Bloodline (Star Wars)

by Claudia Gray

  Ransolm was pleasantly surprised by her measured, rational response. So many Populists seized on any sliver of evidence, no matter how flimsy, for their implausible theories of corruption and scandal. However, he was beginning to learn that Princess Leia was her own person, one worth listening to. “Thank you for bringing this to me. You’re quite right; the links to Daxam Four cannot be mere coincidence. We must look into this right away.”

  “Agreed. And you’re better placed to do it than I am. You know what questions to ask, and who to put the questions to.”

  “I shall ask questions,” Ransolm promised, “but I also intend to look into the matter personally.”

  Princess Leia grinned at him; the sunset painted her white gown nearly gold. “I think you’re developing a taste for action.”

  He leaned forward, smiling conspiratorially. “You’re a bad influence.”

  That made her laugh out loud. “Do you know, that’s the best compliment anyone has paid me in a long time?”

  “Then you aren’t being paid enough compliments.” Ransolm decided to risk the next. “Of course, the Populist candidate for First Senator could expect a great deal of flattery in the future.”

  She held up her hands as if she could ward off the election. “Nothing’s official. Not even close. And please, let’s concentrate on the matter at hand. I need a break from the Senate for a while.”

  The princess was keeping her cards close, Ransolm figured. After seeing how skillfully she played sabacc, he should have anticipated as much. “Then I repeat my thanks. You’ve given me valuable information I can act on without delay. The incursion of such criminal elements threatens these worlds, and as you know, we Centrists believe in law and order.”

  “Do you ever,” she said wryly, but her good humor seemed to have been restored.

  “I’ve actually just lent my support to a campaign to restore the death penalty on Riosa. More systems are leaning toward it, you know.”

  “More Centrist systems, you mean.”

  “Yes,” he said, “most Populists are too soft for such measures. But I’ve watched you strangle a Hutt to death with satisfaction. You’re not one of the soft ones, Senator.”

  “Two compliments in one day? If you’re not careful, they’ll throw you out of the Centrists.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” He realized, somewhat to his surprise, that their meeting wasn’t merely useful; when the princess wasn’t being combative, she was enjoyable company. The Senate needed more cooperation between Centrists and Populists, and surely cooperation could be furthered by good relations…even by friendship. Ransolm asked, “As long as we’re here, shall we have dinner?”

  To judge by her raised eyebrows, the invitation was a surprise, but a pleasant one. She gestured to a nearby server droid. “Why not?”

  —

  In quieter moments during their dinner, Leia tried to imagine Varish Vicly’s consternation if she saw Senator Leia Organa willingly sharing a meal with “the enemy.” Her fur would probably spontaneously curl. Tai-Lin Garr would take it quietly, but harder, shaking his head in sorrow. And the Centrists? Oh, their reactions would be priceless.

  But there were few quiet moments. Leia found Ransolm Casterfo surprisingly easy to talk to. He was intelligent, cultured, and even witty. Also, he was young enough that she didn’t have to worry about any misunderstandings of the romantic variety—but not so young that she had to feel guilty about appreciating the view.

  “We’re working hard to restore Riosa as a galactic center of manufacturing,” Casterfo said earnestly. His aquamarine cloak turned his eyes an even more vivid shade of blue. “It’s been difficult, of course, but with the new factories, the economy is finally taking an upward turn.”

  Leia wondered whether to chance her next question. She might shut Casterfo down completely, but she decided it was worth the risk. If she was to continue working with him, she had to get to the bottom of this. “Riosa’s economy was wrecked by the Empire, wasn’t it? That makes it hard for me to understand your—let’s call it fascination.”

  To her surprise, Casterfo nodded. “Yes, we were wrecked. Deliberately, even maliciously. Our factories and our people were pushed to the limit and beyond to manufacture components for both Death Star stations, and when we could supply them with nothing more, they cast us aside to starve.” He took a sip of the pink juice they’d been served. “My belief in an empire is not belief in the Empire. It never could be, not after what happened to my world.”

