Chapter Text
Luma Pershing is ten years old when he meets Gideon.
The Empire's attack begins at dawn. By mid-morning, it’s all over. Most of the people of Prim are engineers and traders, after all, not warriors. The small metropolis is known for its ships and weapons tech, and months earlier its leaders declared neutrality in the war between the Empire and the Rebellion, choosing to only sell to private citizens unaffiliated with either side. The Rebellion had respected their stance. The Empire had not.
Once the smoke begins to clear, stormtroopers scour the crumbled wreckage for survivors. A small, soot-covered boy is one of a handful of shell-shocked citizens forced to kneel at blasterpoint in the middle of what remains of the city square. The boy, Luma, glances around wildly at the tear- and rubble-stained faces surrounding him. He realizes with a rising panic that he doesn’t recognize a single one of them.
This can’t be everyone left, can it?
He thinks of Marin, his owner. Luma’s mother, sick, dying, too frail to provide for him any longer, had sold him to Marin out of desperation when he was seven. (“Make yourself useful, Luma,” she’d whispered into his ear. She had clutched his quivering, bony frame to her heart so very tightly. “You need to survive for me, baby, no matter what.”)
Marin isn’t a kind man by any means, but he’d seen past Luma’s appearance - all angles and gangly limbs on a too-small frame and dark, frightened eyes - and saw value in his sharp mind. Soon after Marin had purchased him and realized he had a natural aptitude for engineering, he started bringing him to his shipyard, showing him the ins and outs of building and repairing all types of spacecraft and their assorted weapons. He even allowed Luma to spend some days in the city library, where he would lose himself in the languages and cultures of worlds he would never go to - if only to make easier any deals that might involve a customer who didn’t speak Basic.
“Might as well make use of that big brain of yours, kid,” Marin had told him. “Start makin’ yourself worth the credits I paid for you.” And Luma had understood, had remembered his mother’s final words: If I’m useful, I survive.
But if Marin’s dead, where am I going to go?
“Are these the remaining survivors?” a deep, even voice says.
Luma dares to look up. The man who spoke is undoubtedly the leader. He’s an unassuming, almost dull-looking man in his mid- to late-thirties with an expression of perpetual bored authority etched into his features. Not tall, not short, not handsome or ugly. Just a man cloaked in black. Upon closer inspection, however, Luma notes that the man neglected to wear any protective armor, though he’s clearly taken part in the massacre, as his face is flecked with blood and ash.
Dangerous.
“Yes, sir. These last few souls are all that remain of Prim.”
“Good. Very good.” The man flits a considering gaze over the huddled figures before him. After a moment, his mouth twitches in a dismissive frown. He turns on his heel to walk away and tosses an easy, "Dispose of them," over his shoulder.
Luma hears several things at once: the whine of aimed blasters, the terrified cries of the people huddled around him, and, above all else, the unified voice of every instinct in his small frame shrieking, No, no, no, no, no, no, no - DO SOMETHING.
A scream rises from deep within him, its words leaving his lips before he can suppress it. “W-Wait! I’m - I’m useful!” He only half knows what he’s saying, but he wildly thinks anything is worth a shot - anything to delay the inevitable by even a few precious seconds - though he knows it's futile. He screws his eyes closed, grips the dirt below him one last time, and hopes that wherever he ends up, he'll see his mother again.
To Luma's bewilderment, however, the end doesn't come. The whine of the troopers' blasters stops, and the screams of the survivors around him morph into relieved sobs. He cracks an eye open tentatively, and sees, much to his horror, the man in black staring him down, one hand raised to signal the troopers to delay their fire.
The man raises an eyebrow at him. “Useful?” he repeats, his voice prickly soft.
Luma shivers under the man’s dissecting gaze.
“I know I’m small, but - but I’m smart,” he says, his voice suddenly a timid fraction of his earlier shout. He half-expects to the man to shoot him right there, but instead he lowers his raised hand, signaling the stormtroopers to lower their weapons.
“You’re... smart,” the man repeats coldly.
