19 The Epic: MUSTAFAR -AN INFERNO FOR A PICNIC

(AUTHOR'S NOTE; This material makes a reference back to chapter 2. It's hard to recall old material when it's released so piecemeal.)

Was the evening at the opera an honor or subservience?…It wasn't a new notion, but one Vader had impressed upon her, back when she was clueless and thinking their time together was about something other than reckoning the menace that was Palpatine.

Once Eva had been parked on the Star Destroyer Lacerate, contact with Lord Vader had nearly ceased. But just before her new positing as Courtier came to light, he had called her up two times in quick succession. With the first, she had retired to her quarters for the evening, curled up with a glass of spirits and charts on the Lacerate's supply manifests. The captain's posting afforded her little more than a couple of holographic messages from Vader at best - but now he was outside her very door, unannounced. Before allowing him in she glanced around at the clutter and errant droids then rushed to the viewport. The tip end of the Executor was just visible. 'Is this a good thing or a bad thing? No, a great thing or a very…very…bad thing.'

Vader filled the space and got straight to the point, as he was apt to do. "I've been made aware of an internal investigation. In the interest of expediency, you could shed light on the matter."

So it was to be one of those kinds of visits. Eva never presumed familiarity with Lord Vader. Each encounter was like hitting the reset button and she let him set the mood. He declined the invitation to sit down by her on the built in curved lounge. She reached for her spirits on the low table before her, but the glass seemed to tip over just beyond her fingers. She numbly watched the spreading puddle while fixed to her seat.

He went on, "There were irregularities on Cenigal-1 in their favorable negotiations." Darth Vader could color outside the lines, but it wasn't for every officer beneath him to carry out the same, willy-nilly. Somehow it had become apparent she'd handed the Jaanue Naya confidential Imperial contracts. What she'd done was punishable by tribunal, and in fact Vader's free reign in the distribution of justice and discipline was an altogether personal approach. But the tingling in her throat was only conjured in her imagination.

He would allow Eva the benefit of a doubt. Given that overexposure had somewhat diminished intimidation, an alternative approach was used. Vader took the seat she'd offered, then turned to lean over disturbing close. She tried to back away but the hem of her robe was under his knee, sunk deep into the upholstery. The enormous mask in her face, she realized he could be seconds away from killing her. Even the droids chirped in concern.

" 'Favorable?' " The sound came out oh-so-much weaker than she intended. "Then I take it your intel originated from the inhabitants of Cenigal-1. The contract was very much to the Empire's benefit. That will come to light with the review. The Jaanu Naya capitulated and there were no more losses on either side."

She was barely looking at him, seemingly ignoring the crisis and attempting to respond so casually. His sensors indicated another state of mind from her elevated heart rate.

He eased back in relief. The internal investigation had just begun but another development had rushed the confrontation. Now he could let this go- bury it, in fact. He could scold her and warn her not to continue such antics, while all the same admiring what she had done. But it didn't matter anymore. She'd no longer be answering to him. Eva was just the sort of idiosyncratic thinker the Emperor was trying to weed out from the rank and file, and yet he was pulling her in.

The second communication with Vader was only a handful of hours later. From the bridge, Eva watched the Executor and its accompanying Death Squadron in the near distance, wondering why they lingered. The answer came in a summons. She was ordered to leave the Lacerate to her second in command and board the shuttle sent for her. It would be the brief moment in time when she was not accounted for, fallen off the face of the galaxy. Vader knew what she wanted of him. He would reward her with part of it.

He watched her shuttle approaching, gliding down low in scorched rock ravines, skirting close to the crimson lava flows. Pilots were uniformly predictable in taking the dramatic route. The shuttle made an elegant dip onto a landing pad of his coal-black spired fortress.

He'd kept Eva at arm's length, to keep her safe…and it was just better that way. But if he'd never set her out before the Emperor, this wouldn't be happening. She was smart and tough- she could watch out for herself. It wasn't guilt that motivated him. It was something closer to loyalty. For her stay, he'd let the barriers fall and let her have her peace. And he'd try to seal her allegiance as much as reasonable with her soon to be in the hands of that manipulative bastard. He'd do his best to make sure she need never make a treacherous pact with her soul, as he had.

