THE ASCENSION OF THE QUEEN

by

ami-padme

and FernWithy/JediGaladriel,

Part Four

The suns slipped beneath the horizon without Vader noticing.

He could not tear his eyes away from Luke's face. The last, sad smile had faded shortly after he had passed, and had relaxed into an unreadable look, into something blank and expressionless. It was a very different sight than his mother's face had been - her face had been distorted and grotesque, and when her last breath had left her, the pain was evident in her still-open eyes. Luke was almost peaceful in comparison.

But that made his face no less horrendous to Vader. And yet he knew he could not look away.

When he had looked away from her, the fury had flamed up, shredding through his conscience and his soul. The screams and shrieks of the Tusken camp had begun shortly after that.

The thought of adding the screams of Rebel soldiers to the din made Vader almost light-headed with rage and the need for revenge. And there was the confusion and despair of not knowing what he and the remainder of his family could possibly do next...He did not want to feel or think about any of it. So, he stayed focused on his son's face.

He listened to his wife weep and sob as she continued to hold tightly to Luke's slackened hand. Leia seemed unable to shed her tears, and all Vader sensed from her was an angry, guilty, and jumbled mess that too closely mirrored what he felt in his own heart.

He did not know how long they had been out there before the winds picked up, and a cool gust kicked up the sand around them. Amidala winced against it, but made no move to cover her face or protect herself. Instead, she gently slipped her hand from Luke's, and took the edges of the veil she had used to keep him warm in his final moments. She pulled it up slowly, until his face was covered completely. A sharp sob escaped her as she straightened the pale red linen around her son's body.

Vader did not know what to look at now, or where to turn his eyes to. The energy in the air around him felt sick.

Leia shakily pulled herself to her feet, and stared at the headquarters in a dazed way. "I have to go -"

"No," Vader said flatly. "You are not going in there to confront the Rebels."

"Confront them? That's my squadron in there...I'm going to order them to stop this..." Her voice was as low and weak as Vader had ever heard it. She was still shaking.

"None of us is going to do anything until we've agreed on a workable plan," he replied.

"You want to go to in there every bit as much as I do," she said, her voice taking on an angry, menacing tone. "And I'm responsible for what's happened here. I need to be in there."

"Those facts are beside the point, Leia. I will not allow my - my only child -" he nearly choked on the phrase, but pushed himself to keep going "- to rush into another battle. Please, Leia."

Her response was to close her eyes and turn away from him. Finally, she said, "We need to bring him inside."

The journey back down into the headquarters basement was a blur to him. The servants were out of their rooms, and Vader could feel their eyes on him as he carried the veil-covered body of his son. Some of were crying, some whispered blessings or prayers as he passed. Most simply stared, stunned and horrified at the site of his broken family. The familiarity of the situation - of this particular walk - sickened Vader. By the time he had reached an empty set of quarters and put Luke down on the bed, he was feeling almost dizzy.

He gave Leia a curt order to stay in the room, but it was unnecessary - she was now focused on comforting her mother, who was crying silently. He left the room, and wandered out into the hallway and away from the servants and Imperial officers, half-listening to the muffled sounds of the fighting on the floors above him.

"Anakin?"

Vader stopped walking - he found himself far from the room where his family was, near a staircase that would take him out of the basement and into the upper floors of the headquarters. Obi-Wan stood at the foot of the stairs, a shimmering, blue vision of his younger self.

"This is not an appropriate time for another lecture, Obi-Wan."

"I have not come to lecture you," he replied. "I have come to tell you how sorry I am."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Anakin, when your mother died, I don't believe I ever adequately expressed my sorrow to you. Or, I did it in a way that you didn't relate to." Vader said nothing. "I think that I have a particular understanding of the pain of losing a son," Obi-Wan said softly. "I am grieved beyond words that you must go through it now."

"Obi-Wan..." Vader didn't know where to begin. He was not prepared to share his grief, and he had never been able to share his anger or his rage with Obi-Wan, at least not in civil conversation. And besides the grief and fury, what else was there to -

"You're also afraid," Obi-Wan said gently. "But then, you never much shared your fears with me either."

"Would it have mattered if I had?"

"I have to believe so, Anakin. Even though I'm still not sure, to this day, what the right thing to say to you after your mother's death would have been. There must have been a better way to do things then, and there must be one now. That is why I am here."

Vader was pacing slowly, back and forth before his old Master, glancing at him occasionally, but generally keeping his eyes low and on the floor. "You cannot tell me to let go of my anger. Not over this. And unless you plan to suggest how to end this fighting without my losing someone else, then I think you have little to say to me."

"Anakin, you've lived so long cultivating your anger and acting on it that you've lost faith that you are able to handle a situation in any other way. You have no real desire to do to the Rebels what you did to the Tuskens. Yet, you'll drive yourself to it anyway, because the thought of doing anything else is so foreign to you."

"I am what I am," Vader said gravely, "I am what I've become. If you cannot accept that -"

"But you have made yourself forget what you were, Anakin," Obi-Wan said insistently. "And you're denying what you truly are."

"And you believe that is...?"

"A father. A husband. As you were once a son. You want to save your family. It cannot be done by avenging Luke's death. You know this, Padawan. Leia will not be helped, nor will she be safe, if you inflame the fighting with the Rebels. And your wife will be brought no closer to peace or sanity by watching her husband and daughter continue a battle on opposite sides." Obi-Wan folded his arms across his chest, and stared hard at Vader. Vader stopped pacing and forced himself to look him in the eyes. Obi-Wan continued, "You're right in thinking that the safety of your family is not guaranteed, no matter which path you choose to follow. But that is not a reason to give in to despair. You can bring peace to your family, and to this world. And to yourself. You must at least try."

"Have you found peace, Obi-Wan?" he asked. "Or have you simply found that you are chasing a futile dream?"

"I continue the chase. But I don't consider it futile. Giving up has not spared you any measure of pain or heartbreak, Anakin. And without that hope, you find yourself where you are now, trapped in your anger and sorrow with no path leading you out of it." Obi-Wan sighed. "I suppose I am telling you to let go of your anger, Padawan. There is no other way."

Vader sensed that Obi-Wan was about to leave him, and realized that he was disappointed. He wanted to talk more, or at least listen a little longer.

"What I've said is enough," Obi-Wan said gently. "I have faith that you will find a proper solution to this. May the Force be with you, Anakin."

Vader watched his Master disappear. After a moment, he decided to return to his family.

Leia had never realized how small Mother actually was.

In her early childhood, of course, Mother had been her whole universe and everything in it. There must have been a time that she'd seen Mother with taller people - almost everyone was taller - but in her memory, Mother had reached up into the sky itself, and everyone else was dwarfed beside her. This impossible goddess had lived in her mind all the years of her childhood, arched over her and protecting her, appearing in half-remembered dreams and gauzy memories.

When an intercepted transmission from Lady Vader to her husband had come into Leia's hands and she'd seen those beloved eyes laughing gaily at the monster the woman called "my love," she'd taken on a whole new illusion of size. The thought of her betrayal had pushed into every aspect of Leia's life, had taken over the way she considered issues and made decisions. The huge crimson shadow of Lady Vader had darkened everything until Han had found a way to make it go away.

After Bespin, Mother had been Empress and Leia had been a powerless invalid. She had looked up from her bed, and there was Mother, leaning down to her, huge again, vast, limitless.

But Mother's limits had been reached.

Her supports had fallen away. Her world was collapsing. Her "good son" lay dead in an anonymous military bed, wrapped in her own veils. Her husband might be going off to commit a massacre. And it was her daughter's fault.

She now wept silently beside Luke, holding his hand again through the linen, her eyes distant and haunted. She didn't answer questions or respond to Leia's presence.

And she was small, so very small and lost.

Are you satisfied now? a mocking part of Leia's mind asked. Isn't that what you were after all along? To make your mother small, so that you could be big?

"No," Leia whispered, feeling her face grow hot.

Mother didn't look up at the sound of her voice.

It wasn't about competing with Mother. She had been in the Rebellion long before Mother appeared as Lady Vader, long before she'd known that she had a connection to Father at all. The Empire under Mother was still the Empire, and if she had ever been tempted to give up on the assumption that she only fought for a personal grudge, she remembered Mon Mothma crumpling to the floor of Theed Palace with a lightsaber wound in her chest.

Still...

Mother was so very small.

If there was anything to the idea that she was fighting this battle to diminish Mother, success had brought no satisfaction. Seeing Mother like this felt like someone had ripped a hole in her, and the pain of it bled out into the air around her. She wanted to go to Mother and wrap her in an embrace, help her to her feet, straighten her bent shoulders, bring her eyes up to meet the world again. It wasn't right for Mother to look like this.

"Mother... " she began.

Mother didn't answer, but Leia could see a slight shift in the position of her shoulders, a tilt of her head that said she was hearing.

Leia dropped to her knees beside Mother's chair. Mother's long curly hair, looking bereft without its veil, had dropped down over her face, and Leia tucked it up behind one ear. "Mother, I would take it back if I could. I'll find a way to fix it, no matter how long it takes. I'll -"

Mother's head came around so quickly that it seemed instantaneous. Her eyes were wide with fear for a moment, then they glazed again, and she went back to looking at Luke. "Let it be, Leia. You can't bring him back. You can't fix it. Let it be." She blinked slowly, and when she spoke again, she didn't even seem to be speaking to Leia. "The past is in the past." Then she fell silent again. Leia wasn't sure she knew she had spoken.

They sat together in silence only broken by an occasional hitch in Mother's breath as she reached for another sob. Leia crossed her legs and sat on the floor beside the chair, not having the energy to look for another and bring it over. After awhile, one of Mother's hands drifted listlessly down to rest on her hair. Leia reached up for it and took it, squeezing it almost convulsively, worried that she might be hurting Mother but unable to stop. Mother didn't respond.

From a distance, muffled by stone and metal, Leia could hear the sounds of the ongoing battle. The thought of trying to contact the Rebels with her comlink briefly occurred to her, and she was reaching for it before she realized that they could trace it, and in the mood they were apparently in, they would follow it straight down here, straight to Mother. All the repetitions of the order not to go after the Empress had been in vain before; Leia couldn't imagine that they would be any more effectual now.

You should have realized that. How many times after she appeared again did you wish everyone in the Rebellion would hate her as much as you did? That they would realize she was no more than a charismatic dictator, no more likely to grant their freedom than Palpatine was? You got your wish with the New Rebellion: the ones who loved her stayed in the New Empire, and you got too many of the fanatics, the ones who breathe resentment and drink hate. And now Luke - Luke, who might have been the best of them - has paid the price for your fantasy.

They'd never even really talked about their twinship. It had come on them suddenly, and they'd found out separately. By the time Leia had awakened from her injuries enough to have a conversation, it was an accepted fact of their lives. But now she wished it had been different, that they'd found out from one another instead of separately, from their parents. She would have liked to ask him if he'd ever felt the connection between them, if he'd ever sensed anything strange, as she had when she'd kissed him in the infirmary on Hoth. It might have been nice to compare their childhoods, to find out if they had shared anything on that subconscious level where they'd done so much communicating as adults.

Had Luke been plagued by dreams as she had? Did he sometimes wake up thinking that there was someone else in the room, only to find himself alone? When he had a moment as the center of attention, had he looked around, certain that someone else should be at the celebration? Oh, the moments of attention would have been different in scope, but to a child, the notice of everyone in Anchorhead would have been no different in quality than the notice of every noble on Alderaan and her surrounding worlds. Had he looked over the heads of the people cooing at him, thinking that surely someone was coming through the door, although everyone who was expected was already there? She had been always plagued by that nagging sense that someone was missing. She'd barely noticed its absence over the last four years but now, in the silence left in her mind, she realized that she hadn't felt it once since the door of her cell on the Death Star had opened, and an earnest stranger with untidy blonde hair had said, "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you."

She had never asked, and she would never know. She'd spent their time together arguing about politics and plotting her escape.

Do you still think I'm wrong? he'd asked as he slipped away, and the question was still in Leia's mind. She did still think he was wrong, they were all wrong... but right now, it seemed like the least important question in the universe.

She rose to her knees and then to her feet. Mother showed no signs of noticing, instead just clutching Luke's hand, rocking slightly.

