My son, Vader had said.

Aphra decided to let Luke handle this one.

He stepped forwards, his face clouded with horror, out of the safe darkness of the tunnel. The red sunlight struck his hair like a blade, outlining every line of his face in extreme, blazing detail. He looked almost insubstantial, even his wings folded behind his back, like the winds would whip him away.

Any protectiveness from her would not stand up against the fury of Darth Vader, though, so she touched her hand to her throat. And she stayed in the shadows.

"Leave," Luke said. "Leave us alone."

"Us?" Vader's gaze zeroed in behind Luke—on Switchy, on Aphra—as if he genuinely hadn't noticed they were there before. Geonosis was a hot, hot world, but goosebumps washed along Aphra's arms. "You survived."

She lifted a hand. "No hard feelings, Boss. I know it was just collateral—"

"You handed my son to an alien tyrant to further your own goals," Vader said.

"Your goals, actually—"

"You were supposed to die with them."

She swallowed. Knowing it—no more speculation, no more worrying about it—was liberating, if nothing else. He wanted her dead. Passionately. She could forget about trying to please him and focus on surviving.

"Yeah, well," she said. "I'm pretty hard to kill."

She didn't step out from behind Luke, though. She wasn't stupid.

"I'm the one she betrayed. I get to decide any punishment she receives," Luke retorted. He actively stepped between them, which made her heart constrict. "You have no say in it."

"Your reaction to the fate of your enslavers informs me that you would make a poor, soft, and underwhelming decision by yourself."

"You don't get to judge my decisions."

"I—"

"You killed my family," Luke seethed. "You made me a fugitive!"

"He's the reason you stowed away on my ship," Aphra realised in a murmur. Vader didn't hear it—thank the stars—but Luke did. Not taking his eyes off Vader, he gave her a tiny nod.

"I am your family. Do not chase pretenders. And do not chase fools." Vader gave Aphra a look at that, which she resented.

"I don't want you."

"You do not understand—"

"I understand you're a part of the Empire. I understand that you led the forces to wipe out Geonosis."

"You are still under the influence of the Geonosian mind control, I see. I had not realised the effects lasted so long after the death of the worm. You will recover soon."

Luke ignored him. "I understand that the Empire is building a Death Star—"

"Luke!" Vader sounded furious, which made the hairs on the back of Aphra's neck raise. She tried not to think about the last time she'd heard him that angry. She sucked in a breath through her nose, just to remind herself she still could. "I intend to destroy it. I have informed you of this. Insolent child, if you would only listen—"

"I listened to what you said," Luke bit back. "But I formed my own conclusions. You only want to destroy the Death Star because it's insignificant next to the power of the Force. Were those your words? It gives power to your political enemies instead of to you. It disgusts you and it risks replacing you. You want to be the only toy of mass destruction at the Emperor's disposal."

"Yet we share our objection to it." Vader stepped forwards, reaching out a hand. "Come with me. We can destroy it together. You yearn to know more about the Force—I can teach you everything."

Aphra saw Luke hesitate.

She chewed on her lip. Even without Vader's interference, now, she was unable to breathe even if she'd tried to. Luke wanted to learn about the Jedi. Luke was alone—he was the only person he knew with the Force, and he didn't want to be. Vader was here, offering him a father he'd never had, a family to replace the one he'd lost, and an understanding of who he was and what he could do.

She remembered how angry Luke had been at her when he found out her father was still alive, but she didn't speak to him. Unfairly, unjustly angry at her, but she remembered where it had come from. He'd never had a father. He'd longed for one more than words could say.

Don't do it, she wanted to tell Luke. Vader would teach Luke, certainly. He would make him feel appreciated, useful, and keep coming back to him with important missions, offering him higher accolades and advantages each time. For a while, Luke would be his number one assistant—attaché—whatever they wanted to call it. But he wouldn't be his partner.

And when the time came, he would lash out at Luke for making one minor mistake. Just as he had her.

Maybe it would be different, here. Luke was his son. But nothing she'd seen so far had indicated that. Vader's fury towards Luke was just the same as his fury at Aphra's failures. He overrode Luke, tried to control him, belittled him. And Vader's reputation in the Empire and those that it hurt was legendary.

Perhaps being Vader's son would only make things worse.

