The tale of Darth Vader's Son - A StarWars AU

[FTeik]

As the title says, this is a SW-AU.

It is a long story, comparable in scale (and hopefullly quality, but that is for you to decide ) to TwilightWar, StarCrossed and Fist of the Empire, if not larger.

Most of it, what has been written has already been published at TF:Net, but since I'm banned there and not sure, if and when I will go back I decided to make the best of it and present it here. If you're unwilling to wait for up-dates here, you can look there to learn what happens (until I have cought up with the up-dates).

This is the second story I post at SD.Net, you can read the first here:

Pride's Prize - A SW-shortstory (155 KB)
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=83489

And now I hope you enjoy your read (and give a lot of feedback) of




The tale of Darth Vader's Son - A SW-AU

Prologue



Dawn was close after the great victory-celebration. The fires had died down, as had the noise of humans, ewoks and members of dozens of other races after the battle of Endor. Most of the beings were laying where they had found the place to rest.

With one exeption.

Luke Skywalker was standing before one of the small ewok-huts, looking towards the rising sun and lost in his thoughts. It was still hard to believe how much luck he, if not the Rebel-Alliance and with them the entire galaxy had had in their battle the day before.

From the professional point of view he was tempted to hide behind the biggest bush imaginable, considering the easiness with which the emperor had lured them into his trap. Only a huge number of circumstances in their favor no one of them due to their own planning had allowed them to achive victory.

Or the Force had really been with the rebels this day.

He took a deep breath. The past didn´t matter as long as one was willing to learn from it. For the last Jedi-Knight other things were of more importance now. Since he had gotten and lost the father he had ever longed for at the same day, his sister was now his only relative left.

His sister ... . It wouldn´t be easy for her to accept that part of her heritage that originated from their father. Their father ... .

Suddenly footsteps behind him woke Luke from his musings. Without turning around he greeted the newcomer.

"Good morning, Han."

Han Solo tried hard to hide his surprise and failed.

"Damn, kiddo, how do you do that?" Before Luke could answer the smuggler continued. "Let it be. I don´t want to hear anything about that Force-stuff of yours."

"It will be the force-stuff of Leia too, one day." Luke couldn´t hide an evil grin. "So you better get never on her bad side."

"Considering who her father is, you are probably right."

At that Luke Skywalker raised an eyebrow in surprise. "She told you?"

"Everything. She thought it necessary before, well ... you know." Han Solo tried to stop the blood rushing into his cheeks and failed..

"So the two of you had your own private victory-celebration?" the last Jedi-Knight asked calmly. Han shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. It was obvious that Luke had changed a lot in a short time. He had matured. Especially since yesterday.

"If you want to say so." Han's gaze moved from looks head to his toes and back. "No ill feelings, huh?"

Luke sighed. "Han I loved Leia since the first time I saw her, but even if we wouldn´t be related she has made her choice and that choice is you. In a certain way her being my sister is a relief, because I can still love her without feelings of guilt or shame or jelousy when she is happy with you."

Han nodded. "So the competitor is gone, but the friend can stay without a loss of face."

Luke grinned at that. "And perhaps is replaced with an over-protective brother." He became serious. "If you ever hurt her ... ."

He could still hear his fathers threat in his ears "If you don´t surrender to the darkside, we will succed with her".

Han noticed the sudden tension.

Suddenly the loss of a competitor in exchange for an over-protective brother of the woman he loved didn´t seem to be such a good thing anymore. Especially if this brother had fought sucessfully against beings like Darth Vader and the Emperor and was the son of the first of the two.

"You should know me better by now, kiddo." he scolded. "I would never hurt her. I love her. More than anything else, despite who her father is." Han wanted to continue, but was stopped by Luke who raised a hand.

"I don´t doubt that, but ... " The young Jedi seemed at a loss for words and needed a few moments before he started to speak again. "Han, Leia has told you who our father was."

"Yes, and I still think it hard to believe."

"I know. But why do you think it so hard to believe?"

Han was at a loss for words. Wasn´t that obvious?

"Simple. Vader was the embodiement of evil. A dark brute who terrorized the entire galaxy. And you and Leia, you are so good, so ... bright, ... its impossible to imagine you to be related to somebody like him."

"Nevertheless he is our father. And if we are good, then we must got it from somewhere."

"Perhaps from your mother." Han suggested.

"Maybe. But if our mother was good, then there is still the question why she fell in love with our father."

"What if she wasn´t in love with your father?" insisted Han. "What if he ... ." Han didn´t dare to say it. It would hurt his friend too much.

"If he raped her? Or simply used her as a toy?" finished Luke Hans question with a raised eyebrow. He had asked himself the same questions. "I think in that case I wouldn´t carry my fathers name before he became Vader. And if he would have been totally evil we all would be dead by now."

Han was at a loss for words. Damned, what was his friend up to? "Alright I give up. What has this all to do with me and Leia?"

"Simple. If a good man became evil once it can happen twice."

Han felt oblieged to protest. "Hey, I´m no Darth Vader, not even the stuff for somebody like him." Then the smuggler noticed something else. "What is really bothering you? I think you are moving in circles around a topic you don´t know how to explain."

The younger man was silent for a moment.

"You are right." he finally admitted. "Before I knew who my father was, things seemed so clear. After Bespin my entire world was put on the head and I was forced to find my orientation again. If I had listened to my mentors then I would have become a patricide, if not a Dark Sider like my father before me. I didn´t because I still believed that there was good in Vader and I was right. The entire point is, that my father, like everybody else, was a more complex being, than just a walking armour with a respirator. And suddenly I wonder how things would have developed if I would have been raised by him. If we had had a real relationship from the beginning. If he wouldn´t have been as bad as ... ."

"Stop. Thats enough!" Han gently put his hands on Lukes shoulder. "Don't decieve yourself. You would have become a Dark Sider like him and the galaxy would be in deeper trouble than anybody of us can imagine. Damned, I know you have this gap in your heart that always longed for a father, but it will not vanish, if you continue to ask yourself such questions. The only advise I can give you, is that you have to find something good, something positive to fill this place or it will rip you apart one day.

And then you will really become your fathers son."

Luke nodded with a frown.

"The son of Darth Vader."

[Prozac the Robert]

The lower case 'i's are unforgiveable. It might not seem like a big thing but it is really off-putting.

[FTeik]

The lower case 'i's are unforgiveable. It might not seem like a big thing but it is really off-putting.

Lower case "i"s? I'm sorry, but english isn't my native language.

Could you give an example, where i did wrong and how it is supposed to be right?

Thank you.

Edit: No longer necessary (or so I hope). Had to do a quick research in "lower case" and "capitalisation", but the problem should be solved.

If not, don't hesitate to make corrections (sigh).

[Prozac the Robert]

Yup, that's what I meant. It looks a lot nicer now.

(i instead of I is usually a sign of someone being too lazy to type properly, or typing too quickly. Sorry for assuming that was the case.)

[FTeik]

Here is the next part.

Read and enjoy.



The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter One


Nilan Vortigern carefully stepped down the stairs towards the catacombs and dungeons of the old castle. The hands of the old man were still trembling with disbelief.

Contrary to the palace of Darth Vader on Coruscant this castle - actually more a fortified mansion than a real castle - on the planet Chalakorn was remote enough to NOT fall victim to a robbing and burning mob, who, now that his Master was dead, suddenly was brave enough to fight and to rebel.

"Who doesn´t dare to beat the Dewback, beats the satchel." Vortigern thought with contempt, although he had to admit that with Darth Vader still alive he would have never dared to compare him with a Dewback.

Now that the Dark Lord of the Sith was dead Vortigern was practically the only heir above one of the greatest fortunes of the galaxy and the countless secrets of the man.

But Vortigern was no heir, he was an administrator.

Entitled to the legacy was another one and because Vortigern was a honourable man, he would make sure that this other one would get, what was rightfully his.

Vortigern smiled with contempt, when he thought about the greedy rats on Coruscant and inside the hated Rebel-Alliance, who were looking forward to use the fortune of his Master for their own dirty purposes. Unfortunatly it was unevitable to allow them access to a part of that fortune, but those would only be pieces, of that he had taken care of.

Vortigern was a capable administrator, who made no mistakes. That would have been unthinkable for the Majordomus.

Especially for the Majordomus of Darth Vader.

Finally the old man reached the last level of the catacombs and stopped before a wall that was in no way different than the others. But when Vortigern touched a hidden contact a sealed door opened and the Majordomus entered a big, cube-shaped chamber.

On the first look the room seemed to be empty.

Thick layers of dust covered everything. With exception of the wall opposite to the door the walls were barren.

An artist with two left hands seemed to have tried to decorate this wall with some fresques. The contures of two humanoid shapes were barely recognisable.

Nilan Vortigern moved towards the figure on the right side and wiped the dust away. Below the dust pure carbonite appeared.. The Majordomus remembered like yesterday when he had activated the carbon-freezing-chamber by the orders of his Master. Now he touched a button that initiated a process that would free the unfortunate prisoner from his cold sleep after six years.

With a hiss the solid carbonite turned into gases freeing the frozen prisoner piece for piece until a young man dropped to the floor. Sinking down on one knee the old man moved a medical scanner over the crumbled body, ignoring the hoarse moan from the former prisoner.

Satisfied he confirmed that the boy wasn´t harmed.

"Cold, so cold." whispered the teenager.

"Shhh, stay calm Lucan. I´ve freed you from the carbonite, but your senses have first to adjust to working again."

"Vortigern, is it you? I can´t see anything."

"Yes, it is me my young Lord. You have to be patient, the pain and the loss of orientation will soon be gone. Now come, let me help you."

With all the strenght in his old bones left Vortigern managed to pull the young man to his feet. Breathing heavily he carried Lucan through the dark corridors and to his great relief the young man was able to walk on his own again, when they reached the stairs upwards. The young one only grapped Vortigerns shoulder for the old man to lead the way.

"Seems I´m back among the living." he said with a laugh.

"Yes, my young Lord, you are alive." confirmed Vortigern."Damn, how am i going to tell him the bad news?" the Majordomus wondered.

Lucan Vader, son of Darth Vader, made his first steps into a world, that had changed dramatically with the Empires defeat at Endor.

-------

Six years prior.

"Is there no other solution?"

The voice of the young man sounded almost begging. But only almost. And only for those recognisable, who knew the boy from the day of his birth. Everybody else would have been astounded at the calm exterior of the teenager especially considering the fate waiting for him.

But they were alone, so there was no witness to the events going to happen.

"Unfortunatly not. But Palpatine isn´t even willing to discuss it. Already now he is afraid of you, you and your power. Our power. Because of that he has ordered your termination." Darth Vader's voice sounded even deeper than normally.

"And because of that I have to vanish? So you can prove your loyalty to your Master?"

"Yes. Without a trace, so nobody can find you."

"For how long will I be frozen?"

"I don´t know. But our time will come. The emperor finally believes that our fates are connected enough, that he doesn´t need you as a potential hostage or distraction for me anymore. Your elimination will convince him of that. Lets make him believe that he has me under total control."

"Why not kill him now? You trained me well."

Vader shook his head.

"It is too soon. Palpatine's mastery of the Dark Side is still unmatched. And even if I could challenge him now, there are still a lot of preperations to make to make a smooth take-over of the Empire possible."

The young man nodded his head.

"I wish I could at least say good-bye to mother." he said with a low voice.

"We don´t have the time for that. I will explain it to her." Vader hesitated. "Are you ready?"

The boy nodded his head and looked at the Sith Lord in a way, perhaps nobody before had looked at one. A look with all the love and faith only a child was capable of.

"I am ready." he said with a calm voice.

Vader gave Vortigern at the controls of the carbon-freezing-chamber a sign and the Majordomus pressed a button. Steam filled the chamber and a loud hiss was to hear.

Despite that Vader noticed a tear on the face of the young man and heard his last, wisphered words.

"I love you."

For a short moment the mechanical heartbeat and the painful breathing of the Dark Lord seemed to stop.

The man behind the mask wanted to liberate himself with a scream, but his lips stayed close. When the freezing-process was finished it was for Vader as if one of the last parts of his humanity had finally died.

Because in one point he had lied to the boy. He didn´t knew if he would someday be capable to kill the emperor on his own, didn´t knew if the boy would ever rise from the cold grave he had thrown him into. Nobody heard the whispered words of the Dark Lord.

"I love you too, Son."

-----

Six years later.

Two dayes had passed, days Lucan had spent with sleep and eating. Now he and Vortigern were sitting in one of the conference-rooms of the fortress.

The Majordomus watched the young man carefully. At the age of fifteen Lucan was already more than six feet tall with broad shoulders and long, strong limbs. Piercing blue eyes under bushy black eyebrows looked out of a broad but handsome, aristrocratic face. Lucan had tied his long dark-brown hair to a ponytail and was clad in simple black trowsers, a white shirt, a black vest and kneehigh black boots. Vortigern shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The young man wouldn´t like what he had to tell him.

"How much time has passed, Majordomus?" opened Lucan the conversation.

"More than six years, MyLord." answered Vortigern.

"Six years." shouted the young Lord Vader, taking a deep breath, before he continued. "A long time. But in the expected timeframe." Then his features seemed to brighten. "When will my father arrive, Vortigern?"

Vortigern looked with sad eyes at the boy.

"There was a battle. Somewhere in the outer rim at a place called Endor. The Emperor as well as your father were killed by rebels."

Lucan stared with disbelief at the older man.

"You are lying." he nearly chocked. "An insignificant group of rebels couldn´t have done something like that. Not against the empire."

"Times have changed. Four years ago the three largest rebel-groups have allied themself into an Alliance. And after the destruction of Alderaan their support increased even more. Rumors even claim that a Jedi-Knight is fighting with them."

"The Jedi are extinct." protested Lucan.

"Obviously not."

With a roar Lucan Vader rose from his seat. Gripping the heavy chair he throw the piece of furniture against the opposite wall of the room. Regaining his composure he took a heavy breath and took place in another chair.

"What happened to my mother? Is she still alive?" The young man thought with worry about the disease that had been slowly killing his mother before he had been frozen.

"Yes and no. A short time after your vanishing, she let herself getting frozen, too. Please don´t order me to repeat all the ugly details about the arguments between your parents, after you have been put into carbonite."

"I understand."

There was a long silence between those two so different men. Then again Lucan started to talk.

"If Palpatine and my father are dead, who is now leading the empire?"

"At the moment the Grandwesir Sate Pestage. But in my opinion it will not take long, until Ars Dangor or somebody else will try to usurp his position. Chaos is spreading. Many Moffs and Admirals have already announced their own empires, declared themself warlords and are fighting each other."

"A chaos the rebel-scum will exploit with no doubt. Impossible, but on the other hand not surprising. If my memory doesn´t deceive me it was the main task of my father after the extinction of the Jedi to supress the secession-movements of the warlords and to hold the all to independent Admirals and Governours in line. Isn´t there anybody with enough power and integrity to get the warlords under his control?"

"Not at the moment. And until there is somebody found they will have weakend each other that much, that it will be an easy game for the rebels."

"You are very sure of that, Vortigern. Even if the rebels managed to kill the emperor and murder my father, they can´t fight the various fractions. Force sake we are talking about the imperial starfleet, the biggest war machine ever built."

"A machine that is hopelessly divided. If you have studied the same reports and informations as i did, you would agree with me, MyLord. Without a leader powerful enough to unite the various fractions the empire is doomed."

The young Lord Vader thought about that for a moment. The 25,000 Imperator-class Stardestroyers and the hundreds, if not thousands of battle-cruisers and battle-ships of the Imperial Navy. Not to mention the millions of Stardestroyers, dreadnoughts, picket-cruisers, Frigates and Corvettes in the more than thousand sector fleets. The loss of personel and material had to be astronomical if they were all fighting each other. Not to mention the devastation of worlds and the deaths of countless of innocent civilians. Carnage and chaos worse than the clone-wars. People that had relied on the empire to protect them, to garantee the frame they had build their lives in. The live-work of his father falling apart. It made his stomach turn.

Lucan Vaders shoulders straightened.

"Then i will be this leader. I won´t allow that the live of my father, the order he has fought for so long and died for, will be destroyed under the feet of narrow-minded, powerhungry militaries and idealistic and past-orientated fools like the rebels."

Nilan Vortigern stared at his young master speechless.

"You can´t do that, MyLord." he finally managed to say. The young Lord Vader glared darkly at the old man.

"I am Lucan Vader. Son of Darth Vader and the Force is my servant. Why shouldn´t I?" grolled the young man.

"Because everybody will only see a growing teenager in you, My Lord, despite your training and other abilities. Nobody would take you serious. And you haven´t realised how many have feared and hated your father in the higher ranks of the empire. The same goes for the rebels. As soon as they find out that there is a son of Lord Vader they will try everything to destroy you as long as they can. I´m afraid you have no other choice but to vanish again and to wait for the right opportunity."

For the first time Lucan seemed to become aware of how serious the situation really was.

"Vanish again? Give up my name, my birthright? Watch the empire decay and break apart? Do you know what you are saying, Vortigern?"

The Majordomus stood up and walked to his young master. In a comforting guesture he put a hand on Lucans shoulder.

"My Lord, since your father saved my live so many years ago and offered me a place in his house, I have loyally served him with deeds as with words. With pride I can claim that I have been one of the persons your father listened to and he never had reason to regret it. Sometimes I think I had been one of his few friends as far as something like that was possible. That may be wishfull thinking of an old man, but there are no other words to discribe our relationship. I beg you My Lord, please listen to me now. Don´t let wrong pride and impatience guide you into the abyss. Don´t make yourself a target. Retreat for the moment. Plan for the future. Collect your forces. Your hour will come sooner or later. Palpatine's empire is dying. You don´t have to accompany it on the way to its doom.

Lucan Vader took a deep breath.

"Very well." he answered. "So be it."

-----

It was two weeks later in the evening when Lucan Vader was sitting behind a desk in his private quaters. The quaters of the young Lord Vader were a mixture of office, childhood playground and workshop, with a half dozen computers and nearly every tool in existence.

The heir of Darth Vader had spent the last days to get back in shape and to get trusted with all the events and changes that had occured during his "sleep".

The disbanding of the senate by the emperor and how the local Moffs and Governours had gotten direct control over their territories. This step made sence and had been long overdue. Already during the time of the Old Republic the area to govern had become to big, to be governed by a central authority. Delegating the power and responsebilities to the people directly in place had been a logical step.

The construction of the Death Star.

Lucan was sure that the finished construction of the battle-station and the disbandening of the Senate at the same time was no coincidence. The Death Star had been in many ways a symbol. Although insignificiant compared to the power of the Force, its awesome destructive powers were understandable by everyone, while the Emperor had made sure that the Force was viewed only as an ancient religion. Furthermore it was a symbol of the scale and power of the Emperor, a symbol that showed everybody that there was no chance in resisting the empire.

Of course for the costs of a Death Star hundreds of Stardestroyers could have been buildt, even millions for the materials used, but for those millions of ships, millions of loyal commanders had to be found. And considering the number of deserting commanders during the last years, even honourable men like Jan Dodonna or Crix Madine, it was easier to have one loyal commander on the bridge of a supership. Not to mention that the ordinary Stardestroyer was a relativly small ship by the standards of the empire and didn´t carry enough firepower in an age of planetary shields.

There were only two problems connected to the Death Star.

First the destruction of Alderaan. Lucan didn´t cry a tear for that planet, he had once been there and the pacifistic attitude of its inhabitans, together with their facade of culture, civilization and superiority had caused him a great headache. Such a behavior just wasn´t normal. In Lucans eyes the Alderanians had been cowards, hiding behind others and let others take care of the dirty work necessary to be done, while preaching bombastic speechs about morals, when action was needed.

"Damned Alderaanians, speaking of peace and supporting rebels against a legal government." murmered Lucan with contempt. It confirmed his point of view about their treacherous nature, their cowardice by letting the dirty work be done by the rebels, while cleaning their hands in innocence. Unfortunately the majority of other sentinent beings didn´t thought about that, when they started to support the Rebel-Alliance, they only thought about the reputatiation of the Alderaanians as peaceful people and moral role-models, what made them to perfect martyrs for the Rebels.

And of course, since not only the Alderaanians who had supported the Rebel-Alliance were killed, but many innocent men, women and children who wern´t responsible for the actions of their leadership, the uproar was justified, Lucan had to admit, even if the deathtoll now would be much bigger than that, with a civil-war raging.

What brought Lucan to the second problem connected with the Death Star: Nothing of the consequences of the destruction of Alderaan would have happened if the superiority of the Empire had stayed intact. But its destruction the very same day in orbit of Yavin ... . It had proven that the Empire wasn´t invincible and, in the eyes of the public, that the Death Star was only effective against helpless worlds, while even a small rebel-outpost was capable of winning against it.

"Tarkin should be glad, he died in that battle." Lucan mused, "I bet the emperor would have found a very creative way to punish that old fool for the loss of the battle-station." Just because the late Grand Moff had been a friend of his father didn't mean, that Lucan had to like the man. Or that Darth Vader would have hesitated to give the man the Force-choke, should it have become necessary. Sith didn't view friendship the same way other people did.

Of course Tarkins doctrin of ruling through fear of force, then ruling through the use of force itself had fitted perfectly well with the founding philosophy of the Sith, but not to its logical end. Obviously Palpatine had forgotten about that as well, because sooner or later fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to strenght and will-power.

It seemed that the rebels indeed had become stronger.

What brought him to the Heros of Yavin: Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker

Lucan read their files, then reread them again.

About Leia Organa he already knew, Daugther of Bail Organa from Alderaan. Already the first intelligence reports about her described her as above average intelligent, headstrong and stubborn. And not to forget very idealistic. Lucan sighed. Such was the stuff female rebels were made of. What an asset she could have been for the empire. Palpatine shold have founded a boarding-school for the children of important dignitaries and planetary leaders to raise them in his favour. Invitation impossible to decline.

The young Lord Vader took a pencil and made a notice about the idea of a boarding-school, when he had restored order in the galaxy.

Lucan looked over her picture again, admiring the calm, dignified beauty of the princess. It was obvious that everybody in the galaxy would have preferred such a pretty face over the wrickled visage of Palpatine. According to the files the princess was also a vicious fighter if necessary and Lucan, at age fifteen still influenced by his hormones, wondered if she would be a wildcat in bed too. Unfortanatly he would never find out, since she was the enemy.

"When I´m finished with you, you will wish to have died with Alderaan, your highness. Perhaps I let you even stay alive and sell you as pleasure slave to the hutts."

Lucan despised slavery as much as his father had, but he thought it to be a kind of poetic justice for somebody who had spent his, in that case her live, from the creche in a sheltered position of wealth and respect, to become a slave as just punishment for being responsible of the death of somebody who had been born as a slave and had spent his entire live to achive the power to put an end to slavery and to punish the slaveholders.

The thought brought back all those memories of his father, the plans they had made for the galaxy, as soon as they would have defeated Palpatine.

Now it was up to him alone to make their plans true.

Lucan started to read the next file:

Han Solo, former imperial Lieutenant thrown out of imperial service for attacking an superior officer.

Lucan made a face when he read the details. As it seemed Solo had only tried to protect a Wookiee-Slave. With that he could sympathise.

In a society, at least technological as advanced as the empire, there was no real need for slaves. Slaves needed food, shelter, training, they were rebellious and you couldn´t rely on them. To have them was just a sign of superiority, if not useless cruelity. However discipline had to be maintained and so Solo had been forced out of the Imperial Navy.

Lucan grimaced at that. According to his file Solo had been one of the best in his class, despite being a nobody. Raised to waste nothing, Lucan considered that sending this Solo-guy to the unknown regions to serve under this alien Admiral, ... what had been his name ... Mitthwad, ... Mitthrat, ...did it matter ... would have been a better punishment and of better use for the empire.

But the Imperial High Command had always been very generous with its officers, especially those that lacked the necessary connections. The upper ranks of the imperial fleet were filled with ambitous, but dumb and incompetent officers, who propagated the policy Palpatine had wanted to hear. No wonder that chaos was spreading after the death of Palpatine and Lucan's father.

But when Lucan read the rest of Solos file his sympathy for the man vanished. According to this report Han Solo had turned into a spicesmuggler for Jabba the Hutt.

Spicesmuggler.

For a Hutt.

Solo a criminal. Working for the alien scum that had enslaved his father and grandmother. There was no way to sink lower.

Obviously Solo wasn´t the material for an officer after all and the judges had recognized it.

The last one was Luke Skywalker.

Now this name rung a bell. Hadn´t there been a Jedi-Knight during the times of the clone-wars named Skywalker, close to Obi-Wan Kenobi? According to his father's tales Skywalker had been a comrade, who had considered to join the Emperor together with Vader, but died in battle. Kenobi had blamed Vader for his death and their fight had left Lucans father back as a cripple.

That alone was enough reason to hate everything connected to the man.

So this Skywalker was the rebellions pet-Jedi, responsible for his fathers death. Lucan took a close look at his picture. Luke Skywalker had a handsome face, blue eyes and blond hair and somehow he seemed familiar to Lucan.

The young Lord Vader had a hard time to find the man not sympathic. From the file about the young man he knew that he had grown up on a moisture farm on Tatooine (the galaxy truly was a village) and was then brought into the rebellion by Kenobi.
Lucan shook his head. Reading about the deeds of the man showed a very capable person, if he left the morality of his actions beside. He could even imagine being best friends and comrades with Skywalker, but that had become impossible.

There was no doubt Kenobi and whatever other Jedi out there had poisened the spirit of the man bejoind repair, although his father seemed to have tried to save the son of his old comrade from the Jedi's evil influence more than once. And what had been the reward for Darth Vader's efforts? That bastard had murdered him.

With gritted teeth Lucan shreded the picture of Luke Skywalker to pieces. "You are dead Skywalker." he muttered. "Dead, dead, dead."

Lucan put the files aside and took a simple piece of paper and three pencils with different colours. Then he wrote down what he wanted with the black pencil under the headline "Goals and Wishes: Order, Revenge, walking around with my name of birth, ... ."

Then he took the green pencil and wrote "Assets: Several trillion credits, technical and informational files, a hand full of loyal helpers, the Force." Behind Force he made a questionmark.

He took the red pencil as the last one and wrote: "Needed: "Manpower, power and influence, more training in the force, ... A PLAN."

Lucan underlined the word "plan" and leaned back in his chair. The major problem with plans was that their success relied highly on the given circumstances. The best plan was useless if it was created on the wrong conditions. Lucan tipped with the tip of the pencil against his gritted teeth. No, one plan alone wasn´t enough. And until he wasn´t ready to reveal himself it was pointless to go with his plans to deep into details.

For a moment the young Lord Vader mused about the term "ready" and his need of training in the Force. Although he was already skilled in the most aspects of the Force, the legends of the Sith told about Force-powers and abilities far above his own horizon. But where could he gain that knowledge? Palpatine and his father were dead, there was no other darksider skilled enough alive and he could hardly knock at Luke Skywaker's door and ask for some training in the arts of the dark side.

But fortunately there was another option. Yes, that was what he would do. He would collect and strenghten his assets, bring his pawns into position until he would find a use for them, while he himself would complete his training on ... .

"Master."

Lucan looked up. "What is it, Vortigern?"

The old man stepped into the room. "Giswad has returned."

"Has he landed?"

"Right this moment, MyLord."

Lucan rose from his seat and stormed out of his office, closly followed by the old Majordomus. They walked through corridors and out of the fortress towards the small landing-field, where a Lambda-Class-Shuttle was seated. A tall, muscular man with dark skin and a bald head stepped down the ramp. In front of Lucan he made a short bow.

"Were there any problems with your mission?" Lucan asked with tension in his voice. Giswad shook his head, making a few gestures with his hands he made clear "No."

"But you have it?" This time Giswad nodded his head.

"Where is it?" Again the tall man moved his hands.

"Please a little bit slower." Darth Vader's son ordered, whishing the former owner of Giswad hadn´t ripped the tongue of the man out of his throat.

"He says "In the stasis-box aboard"." Vortigern translated.

"Lets see." Lucan nearly jumped up the hatch. Vortigern took his time and when he had entered the shuttle he saw his young master standing above an open stasis-box. Looking into the box, it was a confirmation and the doom of his last, desperate hopes he had keept to himself, that the reports had only been rumors, that his Master was still alive, perhaps only captured or ... .

But now there was no denying it. Laying between coaled earth, burnt wood and ashe were bones, pieces of a helmet, a breast-plate, burnt flesh, a skull ... .

"At least we can give him a proper funeral, give him the respect he deserves." he muttered towards the son of the man, whose leftovers lay inside the box, but to his great surprise the young Lord Vader shook his head, looking towards Giswad, who had joinded them inside the shuttle.

"No, we won´t do that. Giswad, was that everything?"

The former slave nodded his head.

"Very well." Lucan closed the stasis-box. "Vortigern, you will select everything out of this box which isn´t organic and put what is left back in stasis. You and the rest of the personel will put everything valuebale or what could gave our enemies a hint about us or our whereabouts together, I´ll tell you tomorrow, where our new headquater will be, after I prepared my ship. And I will give you a list of persons that could be useful for us. Try to find out, where they are and what they are doing."

"But where do you want to go, My Lord?"

"I´ll travel to a special planet to complete my training, Vortigern. I´ll travel to Korriban."

[FTeik]

The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter II


Seven years after the Battle of Endor

Han Solo entered the quaters of his family aboard the Rebel-Cruiser "Rebel Dream" and walked towards the room, where the children were sleeping. As expected his wife Leia Organa Solo was there, standing over the small crib of their youngest child, Anakin, while the twins were laying in their beds. For a moment Han looked in wonderment at the sight of his family, his children and their mother, while words like beautiful, precious and ... fragile raced through his mind.

How could it be that something that was so valuable to him like the woman he loved, the children she had born him, could be so easily destroyed, could be taken away from him?

How evil and uncaring was a universe, that allowed the dangers to exist that had threatened his small family over the last years?

It was indeed a frightening thought how easy all of this could be destroyed. How close he had come to loose them all in Emperor Palpatine's last desperate attempt to save his miserable existence by taking over the body of the little Anakin.

The "Rebel Dream" was assigned to transport them back from the Planet of Onderon, where hopefully the last battle in this blasted war against the Empire had been fought.

As the former smuggler now watched his beloved wife stroking through their son's hair, bending down to kiss the little forehead tender, Han Solo vowed to himself, just to make sure and never to forget it, that he would die before he would anybody else allow to hurt them.

When Leia turned around she put a finger to her lips as to signal him to not disturb the sleep of their babies, then they left both silently the room. In the living area of their quaters they embranced, then departed. As much as they both would have enjoyed a rest and a little peace, they had responsibilities that couldn´t be denied.

"Do we know the situation at the front lines?" Leia asked after a few moments, switching from the role of a wife and mother into her position of a councillor of the New Republic.

"We do." answered Han. "It seems the news are spreading fast. The Imperial Fleet is on the retreat and our spies are already reporting some of them fighting each other, now that Palpatine is dead and nobody is there to keep them together."

"Well as long as they are fighting each other, they aren´t fighting us and we can use the situation to stabilise our position and to reorganise after the losses we faced. What about the Galaxy-Gun?"

"Ackbar has sent scouts to Byss. As it seems not only the Galaxy-Gun is destroyed, but the planet as well and the vast armadas in its orbit."

For the strategists and intelligence-people, not to mention for the rest of the New Republics leadership it had been a bad surprise to discover several thousand ships in scale from Star Destroyers upwards in orbit around the cloned emperor's stronghold, especially considering that the recently defeated warlords like Thrawn or Krennel had only been able to use the commen Star Destroyer.

On the other side they were sure that the majority of those vessels had been built before the Battle of Endor. And now those ships would never threaten anybody again.

Leia shuddered at the thought about the damage all those ships could have caused. If they were lucky this had been the final blow for the Empire, to cause them to surrender, but somehow she suspected that the New Republic and the galaxy as a whole weren´t that lucky. She took a deep breath and hugged her husband again.

"You know Han, I think I should feel remorse for all the lives lost without nessesarity in this war. Lost on both sides. But I´m just grateful that the major part of it is over."

"I´m too, honey." Han answered. "Perhaps now that the fighting is over, we will find more time for us."

Leia nudged him playful into his ribs. "Are you sure about that, scoundrel, that you want to trade the fighting for the whining of little children and changing diapers?"

"As long as it is the whining of our children I´m happy to do so. And Threepeo can do the diapers, if you ask me. But besides that I´m a happy man."

"I´m happy too."

---

But another person wasn´t as happy as the dream-couple of the New Republic.

Geven Nakal limbed towards his office inside the huge pyramid-like complex that formed the nerve-centre of KuatDriveYards.

Nakal had started his career as an engineer, but soon he had switched to the marketing department, where he soon had climbed to the top. He had been the unopposed ruler of the enterprise, responsible only to Kuat of Kuat himself and an almost fanatical supporter if not of Palpatine, but of the Empire. With the decline of the Empire things had changed and not for good. It would be unwise with the rise of the New Republic that the leadership stayed in the hands of a convinced Imperial, had been the point of those among "The Ten", who wanted Geven Nakal removed from his position.

Despite everything he had done for the company they had forced him to work for the archive, where the datafiles and informations of the company were administrated. A humilitating work for Nakal. Of course at his age he could have retired, as owner of 2 % of the companies stocks he cold afford alone with the dividend to buy a starsystem every year, but Kuat was HIS baby, had gotten under him the most lucrative contracts of the last thirty years and nobody would seperate him against his will from the company.

The only advantage the old man was getting in his current position, was that he now had more insight into countless details of the development of the enterprise, as ever before as Vice-CEO. Since the major part of the files seemed to be of no interest to anyone and the main work was done by droids, Geven Nakal found always enough time to read the files he was interested in.

And he didn´t liked what he was reading.

If the development continued this way, KDYs leading position was going to melt like snow in the sun. Nakal was sentinent enough to know that now, with the final defeat of the cloned emperor the tide of the war had turned in favour of the rebels again against the Empire.

Right so. At the moment Nakal wasn´t sure whom he hated more: The Republic-turned Rebellion for destroying so many of HIS precious ships, designed and buildt by HIS company, or the now dead Palpatine and what was left of his Empire, because they hadn´t treated them with the care they deserved and put one fool after the other in command of them.

To even think about all the ship-designs that would now never be comissioned caused his heart pain. What made things worse for KDY was the fact, that the capital ships of the New Republic were build not by KDY, but the Mon Calamari. Of those ships nothing was bigger than four kilometres, not to mention real big ships like the Executor or the Eclipse.

In Nakal's view the rebels would pay dearly for being that shortsighted in the next struggle with-whom-he could only guess, but at the moment there was nobody who would listen to him, even if he had been willing to give them an advise. However, economy and industries of the fish-heads were booming. Geven Nakal wasn´t even able to be mad at them, he would have acted the same way in their position. Their engagement for the rebellion had paid of for the fish-heads. Their represantatives hold now leading positions inside the new regime and its military and their economy witnessed a growth that wouldn´t stop so soon. Not bad for a rim-species that wasn´t able to travel through space with faster than light-speed only hundred years ago, while the idiots who were now in charge of KuatDriveYards seemed to be unable to do something against their own decline.

