Galaxies Apart
Five
The glare of the red giant star, nameless and worthless, illuminated Luke Skywalker's face through the transparisteel viewing window of the Corellian Corvette Privateer. He watched as a tiny starfighter spiralled into the immensely vast crimson tapestry, watched as it began to burn with a pathetic wet flame long before it had even reached the inner layers of the crushing gravity well.
It was his X-Wing. His last link to the past, and it had just completed its last, automated course.
Good riddance.
Luke turned away. Around him his modified Corvette thrummed with power, far more than his old Alliance snubfighter had ever contained. Luke felt comforted by the power around him. He found himself attracted more and more to it - the reason why he'd taken this ship as payment for services rendered to the sort of employer he never would have dreamed of working for, once upon a time.
The Rebellion was dead. Luke Skywalker was not, and the Galactic Empire was going to know about it.
One way or another, he would have revenge.
"Hyperspace," he commanded.
The Corvette seemed to contract for the briefest of moments. Behind him the anonymous red giant, complete with its extra mass of metal and bad memories, vanished into the mottled chaos of the hyperspace tunnel.
Luke wondered how he had ever done without voice control. It left him with so much time to perform more important tasks…
"ETA," he inquired, though the answer was never in doubt.
"Estimated Time of Arrival: Three point four hours," the computer's dulcet tones informed him.
He nodded in satisfaction. Time enough to eat and sleep. An hour of rest would be a welcome luxury. First, though…
"Computer: Commence Training Program Five. Seeker balls set to 200 of normal strength."
The windows in the viewing lounge slid shut. Some said the fluidity of the hyperspace conduit could drive deep space travellers mad if they stared at it for too long.
Luke knew that looking inward could drive someone mad a lot faster.
With the windows shut, the lounge was now in complete darkness. Luke felt comfortable in the shadows. He became them. His mind relaxed, and he recalled the Force techniques he'd acquired over the past few years. "Begin," he said.
A soft whirr signalled the opening of the panel on the opposite wall. The five seeker balls - advanced models, all of them - hovered noiselessly into a room unhindered by furniture. He could not sense them directly through the Force; they were without that telltale spark which illuminated life.
That didn't mean he couldn't use the Force to his advantage. He reached down-
Snap-hiss.
The darkness receded a little, fearing the blade. Luke's eyes were silhouettes in the light.
The seeker balls took this as their activation signal. Instantly they split, flying at full velocity to all corners of the room, each in constant communication with the others.
Luke had not yet moved.
Seeker balls, particularly top-of-the-range models like these, were programmed to emit high-pitched beeps when beginning and ending the training session. Within a few days of tinkering Luke had ripped this facility from the main board, along with the safeguarding programs which told the seekers when their operator was defenceless. For all intents, he was engaging them in a battle to the death.
A flash of movement, a blaster bolt zipping past his left ear, and it had begun.
For twenty minutes Luke battled. The seekers, faster and more manoeuvrable than any non-Jedi biological opponent could ever hope to become, fired relentlessly, peppering the training area with blaster bolts.
Luke, as was his custom, spent the first ten minutes simply hurling himself from floor to wall to ceiling, curling and twisting his body around the lasers, anticipating their next formation and attack plan. Only a close affinity to the Force was what enabled him to plot an impossible course under the hail of fire; any sort of distractions would have ruined his concentration.
None did.
When he judged the physical workout to be over, Luke's defensive posture adjusted in seconds. Where previously the sabre had been used only to deflect bolts he could never dodge in time, now he wielded it with purpose and precision.
Luke had discovered over the past couple of years that using the Force for attack opened up some amazing possibilities; he was surprised Ben had never mentioned the huge power contained there.
Not a movement of his body was put to waste when he was in this state. Leaping five metres vertically, Luke descended with sabre blade flashing, decapitating two of the seekers before they had time to engage their evasion protocols. Their cauterised remains fell uselessly to the deck below.
Luke himself, however, landed with much more control, bending his knees and rolling away bare seconds before a counterstrike from the remaining seekers strafed his former position.
Abandoning stealth, the seekers drove straight for him, spitting laser fire. With a mental shrug Luke pitched into a flat-out sprint, yelling with the adrenaline rush as he faced them head-on. Many of their shots simply went wide; those that did not were effortlessly pushed away.
