on the ferry and dump his bags in his room. He hadn't been sure how much stuff to pack; neither had Leia. She'd convinced him to pack twice as much as he wanted to, and now he suspected it was too much.
Artoo suddenly started rocking and beeping. Luke raised his eyes to him. "What?"
Artoo kept beeping happily, rocking back and forth. When Luke looked up to check who he was greeting, a fair-skinned human woman with dark hair, wearing a neat blue dress with a logo of a ferry over the breast pocket, crouched down to study Artoo. He greeted her in a flurry of beeps.
"Artoo?" She huffed. "It is you. Where's—" She glanced up to see Luke, then. He scrambled to his feet.
"I'm sorry," he asked, as she rose out of her crouch to look at him. "Do you know Artoo?"
"I do." She studied him. "You must be Anakin's son."
His heart leapt. "Do you know my father? Have you seen him?" Hope swelled in him. "We're retracing his steps, trying to find him—"
"I haven't seen him. Not since he last came through here with Artoo." She glanced around and lowered her voice. "Come with me."
"What? Why?" But Artoo chirruped, and Luke trusted his judgement, so he followed. "Ms…"
"Higin," she supplied, leading him to the corner of the room. No one was standing here apart from a few impatient children who were running around, playing stuck-in-the-mud. "Suyan Higin."
Luke glanced back over his shoulder. "I've lost my place in the line."
"I'll get you through without it, don't worry. You don't have an Imperial ID, do you?"
Luke swallowed. "No. What's that?"
"A document that you have to present when going through controls like this. It lets the Empire track who people are and where. You can't move between territories without it."
"It means they could have found us?" His tone was quiet, almost a whisper. He knew that his father was hiding them and their Force powers from the Empire. Knew about his brief stint with the dark side from when Luke and Leia were born, his once close relationship with the Emperor. But he hadn't expected it to affect whether he could leave the planet.
He'd been too focused on the vampires to worry about the Imperials as well. His first mistake.
"Anakin had a fake ID. You don't. I'm a staff member; I can get you on—"
"Yes," Luke said instantly. Suyan smiled tightly. "I mean— that would be fantastic. How do you know him?" He tried to gauge her age, but she was wearing makeup, and he'd never been good at judging age anyway. Anakin definitely didn't look forty-two, in Luke's opinion.
She beckoned for him to follow her, and they walked out of the room, down the hall. "We're old friends."
"He told you about me and Leia?" They turned left, skirting the edge of the bay. There was a side entrance for staff up ahead; Suyan was leading them there.
"Of course." She smiled and held out a hand to help him up the steps, her grip strong. "He talks about his children every chance he gets, to anyone. But he didn't tell me your names until recently."
"If you've known him recently," Luke said, "during his… hunting days… I need to ask you some questions. I need—"
Suyan flashed her staff ID against the door, and it buzzed open into the hot air of an engine room. She took a breath. "This is the engine room. Do you know what room you're in? What floor?"
"Room 723."
"723?" She let out a breath between her teeth. "Prepare yourself for some climbing."
Luke threw his bag onto the bunk in his room and threw himself onto it shortly after. Artoo gave an electronic snigger.
"It's easy for you to laugh," Luke informed him. "You have carefully maintained rocket boosters. You didn't have to climb all those flights of stairs because the turbolifts were engaged."
Artoo told him to stop feeling sorry for himself. That wasn't what he was here for.
Luke couldn't argue with that. "Can you play back Father's message again?" he asked instead. He'd watched it a thousand times by now, but Artoo didn't argue. He played it immediately.
Anakin's hologram burst to life. He was kneeling in front of his personal starfighter, hand reached out as he started the recording. Luke reached out his own hand to clasp it, but his fingers fell right through.
"If I don't return, deliver this to Luke and Leia. It's important." Artoo-in-the-recording beeped his promise; Anakin smiled sadly. It was strange that Artoo wouldn't accompany Anakin on every step of his journey—usually he was his back-up—but Luke supposed that if the issue had been truly this dangerous, this personal… "Thank you, old friend."
He lifted his gaze to the holocam. "Luke. Leia. There is so much I never told you about me—you've heard the most, I know, the stuff you needed to hear. The Sith and the Jedi, my part in it. But there's so much more. I can't even tell you now. I don't have enough time.
"But I can tell you this: I believe your mother is alive. I think I've found her. And I think she's in danger from monsters that I convinced you were only myths. That's why I left so quickly—why I didn't say goodbye. I can't explain more than that now, but that's one of two things you have to know: your mother is alive, and I am going to save her.
"The other thing you have to know is what I'm saving her from.
"I told you the stories, when you were children. Mostly as a way of sharing my truth with you when I couldn't tell you all of it, but also so you'd know how to fight them if needed. I know that Leia promptly convinced herself vampires were fictional, and convinced you as well, Luke, and I let you believe that. But I hope you remember the stories about them. Because I'm not a navigator or a pilot. That's not my job.
"I am a vampire hunter. I have been since the fall of the Jedi, and I realised many things. It wasn't Tuskens who killed your grandmother; it was vampires. One of the two Sith Lords, Sidious and Tyranus, could have been vampires themselves, but I don't know which. Or if it was both. Vampirism itself is a mysterious state: I just know that it's the epitome of the dark side's predatory, parasitic nature. It can even infect non-Force-sensitives."