“I - I know how to build ships, repair them, make weapons for them. My master owns - owned - one of the shipyards,” he says, the words spilling from his mouth before he can stop them. “Um. I’ve read every book in the library. And I remember everything I read, so I’m good at history and languages. I - I know about things. Anything else you might need, I could learn. I'm smart. I’m really smart, I swear.”
Please, please let this work.
“Va’abir no jeha’at at ni, adi’ik,” the man growls. (Do not lie to me, child.)
Luma’s heart drops into his stomach, but he presses on out of sheer desperation. “I’m not lying! Give me a chance. Please. I’ll work for you. I’m good at things, honest.”
The man is silent for a moment, all emotion void from his expression as he considers the trembling boy before him. “You just understood Mando’a,” he observes.
Oh. So he did. Foolish hope rises in his throat. “Yeah - I mean, yes, s-sir. It only took me a couple weeks with some books from the library. I also know Huttese, Gungan, and Cheunh. I - I told you, I’m smart,” he says again, weakly. “I learn fast, and I can learn more. Whatever you want me to do, I can do it.”
He can feel the other survivors and stormtroopers around him begin to shift and mutter in confusion at his audacity. Frankly, he doesn’t blame them.
Suddenly, with the vicious eagerness of a loth-cat waiting to pounce, the leader stalks forward and grabs his chin in a vice grip, staring straight into his eyes as if daring the boy to look away. Luma's heart stutters in fear.
“Why should I trust you, boy?” the man hisses. “I have razed your home to the ground. All that you have ever known is ashes because of me. And now you want to work for me?”
Luma meets his glare steadily, trying his best to still his shaking. “My mother is dead.” His voice breaks a bit here, but he pushes on nevertheless. “I'm only a slave who works in the yards. I don't have a family anymore, and I've never had friends... I’m pretty sure my master is dead, too, if this is everyone left. I just want to read, to learn. I don’t want to die yet. Please, just... please.”
The man’s grip on his chin tightens, and Luma screws his eyes shut, certain he is about to earn a blaster shot in the face. To his surprise, however, the man releases his grip. He opens his eyes slowly, cautiously, watches the man as he straightens and clasps his hands together behind his back.
“Very well,” the man says casually, almost agreeably. “You're in luck, as we are in need of more bright young science officer recruits. You may be of some use. What is your name?”
With that, the man holds out a gloved hand. He takes it, rises shakily to his feet. “Luma Pershing, sir.”
“Luma Pershing, I'm Captain Gideon. The Empire welcomes your service.”
Luma follows Gideon away from the survivors and troopers and tries (fails) to ignore the sounds of blaster fire behind him.
*
For the next twenty years, he survives and makes himself useful.
“You’ll stay here to train,” Gideon tells him on that first day, gesturing to the entrance of the Imperial ship’s barracks for science officers in training. Men and women in lab coats mill about inside, some curiously eyeing Gideon and the new boy. Luma notes with a growing sense of dread there are no other children in the barracks to be seen.
Gideon steps toward him, takes hold of his chin once more and forces him to meet his eyes. “You are my first recruit for the Imperial Science Bureau, Luma Pershing. Understand that what you do here reflects directly on me. So make the Empire proud. Make me proud.”
It isn’t a question, but Luma feels compelled to respond with a determined nod.
I can do this.
Gideon levels him another long stare and nods. “Good boy.”
He finds that although he is, as he suspected, by far the youngest science officer recruit, he is quickly able to gain a favorable reputation for himself. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel limited by his surroundings. While Prim had only one meager library (it had only taken him roughly a year to read through every available book and scroll), the Imperial archives give him access to billions of books, songs, and records from across the galaxy. Instead of spending the majority of his time doing manual labor and ship repairs in Marin’s yard with the occasional library visit as a treat, his new commanding officers encourage him and his fellow recruits to delve into the information archives as often as possible, to learn as much as they can about whatever topics interest them. Even better, whereas before he only had Marin’s shipyard scraps to experiment with, the Science Bureau grants him practically unlimited access to cutting-edge technology.
He reads, he experiments, he invents, he learns, and for the first time, he feels like he is living up to his true potential.
