Galaxies Apart

Twenty

The Privateer was not a luxury liner. It would win no design awards nor beauty contests. It was not especially comfortable to live in or nice to look at, from the inside or out. The whole line was now out of service in favour of bigger, more spacious models with an entire observation deck.

Luke's head and hands pressed against the cold metal bulkhead as he maintained his motionless position, his forehead pressed against the floor, his body pointing straight up to the ceiling.

When the ship entered hyperspace the faster-than-light field wrapped so close that they bled all excess heat. All excess heat. Many models of starship had introduced independent heating to counteract this effect, but there was no such system on the Privateer.

He'd had it removed.

"Good," Yoda said approvingly. "Improving your self-discipline is. Progress you make, quickly."

Luke ignored the words, as good Jedi should. So far Yoda had been proving himself most keen to subject Luke to the kind of physical twistings and turnings that Luke felt certain his fragile and puny mortal body had never been designed for.

He had been like this for ninety-four minutes. That was another Jedi trick he'd picked up; an internal chronometer that had yet to be wrong by anything more than a heartbeat either way.

"Away, let your mind go," Yoda prompted him. "Things you will see. Places. People."

This was the tricky bit. Repeatedly they'd tried this on Dagobah, and it had always ended in failure. Yoda despaired of ever teaching him how to clear his mind. How could he? How could he just reach inside himself and rip out all of the anger and the injustice and the things he'd done to pay for this ship and...

...forget...

forget

He was home. In the planet furthest from the bright centre of the universe. Far from the homestead, far from Uncle Owen and Aunt Be

smoking corpses

ru and the farm on which he'd grown up. He was far beyond the Dune Sea, if the position of the twin suns was anything to go by. At first that was all he could see, just the blinding sunlight of a Tatooine day, and then his brain seemed to paint in the rest of the details, slowly.

He felt himself speak, in strange words. Words not his own.

"You know I think my eyes are gettin' better," he said. "Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big light blur."

"There's nothing to see," a voice responded. It was familiar. Luke turned. It was his own voice, because the person speaking was him, and yet not him. He looked at the young man, so full of confidence and easy power, and

hated him hated him HATED HIM

wondered how he could ever have become like him. The other Luke spoke on. "I used to live here, you know."

More details sketched themselves in. Chewie. Guards with sticks. The skiff they were occupying settling to a halt over a pit in which lurked something Luke and Biggs had swapped breathless tales about as boys between chores. The Sarlacc.

All hell broke loose. He felt himself pushed, grabbed a stick and tried to defend himself as best he could half-blind. Why so blind? What had happ

the slam of the carbonite chamber and Leia's face, Leia's tears for him as she told him she loved him

ened to his eyes? He watched the other Luke stand proudly with his hand aloft, managed to make out a droid - was that Artoo? - firing something compact and cylindrical into the dazzling sunshine. A lightsaber.

Halfway to Luke's expectant hand, the saber changed direction and landed in the hands of a woman with a small yet deceptively powerful frame.

"Bad luck, Skywalker," she grinned.

Blaster fire rained down on Luke, left smoking holes in his body. He staggered backward, his last expression one of almost comical surprise

NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS

as he lost his footing and

I

tumbled into the maw of the

am

Sarlacc, swallowed in an

your -

instant, digested in an eternity...

"Concentraaaate!" Yoda screamed as Luke tumbled from his position, taking the Jedi Master perched peacefully on the soles of his feet spilling with him.

The sweat covering his calves and thighs froze painfully on contact; he sucked in a breath and held it, getting to his feet and rubbing where the perspiration had solidified. "I'm...sorry..." he apologised, his mind still reeling.

Yoda regarded him with such keen intelligence at that moment that Luke felt some small measure of shame that he had ever doubted this being. Luke got the distinct impression that, had Yoda felt the need, he could have stripped Luke's mind to find the answers to any questions he wished to ask.

He didn't.

"What you saw..." he said instead, "discuss it, you do not need to. A useful gift, to see the future is. Use it wisely. Come to me with your questions when ready you know you truly are."

He hobbled from the room, leaving Luke alone.

The lightsaber-stealing woman had been Mara Jade. She was the reason they were taking such precautions before arriving at their destination. If Yoda was wary of Mara Jade discovering their destination, then why the hell invite her? She intrigued him, sure, but so had the Krayt Dragons. He wasn't planning to room with them anytime soon.

He'd felt stronger presences in the Force than hers - but sensing her Force powers was like mistaking the insect for the hive. The mark and the mind of the Emperor was an ever-present within her, invading her, using her almost constantly.

Somewhere inside he seethed at that. Not Palpatine, exactly…but the calm acceptance of Mara at each violation.

And now, he'd been forced to witness her casually betraying him and condemning him to death. The message was clear. She was not to be trusted.

But what had he heard at the end of the vision?

Try as he might, he couldn't reform the words. They slipped between the grasp of his memory, as immaterial as fog, vanishing as quickly as he tried to focus on them.

He would get answers. He was sure of it.

So why didn't that make him feel better...?

---------------------------------------------------------

Bakura.

Madine hoped that as many of the population as possible had evacuated whilst there was still time.

