The sleek, X-wing-like Z-95 Headhunter soared over the sands of Tatooine, speedily headed towards it's destination. It had been three days since the debacle that had let the three students of Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as the Jedi Master himself escape the planet, as well as left a number of the planet's meager garrison dead. In the distance, Mos Eisley quickly loomed over the horizon, and the small starfighter's pilot could see the faint outlines of the military base jutting out of the desert sand.
"Unidentified Headhunter," the fighter's integrated comlink said, "you are close to entering restricted airspace. Please identify yourself and divert course."
"Negative Tatooine Base," Mara Jade replied. "I come on direct order from the Emperor, himself. I'm transmitting my clearance code now."
A minute passed as the Imperial in charge checked the code; a minute that Mara passed by flying in circles over the base. She impatiently waited as the bases lone anti-spacecraft gun no doubt traced her every move throughout the sky.
"Tatooine Base to Headhunter; you are cleared to land on Pad Three," the base's commander commed in.
Mara swung the small fighter towards her designated landing spot and quickly began the landing cycle. Through the side view of her canopy, she could see several of the surviving members of the base already rushing out to greet her as a representative of Emperor Palpatine. A gray-haired man was leaving the main building, his dark gray uniform identified him as someone in charge.
Even after a few seconds in the hot suns that the planet orbited, Lt. Hujnis Gierl was already sweating. He quickly checked the bacta lined bandage on his arm as the Imperial representative opened the canopy of her Z-95. The figure that stepped out of the ship and walked down the steps that the base's ground crew had frantically placed next to the starfighter was not the injured officer's view of what a typical Imperial officer looked like. She was dressed in what appeared to be a heavily modified version of a TIE pilots flight suit; the life support mechanisms that anyone piloting a TIE fighter would have to wear had been completely removed from the suit, and the thick layers of padding designed to keep the pilot's own body heat trapped within were gone as well. She wore her red hair long, as opposed to the short crewcut that almost all Imperial pilots were required to wear, and what appeared to be unusually long glow torch hung from her belt. What struck Lt. Gierl the most about this new face was her age. She was young, only appearing to be in early twenties or her late teens.
"Greetings, Ms.?" He asked Mara when she stepped up to him. It was then that he noticed a peculiar thing about the young woman in front of him: despite the midday desert suns beating down upon her, she hadn't broken a sweat.
"Jade," Mara offered, noticing the affect that her use of the to slightly alter her body had on the officer. It was subtle uses of the Force, like stopping your body from producing sweat for a few minutes that could deeply intimidate people. "Are these all of the soldiers in this garrison?"
"Most of them," Lt. Gierl reported. "We still have about ten more in the medical bay."
"I'm going to cut to the chase," Mara said as the two of them entered the base. "What exactly happened to cause an Imperial garrison stocked with two platoons to fail to kill, or even wound a single member of a small band of half-trained Jedi?"
"You certainly have cut to the chase," Lt. Gierl mused, wondering how one so young became so business-like. "The fact of the matter is this, and you can respectfully tell Emperor Palpatine this personally. Even after the escape of the Millenium Falcon several months ago, we were denied the extra men and extra supplies that I attempted to requisition."
"Additional men or supplies can't make up for incompetence, Lieutenant," Mara retorted. "The Emperor is most displeased about what happened here, and it's he who will make the ultimate decision whether or not there is to be a 'change in command.' Get it?"
"I do, Ms. Jade," Lt. Gierl replied. "And I assure you that there was absolutely no incompetence on our part during the battle. We did our best against them, but we didn't count on the smuggler population to rebel against our rule."
"What about the local Hutt in charge, Jabba?" Mara asked. "Could he have been behind this smuggler's uprising?"
"No. He depends on the Empire keeping our noses out of certain practices of his, for a small price of course. Not to mention that he had some of his thugs cut up by the Jedi while they were trying to escape. I've seen the cauterized limb stumps of those that survived myself, there's no doubt in my mind that Jabba was on the up-and-up for once."
"I heavily doubt that Jabba was going to turn in those detained Jedi out of the goodness of his heart," Mara replied. "I suspect he would have tried to sell you them. I'm pretty sure that he would have offered them to the Rebels if they would have fronted up enough money."
"I don't doubt that," Lt. Gierl answered.
"I'll continue with my investigation," Mara Jade concluded as she reached her quarters.
The Imperial-class Star Destroyer Banesclaw blinked into existence near the shipyards of Fondor. The thirteen-year-old ship had been recently the subject of a major upgrade, making it on par with even some of the Imperial II refits that were being introduced. Yet even ten of the ships couldn't compare to the ship that was behind the red shield that protected the shipyards. Darth Vader stared out of the main viewports of the vessel as the shipyards grew ever larger in his view.
"Lord Vader," a middle-aged officer stated, breaking Vader's concentration on what would become his new flagship, "your shuttle is ready."
"Transmit my clearance to Control and tell them I will arrive shortly," Darth Vader ordered the Banesclaw's senior officer as he turned to walk out of the bridge of the vessel.
"Yes, Lord Vader," the officer said before nodding to the communications officer inside of the crew pit.
Darth Vader's sabbatical to one of his private residences on Vjun had done wonders for Vader's mind. Constant meditations had finally allowed him to accept that fact that he had a son, but the other answers to the then lingering questions had been harder to accept. In his meditations he had seen the conspiracy between Obi-Wan, the still in hiding Yoda, and the late Bail Organa; the conspiracy that led them to hiding his only child from him.
