by Claudia Gray
Yet what he heard troubled him even more.
These people—his political allies—weren’t merely interested in greater centralization and efficiency. They waxed nostalgic for the Empire itself. For Palpatine. For the fear and obedience planets showed in the aftermath of Alderaan’s destruction. The worst aspects of the Empire, the very things Ransolm hoped to wipe away in a new order, were the elements of control these people most wanted to bring back.
One man, who served as chief of staff for Lady Carise Sindian, even said, “Lord Vader was nearly a second Emperor. One totally loyal to Palpatine yet capable of exercising ultimate authority in his own right. Can you imagine any leader today commanding such obedience?”
Ransolm turned as if to refill his own glass, because he knew he could not disguise the contempt on his face. To talk about Vader as if he were admirable. To praise the way Vader followed orders, even when those orders were to work people to death in his factories while their starving children watched—
He took a deep breath, composed himself, and returned to the gathering with a smile on his face. The small hypocrisies of politics had to be mastered.
Once everyone had departed and the cleaning droids were hard at work, Ransolm sat at his desk for a while, staring at his collection. It looked so handsome now with the red Royal Guard mask at the center of the far wall. He’d worked for years to bring all the pieces together, and he still felt proud of them.
But he was no longer proud to be counted among the others who valued these artifacts. To him, the Imperial relics stood for strength. To the others, they stood for domination.
—
At last, Lady Carise thought as the cloth-of-gold mantle was settled on her shoulders. At last I have a title of my own.
She knelt in the Great Hall of Birren, at the head of a crowd of hundreds, before their Arbiter. After weeks of ritual and ceremony, she was finally being given the symbolic tokens of leadership—mantle and scepter, to show that she would both shelter and defend her people.
In spirit, at least. Lady Carise had no intention of removing herself from the central position of the Galactic Senate to administrate on a backwater world like Birren. But the Birrenese didn’t expect her to; in fact, they seemed to regard the ceremonies almost as a nuisance. Insolent, she thought, but irrelevant.
When she strode through the Great Hall with the mantle on her shoulders and the scepter in her hands, applause rang out, and the new governor had finally completed her rituals. She had planned a grand fête for the evening with plenty of fireworks and music, and she intended to arrive in style.
“No need to do this today, milady governor.” The Warden of the Treasures was a stout woman of middle years, respectful but puzzled by Lady Carise’s insistence. “You’ve plenty of time to go through Lord Mellowyn’s things.”
“The ball doesn’t begin for another few hours.” Lady Carise’s shoulders ached under the weight of the mantle. “We might as well begin.”
With resignation, the warden consented, switching all the locks to align with Lady Carise’s fingerprints and retinal scans. The older woman bowed as she backed out, leaving Lady Carise alone.
Leaning forward, Lady Carise let the scanners check her eyes and her hands, though impatience made it hard for her to stand still. Birren’s connections to the Elder Houses went back for centuries. Who knew what priceless items awaited inside? She wouldn’t have taken any of them away from Birren; she took her role as governor seriously, and would not have abandoned her honor for a few jewels or a little gold. But she could use any of these things while on this world. If there were an exceptionally alluring gemstone necklace, or a sparkling tiara, here in the chamber—wouldn’t it be a shame to let them sit neglected when she could instead wear them tonight?
Heavy gears turned and clicked within the enormous lock, whining like whalesong. The tall bronze doors swung open at last, and in the darkness only vague shapes could be seen. Enthralled, Lady Carise motioned the candledroids forward, dashed in after them, and stopped.
This is it?
The treasures of Birren added up to no more than a couple of moldering old chests, some gilded furnishings that had seen better days, three or four obsolete droids waiting to be reawakened, and a few bits of jewelry that had more shine than substance. Lady Carise picked up one of the bracelets, sniffed, and let it fall again. So much for her hopes of grandeur.
Annoyed and bored, with nothing to do until she readied herself for the ball, Lady Carise began poking around amid the “treasures,” trying to guess why any of it would have been kept. Did the droids have sentimental value, perhaps? Did someone think that atrocious style of furniture would come back into fashion? Not likely, in her opinion.
Just when she began to think she might as well leave, she lifted a carved wooden box and saw that it had been engraved: FOR PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA OF ALDERAAN.
Lady Carise perked up. Lord Mellowyn must have wanted to give some sort of present to his successor, whom he would have assumed would be Princess Leia. By delivering this box to the princess, Lady Carise would fulfill her sacred duty as governor and, perhaps, finally win some respect from Leia. It was about time.
And if there happened to be jewelry in there worth the wearing—well—the princess wouldn’t mind if Lady Carise borrowed it just once, for a special occasion.
She sat in one of the gilded chairs and opened the box. Wrinkling her nose, she began to paw through the useless things there: a tiny doll no taller than her hand; a small, soft blanket of fine gillendown; a hexagonal, mirrored music box; a ring sized for a tiny finger; and a lock of dark-brown hair tied at either end with ribbon. These were childhood mementos, no more.
So much for the jewelry, but after taking a moment to think it over, Lady Carise decided this was even better. Princess Leia would no doubt become emotional upon receiving these. She would be even more grateful to Lady Carise. Yes, this would work very well.