The familiar black outline awaited just inside the structure, and walked her through an airlock and one chamber after another towards the guest quarters. Most spaces were functional. Some had a purpose less tangible, though clearly they were not simply for show. She expected the brutalist architecture – the darkened colors and familiar Imperial designs. But there was something else, especially in the private spaces, that recalled an ancient temperament: highly wrought concentrations of craftsmanship with metaphorical meaning. There were great battle scenes depicted in the dojo's tapestries, Sith symbolism in the layout of the floor plan. Almost no furniture -nothing was superfluous. All the detail was a part of the building itself. In one steamy chamber, the molten lava stream that funneled through the lower structure was visible. While Vader was insulated and appeared, if anything, shinier and more comfortable in his skin than ever, the sweat was breaching the outer layers of her Captain's uniform.

Vader invited her to step inside his meditation chamber, a much larger space than similarly afforded him on the Executor. He remotely sealed the entrance to establish positive airflow, and turned off the lights so that only the faint glow from the indicator panels near his seat lit the space. Eva made a point of remaining by the door.

Then Vader removed his helmet. In his weak, unamplified voice- unrecognizable in its pitch- he simply offered her a glass of wine. The kind she favored, with no chastisement to her drinking. (Any ambiguity on the subject had been dispelled much earlier when he crushed her throat from half a galaxy away. She had knocked back another in direct defiance- ' He's not here, so there.' Only when she was a gasping puddle on the floor in front of the Rebels, was the sensation suddenly gone. Where did his abilities end!? Trouble was, she then needed that drink more than ever).

"Come closer." Vader had lost her - squandered their time together. Perhaps that was the less messy path taken. For an hour in the mediation chamber, Vader tried to be a normal person. The taste of the wine was acidic to his unaccustomed tongue…awful…and he swallowed down his glass whole (or rather quickly, as he was drinking through a straw since the collar portion of his mask was still intact), awaiting the forgiving carelessness it would bring. He kept her un-abashed stare, as her eyes became accustomed to the dark. She accepted the odd circumstance without question.

Vader had not kept count of the number of times he sat by while others partook in in their dining and drinking rituals. But one occasion stood out. "The Emperor used to hold a banquet for the highest officials, which I was required to attend. For some godforsaken reason, one year he ordered up a set menu of Tatooine cuisine." A sumptuous meal Vader alone could not touch. "The insult was private, as no one there knew where I came from. His effort was almost lost on me - as a slave, I hadn't even seen those fine dishes…

"I sensed a bit of envy when I first mentioned the banquet? When it comes to Palpatine, what seems an honor is not necessary so. And his slights are never off-hand. Everything he does is calculated."

Vader was at once warning her about Palpatine and allowing some insight to their acrimonious relationship. But at the time, it was eccentric rambling to Eva.

"The Empire flows efficiently when a single will controls it," he went on. "Elected office draws upon a kind willing to lie, and not necessarily the best minds…Padmė excepted. The right person with all the power, could have served the galaxy well." He paused to study her reaction.

As the enforcer of the Emperor's will, Vader was weary of campaigns that resulted in innocents being sacrificed for no great purpose. Even a man as bloodstained and jaded as himself, had to admit a basic sanctity of life. "The deaths by my hand have been many, but in pursuit of my mission." He hesitated for emphasis, " I do not create conflict to make a mission. Palpatine will take a life out of sadistic pleasure."

It was clear to Vader that Eva's attitude was to avoid conflict and waste, at any cost. She was at odds with the powers that be. "He was able to become Emperor, because the Republic was weak and in chaos." Vader's voice changed. He seemed to have greater range and nuance without the respirator. He was almost pleading, "The chaos…was of his own making."

He was inviting her into his inner sanctum…to complain about his boss. Eva somehow doubted she would ever be allowed close to him again. There was something final about his words. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim as much as they could. She studied his features -and the damage. His face was more raw than she anticipated, as though healing was ongoing or possibly regressed –luminous gold eyes, rimed in blood red. Strikingly pale skin, in sharp contrast to the indiscernible bulk of black. Though seated he was still taller than her. She eased closer, testing his allowance, seeking the sight she craved the most; emotion.

What had been handsome was now only a slight reference, lost to time and marred by a web of scars. Later, with hindsight, she would realize that Anakin was there- at once hardly him, and very much him. It was all in his eyes, a mystery of his past revealed by a resemblance. No wonder he wore the mask.

