In Shadows and Darkness

Chapter 11

Luke gazed quietly out of the wide viewport in his ready-room to the rear of the Peerless' bridge, back straight, muscles tense, eyes set in the middle distance, seeing nothing, possessed of the kind of kinetic stillness which alluded to at the coming storm.

General Veers was on his way to his ready-room and Luke was... considering his options.

Reece, aware of the larger picture and of Luke's antipathy towards the General, had wisely gone out of his way to find constant tasks for Veers to attend far from the bridge since Luke's return to the Peerless, hoping Luke's temper would cool before he needed to deal with the General in person. The reason that Reece had quoted - that since Luke had seen Veers leaving the Emperor's presence he should, to all intents and purposes, be considered to be under Palpatine's protection - was a valid one, and it had stayed Luke's hand for almost ten hours now, but less than a day into the journey the black knot which had been steadily growing in his stomach could no longer be ignored.

He could of course dispel this situation in any number of ways, he knew; he could play the game, take the hit, chalk this one up to experience and learn his lesson... but the lesson which was whispering so insistently in the back of his thoughts right now was this; Never to leave an enemy at your back.

In truth he had, at the end of the day, achieved all he'd wanted; he was on his way to Bothawuii and a rendezvous with Mothma- and Madine.

But then there was that one point, still whispering... Never leave an enemy at your back.

If he did nothing now... had he learned nothing?

It had occurred to Luke to give Veers temporary command of the Fury during the coming mission, knowing this wasn't the General's forte and therefore Luke may well find an excuse for retribution.

He could easily validate the command; The Fury was set to go after Madine and Veers had worked alongside Madine several times when th eRebel General was still an Imperial officer. He could validate it by claiming that it took a General to catch a General - that Veers would have a better insight than anyone here into Madine's mind. He could offer the command as an opportunity for Veers to show his new Commander what he could do.

It was the ideal situation; if Veers succeeded, which Luke very much doubted considering that his milieu was ground-based battle, then Luke gained Madine. If he failed, then Luke had the perfect excuse to remove Veers- permanently.

It was playing the game, and he knew how to do that so well now- even when it burned him up inside to do so.

Or he could play a different game- could choose not to see Veers at all and simply begin to feed the General a string of ever-more outlandish nuggets of false information until Palpatine realised that his mole had long since been discovered and Luke was now simply playing a game. Load veers up with contradictory, inaccurate, illogical trivia and send him back to the Emperor- force him to deal with the problem he had created.

In a cool, calmer mood that was probably that he would have done. But he wasn't calm and he wasn't in a mood for games, and all of his qualms about more direct action were long since spent.

Once he would have held back because he felt he had something to loose; integrity, the moral high-ground- whatever. The man who had so pitilessly and fastidiously stripped those traits away from him would do well to remember that; to bear in mind the inevitable outcome of creating his precious advocate.

Because that was the trouble with owning a wolf; every now and then without any warning...

it would just turn around and bite.

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The door to Luke's ready-room sounded an entry chime then opened for Veers step inside.

He was hardly in the room before Luke turned on him, the power of the Force-blow sending him flying back against the wall with a resounding 'thud'. He lay on the floor, winded, looking up to see The Commander stalking towards him, eyes ablaze.

Luke crouched down to grab the breathless Veers by the scruff of his uniform, hauling him roughly upright, powering back against the wall again, any consideration of the moderate path already lost in a haze of vehement fury at the sight of the man who had wheedled his way into Luke's staff, lost Luke a valuable senior officer and so nearly obliterated months of groundwork and preparation in his own self-serving ambition.

"I thought I made myself very clear, Veers." Luke growled through clenched jaw.

"Sir, I don't..." an incredible weight crushed against his chest and windpipe, pushing the air from Veer's lungs in a gasp, widening his eyes.

"I don't want to hear - I don't care what worthless little excuse you've spent the last week dreaming up - it won't save your life."

"Nnnn..."

Veers grabbed weakly at the incensed Commanders hands, still grasping the front of his jacket, and Luke narrowed his eyes, unmoved. "I thought I explained very carefully the consequences of informing on me."

Again Veers struggled to speak, weaker now, "Wasssnn't...m..."

Luke kept the pressure for a few seconds more, unwilling to break off the attack... then he turned, the General dropping forward onto his knees, pulling in huge gulps of air.

Luke started toward his desk and the chair before it slid back towards him without visible aid. Veers, still gasping, shouted out in shock as he was suddenly hauled about, his body dragged by the Force towards the chair and thrown into it with enough power to topple the chair backwards, Luke twisting about to catch the back one-handed and haul it back upright before it fell, Veers almost toppling forward out of it, white-knuckled hands clinging to the chair's arms.

"You have just seconds of my time, Veers, so I suggest you make it interesting- I have a very short attention span." He leaned down to the cowering General from behind, "Go."

