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How fine that the academy lost the order of transfers, Luke thought, sitting on his bed with other cadets and soldiers. Recently they were moved to a common quarter block, the era of separation ended after two months of living with people who weren’t clearly fond of a talented guy from Tatooine.
Luke got used to rivalry. The academy was no place to befriend boys, and all the girls he liked talking to remained back there. The Executioner presented a no-girl-walks-in-here place, its stuff mostly unmarried depressive men. Even Lieutenant Rosse was the one of a kind with his permanent quarrels on the comm, a hilarious show to watch after a busy day.
“So, you’re staying longer, huh, kid?” Louson, the officer of provision, sighed with clear satisfaction. “Means more fun to see, yeah?”
Luke nodded thoughtfully. He twisted his datapad like a lost child, his eyes watching something in the dark. The feeling of someone’s endless watch started to annoy him. The first sign of paranoia, and paranoia was a good reason to be relieved of his duties and studies at the academy. The idea stirred uneasiness inside him, when gaze drifted to the screen. Still no clue of coming back to a place he liked. At least, there were no Jawas, no Hutts and no vaporisers he had to fix daily, what an old junk he had a nuisance to work with. Now, with maintenance of a Star Destroyer, he could fix ships, reprogram droids and some other things with sophisticated mechanisms stored under the hull.
“Seems so, Louson,” Luke slipped out of the bed, wrapping himself into a worn uniform, now sitting at him suddenly tight. Probably, the consequence of better nutrition is that he caught on a single inch for this short period of time as well and even turned quite less… scrawny. Or, maybe, that was the lack of physical torture. He didn’t need to run a dozen kilometres in the morning and didn’t have to train his melee combat skills for three hours after brain-melting lectures. Whatever the reason was, Luke didn’t complain.
He was assigned in the docking bay three today, helping pilots to fix their TIEs with… basically being an errand boy. It wasn’t the worst job, especially since stories of some improvements uplifted him.
“So, I burned my compressor,” one man explained, Luke didn’t remember the name. He had such a bushy moustache, that it was impossible to look at it without a silly smile.
“Like, to death?”
“Yeah, boy, just like that,” he shrugged, pointing to the droid to solder some tiny details in the rear of his scratched fighter.
“Is that…” Luke suddenly had an urge to look above his shoulder, but he didn’t. The feeling of presence scratched the back of his head with a tingle of cold, but not a bad one. Just weird, making his attention on full alert. “Okay?”
“What?” the man craned his neck to see. “Ah, yes. Lord Vader sometimes has a strange sense of teambonding.” He explained with a chuckle hidden in lush facial hair. “But I honestly didn’t expect him to do that when your team is still not sent back like a parcel he had no chance to decline the delivery of.”
Luke ignored the implication. He heard numerous stories about Vader’s advanced TIE, which advances were a personal design and work. Vader corrected the blueprints Kuat shared with him, and changed the general appearance. It was still shiny-black, impossibly smooth to guarantee better mobility while piloting in the atmosphere. Mostly, the details Luke could notice were about agility, speed, but they violated life-support systems.
“It seems he reduced shields’ power. There’s something in the socket of the central shield projector.”
“Personally, I never asked. I believe, Vader doesn’t need shields. When he’s participating, he just like… I don’t know, a god. He can fly a piece of trash, and major damage never causes him to retreat. He never retreats.”
Luke tilted his head. He almost could see what was going on in an intricate wiring Vader tried to connect with the stabilizer, or he didn’t want to do it and performed otherwise.
“Does he take advice from you?”
The man almost laughed, slipping down on the floor of the docking bay. “I don’t know, you can try.”
Luke ignored the hint of sarcasm his brain recognised. He walked straight to the destination, Vader reacting at him even before he finished strolling. All the work around them stopped, and Luke could swear he heard all the thoughts surrounding him. A loud noise made him lose balance for a second as he stumbled over his own feet, but as if with an invisible caring hand he was pushed back from falling and finished his route.
“Excuse me, sir,” he leaned to the open area, pointing with his gloved finger, “I believe that what you’re doing is not particularly safe.”
“You think?” his weirdly robotic voice came. His eyes stared with no blinking, though nobody saw them. Luke sighed, sudden chill gone the moment he pulled himself back into the working mood.
“Yeah. You see, sir, your wiring system leaves the stability system almost out of the electricity supply. Of course, done right, it won’t cause a shortcut, but in case you have to run into an aggressive atmosphere with storms or a high barometric pressure, your controls will go wild.” He gestured actively as he tried to explain in a… basic human language not his usual put here in there so your ship doesn’t do big bada-boom! But even if the terminology was off a bit. Vader clearly caught on the idea.
“I think I can manage.” he said, his black figure yet not dismissive, as if he wanted to crouch and lean closer to listen to a child’s story of a school day. Luke sighed. He once tried the trick, and it wasn’t a pleasant ride. “You speak of a personal experience,” now that sounded vaguely strict. “When?”
Oh, the story was buried far in the past, but Luke still felt an odd bite of indignation laying in his stomach like a nuclear reactor. His hands clasped, as he scowled at the memory. “When some brainless guy who transported me to the academy rendezvous point did the same with his ship, but lost control of it in the sand storm.”
“Why didn’t you use a speeder?”
“That was unsafe as I moved at night. Locals…”
“Aren’t friendly at all,” Vader finished with his voice the same, but anger rose like a wall, making Luke’s head slump slightly. “But why moving at night?”
Luke sighed. “My family was against me going to the academy. They said war’s dangerous.”
“They didn’t lie.” Vader as if sighed, though his breathing maintained with the life-support systems of the suit was deprived of such a function. “I wouldn’t let you go too.”
It sounded as if it was an opportunity Vader missed. Like he had adoption papers on his desk in the office ready to be signed. It sounded so weird, and Luke just shrugged in response. The atmosphere of… unclear, but safe companionship, didn’t make his brain process the position he sat in.
“I didn’t want to live on Tatooine forever. They said my father piloted a ship. I believe I got it after him in the end.”
The conversation abruptly cut off. Luke just sat there, homesickness tearing his heart to tiny pieces. But he would send him money when he starts working. Maybe, he would get them off Tatooine and place them in a nice and cozy house somewhere in Mid Rim. And also the other sorrowful mind shared the experience of what was long lost with Luke’s one. He let out a long sigh, then straightened. “So, about the stabilizers…”