Omega Sqadron Black Knights



Chapter 22

(NB The authors have chosen not to incorporate the changes made in the re-mastered DVD version of “The Empire Strikes Back”)

 

Lt Cdr Lainy Kal’Ten watched, almost in awe, as the Home One slid gracefully across the bow of her sister ship, before slowing to a halt abeam her. Lainy defied anyone not to have emotion rise in their throat at the sight of the two Rebel Alliance ships lying alongside one another. They represented everything the Rebel Alliance was fighting for, everything that so many of her colleagues had given their lives for – freedom – and Lainy never tired of the sight of these ships.

A flurry of activity drew Lainy’s attention towards the Home One’s stern. Then a voice broke through her earpiece, “Knight Leader, this is Home One…”

“Home One,” Xen answered, “Knight Leader, go ahead.”

“Knight Leader, requesting an update of Omega’s situation and casualties?”

“We’ve lost three pilots,” Xen supplied, “two dead, one walking wounded. I’ve pulled the remaining three Aryad pilots into the Omega ranks. Omega has fuel reserves for another two hours, but I’m not sure about the Aryad fighters.”

She paused then warned, “Home One it’s inadvisable to remain here for any length of time. There was a second Star Destroyer that left the party. He may have gone for help…”

“Copied, Knight Leader,” the man acknowledged. “Can you supply an outline of the Aryad situation?”

Xen pushed down a rush of irritation. She was a fighter pilot, damn it, not a diplomat! She was in charge of Omega, not the whole damned situation! She keyed the mike, ready to tell them that she would require time to collate the data…

Then, suddenly, she remembered a similar circumstance when Kaz had been asked to give an overview of a situation with all hells erupting around them… And she also remembered what Kaz had told them…

“My Second has that information…” Xen supplied, smiling and hoping that Lainy was more on the ball than she was.

Lainy, she thought as the other Lieutenant Commander stepped in, her calm, measured voice giving the Home One all the information they needed to know, I owe you big time for this…

“Roger that,” the Home One told them. “Stand by for orders….”

“Knight Leader!” another softer, more lilting voice broke in. “This is Rascal One, do you copy?”

Xen keyed the mike, knowing that with a call-sign like Rascal it could only be the commanding officer of the A-wing squadron. “Rascal One this is Knight Leader. Go ahead…”

“Rascal One has twenty-four A-wings heading out to back your butts up,” Commander Bara Kine told her, his smile reflected in his voice. “Confirm the positions of your squadron?”

“Two fighters covering the Home Two,” Xen told him. “The others are posted on a defence perimeter around Pryatt…”

Bara frowned. Only two fighters covering the Home Two? How many X-wings did Omega have left?

“Copied, Knight Leader,” he acknowledged. “How many on the perimeter?”

“Seven pairs…”

“Roger that…” Bara confirmed. Only sixteen fighters left after a run in with two Star Destroyers…

He pushed that thought away, issuing orders to his squadron, sending half to bolster the defence perimeter, the other half following him towards Lainy and Xen’s positions by the Home Two.

Shei turned her fighter, watching the Rascal ships heading towards their position, unable to stop the small pang of longing for her beloved A-wing. Perhaps, now that they had been joined by the Home One she would be reassigned: returned to an A-wing squadron.

Surprisingly, the prospect didn’t thrill her as much as she thought it would…

The A-wing would always be her first love, but she had grown used to the X-wing, to the unexpected thrill that coursed through her at the order to “Lock S-foils in attack position!” She had no wish to leave the Knights, she realised. She would miss the company of these people who had made her feel so at home in Omega Squadron. She would miss the easy companionship, the gentle mick-taking and the tall stories over a glass of Blue…

Riding off Ryven Soieen’s wing, Xen Emaar also watched the Rebel fighters heading towards them. She had heard about the A-wings, but this was the first time she had ever seen the wedge-shaped fighters. They were solid looking, compared to the X-wing’s more pointed elegance. She found herself wondering what they were like to fly. Shei had flown one, hadn’t she? Perhaps she could…

Emaar’s train of thought fragmented as a small voice in the back of her head warned her that she was getting too involved with these people. The surge of adrenaline from the battle to defend Aryad had broken down her defences. Stay aloof, she reminded herself. Keep your distance. Don’t let them in…

It was difficult to completely quash the small tendril of curiosity, though, as the A-wings slid to a halt, spread out between the Omega X-wings to fill up the gaps in the defence perimeter and she found her attention drawn to them once more.

