Chapter 50
Sins of the Father
The Emperor lifted his hand, and the straps holding the guard to the medical bunk released. Somehow the guard looked even more intimidating in his tattered armor without his helmet. Twisting the twins' arms behind their backs, he shoved them toward the cockpit. Luke struggled fruitlessly. Leia didn't bother to fight. Let them think she was subdued—maybe they would underestimate her. She glimpsed Artoo standing beside the medical bay. He whistled forlornly but almost inaudibly. She hoped he would have the sense to stay there, at least while the odds were so dismal.
In the cockpit, the guard roughly secured them to the passenger seats and took his place in the pilot's chair. The Emperor had already seated himself at the copilot's station. The guard ran the ignition sequence, but nothing happened.
"Your Majesty," he said after a second attempt, "I regret to inform you the engine and thrusters are not responding. The comm system is offline, as well."
"You know," said Leia conversationally, lounging as insolently as she could with her arms bound to the seat arms, "sand plays the dickens with electronics and mechanics."
Palpatine spun around, face twisted with fury.
She clenched her fists around the arm of her chair to keep them from trembling. "Tatooine natives invest in equipment designed to take a beating. A fancy shuttle like this, though—" she gave the most disdainful shrug she could manage "—no durability. It will just sit here, an empty hulk, especially once the Jawas strip it of any useful technology. Not that there's much here—but I suppose they might find a few things they can sell."
"Of course," Luke added brightly, "we might be able to fix it, if we had time and parts. I don't really feel like doing that, though, do you, Leia?" His voice was admirably steady until he spoke her name.
"I don't." Her breath was locked so tightly in her chest, it took all her self-control to force out enough to say, "You know who could get this piece of junk up and running? Dad. He's a genius with repairs. He even got Artoo's booster jets functioning again. But I'm pretty sure he won't be willing to work on it. Especially not since you kidnapped us and then tried to kill him. Nope." Her heart thundered against her ribs, threatening to shake her whole body. She bent all her concentration on her breathing, determined not to let her fear show.
Unfortunately, the act didn't fool the Emperor. With a sick smile on his face, he stood to lean over her and pull the protective wrappings away from her mouth. She drew her head back as far as she could, but he barely had to move his hand to tilt her chin up.
"What a pleasure it will be to Turn you, dear child," he crooned. "All your mother's proud defiance and all your father's desperate fear. So sweet."
Leia jerked her chin to one side to no avail.
Luke pulled against his bonds. "Leave her alone," he cried. He closed his eyes, and a gentle sensation—almost as comforting as a brush of his fingers—stroked against her cheek. She reached back through the Force.
The Emperor's bony fingers bit uncomfortably into her chin. "Ah, ah, ah, young Skywalker," he admonished mildly. "That is the first thing you must learn. Your sister is mine, to do with as I choose. You may not interfere." His grip tightened until his clawlike nails dug into her skin.
Leia clenched her jaw to keep from crying out with the pain. He stared into her eyes unblinkingly for an endless moment. Just as Leia thought she could not bear another second of the contact, he released her. She gasped in relief and sagged against the back of her chair.
Without looking at Luke, Palpatine made a careless, backhanded gesture in his direction. Luke's head snapped sharply against his headrest, despite the half meter or more separating them. Leia whimpered. The impact probably hadn't done any damage, but it was terrifying to see Palpatine wield the Force so casually.
The Emperor turned to the guard, who shook his head. "I regret that the shuttle is not operational, Your Majesty."
Scowling, the Emperor stalked toward the corridor, his shoulders twitching as if they itched. "How irritating. Very well, if that is the way of it. The legion has not yet arrived. We shall have to walk down the canyon to rendezvous with them once I have dealt with Vader. Keep these two under control at all times, but do not harm them permanently. Set for stun."
The guard retrieved his force pike from the passageway where he had dropped it when Artoo shocked him before he returned to bind the twins. He attached one end of a three-meter length of cable to the manacle still encircling Leia's right wrist. The other end he tied to the corresponding manacle on Luke's left arm.
"This won't throw you off balance, but it will keep you from trying anything stupid," he grunted. "I can give you the shock of your lives with this before you can take two steps—even on the stun setting. And don't think because he isn't watching you that he doesn't know what you're doing." He shoved them toward the corridor sharply enough that Luke staggered before righting himself.
Luke glared at the guard. "All right, all right. You don't have to be so rough."