Don't do it, she wanted to reach out and say. He will not give you what you're looking for.

But Luke was wiser than her. She should've had faith in that. He always had been.

"We are going to destroy it," Luke agreed. "I'm taking the plans to the Rebellion. We'll find its weaknesses—and I know where the weaknesses are—and destroy it. Then we'll come for the rest of the Empire. Then we'll come for you."

"Luke—"

"I know what you did." His words tumbled out so quickly Aphra wondered if it was painful. "I've read it all, in Ben's journals. You are the reason the Jedi fell. You killed them all. Everyone you've ever loved is dead because of you, and now?" Luke gestured around at Geonosis, at the galaxy, at himself. "Now you can't cope with it. Now you just want everyone else to feel the same grief as you." He shook his head. "We're going to take down the Death Star. We're going to take down your murderous, destructive Empire. And we're going to bring back the Jedi you destroyed."

Vader said nothing. Luke was breathing heavily now, pointing one, accusing finger at his enemy. His father.

Aphra's heart twinged.

Luke lowered his finger. He still looked so small, against Vader, against the pillars, against the Geonosian hive rising around them. But that wasn't necessarily a weakness.

"I promise you that," he said.

Vader said, "You have the Death Star plans?"

Aphra's hand balled into a fist. Tension flushed out of her frame in one disappointed whoomph.

Luke was wiser than her, perhaps. But he sure as hell wasn't smarter.

Luke's eyes widened. "I—"

"You," Vader said to Aphra, "informed me that you could find none. The queen must have lied." Another beat. "If you survived, and you found them, it is likely that she also did."

"No," Luke said quickly, "she didn't—"

"Here is something else you do not know about the Force, my son," Vader said. "I can sense that you are lying."

Luke swallowed. He took another few long breaths, before he was able to demand, calmly and clearly, "Leave them alone."

Vader held out his hand again. "Come with me," he said, his voice dark with delight, "and I will."

"I—"

"With the Death Star plans," Vader added. "You will not be passing them to the Rebellion."

"But—"

"These are my terms, Luke. The survival of the bugs that brainwashed you, in return for you and the plans." He softened his voice again. "Come with me."

The horror on Luke's face was devastating. He looked back at the catacombs—the newly cleared catacombs, the ones that would need to be reconstructed anyway—then at Switchboard, then at Aphra. His throat bobbed.

"Kid, think about it," Aphra said.

"I'm thinking about it!" His voice was shrill. "I—"

Vader interrupted with exactly what Luke didn't need to hear: "There is no escape."

But that was never true.

There was always an escape.

"Switchy," Aphra muttered under her breath. "Comm for backup." Then, to Luke: "Haven't you learned anything from me?"

"About what?" Luke hissed. "How to reprogramme a droid?"

That was a no, then. She grinned, but there was a tinge of sadness to it.

"How to be selfish," she said.

Then she shot Vader in the face.

He was so shocked by the sheer nerve, audacity, and bravery of it—at least, that's what Aphra told herself—that he didn't get his lightsaber lit in time to deflect that one. The second, third, and fourth shots she squeezed off, he did. The fourth one was batted right back at her; she dived to the side to avoid it.

"Run!" she barked at Luke.

Luke ran. He yanked his own lightsaber off his belt and ran at Vader. Her sigh of frustration was lost in his angry yell.

Vader was ready for him. Luke drove down his lightsaber with a snarl, only for Vader to hold him off with one hand, flicking him to the side. Luke staggered back to regain his balance, and Vader backhanded him across the face.

Blood spurted out of his nose in a scarlet fountain. He went flying, the sand soaking up his blood and momentum, cradling him when he went down. He lay there for a few painful heartbeats, head drifting on his shoulders like it was spinning.

Then he got up again and called his lightsaber to his hand.

"I'm not gonna run, Aphra," he said.

Of course he wasn't.

Aphra shrugged off her backpack and reached into it while Luke and Vader circled each other. Luke's cheek looked like a burst tomato.

"You have powerful psychometry," Vader informed him. "And yet you wield that blade. It once belonged to me. Do you know what it has been used for?"

"Killing children, presumably," Luke spat out.

"Indeed."