Jon Alpelor also found himself intrigued by the A-wings. Even after such a short time flying an X-wing, he found himself comparing the wedge-shaped craft unfavourably to the sleek beauty of the fighter he was flying. In the Imperial Navy it had been a TIE or nothing. Now that he could compare what he was flying to other fighters, he found himself biased. Grinning, he wondered if every Rebel Alliance pilot felt the same rivalry? Did they feel the same affection that he was finding for their own particular fighter?

Shaking his head, laughing at himself, he reached out, unable to resist the urge to run a gloved hand lovingly along the smooth metal of the cockpit where it met the canopy. “Glad I found you, girl,” he whispered softly.

On the command deck of the Home One, Admiral Ackbar and the Home One’s Captain, Tiena Bieebenn, listened to the ideas and suggestions the bridge crew supplied for what, exactly, to do about the situation and, more importantly, the Home Two. Her hull was compromised, so until they patched her, there was no way the ship could jump into hyperspace. She had personnel trapped in the forward sections of the hull that needed to be rescued. She was already low on provisions, especially medical supplies, and until they secured the ship there was no way any of the freighters could land.

More importantly, Omega’s Knight Leader had been right. There was no way any of them could remain here. The longer they waited, the more danger they were in.

Tienna’s eyes were fastened to the view screen and the burning hull of the Star Destroyer on the far side of the Home One’s crippled sister ship, but she was listening intently to all the suggestions, aware that precious time was slipping away from them.

Finally, as the suggestions began to dry up, she decided that keeping it simple was probably the best idea until they found out how manoeuvrable the Home Two was…

“I suggest we go with the locking of a tractor beam onto the Home Two,” she put in finally. “We can tow her to the next star system if we have to…”

Ackbar nodded, concurring, “I agree…”

Tienna nodded in acknowledgement and turned to issue the orders. Behind Ackbar, the elevator door opened and Major Elhen Anders stepped onto the command deck, stopping abruptly, eyes wide as she saw the damage to the Home Two displayed on the screen ahead of her.

Ackbar glanced at her as she walked across the deck to stand beside him. “It’s better than we had feared,” he commented quietly.

Elhen Anders nodded, “Still bad, though, Sir… Do we have any confirmed damage or casualty reports?”

Ackbar shook his head, “Her forward sensors have been knocked out and they’re losing power to the forward sections. It may be some time before we have an exact report…”

Knowing that Maggs Ronnoc would probably have been on the Command Deck when she was hit, Elhen nodded, pushing away any personal grief behind the mask of duty. She still had a job to do. She still needed to apprise Mon Mothma of the situation.

“Can you have the information sent down to my office, please, Admiral?” she asked softly.

“Already on its way, Major,” he confirmed.

“Thank you, Sir,” Elhen replied, turning and head off the Command Deck and back to her office. She glanced back at the view screen as she stepped into the elevator, taking another look at the damaged Home Two.

First Gil, now Maggs…

The elevator doors closed, shutting off the scene. Elhen pulled herself together, clearing her throat. She could indulge in grief later… Much later…

Three decks below, Lieutenant Commander Xen Laruna was a happy woman. Now that the ship had dropped into normal space there were a myriad things she could do to get the information she needed. Fingers dancing across the keyboard, she locked down frequencies, slicing into them, sending out feelers. There would be a time delay because they were so far from Coruscant itself, but there were Imperial bases between the two that might just be able to give her some of the information she was looking for.

The computer programs that she had been working on while the Home One was still in hyperspace, insinuated themselves happily inside the sliced messages, piggybacking their way into the Imperial mainframe. All she had to do was keep cycling the frequencies she was using and no one would ever know…

Behind her, the door opened. Go away and let me get on with my job, Major, she thought sourly.