Leia looked down at the veiled shapes of her brother's face, the ridges and concavities softened by the gentle draping of the cloth, undisturbed by the stirring of breath. It was profoundly unnatural to see a human face covered like this, with no fluttering breath to show life. He was like a statue, waiting to be revealed. Luke shouldn't look like this any more than Mother should look small.

Slowly, carefully, Leia leaned over the bed and pulled the veil down. Luke's glassy eyes stared up at her, bits of sand from the last blast of wind embedded on their surface. There was no other damage to this part of his body at all. He looked like he might grin and make a joke, or look up hopefully through his too-long bangs and ask her to make sense of the universe for him. Like he might -

The tears came suddenly, in a hot flood. They fell on Luke's cheeks, slipping down onto the pillow, darkening the veil. She leaned forward, needing to steady herself, needing to hold on, wrapping her arms around her brother's still body and pressing her face against his poor ruined chest. It smelled of burned flesh and the beginning of decay, even through the veil, but she didn't care. She had done this, she had destroyed him, and she could give him one final embrace without recoiling in disgust.

She registered the warm pressure on the back of her neck before she was capable of making any judgment as to what it was, but as the storm of grief subsided, she realized it was a hand, soft and lightweight, stroking her neck in small circles beneath her hairline.

She opened her eyes.

Mother had stood up. She still held Luke's hand with one of hers, but she had extended the other to Leia, and was looking down at her, arching over her, comforting her. She leaned down and kissed Leia's temple, her soft lips as Leia remembered them from long ago.

"Shh," she said. "Mother's here."

Leia nodded, gulping back a sob. She rose and wrapped her arms around Mother's waist, bending a little to lean on her shoulder. Mother let go of Luke's hand, and put both of her arms around Leia. Her hands made light, comforting motions on Leia's neck and shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Mother."

"Shh."

"Mother... "

"Shh."

Leia shushed, and let herself be small again, and let Mother be what she most needed to be.

Mos Espa had settled into a wary sort of calm. Han was grateful for the quiet.

Amee's people weren't very happy about the situation, but they had limited their expression of that to dirty looks and curses under their breath. Mostly, they went about treating the injured Imperials without causing any problems with the Rebels or the Rebel sympathizers in the city. Cooperation had settled in - an icy, detached cooperation to be sure, but a working one nonetheless. No one really much liked one another, but the time for fighting had clearly passed.

The citizens of Mos Espa were starting to come out of their homes and trickle into the streets again, and Han let them. There wasn't as much need for a total crack-down any more. Any Imperial officers who looked like they might want to cause trouble were being closely guarded on the outskirts of town. The Vader sympathizers in the city saw Amee, Seek, and the rest of the caretakers from the old slave quarters and that seemed to defuse any smart ideas some of them might have gotten. The sight of Rebels and Imperial supporters working together, even on something as simple as providing medical care, was taken as a sign that things might have somehow been worked out.

With that settled, Han found a solitary spot underneath one of makeshift medical tents, and was trying to make contact with the other Rebel squadrons. It had been awhile since he had heard anyone check in, and he wanted to see how the others were doing.

He wanted to know how Leia was doing. Hell, he wanted to know what she was doing.

She hadn't answered any of his hails since that last conversation, when she had decided to "fix" the situation in Mos Eisley. He had no idea where she was, or what had happened with the Tuskens. He had tried her every five minutes - five seconds - or so, and was going to keep trying until he was able to get a hold of her.

He broke up his hails to Leia with checks on the other squadrons. Han hadn't been naïve enough to hope that they'd all be doing as well he was, but to his surprise, most of the commanders reported that they had things in hand. They were concerned with watching their prisoners, but they had hit the strategic weapons or communications sites they were supposed to, and had eventually won control of their areas and people. A few were still fighting Lady Vader's forces, and Han worried that one of the smaller groups was in serious trouble. He ordered some of his men to go out and help them. Things were going as well as could be hoped.

But he hadn't been able to get a hold of Lando, which only made him more worried about whatever was happening in Mos Eisley. He also couldn't raise Alpha Squadron at Imperial Headquarters.

He sighed, and decided to make one more call before he drove himself crazy trying to get a hold of Leia again. He raised the main Rebel base on Ledaga.

At first, all he got back was static. But, just as he was about to get worried, it cleared, and a young voice answered the hail.

"Ensign Terel here, General Solo."

"Terel?" he asked, surprised. He knew the kid - he had been commissioned as an ensign right before everyone had left for Tatooine. "What are you doing answering the comm?"

"Sir?"

"No offense, kid, but I'm pretty sure I left at least a captain or two back there at the base. Why aren't they running command? I could be calling in with some critical orders here."

He had said it jokingly, but Terel sounded put-out when he answered. "If you are, I'll carry them out immediately, General."

"I know you would. You just keep holding down the fort for us."

"Yes, sir!" he replied enthusiastically.

"I do need to know where everyone else is though."

"Oh, well, they're all over the base, trying to deal with the mess from the earthquakes. You're actually lucky that you caught us while everything's working."

Han suddenly felt a lot worse for leaving kids like Terel in charge. And for his orders before he left... "The quakes really started? Are the Ledagans on the base?"

"Yes and yes," he answered, almost cheerfully. "The quakes started not too long after you left. We got the Ledagans in here pretty quickly after that...kind of fun having them...need more translator..." The static had returned.

"What's wrong with the comm?"

"It's the earthquakes, sir. They've disrupted our..." Terel was interrupted again. He seemed to realize it this time, because he waited for it to pass before continuing. "Our receivers were damaged in the first quakes. The rest of the system is touch-and-go. That's one of the things the captains are working on."

"What about the base? It's still holding together, right?"

"So far. I think this is probably the safest place on the planet. We can take a hit from the falling trees, stuff like that. If the Ledagans had been outside, they would have been running and hiding and probably still wouldn't have been safe."

"Listen, tell the Captains that they're right to try to keep the vital systems on the base up and running," Han said. "You guys need to be alert. I know I was the one who said the Ledagans could stay if they had to, but you're still running our headquarters. And now you've got a couple of freighter loads of civilians to worry about."

"It's more like a whole planet of civilians!" he said. "You wouldn't believe how many people we were able to squeeze into this base."

"That's great," Han said flatly. "But you guys need to stay sharp. Got it?"

"Yes, sir. Of course. I'll make sure the Captains get your instructions."

"You can also tell them that things are going well here. Mostly. I hope to get back to them with a full report once I get a hold of a few other people. And then we'll return to Ledaga as victorious heroes."

"I'm sure you will, sir."

"All right. Han out."

Han sighed heavily, flipping his comm between his fingers.

"Problems?"

Han jumped, and found Amee just behind him, underneath the tent. "No, of course not." He tried to convince himself of that. He decided there was too much on Tatooine to worry about to be afraid for those far from the battle on Ledaga. "How long were you eavesdropping?"

"I wasn't."

"Sure."

"Somehow I doubt you were going to reveal some crucial information that would let us drive you out of this city." She gave him a smile that almost seemed sincere. "There's nothing else that I'm terribly interested in."

Han rolled his eyes. "At any rate, I did want to thank you for -"

"Don't," she interrupted. "I told you we weren't here for you, and I meant it."

"Whatever. You helped make the city safe."

"After you came and disrupted it in the first place."

Before Han could answer, Lando's voice interrupted.

"Han, you there, buddy? Come in."

Han raised an eyebrow at Amee, which he thought was a fairly plain sign that he wanted to be alone, but she stayed where she was. He had the feeling she'd follow him if he walked away, so he didn't bother. "Han here. Things sound better on your end, Lando. What the hell's happening out there? Where's Leia?"

"You haven't talked to her?"

"Not since I called her about your situation. Why?"

"Well, then you might not believe this..."

In the background, Han thought he was hearing a Gungan say, "Yousa Rebels helpin' the shop owners," or something like that. It was strange; Han couldn't think of a Gungan in the Rebellion, and they certainly weren't native to Tatooine. "Try me, Lando."

"Leia and Vader showed up here together to help us drive the Tuskens out of Mos Eisley. They ordered all of us to work together."

Han found himself staring at his comm as if it were some foreign object he had never seen before. Even Amee, who had been standing nearby straight-faced, could no longer pretend she wasn't listening. She glanced at him, and said, "What the hell does that mean?"

"You took the words right out of my mouth...Lando, what the hell does that mean?"

"I've been working with the Imperial Officers here to get things under control. Those were Leia's orders. And Vader's."

"Put her on."

"What?"

"Put Leia on," Han snapped. "I need to talk to her."

"Can't do that. She isn't here now." He paused. "She and Vader flew out of here awhile ago. I don't know where they went."

"She left without saying anything?"

"They were gone so fast...I don't know, Han. They were racing out of here."

Han was stunned. Leia, working with Vader? Now? "Are things under control there?"

"They're getting better."

"Fine. I gotta find Leia. Han out."

He barely looked at Amee as he left the tent to head for the center square. She followed him closely. He found Seek with a Rebel commander, and he looked back at Amee. "I'm leaving. Try to keep things the way they are."

"What?" she said in disbelief.

"Keep watching the city, all of you." He looked pointedly at Seek. "Don't start a fight. We still outnumber you, and you'll lose. Keep your city safe."

His commander asked, "But where are you going?"

"I'm going to Imperial HQ. I need to try and figure out what the hell is going on. That seems like a good place to start."

All three looked at each other and nodded their acknowledgement. That was enough for Han. If Leia was crazy enough to work with Vader, this little Imperial-Rebel collaboration would be simple in comparison.

Han found himself a speeder, and sped toward the headquarters.

There wasn't enough moisture on Tatooine for mud to occur naturally, and Lando was momentarily puzzled at the muck on his shoes as he crossed the battle site. Then he looked at the bodies being carried away, realized what the moisture in the sand was, and leaned against the wall until the wave of nausea passed.

I'm not cut out for this, he thought. No way. I make deals and speeches. I'll fly a space battle, where everything is icy and clean. But mud that smells like oxidizing iron and bodies being put under tarps to protect them from the sand? Not my game.

But it had become his game, and he knew it. He'd made one deal too many, betrayed a friend, and now he had to do his time in hell for it.

All of which was great in theory, except that he wasn't one of the bodies under the tarp. What had they done for the privilege of being bit players in his private atonement?

"Yousa not being in the war very long, eh?"

Lando looked up. Ter Caldo was standing beside him, leaning against the wall in a casual way that made him look like a street tough on a corner on Coruscant. "Not long," he answered.

Ter Caldo sniffed and nodded. "Mesa bein' in the Rebellion for fifteen, mebbe twenty years before Hersa Majesty coming to the Empire. Mesa seein' lotsa this."

"Do you get used to it?"

"No. Yousa never getting used to it. When Hersa Majesty comin' to the throne, mesa thinkin' it's all being over. But yousa pickin' a new fight." He sighed. "Mesa muy sorry," he said. "This not being the time. Wesa all bein' tired. And da Vader and yousa Princess wanting us to be working together."

Lando wasn't sure what to say, so he just nodded, leaning his head back against the wall. The nausea was gone, though the nagging thought of what he had all over his shoes wasn't. The fighting was over. Rebels were rebuilding an area around the square. Imperials had taken to counting the survivors and analyzing the damage. As Lando watched, the Rebel medic for the mission, Hatwa, made his presence known to an Imperial guard, then knelt beside a human woman who didn't appear to be injured, but who was weeping uncontrollably and hiding her face. She scuttled away when Hatwa touched her arm.

Ter Caldo was blinking his large protruding eyes, clearly expecting some sort of answer, but Lando was saved by the high-pitched hailing bark of a Wookieee. With relief, Lando waved at him, and gave his best approximation of a Wookieee greeting. Chewbacca rolled his eyes and barked something about humans not trying to do things they weren't suited to do.

He was in the company of several men, some clearly recently recruited smugglers and pirates, whose only concession to the command structure had been tying bright cloths around their arms to identify themselves as combatants. Three young regular Rebels tagged along, looking at the older men with great admiration. When they noticed Ter Caldo in Her Ladyship's uniform, all of them stopped.

Chewbacca shook his head, gave a few short barks, then launched into a long question that - if Lando remembered his Wookieee right - boiled down to "What's really going on?" There was something in there about Leia and Vader, and Lando thought he could probably reconstruct the rest of the question himself.

"Yeah, they came in together," he said, and was glad to see by Chewie's face that it did, in fact, address the question. "Decided that the Tuskens were a worse problem than the battle, and told us to work things out here."