Obi-Wan. The man that he had once trusted with his life, and the man who he had considered to be both a father-figure when he was young and a brother as he grew into a man, was now one of the men that Vader hated the most. In Vader's thoughts, there was only one person that he hated more than he hated Kenobi. It was himself…
It was that hatred that fueled him, kept him in the firm grasps of the Dark Side. He was lost in these thoughts for the entire two minutes that it took him to reach the main hangar.
Vader's shuttle quietly launched from the hangar bay, it's two side wings unfolding from the top of the vessel almost immediately after it had cleared the bluish shield. Through the main viewport, Vader could see the red shield that separated him from what could be the doom of the Rebellion. "This is Shuttle AR105," the shuttle's pilot informed the controllers in charge of the shield, "prepare to deactivate the shield. Lord Vader is anxious to see his new Star Destroyer."
"AR105, this is Control. We're deactivating the shield now."
It was then that Darth Vader was granted his first real view of the colossal version of a Star Destroyer that awaited him beyond the security shield. The ship was a bluish-gray and bristling with weapons. A small command bridge near the aft of the vessel seemed dwarfed and out of proportion due to the rest of the ship, and a massive superstructure that rested in front of the command bridge. The ships 19 kilometer long hull reflected the light of Fondor's sun, making the deadly Super Star Destroyer appear even more intimidating. Its name was Executor.
"Impressive," Vader admitted to the pilot. "Most impressive." Even though he had seen schematics of the ship before, and had even taken a virtual "trench run" through the superstructure of the vessel back in Bast Castle, seeing the Super Star Destroyer with his own eyes was an awe-inspiring sight. The vessel, the first of what could become several, was one of the ultimate symbols of the power of the Empire, and thus it was a symbol of Palpatine's power as well. "Is the 501st already aboard?" Vader asked, referring to the Imperial Stormtrooper legion that he had personally commanded when he went to the Jedi Temple to personally put down their rebellion. No, he thought. I murdered them… All part of the internal battle between Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker.
"Yes Lord Vader," the shuttle's pilot informed him. "They were shipped here shortly after you left your private residence."
"Excellent," Vader responded.
As the shuttle neared the newest Imperial ship, the wings of the craft again folded up, the two wingtips coming within two or three meters of touching the central wing of the craft. The shuttle's landing gear descended a few seconds before coming to rest on the polished floor of the hangar bay. With a hiss of pressurizing air, the ramp of the shuttle descended. With a few steps, Darth Vader had officially stepped aboard the Executor. The sound of Vader's mechanical breathing was soon drowned out by the sounds of the welcoming platoon of the 501st Legion bringing their E-11's to their chests in a type of salute to their commanding officer.
"Commander CS-1138, is this ship fully ready to leave the shipyards?" Vader asked.
"Yessir," the commander reported, his voice carrying the unmistakable accent of Jango Fett. Of all of the soldiers in the 501st, he was the only remaining clone of the original source material. The rest of the unit was a mixture of top graduates from Carida and other Imperial academies as well as clones of some of the best soldiers that the Empire had to offer. "The command crew from the Imperial Navy arrived here when we did. They're just as anxious to see what this thing can do as we are, sir."
"It appears that you will soon get your wish," Darth Vader stated as he began to walk out of the hangar. "Have they installed my meditation chamber yet?"
"I honestly wouldn't know anything about that, sir," CS-1138 replied. "You'll have to ask some of the Navy personnel."
"It had better be," Darth Vader icily spoke. "We have a very important mission to attend to in the next few days. It would be a pity if I had to postpone them." The implied action that Vader's voice carried drifted to the ears of a nearby naval officer, and the thought of being on the wrong end of one of Vader's deadly demonstrations quickly drove him to action.
"Your meditation chamber was installed last week Lord Vader," the nervous officer replied. "Built exactly to your specifications, I might add."
"Good," Vader simply replied.
Lieutenant Hujnis Gierl stared at the holographic screen before him, pleading for his life. "Your Excellency, it wasn't entirely my fault! If I had more men--"
"You had two platoons stationed at your garrison, yet you only saw the need to send one of them to attack the Jedi. With your foolish incompetence you let our single greatest opportunity to destroy this new band of Jedi slip through the Empire's fingers."
Gierl felt a horrible tickling in his throat, a tickling that soon turned into a sharp pain. His breathing became irregular as what felt like an invisible hand clutched at his trachea. Breathing became extremely difficult as the "hand" slowly cut more and more of his airway off. His own two hands clawed at his throat, trying in vain to free his airway. Within a few more seconds, Lt. Gierl was dead; a victim of the Emperor's wrath.
"Mara Jade, who is the base's second in command?" Emperor Palpatine asked, watching as two aides at the Tatooine base dragged the body of their former commanding officer towards the base's morgue.
"A Sergeant Leeta, your Excellency. He's currently in a bacta tank, recovering from severe injuries suffered during the battle," Mara replied.
"Tell someone at the base to inform him of his promotion once he recovers," Palpatine replied. "And have him notified that two extra platoons are being shipped in from Carida."
"It is already being done," Mara said as she saw another senior officer walk towards the medical bay.
"I must say; an excellent investigation, my Hand," Palpatine praised one of his pupils. "Report back to your previous assignment. There has been an update to his situation."
"Yes," Mara Jade replied. "I will need the coordinates."
"They have been sent to your space ship, my apprentice."
"I will not fail you, master," Mara said while bowing before the holographic image. And if Vader does, it shall be me taking his place, Mara thought as the nearly transparent image of the Emperor disappeared from the room. Either way, the Rebels won't know what hit them until it's far too late…