The sound of a man clearing his throat told her that it wasn’t Major Anders. Finishing the encryption and sending it off, she turned to look at the newcomer. The man was tall and distinguished and not wearing a uniform, which told her he had to be one of Mothma’s staff. His hair was ruffled and out of place, though, and he looked gaunt, as if he hadn’t slept in a few days.

Laruna gave him her best smile, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice as she asked, “Can I help you, Sir? Are you looking for Major Anders?”

“No…” he began. “I… I’m sorry to trouble you. I know you have more important things… but…"

His voice cracked and he had to swallow before he continued, “I wondered if there was any news of my daughter…”

“You’re daughter, Sir?” Laruna asked, getting the sudden sinking feeling that she knew who this man was.

“Yes…” he nodded, then confirmed her suspicions, “Commander Hawkspar…”

Any trace of Laruna’s irritation disappeared. She pushed herself to her feet, shaking her head, “I’m sorry, Sir. I haven’t been able to confirm anything.”

She saw the despair wash across his face and decided to take the raszil by the tail. “Forgive me, Sir,” she began, taking a step toward him, “but you look as if you’re going to fall down if you don’t sit down… Take a seat and I’ll get you some kaffin. I was just about to have one myself. And now that we’ve dropped into normal space, the information will come a lot more quickly for me to correlate.”

“I don’t want to trouble you…” he began.

Laruna was already half way across the floor to the kaffin pot, “You’re not troubling me at all, Sir. What do you take in your kaffin?”



~*~

Lieutenant Catterin Poom-Bar swore softly as the turbulence punched the shuttle sideways then up before dropping it back down through the original level. She wrestled with the controls, no longer caring about keeping the shuttle in level flight. It was making things more uncomfortable for her injured passengers, but she was having enough trouble simply trying to keep the shuttle from falling out the sky in the treacherous winds.

Holding on tightly to anything he could, Chezzie painfully made his way forward towards Poom-Bar. The deck lurched as he reached her, knocking him off balance, throwing him into the empty co-pilot’s seat. He winced, his breath catching in his throat, pain shooting through his legs and arms as he landed hard against the back of the seat.

Ignoring the growing sensation of pins and needles in his legs, he asked, “Anything I can do to help?”

Poom-Bar nodded, “The screen to the left, below the altimeter…”

Chezzie saw the screen, “Got it…”

“That’s the weather ahead of us,” Poom-Bar explained. “Tell me whether to go left, right, up or down to avoid the solid patches of purple…”

“What are the purple patches?” he asked, easing himself into a more comfortable position, pulling the restraints over his shoulders and locking them in place at his waist.

“The fists that keep smashing into our hull…”

“Okaaay…” he replied slowly, watching the roiling colours on the screen. “Can’t we climb above it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do!” Catterin shot back, “But we get dropped three thousand feet for every four we manage to gain.”

Chezz winced, apologising, “Sorry… So… We’re trying to outrun it…”

“It’s all we can do,” Catterin told him, glancing at him. “There’s a storm on our tail that will rip the ship apart if it catches us… One of the Aryad pilots warned Xen that an X-wing had the outer layer stripped off when it was left out in one of these storms…”

Chezzie pulled a face, “I’ll bet their Flight loved that!” Then he chuckled, commenting, “Lainy would have been glad of it too, from what I hear… When she had to wash a target off the Boss’s bird…”

Catterin chuckled. “You, Lieutenant,” she accused with a grin, “are evil!”

“So’s this flipping weather,” Chezz quipped sourly as he watched a patch of purple expand towards them. “Come left, bearing… point zero seven… Whose great idea was it to put a base on this Force forsaken rock in the first place?”

“Point zero seven,” Catterin repeated, following his directions.

“Any news from up above?” Chezz asked softly.

The shuttle juddered again, dropping out of the sky only to be punched back up. Chezz hissed in pain, knuckles going white as he clenched his fists against the stab of pain down his legs.