The real challenge, his superior officers discover, is holding his interest for any longer than a handful of weeks. He excels at engineering due to his years as Marin’s slave, but he soon finds himself bored of designing countless iterations of TIE fighters and hovertanks. So he dabbles in all areas the Imperial Science Bureau has to offer, hopping gleefully from project to project as quickly as his mind can manage. His superior officers, wanting to encourage the young prodigy, simply let him go where the science takes him.
He spends a few months when he’s twelve creating language matrices to update the Empire’s translator droids into something that outpaces anything the galaxy had seen before. At age fourteen, he creates an alternative fuel for Imperial ships that lasts twice as long as typical starfuel. When he is fifteen, he develops a percussive cannon so powerful it can take out a Rebellion X-Wing, but so compact it can be wielded by a single stormtrooper. At sixteen, he creates a serum that can alter the genetics of a human fetus to make it grow stronger, faster, and smarter than it was ever meant to.
The last one causes a stir - there are whispers from higher ups about the possibilities of genetically modified troopers. Luma, however, shrugs it off - he is less concerned with what the Empire will do with his inventions and more concerned with whether he can push the boundaries of his own abilities.
Gideon, who checks in on him whenever he returns from his missions, is particularly proud of his gene modification serum. He twitches half a smile Luma’s way, puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes, and tells him, “Excellent, Luma. Truly.”
He tries not to be too pleased and continues to make himself useful.
*
At age seventeen, Luma learns that the heart is a dangerous thing.
The rumor spreads through the trooper ranks like wildfire, so much so that it even reaches the typically insular Science Bureau.
“Did you hear, Luma?” Ti’la says, adjusting her goggles as she leans over her microscope. “Apparently they caught two dark troopers together in a custodial closet. Your Admiral Gideon is executing them tomorrow.”
He frowns at her. “Caught together?” he repeats, brow furrowed in confusion. He’s no longer the youngest recruit in the Science Bureau, but in moments like this, moments where he knows he’s missing something crucial, he still feels that way at times. Most of the other officers had lives before joining the Empire, friends and family, and had some modicum of understanding of the outside world before leaving it. Luma, on the other hand, joined at such a young age and was a slave long before that. Upon his recruitment, even, he’d thrown himself so entirely into his work that he didn’t have a life outside his service to the Empire. He’s intelligent enough to have a keen awareness of the incredible amount of life and culture to which he remains painfully ignorant.
Ti’la laughs, though not unkindly, and waggles her eyebrows at him. “You know. They were caught. Together.”
He flushes, despite himself. Ah. “They were idiots then,” he says, voice sharp. “They should have known what would happen to them. Temporary biological satisfaction is not worth losing one's life."
“You’ve never been in love, hun?” she asks with a wistful smile.
This is why he likes Ti’la. She reminds him of his mother, though she is only ten years older than him. Since he joined the Science Bureau all those years ago, she’s taken him under her wing, showed him the ropes, makes sure he never overworks himself. She likes to call him “hun” and help him back to his bunk whenever he inevitably falls asleep slumped over his desk in the lab.
“No, of course not,” he snaps. “You know that all I care about is the work. And, you know, not getting killed. Love isn’t worth it. It’s a biochemical reaction in the brain leftover from our rudimentary evolutionary origins. Hormones overriding higher intellect - it's - it's ridiculous. Illogical. Only idiots think love has any real value."
She snorts and ruffles his hair, ignoring his squawks of protest, and says, “You might feel differently one day. I just hope when that time comes you’re somewhere far away from here. You’re too good for this place, Luma.”
In spite of his better judgement, this is another reason he likes Ti’la. She never takes his snide barbs too seriously. She remembers how scared he was when he first arrived all those years ago - she sees past the prickly, protective walls he’s put up around himself.
But sentiment like that, Luma reminds himself, is dangerous. It’s feelings like that that get you killed.
Later, when Gideon comes to him with an idea for creating a battalion of all-droid dark troopers, Luma knows the man is right.
Love (humanity) is simply another problem for science to solve.
*
When he is eighteen and finally a doctor, Gideon, now a Moff, makes him his chief science officer.
“Your superiors tell me they have taught you everything they can. In fact, I suspect you may have taught a few of them a thing or two,” Gideon says, that half-smile playing about his lips. “You have far exceeded my expectations, son. I think it’s time you joined me on my cruiser.”
