7 months after the Battle of Yavin

There had been many times when Luke had doubted his decision to come to Peralta, starting with that brutal crash-landing, but he didn't ever regret it until Juno Eclipse broke down telling her story.

She didn't collapse into tears. Eclipse was too stoic for that. Instead she simply stopped, head bowed, blond fringe falling in front of her eyes. Hands rested on her thighs and clenched into trembling fists. She bit into her lower lip so deeply she drew blood.

He'd known this was difficult for her, but the realization that her story was downright painful assailed him with guilt. Still, even seeing her in such straits, he was desperate to hear the rest. The series of twists and revelations staggered him and he was still full of questions.

He only knew what Eclipse told him. He didn't know what had happened when Starkiller confronted Darth Vader in his vault, and she would not dare guess. Likewise he didn't know what had happened in space while the battle in the Furnace raged, only that all the Rebels who'd raced to the rescue lost their lives.

But the appearance of the dark side clone seemed to answer the question about Juno's Starkiller. A clone after all, the reconstruction of a dead man cooked up in Darth Vader's lab at Kamino. Perhaps the realization that she'd loved only a simulacrum was what brought her to her personal brink. Yet Luke had a feeling there was even more she dreaded to tell.

He desperately craved the rest, but in the end his guilt overtook him and he said, "We can stop. I'm sorry."

Eclipse took a long time before she raised her eyes to his. "Thank you," he croaked.

The pain in those eyes, still beyond his knowing, forced him to look away. "I'm sure the senator will need your help. You should get to him."

"Yes. Yes, of course." It sounded like she'd forgotten about Consantius entirely. He'd arrived at Antea mere hours ago but it seemed like longer.

They rose awkwardly from the seats they'd claimed in the empty storage room. Luke let Juno go for the door first. As she passed him, he said, "I think your droid was right. Starkiller too."

She turned halfway to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"When they talked about Darth Vader. They thought that he'd once been something else, then changed."

She swallowed hard. "Yes."

"Vader… used to be a Jedi."

"How do you know that?"

"It's what I was told by my teacher. Ben Kenobi."

Obi-wan's name meant nothing to her; he felt faintly let down. "I see," she said dully.

She went for the door again. Luke added, "My father was a Jedi too. Darth Vader killed him."

That time she stopped without looking back. Very quietly she replied, "There are worse ways to die."

Then she stepped out of the room, leaving Luke to wonder what she'd meant. He could only take it as a hint toward Starkiller's fate. Did she mean that he'd been killed by the other clone? Or had something even worse happened to him? Either way he was not getting the rest from Eclipse, at least not now.

"Any hints, Ben?" he asked the empty room.

As always, Ben was silent. Maybe he always had been; maybe Luke had imagined that voice aboard the Liberty that had urged him to fly out to Peralta. Hells, maybe he'd imagined Ben's voice at Yavin too. Maybe that Death Star-killing shot had been all luck.

It wasn't a doubt he could voice to his admirers. The city was full of them now. When he was aboard the Liberty and doing missions with the Rebel fleet he got attention but nothing like this. He understood he'd become a beacon of hope for people who desperately needed it. These Peraltans were convinced they'd been abandoned by the Alliance, and then the Rebels' greatest hero literally dropped from the sky. In their place he'd have been enthralled too.

Being a hero, he'd decided, was nicer if you didn't have to be one all the time. He had too many uncertainties gnawing at him, and despite the adulation there was so little he could actually do for these people. As a result, Luke tried to make himself scarce when he wasn't doing his shift on the spaceport's perimeter lookout, listening to shells bursting by the river and watching the black smoke that always rose from somewhere in the snow-white city.

In the spaceport he found ways to busy himself. When the Rebels had seized it, its berths contained one heavy Damorian cargo hauler (partially loaded), three medium transports, plus seven light civilian freighters. A small hangar reserved by the Empire contained a Delta-class troop transport and a TIE bomber. Finally, tucked away in the corner of another bay, noted but otherwise ignored by Eclipse's survey teams, were three old starfighters.

