The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy

by Alexandra Bracken

  I did it, she thought, letting pride and a small happiness warm the ice that still gripped her center. She hadn’t broken under any amount of agony. There was that, at least—even her aunts would have been impressed she’d managed to keep her head in such a dangerous situation. But it was a cold comfort. She was alone with the small, shivering fear that Vader could come back any second with that droid, and that next time he would try something else. And that he would finally yank the truth out of her.

  Had minutes passed? Hours? A day?

  I can do it again, she told herself. I can make it.

  She knew that as long as she stayed in her cell, her life would be nothing more than a ticking clock. There wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that her father was searching for clues about what happened to her, but she couldn’t sit on her hands and hope he or someone in the Rebellion would put everything together. Leia had to rescue herself.

  The truth was Leia couldn’t predict how long Vader would keep her alive knowing there was a chance she was connected to the Rebellion. It seemed out of character for him to give her even this much time to come around—unusually patient for someone who didn’t blink at crushing a subordinate like a worm.

  If he was even capable of blinking…What was under that mask, exactly?

  Leia pushed herself up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She was on a space station. There had to be some way for her to get a message to Alderaan. An officer would be too concerned with his or her next promotion to risk sympathizing with Leia, but she’d seen the surprised faces of the security officers when she’d come in. Was it possible that there were soldiers within the Empire who didn’t agree with their master’s policies? Leia knew that service in the military wasn’t always voluntary….

  The heavy steps outside her cell door interrupted the new plan forming in her mind. For a moment, Leia was convinced that she could feel the ground shake—but maybe that was just her own fright playing tricks on her. No more than a moment later, she heard the familiar click and whoosh of Vader’s respirator. Then the door opened.

  Leia jumped to her feet, but neither Darth Vader nor the two security officers with him actually stepped inside.

  “Follow me.” Vader’s cloak flew out behind him as he turned.

  Equal parts curious and nervous, Leia took a tentative step outside of her cell. Were they transporting her again? Taking her to some kind of trial? Or was this the moment they’d get rid of her once and for all?

  The security officer snapped binders over her wrists, tight enough to make Leia cringe. Without a word of explanation, they led her through the detention block, boots clicking on the metal walkway in time with the throbbing headache behind her eyes. The burn of the outer hallway’s bright lights was unbearable. Everything on the ship was shining and new, gleaming with evil intentions.

  Vader caught her by the shoulder as they approached two towering metal doors. They slid open at his signal, a whisper of a sound that faded into silence.

  That was what struck Leia first: the quiet. There were dozens of men and women in black uniforms and helmets seated along a stretch of control panels that held too many glowing buttons and levers even to attempt to count. Over their heads, more panels blinked with red and white lights.

  It was the control room, Leia realized, the overbridge. They had walked her into the nerve center of the Death Star.

  But…why would they show her this?

  At the opposite end of the chamber, an enormous screen blinked to life, illuminating the officer standing in front of it.

  Of course. Of course it would be him.

  “Governor Tarkin,” Leia began with her sweetest face. “I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”

  The very first thing Leia’s father had ever told her about Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin was that she was to stay away from him. He had made an official visit to Alderaan right around the time Leia had turned thirteen—which, coincidentally, was also about the time when Leia had made it her mission to do the opposite of whatever she was told to do. So she’d crept along the halls of the palace behind the two men, listening to the cold, tense words they exchanged.

  As she’d slipped out of her hiding place, one thought had blasted through her mind: he is a snake. A man who kept slaves. A man who wrapped around his victims and slowly, mercilessly crushed the life from them.

  The cold, sharp edges of his heart were reflected in the lines of his face. As the years had gone on and he’d aged into his ugly cruelty, his skin had pulled tight against his skull. His steely blue eyes could assess a person’s worth in a single glance, and the perpetually sour expression on his face showed that he always found the person lacking.

  Behind him, a beautiful emerald-green planet filled the screen, glowing with life. Leia felt her chest clench at the sight of it. That was Alderaan. They must have traveled there after bringing her aboard.

  That was her home—the sight she’d been longing to see from the moment she’d left it. Despite everything, she was floating on a bubble of excitement. Were they really releasing her, then?

  “Charming to the last,” Tarkin said, with a look that would have caused a freshly bloomed rose to wither. “You don’t know how hard I found it signing the order to terminate your life.”

  Apparently not.

  A jolt of fear shot through her. Leia had expected they might kill her, of course, but it was one thing to think it and another to hear it promised so casually, the way someone would announce what was for supper.

  “I’m surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself,” she shot back.

  There. His eye gave a small twitch. Leia tilted her head to the side, her lips twisted into a smirk. Very few things made her happier than getting a rise out of despicable old men who wanted everyone around them to cower in their presence.

  These men wanted her to beg for her life. To tremble and cry. It was time to let her hatred fly, to show them once and for all she was not that girl. She was not that little princess. “However did you choose the method of my demise without the Emperor there to pat you on the head when you finished?”