Luke nodded along, even now. That had been what terrified him as a child, listening to those stories. Falling to the dark side, his father always emphasised, was a choice—one that he had erroneously made and regretted for the rest of his life. You could not be forced to do it. And only Force-sensitives could do it.
The idea that vampires could force anyone to join them in the darkness, twist them into something they weren't, had left Luke sleepless for years.
"We moved to Etesun so that you two would be safe from them. You know they can't abide direct starlight. Which is why you need to stay there. If I don't return, you… can probably guess what happened to me." Anakin swallowed in the holo; Luke swallowed too. He hadn't slept through the night since he first tried to imagine that. "Know that I did it happily, to find your mother. And know that I want you to stay there, no matter what. Stay safe. Do not come looking for me."
He stopped and took a shaky breath. "Luke, Leia." His voice cracked. "I love you." The holo winked out.
Luke would have thought that by now, he should be immune to the same words played over and over. He was not. He wiped tears from his eyes, then caved and used the bedsheets to dry them.
"Alright," he said, voice horrifyingly calm. "I can leave my things here while we go exploring a bit, see if we can find someone who knows anything about Father. I get that Suyan needed to get back to work, but it would've been good to ask her some more questions." She'd given him directions then sent them up the stairs. "She mentioned there was a lounge a few levels up, right? Somewhere to sit and meet people. Some staff are there often as well."
Artoo reminded him of something else to take his mind off the message.
Luke smiled sadly. "And it'll provide a good view for take-off," he agreed. Artoo whistled enthusiastically, which made Luke feel better about his own excitement. Imperial IDs or not, missing his father or not, he had left the planet. Almost. He'd done it.
It was a peculiar taste of freedom. He hadn't ever expected it to be bittersweet.
The lounge was exactly as Suyan had described it: a place scattered with chairs, sofas, and tables, wrapped around the stern of the ship. Luke and Artoo trundled inside, taking a quick stock of the residents. It was mostly staff in the room, taking a seat here before their shifts began in earnest, but there were some passengers. A red-haired woman sat like a queen in an armchair with a group of young men around her. She looked vaguely familiar, and the man on her right—with black hair and a neat moustache—was handsome. Opposite her was another woman, brown-haired, with her back to Luke.
His look was only brief, though, because Luke was instantly captivated by the view of Bay 127 below. It was teeming with travellers, officers, merchants. Even stormtroopers, who stuck out like spots on mould on bread. Luke stood there a long time, watching. An alien view of an alien world.
How many of those bustling bodies below him were vampires? The thought chilled him.
How many people in this lounge alone were vampires?
He shook his head. Being paranoid would get him nowhere; it would only do to be careful. He had hidden his three blasters under his jacket, at his back, the smallest in his boot. It wasn't comfortable, but they were there if he needed them, as was the Force.
Even if they should all only be a last resort.
He closed his eyes and took in a breath. The Force buzzed around him, picking out the people in this lounge, the people on the ship, even the people on the planet. None of them felt malicious, which was the point of hiding, he supposed, but it calmed him.
His eyes stayed closed for several minutes, breathing in that sense of life. They didn't open until one of the glowing lives in the lounge broke off from her cluster of lights and moved towards him, tentative. He turned to find her hovering.
"Do I know you?"
His breath caught in his throat.
His mother looked almost exactly like she had in the holos Anakin kept on the mantelpiece. She was only slightly taller than Leia, with curly hair pulled back into a bun, wearing a long green velvet dress. Her arms were wrapped around her torso as she looked him up and down, face guarded…
Then her gaze alighted on Artoo. "Artoo-Detoo," she said. "Which means you must be—"
"Luke," he proffered.
"Skywalker?"
He nodded. The way her face split in two from the force of her smile made him smile back.
"I'm Padmé," she said. Then, clearly not knowing how to address this, she said: "I— I knew your father." She held out a hand and shook his firmly.
He stared at her a little more. She looked uncannily like Leia. Did she know—about him? She must know. Should he bring it up? Should he—
"How did you know him?" he blurted out.
She opened and closed her mouth. Glanced around the room. There were mostly staff in here, wearing the same uniform as Suyan, but a couple of guests were milling about as well. She smiled weakly. "We were very close."
With the way her gaze kept flicking to the others in the room, Luke thought he understood. He didn't know why this would have to be a secret; he didn't like it. But since he'd got his father's message, it was painfully clear that he didn't know much about his family's secrets, anyway.
"Where are you staying?" she asked before he could push the question further. "Which room are you in?"
"Uhhh." It took a moment to remember. "Room 723."
"On the seventh deck?" She pursed her lips; Luke tried not to feel bad. He and Leia had pooled their savings to get a twin room on the cheapest level. "Are you sharing with another passenger, or…?"
"I booked the room for my sister and I, but she got sick." Padmé stiffened, looking concerned. "Corellian flu. Unpleasant, but—"
"Not life-threatening." She let out an exaggerated breath. "That's good. It's a shame she couldn't come—are you going to meet your father anywhere?"
"He's gone missing." He watched his mother's face closely, but she looked so shocked at the news that his heart twanged. "I'm here to retrace his steps. Did you see him on his last trip here, about six months ago? He—"
"No," Padmé breathed.
"You didn't see him?"
"No. He can't have—" She cut herself off. "He's missing?"
Luke nodded.
"I can't believe that. What captured him? Was it the," she lowered her voice, "Empire? I understand that with his gifts, he could get in trouble, but—"
"No. In the message he sent me, he said he was trying to find and protect you."