Luma freezes. Son?
He… doesn't know what to make of that.
His next thought is a resounding: Shit.
Not that spending more time with Gideon would be bad, necessarily. While the man will never cease to terrify him, Gideon has made an effort to remain in his life for the last eight years, visiting in-between missions, bringing him (admittedly cold) words of advice and encouragement, and even the occasional gift for his many experiments.
(On one memorable occasion, Gideon had outdone himself. He’d strutted into Luma’s lab and, brusque as ever, set a massive, opalescent stone on the table in front of him.
“For your studies.”
Luma gawked at the stone, then at Gideon, then back at the stone again, holding out a shaking hand to place a reverent touch on its gleaming surface. “Is this - is this a krayt dragon pearl? Oh, sir, how did you get your hands on this? It’s - krayt dragons are - you could have -!”
Gideon’s lip twitched at his histrionics. “I managed.”
“But sir, these are so valuable... Surely, you could find a better use for it than my experiments? You could sell it for -”
“It is indeed valuable,” Gideon said, an odd caution coloring his voice that Luma hadn’t heard from him before. “But so are you.”
Luma’s breath froze in his chest.
“As is the Empire,” he continued curtly. “See what use you can make of this.”)
Gideon sees his value, he knows. After eight years of proving himself, Gideon finally sees him as worthy of his time, his advice, and that means he is finally safe with him. At least, as much as one could be safe with Gideon.
And yet.
He knows the kind of work the Empire sends Gideon to do. Wet work. Information extraction. Torture. He’s been largely sheltered from the horrors of the Empire during his time in the Science Bureau. Can he handle what Gideon will undoubtedly expect of him?
Shit. He’s been quiet for far too long.
Gideon’s half-smile is gone. “What do you say, Dr. Pershing?”
Make yourself useful. Survive. No matter what.
“It would be my honor, sir,” he lies.
*
Being Moff Gideon’s chief science officer is every bit of what he feared.
Gone are the days of endless encouraged experimentation, research, and invention. His main priority now, as Gideon demands, is information extraction.
Luma, as always, resolves to keep his head down and do as he is told. While Gideon seems to - or at least pretends to - have some strange attachment to him, he has seen what the man does to officers who so much as hesitate before heeding an order. He doesn’t dare risk his wrath.
The worst part of focusing on information extraction is that he suddenly finds himself in need of sentient lifeforms upon which to test his inventions. Gideon’s missions never leave him in short supply of prisoners, and eventually, Luma runs out of reasonable excuses to further delay his experiments.
Just do as you’re told. Survive.
His first experimental subject is a captured Rebel soldier. Gideon wants information on a Rebel base, but even more so, he wants to see Luma’s invention in action. He’s just put the finishing touches on his newest device - a nerve disruptor designed to make all pain receptors in the body fire off at once. Luma, becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of being in such close proximity with Gideon's subjects, develops the prototype with the hope that while the machine would cause tremendous amounts of pain as the Moff demands, if only used in short bursts, the subjects would experience no lasting damage - physically, at least.
His first subject is a blue Twi’lek with large, tear-filled eyes and a piercing scream. She gives Gideon the information he wants after Luma deploys his machine for a mere three minutes.
The Twi’lek pants, leaning back heavily against the chair she’s strapped to. Her expression is empty as she stares at the ceiling.
Luma eyes the scanners and jots down some notes for his research. Unsurprisingly, his invention works as intended. Debilitating pain despite no lasting physical damage to the soldier, information acquired, and a happy Gideon. He feels a bit ill, however, upon noting how quickly the Rebel soldier, surely trained in resisting torture, succumbed to his machine.
“Excellent, Dr. Pershing. Quite impressive. Your nerve-disruptor is incredibly effective,” Gideon praises, skimming a reverent gloved hand across the machine's various knobs and dials.
All he can bring himself to do in response is nod numbly. He doesn’t trust his words to not turn into a scream.
Gideon turns his attention back to the Twi'lek. “Now, Doctor. Turn it back on. This time, leave it on, please. I would like to see the full range of your invention’s capabilities.”
Luma freezes.
