Chapter Text
Meera Andari, 9 BBY
Obi-Wan's first thought was that her presence here was wrong. His first thought should have been the question of how Meera had found him here – not even the Imperial henchmen or the Inquisitors had managed that - yet - but that thought came second. His first thought was how wrong her presence was. She belonged in Naboo's sun-flooded meadows or in her small apartment surrounded by her family – not in the scorching sun of Tatooine and that dusty marketplace.
At first, he didn't recognise her, even though she had changed surprisingly little. Her uniforms and the traditional robes of her home world had given way to more practical and simpler tunics made of coarse linen, but she still wore her red hair pinned up at the back of her head, the same way she did during the war. There was an expression in her eyes that Obi-Wan regretted seeing there, but beyond that, the past years seemed to have been kinder to her than to him.
He was already turning away, ready to leave Meera behind and return to his small, modest hut. Whatever had brought her to Tatooine, she was a link to a past and a life he had left behind almost a decade ago. The Kenobi she knew had died with Anakin on Mustafar.
But a small part of him was fascinated by the sight of her. It had been so long since he had known anyone, since he had seen a friendly face – so long since anyone had known him. Seeing Meera haggling with one of the stallholders over the price of a piece of fruit was both a comfort, like an anchor line thrown to him, and a reminder of everything he had lost. And so he turned his back on the sight, just as Meera had apparently finished her shopping. Kenobi merged with the jostling crowd, letting himself be carried along by the flow, yet heading purposefully towards the market's exit. But before he could reach it, a hand suddenly grabbed his arm and hooked itself under his. Kenobi's first instinct was to pull away, but Meera held him fast.
“Now, now, Ben, you weren't trying to hide from me, were you?” Meera scolded him and pressed a bag into his hand. “Be a gentleman and help a lady carry her shopping”, she said, tilting her head. She didn't seem to expect an answer, and Obi-Wan wouldn't have been able to give her one at that moment anyway. So the two walked side by side in silence. Kenobi's thoughts were racing, and he sensed that Meera was also tense beside him. Her mood, her behaviour and her body language were just as feigned as they had been back on Concord Dawn, where Meera and he had very successfully convinced a group of bounty hunters that they were a tragic pair of lovers on the run. At the moment, the woman at his side seemed to be acting no less, but unlike back then, Kenobi did not know what she intended with this masquerade.
Kenobi stopped abruptly, finally able to shake off his astonishment and speechlessness. “What are you doing here, Meera?”
“Visiting an old friend.”
“No. No, Meera, no! You don't know me anymore.”
Meera sighed. She hadn't changed much in that respect either. "Listen to me, Ben, we need to talk, and we shouldn't do it here. Take me to your place and I'll explain everything. You can kick me out afterwards, but at least give me a chance to explain myself, okay?"
“Did Bail send you?” Kenobi asked sceptically, still not moving. His opinion hadn't changed in the last two days.
“No – yes – it's complicated. Please, let's talk, but not here!”
Kenobi looked at her for a moment, hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head. “I'm sorry you had to come all this way, but I can't help you”, and with those words, Obi-Wan withdrew his arm from Meera and turned his back on her, but she reached for his shoulder once more.
“It is said that Inquisitors are on Tatooine. Please don't force me to threaten you, old friend", Meera whispered in his ear, and when Obi-Wan looked into her eyes, he realised that she had changed a great deal.
Clone Body 4-7-3, 0 BBY
She broke through the glass and fell onto the cold stone floor. Her body felt wrong and weak; it wasn't hers. Her shoulders shook as she coughed convulsively. Gasping for air, she vomited the cloning fluid she had swallowed. The ventilation system in her tank was old, and when she woke up, it had not been able to supply her with enough oxygen. Her hands felt numb, her knees weak, she was cold. For a moment, she did not recognise herself, feeling wrong and alien and lost. Her body had been cloned from her DNA, but it still didn't seem to fit her, like an ill-fitting shoe that pinched and rubbed and threatened to slip off. Her head began to spin as she feared to lose touch with the body. The light flickered above her head as she finally sat up. This place had seen her suffer, bleed, it had almost seen her die – but she had survived and now she would not give up. With one hand, she pulled herself up on the shattered tank. The blood from her cut palms dripped onto the floor and mixed with the other fluids on the ground.
