Galaxies Apart
Twenty Two
Vader knelt in the shuttle.
The hologrid flared into life. Rather than the usual tiny projection a huge presence was beamed. A head, partly covered in a familiar blue-black robe, failing to hide the paleness of the skin beneath.
"Lord Vader," said Emperor Palpatine.
"What is thy bidding, my Master?" Vader gave the response he knew Palpatine wanted to hear.
As was the custom, the Emperor kept his face hidden behind the hood while they talked. "I assume," he began, his words exact and barely restraining the anger behind them, "that you have heard the news."
"I have, Master," Vader confirmed.
"Yet at a time of crisis like this I find that my most trusted ally and greatest warrior is not aboard his ship nor in contact with his Navy…"
Vader let the accusation hang.
"…do you have an explanation for this remarkable absence, Lord Vader?"
The tension between the two men carried, even across the incredible distances of hyperspace commlink.
"There is a great disturbance in the Force."
"This much I know," the Emperor replied, "we have felt it for some time now. I don't see how it explains your actions, Lord Vader."
Only occasionally did these one-on-one chats ever take place. Both men found that the intensity of the other was off-putting to making constructive dialogue.
Both men had something to hide from the other, and both needed to put quite a bit of effort into fending off the subtle press of the other's mind. Now, with so much at stake and so much to hide, it was worse than ever before.
"I have seen him again."
Palpatine stirred once more. "The son of Skywalker?"
"Yes," Vader revealed. "He visits me more often than ever before, each vision stronger than the last. I must seek him out."
Memories of Mara Jade's last transmission from Dagobah flashed across the Emperor's mind. He knew where Skywalker had been not a few days ago. Soon, very soon, he would have his exact whereabouts.
But he was not about to tell Lord Vader that.
"Bespin?" he asked.
"The Force brought me here," Vader replied, and left it at that.
"I see," Palpatine nodded, "and what are your plans now, Lord Vader?"
It was a baited trap, a loaded question. Both men knew it. In Vader's mind the possible responses presented themselves.
He saw two paths before him; the first continuing down charted territory in the service of the Emperor and the second…a path riddled with unknowns, with doubt, with danger. Had he been the firebrand of his youth, he would have gone for that second path without second thought.
But he was not.
"What is thy bidding, my Master," he said again.
Behind that hood he felt certain that the Emperor smiled. "Return to your command vessel in time for the celebrations at Endor."
"They go ahead?" Vader said, surprised.
Palpatine waved away his objections. "The Alliance is as predictable now as it always was. With the bulk of the Imperial Navy amassed in one place, they will be sure to attack. We must be ready for them."
Vader considered the notion. If he understood him correctly, the Emperor was planning to draw the Rebellion out from where it hid by giving it the one thing it could not refuse; a chance to hurt the Empire's biggest and best ships, and therefore their entire base for control of the galaxy.
By creating this inevitable battlefield it would be possible to give the Fleet the best available chance to take out the Death Star, over a worthless world.
It would be battle, and that more than anything Vader ached for.
"I will be there, my Master."
A flick of the Force deactivated the holo. Vader rose from his knees, and set a course for Endor.
The Force told him that he would find his answers there.
And then, that he would die.
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The Millennium Falcon had not flown so well for years.
It was almost as if the ship sensed that its captain had a purpose once again, and responded in kind with a return to the speeds which had made it so famous.
Or at least, that was what Han liked to believe. The fact that Kyp Durron had an affinity for all things mechanical that bordered on the supernatural may have had some small part to play.
Han had developed a liking for listening to tales from through the looking-glass. Kyp related to him how his married life with Leia should have panned out - how a typically crazy move by Han in four years time would bring them to the wild world Dathomir and, eventually, to each other.
Less easy to take was the tale of how, after Han was exposed to high levels of radiation, the couple had handled the news that they could never conceive a child together.
There remained something about Durron which bothered Han. His instincts told him the boy meant them no harm, but nonetheless an itch existed at the back of the smuggler's mind about his young guest.
Threepio bustled unsteadily in some time later and offered everyone light refreshments.
"Let me fix him," Kyp asked.
Han nodded. Chewie reached out and deactivated the protocol droid. Threepio slouched forward. Han spread his hands, feeling the need to explain himself.
"We've tried to, kid. Believe me. Chewie here has been working on him for the past six months-off and on," Han added, shooting a meaningful glance at the Wookiee, "It's a normal side-effect of the counterpart safeguard; it was never meant to re-create the droid, just to save vital information the droid may have carried. You can't maintain a stable neural net on second-hand programming forever."
"Han," Kyp said gently, "I'm from the future. Plus, I'm a Jedi Knight."
"Being able to lift rocks-"
"-doesn't make you a good mechanic, kid." Kyp completed the sentence with an expression of wonder. A smile spread slowly across his face. He began to laugh, shaking his head in bemusement.
"What?"
"Nothing," Kyp held up his hands, "nothing at all."
The laughing continued. Han felt vaguely ridiculous. "What the hell are you laughing at, kid?"
"Nothing. I'm sorry…"
The credit dropped. "I say that, do I? Is that it?"
Kyp gave in. "You've been known to," he understated. "I…I work-worked with you quite a lot. Every so often when I'd mention my Force abilities you'd lose your smile and say that, very sternly. It always used to crack me up. I'm sorry, but you sounded so much like yourself then I had to laugh."
"What do you know – I do a good impression of myself," Han said cheerfully.
Truthfully, he hadn't felt this good in years. Being around the Jedi was doing him good, giving him purpose again – not to mention the fact that Jabba was now Hutt-sized chunks of meat on the desert sands of Tatooine.