Two of them were Incom Z-95 Headhunters, the perennial standbys of local police and defense forces. One of these Headhunters bore PPM markings, while the other seemed to have been privately owned. Both had been heavily modified over the years and then apparently abandoned, because when Luke and R2-D2 tugged back the tarpaulin laid over them he received a face full of dust.

The third starfighter, though, was the real classic. Growing up on Tatooine he'd devoured schematics and data-sheets of Clone Wars spacecraft, and he immediately knew this elegant, wedge-shaped, scarlet-hulled fighter as a Kuati Delta-7, better known as an Aethersprite. Once upon a time, he'd read, these had been ships favored by the Jedi, and when he first lowered himself into the cockpit (not dusty, but certainty smelling stale) he wondered if Anakin Skywalker had piloted a ship like this. After all, Ben had said his father was the best star pilot in the galaxy.

Then he wondered if Darth Vader, in his former life as a Jedi, had ever flow an Aethersprite, and it dampened his enthusiasm.

Nonetheless, these discoveries were a welcome distraction. When he had the time, Luke retreated to the small hangar that housed the fighters and worked them over. For the most part R2-D2 was the only assistant he needed. Both the Delta-7 and the Z-95s had ports for astromechs, and R2 was able to run very useful diagnostics on all three ships. All of them needed work before they could get flying again, but Luke noted the privately-owned Z-95 had been modified with a variety of both Incom and Kuati parts which he could cannibalize to repair both the PPM fighter and the Aether-sprite. He was drawn most to the latter and found himself lavishing it with attention. The idea of sailing free of Peralta on a resurrected Jedi starfighter had irresistible appeal (never mind that it had no hyperdrive). This was the kind of work Luke had been doing since he was a child, and there was comfort in getting back to basics.

The other Rebel soldiers sensed that this was Luke's way of seeking privacy. When they did come to visit him in the hangar they did so tentatively in ones or twos. The second evening Luke spent working on the Aethersprite, Berbar and Ferol came to visit him. The broad-bodied man looked strange leaning on the thin woman for support, but his broken leg was still settling.

"I'll be back fighting in no time," Berbar assured, though he sat on the Aethersprite's hull as soon as he got the chance. "It takes more than an AT-PT to knock me down for good."

"Right," Ferol agreed. "If I go down I'd at least want to be killed by an AT-ST. Or best of all an AT-AT."

Luke tried to join their banter. "At least an AT-AT would make it quick."

"True, but I don't want the last thing I see to be a big metal foot clanking down at me," said Berbar.

"An AT-AT won't leave you much of a choice," Ferol pointed out.

"It's a good thing they can't bring AT-ATs in here," Luke offered.

"Me, I think it's a shame," Berbar said. "I'd love to see our resident Jedi take down one of those."

Luke flushed. "I think that's a little beyond me."

"Just 'cause you haven't tried it yet. You know what I'd do if I had an AT-AT clanking over me, and I had your kind of skills?"

"This is getting very hypothetical," Ferol muttered.

Berbar pressed on. "I'd get up high. Say, a grappler or some Jedi high-jumps. I'd use my lightsaber to cut a nice big hole in its belly, and then I'd toss a grenade or two inside."

"You do love grenades," added Ferol.

"Those AT-ATs are hollow inside. Sometimes they keep troops, sometimes vehicles, lots of time extra munitions." Berbar clapped his hands. "If you can get through all that heavy armor they wear, they're ripe for killing."

"But that's hypothetical," Ferol drawled, "and it won't happen here. But taking out those AT-PTs really was impressive. I've never seen anything like it."

"Thank you," Luke smiled a little. "I'd also never done it before."

She looked at him seriously. "I'm sorry I have you a hard time earlier. I shouldn't have. I thought Alliance command had left us to die. I thought nobody cared what happened to us. But I guess you cared. So thank you." Ferol swallowed. "That's what I came here to say."

"That's what she came here for." Berbar grinned to break the sober mood. "I came to see what you were doing. Found yourself some museum pieces, have you?"

Luke patted the D-7. "Jedi used to fly these during the Clone Wars. I'm trying to get this one in working shape."