  The governor clasped his hands together in front of him, angling his face back toward the screen. Another officer stepped up beside him, struggling to master his smirk at her words. He was younger than Tarkin, his face stirring some memory at the back of Leia’s mind. Admiral…Motti. Wonderful. No wonder the Death Star was so big—it needed to be to house some of the largest egos in the galaxy.

  “Princess Leia, before your execution, I would like you to be my guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational.” He was so smug, so sure of himself. There wasn’t a single aspect of Tarkin that didn’t make Leia’s skin want to crawl right off her bones. “No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.”

  “The more you tighten your grip,” Leia warned, “the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

  “Not after we demonstrate the power of this station.” The little smirk he gave her made Leia want to take a small step back. A man like him didn’t smile unless he was about to get a taste of blood. “In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that’ll be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station’s destructive power…on your home planet of Alderaan.”

  The truth whipped through her, cracking her wide open with terror. “No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons. You can’t possibly…”

  They couldn’t. Alderaan was one of the central planets. The galaxy depended on its wealth and innovation. There were billions of innocent lives down there!

  “You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system!” Tarkin said. “Where is the Rebel base?”

  Leia glanced over at the officers sitting at the controls of the station, disbelief swelling inside her. How could they follow orders like these? She pulled
back, trying to hide her face so they wouldn’t see that panic had drained every last drop of blood from it. But Vader was like a wall behind her, and Tarkin stepped up close in front of her, trying to get her to cower.

  A version of the truth, she thought, old information. The location would be believable, and she wouldn’t run the risk of giving them a planet they had already checked and found clear of Rebel activity. It didn’t matter that she’d be confirming her involvement with the Rebellion once and for all, not if it meant saving her planet. She would have fought through years of war to help the Rebellion, but she would die for her home.

  “Dantooine,” Leia said softly, lowering her head. “They’re on Dantooine.”

  “There. You see, Lord Vader, she can be reasonable.” Tarkin turned toward Admiral Motti. “Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.”

  “What?” Leia cried. “I gave you what you wanted! You can’t do this!”

  “You’re far too trusting,” Tarkin said, giving a dismissive wave. “Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration. But don’t worry. We will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough.”

  “No!” Leia begged. “Please!”

  “Commence primary ignition,” one of the officers said, leaning forward over his section of the console to push one of a dozen lit buttons on the panel. Next to him, another officer reached up to pull a lever.

  The low, eerie hum vibrated through the floor, through Leia’s skin. She felt it in her teeth. Vader’s grip on her tightened as a green beam appeared in the viewport. Leia sucked in a horrified gasp, struggling against him, trying to do something—anything—to—

  The beam of light raced toward her planet, ripping through the blackness of space. There was a single moment when everything around Leia seemed to suspend. She didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Couldn’t feel. And then—

  The planet gleaming like a gemstone in front of her exploded, tearing apart in a burst of fiery light, sending debris scattering into a molten hot ring. She could imagine how it happened. How the light must have appeared in the crystal blue sky for just a moment. How the mountains had dissolved into dust. Billions of lives gone in the blink of an eye.

  Her home. Her family.

  She stood there, seconds feeling like hours. She shook her head again. There was no way. Alderaan couldn’t be gone. It was all a show, some strange illusion that the Empire had crafted to try to break her. Another interrogation tactic.

  But then why would they have done it after she had given them the information they were looking for? Why were the fragments of the planet’s core still shooting out around them, blazing paths across the void of space.

  It was real.

  The cold numbness that had gripped her suddenly snapped. In its place was a burning, bottomless anger.

  Leia screamed, trying to rip herself out of Vader’s grip to claw at Tarkin’s face with every ounce of fury radiating from her center. Vader held her firmly, letting her struggle against his iron grip.

  “You call yourselves human?” she snarled.

  Tarkin merely gave her a bored look, then turned to Vader. “Take her back to her cell to await termination. Sedate her if you must.”

  There was no need. Her shocked rage flared so bright, so hot that it burned out before she could really make use of it. And once it was gone, she was left with nothing but numb disbelief. Her home…her family…everything…It didn’t feel real, any of it. Her mother, her father, her aunts, her people, the gardens, her room, the libraries, the art, the beautiful blooming life—the Empire needed to take her instead. She would do anything to bring it all back. She would trade herself, anything, if they could undo what they’d done.

  You know that’s impossible, a small voice whispered in her mind. Nothing would bring her home back. No amount of bargaining would fix this. It was over.

  They must have dragged her back to her cell. Leia didn’t remember. Her legs gave out the moment she was through the cell door. The next thing she knew, her cheek was pressed against the cold metal grating on the floor. Her fingers curled around it, but Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, for the first time in her life, couldn’t bring herself to push herself back onto her feet.

  Princess Leia. Were you still a princess if your home world was gone?