For Geven it had been quite a surprise when he had discovered that the price for stocks of KDY had increased at the stock exchanges during the last weeks. It made no sense at all. No economic number justified the current price. The young executive officers were without a doubt exchanging congregulations with each other, after all they had justified the faith of their families, who owned the majority of stocks, while only twenty percent were free available. Nakal however suspected that something was going on, but had no idea how soon everything would become clear to him. He entered his office and had to discover that the room was as dark as a black hole.

"Light." he commanded. Nothing happened.

"Enter, so that the door can be closed, Geven."

Totally surprised Nakal obied. As the door closed the invisible intruder ordered.

"Light." And it was light and Nakal could see the his visitor, sitting in his seat. "Hello, uncle Geven."

For a moment Geven Nakal thought his heart would stop beating. For all he know the young man he was facing was dead.

"Lucan." he nearly choked at the name.

"The one and only." confirmed the other man.

"I believed you dead."

"Many who knew about me did and there are many who will wish in the near future, that it would be true. In any case i spent the last years to prepare and to plan. In any case a very valuable lesson in patience. And how are you?"

"Could be better." stated Nakal, taking place in a chair. "They banished me from the top floors. Not that there is something what could excite an old man like me. The construction of the Executor with your father and Lira Wessex was the last big adventure. Since then there has been no comparable challenge and the business-situation ... .

Fools are now in power. Those pansies lack the killer-instinct. If they had met your father, they would have peed their pants and said "yes" and "of course", to everything he would have demanded."

Lucan couldn´t resist, he had to grin at the outburst of the old man. He knew that Nakal had been one of the handful of people his father would have considered an equal, if not for Nakals lack of force-sensitivity and the fact that nobody was equal to a Sith-Lord.

But while Nakal had found his profession in the industry and Darth Vader on the killing fields and the politics of the Imperial Court, both men shared an engineering background and could become enthusiastic about everything technological.

The young Lord Vader remembered all to well the discussions between "Uncle" Geven and his father, when they had been arguing above the blueprints of Star Destroyers and discussed their advantages and flaws.

"And what do you think about the situation in the galaxy as a whole?"

Nakal shook his head in a resigning gesture. "Don´t even ask. Isard, Zjnji, Krennel, those stupid Grandadmirals Pietta and Grunger, who had to eliminate each other. Not to forget all those wannebe-warlords, admirals and Moffs. The only thing they achived was exhausting and destroying each others forces, instead of fighting the rebels together.

All those beautiful ships ... ." the old man stopped talking with evident bitterness. "Even Thrawn and Palpatine failed to win the Galaxy back. And the New Republic is not better. Boy i tell you in one or two years the empire will have decreased to be no longer a major power and then in a one or two decades the New Republic will fall, like the Old one, when there is no commen enemy to hold them together. No discipline, no will for strength."

"And if somebody could change it?" asked Lucan.

"Somebody? You are talking about yourself?" stated Nakal.

"Me." confirmed Lucan Vader.

Geven Nakal showed a grim smile. "Somehow I suspected that you are here for a reason. But I will not be able to help you much or have you forgotten in what situation I am in?"

"No i haven´t. But how would you like it to take back the control about your company?"

Nakal laughed grim. "How? I own 2% of the stocks, but would need 51% and I doubt that that is going to happen in the next time."

"Are those your only worries, Geven? Despite the matters of ownership, do you think you can do the job?"

Nakal glared furious at Lucan. "Better than those pansies who are now in charge in every case."

"I have hoped so." answered Lucan. The younger ma put a data-card our of his pocket. "You told me, that you control 2% of the stocks out of necessary fifty." Lucan put the card in front of Gevens face. "Here are another fifty."

Nakal looked in wonderment at the data-card and it was a wonder he didn´t started to drool. "How, how did you get them? Only twenty percent of the stocks are available to prevent a buy-out."

Lucan grinned. "Well it took some convincing, but I was able to persuade a few members of "The Ten" to allow me control about his part of the company. Of course he and his family will get their part of the money, but it will be we, who are in control."

"Do I want to know which member of the Kuat-Nobility you were able to convince?"

"Lets just say one of them took to much pleasure from under-aged, non-human prostitutes." answered Lucan. " Are you in?"

"Yes."

With trembling fingers Nakal took the data-card out of Lucans hand, when suddenly the younger man gripped him at the wrist. "Never forget, we are playing the most dangerous game possible, with an entire galaxy at stake. It will take years until we will reach our goal and one mistake will mean the death of us all. Are you aware of that?"

"Don´t lecture me about secrecy and being careful. I´m to old to be afraid of death and I achived what I achived, because I made only few mistakes in my live and never repeated one of them."

Lucan smiled. He hadn´t hoped to find so much spirit in the old lion.

"Perhaps I should tell you then, what i need and ... ."

------

Carzeta Myntrela reached the floor with the office of her granduncle. In one way he would be the last person who would approve of her plan, but he was the only person of her entire family who would at least understand why.

Carzeta was still a few meters away from the office when the door opened and her uncle stepped out, accompanied by a much younger man.

"Hello, uncle Geven."

"Uhhh, Carzeta, what a nice surprise." Geven Nakal greeted back and then seemed to be at a loss for words.

"Well?" asked Carzeta after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "Why don´t you introduce me to your friend."

"You are right of course, where are my manners?" muttered Geven Nakal. He looked helpless at Lucan, who saved the old friend of his father, by bowing politly.

"Watto Tarashon, at your service. And you are?"

"Carzeta Myntrela. I´m the grand-niece of Geven."

Lucan looked over the young woman standing in front of him. Tall, slender, with black hair, high cheekbones, greyblue eyes, for a moment he forgot the reason he had talked to Geven. Then he became aware that she was staring at him and he couldn´t help himself, but started to grin.

Carteza who noticed the change in the face of this stranger, couldn´t help herself but thought. "Boy, this guy is georgous. Especially those blue eyes of him." Not to mention the mane of darkbrown hair, the broad handsome face and the tall muscular body. "I know this guy for perhaps ten seconds, but I would already exchange my Telbun against him." thought Carzeta.

"Well, why don´t you tell me, what causes you to visit the old fossil of your granduncle?" asked Geven Nakal, who had regained his voice.

"I wanted to talk to you, Uncle Geven, but in private."

"I´m sorry for you, but i have no time at the moment. As you can see, i was accompanying ... Watto to his ship."

"If it really has to be, we can talk on the way to the hangar." The girl looked at Lucan. "I trust you to be discret."

Lucan couldn´t help but smiled. "You only have to ask your uncle how discret I can be, MyLady."

Carzeta looked him over. "Very well."

Together the trio started to walk towards the hangar.

"So what is it, you want to talk about with your old uncle?" asked Geven with a kindness, he normaly never showed.

"I wanted to say good-buy to you, because I´m leaving." answered the girl.

"Leaving? What do mean "leaving"?" Geven asked somehow flabbergasted.

"What I said. I´m leaving. This planet, the Kuat-System, my parents. I left them a letter, but I felt obliged to tell you personally. I thought you would understand."

"Understand? Understand what?"

Lucan listened with pointed ears to the dialog between grand-uncle and grand-niece. It was a habit he had developed over the years: Be always aware of your surroundings.

"Why I can´t stay here any longer. If my family gets its will, i´m going to stay for the rest of my life, get impregnated by my Telbun in the next two or three years and spent the next decades in raising the next generation of Myntrelas of Kuat. Eeeeeh. I want to do more with my life."

Lucan had to grin when he watched the girl shaking her head.

"Well." rumbled Geven. "You have always been some kind of rebellious child. I should have expected something like that long ago and talked with your father about it. Anyway, my best wishes will be with you."

"What are you planning to do, when you have left?" Lucan asked at this moment .

Carzeta hesitated for a moment. "I´m going to join the New Republics Starfighter-Corps."

Gevens steps came to a halt immediatly. "What?" he nearly roared.

"I said I´m joining the Starfighter-Corps of the New Republic." answered Carzeta with more bravery than she actually felt.

"Are you crazy?" asked Geven. "Don´t you know that the starfighters have the highest killing rate of all armed forces? Fourty percent. And to make things worse for the the New Republic?"

"Well, shall I try my luck with what is left of the Empire? You know as well as me that the Empire will loose. And a sucessful military career will help me later when I go into politics."

"You don´t have to endure military service to become a politician." protested Geven Nakal.

"No, but it will help a lot. Many in the leadership of the New Republic have served on the battle-fields during the civil war. It should give us a commen ground."

"Sounds really opportunistic, if you ask me." stated Lucan. Carzeta glared at him.

"Don´t get me wrong. I want to help to make the galaxy a better place. But why make things more difficult than necessary? And the service in the corps won´t be that easy."

Geven Nakal sighed. Pleadingly he looked to Lucan. "Blast, why don´t you help me to talk same sentinence into that girl. Her head is as dense as that of your father."

"Yes, but she is right. If you like it or not, the New Republic will be the next major power." He looked at Carzeta. "But what I don´t understand is, why the Starfighter-Corps?"

"I´m a good pilot and I always wanted to fly. There is nothing compared to the freedom of space."

"I know the feeling. But your uncle is right. The killing rate for fighters is the highest. Why not a conventional career in the Navy ?"

Carzeta grinned. "Because I somehow doubt that the New Republic would allow the daughter of a world, that has build most of the warships of their enemy, to command one of their capital ships. Besides that, have you any idea how much time passes before you get a promotion in the Navy ? Especially in times of peace? The high killing rate for fighters is an ADVANTAGE."

Lucan grinned at Given. "She has a point there. And at least she will fly with ships that have shields."

"That is something I never understood. Why did the empire equipt only a few of its fighters with shields?"

"Because without the support of capitel ships fighters are useless in ship to ship combat, despite everything the propaganda claims about Wedge Antilles and his Rogue-Squadron. And you have to compare the costs. It was easier for the Rebels to afford their ten to twenty squadrons of fighters at the time of Endor equipted with shields and hyperdrive than for the Empire. Hell alone the ISDs of the Imperial Navy carried nearly 2 million TIEs, not to mention ships in sector-fleets, planetery garrisons and so on. A good military commander knows how to combine his different forces to achive his goal, and fighters ARE useful if used properly. Nakal explained.

The trio had reached the hangar.

"Which one is your ship, Watto?" Carzeta asked curious.

"That Sentinel-Class-Shuttle." answered Lucan. "I made a few modifications, so that I should reach Imperial Center, I mean Coruscant, in a matter of two days without the need to refuel on the way."

"Your next stop is Coruscant? Perhaps we will met there." explained Carzeta.

"I can give you a ride, if you want." offered Lucan.

"That would be great. And it would save me a lot of money." Carzeta looked questioningly at her uncle who gave her an encouraging smile.

"As I said before I´m at your service." stated Lucan. "But what about your luggage?"

"I have none. It would have raised suspiciouns. All I have is a credit-chip with enough money." the young woman answered.

"Well, then we can take of any moment you desire."

"Fine." Carzeta stepped to her uncle and hugged the old man fiercly. "Good-buy uncle Geven. I hope you understand my decission."

Geven Nakal hugged her back. "Good-buy, little one. I don´t approve what you are going to do, but I understand. My best wishes will be with you." Uncle and Niece departed. "Now go. There is someting I have to tell Watto."

After the girl had entered the shuttle Geven turned to Lucan. "Promise me to take care of her."

"She will be safe until we reach Coruscant. But should we ever met on the battle-fields ... ." The son of Darth Vader didn´t finish the sentence.

"I understand. As much as I hate it, but I understand. My niece is an adult now and has to take the resposibility of her actions. If we are lucky it will never come to the worst."

The two men shook hands. "See you, Geven."

"See you, Lucan. And treat her like a Lady."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know what I mean. Centuries ago I was a young man myself."

[FTeik]

No feedback or critical replies. Is this a good sign, a bad sign or are you simply undecided and still waiting how things will develop?

We will see.

Until then i hope you enjoy the next part of this story.



The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter III


One week later the young Lord Vader was sitting on the balcony of his suite of the "Hotel Calshar", where he had taken quater. There were finer adresses than the "Hotel Calshar" on the middle-rim world of Fecqual, the palace of the royal family of the planet for example, but of course Lucan couldn´t have taken quater there without raising suspicions.

Well, the most noble hotel of Fecqual had to do, it could even compete with the Hotel Imperial on Coruscant and other of the finest adresses of the core-worlds.

He was enjoing the sun raising over the horizon and a huge breakfast, being very hungry after a long night spent with deep, relaxing sleep after enjoing the company of one of the attractive chambermaids of the hotel and was now going to regain his strengh, waiting for the man he was going to met with.

He was just taking a look on the reports from SERTUR, a galaxy-wide operating information service on the development of the different stock-exchanges and business-companies where he had money invested. To rebuild an empire was an expansive enterprise to say the last.

Lucan wondered if ever before a Force-sensitive being had used its Force-powers of precognition to make a fortune. He somehow doubted it. In this area Sith like Jedi seemed to be the same, with nothing but contempt for the, well ... banality of monetary matters, neglecting the advantages connected to huge amounts of credits available. Not that money meant anything to him, it was simple a tool among many others if used properly.

Suddenly a melodic sound was in the air, signalling that there was somebody at the door, asking for entrance.

"Come in." ordered Lucan, putting his cup of tea down and taking a pair of sunglasses to hide his piercing blue eyes.

A man entered the suite. Nearly as tall as Lucan, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, a carefully cutted beard and darkblond hair with first hints of greying. The eyes of the man were of grey colour, too, as well as his grey suit, resembling the uniform of an Imperial Navy-Officer. He carried himself with an aura of self-confidence and pride.

"Even after all those years." thougth Lucan. "You just have to look at him and you know, he is a born warrior, a soldier of the highest league. I wonder why it was so difficult to find him, he is anything but inconspicuous."

The man stepped onto the balcony and suddenly Lucan felt himself taking a more upright position.

Surpressing a feeling of embarrasment he pointed towards the opposite chair.

"Good morning. Please have a seat, Admiral Guderi."

The man just raised his eyebrows.

"You must mistake me for somebody else. My name is Kall, not Guderi. And I never was an Admiral."

"Don´t try to fool me. You haven´t changed a bit since you ... left the Imperial Forces fifteen years ago. And only you could have been able to discover the secret code hidden in the message I sent you. You or perhaps a hand full of other men. Men Darth Vader viewed as his proteges. And you have been supposed to be the best of them."

"I was the best of them." Guderi answered with a small smile. "But perhaps not brutal enough for Palpatine."

"I think it was more your lack of obidience and the fact that you called him a blood-thirsty idiot in front of your entire bridge-crew, than your lack of brutality. Call yourself lucky that Palpatine's control over the military wasn´t that secure during that period of time as in the last years of the Empire or you would have been killed immediatly."

"Instead I was forced out of the Armed Forces." Guderi completed.

"And just because you refused to follow a simple order. I know your file. You would have become the first of the Grand Admirals, when the Emperor introduced that new rank, but ... ."

"I refused to slaughter the entire population of an already defeated world. I´m a soldier and not a butcher."

"And your "retirement" has been a source for concern and anger for my father for quite some time." stated Lucan.

Guderi stared at Lucan. The tall figure of the man sitting in front of him, the deep voice, despite the obvious youth, the burning look of the eyes he felt on him through the lenses of the sunglasses and suddenly recognition hit him.

"Darth Vader." he muttered. "He was your father."

"Yes." confirmed Lucan. "And now you belong to the small circle of privileged beings who know about my existence."

"What do you want from me?"

"I need your help. But before you make your decision, hear me out first."

Guderi took a deep breath.

"Alright. That much I own to the son of my mentor. But I won't make promises."

The two men were talking for over three hours and finally Lucan had managed to convince Guderi to join forces with him.

Of course Lucan had had a small, but important advantage: Guderi was a man that felt only comfortable on the bridge of a warship, commanding other men, leading them into battle. The last fifteen years must have truly been a very special hell for him. But despite that, Guderi being a man who had believed in the Empire hadn´t been able to work for the rebellion and neither had his pride allowed him to join one of the imperial warlords. Guderi didn´t expected one of them to hold his position for more than a few years.

Not that Lucan Vader should have been any better, but first he was the son of Guderis mentor and second, he had already designed the raw points of a plan that would finally lead him to unopposed power over the galaxy. The chuzpe of the entire sheme alone had impressed the former Admiral.

When Guderi had left, the young Lord Vader turned back to SERTUR, concentrating again on the news-reports. After a few minutes a special report cought his attention and when the report was finished the cup of tea smashed into the screen. It took quite some time for Lucan Vader, but then he muttered through gritted teeth. "So you want to restore the Jedi-Order, Skywalker? Not if I have to say something about it.

But for now I have other things to do."

But in the depths of his mind Lucan was already working on a plan to deal with the threat a new Jedi-Order would be.

-------------

Odiin Vaskal, Moff of the Elten-Sector was in a foul mood when he read the last report about the condition of his military forces.

A territory of the inner rim at the border to the outer rim, the Elton-Sector was located between the territories of systems that had become independant after the fall of the Empire and the New Republic on one side and systems controlled by former imperial warlords like himself and what was left of the Empire on the other side.

The only real concern about the current situation for the Moff was an invasion by the New Republic. The three squadrons of Star Destroyers forming the backbone of his sectorfleet were enough to hold the fourhundred-seventy worlds under his control and to maintain order against pirates and smugglers.

However, spread over a vast area there was no hope to fight off an invasion by Republic forces, should they ever try something like that. Fortunatly they were still recovering from the losses suffered during the campeigns of Thrawn and the reborn Emperor (and even this stupid bitch Daala) and if he stayed quite they probably ignored him until the "problem" of his rule solved itself by his natural death.

Considering this Odiin Vaskal viewed his next neighbours, Moff Harraged and Highadmiral Cordal as his main adversaries. All three men hated each other with a vengeance. They were both in a similiar situation like him, so neither of the three archenemies could hope to attack one of the other ones without suffering losses that would endanger their own position at home.

Of course Odiin Vaskal was increasing the size of his fleet by new ships being build in his shipyards, but Harraged and Cordal would have been stupid if they weren´t doing the same.

While Moff Harraged had control over the same number of Star Destroyers like Vaskal, Highadmiral Cordals little kingdom was guarded by only two squadrons of ISDs, but those were reinforced by Cordals original command in the Imperial Navy, a Superiority-Class Star Battlecruiser (often mistakenly thought to be an Executor-Class Star Dreadnought, since both classes looked similiar, but less then half that long with a lenght of eight kilometres), and five Star Destroyers of the Imperator-class Mark II and an Interdictor-destroyer of the Dominator-Class, KuatDriveYards answer to SienarFleetSystems Immobiliser-418, the dreaded Interdictor-frigate.

To say it bluntly: All three were strong enough to hold their territories against each other and perhaps even the New Republic fleet if necessary, but on the other side no one of them was capable to increase his power against the other two.

A small sound caused Vaskal to look up from the report.

In front of him stood a tall man, totally clad in black. The body was covered by an armour and a cloak that nearly reached the floor, while the head of the man was hidden behind a helmet that looked similiar to the mask of the now dead Darth Vader, but was less stylisized and had a single visor, rather than two eye-lenses.

"Who are you and how did you manage to enter my office?" Vaskal shouted. He had no time for idiots, who thought themself to be the next Lord Vader.

"It doesn´t matter who i am." explained the stranger. "It only matters that i´m here to help you."

"I somehow doubt that." Vaskal stated. "And who you are doesn´t really matter. Not if the security guards throw you in one of my dungeons." He reached for the com.

The Moff never reached the button, because with incredible speed the intruder raised his hand towards the com-unit, Vaskal saw only a flesh and where his com had been there were now only smoking pieces of debris and glowing molten metal.

"Of course i could reach an agreement with your successor." said the stranger in a cool, calculating voice, pointing with the tip of a lightsabre at the Moffs throat, "But somehow i doubt this to be in your interest. Won´t you agree?"

"Yes. Yes of course."

"Excellent." With that the lightsabre vanished under the cloak and Odiin Vaskal was finally able to take a deep breath.

"What do you want?"

"As i said, i´m here to help you, to offer my assistence in defeating your enemies. Isn´t it true that you have a problem to outrun your enemies in your armament efforts?"

"You are well informed, stranger. But what are you able to do about that?"

"Lets just say i have a source of warships available. If you can provide the crews, my and your own efforts will be enough to defeat Harraged and Cordal. If they are taken out, you will control enough systems to stand against the New Republic, especially if our victories convince other warlords to support you."

"Provide crewers sound nice, but unfortanatly soldiers and crewers of warships don´t grow on trees my unknown friend. It will take some time to train them."

"And it will take some time to build the ships. But we should be able to manage it in a time-frame of two years."

Vaskal thought about it. The proposal of the man was tempting and he could see himself already as the new emperor, if not ... . "And what do you want for your help? What kind of reward do you expect for your efforts?"

"Not much. I´m not interested in politics and the administration of an Empire. I would be satisfied to be in charge about your military and to work as an advisor if you want."

Vaskal surpressed a snort. As if he would believe that bantha-poodo.

"And to have my revenge." added the man somehow recognizing Vaskals disbelief. On the inside the Moff smiled. Obviously this man was one of those lunatics who hadn't been on Byss, when the planet had been blown up by the Galaxy-Gun and who were only interested in destroying the New Republic. He would have to closly observe his new ally, but he was sure he could deal with him if necessary.

"Well, it seems we have a deal, my friend." Odiin Vaskal said. "I will soon start a campeign for conscripts."

"You will do nothing like that." the other man stated.

"What?" Vaskal was at a loss for words. "How do you want me then to provide the crewers for your ships?"

" We will take volunteers."

"Volunteers? Are you crazy? We won´t get enough men to crew a single Victory-Star Destroyer."

"Oh, yes we will. All you have to do is to introduce a new election-law and ... ."

"ELECTIONS???"

"Yes elections. Now would you please listen ..."

-------------

One month later Lucan Vader walked through the streets of Chalmarn, the biggest city on the planet Geflen.

Geflen was an outer rim planet. The world had no native inhabitans, it had been colonized during the time of the Old Republic by several humanoid races. The local economy had stayed dependent on trade with outside worlds and during the down-fall of the Old Republic and the rise of the Empire the Hutts had taken control of the planet. Geflen had become a key-position for the slug-like creatures in the sector, contrary to their usual behavior the Hutts tried to keep a low profile since their cash-flow from illegal sources (like the trade with drugs, slaves and so on) changed on its way over Geflen into legal investments.

As a consequence the world was as corrupt as any hole on Tatooine or even Nar Shada. Incredible wealth and undiscribable poverty were next neighbours and while the rich and mighty citicens of Chalmarn lived in huge, clean villas if not castles on the hills outside the core of the city, others lived their lives in misery and poverty in the slums around the starport.

In those quaters every kind of scum can be found: Beggars, muggers, thieves, prostitutes of both genders and every age. Security was lax to say the last, those who counted in the eyes of the officials employed their own body-guards and the fate of those who couldn´t afford such employees was of no interest.

Besides the organized crime the slums of Chalmarn suffered from countless groups and gangs that were formed by youths without home and without future to increase their chances for survival. Some of those groups consisted of even younger childrens.

Misery doesn´t makes age-differences and the horrible living-conditions turned many sentinent beings into dangerous predators.

But now a different kind of predator was walking among them. A predator more dangerous and with no sense for their pathetic problems.

During the last two months Lucan Vader had contacted perhaps over hundred people, people who hold positions he wanted to make use of, people who controlled or had access to ressources he would need. Geven Nakal and Guderi had only been the last two on this list.

Most times those people had believed in the Empire. Many of them had been among the best in their special fields. But often they had made a mistake or lacked the necessary connections or had been betrayed by their superiors for the rewards of their work. Soldiers, scientists, entrapeneurs, local politicians. Others simply wern´t satisfied with the current situation of the galaxy as a whole. Of course there were perhaps billion of beings out there, who wanted things to change, but Lucan had contacted only those he was sure he could use for his plans. And if more people were needed, he would delegate those task towards those who were suited best for them.

This was one of the things his mother had thought him: How and when to delegate a task needed to be done towards a servant and when it was better to do it on your own.

How to do a job yourself had been something his father had thought him. Thought him very well.

Now the young Lord Vader was walking the streets of the slums of Chalmarn, he wasn´t sure for what he was searching, but he trusted his instincts and they had lead him here.

Lucan couldn´t put a finger on it, but something was there. Glaring his view over some kind of market-place he shifted his position to move further, when ... .

There ... .

Somebody was using the force unconscious.

He directed his view back and took a closer look.

There.

---

Miney made sure that there were more than thirty meters of distance between her and the small stall of the trader she just had "visited", before she dared to breath again. Pressing the small piece of bread against the chest of her thin body, the girl was looking forward to stop the hungry growl of the stomach.

Miney was a Zabrak-girl, but not of the well-known Useti-Zabraks, but the Hcharad-Zabraki, a subrace of that species. So instead of a light brown the colour of her skin was of a blood- if not crimson-red and the delicate horns on her head were not thick and rounded like those of the Useti, but thin and sharp. She had sharp teeth, green-grey, cat-like eyes and was ten kilograms underweighed.

Miney was the only Hcharad-Zabraki on the planet, she was an orphan and a thiev.

She was twelve years old.

Until now she had been lucky. Neither had she been cought by the traders she was stealing food from, nor by members of the gangs. In a way it was funny. Normally she sneaked around her victims then, wishing for them to look into another direction, they always get distracted and she could grab her prey and escape before somebody realized what was going on.

Or, if she was able to concentrate enough, people suddenly ignored her presence, didn´t noticed her at all. That way she had escaped the gangs and corrupt officials more than once.

It was like a childs-play, but with a very serious background.

Of course her small size for her age and her being underfed had helped too.

Miney reached a dark side-street, where in a corner was one of her hidding-places. Sitting down the girl bit hungrily into the stolen piece of bread. For quite some time now, she seemed to be always hungry.

With worry and concern the girl thought about the most possible reason for her constant hunger. She was growing, changing from a girl into a woman. She didn´t want to grow up, to become big and rounded and clumsy and unable to fit through any hole that offered escape for a small child but not for a growing girl.

Miney knew what happened to those girls. It didn´t mattered if they were looners like Miney or members of a gang themself. The fate of those girls was always the same. If they were lucky they were cought, beaten, raped and killed by the gangs. If they were unlucky they were cought, beaten, raped and sold to a brothel or directly to the Hutts, the real rulers of Geflen. Those poor females were made dependant on drugs, had to satisfy even the most perverse desires of their "customers" , they were punished harsh if they didn´t reached their quote of credits and if the Hutts were disappointed with them, they got disposed in a very nasty and ugly way.

In that regard the slug-like creatures were very creative.

Miney was glad that she had managed to evade such a fate until now.

Swallowing the last piece of bread she stood up, when suddenly a shadow fell over her.

"Look, what we have here." A raspy voice said.

Miney´s blood turned to ice, frightened to death. Suddenly the instinct she had relied on her entire live had left her, perhaps when she needed it most. Before she could turn around, something hit her on the head and the world went black.

---

She regained consciousness only to wish she had stayed stunned as the last seven times before. It was of no use. After three hours the three thugs that had captured her where still not finished with her. Miney's entire body was already covered with cuts and bruises, her lips were swollen from a very brutal beat and one of her eyes was closed.

"Please." she prayed silently. "Make an end. I can´t stand it any longer." She had prayed the same two hours ago, when she still had been able to scream, to cry, but now her throat was dried out, her tongue felt like a pair of three week old unwashed socks and her voice was hoarse.

"Look, what i have here." rasped one of her tortourers, a Rhodian youth towards his comrades, a Twi´lek and a human.

None of them was older than twenty but dispite that they were experts. They had taken their time with the helpless Zabrakian-girl, they had whipped her and beaten her, but with no rythem behind their strokes to prevent Miney from getting used to them. Added to the beatings they had used pieces of glas to make cuts into the girls skin and to cause minor injuries. To make things worse they had tied her up, halfnaked, with her arms stretched about her head so she was standing on her toes, unable to rest the weight of her own body: If she had passed out, it had been because of the pain, not because she was exhausted.

"What is it, Mordu?" asked the human.

"A batterie and two whires, if you know what i mean, Dillos." answered the Rhodian. "Bet we get a few more screams out of her with a little electricity."

"Deal." stated the Twi´lek. "A bottle of beer if she screams more than once."

With horror in her open eye Miney had to watch how Mordu moved the ends of the two whires towards the bare skin of her left arm, sparks already flying between them. Then they made contact. Miney choked, tried to regain her voice to scream hoping against hope that they would stop as soon as Mordu would have won his bet, but she couldn´t. Instead her body twitched and shook in pain. A moan was all that escaped her mouth

Unsatisfaid Mordu removed the whires. "That one is finished for now."

"Try again." suggested Dillos, the human. "Not at her arm, but there." He grabbed the nipple of Miney's undeveloped breast and squeezed it.

A single tear dropped down Miney's cheek.

"Are you sure?" asked the Twi´lek. "He said he wanted her relativly unharmed."

"I don´t care what he said." shouted Dillos. "I want that piece of podoo to scream and i want it now."

He took the battery with the whires connected to it out of Mordus hands and moved them towards Miney who shook and twitched her body in dreadful anticipation, trying as long as possible to evade the diabolic device. Dillos looked at her grinning with sadistic pleasure.

"I think i have an even better idea. One the little slut will perhaps enjoy."

He put the battery down and started to remove his clothes.

"Isn´t she a bit small for that?" protested the Rhodian.

"They are never to small." explained the Twi´lek with a laugh, stepping to the twelve year-old, gripped her skirt and ripped it apart from her.

Despite what Dillos intended to do, Miney felt nearly relief. Soon it would all be over as soon as those three would have satisfied their carnal needs with her flesh and then she might be finally able to die.

"Good-buy, cruel world, every after-live is better than you." was her last thought, when she suddenly heard some kind of hiss in the air.

"You´ve done enough." rumbled a deep voice and Miney thought again to hear screams.

----

When she awoke this time she realized to her great surprise that she was no longer tied up and that she was laying on soft, silky sheets. Opening her eyes she found herself in a huge bed and that her clothes had been removed, causing her heart to beat faster. Whoever had undressed her had seen her naked. If not for the already crimson-red skin of hers, she would have blushed with shame. The room was dimly lightened and Miney thought she smelled food.

Was this heaven?

"Put some clothes on and join me." ordered the deep, powerful voice she had heard before from outside, causing Miney to tremble with fear. Hutts had such deep, commanding voices. On the other side she had awoken in a bed for humanoids and the door didn´t looked as if any of the fat, slug-like creatures would fit trough.

"I´m waiting." rumbled the voice again.

Quickly Miney stood up and stepped to a chair, where a bundle of clothes was spread out. Putting the black clothes on, she finally noticed that her wounds, all the cuts and bruises had vanished, even the older scars were gone.

The material shirt and trowsers were made of was soft and silky and it felt very sensual on the young girls skin, causing Miney's fears to rise again until she took a look into the mirror and realised that those pieces of clothes were in no way provocative.

Taking a deep breath she entered the other room watchful, where a tall, muscular human man with dark hair and cold blue eyes was sitting at a table covered with different kinds of food and drinks. With great relief Miney recognized that her "special" sense had returned to her, but was now sending confusing signals.

The man was dangerous, very dangerous, but Miney didn´t feel threatened or intimidated. She even thought him to be handsome in a brutal, barbaric way.

"Please take a seat and eat. You have to be very hungry." said the stranger, pointing at a seat opposite to him.

The zabrakian girl sat down and started hungrily to eat, while the strange man did the same, although in a more calm, if not royal way, carefully enjoing every piece of food.

After fifteen minutes Miney wasn´t able to eat a single piece more, her stomach was filled to the top. With eyes full of regret she looked over the still loaded table. The food still left would free her from her hunger for more than a month if stretched properly. Never before had she became aware of the poverty and the misery of her life that much.

"Finished?" asked the strange man, his voice surprisingly gentle.

"Yes."

"Good. Tell me, who were those youths that tortured you?"

"Doesn´t matter. Members of a gang. If they catch a girl they try to get as much fun as possible with her."

"But wasn´t there a way to evade them?"

Miney shook her shoulders.

"Maybe. But sooner or later they catch everybody. It would have happend this way or the other."

"So you are saying that it was inevitable, no matter what you would have done, correct?" asked the tall man.

"Think so. Why is this important?" the girl asked..

"Simple. I want to be honest with you, Miney. It was me who ordered those thugs to catch especially you this day. You and nobody else. I even blocked your sense for dangers and this way they were able to catch you."

Miney was speechless. Rising from her seat she gripped a knife to defend herself if this, this sick guy tried anything.

"You bastard. If i could I would kill you."

Despite the insult, Lucan just nodded his head calm. "Very good. You have spirit. And your anger makes you strong. But don´t you want to know why i did it?"

Miney was still trembling with rage, but at the same moment she felt curious. "Because you're a jerk?"

"No, but to give you your first lesson. Tell me, how did it feel to be tied up, to be beaten and cutted, to be tortured with electro-shocks and to be raped. Tell me how did you feel."

Miney thought about that for a moment. What was this man up to?

"Helpless." she answered. "Humilitated. Weak."

"In other words, you felt out of control, powerless." Lucan asked softly. "It was a bad feeling, wasn't it?"

"Yes. But what does this has to do with the lesson you are talking about?"

"Because its such a simple lesson most people never think about it and if they do, they deny its importance.
It sucks to be helpless, without power. Power is everything."

"And how does this concern me?" asked Miney.

"Because i have an offer to make. Become my apprentice and i´ll show you power beyond your imagination. Serve me and you will never be helpless again." Lucan pointed to the various foods on the table in front of him. "You will never be hungry again."

"And if I say no?"

Lucan shook his shoulders and pointed towards the door. "There is the exit. You can return to your live in your slum if you want, back to its poverty, its gangs, I can´t force you to stay."

"Can´t or won´t?" Miney asked.

"Can´t." stated Lucan. "To use the Dark Side of the Force is a decision you make, not an act forced up on you. I want you to serve me out of your own free will. I have no use for you, if I have to enforce my will. So do you accept my offer?"

After a short moment Miney agreed. After all, what did she have to loose?

[FTeik]

Had to edit Chapter III a little.

Here is Chapter IV. Enjoy.



The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Part IV


Leia Organa Solo managed to hide a nervous glance as she looked over the other people inside the room. It was hardly the first meeting of this kind she participated in, but one of the firsts where she was in charge. Not only in charge, but as new President of the New Republic.

Present besides her were Admiral Ackbar, General Dodonna, Garm Bel Iblis, General Madine, Doman Beruss and two newelected senators, representing the legaslative body of the New Republic.

For a short moment Leia wished for Winter sitting beside her. Her friend and aide with the perfect memory would have been of great help to her now, but the white-haired woman was taking care of the children.

"If we are all ready we might as well begin." Leia finally started the briefing. "Admiral Ackbar, are there any new facts concerning the fate of Admiral Daala?"

"Nothing Madam President." rumbled the Mon Calamari in his deep voice. "For all we know she is dead."

A collective sigh of relief went through the room. The renegade Admiral Daala, former Mistress of Grand Moff Tarkin had been the cause of great worry and concern for the officials of the New Republic since Daala had left the Cluster of black holes, where she had guarded a secret imperial facility for weapons-research for over ten years.