"I didn't do it..."

"You don't know what I've accused you of yet." Luke countered, standing behind the terrified man.

"I haven't done anything- I'm not active at the..."

"So you were intending to?"

"I..." Veers fell to desperate silence, then, "Spies! There are five active spies onb..."

"There are seven." Luke corrected, hands clamping onto Veers shoulders from behind. "But names would be interesting."

"Uuuh..." Veers struggled to remember, " Sinsa...Ogo...uhhhh..."

"Faster." Luke whispered, leaning in, using the Force to begin a gradual downward pressure on Veers' chest.

"N..uhhh Ni...Ni..."

"Nishima." Luke whispered. "Another?"

"Jiddick!...Jiddick and... Findallen."

Luke rose, though he maintained the Force-pressure against Veers, "Apparently there are eight. Thank-you."

Veers struggled to raise his arms, still pinned to the chair, breaths coming in short gasps now, "Sir..Sir, I didn't.. didn't do it! Whatever it is... it wasn't me..."

Still maintaining the force-pressure, Luke walked slowly to the tall viewport behind his desk, gazing out, his voice calm and cold, "I'd like to believe you, Veers, I really would. But the fact remains that even if you didn't do it this time, you would, eventually. And everything I suspect you of here, you've already done onboard my father's ship."

Veers turned slightly at that, eyes wide, "Father..."

"Lord Vader." Luke said easily, turning just slightly to observe the shocked look in the General's eyes, wondering if he comprehended that this forbidden piece of knowledge had now sealed his fate. "You may not have crossed me yet, but you've crossed mine - so you can understand why I don't like you, Veers. You can understand why I'm hard-pressed to let you walk out of here."

"My.. Lord..." Veers strained to even talk now-

"You know, I was once a tolerant man - very tolerant." Luke's voice was quiet, lost in thought as he turned back to gaze out into the endless darkness. "Perhaps because I believed I was doing the right thing..."

There was a dull 'cr-ack', the wet splinter of bone muffled by flesh, and with a final, broken gasp Veers crumpled forward, falling deadweight from the chair, his final breath driven from his lungs by the impact.

"I don't anymore." Luke said simply, no trace of regret in his voice.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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"Sir, we're coming up to reversion." Admiral Joss stepped close to The Heir before he spoke, the bridge crew hunching studiously over the unfamiliar consoles of the modified freighter, staring intently at readouts with the grim, single-minded concentration of men trying hard not to be noticed.

General Veer's demise several days earlier had caused a buzz of trepidation about the Peerless, all the senior officers feeling the wind blow, so that although Joss was confident in his own immunity, his loyalties to The Heir long-since decided and declared, he too felt a little jittery in the wake of recent... actions.

The Heir had of course, taken the time to explain to those who were loyal that Veers was the Emperor's spy, and indeed Joss remembered having been informed of such by Commander Reece within a few weeks of Veer's arrival, long before the campaign against the Bothans' had even commenced. Still, The Heir's method of removing his spies left one a little... anxious when dealing with him.

Leadership, they had taught Admiral Joss on the Imperial Military Academy on Carida, was part respect, part fear. One should learn to inspire respect in those who are loyal, and fear in those who are not- and if a little fear was scattered around the feet of the faithful, then that too commanded a healthy respect.

Certainly the Admiral felt just that as The Heir turned to him now, gaze as calm and impassive as ever.

"Thank-you Admiral. Have the crews stand by. Verify that we're all present and correct then contact the Peerless and the Executor and confirm our arrival. All further comms are by running lights only until we've secured our target."

Joss voiced his confirmation, turning to the bridge officers to ensure that they had heard as the battered freighter dropped out of hyperspace at the busy outer orbit ring well beyond the distant Col Dinn orbital platform, responsible for all shipping, handling and duty processing for Bothawuii's planetary cargo, it and its two accompanying freighters immediately lost in the bustle of the loose groupings of freighters waiting for their turn at the Col Din platform.

They were running with what Joss would normally have considered to be a skeleton crew aboard one of the three anonymous, battered freighters that had rendezvoused with them at Obrai-Skai, though there were ten units of the 701st in the hold awaiting the green light, the dozen or so Bothan and Chadra-Fan crewers which the smuggler Karrde had provided along with his carefully camouflaged freighters looking decidedly and deservedly nervous in their company the last time Joss had been down to the hold to check preparations.

The Heir turned, pulling the black leather gloves he wore tight as he flexed his fingers, glancing up as Joss stepped back to his side, "Move to secure channel only. Let me know when the Fury is in place and our friends arrive. We'll go dark at that point."

Joss nodded, glancing to Mara Jade who hovered nearby, listening vaguely, re-checking the small holdout blaster she occasionally wore strapped to her wrist, a special-forces blaster rifle already slung over her shoulder.

