Spread
High Command meetings were usually quite brief by military standards, Carlist Rieekan reflected as the meeting dragged into the thirty-minute mark and his nerves began to fray considerably.
This particular meeting was becoming a fight. Plain and simple.
What had begun as the much-anticipated explanation of recent events brought to the Alliance from Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker had slowly devolved into suspicion and rancor. The debrief carried with it a number of questions to be brought to the two young Jedi in their custody. Leia was in an interrogation cell and Luke and Chewbacca were in Medical, as Skywalker was being fitted with a prosthetic hand and the Wookiee would not leave his side.
No one felt particularly inclined to try to remove him.
Carlist's chest felt tight as he thought of the twins and the horrors they must have seen. With the Dark Lord so clearly tracking them, they seemed to be stuck in a special circle of hell that no one here could possibly imagine. Between that and the fact that they had arrived without Solo—their trusted accomplice to barely-approved shenanigans—Luke and Leia deserved empathy and consolation.
Instead, they had been greeted back into the Alliance with distrust and suspicion.
"Why are we treating them like war criminals, again?" he asked into the charged lull of the briefing room.
"Because they are dangerous," Jan Dodonna sputtered.
His answer was a lone voice decrying fears for personal safety, a laughable idea while sitting on an Alliance starcruiser. All of them were slated for public execution if events didn't swing in their favor. What was personal safety, anyway?
Carlist furrowed his brow in frustration. "Dangerous? They are recovering from what was clearly a traumatic evacuation from Hoth and whatever happened afterward."
Details were hard to come by. He itched with the deep desire to go talk to the princess, to understand how she had returned in such a state, but until he was granted access to her, he could only rely on what others told him. And less-official reports were more concerned with how Commander Luke Skywalker had returned without his right hand. Rumor was that it had been cut off with a lightsaber—fully cauterized, as Antilles had reported when the Rogues had rushed their commander to Medical—and that the wound was not a month old. Skywalker hadn't lost his hand on Hoth, then, which meant there had been a second confrontation with Darth Vader.
Hating the implications of that thought, Carlist settled into finding out exactly how—and why—such a terrible thing had happened.
As always, it was Jan who somehow managed to redirect Carlist's rage. "Traumatic," he sneered.
"Yes," Carlist defended. "I would certainly say so."
As one of only two High Command members who had been a part of the evacuation of Hoth—and alone in this meeting because they were holding the other one prisoner in an interrogation cell—Carlist felt a special heat when anyone mentioned the ice planet. A staggering loss, by any account, and also one of the Alliance's fiercest battles to date. The Empire had thrown everything at them that they had at their disposal. Walkers, ground troops, a blockade.
Darth Vader.
And still nearly half the forces stationed at Echo Base had survived, thanks in very large part to the two young Jedi in their custody.
Jan pivoted. "Did either of them give any indication about the fidelity of this newcomer? What was his name?"
Calrissian, Carlist silently supplied.
"And where is Commander Solo? Did anyone say anything to that end?" Gial Ackbar added.
"Skywalker said little," a new voice answered. "He told me the princess would speak on his behalf."
Carlist's eyes roamed around the room, looking for sympathizers. Gial was preoccupied with the assembling fleet and usually had little use for debriefs about the goings-on in the ranks below him. A tactical mastermind, he prided himself on his ability to rationalize the trivialities of humanity away when necessary, and it appeared he was either bored or annoyed by Jan's outbursts. Leia's usual seat was empty, but to the right of Carlist was the addition of Crix Madine, the new voice: current head of what was recently-termed Alliance Central Intelligence.
"What did she say, then?"
No one spoke, and Carlist turned careful eyes to the only person who had had the opportunity to interrogate the princess. Mon Mothma, physically present for the first time in a great while, was noticeably quiet in the charged silence that followed. She had largely been mute for the past half-hour, and Carlist suddenly realized how unusual that was.
The Chief Commander always had an opinion.
"What is it, Mon?" he gently asked after seven long, unresponsive seconds.
When she turned, her eyes were tired and there were soft lines on her forehead that Carlist wasn't sure he had seen before. Alarmed by her expression, he leaned forward, dread soaring through his ribs.
"We did not discuss Calrissian or Commander Solo."
Jan leaned forward, too, clasping gnarled hands together on the table. "Surely she said something."