That had been a dig. Luke hadn't actually thought that, Aphra knew, and now he was going green under his tomato-coloured cheek. But he had the wherewithal to spit back: "I can't sense that. All I can sense from this lightsaber is how much Ben Kenobi loved you."

Vader roared, so abruptly that Aphra started and dropped her pack. Cursing, she scrambled in the dirt to shove everything back in and drag out what she'd been looking for while Vader lunged at Luke.

Luke got out a desperate parry, but Vader was a beast. He'd been a Jedi during the Clone Wars. He'd been a murderer for the Empire for as long as Luke had been alive. And maybe in another context he might have gone easier on his own son, but in this he was fighting to capture him, and keep him, against Luke's loud and vociferous wishes.

The clash of their lightsabers echoed throughout the arena, bouncing off the walls and the stands, and Aphra almost thought she could hear cheering, echoing through the ages. Luke stumbled backwards and tried to strike back, but Vader redirected that with an ease that must be insulting. The four pillars, three standing and one fallen, loomed behind Luke as he backed away, diving to the side away from his next blow.

Vader drove his lightsaber down; Luke dodged. Again, and Luke dodged again. The arena was wide, so it gave Luke the only advantage he could possibly have against a behemoth like Vader: he was small and fast. His swings had no style, coherence, or structure to them; whatever form he'd had when fighting Vader before, while part of the hivemind, had dissipated along with that. The ghost of dead Jedi no longer haunted his nervous system.

His lightsaber never, ever made contact.

Still, he backed away, darting out of the danger zone and out of Vader's range. But he was backing towards the pillars. Vader lurched towards him like a furious gundark and reached out a hand.

Luke gasped, hand going to his throat as his lightsaber tumbled from his grip. He was yanked into mid-air and slammed against the central pillar, the thwack of impact making Aphra winced. His head lolled before he blinked hard and managed to lift it again, looking down at—

Vader dropped his hand and dropped Luke. Luke slid down the pillar again, slamming into the ground.

Aphra had been right. This was exactly how Vader had treated her.

Except Luke wasn't getting up. A cry exploded from his lips as he doubled over, hand going to his back, nails digging into the back of his jacket like claws. He bent forwards over himself, gasping.

Vader stopped. He stared at Luke, then up at the pillar. Then back at Luke—at the places on his back where his hands pressed, as if to stop imaginary bleeding.

Aphra remembered how badly Luke had reacted to touching that pillar before. She had to wonder what the hell had happened to that poor arena combatant.

Vader didn't seem to be wondering. His hand, still outstretched, was frozen. He stared at Luke.

"Padmé…" he said. "Luke, you—"

The sound of his voice seemed to ground Luke, at least insofar as it snapped Luke out of it. With a roar of his own, Luke rocketed to his feet, throwing out his hand. His lightsaber snapped back into it.

Vader was faster. His hand flung out as well, and the chain attached to the top of the pillar lashed around Luke's wrist like whip. His skin flashed red and bloody. Luke screamed again—and fell to his knees.

"Who—is—this?" he snarled out, glaring at Vader. "You knew—what that would do—what—"

"That is your mother's pain," Vader said. Aphra had to gape at the callousness of it.

Luke's face drained of colour, but he didn't drain of rage. Or thought. His lightsaber was still in his hand: he slit the chain at his wrist with a bounce of the blade against his skin, leaving a long, red mark down his forearm. It was how he'd removed the worms from his torso, back when they knew nothing about the true horrors of this place.

"And which was the monster that attacked her?" he demanded, drawing his arm back to swing again. "You?"

Vader caught that swing, twisted the blade, and the lightsaber flew out of Luke's hand. "You will learn soon enough."

But again, Luke reached to summon his lightsaber. He would not, could not, give up. Aphra could tell that—hell, she could have told Vader that from the start. And Vader was starting to realise that too.

Because of her dad, Aphra had grown up around Jedi texts. One time when she was a kid, because she was a kid and thought it was awesome (and she'd been right), she had read cover-to-cover a manual for padawan lightsaber training. To end a fight, had been written in the margins, is a difficult task, particularly a lightsaber duel against an enemy who will not cease. If you have no desire to kill your opponent—and indeed, in the majority of cases you should not—disarming them is effective, yes, but we encourage you to take the word more literally. We live in a galaxy where prosthetic limbs are increasingly affordable. Cutting off a limb where necessary can deescalate a fight rapidly, with minimal damage.