"Well, yes, he was trying to find me." She stopped, as if realising that that might give too much away, in their company. "I… hadn't realised he—any of you—was still alive. We managed to get in contact in the last year, and he told me you were living on Etesun, and that he would meet me on the night ferry. It would be a good place to talk about everything without having to dump the drama of it on you or your sister." She paused. Bit her lip. "He hasn't showed up."
"What?"
"I last heard from him a month ago. He said to meet him here. I was going back and forth, back and forth, between Etesun and Corellia so often… I don't want to leave before he arrives. Do you have any idea what's happened to him?"
He might have been eaten. "We heard from him six months ago. You'd know more than us. He sent us a message through Artoo, but— I'll show it to you. It's not very revealing."
"I'd love to see it. Anakin…" She pressed her lips together to stop them from wobbling. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to lose it like this." She met his gaze, noticing his watery eyes. "I'm making you cry as well?"
He shook his head. "I can do that on my own."
That at least got a laugh out of her. She wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said again. "This is horrible. And it might be best if we talk more about it later, in private." She glanced out the viewport. "I believe they're about to take off."
"Are they?" It came out far too excited for a grieving son. He flushed, but Padmé just seemed to smile.
"Have you never been off planet?"
"Never." He stared out of the window. They were indeed starting to get the last stragglers on, with staff rushing about to make the final preparations.
"Then watch the take-off with me?" she offered. "I've done it so many times, but it's exhilarating. That sense of freedom, the feeling that you can go anywhere…"
"I want to be a pilot," Luke said, nodding along.
She smiled at him. "Like your father?"
"I know he wasn't a pilot," he felt like he needed to defend. "But yes." He lifted his gaze to the lights of the spaceport, glittering behind the viewport. "I want to go anywhere. Everywhere. I want that sort of freedom."
No Empire tracking IDs, who would arrest him if they knew about his gifts.
No overbearing father leaning over his shoulder, watching his every move.
Nothing to stop him, or his sister, from seizing the freedom they'd been denied their whole lives.
Padmé nodded, blinking hard. "You're so much like him, you know?"
"I know."
She kept nodding at his response, glancing around. "You know," she said tentatively, "the rooms on this floor are a lot larger than the floor you're currently on. And I know there's a fair few that have a view. With how much time I've spent on this ship over the last few weeks, I've got to know the captain quite well—I can see if I can have you upgraded? On my expense."
His mouth slammed shut. "M— Padmé, I couldn't—"
"It's a gift," she cut him off, beaming at his slip, putting a hand on his cheek. Instinctively, he leaned into her cool touch. "Please. Allow me to."
He nodded. "Thank you," he said, almost on autopilot. "That's… really generous."
"Think nothing of it," she ordered. It seemed like she was about to say something else, but the ship lurched. She lost her balance, and Luke caught her, but she didn't look fazed.
"I think that's us," she said with a smile. "Are you ready?"
The take-off procedures of a ship as large and unwieldy as a ferry were hardly interesting. It didn't matter. Luke watched almost hungrily when they started to rise, the vibrations shuddering through them. He closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation—then opened them again, so he didn't miss the view. The spaceport receded beneath them until it was a speck of light, and then Etesun itself was a ball hanging before them, its day side glowing while its night side twinkled.
Then they jumped to hyperspace, and the swirling lights were the most stunning view of all.
Padmé was watching him, not the view. "It's spectacular, isn't it?"
Luke didn't respond. Nothing could capture the awe already in his heart.
His mother did end up securing him a lovely room on the tenth floor. A couple of maids with nothing else to do offered to help him carry his bags up, even if he only had the two, and let him in.
"It's not a fancy room, but it's a nice one," one said, hanging in the doorway and tossing him the key. It was a fair assessment. The bed was double, the room was large, light, and airy, and a large viewport with a windowseat overlooked the swirling of hyperspace, but it wasn't ostentatious. He liked it like that.
"It's perfect," he said. "Thank you for helping me, Ms. Adova, Ms. Tonsort." He nodded at them both; they gave him polite smiles.
"I'm giving some of the other residents of this floor a brief tour of the facilities," Ms. Tonsort said. "It shows you where the escape pods are, emergency escapes to the lower floors, and so on. Important things."
"Mostly it shows you where the pool is," Ms. Adova chimed in. Luke laughed.
"We'll be out in a moment," he promised. "Thank you for the offer." He glanced at Artoo, who'd already set himself up on the charging station. "Or I will be. My friend probably needs a shut down." Artoo beeped his sleepy confirmation.
When they congregated in the lounge again, Luke was disappointed to see that Padmé wasn't there. The red-haired woman and her escorts were, including the handsome man, as well as a couple of others. One couple looked utterly disgusted to be there, dressed head-to-toe in fine clothes, and stood with their bodies pointedly angled away from each other. Suyan was also dusting and cleaning the lounge in the background, nodding at him in affectionate greeting.
He committed all their faces to memory. The trip on a ferry as slow as this would be about a week long, especially with the tricky hyperlanes you had to navigate in and around Etesun, so he might as well get to know his neighbours.
The handsome man helping to escort the red-haired woman cast Luke a smile, which Luke returned shyly. Before he could say anything, the woman murmured something to him, and he turned away.
