"So, what do you think?"
"Bail, it's…" Emily shook her head, struggling for words. Senator Organa's smile edged from pleased to a little smug. "It's huge!" she finally burst out, moving back a bit just to take it all in. "Where do you even keep that thing?"
"Well, it's in almost constant use."
"Really? Even here on Coruscant?"
"Oh yes, especially here. Many friends and colleagues within the Senate often enjoy its use. Even the Chancellor has had the pleasure of-"
"Yes yes, it's all very impressive," Pei interrupted, coming up to peer over Emily's shoulder. She gave an unimpressed huff, which wiped some of the pride from the Senator's faltering smile. "I assume we're going to be making use of it ourselves, instead of spending all morning admiring it?"
"Of course," Bail said, rallying his enthusiasm. He stretched a hand out in invitation. "Please, after you."
Pei rounded from behind Emily, ploughing on ahead towards the looming behemoth that was the Tantive IV, Senator Bail Organa's own private transporter, which was currently waiting for them on one of the Jedi Temples external docking bays. After months of back and forth between the Temple and Organa's office, all of the security arrangements had been finalised, the itinerary agreed and - with Pei there to keep her in check - Emily was finally, finally going to travel through space and visit the planet of Alderaan. She'd been practically vibrating out of her skin with a nauseating mixture of excitement and nervousness for the past day; had spent hours researching Alderaanian culture and customs and had packed, unpacked and repacked the custom-made clothing for her trip around a dozen times.
"Shall we?" Bail asked. He placed an open hand gently on her shoulder to guide her forward, but Emily found herself flinching away from him with a gasp. Bail's hand snapped back, his face a picture of confusion. "I apologise if I-"
"No, it's okay," Emily said, quickly cutting him off. "It's not...it's my new skin. Since the surgery it's just been really, really sensitive."
Emily gestured with a nod towards her exposed right arm and shoulder, the skin there so new and pale and unblemished, it almost looked fake. Even something like the brush of fabric was over-stimulating, so she'd taken to wearing light, billowing clothes that kept as much of the grafted skin uncovered while still keeping her modesty intact. Mainly, she wore clothing similar to the dress she had on today; a halter-neck number that extended out from her bust in layers of soft golden-green silk.
"Oh, of course - I hadn't thought. Does it hurt?" Bail asked, and began walking towards the entry port of the vessel; a tarnished silver cylinder that jutted down from the ship's belly to the docking bay floor. Pei had already disappeared inside as they talked.
"No, nothing like that. It's just...everything that touches it feels too much, if you know what I mean?" Emily said, keeping in step beside him.
The graft had only been a few days ago, even though Pei had been ready to perform the surgery weeks earlier. If asked, Emily would say she'd only waited until the last minute as she wanted to continue training with Master Windu. In truth, she was scared about being put under and had wanted Ben to be there with her for the surgery. It was stupid - Emily knew she was being irrational; that she was perfectly safe with Pei and nothing bad would happen. But in the back of her mind, all she could think about was that the last time she'd been knocked unconscious, Emily had woken up alone in a dingy cell and had been put through things that still jolted her from sleep at night, terror gripping her throat and settling like ice in her stomach. If Ben was there...but he hadn't been. She'd stared up at the ceiling of the operating room, the murmur of Pei and Doctor Nema talking around her, and as the sedative started to dull the edges of her vision, Emily dug her fingernails into her palms and focused on not hyperventilating or screaming or both. When she was eventually pulled from the bacta tank two days later, the skin she'd gouged from her hands had healed alongside everything else.
"Pei said that it should get better with time. It's something to do with all the new nerve endings and stuff. Although honestly?" Emily stopped as they reached the entry hatch, dragging her thoughts back to the present and mustering up a smile. The bulk of the ship's hull above them had blotted out everything else, casting them both in shadow. She dropped her voice to a whisper so the Sullustan wouldn't hear her. "I only ever understand about a fifth of her explanations anyway. Sometimes it's easier to just nod and agree when Pei gets into the technical details."
"I can hear you," Pei's voice drifted out towards them from the entry hatch. "My ears are not just for show."
"Shall we?" Bail said, motioning towards the door, his eyes crinkling in amusement. The inside of the docking tube was surprisingly spacious, even with Pei already inside, leaning against a wall as she waited for them, her hands stuffed into the sleeves of her brown robe and looking like a picture of undisguised impatience. Bail hit a button, and the floor moved below them with a jolt, depositing them into an open hallway a few moments later. The inside of the ship itself was rather startling, the panelled walls were blindingly white, interspersed with dark monitor screens displaying indecipherable information in red graphs. Boxy access points jutted out from the walls every few paces.
"You've really leaned into the clean, minimalist look," Emily mused, catching the edge of a smile from Pei as they walked along the smooth grey flooring. Organa chuckled but didn't rise to the bait. "Is this a normal size ship for transporting a Senator?"