"Well, you've already got the lightsaber. Might as well fetch the other tools of the trade. Think you can really get this flying again?"

R2-D2 chirped encouragingly.

"Artoo is a dauntless optimist," Luke said honestly, "but we've been making surprisingly good progress."

"Then I can't wait to see the result," Berbar said.

"Neither can I," Ferol added with a smile. It was the first one he'd ever received from her.

The next night, Luke was lying on his back beneath the Aethersprite when R2-D2 alerted him with a whistle. That time it was Nevetts and Drasca come to call. Both of them were fully ambulatory, but they leaned close to each other nonetheless. The skinny, slightly bookish-seeming comms tech and the woman with inkvine tattoos on half her face looked an odd couple, but it was clear they basked in each other's company. Despite pangs of envy, Luke enjoyed their radiated warmth, especially since they did not mention his lightsaber, Yavin, or Jedi powers during their fifteen-minute visit. Slowly, tentatively, he was starting to feel like he belonged among these strangers.

Juno Eclipse did not come to see his work at all. This was no surprise. While Luke still craved the hear the end of Starkiller's story, grim as it seemed to be, he consoled himself with the thought that when the time came to leave this planet, he'd have an escape ship ready and it would be entirely of his own making. He might not be a real Jedi, and he wasn't certain he was a real hero either, but he could accomplish that much.

-{}-

The sight of the Mandalorian Crusader corvette dying over Breshig was so beautiful, Miltin Takel wanted to pop a capsule of glitterstim right there so he might best savor the aureate and crimson conflagration furling into space as the dying ship's atmosphere vented through the cracks in its shattered hull. It would keep burning for minutes, maybe an hour, and a spice-high would be the best way to admire its fleeting glory.

But alas, Takel was on the bridge of the Magic Dragon and indulging his habit in full view of his crew would be a sight unbecoming. There were some lines even he would not cross, so he contented himself with standing new the viewport, watching the destruction, and imagining the dozens of brazen Mandalorian Protectors who were frantically sealing their beskar suits in the vain hope of surviving their ship's death.

"Grand Admiral," his tactical officer reported, "the other corvette has just jumped to hyperspace."

There was a hush on the bridge, like they expected him to be upset at the news, but Takel kept staring admiringly at the burning ship. They'd been lucky to have been patrolling a hyperspace lane near Breshig when word came it was under attack and destroying one of the two Protector ships was a victory.

Fenn Shysa's raiders had been hitting targets all across the sector, always using Crusader Corvettes in pairs. Takel's technicians had analyzed the drive signatures recorded at different engagements and were nearly certain that Shysa was only using three separate working pairs.

They'd been industrious, hitting as many targets as they had been with only three battle groups, but now they'd have to either fold that remaining corvette in with another group or send it on minor strikes alone. Either way, it was a blow that Shysa's small band of raiders couldn't take lightly.

Takel decided to put all those Mandos in the dying corvette out of their misery. "Tractor beam, lock onto that Crusader and give it a nudge toward the planet. Let it dissolve in the atmosphere. Everyone else, stand down from red alert. Our job here is done. Congratulations."

Leaving his men to finish the job, Takel made his way back to his quarters. As soon as he was through the sealed door he began unbuttoning the uniform of his jacket. Veespa and Comara were on him like red and gold blurs, ready to help him out of his clothes.

"Oh, what a battle," Veespa said, scarlet fingers tracing his face like they were feeling for wounds. "Are you alright?"

"We were frightened," Comara added. "Those Mandalorian ships were so fierce."

"And I took care of them. They were never any threat." Takel pulled a red and gold hand off him. "I'm sorry, my darlings, but I have one private call to make. Off with you."

"Of course," Comara said quickly. "We'll leave you to it."

She tugged Veespa for the exit. The Zeltron added, "Let us know when you're done!"

"Don't worry, lovelies, I will," Takel smiled, waved, and slumped when they were gone. He pondered whether to use some spice now, as his next task might take some exceptional mental acuity, but decided against it. High-grade spice was useful for many things, but in his experience it did little for his language functions, especially when speaking Huttese.