This was the one moment she would see him looking back at her. But his gaze was filled with sadness and cold. "There's a rumor floating around the Executor, that those who've looked upon your face have paid with their lives."

"There is some truth to it."

She now stood just between his shin guards, nearer to his face than his own knees. "Then I have nothing to lose."

He raised his gloved hand to firmly grip her upper arm and hold her there. He was neither drawing her in nor letting her go- so reflective of the stalemate between them. This man did not want to be touched.

If just once…

Vader was not so much entertaining her as he was 'approachable' company. For four days she was in heaven while the setting was a perfect replication of hell. The picnic overlooking impressive lakes of fire and molten rock, exemplified the irony. The burning sulfur oozed a hot stench. The acrid taste of ash clung to the back of her throat. "The Emperor 'gave' you a planet?"

"A tiny planet."

A hollow wind whistled to the emptiness, the only other sound being the TIEs that roared past- Grey starfighters against foreboding skies. Vader's distinct personal TIE sat parked with open hatch. The short flight meant that he could have her stand behind his pilot's seat, and he promised not to try any aerial stunts.

"The fumes are somewhat toxic. You shouldn't be outside for long." He dropped down a satchel with lunch packed by his attendant Vaneé - nothing special, just an odd array plucked off the mess hall line. Fortress Vader was more like a small base than an abode.

"Your graciousness… It is not necessary." She was reluctant to eat in front of him.

"Do not think of it." He assured her from where he remained, sitting atop the TIE. He was not so much contemplating the view as thinking of his past- A picnic with Padmė years before when he had been stolen away to her hideaway, and oh how he swooned.

He watched Eva perched on a rock, snacking on the foodstuffs, as content as possible. She may yet be of more use, but that was something he hadn't anticipated. And all along he had let her be, when it would have been easier to blow her up with Hoth than had been not to. In the past he would have done just that, simply because he had told her his mother's name. It wasn't that he was smitten by Eva. It was him. Something had changed.

Vader slid off the top of the TIE and landed lightly for his weight. "Do you know how the Emperor knew your gown was Nothoiin when he draped that medal over your shoulders? How he was inside your head?"

Do you know what's in my head? She so badly wanted to know.

"The Emperor is Force sensitive, as I am." (Well, that's an understatement.) "I've skirted treason with you—our discussions. Can you put up a 'wall?' You need to learn how to block off your mind- Your survival depends upon it. You will serve me better and yourself as well, if you know how…

"Stand still and do not be afraid," he ordered. With his slightest hand motion, the passing lava streams seemed to shift, and they snaked to merge up onto the incline near where they stood. "The Force has many shades, the darkest being the strongest. Do you know much about the Sith? 'Evil' is a word used by the ignorant and the weak. The Dark Side is about survival. It's about unleashing your inner power. It glorifies the strength of the individual."

Little rivers of red hot lava began to lift from the ground. "Force wielders are nearly extinct. The Sith were all but forgotten, but now we two are all that exist. I am the Emperor's apprentice, which is not the right of successor…" The lava shifted in sync to spiral around and between them both, first no higher than their knees-like a whirlwind of fire. "Weakness is not tolerated and trust is a weakness. You are far too trusting."

The molten red liquid thinned out into tendrils and they rose higher, slipping disturbingly close past her face. The hot and cool had stirred the air and Vader's cape whipped round, touched by suspended lava. It was singed but not quite catching on fire- Vader had pulled away the very oxygen it needed. No, he hadn't control of lava when he was stricken and most needed it. He had made it a point strengthen and to master control. "Gratuitous displays…as this…are uncommon." His voice lowered. "Do not let the frail deceive you." And the lava pulling into the finer threads cooled and turned to black rubble. He let it all drop to the ground at once.

Eva stood breathless and dumbstruck. The sight had burned deep into her impressionable mind — one intricate and mesmerizing enough she would call on it again and again when she wanted to bury her other thoughts. She could not have imagined him (or anyone) as capable…

Whatever to do you want of me?

'The chaos was of his own making.' Vader's words echoed uncomfortably. She struggled to put them aside as Palpatine turned to leave the opera and she followed behind. Now was not the time. Eva didn't know what he meant of Palpatine when they were spoken and she had come no closer. But of all Lord Vader had said or did on Mustafar, it seemed that was what he wished for her to take with her.