"Very well. What about our shipyards at Mon Cal?"

"The damage caused by Daala's forces will be repaired within the next two months, but it would be wise to distribute our ship-building efforts over a few other systems."

"When will the ships of the NewClass-program be ready?" Garm Bel Iblis asked. "After all, we´ll have a lot of ships to replace in the next few years."

Many of the vessels still in service in the New Republics fleet were older vessels, modified from civilian vessels for military purposes during the time of the Rebellion and a huge number of more modern ships had been destroyed as front-line-ships during the struggles of the last years. To say it bluntly the forces of the New Republic were spread as thin as possible.

"The officials from the RepublicEngineeringCorporation have told us that the first vessels will leave the drydocks within the year. After that they expect the progress to accelerate considerable."

"What leads us to the reason for this new arming-up-program, when we could use the money for better purposes." Doman Beruss stated with a dry voice.

General Dodonna rose from his seat. Supporting himself on his cane he walked towards a wall of the room, where he activated a hologram-projector. A large three-dimensional image of the galaxy appeared.

"Yes. The galactic situation as a whole. Although we have some justified reason to call us the successors of the Old Republic and the Empire, we are far away from a comparable position.

As you are all aware of, the remnants of the Empire are for one ruled by a council made up of Moffs and remains of the Imperial Ruling Council," a wedge-shaped territory from the inner rim towards the outer rim and a few sparks of the core were highlightened in orange, "controlling perhaps an eighth of the former Empire. This fraction was under the military leadership of Grand Admiral Thrawn, when he returned from the Unknown Regions.

Then we have several imperial warlords, who don´t recognize the authority of the Moffs Council and who have managed to stay in control over their territories. Some of them are clustered in the deep core, others spread from the core towards the inner rim." A number of red sparks was highlighted. "Together both fractions still control a fifth of the Empire at its height. The rest are independent systems and us."

"Fortunatly what is left of the Empire has its hands full with each other and their efforts to stay in control over their systems. Otherwise they could cause us serious trouble." added Crix Madine. "Not to forget that many of the independent worlds are fighting the Empire on their own. Dornea for example."

"But it won´t be like that forever." Leia stated.

"Yes." Dodonna pressed another button and a number of crimson red lines from the core of the galaxy into the deep core became visible. "There are only a few safe passages in hyperspace to the systems of the deep core that are now controlled by imperial warlords. We have fleets stationed at all these lanes, so the warlords in the deep core are successfully isolated from the rest of the galaxy. What might be a problem in the future are some of the warlords outside the deep core and the part of the Empire ruled by the Moffs as soon as they get a new military leader, although the warlords are the prime problem as soon as they stop fighting each other."

"Then why don´t we deal with them as long as they are occupied with themself?" asked one of the newly elected Senators.

"Impossible in our current condition." answered Ackbar. "May I remind you that the Imperials have turned most of the worlds they control into nearly unpenetratable fortresses. We would have to face significiant losses if we start to attack one of them and a siege would bind out forces in one place for weeks or months."

"What means we would become an easy prey for one of the other warlords." added Leia. "If we like it or not, we´ll have to concentrate on our defenses and build up enough forces to do both. Defend our space and liberate the fortress-worlds. If we are lucky the warlords will continue fighting each other and waste their ressources and the problem will solve itself or maybe some of the surpressed populations rebel against them, if we support them properly."

Nobody of them knew that they would have to deal with the situation they were discussing sooner than expected.

------

Almost a year later

The "Lusankya" and her escorts dropped out of hyperspace one astronomical unit away from Coruscant. The nineteen kilometer long commandship was accompanied by one Imperator-Class-Star Destroyer, five MC80 - Star Cruisers of the A and B variant, built by the Mon Calamari and several picket-cruisers, frigates and corvettes from different manufactors.

New Republic General Wedge Antilles looked out of the huge windows of the bridge of the huge warship. It felt different, compared to the cockpit of a starfighter, even after all this time.

He had so much space to move.

Wedge wondered why he had been ordered to return to Coruscant, there was still a huge number of renegade star destroyers out there. Star Destroyers that had belonged to Admiral Daala's armada and that hadn´t joinded the Empire after the woman's defeat and the loss of the "Knight-Hammer". Some of them had turned pirates, others had became mercenaries.

It had been the task of Wedge and his combat-group to hunt them down and they still wern´t finished. And now they were back at the New Republics capital, where he would hopefully get an explenation for what was going on.

--------------

Less then one hour later he was guided into a comfortable conference-room at the New Republics fleet headquater. Admiral Ackbar was there, as well as Admiral Draysson. Also there to Wedges great surprise were Derek "Hobbie", Klieven, who was now in command over Rogue-Squadron and Page from the Republic's SpecialForces.

After short greetings Draysson came straight to the point.

"Gentlemen, you all know what great threat the various warlords who control the remnants of the Empire are to the New Republic. The last campeign of Admiral Daala has proved this dramatically. And although she only managed to get control over the limited ressources of the warlords located in the deep core she caused a lot of damage. To much if you ask me.

But since the deep core is very poor in ressources, its rulers were killed by Daala and we control the few safe lanes towards there, we consider this threat to be removed. According to the newest reports, Vizeadmiral Pellaeon, Daala's former second-in-command, has abandoned the deep core totally and left it with the remaining warlords on its own. Pellaeon has now joinded the imperial fraction that is ruled by a council of Moffs, since its the most legetimite successor of the Empire.

We are sure, that as soon as they have gathered their strenght again, they will start a new campeign."

"A campeign we can deal with, given enough time." stated Ackbar.

"So what is the problem?" asked Hobbie.

"The problem are the remaining warlords. We were nearly unable to deal with Admiral Daala's deep-core-armada, General Antilles task-force consisted of the only ships we could spare to deal with them. In a few months we will again be strong enough to deal with a new imperial campeign, but if one or several warlords try to exploit such a situation ... ." Draysson didn´t finished his sentence. It wasn´t necessary.

"So what you want to say is, we can deal with the empire and we can deal with the warlords, but we can´t deal with empire AND warlords at the same time." summarized Page.

"Not in terms of conventional warfare." confirmed Ackbar. "Unfortunately there have been several delays with the NewClass-program, otherwise we wouldn't have to worry about future acts of war."

Antilles looked questioningly at the Mon Calamari. Not in terms of conventional warfare ... . He suddenly had an idea where this briefing would lead.

"Could it be that you want to make use of my, lets say experiences in gurilla-warfare and more subversive actions?" he asked.

"Exactly that." confirmed Draysson. "Your successes with a few fighter-squadrons against Ysanne Isard and Zjini were remarkable. At this point of time you are the most experienced officer we have available in this regard. You and Commander Page. Unfortunatly the members of Wraith-Squadron are needed on other posts, so you will have to start from the beginning.
We want you to infiltrate the territories of the warlords and to keep them busy. Disturb the trade inside their domains, eliminate their key-personal, destroy their weapons- and shipbuilding facilities, short do everything possible to prevent them from becoming a bigger danger to us, than they already are."

Wedge leaned back in his seat and rolled his eyes. "Great. And i thought I´m finished with this kind of dirty work."

"I understand your feelings perfectly well." tried Ackbar to comfort the younger man. "If you don´t want to, you don´t have to do this."

"Ackbar is right."confirmed Draysson. "But if you say no, we have to find another candidate. Somebody whose chances in succeding are perhaps less good than yours. There might be a high prize to ... ."

"Alright, alright." interrupted Wedge. "I´ll do it. Me and my sense for responsibility." he cursed. He glanced at Hobbie and Page. "Let me guess, you two already volunteered."

"Yes." grinned Hobbie. "And Page owns me a beer."

"For what?"

"I had this little bet with Cmd. Klievan, where he said you would accept the task." explained Page.

"And you ... ?"

"Well, i said you wouldn´t accept, because you became complacent cruising around with the Lusankaya." admitted Page.

"I´ll show you who is complacent."grunted Wedge Antilles. He turned back to the two superior officers, who had watched the exchange with amusement. "As you can see my suffering has already begun."

"It will vanish as soon as you start with the task at hand." promised Ackbar.

------

Wedge pulled his X-Wing into a sharp turn, evading a proton-torpedo fired at him. He accelerated his fighter, but couldn´t escape the fighter on his heels. Whoever was piloting the hostile engine was good.

Very good.

A number of laserblasts smashed into his aftshields, bringing them down to twenty percent. Wedge Antilles decided to change tactics and started a massive deacceleration manouver, while rolling his fighter around its axis. This way he escaped the next volley of laserfire and in the next moment the hostile X-Wing had passed him.

Getting a clear target-look Wedge shot a proton-torpedo after his adversarie, but the other pilot had already reacted and directed all energy into his shields.

For a short moment the cold void of space was littered by the explosion of the torpedos warhead, but as the ball of energy vanished the other X-Wing was still there.

However he must have inflicted some kind of damage, because the other fighter lay dead in space, drifting numbly around. But something wasn´t right here, Wedges sensors got still conflicting signals. Perhaps because of the EM-radiation after the torpedo-explosion.

Or because the enemy X-Wing was still able to jamm his sensors.

Accelerating again Wedge moved in for the kill, careful to stay out of the direction the enemies lasercannons were pointing.

A beep was the only warning that he was in a targeting-look, according to the sound that of a proton-torpedo.

Damned, where did that come from?

And it wasn´t only one, but two torpedos, that were homing in on him from behind and from different sides. And while he was trying to evade them the drifting X-Wing powered up his engines and moved against him, firing with all cannons.

And before the world turned white Wedge realised what his adversarie had done.

Then everything went black.

---------

After a few moments the light returned and Wedge let out a sigh of relief. He felt the sweat dripping down his back. "Damned", he thought, "those simulators get more realistic every year." It hadn´t happened in a long time that he had been shot down in a simulated dog-fight.

"Getting old, aren´t we." mocked a low voice inside his head. "Or perhaps you have been a General aboard the Lusankya for too long."

Wedge Antilles climbed out of the Simulator. In the background he could already see technicians and instructors whispering to each other, probably talking about his defeat.

He sighed again. For the task he had been ordered to do, he had to put a team together. For the kind of hidden warfare he and the Admirality had in mind, he would have two, perhaps three squadrons of starfighters and a few supporting ships.

Nothing to suspicous.

Rogue-Squadron was already in. This part of the enterprise was commanded by Derek "Hobbie" Klievan. As second starfighter-squadron General Antilles would have preferred the "Wraiths", but as Admiral Draysson had already stated, they were not available.

Because of this he was now searching for other pilots, good enough to melt them together into a squadron for such a dangerous mission, although he would have been glad to simple take an already existing squadron. In that case he wouldn´t have to tear already formed teams apart.

Hobbie, Wes Janson and he had searched through a lot of files, but since paper (or electronical circuits in the age they lived in) was patient, they had decided to test the candidates personally.

Which was why he had spent the last few hours in a simulator. The last three people had been extraordinary good, not as good as some of the Rogues, but only few steps away from that level. And his last adversarie ..., well he had been killed and not the other way around.

Antilles stepped down the ladder when a hand was put on his shoulder.

"Hello Wedge."said a familiar voice. Wedge turned around and smiled.

"Luke. What are you doing here?"

"Just visiting. And looking how things go." Wedge noticed the still sorrowful look on Luke's face.

"Still no sign from Callista?" he asked gentle.

"No, not a single one." confirmed Luke.

"Damned woman." thought Antilles.

Callista was a Jedi-Knight from the times before the Empire. Her spirit had survived aboard a disabled battlestation of the Empire, called the "Eye of Palpatine", she had helped to sabotage. When this station had been reactivated by some imperial renegades Luke Skywalker and two of his students had prevented the "Eye" from executing its program. During this incident Callista's spirit had taken over the body of the Jedi-Apprentice Cray Mingla with permission of the same, who didn´t wanted to leave her mate behind. A short romance had developed between the female Jedi and the Jedi-Master, but thanks to circumstances unknown Callista had lost her Force-powers and not long ago she simply had vanished.

Antilles felt pity for his long-time friend. Everytime he got involved with a woman - bang, it didn´t take long and the dung was hitting the exhaust. "She doesn´t need Force-powers to be happy with Luke, but no." he thought.

"And you?"asked Luke Skywalker. "How is Iella?"

"Fine. Its only I haven´t seen her much for quite some time and that isn´t going to change for the next weeks."

"Yes, I´ve seen you´re quite busy." confirmed Luke taking a look around.

"Right. Believe it or not, I´m flying again." stated Wedge with a wide grin.

"I´ve seen it." answered Luke grinning back.

"Wait a moment." asked the General. "It hasn´t been you who killed me in the last run." It was fitting for Luke to do something that crazy.

"No." stated another voice, a female voice. "That was me."

Wedge turned around. Seeing the woman for the first time he had difficulties not to stare at her, although he wasn´t sure if it was because of her age (or her lack of ) or her beauty. Tall, slender, with high Checkbones, black hair and greyblue eyes. She wore a green pilotuniform and the rank-insignia of a major. Next to the woman stood Hobbie grinning like mad.

"And you are?" Wedge Antilles asked.

The woman saluted. "My apologies, Sir. Major Carzeta Myntrela, "Clawfingers"."

"At ease." stated Antilles. "We are all front-pigs."

The low voice in his head was back and reminded him that the last time he had seen a Major of that age had been during the darkest times of the Rebellion, how much years had passed since he had been that young and that the New Republic had really to be desperate, if ... .

"If you wish, Sir."

"I wish."

"Wedge, this has to be our lucky day. Every single one of Major Myntrelas squadron is fit for our little enterprise and we selected twelve other good pilots as replacements. I suggest we take them all in."

"We still have to see if our people can work together." made Myntrela clear. "There is a lot of work to do. And since no one of us knows what our mission will be ... ?" she let the rest of the sentence open.

"I´ll explain everything in the briefing." stated Wedge. "Luke? You´re coming with us?"

The Jedi-Master nodded his shoulders. "Well, why not."

On the way to the briefing room Wedge, Hobbie, Luke Skywalker and Carzeta Myntrela had enought time to talk some more with each other.

"Myntrela, Myntrela ... ." wondered Hobbie. "Are you somehow related to Civas Myntrela, from KuatDriveYards ?"

Carzeta looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You heard of my father?"

"Who not. Every New Republic Starfigther pilot prayes for him." blurted Hobbie out.

"Let me guess." answered Carzeta coolly. "For the commission of the Anti-Starfighter-frigates of the Lancer-Class. To slow, to expansive and underarmed for capital-ship-combat. One of the worst investments of the Empire."

"Ah, yes." stuttered Hobbie. It seemed as if Carzeta didn´t held her father in high regard.

Luke Skywalker laughed. "Of course for us pilots the flaws of the Lancer are a blessing, but from the personal point of view of a honourable businessman its an emberassment. Please accept our apologies."

"Accepted. After all its not your fault." stated Carzeta mildly.

"But what is a member of one of the richest families of the galaxy doing in the New Republic starfighter corps? Especially form a system that has always had close connections to the Empire?" asked Wedge Antilles. "Why do you fight for the New Republic?"

"A female member of one of the richest families of the galaxy." corrected Carzeta. "As one of them I´m nothing more than a pawn in the families dynastic plans. Oh, yes, I would live in incredible wealth and luxury, but a golden cage is still a cage. And I´m here to fight for freedom and peace, not the New Republic." She now looked Wedge straight in the eye. "You have fought to end the tyranny of the Empire and to restore freedom in the galaxy. You succeded and now its my generations obligation to make sure that things stay this way."

"You mean as soon as the Republic gurantees no longer peace and freedom you would turn against it?" asked Luke Skywalker.

"Wouldn´t you do the same?"asked Carzeta back. "Or are things just different, now that your sister is in power?"

Luke was tempted to argue back, but fortunatly Wedge changed the topic. "I think we can all agree, that as long as Leia is in charge, she will do everything that things don´t become worse. But what I wanted to ask, Major. How did you get the idea to sent two of your torpedos out cold, even before you passed me in the fighter-simulation?"

To the three mens great surprise Carzetas features softend and her eyes got a dreamy gaze. "A guy I met years ago gave me a ride to Coruscant. I told him about my future plans and we talked a lot about fighter-piloting, tactics and strategies. He explained me a lot of things and gave me a lot of tips. Part of my fast carreer I made thanks to his advice."

"Ah, yes." stated the three men unisono. Commander Myntrelas attitude traited that there had been more than talking about starfighters and tactics between her and this guy.

"Do we know this man?" asked Luke carefully, but Carzeta only shook her shoulders.

"Who knows. He claimed his name to be Watto Tarashon, but when I did some research after arriving here on Coruscant it showed that there exists no person with this name."

"Probably a mercanary. Or a defected imperial pilot." guessed Hobbie.

"Yes, perhaps. But somehow he didn´t looked like an ordinary pilot or mercanary to me." stated Carzeta. It seemed as if she wanted to say more, but was interrupted by Wedge Antilles.

"Well, here we are." the General said, when they reached the briefing-room.

-----------------

More than fifty men and women of different species had assembled in the large briefing-room. While Carzeta Myntrelas "Clawfingers" wore green-grey pilotuniforms, the pilots of rogue-squadron and the twelve pilots picked for the third squadron wore the more commen orange suits. Three officers wore the uniforms of Navy-Officers and the rest consisted of Page's Commando-team.

Luke Skywalker, Commander Klievan and Major Myntrela hurried to take place, while Wedge stepped to the podium on the front side of the room.

"Gentlebeings, fellow comrades." he greeted. "Although all of us would prefer it to be otherwise, the war against the successors of the Empire is far from over, as especially Admiral Daala's last campeign has shown.

Our political leadership and the Admirality are especially concerned about these three Gentlemen among the imperial warlords."

Wedge activated a hologram.

"Moff Arisk Harraged. His sector contains seven-hundred-thirty-nine inhabited worlds and his fleet contains three squadrons of Star Destroyers. Fortunatly, as the size of his sector implies, they are spread about a very vast area. Thanks to the ressources of his sector and its wealthy inhabitans Harraged is one of the most richest warlords. Unfortunatly he can be called an "honest" Imperial, what means that he doesn´t use the wealth of his sector for his own pleasure, but to strenghten the defences of his worlds and to solidify his power."

"Sounds not that bad." interrupted Corran Horn. "Compared to some other persons we encountered."

"Don´t bet on it." made Wedge Antilles clear. "He still rules with the iron fist of a typical Moff, but as long as he doesn´t crosses certain lines the inhabitans of his sector have less motivation to uprise against him. Problem number two is, that we believe Harraged to be ambitious enough to be not satisfied with the territory he controls now. Our intelligence people are sure that as soon as he has solidified his power enough to feel secure, he will look for new worlds to conquer.

Warlord Number two is High Admiral Char Chordal. During his time in the Imperial Navy he commanded a task-force similiar to Darth Vaders death-squadron and was mainly occupied with the conquest of new worlds for the Empire. In the three years before Endor he conquered more than five-hundred worlds, among them worlds like Hovall, Wefen or Lisikya, where he ruthlessly destroyed the capital cities to make an example. The total number of victims by these massacres is around eighty billion dead people. Short before Endor he and his task-force were sent to the Corrol-Satrapie to support the local sector-fleet. Chordal was promoted to High Admiral and put in charge over all military forces of this sector. After the battle of Endor the Corrol-Satrapies original Moff tried to free his sector from the grip of the Empire and to join the Alliance, but Chordal prevented this and took control himself. Until the end of the cloned Palpatine he kept the Corrol-Satrapie part of the Empire and is now on his own.

Chordals sector contains around fourhundred worlds and his sector-fleet contains two squadrons of ISDs."

"You said he took his task-force with him." stated Gavin Darklighter, member of Rogue-Squadron and cousin of Biggs Darklighter. "With what kind of ships will we have to deal ?"

Wedge Antilles hesitated for a moment. "One Interdictor-Destroyer, five ISD-IIs and his flaggship, an eight kilometer long Superstardestroyer." He pressed another button and the holo showed an image of the "Yagghart".

Silence filled the room, while some of the people assembled exchanged concerned looks.

"Three squadrons against a fleet of Star Destroyers and a Superiority-Class-Battle-Cruiser?" asked Carzeta Myntrela with disbelief. "I didn´t knew this enterprise was going to be a suicide mission."

The young woman was hit by several curious looks.

"What do you mean "Superiority-Class-Battle-Cruiser"?"asked Wes Janson.

"Thats the designation of this class of ship." snorted Carzeta Myntrela with contempt. "The term "Superstardestroyer" is slang for every kind of warship bigger than an ISD." A grim smile appeared on the face of the young woman. "I should know, after all my family builds those ships."

"Well, either if Superstardestroyer or Superiority-Class-Battle-Cruiser." Corran Horn nearly stuttered at the long term. "We dealt with such behemoths before and defeated them and will do so again." He threw an arrogant glare at the female Major.

"Maybe." Carzeta glared back. "But I don´t think this time you - we - will have the support of Star Destroyers and countless other ships like with the "Lusankya" at Thyferra or help from the inside like with Zinjis "Iron Fist". And wasn´t it a fleet of Hapan-ships that destroyed the "Iron Fist" in its drydock at Dathomir?"

Wedge had to hide a smile, when he watched Corran blush. It was a good sign that Major Myntrela didn´t let herself be intimidated by older or more famous officers. And to see Corran's arrogance get a scratch wasn´t a thing you witnessed every day.

Inside his seat Luke Skywalker was tempted to chuckle. The blunt and straight ways of this young Major to express herself reminded him a little bit of Mara Jade. For a short moment he wondered where the former Hand of Emperor Palpatine was now and what she was doing.

"Lets get back to business." tried General Antilles to calm the situation. "Nobody expects us to engage them in a direct battle, since it would be a fruitless exercise. What we are ordered to do is to disturb the enemies infrastructure and to sabotage his offensive capabilities. If you don´t mind I will continue with the last of the three."

The image of a third man appeared:

"Odiin Vaskal, Moff of the Elten-Sector with four-hundred-seventy worlds, guarded by three squadrons of ISDs. His intelligence service has managed to prevent any kind of infiltration attempt by our agents. For the task that is expected from us he seems to be the most dangerous adversarie."

The holo vanished.

"Gentlebeings, every single one of the three men I have you told about hates the other two with a vengeance. All three of them are increasing their fleets and armies like crazy. The best solution for us would of course be, if they eliminate each other, but as long as an unstable balance of power remains this isn´t going to happen. But they could use their additional forces against the New Republic. If one of them starts to fight us the other two will follow this example to get as much of the cake for themself, instead of fighting the beginner of the war."

"If i understand correctly, General." asked Inryi Forge. "You want to tell us, if number one attacks us, number two isn´t going to attack number one for fear of getting attacked by number three, while two and three will attack the New Republic, too, to prevent number one from becoming to powerful on our costs."

"Correct. Complicated, but correct." stated Wedge Antilles. "Not to forget the situation with the remnant of the Empire. The moment they think to have discovered a weakness and they will be at our throats again."

"Against whom of them will we strike first?" asked Wes Janson.

"We will start with Vascal." explained Wedge Antilles. "Believe it or not, a few months ago he has introduced some kind of election-law in his sector. Everybody who has served for five years in his forces will be allowed to participate in the political power."

"What kind of crazy idea is this?" asked Hobbie, eyes wide open with disbelief. "Democratic and political rights in exchange for military service?"

"It might be crazy, but it works." stated Page. "The number of volunteers has increased dramatically in the Elton-Sector since then."

"How do you know that?" asked Corran Horn. "I thought we have no sources of information inside Vaskals sector."

"Why should he keep something like this a secret?" asked Carzeta Myntrela back. "I even bet he uses this fact as part of his propaganda, to show what benelovent ruler he is. For most beings it will make a lot of sense. If you want something, you have to do something to deserve it."

"But not freedom or political rights of codetermination." protested Luke Skywalker. "Those are given rights for every being."

"On the contrary. Billions of beings over the entire history had to fight and sacrificed their lives for those privileges. They are no given rights by some deity or the force, you have to fight for them and to fight to protect them. Otherwise we wouldn´t be here."

"Changes nothing that they are for every being in the galaxy." tried Inryi Forge to support Luke Skywalker.

"Nice rhetoric. And so typical for politicians. Watto has once said as soon as Mon Mothma and her peers are in power and feel safely established the drive of the New Republic to free others will slow down, if not stop totally. Tell me, will the New Republic free the slaves of the Hutts, when we are finished with the Empire? Or the beings enslaved in the Senex-Sector? Or why did we try to negotiate with the criminals on Kessel and not with the Empire?"

"Would you please shut up. All of you." ordered General Antilles. "Both of you have your points, but its not our job to make politics, its our job to execute it. Now we have a mission to prepare and that means a lot of work. You are all dismissed."

The room emptied. Most soldiers not from "Clawfinger"-squadron threw curious or angry glances at Carzeta Myntrela.

Corran Horn left with Gavin Darklighter the room. "Can you believe she is on our side?" the former CorSec-officer asked. "I wonder who this Watto is?" stated Gavin. Then they were gone.

Carzeta sighed and met with Skywalker, Antilles and Hobbie. "Seems I made a few new friends." she stated dry.

"Well, you left no doubt about your believes." confirmed Luke Skywalker.

"My apologies, if I somehow insulted your sister with my remark about Mon Mothma and her peers. It wasn´t my intention to accuse anybody of anything. Its just that I have heard such bantha-podoo like how good we are and such, for my entire live at home and its hypocrisy sickens me."

"You didn´t insulted me or my sister." explained Luke Skywalker.

"Thank you." The young woman turned to Wedge. "General Antilles, I ..., if you think I´m going to be a problem for the mission, I mean ..., if your pilots can´t or don´t want to work with me... . I would understand."

Wedge grinned. "They will learn to accept you, believe me. They will get used to you."

"If you say so." Carzeta was clearly reliefed. She saluted and left the room.

The three remaining men were silent for a moment.

"An impressive young lady." stated Hobbie finally.

"With a very sharp tongue." added Wedge.

"You have to read her file again or to talk with a member of her squadron. They would die for her and follow her to hell and back."

"Yes, she has spirit and passion." thought Luke aloud. "It takes a lot to speak this way in the presence of an superior officer. She can really inspire and motivate people. Its no wonder she became a Major that young. I´m sure we are going to hear a lot of her in the next few years."

"About that I have no doubt." Antilles looked questioningly at Luke. "And she really didn´t insulted you?"

"How? If she´s right her accusion was justified and if she´s wrong I should be able to disprove her. Although I find it a little sad, that somebody that young is so cynical."

"I think the good Major Myntrela would say "I´m not cynical, i´m realistic." stated Hobbie.

"Maybe." answered Luke Skywalker. "If you would excuse me now." And with that he left.

After a few moments Wedge turned to Hobbie. "So what do you think?"

Hobbie just shook his shoulders. "I´m not sure."

"Sure about what?"

"If we should try to couple Luke Skywalker or Gavin Darklighter with the good Major Myntrela."

"Are you joking? She would rip Gavin to pieces in a matter of minutes."

"Then it has to be Luke."

"Maybe." mused Wedge. "But tell me. Is it just me or are you too reminded of Mara Jade, by the commander of the Clawfingers?"

---

[FTeik]

Here is the next part. Enjoy.



The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 5


While the New Republic started to train its best soldiers to prepare for a deadly mission against the more dangerous leftovers of the Galactic Empire, another kind of traing was taking place in a huge gym on a planet that belonged to Odiin Vaskal's sector .

The room had easily a height of ten meters. Metal bars and ropes with a lenght between one and five meters were hanging from the ceiling. Climbing between them like a little ape was the zabrakian girl Miney. She had to follow a certain path through the ropes and bars, while the ropes were harmless, some of the bars were heated or would hit her with electricity if she ever touched them. In that case she would drop ten meters to the floor if she didn´t manage to took hold of another rope and would have to start again.

Sometimes she asked herself if her life had really improved that much, especially during training seccions like this one, but every single meal was enough to remember her, how much she had gained. Enough food every day, medical care, clean clothes, a room with a warm, soft bed all hers alone, even thirty minutes every day she was free to do what she wanted. The rest of the time was spent with learning and physical exercises.

Every morning she had to stand up at five a clock. Endurance-training. Then breakfeast: Mostly tea or milk and fruits or bread with cheese. Then educational lessons. How to write and read, the basics of mathematics, after those physics, chemistry and biology, more mathematics, teachings in engineering and other technical matters, finally lunch at one o´clock in the afternoon similiar to breakfeast. In the afternoon piloting, shooting and different kinds of hand-to-hand-combat and other weapons training thought by Giswad. Then normaly three hours training by her Master in the use of the Force, how to lift objects, how to meditate, Force-healing and control over her body. After that, before dinner, she had a half of an hour for herself and after dinner the time was used for what Miney called homework. When she was finished normally around ten o´clock in the evening, the young girl was totally exhausted and slept like a stone till the next morning.

And her Master thought her how to hate, how to focus her anger.

"Never forget." her Master had told her. "Once the Old Republic ruled most of our galaxy and there were tent-housand of Jedi-Knights. They had twenty-five millenia of time to grow and to improve the life for everybody, but since they didn´t cared for the commen people and the Jedi used the Force only in passive ways, things stayed the way they were. There was no development, no progress, no advances and so they became complacent and self-satisfied. Because of this they failed and were whipped out."

Miney had then asked, if the Empire had been an improvement.

"No" her Master had answered. "Unfortunatly not. Many who supported the Empire had hoped that things would turn to the better and in some ways they have. But Palpatine, despite all his political genious, despite all the power he managed to took hold of, was only intersted in himself. His Empire was only a twisted version of the Old Republic with a few changes at the top of the government, mimimal changes in the greater picture. His New Order was forced upon the majority of people, they never got a chance to understand what ideas are the foundation of the order we try to achive, to embrance the values we stand for.

To do him justice most of the Sith never understood it either."

"Understood what?" asked the young girl.

"We, who have the power and the knowledge have the responsibility to act, to rule and guide the beings inferior to us. But they will only accept our authority if we rule for the better of them. After all, why should they accept the reign of an autocrate if they not benefit from it. There has to be a balance."

"Oh, yes, there has to be a balance." thought Miney, while hanging from a rope. She had finally managed to find the path along the ceiling. "For example between those exercises and your talkings."

It was hard enough to exercise the tasks her Master had ordered her to perform, but listening and concentrating to his explenations and teachings at the same time was even more difficult. Miney was thankful that her Master never showed anger or disappointment at her. If she didn´t understood something he explained it again and again. And if she didn´t managed an exercise with success, she had to try it again and again.

Sometimes his patience with her was inhuman.

"I´ve done it, Master." she cried out loud with pride.

"Excellent, my young apprentice." praised Lucan Vader. "And now move back without the light."

And with that he turned the light off.

---

Lucan Vader waited a few moments, but his senses told him that his young apprentice was still in her original position.

"Is there a problem?" he finally asked.

"Master, I can´t see anything." came the weak response from Miney.

"Remember, your eyes can deceive you so don´t trust them. Rely on what you know, not what you can see." ordered the son of Darth Vader with a mild voice. His sharp ears picked up the small sigh of Miney and then the girl started to move. Lucan suddenly remembered an event from his childhood and a sad expression crossed his face.

He had been only three or four years old and ... .

---

"Master Lucan, please. Where are you?" The prissy voice of the nanny-droid sounded through the great entrancehall and Lucan supressed a chuckle to not give away his position. "Please, Master Lucan, your father is going to shred me to pieces and what your mother is going to do to me, I don´t want to imagine. Please, ... ."

The droid left the hall, still searching for the small boy. If the machine had only once turned its head up to the ceiling and especially to the top of the huge door, it would have discovered the young son of Darth Vader clinging to the ornamented structure of wood in a height of six meters.

Lucan didn´t cared what was going to happen to the droid or that he was in a position that could easily mean death for ordinary children, he had faith in himself and his abilities, but that wasn´t important at the moment. Important was something else.

Daddy was coming.

After an absence of nearly three months daddy was finally coming back and Lucan was eager to show what he had learned during that time.

Hearing the heavy footsteps and the wellknown breathing the four year old hold his breath, waiting for his father to enter the room through the door below him.

The tall figure of Darth Vader stepped into sight. When the dark Lord of the Sith suddenly stopped in his steps Lucan opened his grip and let himself drop to the floor, screaming an old battle-cry he had once heard in a holo-movie.

"Attayaaaaa!!!"

With incredible speed Lucans father turned around, stretching out his arms he cought the falling child before it could hit him or drop to the floor. Darth Vader whirled Lucan around and the small boy squeaked with joy. Finally carrying Lucan with one arm, the Sith-Lord hold his son close to his mask.

"Hello, son." Darth Vader greeted the boy with humor in his voice.

Lucan looked into the eyelenses of the mask of his father, a mask that was the symbol of love, protection and caring to him.

"Hello, daddy." he greeted back.

"You could have hurt yourself with that stunt." stated Darth Vader. "You would have hit the floor and the droids could have cleaned up what would have been left of you."

"Oh, no." explained Lucan proud. "I would have stopped my fall short before hitting the floor. And if not, you would have caught me."

"I could have thought you to be an assassin and greeted you with my lightsabre instead with my outstretched arms."

"But you didn´t, because you knew it to be me. By the way, how?"

"I know you, son." stated Darth Vader dry. "And how did you know, that I would catch you?"

"I know you, daddy." answered Lucan with a smug smile. "How long will you be with mom and me?" the boy asked.

"Two days." answered Darth Vader. Seeing the disappointed look on Lucans face he added. "I´m sorry. But i have duties to execute for the emperor."

Lucan scoled. "Emperor. Hate him." Vaders grip suddenly increased in strenght. "Never again say that aloud. I understand your disappointment, but you have to keep such thoughts to yourself. It would be to dangerous if Palpatine is going to know about them. Is that clear?"

Realizing the change in the mood of his father Lucan answered with a firm voice. "Yes, Sir. I won´t endanger our family."

"Very good." answered the boy's father. The fact that his son was smart enough to recognize a possible danger at this early age filled him with pride. But he also wanted to explain the necessarity of his absence to his son. "You have to understand, that there are millions of other boys like you out there."

"They are not like me." protested Lucan. "Mom told me i´m something special."

This interruption caused the Dark Lord to grunt. "They are like you ... ."

"And you told me, too."

"They are like you in the way that they love their fathers and that their fathers care about them, like i care about you. They and their families are the citicens of the Empire. Its the duty of every government to ensure the security and the prosperity of its citicens. But the galaxy is a very dangerous place and because of that we have to get control over it. Something you control isn´t a danger to you. And to get the control, we need power. This means ships, armies, policeforces and so on, things people can see and therefore will believe in. Unfortunately there are those, who think that this is a threat to their freedom or who even want to participate in the political power. Why they think thousand people can make a better desicion than only ten or one will forever be beyond me. Do you understand that?"

Lucan saluted. "Yes, Sir!" Then his face got a questioning look. "What does this have to do with you?"

"As i said there are those who disagree with me and the emperor. And they are not only talking about their disagreement, they are acting in ways that threaten the peace. They rebel and cause uprising. And with the peace they threaten all those boys and their daddies who care about them, too. And its my job to stop them."