No. No, no, no -
“Was there more information you wanted from her, sir?” he asks carefully.
Gideon’s lip twitches downward. Not good. “No.”
"But sir, that will -"
"I am well-aware what it will do, Doctor."
Luma hesitates. For far, far too long.
Gideon’s eyes begin to get that dangerous glint Luma has only seen directed at others before. Others who did not survive for very long.
Shit.
“I understand that you find this work distasteful,” Gideon begins. He takes a single step forward, and it takes every ounce of Luma’s self-control not to bolt.
“N-no, no sir -”
“Please do not bother, Dr. Pershing. You are a man of a great many talents. Lying, however, is not one of them.”
Shit, shit, shit -
Gideon closes the remaining space between them and, instead of the slap or tase that he fears, a gloved hand brushes his cheek. His body freezes, torn between leaning into the touch and wrenching his face from the man’s reach.
“It’s alright. It’s one of the reasons I trust you, Luma. Every thought that impressive mind of yours has plays across your face at every moment, clear as day. Your eyes betray you. In fact,” the Moff says with a prickled softness, “I don’t believe you could deceive me if you tried.”
It takes everything Luma has not to gulp at the thinly veiled warning. The part of his brain not currently paralyzed in fear wildly makes a note to invest in some protective eyewear - goggles, glasses, anything.
“However,” Gideon continues, his voice simmering with an undercurrent of something that sends alarms shrieking through Luma's mind, “you must understand that it is not an innocent being I am telling you to execute. It is a terrorist who would kill either of us in a moment if given the opportunity. With the information we’ve extracted from her, we have saved Imperial lives. Be proud of what you’ve done here, and finish the job. You have been extraordinarily useful to me, Luma, and I would like for you to remain so.”
His wording is not a coincidence, and they both know it.
Luma makes a valiant effort to school his expression into something resembling neutrality. “Understood, sir.”
And so, he does as he always does - he follows orders.
He turns on his machine with a trembling finger and wishes desperately that he didn’t understand Ryl. Some time later (far, far too long), in her last moments before her heart finally gives out, the soldier cries out for her parents in her mother tongue.
If, in a moment of weakness later in his quarters, he sobs himself to sleep and dreams of being someone else, anyone else, well. No one has to know.
*
He is thirty when the Empire is defeated.
The scream that tears from Gideon’s throat when they receive word of what happened to the second Death Star will stay with Luma for the rest of his days.
Gideon collapses to his hands and knees, making a horrible keening sound like an animal in pain. His shaking hands scramble to find purchase on the cold, smooth floor of the light cruiser’s control room.
Luma is bizarrely reminded of himself twenty years earlier, on his hands and knees, clawing wildly at the ground, his whole world collapsed around him. He knows what that feels like, and despite himself, he feels pity for the man.
He shoots a warning glance to the other officers and troopers in the hull, and they get the hint. Though as a science officer he shouldn’t hold much authority, it is known amongst the crew that Gideon holds Luma in high regard, so they tend to listen to the few orders he bothers to give. Not to mention Gideon has killed troopers for seeing much, much less. They file out quickly, giving Luma and Gideon the room.
Once they are alone, he kneels by the man’s side, steels himself, and does the single bravest thing he’s done since joining the Empire - he places a tentative hand on Gideon’s heaving back.
The man freezes at his touch, but Luma doesn't retreat.
“Sir,” is all he can say, meekly.
He’s at a loss for words. While he still doesn’t care for the Empire or its mission as Gideon does, he’s just lost countless coworkers, a few he would even call friends, who worked on the Death Star. People he’d trained with. People who took him, a scared ten year old child who lost his whole world, under their wings. Decent people who - like him - were just trying to survive.
And Ti’la. Oh, no. Ti’la.
“They’re all gone,” Gideon whispers hoarsely. “Emperor Palpatine was on the Death Star. We’re one of perhaps ten star cruisers left.”
Luma can’t tell who is shaking more - himself or Gideon, when two memories come to him, unbidden: Ti’la, her hand gently ruffling his hair, saying, “You’re too good for this place, Luma," and his mother, clutching him tightly to her heart, whispering in his ear, “You need to survive for me, baby, no matter what.”
