Luke Skywalker.
From the moment I heard his name – the dying words of a Rebel who had been tortured beyond endurance – I had become obsessed with finding him. For months on end I could think of nothing else. Find him, find that upstart farm youth who had almost single-handedly demolished the first Death Star, find him before the last of the Jedi could sink their claws into him and shape him into their savior…
Find the last fragment of my past, and in that fragment, perhaps, a snatch of hope.
The Emperor knew that I would stop at nothing to locate him. And he knew that, with my son at my side, I could find the strength to overthrow him. He had to know, or why else would he have done what he did?
I remember as if it were yesterday – aboard the second Death Star, Luke a prisoner of the Emperor, myself standing at my master's side, only a spectator in the battle between the Emperor's will and my son's soul. And my son was losing, being slowly but unstoppably drawn into the pit of the dark side by his own anger.
"I am defenseless," taunted the Emperor. "Strike me down, and your journey to the dark side of the Force will be complete."
Luke turned to stare at the dark being, his face nearly mad with anger and fear. He knew the Rebellion's strike against the Death Star was failing, that his friends on the moon of Endor were in grave danger. And try as he might to deny it, he was sorely tempted by the Emperor's words.
Oh my son! I knew his turmoil better than even he could, for I had been in his place. To watch and know that those he loved were in danger, to know that perhaps the dark side could save them… Yet he did not know, as I did, that to surrender to the dark side would accomplish nothing, only accelerate the damage. I had given my soul to the Emperor in exchange for the life of Padme and her unborn child, but despite my payment they were cruelly taken from me. If Luke gave in to the dark side, he would save nothing and lose everything.
I longed to speak to him, to give some comfort, but some dark force held me rooted to the spot. The Emperor knew my mind and heart, and he would not have me disrupt his plans. I could only watch in torment as he slowly corrupted my son.
Green fire burst across the field of space, and the death blast of a cruiser illuminated the battlefield. At that, Luke lost all control. His saber flew into his grasp.
For an insane moment I rejoiced – my son would defeat the Emperor at last! The despot who had controlled the galaxy and my own soul for so long would die at the hands of Padme's child…
But a stab of fire lanced up my left arm.
The ring. In the events of the last few weeks I had forgotten about it. It remained transparent and close to invisible… yet it now burned upon my hand like fire, spurring me to some action. But what action…
My arms moved of their own volition, igniting my own weapon, blocking the strike that would have beheaded my master. The tyrant showed no fear, only grinned and sniggered demonically. At that moment I understood – if Luke killed him in hatred, he would descend down that same dark path I had all those years ago.
Luke was past reason with fury, slashing, hacking, the anger that would have crushed the Emperor now directed at me. I blocked and parried, suddenly terrified at the monster my son had become. And a sickening thought came to me – had I been such a monster during the Tusken massacre… the attack on the Jedi Temple… the destruction of countless Rebel bases? Had I worn that same expression of mad passion?
The rest… the rest is a crazed blur. You know the story, else you wouldn't be reading these words. The last thing you need is a blow-by-blow description of a battle you have probably seen waged a thousand times. No, it is what happens after that you must hear. But I'm getting ahead of myself…
Reason did prevail a few times, when Luke extinguished his weapon and refused to fight me. I would have gladly put down my own weapon then, but the painful influence of the Emperor would not leave. Strange, I didn't remember his Force-influence hurting before. It was as if his power had to fight another's influence to affect me. But he forced me on, goading Luke into defending himself, into attacking me upon hearing the Emperor's words through my mouth… the threat to turn his sister to the dark side.
The battle ended abruptly, when I stumbled and fell, unable to retreat anymore. Luke hammered at my defenses, batted my saber to one side…
Something very like pain shattered the Emperor's grip on my mind, and my cybernetic right arm, still clutching my saber, skidded away. I couldn't rise – not out of weakness, but because Luke's saber now hovered right over my throat.
"Good!" applauded the Emperor. "Good! Now strike your father down, and take his rightful place at my side!"
I turned to face my master, unbelieving. No. That couldn't be right. He had told me that Luke would by MY student, MY apprentice. He couldn't seek to replace me with my own son! And what of all I'd done for him? I had sacrificed everything to become his servant, I had sunk to the very depths of every hell imaginable to please him…
Luke stared at me, and for the first time understanding crossed his face. For the first time, he knew why I had done what I had done. And he understood all I had lost in the name of the dark side… and all he was about to lose.
He threw the saber away.
"Never," he hissed. "I'll never join the dark side." He faced my master bravely. "You failed, your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me."
The Emperor was no longer smiling. If anything, he looked angrier than I had ever seen him.