Chewie's growl was only questioning, but the looks on the faces of the men in his little platoon looked flatly suspicious.

Lando nodded. "Look, you all know how bad it was here. I don't know what made Vader decide to drop in -"

"Deesa people being hurt!" Ter Caldo interjected, standing away from the wall and taking up a defensive stance. "The Empress and hersa Lord aren't standing still while theysa people being murdered!"

"Yeah, right," one of the smugglers said. "Unless 'theysa people' think 'theysa' full of -"

Lando held up a hand to stop him, and it miraculously worked. He gave Ter Caldo a look that he hoped said, "Be a leader and don't start anything." It may have worked, or Ter Caldo may have come to the conclusion on his own.

"Leia and Vader came in together. If two people who disagree that strongly and that frequently can manage to work together, I suppose we can."

The smuggler just waved his hand in an irritated way, but the young Rebel behind him bit a full lip and looked up. Lando realized for the first time that this one was a woman. She was thin and flat-chested, and had worn her hair in a short style... but it was obvious that she'd recently started growing it. It was just at the slightly-out-of-control stage, not long enough to be grabbed by the things ladies used to hold their hair, but not short enough to stay in place by itself. It looked like a mop on her head. A lot of the women on the base had started to grow their hair when Leia had returned. "Sir... " she said hesitantly. "I... That is, we were wondering... "

"Has your Princess dumped us here?" the smuggler asked. "Gone back to Mommy and Daddy like we figured she would?"

The young woman looked miserable, but nodded.

Lando didn't know the right way to answer that, because the fact seemed to be that Leia was with her parents, at Imperial HQ, and probably talking with them, given the way she'd acted in concert with Vader. That she had good reasons wouldn't make much difference to this man.

Chewie growled threateningly.

The young woman pushed her too-long hair back, using a string to keep it away from her face a little. She looked wounded. "Please, General Calrissian... tell us. Is the Princess still with us?"

"That one, I can answer," Lando said, praying that he was right. "The Princess is one of us. She's the first of us. Don't doubt it. Whatever she's doing with her parents, it will be with the interests of the people of the galaxy in mind. Believe it."

I hope.

"What does she say?"

"Her comlink is inactive."

"Did they kill her?"

"I don't know." But thanks for giving me something it hadn't occurred to me to worry about yet.

"When will we know?" one of the other pirates, a taciturn Rodian with a great red scar down his green face, asked.

Lando shrugged. "Look, I'll head up to headquarters. I'm guessing that's where they are. I'll find out what the situation is. Han is already on his way -"

"Great!" the smuggler exclaimed waving his open hand at the sky. "Now they're both just dropping out on -"

He didn't finish the sentence, because Chewbacca had grabbed his neck with both hands and started to crush.

Lando put a hand on the Wookieee's arm. "I think he gets the point, Chewbacca. Let him up."

Chewie didn't obey the order immediately, though Lando could see by the man's face that the grip's intensity had let up. Chewie was going through a long string of curses and insults.

Lando looked at Ter Caldo. "Do you speak Wookieee?"

Ter Caldo shrugged. "Mesa knowin' enough to know hism sayin' things hesa mother not liking much."

"That's about where I am. Good enough." He looked up. "Chewie, let him up and listen to me."

Chewbacca let go of the smuggler and barked an interrogation.

"Can you keep these guys under control?"

Thought. A few affirmative yelps. A shrug.

"Good. Work with Ter Caldo. He sort of understands you."

Chewbacca looked flabbergasted, then barked in a soft way - trying not to be heard - that he wasn't sure how well he understood the Gungan dialect of Basic.

"You'll get the hang of it. I trust you. I'm just going to make a run out to Imperial HQ and see what's happening there. You've got command of the Rebels."

Chewie nodded.

"Try not to strangle them."

Shrug.

Lando grinned. "I'll see you in a couple of hours. Keep them out of trouble 'til then."

With that, he left - avoiding the horrible mud patches - and made his way out of town, looking for a vehicle. He found an abandoned Rebel speederbike at the end of a long alley leading away from the battle, climbed on, and headed out into the desert.

Han leapt off his speeder before it had come to a stop, his sense of trepidation growing with every moment that he didn't know what was happening with Leia.

There were no guards or officers at the main entrance to Imperial Headquarters to take notice of his arrival. He could hear occasional blaster shots and yelled order coming from the inside. It seemed Alpha Squadron had been busy during the time they had ignored his hails.

Han wondered if he had been wrong - if Leia and Vader had dashed off for somewhere else. He couldn't imagine Vader allowing this battle to continue, and Leia hadn't wanted Alpha Squadron to charge the base in the first place. They certainly would have gotten things under control by now, wouldn't they?

He frowned, and then decided that it didn't matter what seemed to be going on inside. He couldn't start searching the whole planet for her, and couldn't think of anywhere else that would be more likely for them to wind up. He readied his blaster, and ran inside.

The hallways rooms he first passed were empty. There were scorch marks on the walls, and occasionally blood on the floor. He decided that would be as good a trail to follow as any, and kept moving to wherever the battle was being waged now.

He had almost reached the main Command Center according to his memory of the layout plans before he began to see Imperial Officers in any great numbers. They were running all over the place, and none of them seemed to take any notice of him. They dragged their injured away and barked orders at each other. They seemed to be trying to regroup.

Now, Han was really worried. There was no chance that Vader was commanding this bunch. Where the hell was he? Where was Leia?

Han ducked, as a blast flew by his head, barely missing him. He was almost at the Center now.

As he closed the last of the distance, he suddenly felt a hand latch onto his arm, and yank him aside. He instinctively struck out at whoever grabbed him, and looked down to see Athuli stumbling to the ground.

Han helped him up quickly, but didn't waste time apologizing. "What the hell is going on?" he asked.

Athuli rubbed the bruise that was forming on his face. Then he said, "I tried to stop them! They don't even know what they're doing any more! They're fighting for no reason now."

"Where's Leia?"

"I don't know," Athuli snapped. "She left. She ordered us not to storm the base, but they want a shot at the Empress. They're not happy that they haven't found her yet. That's the only reason they're keeping this up."

"So, the Empress isn't anywhere on the base? Are you sure?" Han thought this could be the best possible news. Until Alpha Squadron settled down, he didn't want any of them finding Leia with Vader, or with her mother. He just wanted her somewhere safe for now - if he could bring himself to call being with her parents safe.

Athuli shrugged. "I don't know. Most of the squadron is in there -" he gestured to the Command Center " - or in the guard tower. That's where most of the Imperials were when we first got inside. A few others ran off, but I'd think they would have reported back if they had found her.

"She wouldn't exactly be unguarded," Han answered. "Anyone foolish enough to go after her without the rest of the squad might not have had the chance to call back." Han pulled up his blaster again, and waved Athuli forward. "Come on, let's get these guys calmed down."

Athuli gave him an almost comical look of skepticism and aggravation, but he followed.

Han went in yelling instead of firing. "Cease fire! Alpha Squadron, stand down!" Han took a look around the Center, and could immediately see what Athuli had meant - the Imperials that were in the room and not injured were outnumbered, and crouched behind a large console, trying to dodge fire. The Rebels were firing at them blindly, apparently not realizing that they already had control of the room, even with some Imperials left standing. "Cease fire!" He was almost directly in front of the Rebels now, and a few of them were trying to shoot around him. "That's an order, Alpha Squadron!"

Eventually, the blasters were silenced, and the squad's attention focused on Han. The Imperials stared and waited.

"General Solo!" Arralla said, looking too pleased with herself, and too disappointed that the fighting had been interrupted. "Here to help us get the Empress?"

Han's first instinct was to say "No!" and then launch into a tirade about them not following orders, and fighting so foolishly as they made their way through the base. His second instinct was to say, "No!" followed by, "The hell with all of you!" and go find Leia, which was all he really cared about at this point anyway. Luckily, his better thinking managed to overcome his instincts, and he decided on focusing on a way to diffuse the situation instead.

"No," he said, "I'm here to tell you guys to get the base under control."

"But -"

"The Empress isn't here, Arralla. She high-tailed it out of the base the minute you guys got inside. The rest of the planet is relatively...calm. You're fighting for nothing. I need you guys to cut it out, and focus on holding this section of the base."

The lie about the Empress - well, Han wasn't certain it was a lie - had the intended effect. He could almost feel the air go out of the room: the Rebels had lost their driving cause, and the wild look left some of their eyes. The Imperials no longer felt they had to hold the Rebels back from finding Lady Vader, and they were relieved. Han let the moment hang, wanting to allow the let-down to sink in on both sides as much as possible.

Finally, he said, "Secure this part of the base, and then sit tight, okay?"

Arralla frowned. "What about the rest of the base? I'm sure there are still Imperials guarding -"

"Arralla," he said impatiently, "you're still only one squadron. You can't take the entire headquarters, and you know it. Hold the Command Center and the guard tower. That's an order." He gave her his most pointed glare. "Do you think you can handle that until I come back?"

She looked more than a little offended. "Of course we can."

"Good. Make sure the rest of your squad knows what their orders are then. If there's any trouble, I'm holding you personally responsible. I've got other things to take care of, and I don't want to be dragged back here because you all are trigger-happy. Got it?" Han waited for a few mumbled, "Yes, sirs" and then abruptly grabbed Athuli and pulled him out of the center. Once Han felt they were out of earshot, he asked, "The other people you mentioned, do you have any idea where they took off to?"

"The basement maybe," he answered. "They wanted to 'liberate' the servants, I think."

Han nodded, and glanced back at Arralla and her people. They were rounding up the Imperials - probably being rougher than they had to be, but they weren't so eager to shoot at anything in an Imperial uniform any more. "All right, I'll be back soon, with new orders...do what you can to keep things settled."

This time Han didn't even wait for a response. He was running to the nearest lift, and heading down for the basement level.

He found nothing there but servants weeping and consoling one another. Han had no idea what to make of it, but consoled himself with the thought that no one here would shed tears if something happened to Leia.

There were Rebels lying in the hallway, shot dead and left behind. Apparently the few that had come down here had managed to cause some trouble before -

"Han?"

Leia - that was Leia's voice coming from a room that was guarded by several Imperial Officers. She came running past them and flung herself into his arms. He held her tightly for a few seconds, but then tried to push her away so he could see her. She resisted, but Han could see her face was tear-streaked and flushed, and her eyes were bloodshot. She was trembling.

Han wanted nothing more than to get her the hell out of there, no matter what had happened, but she was now pulling him back to the room she had run out of, waving off the guards, who were eyeing him warily. "Leia, what's happened? What's wrong?" She continued to drag him along. "Where's Vader? Are you all right?"

They entered the room and Lady Vader stood, looking as shaky as Leia did. Han barely noticed her. He saw Luke, lying on top of a bed, with one of his mother's veils covering part of his body.

"Luke?" he started to ask. But he already knew. Luke was dead. "Damn," he whispered, curling his arm around Leia and drawing her closer to him.

Han had been so furious at Luke for so long that even now, looking at his old friend's lifeless body, he couldn't quell the first wave of anger that he felt. But it came, and it passed, and Han wondered what good carrying a grudge to the grave would do. Luke had done some terrible, traitorous things, and if Han had been given a real opportunity, he thought he might have wrung the kid's neck without much of a second thought...The kid...that's all Luke was really, even after everything that happened. Just a wide-eyed kid. Whatever he had done, Han couldn't help thinking that Luke didn't deserve to wind up like this.

How had he wound up like this?

"Han?" Leia whispered.

"Damn," was all Han could manage to say in response. He almost asked if Alpha Squadron had done it, but Leia's anguish was so acute that he knew the answer without being explicitly told. Leia's own squadron had killed her brother, in an attempt to kill her mother. Whatever the Vaders were, and whatever they had done - how was Leia supposed to deal with this? "Leia, I'm sorry." She looked away. "What do you want to do now?"

To his surprise, Leia looked to her mother. Han took real notice of Lady Vader for the first time. She was standing next to the bed, looking drained and depressed. When she spoke her words were slow, deliberate. "We have to stop this. This has to end here."

Han wasn't sure what that meant in her mind, though he had to admit that despite what happened, she didn't seem nearly as crazy as Leia had described her. He had thought she'd be hysterical, but she was composed. Han supposed she could be in shock. Some traumas were just too much to deal with.

"Yes," said a voice at the door to the room, and Han and Leia turned to see Vader standing behind them. "We must bring an end to this conflict, Leia."