And then, a dangerous thought strikes him:
Is this my chance to run?
It’s a tempting thought that's haunted him periodically throughout his years in the Empire, despite his best efforts to push such foolish ideas deep, deep down. But is it so foolish now? He could sprint to the escape pods now while Gideon is distracted, go to some backwater planet, change his name, open a small ship repair to make ends meet. The troopers wouldn’t stop him - hell, some of them might be getting into pods of their own.
And then, at the precise moment he’s seriously considering making a break for a pod and never looking back, Gideon does something that shocks him to his very core: the man sits back from his kneeling position and leans against Luma, still trembling. With a quiet, simple pressure of their sides meeting, Gideon accepts his offered comfort.
They sit there a moment, side by side, sharing the weight of their grief, and Luma knows that this moment of weakness is not something Gideon would share with just anyone.
He actually trusts me. More than most. Quite possibly, more than anyone still alive.
...Fuck.
Eventually, they pull themselves to their feet and Gideon is back to his old self, barking commandments over the coms about regrouping with remaining Imperial warships in the Outer Rim.
And so, Luma pushes all thoughts of fleeing the Empire to the back of his mind where they belong. Gideon is still alive, after all, and he knows now, deep in his core, that the man will never let him go.
If he’s going to run, he’ll need to do it when he is far out of Gideon’s reach. Even then, there’s only a slim chance he could escape the man’s clutches for long - at least, not without help. And who would help a man like him?
He feels much, much older than thirty.
*
Luma is thirty-four when Gideon approaches him with The Plan.
The Empire has been run ragged for the last four years. The New Republic grows in strength every day, while Gideon grows more and more desperate with every failed mission.
There still is, he realizes, some form of authority that managed to survive the destruction of the second Death Star, or perhaps hadn't been on the ship when it was destroyed. The Moff gets his orders from somewhere, after all. But all of Gideon’s cunning cannot make up for the Empire's sheer lack of numbers.
All the while, Luma watches warily from his place at Gideon’s side. While he feels some relief that the Empire can no longer carry out its more sinister plots, Gideon has changed. He is less the controlled, calculating man who took him in as a boy. He’s wilder now, more vicious. More prone to impulse and fits of rage. Violence for violence’s sake.
Before the Death Star, Luma had occasionally seen glimpses of the man behind the mask, moments where he could sense the ghost of humanity, possibly even some sort of emotion the man felt for him. But for the last four years, those glimpses into Gideon the man have all but ceased. Gideon, a vicious machine for the Empire, is all that remains.
So, he keeps his head down, keeps his eyes hidden behind his tinted glasses (Gideon, the pre-Death Star Gideon, had said nothing, but eyed him in vague amusement when he’d worn them for the first time), and hopes he is still useful to this new version of the man who spared him all those years ago.
And then, the Moff comes to him with an idea.
“At this point,” Gideon admits after explaining the tentative plan, “this may be the Empire’s last hope.”
At first, he doesn’t consider the implications of the idea. His first thought, as always, is not Should I? but Can I?
“Force-sensitive strandcast soldiers...?” he murmurs, not without some excitement at the novelty of it. “It’s an ambitious thought, certainly. According to the data I had access to from Grand Admiral Thrawn’s research base, what gives Force-sensitive beings their power is high levels of something called midi-chlorians in their cells... We don’t know much more about them, though. If I could somehow use existing strandcast technology, my gene serum, and really research midi-chlorians - understand what they are and how they work, maybe -”
“Is this something you can do for me, Luma?” Gideon presses.
He pauses in surprise and feels a bit of hope begin to stir in his chest. Gideon hasn’t called him anything but “Dr. Pershing” in years. He chooses his next words carefully.
“There’s a chance. A small, small, chance. I can’t say for certain, but… I might be able to do it,” he offers cautiously.
And then, the old Gideon is back for just a moment, looking at him like he hung every damn star in the galaxy, and he nearly forgets all traitorous notions of escape. (Nearly.)
So that’s that. He is going to make himself useful. If it means cloning and gene-splicing an army of Force-wielding strandcasts, well. He’s done the impossible before.
All he needs is a subject, possibly a Force-sensitive creature...