Aphra figured out Luke was Force-sensitive approximately six minutes after she met him. It wasn't a difficult deduction—not for someone as brilliantly talented as her.

The troopers in Mos Eisley had been hanging around looking for something, even if that something was just trouble, and there was a reason she'd decided to turn tail and run. Finding a lanky teenager folded origami-style between her engine and the sheaf of dig notes she still had from Sana (she had to keep them somewhere, and there was only a small danger of them being incinerated back there) wasn't what she'd expected to be the cause of their surprising competence. But it was clear why the troopers had wanted to find him the moment the ship bumped, and he saved Sana's dig notes from incineration.

That bump had been interference from the Interdictor-class Star Destroyer that had jumped into the system. Aphra didn't know that then. She'd known there was a cordon and blockade, sure—which, actually, should have cued her in to the fact that trouble was afoot even before she ran into the prissy stormtroopers. But it wasn't until later, when she reported to the boss, and he was royally pissed off at her for breaching a Class-A-something-something-very-important cordon without having the decency to stay off their scopes, that she realised that she was just that good. She had avoided a Star Destroyer that literally carried a gravity well projector meant to stop any ship from jumping to hyperspace and drag them out if they came past. Sure, she'd got there and out of range just before they got the artificial gravity well powered up in earnest, but still! She was a genius.

As a genius, she hadn't even been in the cockpit when the bump came. She and the Ark Angel were safely through to hyperspace, away from whatever mess the Imps were here to clear up this time. So, that was the ideal time to meander back and investigate what that noise had been in the back.

Rats? No, rats on Tatooine were six feet long and venomous; she would have noticed any of them on her ship. Had one of her droid projects come to life? Hopefully not, or the boss would have to peel her bloodied corpse off the side of the ship whenever he deigned to track her down. A stowaway?

Bingo.

He looked like hell. When she marched up to him, hands on her hips, he toppled out of his hiding place with a sort of clumsy grace that was as horribly endearing as it was horrible. The pipes running past his arm had been red hot; the sleeves of his loose, bleached white clothes were blackened.

Or—no. All of him was blackened, actually. Aphra allowed herself a moment of paranoia and sniffed the air in the engine room, but no. For once, it was not the Angel that was on fire.

"Thank the stars," she said, looking him up and down. His cheeks were pretty red—at the time she guessed from embarrassment, but looking back she knew it was something like sunburn. She'd made Luke flush from embarrassment plenty of times, but he'd never looked that bad. "I thought you were a womp rat."

He frowned. "Please don't eat me instead, then."

Aphra, at the time, did not know womp rats were edible. That was one of the many charming things she would learn from Luke Skywalker, random moisture boy a long way from home.

The bump came while she stared him down, hands on her hips, Luke still collapsed in a disorderly pile of limbs on the floor. It was a big bump—nothing to be scoffed at—and nearly threw Aphra into those red-hot pipes. Luke rocketed to his feet and caught her. He was the one who smelt like smoke and fire, and she pushed him away.

"What did you do to my ship?"

"What? Nothing!" Luke held out a hand to steady her, which she let happen, if only because she didn't really want to get thrown into those pipes again.

"Then what was—"

The bump came again—the Interdictor rebooting their gravity well, to try to drag back escaped ships, as Aphra would later learn. This time, she managed to stay on her feet, but it was too much for Sana's poor dig notes. They hopped out of the tiny crack in the wall Aphra had shoved them into and spilled out of their neat, colour-coordinated sheaf (dig notes were always bright red, better to be spotted on the site itself) in a fluttering white arc, like… butterflies. Yeah. Like butterflies of guilt and yearning and all sorts of shit emotions gathering daintily above her head. She paused and watched them, her heart going still and her mouth tight. They pitched for the engine.

The Angel's engine was the most efficient in the business, but it wasn't exactly standard. Aphra knew that most professional engineers would cry if they had a look at her baby, but her baby was great! She ran… a little hot… and sometimes she'd let off steam between sheets of metal that were supposed to be airtight… but hey. She could mod her to hell and back. And frequently did.

