Galaxies Apart

Thirty Three

"Dropping out of hyperspace in twenty seconds, sir."

Tarkin's grip tightened on his command chair. "Inform the Fleet to spread out around the planet."

The helmsman confirmed the order and hurried to obey. Wisely, he had caught the mood of intensity. Today would not be a good day to annoy Grand Moff Tarkin.

"Sir, we have an incoming transmission from Coruscant."

Tarkin felt a ripple of silence, an inversion of noise, course through the bridge of the Death Star. Though none had shifted their position physically, he was acutely aware that the attention, the trepidation of each and every bridge officer was now focussed on him.

Rumours had been spreading...

"It's Coruscant orbital control, sir," the navigational officer went on. "Merely confirming our approach vector."

A collective breath escaped the lips of all assembled, including Tarkin's, though he'd rather have been fed feet-first to rabid mynocks than have admitted it.

"Moff Lursa's fleet has adopted their designated approach vector, sir," helm informed him. "The remainder of the Fleet is falling in behind us as you ordered."

Led by the Death Star, the Imperial fleet was indeed fanning out in the Coruscant system. To the observer it would have looked innocuous enough; a large collection of huge ships merely giving each other room.

In actuality, each of the Fleet's capital ships was sidling up against a strategic defensive position. Come the time, come the signal, they would be poised to strike with lightning speed against their own troops.

Tarkin glanced upward at his command chair's newest addition and smiled. And the sweetest part, my 'Lord', he thought with some relish, is that you will never see it coming.

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

"You're curious about me," Luuke stated. He was exploring the extent of the Throne Room with apparent interest whilst Palpatine remained placidly seated on the throne itself.

"Is that a question?" the Emperor replied.

Luuke was about to speak when a transmission interrupted him. "Master...the Imperial Fleet has entered the system."

"Excellent," Palpatine replied, a strange look of satisfaction on his face. "You have your orders, Captain. I expect them to be carried out as befits a man in your position."

There was an almost audible gulp of air from the other end of the audio transmission. "Yes, Master," the man replied.

"They're not curious about the squad of dead troops outside?" Luuke asked, vaulting easily in a series of casual yet spectacular bounds across the expanse of the Throne Room until he was no more than ten feet from Palpatine once again.

"Hardly," Palpatine replied. "I had told Palace staff to expect it, after all. I imagine the bodies have already been disposed of."

Luuke cocked his head to one side. "You knew I was going to kill them all?"

"I would have been disappointed in you otherwise," Palpatine replied, seemingly surprised at the question. "There are always more stormtroopers, my young apprentice. But I believe we were discussing you, not me."

"Yes. I-"

"You are a clone. Created, I would guess from the level of complexity, using the Spaarti cloning facility I located on Wayland. From our earlier conversation regarding the original timeline of events, I would assume that some years after my death, my facility on Wayland was called into service and that you were created as part of some scheme to eliminate your..." the Emperor smiled, "...other half."

Those yellow eyes and pallid skin bored holes into Luuke's skull, seeming to suck the oxygen from the room.

"Close?"

"The stories of you are true," was all Luuke could muster in reply.

"I try not to disappoint," Palpatine said softly. Danger and warning lurked behind every word this man uttered. "But please, feel free to fill in the gaps..."

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

They should have killed him.

He saw it behind the eyes of everyone who talked to him, at him, about him like he wasn't there, those who mouthed platitudes and shivered as he walked away and said isn't it strange? the poor thing! and they're so alike! poor, confused thing!

He had been created as the last throw of the dice by a madman - a cloned madman, naturally. Grown in a tank, shielded from the Force, hidden, and unleashed upon his target with no free will of his own, his infantile mind completely taken over by the crazed intellect of Joruus C'boath, hellbent on the destruction of Luke Skywalker and determined to the point of insanity to gain an apprentice to tutor in his own dark image - whether that apprentice be a clone himself.

He had fought Luke, the original Luke, and...his memories of those early days were so fragmented, so myriad...he had lost the fight, not to Luke, but to Mara Jade. She had the chance to strike him down, and instead she'd merely incapacitated him, cut off his lightsaber hand. He had blacked out - not from the pain, he knew, but because with the loss of his fighting hand Joruus had promptly realised he was useless and had simply withdrawn from his mind. Empty, vacant, that shell of a mind had simply closed down without its pilot.

Poor thing.

The taste, smell, feel of bacta was all he could remember for the next eternity, as if finally he was being born a proper person. But he was no child. He was a perfect copy of a legend, and when his wounds and his mental scars had finally healed and Luuke Skywalker emerged from that bacta tank, it was that mirror image who met him, Leia Organa Solo and her husband with him.

He had been watched. He had been considered a high security risk. Though C'boath was long dead, memories of the capabilities of Dark Jedi Masters were fresh in the head of every Alliance general still. His movements had been restricted to the Coruscant facility he had been reborn within. Even as they worked to educate him, to teach him how to read and write, they had watched him day and night for signs. There were some, he knew, who would have happily made him vanish, lest he be harbouring any last vestiges of Joruus C'boath's twisted mind.