Aphra had privately thought that was kinda cool, then—or rather, she'd thought prosthetic limbs were cool (which she'd also been right about)—and had taken that as fact. Now, it seemed a horrible thing to do.

So, of course Vader was going to do it.

She could see that. The way he shifted the aim of his blade, so it would slice through Luke's arm as cleanly as possible. How he actually placed two hands on his lightsaber for once, the best for force and precision, rather than the dismissive one-handed show of strength he'd given so far. As the arc of his swing came down on Luke's arm to disarm him, as Luke's lightsaber flew towards his hand as fast as possible but too slow to be useful, barely half a second passed, but it was long enough for Aphra to remember two things:

She had been rooting through her backpack for a reason.

And she had started this fight. She wasn't going to sit on the sidelines watching it.

"Hey!" she shouted. She ran forwards, hoisted her flamethrower, and opened fire.

Vader was distracted; his only warning was Luke's eyes, blowing wide with terror and awe at the blue-yellow help hurtling towards him. The flames engulfed Vader immediately, licking up his cape, crowning him with a circlet of fire. They shone on Luke's sleeves, gobbling up the fabric of his jacket towards his neck, but Luke had clearly had adequate fire safety training at some point in his life, because he immediately dropped to the ground and rolled, over and over, in the hot, dry sand. The flames smothered on him, leaving behind a face that alternated red and black with blood and soot. His eyes, bright blue and wider than the skies, seemed to shine amidst that wreckage as he stared at Vader.

Aphra glanced at Switchboard, who gave her a single nod. She stepped forwards again, spurting off another jet of flame. The acrid stench of gasoline engulfed her head, stinging her eyes, but she pushed through it. She fired again. There was a tornado of fire around Vader, and he stood there, an obsidian statue, frozen now as he had been before. He hadn't had the warning to deflect it, this time. It was around him, it was devouring him, it was—

Vader jerked to action. The harsh rasp of his respirator forced him to keep breathing through the heat and the pain. He turned to look at Aphra.

His hand came up. Her flamethrower flew out of her grip, towards him, but he didn't catch it. He lit his lightsaber again, a beam of red in the flood of yellow, orange, and blue, and slashed through the flamethrower when it came within range. Once. Twice. Three times. The parts clattered to the ground at his feet, red hot from his lightsaber, and soon red hot from the fire around him. A thin trickle of fuel formed a stream tinkling along out of it, until a lick of fire set that alight as well.

Vader stepped over it. There was—something. A strong wind, a wave of pressure, a moment where Aphra struggled to breathe. The flames all over him smothered in an instant.

His cape was tattered and full of holes. The plasteel of his helmet had melted in ripples, the splatter shot Aphra had made on his mask at the start of the fight joined by all number of newly grotesque shapes. His mask was designed to frighten, but this—this twisted mess of fire and pain, overlapping, all-consuming—was what the Emperor and the Empire had tried to make a measured enforcer out of. The controlled, shapely terror of Vader's domineering mask was gone. Now there was only the fire and the pain.

His hand fisted. Aphra was yanked into the air and flung through it just like her flamethrower, but not towards Vader. Towards Luke. He was staggering to his feet again. He'd just risen when she collided with him, and they both tumbled in the sand.

She groaned, loud, low, and aching. Her head was spinning like a comet knocked out of orbit. Underneath her, in a tangle of limbs, Luke groaned too.

"This is a waste of my time," Vader hissed. Aphra wondered if he'd been hoping she'd be impaled on Luke's lightsaber. He should be more attentive, if that was the case; Luke's lightsaber was several metres away from him, and he'd lost in it the fall. "Luke, you will be coming with me. You cannot stand against me. Doctor Aphra, you are a useless opportunist, and you will—"

"Wait just one second, Boss," Aphra said, dragging herself up onto her knees. "A useless opportunist? You haven't even heard my latest proposition yet."

And before Luke could object, she seized him by the singed collar and pressed her blaster against his blond, matted hair.

Vader stopped moving immediately, only his cape and the scraps of ashes around him drifting in the breeze. She'd thought he would. Queen Karina had. Vader would.

Everyone wanted Luke. Luke was the Jedi. He was kind; he was smart; he was brilliant; he was powerful. He wanted to help.