Watching Mon's discomfort sent a mirrored unease through Carlist. This wasn't about Solo, then. That had been a large concern of his, that High Command would take note from Jan's elitist bullshit and choose to censure the princess for her relationship with the Corellian. Which was beside the point, to Carlist's mind. Solo's absence was like a dismal melody in the air, wafting through the scrubbers and purifiers of Home One so that everyone, everyone, felt it. He was curious about the commander's whereabouts, worried for the young man he genuinely liked, who had been so eager to resign his commission that last fateful day on Hoth and was now inexplicably absent from his crew and beloved ship.
From his beloved princess, too, Carlist thought.
He knew love when he saw it. Whatever had been happening those last two weeks on Hoth did not in any way mean that the Corellian would abandon the woman he loved. That had been precisely the reason Carlist ordered him to stand guard for the twins during the evacuation. Solo was predictable, despite all appearances to the contrary. His absence from them now was just as alarming as the inexplicable loss of Skywalker's hand and the appearance of Calrissian.
Watching Mon now, though, he realized that it wasn't any of these things that had set her on edge. All thoughts of Han Solo vanished in the stillness that followed Jan's insufferable words.
"I'm afraid a conspiracy has been embedded into this body from its very inception," she began. "And it has finally come to light."
Leia was thinking about Padmé Naberrie.
The name rang like a bell, cutting across the self-doubt, the enthralling desire to hide in Han's blue-white room, and her concern for Luke. For long moments, she would be thinking about rescue plans or her impending resignation, and then, suddenly, there she was again: a phantom.
Padmé Naberrie.
A name she had never heard, and while that wasn't at all unusual for a galactic senate that stretched thousands of years into the past, it was odd that no one had ever mentioned a founder of the Alliance by that name. She had studied the history of her life's work. Her father had told her about those dark days of the fall of the Republic. He had talked about the massacre at the Temple, the horrors of Order 66, the way he and others like him had tried to keep their utter rage and horror in check for the optimal time to take it all down, piece by piece, until Palpatine was a smoking pile of rubble.
But he had never, never, invoked the name of Padmé Naberrie. She was sure of it.
He had also never mentioned Obi-Wan Kenobi until the day he sent her to get the Death Star plans. Funny, that.
My old friend, he had told Mon.
Leia swallowed hard.
Layered under this entire mess was a deep, unceasing betrayal by Bail Organa, and she didn't have adequate resources to combat it. Why hadn't he told her about her birth parents? Why hadn't he better prepared her for this destiny?
Why, why, why?
She looked up at the sound of the interrogation cell hatch opening, knowing precisely who would step into the room. She would recognize that presence in the Force anywhere. It was as familiar to her as her own name, and she had a moment of dawning realization as she understood how intrinsically the Force had always moved in her life. She had never tried to feel his presence, and yet she knew him instantly.
Uncle Carlist.
Sitting on the chair with legs politely crossed, she tried a soft smile, but it quickly lost momentum. Instead she swallowed and pressed her lips together in grim acquiescence to the universe of pain she feared was to come.
"She told you," she said.
Her voice sounded too loud, but that was probably because she hadn't spoken since Mon had left. She hadn't been sure what to say to anyone, should they come to see her, and she should have known Carlist would be the first to try. He stood tall, spine ramrod-straight, face full of shadows and uncertainty. He folded his hands in front of his unpressed uniform shirt, and looked at her speculatively for a long moment before slowly nodding.
Well. Here was the first test.
She looked away and blinked back tears. Odd. She had thought them all dried up by now. So much loss and yet so much more to lose. What a paradoxically horrifying feeling: no end to her suffering, even when she wasn't sure exactly what she was suffering for anymore.
"I take it by your expression that Father never told you, either," she ventured.
"No."
Nodding, she slowly un-crossed and then recrossed her legs. She swept a tired hand over the wisps of hair that curled around her face, and steeled herself for the answer to the question she never wanted to ask this man, this pseudo-father who had emerged from the ashes of Alderaan's destruction to keep her sane over the past three years. Before Han, before Luke, there had been Carlist, saving her from herself in her darkest moments.
How many dismal nights had they sat together in the mess hall, the lone survivors of Alderaan on that particular Alliance ship. or in that particular Alliance base, or with that particular Alliance defense force? Not crying, but slowly, gently, acknowledging their shared loss?
"Do you … am I …?" She stopped when the words would not come with any kind of sense, and then rallied all her skills to ask the real question coherently. "Does this change anything for you?"
Am I a monster?