The gush of hot steam—and stars, was that fire? She needed to check the fuel pipelines—that spewed from the engine was two metres away from her, but hot enough that every drop of sweat evaporated off her skin. Her hair blew back from the heat. The light refracted in her goggles, glowing like something godly.

Luke used the infinitesimal instinct of self-preservation he possessed—the only one to be found on the ship!—and threw himself backwards. The white flimsi notes pitched towards the gush of heat. Aphra's heart started working again, only to skip a beat.

Oh well, she thought. Sentiment was a bastard, anyway.

She'd left Sana. She really should forget about her already.

Then Luke lifted his hand, squinting against the heat, and—slowly, gracelessly, instinctively—waved it towards Aphra. A gust of wind without wind shoved the notes in her face before they hit the flames.

She spluttered. "Hey!"

"What?" The kid looked at her. "Are you—"

Sana's handwriting was neat and tidy, like everything else about Sana-the-student. It wasn't too different from Sana-the-smuggler, but different enough that Aphra grabbed the notes by the fistful and shoved them back into the sheaf that had held them crumpled. It bulged unhappily. She shoved it into her pocket.

"You any good with engines?" she demanded.

"I can fix any—"

"Good. Fix," she waved a hand, "whatever you did, before you blow us up."

"I didn't—"

"I'm gonna fly us out of here." They should be in hyperspace, but just in case they weren't…

"I'm Luke, by the way!"

Oh, the stowaway had manners. Disgusting. "Shut up."

It was obviously a partnership at first sight. Because it was a glorious six months from the moment they met to the moment Aphra backstabbed him and left him for dead, deep in the guts of an alien planet.

She admitted to a slight twinge of regret. The gambit hadn't even paid off, in the end—the queen did have the Death Star plans but had no interest in handing them over. Fair enough. Aphra had phrased her demand poorly: a rookie mistake.

But seriously, the boss was going to kill her. Who cared about Luke? Her life was on the line if she failed, here.

Luke probably wouldn't see it that way. Judging by the bloody hole he'd left in her side, at least.

"Kriff," she muttered to herself. It was hard to run and limp and clutch your side like a tortured lover all at the same time. Not that she hadn't done the tortured lover bit herself, but— "Kriff!"

Thank the stars battle droids couldn't run. They just kept advancing. March—march—march. Kriff—kriff—kriff.

Aphra didn't know where she was going. She just kept moving through the catacombs, following every tunnel that seemed to be heading upwards. Thankfully, at the same time she'd slipped the charges into Luke's pockets when she hugged him, she'd nicked the scanner off of him too. That was the only thing letting her avoid the dead ends and sudden drops that characterised… well. Catacombs designed by beings that could fly.

She checked her comlink. While it was true she hadn't hacked Switchy's circuits there and then, beyond using them to send the queen her message, she had installed a little something for her to activate when she needed it. It would only take a few seconds to download, and then…

No. One battle droid against dozens wouldn't help her now. But she did have Switchy transmit her his location. He was with Luke, still, and still in the throne room. Huh. Either Luke had been eaten pretty quickly, or they were putting him into storage. But it was reassuring that not all the droids were after her.

Only most of them.

That moment of checking her comlink cost her. She glanced up, breath hissing out through her teeth as she pressed a hand to her side again and saw a row of battle droids march around the corner, their wings humming. Oh.

They could fly a lot faster than they could march. Right.

She backed off and sprinted.

Light was ahead of her—light! Sunlight? It couldn't be: judging by the scanner, she was still too far down, unless this opened out onto a shaft that went directly upwards. She and Luke had passed by a few of those. But no: this couldn't be sunlight. It was gold, buttery, and…

Aha.

Aphra had an idea.

When she flicked it in that direction, the scanner trilled and spat out a construction of winding blue lines and corridors that told her everything she needed to know. She paused at the entrance to the tunnel and expanded the scope of the scanner, flicking over all the other paths revealed. Any close by? Any alternative routes? Was there any other way to get through there? No.

Great!

She threw a glance over her shoulder again. The droids had consistently stayed a turn or two behind her, even as their wings kept whirring—it made sense they couldn't all fly in a narrow tunnel at the same time, she supposed—so they weren't just tracking her by sight. Well, maybe they were following her footprints, but it didn't seem that clear, and they never hesitated.