Leia loitered down the corridor as slowly as possible, scanning the shuttle's interior for some means of resistance or escape. Artoo stood, apparently deactivated, in the galley across from the hatch, but she didn't know how to signal him without alerting the guard. If, in fact, he was only feigning and not truly deactivated. The guard prodded her sharply in the back with his palm and she staggered to the top of the shuttle's ramp. Luke grabbed her arm to steady her. They took the opportunity to exchange a long, significant look.
Anakin and his companions descended the ladder from the roof. They didn't dare split up to hunt for the twins—it would be too easy for Palpatine to ambush them in the murk. There was safety in numbers. They followed the wall along the cliff until it led them back onto the open plateau in front of the hut.
"Oh, no," Ahsoka said when the battered hulk of the shuttle took shape in the haze. It sat several meters farther back than it had originally. The port wing, twisted out of shape and incompletely folded up, had scraped along the corner of the hut, crumbling the permacrete and exposing interior wiring.
The three exchanged dismayed glances. Their shared fear for Luke and Leia's safety hung more thickly in the air than the dust. Especially with Palpatine on the loose. They drew their lightsabers as they approached the cock-eyed ramp. By unspoken agreement, Anakin took point. He hesitated for a long moment, terrified what he might find inside the ship.
Uneven footsteps scraped across the shuttle's deck, and Palpatine appeared at the top of the ramp.
Obi-Wan and Ahsoka drew up to flank Anakin at the foot of the ramp. Sidious' face, particularly around the eyes, was lacerated and swollen. His robes hung bedraggled and gray with dust. Motion beyond him caught Anakin's eye. In a scene out of his worst nightmare, a Royal Guard—helmetless, armor scorched and tabards tattered, yet still radiating lethal energy—herded the twins into the doorway. It was small comfort that, although clearly shaken, they seemed uninjured, but Anakin would take any comfort he could get right now. He heaved a sigh of relief, only to stiffen as the guard met his eyes and brought the tip of his staff close to Luke's ear in a clear message.
Anakin's shoulders tightened with the necessity of restraint. "Release my children. They are no threat to you."
"I most certainly shall not," the Emperor said crisply. "They will make most excellent apprentices."
"You're a fool, Palpatine, if you think you can subdue them both." Obi-Wan wielded urbanity as a shield to conceal his fear.
"They're too much like their father," Ahsoka interjected. "And their mother."
"Oh, I have every confidence I can do whatever I wish with them. They are not even padawans, after all," he sneered. "You've had them for eighteen years. What were you doing with them? Obviously not making them Jedi." He spat the last word.
"Protecting us from you." Leia tried to lunge forward, but the guard shoved her to the side with the butt of his pike. He caught her against him, trapping her with the staff of the pike across her body.
"Ah, what an ornament you will be to the Sith Order, my very young apprentice. That anger—so delicious. So like your father at the same age…" Palpatine chuckled mockingly and ignited a familiar lightsaber.
"That's mine," said Anakin blankly.
"This?" Sidious waved the blue-bladed lightsaber negligently. "I can't see that you have any grounds for complaint, Anakin. Since you have destroyed mine, it is only fitting that I should use yours to defeat you once and for all."
Anakin braced himself with a deliberate breath. "Let Luke and Leia go," he said again.
"Oh, no. They are mine now, to do with as I please. Ah, ah, ah," he cautioned as Anakin shifted his weight in preparation for some desperate action. "If you attack me again, they will suffer for your rebellion."
Anakin clenched his fist around the hilt in his hand. The guard could react well before he could ignite his blade. He longed to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off Palpatine's face, but he forced himself to relax and try to think. He needed something that would take Palpatine by surprise yet not result in severe injury or death to the twins. Not a shred of an idea presented itself. Even ragged and filthy, the Emperor reeked of Dark power.
Anakin's fear oozed from behind his shields, drawn to that Darkness. There was so much power—right there. Familiar power. Comfortable power. If he only reached for it, it would flame through him. Light or Dark—did it really matter which side of the Force he used as long as Palpatine was dead?
"Good. Good…" Palpatine's voice spread like a puddle of oil on a polished floor. "You want to kill me? Do it. You know the power is right there. Take it. I am weakened—I could hardly resist."