She knew it wasn't logical. Carlist had trusted Han despite his incredibly problematic background. He believed in the autonomy of the individual, as all Alderaanians did. It would be supremely unlike himself to judge her for the sins of her father.
But that didn't quiet the small, fearful girl inside her that hadn't stopped crying for Bail since the moment Vader had spoken those cursed words.
"Leia."
The tears sprung up, and she fought valiantly against them, but nevertheless they fell. Down her cheeks and onto her lips, and she tasted salt, and that was where Han lived now, too, wasn't it? In the sea-salt of her imagination and only there?
It was too much. The question never came, and instead she could only say:
"He lied to me," she whispered, still looking away from Carlist. "He lied about all of it. I don't know how much she knew, but he knew everything."
Urgent footfalls and then the warmth of his arms as he pulled her to stand and wrapped her in total and utter security. She furrowed her brow but accepted the comfort without second-guessing it, feeling that the Force would tell her if rejection was near.
"Leia," he murmured against the crown of her head, but there wasn't anything else to say. Nothing would ever make the salient facts any easier to take. More than the thought of Anakin, or Vader, or Padmé, who were all amorphous emotional strikes to her composure, the thought of Bail Organa's betrayal was a blade into her chest, so much more intimate and nefarious than she could have ever imagined.
She began to sob, and this was embarrassing. She was being recorded, she knew. She knew that others in High Command might even be watching this travesty unfold live, with or without Carlist's knowledge, and anger threatened to take over for the pain, because that was so much easier to deal with than this choking, relentless, horrifying insecurity.
But she resisted.
"I'm so sorry," Carlist said, and he pushed her back to look her in the eye, so that she could see the kindness there, the authenticity in his own. "I … he never said a thing to me. I didn't know."
Sniffing indelicately, she dropped her eyes and stepped away from his arms, trying to gather her wits about her. When she looked up again, she had found a sliver of her control.
"Is Luke being taken care of?" she asked.
He looked confused at the turn the conversation had taken, but answered quickly. "The prosthesis is working well. He's being held in Medical. Chewbacca is there with him, I understand."
"I'm assuming they are holding Calrissian in a secure cell?"
"Jan is interrogating him as we speak."
She nodded again and settled into silence, thinking. They hadn't had much of a plan about what they would do once Luke was treated and felt well enough to rescue Han. There was a larger plan brewing, clearly, based on the gathering of the Alliance fleet and the fact that Mon Mothma was aboard Home One, but nothing mattered more to her than finding Han. She had known that she would need help in that arena, though she wasn't sure exactly what kind of reception she would receive. She had anticipated where all the game pieces would land, but not how they would strike next.
"Have they decided what they are going to do with us?" she asked.
It only determined what her next step would be. She and Luke could easily escape Alliance detention if it came to it, but she was not keen to do that. No need to reinforce the negative image they were bound to have assumed after the news was announced.
Carlist cleared his throat. "Well, that depends on who you speak to. Jan is ready to make you a permanent resident here, but Gial couldn't care less, even sees tactical advantage in two Jedi under his command."
"I'm sure he does."
"Everyone else is somewhere in the middle," he continued. "It would help if you could tell us what your next steps are."
Leia looked him in the eye. "Oh, I'm very clear on that front. The Mercs and I will be getting Han back. After that, I plan to serve the Alliance however High Command sees fit."
"So Solo is…?"
"Frozen in carbonite and with a bounty hunter named Boba Fett, somewhere en route to Tatooine."
Carlist blinked but otherwise displayed no outward sign of shock at that slightly unbelievable recount of events. "If you wouldn't mind, Princess, I would very much like to know how that happened."
"You would, or High Command would?"
Even now, his rueful smirk made her feel more human, and she was so grateful.
"All of the above," he said, and she prepared to tell the whole, unvarnished story of Bespin.
It wasn't the burning ache in his new hand that annoyed Luke Skywalker the most.
He understood that the science of droid prosthesis was beyond his ken, and he had no desire to learn the mechanics of this incredibly adaptable, very capable, and yet inorganic right hand of his. He had known several moisture farmers on Tatooine who had lost limbs, friends of Uncle Owen, and most of them would claim their new limbs were superior to their old ones. Smarter, one had said. Keeps me from touching anything too hot with those really sensitive Byro sensors. You know the ones?
Yes, Luke knew the ones.
Stronger than most of my load-lifters, another had said of his new lower leg. Can't hardly imagine doing all this work with flesh and bone!