At the right moment he leapt.
Luke's blade flashed once, twice. Two tiny explosions heralded a double strike. Cancelling a third swipe at the last moment on a whim, he instead deactivated the blade and threw out an arm, grabbed.
The last little seeker writhed in his hand, servo motors screaming, trying with all its might to turn itself around so that it could bring its forward-facing firing port and empty its laser into this insolent target.
His eyes bulged as he looked closer. This close up, the spherical seeker ball's tiny channels and grooves were plainly visible. It looked like a miniature-
Crrrccck.
He stared down at his hands in shock. The seeker, crushed beyond repair, died.
The Privateer had extensive medical facilities and a resident Too-Onebee droid he'd salvaged from a ruined Star Cruiser a few months back. His right hand, bloodied and scalded from the strain of crushing hot metal, would be healed in time. As he strode out of the gallery and into the corridors of the desolate vessel, his thoughts were grim.
Could he really have lost control so completely?
Again?
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If, the philosopher decided, you had the power to draw a map of the universe the Empire would show up, immeasurably tiny but there. It was, he reflected, a fantastic achievement. Some he knew would have dealt in generations when talking about the scale of Empire's triumph. He thought this typical of the arrogance of Imperial officers. A generation, of course, was measured and set in human years. What else?
It had been one thousand, three hundred and eighty four generations since the Empire had been created from the dead ash of the Old Republic. In the multi-faceted eyes of the Sullustan btyti, at least. Similarly not even one eighth of a reproductive cycle had passed for the gigantic renfar trees on the jungle world of Elyt.
Even the supposed galactic guardians, the exalted Jedi Knights, had revered in their little motto of 'protectors of peace and justice in the galaxy for a thousand generations'. To the btyti this would have amounted to the grand total of around thirty years.
No one was going to give humans any prizes for being modest. After all, the philosopher relented, they had a lot to be proud of. Humans had-somehow-managed long ago to seed their number on countless worlds, making them by far the dominant species in this galaxy. The process had gone back so far that, he knew, the name and location of their homeworld was a complete mystery. The first recorded Galactic Trade Pacts had been signed by humans with humans.
Human art, now. It was…frequent. It seemed the best term to use. He studied the rows of holograms with a cultured eye. Everyone knew he was a bit of an art fan. To his peers in the Imperial Navy this brought him in line for more distaste. He couldn't have cared less.
Only one opinion, in his current position, mattered in the end and thus far the Emperor had no cause for complaint. In fact he rather suspected the Emperor was beginning to find his recommendations for internal reform compelling; he'd been to more top-level functions lately than he could comfortably handle.
Vader had been there, of course. Anything else would have been bad protocol. It was fair - and also a major understatement - to say that Vader didn't like him. This in itself did not make him feel overly concerned. The numbers of high-ranking Imperials in Vader's good graces was small already.
There was a rift developing. Frankly the Imperial hierarchy was sick of Darth Vader's random homicide of promising young officers for the most trivial of mistakes. Evil for evil's sake had yet to win a space battle, in his experience.
Had Vader not been the most powerful Dark Jedi in the galaxy he would have been long, long dead. Six attempts had been made on Vader's life within the last two years alone. From inside the Empire.
With some reluctance he shut down the art program and activated a map of the sector his battle fleet was in. The Rim territories were sparsely populated and barely worth conquering, truth be told. His posting to the very reaches of Imperial space was no doubt a result of his 'alien' heritage and his unsettling views.
Still, he'd settled down well. The last eighteen months had seen forty-two combat encounters and a grand total of forty-two victories. He'd taken nine star systems and lost nothing larger than an AT-AT in the process; something of an Imperial record.
The chatter across Imperial channels seemed a little more frenetic than normal. The grapevine had been likewise fruitful of late. He'd heard rumours of a big mission, something huge and sanctioned by the Emperor himself. He itched to be back at the Core, in the thick of the action.
"Grand Admiral?"
Another man would have exploded at the interruption. He pitied the Lieutenant who tried it with Vader.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"There's a Priority signal for you, sir. You did say that if any messages came through that I should-"
"Yes, of course. Patch it through."
"Right away, sir," the Lieutenant replied, relieved. "Patching it through now, sir."
His holo grid burst into life.
"Grand Admiral Thrawn," the Emperor said. "I have a task for you."