Han cleared his throat. Vader didn't acknowledge him, or take his eyes off Leia. Han continued anyway. "I think the fighting upstairs has mostly stopped. For now. But the Rebels are in control of several key areas of your base."

Vader still didn't turn his head on Han's direction. His breathing went through several cycles. "I'm not speaking solely of the base, or of Tatooine. I do not intend to end things here, and then fight another day. I am suggesting that we end this."

Leia's eyes were enormously wide, and they looked back and forth between her parents, trying to find understanding. Lady Vader didn't react at all.

"End it?" Han finally said, stunned. "You...you can't be ready to surrender..."

"No," Vader answered.

"Then - then what do you want to talk about?" Han asked. "You want to negotiate for a 'better' Empire?"

Lady Vader rolled her eyes, and for a second, Han thought she was going to swoon. But she pulled herself back, and brought her eyes to rest on Leia. "I can't fight you any more. But I'm not going to abandon the galaxy to anarchy and chaos because you think that's preferable to my rule. So we have to find another way." She sighed. "Really, we want many of the same things -"

"Mother," Leia said.

"We do."

"You have never wanted those things in practice," Leia whispered wearily. "You just want to be the person who talks about doing them eventually. In the meantime, you do almost the exact opposite of what you say you want to do."

"And what have you done here, Leia? Have you done anything for the people of Tatooine that you say you wanted to do?" asked Vader. "Or have you done the opposite?"

"I've fixed what happened in Mos Eisley."

"And will you fix the next planet? Will you do it alone if I am not there to help you?" Vader shook his head slowly. "I am not willing to wait for this family's mistakes to destroy us again."

Leia looked up at Han, and he simply shook his head. He had no idea whether they should be believed. He also didn't know which way would be more dangerous for her - to continue to fight them, or to trust them.

She looked at both parents again, then said, "We at least must decide what is going to happen on Tatooine. Here at the base and out in Mos Eisley. Maybe...maybe from there, there are other things we can discuss."

"Yes," Lady Vader said, "I think that we can do that."

"But," Leia continued, "this has to be done in good faith. Which means that everything is on the table. This can't just be a ploy to keep me out of harm's way, or something done because we all feel...because of...Luke. Our issues with the Empire are fundamental ones. If you honestly think you want to discuss them..."

"We can discuss them," Vader said flatly. "But if you believe you're going to force your mother to abdicate her throne -"

"She cannot keep it in the fashion it exists in now," Leia said. "That is the reason we're fighting."

"That is not -"

"Ani," Lady Vader murmured. "I am not ready to return to the fight. We should begin with Tatooine. Resolve the situation on this base, and in Mos Eisley."

"Very well," Vader said. "We should all go back into the main section of the base, and bring our people under control. We can continue from there."

Han felt Leia take his hand, and squeeze it fiercely. She nodded to her father. Vader went to the bed, and picked Luke up. Lady Vader led them all out of the room and back upstairs. The fighting would be stopped for good, and Luke would be properly tended to. Then the four of them would continue their talks.

Amidala leaned on Leia as the turbolift carried them into the upper levels, toward the command center. Leia's lover - Han, his name was Han - stood awkwardly to one side. Amidala felt some instinct to tell him not to be afraid, but she was unable to act on it. A kind of paralysis seemed to have come over her. Words came only with difficulty, and when she moved, it felt like she was fighting a rough current.

In front of her, Ani stood stock still, his mechanical arms supporting Luke's limp form easily. He was still wrapped in the veil, which kept his poor arms from dangling, but his face was uncovered, and her eyes traced his profile, recording it. It would be gone soon.

Only this morning, when he had laughed and smiled as they shared stories over breakfast, she had been able to think of him as a baby, as a child... she could feel the potential of the life they had missed together hovering everywhere.

But now?

It was gone. All of the fantasies, all of the half-memories... just gone. Reality was the still, limp form in Ani's arms.

The door of the turbolift opened, and Ani led them out into the base. Imperial officers stood to attention. Rebel officers who were ostensibly guarding them simply gaped. Amidala didn't react. She felt Leia straighten up beside her. The Rebels moved to attention.

Ani laid Luke down on top of a natural stone bier which had been left as an architectural feature of the command center, then rearranged the veil into something better approximating a shroud, although he folded it down to continue exposing Luke's face. Slowly, he closed the bright blue eyes.

I'll never see them again, Amidala thought.

She tried to remember those eyes on the night he was born. She could see them, far away and small... she'd thought they were so like Ani's, except lighter and clearer. But she couldn't make the memory live, as she had been able to for so long. The veil of time had been drawn across it.

Ani set up Imperial guards to stand beside Luke's body while he lay in state; Han insisted that the Rebels provide one guard as well. To them, he said it was because Luke had served honorably in the Rebellion. To the family, he said quietly that he didn't want a war around "the kid's body." Amidala registered this, but didn't respond to it. It seemed sensible, and she had nothing to add.

When it was done, Han looked at her. "Ma'am," he said, "are you up to talks?"

Amidala glanced at Leia and Ani and noticed for the first time that both of them had oriented themselves toward her in a protective way, as though they were afraid she would break at Han's question. Leia's face was a study in miserable conflict. Amidala touched her arm. "The last thing I want to think about right now is the war," she said. "But there is no choice." She took a deep breath, then stepped away from Luke's body and went into an empty conference room off the command center. It had been richly appointed, meant for high-level meetings between the Guard and Imperial High Command.

Amidala looked carefully at the high-backed chair created to be a throne. If she didn't take it, the symbolism would be clear: she was willing to negotiate the tenuous hold the Empire had on the galaxy. If she did take it, the meaning would be equally clear: she meant to retain her throne even against her daughter, at this of all times.

She took it.

Whatever Leia thought, the galaxy was not ready to go back to the Republic. Too much had happened; the paths had split too far.

Leia understood immediately, and sighed heavily, pulling out a chair to Amidala's right. Han sat beside her. Ani remained standing.

"This is not a family meeting," Amidala said. "Except by coincidence. We're here to solve problems. And I don't know the answers."

She let the silence build. Through the still open door, she could see Luke's head and shoulders on the bier. She wanted to spin a fantasy, bring him back to life, wonder where they might be right now if things were different. But the reality simply lay there, unmoving, unyielding, and her mind would not cooperate.

Han spoke first. "Do you know why they're crazy out there? Do you know what your Guards have been up to?"

Ani stepped forward threateningly. "Reconsider the tone with which you address your Empress."

Amidala held up a hand.

"They killed a woman for not closing her saloon at curfew."

"The law is the law," Ani said. "It was a regrettable overreaction, but the curfew is intended to protect citizens from criminal behavior -"

"Father!" Leia moved her hand as if she meant to strike the table, then set it deliberately down beside her comlink instead. "Don't you understand, that's the problem? You can't manage people the way you set out to. They won't cooperate. And because your laws are absolute and no appeal is permitted, you're always going to end up with 'regrettable overreactions.' And the Empire ends up being the criminal."

"Perhaps better training of the Guard in matters of -"

Leia let out an explosive breath. "It's not going to work."

"You have yet to provide acceptable reasoning of that premise," Ani said. "You take on faith that your republican ideal is preferable to the government taking some responsibility for the safety of its citizens -"

"The Republic I have in mind would do so -"

"As it did when it allowed Palpatine to rise in the first place?"

"Please," Amidala whispered. "This is not productive."

Ani and Leia both stopped talking. They had each heard the other's position many times.

Han Solo spoke first again. "We need to get Tatooine settled once and for all," he said. "Before you say it, we know it's a mess we made. One of your loyalists in Mos Espa reminded me about that before I left, just in case I forgot. But the mess is here, and we have to do something about it."

"On that matter, there is little disagreement."

Amidala wished Ani would sit down if he planned to join the discussion, but knew he wouldn't. He had no wish to be a politician, only the champion of what he had once called "someone wise." She took a deep breath. She wanted to go to sleep, to find a dark room and wrap herself in shadows and shame. But she had a job to do. She reached deliberately into her mind for language, found it, forced it out. "We have accomplished a temporary truce here, and it has been done very quickly. We should reinforce it."

"What do you have in mind?"

Quiet, Amidala thought. Calm. Just go back to the beginning and start again. But she looked again at Luke, still unmoving, and the fantasies still wouldn't come. "I don't know."

"We got everyone mostly on the same page in Mos Espa," Han said. "And it sounded like you guys actually got the armies working together in Mos Eisley -"

"For now," Leia said. "But if we don't come up with some kind of workable joint command, it's going to collapse as soon as they figure out that the Tuskens are back in their camps."

"Then setting up a joint command is where we better start." Han looked over Amidala's shoulder. "Think we can work that out with the military, Lord Vader?"

"The Imperial military will follow orders. Can you say the same for your Rebels?"

Amidala, who had very little contact with the military, felt her mind begin to drift. Luke was dead. It seemed to keep coming to that inscrutable truth. Luke, whose terrified cries when Obi-Wan had taken him from her had followed her down through the years, was lying on a cold stone with his eyes closed forever. He shouldn't be there. He should be...

But she couldn't create the story of where he should be.

She pulled herself back up. She needed to know what was being planned.

Han was thinking hard about Ani's question. Amidala wasn't sure if he'd given an answer or not - he might have, while she'd drifted - but if he had, it had apparently not been accepted. Which was fair enough... if Leia was telling the truth, the Rebel army was close to full scale mutiny, in which case peace talks might prove useless.

At last, Han looked up. "I think that the ones who... who did this... are pretty much in the minority. Most of them have their problems, but I think that they'll try it if we order them to."

"And those who will not?"

Han didn't answer. Leia did. "Those who won't, Father, will find out that military discipline isn't unique to the Empire. I won't have my people turning into nothing more than vigilantes."

Beside her hand, her comlink suddenly came to life. She stared at it. "It could be an emergency," she said. "We have a lot of people in battle, and that's a command code from Alpha Squadron. The one that's here."

"Take it," Amidala told her.

Leia nodded and picked it up. "Organa."

"This is Athuli, Ma'am," someone said. "General Calrissian has just arrived from Mos Eisley. Says he wants to see you and General Solo. I told him you were in a meeting."

Calrissian. It took Amidala a moment to place the name, but when she did, she was astounded. All Leia's talk of betrayal, and she had accepted as an ally the man who had sold her to the Empire in the first place?

Whatever Leia's motives, though, Amidala wanted Calrissian here. She had found him to be a capable administrator on Bespin, and maybe he could help them sort out this local mess.

And then they could move on to the rest of it.

"Have him join us," she said.

Leia raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue.

Lando stepped into the conference room, and felt like he had entered some other reality. There they were, the Empress and Vader, Leia and Han, sitting around a conference table, as though this were just another meeting, or some perfectly reasonable occurrence. They all looked weary - well, Vader looked like Vader, and stood there and breathed - and the grief from Luke's death was written over all their faces. Still, they were together, and didn't seem particularly shocked or troubled by that fact. He had led the Rebels and Imperials officers in Mos Eisley, and had seen them work together, and thought it was a remarkable thing. This was honestly unbelievable.

Leia gestured toward one of the chairs, and Lando slowly took a seat.

"So," Han finally said, "you ask to be in on this..."

"And what, exactly, is this?" Lando asked, unable to hide his confusion. He couldn't remember his voice ever sounding quite this incredulous.

Leia looked like she understood what he was feeling. "This is...an attempt," she began, "to reach an agreement. Between our two sides."

"I see," Lando said. "And what exactly has been agreed to so far?"

"Not much," Han said bluntly.

"We were hoping for your help, Baron," the Empress said, her voice cool and distant. "Since you've worked for all of us, on both sides at various times, we assumed you could provide us with some needed insight."

Her words hit their mark, and Lando couldn't help feeling stung at essentially being called a traitor once again.

But Han and Leia hadn't reacted at all, and Lando realized he shouldn't take the bait. There were real questions that needed to be addressed here, and getting upset about old betrayals - on either side, on anyone's side - would only be counter-productive. "I'd be happy to help, Your Majesty."

"We have decided to bring both Rebel and Imperial troops on Tatooine under a central command," Vader declared.

"And we haven't figured out exactly how that's going to work," Han added.

Vader straightened his back, making him appear even taller than he already was. "You claimed that the Rebels would listen to orders."

"Who's going to be giving them?" Han asked. "Who will they report to? Who's running things here? Us?"