Sixteen hours in and Luke was not of the same mind. His new right hand felt clumsy and burned like duracrete on a summer midday. Opening his fist and closing it—as his TwoOneBee had ordered him to do—he found the electrical impulses just a hair too fast for his liking. He had never noticed the impossibly slight pause between his brain's command and his natural hand's movements, but now it felt like his hand would react before the thought had even occurred to his brain at all.
"Human brains are not capable of noticing the slight increase in response times," TwoOneBee had declared when Luke had brought it up.
The Force, then, he had decided, and that was that.
Yet another reality that he now had to deal with.
"Frustrating," he whispered to himself as he clenched the hand into a fist again and again.
A questioning roar brought Luke back to his surroundings, and he hastened to pull himself together. Chewbacca sat in a too-small chair, strapped down to the floor with a durasteel lock that Luke found hilarious. If he wanted out of Medical, Luke would hardly use something as brute as throwing a chair into the viewing theater's plastisteel frame.
High Command did not understand the Jedi at all.
Chewie growled again, and Luke shook his head. "No, it's nothing. I'm just trying to figure out how to drive this thing."
Is it malfunctioning?
"No, no," Luke hurried to reply. "Thank you, though. I just need … practice."
Chewie settled back into his chair, long arms crossed over his chest and a dedicated, obstinate glare on his features. Luke hadn't discussed it with Leia—hadn't been able to discuss anything with his sister yet—but it definitely felt like the Wookiee had initiated some sort of transference clause to his Life Debt to Luke. And Luke felt awful about it, but …
Can't a guy catch a break while he's trying to figure out his new blasted hand?
The thought immediately made him feel disloyal, and he took a second to really look at Chewie. His long mane seemed a bit patchier than usual, a little dirtier, perhaps. Tired, his eyes were slow to respond to stimuli and restlessness plagued his long legs as he sat uncomfortably in the chair. His aura was scattered and displaced, active in odd ways, like a micro-tornado but less organized. And when Luke reached out in the Force, he could feel the depth of Chewie's sorrow and sense of failure.
He wishes he was with Han, Luke guessed, and that made three of them.
"Have you heard anything from Wedge or Salla yet?" Luke asked, in a vain effort to pull his friend from the gloom.
Not yet, he growled. They have just now released you out of confidentiality, however. You haven't been able to accept visitors until now.
Rolling his eyes, he said too loudly, "They want me to tell my friends all the things so the cams can pick it up?"
He glared in the direction of the two microscopic cameras that had been installed in his "private" medbay. It was yet another gross underestimation of both his intelligence and the Force.
I assume that is the reason, yes, the Wookiee said.
"General Madine, you don't have to go to these lengths to get me to talk," he said into the still air of the bugged room. "I have one very specific, very harmless request."
Chewbacca, as always, was three steps ahead of him. They believe it is safer to keep you two separated, Little Jedi.
Luke sighed, unhappy with the Wookiee's astute observation. "The longer they keep us apart, the more likely it is that Leia will react badly."
He could feel her, shields up and reinforced, trying desperately to keep herself in control, and it made him want to console her so much it was driving him a bit insane. Her guilt, her fear, her anger and her deep sorrow were all held captive in neat, compartmentalized little boxes, because she felt she did not dare to let them loose in what was clearly an unfriendly environment.
The guilt was one thing he could help her with, though, because it largely focused on him and the loss of his hand. It had been her lack of control over her rage that had resulted in Vader's—Anakin's—surprise attack on him and …
And …
He clamped his own mental shields down so quickly that he jerked into stillness. He had thought the name, and the name wasn't allowed here. If he let it loose in his brain, his mind would become an open desert of betrayal, fear and self-loathing.
No, he thought. Do not do this to yourself.
But the damage had already been done.
I am your father.
Horror washed over him, and he clung to those mental shields so hard he could feel the shake in both his hands, organic and not. Revulsion roiled in his stomach and he focused on trying not to vomit all of it onto the medbay deck.
Not now!
He pushed back against the waves of deep self-indictment, the grievances against his sire that he recognized in himself. How none of the good he had done in the galaxy would ever, could ever, rise above the evil his father had unleashed. How his power came from something so putrid, so awful, that he struggled to see how it could be anything but the Dark Side.
He had lied to Biggs as a kid, and was that because he was a born liar?
He had pulled his sister into his own training, and was that because he was inherently selfish?