So, they were using scanners to navigate as well. Not to figure out where each tunnel went, as she did, but to figure out which ones had life forms lurking down them. They'd be able to see her escaping, but not follow her. And although the droids operated on collective intelligence, it was clear they didn't have other droids or sensors dotted around the catacombs, or even patrolling them: she and Luke would have run into them by now, if they did.

So…

When the droids rounded the corner again, pulling up their blasters the moment they had her in their sights, she shot them a cheeky grin and disappeared into the next tunnel.

The golden glow from above bathed her in light for one glorious moment. Her grin widened. She pulled out her blaster, grimacing as it brushed her side, raised it, and fired at the entrance she'd just run through.

Her shot landed true. The phidnas clinging to the walls and ceiling let out a high-pitched shriek and exploded, their shells catching on the hot plasma. Fire bloomed, and a great force punched into the rock. Cracks spiderwebbed through the ceiling.

"Don't destabilise the whole tunnel system," Aphra muttered to herself, half reminder and half prayer. "C'mon, not the whole thing…"

The droids' monotonous marching didn't stop, even as the ceiling started to rumble, dust ghosting down. It settled on her hair, on her lashes, but she just backed up and fired again. Her bolt sank a deep, thin hole into the ceiling for a second time, punching right through another poor phidna. It burst in a shower of shell and sparks. More phidnas detonated, their small bodies roses of fire, and the rumbling grew louder and louder.

Then the droids rounded the corner.

A chunk of rock fell out of the ceiling, but it only bounced off the head of the first droid, leaving them totally untouched. Aphra swallowed and backed up farther—faster, faster, faster. The shots came almost immediately.

"Alright," she said. She ducked and slammed herself into the side of the wall—then threw herself away again when she realised there were more phidnas hanging out there, before she got another hellish burn all down her side. They detonated. A wall of fire erupted on her left. And the droids' shots weren't helping: more often than not, they hit the walls and ceiling, until…

Aphra backed away some more. "Ah, what the hell," she muttered and groped around in her pack for something extra. Just a little charge. Or—

Alright, that was a bigger bomb than she thought she needed. But in Aphra's experience, she always needed a bigger bomb than she thought. She yanked out the thermal detonator, glanced up at the fracturing ceiling, then at the droids.

She activated it, tossed it, and ran, throwing herself behind the wall in the next turn. The overwhelming whoomph and the crashing sound validated her hopes and dreams. When she peeked back around, the tunnel was totally collapsed. Boulders the size of her head mingled with ones the size of her fist and ones that put the Ark Angel's engine to shame. Dust trickled down onto her shoulder; she wiped it off.

"Roger… roger…" she heard as if on a wisp, a dying breath. The last cue or tick of a droid programmed and reprogrammed again, so core to its being that it reverted back to that state in its last moments. So, the droid didn't just speak Basic, it was one of its primary languages. Interesting.

She spun her blaster and slotted it back in its holster, smirking at her handiwork. That would get them off her tail—for now, at least. She'd need to keep moving, but…

She turned around. Satisfaction rolled in, and adrenaline rolled out. The pain in her side exploded as violently as the ceiling had.

The floor hit her hard, but the darkness hit her even harder.


The med pack had been in Luke's pack.

Aphra had made Luke carry the med pack, in fact.

Aphra was a karking idiot.

This was what happened when she backstabbed people on little to no sleep. She shouldn't have let Luke go to sleep first. Too nice of her.

She gritted her teeth, sweat dripping down her face, as she shrugged off her coat and bunched it against her side. The pocket Luke had slipped the charge into was totally shredded, blackened and burnt, but not for the first time, wearing treated fabric for her stylish adventuring clothes had paid off. While her coat was destroyed, her skin and actual body were…

…fine.

Yep. She had fainted, but they were fine. The burns weren't too deep. The cuts and bruises from shrapnel were only minor! She just needed a little bit of bacta…

Bacta that was in Luke's pack!

Blast that boy. Or—well, that was what Aphra had tried to do, and ended up blasting herself instead. But blast him properly this time.