"I thought the wisest course of action would be -"

"- to let you run everything, while we go along with it," Leia finished for him. "If this is a joint, equal command, it shouldn't matter if it's us giving out the orders. You still don't trust us enough to work with us. You want us to turn everything over to you."

"Leia," the Empress said, her voice a near whisper, "this isn't a simple matter of trust. If you say your men will work with ours, we believe you. But the fact of the matter is you lead a renegade, revolutionary group, one that is willing to fight and kill for the so-called ideals of a failed Republic." She sighed. "We have no desire to turn everything over to you either."

"And that puts us back at our impasse, doesn't it?" Leia sat back in chair and glanced at Han, and then she turned her gaze on Lando. She was curious to see if either of them could find a way out. "We can't seem to deal with Tatooine unless we deal with the larger issues."

Vader shook his head, and he paced his way over behind his wife's throne. "She will not abdicate, Leia."

"The strength of the Empire, the strength of my position, is needed," Lady Vader added.

"Maybe she's right."

The words were out so quickly, that Lando had no chance to stop them, or even think them all the way through. He wanted to take them back, or correct them or clarify them, but Han and Leia were glaring at him furiously, and he wasn't sure what to say. He wasn't yet fully sure of what he meant.

He tried though, "That isn't what I meant...I mean...what I think is..."

"Lando!" Han snapped.

"All right, all right," he said. He took a deep breath. "What I mean, is that the position of Empress is not the problem. We're not arguing about a title. It's that she has all the power. It's that everything is completely centralized under her authority, and -"

"No offense, Lando, but you do realize that that's pretty much the definition of an Empress," Han said, cutting him off. "That's what they do. They control everything. They rule everyone. So what the hell are you talking about?"

"We're arguing about the power. That's what I'm trying to say." He threw up his hands in frustration. "Why does her power have to be absolute?"

Lando fully expected that the answer he'd get would be Han yelling, "Because she's the Empress!" But before he could get out a reply, Leia's face changed completely, and she leaned forward over the table. Lando could practically see an idea - or several - forming in her head, and he hoped she'd be more coherent in explaining herself than he had been about his ideas. The attention of the room was now focused on her, as she silently thought about, and reconsidered what she should say.

"Leia?" Han said, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking...I'm thinking that I've never heard of this being done with someone called 'Empress' - but that Lando might be right. There are democratic monarchies. I'm part of one, I was part of one. So were you," she added, staring pointedly at her mother. "On Alderaan, we had a royal family to lead the planet, because of our traditions and history. But outside our family, in other parts of the government, there were elected officers and leaders, and a binding law. We were always aware of our place in the way things were supposed to work." She was still staring at the Empress. "Maybe what we should be focused on is making you more aware."

Lando nodded to himself, relieved that Leia had picked up his unfinished thought and run with it, turning it into what sounded like a workable premise. To him, at least.

Han looked skeptical, but said nothing. Lady Vader gripped her armrests tightly, and her husband paced slowly behind her. He was sharp when he spoke. "I am still unclear as to what you're actually suggesting, Leia."

"Mother has advisors, and governors and Senators - she's kept up the appearance of a normal, functioning government. If things were changed, so that the Senators, or the regional governors were legitimately elected by the people of those systems..."

"...and those positions were given their own powers," Han said, "and were sharing some of the control over the military and the rest of the infrastructure..."

"You'd have a real, working government," Lando finished.

Leia was nodding along with what they were saying. "With Mother still at the head of it. And that would allay many of your concerns about maintaining stability through the change, wouldn't it?"

Lady Vader was shaking her head as if she were trying to clear it of something. "It's the Republic with a different name. You want to make me an ineffective Chancellor, dealing with corruption and bureaucrats. You just hope the galaxy won't notice because they trust me, and because I'm already the Empress."

"That would be part of it," Lando conceded. "If it's a change instead of an outright overthrow, people will certainly be more accepting of whatever's decided."

"But it doesn't have to be the Old Republic," Leia said. "The two of you need to let go of that time as much as we should remember it in trying to avoid making the same mistakes. We'll help you move on, and you help us avoid the pitfalls of the past. It doesn't have to be the same as the Chancellorship was. We can work something else out."

"I don't understand - you want the Emperor or Empress elected? To terms? By this new Senate of yours? To leave me or whoever at the whim of political factions and alliances again?" Lady Vader asked in disbelief.

"What's the alternative?" Han asked. "Heredity?"

Lando knew the tone Han had used, and that he had meant for the suggestion to be taken in a flippant way. But the Empress and Leia snapped to attention, looking at Han, and then at each other.

The idea clearly hit close to Lady Vader's heart. Her whole demeanor softened. "I could hardly oppose that," she whispered.

Leia looked like she wanted to protest, but saw that her mother was considering a compromise, if only because the hope existed that she would be able to pass the reins on to her daughter after all. And Leia did not want to stop her from thinking along those lines. She said, carefully, "I wouldn't accept the position the way it is now, Mother."

Her mother swallowed hard, and looked up into her husband's mask. Lando couldn't begin to guess what passed between them, or what is was she could possibly see when she looked at him. After a moment, she closed her eyes. She didn't reopen them when she started to speak.

"Appointment of the regional governors is critical," she said. "There is no way for a leader to maintain contact and control over the further reaches of the galaxy without having trusted people in those positions. They must be selected."

Leia face relaxed ever so slightly, and an expression of hope came through. "The Senate, though, must be elected. All of them. Perhaps a Chancellor can be chosen by them to work with you - with the Empress. Or maybe the Empress and the Senate can choose one together, somehow. That might help with the day-to-day running of the government."

The Empress opened her eyes. "Perhaps."

Lando caught Han's eye, and they both quietly sat back in their seats. Vader had also seemed to step back from the throne. They mostly watched as Leia and her mother worked together, trying to find a way to fix the galaxy.

Piett finally took his eyes off the chrono on the wall. He had been watching it obsessively for hours. For too many hours. It had been more than long enough since he had last been able to raise anyone on Tatooine, since Imperial communications all over the galaxy had started crashing.

She had said, explicitly, that she would trust his judgment. That he was to act if something catastrophic occurred.

Piett rose, staring at his various senior officers whom he had consulted about this decision. Most seemed eager for something - anything - to be done at this point. His eyes finally rested on Dihave. "Is the weapon prepared for launch?"

He nodded, looking unusually sobered. "Yes, sir."

"Sir," said General Temlik, "may I remind you that the Empress has always placed a high priority on sparing civilian lives."

"You already have reminded me of that," Piett said. "Several times. I must act according to Her Majesty's last orders."

"May I also remind you that it's obvious that the majority of Rebels are on Tatooine fighting, not on the base on Ledaga?" Temlik asked.

"Noted," Piett said. "I am aware of this situation, General. A decision needs to be made. It is my responsibility to make it."

Dihave rose from his chair. "It will take some time for the weapon to reach the base, sir. The propulsion systems are still in development, and it's been outfitted with standard engines. But once it arrives, the destruction should be total."

Piett stood to full attention. It was time. This had to be done. "I order you to launch the weapon against the Rebel base."

Dihave saluted him, and marched resolutely to the control console. It only took a few, quick keystrokes. The missile was launched.

Around the galaxy, the Empire was beginning to awaken to the news coming from Tatooine.

"Phenin?"

Phenin Ometak heard Temodi's voice, but he didn't want to talk to her right now. They'd hit enough rough patches in the three years they'd been sort-of-dating, sort-of-not that by now she should know better than to try and talk to him right in the middle of one. It was hard enough having to dance together every day, playing Lord Vader and his Empress like they were crazy in love, without having to come up with some deep and meaningful conversation about why their own relationship sometimes hit spots when they couldn't stand the sight of one another. The spots always passed. Phenin figured this one would, too.

He turned his back on her and started the duel routine, trying to imagine Kemizon Vum dancing the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi a meter or so away. Kemizon would be taking over the part next week; Ambris Tagio had managed to break his ankle in their last performance.

But Temodi Meiem was not easy to dissuade, once she had an idea in her head.

He came down from a complex leap that he'd invented for the routine and landed as softly as he could, but before he could move forward, he felt her small hands on his shoulders. She must have climbed onto the stage with her usual grace, completely silent.

He whirled on her. "All right, Temodi. Fine. You want to talk?"

She shook her head, and he noticed now, up close, that she was pale and her dark eyes were wide. She carried a handheld holoprojector. "I... Phenin, something's happening. You'll want to know about it. I want you with me while I know about it."

His irritation with her vanished as quickly as it seemed to have appeared. He sat down on the stage, and pulled her hand to sit down beside him. She did, gratefully, and squeezed his hand once before letting go to turn on the holoproj. She set it down on the floor between them.

Right now, all Phenin could see was a newsperson he didn't recognize - Twi'lek, male, dressed in what looked like an old flight suit. Temodi hadn't turned the sound on.

"The Empress was supposed to initiate a new Guard this morning," she said. "Remember, on Tatooine?"

Phenin nodded, though he remembered nothing of the sort. Playing Lord Vader had not particularly changed his outlook on the political life of the galaxy - he simply didn't care about most of it, though he had a vague liking for Her Majesty and wished the New Empire well. It was certainly an improvement on the old one, and it was good to have non-humans back in the Ostunu School again. But Temodi had adored the Empress since she'd first appeared as Lady Vader. She'd taken to wearing a wisp of a red veil clipped into her hair early on (this had later been dropped) and, like so many other girls, had stylized scars tattooed on her back. Temodi's were decorated with a floral pattern that lit up in gold when Phenin traced it with his fingers, which always delighted him in ways he never entirely understood.

It had been her idea to choreograph the story of the Empress, and going to Theed to perform it had been the highlight of her career. Her adoration of Lady Vader had turned into what Phenin could only call genuine love. He'd discovered it accidentally when he'd made a risqué suggestion about the veils, and she had treated him as though he'd insulted her personally. Ever since then, he'd been careful not to show anything but complete respect for the Empress.

Temodi took his nod at face value. "Her convoy was attacked when it left Naboo yesterday. I heard about that, but they said it was all over and no damage was done."

"That's good, then, right?"

She bit a trembling lip, then tears spilled out of her eyes. "I thought that was it! I thought it was over! But they attacked again this morning, on Tatooine, and... and... "

Phenin put his arms around her, not understanding her grief or needing to. "What is it, Tems? What happened?"

"No one knows, exactly. It was bad. Then we started losing communications everywhere. All the official channels are acting up. Weird things are coming through and nothing's going where it's supposed to be." She gestured at the holoproj. "This is an underground broadcast. The reporter said they're bouncing off Rebel frequencies today. Nothing's come off Tatooine from the Empire for hours. And they're saying it's really bloody." She turned on the sound.

The Twi'lek was nearly gleeful. He was in the midst of a celebratory speech of some kind. "...and it's looking good for everyone who cares about free speech! How do you like this?" He let out a stream of expletives that Phenin hadn't heard away from the Corellian loading docks where he'd spent much of his early childhood, before the scouts from Ostunu had decided to make him a high culture phenomenon. "And no one to stop me from saying it! The Empire can't even get its own business together!" He stood and actually danced - or gave a crude rendition of dancing - then plugged a listening device in his ear and plopped down behind a desk. "I've got someone from Tatooine here. Let me tune him in for you."

A crackle of static, then a voice that sounded drunk came over the frequency. "... Rebels in the Command Center... don't know for sure, but there are rumors that... Skywalker...dead... "

Temodi leaned into Phenin's arms, curling her body against his chest. He held her tighter. "It'll be okay," he said. "It's just a battle."

"She's there, though. What if the Rebels win?"

"It'll be okay," Phenin said, trying to remember his brief contacts with politics back before Ostunu. "Hey, it's still Princess Leia, right? She knows what she's doing."

"Yeah... " Temodi shivered. "I just... I guess it's okay with the Princess, but... the Empress, Phenin. What if -?"

"Shh. Don't say it." He reached for the holoproj to turn it off, but she pushed his hand away.

"Leave it on," she said. "I can't stand not knowing what's happening."

"Okay. But let's see if we can't find some other broadcast, all right? Something that's not so... You know."

Phenin didn't wait for an answer. He picked up the holoproj - not letting go of Temodi - and started scanning for more underground reports.

Temodi just sat, silent and warm in the circle of his arms.