He had readily fallen for Vader's trap, the one in which Han and Leia had suffered so much, and was that because he was not intelligent enough to see through such blatant tricks?
Little Jedi? Chewie asked, clearly picking up on Luke's distress.
"Can you … please, Chewie, can you tell me again?"
Standing from the chair, the great Wookiee took two steps and then leaned down to hover over Luke's shaking form, a stayed Wroshyr tree in this hellscape of triggers.
You are safe, he began. You are a good human. You are trying to follow the light, as your people always have. What you feel is temporary and will pass, if you let it. You are not your father.
Luke didn't know how Chewie knew what to say, didn't know what practice he must have had with Han or some other human going through severe episodes of trauma, but he was so grateful. The Wookiee hadn't left Luke's side during this entire confinement, eating and sleeping in the small room as if on watch. And if he couldn't have Leia here with him, Chewie was the older, more experienced sibling he needed to keep his calm.
Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and let the worst of the emotion pass by him, thinking of its temporarity and the two centuries that had already passed under his friend's careful watch. Chewie was usually right, and this was no exception.
He had just found a sense of calm in the Force when he a presence approached his medbay hatch. The aura felt stringently organized, mathematical and deeply analytical, similar to Chewie's but without the kindness that imbued every part of the Wookiee's being. This presence—General Crix Madine—was the most droidlike human Luke had ever encountered. In his fierce attachment to reason and evidence, Madine seemed to cling to the tenets of a universe that did not dare deceive him.
Luke's lips lifted in a soft smile, thinking of this similarity to Han.
But that was the end of the likenesses. Where Han had confidence in his own tried-and-true abilities, Madine was staunchly reliant on military protocols and established evidentiary standards. And that was why Luke knew the following conversation would not go well.
"Commander Skywalker."
Luke smiled and dipped his head in a respectful nod. "General Madine. It's good to see you again."
It was a half-joke. Their last conversation had not ended on pleasant terms, either.
"Between the interrogations of the princess and Lando Calrissian, High Command has learned significantly more about the circumstances of the past four weeks. You have not been as helpful."
"My sister outranks me," Luke offered. "I was following protocol."
Be careful, Little Jedi, Chewie rumbled from the corner. Madine glanced at the Wookiee, displayed no anxiety whatsoever, and continued on, undaunted.
"Admirable, but you two were not on an Alliance-sanctioned mission. No such protocol exists."
"The evacuation of an Alliance base is a sanctioned mission."
Madine peered down his nose at Luke. "The evacuation is not the problem. Your X-Wing was registered leaving the Anoat system. You somehow arrived a month later without the X-Wing or a hand."
"Sounds like the protocol exists when you want it to, and doesn't when you don't want it to." Luke replied to cover up the flare of anger he felt at the callous remark. "That's nice."
Stormy gray eyes met calm blue, and Madine quirked his lips to the side. "We now know the circumstances of Commander Solo's capture and your … unfortunate relationship to Darth Vader."
Trying hard not to flinch at the name, Luke held the general's eyes. "Busy morning, then. When can I see Leia?"
"We don't trust you."
Well, of course they didn't. Luke probably wouldn't have trusted them, either, had he been in their position. That was no surprise.
"I'm sure you don't," he said flatly. "Trusting us would be pretty dumb, honestly."
Madine kept his face neutral. "So you see why we would prefer to keep you here for the time being."
Sighing, Luke shared an exasperated look with Chewie, who sat up in his chair, knowing what was coming and preparing as any good hunter would. Luke swung his legs out of the bed and stood to his full height, a good few centimeters shorter than Madine. With one last clench of his right fist, he easily reached out with the Force and grabbed the general's blaster from its holster, bringing it flying into his own hand without a twitch of a reaction. It smacked into his right palm, and for show, Luke trained it on his startled superior officer, who stared unblinkingly at the blaster as if it had acted of its own accord.
Chewie stood and walked behind Madine, his sudden terrifying shadow, and Luke let the moment linger a beat longer, wanting his point to be made crystal clear.
A flip of his hand and the blaster was suddenly lying flat on his robotic palm, a venomous snake offered back to its owner. Madine glanced between his blaster and Luke's eyes, gauging the seriousness of what had just happened. Finally, after a long moment, he tilted his head to the side, reached out with a careful hand, and retrieved his weapon.
"I understand your preferences," Luke said with as much kindness as he could muster. "But I really do need to see my sister."