Suyan wandered up to him. "Are you taking the tour?" He nodded. "Make sure to ask Rabene about the chlorine levels in the pool. She has a rant prepared about how much work she puts into it to make sure it's safe for the majority of species." Luke glanced up at Ms. Tonsort—Rabene—and smiled to himself.
"It sounds like a challenge."
"It is." She glanced down, then around. "Where's Artoo?"
"Charging. He was exhausted after rocketing all the way up those steps."
She laughed. "I didn't know astromechs could get tired," she said. "I'm proud of myself now."
"You definitely should be."
"Enjoy the tour," she said, turning away to continue her work. "You'll be here for at least a week—it's probably worth getting to know the ship at large as well as just this floor."
Luke nodded, thinking it over already. It was a big ship, designed as much as a cruise ship on these luxurious upper levels as it was a ferry. Exploring it would take him a good few days. He was looking forward to it.
When he turned back to the group, one of the men escorting the red-haired woman was standing right in front of him. He'd sensed his proximity in the Force, but that was something very different to seeing someone less than a foot away from him; he jumped.
"Hi," he said. "Can I—"
"You have an astromech?" the man asked. He had dark hair like his friend, with a face that looked solemn despite his smile, and tragically no moustache.
Luke blinked. "Yes. His name's Artoo, he belongs to my father. We're travelling together."
"If you're a pilot, why are you travelling on a ferry?"
Luke opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. Because—if his father was a pilot with his own ship—a ship that he regularly used to fly on his missions with—why had, according to Artoo, he taken the night ferry so often? It was a haunt for vampires due to being a night service, yes, but surely it would be more effective to hunt them elsewhere? When they weren't stuck in a metal ship with civilians, putting innocents in danger?
"My father used to be a pilot," he said. "We just still have Artoo. He's part of the family." Then, because he was tired of answering questions instead of asking them, he said: "I'm Luke, by the way. What's my astromech got to do with you?"
His companion gave a sheepish grin. "I'm Wedge. I'm a pilot as well"—a furtive glance at the lady he was escorting—"and wanted to see if you were. Any affiliations? Of your father, I mean, if you're not a pilot."
Luke was a fantastic pilot who happened not to own his own ship. He didn't bother saying that. "No." It was easier to say than explaining 'vampire hunting' as a hobby. "You?"
"None," Wedge said, too quickly. Luke raised his eyebrows and glanced at his cohort. The red-haired woman, now he saw her fully, looked familiar. "I was just curious."
"That's Senator Mothma, isn't it?"
Wedge stiffened. "No."
"Relax. I'm not blind. And my sister is a massive fan of her." Leia had spent the last five years tracking every speech Senator Mothma made in the Imperial Senate, before she left it so dramatically. Luke would know her anywhere, despite the effort put into disguising her with a new outfit and style. The red top and trousers she was wearing clashed with her hair. "She'll be so annoyed she missed her. She's been talking about us running off to the cause since we hit sixteen."
The man relaxed slightly. "Why didn't you?"
"My father." A tinge of guilt twanged his guts. "Very overprotective. Did everything he could to keep up at home, and not risking our lives fighting monsters."
And yet here Luke was. Disobeying his father's last order to him. He regretted nothing, but…
"That doesn't mean the monster doesn't need fighting. The Imperial beast isn't gonna sheathe its claws just 'cause you didn't join up."
Luke smiled, then turned away. "I know."
There were others thronging in the lounge, now, now. Not nearly enough that he thought that would be all the people on this floor, but enough that it didn't exactly feel intimate anymore. It was hard not to notice that most of the passengers on this deck were human, but there were a few exceptions.
Perhaps he shouldn't have let his mother upgrade him to this floor. It was far nicer, certainly, but the company looked…
"Who's your cute friend, Wedge?" The handsome man from the escort sidled over to cast Luke an appreciative glance.
…perhaps the company wasn't so bad.
"I'm Luke," he said, holding out his hand. The man shook it with a smile, his grip firm and lingering a little too long.
"I'm Biggs. The unfortunate travel companion and colleague of this ball of stress." He clapped his friend—Wedge—on the back. Wedge scowled, but it was good-natured. "Lighten up. When you first went over to talk to Luke I think you were gonna rip his head off."
"I wasn't gonna rip his head off. I just heard he had an astromech and thought it was weird. Only soldiers and pilots have those, usually—they're starfighter droids."
"He was my father's during the Clone Wars," Luke defended. "Sorry for not living up to your expectations."
Biggs guffawed. "Your dad is a clone, then? Good for him, getting out." Luke didn't argue—that story was as good as any, and safer than being the son of a Jedi. "And I apologise for my commander." Biggs dropped his voice. "Newly promoted. Very tense."
"I can hear you, Lieutenant Darklighter."
"He's milking the rank for all it's worth, though. I was gonna come over here sooner, before I got worried about what my commanding officer would do to me if I did. Didn't want to see a pretty guy like you get snapped at like that."
If nothing else, Biggs was charming. Smoother than the local farm boys on Etesun, certainly. Luke felt his cheeks warming against his will. "If I were you, I'd be more worried about your commander than about me."
Wedge raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. Right."
But Biggs looked politely—or, again, charmingly—intrigued. "Oh, really? You can take care of yourself?"
"I can take care of myself," Luke confirmed. Then, because his father had taught him many skills, but flirting was not one of them— "I can take care of you too, if needed."
"Or, if you two stopped gazing into each other's eyes," Wedge interjected, "we could all catch up with the woman we're meant to be escorting, as well as the rest of the tour."