She was a warrior and her fight was not yet over.
Darth Veil, 32 BBY
Sidious was a fool – at least sometimes. Most of the time, he acted with brilliance, and that he knew. But therein was also his weakness. Veil looked at the notches in the rock in front of her. The rock around the notches was covered in a dark yellow resin, as if the stone had started to bleed as soon as Veil had worked on it. The resin stank and slowly poisoned her the longer she breathed in its fumes. The stone rebelled against her, the winds roared faster, the rivers flowed wilder, the ground wanted to swallow her up and the animals avoided her. Tython was a planet of the Jedi, Ashla was one of its moons. A planet steeped in the light side of the Force, so much so that it almost made Veil sick. She pushed the memory crystal, wrapped in cloth and tightly tied, into the crevice and closed the notch again. Her limbs ached as she pushed herself back up – she could not stay on the planet much longer. Ashla poisoned her blood, making it viscous and rancid, and Veil could not, must not turn to Bogan.
The stone vibrated beneath her hand – it understood, it knew what Veil had entrusted to its care.
A new era had dawned, and buried within the stone was everything needed to end this new era and overthrow the man who had just ascended to the throne of the old Order of the Sith.
Jané Palpatine, 67 BBY
Jané crouched on the floor, pressing her small body as close to the outer wall of the ship as she could. Not that it really made any difference. He knew she was on the ship, and it was only a matter of time before he found her. They had always played hide and seek at home on Naboo, in the gardens of their home, in the caves beneath the royal capital, or in the tall grasses of Naboo's lake country. He had always found her, and today would be no different.
Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, but if she was honest, she wasn't afraid. She had known for a long time that this day would come. She had witnessed argument after argument between her father and her eldest brother, and she had looked into her brother's eyes and seen the anger seething there.
She had been eight years old, and the family had spent the summer months, when the children had no school or other obligations, at their estate in the lake district of Naboo. Jané had spent the whole day swimming in the lake behind the house and now lay exhausted but happy on the sand of the narrow beach in the evening, letting the last rays of the evening sun dry her off. At one point that evening, her brother had sat down next to her. It was the first time she had seen her brother that day, and he looked strangely out of place in his robes. For a while, they sat together in silence, but then Palpatine thoughtfully reached for a strand of her hair and wrapped it around his index finger. Jané turned her head in his direction and looked up at him with wide eyes. Palpatine gazed intently across the rippling water and squinted as the setting sun threatened to blind him. He said nothing, just kept wrapping Jané's hair around his finger. Although the sun was still glowing on the horizon, Jané suddenly felt cold, as if a cool breeze were blowing unnoticed across the beach. “One day I'll kill him”, her brother finally said in a monotone voice as Jané was about to sit up and wrap herself in a towel. The girl looked at him from the side.
“Who are you going to kill?”
“Father. One day I will do it!”
Five years had passed, and today was the day. Only Jané had seen for herself that her brother's anger did not stop with her father. It was also directed at her mother, her brothers, her sisters, the guards... and now Jané heard footsteps outside the door to her hiding place, and she did not know who else could still be alive besides her and Palpatine. Then the door opened, and in the bright light streaming in from the corridor, Jané recognised the trembling silhouette of her brother.
Cadet C25-739 of the Imperial Academy on Coruscant, 1 BBY
Thekla loved the library perhaps more than any other place on campus. The training rooms were modernly equipped, the sleeping quarters even offered something resembling privacy, and the food in the canteen was surprisingly delicious most days, but the library ... Among the countless memory crystals, Thekla found a sense of calm and belonging that was rare on a city planet like Coruscant, which never slept. In addition, Thekla had rarely, if ever, seen so much information gathered in one place in her life. The wealth of knowledge available to her in this place was almost dizzying. So, that evening, she was engrossed in reading a memory crystal and lost in thought, looking at an image she had been searching for, when suddenly two hands were placed on her shoulders.
“Gotcha”, hissed a voice, and Thekla started more violently than she would later be willing to admit.
“Nirvi! Why do you always have to scare me like that?”
