Chapter Text
Prologue
Captain Raymus Antilles is about to die.
He knows this. He knows they never could have outrun the Devastator, not in their condition. He knows the claim of diplomatic immunity never would have worked, not fleeing from the scene of the fiercest battle he’s witnessed in many a year. He knows that most of his crew are dead, the rest prisoners and soon to join them.
Raymus has found himself in the claws of a demon out of the old stories. This Imperial commander is inhumanly tall. The rasp of some kind of breathing mask echoes, in sharp contrast to Raymus’ own silenced lungs. He cannot breathe, strangled by shadows, and yet somehow he can still think.
His niece Corla is still alive, he’s pretty sure. She volunteered for this mission, going against both her parents’ and his own wishes, even though the senator would have given anyone the option to depart if she’d asked. She’s an adult, barely. They couldn’t really have stopped her. And now she’s going to die here with him.
And then what happens? The princess says whatever they’re carrying has the power to save the Alliance. But he knows what the Empire had, back at Scarif. That station can destroy planets. What the hell is the Rebellion supposed to do against it?
In fact, the Empire knows they’re headed to Alderaan. Except for Corla, his entire family is there.
Milliseconds have passed. Bright spots dance across the center of his vision. His chest is burning, his neck in agony. The demon says something, he doesn’t really know what, but he manages to choke out a response. Another lie. It’s his duty.
He’s known the princess since she was a child. She’s younger than Corla, only nineteen. Nonetheless, he holds young Leia Organa in the highest regard. From his assessment of her character, from innumerable “diplomatic missions” spent furtively funneling the Rebels aid, he’s well aware of her courage and resolve.
She is principled, remarkably so. Not a little headstrong. She can read people like one twice her age, but has the sheer unbridled gumption of any righteous teenager. She is somewhere on this ship right now, and the Empire will find the plans, and they will kill her.
What teenage princess stands a chance against the Imperial legions?
Even though it’s a futile and pointless hope, he hopes nonetheless. Maybe the princess will make it. Maybe the Imperial station won’t be turned against his homeworld. Maybe someone, somewhere has a clever plan in the works, some way to salvage this tentative victory from the jaws of absolute defeat.
Maybe someday in the years to come, his daughters will go together to a quiet grove on the shores of Aldera Lake and just sit there and remember him. He’d like that. He misses them so much right now.
“Sir, sir, you need to hear this,” a tinny voice repeats. “Sir, we don’t know what’s going on.”
The Imperial commander twists his obsidian mask just a degree, that face aimed now in the direction of the voice. He does and says nothing else. Raymus struggles weakly once more, his lungs screaming.
“Sir.” An Imperial lieutenant stands, knees positively knocking together at the prospect of conversing with the Lord Vader head on. “Sir, there’s someone else on the ship. We’ve dealt with the crew, no sign of the princess or the plans, but–” he shifts his weight. “We’ve got troopers missing.”
Another officer interjects nervously. “A man? Surely not a whole squad?”
“More than one. We’ve lost contact with Squad 337, and Squad 896 is reporting…” the first lieutenant turns to the stormtrooper commander next to him. “What are you hearing?”
The fingers around Raymus’ throat loosen slightly, apparently at random. Suddenly, there is oxygen, not enough, but some. All thought leaves his head for a minute. It will take a long time for him to figure out what got the Imperial commander distracted.
“Surely this isn’t a matter to trouble Lord Vader with,” the second officer insists, a rather frantic tone underlying his voice. “Perhaps some of the crew didn’t go accounted for? Send another squad, that should fix the problem…”
“Do not.” The Imperial commander’s voice is a monstrous rasp. “Draw your weapons.”
Raymus is flung against the wall at a speed that seems unnatural. If he weren’t already numb with shock, the pain of several shattering ribs would have knocked him out. As it is, he crumples to the floor. His chest expands, then contracts, more with pain than with the force of any intake of breath.
The stormtrooper shouts orders to his subordinates. The crowd of Imperials is flurrying around now, bungling formations in their haste; all but their commander, his black-cloaked figure still. He stares down the corridor, still lined with corpses.
There is a figure approaching down the hallway.
For a moment, Raymus is struck by the memory, just a few hours before, when this “Lord Vader” first began slicing his way towards Raymus’ ship. They’d escaped, just barely, and everyone thought the nightmare was over, until they remembered their malfunctioning hyperdrive. Still, their time in hyperspace had been a moment of peace, however tinged with panic. Not so, what came before.
But Vader stands in front of him. Someone else is approaching.
Whoever they are, they’re not Vader. The lights do not flicker. The aura of dread is not present. Raymus can barely see, and besides, there are a number of stormtroopers in the way, but he catches a glimpse of an ordinary-looking pair of boots, a fragment of grey fabric.
Oh. Perhaps there was someone in the crew he didn’t account for. In the chaos, he neglected to remember the princess’ tutor.
He doesn’t know the woman very well– she tends to keep to herself. She’s younger than him, and in the confidence of both the princess and her father. Why exactly a nineteen-year-old apprentice senator already at the forefront of a galactic revolution still needs a tutor, no one has ever really explained to him. Nonetheless, she accompanies the princess everywhere (or is it the princess who accompanies her?). He’s been trying to get a read on her for months.
She knows her way around the bridge of a ship, that’s for certain. She’s respectful to the crew. She spends long periods of time by herself, often while they’re in hyperspace, and requests that no one disturb her. Once or twice, when someone has asked her a question that’s just a bit too prying, the questioner has come over… funny.
All right, Raymus isn’t an idiot. He does have an inkling who, or what, this woman is. The galaxy may have forgotten her kind in a mere twenty years; he hasn’t. But what she has to do with the princess is unclear.
In the moment, she stands at the end of the hallway, chemical fog drifting out of the intersecting corridors behind her and pooling around her feet. There is tension in her frame, but also a hint of self-assurance. She stands like someone who is used to combat.
Wait a moment. Raymus’ eyes widen. Was it her who took out the missing stormtroopers?
“Spare the crew.” She says it like a command. It doesn’t have the power behind it that her past suggestions did. Perhaps that doesn’t work against a crowd? Nevertheless, her voice silences the string of whispered commands going back and forth. She is, apparently, unarmed.
Vader speaks. “You are not in a position to be making demands.”
To be accosted by that black gaze is a heart-freezing experience, Raymus knows this personally, yet somehow the tutor retains eye contact. “Nonetheless.” She stops, like there is more she wishes to say, but she says nothing.
The Imperial commander now seems… hesitant, almost? Who could make someone like him hesitate? It’s only for a moment, and then he lunges, fiery red sword already swinging. One rebel captain, and what remains of his crew, lie forgotten on the floor.
Raymus Antilles may still die, may die soon, in fact, but he will not die just yet.
He’s semiconscious and fading fast, breath hoarse as he desperately pumps air into his lungs. Armored hands seize him by the shoulders. One of the stormtroopers is shouting. He catches a brief glimpse of surviving crew members being herded away in manacles. The air smells like laser-burnt steel and smoke.
But as the stormtroopers drag him away, towards a medbay and then towards a prison cell, the captain knows. This is a reprieve.
What he sees last, before unconsciousness claims him, is not the stormtroopers. Not the hallway filled with dead bodies. Not the smoke. Not Vader. No, Captain Raymus Antilles only sees the glow, as the tutor brandishes her weapons at last:
Twin beams of brilliant white light.