But Luke...Luke had fought for him.

Luke had approached the New Republic Senate. Luke had argued fiercely with the politicians for his rights. Luke had reminded those cautious souls within the military that what they had found on Wayland had been a blank slate, a slave dominated by the will of a monster few had been able to resist. A slave they had freed, and who now deserved the chance to exist within that freedom.

Poor thing.

And so, at the kind request of the Senate (and as a suggestion from Luke), Luuke had taken the name Ben and had emerged into the galaxy as Ben Skywalker. At first he could only stand back and watch as his 'brother' and his friends helped to save the galaxy time and again. As time went by, however, Ben Skywalker grew to master his own Force powers.

Two years after Wayland, a clone of Palpatine claimed the Imperial throne. Luke fell to the Dark Side in a misguided attempt to understand the Force better. In that moment, it had been Ben Skywalker who had stepped forward. It had been Ben who had led the New Republic counter-attack to victory, who had fought Luke and made him reclaim himself from the Dark Side.

And in the customary victory celebrations that ensued, the galaxy paused to embrace and celebrate the tale of Ben Skywalker, created for evil but destined to be a force for good.

They had all been so busy looking for C'boath's influence over him that no-one had ever thought to imagine, dared to even theorise, that he would look at the galaxy and examine the ways of the Force and simply decide that he would dedicate himself heart and soul to the Dark Side.

All things being equal, it just seemed more fun.

In the years that followed, he had constructued a political career...gained the trust and adulation of hundreds of billions of sentient beings across thousands of worlds...it had all been so easy.

But he was still Ben Skywalker. Cosmic mistake.

The chance to go back to the past...to travel to a past untouched by the weakness of the Alliance and before anyone would know of his origins...it was something he couldn't resist.

Something he would have killed for.

"Why are you doing this, Ben?"

Feverishly working the consoles, the targeting software of the Control Room whirring and spinning into spectacular life around him, he didn't even bother to turn around. "Just preparing for a little trip, big brother."

Snap-hiss.

Now Ben did turn. He looked down at the lightsaber Luke was holding and raised an eyebrow, bemused. "Are you intending to use that?" he asked mildly.

"If I have to."

"Oh come on, Luke," he grinned, looking into that face and feeling the usual mixture of revulsion and not bothering to repress it for the first time in years.

Luke gasped as if struck. "That's how you feel about me?" he said, his voice hollow with shock and sadness. "I disgust you? You've hidden that from me all these years?"

Ben's mouth curled. He stepped forward, as the immense holographic projections swept through them. His lightsaber came bidden to his hand almost unconsciously. He looked at Luke Skywalker with undisguised hatred.

"I defended you," Luke said, faintly, almost as if he were talking to himself. "I fought for you. I spoke up-"

"Shut up," Ben snarled. "Just shut up with that sanctimonious prattle for once, would you? Do you want the truth, big brother? You didn't care about me. You never have. You looked at me and you saw our father. You looked at me and you remembered how you failed to save him and you just couldn't live with the thought of losing someone else. All that you did, it was never for me. It was for him. For you. So the mighty Luke Skywalker, the galaxy's greatest hero, could have another cosy little story."

Luke flinched back. "No," he said eventually. "No, you're wrong. I wanted you to have a chance at a normal life-"

"The galaxy doesn't need two of us," Ben shot back. "I wasn't interested in failing to live up to you. I was created to be your shadow self. I guess I'm finally succeeding at something."

"But you...Ben, you were the one who brought me back from the Dark Side..." Luke went on, hoarsely. He was moving backward, perhaps without even realising it, his lightsaber gradually dropping from a position of readiness.

"You never went over," Ben said dismissively. "You flirted with darkness and it scared you. Believe me, brother...those who truly embrace the Dark Side discover the true meaning of power-"

With that, he'd thrown his lightsaber. The blade ignited the moment it left his grip, spinning through the air on a lethal arc for Luke's torso. Luke was equal to the task. He parried the blow easily-

But then, that had been the point, hadn't it?

"Made you look," Ben snarled, as his fingers erupted with blue fire.

Dark Side energies leapt from him and tossed Luke Skywalker aside like a rag doll. With a thought Ben plucked his opponent's lightsaber from his grip and, controlling both from afar, suspended Luke in mid-air, bringing the blades of both sabers to bear in a criss-crossing X formation around Luke's neck.

The Control Room settled on its target. Around them, the Death Star's walls and canyons were passing through them as the immense machinery in which they stood settled on its final destination.

"You're going to change it?" Luke Skywalker managed to gasp.

"No, you poor thing..."

The lightsabers moved.

Ben Skywalker smiled as he released his grip and allowed both halves of Luke Skywalker to fall lifeless to the floor.

"...I'm going to fix it."