Imperial Palace
Imperial City
Imperial Center
Sheev Palpatine, Senior Sith Lord, Emperor of the galaxy, took a careful bite of Nubian cabbage rolls and released a deep sigh of satisfaction. His teeth were original, which meant that they were a trifle on the aged and fragile side, so he was careful to eat soft foods. Given that he had the best cooks in the entire galaxy, he always was served exceptionally tasty soft food. Nubian cabbage rolls, while somewhat plebian in origin, were one of his favorites and it had taken some time to find a cook who could prepare them exactly right. His mother's food droid used to make them, back when he was but a child, but that droid had been lost in a most unfortunate Force lightning accident when …
There was a sudden, unpleasant, incredible lurch in the Force and Palpatine reached out a hand to steady himself as the cabbage roll showed an unbecoming desire to reverse its journey. What…what... what was that? Something very weird, and very bad, had just happened.
While he focused on not throwing up with 1% of his attention, he threw the other 99% into his direct vicinity. He relaxed a little; he sensed no immediate danger from assassins or large bombs nearby.
The next step, of course, was Vader; the junior Sith was out trying to find the Rebel base and the former Anakin Skywalker was always a bit of a loose laser cannon. With a snarl of irritation, Palpatine put down his fork, leaned back against his extremely comfortable padded chair, and closed his eyes, seeking the source of the disturbance. If it was Vader – well, the Emperor would find great pleasure in punishing his apprentice for disturbing his meal!
A minute later, he grunted and rose to his feet. It was Vader. He didn't know what was going on but something was happening and he had better find out what exactly. Of course, he could com Vader directly, but given the significance of the perturbation, he required more information.
Forty-five minutes later, Palpatine had transitioned from irritable to hesitantly excited. A spy on board Executor had explained that apparently Luke Skywalker was on board the Super Star Destroyer and in custody, along with two unknown women. Vader had rushed off with the young Rebel in a frenzy approximately an hour previously. The spy in question, who had not been on the Bridge during the events in question, was openly confused about what had come to pass, but the identity of Skywalker was mostly confirmed.
Palpatine spent a few minutes considering this and then decided he had better com Vader immediately. He knew, of course, that the cyborg Sith wanted to kill him. The apprentice always wanted to kill his master; it was the way of the Sith. And Luke Skywalker was the best path forward for Vader. Given that, would Vader admit that the boy was under his control? Or would he lie? Both responses would be...interesting.
The Emperor strode into his private com chamber, sat down on the exquisitely comfortable krayt dragon throne, and commed Vader's direct line in the cyborg's private quarters on Executor. The sooner he knew how Vader was going to react, the better. Not that he truly thought that Vader would respond immediately. Palpatine would probably have to contact Ozzel, who would in turn track down…
To his surprise, the com at Vader's end picked up within seconds. But that was nothing compared to the shock, the disbelief, the downright confusion which swirled in Palpatine's brain as the image on the holoscreen formed into an image, not of Darth Vader, two meters tall, clad in black, wheezing endlessly, but instead into … into…
"Amidala?" he choked out, and a part of his brain slapped another part of his brain. It could not be Padme Amidala Naberrie Skywalker, of course. The woman had died 23 years previously, which was one of his greatest accomplishments.
"Sheev Palpatine," the woman responded, her beautiful, youthful face contorted into an expression of sheer hatred. "You are, without a doubt, the most disgusting, loathsome, nasty, manipulative… you know what, Basic words just don't cut it. Beesga! Cha skrunee da pat, cheespa bo coopa, cuba doompa, dopa-maskey kung…"
/
Darth Vader's private holodeck
Executor
Darth Vader stood with his two sort of children flanking him, staring into the face of his beloved Padme. A part of him was full of ecstatic euphoria at the reality that she was alive and with him, right here, right now. A growing part of him was fearful. It was insane for Padme to expose herself to Palpatine; indeed, it was the merest, wretched chance which had allowed her to be on the holodeck when the Emperor's call came through. Padme had been thinking about contacting some old friends, those few that were still alive, to discuss the political situation in the galaxy and ding, dong, the Emperor's com had buzzed, and Padme, after learning who was calling, had promptly answered.
And Luke and Leia, his Alter twins, had grabbed Vader's arms and hauled him out of range of the holocams despite his protests. The weird thing, the terrifying thing, was that they were so strong in the Force that he wasn't sure he could break free if he wanted to.
"Where did Mom learn those amazing Huttese insults?" Luke asked telepathically.
"Yes, she's got some doozies there," Leia chimed in, also telepathically. "I mean, I think she could teach Han a thing or two!"
Vader took a step forward, galvanized into action, only to be hauled back with the Force, where he unhappily subsided. "The emperor will kill her!" he cried out silently.
"No he won't, because you are going to protect her," Luke said with complete certainty.
Palpatine, who was looming above them in the form of a truly gigantic holograph, interrupted Padme's insults and demanded, "Where is my servant, Lord Vader? I will speak with him now!"
"He is a person, and his name is Anakin," Padme snapped, her body quivering with outrage. "You no longer have any control over my husband, Palpatine. One more thing, shoor-uop squee boop beep!"
Padme snatched up the blaster that Luke had found for her and shot the holographic projectors, causing them to explode in a cloud of sparks. The image of the Emperor disappeared and Luke let go of his Alter Father's arm and strode forward to give Padme a hug.