Luke flushed, and they hurried to catch up. But not before Biggs reached and caught Luke's hand in his own, so they hurried side by side, and Wedge rolled his eyes so hard they could have toppled out and started orbiting his head. When they caught up with the group, Luke saw Wedge cast an apologetic look at Mothma, who only looked amused; she forgave him with a magnanimous nod. There were still three other men from her escort surrounding her, after all.
Rabene was waiting at the edge of the lounge for everyone's attention; when she had it, she swept her arm across the room. "This tour shouldn't take too long, but hopefully it points things out to you that you wouldn't have otherwise noticed, or provide information that you'll need. This is Deck Ten; you're welcome to move about, of course, but this is where we're staying."
"Why did they book us onto this floor?" Luke heard one of the escorts murmur to Wedge. "It seems so fancy, and there's too many Imperials about. If we wanted to avoid them—"
"The senator's contact meets us here. That's it. The Imperials won't be a problem unless you make them one, so keep your head down and your eyes open." For a man only recently promoted, he had the market cornered on brisk, firm orders.
"Yessir."
"To begin, you all know where the lounge is." Rabene nodded at the room at large. "This is at the stern of the ship; people usually come here to stargaze. But take care. The ship passes by a particularly powerful star at one of the points where it drops out of hyperspace—it's an unavoidable part of the trip. For that duration, the durasteel blinds will be closed, as the star has been known to cause irreparable damage to skin cells in humans and other humanoids before. Don't be alarmed if you see this."
A star damaging humanoid bodies during the timespan when hyperspace calculations were made? That was ridiculous. He added it to a tally he was keeping in his head of hints that vampires were around—a tally he didn't realise he had until now.
It was impossible to tell if it was paranoia, the desire to impress his father with his attentiveness, and just plain fascination with the non-farmland world.
"Just on the other side of the lounge, we had an arcade, a library, and—of course—the bar." She gestured to a bar in the corner of the lounge, sitting sad and empty. A single bottle sat on its top, chipped at the side and hazy as the morning mist on Etesun. There was no one to drink it now, not at this time at night. "Someone will be out to open it soon enough. In the meantime, the arcade…"
They only peeped into the arcade and games room for a few precious seconds, but it was enough for Luke to recognise the toy flight simulator they had in the village pub on Etesun, as well. His face cracked into a grin.
Biggs, still hovering at Luke's shoulder and holding his hand, noticed. "Did you have that as well? I thought only Tatooine was backwater enough for that."
Luke grinned. "I doubt it. My sister and I still compete fiercely in the local pub to see who can get the highest score."
"Oh yeah? What's your record so far?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because as a real pilot, I'm sure my skills on the game would far surpass—"
"You wish, hotshot," Luke said, laughing and shaking his head. "You wish."
Wedge finally, with some effort, managed to zone out Luke and Biggs's excited flirting and gravitated back towards Mothma's side. He didn't like this mission they'd been assigned to—he understood that Senator Mothma needed security if she was going to be discreetly meeting an old friend on a ferry, but there was no way that Red Squadron was the best choice for that. They were pilots—which was the point, they were here so that they could commandeer the ferry or fly her off of it if needed, but his objection remained. They did not do subtle. Trying to force them to was too much stress for a newly promoted commander to handle. What the hells was Wedge supposed to do? What would Narra do?
He swallowed. Commander Narra would have told him to suck it up and follow orders, like he always did. So Wedge would—so Wedge would have to. Biggs might tease him incessantly for getting a stick up his backside ever since he was promoted, but suddenly he understood the stress of being responsible—for himself and his squadron.
He couldn't make petty mistakes because he got too belligerent in questioning orders and doing his own thing. People died in war. Narra had died in the war.
So Wedge would follow his example and follow the necessary orders, and follow them well. Even if it meant he was stuck on a ridiculous cruise ship as protection detail, and his second-in-command was flirting with a random kid they met on the tour.
"Commander Antilles?" Mothma murmured. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, Senator," he murmured back. Hobbie and the others—except gooey-eyed Biggs-were giving him concerned looks as well. "I'm simply on alert."
He wanted to scream.
The woman—Rabene, her name was—led them out of the arcade and games room and into the next room over, introducing it as the library. Wedge glanced inside but didn't enter with the others. It was identical in size and shape to the arcade, sharing a wall with it, but it didn't share a wall with the lounge. Wedge privately thought that was a good idea. No one wanted to read in peace immediately opposite a bar.
The information from the tour floated out to him, but he glanced up and down the corridor. A sound skittered down it, like footsteps too rapid to be human, and he glanced in that direction. Nothing.
He was just paranoid. This was his first job as commander. It was natural that his nerves would go overboard.
He blinked, and they were out of the library. Just before Rabene closed the door, she smiled at him. "Are you well, sir?"
"Fine." He glanced into the library and saw a tiny shelf of flimsi books, alongside a much larger shelf of datafiles that no doubt held stories and information in various forms. "Is that all that's in there?"
Her smile widened at the poor excuse of a joke. "Not many people read when there's a games room right next to it. If they do, they've probably brought their own." She glanced up. The rest of the people had congregated at the edge of the corridor. "Shall we catch up? Or is there something upsetting you?"
"I thought I heard someone approaching."
"It was likely another guest. Or a sound from the lower floors."
"Lower floors?"