Ingithe Lypsean hadn't realized for nearly an hour that her broadcast wasn't going anywhere. All the indicator lights were working. Her crew hadn't gotten any notices. No calls were coming in, but she'd simply been relieved at the lack of interruption - for once - in the Holonet News studio on Coruscant. It was extremely early morning here in the old Imperial district, but even at this hour, there were usually at least a few rabble-rousers trying to broadcast their unwanted opinions across the Empire. It seemed not to have occurred to them that they would be screened long before they were allowed on the air.

She'd thought the lack of interruption was due to her guest, an archaeologist from the team that was trying to pinpoint the first human settlement on Coruscant... a man who seemed to exude dullness like an overbearing cologne. Ingithe had been wondering just which god she had angered to end up with such a lousy assignment - she had once been a sought-after critic and columnist - when her guest had decided to show footage from the dig that he had stored on a computer at the site. He was still fiddling with the controls when she turned casually around to see whatever mundane thing he meant to show her, and was met instead with a scene from an old vid, with a mad Wookieee rambling around Alderaan (of all places). He had just ripped the head off a young lovely in white.

"Excuse me, sir," Ingithe said, "but you seem to have brought an inappropriate file."

The archaeologist glanced up, saw the vid and knocked his console over. "That's not even on my computer!" he burst out. "I would never show that kind of anti-alien garbage!"

Ingithe noticed that the crew in the broadcast booth had suddenly begun scrambling around. "Sieps!" she called to the Dug who produced the show. "What's happening?"

Sieps scuttled out on his strong arms and kicked a prop desk out of his way. "We're not broadcasting," he said. "Or if we are, it's not going anywhere I can predict. Maybe some kid's picking us up."

"What's happening?" Ingithe repeated, more slowly.

"We're trying to -" He held up one foot, sticking it right in Ingithe's face, and listened to something on his earpiece. "Okay. My techies just switched to a Rebel frequency."

"How would they know... ?"

"I'm not going to ask them." Sieps shook his head. "They got word over the underground that there's a battle going on over on Tatooine. A lot of the Imperial network is down. Someone planted a bug."

Ingithe found herself - for once - with almost nothing to say. The Imperial communications network? How was anyone supposed to report on whatever was going on if the network was down? And what good would it do the Rebels if no one knew?

Oh, but that would be thinking, and the Rebels didn't think. They were probably just trying to put a hydrospanner in the works. "Can we bounce off their signal?" she asked. "Get back an audience?"

Sieps shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

"Find out. And find out what's happening on Tatooine." An idea struck Ingithe. "Wait... wasn't that where Her Majesty was going?"

Sieps, who generally considered Her Majesty's movements off Naboo so much socialite trivia, looked surprised, then nodded. "Good call."

"Do we have anyone there?"

"On Tatooine? No."

"Well, find someone. Let's get this going. Keep a scan of the communications and -"

"I'm the producer here, Ingithe."

"And I'm telling you, this is news. It's about time. Let's find a way to get it out there."

"It's a small battle on a minor world... "

"A minor world where the Empress happens to be. We could come out of this small battle with a new government."

Sieps frowned, tapping his toes against a nearby wall. He'd been glad to get back into the business when the New Empire had taken control - that much, Ingithe knew - but she suspected he'd have been a lot happier if the Rebellion had won in the first place. "Guess we'd better cover it then," he said, and scurried off.

The archaeologist was just looking dumbly at all of them.

Ingithe waved him off the stage. "You've been pre-empted," she said. "Go back to work and get some sleep."

On board the Imperial Cruiser Binks, Admiral Calpar knew something was wrong, but so far hadn't found a way around it.

"Whatsa yousa kids doing?" he barked at the ensigns at comm. "Wesa not getting so much as a nav re-direct from da Empire for longo time!"

"Systems being down," one of them said. "Wesa getting lotsa other things. Nothing being useful."

Calpar glowered. He knew all this. "Yousa tryin' da old Gungan codes yet?"

"Sir?"

"Yousa not being that young, Ar-Tor. Yousa remembering da exile codes."

"But wesa not needing them anymore. Wesa not being in da exile!"

Calpar pushed him out of the way and sat down at the console, hoping that the old codes weren't among the ones the Empire had blocked to prevent unauthorized transmissions to Imperial vessels. (There had been concern about morale, if the Rebels or Palpatine's remaining forces tried to broadcast propaganda to the fleet. ) Calpar didn't remember reporting them, but he wouldn't have deliberately kept them from Her Majesty, either.

He scanned the rotating frequencies they'd used. Blank, blank, static...

The sound of waves.

Someone was broadcasting.

Calpar breathed a sigh of relief and reconfigured the transmitters. "Whosa-dere?" he asked.

The waves resolved into silence, then someone said, "Dis'm Verkam Res. Whosa dis?"

"Dis'm Admiral Calpar, on Hersa Majesty's ship, Binks. Wesa being cut off."

More silence. "Yousa not being da only ones. Wesa... " He paused. "Wesa opening disn system, wondering about da other Gungans. But wesa not finding nothing."

Calpar rubbed his head. Something had to be working. "Yousa be listening," he said. "Mesa knowin' the Rebels, longo time ago. Deysa used to be using da circulating frequencies - da comm-sats being moving around. Yousa try to be finding them. I'm thinking theysa using the same frequencies as da children which play at making shows."

"Sir?"

"Da kids finding da sats and da frequencies. Deysa always getting in da way, but when mesa knowing da Rebels, dism just laughed at. Be looking for them. Then be looking for other things on desa frequencies."

Calpar kept the channel open, waited for what seemed forever, then Verkam Res returned.

"Mesa finding them," he said. "Lotsa stuff coming through. Theres-a a battle on Tatooine. And nothing getting through. Mesa can send you da frequencies."

"No. Yousa can find me here, but wesa an Imperial ship. Wesa no getting outside frequencies. Yousa just keep telling us what's happening. Desa Rebels... theysa trying to block you?"

"No, sir. Deysa keeping it open. Mesa catching someone saying so. Deysa saying deysa no wanting anyone cut off but... well, yousa."

"Understood."

The Binks powered down and waited to hear the news of the galaxy.

In Cloud City on Bespin, the New Empire and the Rebellion had long lived in uneasy knowledge of one another.

Cloud City had been the heart of the New Empire, of course - they had declared for Lady Vader immediately. But in the confusion and devastation of the battle, many of the Rebels had found their way to Lando Calrissian's hastily established medical facility, and had integrated themselves into the life of the colony ever since. The Empress had given orders not to treat the Rebels harshly - she'd never given up hope of winning them - so the local Guard had merely kept them from acting or producing propaganda, and otherwise allowed them to go about their business with no impediment.

The Rebels, for their part, had found it more and more difficult to retain enmity. Those who couldn't abide the New Empire at all had found ways to sneak away; those who remained either joined Her Majesty's supporters or kept their resistance to occasional token objections in public forums. They would serve their time for sedition in relative comfort, and during it, they fraternized with their captors. There had been four Rebel-Imperial marriages (the polite fiction involved a supposed belief that the Rebel involved had reformed), and three children had been born of them so far.

The Twi'lek Chirlin, who ran a tavern in the upper levels, had adjusted to the new life as well as he could. The New Empire had outlawed the dancing girls which had once brought in the miners, so Chirlin had re-focused the business, hiring his girls on as living statues and catering to an artsy culture that had sprung up among the New Imperial hierarchy - one which the rich owners of the mines longed to copy. Even the miners themselves made noises in that direction, but they could no longer afford Chirlin's place. A few of the newly emancipated slaves had made a living statue garden a few levels down, and that was where the miners spent their time.

Here, in the upper levels, the day had begun in its usual glory of golden mist. Chirlin had already set up his holoproj - it was well-known that he got a few more frequencies than were technically permitted, but since he only used them to find underground artists, the Guard looked the other way - but he hadn't noticed yet that the transmission was spottier than usual. The girls had just decided to go with a colonization era theme in their poses and Chirlin was setting up the grill when Captain Lopahin - the head of the Guard - had come rushing in, shouting about downed communications. The New Empire had seized the holoprojector and technicians had been trying to receive signals for nearly an hour before Lieutenant Moge had stood up quietly and suggested that his "former" Rebel wife, Comari, might have a suggestion.

Comari had shown up five minutes later, baby in tow, and had indeed been able to "guess" where news might be found. Then a few of her friends had also "volunteered" to help.

The transfer of power had been completely invisible, and everything was still ostensibly going through the Guard. The fictions were maintained. But Chirlin knew the truth, and he supposed all of them knew it as well: Cloud City was now in the hands of the Rebellion.

Comari sat at ops, scanning the information that was trickling in, trying to make sense of what was essentially senseless. Two separate reports from Tatooine had suggested that Lord Skywalker was dead - there was much grief from the Imperials about this - but the most disturbing report was that Her Majesty had been with him, and none of the Rebels reporting in had seen her since.

"They're all outside," Comari reassured her husband. "The ones who reported about Lord Skywalker had slipped out after that fight. Afraid of Lord Vader's reaction, I bet."

"As well they should be."

She tried to raise anyone in command and got only static. That wasn't surprising - it was a battle, and the leaders would have restricted their communications to those who really would need to contact them. The general frequencies wouldn't be a good choice.

Lopahin asked Chirlin to fix breakfast for the assembled crew - "You will be properly compensated, of course" - so he wasn't actually there when they finally contacted a Rebel who had seen the Empress after the death of her son. There was no cheer, but when Chirlin brought out a tray of hot bread and eggs, the Imperials in the room had slipped into poses of pure relief. Lopahin was weeping with it.

"They're talking," Comari said. Moge put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her head. She twisted her head to kiss his fingers. "Finally, they're talking."

"Who?" Lopahin asked.

"The Empress, Lord Vader, Princess Leia. The man I spoke to thinks that Generals Solo and Calrissian may be there as well. Calrissian did well here. Perhaps he -"

She stopped talking, her eyes going suddenly sharp. Something had flashed across the proj-base, a face, a word...

"Replay," she ordered the machine.

Lopahin was over in a flash. "What is it, Comari?"

She frowned, punching at buttons. "We've been picking up stray Imperial communications all morning. Things that aren't aimed at us. And that was Admiral Piett. I'm sure of it."

"Let me see."

"I'm trying to get it back. He was ordering something."

"Let me try to raise him," Lopahin said, slipping into the seat beside her.

He worked the console for a long time, enlisting the aid of Rebels and Imperials alike, but the message did not recur.

Now, it was the Rebels who looked worried.

Amidala was finished with the negotiations.

She didn't know how long they had been there, sitting in this room - whether it was minutes or hours or days - but at some point, she had stopped caring. She hadn't interrupted the discussions and hadn't jumped into any of Ani and Leia's arguments or showed any outward sign of her distraction. But her mind had gotten her to a certain point, and then refused to cooperate any further.

They were done. Many of the major points of contention had been resolved; some grudgingly, some bitterly, some with a startling ease...but they had been determined one way or another. Senators would be elected by their homeworlds. Governors would be appointed to terms by the Empress. The military would turn over a good portion of their work to planetary police forces, which would be created by local governments. A new Chancellorship would be created to ease the relationship between the Senate and the Empress. Certain legal rights would be restored to galaxy's citizens. New laws would govern the Imperial throne.

And that last point had returned her daughter to her for good. Leia would eventually take over, and until then, she would be a part of the Empire, and a part of the family. Amidala clung to that knowledge fiercely, holding onto it amidst the ruins of the broken dreams she'd had for Luke. They had fixed things in time to salvage Leia's future, and to save what was left of her family.

Amidala would remain Empress and stay in charge, dealing with any of the potential problems some of the more sweeping changes would likely bring. And she would do it with Leia at her side. Beyond that...

Beyond that were minor arguments, like the one Leia and Ani had gotten themselves into now, on some technical questions about the relationship between planetary rulers and the Senate. All details that could be worked through later.

They had accomplished enough in terms of fixing the government and stopping this war that they could afford to turn their attention to other issues.

To Luke.

He was still out there, of course, shrouded and unmoving just beyond the conference room door. The parade of people streaming past him had stopped, and it seemed that everyone, both Imperial and Rebel, had finished paying their proper respects.

Everyone, except for Luke's own family, who were sitting in a room, wrangling over the finer points of taxes and appointments and...

"Enough," she said softly.

Leia and Ani stopped talking instantly, with Leia breaking off in mid-sentence. "Mother - I'm sorry, we can move on to something else and -"

"No."