"Because you are the best?" asked Lucan.

"Yes."

The small boy thought about that for a moment. "So its because of those rebels and not because of the emperor that you will be away from me and mom?"

"You can say so." answered Darth Vader. "But not for the next two days. Those days i will spent with you. Promised."

This caused the little child's face to brighten. "When i´m grown up and a warrior like you, Dad, i will help you to stop those rebels. Promised."

"When you are grown up you hopefully won´t have to worry about those rebels." answered Darth Vader. "You'll have to worry about other things." he thought.

"But if there are still rebels when i´m grown i will help you." insisted the boy.

"And for that you have to get your sleep, young man." added a female voice. Lucan and his father's heads turned around.

"Mom!" squeaked the boy in protest.

"No protests. Its already late in the evening and you should sleep in your bed." Then the tall woman concentrated on Vader. "Mylord, welcome home!" She made a small bow to her husband.

"Mylady." answered Vader.

Lucans mother stepped closer and lifted her son out of his fathers arms. Stroking gently through his hair she placed the small boy in the arms of Nilas Vortigern, who had stood in the background and ordered him to bring her son to bed.

The last thing the boy heard before leaving the great hall was his father talking to his mother.

"... and Palpatine is eager to know about the progresses of your research."

---

"Arrrgggghhhhh."

Miney's scream caused Lucan Vader to leave the memories behind and to concentrate on the present. Reaching out with the Force he slowed the fall of the girl enough so she didn´t get hurt. Then he turned the light on.

Miney was levitating only centimeters above the floor of the gym. The body of the girl was shaking and an expression of panic was on her face.

"Its alright." the son of Darth Vader shouted. "You can open your eyes now."

Slowly the redskinned girl opened her eyes. "I´m alive." she muttered.

"Of course you are alive. I told you i would watch over you. Now what went wrong?" demanded Lucan to know.

"I missed the last rope."

"Why?"

Silence filled the room for a few moments. Miney didn´t wanted to tell her master what went wrong, but she knew there was no point in lying to him.

"I was afraid." she finally admitted.

"You feared to miss the rope." tried Lucan Vader to confirm.

"Yes."

"And because of your fear you didn´t concentrated enough. Because of THAT you missed the rope. How often have i told you, its you who has to control your feelings, not the other way around? Fear is a feeling like any other feeling. You feel hunger, you feel heat, you feel cold. Fear doesn´t kill you. Now do it again."

"Yes, Master." With that Miney walked back to the wall of the gym where she started to climb back to the ceiling. Only then Lucan finally turned around to face the man who had entered the room.

"Yes, Nilan?"

"A report from Geven Nakal." stated the old Majordomus. "Thirty of our ships will be completed in a matter of days. And from our spy-net there is a report that the New Republic is up to something. Something against our new ally."

He handed Lucan a datapadd. The son of Darth Vader acknowledged Vortigerns efforts with a nod and started to read.

If the New Republic was up to something, he would have to be prepared against them.

---

Stepping through the entrance of the expansive looking restaurant Carzeta Myntrela wondered if she was doing the right thing.

But an invitation for dinner from an superior officer wasn´t something to be ignored and Carzeta had worked hard to achive her current position, despite circumstances that would have hindered the progress of other officers. Other officers, but not her. If Leia Organa Solo had become a senator in the Imperial Senate with eighteen ... .

Not that she minded the reason for those circumstances. Carzeta admitted to herself that she was more curious than concerned, it was said Wedge Antilles was happily married. Even if that wouldn't have been the case the young Commander had gotten the impression, that the General wasn´t the man to start a relationship with one of his inferior officers.

So there had to be another reason for this invitation.

Lost in her thoughts Carzeta failed to evade another woman crossing her way. "Uhmmm, excuse me." she tried to apologize, being slightly embaressed.

"No reason to do so. After all it was my fault." answered the other woman. "I should have really looked, where I was walking." She looked over Carzeta with a questioning look. "Let me guess, you are Carzeta Myntrela?"

"Yes." answered the young Commander. "But how do you know ... ?"

"Force sake, where are my manners. I´m Iella Antilles-Wessiri, Wedges wife. He told me about you. And even if not, I once worked for CorSec." Iella blinked at Carzeta.

Carzeta couldn´t resist, she just had to smile. "So there are more people than the General?"

"Yes, of course, in one of the backrooms. Disappointed?" asked Iella with mockery in her voice.

"Reliefed would be closer to the truth." stated Carzeta.

"Then lets go. There is no need to let ones friends wait."

---

Carzeta followed Iella to the backroom of the restaurant.

Already assembled were General Wedge Antilles, Ltd. Corran Horn and his wife Mirax Terrik, Captain Tycho Celchu, Wes Janson, Gavin Darklighter and ... Luke Skywalker.

"Finally, our guest of honour." shouted Wes Janson.

"Commander Myntrela, welcome in our small circle." Wedge Antilles greeted.

"Please, have a seat." suggested Gavin Darklighter.

A little confused about the friendly welcome from that many people the Commander of the Clawfingers took place in a seat offered to her by Gavin Darklighter. This way she was placed between the young Lieutenant and Luke Skywalker.

"Thank you. But what am I doing here?" Carzeta asked.

"It was Wedge's idea, some time ago." Luke Skywalker started to explain. "You have to know Commander, the people assembled in this room and a few others not present spent a lot of time with each other. More than with their families. They train together, they live together in the barracks, they fight side by side ... ."

"We have to trust each other with our lives and more." added Wes Janson. "But the funny thing is, we hardly know each other in civil live. And now that the main part of the war is over - or should be over - postings change, teams are ripped apart, people who have worked together for a long time start to move into different directions or ... ."

"Or settle down and start a family." continued Tycho Celchu.

"I understand." explained Carzeta Myntrela. "Well, I think I understand. But everybody of us is still part of the military. Or is there something I don´t know?" Growing up as a member of the Kuati-aristocracy Carzeta was always aware of possible intrigue around her.

"There is nothing. Its just that there is more to life than this war. And because of this I had the idea for those meetings. Sometimes we met just for a good dinner, sometimes we do something else together, just for fun. Just to stay in contact, to met on a more civil level and so on." answered Wedge Antilles.

"Sounds more like an annual meeting of war-veterans. Doesn´t it?" asked Iella, what caused Carzeta to chuckle.

"Well, but I don´t feel like a veteran." her husband stated.

"But for a fighter-pilot, who participated in the most important battles of the war against the Empire you are one." made Luke Skywalker clear.

"Look, who´s talking now. I´m hardly thirty-five and our great Jedi-Master wants to put me out of service." contered Wedge with humor.

"Gentlemen, please. I don´t think anybody of you belongs to the old iron, although your greatest achivements lay far behind you ... ."

"Someones wishing for a Death Star?" mused Mirax.

"Of course not. But you have to admit for an ambitous person its hard to top those deeds."

"Don´t count on it. I´m sure the next months will provide you with enough opportunities to prove your value." explained Wedge Antilles, while he watched Carzeta Myntrelas reaction carefully. "Enough opportunities to gain glory."

"As long as the mission is a success and my men still alive, I have nothing against a little glory. Anything else would be stupid."

"Now thats the right attitude. I hoped you would say so."

"You mean, I just passed a test?"

"No, of course not. You just confirmed our first impression of you." stated Wedge.

"What he wants to say is: Welcome in our small circle of the big family of pilots." added Luke Skywalker.

"I´m touched." answered Carzeta dry.

"In that case lets no longer waste time and order dinner." completed Gavin Darklighter. "I´m starving."

---

Carzeta really enjoyed her meal. The meal and the company. Iella and Corran told of some of their cases during their time at CorSec, Gavin Darklighter and Luke Skywalker discribed details of Tatooine farmlife and Wedge Antilles how it was to grow up on a fuelstation. The war and everything connected to it was left outside the conversation and although this was a difficult task, the people assembled somehow managed to do so.

The other people in this room knew each other for years, they had fought side by side and more than once trusted each other with their lives. Carzeta was new in this special circle and she didn´t really understood why she had been invited, but she was grateful for the chance to become a part of this group.

To belong to them, to belong to somebody.

Over the last few years she had concentrated on her career, spent most of her time working and it had paid in the rank she now hold. The price she had paid had been loneliness and a social life that wasn´t worth mentioning. Being a young and beautiful woman had made things worse, older and especially male pilots thought she had climbed the ladder thanks to her good looks and not because of her abilities. Others had made offers or tried to take advantage of her, but she hadn´t been interested in affairs and how to discourage certain kinds of advances had been something Carzeta had learned very fast.

But here, in the company of these people she felt comfortable and the hours seemed to pass in seconds and it had become late in the night.

"Well, that was a nice evening." stated Wedge Antilles.

"I agree." confirmed Luke Skywalker.

"And, what do you think, Commander Myntrela?" asked Mirax.

"Please, call me Carzeta. And yes, it was a nice evening." answered Carzeta to Corran Horns wife.

"Pity. For the rest of us, you still have to be Commander Myntrela. At least at the parades." mocked Wes Janson.

Carzeta grinned. "You will survive it."

"In any case, its time to go home." made Tycho Celchu clear. "Gavin, why don´t you accompany the Commander? The streets are not very safe at this time."

"Well, ahm, yes ... ." The younger man tried hard not to blush. "I mean, if you have nothing against it, Commander?"

Carzeta watched him with raised eyebrows until his face had turned crimson. Now this was really cute and although she had started to like him, she wasn´t interested in him. She suspected, that he was one of the men who tried to carry the woman he loved on his hands through live and Carzeta wasn´t interested in being carried. She knew herself well enough to knew that she needed somebody who was able to match her, to dominate her if necessary, for her own good.

"Thank you." she said as polite as possible as not to embarass him. "But I would feel more secure in the company of Luke Skywalker."

Luke Skywalker, who was taking a gulp of his drink, chocked.

"If you have nothing else to do, of course." Carzeta added.

"No, no. I have nothing else in mind." the Jedimaster answered.

"Me too." Carzeta grinned. "So don´t let your hopes rise."

"Of course not. At least not at this evening." contered Luke Skywalker. Suddenly he remembered all the bantering between Han and Leia before they were married and he wondered if it wasn´t him who would need every protection available. "Ah, Wedge?"

Wedge seemed to understand, what was going on in the mind of his friend and reacted accordingly. "Don´t worry. Iella and I will accompany you for propriety´s sake."

"Thank you, General." Carzeta managed to hide her relief. She didn´t wanted to know what would have happened if she and Luke Skywalker walked to her home. Or what would have happened even if nothing at all happened. The young commander decided she had had to much Lumin-Ale and wished for a clear head.

"Yes, if the great Jedi-Master needs a watchdog, I´m happy to obliege." mocked Iella goodhearted.

---

"Well, here we are." stated Carzeta opening the entrance to the appartment she lived in. "Small, but mine."

"Nice." commented Iella Antilles. Carzeta Myntrelas appartment was on the top floors of one of the two miles high skyscrapers of Coruscant. Those adresses were very expansive, even for small residences. The young Commander and her guests stepped through the door.

"I doubt I could afford such an appartment, even with my salary as a general." whispered Wedge towards Luke Skywalker.
For a moment the Jedi-Master thought about how unusual it was, that the female Commander didn´t lived at the barracks of the starfighter-corps or the appartments the military provided.

"Being a member of a rich family has its advantages." answered Carzeta, who had heard Wedge Antilles words. "So why not use the fortune?"

"You could have bestowed it." suggested Luke. Carzeta rolled her eyes.

"As if it isn´t enough that I´m already willing to sacrifice my live for the New Republic, now you want my money, too. Believe it or not, I already tried to make a donation for the New Republic's widow-and orphans-trust. The result was that some people claimed, that I tried to buy myself a position inside the starfighter-corps. Let me make one thing clear, I intend to live long enough to enjoy the small pension the military offers and besides that ... ." At this point Carzeta Myntrela was interupted by the sound of small, hurried steps.

"Mommy." The visitors eyes went wide, when a toddler rushed around the corner and they realised what the presence of a child implied. Carzeta Myntrela, who, despite her young age, seemed to be a very tough woman, a single mother?

"Gorin, honey." Carzeta bent down and took the small child in her arms. "Shouldn´t you be in your bed and sleeping?"

"He would, if you hadn´t interrupted me giving him his "goodnight-story"." An older woman had entered the room. "You are late."

"Galina, forgive me." pleaded Carzeta with an apologetic look. Then she introduced Luke, Wedge and Iella to the older woman. "Galina, these are General Wedge Antilles, his wife Iella and the Jedimaster Luke Skywalker. Galina has been my nanny when I was little and now she takes care of Gorin, if I´m away."

"Pleased to meet you." greeted Luke Skywalker.

"Me, too." stated Wedge Antilles.

"Hrmmph." responded the old woman. "Don´t think I´m impressed. I have seen enough Generals and Admirals through my time in the Myntrela-household, if those braggarts lowered themself to visit those who build their ships. I have even seen some Jedi-Knights in my younger days, but then the order was already declining." Galina viewed Luke careful. "You seem to be a nice man, not like those stiff puppets, filled with only warm air."

"Who, the officers or the Jedi?" asked Iella.

"Both of course."

"Galina." shouted Carzeta. Luke Skywalker tried hard not to grin, the gruffy behavior of Commander Myntrelas old nanny reminded him in some ways of Yoda.

"I assure you I´m not like those Imperial officers you have met." explained Wedge Antilles.

"Really?" the old womans features softened. "Perhaps you can convince my little darling here to quit flying those starfighters and to settle down with a nice husband and ... ."

"Galina, thats enough." made Carzeta with a firm voice clear. "You can go now, I´ll take care of Gorin from now on."

"Alright, alright. I´m already gone." Galina stroke gently over Gorins check. "Sleep well, little one."

"I´m not a little one. I´ll soon be three." protested the boy.

"Yes, yes." That said Galina left the appartment. Carzeta gave her guests an appologetic look.

"You have to forgive Galina, but she sometimes forgets that the people she once took care of are now grown and make their own decisions."

"You are lucky to have someone like her." stated Luke Skywalker. "I felt that she cares deeply for you."

"I know. Without her I would be lost." admitted Carzeta with a low voice. Then her mood seemed to brighten. "Since you are here, what about some kaf, before you go."

"Kaf is fine." stated Wedge Antilles.

"I want some kaf, too." cried Gorin, who had been put on the floor.

"You will go to bed, young man." explained his mother.

"Mom, I´m not tired." protested the boy.

Carzeta's shoulders dropped in defeat. "Fine. You may stay awake. But only for an half hour. And you won´t get kaf, but some cacao."

"Yiphieee." cheered the boy and rushed towards the living room. The adults watched with slight amusement and then looked at each other.

"You have a nice son." stated Iella.

"And very energetic." added her husband.

Luke watched the boy silently. There was something familiar about this child, although he wasn´t able to say what.

"You have no idea." confirmed Carzeta. "Energetic and incredible stubborn. If i hadn´t agreed to an half hour we would have argued till morning."

Luke Skywalker, Wedge and Iella followed Carzeta into the living room of the small apartment. Carzeta reminded Gorin to be polite to her guests then vanished into the kitchen. While the adults took place on a sofa and comfortable chairs, the little boy in his blue pyjama watched one after the other of them. Luke Skywalker looked into the blue eyes of the boy, smiling down at him he asked.

"So you are Gorin, hmmm."

"Yes, I am." The child rubbed with his right hand over his chin like an adult. "And you are?"

"I´m Luke Skywalker." answered the Jedi-Master. The eyes of the boy seemed to increase in size. Obviously he had heard of Luke Skywalker.

"And I´m Wedge Antilles, and this is my wife Iella." introduced Wedge himself. The boys eyes became even bigger.

"So you are married?" he asked Wedge.

"Yes, I am." answered the General. Surprisingly the boy seemed to loose the interest in Wedge with that answer. Turning back to Luke he asked. "Are you a friend of Mom?"

Luke tried hard to hide a grin. The seriousness of this child was really amusing.

"Well." he started. "I don´t know your Mom for long, but I think yes, we will be friends."

"Are you married?" asked Gorin.

"No." answered Luke, raising an eyebrow.

"Girlfriend?"

"No." The way this little being interrogated him was to funny.

"Mom, he is available." shouted the boy towards the kitchen.

"Who is available?" asked Carzeta, leaving the kitchen with a small tablet with cups of kaf.

"Luke Skywalker." explained the boy. "He is not married and he has no girlfriend."

"Gorin." Carzeta blushed. "I think its better you go to bed."

"But Mom ... ."

"Now." It was clear that Carzeta wasn´t going to allow any objection. "Say goodnight to our guests and then go to bed."

Making a face the small child turned to his mother's guests. Shaking his shoulders he said. "You heard her. I wish you a good night."

He shook hands with Wedge, made a small bow to Iella and turned to Luke Skywalker to shake hands, too. When the hands of Jedi and child touched it was as if a strong electrical stroke was transmitted. Gorin didn´t seem to notice, but Luke stiffed. This child was strong in the Force.

Luke looked wide-eyed at Gorin. It had only been a short contact, but Luke already knew that Gorins Force-powers were incredible strong. They easily matched those of his niece and nephews. But contrary to the children of his sister Gorin's powers were unfocused, buried deep inside him. The boy didn´t seem to be aware of them. Since Gorin's mother wasn´t Force-sensitive, this was hardly a surprise for the Jedi-Master.

"Luke?" asked Wedge. "Are you alright?"

"Hmmm, oh yes, I´m alright." He padded Gorin on the shoulder. "Now go to bed and become a strong, young man, my friend."

The face of the child seemed to brighten. "You want me to be a friend?"

"Yes, I want to be your friend." Luke looked at Carzeta. "If your mother permits it."

The boy looked pleadingly at his mother. "Mom? (Puppy-eyes) Please?"

"Yes, of course. But only if you be a good boy."

"Okay. Goodnight Mom, goodnight Luke." With that the small child left the room.

For a moment there was silence in the room.

"Thank you." said Carzeta finally to Luke Skywalker.

"No need to." answered the Jedi-Master gentle.

"You have a fine son." stated Iella.

"Yes. Difficult at times, but he is worth it. Do you have children?"

"We are still working on the first." explained Wedge.

"I don´t know, he sometimes looked at me." mused Luke.

"He wondered if you are his father. He wonders this about every man I met." The young commander sighed. "Its not easy to be a sole mother and I do my best. But he still longs for a father."

"I understand." stated Luke. He understood all to well. For twenty years he had felt similiar, wanting to know who his father had been. And when he had known, he had wondered how his father had became the man he had been.

Darth Vader.

But perhaps little Gorin was more lucky than him.

[Darth Fanboy]

After reading through the fic, I can honestly say that I think you are a capable writer, but I had a difficult time with the plot, I am just not genuinely interested in the idea of Darth Vader having another son.

[Wanderer]

I have weighed the balance and found this fic... Interesting.

[FTeik]

After reading through the fic, I can honestly say that I think you are a capable writer, but I had a difficult time with the plot, I am just not genuinely interested in the idea of Darth Vader having another son.

In that case i can only hope, that other aspects of this story catch your interest.

@Wanderer:

A lot of things can be called interesting. Is there something special you liked/disliked or that caused you to scratch your head?

[Wanderer]

@Wanderer:

A lot of things can be called interesting. Is there something special you liked/disliked or that caused you to scratch your head?

Well the fact Lucan has an unknown son and Luke met a half nepthew without knowing it.

I hope Lucan wins. He is the perfect man to fight the Vong.

You said you have more of this on another site. Linky please.

[Wanderer]

Found this at TFN and am reading it like crazy.

[FTeik]

Here is the next part.



The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 6



"Fencer Three to Fencer Four, if you accelerate only a little bit more, you can kiss the Lieutanant's butt. I suggest you give less speed on your thrusters, pal."

"Four to Three, advice acknowledged. Although he ordered tight formation, Dors."

"I´m sure he didn´t meant THAT tight, Kaljo." answered Fencer Three, Dors, wingman of Fencer Four.

The "Fencers" were an X-Wing-Squadron. They were part of a New Republic task-force patrolling the border-region of Inner Rim and Outer Rim. It had been this part of space from which the Rebel-Alliance had launched its offensives against the imperial occupied systems of the inner rim. Many worlds that had first joinded the Alliance after Palpatine's fall at Endor were located in this quadrant and although none of them could compete with a major world of the core in regards of population or industrial strenght, they were an important fraction inside the New Republic. Some of the oldest alliance-bases and training facilities were still located in this regions of space, despite the fact that a lot of those installations had moved towards the core, together with the government.

"You know its a bit scaring to patrol one of those dead systems." started Kaljo the conversation with his wingman again. "Especially since those rumors about "Flash-Squadron" started to circulate."

"I have no idea what you are talking about. Whats going on with this "Flash-Squadron?" Dors asked.

"Nothing is going on with them." explained Kaljo. "And exactly that is the problem. The entire squadron, twelve A-Wings, simply vanished."

"An entire squadron doesn´t simply vanish." protested his wingman.

"Well, the Flashs did. Only three or five systems away from here. And fleet-command has no idea what happened to them."

"Was debris found?"

"As I already said, the entire squadron vanished without a trace."

"Perhaps they defected to the Empire." suspected Dors. Before he was able to continue he was interrupted.

"Fencer-One to Three and Four. Would you two please stop arguing. You only make yourself and your comrades nervous. There is a simple explenation for the vanishing of this "Flash-Squadron". Do you want to know?"

"Yes, Sir." answered Kaljo.

"Alright. "Flash-Squadron" was one of those squadrons that only existed on paper, at least as long as the forces of the New Republic in this sector are concerned. Despite that the squadron really existed and would have been assigned to our local forces, if not for shortages elsewhere. So the squadron was untied and the pilots distributed to different squadrons who needed replacements. And that was the end of the "Flashes". Do you understand."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you for solving this little riddle."

"Was a pleasure to me." answered Fencer-One. " Now stop talking and concentrate on our mission."

---

Lieutenant Cyad supressed a sigh. As it seemed Fencer-Four and Fencer-Three had believed his explenations. There was only one problem with them.

They weren´t true!

Cyad didn´t liked the idea to lie to his men, but had been ordered to do so. Their superiors were quite nervous about "Flash-Squadron" and because of that the entire affair was kept top secret.

Because there had been a squadron of A-Wings assigned to this sector, called "Flash-Squadron", and it had vanished without a trace only one week ago. The officers at fleet-command wouldn´t have been that nervous, not now, if not for the fact that two weeks prior another squadron, this time a squadron of Y-Wings had vanished. Twenty-four fighters and their pilots in two weeks and there wasn´t the smallest kind of hint what had happened to them. Had they been destroyed or had they defected or was there another reason for them vanishing?

Nobody knew.

The most plausible explanations was that they had been destroyed, of course, but that hadn´t explained the lack of any kind of debris. But something was going on in this sector and it might be of vital importance that the New Republic found out what. And because of this the "Fencers" and a number of other squadrons were patrolling the systems in the neighbourhood of the places where the unforunate squadrons had vanished, looking for anything suspicious.

"Fencer-Nine to Fencer-One, there is something on my scanner."

Under his visor, Cyads eyebrows rose.

"What do you mean, Fencer-Nine, with something?"

"Impossible to identify, but its several thousand klicks in front of us."

Cyads eyes became slits. In front of the Fencers meant towards the sun of the system, very practical for an ambush since the electromagnetic radiation of the star was blocking any kind of sensors. This had to be their lucky day, because under ordinary circumstances they probably wouldn´t have discovered the object until they would have been close enough to the unknowns to close their trap. If the unknown enemies still believed to be able to surprise the "Fencers" they would get the surprise of their lives.

"S-Foils in attack position. Distribute energy to weapons and shields, especially forward." ordered Cyad. Perhaps it would be better to retreat, but the New Republic had to know what was going on. And until reinforcements would reach the system ... .

Suddenly there were explosions to his right and left, Lieutenant Cyad was even able to hear the sound of the explosions thanks to his communication-equipment. A look to the statusdisplay of his squadron confirmed his worst fears. In less than a few seconds five of his twelve fighters had been destroyed.

"Fencer-One, what was that?" came the panicked voice of Fencer-Seven, a woman from Chandrila.

"Calm down and concentrate on your fighter." ordered Cyad, who himself had difficulties to stay calm. "That came from behind, so split formation and turn around. We have to face those bastards."

Humans and most other sentinent beings are aware of their surroundings by more than one sence. Tribute to this fact had been made by not only visible, but also audible signals for the pilots. The screams in their ears were known to every pilot of the New Republic.

TIE-fighters.

Green laserbolts turned the X-Wing of Fencer-Eleven into a cloud of molten metal and then three TIEs rushed over the remaining fighters of the Fencers. The Fencers, already turning around, tried to turn back again and split up into three pairs, since the half of their squadron was already destroyed.

Lieutenant Cyad tried to identify the hostile fighters and a lump formed in his stomach, when he identified the leading fighter as a TIE-X1. Darth Vaders personel TIE had been a X1 and in the hands of a capable pilot like the Dark Lord of the Sith this fighter had proven to be deadly for rebel-fighters, no matter their numbers. The X1 was accompanied by two Interceptors.

Numbers? Cyad took a second look at his displays and discovered that only the remains of his squadron and the three TIEs were out there. Could it be, that half his squadron had been destroyed by three single TIEs? Impossible.

More manouverable than their New Republic counterparts the TIEs nearly managed to completly turn around together with the X-Wings, but while they stayed in their formation of three, the pairs of X-Wings were now advancing from three sides towards them.

Fencer-Six, who had lost his wingman and was now accompanied by Fencer-Seven opened fire with his lasercannons, but the TIEs evaded most of the shots and accelerated incredible fast towards the two X-Wings.

"Black bones of the emperor. I´m sure I hit one of them." cursed Six.

"I´ve seen it. You hit him." confirmed his wingman, the woman from Chandrila. "Six to One, those fighters have shields, they have ... ."

A volley of laserbolts from the TIEs, closely followed by a proton-torpedo sealed the fate of Fencer-Seven. Cyad, his wingman, Fencer-Three and Fencer-Four had to watch helpless as the TIEs also finished Fencer-Six. The TIEs had been too
fast for the X-Wings to do something for their comrades. Much too fast for Interceptors.

Now it was four X-Wings against three TIEs and they were heading towards each other, when the TIEs suddenly split their until now careful upholded formation. The leading X1 accelerated suddenly with additional thrust against the New Republic fighters, while his companions spread out to his left and right. Firing with all guns, the X1 caused the X-Wings to split their formation of four again into two pairs, while his companions picked one of each pair as target. Then there were only three X-Wings left, some shots of one of the TIEs had missed their target, while the other one had succeded in destroying Fencer-Two.

"Okay, that was it." ordered Lieutenant Cyad in a slight state of shock. "Dors, Kaljo we leave the system."

"But sir, ... ."

"No but, is that clear. Three quaters of my squadron destroyed by only three blasted Imperials with new fighters. We have to warn our fleet about them. As soon as you have clear coordinates for the jump to hyperspace, do it."

As a consequence of the constant manouvering the X-Wings were again heading into the system. Now they changed their course on a vector that would lead them in a tangente to the star above the plane of the system. Behind them the two Interceptors were in close persuit and they were coming closer. But where was the X1?

Lieutenant Cyad got his answer when Fencer-Four, Kaljo, exploded. Raising down on them like an angel out of hell, the X1 fired with his lasercannons, destroying the unfortunate X-Wing and killing its pilot. Cyad heard the painfilled scream of Dors about the death of his wingman.

"Bastards, I´ll kill you."

"Dors, no, don´t ... ."

But Fencer-Three wasn´t listening. He changed direction towards the TIE-X1, eager to destroy the murderer of his friend, but this change of direction allowed the pilot of one of the Interceptors to catch up with the X-Wing. Fencer-Three was killed by a proton-torpedo.

"Those can´t be Interceptors." thought Cyad, leader of Fencer-Squadron and last member of them, numb. "Interceptors with that accel don´t have shields and they don´t have proton-torpedos."

Then the TIE-X1 was behind him.

---

Lucan Vader climbed out of his personal TIE-Fighter aboard the Star Destroyer "Spectre". It was of the same design as his fathers TIE, but Lucan had made some modifications. First of all his version of the TIE-X1 carried a load of eight proton-
torpedos and it had a special thrustsystem, which allowed the fighter to suddenly accelerate on a tremdous rate. But only once in a fight.

Besides Lucan his escort fighters landed. No TIE-Interceptors, but TIE-Avengers. The Avengers were a model of TIE-Fighter, that was based on a design of Lucans father, Darth Vader, so it had been a kind of family obligation to use them.

They looked similiar to an Interceptor, but their cockpitballs were less rounded and the bent cooling-panels of them were not only cutted in in the front, but also in the aftsection. With four lasercannons and two torpedolaunchers for six proton-torpedos they equaled a X-Wing in terms of arms. Furthermore they were equipted with shields and a hyperdrive. As if that wasn´t enough they had thirty percent better acceleration than an X-Wing and twenty percent better acceleration than an A-Wing.

Lucan shook his head when he thought about the TIE-Avenger. Introduced short after the battle of Hoth the Avenger had seen limited production for only the most loyal squadrons of pilots, sent on missions of vital importance for the Empire against mutinious elements and warlordism inside the imperial military. Obviously the Emperor hadn´t viewed the battle of Endor as a vital mission. Talking about overconfidence.

According to some explenations the Avenger, as well as the TIE-Defender, which had been the succeding model, hadn´t been produced in huge numbers due to their costs. After all, there was a price for all their advantages. While the ordinary TIE had a price of 60,000 credits, a Defender was five times as expansive, closely followed by the Avenger.

In the eyes of the young Lord Vader this was bantha-podoo of the worst kind.

After Endor, with all the infighting among the imperial fractions and the loss of resources, this might have become true, but for an Empire with enough resources to buildt a DeathStar, those costs were ridicioules. Lucan had done the maths: For the price of two-hundred-and-one Imperator-Class-Star-Destroyers, they Empire could have built two-hundred of the ships and replaced their wings of different TIEs completly with the Defenders. For the entire Imperial Navy with its twenty-five-
thousand ISDs, it would have meant the additional costs of less than hundred-fifty ISDs, not even two percents. Of course the costs would have been bigger for the entire Imperial Military, but considering the performance of the more modern models and the increased survival-rate of pilots by a factor of three it would have paid off more than enough. Or to say it otherwise: The Empire had wasted expansively trained pilots by giving them cheap fighters.

Lucan often wondered what mixture of corruption and incompetence, if not political preferances had lead to this development. After all why give pilots a chance on defection? The Empire had had enough of them. And the bereucrats in the higher echelons of the ImperialHighCommand had never been to found of Lucans father, too.

Not that it mattered anymore. The young Lord Vader was only satisfied with the best, no matter the costs and he got it. Speaking of the best ... . He adressed his wingmen by their code-calls.

"Black One, your performance was excellent. But you ... ." he glared at Black Two, who started to twitch nervously. "You missed your second target, although we sucessfully sneaked from behind on the rebels, who were concentrating on the "Spectre" as planned. And later you missed again."

"My apologies, Lord Vader." The man answered through gritted teeth. "It won´t happen again."

Lucan could feel the man's fear struggling with his pride and decided to gave the pilot a little push in the right direction.

"I hope so. Until now you showed great skills, but if you fail again, somebody better than you will take your place and you´ll be sent back to an ordinary squadron. Do you understand?"

The man gulped. "Yes, Sir."

"Good. Now leave me alone."

Lucan watched the two men leave and activated a comlink to the bridge.

"Admiral Guderi."

"Yes, Mylord?"

"You have recovered all the debris?"

"Yes, Mylord. Captain Priem's tractor crews just finished cleaning up. May I ask, if there were any problems on your side?"

"No problems Guderi. We weren´t even able to detect the "Spectre" on our sensors. The modifications seem to pay off."

The "Spectre" was a special ship. Based on the design of an ISD-II, it had been heavily modified. Instead of an army of nearly ten-thousand troops, it only carried two regiments of fivehundred men each. The young Lord Vader didn´t intended to use the "Spectre" for planetary invasions, so the ship neither needed a fully equipted army, nor all of the vessels needed for groundwarfare. This had allowed the installment of additional powerplants and more armour. To protect the ship from enemy-
sensors it was equipted with stealtharmour, which had turned the hull into a big mass of black metal. Another change had been in the armament. The "Spectre" carried now eighty heavy Turbolasers. Furthermore the armament had been increased by twenty launchers for proton-torpedos and concussion missiles. Also new were improved targeting- and sensory systems like those the New Republic used for its new classes of warships, what should increase accuracy and effective reach of their cannons by fourty percent. The usual wing, consisting of thirtysix TIEs/ln, twentyfour TIE-Interceptors and twelve TIE-bombers had been replaced with sixty TIE-Avengers and one squadron of Scimitar-Assault-Bombers Mark II.

All of those changes had come to a price of course. The construction of the "Spectre" had been three times as expansive as the construction of an ISD. Nearly twelve billion credits. But in the eyes of Lucan Vader the money was well invested.

Lucan wouldn´t have hesitated to replace all of the fighters with the even better TIE-Defender, family honour or not, or to install a cloaking device, but he lacked the blueprints for both. Until his agents didn´t manage to steal them from one of the data-
stores still in possession of the Empire, he would have to do without them.

The young Lord Vader considered the next step in his plans. Three destroyed squadrons of rebel-fighters should be enough by now.

Next to the purpose of training his piloting-skills during battleconditions, he intended to cause the New Republic to either spread their forces in this sector. In this case many of the worlds located in this part of the galaxy would be easy prey for the "Spectre". Or they were forced to sent additional forces from other sectors of their territory. If the "Spectre" started to attack worlds, the central government of the New Republic would be forced to sent ships, too. In any case their efforts in other parts of the galaxy, especially those, Lucan intended to become active in, would be slowed down. Perhaps the Empire even managed to start a new campeign and that would give Lucan even more time and opportunity to execute his plans.

Until now, everything was proceding as he had foreseen.

---

Leia Organa Solo, President of the New Republic, entered the appartment of her family inside the Imperial Palace. It was late in the evening and a long day was finally over. In times like this, when the concerns of an entire galaxy were laid down in front of her feet, she wondered how the now dead Emperor Palpatine could have been so obsessed with ruling this entire mess. And the New Republic was still far away from the size of the Empire at its height. But of course Palpatines methods had been different.Tired she walked towards the bedroom, when suddenly strong arms closed around her waist.

"Welcome home, honey." whispered Han Solo, placing a quick kiss on his wifes neck.

"Uhmmm, Han." muttered Leia, starting to relax in his embrance.

"I already brought the children to bed and I ordered the kitchen-droid to warm up a meal, when I heard you coming in." explained Han, his voice gentle.

"Thank you, but I don´t think I´m hungry. For now, I´m only interested in my bed." Leia freed herself from Han's embrance. "Just wait for me, I´ll give the children their kiss for a good night."

Entering the dimly lit room where her children were sleeping, Leia watched the three small bodies in their beds. Sometimes it was still a miracle to her to believe that those little beings, so beautiful, so innocent, were the result of her and Han's love for each other. To see her children was always a source of strengh for the princess, they showed her, that she was on the right way, confirming her determination to make the galaxy a safe and better place not only for them, but for all children.