And he was the son of the worst man in the Empire.

No one wanted Aphra, but that was because everyone thought she was a scoundrel. A double-crosser. The inside of her mind itself was so selfish and deranged that the hivemind had kicked her out as soon as they had what they needed from her. No one had faith she could be better than the many atrocities she'd committed, and that included herself. There was a reason she worked alone.

Until Luke.

Luke had had faith in her.

She looked Vader in the eye, daring him to doubt her. She'd already sold out Luke for certain death once. "Back away," she said. "Drop your lightsaber."

Vader looked right through her. He scoffed, marched forwards—

Aphra shot Luke in the foot.

Luke shouted in pain. What was worse: he shouted in betrayal. "Aphra!?"

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. It hurt, but she'd do it. She always did. "I said," she repeated, voice loud and clear, "back off."

Vader took a step back. When she raised her eyebrows, he took another. Then another.

Aphra wished she could interpret that as fatherly care, if only for Luke's sake. But she was too used to using other people, and needing them alive to use them, to view it through any other lens.

"We're gonna get out of here," Aphra said, dragging herself and Luke to their feet. Or, in Luke's case, to one foot. Vader started forwards, and she tutted. He froze. "By we, I mean me and Switchy." She nodded at the droid. "With the Death Star plans. I'm that one that's got them anyway; you can buy them off me later if you want them so badly. Promise I won't tell anyone. If you agree, I'll dump your little son in front of your little ship, and he'll be trussed up like a roasted convor ready for you to pick up on your way out. Do we have a deal?"

"You will pay for this, Aphra," Vader growled.

"Not until after you pay me, I hope! Do we have a deal?"

Vader looked at them both. Luke shivered in her arms; she gritted her teeth.

Vader lit his lightsaber. "No."

"No?" Aphra backed away. "Lord Vader, your son—"

"I can sense your conflict, Aphra. You will not kill him. And you will pay for the damage you have already done." He stalked forwards again, closing the distance between them. Ten metres. Nine metres. Eight metres. "The two of you cannot hope to defeat me. Spineless gambits will not change that."

Luke squeezed his eyes shut in terror. Maybe it was that that gave Aphra the nerve to keep her own eyes open and face Vader head on.

"Who said anything about the two of us?" she asked.

Vader stopped, a scant five metres away from them. He tilted his helmet, suddenly aware of the intense whirring sound, the cacophony of a thousand beating wings. It grew louder and louder, until it was unmistakeable.

He turned towards the tunnel they'd come out of—just in time for the flood of flying battle droids to overwhelm him.

Aphra let go of Luke. "Go," she ordered. "Go, go, go!"

"I can't walk," Luke barked. He almost collapsed when he put weight on his right foot—his injured foot—oh stars, she could see right through that hole to the sand beneath it. She slung his arm around her shoulders. "What were you—"

"Buying time," she got out and ran hard for the nearest entrance to the catacombs that wasn't currently a highway for battle droids. Behind her, she heard the characteristic sear of lightsaber through metal, and the clanking as battle droids collapsed.

"You had to pay for it with my foot?"

She stopped at the archway, just in the shadow of the catacombs, as Luke writhed and struggled to get her off of him. "I'm sorry, kid," she said. They staggered a little way along the tunnel—this was one of the ones that opened onto the birthing chamber below. She could tell from the alcoves that pooled darkness at their base and also the terrible smell coming up through the holes in the ground. "All I can do is hurt you."

"It's a good thing I bring something else to the partnership then," Luke said.

"What?"

"Luke!"

They both looked over their shoulders, panicked. Vader was exactly when they'd left him, scything through battle droids left and right, the army of detritus collecting around his feet. He turned to give chase to them, but another came at him with a volley of shots, and he had to turn back to deflect them.

"Luke!" he shouted again, turning to lock eyes with Luke for one long second. "I—am—your—father!"

Luke turned away.

Aphra opened her mouth—to say something profound, inspiring, unforgettable, no doubt. She hadn't formulated it yet, but she was good at coming up with genius on the spot, and she had her own experience of bad fathers—not this bad, but still—so whatever gems of wisdom she'd been about to relay would no doubt have really helped Luke in this difficult time.

They never found out, though, because Luke shoved her through the hole in the floor.