Maybe if things had been different…maybe if he hadn't been stuck in this perversion of time…he and Luke might have made a good team.
And we will again. He was determined of that.
The Falcon was flying to Site Zero.
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"I have to report that, in our efforts to establish a ground base for troops and equipment on the forest moon, sir, we were forced to…er, deal with several tribes of the indigenous peoples. The matter is now closed, sir."
Tarkin looked up from his battle readiness report. "Hmm?" he said absently, "Ewoks, were they?"
The young lieutenant, sweating, glanced down at his readout. "Ewoks sir, that's correct."
"What's your name, lieutenant?"
The wretched officer let out a small resigned breath with a dejected whee. "Lieutenant Markon, sir."
Tarkin's cold stare impaled him. "New on the command crew, are you?"
"Promoted last week, sir."
"And just," Tarkin paused for effect, "how many of these Ewoks did you…deal with, Lieutenant?"
Rich scrabbled through his figures, desperately trying to save himself. "Six thousand, sir."
Tarkin drummed his fingers on the desktop for a while, interestedly observing a trickle of perspiration that was circumnavigating Markon's nose and mouth. It plopped to the deck wetly.
"Excellent work, Lieutenant. Feel free to use similar methods in future."
"Yes, sir!"
Tarkin watched him salute, about-face and march out with a euphoric step. A small smile invaded his normally cadaverous features. A lifetime ago he had been that young, eager and naïve lieutenant and his CO had played almost the exact same trick on him.
How he'd enjoyed having that old bastard executed.
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The shuttle was crowded with troopers en route to Endor. One sat alone.
He heard every whisper that followed in his wake, partly due to his excellent ears and partly because the perpetrators wanted to be overheard. All of them, more or less, muttered the same thing to each other.
There he is.
That's him.
The big-headed alien who lost us the Death Star.
It's his fault we're back at war.
Humans are better. Just like Palpatine always said.
"Hey!" a voice called.
Thrawn's red eyes narrowed to slits. He turned slowly to face this latest speaker, a burly human who filled out his infantry uniform to overflowing.
"Can I help you?" he inquired politely.
The shuttle had a main access corridor barely wide enough to allow single file procession. To each side, the stormtroopers and minor officers occupying the troop benches began to fill the air with hooting and yells of encouragement as the giant lumbered forward.
"Yeah," the giant eventually replied, when he was within grabbing distance of Thrawn. A leer appeared on his face. "You can go back to whatever miserable little planet you crawled from, you alien scum."
The watching crowd roared their approval.
"Thought you were good enough to push us humans into second place in our own Empire. You didn't look so smart when the Rebels made off with the Death Star, did you?"
Another roar. Waving one huge hand for silence, the thug stabbed a finger from the other into Thrawn's face.
"What have you got to say for yourself now, you red-eyed freak?"
More hooting. A chant of freak, freak, freak began from the back of the transport. The stormtroopers used their blaster rifles to drum the rhythm on the deck of the tiny ship.
In the middle of it all the elected spokesperson for all those assembled stood and conducted the cacophony of hate.
Thrawn's mouth moved. His response was completely inaudible in the frenzy. Realising this, the giant bellowed for silence and got it without question. The transport was now as quiet as it had been noisy.
"Say it again, freak."
"I asked, can I help you?"
The giant rocked back on his heels, as the crowd reacted with boos and jeers. A component of blaster carbine sailed across the ship and impacted on Thrawn's ear with a crack. He flinched, and recovered.
"Quiet!" screamed the spokesman.
Yet again a hush descended, as he leant forward until he was nose to nose with the former Fleet Admiral.
"Can you help me?" he repeated. "I think you can. You see, I'm from a world of humans only and I'm a little curious about you animals…" he waved an angry palm at the hoots which went up, "…and I was wondering what you look like from the inside compared to real people. So I was thinking of cutting you up and taking a peek for myself. Is that OK with you, freak?"
The crowd froze, waiting for Thrawn's reaction.
The Commander's eyes glittered with crimson fire. His blue-black, cool skin made for a startling contrast. Only a very few times in his career had someone underestimated him, usually because stories tended to circulate pretty quickly.
It seemed they'd been forgotten. It was time for them to be re-learned.
"Come and get me," he hissed.
The crowd roared its approval. Battles between the lower ranks were common on such journeys, as the boredom and the stifling heat began to take their toll.
The Empire encouraged such conflicts; it worked to weed out the strong from the weak early and effectively. What the tests in training failed to spot, the process of working yourself up the lower ranks of the Imperial Navy usually soon highlighted.
Humans went in one end. Stormtroopers came out the other.
The giant smiled crazily, and roared, "I'm coming, freak!"
Before he could move Thrawn frowned in puzzlement. "But what I don't understand," he said, shaking his head, "is how you expect to fight-"
A lot can happen in one second. Lovers can make it last for eternity, so it goes.
Experts in martial arts can make a heartbeat stretch for much, much longer than that.
Thrawn's hand blurred.
"-with a cardiac problem like that," Thrawn finished, as the giant toppled over onto the deck with a wet crunch, dead long before impact. Beneath his prone body the floor of the shuttle was already staining dark with blood.
Over the incredible, stunned quiet of the transport Thrawn glanced down at his left hand. He straightened his arm.
The stormtrooper who moments ago had felt brave enough to hurl a blaster carbine at Thrawn's head cried out in pain and terror as a human heart impacted the side of his head and exploded messily.
Thrawn sat down.
The shuttle flew on, Endor looming larger with every passing second.