The gears ground as Anakin's hand tightened still further on his lightsaber's hilt. His shoulders were so tense, they might crack under the pressure. And all the while, the Darkness prowled at his feet, tempting him with its offer of power. Power to destroy this man who had shattered his family and subjugated him for so long. He could use it to overthrow Palpatine, and once the greatest danger was eliminated, he could deal with whatever fallout resulted.
But he could not let the twins suffer. He could not!
"He's trying to trick you, Anakin," Obi-Wan said urgently.
The fear was so suffocating, Anakin barely heard him. He gathered himself to grasp that burning energy and hurl it at his master.
The Force flared with wild energy and his concentration shattered. The twins' bond had activated. While not as intense as it had been when they sparred on the Sandfish, the brilliance of their accord was enough to startle every Force sensitive for miles.
Leia lowered her head and twisted her body to her left to drive the crown of her head into the guard's neck. Her right arm, bound to Luke's left, stretched behind her. The guard staggered, more from the unexpected nature of the attack than because she had hurt him, and the tip of his pike struck the rim of the ramp housing above his head. The tip sparked. He tugged to pull it out of contact.
Palpatine was turning, his empty hand instinctively splaying in the telltale gesture that betrayed his intention to deploy Force lightning, but Luke had already lunged low to grab for Ahsoka's hilt dangling at his waist.
As Luke reached the Emperor, Artoo charged, shrieking, through the shuttle hatch, arc welder extended. Blue-violet energy leapt from its tip to ground in the guard's backside. The guard yelped with surprise and stumbled backward, slipping on the loose sand underfoot. Leia, wrenched between her captor and her brother, screamed in pain. The guard regained his feet. With the butt of his pike, he swept Artoo off the ramp.
Luke, his left arm pulled uncomfortably taut behind him, ignited the bright white blade and swung it in a frantic attack. The next moment, he crumpled to the ground with a cry. Ahsoka's hilt flew free to land some distance away. An odor of scorched flesh bloomed.
The guard, more focused on the threat posed by the droid behind him than on the scuffle in front of him, had misjudged the range of his weapon by a fraction. The tip of his force pike brushed against the Emperor's scalp.
Palpatine stiffened, howling in rage and pain as it discharged. The energy he had been preparing to unleash blew out in an uncontrolled wave. He collapsed to his knees, and Anakin's old lightsaber dropped out of his hands. Leia and the guard tumbled under the force of the energy wave. She struck her head on the ramp housing and fell to lie still, face down, right shoulder at an unnatural angle despite the slack that now lay in the line between her and Luke. The guard collided with the sharp edge of the hatch's frame. He too lay silent and still.
Anakin, shock and fear clawing in his chest, tore his eyes from his disturbingly motionless daughter to dart a glance at his son. The boy was curled in on himself, moaning, right arm tucked under his left. Ahsoka had dropped to her knees beside him, calling frantically, "Luke! Luke!"
The boy lifted his head, agony etched across his features. Anakin's eyes followed the trajectory Ahsoka's lightsaber had taken, and he nearly vomited. That burned flesh wasn't Palpatine's. Luke! Palpatine had—
Anakin's vision went almost as red as it had been when he wore the mask. He roared his rage. Luke and Ahsoka flinched, but he took no more notice of it than of the resulting pain in his throat.
He ignited his blade even as his old lightsaber sprang through the air to smack against his left palm. Green crossed over blue at Palpatine's throat. His arms quivered with the force of his fury. How he longed to part those blades as he had done once long ago.
But that was not enough to satisfy his vengeance, and if he had learned nothing else from Palpatine's tutelage, he had learned the self-control necessary to extract every morsel of vengeance he was owed.
Palpatine had killed Padmé. He had enslaved Vader. He had threatened the twins. Now he had cut off Luke's hand. And Leia lay alarmingly still and quiet.
His Master deserved to suffer. So he would make him suffer. With sickly pleasure, he wrapped the Force around Palpatine's windpipe and squeezed. Gently. He caressed the tissues. Larynx. Trachea. Cartilage. Bone. He pressed lightly on the hyoid bone, knowing from experience that it increased a victim's pain. Palpatine began to gag.
Good.
He released the pressure and shifted his grip to the trachea. He compressed it sufficiently to induce lightheadedness. All the while he gazed into his master's eyes over those crossed sabers.
Oh, this was sweet.
"Just do it, Anakin. Don't draw it out."