  “I guess I can’t get around the contradiction.”

  “It’s not a contradiction.” Casterfo remained silent a few moments, weighing his words. Dusk had fallen, and the ships zooming by were shooting stars in the cobalt blue of early night. “You know, I assume, that the manufacturing efforts on Riosa were often overseen by Lord Vader himself?”

  Leia tensed. It seemed to her that she could hear that heavy, metallic breathing, as though the mere mention of his name had resurrected him. When she trusted herself to reply, she said, “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “Vader visited Riosa often. Each time, he tightened his fist even more.” Casterfo’s gaze had turned distant. “The quotas rose higher. The hours grew longer. What had been paid employment became mandatory service, then slavery in all but name. Workers with manufacturing experience were herded into labor camps with pitiful living conditions. Not enough food, only the bare minimum of shelter—and always, always more work. You could keep going until your fingers bled and still, it wasn’t enough.”

  She stared at him in dawning comprehension. “You were in one of those camps.”

  Casterfo breathed out sharply. “Technically, yes. It was my parents who had the more wretched experience, my parents who were herded behind the camp walls to work themselves to the bone.” He tried to laugh, but the sound came out strangled. “Would you believe that bringing me with them was a ‘special privilege’ my parents were given? That they were lucky to be allowed to bring their child to suffer by their side? Others had to leave their children behind to starvation or slavery or who knows what other torment.”

  Leia had heard such stories from other worlds, other survivors. That didn’t make it any easier to see Ransolm Casterfo struggling for control as he thought of his parents. She laid her hand on Casterfo’s forearm, hoping he would take it as comfort rather than pity.

  He didn’t even notice. “My parents survived the war, but only just. They’d been forced to work without proper safety filters; the toxicity in their lungs killed them both less than a year into the New Republic’s rule. All because Lord Vader thought they could work harder.” Casterfo looked into Leia’s eyes again, and he didn’t even try to disguise the rawness of his pain. “I believe in strong leadership by good men. But I know the damage evil men can do. I learned that from Darth Vader’s example. I saw him cut down innocent people with my own eyes. So trust me when I say that I can admire the Empire’s core structure and still condemn Palpatine, Vader, and all their works.”

  “I do. I trust you.” What moved her as much as Casterfo’s story was the faith he had shown in her by telling it. “What happened after?”

  Casterfo took a deep breath, then smiled as if he’d entirely thrown off his dark mood. He hadn’t, but he was making a valiant effort. “I had a rough few years, but then I was taken in by a couple that had some offworld wealth. They didn’t exactly adopt me as a son, though I was one of several children they housed, fed, and educated. But for them, I might have starved.”

  “No wonder you got angry when I called you spoiled,” Leia said. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “You didn’t know. Whereas I did know about Alderaan, and I threw the insult back at you anyway. It wasn’t our finest hour. Let’s leave it at that.” He lifted his glass for another draught of the juice, then saw it was empty. A droid zipped over immediately. “Did you ever see Darth Vader with your own eyes? I suppose, in the Galactic Senate, you must have.”

  “I…yes, I did.”


  Casterfo frowned. “Princess Leia?”

  He had dared to tell her his most painful truth. She could never reveal hers, not to anyone who didn’t already know; Leia understood that. But perhaps she could find the courage to match his honesty with a measure of her own.

  “At the beginning of the war against the Empire, just as the Imperial Senate was dissolved—” She swallowed hard. “My ship was captured by the Devastator. That was Darth Vader’s flagship at the time. He personally brought me to the Death Star, where he—where he questioned me.”

  Comprehension dawned in Casterfo’s eyes. “You mean…”

  Just say it. “I mean he tortured me, for hours. While a couple of his Imperial stormtroopers watched.” Sometimes that got to her when nothing else did. The troopers had been soldiers of the line. Some of them had honestly believed they were doing the right thing, or so she told herself.