"Mother?"

"My son is lying outside that door," she said, "and I'm tired of trying to ignore that. We cannot solve every single issue right now. We should be grateful we've come as far as we have."

Her daughter and husband both looked as though they'd be quite content to keep arguing forever, but Han quickly spoke up. "It might actually help if we stop for a while, and pick this up again later. We could take a fresh look at some of this stuff"

"Besides," Lando added, "we do have multiple pressing issues here, right now. We shouldn't wait much longer to begin implementing the unified command for the guard."

"Yes," Amidala agreed, "and I need to take care of my son. He requested a family ceremony, and we should...we should honor that. He deserves..." She stopped, feeling her throat constrict painfully as her eyes again went to her son outside the conference room. "He deserves to be put to a proper rest. We can't just leave him out there..." And then, she simply couldn't continue.

Her husband reached down to squeeze her hand. Then he walked slowly to the door. "I will make preparations," he said. Then he left. She could hear him giving orders to both the Imperials and the Rebels, and then he picked Luke up, and carried him outside.

Leia watched her father go, and Han put his arm around her, pulling her in against him. She buried her face in his chest. Lando clearly was a little lost, and he glanced uncomfortably between them and Amidala.

"I think...I think I should go check in with Alpha Squadron. Make sure they've gotten into the mindset of accepting a joint command," he said. Han and Leia barely acknowledged him. Amidala nodded, and he took that as a dismissal. He quickly went back out into main part of the headquarters.

"Han," Amidala said, trying not to sound as if she were forcing the words out, "you may join us at the ceremony." He looked surprised, and Leia even pulled away so her mother could she the shock on her face. "You were once a friend of my son, and my daughter considers you family."

"Thank you."

There was little else to say, so they simply waited for Ani to return once the arrangements he had in mind were completed. It took longer than she expected.

When he finally returned, he said nothing. Amidala rose from her chair to join him, and Han and Leia eventually followed. The officers were silent and solemn as they passed, the Imperials saluting, the Rebels standing at attention, watching the family head outside into the Tatooine night.

Away from the base, she saw Luke, resting in a hastily erected funeral pyre, made from an odd assemblage of kindling, from materials gathered from all over the base. She walked right up and touched her son's covered face. She wanted to say her goodbyes, to say anything, but she was blinded by her tears and suddenly felt as though she couldn't breathe, much less talk. She let her fingers trail away, and then she stepped back.

They formed a line in front of the pyre, Amidala standing between Ani on her left, and Leia on her right. Han was on Leia's other side, holding her hand tightly.

After a long, pained silence - Ani and Leia couldn't seem to find the words for their goodbyes either - Ani ignited his lightsaber. With a few short steps, he was next to Luke, and he held his sword to one of the cross sections of kindling, and waited for it to ignite.

Once it did, the fire spread up and down and across almost instantly, and soon consumed her son's body.

Leia took her hand. She took Ani's. Amidala tried to draw on their strength, but all they were sharing was the grief and emptiness, watching as Luke slowly disappeared before their eyes.

The four of them were still standing there silently as the fires began to die out.

Lando crept silently behind the Skywalkers, feeling as though he were sneaking up on them. The last, last thing he wanted to do was interrupt their funeral, and he wouldn't have unless it was something potentially this important.

He couldn't decide whether or not he was hoping that he had misinterpreted the message he heard. Piett couldn't have possibly said what Lando thought he had...then again, Lando couldn't stand the thought of coming all the way out here for a simple misunderstanding.

None of them turned around, even as he was standing directly behind Han and Leia. He waited. Then he cleared his throat.

Leia looked furious. The Vaders still didn't turn around.

"I'm incredibly sorry for interrupting," he began. "I've picked up an Imperial communication that I think you all need to hear."

"Imperial communications are down," Leia said.

"People are still trying to send messages. I was working with a few of the Imperial Officers - bouncing off Rebel frequencies and some underground channels, trying to see if we could pick anything up. We heard a garbled message from Naboo."

Lady Vader, her face tear-streaked, blinked slowly at him. "From Imperial Command?"

"I think so. We think he was trying to send the message to your personal frequency, we can only pick up parts of what he's saying." Lando pulled out his comm, and played back the message. Static almost completely garbled it.

"...Your Majesty...receive this message...communications...down throughout...network..."

"That's Admiral Piett," Lady Vader said softly.

"...launch...base...waited for...before..."

"What is he saying?" Han asked.

"Wait," Lando said. "It'll repeat. It comes through a little clearer."

"...Majesty...hope you receive this...our communications are going down...I've launched...against the base...waited for catastrophic... before acting..."

The message began to repeat the first version, but Lady Vader gasped loudly and covered her mouth with her hand, paling drastically. Lando stopped the playback.

"Oh no..." she whispered. "No...not when we've settled everything..."

"Mother," Leia said cautiously, "what's happened? What has he done?"

The Empress looked away from her daughter, and Lando's heart sank. Whatever happened, it definitely was as bad as he feared.

"He's launched a missile that will destroy your base on Ledaga."

The base on Ledaga.

Han Solo sat down heavily on a boulder. "What kind of missile?"

Leia's parents looked at one another cautiously. Lady Vader's small hand had risen to her lips, and as Han watched, she slowly moved it to brush tears from her cheek. The motion left an ashy smear. "It's a new design," she said. "There's a containment field involved, to keep the damage from spreading beyond the target, but -"

"But destruction of the target is complete," her husband finished.

"If it's contained, we can order an evacuation," Leia said, desperately hopeful. "We can tell them to get clear of the base area... "

Han shook his head. "We can try. But there's a lot of seismic activity. Earthquakes. Big ones. The last time I tried to reach them, they said they weren't getting much through."

"Try," Lady Vader said.

Han pulled out his comlink, and tried to raise the base. Static, a whine of feedback. Someone saying, "... not receiv... any... " Then there was an ominous rumble, and he lost the connection entirely. A droning electronic voice came across the frequency: "No receiver/transmitter is available at the coordinates specified. Please check coordinates."

"Quakes must have taken it out," Lando said.

Lady Vader rubbed her head. "How much of your staff is here?"

"Most of them," Leia said. "But the ones who are left on Ledaga are young kids, the ones we didn't want to put in any danger."

"And civilians," Han added.

Lord Vader turned on him quickly. "You guard your base with civilian shields?"

Han was too busy castigating himself for putting civilians on the base to bother snapping back at Vader. "No," he said. "It's natives. We found them there when we set up. They're burrowers. They wanted shelter there during the quakes. We figured it would be safer than their tunnels."

Lord Vader looked like he was ready to continue berating Han, but his wife put her hand on his shoulder. "I would have done the same," she said.

"What's the navigational system on the missile?" Leia asked. "Maybe we can stop it."

"It's controlled through the communications system."

Leia closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. "Of course. Can we piggyback a signal off a Rebel frequency?"

Reluctantly, Lady Vader shook her head. "I didn't want Rebel propaganda broadcast to the military. All military equipment blocks unsanctioned frequencies."

"So what do we do now?" Lando asked.

"The missile will need to be intercepted." Lord Vader turned and bowed to the pyre where Luke's ashes were smoldering. He said nothing, but turned and led the group inside.

Han's insides cramped up, and he forced them to let go. He followed the family into the command center.

Vader had apparently ordered several officers to leave. Han could see them filing out. Three remained - two Rebels and an Imperial - and they'd brought up a starmap. Vader had highlighted Naboo, Tatooine, and Ledaga. A launch trace appeared as he watched.

Lady Vader crossed her arms over her chest, scanned the red line with her eyes, then looked at her feet.

Leia leaned forward, as though she could put her hand into the map and stop the missile.

Lando drew in a sharp breath.

Vader simply looked at it, impassive, his head cocked to one side. "The missile was never fitted with modified engines. It will travel relatively slowly."

"Could we put something in its path as it gets near Tatooine?" Leia asked.

"Commander Dihave programmed it to avoid all impediments," Vader said. "An intercepting object will have to be steered into it."

Leia's eyes widened, and she turned to her father. "Father, there's no way to do that. The Imperial military equipment can't take orders right now, and our autopilots are programmed not to self-destruct. We didn't want any of our equipment turned against us."

Vader didn't look at her. "Someone will have to pilot a ship."

Lady Vader paled. Leia shook her head. "Father, there has to be another way. And most of the Imperial Fleet here on Tatooine was destroyed in the hangar battle anyway! I didn't see anything that looked like it would still fly."

Han stepped forward. "Look, I'm the one who put the civilians on the base. My ship is nowhere near where the fighting was and -"

"I absolutely forbid it," Leia said, glancing over her shoulder at him.

"There's no reason to. You're necessary in this scheme we worked out. So's your father, I think. I'm just a pilot, Leia."

"You're not just a pilot. You're necessary to me, and if I'm necessary, you're necessary."

"You know that's not true -"

"It is true!"

"Hey!" Lando waved a hand between them. "Look, I think maybe we're jumping the gun. Lord Vader, how much slower are these engines? How much time do you think we have before it passes Tatooine?"

Vader thought for a moment - a much shorter moment than Han had ever seen another human make a complex calculation - then said, "We have two hours at least before it reaches Tatooine. If this trajectory is correct, then the route between Tatooine and Ledaga will take approximately five hours."

Han nodded. "I got an old Naboo cruiser. I modified it a little. It'll be able to -"

"I said no," Leia said.

Lando touched her arm. "Two hours, Leia. We can go out in the desert. Between us, we can re-work the autopilot. We can make it work."

"The risk is too great," Vader said. "I will -"

"You most certainly will not," Lady Vader said quietly. "I invited Baron Calrissian to join our discussions because he thinks well. Before any of you rush to martyrdom, we have time to try another path. I suggest that we waste no more time discussing the subject." Her eyes were cast down, and she did not look up as she spoke.

"Yes, ma'am," Han said. "Lando and I will get to work on it."

Vader nodded. "I will assist you."

"Father... " Leia sighed. "I need your help with the Imperial military. And you need mine with the Rebellion." She looked at her mother. "And we should gather Luke's ashes before the wind takes them."

Lady Vader finally looked up, met Leia's eyes, and nodded. Leia put an arm around her shoulders.

"Then that's the plan," Han said. "We'll make it work."

Han turned to leave with Lando. He'd made it most of the way to the door when he heard Leia call his name. He looked back.

She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. Her lips pressed against his cheek. "Don't... Han, if it doesn't work... Please... come back here. Don't... " She drew away and bit her lips. "Han, please don't."

"We'll make it work," he said again. "And I'll come back here one way or another before we make any decisions. That's a promise."

Leia nodded and let go of him. She looked small and unprotected. Then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head, became the Princess she had been when he'd first met her. "May the Force be with you," she said.

Han leaned down and kissed her forehead. "It'll be okay, Leia. We'll figure it out. Hold tight and keep a lid on the base. It'll be okay."

She took a few steps back and nodded again. Han hesitated, then followed Lando out into the desert.

He hoped he hadn't lied.

Han and Lando left quickly so they could get to work on their ship adjustments, and try to head off this tragedy without necessitating another one by losing a pilot to the mission. Amidala was dimly aware of their exit, but the main focus of her attention was Leia, whose eyes were filled with apprehension as Han went off. She hated seeing her daughter so afraid, though she couldn't blame Leia for being shaken by Han's offer to pilot the ship. Amidala herself was not pleased with her own husband thinking along similar lines.

"I still can't believe he let practically the whole planet's civilians onto that base," Leia muttered, mostly to herself, "as if being near the Rebels would be safer than being out in an earthquake."

Amidala could almost picture Ani rolling his eyes. "You would not have left them to their own devices in the middle of a natural disaster if you could have helped," he said.

Leia didn't argue that point with him. "Still, for me to be responsible for that... I just... an entire people could be wiped out," she cried in anguish. "All of them. Gone. Just like that. It's... for them, it'd be another Alderaan." She shuddered, as she often did when she thought about what happened to her homeworld. "And we left the kids to watch the base... "

"Leia, this isn't your fault," Amidala said, almost automatically.