Aware of his eyes on her, Mara glanced up at the Admiral, mind too locked on the moment to be bothered looking for clues as to what he was thinking. He raised his eyebrows just fractionally at her though, and the inference was clear; do your job- keep him safe.

It wasn't at all unusual for Luke to accompany ground troops on this kind of operation; in fact it was par for the course, but his would be his first sortie since his injury, and with Reece still onboard the Peerless, Mara would be his sole bodyguard. The strain of this knowledge was already beginning to pull her edgy nerves taught; Skywalker disliked having bodyguards at the best of times and two sets of eyes were far more able to keep up if he took it upon himself to leave them behind, as he had a habit of doing.

Still, his insistence on not only planning and overseeing but very often participating in field missions was one of the reasons why Skywalker had gained such a solid base of popularity among the military, Mara knew; his day-to-day presence in the Core Fleet, only ever returning to Coruscant under direct orders from the Emperor, meant that he was considered very much a 'military man', with real field experience and genuine tactical ability. The military were essentially pack animals, and there was nothing inspired loyalty like a sense of fraternity. Skywalker's willingness to listen to advice from those with experience also stood him in good stead, as did his backing of and faith in the senior officers he trusted, all factors which Mara hadn't failed to notice he'd been subtly underscoring of late.

"I'm sure I can leave things in your capable hands, Admiral." Skywalker said, glancing to Joss as he passed, casually confident. "Now... find me a freighter running under the name Attin'Cho- passive scan only."

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"Ma-am- we have the freighter Attin'Cho on our scopes; bearing one-seventy by fifty-eight by nine-oh-one."

Captain Wyatt turned to her helm officer, her low, measured Mon Calamari tones making her words seem far more solemn then they were.

"Send a greeting and transmit the Alliance code within it. Keep us a good space behind that forward freighter." she added, bulbous head nodding in the direction of the freighter in the 'stack' before them, already aware that another dilapidated freighter had cruised slowly into the space behind them, half its running lights inactive.

But she wasn't too worried; they had chosen their queueing stack with care; one to the outside of the roughly-queueing cluster of weary freighters, all waiting to pay their duty and unload their cargo so they could fill up for the next haul. The Alliance freighter, battered and merchant-rigged, fitted into the bustle of the large port without notice, staying on practically the outermost stack, a good-sized exit to deep space to their port side. "Any sign of any trouble?"

"None, Sir. All the boards are clear, and the Sol has just sent confirmation that they're docking in order to load. They have one Star Destroyer near the Col Din Orbital Platform, close to them."

That brought Wyatt's head around, as well as Leia and Mon's.

"Does he foresee any problems?" Leia asked tensely- like Wyatt she'd originally been puzzled by Mothma's choice of Madine as commander of this operation; he was ex-Imperial army, and well-trained, but he wasn't generally placed in charge of a space-based mission, which came under the Navy's remit. She hadn't questioned it too much though, knowing that Mon and Madine often worked closely together, Mon relying on both his abilities and his opinion.

It was only during the jump here that they had been called into a meeting in which Mon had explained Madine's mission whilst she met Ollin'yaa; technology garnered in a deep-cover covert operation by the Bothans was to be transferred from the Col Din Orbital Platform to the second freighter, the Sol, commanded by Madine. The nature of that technology had opened Leia's eyes wide-

The Empire's new weapon, a Dynamic Electromagnetic Pulse Generator, was being built in the closely-guarded military docks in the Imperial Shipyards at Bilbringi, in readiness to be loaded into the new Super Star Destroyer Invincible, due to launch later that year. Madine was responsible for loading two duplicates of the weapon onto the Sol, secretly built at a separate site in concert with the Imperial original, using information from several spies within the shipyards.

This was an incredible break for the Alliance, and although the weapons couldn't yet be safely fired, they were already committed to an upcoming assault, the nature of which neither Mon nor Madine were willing to discuss, citing the ongoing problem of information leaks, leaving Leia uncomfortably aware that she had been excluded from this loop- which meant that she was in some way implicated.

Something to worry about later. Now however, her mind was on the success of the missions - both of them. If there was a chance that either mission would encounter difficulties, then Madine needed to abort his mission now rather than compromise it and lose the DEMP generators or alert the Empire that they had them. Everyone waited, eyes on the comm officer.

"Ma'am, the General reports that the Destroyer is in a standard holding pattern on the edge of their scanners; he says he's confident that there's no further risk implied by its presence. The Bothans say its been there for almost two days."

Leia turned to Mon, who relaxed a little, raising her eyebrows.

"Fine." Leia replied, "Acknowledge the message and tell him we're going dark now. We'll contact him when the meeting is over." Then, unable to shake some uneasy misgivings, added, "Ask him to break comm silence and let me know immediately if the Star Destroyer leaves Col Din."