“One Star Destroyer is a floating pile of metal, the other turned and ran,” Catterin told him.

“Turned and ran,” Chezz repeated in astonishment.

“Yeah,” Catterin confirmed.

“Well…” Chezz murmured in amazement, “Go figure…”

“The Home One has dropped in too,” Catterin went on. “The other ships have started lifting, so hopefully we should be rid of this Force forsaken rock of yours in the not too distant future…”

“Assuming we can outride this stuff…” Chezz commented softly.

Catterin grinned but didn’t look at him, “Never lost someone I rescued yet, Chezz… I’m not about to start now!”


~*~

Aryes Drake and Andi Sedalby lifted the coil of heavy cable off of the grav-sled and dumped it down on the corridor floor. Someone had managed to lock down the power losses in the forward deck and there had been no more reports of power going down, but they’d been unable, as yet, to repair the damaged cables and the Med Section was still running on minimal power. The Omega engineers were two of a squad of people running power lines through the ship.

“My back,” Andi commented, wincing as he stood up and his spine twinged, “is never going to be the same again!”

Unhooking one end from the reel, Ary glanced at him, “Who don’t you take a break, see if you can get us some kaffin?”

Andi nodded, rubbing his shoulder, “I’ll do that… Once I’ve got the other end of this cable in place…”

Ary nodded, standing up. They were having to use some pretty inventive thinking to join some of the ends of the cables together and Ary wasn’t sure how long some of their handiwork would hold, but with any luck they’d be able to provide power for the Med Section and the forward rescue crews for as long as they needed it.

“You splice this end together and I’ll unravel this lot…” he offered, unhooking the other end from the reel and hefting the cable over his shoulder. Leaving Andi to contrive an adapter, Ary dragged the slowly unwinding cable down the corridor. He stopped, turning back to look at Andi as a disembodied voice announced, “Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel!”

“The Home One has dropped out of hyperspace,” the voice continued, “and is going to take us under tow…”

Ary grinned. Andi punched the air in jubilation, then winced as a twinge ran through his shoulder again.

“All personnel should exercise caution until the towing operation is under way,” the voice warned. “The Home One will endeavour to make the transition as smooth as possibly. That is all.”

“In other words,” Ary quipped over his shoulder as he started down the corridor again, “Watch you don’t get dumped on your butt!”

“Depends whose butt you’re dumped on!” Andi called after him.

Ary turned, grinning, still dragging the cable, “Don’t you think about anything but sex?”

“Once every sixteen seconds!” Andi shot back. “It’s a well known fact that everyone does! Anyone who says they don’t is a liar…”

“It’s every sixteen minutes,” Orise Ymra contradicted as she turned into the corridor behind him carrying a tray food and drink. “It’s only pilots and you who think about it every sixteen seconds…”

She grinned as him as he pouted and muttered under his breath. Then she offered, “Kaffin and eats. Get them while they’re hot, cause it might be a while before there’s more.”

Ary laughed, gently dropping the cable onto the floor and heading towards her. Andi climbed to his feet, helping himself to a carton of kaffin and some rations.



~*~

Lieutenant Mason Arnwald peered out of the window of the observation deck on the Raszial Haven, his attention fixed on the huge bulk of the Home Two. As an engineer he made a damned good X-wing pilot, so he had no idea just how badly damaged the Home Two was… but it couldn’t be good.

Standing beside him two, much younger pilots, also had their attention fixed on the scene outside. “I can only see two X-wings…” Lorah Piaenk said quietly, tucking an errant strand of blond hair back behind her ear.

“No, there’s more out there,” Arla Ma’Etihw commented. “Half the A-wings went out to join them… They’ll have strung themselves out in a perimeter.”

Mason glanced at her. She looked young, barely out of her teens, but she had a Lieutenant’s rank and he had the feeling that she was battle-hardened and far more experienced in an X-wing than he was. And he’d been with the Rebel Alliance since just after the dissolution of the Senate…

“You’re right though,” Arla was continuing, “There’s not many of them… Omega were all but wiped out just after Hoth. Only the Boss, the Second and another Lieutenant survived. And if the stories are right then she was damned lucky to survive.”