Takel went to his comm console and punched in the proper code. His contact was not the most physically swift but he seemed to be taking longer than usual to respond. Takel stripped off his jacket while he was waited, tossed it on the bed, and was starting to reconsider that spice when the holo lit up in front of him.

"Ah, my favorite grand admiral," said Jabba the Hutt in his native tongue. "What a pleasure to see you."

Takel smirked and replied in the same language. "No need to flatter me, not when we're already business partners. Though may I say you're looking especially bloated today?"

The Hutt literally rippled with laughter. "Your praise is accepted. Though I'm sure you called me for business, yes?"

"I have, although not quite the business you expect."

"You want to expand our arrangement?"

"Call it a one-time modification. In exchange for certain services, I'm willing to increase this month's shipment of spice by fifty percent."

Jabba rumbled thoughtfully. "Name your request."

"I require a man delivered to me. Preferably alive. The situation is delicate. Inserting a team of my own is too difficult, and frankly, I want plausible deniability in case something goes wrong."

"And you cannot hire a bounty hunter?

Takel shrugged. "I would call Boba Fett, but unfortunately I misplaced his number."

Jabba chuckled. "Who is this target?"

"A human named Luke Skywalker."

"That means nothing to me."

"I didn't expect it to. He is currently on the planet Peralta, in the northern district of the city Antea, which is currently in rebel hands. The south half is in Imperial control, though you should consider the whole city contested. I understand that he is young but not to be underestimated. Supposedly, he has Jedi talents."

Jabba's slit-eyes widened a little. "A Jedi? Pah. Their kind is extinct."

So the Hutt said, but Takel knew he was calculating how much to raise the price for his services. Takel had thought about keeping Jabba in the dark about the supposed Jedi aspect, but he knew all too well how formidable those Force-wielders could be. It was better to overestimate him than underestimate.

"I have this on good authority. At the very least, he's known to carry a lightsaber. Make sure your men are prepared for that."

"Hmmm… Very well. There are ways to capture lightsaber-users. What does this human look like?"

"Unfortunately, I don't have images of him, but I have an agent on the ground who can guide your mercenaries."

Jabba's eyes narrowed. "This agent is an Imperial spy?"

"Among the Rebel army, yes. The agent will identify Skywalker so your team can capture him."

"In a warzone, no less?"

"Indeed. Also, Peralta is predominantly human, so your mercenaries should be human as well."

"I have plenty of human servants. Your race breeds like maggots on a corpse." Jabba's fat tongue lolled out. "Is this Skywalker desired by you, or the Empire?"

The grand admiral spread his hands. "One and the same."

"Ah, I smell politics. You call Hutts conniving, but I've never seen beings so eager to slit each other's throats."

Takel smirked. "We are but humans, O Bloated One. Would that we were Hutts, without stringy necks meant for cutting."

Jabbo snorted. "I do like you, Grand Admiral. Other Imperials are such snobs, even when they're taking bribes."

"It's their defense mechanism, dear Jabba. They're ashamed to be doing it."

"And you are clearly not. Well, shameless admiral, I am interested. However, for such an unusual task… I will require more than that. Double the monthly allotment."

Takel knew he'd get to bartering. "Sixty percent."

"Double," the Hutt said, adamant.

"Seventy, paid up front. If you get me Skywalker, I will also double my next order of sansanna."

"Double? Ah, how gluttonous."

"Thank you. Do we have a deal?"

"Consider it done."

"Excellent. It's a pleasure doing business with you, Jabba."

"And you, Grand Admiral. Until next time."

The holo winked out. A shudder ran through Takel's body. There, it was done. Governor Vancon was still nagging him about sending more troops to Peralta, but that could wait until after Jabba's men got him Skywalker. After that, Takel would send more ships and men and try to retake the spaceport. If that didn't work, he'd level the whole city from orbit. Bad for the supply lines, yes, but if he could present Skywalker alive to the Emperor, all would surely be forgiven.

Takel walked over to the comm and opened a line to the mess room, where Veespa and Comara were surely waiting. With a glowing grin he said, "You may return, my dears. I am ready to celebrate."