"So be it… Jedi," he snarled, curling his lips around the final word as if it were profanity. "If you will not turn… you will be destroyed."
And blue lightning enveloped my son.
I struggled to my feet, still dazed by that final blow. The ring burned into my finger like fire, so intense that for a moment I expected it to glow with the heat. As if in a dream I stared, watched, as my son writhed in torment, the lightning dancing and twisting around and through him. My master's face also danced and twisted in malevolent glee…
No. Not my master. My master would never have betrayed me. As if a veil had been pulled away I realized what he had planned to do – have Luke kill me and, in the process, gain him as a servant. He had no intention of letting me train him, just as he'd had no intention of instructing me on how to save my Padme. I had been a pawn once again…
But I would be a pawn no longer.
"Father, help me!" Luke cried in a voice ragged with pain.
A surge of power flooded up my left arm, power that was met by another force that rose from deep in my heart. I turned toward my master a final time… and grabbed him in a deadly embrace.
The Emperor writhed, bucked, spewed lightning that coursed through me and sent every nerve and circuit in my body screaming in agony. My legs nearly gave out, my heart stabbed with pain, every breath became more labored than the last…
With the last of my strength, the last of my hate, I flung my former master into the reactor core.
The pain ebbed, and with it the power. I collapsed at the edge of the pit, watching him fall. His body tumbled nearly a hundred meters down before bursting into flames, and the last of his dark power blasted upward in a shock wave that nearly knocked me off balance. I hung there for a moment at that edge, wondering if it wouldn't be better to follow him down, to end the pain once and for all…
Someone pulled me back, and I fell to my side to see Luke staring at me, eyes wide with emotion.
I do not know how long we lay there, too weak to move, too moved to speak. But somewhere along the line the ring burned again, and I realized we were in danger. I also realized that I was unable to stand, that I could never make it off the station in time…
I pushed Luke away. He had to save himself. My life was worth nothing.
He wouldn't listen, insistently pulling at me in an effort to haul me to my feet. I struggled against him, batting at his hands…
Later I would wonder if the ring played a role in it, but at the moment all I knew was a golden mist obscuring my vision, and of my conscious mind gradually slipping away.
Break…Fevered dreams tormented my mind, snatches of memory, scraps of half-forgotten events, all haphazardly clumped together like the swept-together remnants of a smashed vase. Dimly I recognized some of them as my own memories, but others… others were less clear. They seemed to come from another source entirely…
It took me awhile to recognize that other source as the ring.
For an age I lay there, completely at the mercy of my own subconscious and the ring's whimsy, jumbled images crowding my mind's eye…
…a battle droid felled by a sapphire lightsaber, a Jedi youngling petrified by betrayal and fear, a young man's scream of denial as he learned his true parentage, a fountain of molten lava bursting centimeters away…
…you were the Chosen One, Anakin! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them…
…a white horse savagely attacking a filthy would-be rapist, a knight in rusted armor charging a massive spider, a girl and a menagerie of animals fleeing a squadron of soldiers, a black dragon landing to greet a stunningly beautiful maiden…
…you stuffed the memory away for so long, just because you were afraid of the hurt. But it was a long time ago, and things – and people – change. Now you have let it out, you will heal, believe me, and be whole…
"Father?" As if from far away I heard Luke's voice. "Father, you awake yet?"
But the memories weren't done with me yet. I had a fleeting glimpse of the first Death Star going nova, of a blind man staggering through the aftermath of a bloody attack on a caravan, of Padme's look of terror as invisible hands closed on her throat, of a man and woman bearing the brunt of the wrath of a cluster of enraged dragons…
…but I did get something out of it! And now those dragons can search till Doomsday, God curse them and curse you all! Do with it what you will…
It was those last words that finally shocked me awake, bewildered, my mind scrambling to recall what was going on. The Death Star, Luke, the Emperor…
I was lying on a bunk in some sort of starship, a medical monitor strapped to my left arm. Luke was seated on a stool and watching me, an expression of concern on his face.
"Where are we?"
"On a shuttle whose autopilot is bound for Corellia," Luke replied. "I have some contacts there; we'll be safe for the time being."
Bemused, I flexed the fingers of my right hand. Luke had evidently been busy while I'd been unconscious.
"I found some medical supplies in the hold," Luke explained. "Including a cybernetic arm."
For a long moment I could only stare at him. My son… the child I thought I had lost with Padme's death… the young man who had come back to save me, even knowing full well what I was and what cause I worked for…
"You deserve better than this," I told him. "Than a life on the run, as a fugitive…"
"I'm not leaving you," Luke said fiercely. "I'm not going to lose my father again." His mouth took on a stubborn set that I knew all too well. "I'll go back to the Alliance someday, but I have to help you first."