“Oh, come on, The, how could I have let such an opportunity pass me by?” said the Twi'lek, sitting down next to her fellow student after one of the supervisors had told the two women they were being too loud. “Besides, if you weren't so preoccupied with your daydreaming, I wouldn't have been able to sneak up on you.”
Thekla sighed, and the frustration was not entirely feigned. “It's not daydreaming, I just like to be well informed”, said Thekla, pushing a ration bar she had brought for Nirvi from the canteen over to her friend. The Twi'lek's close combat class ended very late, and if she wanted to shower afterwards (which she definitely did!), she wouldn't have time to get something to eat from the cafeteria before meeting Thekla in the library.
“I like to be informed too”, Nirvi commented, swallowing the last bite of the bar, “but I watch the HoloNet news in the evening or read the recommended reading from our professor of modern intergalactic history – staring dreamily at pictures of the Emperor all evening goes a little beyond ‘wanting to be informed’”.
Thekla blushed. "I don't ‘stare dreamily’ at pictures of the emperor – oh, you know what? It's not worth arguing with you about this anyway. You believe what you want to believe."
Nirvi raised her hands appeasingly. "That may be true, but I'm not judging. You only live once, and this life is far too short anyway – if that's your type of man ..." She shifted slightly in her chair and her lekku twitched as she tried to get a better look at the image in front of Thekla. "Honestly, apart from the clothes they wore on Naboo back then... the Emperor wasn't an unattractive young man." Thekla's face turned even redder and she resolutely removed the memory crystal from the reader. Before Nirvi could protest, Thekla had already changed the subject.
"Professor Tytos' homework – I've got to the point where we have to calculate the point at which we have to enter hyperspace. But I don't understand how we're supposed to maintain course under the conditions set out in the assignment".
"You're lucky to have me – do you remember Kirian?"
"That was the guy from weapons class who thought you were cute?" Thekla tried to remember.
"Weapons technology, but otherwise correct. I felt sorry for Kirian and we went for a drink. It turned out that he's damn good at intergalactic navigation... and since I asked so nicely, he explained the assignment to me." Nirvi, smiling meaningfully as she bent over the piece of paper she had just taken out of her bag.
The two women spent another hour together in the library, motivating each other to complete their tasks to the best of their ability. Finally, Thekla was packing up her papers and getting ready to leave for the night when Nirvi held her back. “Wait, I almost forgot.” With an almost nervous twitch of her lekku, she pushed another flimsi across the table to Thekla. “I saw the notice earlier and thought you might be interested.”
Thekla read the contents of the notice aloud in a whisper. “Wanted: personnel for a mobile combat station, duration of deployment: one year, qualified personnel interested in applying should report directly to Imperial Fleet Headquarters, reporting directly to Lord Vader.” She put the flimsi down again. “Are they looking to man a new Star Destroyer or something?”
“I don't think so”, said Nirvi, resting her head on her hands. “The advertisement is far too cryptic for a simple Star Destroyer, and did you see that they report directly to Lord Vader? No, I think this is something big! Just look at the kind of personnel they're advertising for.”
Thekla's gaze wandered back to the flimsi. "Stormtroopers, pilots, security officers, bridge officers, logisticians, weapons technicians, engineers, physicists, propulsion technicians, medical personal of all sorts ..." The list was indeed impressively long.
"No Star Destroyer needs so much personnel, so much diverse personnel at that. Almost every profession that the Empire trains is represented here. This is something big, and it's your chance!"
"What do you mean? Why is it my chance?"
Nirvi suddenly looked at Thekla with a gaze that was too serious to fit in with their previous playful atmosphere. "Ever since I've known you, you've always reached for the stars. Higher, faster, stronger, the best in our class. You never wanted to be anything less than the Empire's poster child – and I just have a feeling that serving on this space station could make your dream come true."
Nirvi's words gave Thekla a lot to think about. But before any of these thoughts could take real shape, before she could even explore her own heart, Thekla borrowed the memory crystal from the library that had occupied her all afternoon. Now, that night, she sat in her quarters, looking at the image of a young Palpatine on Chandrila, lost in dreams and thoughts and horrors.