  But how could you believe that after you watched a nineteen-year-old girl writhing on the floor and screaming for mercy that never came? How could you stand there and watch that girl convulse in helpless agony without doing something, anything to help?

  Apparently some people could.

  “Then he brought me to witness Alderaan’s destruction. Vader’s hand gripped my shoulder just after I watched my planet die. He made me suffer in every way a human being can suffer, all for the love of the Emperor.”

  Casterfo slipped his arm from under her hand—she had gone utterly motionless—and grasped her fingers in his. As old as she was, as cynical as she’d become, Leia would never have guessed that such a gesture could still move her, but it did.

  “I hated him so much,” she whispered. The breeze blew past them, rustling the blueblossom trees within the hanging gardens. It was as if they were helping to hide her painful words. “Sometimes I felt as if the only thing that kept me going in the aftermath of Alderaan was the strength of my hatred for Vader.”

  For my father.

  As always when Leia thought about this, she called upon what Luke had told her of their father’s last hours. He had renounced darkness, saved Luke, and become Anakin Skywalker again. Whenever Luke told the story, a beatific smile lit up his face; his memories of that event gave him a level of comfort and even joy that sustained him. Those were memories Leia couldn’t share.

  “Then we have that in common,” Casterfo said. “We both know what a monster Lord Vader was, and we have no desire to see his like gain power in the galaxy ever again. But you think he will emerge from order, while I think he will emerge from chaos.”

  Leia couldn’t muster the nerve for another debate. “Let’s hope we never find out.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  They let go of each other at the same moment and leaned back, but Leia knew the connection they’d forged wouldn’t be broken that quickly. Only a few short hours before, Ransolm Casterfo had been her uneasy ally. Now, for better or for worse, they had become friends.

  When the server droid rolled by them again, Casterfo snagged two glasses of Corellian ale for them without asking whether Leia wanted one; it seemed he had the good sense to know she needed it. After the first couple of sips, and too many moments of silence, Leia decided to change the subject. Awkward, but surely any topic of conversation had to be more pleasant than Vader’s evils. “Any bets as to who the Centrist candidate will be?”

  Casterfo shook his head. “There are a dozen possibilities at least, Senator—”

  “I think we’re on a first-name basis by now, aren’t we, Ransolm?”

  He acknowledged this with a quick nod. “As I was saying, Leia, at least a dozen potential nominees so far, and more may arise.”

  “Who knows?” She managed to smile. “You might wind up voting for me yet.”

  “I’ll vote with my party, of course, but I’ll say this much: You’re the only Populist I’d ever trust with the job.”

  “Too bad Riosa isn’t a more influential world,” Leia said. “I’d feel a lot better if you were the Centrist candidate.”

  Ransolm tried not to smile, but the result only made him look mischievous. “That makes two of us.”

  “I think we can drink to that,” Leia said. They lifted their glasses and clinked them together, and the darkness in their pasts seemed farther away than it had before.

  The next morning, Leia wondered whether she’d had too much of the ale—but she hadn’t. Her weariness and bad mood were the natural result of reliving memories so dark she rarely allowed herself to think of them, much less speak them aloud.

  Think of your conversation with Casterfo as practice, she told herself. One day she would have to reveal all this to her son. The truth of Vader’s identity had shattered her; she could not imagine what it might mean to Ben. At least Luke could tell Ben the most important part—that Vader had, in the end, been redeemed. Anakin Skywalker had returned; the dark side had been defeated by the light.

  Leia knew this. She believed it. But she still did not understand it.

  “You’re unusually quiet this morning,” said Tai-Lin Garr, who walked with her across the grounds of the senatorial complex. “And not in high spirits, I think.”

  “I’m…grumpy. In a bad mood. That’s all.” She cast about for a plausible reason, and found one in the early hour. “What kind of sadist plans a meeting at breakfast?”