Seriously, though. Aphra had been moving for what felt like hours since she'd woken a few seconds after fainting, the dust still settling around her. It was started to get into the red, shredded mess of her wound, so she'd limped onwards, trying to use water to wash it clean. Judging by the mounting agony, striking like a pickaxe through her torso with every step, it had only helped so much. She needed to stop. She needed to have a look at this.

It was a little while after taking off her coat and wrapping it around her side to shield it from the dust that the tunnel she was following opened out into something bigger. She followed it around to where it did open out into a bright, open space. Brighter and more open than anywhere else she'd seen, at least. She stumbled forwards, mouth dry, and poked her head out.

A grin consumed her face.

She'd kept going higher, higher, higher with every tunnel she chose, until she seemed to be on one of the higher levels of the catacombs. Now, she stood on a shelf with no path downwards—she genuinely wished she'd brought a jetpack to Geonosis—but that looked over a construction line. It was currently shut down, but she could see the flashing lights from here. It could be activated at a moment's notice.

This was the queen's droid factory. She'd found the droid factory.

She was above the droid factory.

The distant sound of clanking echoed up to her, and she backtracked, ducking back into the corridor she'd come from. It seemed undisturbed. Not that most corridors in this place didn't seem undisturbed, but it was an enormous hive complex with only a few dozen droids and a homicidal queen to occupy it. Most tunnels would go unused most of the time. It would take them a while to find her, especially as scanners for life forms didn't penetrate through too many walls well.

She hoped.

There was nothing she could do right now if they found her, anyway. She was sure she'd think of something on the spot, but the only thing she wanted to do on the spot here was collapse. Which she did. Sand and stone remained as uncomfortable a bed and pillow as they had been before, but at least she got to stretch her feet out in front her, hitch up her blasted shirt and unwind the coat to inspect the twisted, fleshy mess she called her hip.

She looked away immediately, bile gorging in her throat.

Oh. That wasn't good.

Why the hell had she given Luke the med pack?

No matter now. What did she have in her pack? After a quick, ginger rummage about, she came out with a (mostly) clean rag, another pack of water, and a nearly empty bottle of very old bacta spray. She squinted at it suspiciously. It was old enough that the millimetres-thick layer at the bottom of the bottle was gloopy and recalcitrant, sticking to the sides like a whiny child. She should have thrown this away months ago.

Good thing she hadn't!

She poured a little water onto the cloth and dabbed it against her side, grimacing. Every grain of sand felt like it was carving grooves into her as she wiped it out, the mess of flesh reddening even further. She tried not to look at it. Instead, she set the cloth down on her lap, took the bottle of bacta spray, and shook—hard.

When she sprayed it on her side, some of it came out in the mist of liquid it was supposed to. It was cool and soothing—before it immediately began to sting like hell.

That's how you know it's working, her mother's voice soothed.

"Shut it," Aphra snarled under her breath. She didn't want to think about her weak, dead mother when she was in a situation like this.

She shook the bottle again and pressed down. More mist—but less than before. Another try, and the gloopy bacta came out in one long semi-solid string. It cuddled her burn like one of those worms. Her stomach turned, and she wiped it into the wound as best she could with the rag.

The bottle was empty. That was it. She winced, sat back against the wall, and sighed long enough to fill an oxygen tank in one breath. Then, she put everything away.

There was no choice for it. If she wanted this thing to heal, at one point she'd have to sneak back and find Luke's pack. It would be fine. He'd be dead soon; he'd have no use for it. The only issue was getting past all the droids again.

Until then…

She sighed again. This time, she could have filled a ship with one breath.

She'd have to contact the boss.

There was no point in dwelling on horrible futures—at least, that was the mantra Aphra had always lived by. She reached for her comlink and commed him before she could decide otherwise. The odds of him picking up were terrible, anyway—he always made her play by his schedule—honestly, she'd probably end up leaving him a message, and he could get back to her when it suited him—

"What news, Aphra?"

Her luck was appalling today.

She pasted her grin back on her face. "So, Boss… Whew. What hasn't happened since we last spoke, right? You doing good?"

"Make your report. My patience wears thin."

Vader's patience was never thicker than a credit. To be fair, neither was Aphra's. In fact, a credit was her number one measurement for whether or not something was worth her patience.