Although after a day like this, she wondered if her actions really had an impact for the better, when the spectre of Alderaan loomed over her shoulders. "Ten million people." she thought.

After she had placed a kiss on Jacen's check, one on Jainas forehead, while stroking through the girls long, thick hair, she turned to her youngest son, Anakin. To her great surprise the four year old was still awake.

"Ankain. Is everything alright?" she asked, feeling, that something had upset her youngest child.

"I don´t know." the small boy whispered. "I had a nightmare, i think."

"You think you had a nightmare?" asked Leia. At the few occasions Anakin, or all of her children, had had nightmares, there had been much more trouble. Much more noise. But Anakin didn´t seemed to be scared, only disturbed.

"Ssshhhh, everything will be alright." she tried to calm him down. "Can you tell me what your nightmare was about?" Perhaps it was enough to calm Anakin down, if he told her about it.

"Actually it was about nothing." Anakin started. "Just this man." He shifted uncomfortable in his small bed.

"A man? What man?" asked Leia.

"Just a man. His eyes were blue like uncle Lukes, but his hair was dark and he had a hard face. But not as hard as his eyes." Leia felt her son shudder. "He smiled at me."

"He smiled at you?" tried Leia to confirm. And although she knew better she asked. "I would think it to be a good sign, if he smiled at you."

"Mom, you don´t understand." protested Anakin. "It wasn´t a friendly smile. The man smiled as if he knows something I don´t know and as if there would be no escape for me or anybody. He isn´t a nice man."

"Yes, but you don´t have to be afraid. Your mom is here to protect you. Your daddy is here to protect you. Chewie is here to protect you and your older siblings are here to protect you, too. Do you remember, when you were taken away from me by Hethrir?"

When his mother mentioned the former Procurator of Justice of the Empire, Anakin shuddered.

"Barely." he whispered. "I was very small then."

"Yes, you were." explained Leia. "But Jacen and Jaina protected you and as long as our family stays together, nothing bad will happen to us."

"Promised?"

"Promised. Now close your eyes and sleep."

Anakin closed his eyes and Leia kisses him on his forehead. Sitting beside him and holding his small hand, it didn´t took long for him to fall asleep, while his mother used the time to think. She had no idea, who would fit the description of the man her son had told her about, but she was sure, that the security-service of the New Republic could deal with any "ordinary" threat. What left only a Force-user as possible source of danger. Leia was aware about the fact, that in some regards Anakin was the most sensitive of her children as far as the Force was concerned. She would have to talk with Luke about it as soon as possible.

And if they were lucky, it was just a simple nightmare.

---

When her youngest son was finally asleep half of an hour later, Leia entered her own bedroom and let herself drop onto the sheets without bothering to take of her clothes. Burring her face inside the sheets she regreted, not for the first time, to have never taken the time to complete her training as a Jedi. Especially relaxing and recovering-techniques would be welcomed in her current situation. The shift in the mattress by an additional weight traited her the presence of her husband. Strong, gentle hands cupped her neck and shoulders, starting to massage Leias tense flesh.

"Ohhhh." moaned the former princess of Alderaan and now Chief-of-State of the New Republic. "Please, don´t stop, Han. Believe it or not, but this is the best thing of the entire day."

"That bad." mused Han, while his hands moved over Leias shoulderblades down her back. "Do I even want to know?"

"No, you don´t." answered his wife. "Something is going on in the rim. Something ugly. Not only did several starfighter-squadrons disappear, but two colonies were totally eridicated, too."

"Wouldn´t be the first time, that pirates destroyed a colony and murdered all of the people there to cover their tracks." stated Han. "And with the ongoing war between Empire and Republic, pirates were a low priority for both sides." he thought.

"Han, those colonies wern´t a handful of farms and one or two small villages. We are talking about colonies on level three with corresponding defenses. Ten million people have been slaughtered."

Han's movements stopped, horrified. "Ten million." he whispered. And after a moment. "I had no idea."

"The senate tries to keep the issue quiet as long as the investigation goes, but I doubt that there will be any results."

"A star destroyer." suspected Han. Other ships were able to do the same, but not with the speed and efficency of a Star
Destroyer. Not against the defences of a level three colony. "The Empire?"

"I somehow doubt it. Not their style. Perhaps under Palpatine and Isard. But now with Pellaeon as their military commander and them still reorganizing their forces ... ." Leia didn´t completed the sentence. "Me defending the Empire." she thought. "Girl, you really are exhausted."

"Anyway." she continued. "The other worlds in this sector are quiet nervous and crying for more ships to protect them. Ships we desperatly need elsewhere, as soon as the war becomes hot again. Not that I blame them."

"So we are sending ships?" asked Han.

"We have no other choice. Most of those worlds are founding members of the New Repubic and were liberated first, after Endor. We can´t abandon them, even if thats exactly what our enemies want."

"If so, we will find out soon enough." mused Han.

"And thats what I'm afraid of." stated his wife.

[FTeik]

"Don't comment/complain all at once." Han Solo in a version of ANH, that wasn't shown at the theatres.



The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Part Seven


"Invisible Hand was built in the tunneled Quarren-colony world of Pammant. The planet was recently devastated with radioactivity and fractured to the core by a cataclysmic hyperspace accident involving the Republic's Star Battlecruiser Questor." ROTS:ICS.


Moff Harrageds situation was similiar to that of his neighbour OdiinVaskal. But while Vaskal had only four hundred seventy inhabited worlds to guard with his three squadrons of Star Destroyers, Harraged had to hold seven hundred thirty nine worlds in line with the same number of ships, a nearly impossible task.

To make things worse most of the inhabited planets under his control lacked the dense populations of other major worlds. So while Harraged had access to a huge number of uninhabited worlds rich in ores and other ressources as it was fitting for the size of his sector, he lacked the sources of labour or customer for those ressources to exploit. As if to make up for it, a small number of his worlds were extremly rich and Harraged intended to make good use of their fortunes.

Harraged knew he was on the bad end of a run for increasing his fleet, compared to his next neighbours, Moff Odiin Vaskal and Highadmiral Cordal. With the same number of Star Destroyers as himself, but only half the territory to guard, Vaskal could easier exempt ships to fight his enemies on their own territory. Same went for Chordal and his taskforce, especially the Star Battlecruiser "Yagghart", which alone equaled several Star Destroyers.

So Harraged had to find a way to free his ships from "coastguard"-duty, while still being able to defend his worlds.

Considering what kind of worlds he had under his control he had divided them into three categories.

Thirty worlds he couldn´t afford to loose under no circumstances, obviously the worlds with the highest numbers of population and densest industrialisation.

Two hundred fourty worlds of medium importance, a loss of one of them would be felt in the long run, but for a short frame of time he could do without them (until he captured them back) and finally four hundred sixty nine worlds he didn´t needed.

Only with two additional squadrons of Imperators the Moff would have felt comfortable, but until then he needed another replacement for the ships he used to patrol his borders with instead of defending his worlds.

Fortunatly it was a big galaxy with a big black market and for the right money a man can get everything he wants. Or nearly everything. Not necessarily the most modern military hardware, but independent goverments, rimworlds or worlds not as wealthy as some others had to take what they can get.

In Harrageds case twenty two Trade-Federation-Battleships, that were nearly fifty years old. Of course being older than the Empire and only armed with 48 Quadlaser-Cannons the huge warfreighters with a diameter of two miles were hopelessly outgunned by any modern ship, especially since their circular form prevented the concentration of more than a few guns on the same target.

But Harraged didn´t intended to use them in fleet-engagements. He had other ideas for them.

First of all he had replaced the quadlasers with the very heavy turbolaser-cannons used by Imperator-I-Class-Star Destroyers.
Additional VHT-turrets were spread over the entire hull, increasing the total number of heavy cannons to hundred fourteen. Not wasting time and resources with medium cannons Harraged and his engineers also added four hundred eighty point-defense-cannons, which wasn't much given the size and surface of the ship, but with so many heavy cannons to power there was no internal space left for more of the smaller cannons. All the vessels for groundwarfare had been removed and the space they had occupied as well as most of the huge storage rooms had been filled with additional reactors and powercells for weapons and shields. The 1,500 Vulture-droids of each ship had been upgraded with more powerful lasers, their energy-torpedos had been replaced with proton-torpedos and their droid-brains were much more advanced than those used fifty years ago.

Harraged and his engineers had turned the huge warfreighters into massive battle-stations.

But the main change had been something else. Few persons are as creative as a dictator in desperate times and Moff Harraged was no exeption. The main weapon of the station-turned ships were 1,500 Hyperdrive-Equipted-Torpedo-launchers (HETo-Launchers) that were kept in what free space had remained after all the modifications.

Harrageds engineers had simply taken a number of hyperdrive-motivators similiar to those of probe-droids, a modified droid-brain of a droid-fighter and eight proton-torpedos carried by capital ships and put them together. Now those launchers were able to make up to eight small hyperjumps, while carrying their deadly load close to an enemy starship.

It was a crude idea, but one that should be very effective. Attacking fleets normaly tried to avoid leaving hyperspace too close to a planet, simply for fear of getting cought inside the gravity-field. The normal distance of an hyperspace-exit was ten to twenty planetary diameters, enough forewarning for the battleship to launch all its HETo-Launchers and fighters. The plan was for the torpedo-launchers to exercise micro-jumps close to or even inside the enemies fleet and launch their torpedos.

What had been the greatest surprise when the engineers had made the first calculations had been the low costs. It had been shown, that for the price of a single Victory-Star Destroyer, Harraged could equipt all twenty two battleships with those HETo-Launchers.

When it had become clear, that HEToL was a workable concept Harraged had been forced to decide, if he should keep the launchers aboard the transformed warfreighters or if he should distribute them in high orbits around his worlds. Realizing, that a weapon his enemies didn't knew about was a weapon his enemies couldn't prepare for, the Moff had finally decided for the HETo-launchers to be stored aboard their motherships until they were needed.

Harraged expected HEToL to be most effective against the escorting-units of any enemy-fleet, those units that provided the real capital ships with protection and additional point-defense-cannons, but he had also reason to hope, that HEToL was able to cause problems for Star Destroyers and even larger units, too. After all, even if two thirds of the total number of the 12,000 torpedos was taken out by point-defense-cannons, fighters and smaller ships there would still be four thousand torpedos left. Enought to overwhelm a score of Star Destroyers. And after the torpedos the remains of any attacking fleet would have to deal with a heavily upgraded TradeFederation-battleship.

Those modified TradeFederation-Battleships were now positioned at twenty-two of Harrageds most important worlds. The eight worlds remaining were guarded and patroled by six Star Destroyers of one of his three ISD-Squadrons. The two hundred fourty worlds of medium importance were guarded by the Star Destroyers of the other two Squadrons, so each ship was responsible for the safety of ten worlds. The fate of the rest of his worlds was in the hand of frigates, picket-cruisers and corvettes until he had more ships available.

This division left Harraged with six free available Star Destroyers, six capital ships and their escorts he used as personal taskforce.

More than Vaskal had available at the time, but less than Chordals task-force.

And now Harrageds men were working on new ships in his two shipyards. They would have already finished a number of ships, but with the halfway satisfying sitation of defencestations and his free movable combat-fleet Harraged had decided to commit some of his ressources to the construction of a third shipyard, which was already halfway completed and operational.

Harraged had great plans for his empire and they showed in the vessels already being built.

One Questor-Class-Star Battlecruiser with a length of six miles was to fourty percent finished, six Pugnator-Class- Star Cruisers with a lenght of three miles were from thirty to fifty percent completed. With a maximum fuel-consumption of two million tons of hypermatter per second one of those cruisers equalled ten ISDs in reactor-output and was able to destroy a Victory-Stardestroyer with a single broadside of its turbolasers. The Questor-Class-Battlecruiser could consume six and a half million tons of hypermatter every second what was almost a quarter of an Executor-Class Star Dreadnought's main reactor and Harraged was even thinking about the construction of one of those or even an Eclipse as soon as his third shipyard was totally completed and operational.

The remaining ships under construction were twenty-four Star Destroyers of the Imperator-Class Mark II and twelve heavy destroyers of the Bellator-Class. With a lenght of 2.2 kilometers they were nearly fourty percent longer then an ISD and, designed purely for fleetcombat, carried six times the firepower.

Unfortunatly all of those ships still needed months to be completed. Months Harraged didn´t had.

But that was something he didn´t knew.

---

Lucan Vader was sitting behind his desk, reading through the last report from Geven Nakal.

His personal shipbuilding-program was developing well. Twenty out of fourty-eight ISD-IIs were already completed, the other twenty-eight would be within a month. Besides those Imperator-Class-Stardestroyers his secret shipyards were also building twelve Interdictor-Destroyers and twenty-four Tector-Class-Star Destroyers.

A model of warship not as widespread during the height of the Empire as the Imperator-Class, although one of those had taken part at the battle of Endor. With a lenght of a mile, it equaled an Imperator in size, but it lacked big hangarbays and most of the dorsal superstructure. It also lacked an outside reactor-bulb, since the reactor was hidden deep inside the ship, covered by thick armour-plates. Like the Bellator-Class the Tector was purely designed for fleetcombat, having twice the firepower of an ISD-II. Speaking of the Bellator, the construction of the six ships of this class had fallen behind shedule. Not much, but Lucan would have to do something about it, if the problem increased.

However, the last point in the report caused his mood to brighten. His future flagship, the seven mile long Praetor-Class-Star Battlecruiser "Executioner" was to seventy percent completed and Lucan could hardly wait to lead the destructive power of the arrowshaped vessel against his enemies.

If only Vascal managed to provide enough crewers for both their fleets. The efforts of his ally were embodied in a second Praetor-Class-Battlecruiser, twenty-four of the Tectors and twenty-four ISD-IIs. Vascal had explained, that he wouldn´t waste desperatly needed place in his shipyards for Interdictor-Destroyers, whichs destructive powers in battle were limited by their four gravitywall-projectors. No, Vascal prefered the only sixhundred meter long Interdictor-ftigates of the "Immobilizer-418"-type in combination with other ships. Lucan sighed. Let him. He wouldn´t need Odiin Vascal for long, when he had defeated Highadmiral Chordal and Moff Harraged. With the ressources of the three sectors of the warlords he should be able to work against the New Republic and if not, he would have to wait for a better moment.

Lucan made a small calculation. Nearly six million men, even without the army-divisions. It seemed a lot of captains of frigates and first officers were going to be promoted, thought the son of Darth Vader with a small smile. That should improve the moral considerably. Of course he would have to make sure, that those officers would be fit to the task and loyal to him. That should be no problem: Men prefered to follow leaders who lead them to victory, not the politicians that stayed behind and Lucan intended to become the best leader military forces had seen, since his father had lead the imperial fleet. And if Vascal couldn't deliver ...

Looking up he discovered Nilan Vortigern entering his office. For anybody else, this would have been a lethal break of protocol, but the old Majordomus was the exception to the rule.

"What is it?" he asked calm.

"Two things. A message from Odiin Vascal about the progress of his recruiting-efforts." Vortigern hesitated for a moment. "As it looks his recruiteers can't convince the numbers of recruits needed to volunteer."

"Funny, I was just thinking of that."

"He claims, that the people are suspicious about the promise of more liberties and rights. They first want to see, if he is serious about it, before they sign up. He says without getting back to conscription he won't be able to provide the numbers of crewers for our ships."

"He can forget that. Not only would it undermine our - his - credibility, our fleets won't go far, if we have to force our crews to fight for us as well. Tell him not to worry, we will get our volunteers in the end, if we stay on course now and show the galaxy, that we mean what we say." Lucan explained.

"He'll answer, that we're looking at a serious lack of manpower until then." the majordomus argued, what caused Lucan to roll his eyes. "What is he expecting, that I'm going to hold his hands? He's a Moff, for ****** sake, he'll find a solution, if he gets his posterior out of his comfortable office-chair. The galaxy is full of mercenaries and former Imperial Navy-men looking out for themself. Tell him to hire some of them and if he complains about the costs, give him access to one of our accounts."

Vortigern thought about that for a moment. "In that case we have to make sure, that those people become aware of who is truly paying them. Without Vascal knowing about it."

"That won't be necessary. Those volunteering for service in Odiin Vascal's forces will already know, who their true master is. I wanted to give Vascal a chance to get his own men aboard our ships, so he would feel secure around them and wouldn't have to worry about their possible loyality to me. But if he is too stupid to do that ... ." Lucan Vader shrugged his shoulders, before he continued. "If Odiin Vascal's ineptitude at finding crewers for our warships allows us to smuggle our own people in, we would be stupid not to do it." He looked at Vortigern. "You will make the necessary arrangements and inform our people on Thule."

"Yes, Mylord." the Majordomus confirmed.

"Then proceed with your second point."

"Yes, Mylord. Mylord, our spynet has confirmed the departure of a commando-force from Coruscant within the next days. Three starfighter-squadrons and one corvette and a freighter for the support of the fighters. As it looks they're finally trying to make a move against us."

"You mean, against our ally." Lucan's eyebrows rose up. "I didn´t expect a taskforce that small. Obviously they are really desperate."

"Its not a regular taskforce. More like a guerilla-group from the times of the rebellion. Hit- and run-tactics, sneaky ambushs, sabotage of enemy-installations, ... . We have confirmed that the group is lead by Wedge Antilles and Rogue-Squadron and that their first target is indeed Odiin Vascal." explained the old Majordomus.

"Odiin Vascal." mused the young Lord Vader. He would have expected Harraged as their first target, being the warlord with the biggest territory or even Chordal, because of his combat-group.

"Obviously the changes Moff Vascal has made following your advice have made them nervous. It is also possible that they think Vascal to be the calming influence for Chordal. Harraged still needs months to complete most of his fleet and if not for Vascal, Chordal possibly would have already attacked Harraged." said Vortigern.

"Sounds logical. Complicated, but logical. Sometimes I miss the times under Palpatine. Everything seemed to be clear then. Much simpler. Another thing the rebels are to blame for."

Lucan sighed, then activated a console on his desk. Pressing a button a holographical map appeared. After manipulating a few controls the map showed parts of space, that belonged now to the New Republic, including Coruscant and the borderregions and some of the territories of the three warlords.

"Lets see." he guestered. "There are only two possible lanes inside Vascals territory for a X-Wing, at least without refueling. Now do we ... ." He was interrupted by Vortigern.

"Forgive me Mylord, but they won´t take of from Coruscant, at least not directely. Officially they are ordered to reinforce the sectors of the rim and will be transported there by a Mon Calamari Cruiser."

"You should have told me sooner." accused Lucan. He added the route of a Mon Calamari-Cruiser to his calculations, what increased the number of possible hyperspace-lanes for a X-Wing to fifteen. "Fifteen possible routes." muttered Darth Vader's
heir. "Thats to much." He paused for a moment, taking a closer look. Satisfied he turned to Vortigern.

"We are lucky, old friend. The optimal points for them to take of are concentrated in three systems. We´ll deploy probe-droids in all three of them. They should be able to report what vectors the rebels will chose to leave those systems and then we know which lane they take." He turned back to the hologram. "We just have to wait in a position, where we can intercept them, no matter which route they take." Again he looked at Vortigern. "Call the "Spectre" back. And inform Odiin Vascal that we need one of his Interdictor-frigates."

---

"Sir, General Cracken is here."

"Sent him in." Geven Nakal ordered.

Taking a last careful look over his office, he prepared himself to met with the head of the New Republics Intelligenceservice. Ever since his return to the highest levels of power over KuatDriveYards after his time in the archives he took nothing for granted. He looked over his massive desk, the wall to his left that was covered with models of ships and the wall to his right, that housed a huge hologram of the Kuat-System with its planets, moons and countless spacebound construction-facilities, all of them dedicated to the task of building ships.

When Airen Cracken entered his office, Geven Nakal rose from his seat and tried to give the other man a friendly greeting.

"Welcome in my humble office, General. Please have a seat." He pointed at a comfortable looking chair. "May I offer you some refreshments? Tea? Fruitcakes? Perhaps something with alcohol?"

"No, thank you." answered Cracken with a cold, controlled voice. That this old, insidious, imperialistic fossil was in control over KDY ... . Cracken showed his host a friendly smile. "Perhaps we can go straight to business, we are both men with limited time."

"How right you are." agreed Nakal enthusiastically. The idea of dealing with this man sickened him. Eight years ago this man had been nothing but a terrorist, a criminal wanted by the authorities and only the change in the balance of galactic powers had allowed this man to usurp the position he was currently holding. Nakal remembered that ninty percent of what was right was based on power and for now the New Republic Cracken represented was the major power. "What can I do for you, General?"

"Well, as a start you could explain to me, what happened to ten of your spacebound shipyards. If I´m informed correctly a single one of them is capable of constructing twenty-seven Stardestroyers."

"Or less bigger ships or more smaller ships." added Nakal.

"Anyway. By ten shipyards we get a number of two-hundred-seventy star destroyers and we know that neither the Empire, nor one of the warlords have them. So where are they?"

"Nowhere. Some of them had to be scrapped, others were taken apart to get spare-parts for our remaining facilities. Your "take-over" of our system caused a lot of damage."

"You scrapped them?" asked Cracken in wonderment.

"Yes. Unfortunately yes." answered Geven Nakal with regret in his voice. "As already said, your hostile take-over did a lot of damage. We were still busy with the cleaning up when the last clone of Palpatine was defeated and after that we expected the demand for warships to decline. So there was no need to keep them around. What we, and especially me myself, couldn´t foresee was that you weren´t able to finish this war in a short amount of time."

"We defeated the Epire time and again." protested Cracken.

"But its still out there and the war is going on. And if we leave your various alliances aside you're both of comparable power at the moment. Between hundred- and two-hundred thousand systems each of you. They are only quite for now, because they try to regain their strenght."

"I am aware of that." answered Cracken. "However we are the ones, who hold the core and the inner rim and they are limited to the rim."

"That was true of your NewRepublic a few years ago, too. Then the Empire controlled all the important systems and look where they are now."

"And was fighting against its own members. The NewRepublic doesn't suffer from those problems."

"No, but you're far away from the prosperity the Empire enjoyed. While the Empire was able to buildt a second DeathStar totally in secret, alone the repairs of the "Lusankya" at Bilbringi caused the stockmarkets to move on a level, that allowed those, who know what to look for to guess, that the ship was being repaired. Because of the high costs of natural Tibanna-gas your military experimenting with a synthetic replacement as cooling-medium for Turbolasers. And last but nor least not a single one of the ships from your NewClass-program is bigger than a mile."

"Why should we need such ships?"

"Didn't you come for those? If not then you're fooling yourself. The economy at large is in shambles, but the war still not over. Your intentions in the rebellion might have been good, but for those who have seen the last days of the old Republic and for the majority of the citicens, things have turned to the worse. And sooner or later not even your propaganda can cover it. Personally, I´ll give your government twenty years, if you manage to defeat the empire. Then it will break apart, divided by the differencies and rivalries between your people, old feuds and old hatred."

"You really must be looking forward to it." accused Chracken with disguest. "More customers for your ships."

"Believe it or not, I´m not looking forward to it. Warships aren´t the only products of my company and a shattered peace and a divided galactic market is bad for business. Even for the weapons-manufactures. But if that development is unavoidable, it is my responsibility to prepare KuatDriveYards for it, as well, as when the cries for the strong hand return."

Cracken had enough. Geven Nakals words sounded to plausible for his ears and the memories of the majority of beings were only shortlived. It wouldn´t come as a surprise to him, if in a few years Palpatine would be hailed as a visionary, whose ideas simply had been corrupted. There had been other matters he had wanted to discuss, but those could wait.

Now he needed fresh air. He rose from his seat.

"Thank you, Mr. Nakal, but unfortunately I have to go."

"It was a pleasure, General Cracken. I'm sure we can talk about your capital ships at another opportunity."

They didn´t shook hands.

After Cracken had left, Geven Nakal turned around in his seat. In one point he had lied to Chracken. If the plans of the son of his old friend were successful, the New Republic wouldn´t survive twenty years. Perhaps not even five. Somehow he had no doubts in the abilities of the younger man.

Lucan was a Vader after all.

[FTeik]

Here we have the next part. Enjoy and always remember: A little feed-back doesn't hurt.



The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter Eight


Carzeta Myntrela cursed, when the bell to her door rang. She had no time for visitors now. If she didn´t hurry, she would be late at the garrison for the take off.

The bell rang again.

"Alright, alright, I´m coming."

She rushed to the door, wondering who it could be. After all, it was five o´clock in the morning. Gorin's Nanny was supposed to arrive in two hours, when she was already on her way and Galina was always punctual. Opening the door she prepared herself to rip of the head of the unfortunate visitor.

"Do you have any idea, what time it is? Who do you think ... ." only then Carzeta recognized the person standing outside her apartment. "Master Skywalker, I ..., I´m sorry, I wasn´t expecting you." she stuttered.

"Apology accepted, Commander Myntrela." the Jedi-Master said with a smile.

"Well, since you are already here, why don´t you come in?" asked Carzeta. "Unfortunately I have less to no time."

"I know." answered Luke Skywalker. "I thought I could give you a ride to the hangar and we could talk on the way."

"Talk on the way?" wondered Carzeta. "Talk about what?"

"Well ...," the Jedimaster hesitated for the moment. But before he was able to continue, Gorin appeared on the scene.

"Mommy, who is there?" The little boy was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with one hand. His other hand was pressing a wookee-doll against his small chest.

"Hello Gorin. Its me Luke Skywalker. Remember me?" Luke greeted the child. Gorin only nodded his head. Then he saw his mother in her flightsuit and his eyes went wide.

"Mom, you are going?" he asked and Luke thought to hear something like terror in his voice.

"Yes honey, I´m going on a mission. I told you about it a few days ago. Remember the gift I promised to get for you when I´m back?" Carzeta twinkled at her son with a smile. But Gorin didn´t seem to notice. He let the wookee-doll drop to the floor and rushed towards his mother, hugging her long legs.

"Don´t go." he pleaded. "Please don´t leave me alone." Tears started to drop down his cheeks.

Ignoring the presence of Luke Skywalker, Carzeta Myntrela bent down and took her son into her arms.

"Sheeeee." she tried to calm down the little child. "Whats wrong, Gorin? When we talked yesterday, you´ve been so brave and now my big boy is crying?"

"That was yesterday." Gorin muttered. "Don´t go. Something terrible will happen. I have a bad feeling about this. Please."

"Oh, but you don´t have to feel bad, honey. Mommy will come back, you don´t have to worry."

"But why do you have to go? Why do you have to go and not somebody else?" inquisited the little boy.

"Because there are evil people out there, who make life for all the boys like you and their mommies miserable and they have to be stopped. Remember what I have told you about responsibilities?" Carzeta looked her son deep in the eyes. The child nodded his head. "Well, this is my responsibility, because your mommy is one of the best." She placed a quick kiss on her son's forehead. "And the people I´m flying with belong to the best, so nothing will happen to me."

Luke Skywalker watched mother and son silentely, wondering if Gorin's fear was caused by a hint of the Force or if the child simply had had a nightmare. After all the boy was old enough to understand, that his mother had a dangerous profession. But fortunately not old enough to understand, that being the best meant also being the one chosen for the most dangerous missions first.

He suppressed a sigh, wishing for an idea what to say. He had none.

The young Commander's efforts seemed to succeed and Carzeta put Gorin to the floor. Taking his hand into hers she lead him to his bedroom. When she returned Luke Skywalker was still standing there. Putting on a coat and taking a small bag Carzeta Myntrela pointed to the door.

"If you are ready, we can go."

------------------

"Thank you." Carzeta said when they were sitting inside the air-cab.

"Thank you for what?" Luke Skywalker asked back.

"Thank you for not interfering by saying something. Gorin is smart enough to recognize when somebody is talking podoo."

"Actually I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what."

"How about: "Your mother doesn´t have to do this!" or "Its irresponsible of your mother to go on dangerous missions with no relatives to take care of you, if something happens."" the young Kuati explained.

Luke Skywalker raised an eyebrow. "You heard such things before?"

"Actually yes. And there are times I hear them from within. How can I do the things I do and risk my life, while I´m the only person my son has? Why can´t somebody else do them? Why can´t I simply step back and live with my child in my own small and safe bubble?"

"I´ll admit, I was tempted to say something, but thought the better of it." said Luke Skywalker.

"But you didn´t. Why?"

The Jedi-Master hesitated for a moment. "Because you are a grown-up woman." He finally said. "You are responsible for yourself and I have no right to make your decisions for you. That would mean I would enforce my will over yours and even if it might happen with good intentions, it would be selfish. Selfish, because it would mean I am right and you are not and because of this I can do whatever I want."

"Even if you are right?" Carzeta asked.

"Even, if I am right it would be wrong to act this way." confirmed Luke Skywalker. "And I'm not always doing or knowing the right thing."

"Has to be hard." the Commander of the Clawfingers mused. "To know what is best for the people and to stand by and watch how they run into the opposite direction."

"Yes, that is the hardest part. And I only become used to it slowly."

With a lump in his throat Luke Skywalker remembered, when he had turned to the Dark Side on Byss, believing he could destroy the dark from within. If not for Leia the galaxy would have been doomed by the reborn emperors rule again. He also thought about his first students at the Jedi-Academy on Yavin 4. The losses and failures he had encountered there. Gantoris, Kyp Durron, Brakiss, Dolph. The dangers he hadn´t seen in the shadows of the temple. Exar Kuns evil spirit. Painful, but also necessary lessons not only in patience, but also in humility. He hoped he had learned his lesson well, since others had paid the price for his mistakes. Carzeta seemed to have read his thoughts.

"And it has to be extremly hard to watch, when the person in question is not only responsible for herself, but also for another person. Somebody we consider innocent." she said softly.

"Since you know that, why don´t you step back and let another one do the job?" asked Luke Skywalker. Carzeta was silent for a moment.

"There is a war out there. And if we like it or not, it effects us all. If I would be a person, who steps back from danger or her profession the moment there is a child, I could as well have stayed back home in the golden and secure cage my family and the traditions of the Kuat-Nobility provide. That is not what I wanted to do with my life and so I left.

Of course I had no idea, that I would have to go this way accompied by a child." At that Carzeta Myntrela twinkled at Luke Skywalker. "You have to know, Gorin was planned for much later, but now I´m happy to have him." Again the woman was silent for a moment. "Besides, if I step back, somebody else would have to take my place in the task-force. Another husband, father or son. Somebody who is perhaps less qualified. And, if my son asks in a few years "Mom, what have you done during the war?" I don´t want to answer "Well, I wanted to have an impact, but then you were born and I decided to let somebody else fight for me". That would be selfish."

"But is it really necessary, now that the tide of the war has already turned against the Empire and the outcome is inevitable?" asked Luke Skywalker.

"Inevitable?" wondered Carzeta. "If you really think this way, I have to wonder why you have joinded the rebellion. The Empire is still in better condition than the rebellion at Endor. Despite that the rebellion won. So don´t talk about the inevitable."

"You are right, of course." admitted the Jedimaster. "But that wasn´t the topic I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Gorin."

"Gorin? Why are you interested in Gorin?" asked Carzeta. Concern showed on the face of the young mother.

"I think he is Force-sensitive." Luke answered.

"Force-sensitive? As in Force-sensitive like a Jedi?"

"Yes. And if my impression is right, he is incredible strong." admitted Luke.

"I would be flattered, but he can't have it from me. I don´t have any Force-powers at all. Nobody in my entire family has." Carzeta protested.

"We still don't know how they work. It is a wide-spread misconception, that Force-ability is related to genetics. A misconception I once believed, too. But the more I learned about the Jedi of old, the more I came to realize, that among the myriads of Jedi of the past five-thousand years only a few belonged to what you can call Jedi-families. I'm not even sure, if the Force manifestating itself within members of the same family is not a rather recent development." Luke explained.

"But what could have caused such a development?" Carzeta asked. "What has changed over the last years to ... ohhh." A look of understanding appeared on her face. "The Jedi-purge of the Empire." The young Commander took her time to disgest the idea. "It is an interesting theory, but for it to work you're applying a lot of sentinence onto something, that is usually described as an energy-field. I find it hard to believe, that the Force is activly helping you with re-establishing a new Jedi-Order by concentrating itself within a few select families."

"Because you view the Force as a tool, Commander. For a Jedi the Force is like a partner."

"Fine. But what does this have to do with my son?"

"Because, if you like it or not, your son has those powers. And you and he will have to life with them." Seeing, that Carzeta Myntrela was about to protest Luke raised a hand. "I'm not asking you to give your son away to become a Jedi. That decision will be up to him when he is old enough. But I thought it better to tell you now, so you can get used to the idea."

"It is not an idea I like." Carzeta growled. "Although I'm truly grateful for the warning."

"I'm really sorry and I can understand, if you're upset." A boyish grin appeared on Luke's face. "Please don't shoot the messenger. If my theory is right, then Gorin's father is the one to blame. What can you tell me about him?"

Carzeta blushed. Part of her wanted to tell Luke Skywalker to mind his own business. How should she explain her short, passionate encounter with Gorin's father without the Jedi-Master thinking bad of her. On the other side he might be the only person, who wouldn´t judge her for her actions.

"I´ve already told you about him." she said with a low voice. "As well, that I don´t know his real name."

Unterstanding appeared in Luke Skywalkers eyes. "Watto Tarashon."

"Yes." The young woman hesitated for a moment, since she had never talked to anybody about this, but after all this time, she wanted to speak with somebody about it, somebody who would understand. When Luke Skywalker asked her, what she could tell about Gorin's father, it broke out of her like a river.

"Please don´t think me to be an easy girl. I´m not. I was young, exited and more than a little bit rebellious. I was going to leave my home and Watto offered me a ride to Coruscant. He was somehow associated with my Granduncle and Uncle Geven seemed to trust him. Since I was on my own then I wanted to save money, despite the fact, that I carried more with me than some people earn in their entire live. Despite the fact that I knew him for less than an hour, I felt drawn to him, although I wouldn´t call it a crush. We just fit. Can you understand that?"

Luke Skywalker nodded his head. He remembered himself at that fateful day on Tatooine, when he had first seen Leia, as well as the times when he had competed against Han in courting her. Fortunately Leia had chosen the smuggler and only the Force knew, what might have happened, if she had decided otherwise.

"Sounds like an attractive guy." he said aloud, just to say something.

"Attractive, yes. But not a beau. Handsome although in a somehow brutal way. Tall, with broad shoulders and, as I discovered later, with incredible muscles. You know, the strong protector-type. And then those laserblue eyes." Carzeta smiled at Luke Skywalker, lost in her memories. "I don´t know why, but you remind me of him."

"I´ll take that as a compliment." commented Luke Skywalker. "The poor woman still loves this guy." he thought with pity.

"Despite that I would never have, ... well you know, just for the looks of him. But there was also another quality about him. Trustworthy, loyal. You just had to look at him and you knew, this guy would go to hell and back, if he cares for you, while at the same time there would be no safe place in the universe if you belonged to his enemies. A vulcan of passions, strictly controlled, but there. He really had a presence. Powerful. Very powerful. Like a Prince of Darkness. Somebody, who always gets what he wants."

"So he took advantage of you?" asked Luke Skywalker with sympathy. This description certainly fit anybody, but not a Jedi-Knight.