Idly, Lady Carise picked up the music box and opened it. She recognized the song immediately; it was a traditional Alderaanian lullaby, one Carise’s grandmother had sung when she felt sentimental about her homeworld. The words welled in her memory:
Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember
When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember
Those you have loved but are gone
Those who kept you so safe and warm
The mirrorbright moon lets you see
Those who have ceased to be
Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers
Those you loved are with you still—
The moon will help you remember
It was a sadder song than Lady Carise had realized. What a thing to sing to children. Nor had Alderaan ever had a moon. Probably it was symbolic, she thought. Poetic. The sort of nonsense Alderaanians put so much stock in.
The music dropped slightly in volume, which usually meant a voice would start singing along. But instead a man began speaking.
“My beloved daughter,” he said. “The supreme governor of Birren, whom I trust completely, said that he would keep this here for you when you someday inherit this title. My hope is that this recording contains no new information, that I have had the chance to explain everything to you myself.”
Lady Carise realized the speaker could only be Bail Organa. She covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide, as she listened to the voice of a man now dead nearly thirty years, speaking for his daughter’s ears only.
Organa continued, “However, I make this recording during a time of increasing danger for our Rebellion. I know too well that I may not survive the war that is surely to come. By hiding the information here, on a world of no significance to the Empire, I hope to keep it out of the wrong hands and deliver it into yours. For this is knowledge you—and only you—have the right to possess.”
Probably he would now start going on about war secrets, no longer secret, about a war that had ended decades ago. Lady Carise
rolled her eyes, deciding Princess Leia would probably like this even more. She loved nothing so much as reminding the galaxy what a great war hero she’d been. A recording like this from her father would be marvelous propaganda fodder. How long before it was played for the public as part of Princess Leia’s campaign to be First Senator?
“You’ve never expressed much interest in knowing about your birth parents,” Organa said. “So many times, you’ve told your mother and me we are the only father and mother you’ve ever needed—and never doubt how much that means to us both. But Leia, the story of your origin is one you must know. You were hidden with us, for your own safety, and for that of your brother. Yes, you have a twin brother, though you must not seek him until the war has ended, and both Palpatine and Lord Vader have been defeated.”
Princess Leia’s brother was the Jedi Luke Skywalker. Why would Bail Organa have forbidden his daughter to seek Skywalker out? And what was this mysterious origin story? Lady Carise leaned closer, and the glinting light from the mirrored surface of the music box reflected on her face.
Organa said, “Obi-Wan Kenobi took your brother for safekeeping, and I took you. We hid you both from each other, and from your father, who could not know that any child of his had been born alive. You see, Leia, I always told you the truth about your mother and how she died. But I never told you that she was Padmé Amidala, former queen and senator of the planet Naboo.”
A war orphan and yet a royal by birth? Surprised as Lady Carise was, she decided that made sense. Leia’s nobility was indeed in her blood.
But Bail Organa continued, “Nor could I share that your father was Anakin Skywalker, one of the last Jedi Knights and a great hero of the Clone Wars. But now I must tell you the worst, and you must be strong. I must tell you what became of Anakin Skywalker.”
Lady Carise’s hand gripped the music box more tightly as she listened to the next few seconds, her astonishment coalescing into dread as Bail Organa spelled out the entire truth of a man’s descent into darkness—and yet she was unprepared for the moment she heard the words:
“Your father has become Darth Vader.”
She snapped the music box shut, silencing Organa’s voice. Then she dropped the music box back in the small chest, after which she shut it, too. Lady Carise put the chest on the floor, kicked it farther from her, decided that wasn’t far enough, and got out of her chair to back away from the thing until her shoulder blades collided with the chamber’s stone wall. Dazed, almost faint, she kept staring at the small wooden chest that held a secret with the power to change the course of the galaxy.
Darth Vader was the father of Princess Leia.
Of Luke Skywalker, too, but this detail was nearly irrelevant to Lady Carise. Skywalker had been so long away on his strange quest for the lore of the Jedi that he no longer had much influence outside his own acolytes. He was a figure of myth more than one of flesh and blood.
Princess Leia, however—she had power. If she were elected First Senator, she would become the ultimate authority in the entire galaxy.
But the child of a figure so widely hated as Darth Vader could never win that election.
Lady Carise realized she had been given the one thing that could ensure victory for the Centrists. The untouchable, unimpeachable heroine, Leia Organa, could be toppled off her pedestal forever merely by playing this recording in public.
Yet she had taken all the sacred oaths of the governorship of Birren. Those oaths matched the ones shared by most of the Elder Houses, which included keeping any secret under the royal seal—and the entire chamber of treasures was under such a seal. If Lady Carise exposed this recording and let Princess Leia’s true parentage be known, she would have broken her sacred vow. She would have betrayed the royal seal. It would be the same as saying that nobility meant nothing.
But Princess Leia is a liar and a fraud! She’s kept this secret from everyone all these years. Didn’t we deserve to know?