He made it sound so simple, didn't he? But we both knew that I was the galaxy's most wanted man now. With the Emperor dead and the Empire in chaos – for Palpatine hadn't bothered to name an heir to the throne – the only place for me was in a jail cell on death row. And if Luke chose to harbor me as a fugitive, he could very well put his place in the Rebellion in jeopardy.
"Go back," I urged him. "Back to your friends. They need you more than I."
"I've already sent them a message," Luke replied. "Leia knows about… us. She says she understands. And she's promised to keep quiet."
I smiled beneath the mask. "She's your sister," I said. "Your twin."
He smiled. "Is she… like mother?"
My own smile faded as memories of Padme returned. At the very end she had rebuked me, telling me that she could not follow me down the path I had chosen… and in my anger, I had killed her and nearly killed the children she carried. And I had further brutalized my children – her children – our children… torturing Leia on the Death Star… dismembering Luke on Bespin…
"Not now," I protested. "I will tell you more of your mother later… but not now."
He nodded. "Okay."
I clasped his hand tightly. Oh, my son… so quick to forgive, so quick to love, to trust…
An alarm chimed, interrupting our moment together.
"We're emerging from hyperspace," Luke told me, as if I were a child that had never heard that sound before. "I'd better go land us so we don't make a crater coming in."
His attempt at humor fell rather flat, but at least he tried.
When I disembarked from the shuttle, leaning slightly on Luke for support, I saw we had landed in the wilds of Corellia, some distance from any civilization. It was just dusk on this part of the planet, and mist was beginning to curl around the young trees that marked the edge of the forest. Looking deeper, the elder trees were visible, their branches more bowed and their bark shaggy with moss. Deeper still, darkness reigned, and such darkness was slowly bleeding out to encompass the rest of the land.
"We can always spend the night in the shuttle," Luke suggested.
I shook my head. I had been around technology for so long. For some reason, I wanted to spend some time in the company of the natural world. "Here suits."
Though Luke maintained that I needed my rest, I insisted on helping him set up shelter for the night and carrying supplies out of the shuttle. I paid for my stubbornness later, when my still-battle-weary body finally had enough and I spent the last of my energy sitting heavily beside the fire. We had a perfectly fine cooking reactor and lantern among our supplies, but a fire sounded good to us. I suppose we wanted to forget, just for a moment, that we were in the middle of a war, on the run for our lives, and pretend that we were simply on a father-son camping trip.
"Hungry?" Luke asked, settling beside me with a ration tray.
I shook my head. "I am mostly machine. I do not take in nutrition the same way you do."
"Oh." He stared at his tray a moment. "I hope we have everything aboard the shuttle for…"
"We should. The shuttle you… borrowed is the one that transported me to the Death Star in the first place."
He whistled. "Lucky for us." He turned his attention to his food for a few minutes, and while he was occupied I reached forward to add a little more fuel to our fire…
"What's that?" Luke asked thickly through a mouthful of food.
The firelight had reflected off the ring for a moment – just a moment, but enough to catch Luke's attention. I held my left hand out a moment to inspect it. The ring was no longer transparent, but metallic and shining, not quite silver but not quite gold. For a moment I wondered how I could explain this to my son without sounding as if I were going insane – a ring discovered in the Emperor's palace, one that had fused itself to my hand, one that restored severed limbs and warned of impending danger…
I was saved from my explanation by a crash in the nearby forest.
Our heads rose simultaneously at the sound of something heavy and vaguely metallic falling among the brush and fallen branches on the forest floor. One could have dismissed it as a rock falling down a nearby hill, I suppose… except that the crash was promptly followed by a feminine voice uttering a scorching expletive that would have stunned a Hutt speechless.
Dead silence followed. I would have suspected that we had been followed in our flight, except that the ring was pulsing again, calmly but with a sense of underlying urgency. Whoever she was, she was far from a threat – if anything, she was someone we needed, someone who could help us.
"Well," the feminine voice said resignedly, "seeing as it's kinda pointless to keep hiding from you guys now…" Shuffling and rustling as she edged closer. "Promise not to shoot if I come out?"
Luke hesitated.
"She means no harm," I told him. In the general direction of our interloper I said "We will hold our fire if you show yourself."
"Okay," she said unsurely. "Please don't laugh, scream, or freak out, all right?"
"Lady, you can't possibly be that strange," Luke replied.
"Wanna bet?"
And a bizarre creature stepped into the light of our fire.