"That was great, Mother!" he said cheerfully. "That last insult of yours was awesome, though I am not sure Old Wrinkles will get it. Does he know binary?"
"Oh, was that what that was?" Leia asked curiously. "I don't know binary very well. I hope it was really insulting."
"It was," Padme said, her shoulders relaxing though her expression was still stormy. "I learned it from R2D2, an astromech."
"We know R2 very well," Leia said, putting an arm around Padme and guiding her through a nearby door and into Vader's austere quarters. "He and C-3P0 went to the Organas along with me; I was adopted by the royal family of Alderaan, you see."
"R2 has been holding out on me," Luke grumbled, wandering over to a nearby food and drink dispenser. He ordered blue milk for the three humans who could eat normally, waited until the order had arrived, and floated two to his sister and sort of mother, who swallowed hers down within seconds.
"I am thirsty," Padme commented, and leaned back on the comfortable chair which Vader had ordered to be delivered to his quarters an hour previously. "And tired."
"Not surprising," Leia said in return. "You gave birth like a couple of hours ago and lost quite a bit of blood. Also, your milk is going to come in soon so your body is signaling you need more liquids for that."
Padme looked at Leia and, to the horror of Vader, and the distress of her Alter twins, she suddenly burst into tears.
"I … they are 23 years old!" she sobbed. "I won't be able to…I missed their infancy! This is your fault, Anakin! Thanks to you, I have missed more than the first two decades of our children's lives!"
"So have I," Vader pointed out, filled with a mixture of sorrow and anger. "And it isn't all my fault! Why did you bring Obi-Wan to kill me at Mustafar, Padme?"
Padme, who had been curled up in a miserable huddle on her chair, jerked upright, then rose menacingly to her feet and strode over to poke her husband in the blinking chest plate. "I had no idea that Kenobi was on board, Anakin. He stowed away! Do you really think I would bring someone to kill you? I love you, don't you get it you big, stupid oaf? I love you!"
Only a day previously, Darth Vader would have not have even considered the slightest possibility that someone would call him a stupid oaf and live to tell the tale. In this moment, however, while guilt and shock entwined in his heart (she had not betrayed him! She had been trying to call him back from the brink! She wanted to run away with him to have their child, to be safe…) the most overwhelming emotion was incredulous joy.
"You…you love me?" he repeated, his voice shaky even through the vocoder. "After all that I have done? After I attacked you on Mustafar?"
"I will always love you, Ani," his wife said, looking up into his helmet. "Always always. Frankly, I hate what you have become, but I will always love you."
Vader's eyes itched as they attempted, and failed, to produce tears. His tear ducts, along with many of his organs, had given up the ghost on Mustafar.
In the middle of this emotion, a bell chimed and Luke and Leia both looked toward the closed door.
"Admiral Piett," Leia said.
"Actually, it's still just Captain Piett," Luke said. "Father hasn't killed Ozzel yet."
"Ah," Leia mused. "Well, I think we should talk to him."
"Why?" Padme demanded.
"Um, well, I, erm, just think we should," Leia said, then turned to Luke. "I must say, it is inconvenient having Vader here. We can't talk telepathically without him hearing!"
Luke stared at his twin with a wrinkled brow and then said, "Oh, we are three years after the Death Star so…"
"Yes, so, we should talk to Piett," Leia agreed, and waved a hand toward the door.
It opened.
/
Firmus Piett was a competent, diligent, intelligent officer. It was the diligence that was his problem now. He had, along with everyone else, been entirely discombobulated by the sudden appearance of Luke Skywalker on the bridge, followed by the arrival of two unknown women out of thin air. He had also been shot by a stray deflected blaster bolt and Maximillian Veers, who was a genuine friend, had hustled him off to med bay to have his arm wrapped up after Vader disappeared into an elevator with his…prisoners?
Piett had originally ascribed his fuzzy thinking to being confused and in pain, but after the pain killers had dealt with the agony side of things, his brain still felt funny. It had taken him forty-five minutes of hard thinking to remember the probe droid in the Hoth system which had shown signs of sentient life forms on that frigid planet.
Piett hated being in a medbay and the knowledge that the Rebels might well be on Hoth had given him sufficient reason to sneak out of his bed and find Admiral Ozzel, who had looked down his patrician nose and dismissed him out of hand when Piett insisted the Rebels were probably on Hoth.
That was exasperating but not surprising. Ozzel was, not to put too fine a point on it, a fool.
But Piett was loyal to the Empire, not to Admiral Ozzel, and thus he had decided, admittedly with trepidation, no, downright terror, that he needed to speak to Lord Vader on the subject. Vader might be a two meter walking mass murderer, but he was also intelligent and devoted to the Empire. Piett knew that the Sith Lord would look into the matter even if Ozzel was too stupid to do so.
The door slid open and Piett straightened his spine and stepped into Lord Vader's private rooms.
He stopped a meter in and forced himself not to goggle. The scene on the bridge two hours previously had been bizarre, but this was even weirder. Lord Vader stood directly in front of him, his posture strangely uncertain. To one side, a chair sat where no chair had ever been before, and the younger of the two women was sitting on it, the one who had been unconscious when she appeared on the bridge.
Behind the woman stood Luke Skywalker and another woman whom Piett now thought might be Leia Organa, except her dark hair was only shoulder length, and that was weird because the princess of Alderaan was known for her very long locks.
Why were these people in Vader's private quarters? What was going on?
"Come in, Captain Piett," the seated woman invited. "We have much to discuss."