"Right. To cut a very long and exciting story short, I found the queen's chamber and confirmed what you already suspected. A Geonosian queen is alive—my best guess is that she was an egg when the rest of the planet was sterilised and didn't hatch until later—and she's the one overseeing all the battle droids on the planet. So, the intel from the Droid Gotra was right about the droid factory."

The grainy hologram of Vader crossed its arms over its chest menacingly. "And the Death Star plans I instructed you to find?"

"Right. Those." She swallowed. Genuine disappointment stabbed through her on that front. She would have killed to get hold of the plans for a planet killing weapon. Actually, depending on Luke's status, she probably already had, but it hadn't worked, had it? "I… The negotiations went poorly."

One did not say I messed up to Darth Vader's face.

"The queen was super interested in my assistant for some reason—kept trying to stun the kid while she tried to kill me—so I traded with her. She revealed that she did still have a copy of the plans, but she refused to give them to me!" Aphra tried to inject a bit of joking disapproval into her voice, a certain honestly? After everything, that's just bad manners, isn't it?

Vader didn't care. "You must acquire those plans, Aphra. If you do not…"

"I know, I know. Trust me, I'm aware of what happens to the people who fail you." She touched her throat absentmindedly and shivered. Ugh. What a horrible way to go. "And I'm very aware of how important this is to you specifically. I won't fail."

"You will not leave Geonosis without those plans," he agreed.

Aphra shivered again.

"So, anyway…" she continued, a slight awkwardness—one might even say nervousness—marring her tone. "She drove me out with her battle droids. I had to run, or they'd have killed me, and then where would you be? I left Luke with the queen. Dunno what happened to him—"

"Wait." That caught Vader's attention like nothing else she'd ever said before. "Luke?"

She blinked. "Luke? He's my assistant. You remember me mentioning him?" Honestly, if she'd ever needed evidence that Vader didn't listen to her ramblings half the time. She must've mentioned Luke before. "Joined me about six months ago?"

Unlike Luke and His Dark Lordliness over here, Aphra didn't have the Force. But she was excellent at reading people. She didn't need it to know that Vader was suddenly very, very interested, his shoulders tensing and his head leaning forwards. "What is his full name?"

"Uh… one of those Tatooinian compound names, I think. Starkiller? No. Winddancer?"

"Skywalker," Vader said.

Aphra paused. "…yes," she said. That rang a bell. "Luke Skywalker. About this tall." She held up her hand. "Blond hair. Reckless as anything, and twice as soft."

"Luke Skywalker," Vader said, "has been captured by the Geonosian queen?"

"Well—" Actually, saying that he was probably eaten by now would make this matter indelibly worse. That was the sort of handy insight Aphra's survival instincts liked to give her. "Yes. Yes, he is."

"I am coming to Geonosis."

Aphra opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Right. That'll be useful, actually. It'll be difficult to take on all those droids by myself."

"You will tell me everything you know about Luke Skywalker. Now."

This was not the way she'd expected this report to go, but at least the cold fist of fury hadn't hanged her yet. "Sure, Boss. I met him six months ago when he stowed away on the Ark Angel—"

"When you flagrantly violated an Imperial blockade and forced me to intervene."

"Ah. Yes." She swallowed, massaging her throat again. She'd been working for Vader for over a year before that, increasingly confident that this was the way to achieve fame and glory. Here was someone who saw her, appreciated her potential, and trusted her. This was the dangerous partnership nonetheless built on mutual respect that would lift her out of all her scrabbling in the dirt and constant on-the-run status to become one of the most feared adventurers in the galaxy.

Then she'd made a mistake. A tiny mistake. She'd not escaped Tatooine before the blockade formed and got in the way of… whatever he'd been doing there. She'd become a minor inconvenience.

He'd nearly killed her for it.

Perhaps this wasn't the mutual relationship she'd hoped it would be.

"He's a good kid," she added in Luke's favour. The only reason she could think of that Vader would be interested in him was that he was that pseudo-Jedi sort of thing. That never ended well when Vader got involved. "Works hard. Saved me and the Ark Angel from exploding many a time…"

"You will stay on Geonosis. Find the Death Star plans you now know for sure are there. When I arrive, I will recover Skywalker from the queen. It will be no challenge."