Then again, perhaps the princess didn’t even know the truth. Bail Organa had probably never had the chance to tell his daughter any of this, since the recording made it clear he thought it would be dangerous for her to seek her brother before the end of the war. Somehow Princess Leia had learned his identity, and her mother’s, too—which implied she knew the truth about her father as well—but that implication was far from proof.
It took only a few moments for Lady Carise to make her decision. Nobility was more important than rabble-rousing. A royal seal had to remain inviolate. She could fulfill her oath and keep this secret, maybe even from Princess Leia herself.
However, she intended to hold on to the chest and its contents.
Just in case.
“I could get used to this,” Joph said.
Greer gave him a sideways glance as she brought their ancient Y-wing into orbit around the space station. “Running around under assumed names? Not telling anyone where we’re really going? Following orders Princess Leia might not actually have the legal authority to give?”
“Exactly.” He folded his hands behind his head as he leaned back in the chair, his thick golden hair the least convincing halo imaginable. Sometimes, despite his youth and sunny disposition, Joph Seastriker’s yen for trouble made him come across more like a potential smuggler than a New Republic pilot.
“You still crave excitement.” Greer shook her head as she began signaling for a docking berth. “Wait until you get some.”
“Come on! We’re on a secret mission, we’ve already saved the princess from kidnapping once, and I even rigged a mobster’s satellites. That absolutely, one hundred percent counts as excitement.” His blue eyes narrowed, momentarily less innocent, more searching. “You know, there’s something I don’t get. At this point, you’ve proved a thousand times that you don’t like playing it safe. So why do you keep pretending that you do?”
Greer remembered the day she’d walked away from her racer, the way Han Solo’s hands had closed over hers as he said a gruff goodbye to her that would allow them both to pretend there weren’t tears in her eyes. “You’re still a kid, aren’t you? You still think recklessness is a virtue, or that you can only prove you’re brave by risking your life. Staying alive as long as you can to do some good in this world—” The word caught in her throat, but she pushed on. “That’s not playing it safe. That’s our job.”
Joph sat up, suddenly serious, his expression gentler than she’d known it could be. He’d finally glimpsed some shadow of the truth she tried so hard to hide. “Hey, if there’s something I ought to know—or something we need to talk about, whatever—you know you can tell me, right?”
“There’s nothing worth telling.” A green light on the console began flashing: docking clearance granted. “Let’s go in,” Greer said, focusing on the task at hand and, she hoped, changing the subject.
She and Joph had scrounged up the cheapest used ship they could find, one so battered that buying it was less expensive than renting anything else. Greer thought it might have been banged up in the Clone Wars and patched back into service every few years since. Any two young pilots flying around in a ship this rickety would obviously be hungry for work of any kind, at any price.
When they’d gone to Pamarthe, they’d wanted to come across as pilots looking for a job. Now they needed to actually get a job—one that would take them to Sibensko.
Space stations generally served as military outposts and had for generations; some planets kept their own civilian stations operational, primarily for the use of pleasure craft. But this station, adrift in deep space, was unique. Abandoned by asteroid miners more than a century earlier, it had been taken over by smugglers, slavers, and others who valued a place to do business where no planetary laws applied. Any repairs and updates to the station had been undertaken by individual spicerunners and low-life pilots, when and if these individuals happened to notice something that required fixing, when and if they had the time, money, and inclination to actually do something about it.
As such,
the space station Chrome Citadel looked like it might fall apart at any second.
The various repairs appeared to have been piecemeal at best. Chrome Citadel’s rough conical hull had been patched with different shades and types of metal—its namesake shiny surface long since buried beneath layers of duller stuff—and many sensors that would normally be shielded within station atmosphere had instead simply been bolted on wherever they would fit. Although the work was inconsistent and shoddy, it had somehow been enough to keep the thing going despite its dilapidation.
Only desperate people would come here, Greer thought as she brought their ship in for docking. Anyone else would stay far away.
Joph looked askance at a particularly dodgy bit of patchwork near one of the main vents. “Are we sure about the atmospheric controls in there? Because this thing seems like it might vent all its air any second.”
Greer shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
Inside the Chrome Citadel, chaos ruled. As Joph and Greer walked from their docking port, they merged with the busy foot traffic of a few dozen species, each one a pilot or a trader, several of them familiar from WANTED holos in respectable spaceports, most of them probably very dangerous. Every corridor was lined with makeshift stalls selling everything from dehydrated deep-space rations to fashionable headscarves. Greer bought a red one and knotted it around her thick black hair as she saw some of the bush pilots do. While both she and Joph had worn loose, rumpled coveralls, they still looked too tidy and respectable for the rough crew in this place.
Joph, also, had noticed that they stuck out, and they quickly stopped at one of the nearest stalls. “What do you think they’d do if they knew?” he murmured as he strapped on the leather tool harness he’d just bought.
After taking a long look at the motley crowd of humans and nonhumans, every one of them armed, Greer said, “If they knew, we’d be thrown out of the nearest air lock.”
He nodded toward one farther down the corridor, which looked as though it had been painted and enameled over dozens of times since it was last opened. “At least it looks like most of the air locks don’t work.”