"The Tantive IV was originally commissioned as part of the Alderaanian fleet. We had need of a ship that could be adapted to a variety of roles. It was initially utilized to provide cross-species aid, defending refugee transporters, hosting negotiations and peace talks - that sort of thing." As they walked down the hall, a crewman was coming towards them from the other end. His wide eyes were fixed on Emily as he passed them, and she noticed him trip over his feet as he craned his neck to keep her in sight. Bail pointedly ignored him. "As I found myself increasingly at the forefront of those efforts, my wife and I thought it best to also appoint this ship as the official Consular vessel for Alderaan."
"So not only trying to better the galaxy through the Senate then?" Emily said, and if it was anyone else, she'd think that maybe he was bragging a little to impress her. After only a few interactions though, Emily had found Senator Organa to be a man so entirely sincere in his beliefs of the good his position as a Senator could do, even Pei would struggle to find fault in him.
"Alas, I'm afraid that with my increasing duties in the Senate, both myself and this ship have found ourselves drawn away more and more from such noble causes." Another crew member came around a corner, walking directly towards them. This one, luckily, gave Emily little more than a second's glance, before coming to a stop in front of the Senator. "Ah, Forhsom - please let the Captain know that we are ready to depart."
"Can I watch us take off from the flight deck?" Emily asked, as they watched Forhsom retreat back down the way he came. It was only through a frightening amount of self-restraint that she didn't run off after him. They were going into friggen space!
"Of course," Bail said, pausing mid-stride, "although I think you would have a better view from the dining-room. It would allow you to see Coruscant as we leave the atmosphere."
"Wait, you have a dining-room on this thing? Seriously?" Both Pei and Organa looked amused at her reaction. "I didn't even have a dining-room in my old house and you have one on your spaceship?"
"As I said, negotiations and peace-talks have been held onboard. I have found that, regardless of species, people tend to be more amenable to compromise on a full stomach."
A deep thrum started up through the floor of the ship just as they reached the dining-room. Organa ushered them both into the large oval space, the decoration inside much the same as the stark white corridors, but with fewer screens and buttons covering the walls. The entire far wall was floor to ceiling transparisteel, which was now showing the quickly shrinking spires of the Jedi Temple disappearing into the glittering grids of Coruscant. Emily rushed across the room, darting around the massive glass table that dominated the centre to press herself against the windows.
She watched as everything drew away, getting smaller and smaller until huge sections of clustered buildings morphed into little more than outlines. The further they got from the surface, the more of the weblike layout of Coruscant became apparent. It was beautiful; the skylanes creating intersecting lines that flickered molten amber light. Clouds appeared, stretching a gauzy haze over everything and then, in the distance, Emily caught the dark black edge of the horizon. Space. It grew, swallowing up more and more of the window as Coruscant receded back to nothing more than a silver sphere suspended in inky darkness. She was in space.
"One small step for Emily," she whispered to the stars crowding her vision. They blurred and she felt a trail of wetness run down her cheek, brushing it away with the heel of her hand.
"So, is this how you imagined it to be?" Bail asked, his voice coming from just behind her.
"I thought there would be more floating," Emily admitted, sniffing back a laugh. Maybe if she asked nicely, they'd turn off whatever setting kept them rooted down with gravity. She had always wanted to bob around weightlessly in the air, like you always saw astronauts do in the movies. And where was the giant orchestra? It should be behind her, bellowing out the theme from 2001: Space Odyssey. There should be dramatic drums and blaring trumpets for a moment like this. She should be carrying a flag with her, ready to plant on the first new world they come across and claim it for the glory of Scotland! Declare the rule of whiskey and haggis and men who like the breezy freedom of skirts. The thrum under their feet suddenly spiked, jittering up through her bones until it set a fine vibration through her skull that made her teeth itch and her eyeballs feel numb.
"We're about to make the jump to hyperspace," Pei calmly noted, coming up to stand next to Emily at the window.
One second, Coruscant was just a tiny grey marble surrounded by blackness, and the next, every point of light outside the window was stretched out, streaking dazzling lines of neon white that quickly began to ripple and churn. It was like being caught in the swirling vortex of a lightning storm. Every hair on her body felt like it was standing on end. It was all so surreal, but also strangely unremarkable. Emily had parsed just enough about hyperspace to know that they were currently skimming across the liminal ether, a point where two dimensions pressed against the other and all the laws of physics blurred, rocketing at a speed faster than light and travelling distances that should take hundreds of thousands of years to traverse, in less time than it would have taken her to drive from Glasgow to Inverness, back when she was on Earth. At least in a car, there was some physical indicator of motion. The subtle pull of acceleration, the juddering rumble of tires over uneven road or the sudden dip of a pothole. Here, other than the vibration that could be felt tingling through her fingernails, there was nothing. She could have been anywhere, the view outside of the window closer to a migraine inducing screensaver than the reality of physics defying space travel.
"Would you like a tour of the ship?" Bail asked, coming up to stand at her other side. "It will take a few hours until we reach Alderaan, and the view won't change much until then."
"Let me guess?" Emily said, eventually managing to pull her eyes away to meet his. "You have a swimming pool and a casino somewhere on board too?"
"Not quite," Bail replied. "But I do believe that some of the crew are known to host a Sabaac game once a week, if that's of any consolation."
"What's Sabaac?"