She beckoned, and he followed. Just at the end of this corridor, the interior of the deck opened up into a large hallway, where the two corridors running parallel from the lounge intersected around a chamber. At the heart of hallway was a massive hole in the floor, surrounded by a railing, that looked down onto the floor below.
Wedge paused at the edge of it, as did the other guests. You could indeed hear a lot of the noise coming from down there. They were directly above the bar, not a table where people were playing, probably for security reasons. The noise of footsteps tramping over the dark red carpet, glasses clinking, and voices chattering in a drunken haze drifted up and through the corridors.
He forced himself to relax. He was jumping at shadows.
"That's probably what I heard," he admitted. Rabene nodded in understanding.
"This is the centre of the deck," she said to the others. "It overlooks the Lucky Hand casino downstairs."
"And the bar?" someone teased. Wedge didn't catch who it was; he hoped it wasn't a Red.
"Specifically the bar," she agreed, pausing to watch, almost suspiciously, as the bartender poured someone a glass of red wine. "There's not much to see, but it's a fun feature to have, and the ferry inherited it from its previous owners."
Wedge watched the bartender hand the glass of red wine to a patron, then pour another drink. This time he handed it to—
"That's a stormtrooper," he said, a little too loudly.
"Yes?" She looked at him oddly. "There are many stormtroopers on board. A ship as big as this has private security, but the local Imperial authorities of course insist on having their men stationed here. It's seen as a cushy job, by and large."
Great. He'd thought they were free of troopers once they got off the spaceport. Senator Mothma didn't look fazed, but she wasn't nearly as well-disguised as she thought she was. If they spotted her—
One of the guests—the man in the unhappy couple, who'd loudly declared himself to be named Hugh—looked Wedge up and down. "What's wrong?" he demanded haughtily. "Do you object to these brave men keeping us safe? I feel much more secure with them on board."
Of course he did.
Wedge bit back, "Do they do it gently? This is a holiday. I don't want to be arrested on trumped up charges."
"I know stormtroopers have a reputation for being… violent," Rabene said, cutting in smoothly. "There have been altercations before. But we endeavour to prevent them now."
"How?"
"We persuade them not to cause trouble," she said, utterly straight-faced. Wedge couldn't tell if she was serious or not, and also couldn't contain his scoff.
"Shall we move on?" she said sharply instead. He nodded, not really having a choice. At least there didn't seem to be any stormtroopers on this level, yet. "Alright. Through here is the swimming pool."
Wedge cast a sidelong glance at Biggs, just to try to commiserate with him about this, but he was still talking to Luke.
It was just down another corridor of rooms from them, on the opposite side of the deck from the lounge. The walls were transparisteel, staring out onto the vastness of hyperspace. Wedge stared at the massive cuboid of water, ripples gently lapping at the sides, in something approaching shock. It seemed like such unnecessary luxury to have this on a ferry—even if this ferry was a massive one, and they were on the level that catered to the rich.
The patterns of hyperspace outside reflected in the patterns of the water. He stared at how the light moved for what seemed like a long time, mesmerised.
"This is the swimming pool!" Rabene introduced. She launched into a long list of rules and regulations that governed the pool which Wedge mostly tuned out. Lifeguard schedules, requirements, practical information about where to find towels flew over his head as he watched the light play across the water. It calmed him down, at least.
"What level of chlorine do you have in it?" Luke asked politely. Wedge frowned, confused at the hyperspecific question. Rabene gave Luke a funny look, surprisingly intense, but she was smiling. "If there's multiple species that use it—"
"That's an excellent question," she said. Wedge didn't bother listening to the answer. There was a persistent dripping sound coming from up ahead. He frowned, and stepped forwards to investigate, scanning his eyes across the room.
It was the puddle he noticed first: something dark and congealed. It could have been oil, except it didn't move correctly; it was trickling into the grooves of the tiles and towards the pool. When he peered at it under the light, he realised abruptly that it was red.
"What's this?" he called, drawing Rabene's attention away from the conversation. She glanced up at him lightly, then froze.
What is that? she mouthed. "I'm sure that's nothing," she said. "Probably a leak from," she glanced up to the pipe it was dripping from, "somewhere. An engine room, maybe. It looks like oil."
"It's bright red."
She shrugged. "Then maybe it's hot sauce." When she laughed at her own joke, it gave the other guests permission to laugh too. "Either way, it's fine. It's nothing. I'll get someone to fix it." Her voice turned pleading, which he felt slightly guilty about. It probably was nothing. He'd attacked her so many times already because of his paranoia.
"Alright," he said, unsure how to steer the conversation back into her safe waters. "This is the swimming pool, then?"
"Yes. The refreshers are over there…"
The group drifted onwards, but Wedge noticed that Luke stayed behind. He knelt next to the trickle of liquid and squinted at it.
"She said it was nothing," Wedge said—then grimaced when Luke daubed his fingers in it and sniffed it tentatively. "It's—"
"It's blood," Luke whispered.
"What?" Wedge hissed—but before he could question Luke further, or sniff the blood himself, he glanced at the group. They were moving on again.
Except Senator Mothma. She was walking in the opposite direction.
He raced to catch up, heart already hammering from tension. "Senator?" he whispered. "Where are you going?"
She kept pace with him, not stopping from where she was going. "I'm simply heading to the refresher," she said. "Rabene mentioned that they were there, and I felt that I needed to use them. I wouldn't want to hold any of you up."
"I'll wait outside for you, then," he said.