“Seems that you know an awful lot about our new squadron,” Mason commented.

Arla nodded, her attention still on the scene outside, “I like to keep up with what’s going on.” She flashed him a grin, “If you want to know anything, you go to the source, and when it’s gossip you want to hear, that’s the engineers. Buy them a few rounds of drinks every now and then and they’ll keep you up to date with every piece of gossip there is…”

Mason grinned at her, asking, “Sleeping with them help too?”

Quirking her eyebrow, Arla shook her head, “Not on Omega, Lieutenant. Not allowed. Commander Hawkspar doesn’t like it.”

“How come?” Lorah asked.

Arla shrugged.

“Anything else we need to know about our Boss?” Lorah enquired, thinking that the Omega CO sounded like a real hard-ass.

Arla grinned, “Well, she’s the best damned pilot around, except maybe for Skywalker. Although Wedge Antilles would probably disagree…”

Mason quirked an eyebrow, anger flaring not at Skywalker and Antilles’ names, but at the reminder of the friends he had lost on Hoth. Minor details like the whims of their new Commanding Officer seemed suddenly frivolous in the face of the dangers the Rebel Alliance was facing in its war against the corrupt might of Palpatine’s Empire.

“So, if you know so much, do you have any idea how we can get from here, to out there,” he asked tersely, pointing towards the two Omega X-wings, “if our fighters are on the Home Two?”

Lorah looked at Mason, taken aback by the sudden hardness in his voice, “We were told to remain here, Lieutenant…”

“That’s never stopped me before,” Mason shot back.

“Which is why you’re still a Lieutenant,” Arla grinned. “Right?”

“Maybe…” Mason conceded. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit on my butt here when I could be out helping Hawkspar…”

“Funny,” Arla told him. “I was thinking the same thing…”

She turned, doing the best impression of an Artoo unit that Lorah had ever heard. Astoundingly, the Lieutenant’s droid burbled back at her, almost as if it understood what she was saying. Arla whistled back at it and it turned, rolling off out the door and into the corridor.
“Let me guess,” Mason asked dryly, “You can speak droid?”

Arla flashed him a smile, “Like I said, Lieutenant. You want something you go to the source.”

“So where has your droid gone?” Lorah asked.

“Kaytoo has gone to find out how we get from here, to there...” she said, turning and nodding out of the window, “Without getting ourselves killed or pulled in front of a Court Martial.”


~*~

The door opened and Laruna looked up, pushing herself to her feet as Major Anders came in, warning, “Ma’am, Commander Hawkspar’s father is in your office…”

Anders glanced at the door then looked back at Laruna, “Is he waiting to see me?”

Laruna shook her head, “Not exactly. He came to see if there was any news of Commander Hawkspar. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, so I offered him some kaffin and said to wait in your office until you returned.” She winced, “I’m sorry, Major, but he really did look like he was fit to drop…”

“No news is not necessarily good news,” Elhen concurred quietly.

“The thing is, Major…” Laruna went on, “When I went in a few minutes ago to see if he needed a top up, he was fast asleep on your sofa…”

Elhen smiled, assuring, “That’s not a problem, Xen.” Then she saw the look on Laruna’s face and her stomach flipped. “You’ve found something?”

Laruna nodded, walking over, handing her a hard copy of the information. “I’d like your confirmation on it, Major, but it’s from a sleeper on Coruscant, code name, Mace. It’s a warning that the Empire has discovered the theft of the plans and is letting our agent walk into a trap…”

“It was sent only hours before Commander Hawkspar and her contact were due to meet,” she went on as Anders took the printout. “It bounced off four relays before it reached us…”

Anders sighed, rubbing her face and reading the information. “So we still have no definite proof that they have her?”

Laruna shook her head, “I haven’t been able to dig deep enough into their computer systems. It’s only a matter of time before I do, though, Major, especially now that we’ve dropped out of hyperspace. Their security isn’t exactly up to much…”

“Has he seen this?” Anders asked, nodding toward her office.