"Oh no, he didn´t had to. He was the perfect gentleman. Polite, well educated and very observant. He was a good listener. And as I said I was very rebellious at that time. It didn´t took us two hours to set the shuttle on autopilot and move to his cabin for the next two days, where ... ."

"I don´t have to know." explained Luke Skywalker quickly, rising his hands in defeat. Just to imagine, what a godess like Carzeta Myntrela and a man like the one she just had described could do in two days in a secluded cabin was too much even for a Jedi-Master. "What happened then?"

"Well, as promised, he dropped me at Coruscant, where he asked me, if I wanted to see him again and if he should give me an adress to contact him. I told him he could visit me anytime he wanted, but I wanted no adress. I didn´t wanted to become an ordinary relationship what the two of us have had. I haven´t seen him again, but nine months later Gorin was born. His birth has made things harder, but he is also a constant source of joy.

Its the loss of his father, that he doesn´t know his son."

------------------

Lucan Vader walked through the streets of the vast city.

To his right were the lanes for the aircars and repulsortransports, forming the middle of the broad valley between the mile high starscrapers and towers of the city. The gaps between the huge buildings were big enough for the sun to touch the ground even here.

It was a light day, the sun shone bright and the sky was blue. The air was fresh and the passages were flanked by huge green trees. The wide walkways between the buildings and the traffic-lanes were neat enough to eat from, despite countless people walking on them in different directions. Children were playing, shop-owners doing business and the people made room for him, the moment he moved foreward, looking at him with respect and admiration in their eyes.

It was a picture of order, of peace. An enviroment were people were able to take care of their businesses and become wealthy by it.

As it should be.

Viewing a group of stormtroopers patrolling along the walkway, Lucan mused about the looks of admiration and respect. It was a good feeling, especially since he deserved it for all he had done, for what he had achieved and for what he was. The people of the galaxy had finally accepted his superiority over them, willingly entrusted their lives and their future into his hands.

It was a happy burden, although he had to carry it alone. Being superior meant also being seperated from others, since they weren´t his equals. But Lucan didn´t blame them for being inferior and different than him. After all, it wasn´t their fault.

"Things could always be that easy, if people were only willing to accept, what they are." he thought.

The view changed.

The son of Darth Vader was now standing on the top of a high mountain. Looking down he could see the city he had just been walking through. Looking up he saw the dark void of space with its uncounted numbers of stars. One day he would have visited them all. Star Destroyers and other ships, his ships, were moving between them, enforcing his peace, bringing law and order to the less civilizated areas of the universe. Not only in this galaxy, but in the other islands of stars as well.

Lucan was able to see it all, from his point of view, that high, on the top of his mountain.

The hissing sound of a respirator gave away the presence of another being. A strong hand was gently pressing his shoulder and Lucan, suddenly small compared to the towering figure of his father, Darth Vader, rested his head against the hip of the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"I did it, father." he said with a low voice. "I made our dream come true. I restored order and united the galaxy."

"Yes, you did it." answered Darth Vader with his deep voice. And then he said the words Lucan was willing to die for.

"I´m proud of you, my son."

Lucan closed his eyes in joy. He turned around to hug his fathers waist ...

... and dropped over the edge of the bed to the floor of his quaters aboard the Star Destroyer "Spectre".

"Autsch."

Swallowing down a curse he stood up. For over eight years now, this had been his favourite dream during the few occasions he really slept. Meditations in the Force were a much better way to regain his strenght, but Lucan allowed himself those little luxeries. Especially if he had company. For a moment he watched the sleeping form of the pretty ensign he had spent the night with. It didn´t matter to Lucan, if the crewers of his ship were male or female, human or alien, as long as they got the job done. Putting his clothes on he thought about last night and the passionate lovemaking with ... the ensign. Lucan turned around and looked at the sleeping form of the blond woman. Ensign ..., blast, what was her name?

"Admit it." he thought. "No passionate lovemaking, just sex. Hard and heated, but without soul." He sighed.

The woman in his bed wasn´t the first and certainly not the last, but it didn´t took long for Lucan to become bored with them. They seemed to lack something, although Lucan wasn´t able to see what. If he liked it or not, he felt lonely. The son of Darth Vader was aware of his own mortality, but if he wanted to make sure, that the galaxy stayed in capable hands as soon as he had conquered it, one day there would have to be somebody, who was able to replace him, to continue his work. Why not his own offspring? After all, he was the second generation of a dynasty and a third certainly wouldn´t hurt. Funny, that he wasn´t able to image one of the many women he had slept with to be the mother of his child. To think of one of them as his wife was even more laughable. He sighed again. Sooner or later he would have to find a suitable mate and if not... .Well, there was always the option to clone himself, like the late emperor Palpatine, but if no Spaarti-Cloning-Cylinder was available he better started soon.

Lucan didn´t knew why, but suddenly, without intention the image of another woman was in his head. Carzeta Myntrela. How could he have forgotten her? He remembered her very well. The way she laughed, the smell of her hair, her firm body pressed against his. Her bright spirit and her quick thinking. Her passion and compassion. Yes, that woman would make a worthy partner. Funny, that he only realized it now and not when he had been together with her. But then his mind had been occupied with other things. He wondered if she was well, if she was happy with her current live. If there was somebody else. And if so, if he could win her back or if he had to kill that guy. Yes, that was it. As soon as this mission was over, he would search her, find her and court her, until she agreed to become his wife. His wife and the mother of his children. But first there was a strike-team of the New Republic to destroy.

A shift of the bed and a yawn caused Darth Vader's sons thoughts back into the here and now. The blond ensign was sitting up, covering her naked body with the sheets and smiling at him. Lucan always wondered how a woman was able to glow the way they did after a night with him.

"Good morning, Mylord." she said.

"Morning." he greeted back. Suddenly he was extremly annoyed by her presence. He turned to the door, intending to leave, but her voice stopped him.

"Do you want me to come this evening, too, Mylord?" she asked with a sultry voice. Lucan turned back at her.

"I don´t think so." he only wanted to get rid of her. "By the way congregulations, Miss Dlarit. You´ve been promoted to Lieutenant."

"Wow, thank you, Mylord." she crawled to the edge of the bed, dropping the sheets a little bit to show her cleavage. "I can´t expect to show you my gratitude."

"About that I have no doubt. Unfortunately your new position is aboard the Interdictor-frigate "Catcher" so we won´t see again." The door opened. "Have a nice day."

The shocked look on the newly-promoted Lieutenant Dlarits face was something he didn´t saw anymore.

[Sean Mulligan]

I have been reading this fic for a while and I have been wondering if Lucas is going to find out that Luke and Leia are his half siblings and that his father was once Anakin Skywalker. Also, how could Vader have fathered a child after being put in his suite? Lucas would be very upset if he found out that it is Luke not him who is carrying out his fathers vision by rebuilding the Jedi Order and resoring the Republic.

[FTeik]

I have been reading this fic for a while and I have been wondering if Lucas is going to find out that Luke and Leia are his half siblings and that his father was once Anakin Skywalker. Also, how could Vader have fathered a child after being put in his suite? Lucas would be very upset if he found out that it is Luke not him who is carrying out his fathers vision by rebuilding the Jedi Order and resoring the Republic.

I don't know, if Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader had a vision of rebuilding the Jedi-Order and restoring the Republic, but Lucan will find out about his siblings soon enough (or the other way around).

About Vader fathering a child while in the suite, this is an AU so everything is possible. Not to mention the possiblities of modern medicine, but there are a lot of chapters to cover until we reach that point.

[FTeik]

Here is the next part:



The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter Nine


Like a predator forced to live in a cage Luke Skywalker patroled the bridge of the MC90-Class-Cruiser "MorningTide", a warship built by the MonCalamari and one of the most modern types of ships used by the NewRepublic.

The "MorningTide" was accompanied by an older MC80, the "DeepSea", a Corellian Corvette and a small tanker. Escorting the group of warships were three squadrons of the X-Wings from the "MorningTide", that had accompanied the capital vessels on their journey from Coruscant to the Teffeel-System on their own. It was in this system were Rogue-Squadron, Clawfinger-Squadron and the Storm-squadron would leave the fleet to sneak into Moff Odiin Vaskals territory to play the game of guerillawar. The fighters of those three squadrons had been transported in the hangar of the MonCalamari-Cruiser to give their pilots as much rest as possible before they would take off.

Luke Sykwalker had only at the starport decided to accompany the small fleet, caused by a sudden feeling that something wasn´t right. Although he had quit the service in the armed forces of the New Republic years ago, as Jedi-Master, Hero of the Rebellion and brother of the current chief of state, there had be nothing the captain of the "MorningTide" could have said to prevent Luke Skywalker from coming aboard. And the members of the crew viewed the presence of the Jedi as a good sign, after all. Smarter persons however would perhaps have started to worry.

Captain Deblev joinded the Jedi-Master at the transparisteel-window.

"Our freight is ready to take off."

"I see." answered Luke still looking out to the stars. "Thank you." he added after another moment. He couldn´t point a finger on it, but something felt wrong. Very wrong.

------

Inside the hangar of the "MorningTide" last preperations were finished and the three squadrons of X-Wings were ready.

"X-Wing-Squadrons report readiness for take-off." the officer in charge of the hangar-control ordered.

"Rogue 1, ready for take-off." General Wedge Antilles, the leader of the entire enterprise, confirmed.

"Rogue 2, ready." this was Colonel Tycho Celchu, commander of the Rogues, since Wedge had been promoted to General.

"Rogue 3 is ready." Corran Horn stated, still not used to the idea, that he was no longer Rogue Nine.

"Rogue 4 ready." this was Corrans wingman Ooryl Qrygg.

"Rogue 5 ready." sounded Inyri Forges voice.

"Rogue 6 ready." Gavin Darklighter.
.
.
.
Rogue 7 to 12 reported also to be ready. Then it was the turn of the "Clawfingers".

"Clawfingers 1-12 are ready for take-off." Commander Carzeta Myntrela reportet. Wedge Antilles rose his eyebrows in surprise.

"That was a fast one, Commander." he told her.

"While everyone of your Rogue-braggarts had to waste time to report personally to hangar-control, the "Clawfingers" were reporting to me on our squadrons freqency so that I could make the report in three seconds. We are a disciplined and modest squadron, General." mocked Carzeta.

"If you are as good in battle as you are modest, I have no problems with it." answered Wedge Antilles. This incident only confirmed his opinion of Carzeta Myntrela. A good commander with a lot of corps-spirit and able to motivate her men (and women) by taking advantage of the friendly kind of rivalry between different squadrons.

"Alright, Storm-squadron, confirm readiness to take off." he ordered to their third squadron.

"Yup, yup, Commander." answered Commander Wes Janson, Storm 1, since the Storm-squadron was the only one of the three squadrons, that had been put new together. "Storm 1-12 ready."

"We followed the modest example set by the "Clawfingers" explained Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, Storm 2. "While you were talking to the charming Commander Myntrela."

"Rmmmpf." answered General Antilles. "Alright, lets take off. The sooner we finish this mission, the better for my mental health."

--------

From the bridge of the "MorningTide" Luke Skywalker could observe how X-Wing after X-Wing left the hangars of the capital ship. As soon as the snubfighers were out, they started to form groups of four, always two pairs of wingmen. This way they formed nine groups, with Rogue-Squadron forming the first line, then the "Clawfigners" forming the second line and finally "Storm-squadron." The Corellian Corvette, which would accompany them moved between the first and second line, the tanker between the second and third line. As soon as the ships had completed their formation they turned towards their calculated hyperspace-vector and accelerated away.

Luke Skywalker and Captain Deblev watched, how they made the jump to lightspeed.

"Goodbye, friends." whispered Luke Skywalker. "May the Force be with you."

"There they go." Deblev commented. The MonCalamari turned around to face the Jedi-Master. "Master Skywalker, is everything alright? I got the impression you are unusually quite."

"Its nothing, Captain. I already said goodbye to them an hour before their take off. Its just that there are a lot of friends of mine out there now, moving close to the danger."

"That is their job and nobody forces them to do it. They know the dangers. They belong to the best and can face every obstacle that awaits them. You should know that better than me." tried Deblev to console Luke.

"Even the best ones will met sooner or later somebody, who is better than them." answered Luke Skywalker back. "I pray it won´t be this day. I have lost too many friends already."

Realizing that he could do nothing to change the mood of the Jedi-Master for the better, Deblev turned to his officers, ordering to take their other fighters in, now that the places in the hangar were free with the departure of the New Republics guerrilla-taskforce.

---

The probe-droid moved silently through the dark void of space, several thousand kilometers behind the small fleet of the New Republic. Its sophisticated sensors were only working in passive mode as to not give away its presence. Its outer hull was covered with sensorblocking materials and it was small enough, so it was close to impossible for enemysensors to detect it.

But now it discovered on its passive sensors, that something was going on. It seemed as if fighters were launched and the two smaller ships of the New Republic formation changed their position.

The probe-droid knew that his sole purpose was to discover on which hyperspace-vector the fighters would leave the system. It also knew, that to accomplish that task it had to activate its active sensors, what would give away its position. This would possible mean its own destruction, but the probe didn´t care about it.

It was just a droid after all.

-----------------

"Sir, there is something unusual." reported the responsible officer of the "MorningTides" sensor-station.

Captain Deblev stepped to the man. "Something unusual?" he asked.

"For a fraction of a second there was something like a sensorimpuls." hurried the inferior officer to explain. Again a short "blip" could be seen on the screen. "There is it again. But its too small to be a ship."

"Too small to be a ship." tried Luke Skywalker to confirm, who had observed the entire exchange and who felt now an ugly suspicion rose in his guts. "Can you triangulate its position?"

"Yes, Master Skywalker."

Deblev shot a questioning look at the Jedi-Master. "I guess we both think the same, Master Skywalker." he said with a low voice. Turning to his bridgecrew he ordered. "Change course on vector 264 and make our ion-cannons ready. Also make sure to disturb all attempts at communications. Intercept."

As fast as possible the huge MonCalamari-Cruiser turned around, accelerating towards the unknown contact, powering up its communications-scramblers.

----

The probe-droid registered the changes in the behavior of the objects it observed and even droids with a less sophisticated brain than the one it owned would have been capable to guess the things to come.

Activating its thrusters it accelerated away from the advancing enemyship, while bringing at the same time its hypercom-antenna in position to report its last observations.

----

The "MorningTide" covered several thousand kilometers in a matter of seconds, soon getting the object its crew was searching for on the targeting-sensors of its weaponsstations. But long before that, the entire spectrum for communications was jammed.

----

"We have a positive targetlook." reported the weapons-officer of the "MorningTide"

"Ion-cannons fire." ordered Captain Deblev. The tall Mon Calamari rolled his eyes nervously.

----

The probe-droid diverted all available power to its thrusters, still trying to escape its huge persecutor, but without success. Hit by several blasts from the ion-cannons of the huge ship, its electronic systems went down.

But its builders had been prepared for that possibility. The very moment the droid was hit its self-destruction was initiated. In an expanding cloud of flames and debris the droid vanished out of existence.

----

"There is no doubt, isn´t it?" asked Luke Skywalker, who watched the last moments of the unmatched hunt on tape.

"No." confirmed Deblev. "An imperial probe-droid. Somehow somebody knew, that our taskforce would depart here."

"Fortunately we were able to intercept the droid and to prevent it from fullfilling its purpose."

"Yes, but it was close. Too close. Hopefully ... ."

"Sir, Captain ... ." the human Jedi and the MonCalamari-Captain were interrupted.

"What is it?" Deblev demanded to know.

"We have a second contact. And its transmitting a hyperwave-message."

----

Admiral Guderi watched the tall figure of Lucan Vader carefully. Thirty minutes had passed since one of their probe-droids inside the Teffeel-System had transmitted the departing vector of the New Republics taskforce to them. The "Spectre" and the sixhundred meter long Interdictor-frigate "Catcher" had then needed twenty minutes to reach this system, that didn´t have a name, but was only a number on the maps, where they would intercept the infiltrators of the New Republic. The only way the three squadrons of X-Wings and their supportships could escape now would be a change of their set course in hyperspace, but that would mean, that they were abandoning the mission.

Guderi turned back to the tactical hologram. On his side all players were in position. The "Catcher" formed one angle of a triangle, its powerful gravity-well-projectors already creating a coneshaped interdiction-field towards the centre of their formation. Close behind the Interdictor-frigate its two squadrons of fighters were waiting, one squadron of Interceptors and one of ordinary TIEs. Guderi made a face when he thought about them. The construction-facility of SienarFleetSystems they controlled was producing TIE-Avengers in the hundreds, but it was a huge fleet and ships like the "Catcher" were on the low end of the recieving list.

As if to make up for it, the second angle consisted of the entire fighterwing of the "Spectre", sixty hyperspace-capable TIE-Avengers, with shields, lasers and proton-torpedos and twelve Scimitar-Assault-Bombers Mark II.

Both groups were only several dozen kilometers away from each other, while the "Spectre" had retreated to a position several lightseconds away from them, forming the tip of a very pointed triangle.

Guderi looked at his watch. The enemy should be here in a matter of minutes. He turned back to his Master, Lucan Vader. The Sith-Lord was standing in a tense position, as if listening to a voice only he was able to hear. Slowly his arm moved up. Seing this Guderi hurried to order the bridge-crew. "Be ready for the jump. On my mark." His eyes switched back to the young Lord Vader.

The seconds seemed to pass like hours.

Then.

The arm of the Dark Lord dropped down.

"Jump." the helmeted figure barked.

The "Spectre" jumped to lightspeed, but before the blackness of space was replaced by the swirling streaks and clouds of hyperspace Guderi could see a number of ships trapped in the centre of the interdictionfield.

[FTeik]

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The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 10


General Wedge Antilles knew something was wrong the very moment his X-Wing dropped out of hyperspace long before their flight should be over. For a moment he searched for the gravital anomaly that had pulled him out of the faster-than-light-realm, hoping that the interruption of their flight had a natural source. A hope, that was quickly crushed the moment he discovered the well-known shape of an Imperial Interdictor-frigate a few kilometers away.

And then all hell broke out.

----

In his youth Gavin Darklighter - now Rogue Six - had accompanied his father into the deserts of Tatooine, during one of the drynesses on Tatooine. Although the planet was a desert already, there were periods that were even worse, when not even the Tusken or the wild Banthas were able to find necessary needed water anymore. During those times the ambushes and raids on settlements increased dramatically in numbers, simply for getting water and so Gavin and his father were scouting for Tusken-activity.

They hadn´t found any Tusken, but a large herd of Banthas moving towards a canyon that divided a chain of mountains into two halfs. His father explained to the young Darklighter, that the animals hoped to find water and deposits of salt. Where Banthas were, Tusken weren't far away and so the two Darklighters decided to follow the herd and climbed into the mountains on one side of the canyon.

Gavin was still climbing over the edge of the plateau at the top, when he realised that the body of his father, who had already reached the top, had become tense.

"Dad? Is everything alright?" he had asked, concern in his voice.

"Shhhhh, Gavin." the older Darklighter had hissed. "Be quite and come here."

Gavin had obeyed and when he reached his father he understood why. On the plateau of the other side of the gap a Kryat-dragon was moving and the canyon was narrow enough for the huge predator to cover the distance with a single jump. The dull colors of its scales showed it to be a female and despite its huge size the beast seemed to be very thin. It probably hadn´t eaten for quite some time and Gavin thought to see the madness of hunger and pure bloodlust in the eyes of the animal and the young Darklighter prayed, that the Krayt-dragon didn´t detect him and his father.

The Banthas however were less lucky.

With an incredible scream the Krayt-dragon jumped into the canyon, directly among the Banthas, pushing its claws into the furcovered flash, turning its head from the left to the right and closing its mouth around its prey, as if obsessed with only one thought.

To kill.

It was an awesome and terrible sight and Gavin Darklighter would never forget it.

When the dragon finally stopped, having exhausted its strenght, the ground of the canyon was filled with the dead bodies of dozens of Banthas. The ground, the walls, everything was covered with blood and the smell of death and already rotting flesh in the incredible heat of Tatooines two suns filled the air.

For a long time the memories had caused nightmares for the young Darklighter, so much, that he sometimes had wondered how the doomed Banthas had felt that day before death claimed them.

When they were pulled out of hyperspace and barely a second later an Imperial Star Destroyer suddenly appeared inside their formation and started to fire with every single one of its guns, he knew.

This was the end.

-------

The very moment the "Spectre" was pulled out of hyperspace by the interdictionfield of the "Catcher", the ship had opened fire with every cannon available. Green and red bolts of Turbolaserfire and Ioncannons were pounded into the ships of the New Republic.

On the bridge of the Star Destroyer the leading persons were recieving the results of the first five seconds of their ambush.

"Nine enemy-starfighters destroyed. Five out of the squadron at their aft, three of the middle one and one from the leading squadron. Our surprise was total."

"Remember me to promote the officer at tractor-station three, who managed to catch the Corellian Corvette after our first volley. Now finish her off." ordered Guderi. "Can anybody tell me, where their tanker is?"

"Our sensors are registering a cloud of debris, that fits the mass of the tanker. And our dorsal shields have dropped by twenty percent. It seems the tanker collided with our dorsal frontshields and exploded and we haven´t seen it, because of our own fire."

"Is the damage to our shields permanent?" Lucan Vader asked calm.

"No, Sir, they are already recharging. They should be back at maximum power within one minute."

The young Lord Vader didn´t show his relief when he turned back to Admiral Guderi and Captain Priem. "We are lucky. Our results are better than expected. As it seems we don´t need the bombers anymore."

"Then I can sent our fighters in, Mylord?" asked Priem.

"Yes." confirmed Lucan Vader. He pressed a button at his seat. "Hangar?"

"Yes, Sir?" came the immediate reply. The Crew of the "Spectre" was well trained and everybody knew what would happen, if their great leader had to wait for something he wanted now.

"Is my personal fighter ready?"

"Of course, Sir, as well as your wingmen."

"Excellent." Lucan turned to Priem and Guderi. "I will personally participate in the cleaning up of the remaining fighters. You have the bridge."

-----

A part of Wes Janson wanted to scream, to curse, to hit the controls of his cockpit with his fists and smash them. Nearly half his squadron - five fighters - had been obliterated by the first volley of the Star Destroyer. Men, women, aliens he had lived with, trained with and for whom he was responsible. But the pilot from Taanab had been a soldier for too long and wouldn't have survived so many battles, if he wouldn´t have been able to concentrate on the here and now. Besides his prime duty was now to ensure the survival of those, who were still alive.

"Hobbie, are you alright?" he asked his second-in-command of "Stormsquadron". When no answer came, he asked again. "Hobbie! Storm2, are you alright?"

"I´m alright." answered Derek Klivian after another short moment. "But my X-Wing isn´t. My S-Foils on the right side are totally burnt away. Storm4, 6,7,8 and 12 are dead."

"I know." A lump formed in Jansons throat. With his S-Foils burnt, Hobbie was as easy to hit like a sitting duck. And from their right a cloud of TIEs fast closing in could be seen.

"Alright. Storm3, your new wingmen is Storm5, I want you to cover Storm 2. Storm11 you´ll come with me. Please confirm."

"Don´t try to take care of me." Hobbie shouted. "I´m as good as dead with my fighter damaged. Wes, you´ll have to try to escape."

"I won´t leave you behind."

"You´ll have to."

----

Wedge Antilles mouth formed a thin line, when his astromech reported their losses. He had no idea how the commander of the Star Destroyer had managed to be pulled out of hyperspace at the same moment as his taskforce. Not that it mattered for the moment. What mattered was, that their tanker had been destroyed by colliding with the shields of the huge warship and that the corvette was shot to pieces by the heavy turbolasers, after being damaged in the first volley and then cought with the tractorbeams. That was a bad sign. It showed that the Imperials didn´t intended to make prisoners or to make a prize by capturing a valuable ship.

Nine of his fighters, a quater of all his X-Wings was already destroyed and soon they would get company in the form of eighty-four TIEs.

Things looked bad. Really bad. He tried to banish the picture of Batesh, Rogue12 out of his head. The Barabel had been a member of Rogue-Squadron for only a short time, but had already belonged to the family.

"Think, Wedge, think." he admonished himself. The mission was already doomed. The only thing that counted now was to escape. And for that goal the Interdictor-cruiser with its four huge gravity-well-projektors was the main obstacle.

"Missionleader to all Squadron-Commanders. Change your course to Vector 10 by fifteen degrees. We´ll go after the Interdictor."

"Roger, missionleader." came the confirmation from Carzeta Myntrela.

"Roger." answered Wes Janson with a low voice. "Wedge, Hobbies X-Wing is damaged. Request permission to stay with him."

"Negative." Wedge and Derek Klivian shouted unisono.

"Wes, there is nothing you can do."

"The General is right." stated Hobbie. "Perhaps they´ll ignore me, if I play dead. Now save your own butt."

"Hobbie... ."

"Do it. Oh, no."

-------

Carzeta Myntrela was tempted to curse very unlady-like. Her first real mission besides border-patrol, fighting pirates and securing liberated starsystems had turned out to be a disaster. To make things worse, one quater of her squadron was destroyed.

With their supportships destroyed, the remaining X-Wings had to face trice the number of hostile fighters. Not to forget the blackhulled demon of a Star Destroyer behind them.

A fight impossible to win.

So it came as a great relief when General Antilles ordered them to attack the Interdictor-cruiser. If they managed to take out the gravity-well-projectors of the six hundred meter long ship, they would have a chance to escape.

"Alright, Clawfingers, you´ve heard what the General said. Lets give those Imps a dance for their money."

Less than a minute later, they were already engaged with the fighters of the "Catcher".

-----

Against Wedges orders Wes Janson accelerated back towards the drifting X-Wing of his friend. Hobbies fighter was in the middle of an invisible line between Wes Jansons X-Wing and the huge, black form of the "Spectre", from where a group of three TIEs was racing towards the battle.

And with the speedadvantage of the TIE-Avengers it wasn´t really a question, who would reach him first.

-----

"Black Two, finish the damaged fighter, I´ll take care of his compassionate companion." Lucan Vader ordered inside his TIE-X1.

"Roger, Sir." confirmed Black Two. It wasn´t very noble to kill a helpless opponent and it wouldn´t be counted as a hit, but he knew better than to question his leaders orders.

While Lucan and Black One moved on towards the main bulk of fighters, Black Two slowed down and fired a protontorpedo the very moment he got a positive targetinglook.

-----

Inside his cockpit "Hobbie" Derek Klivian had tried without success to reactivate the systems of his X-Wing. But with his entire right S-Foils burnt away, this was an impossible task. The balance of his thrusters was dependent on four Foils and he had only two left, both of them on the same side. Same went for his weapons, but while his lasers were shut down, his second launcher for protontorpedos was still working. For a moment he wondered, why the gunners of the Star Destroyer ignored him, helpless as he was, but Hobbie wasn´t the one to question small favours. Now if he could only get a positive targetinglook at one or both of the two TIEs, that had passed him and were closing in to his friend Wes ... .

The beeping sound of his warningsystems was the last sound the pilot from Raaltiir heard, before a protontorpedo hit his unshielded X-Wing and exploded.

After ten years as a member of Rogue-Squadron and the fighterforces of the New Republic, after surviving Hoth, Endor, the conquest of Coruscant, the campaigns of Grandadmiral Thrawn and the reborn emperor, and countless other battles, Derek Klivians luck had finally run out.

------

A few kilometers away from the place, where Derek Klivian had died, the remaining fighters of Rogue-, Clawfinger- and Stormsquadron were enganging the two squadrons of the "Catcher", when the "Spectres" five squadrons of TIE-Avengers reached the battlefield.

"Blast." cursed Gavin Darklighter. "Without Hobbie and Wes we are twentyfive against eightyfour."

"Then lets change the numbers in our favour." suggested Corran Horn. "They are only "Squints" and one Squadron of "Eyeballs".

"Negative. They´re too fast even for "Squints"." corrected Tycho Celchu. "So you guys better stay careful."

"Yes." thought Wedge Antilles. "Those fighters look like Interceptors, perhaps Interceptors on steroids, but they are no Interceptors. Hopefully their superior speed is the only difference."

Unfortunately for the soldiers of the New Republic, this wasn´t the case. A TIE-Avenger was armed with four lasercannons and two launchers for three protontorpedos each. It had shields and a hyperdrive, so for all these factors, it was equal to an X-Wing. But as a TIE-fighter it was also more manouverable than an X-Wing and had much better acceleration. The TIE-Avenger was almost by thirty percent superior to an X-Wing and still twenty percent better than an A-Wing.

In terms of technic and numbers the forces of Lucan Vader were superior. The young Lord Vader had brought the best pilots he had been able to find aboard the "Spectre", where he had forced them to train as often as possible. The only advantage in this battle the soldiers of the New Republic might have had, were their experience and their skills.

-----

Wes Jansons eyes turned into thin slits when he discovered, that only one enemyfighter was flying towards him. He had no idea, where the second TIE had disappeared. Janson got an explenation for the bold way the hostile fighter headed for him, when his computer identified the machine as a TIE-X1.

So just because this guy had shields, he thought he could play games. Wes was all to eager to do him that favour. He had been forced to witness the death of Hobbie and he still wasn´t able to believe it. After all those years, all those battles, they had fought and survived, it was impossible. Other pilots died, but not Hobbie. It was, as if a bubble had been destroyed. If Hobbie could die, Wes Janson could die, too. Oh yes, on the rational side, he had always known, that one day, sooner or later something like this was going to happen, but to know something and also to believe it were two different things.

And now the two fighters were racing towards each other, cockpit to cockpit with their guns firing. It was like a game of "Frightened Chicken". The first one who was abandoning his course or would loose his shields had lost. It was only a question whose shields would drop first.

But in the last possible moment, the TIE-X1 moved to the sides and Wes Janson was finally able to see the trap he had walked into. The second TIE had been close behind the leading X1, hidden in the sensorshadow of the massive fighter. The very moment its line of fire was clear, Black One opened fire.

Wes Jansons shields were already weakend and so the lasers of Black One caused them to drop totally. The last thing Wes Janson saw, was the glowing orb of a protontorpedo, before his X-Wing was turned into a fast expanding cloud of debris.

-------

"Excellent shot, Black One." praised Lucan Vader.

"Thank you, Sir. But it was an easy task, since you feed me with targetingdata. This way I was able to open fire the very moment, you moved aside." answered Black One.

"No false modesty." Lucan Vader admonished. "It request great skills to fly in the sensorshadow of another fighter."

Contrary to the fighters of the rebellion, the training of pilots of the empire had been more concentrated on cooperation, since the majority of imperial fighters had been without shields and hyperdrives. Pilots had to rely on their wingmates, if they wanted to survive and even then the deathtoll had become enourmes, when they had been forced to fight the superior fighters of the rebels. Despite that Lucans praise had been justified, since Black Ones flying had really been excellent.

"Black Two is closing in." reported Black One.

"Then lets join the major battle."

-----

With a sad smile Carzeta Myntrela watched how the TIE-Interceptor exploded. This was her fourth hit of the day, but it could as well be her tenth without making a difference.

The young commander took a quick look at her tactical display. Personally she had destroyed one ordinary TIE, two Interceptors and one of those new fighters.

Together the remains of the three squadrons of X-Wings had destroyed ten TIE/lns, seven TIE-Interceptors and five of the other fighters. But Stormsquadron had ceased to exist, Rogue Ten and Eight had been killed and of her own squadron only six X-Wings were left. They had killed twenty two enemyfighters, but lost fourteen fighters of their own.

Now it was fifteen X-Wings against sixty five different models of TIEs.

------

On the bridge of the "Spectre" Admiral Guderi was leant back in the comfortable Admirals-chair, his eyes halfway closed, the tips of his fingers pressed together. He seemed to be rather relaxed, but despite the outside facade of peace and calmness, Captain Priem was sure, that nothing escaped the attention of his superior officer.

"Captain Priem." Guderi asked with a calm, almost gentle voice.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Order the "Catcher" to project her gravity-wells on an interception-point of a straight line between the Teffeel-System and us. Order our Scimitarbomber to move into a position on the opposite side of us with the interdictionfield in the centre. And turn the "Spectre" around. Battlestations."

"Yes, Admiral. May I ask ... oh, I think I understand."

Guderi wasn´t Force-sensitive. But like many of the best soldiers, he had a certain sense for the ground he was fighting on, for the possibilities open to his opponents and those open to himself. It was this kind of awareness, that allowed him to turn things to his advantage, to keep the initiative over his enemies. Guderi strongly believed, that the outcome of ninty percents of all battles was decided, before the real fighting even started. For the one who choses the battlefield and dictates the conditions of the fight victory will be inevetible. The real art of war was to make sure, that sudden surprises didn´t sent the battleplan to hell.

Guderi had made his preperations and as always he wasn´t going to be disappointed.

[FTeik]

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The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 11



"Black Bones of the Emperor." Corran Horn cursed.

Again an enemy-fighter had escaped by manouvering out of the X-Wings targeting-look and firing-arc before the four laser-cannons had been able to weaken the shields enough to destroy the fighter. Corran still wasn´t used to it and it showed in his hits until now. One fighter destroyed.

"It isn´t fair." he thought. "TIEs are not supposed to have shields. Point."

Fighting shielded enemies proved to be much different and more difficult than the fighter-forces of the New Republic ever had expected. Suddenly they were forced to need more time to shoot down a single enemy, what requested greater flying-skills to keep the hostile fighter in reach of their weapons, while at the same time they had to make sure that nobody else sneaked in on them from behind as long as they were concentrated on a target.

And the fact that the concentration of forces had shifted to a numerical advantage of four against one wasn´t helping either.

"Blast, what are you?" he muttered into his comlink. But before he got an answer, he had to take care of other things.

"Corran, Ooryl needs your help."

The desperate outcry of his wingmate was like a cold shower for the corellian pilot. On his display he could see Ooryl's fighter persucuted by two of those new TIEs.

"Hold out, I´m on my way."

Turning his X-Wing to the side Corran accelerated towards the triplet of fighters. For a short moment he touched his talisman, the coin of his grandfather on his chest. An unusual calmness came over him and for a moment Corran was flying with closed eyes. When he opened them again, he was right behind the two TIE-Avengers and without even waiting for the confirmation of his targeting-computer he opened fire with his lasers on the right one. Red beams of energy tore into the shields of the TIE and when Corran fired a protontorpedo at the enemy, the fate of the TIE was sealed.

His wingmate realised the danger he was now in and deaccelerated, what caused Corran to haul over him. Now Corran was the one with a TIE on his heels, but Ooryl had used the time to turn his X-Wing around. The Gand was now coming in from the front and when Corran moved aside, Ooryl opened fire. Seconds later the TIE was nothing more, but a cloud of molten debris.

Corran took a deep breath. "Well, thank you Ooryl."

"No need to. Thats what friends are for." the Gand answered.

"Yes, thats what ..., Ooryl WATCH OUT!"

But it was to late. Hails of green laserfire tore into the X-Wing of the Gand, oblitering it totally. A sour taste formed in Corrans mouth and for a moment he thought he was next. But the attack had come from the side and so the triplet of TIEs and he himself were moving into different directions. For a moment he wondered about the TIE in the centre of their formation, which seemed to be another different model he hadn´t encountered before.