The ground vanished beneath her feet. Aphra shrieked, air—stinky air, at that—whistling past her, the few loose bits of hair not tucked under her aviator cap streaming upwards as she fell. Below her, the birthing chamber was noisier than it had ever been before: the distinct sounds of chomping, of groaning, of splitting bones rippled up to her as if she were in a dream. Her stomach turned.

"Luke!" she screamed. "Luke, you piece of—"

A body crashed into her. Her flailing arms hit something metal—metal and moving fast—and she retracted them fast enough that they were trapped to her sides when Luke flung his arms around her and banked upwards, the scream of his wings deafening. She twisted in his grasp, uncomfortable, terrified, flailing—

"Are you an idiot?" he got out, shifting his hold on her so she was facing downwards. "If you do that I'll drop you."

The scorn in his voice, so much like something she must have said to him so many times, gave her enough indignation to snap out of it. But she didn't like this position much better. She was looking down, now.

The birthing chamber below them stretched for a long way, right underneath the arena. It was shot through with red sunlight from the gaps like the one they'd just fallen through, and as Luke soared over it all, Aphra had a clear view of how it had changed once the bodies had been returned to their resting places.

It was so much grosser. Instead of just bones and dead snakes and other small animal corpses that the worms could gnaw on, entire rotting Geonosian corpses lay down there. Beside them writhed newer, pinker flesh, blood red in this lighting. Worms and younglings alike looked up at the two of them as they soared over. They had the nerve to wave at Luke, and Luke waved back. The smell was worse the further down they got.

This planet is rotten to the core, Vader had said.

It was. The rot was where the new life sprang from.

They zipped around the chamber in a half-circle, the spotlights of filtered red light flashing in and out of Aphra's vision fast enough to make her dizzy. Finally, they shot out into the open sky through an opening at the other side. From this high, she could see Vader still battling the droids below. She could see the spires rising around them. She could see all of Geonosis, barren for so long but no longer, as her dead marched home to rest.

And she could see two ships, exactly where they'd left them. She recognised the third one stationed there more slowly than she should have and ignored the nerves that fluttered in her gut when she did. Her contact had arrived, then.

"You ready to get out of here?" Luke asked, his voice almost inaudible over the roaring of the winds.

She sagged in his grip. "Please," she said, just to be polite.

He grinned, and they flew towards their getaway ships.

We noticed the third, unrecognised ship enter the atmosphere within minutes, because Geonosia is our world and we know her well. But we knew for whom it was and to whose call it came, and we let it land. Instead, we focused our attention on Invader and his standoff with our friends—the first of many new friends, we hoped—and how he threatened all.

We do not tolerate threats to our friends.

Their escape is assured, now. Wormie soars on the wings we gave him towards the ships that spell their salvation. At a distance, in a more measured, less joyful way, the creation of ours they named Switchboard flies after them. He cannot be left behind in the escape, after all, but it is understandable that they forgot him; droids can take care of themselves. From what we know of them, humans rarely can.

Nor can Geonosians. That is why we exist in groups. That is why we fight together.

Invader is a mighty warrior, but we have many battle droids. They break against him like storms against our spires: useless and wasted, but nonetheless requiring a mighty defence. It is what we can do to help them escape. Invader knows of our survival—did Wormie truly think he would not?—and we would have had to face him anyway.

He knows now, with every stroke of his blade, that we are here.

He knows that we will try to kill him.

He knows—as we know—that we will fail.

We have only so many battle droids. Our factories were crushed in the collapse, as nonessential parts of the hive. Others in our stock were damaged or crushed themselves in their race to protect us. By the time he reaches our inner sanctum, if he fails to catch Wormie and Boop on their escape, we will be defenceless.

But we will survive. How, we do not yet know, but we know. We have survived him before—and we survived him alone. Now, there are others who will come to our aid as readily as we come to theirs. If all of us here die, they will ensure the hive lives on.

It is lovely, to trust another. Particularly one to whom you are different, body and soul.

Invader carves through our soldiers. He abandons this fight and gives chase to our friends, even if his mechanical legs will never reach their destination in time. He has lost, yet he refuses to accept it.

We accept it.

Even as our surviving droids mill back to us, ready to fortify our defences, we prepare ourselves for his attack.