Organa decided it was best to explain the game as he showed Emily around the ship. With three levels to cover, the topic swiftly moved on to discussions about gambling laws throughout the Republic, including some legislation he had tried to pass and failed, in an attempt to regulate the rampantly growing industry. Pei bowed out of the tour, deciding instead to go check on MEL, who had been stowed away in their appointed cabins along with the luggage. It was well over an hour by the time they looped back around to the dining-room, with Emily's clothes still crackling with static and clinging to her skin from visiting the engine room.
"Would you like a glass of wine?" Organa asked, motioning over to the modest bar tucked into the corner of the room. He went for a familiar bottle of blue liquid and Emily nearly put a crick in her neck with how fast she shook her head.
"Oh no, I've been explicitly warned by Pei that if I get drunk on this trip, I'm on my own. She said that she'll just leave me lying wherever I fall."
"Ah," Bail said, slotting the bottle back onto the shelf. "I do apologise for not warning of the after effects of Savareen brandy. It is known to induce something of a headache."
Emily raised her eyebrows. "Headache is an understatement. I nearly blacked out in front of the Chancellor. It took three days for me to taste things properly again. I honestly considered just lobbing myself off one of the Temple's balconies, but it involved more walking than was feasible."
"Ah well, in that case, perhaps it's best to stick to caf instead?"
They sat together on white seats that were severely under-padded, sipping on the weird, slightly malty peanut flavoured drink that made her sinuses tingle if she had more than one cup. Just as Emily was worried that the conversation was about to slip into an awkward lull, she hit on a topic that Senator Bail Organa could seemingly talk about with endless enthusiasm; his wife, Queen Breha Organa of the Royal House of Alderaan. If anyone should ever doubt Bail's affections for his wife, a brief two-minute conversation with him on the topic would have completely convinced even the most jaded of cynics that the man was entirely in love. He talked about their first meeting, when Bail was only a junior administrator to Senator Antillies. He praised her ongoing efforts to help keep the Alderaan culture alive and relevant, while accommodating the changes brought about by integration with the wider galactic community. He waxed lyrical about her compassion and her intelligence, her determination in promoting Alderaan's ideals of peace and unity beyond the boundaries of their own system. It was only when he started talking about their wish of starting a family, that Bail seemed to catch himself, a faint blush of colour rising to his cheeks as he realised how much of the conversation he'd overtaken.
"Did you leave someone special back on Earth?" he tentatively asked, obviously hoping to redirect the conversation.
"I've never had much luck with the whole love thing," she admitted. Emily's brother had already started referring to her as a spinster; the new title given with that strange mixture of sadistic glee and genuine affection that only siblings seemed to hold for each other.
"Perhaps that too will change," he replied.
"Recent experience says otherwise."
Bail gave her a questioning look, his mouth opening to form an inquiry, but he seemed to abort at the last minute, offering a top up of her drink instead. By the time Emily finished her second cup of caf and was trying to inconspicuously rub the itch building just behind the roof of her mouth with her tongue, a call came over the ship's speakers, letting them know that they were ten minutes away from exiting hyperspace. With the least amount of dignity possible, Emily dragged Bail to the flight deck and hovered - probably incredibly annoyingly - over the pilot's shoulder as the swirling view turned into streaks of light and then formed into a very distant blue and white dot against a field of stars.
"Alderaan?" she asked, turning to see that Pei had joined them.
"Alderaan," Bail confirmed with a smile.
It wasn't until they hit the atmosphere and pierced the fluffy layers of cloud cover, that the jagged snow-capped peaks, deep green valleys and sapphire lagoons Bail had talked so much about, finally came into view. As they swept lower, small towns of clustered buildings could be seen, broken up by the manicured uniformity of agriculture nestled neatly between huge swathes of wild grasslands and forests. Emily drank in the sight. After a year in a world of nothing but grey and glass and chrome, Alderaan hit like the first cool rain after a summer long drought.
"That is Aldera, the capital city just there in the distance," Bail said, leaning over to point at a large cluster of gleaming towers catching the light like icicles, overshadowing the rocky peaks all around. The city seemed to be perched on a mountain shelf, surrounded on all sides by a deep blue lake. The buildings themselves were beautiful; all curved lines and tapered spires, with tree-filled parks and gardens covering every inch of available space. The ship looped around the largest tower, descending towards a huge landing area that teamed with little dots of colour like shifting confetti. It was only as they got closer that Emily realised it was people - thousands of them - not just on the landing pad but lining the walkways and balconies in all directions.
"Let's make our way towards the docking hatch," Bail said, before Emily could pull her wits together.
It was only when the landing bay door opened, and the soaring sound of music and singing voices filled the air, that Emily realised all those thousands of people were there to see her. Cheers rang out as she stepped down onto pathway strewn with petals, people clapping and waving banners of coloured silk in every direction. An honour guard lined the walkway towards a raised dias, where a young woman was stood, dressed in gleaming white, her arms stretched out in invitation. Emily blinked, dazed, until she felt a warm hand in hers. She turned as Bail tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, a bright smile on his face.
"Welcome to Alderaan."