-----

Meanwhile the number of X-Wings was down to eight fighters, while still fifty-eight TIEs were out there.

With a grim smile General Wedge Antilles watched one of the last Interceptors explode. If that was the end, he was going to sell his life as expansive as possible. For a short moment he thought about all the things he had wanted to do, had wanted to tell Iella and regreted, that he hadn´t said them.

He turned his fighter into a curve, when he heard Tycho Celchu on his comlink.

"Hmmhmm, I remember something about those fighters."

"Does it help us to get out of here?" Inyri Forge asked.

"Unfortunately not." the Alderaanian admitted..

"Well, tell us anyway." Wedge ordered.

"Those fighters aren´t new. The first squadrons were put into service short after the battle of Hoth. Their design is based on Darth Vaders TIE-Advanced and they are called TIE-Avenger. From the entire TIE-series, only the Defender was better."

"Nice. So why haven´t we seen more of them?" asked Wedge. "If the empire had used more of those fighters, who knows how the war would have developed." he thought.

"The official version was, that they were too expansive to be produced in high numbers. But that was only misinformation."

"And the correct version?" Inyri asked, while Wedge opened fire on another fighter.

An imperial mutineer, who attempted a coup against Palpatine managed to destroy all the construction-facilities before he was defeated himself. Of course the empire tried everything to keep that a secret."

"Well, they were very successful. Despite that, my gratitude to the imperial mutineer. And how will we survive this?" Gavin Darklighter asked annoyed.

"Get into formation." ordered Wedge. "We´ll try to break through their formations and to get out of that interdictorfield."

"General, we tried this before and they always managed to force us back."

"Yes, but we have no other choice. Report in when ready."

"Rogue Two ready." came the reply from Tycho Celchu.

"Rogue Three ready." this was Corran Horn.

"Ready." confirmed Inyri Forge.

"Six ready." that was Gavin Darklighter.

"Clawfinger One, ready." Carzeta Myntrelas voice sounded dry.

"Anybody else?" asked Wedge, hoping against hope, although he knew better.

"They are all dead. My entire squadron. All dead."

Listening to this Wedge had to bite his lower lip. He hoped Carzeta Myntrela wouldn´t suffer a mental breakdown, like Myn Donos years ago, when his squadron had been destroyed by Admiral Apwar Trigit. Not now.

"Concentrate on the here and now, Commander." he said with a sharp edge in his voice. But the young commander seemed to understand his concerns.

"Don´t worry, General, I´m alright. Its just, that the last three of my men were killed by one fighter. And I could do nothing about it." Suddenly she screamed. "Thats him. THERE HE IS."

Looking out Wedge discovered a triplet of TIEs closing in on them, closely followed by other groups of imperial fighters. Recognition hit him, when he saw the fighter in the centre of their formation and he remembered all the nightmares he had had after the battle of Yavin. There had also been a fighter like this one in this battle and its pilot had nearly killed Wedge and Luke. Only three fighters out of thirty-five had survived this day and if the pilot of this one was as good as the one at Yavin ... .

This is really the end he thought with desperation.

But then he saw something, that would become the most beautiful sight of his entire life.

With a flicker of pseudomotion the "MorningTide" and the "DeepSea" dropped out of hyperspace.

But the joy didn´t lasted long.

The two MonCalamari-Cruisers had dropped out of hyperspace right in front of the cannons of the black Star Destroyer, which immediately opened fire.

---

Guderi was shaking his head in disappointment. There was no reliance on the rebels anymore. He had expected them to arrive here five minutes ago. The moment the transmission of one of their probe-droids inside the Teffeel-System had reported the selfdestruction of one of its collegues, Guderi had known that they would be on their way. He had only waited that long, before he ordered the "Spectre" to turn around to prevent the crew from tiring on their battlestations. Despite that, they had been forced to wait five minutes longer than expected.

Well, better late than never.

"Ignore the MC90 for now and concentrate all fire on the MC80. Fire all protontorpedos after the third salvo. Order the Scimitars to attack the MC80, too. And call the "Catcher" to join us." He ordered with a calm voice, while he watched the first salvo of his Star Destroyers cannons fired on both MonCalamari-Ships.

-----

On the bridge of the "MorningTide", Luke Skywalker barely managed to NOT drop to the floor. The entire ship was shaking around him, first from being pulled out of hyperspace and second from the broadside of the black Stardestroyer in front of them.

"By the Seadragon, open fire on that Star Destroyer." Captain Deblev shouted as soon as he recognized the situation his ship was in. This time the ship was shaken by the recoil of its own Turbolasers.

"Besides the Star Destroyer we detected one Interdictor-cruiser. And fifty-seven TIEs." came the report from the "MorningTides" sensor-station.

"Any signs of General Antilles and his task-force?" asked Deblev, who had been lucky enough to sit in his command-chair, when the disaster had started.

"No signs of ..., wait. We have six X-Wings on our scanners. They were partly covered by the TIEs."

With a mixture of horror and relief Luke Skywalker turned to the Mon Calamari. Horror, because only six men of their entire task-force were still alive, relief, because they weren´t all dead, because some of them could still be safed. "Captain, we have to launch our own fighters if we want to help them."

"I somehow doubt the Captain of that Star Destroyer is going to allow this." the Mon Calamari shouted.

"Then turn the ship around its axis, so that their take off is covered by the hull and our shields."

"In that case, we can only concentrate half of our weapons on the Star Destroyer."

"Then you should better hurry." Luke Skywalker shouted.

"Where are you going?"

"To the hangar. I´ll go out. Here on the bridge I´m useless."

Deblev watched him leave. "Alright." he ordered. "Turn the ship around the axis. We have to get our fighters out. Has the "DeepSea" managed to launch its fighters?"

"Negative, Sir. The Star Destroyer is firing with all its guns on them, so they can´t drop their shields. They won´t hold out any longer."

On his tactical display Deblev could see a squadron of enemy-fighters accelerating towards the "DeepSea". "Oh, no." he muttered. Pressing a switch at his command-chair he established a connection with the hangar. "Hangar-control, we have to get our fighters out. Now."

-----

It was a thumb-rule in space-combat, that a capital ship was able to survive five to six full volleys from an opponent of equal size and armament, before starting to take serious damage. And even being four hundred meters shorter a MC80-Cruiser was able to hold its ground against an ISD-I, since it didn´t wasted space on huge storerooms for Walkers, prefabricated Garrisons or an entire army of nearly ten thousand troops or more than thirty thousand crewers.

But even with those differences, it had to make up for a smaller number of weapons. The MC80-Cruiser made up for this with its triple-redundant shieldgenerators, what meant that it was capable to recharge its shields much faster than an imperial Star Destroyer.

But while able to challange an ISD-I, an MC80 was no match for an ISD-II on the long run.

And especially not against an heavily upgraded ISD-II like the "Spectre".

The "Spectre" didn´t carry a huge army of ten thousand troops. It didn´t carry all the heavy equipment for ground-warfare. Additional powerplants for weapons and shields and hullarmour had taken their place. Twenty launchers for protontorpedos and concussion missiles had been added, as well as twenty additional heavy Turbolasers, thus increasing the firepower of the ISD-II by thirty percent, torpedos not counted.

Because of this the "DeepSea" was under fire from an enemy, that had almost hundred-sixty percent more firepower than the MC80. The result was, that it wouldn´t take six salvos to bring its shields down, but less than three.

Admiral Guderi had counted on that and therefore decided to suffer the punishment from the "MorningTide". Another Commander would have split his firepower between the two MC-Cruiser and, in the end, reached nothing. The main point was to prevent at least one of the two enemy-cruisers from launching its starfighters, because the "Spectres" own fighters would be clearly outnumbered by twelve squadrons of NewRepublic-fighters in that case and to destroy or at least severly damage one of the enemies capital ships.

So after the third salvo from the "Spectre" the shields of the "DeepSea" ceased to exist and twenty protontorpedos smashed into the now unprotected hull.

For that, the squadron of Scimitar-Assault-Bombers had only waited. They had started their strafing run on the "DeepSea" the same moment the second salvo had torn into the shields of the unfortunate vessel and launched a volley of protontorpedos of their own, when the third salvo caused the shields of the MC80-Cruiser to drop.

Scimitar-Assault-Bombers were crewed by a pilot and a weapons-officer. They were as manouverable as a TIE-Interceptor or an A-Wing and armed with two lasercannons and two launchers for either eight concussion missiles or twelve protontorpedos each.

Thanks to their manouverability they were able to evade the fire of the "DeepSeas" pointdefence-cannons. The fighters of Wedge Antilles taskforce would have been able to do the same with the antistarfighter-cannons of the "Spectre", hadn´t they been surprised in a matter of a millisecond. This was an advantage the gunners aboard the "DeepSea" lacked now.

So it came, that the MC80-Cruiser was hit by fourtyfour protontorpedos at the same time, with shields down and its fighters still inside their hangars.

----

Satisfied Guderi watched on his tactical hologram, how the Scimitars continued to maul the "DeepSea", while the "Catcher" was moving in to support them.

"Status of our shields, Captain Priem?" he asked.

"Starboard shields have dropped to sixty percent." reported Priem. "And the MC-90 has managed to launch all its fighters. Three squadrons of A-Wings, two squadrons of X-Wings and one squadron of E-Wings."

"Excellent. The A-Wings don´t carry the armament to be a danger to us or our Avengers, so we only have to worry about the X- and E-Wings. Rotate the ship around its axis, so that we can present their mothership a fresh shield.

And I think its time to call our fighters back."

-----

Lucan had just finished another X-Wing and was now accelerating his TIE-X1 towards his next target, when the capital ships of the New Republic arrived on the battlefield.

Satisfied he watched how Guderi concentrated the cannons of the "Spectre" against only one of their adverseries, preventing it from launching its own fighters and giving the Scimitar-Assault-Bombers the oppertunity to attack it with chances of success.

On the other side, this meant that the "Spectre" had to take the punishment from the other ship and to allow the other ship to lauch its own fighters.

What meant, that Guderi would soon have to call the fighters back, giving him less time to destroy the New Republic taskforce completely.

The heir of Darth Vader decided NOT to wait for Guderis call.

"Black One and Two, you´ll stay with me, as well as Spectre-1 to Spectre-6. Spectre-7 to Spectre-54, you´ll return to the "Spectre".

Lucan didn´t waited for the confirmation of his men, but fired his lasers against the X-Wing whose pilot had shot down Spectre-35 just moments ago, what had turned Spectre-55 into Spectre-54.

----

Only moments ago the withdrawal of four entire squadrons of those blasted Avengers would have been reason to cheer for Wedge Antilles. But that had been before the pilot of the TIE-X1 had killed Inyri Forge and Tycho Celchu, although the pilot from Alderaan had managed to destroy an Avenger before his death.

Now only he, Gavin Darklighter, Corran Horn and Carzeta Myntrela were left, facing eight TIE-Avengers and one TIE-X1 whose pilot had already shown, that he counted for three.

But with the withdrawal of fourty eight of the enemies fighters, space was free for them.

----

Luke Skywalker was one of the last to leave the hangar of the "MorningTide". There was a limit to the speed of the ships turbolifts and even using "Jedi-Speed" and running through the corridors wouldn´t have made a difference. Besides that, he couldn´t afford to be exhausted before the battle even begun.

Now outside the hangar he just had to decide, where to go.

Follow the three squadrons of A-Wings, that were racing towards the support of the already heavily damaged and burning hull of the "DeepSea", which now came under attack not only from the imperial bombers, but also from this Interdictor-cruiser, join the two squadrons of X-Wings, that were attacking the blackhulled Star Destroyer on the side where its shields were weakend, while it exchanged broadside after broadside with the "MorningTide" or to follow the single squadron of E-Wings, that were trying to reach his friends?

Luke Skywalker decided for the later one, first because he was obliged to help his friends, second he had aquired an E-Wing and he was tempted to take that as an omen and third, because he felt through the force, that the main enemy was out there.

A greater danger than even the Star Destroyer.

----

Inside his comfortable command-chair Guderi sighed. His feeling of disappointment had increased, when he had witnessed the way the leading commander of the enemy had distributed his fighters. On the other hand, he hadn´t had much of a choice, although Guderi in his place wouldn´t have wasted an entire squadron of E-Wings for four people.

Even if one of those people was Wedge Antilles.

Sooner or later the New Republics luck would run out and Guderi was wondering what would kill them first then, their incompetence or their compassion. On the other side, the death of Wedge Antilles would probably be a blow to them, worse, than the loss of a simple taskforce.

After all, Wedge Antilles was a hero, a legend and perhaps the only reason for fifty percent of the New Republics recruits in the starfighter-corps.

He looked over his tactical display again.

Viewed from above Lord Vaders group formed the narrow tip of a quadrangle or parallelogram. The "Spectre" and the MC90 formed the two tips closest to each other, while the MC80 and the "Catcher" formed the narrow tip on the opposite site and were (viewed from the same level) partly behind the "Spectre".

Because of this the E-Wings from the MC90-Cruiser wouldn´t met with the Avengers, which were returning to the "Spectre".

If he had been forced to spent one squadron to save four people, Guderi would have chosen an A-Wing-Squadron. They were faster than an E-Wing and therefore able to reach those in need of help sooner. And the E-Wings armament of sixteen protontorpedos could have been used against the big ship.

Now the "Spectre" and the MC90 were exchanging broadsides, not full volleyes, since both ships could only bring half their guns into the fight, facing each other from the sides.

"Add a volley of protontorpedos to our next broadside of Turbolasers." he ordered with a calm voice.

"Sir, shields on our portside are down to fourty percent." came the report.

Guderi´s eyes turned into slits. That was the side, where they were under attack from the two squadrons of X-Wings. Under normal circumstances, that shouldn´t be a problem, without the help of capital ships, that fought the shields of the hostile capital ship down, fighters were rather useless. But the "Spectres" shields on that side had already been down to sixty percent prior to the X-Wings attack.

And now they had dropped by another twenty percent. Not the shields themself, of course, but the network of shield-generators, but it would take time for the damage-control-parties to get them back online, time they didn't have.

"Concentrate all cannons, even ion-cannons on their next vector of approach. Even if we don´t hit their fighters, we will destroy a significant part of their torpedos, before they will hit us. That should relief our port-shields."

-----

Lieutenant Xantris was biting his lower lip in frustration. While their comrades in the A-Wings had gotten the, in his eyes, easy part of dealing with a single squadron of imperial bombers and an Interdictor-cruiser, he and the men of the two X-Wing-squadrons had to face the great monster of the Star Destroyer.

Already twice the twenty-four X-Wings had made an attackrun, with one squadron homing in and firing their lasers, closely followed by the fighters of the second squadron, that had fired their protontorpedos together.

And while the pointdefenses of the Star Destroyer had managed to take out only three of their fighters, they had shown to be more successful against the protontorpedos. From the twenty-four torpedos of the first attackrun, only ten had impacted in the still powerful shields of the black ship. The second run had been slightly better, with thirteen torpedos hitting the target.

Now they were on their third run.

-----

"Sir, they are preparing for a third attack. Our shields won´t last longer if they manage a similiar number of hits as before."

"How long, till our Avengers are here?"

"Thirty seconds."

"Gunnery-crews, you have your orders. Fire on my mark."

Guderi was silently counting the seconds. When he had reached fifteen he barked out: "Fire."

-----

Xantris was again biting his lower lip. Something wasn´t right here. Had they been greeted with hails of laserfire from the Star Destroyers pointdefense-cannons, those guns were now silent.

Given the conditions, it was a frightening peaceful sight. For a moment Xantris considered the possibility, that the destroyer had been heavily damaged by the "MorningTide". But then realisation hit him.

"Evasive manouvers. They´re going to fire all their guns."

Xantris warning was partly to late. Contrary to their first two attackruns, the pilots of the remaining twenty-one X-Wings had fired their torpedos in one salvo. Enough energy to bring the shields of the enemy completely down.

Fourty-two protontorpedos were racing towards the "Spectre", when the cannons of the big ship errupted like a vulcano. For a short moment, the Star Destroyer vanished behind a cloud of superheated green plasma, mixed with blue bolts of ionblasts.

While the majority of X-Wings managed to evade the hostile fire, the protontorpedos were smashing into a massive wall of fire. Not a single one came even close to the black hull.

And while the pilots of the remaining sixteen X-Wing tried to get the order back into their confused formation, they were suddenly assaulted by the returning four squadrons of TIE-Avengers.

-----

Somewhere else the pilots of four X-Wings were fighting for their lives against the double number of Avengers.

Lucan Vader had managed to identify the leading X-Wing, piloted by Wedge Antilles and the heir of Darth Vader had been all to eager to destroy THAT fighter.

But soon he had been forced to realize, that the reputation of the corellian pilot was justified. For close to two minutes, which seemed to pass like an eternity they had played cat and mouse with each other, while his escorts were taking care of the other three X-Wings. And in a far corner of his mind Lucan Vader was aware, that hostile reinforcements in form of E-Wings were soon to be expected.

Before the young Lord Vader was able to say bantha-podoo, Wedge Antilles flipped over and was suddenly behind him, opening fire with his lasercannons.

-----

Inside his cockpit Wedge Antilles smiled grimly. His opponent was good, but not good enough. He had finally managed to come behind the blasted X-1 and opened fire with his lasers. But instead of trying to evade his shots by moving to the side, flipping over or simple deaccelerating, the other pilot forced his fighter into a sharp turn, turning by 180-degree, while his shields took the punishment of the four lasers of the X-Wing. Wedge had to deaccelerate, if he didn´t wanted to collide with the TIE-X1 and turned to the side.

Now the TIE-X1 was behind Wedge Antilles, who was still slowed down. A hail of green laserfire smashed into the aftshields of Wedges fighter and when they were hit by a protontorpedo, the X-Wing drifted dead in space.

-----

Lucan had to turn his fighter around. After his salvo he had passed the now drifting X-Wing and if he wanted to deliver the killing blow, he had to turn around.

-----

Inside his cockpit Wedge Antilles could see the TIE-X1 closing in, knowing, that he would be dead in a matter of seconds.

His enemy had really been good.

For a short moment he wondered, if the TIE-X1 was piloted by Soontir Fel, who had been the secondbest imperial pilot after Darth Vader himself. And who was, by a funny twist of fate, Wedges brother-in-law. But he dismissed the thought as soon as he arose. Soontir Fel would have never tried a stunt like this 180-degree-turn. No sane pilot would.

But Wedge Antilles had to admit that because of that dared move, he was now the one on the wrong end of a pair of lasercannons.

-----

Under Lucan's helmet a small smile appeared. Only a few moments and the New Republic would have to do without their prime fighterace.

He pressed the firingswitch and expected Wedge Antilles X-Wing to turn into a cloud of molten debris, when suddenly a white flash moved between his blasts and the drifting X-Wing, firing at him with red bolts of its own.

[FTeik]

Have a happy Eastern. Here is the next part:


The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 12


Wedge Antilles couldn´t believe his eyes. He was still alive because another X-Wing had covered him from the deadly blasts of the X-1. He was able to identify the X-Wing as the fighter of Carzeta Myntrela, who was now engaged in a personal duel with the other pilot.

A lump formed in his throat.

Myntrela was good, very good, that much she had shown during the preparing trainingrounds in the simulators and during the battle, but she was young and not as experienced as Wedge and certainly no match for somebody like the pilot of the X-1, who had managed to outsmart him despite his more than ten years as a fighterjockey.

While he could do nothing, but watch the uneven match between Carzeta Myntrela and the hostile fighter, he also recognized, that the TIEs that had dealt with Corran and Gavin until now, were now under attack from the E-Wings that had finally reached this corner of the battlefield.

He could only pray, that they would reach them soon enough, to save him and the young commander from Kuat.

-----

Lucan Vader was fuming with rage about the audacy of his current opponent, who had cost him his prey. Oh, well. To abolish wasn´t to delay and as soon as he had killed his opponent, he would take care of Wedge Antilles once and for all. At the same time he almost felt something like admiration for the other pilot who had risked his own life for the corellian. And who was flying excellent manouvers, although that wouldn´t help him now.

He activated his comlink and hailed his adversery.

-----

Carzeta Myntrela nearly lost the grip on her joystick, when suddenly her comm was activated and a voice filled her cockpit.

"That was very brave and noble, but not very smart my friend."

For a moment the young commander thought she would die here and now, but at the same time she felt a certain kind of relief. She knew that voice, although it was alienated by the comconnection and the cold, controlled way of speaking. The last time she had heard that voice, it had whispered words of tenderness and passion into her ear.

"Watto...? Watto Tarashon?" she answered.

For a moment there was surprised silence at the other end.

"Carzeta Myntrela?"

For a moment Carzeta forgot the situation she was in. Finally she had found the man, who had fathered her child and whom her heart belonged to. Gorin would finally met his father and they would live all happily together for the rest of their lives.

Then she remembered the situation she was in.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Taking care of some business." came the reply. "Unfortunately you are in the wrong kind of fighter. Its really a pity."

Hearing him saying this, Carzeta wasn´t sure, if she could trust her ears. It couldn´t be. It simply couldn´t be.

"Its nothing personal you know." Lucan got a positive targetinglook.

"Watto wait, there is ... ."

Lucan Vader pressed the firingswitch.

"I´m really sorry."

-----

The mental deathcry of somebody he had known tore through Luke Skywalkers brain. This was one of the disadvantages of being a Jedi, being empathic you were directely able to feel the death, the pain and the suffering. The Jedi-Master wondered, who of his friends had just died, when he directed his E-Wing towards the spot, where an X-Wing was drifting dead in space and where a model of TIE-fighter Luke hadn´t seen since Yavin was flying towards to.

-----

With an odd mixture of regret and satisfaction, Lucan Vader watched how Carzeta Myntrelas fighter exploded.

Satisfaction, because he had managed another hit against an enemy. Regret, because now all his plans for Carzeta Myntrela and himself were going down the abyss. But Carzeta had chosen her profession and she had known the risks. An unfortunate coincidence of fate, Lucan didn´t view the Force as something with consciousness, had put them on different sides in a battle, if not a war, and mercy or compassion hadn´t lost anything on the killingfield.

Despite that, a sudden sadness filled his heart, a feeling of loss, only comparable to his feelings of loss, when he had been forced to acknowledge the death of his father.

And like then, he wanted to kill somebody.

He turned his fighter around, it was time to take care of Wedge Antilles and the rest of his squadron.

-----

Kippor Tak was one of three Lieutenants, who commanded one of the "MorningTides" three squadrons of A-Wings. Since he had been promoted prior to his two collegues, too, he was the senior officer of the attack, that should ease the desperate situation of the "DeepSea".

But the Imperials had something against that goal of the A-Wings and so the Interdictor-cruiser had moved into a position, where he would intercept the thirtysix fighters of the New Republic.

In another situation, this shouldn´t have been to much of a problem for the fast and agile fighters, but in this special case, it was enough to slow them down.

The fire from the Interdictor-cruisers twenty quadlaser-cannons, that had cost them three fighters so far, had made very clear, that Tak and his men couldn´t afford to ignore the hostile ship. The problem of the A-Wings was, that their two lasercannons were to weak to cause problems for the capital ship with its shields up, so they would have to use their protontorpedos, what requested concentrated attack-runs.

The A-Wings were just regrouping for their first run, when the sight of a huge explosion showed them, that helping the "DeepSea" had become obsolete. Helpless they had to watch, how the big cruiser broke into pieces, burning everywhere until the flames ran out of oxygen..

But if they were to late to save the "DeepSea", at least they should be able to avenge her death.

-----

"Admiral, our backboard shields are up to ninty percent again."

"Very good. Now turn the ship to fully face this MC90. Its time we finish this battle."

The remains of the "MorningTides" two X-Wing-squadrons hadn´t managed a third attack against the "Spectre". The returning four squadrons of Avengers had taken care of the remaining sixteen X-Wings in a matter of minutes. They had lost eight of their own fighters, but totally obliterated the fighters of the New Republic. Now the Avengers were racing towards the support of the "Catcher".

It was only a question of time till the battle was over and Guderi already was wondering, how he would celebrate this convincing victory.

Suddenly the Admiral was shaken through in his seat. Instinctively Guderi knew, that something had gone wrong.

"What was that?" he demanded to know.

"Turbolaserturret One and Three. Totally burnt out. Their energy had to be directed out through one of the shieldprojektors, which wasn´t able to deal with all the energy. We have totally lost the aftsection of our starboardshields."

"Then turn the ship further, until we present them our portshields."

Guderi smashed his fist against his seat. Such were the problems with special constructions.

The upgrades of the "Spectre" had included an increase in firepower as well as shieldstrenght of around thirty percent. For the shields that had meant, that thirty percent more energy was available, but not an increase of thirty percent of shieldprojectors. Because of this the projectors, that were designed for hundred percent and had a safetylimit of fourty percent had already been hardpressed by the hundredthirty percent of energy, that had been directed through them during the battle.

Under ordinary circumstances it was no problem to support one system on a ship with energy from another system, for example to direct energy from the weapons to the shields if necessary or vice versa, but thanks to the heavy modifications of the "Spectre", the ships shieldprojectors had already been pushed to the limit. The additional energy from the two turrets with their sixteen turbolaser-barrels had been to much and caused the shieldprojector to explode.

Guderi was still fuming, especially since the MC90 was now turning also to get the Stardestroyer into the firingarcs of nearly all his weapons, while the "Spectre" was only able to defend itself with half her weapons, when the next bad news came in.

"Sir, the Captain of the "Catcher" requests permission to leave the battlefield. His shields were overloaded by twenty protontorpedos and one of his gravity-well-projektors is already damaged."

Guderi considered his options. It would have been nice to leave the battlefield with TWO destroyed Cruisers of the enemy, but the goal of the mission was already achived. The taskforce of the New Republic was destroyed, as well as an MC80-Cruiser with more than five-thousand men and women of crewers. To stay longer would only increase his own losses. If he would retreat now, he would retreat as the winner. He only hoped, that Lord Vader would see it the same way.

"Alright, thats it." he clapped his hands together. "Order the "Catcher" to recover our Scimitars and transmit coordinates of a meeting point to our Avengers. And inform Lord Vader."

-----

Kippor Tak barely managed to escape a salvo of green laserfire. Twisting his fighter around he cursed through gritted teeth. Blast, what kind of TIE was that?

They were way to fast for Interceptors. If not for them, the "MorningTides" A-Wings would have already taken care of the damaged Interdictor-cruiser. Made the imperials pay for the destruction of the "DeepSea". Far away he could see the imperial bombers vanish inside the cruisers hangarbay. Without those new TIEs purchasing him, he would have felt relief, was the recovery of the bombers a clear sign, that the enemy was going to retreat.

Deaccelerating and rolling over he set himself behind his persecutor and opened fire. In a spectacular explosion the TIE turned into a cloud of debris and fire.

-----

Lucan Vader had seen himself been forced to change his plans for Wedge Antilles. His Avengers were engaged with a squadron of E-Wings and were now outnumbered, while a thirdteenth E-Wing was heading towards him.

After the long battle his Avengers were low on protontorpedos and had a hard stand against the hostile fighters. With a frown he realized, that the other two X-Wings of Rogue-Squadron were still flying around. The fact, that they had survived this long against superior forces was testimony of their pilots skills.

In this situation he couldn´t afford to waste time and energy on the already disabled X-Wing of Wedge Antilles. Besides the other pilot wasn´t able to run away. Lucan had just to finish an entire squadron of E-Wings, two X-Wings and then he would come back.

Plain and simple.

-----

Wedge Antilles didn´t knew if there were any gods looking out for him, but if they existed they suddenly seemed to have remembered him after everything, that had gone wrong this day.

The X-1 had interrupted his attack and was now heading towards the two fightergroups some kilometers away.

On his left side suddenly an E-Wing appeared.

"Wedge? Wedge are you alright? Can you hear me?" came the familiar voice of Luke Skywalker.

"Luke? Luke, is that you?" Wedge couldn´t believe his own ears. "Where have you been? We could have used your help." It was a rethorical question and they both knew it.

"Well, I´m here now. Do you need any help?"

"Don´t waste your time on me. I´ll make it a bit longer if necessary. You´ll have to help Corran and the others. This X1 is on his way to them and this can´t be good. Without him, most of us would still be alive."

"I see. I´m on my way."

"Luke."

"Yes, Wedge?"

"Be careful. This is an evil one."

-----

Lucan Vader had jumped among the enemy, like a hungry Kryat-dragon among a herd of Banthas. When he arrived the numbers of Avengers had dropped to six, while from the original twelve E-Wings ten were left.

Lucans appearence quickly changed that to eight.

Then the surprise-effekt was gone and the son of Darth Vader was again engaged in a hard battle.

-----

Captain Debvel dropped back in his seat, when the blackhulled Stardestroyer turned away and accelerated towards open space. Despite the fact, that the other ship seemed to have suffered some kind of damage to its starboard turbolaserturrets and aftshields, there wasn´t enough time for the „MorningTide" to turn that fact into an advantage.

The shields of the black Stardestroyer had been at least thirty percent stronger than that of an ordinary ISD-II, what meant, that to cause significiant damage the "MorningTide" should have been able to fire nine full volleys against the enemy. After they had turned they had only been able to fire seven full volleys.

Deblev took a deep breath. Perhaps it was for the better. They themself had been forced to take a lot of punishment, a lot of it thanks to several salvos of protontorpedos against their shields. One or two salvos more and they would have probably lost shields too. The situation was already bad enough.

The Mon Calamari wasn´t sure, if his carreer would survive this debacle, but if it did, he hoped he would never see this special Star Destroyer again.

-----

Lucan Vader and his two escorts had regained their typical formation, when the call from the "Spectre" came.

"What is it?"

"Mylord." came the calm voice of Guderi. "I´m transmitting you the coordinates of a meetingpoint, since the "Spectre" is forced to leave the battlefield."

"Leaving the battlefield? What about the New Republic?" shouted Lucan.

"Mylord, we have already won. We have obliterated their taskforce. We have destroyed one of their cruisers and a huge number of fighters. To stay would only increase our own losses without necessity."

"Alright, you may leave. I´ll follow as soon as I´m finished cleaning up here."

Moments later the "Spectre" vanished from Lucans tactical display. The "Catcher" had made the jump long ago. Where the A-Wings were fighting with the "Spectres" other group of Avengers, the Avengers suddenly started to withdrawel.

On his targetingcomputer Lucan got a positve look on one of the last two X-Wings. "Now I have ... ."

A small vibration in the Force was the only warning. The son of Darth Vader ripped his TIE around, barely escaping a pair of protontorpedos fired from an E-Wing, that had suddenly appeared behind him.

Gritting his teeth together Lucan flew through a sharp turn. Helplessly he had to watch, how the pilot of the E-Wing used his lasercannons to destroy Black Two.

Accelerating again he tried to get behind the newcomer and, to his great surprise, discovered, that something was different about this pilot. He almost felt something like a connection with the other man.

Very interesting.

As if developing a life of its own, his hand moved to the com of his fighter.

-----

A frown crossed Luke Skywalkers face. The pair of torpedos he had fired against the X-1 should have hit home. But then a disturbance in the Force had occured and the pilot of the TIE-X1 had been able to evade his shot.

Luke Skywalker reached out with the Force and discovered to his great shock, that the other pilot was strong in the Force.

Very strong.

Swallowing hard Luke Skywalker retreated from the other presence, since the power easily equalled his own, its coldness and selfcontrol was something he had never encountered before, when suddenly his comm activated itself.

"Congregulations." said a calm, cold voice. "You nearly got me. Until now, nobody was that lucky."

"Who are you?" asked Luke Skywalker. He simply had to know. The other one answered with a cold chuckle.

"Thats something you really want to know. Why don´t you start with the introductions. Although I don´t think, that should be necessary. You are Luke Skywalker, right?"

"Right." the Jedimaster whispered. "And you are?"

He barely managed to escape the sudden hail of laserfire from the other ones fighter and for a moment Luke Skywalker was tempted to curse. Here he was, making conversation with a dangerous foe, while the very same person was trying to kill him.

"So you are the New Republics pet-Jedi." answered the other one. His voice suddenly dropped and became even colder. "I´m your worst nightmare."

Luke Skywalker had enough. "Alright, Mister Nightmare. What do you want?"

"I will destroy you. You and your precious New Republic. I am Lucan Vader and the Force is my servant." said the other man with audible pride in his voice.

Luke Skywalker nearly got a heartattack, when he heard this. It couldn´t be. It couldn´t be true.

"Lucan Vader." he nearly chocked.

"Yes. The son of Darth Vader."

"That can´t be true. Thats impossible." For Luke Skywalker the entire situation had suddenly something of deja-vu to it.

"If you listen to your feelings, you will know it to be true."

Luke Skywalker didn´t wanted to. It made no sense at all. It was against all logic. But it was also the truth. And the other one was already speaking again.

"You will also know, that I will win in the end. There is no escape from the darkside."

For a moment Luke Skywalker felt as helpless as at that horrible day at Bespin, where his entire life had been changed forever. The man in the fighter behind him was his brother. And he was trying to kill him. Lucan Vader had obviously no idea, that Darth Vader had been Anakin Skywalker. He didn´t knew, that he was trying to kill his own brother.

Luke Skywalker didn´t wanted to live through this entire horror again. He also didn´t wanted to kill his new discovered brother. The approaching form of the "MorningTide", that was closing in on the fighterbattle offered him a way of evading.

"At the end Darth Vader refused the darkside and freed himself from its hate and its darkness. You could do the same, Lucan Vader. We don´t have to fight. We can discuss this out. I´ll help you. Come with me." He put all his convincing power into his voice.

But the answer was only a cold chuckle.

"You must think me to be stupid. Thank your light side of the Force, that this cruiser is here to save you. You know now, that I´m out there. You´ll never feel save again. Don´t worry, we´ll meet again.

And then you will die."

[FTeik]

Have really two months passed since the last update?

Alright, here is the next part.



The Tale of Darth Vaders Son - Chapter 13


The journey back to Coruscant was a long and depressed one for the crew of the "MorningTide". For the three surviving pilots of Rogue-squadron it was even worse.

Despite that Wedge Antilles had insisted to participate in an inofficial meeting between Captain Deblev and Luke Skywalker, while Gavin Darklighter and Corran Horn had been sent to their cabins after they had been checked through in the sickbay of the cruiser.

"Its a desaster." grunted Captain Deblev inside his seat. "Hundred-seventy-five men killed aboard the Corvette, twenty-two aboard the tanker and thirty-three of our best pilots. And that is only the taskforce."

"Best pilots." muttered Wedge Antilles. "Yesterday I would have agreed with you, but after today ... ." The General didn´t complete his sentence, but it was obvious that his selfconfidence had suffered a serious blow.

"There is no reason to be ashamed, Wedge." Luke Skywalker tried to console his friend. "They had better fighters and you were walking into a trap."

"And don´t forget, that I started with six squadrons and am now returning with thirty fighters. They also managed to destroy fourty-two fighters from the "MorningTide". Not to forget the loss of the "DeepSea"." Deblevs voice dropped. "Five-thousand-four-hundred crewers and thousand-seven-hundred troops.