Aphra winced and debated keeping her mouth shut. No, she had to tell him. "My lord. While we were here, we found evidence that the Geonosians… eat… people. I don't know what else she'd want out of Luke, but there's the chance that by the time you get allll the way over here…"

"I know what she would want out of Skywalker. He is a Jedi."

"A Jedi?" Her voice came out in a squeak. "Really? I had no idea."

"He will still live when I arrive," Vader said confidently. "And you will have found the plans. Or be far further along in this aim than you already are." Aphra nodded vehemently like she had any idea how to do that. "Is he trained?"

"Trained? He can use a blaster alright, and I taught him everything he didn't already know about how to rebuild a ship—"

"In the Force. Tell me everything."

Aphra opened and closed her mouth again.

She had a moment's hesitation. Vader would want to kill Luke, surely? Torture him for information first, sure—need to be thorough when investigating any potential Jedi leads—then execute him like the traitor to the Empire he technically was. The more information she gave him, the more ways Vader would have leverage over Luke.

She considered all of that and knew it was true. She even went so far as to feel guilty.

Then she told him everything.


It was a while before Vader let her go. His obsession hadn't waned but Aphra's storytelling abilities sure had: she'd run out of anecdotes she'd be comfortable sharing with Vader, of all people, within ten minutes, and the rest of the conversation she'd been scrambling to patch together some semblance of respectability.

Luke, of all people? Why did it have to be Luke?

It was Jedi stuff, she knew, and she wasn't meant to understand it—in leaving her dad to his failure of a life's work, she'd actively tried to stop herself from understanding a lot of things about the Jedi. But that didn't stop the pang in her chest. She remembered Luke's feverish curiosity about the Jedi, his interest in those lightsabers, how he'd shouted at her for her dismissal of it all.

Luke hadn't listened to what she'd been telling him. She'd known he was Force-sensitive. She'd known the whole time—and he hadn't listened.

Perhaps she should have tried harder to dissuade him from that particular suicide run. Or maybe she should have had the decency to leave more than one charge in his pocket so he couldn't possibly find them all, and he'd be dead before he had to deal with the nightmare named Darth Vader.

No matter. She hadn't. And she had this kriffing burn wound in her side to show for it.

When Vader's hologram finally winked out, she examined the burn again. She hadn't mentioned it to Vader—she was smart enough not to advertise any weakness—but it still hurt like hell. If she didn't get proper medical supplies soon, it might get infected. Or it'd just irritate her for longer. She needed the proper bacta patches, not that shitty little spray.

After a long, pensive look at it, she sighed, wrapped it back up with a clean sheet of cloth, and settled back down to get some sleep. She needed it: her head spun, her eyesight fuzzed, and it was a miracle she'd talked to Vader as long as she had without slurring. She was so tired.

But not yet. Someone needed to set up the perimeter alerts.

"Luke, grab the—"

Oh.

She squeezed her eyes shut. A groan erupted from her mouth. Blast it. She was alone again. She had to do everything herself.

Which she could do. She was an expert at being on her own—worked better that way, even! But it had been a while. Six months of having Luke to lean on and help her, or even just to tease, had made her soft.

Even before that. She'd been a fool, thinking that working with Vader would mean anything to him. They'd made an effective team, until he'd made it clear they weren't a team at all and been ready to throw her under the shuttle if she inconvenienced him in the slightest way. He didn't work with people. He killed people, and the writing was on the very wall Aphra was leaning and bleeding against now.

She was alone again. She always was. Luke was gone. Vader was not what she'd thought he was. And before that… Sana.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she'd betrayed Luke here and now. The moment it looked like she and Sana might graduate and have a soft, kind future together, she'd gone off searching for the perfect bomb to blow it all away.

That wasn't to say that she didn't still think about it, sometimes. Every time she ran into Sana on the various underground circuits they both frequented and got Sana's big, beautiful blaster pointed in her face, she thought about it. But Sana was a smuggler, now; the gentleness they'd both found together was gone, and they had receded back to the harsh galaxy that had made them in the first place.

Their sappy, kissy, pathetic university days were over.