She didn't like the fact that the Destroyer was at Col Din Platform; it had, after all, been the supposed rendezvous point for the meeting between Mothma and the Bothan leader, Ollin'yaa. It had been changed at the very last moment by an encrypted message from Intel Chief Tag Massa, who had chosen the new site herself; an innocuous tramp-freighter park well outside the Col Din platform consisting at any given time of about fifty or so dilapidated mid-size freighters and worse-for-wear merchant vessels huddled together in a synchronous orbit waiting for permission to unload their cargo.

There were always several of these unofficial parks about any industrialised planet, Imperial Customs never quite up to speed in checking permits and authorising permission to unload. If one was willing to pay a little extra, the necessary access to the Col Din platform for required customs checks could always be speeded up, but many of the smaller haulage companies simply didn't have the profit margins to oblige, and so these loose unofficial clusters of ships huddled together to wait out permission, crew members travelling constantly from ship to ship with little regard for procedure, catching up on trade gossip with fellow-hauliers.

It was a nice, nondescript, easily-escapable setup - and a commonplace one too, likely to attract little attention. With less than an hour to go Chief Massa had named this particular cluster with care, providing ample opportunity for their Bothan contact onboard the Attin'Cho to make his unanticipated in-system jump from Col Din to the new co-ordinates- and for either Madine onboard the Sol or Leia and Mon onboard the Arcturus to do the same, should either need back-up.

The comm officer nodded as the Arcturus slowed, dropping into place in the losely-queueing starships, another dilapidated, rusted freighter which hovered to starboard seeming momentarily to be going backwards due to its stationary position beside the slowly-advancing Arcturus. The comm officer glanced to the side, then added, "We have the confirmation code from the Attin'Cho, along with docking co-ordinates. Commander Ollin'yaa sends his greetings, Chief Mothma, and invites you aboard."

Mon turned to Leia, smiling, "I'll leave things here in your capable hands."

Leia smiled at the compliment, watching Mon walk from the bridge of the disguised freighter, unable to shake the feeling that something... something...

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Mon walked sedately from the shuttle now docked in the Attin'Cho's small hold, three Bothans waiting at the end of the ramp now, an irregular line of several others forming an Honour-Guard, a few Humans and a Devaronian making up the line. The trip over had taken less than five minutes, only one freighter between the Arcturus and the Attin'Cho, and that clearly trying to jockey a position forward of them, pinned in from starboard by a large, ponderously slow merchant vessel just as the Arcturus was. Mon glanced momentarily at the reassuringly open depths of space visible beyond the docking bay, the pale corona of Bothawuii just perceptible at its edges. If they had to make a run for it, then the Attin'Cho was well-placed to do so.

"Good afternoon, Chief Mothma," The first Bothan said easily, stepping forward, his fur rustling forward then back in the Bothan equivalent of a nervous tic.

Mon smiled politely, pretending not to notice, holding her hand out to the nervous Bothan who took it in his own, gesturing for her to continue, "You must forgive us - we aren't used to having so illustrious-a guest on board our humble transport. We believed we were simply transporting Commander Ollin'yaa to the Col Din Platform. We had little time to make preparations."

"No special preparations are necessary...?"

"Forgive me, Chief Mothma- my name is T'indarr- I'm Ollin'yaa's aide." The Bothan clearly realised from Mon's pause that he'd failed to introduce himself, another ripple brushing his pale fur. "If you'd follow me, I'd be honoured to take you to the Commander now."

Mon nodded politely, setting forward with the Bothan and his two companions, her own guard of six Rebel Special Ops soldiers falling in behind her. The Bothan pointedly didn't look back or mention them.

They walked only a short distance into the ship, very few crew in evidence, only a few Bothans and a Chadra-Fan pausing as they passed by, bowing their heads respectfully, the Bothan's fur rippling in a motion Mon recognised from long experience with the species to be nervous curiosity. She nodded easily as she walked by, always the politician.

Finally T'indarr paused before a room, reaching out his hand to rest dramatically on the door release, waiting for Mon and her entourage to catch up.

The door slid open... and Mon stopped dead.

The Bothan Commander Ollin'yaa, whom she had come to meet, sat tensely in a chair at the far side of the room-

Around him, weapons held ready, were two phalanxes of stormtroopers, their blue pauldrons identifying them as units from the 701st... And stood just behind him, hands on Ollin'yaa's shoulders... was Skywalker.

There was a flurry of sound and motion behind her as her guards drew their weapons, and Skywalker's sharp eyes flicked from Mon towards them - a sickening smack sounded behind her as bodies hit the walls, not one shot fired before they fell to the floor, unconscious or dead; she didn't know which.

Mon flinched just slightly at that indecipherable crack of bones and armour, but remained motionless as those cold blue eyes came back to her own and a slow half-smile spread across his scarred face.

"Hello, Mon."