Not so long ago, the planet had been a beautiful world of oceans and seas and mountains. The Cherocera range had the honour of being the most perfectly circular set of peaks of any inhabited planet in the Empire. The aquatic species on this world had provided the upper-class Imperials with countless delicacies; a small portion of one plate would have accounted for his life savings.

So they said.

Now it was painful to stare at the surface. Bakura had resisted the Ssi-ruuk invasion with everything at their disposal. Isolated and ambushed with only a local fleet to call upon, the locals had fought the aliens tooth and nail for three bloody and stubborn weeks.

When their capital ships had been mortally wounded each and every one of them had gunned full throttle and rammed themselves against a Ssi-ruuk vessel of equal size. Each and every one of them. The Ssi-ruuk simply could not grasp the logic of that sort of sacrifice.

Madine had never subscribed to the humanist doctrine of the Empire. As an undercover operative he'd quickly seen that 'alien' species could not only be as ruthless and as cunning but they also tended not to be so cruel as his own superiors.

In his opinion it the resistance against 'invasion' by these so-called inferior aliens had contributed to sowing the seeds of discontent among so many of his peers in the Navy. With Grand Admiral Thrawn's meteoric rise, he'd felt genuine hope that times might change inside the system.

Not likely now, he lamented. Partly due to his own machinations the Grand Admiral had been dealt a humiliating defeat which would surely cost him his rank, if not his life.

Privately, Madine would have much rather taken down someone like Tarkin or even Vader himself. Still, he wasn't going to shed too many tears for Thrawn's white uniform, especially as the destruction of his career had mirrored the rebirth of the Rebellion, housed on this Death Star.

The Alderaan.

Well…the Palpatine had hardly been an appropriate name for a ship of liberation and freedom, was it? The Rebel leaders had settled on a name which would strike fear into the heart of the Empire. Personally Madine suspected that the chambered superlaser and the immense reactor core would do the trick perfectly well without the sentimental title.

Certainly Ackbar hadn't decided on it. The gravel-toned commander was currently instructing the Ssi-ruuk flagship on where to dock. Madine was invited to the meeting; he wasn't about to miss it and let those reptilian slimeballs away with anything.

As soon as this alliance was over, and if they were triumphant against the Imperials…he was going to follow Imperial protocol to the letter and stick it to the Ssi-ruuk where it hurt, then twist it to stop the blood from clotting.

With the acquisition of the Alderaan, all that was now needed was a destination. A rendezvous point. They needed a place to begin the retaking of the galaxy, to start the destruction of the Empire.

They needed, in short, somewhere in space and time the Empire would never believe, or at least admit to the galactic population, that they were vulnerable to attack.

Victory Day.

The battle for the galaxy would begin at Endor.

---------------------------------------------------------

From where Vader stood the depth seemed to be endless. A narrow platform, suspended by the flimsiest of frameworks jutting from the main body of the processing works.

Why? Why in eternity, why in the Force was he here, of all the places in the galaxy? The Dark Lord of the Sith, terror of countless worlds, standing on a mining platform in Cloud City of Bespin.

This place had it, though. A connection with him.

Vader's hand went to his lightsabre, attached securely to his uniform. He wanted to wield it, to fight with it. The urge was overpowering. Had Governor Calrissian chosen that moment to 'check' on his esteemed visitor he may have ended his greeting with less limbs than when he began.

So close. Yet he wasn't here, nor anywhere near. Wherever the son of Skywalker currently resided, it was out of his range.

Vader experienced the usual primordial surges when that name passed through his consciousness.

Could it really have been so long ago?, Vader wondered joylessly.

The mining apparatus ground to a halt around him-a sure sign that Calrissian had located him. Vader determined to relish his last remaining moments of solitude. He felt so tired, suddenly.

Even the thought of utterly destroying Calrissian's patently obvious illegal operations here when he was finished failed to inspire him as once it might have. What was a small-time crook and a backwater planet like Lando Calrissian and Bespin to him? Would the governor ever pose a real threat to the Empire?

I would have protected you, my son.

He lied to me. He told me she was gone, and you with her as far as I knew. And I howled and never stopped howling, though I fell silent. Every life I took since I took to quiet that howl, and none of them worked.

Did she think that I was incapable of protecting you from the Emperor? Did she think that to me my Master was more important to me than my own child, my own precious heir?

So many questions. But those would forever go unanswered. She had been taken from him years ago. Only one person could provide him with solace.

"Lord Vader, sir!"

Lando Calrissian's voice. He turned back from the abyss.

The furtive governor skated nervously to him. "Ah, there you are. We were becoming a little concerned as to your whereabouts. We do have some rather…unsociable types here in Cloud City, I'm afraid."

Vader began the journey back under cover. "Your concern is touching," he returned with bored acidity, "but I think I would be quite safe."

Lando kept pace, always a respectful half-step behind. His timing was impeccable. "Are you planning on departing for the Regatta earlier than planned, in light of recent events, Lord Vader?"

Vader stopped in his tracks. "Recent events?"

He had cut himself off from contact with the Empire to help him meditate on his destinations, believing it hardly likely that the dominant force in the galaxy would fall apart in the space of a few days.

Realisation dawned on Calrissian's face. The man went pale. "You haven't heard."

"Enlighten me."

Calrissian looked as if he were about to faint. "We'd better get you to a comm station," he said weakly.