Obi-Wan's voice was only a distant rumble in his ears. How he had fantasized about this moment. But this was better than his fantasies. He had never imagined he could have Palpatine so thoroughly at his mercy. He had always thought he would have to do the deed quickly. A lightsaber stroke. A broken neck. A blow to the head. To have the time to extract some small part of the debt this man owed him….
He would be free at last!
Palpatine feebly pressed back with the Dark, his anger and fear surging wildly, but he lacked the concentration and strength to master the Force. Anakin used those wild emotions to stoke his own connection to the Dark, just as his Master had taught him. Gloating over his enemy's humiliation, Anakin increased the pressure.
Leia stirred and moaned. Involuntarily, Anakin took his eyes off Sidious to see her try to push herself up, only to fall back when she jostled her shoulder. Artoo righted himself and touched her hair with his grasper arm, whimpering his distress.
Obi-Wan twitched, his impulse to go to her aid clear, before restraining himself to maintain his guard at Anakin's side. He gave Ahsoka a significant look. She nodded in reply and lowered Luke to the ground. He, foolishly, tried to stand, wavering and white-faced, his right stump held tightly against his chest as he stared at his father.
As though the sight had triggered a flashback, Anakin caught a glimpse of a gantry suspended over a chasm, wind whipping through the dark chill. A desperate boy confronted him, a familiar blue blade in one hand. Luke! A red blade in his own hand sliced through his son's wrist to the distant reverberation of his vicious satisfaction. The echo of the boy's agonized cry lingered, even as the gantry faded into the close confines of a harshly lit cell. Leia, her outward defiance belied by the terror in her eyes, stared beyond him at the buzzing interrogation droid. "And now, Your Highness," he said with cruel implacability and a secret twisted pleasure at the measures her defiance was driving him to, "we will discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base."
As quickly as it had come, the memory dissipated, and he stood over Palpatine once again. He glanced down at the blade in his hand—the blue blade Luke had wielded in that snippet of vision. Yet the other lightsaber he held was not the deep scarlet of the Sith but the silvery-green of sun-washed krayt's scales.
A wave of disorientation swept through him.
The fading echoes of the satisfaction he had felt at his children's suffering brought the burn of bile to the back of his throat. He couldn't do that. He couldn't! Not under any circumstances. He loved his children.
Treachery is the way of the Sith. The old proverb echoed in Obi-Wan's cool voice.
Anakin drew a great hissing breath through his nose, but it caught on the fear lodged in his throat. He dreaded the consequences of either action. To kill Palpatine while the Dark raged through his soul left him open to its corruption, but he did not know how to let it go, now that he had listened to its siren call once again. And yet not to destroy Palpatine was unthinkable. Not only for his own sake—for his own freedom and his children's—but, even more, for the freedom of the galaxy.
As was becoming his habit when perplexed or in need, he tuned his mind to the song of the krayt crystal. This time it carried the impression of words, faint but distinct.
Remember, the truth will set you free.
The truth. What truth could bring freedom in this situation?
Who are you? the krayt had asked.
He shifted his grip on the hilt in his right hand. The crystals hummed as though waiting for his answer, as the Great Mother had waited when she first demanded he answer. He had struggled to speak the truth then, but he knew now. He was Anakin Skywalker. Son of Shmi and father to Luke and Leia. He was Kraytrider, with all the obligations and expectations that entailed. He had taken his Oath and he would keep it until death. Perhaps he was even a Jedi once more.
He was not and never would be Darth Vader again.
Yes, yes, the crystals sang. The truth will set you free.
The truth was that the Dark Side had enslaved him. To wield it again, even in pursuit of a worthy end, was to voluntarily place the shackles on his wrists and the detonator in his heart. If he chose the Darkness now, there would be no escape. He would destroy all he had sworn to protect even as he damned himself and all he loved.
He recalled a barren landscape under a barren sky. Will you submit?
With a choked cry, he fell back a step, releasing his hold on Palpatine's throat, although he did not lower his blades. The Emperor sagged forward, coughing and gagging.
"What are you doing, Master?" Ahsoka demanded, half rising from her crouch beside Leia. "He's too dangerous to leave alive."
Anakin's voice rasped and trembled. "I will not take revenge. I will not Fall again."
"It is possible," Obi-Wan said quietly beside him, "to kill even an enemy without taking revenge."
"Yes. It is." Still trembling, hoping he was not about to make a dreadful miscalculation, he stepped forward again, prepared to strike the blow that would end this struggle.