“No, Ma’am…”

“Good,” Anders told her. “I think we should let him sleep for the moment… And I can get this confirmed for you while you dig deeper into their systems…”

She sighed, walking past Laruna as she continued, “And then I can apprise Mon Mothma of what’s going on…”

“Ma’am?” Laruna asked, “Is the Home Two badly damaged?”

Elhen glanced at her as she sat down at a terminal, “The whole command deck has gone, Xen…”

“Oh,” Laruna swallowed. That wasn’t good… She hesitated for a moment then asked, “What about the pilots, Ma’am?”

Elhen turned, suddenly remembering that Omega’s Acting CO was Laruna’s cousin. “I’m sorry, Xen,” she told her, “I don’t know. And we don’t have any accurate casualty reports yet…”

Laruna nodded, biting her lip as she headed back to her computer, trying not to let the worry about Edraa and Emaar gnaw at her. They would be okay, she assured herself. They would be fine. They were both damned good pilots. They could take care of themselves.

Come on, Lady, she told herself. Get a grip. You have a job to do.

There was a man lying in the next office who was in exactly the same position as she was, uncertain about the fate of someone he loved. Only, it was his daughter and he knew that that she was definitely missing: and behind enemy lines.

Xen swallowed hard, pushing down the lump in her throat. She picked up her kaffin, taking a deep draw on the mug, then put it down, flexed her fingers and set back to work.


~*~

“Admiral?”

Ackbar turned away from Tiena Bieebenn, looking round at the officer. “Sir,” the man went on, “the damage to the Home Two is along the external layers only. She must have suffered a glancing blow rather than a direct impact. We can’t see any major damage to her internal superstructure…”

“So why is she all but dead in space?” Ackbar asked. “They’re reporting major losses in power.”

The Lieutenant nodded, “I know, Sir. We think that when the command deck was hit it caused some sort of feedback loop to the main generators, knocking out most of the main power to the forward decks. But the thing is, Sir, if we can set up some sort of retaining force field across the damaged areas it would allow them to pressurise the forward upper sections to get to the people trapped there. It would also mean that she might be able to jump into hyperspace, as long as we moved together and the Home One superstructure shielded her from most of the forward forces. It would only be for a short time, granted…”

“It’ll be a tricky manoeuvre, Admiral,” Captain Bieebenn put in, already running the scenario through in her head, “but we can do it if we use a tractor beam to secure us together. We would leave a hyperspace distortion behind us…”

Tiena smiled wickedly, her gloom at the situation beginning to lift. “We wouldn’t have to make a terribly big hyperspace jump to fool the Imperials into believing that the damage to the Home Two wasn’t as bad as our friendly, disappearing Star Destroyer is going to report...”

“Actually…” the Lieutenant began, his face reflecting concentration as he stabbed figures into a datapad before going on, “There’s a possibility that we could reroute power on the Home Two and establish a tractor beam from her to us… It would be weak, though…”

“Would it be strong enough to help stabilise both ships in the hyperspace corridor?” Tiena asked.

“Probably…” the Lieutenant nodded. “I wouldn’t like to say for certain until we’ve checked with the Home Two and crunched the numbers…”

“If it is,” Tiena said, turning back to Ackbar, “then shielding the Home Two in a hyperspace jump is a viable option…” She hesitated then went on, “I wouldn’t like to vouch for the safety of any of the survivors in the forward upper sections if we jumped, though, Admiral.”

“We shall cross that bridge when we come to it,” Ackbar told her, turning to the Lieutenant and ordering, “Crunch your numbers. Quick as you can, Lieutenant!”

Then he turned back to Tiena, “I want those retaining fields in place now, Captain. Inform the Home Two of what we plan to do and find out when they will be ready to accept the transport and cargo ships. They need the supplies those ships are carrying, especially the medical supplies, and we need to make that a priority.”


~*~

Ettei Soosaan rubbed her face, sighing and reading the list again. “That’s it, I think,” she told Bluesky.