"But I command the Rebels -"

"Your mother is correct, Leia," Ani agreed. "It may not have been wise to bring the civilians into your camp, but Solo could not have foreseen these types of problems. He was not expecting an attack, and believed he'd be able to stay in touch with your officers." Leia shrugged, not particularly helped by his words, but at least partially appreciative that he had made an effort to comfort her. Ani continued, "The true question is not why Solo chose to allow the Ledagans on the base, but what Admiral Piett could have hoped to accomplish by taking this action. He must be aware of the fact that the vast majority of the Rebels are here on Tatooine, and not on the base. Even without the knowledge of the civilians staying in the camp, an attack on Ledaga now makes little sense from a strategic standpoint."

"Except to punish us for Tatooine," Leia said. "He couldn't very well fire off that thing here. He's getting us the only way he can. And it could ruin everything. I can't imagine trying to get the Rebels to go along with any of our plans if our base is wiped out like this."

Amidala felt a chill inside her and trembled. She was trying not to remember - the order she had given Piett, the words she had last said to him, the instructions she had left him with...

"My love?"

She wondered how pale she suddenly looked; her face felt completely drained. Then she flushed. "This isn't Piett's fault. And it's certainly not Han's fault, or your fault, Leia. I gave the order."

"What?" Leia whispered harshly. "You did what?"

"It was much earlier, before the communications went down," she tried to explain, "before we were sure what you were... what we were dealing with here. Piett told me that he thought he had found the Rebel base, and he needed guidance on what to do while we were under siege here." It sounded wholly inadequate to her - how could it have made so much sense such a short time ago? "So I... "

"So you told him to destroy the base?" Leia asked incredulously.

"I told him to be prepared to act if the situation here reached a - a critical point. That I would trust his judgment on the appropriate action to take."

The hostility in Leia's eyes diminished a little.

Ani, of course, all but jumped to her defense. "You should not blame yourself, my love. Piett had not shown himself to be unworthy of your trust prior to this. And circumstances demanded that you leave him in command."

"In any event," Leia said wearily, "what we have to worry about now is finding a way to stop the missile before it hits. Let's just hope that something can be figured out."

Amidala was hugging herself tightly, even though it was doing nothing to ward off the chill she was still feeling throughout her body. She wanted to believe them. What she had done was neither unusual nor inexplicable given the situation she had found herself in. And assigning blame would do no good to anyone at this point anyway, and should be put off until later.

She didn't feel comforted by any of that though. "I wish there was something I could do. I want to help."

"There's really nothing that can be done right now, Mother."

"But if I could -"

"Your mother has never been good at leaving these matters to others," Ani said, interrupting her in mid-sentence. "At least, not in all of the time that I have known her."

Usually, that kind of comment from Ani would have spurred a shared smile, and more than a few shared memories, both pleasant and painful. She couldn't find any smile right now, but the memories came quickly enough anyway. Of how they had first met while she was stuck on this awful planet, unable to do anything for her people on Naboo, who were trapped and suffering under the Trade Federation invasion. Ani hadn't known the full story of what she was dealing with until they were on their way to Coruscant later, but he had been perceptive enough to feel her anxiety and urgency. And her frustration.

Now, decades later, here she was again. Stuck on Tatooine while a disaster was in the making elsewhere.

"Perhaps," Ani was saying, "we should give thought to a course of action if the attempt to send an unmanned ship fails. One thing we can do - and must do - is find a way to mitigate this problem with the Rebels."

She had been a child, really, during the invasion. She probably hadn't been ready for the throne, even under normal, peaceful circumstances. Dealing with an attack, with a blockade? It was out of her experience and beyond her training - it wasn't part of the way Naboo was ruled or the way the planet had previously dealt with its neighbors. People knew that. Had things gone differently, or ended badly, she would have been the object of a great deal of pity, and people might have rightly wondered why they voted a young, inexperienced girl into office... but no one had expected her to be able to take charge herself and save the day. Her enduring popularity after she expelled the Trade Federation was a testament to how surprised and impressed people were with what she had been able to accomplish.

Still, she would have blamed herself if she had not been able to save her planet. That was all that had mattered to her at the time.

Leia's brow was furrowed, and she was deep in thought. "I'm sure we have people who would be willing to take on this mission." She sighed. "The fact that the Empire is working with us to stop this might be enough to convince them that this alliance is serious."

"If an Imperial Officer were to volunteer," Vader said gravely, "it might do more to further relations between both sides."

She had been so hard on herself then. Every problem that happened when she was Queen (or Senator) had been her problem, and she had found a way to tackle each of them without retreating in the slightest. How had she been able to do that? Were things really so different then?

Was she really so different?

"I can't believe we're talking about this," Leia said. "To just send someone to do this knowing that they'll never come back... "

"There are honorable people, on each side, who will volunteer."

"Yes, you and Han were certainly out to prove that."

When she had become Mayor and Queen and Senator... each time, she had felt the weight of her position, of what she was about to do. Where had that feeling been when Palpatine had been overthrown, and she had become Empress? She couldn't remember it. There was just a sense that what happened had been inevitable, that the throne was hers, and she was where she was meant to be. The problems of her Empire were Palpatine's fault. Or the Rebels' fault. Or the criminals. Or the bureaucrats. Of course, she had wanted to fix everything, but none of the problems had ever really been hers; she'd never claimed ownership of them as an Empress responsible for a galaxy.

"Let's hope for the best with the autopilot," Leia decided. "In the meantime, I want to take charge of the joint command. We have to start giving directives to the officers in the settlements."

Amazingly, there was no argument, no disagreement. Ani simply began to lead Leia toward the Command Center, where the Rebels and Imperials were working together on the communications and messages. They both turned back when she didn't follow right away.

"Mother? Aren't you coming?"

She nodded absentmindedly, and trailed behind them. It was time for her to remember her forgotten duties. However this impending tragedy resolved itself, Amidala knew that a new era was again beginning for the galaxy. She needed to be ready to guide it.

Lando took the speederbike he'd grabbed in Mos Eisley (Han, with no hint of surprise, identified it as Leia's), and followed Han up and over the mesa. A large opening in the south face caught Lando's eye. "Is that another hangar?" he asked, leaning in toward his comlink to speak over the wind.

"Probably. But if they had another ship in there, I think Her Ladyship might have mentioned it. I'm guessing they were all down in the North Hangar. And they're all scrap."

"Either we're really good," Lando said, "or we're really stupid."

"I'm trying to figure that one out myself, old buddy. Solo out."

The communication cut with a loud burst of static, and Lando pulled back from the comlink.

They went across the desert to the Rebel encampment outside of Anchorhead. It was deserted with the exception of six guards. Leia had wanted to leave more - if they hadn't gotten a leg up on the Empire immediately, a strike here could have stranded the whole damned Rebellion on this dustball - but they couldn't be spared.

"General!" An ensign saluted, snapping to attention beside Han's ship.

"Not now," Han said. "At ease."

The ensign spread his feet and stood at parade rest. "We've been getting strange reports, sir."

"Then you've probably been getting the right ones." Han lowered the gangplank. "We've got work to do, Ensign, and not much time to do it. We'll have to save the debriefing for later."

"Yes, sir!"

Han rubbed his head as he went into the ship. Lando took a deep breath and followed him in.

"What are the odds?" Lando asked, staring at the navigational console.

"When did I ever give odds?" Han switched on the monitor and called up the autopilot routines. "Whose great idea was this?"

"One of the kids. Remember, you wanted them to think of things the Empire might do now that it had some brains in its administration?"

"Oh, yeah."

A holographic command structure appeared in the air, and with a command from Han, displayed a sequence of red lights that formed a thin braid throughout the form.

Lando drew a sharp breath. "It's totally integrated."

"It was that Mon Cal kid," Han said. "He came up with the idea that the Empire could cut into our systems and start turning our ships against us. So he put in lockout on allowing remote or automatic piloting that would actually hit any object. And he made it harder to cut in."

"Makes enough sense in theory."

"Let's pack up and move to Theory, what do you say?" Han waved the comment off. "Okay. We're not going to get in from the top, not in two hours anyway. Let's see if we can wire around the nav console."

Lando hunkered down beside him, and they tried for forty minutes to re-circuit the navigational systems on the old Naboo cruiser.

At first, it looked easy - just strip a few wires, re-direct, maybe send navigation through the communications computers, then put in a quick program. Nothing too complex, nothing they hadn't done before. Lando had wired around a faulty naviputer four times, and Han had never run across a ship he couldn't re-design from the circuits up.

But Naboo technology was stubbornly integrated. A single console was used in communications, navigation, and the ship's log. The same button would bring up starmaps and broadcast messages, depending on how the system was toggled. Wiring around it wasn't a simple matter.

"Should we try wiring it to the defense network?" Lando asked, pulling himself out from under the counter. This corner of the cockpit was a mess, but even Han hadn't been able to make the rest of the cruiser look anything but sleek and luxurious. "They don't have a lot of gunports, so I'm guessing they've got a smart system."

"Oh, it's a great system," Han said, rolling out from the other side with a sneer on his face. "Only problem is, it's housed way back at the other end of the ship." He jerked his thumb aft. "Guess they didn't want to bother the dignitaries with it. You happen to have twenty meters of wire?"

"No way to do it by remote?"

"Naviputer actually needs to be attached to something. Right now, we're the galaxy's biggest paperweight." He stood up. "I can get the defense network plugged in to the propulsion system from where it is. There are plenty of access points for that. But if we're going to get any navigational control, the nav files have to be in the system."

"Can we communicate with the defense system from here? Send the files it needs?"

Han looked at the tangle of wires. "Not until we get this thing hooked back up."

"Let's get back to work then."

Han made no move.

Lando raised an eyebrow. "Are you thinking it's not going to work?"

"I'm thinking we might figure it out in five minutes. Or we might keep trying new things until that missile drops in on Ledaga. We don't know this is going to work."

Well, Leia needs you, Lando tried to hear himself saying, and the Empress seems to want her husband around. I'll go. I'll take the ship and I'll fly it into a missile that will vaporize whatever it hits. I'll do it.

But he couldn't. He didn't think he was a coward - he just hadn't tried all the other options yet. People who decided to bow out of the game before the last hand had been dealt had always struck Lando as not quite right in the head. There was still a chance.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get this back together."

Leia felt curiously comfortable now in the headquarters of the Imperial Command Center.

When she had first walked in the room, she wasn't entirely sure where she was supposed to begin. Her parents stayed back, much to her surprise, trying to give her the space she needed to formulate a real plan for taking charge.

Since intercepting Piett's message, the Rebels had been working frantically to use their comms to pick up any other stray messages of import, and to try repeatedly to raise the base on Ledaga, to no success. The Imperial Officers weren't quite sure how to make use of themselves, and Alpha Squadron still wasn't fully committed to working with them anyway. A few of the more insistent ones had been allowed to help strengthen the Rebels communications system, using some of the stray parts and pieces of the Imperial network. They had occasionally snuck on the system itself, trying to get the Rebels in the various settlements to put Lady Vader's forces on the comm link, so they could at least be updated as to what was going on.

Nothing else in the Command Center was working. Everything in the room had been tied in some way or another to the main Imperial network, and when that went down, everything here was reduced to blank or flashing consoles that would not respond to any command.

So, there was a fury around the Rebels' small, makeshift transmitter. That was what was passing for a command structure. For both sides.

Leia dove into the disarray headlong. This was her first real act of command over Imperial officers, and it was the first true, organized attempt to get them and the Rebels to work together under one authority. She needed this to work - she needed to make a statement about the future of the Empire, and how they had decided things would work from now on.

She didn't even stop to wonder how she had gotten to the point where she was concerned about establishing the future of the Empire. There was just too much to do.

Leia had quickly grabbed a handful of Imperial Officers and ordered Alpha Squadron to work with them on creating as reliable a system of communication as they could under the circumstances. That meant letting the Imperial engineers get to work on the transmitter. It meant working on a combined list of squadrons and battalions, and their leaders who would need to be kept in contact with headquarters. It meant getting about half the Rebel leaders out in the cities to give up their comlinks to their Imperial counterparts, so one side wasn't completely out of touch, or at the mercy of people they considered their enemies. It meant running Rebels and Imperial officers on foot to various locations to make sure they believed what they were hearing over the comm.

There were difficulties, of course. A very few people who were actually still fighting in random pockets out in the dunes; people on either side who weren't going to listen to anyone if it meant compromising with their enemy; settlers and other parts of the native population who still resented the encroachment on their homes, and blamed one side or the other, or both, and were still trying to stir up trouble.

Still, things had gone more smoothly than Leia had hoped. She realized that both sides had already been working together quite a bit, since she and her father had brought Mos Eisley