  In a matter of hours, she’d lost her position in the Senate, her home, and every plan she’d made. For the first time in her life, Leia didn’t know what to do. The senator didn’t have a plan. The princess didn’t have a history. All that was left was just…Leia.

  She closed her eyes, trying to picture her parents’ faces. Her body shook with the effort to keep her tears back. She folded the pain away, the anguish. She had to. She’d made a promise to her father as he’d seen her and the crew of the Tantive IV off that last time: I won’t fail you. But hadn’t she?

  No. No. Leia pushed her chest off the ground, sitting up. Failing would be giving up. Because somewhere out in the desert there was a droid carrying the hope for the future inside of him. There were allies counting on her, allies who needed to know the truth about the Death Star and the tremendous danger they were in. It wouldn’t be the same, but she could still fight. She had a place with the Rebel Alliance.

  Leia took a deep breath, her father’s voice whispering in her mind. Taking on all of these responsibilities…they’ve shaped you into a glittering star.

  Maybe she had misunderstood what he meant after all. Her father hadn’t been a man who prided himself on his riches or owning beautiful things. He didn’t value gems or credits, and he didn’t often fall back on poetic flattery. Above all, he admired strength. And how else were stars formed but through a collision of pressure and heat, an explosion of energy? The formation of a star shaped the space around it. It could be seen from millions of kilometers away.

  She stood up, straightening to her full height, and began to look around her cell again, searching for her out. They could think they’d taken the parts of her that mattered most. That they’d broken her. But there was a part of Leia that the Emperor, Vader, Tarkin, any of them could never touch.

  Her heart was a star that would never burn out.

  And she would outshine them all.

  NOTHING LIKE A severed limb flying through the air to break up a perfectly good day in a cantina.

  “No blasters!” the barkeep called, panicked. “No blasters!”

  Thank the stars, Han thought. Otherwise no one would walk out of there alive.

  For a single heartbeat, the thick herbal smoke that layered the air seemed to part. The band’s cheerful music cut out. The shouts in Basic and what had to be every other language in the galaxy faded to a whimper. For the first time in Chalmun’s Cantina’s long history of hosting the rowdiest pirates Mos Eisley had to offer, there was absolute silence.

  Then everyone went back to their business and the pulse of life returned. The band, Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, a group of Bith with dome-shaped heads and black, glassy insect eyes, started bopping away on their instruments again.

  Han could have sworn the severed arm—not to mention the creature’s remaining stump—was still sizzling when the old fossil calmly switched his blue laser sword off. Han leaned around the girl in his lap, trying to see what had sparked the fight in the first place. A younger human, a blond teenager, was hauled up from the floor looking dazed, then disappeared into one of the cantina’s dark pockets.

  Han had taken up a corner booth back in the shadows, waiting for the right job to lure him out. And, well, okay, it had the added bonus of keeping him out of sight of the people hunting his skin. But clearly Han should have been more worried about the human girl training her sights on him than he was about Jabba the Hutt.

  “Han…” the girl in his lap began, voice high and breathy. She slid her fingers into his hair and forced him to look at her. “You were gone for so long.” She was beautiful and charming, that was for sure—jewel-toned eyes, long pale hair, an outfit Han was sure would result in some in
teresting tan lines when she stepped outside. And, hey, he was never going to shoot down the attentions of…a…uh…lady.

  “Well, Sar—” he cut himself off when he saw the way her brows pulled together. Right. Sarla was the girl in Serenno Spaceport. Hellene was the Twi’lek barkeep at Kala’uun who had a thing for captains. Which meant this girl was…

  Blank. Mos Eisley Spaceport Girl.

  He shot her a charming, lopsided smile and stroked a knuckle down her cheek. “You know how it is. The jobs I get take me to every corner of the galaxy. Sometimes it’s just too dangerous to show my face around the usual haunts. A guy like me”—he dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper—“he just has to keep moving.”

  The girl sighed. “Everyone’s been talking about that spice cargo you had to dump. One of the freighter pilots said Jabba put a price on your head the size of this planet.”

  Han scowled. “This dust ball isn’t that big.”

  She continued, ignoring him, her fingers moving to fiddle with the collar of his shirt. “You must have come back for a reason. A good one?”

  Not a blond one, he thought, reaching for his drink. Half paying attention to what the girl was saying, he scanned the cantina, searching for the kid and the old man—and found them, of course, right next to Chewie.

  Leave it to the Wookiee to cozy right up to them, chatting them up like he hadn’t just seen someone else get his fur singed. People only came into this particular cantina if they were looking to book a ship’s services and weren’t inclined to tell the Imperials about what they were transporting. Han’s specialty.

  But, really, he thought, what job was going to be worth letting a lunatic with a sword anywhere near his Falcon? They’d already had to turn down two measly jobs hauling goods off-planet. The pay was bad and the cargo was hot—literally steaming. Han might have taken a blow to his rep recently, but he had some professional pride left, thank you very much. One guy had wanted him to haul bantha dung into space to fertilize some other wasteland. No, thank you very much.