The other Doctor took the list from her, scanning it. “I concur… To move the other patients would be more hazardous that letting them stay…” She shook her head, glancing round the medical bay, “Still so many…”

“Well,” Soosaan reminded her, trying to stay upbeat, knowing that if she didn’t she would probably end up in tears of frustration, “The Home One is here now, so at least they can deal with the casualties from Pryatt...”

Bluesky smiled, nodding, adding, “And once the ship is secured we will have plenty of supplies to help us…”

“And a change is as good as a vacation,” Ettei quipped.

Then she took a deep breath, telling Bluesky, “Okay, let’s get things organised before your efficient young man comes back and starts harassing us…”

“If you are nice to him,” Bluesky, smiled, “he will perhaps offer to escort you to dine grandly once this emergency is over…”

Soosaan chuckled softly, “Maybe I should be the one offering to take him to dinner for shouting at him like that.” She shot a grin at Bluesky, “Maybe he has a friend…”

“And you would offer to take them both for dinner?” Bluesky asked, still not completely au fait with human custom and wondering if this was, perhaps, an act of reparation that she had not yet heard of.

“No,” Soosaan told her, trying hard not to laugh, because it would be at Bluesky’s expense and she had no wish to insult her friend and colleague. “So that I can take him to dinner and you can take his friend!”

The soft fur on the top of the other Doctor’s head ruffled slightly and she smiled, “That would, indeed, be most agreeable…”


~*~

The Lord Darth Vader stood at the window, silent but for the rasp of the respirator that kept the oxygen flowing into his lungs. Deep in meditation he was acutely aware of, and at the same time totally blind to, the things going on around him in the Imperial Palace.

Something had happened, something concerning one of Mon Mothma’s command staff and the boy Palpatine was grooming in the ways of the Dark Side of the Force. Instinct told Vader that he did not have long before Palpatine requested his presence.

The aide who had met him at the shuttle and escorted him to this room had informed him that Darrik Hawkspar’s daughter was being held in the detention cells in the bowels of the Imperial palace, but that Fleet Commander Martellon had failed to inform the Emperor of her capture.

Vader had reached out through the Force, sensing the boy’s presence, feeling the confusion of emotion that coursed through him.

To Vader’s consternation, keeping his own emotion in check was now proving more difficult than he had foreseen. And that was dangerous. This close to Palpatine, the Emperor would not fail to sense the turmoil that raged deep within what had once been Anakin Skywalker’s soul. And if Palpatine saw the truth that lurked deep within Vader, everything would be lost.

As it had done so many times of the previous months, Vader found his meditation fragmenting, his thoughts turning towards the past, memories hammering at him. Long suppressed recollections flowed to the surface of Obi Wan, of Qui Gonn Jinn… of Padme… and of the fair-haired boy he had seen briefly in the hangar bay of the Death Star after the duel with Kenobi…

Luke…

His son…

Over three years had passed since that day: three years of searching and planning. If not for the fool Ozzel, Luke would have been within his grasp now and Palpatine would know nothing of the boy’s existence. Instead, Luke had evaded him and tremors had begun in the Force that Palpatine could not fail to sense…

And yet Vader had dared to hope that, somehow, the Emperor would overlook them.

That hope had been crushed hours later while they had been pursuing the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid field. Palpatine not only new about the “new enemy”, but also knew that he was a Skywalker…

Was it possible that Palpatine had not realised that the Skywalker name was not a coincidence? Was it possible that in the long years since Anakin had become Vader, Palpatine had forgotten the name? Or did the Emperor simply believe that Vader was so much like him that the father-son connection would mean nothing to the Dark Lord of the Sith?

If that was the case, Palpatine had made a grave error, one that would lead to his downfall. Far from being unconcerned that he had a son, Vader’s only desire was to find Luke. Find him and show him the potential that lay waiting for him in the Dark Side of the Force, before Palpatine could…

With Luke at his side, he could give his son the Empire…

Starting out of his reverie, he cursed his stupidity; ruthlessly pushing those thoughts back down deep within him. Thinking like that so close to Palpatine was courting disaster.

Turning away from the window, sinking to the floor, Vader slowly began his meditation again.
Continued in Chapter 23