"You need to stay with your squadron, make sure you all get a good look around. I won't be five minutes. You're heading back to the lounge, and I know my way; I'll meet you there."
"Senator, I must insist: there are stormtroopers on this ship."
"They are not on this deck. And a lone woman without an escort is less noticeable to them, anyway." She gave him a tight smile. "With respect, Commander Antilles, I must order you to continue this reconnaissance, instead of dogging my footsteps. But your devotion to your duty is noted."
Wedge swallowed and nodded. "Thank you, Senator," he said stiffly. "I apologise for—"
"No need." She glanced at where the group had already moved back the way they had come, back to the lounge. Everyone other than the Reds, that is, who were watching them in confusion. "Go."
Wedge turned around and let her use the refresher in peace. Once he headed to the entrance, he paused to glance behind him. Another person who hadn't yet moved was Luke: he was still kneeling over the channel of blood with a thoughtful frown on his face.
His gaze was fixed on where it was seeping into the pool; Wedge looked there, too. The blood billowed into the water like a cloud, until the red, then pink, tinge was so faint it could hardly be seen.
Biggs asked him several times if he was alright; Luke didn't have an answer for him. Nothing had happened to him. The blood was just really kriffing ominous.
"I'm fine," Luke said for the thousandth time, his voice a little too loud. Rabene and the other guests shot him curious looks. "Thanks for your concern, though."
Biggs gave him that suave smile. "I just hate to see a guy like you so tense and anxious."
"Are you going to offer to help me relax?" Luke drawled it with a cutting sarcasm Leia used when a guy she wasn't interested in came onto her, but he wasn't entirely disdainful of the idea. Biggs could tell. He offered him his hand; Luke took it, letting his thumb rub his palm.
"Well, I—"
A scream from up ahead cut them off.
Luke balked, letting go of Biggs's hand and sprinting forwards. The majority of the group were still in the corridor, but he pushed past them and dived in himself. The woman—a young, orange-skinned Twi'lek in a headband, the woman whose husband Hugh had been so vocal about stormtroopers—was standing just inside, a hand over her mouth.
"Are you alright?" Luke asked, scanning her for injuries. Her lekku were trembling. Instead of answering his question, she raised a finger to point across the room—to the viewport opposite.
Luke turned to look. He saw nothing—nothing but the endless whirl of hyperspace. He looked back at her, but she was shaking her head and sobbing quietly. It would be cruel to doubt her word when she was so upset.
He crept forwards, then. A flicker of white movement next to a bulkhead drew his attention, and he drew closer to it. Tried to peer around the side—although, what could be on the side of the ship in the middle of hyperspace?—but the angle wouldn't let him.
"What was it?" he called over his shoulder, as more people filed into the room. He didn't dare take his eyes off the viewport, but as he turned towards her—
Movement. Another flicker of white.
Murmurs and louder objections broke out behind him as the others tried to comfort or confront her, but Luke didn't dare take his gaze off of that white flicker, transfixed.
Before his eyes, they moved—retracted out of sight, vanished for several seconds. He stood very still, protecting thoughts that he wasn't there; no one was watching. And then, one by one, five pale fingers curled around the end of the bulkhead. Five human fingers, from a human hand—apart from the fact that each one sported a claw the length of his thumb joint.
"It was a monster," the woman said behind him. It jerked him away from the pounding of his heart; he turned to face her. "I came in and saw him scuttling across the viewport. Wearing a lot of black, with this terrible, terrible face—"
"That can't be true," Biggs interjected. When the woman looked devastated, he offered a reassuring smile. "I don't mean to upset or disbelieve you—we all see things sometimes. But I think it was likely a trick of the light or your imagination. Nothing could be out there," he nodded at the viewport, "not in the middle of hyperspace."
"Yes. Loretta, stop embarrassing yourself with your hysteria," her husband—Hugh—said. She glared at him. Luke couldn't blame her.
"I saw something too," Luke said, glancing back at the viewport. Taking his eyes off it had been a mistake. The hand and claws were gone.
"You saw a terrible-faced monster?" Hugh asked incredulously, raising a blond eyebrow.
"No. I saw a hand."
"Even less plausible," he scoffed. If Luke remembered correctly, this was the same man who'd snapped at Wedge earlier for his very valid concerns about stormtroopers. Good. He already disliked him, then. "Her fear made you imagine something terrifying, so that's what you saw."
"I think—" Luke said.
"That's enough," Rabene cut in. She laid a hand on Loretta's shoulder. "Are you alright? Can you calm down for me?" Loretta shook her head. "Come on, look me in the eye." After a moment, she did. "Breathe with me for a few moments. Calm down for me."
Miraculously, the sobs started to fade.
"There was nothing there, I'm sure." Rabene looked from Loretta to Luke, her voice firm. "There was nothing there. There's no shame in a vivid imagination."
Luke swallowed his pity, knowing he wouldn't want to be pitied in this situation, but he couldn't stop his mind from wandering—and wondering.
He hesitated. Loretta was already relaxing, clinging to the certainty with the desperation that fear could give. Had they imagined it? He had been searching for signs of vampires since he set foot on board…
He nodded. "There was nothing there," he conceded.
There had definitely been something there. He just didn't know what.
"I was impressed at how quickly you sprang into action to help Loretta when you heard her screaming," Biggs said with a smile. In the flurry of activity after their return to the lounge, they'd thankfully got her settled down on one of the sofas. Rabene had finished her tour and left, looked unnecessarily exhausted.