So, Aphra set up her perimeter alarms alone. When her eyes slipped shut again, she mumbled in her sleep, but no one was there to hear what she confessed.


Where once we were many, now we are few. In mind, we are infinite; in flesh, we are two. Our creations of metal and stone maintain the tomb and palace of our existence, but despite our new acquisition, we still lack the resources of flesh. That is something we are now in the position to change.

For now, we train. The ambassador's body is young, frail, and malnourished in both food and sleep. Before joining us, he was unfamiliar with the weapons and ways of the Jedi whose gifts he wields, but now we all know all. He stands before our queen as her only flesh protector and gives orders to the droids to attack him. With the full knowledge we hold from generations past, he can destroy these creations of ours, the way we used to fight and fall in droves in our arena to feed the growth of the hive. We grow his strength and grow our own. The knowledge we retain is priceless.

We knew a Jedi, once.

We were meant to know three more. But the two who came to rescue the one who was captive came too soon, and we were robbed the chance of taking root in her mind, of using her as an extension of our will to protect us and our people for the war to come. She was a powerful Jedi, well-respected and listened to, and with her under our thrall we would have been unstoppable.

No matter. We knew her padawan, for a brief shining moment. She was glorious. We knew how she hated the war. We knew how she idolised her master, and how if we had had her master we would have had her anyway, for she would have done whatever she said. We knew how she fought and watched her fight her friend, to bend her to our cause as well. She failed. All of us on that ship that day failed and were torn from us, stolen back to a life of loneliness and unrecognition. They are likely all dead—they are certainly dead to us.

We remember them, nonetheless.

And we remember her training. All the memories and love and connections she held in her mind, we hold in ours. The ambassador uses them now, these memories from another Jedi he has never met, and the lightsaber in his hand flashes and dances with the skill of an experienced swordswoman, not the clumsiness of an untrained youth. This is how we are meant to operate. Here, our memories live on and thrive, where our bodies do not.

The ambassador trains for hours, until the frailty in his soft body threatens to collapse him. The queen orders droids to hold him, accompany him back to the base of her throne, where he kneels in the supplication we all share for the being who maintains our flesh and memories both. Our queen; our renewal.

She detaches her bottom left arm, and it topples to the ground. We feel pain, but it is irrelevant; we are built for this, to nurture. We consume each other. When it is freely given and gratefully received, it is a gift. A social bond. It is what holds us as one. Pain is nothing in the face of connection.

A droid passes it to the ambassador, still on his knees in respect. He bows his head. The honour of receiving flesh is insurmountable, of receiving it from the queen, she who maintains our flesh, unfathomable. We all understand its importance.

The ambassador had a name, before he became a person and part of the people. Other outsiders, invaders, called him Luke, called him Skywalker, called him Wormie and meant the comparison as an insult. Names are useful: we have had many queens, but our current queen calls herself Karina, after Karina the Great, our leader who led us to war with the outsiders, brought us immense work to be done, and let us thrive because of it. She is the only other queen to successfully claim a Jedi, even if it was after her death. We hear her voice loudly, crowing glory and triumph at what we may yet become from this acquisition.

Names are useful designations for the different parts of a whole—we have had many archdukes, but only a few Poggles, and only one Archduke Poggle the Lesser. We remember Karina the Great. And we remember the one drone who lived through the apocalypse to protect the egg of our queen, though he was young and nameless when he survived. We remember him, nameless or not, but it is easier with a name, and so we know him as Sacrifice. Our queen consumed him when she hatched: he, and the pitiful bounty he had slaved to collect, were all she could reach. And we all required her to grow.

The ambassador bends his small, round head to the arm in his arms and opened his pinprick mouth to reveal the pebbles he calls teeth. He sinks them into the queen's offered flesh and feasts on it. Blood runs down his chin to drip, dark and blessed, in the sand. Every bite enriches him. He swallows our flesh; we are a part of him, as he is of us. When he hits skeleton, structure, he cracks into it, and in the breaking there is rebuilding. The whole meal is swallowed; the queen's strength is accepted in full.

We have had many ambassadors. We are content to call our ambassador by a name if he wishes. He does.

Then we shall call him Wormie.

He is the vessel for all our dreams, after all.