Seven-thousand-three-hundred-seventy-two men, women and its were killed in less than an hour."

"What I think to be most concerning is the type of fighter they used." Wedge started to muse. A frown crossed the forehead of Luke Skywalker. Something else concerned him even more. The approach of the "MorningTide" had caused the last hostile fighters to withdrawel from the battlefield, but Luke Skywalker was sure, that he would hear from his new discovered brother sooner or later.

"They had shields, they had hyperdrives and they had at least twenty percent better acceleration than an X-Wing. We haven´t seen them used before, so where did they suddenly appear?" The corellian started to laugh harshly. "You know, I always wondered what would have happened, if the empire had used better fighters. Well, now I know."

"Its not only the fighters. Their ship was also highly unusual." added Deblev to the discussion. He pressed a button on his desk and a holo of the black Stardestroyer appeared. "On the first look this ship seems to be an ordinary ISD-II, that has simply a black hull, but the material reduced the performance of our sensors dramatically."

"Stealtharmour." stated Luke Skywalker. "Admiral Daalas Superstardestroyer "Knighthammer" has had the same material as outerhull. Are there any other differences?"

"Well, the ship has the typical four turrets for heavy turbolasers on each sides of the dorsal superstructure with eight barrels each, accounting for sixty-four barrels in total. But if you have a look at the sidetrenches you will see, that there are four quadlaserbatteries. One in the same place as on an ISD-I , the second one closer towards the bow of the ship and on the other side as well. By that we get a total number of eighty heavy cannons, if we don´t count the dorsal defenseturrets, too.

So their ship was superior in firepower, their fighters were equal or superior to our own and they forced us to divide our forces. That was a perfect ambush and it cost us more than seventhousand soldiers."

"I doubt, that the senate will see it the same way." stated Wedge Antilles. "As soon as they know, what happened here, they will search for a scapegoat." His eyes turned back to Luke. "What is wrong, Luke? You look, as if there is something else you don´t want to talk about."

Showing no expression on his face, Luke Skywalker turned around. He couldn´t keep the knowledge about the existance of this Lucan Vader to himself. His brother. And possibly the next great threat to the New Republic, about that the Jedi-Master had no doubt.

"I had a little conversation with the leader of the enemies TIE-fighters." he said slowly.

"The pilot of the X1?" Wedges head turned sharply around. "He killed the majority of us. It was as if Darth Vader was back from the dead."

"He said his name is Lucan Vader." Luke Skywalker answered. "And that Darth Vader was his father."

Wedge turned pale and his mouth gaped open. Captain Deblevs dark skin changed from a healthy brownred to a sick looking browngrey.

"A son of Darth Vader." whispered Wedge Antilles, who belonged to the small circle of friends besides the people, who had to know the truth about Luke Skywalkers heritage, that the Jedi-Master was Darth Vaders son.

Deblev didn´t belong to that circle. "Are you sure, Master Skywalker? I mean, you´ve been only talking to the man for less than a minute."

"I have no doubt, that he is the one he claims to be." stated Luke.

Wedge took a deep breath. "In that case, Force help us all."

"The General is right. We´ll have chaos and panic, if that becomes known." confirmed Deblev.

Luke didn´t answer. He knew he should be concerned about the consequences for the New Republic, but his thoughts were occupied with the consequences for his own family.

-----

Half an hour later Wedge Antilles discovered Luke Skywalker in one of the bigger wardrooms. The Jedi-Master was sitting behind a table, a bottle of Luminale and a glass in front of him.

"Ah, here you are." Wedge stated.

"Hello Wedge." answered Luke. "Where have you been?"

"Took a look after Corran and Gavin. Wanted to make sure, that they are alright."

"Well, why don´t you have a seat?" Luke Skywalker asked. "I thought I could try to get drunk."

"With Luminale?" Wedge dropped down in a chair opposite from Luke. "That'll take hours. If you want to get drunk, you better take Corellian Whiskey."

"It was just an idea. Besides, I´m not the type who drowns his worries in alcohol. Although it is a tempting prospect at the moment."

"That bad, huh." Wedge commented. "I lost a lot of friends today. People I was responsible for. And here i am, trying to console somebody else." he thought. But then he corrected himself. "You are not fair, Wedge. You didn´t kill them. But somebody, who could be Lukes brother did."

Luke was silent for a moment.

"Everytime I think I know everything there is to know about my father something happens, that sheds a totally new light on him. First I was told, that he was a pilot of a spacefreighter. Then, that he was a Jediknight and a hero of the clone-wars. After Bespin I have been forced to acknowledge, that the idol of my youth, the man I wanted to be like, was still alive. Not only alive, but the total opposite of everything I ever believed in.

And my masters expected me to kill him." Luke took hold of his glass and gulped the Ale in it down. All of it.

"But you didn´t. Or so you told me."

"Yes. I managed to turn him back to the light. And although he will be forever Darth Vader to the rest of the galaxy, I know, my father died as Anakin Skywalker. And now it seems, that Darth Vader left more than his memory, but also an heir." Luke glared at Wedge. "And that makes me wonder, where this heir has been over the last years. After all, Vader died at Endor and that was nine years ago." The Jedi-Master rubbed his forehead.

"Since he sees himself as ... ." Wedges became silent, when two ensigns passed by. "Since he sees himself as Darth Vaders son, he was probably born a few years after you."

"But why isn´t he mentioned in the imperial records? Our father was perhaps the most wellknown person in the entire empire. And what about his mother? Our mother. Wedge, Lucan could be the only one, who knows, what happened to her."

"Luke." the General interrupted. "Blast. You are talking as if it would take nothing else, as to have a nice conversation with this guy and all questions will be answered. You don´t even know, if you two have the same mother. For all we know, his mother could have been one of Palpatines concubines, who lost his favour. You seem to have forgotten, that this Lucan is a killer. He killed more than five-thousand good men and women this day. And, please don´t get me wrong, from what I know from this special side of your family, thats just the beginning."

"Thank you Wedge, for reminding me of that little detail." answered Luke with acid in his voice. "I´m fully aware of who Lucan is and what he is. Why do you think, I´m trying to get drunk? I had to fight my father, I had to fight my own clone, I had to fight the reborn emperor, where, without Leia, I would have been lost." The Jedi-Master shook his head. "I don´t know, if I can fight somebody of that calibre again." Then he seemed to remember something else.

"Oh no." he said. "Leia."

"Leia?" wondered Wedge. "What is with Leia?"

"I have no idea, how she will take this." Luke Skywalker admitted. "You know, these are really shocking revealations."

"Don´t know. Perhaps the same way she reacted, when you told her that Vader was your father."

"I don´t hope so. I think, she still hasn´t accepted it. I mean, I told her and the next day he was dead."

"Well, I don´t know how Leia will take it, but I know of some other people, who won´t think too kind about the appearence of your brother. People, who lost somebody today. A father, a brother, a husband or lover. Winter for example. I have no idea, how I´m going to tell her, that Tycho is dead. Luke I ..., Luke?"

It seemed as if Lukes thoughts were far away, as if Wedges words had reminded him of something. Something important. He rose from his seat, that his chair nearly dropped over.

"How could I forget about that?" he wondered aloud. "Wedge, you are an angel."

And with that he stormed out of the wardroom, leaving a confused Wedge Antilles behind.

-----

Leia Organa-Solo was sitting in her office, reading a report about incresed imperial activities in the borderregions, when she thought she heard somebody wheeping.

Curios she rose from her seat and walked towards the door to the foreroom of her office. Normaly this door was always open for her friends and advisors. Leia didn´t thought too high of a policy of closed doors.

Leaving her office the former princess of Alderaan discovered her longtime friend and aide Winter, her face burried inside her hands, her silverwhite hair a mess. The shoulders of the woman were shaking.

"Gods, Winter, what has happened?" Leia could remember only one time, when her friend with the perfect memory had been as devastated as now. Short after the battle of Yavin, when the two women had consoled each other over the destruction of Alderaan.

Winter looked up. Her eyes were already red and rivers of tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"They are dead. Nearly all of them are dead."

-----

Half an hour later Leia and Winter were inside the surfacebase, where the entire enterprise had started. Here they met with the surviving members of the taskforce.

Present were Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles, Corran Horn, Gavin Darklighter, Admiral Ackbar, Captain Deblev, the Lieutenants Xantris and Tak. Corran Horns wife was also there and Leia had gratefully left Winter in the care of the other woman, when she, her brother, Ackbar and Wedge had retired to one of the smaller briefingrooms of the base.

"You want to tell me, that a single Stardestroyer was able to destroy our entire taskforce, to hold his own against two of our cruisers, to destroy one of them and half the number of fighters from the other one? And at the same time suffered only fighterlosses?"

"Yes. Unfortunately yes." stated Ackbar. "You have to understand, that the enemy managed to dived our forces and destroyed them one after the other. There wasn´t anything different our soldiers could have done."

"And the ambush they cought us with was perfect." added Wedge Antilles. "They destroyed a quater of our fighters within the first one or two seconds."

"That still doesn´t explain the poor performance of our fighters." stated Leia. She didn't know why, but she felt scared by something still hidden. "No insult meant, Wedge, but we were used to better results in the past from you and Rogue-squadron."

Ackbar wanted to protest and defend the performance of his men, but it was Wedge, who answered. If the corellian hadn´t known Leia for so long, he would have reacted with anger at the hidden accusation. He knew it was only because she was confused and frightened. But so he managed to stay calm.

"At those occasions we were able to chose the battlefield. We weren´t outnumbered nearly four to one. We weren´t fighting TIEs like those Avengers. We weren´t only six left out of thirty-six, when finally reinforcements arrived. And our enemies weren´t lead by ... ." Wedge barely interrupted himself in time. He threw a guilty look at Luke. They had agreed to let Luke explain the part with Lucan Vader.

"I´m sorry Wedge." apologized Leia. "But you have to understand, that this is one of the hardest defeats for a long time. Many people have already forgotten that we are still at war, they are no longer used to losses like this."

"You don´t have to apologize, Leia." answered Wedge. "I feel as bad as you do, probably worse."

"Of course you do." said Leia with compassion in her voice. Force, she had known most of the pilots only by name, while for Wedge they had been friends and collegues.

"Perhaps we can now return to the matters at hand." interrupted Ackbar. "General, you wanted to say something else? About the man who lead the hostile forces?"

"Yes, I wanted to say ... ."

"Perhaps you leave that part to me." suggested Luke Skywalker. "I had a short conversation with the commander of the enemies fighters." He took a serious look around. "He said he is the son of Darth Vader."

Like in Captain Deblevs readyroom aboard the "MoringTide" there was stunned silence. Ackbar was only able to glare at Luke, while Leia seemed to have turned to stone, totally motionless and deadly pale.

"No." she whispered. The palms of her hands clapped against the table. "No." she whispered again.

Ackbar, who knew about the relationship of the two siblings to Darth Vader, looked questioningly at Luke. "Are you sure?"

"I am sure. The man, who destroyed the "DeepSea" and our taskforce is my brother." The Jedi-Master looked at his sister. "Our brother."

"No." This time Leia nearly shouted. She rose from her seat and turned around, pressing her arms against her chest. "Thats impossible. Luke, you must be wrong. That can´t be. It has to be."

"Leia ... ." Luke said softly.

"Don´t. I don´t want to hear it." She turned around. "We have no brother, Luke and this man is simply an imposter. Darth Vader had no children. The very idea is ridicilous, that, that this monster ... ."

Luke was at a loss for words. Why was it so difficult for Leia to accept the truth about their father?

"Leia." he said gently. "You can´t deny the truth, that Darth Vader is our father. Yes, he did a lot of evil things, yes, he was the embodiment of evil for the entire galaxy, but that is not our fault. Nor are we responsible for the acts he commited. Why can´t you accept this."

"I can´t, Luke. Do you understand?" shouted Leia. "And I don´t want to accept it. And I won´t accept it, that there is a man, who claims to be my brother and kills thousands of people in the same moment."

"But that changes nothing. You can´t hide from it. And the sooner you accept it, ... ."

"Why are you not listening to me, Luke? One Vader was worse enough, the iron fist, that was holding the entire universe in its grip. That monster poisened the atmosphere wherever it went. There was no chance for peace or freedom as long as he lived and now you are telling me, that there is a second monster like him out there?"

"That monster was our father."

"Your father perhaps. MY father was Bail Organa."

"Princess! Thats enough." interrupted Ackbar. "This way we reach nothing. Lets better decide, what to do about the situation."

"In any case, nothing of this should be made public." suggested Wedge.

"Good idea." agreed Leia.

"But ... ." wanted Luke to protest, but was interrupted by the buzz of his comm. "Yes, what is it?" He listened to the speaker, nodded a few times and put the comm back in his pocket.

"If you would excuse me, there is something I have to take care of."

Leia, Ackbar and Wedge could only watch how the Jedimaster left the room. Wedge remembered something similiar aboard the "MorningTide", but still had no idea what was going on in Luke Skywalkers head.

When he was gone, the three people remaining continued to discuss, what had happened, but reached no result.

-----

For the third time Nilan Vortigern pressed the button at the door to his young masters personal quaters and, like the two times before, got no reaction. He sighed. Then he overrode the security-program of the door with his personal access-code and stepped into the rooms of Lucan Vader.

The "Spectre" had returned yesterday to its secret harbour, from where the young Lord Vader had taken a shuttle to the sector-capital, where he had set up residenz.

Even a blind man would have been able to see the foul mood the young man was in. He hadn´t eaten much for the night and now he still wasn´t up, although it was eight in the morning.

The Majordomus entered the bedroom of his young master, where Lucan Vader was lying on his stomach, his head burried under a pillow.

"Master, its eight in the morning."

No reaction.

"Master, its time to wake up."

"Leave me alone." grunted Lucan as an answer.

"Master, in one hour you´ll have a meeting with the artists and in two hours the assassins will arrive."

"I don´t want to see them."

"Very well, Master Lucan. In that case I will kill the artists and tell Giswad to take care of the assassins. Of course in that case, we´ll have to find six other hitmen."

Lucans head appeared under the pillow.

"The assassins will be here today?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, in that case, it seems I have no other choice." he grunted.

The young man left the bed and walked towards the wardrobe. Taking out his clothes for today he asked Vortigern.

"Any news from our shipyards, Vortigern?"

"Good news, Mylord. They should improve your mood."

"Let me be the one, who decides this."

"Of course, Mylord." Vortigern took a datapad out of his pocket. "Lets have a look. The first tranche is finally completed, since the workcrews managed to get back on shedule with the Bellators. Your fleet consists now of
-one Praetor-Class-Battlecruiser,
-six Bellator-Class-Lightcruisers,
-twelve Dominator-Class-Interdictordestroyers,
-twenty-four Tector-Class-Star Destroyers,
and fourty-eight ISD-II."

"Well, something good for once." muttered Lucan. "What about the second tranche?" The young Lord Vader hadn´t managed to set up all of his six shipyards at the same time.

"Four to five months. Then we will have another Praetor, six Allegiance-Class-Lightcruisers, twentyfour ISD-IIs and
-hundred-eighty Acclamators MarkII available."

"Just that I probably need those ships now, not in four to five months." Lucan Vader grunted. "The New Republic now knows of my existence, Odiin Vascals ships aren´t ready and I can´t fight the New Republic, Highadmiral Chordal and Moff Harraged at the same time." He turned around and faced the older man with a dark look. "I need a very genious idea and I need it now."

The old Majordomus answered his Master with a smile. He had kept the best knews to himself until now.

"No you don´t. The New Republic will have other problems within a week."

An eyebrow of Lucan Vader was raised. "Explain."

"Have you ever heard of the planet Orinda?" Vortigern asked.

"Guderi mentioned it once or twice. Those are very good news, Vortigern. I´ll be down in five minutes."

"Then I will prepare breakfast." stated the Majordomus and turned around to leave Lucan Vaders quaters.

"She was a fine young woman." he heart his Master whispering. Vortigern turned back.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, she was a fine young woman." answered the young Lord Vader.

The Majordomus didn´t knew, what to make out of this. "Who?" he asked.

"Somebody I met a long time ago." stated Lucan. "A sacrifice on the altar of necessity. One out of many." Then he seemed to have an idea and he looked Vortigern straight in the eyes. "I want you to get me something."

Now Vortigern was totally lost. "Of course, Mylord." he answered. "What do you need?"

Lucan Vader told him and Vortigerns face started to darken. "I don´t know, if that is such a good idea." he finally said.

"I understand your concerns." answered Lucan mildly. "But i´m not interested in your opinion in that case."

"Very well." answered Vortigern. "But it will take some time."

-----

Lucan watched over the forms of the six Assassins assembled in his office.

Khil´klit´chit, the Verpine. Specialist for "accidents" including vessels and other technical hardware.

Tesb Gil´La from Bothawui. While Khil´klit´chit had a reputation of manipulating hardware, Tesb was known to alter the software to achieve his goals.

Besides that, both were known to use more traditional weapons.

Laxon was a Falleen. His handsome features and his winning smile deceived the coldness of his reptilian heritage and the brutality he was capable of. His mode of operating was to seduce his victims, if they were females, or women related to them, to get access to the real target.

For a long moment Lucan's eyes rested on the beautiful woman from Ryloth. Xi´Galeen. The Twilek carried her two Lekkus decoratively over her bare shoulders, but Lucan resisted the tempting idea of interacting with her on a more personal level. It would be an unnecessary risk to be intimate with her.

The remaining two were humans.

Xron Tallos originated from a world with a gravity much higher than standard. Although he looked like a small and lean man, he was perhaps the strongest of all of the six.

And finally White. From the colour of his suit, to his skin and to his hair, everything about him showed how he had gotten his name. White wasn't an albino in the classical sense, since the pupils of his eyes were white, too.

Lucan Vader was satisfied with what he saw. The six best assassins of the galaxy. And unlike other people who worked in this profession from time to time (like Boba Fett, for example), they were more discreet or usually caused less of a mess while doing their job.

The young Lord Vader didn't wear his usual armor with cloak and helmet. To prevent them from seeing his face and being able to identify him, he had activated a holoshroud. His guests were watching an incredible fat man in a repulsorchair, with blooded eyes and sagging cheeks. Lucan would have preferred another image, but with a size of nearly two meters and weighing hundredfifty kilogram, there weren't many options, besides a human version of a Hutt.

"Gentlebeings." he rasped with a low voice. "Welcome to my modest home."

"Pleased to meet you." said Xi´Galeen with a sensual voice.

"You have a job for us." stated Xron dryly.

"Yes, I have."

"I alone should be able to do the job," snarled Tesb Gil´la.

"That's something I doubt." explained Lucan. "There are several people, who will die. Actually a few hundred. Too many for one of you alone." He gave a datapad to everyone of the killers. "Here are the names and files of your victims. As you can see, there is a date behind every name or a timeframe. If there is a date, the job has to be done before then, if the target is still alive after the date, the job is cancelled. In that case, the one of you responsible for this special job will find himself on the list of one of his colleagues. If there is a timeframe, the target has to be eliminated in exactly that frame of time. If he or she dies before, you won't get any money, too. If he or she dies after, it will be the same as case of a missed date. Let it look like accidents, common crimes; in short, make sure that nobody can discover a hidden agenda or other motives, other than the obvious. Any questions?"

"Here is written, that we get fiftythousand for every hit." stated Laxon. "My usual payment is hundred." The Falleen took a look around. "For every one of us."

"This is only the first group. If you do well, you´ll get hundredfifty for the people from the second group. IF you do well."

"How do we prove to you that we really did the job? After all some of them could die in a real accident," asked White.

"I don't want any proofs. You'll get your money, if you are responsible for the kill or not, as long as it is in the given frame of time or done until the set date. Otherwise ... ." Lucan took a small statue from his desk and squeezed it in his hand. "I think I already covered that."

After that, the Assassins left. Xi´Galeen as the last one. She gave Lucan a knowing smile, as if to tell him, that she had seen through his use of a holoshroud, and then left the room, swinging her hips.

"Well." asked Lucan into the silence. "What do you think?"

Suddenly the shadows became alive and two figures emerged from the dark. One was the tall, bald figure of Giswad, the other the lean figure of Miney.

While Giswad hadn't changed much over the years, Miney had developed into a teenage girl, which would mature into a fine and beautiful woman one day. Now at age fifteen, her body already showed female curves. She wore a jumpsuit, that covered her body like a second skin and the black colour of the fabric was a strong contrast to her darkred skin. For a short moment Lucan wondered, if the jumpsuit really had this v-cutted top and had been fabricated without sleeves, giving Miney the opportunity to show some skin. But that didn't matter.

One day, Miney might be able to drive men crazy with the looks of her, but not him. She was the apprentice and he the Master and nothing would change that.

"I don't like it." stated Miney. "We don't need this scum."

Giswad only nodded his head in agreement.

"Is there something in particular you don't like?" inquired Lucan. "Or perhaps somebody?"

"Xi´Galeen." answered Miney and Lucan was sure to hear some jealousy in her voice. "She hasn't shown the respect you deserve, Master."

"I'm not interested in her respect, but in her doing the job I have given her," explained Lucan. "Anything else?"

"Just that it's risky to involve these assassins. Giswad and I could have done the job, too. I´m sure we could have done it even better than them."

"Possible. But that would have been a waste of your talents. No, I have another job for you." He smiled. "This will be your first mission and your first real test. Giswad will accompany you."

And Lucan started to explain the details to his two helpers.

----

Luke Skywalker entered the dimly lit room, where Galina was sitting on a couch, the small frame of Carzeta Myntrelas' son cradled in her lap.

When he had told the boy about the death of his mother, the child had first glared at him with disbelief. After that he had smashed his small fists against Luke's chest and shoulders, accusing him of lying and not having watched out for his mother. Finally acceptance came and Gorin had broken down and started to cry.

Luke had hugged the poor being and tried to calm him down, but Gorin hadn't stopped crying, he had still been crying, when Luke Skywalker had put him into the arms of his old nanny and left to attend to the meeting with Wedge, Ackbar and Leia.

The Jedi Master sighed. Another victim of his brother. Or of his father, if Lucan only continued, where Darth Vader had stopped.

"Is he alright?" he asked the old woman concerned.

"He sleeps now." answered Galina. "But I have no idea, what to do with him. I'm far too old to take care of a child that young. And I won't be able to protect him."

That came as a surprise for Luke Skywalker. "Protect him? Protect him from whom?"

"His family on Kuat. Carzeta left her family in anger, but they couldn't deny their relations with each other. Gorin is another matter. In the eyes of the Kuat-Nobility he is a bastard. If they get a chance, they will try to kill him. Even if it is only to prevent him from knocking on their doors one day and claiming a part of his heritage. You know, as well as me, that people were killed for less than a part of the fortune of KuatDriveYards."

"I see." answered Luke Skywalker. "Well, that's another thing I have to take care of. But first lets get Gorin a new home."

Galina looked Luke straight in the eyes. "Carzeta trusted you. For the sake of the boy I hope, this trust wasn't misplaced."

The Jedi Master gave her an encouraging smile. "I'll try my very best. Would you please wake him up?"

He went back to the door and invited two people to enter. A tall, bulky man and a slender woman with silverwhite hair. Meanwhile Galina had managed to wake Gorin up. It was a heartbreaking sight to watch this small child rub his eyes, the blue of his eyes in contrast with the reddened skin from the tears he had cried. Carefully Luke Skywalker took Carzeta Myntrelas' son into his arms.

"Hello, Gorin." he said in a consoling voice. "Do you feel better?"

"Think so." Answered Gorin. "Yes." From what Luke felt through the Force, this wasn't the case, so obviously Gorin tried to be brave. It only confirmed his already existing opinion, that, like his mother, Gorin was somebody special.

"Gorin, I want you to met Kam Solusar and his wife Tionne. They are good friends of mine and I have asked them, if they would like to take care of you."

Gorin mustered them from head to toe, before turning back to Luke. "Why can't I stay with you?" he asked.

"I would like to, but you need a home with a mother and a father and that's something I can't give you. Not now." "And not with that Son of Darth Vader out there." he thought.

Gorin looked back to Kam and Tionne. The silverhaired Jedi broke the ice with a smile and open arms. "Hello Gorin, I´m Tionne."

Gorin smiled shyly. "And I'm Gorin."

"Well, why don't you sit down," Luke put Gorin on the couch, "and get to know each other better. I'm sure you will like each other."

"That's a good idea." stated Tionne.

"Where are you going?" asked Kam, when Luke Skywalker turned to the door.

"Galina brought my attention on something else to take care of, but for that I´ll need the help of R2." he twickled at Kam. "Manipulating some datafiles."

[FTeik]

The Tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 14


Leia Organa Solo tried to calm her thoughts. "If I had only concentrated more on my calming-techniques." she thought. But it was too late now for regrets. Sooner or later the press would have gotten wind of what had happened and unfortunately, if had been sooner.

Now she had to explain the loss of several ships and more than five-thousand lives to a pack of reporters.

Accompanied by Wedge Antilles and some aides she moved towards the lounge, where the journalists were waiting. Taking a deep breath she prepared for the unevitable.

---

Lucan Vader, Nilan Vortigern and Admiral Guderi were watching the transmission on CoruscantHolonetNews.

"There she is." Lucan hissed through gritted teeth. The president of the New Republic looked exhausted. And if the young Lord Vader got his will, this wouldn´t change.

"Patience Mylord." Nilan dared to say, while Guderi remained silent. "You will get you revange, sooner or later."

"Yes I will." answered Lucan Vader. "Have you done as I told you?"

"I managed to sell fourty percent of our different stocks on sixty important stock-exchanges. By that we made a plus of fourteen trillion sixhundred-fiftynine million credits. We could have earned more, if we would have waited. The markets climbed by six percent this morning."

"Fourteen trillion credits." mused Lucan. "Thats more than ten percent of the Imperial Navies Imp-Stars. Pity we don´t have the shipyards to build them or the men to crew them."

"I´m sure, that will change sooner of later. But we would have really made more, if we would have waited."

"Don´t be so sure, Nilan." chuckled Lucan. "I garantee you, at the end of the day the prices will have dropped by twenty percent or more. And then we will buy again." The chuckle turned into a laughter. "And then a few companies will have changed their owner."

"If I may be so bold." interrupted Guderi. "The press-conference begins."

----

"Gentlebeings of the Galaxy, fellow citicens of the Republic. This is a sad day for all of us." The pain and the sadness was evident in Leias voice. "It is my sad duty to inform you of the destruction of several of our ships in an engagement with former imperial forces. We ..., we lost seven-thousand-three-hundred-seventy-two men and women in total and our prayers are with their families. Their tragic deaths are a dramatic remainder, that this war is far from over, although many of us wanted to believe otherwise. The heroic deaths of these men and women, who sacrificed their lives for us and our freedom will not be in vain. Their sacrifices will not be forgotten. I ... ." at that point Leia was interrupted.

"Princess, is it true, that members of Rogue-Squadron are under the soldiers killed in that inciddent?"

Leia had to bite their lip. Her advisors had told her, that it would be better to make an accident responsible for the losses, but Leia had decided against it, since she was sure, that the truth would come out sooner or later. It was impossible to hide the circumstances of the deaths of more than seven-thousand people. Not in a democracy. But how did those people knew about the involvement of Rogue-Squadron?

"Yes, that is true. But as you can see, General Antilles is standing next to me and he and the surviving members of Rogue-Squadron are well."

"Madam President, what kind of ships did we lost?" asked another reporter

"We lost one MC80-Cruiser, one Corellian Corvette and a tanker." answered Leia slowly. "As well as several squadrons of fighters. However our ships managed to force the enemy away." Somehow she had lost the control over the interview, but she didn´t know how.

"Princess Leia, is it true that our fleet was ambushed by a single Stardestroyer, which managed to destroy all those ships and to fight of another MC90-Cruiser, and that the Imperials lost only fighters? How could this happen?"

"We are still investigating what really happened and we will be able to tell you more, as soon as we get more information. Until then, I have to ask for your patience."

"Madam President, can this incredible defeat be explained by the fact, that the hostile forces were commanded by a man, who calls himself Lucan Vader? A man, who claims to be the son of Darth Vader?"

Deadly silence suddenly filled the room.

"That is ridiculous." stated Leia with a firm voice, although her face had went pale. "I really don´t know, how you got that idea."

Instead of answering himself, the reporter activated a tape.

"I will destroy you. You and your precious New Republic. I am Lucan Vader and the force is my servant."

"Lucan Vader." another voice nearly chocked, but most of the people in the lounge were able to identify the voice of Luke Skywalker.

"Yes. The son of Darth Vader."

"That can´t be true. Thats impossible."

The reporter deactivated the tape. "It seems your brother thinks otherwise, Madam President."

-----

"Haha." Lucans flat hand clapped against his muscular thigh, while he and his companians watched the chaos unfold. "Have you seen the face of that self-rightous bitch? That was a hard beat in the stomach."

"I wonder, how this reporter got access to that tape." mused Guderi.

"Simple." answered Lucan. "I made sure, it was delivered to him. The upper echelons already know about my existance, so there is no reason to keep the common people in the dark." He twickled at Nilan and Guderi. "A free press has its advantages." Then his tone changed. "Is the damage on the "Spectre" repaired?"

Guderi became business-like, too. "Yes Mylord."

"Excellent. Then we can start tomorrow. Its time for us to establish some bases."

"As you command, Mylord." answered Guderi. "If you excuse me, in that case I better return to the ship."

"You may leave." answered Lucan generous. When the Admiral was gone he turned to Nilan. "Do you have it?"

The majordomus made a sour face. "Yes, I have it. However I still think it to be foolish. It would be a useless gesture."

"Useless perhaps. But it is also the respect for the dead ones. If not I, who else would do this for them?"

----

The news spread from planet to planet in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. After less than two hours the entire core and inner rim knew, that there was a man, who claimed to be the son of Darth Vader.

To say that chaos broke out would have been the understatement of the year. While it was hard to believe that Darth Vader had an heir, the possibility for that was still higher than for a dead man to return from the dead. Just that exactly that had happened not so long ago. Less than five years had passed since the destruction and bloodshed of the Imperial Civil War and Operation Shadowhand and the people all to well remembered, that it had been Emperor Palpatine, who had died seven years prior, who was responsible for that. There were many of the former citicens of the Empire in the core, who viewed that time as the revenge of the once benevolent ruler of the galaxy for being disposed by an ungrateful population.

The stockmarkets reacted first. Before the trade could be stopped, the major indexes had dropped by thirty percent. Companies like Incom or REC, with close ties to the New Republic, lost even more. In a matter of hours trillions of credits ceased to exist.

On several worlds, that once had been personally been honoured with a visit of the Dark Lord of the Sith, open panic broke out.

Five hours after the fateful press-conference, sevenhundred-and-twenty people had commited suicide.

On Coruscant the governments department for public relations got several thousands requests per minute about the issue.

And inside the former imperial palace an emergency-meeting was going on.

----

"... Skywalker, how sure can you be, that the man you were talking to was indeed the one he claimed to be?" inquisited Borsk Fey´lya.

"I´m sure." the Jedi-Master.

"But isn´t there a chance, that you erred, that this man tried to fool you? After all, you never talked face to face with each other and it was a very stressful situation."

"Please say yes." thought Leia, while pressing her nails in the flesh of her hands.

"Councillor Fey´lya." interrupted Doman Beruss. "The identity of this man isn´t as important, as our reaction to his appearence."

"I disagree." answered the Bothan. "We are all threatend, if there really exists an heir of the Dark Lord. And I don´t think it wise that people with personal relations to this man are involved in finding a solution for this mess." He threw a quick glance from Leia to Luke.

"Would you please stop playing political games." rumbled Garm Bel Iblis. "Our president and Master Skywalker have shown time and again, that we can trust them."

Although Bel Iblis hadn´t participated at the battle of Endor, he knew, like most leading members of the New Republic about the connections between Luke Skywalker and his sister to Darth Vader.

"I´m not playing games. I just want to find out, if this Lucan is the one he claims to be or simply an imposter. Besides, the knowledge that Darth Vader is his father caused Luke Skywalker to abandon his post during the mission on Endor."

"We have already decided about that incident. Now could you please return to the present." stated Beruss. The annoyance of the woman from Corellia was obvious.

"Well, it seems clear, that Odiin Vaskal and this ... man work together. So we should concentrate on taking out Vascal." suggested Leia.

"Thats not possible." rumbled the deep voice of Admiral Ackbar. All heads turned to the Mon Calamari in his white uniform, who was just entering the room.

"Admiral, where have you been? And why is it impossible?" Doman Beruss asked.

"I was at the headquater, where I got grave news." answered Ackbar. "At the moment we can´t spent a fleet to deal with warlords like Odiin Vaskal."

The Mon Calamari let his gaze sweep over the room.

"The empire has started a new campeign. Less than a day ago, they started with the conquest of the planet Orinda. Admiral Pellaeon is leading their forces from the Superstardestroyer "Reaper"."

----

Alone in his meditation-chamber Lucan sat down and connected the datapad Vortigern had given him with the holoprojektor of his displayring. According to the readout of the pad it contained ten million small files. For a moment the son of Darth Vader wondered, if Vortigern wasn´t right and if he really should do this. But it was his responsibility and he felt oblieged to do it.

Taking a deep breath, Lucan activated the first file.

The image of an old Bothan appeared. The colour of his fur was dull and his face showed a businesslike smile. His eyes looked tired.

The accompanying text said:

Name: Treek Pro´ftel
Species: Bothan
Age: fifty-nine
Profession: Shopowner for electronic parts
Family: divorced, ex-wife and three children live on Bothawui

Status: killed in an attack on Cetlic III

Lucan viewed image and text for three seconds, then he had memorized both and activated the next file.

A human woman appeared. Round face, blond hair, a little overwheight. The accompanying text was:

Name: Iessa Loral
Species: Human from Tabvev
Age: Thirty-three
Profession: Waitress in a restaurant
Family: single, one child, father unknown

Status: killed in an attack on Cetlic III

The next was a young human male, who wore the uniform of a police-officer.
A proud smile was on his face. It was obvious, that he had graduated only recently on the image.

Name: Kassor Melan
Species: Human from Chandrila
Age: Twenty-four
Profession: Constabler
Family: none

Status: killed in an attack on Delva IV

A female from Sullust.

Name: Slien Vhun´nhub
Species: Sullustan
Age: fourty-eight
Profession: Geological Consultant
Family: married, four children

Status: killed in an attack on Delva IV

Lucan switched to the next file.

A female Twi´lek in a very revealing costume. Her eyes showed a hard edge, but she was still beautiful.

Name: Tia Di´ranin
Species: Twi´lek
Age: Twenty-two
Profession: Dancer in a bar
Family: none

Status: killed in an attack on Cetlic III

A human girl with a ponytail, laughter on her face and big eyes, still watching the world in wonderment. Her open mouth showed a gap between her small teeth.

Name: Myn Civek.
Species: Human from Delva IV
Age: Seven
Profession: Pupil
Family: parents and one brother

Status: killed in an attack on Delva IV

Lucan closed his eyes. He had known, that the children would be the most difficult part of all. Swallowing hard he opened his eyes again. Dranking in the sight of the innocent child he had killed he needed twenty seconds to switch to the next file.

The face of a Rhodian appeared.

Name: ...