Luke leaned against the empty bar and smiled back, trying to look casual. "What else was I going to do? Roll my eyes the way her husband did?"
"What a bastard he is," Biggs agreed. "But still. You could have. You didn't." He lowered his voice and leaned closer. "Did you really see something?"
Luke opened his mouth to talk about it—to tell Biggs about the clawed hand, his suspicions about the monsters on the ship, how his heart was thundering in his chest—but as Biggs leaned forwards, his gaze caught on his navel, then on his lips, and stayed there.
"Nothing," he said haltingly. "It was… nothing."
Biggs raised an eyebrow, but he clearly knew what was distracting Luke; a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Nothing? Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Biggs glanced over his shoulder, at his coworkers where they were congregating around Wedge on the opposite sofa. One of them smirked at Biggs, giving him the thumbs up, while Wedge gave a careful nod, glancing at the door. Biggs turned back to Luke.
"You sure I can't convince you to tell me?" he said.
The fact that Biggs, despite his cavalier attitude and easy charm, was down-to-earth enough to check that he was off duty before getting involved in this was almost painfully attractive.
When they kissed, it was in the arcade, away from prying eyes. Biggs started as Luke shoved him up against the glitchy flight simulation game they'd both played in their backwater farming towns and smiled against his mouth when their faces collided. Luke was nineteen, but this was far from the first time he'd made out with, or even had sex with, someone. He knew what he was doing.
On Etesun, in a town dogged by eternal sunlight, it was hard to hide things in shadows unless they were in a—literally—underground bar. It was one of the few methods of teenage rebellion he'd been able to not just keep a secret from his father, but revel in without guilt. He wasn't endangering himself like this. He was just having fun.
Biggs's hands ran up and down Luke's back, before gripping his shoulders tightly, his fingernails digging in through Luke's thin shirt. They shifted and thumped against each other with each graceless movement for several long seconds. Luke could feel his blood pumping in his head, his chest. Biggs pushed him back, away from the simulator, and moved away from his mouth to plant a line of kisses down his neck instead.
For a moment, Luke felt a flash of panic. Vampires, the most forefront thing on his mind even now, targeted the neck for feeding and turning; he'd heard that in his father's stories. If Biggs—
But Biggs wasn't a vampire. He knew that. His skin was hot and sweaty against Luke's as Luke fumbled for the neckline of his black top, his breathing laboured, his pulse pounding against Luke's fingertips when he trailed them over his neck. Despite his suspiciously alluring charm, he was as human, raw and imperfect, as they came.
The thought gave him a thrill, though, of the risk inherent to getting too close to anyone here, of the setting and the ship they were choosing to do this on. Perhaps this rebellion wasn't as free of danger as he'd always told himself. It only made it more exciting as Luke pulled off Biggs's top and let him fiddle with the buttons on Luke's shirt, managing to undo one, two, three, before they kissed again and stumbled deeper amidst the games of the arcade.
They hadn't even turned the light on when they entered; only the glowing lights of the machines illuminated the scene. Luke's gaze roved over Biggs's chest, the contours flashing red, orange, blue as they shifted angle. Biggs stepped towards him again, his hands reaching for Luke's face, cupping his neck; Luke stepped back so that Biggs had to follow, smiling into his palm, and stepped back again—
The flash of warning in the Force came too late. He tripped over something large and squishy on the floor; it sent him sprawling over a blinking machine that read Pallie Crash, blinking pink against his eyelids. He cursed.
Biggs did too. "Kriff, are you alright? What happened?"
"I dunno, I tripped over something." He'd hit his head on the machine—not hard, but it stung a little. "Ugh. Hit the lights, I can't see what it is." The mood had evaporated like morning mist already.
Biggs reached over to the switch next to the entrance. Luke crouched down next to the thing, reaching out an absent-minded hand. He felt along the carpet, tracking where rug gave way to cloth, then ghosted his fingers over what the cloth folded itself around—and yanked his hand back just as the lights flickered on.
He stared.
It was a human hand.
Attached to, he realised as he trailed his gaze upwards, a body. A full, limp body, that absolutely stank of blood.
He didn't recognise the face that stared blankly up at the ceiling, nor those empty eyes. That did not make him feel better.
Biggs shouted in shock. Luke was still staring in his own private horror when Wedge and the others streamed in, shouting in dismay at the discovery of a dead body on the floor of the arcade. Snippets of conversation floated over his head—who, when, how, what, why—but all he could think to do was reach for the corpse's neck and shift the late man's clothes so he could see.
Two circular wounds, a mouth's width apart, punctured his jugular like needle holes.
"He's been exsanguinated," Luke said, shocked at the calmness in his own voice.
Wedge turned his shocked questions on him, then, another flurry of unconnected words: how, know, what, blood, scan, examination—
Luke rested his fingers lightly on those two punctures and stared at the man's cold, colourless skin.
They were here, then, he thought. It was confirmed. The dripping blood and the hand had been pretty kriffing obvious clues, but it was nice to have it confirmed. The monsters his father had been hunting when he disappeared were here—on the same ferry as him and his mother.
Had Anakin been right? Were they here hunting Padmé? He shivered at the idea. He'd just found his mother; he wasn't going to lose her so quickly. Would they be able to protect her?
But the most important question drowned out the others, when he let it:
If they were here, would his father be as well?