  Tai-Lin, ever patient, shook his head fondly. “You’ve never been one to mind early hours. And you know how busy our schedules are.”

  “If the alternative is a breakfast meeting, I can find the time.” Leia took a deep breath and tried to let it go. “Well, if I do wind up becoming First Senator, I know the first thing I’m going to outlaw.”

  Chuckling, Tai-Lin said, “You’ll change your tune when we sit down to eat and you get a little caf in you.”

  “Caf usually helps,” she agreed.

  Tai-Lin Garr had been inaugurated into the first Senate of the New Republic alongside Leia; he was one of only a handful who had served from then to now. Although he possessed the preternatural calm of most people from Gatalenta, in Tai-Lin that serenity was anchored even more deeply. In all these years, Leia wasn’t certain she had ever heard him raise his voice, despite the ample reason Centrist politicians had given him. He was an attractive man only a year or two younger than herself, with only the temples of his black hair turning silver. In the distinctive scarlet robes of his planet, he cut a striking figure. A figure one could imagine in, say, a campaign holo.

  “You know, there’s still time for you to try for the nomination yourself,” Leia ventured. “You’d make a better First Senator than I ever would.”

  He shook his head. “Let’s be realistic. You are the only Populist candidate who could win—and if you lose, this entire experiment is doomed to disaster.”

  Leia paused, and he stopped alongside her. They stood in the middle of the complex square amid an intricate pattern of tiles in blue and white, as if it were the board for a game of strategy. “Doomed? Even with another Populist as First Senator?”

  Tai-Lin nodded, his expression grave. “The Centrists are forced to respect you because of your role in the war. Even then, they’ll be intransigent; they’ll fight every step you try to take. But at least we’ll have some modicum of civility. You’ll be able to push some things through. With anyone else in the position, we’ll be even more deadlocked than we are now.”

  As little as Leia thought of the concept of a First Senator, she couldn’t believe she was the only one with any chance of making the role effective. Yes, the Centrists could be difficult, but so could the Populists, and the Centrists would at least respect the idea of a hierarchy.

  He’s basically declaring that galactic-level politics can’t work, she realized. Uneasiness stirred within her. If too many Populist senators agree with him, it’s going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Tai-Lin clasped his hands in front of him and stepped closer just as a few civilian vessels sliced through the sky above them, as if he wanted the silvery
sound of their engines to conceal his words. “Leia? You don’t intend to drop out of the race? If you abandon the Populist cause—”

  “I’m not dropping out.” Technically, she wasn’t even officially in the race yet, but it made no difference. Leia thought again of her dreams of flying around the galaxy with Han, without responsibilities or cares, with all the time in the worlds. “But before all this, I had been seriously considering retiring. I’ve wanted to spend more time with my family.”

  “Of course.” Tai-Lin inclined his head. “You would wish to join your brother and son, I imagine.”

  “I miss them, yes. Still, I imagined living with my husband again. It’s been a while since we were together more than half the year.”

  Tai-Lin hesitated before he came closer. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, and finally I feel I know you well enough to dare. If I overstep my bounds, please, tell me.”

  Uh-oh, Leia thought. Was this some kind of romantic overture? Surely not. She seemed to have a case of paranoia this morning. But she understood why an outside observer might believe she was available, which was proof Han had definitely been gone too long. “I’ll tell you, Tai-Lin. Go ahead and ask me.”

  “Did you never consider following in your brother’s path and becoming a Jedi?”

  Leia found herself caught short. “Why do you ask?”

  “They say on my world that the Force sometimes runs strong in certain families.”

  So much of the lore of the Jedi had been lost—but on Gatalenta, the old religion had remained strong. History had become legend, but some of the legends were still told. Gatalenta had been one of Luke’s first destinations when he began his research into the Jedi Knights of old. Tai-Lin continued, “If that is true, then you might have the potential, just like your brother.”