"And you wasted it," Luke accused. "Because you knelt, spineless, willing to further the ambitions of a ruthless, vindictive old man--"
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Before he realized what he was doing, Vader had taken two fast steps forward to grab Luke's arm and yank him up and about...then he froze as his mind caught up with his actions, and he realized what he was about to do.
"Your word is not law here," his son said, venom in his voice, undisguised hatred in his eyes. "You don't command me."
Vader released him with a half-throw. "You are a foolish child. You know nothing of what you speak."
"If you dislike what I'm saying then leave," the boy hissed.
Unwilling to continue this tirade Vader turned and strode to the door. In the long seconds it took for the lock to cycle open his anger calmed, leaving him unsure how it had come again to this between them.
"Why do you always try to provoke?" Vader asked into the silence.
"To remind us both of what you really are," Luke replied, not bothering to turn.
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Eventually the door thudded closed and Luke was left again to silent darkness. He considered for a long time, but couldn't find it in himself to regret a single word that he had said.
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To be continued...
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Chapter 9
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CHAPTER NINE
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"Leia!" Mon smiled broadly, arms out in welcome as Leia rushed from the transport onto the deck of Home-One, the Alliance's main Mon-Cal cruiser, Lando and Chewie in tow.
"Mon." She smiled, embracing the older woman genuinely. It had been so long since she had seen her, had felt safe.
Mon Mothma held on to Leia for long seconds, always pleased to have her back safely. They'd always been close, practically family, Mon having known knowing her adoptive parents well, and being a part of her life since Leia since she was a child. They were all the family each had left now.
Mon had already read Leia's report, written on her week-long journey back to the fleet, and spoken with her several times, when both their ships had happened to be in realspace between jumps at the same time. Interpreting the play of another's thoughts over the HoloNet ws always difficult, but Mon had seemed disturbed by all that had happened--and more. She'd briefly intimated that they had shouldered their own problems onboard Home One, in the form of a high-level spy, but been frustratingly unwilling to tell more, even over a scrambled channel. Some things, she'd claimed, were best done face to face.
And the worry on Mon's face right now intimated just how disturbing these things were. "Lieutenant Grade will see that your friends are settled in quarters...we have something we need to speak about," she said gravely, leading Leia away.
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"Oh please!" Leia said dryly as she held the clear bag which contained the comlink, disbelieving eyes turning from Mon to Crix Madine, his face hidden in the low light of Home One's carefully emptied Communications suite.
"We're not assigning blame--yet," Madine said neutrally. He too knew Luke, and though it seemed that he was having trouble accepting what appeared to be right in front of him, Leia could also see the brief bursts of resentment shadow his face as, being forced to validate this against her scathing disbelief, his own opinion seemed to be consolidating. "What we do know for certain is that this is the comlink which was sending out coded messages. Comms have track them specifically to this unit."
"Everybody sends out unauthorized transmissions," Leia argued, unconvinced.
"These were encoded," Mon said softly. "Once we had the comlink to work with, the techs traced over forty transmissions on its bandwidth over the last year, all encoded. It's a standard-issue comlink, Leia, it shouldn't even be able to transmit on that kind of compressed frequency."
"You don't even know it's his," Leia said, unwilling to give in so easily, though a little voice whispered at the back of her mind.
"It was in his crate," Madine said levelly.
"We're not saying it was his," Mon cut across Madine, seeking to give Leia time to come to terms with this. "We're just looking for answers."
"If I were an Imperial agent, I don't think I'd keep my doctored comlink in my own crate," Leia said of the large, plasteel chests which every member of Alliance personnel had, each with their name and number stenciled on the side, always moved from ship to ship as they were reassigned. They held all of that crew member's personal belongings. In Luke's case pitifully little: his uniforms and fatigues, a few pieces of civilian clothing, a reader and a mass of work-related data chips...and this.
"We're not blind to that," Mon assured gently, quieting Leia's anger. "Leia, we knew we had a spy...we knew almost a year ago."
"Luke has been with us for three, Mon," Leia interjected.
Madine shook his head. "We knew we had a spy a year ago. He was probably operating long before we realized."
"He?" Leia said pointedly. Of everyone here, she had thought Madine would be the least likely to accuse, having himself been an Imperial defector, and therefore being under watchful suspicion when he first arrived. But then, maybe his Imperial history was beginning to show through.
"The last coded transmission from this comlink went out less than two hours before the Imperial blockade on Hoth," Madine said gravely. "The one before that was three weeks previously...when the last of the main units transferred planet-side. The one before that was sent the day that the first advance units arrived there to set up camp--Rogue Group included. We don't know what they say yet--we can't crack the code--but I think the dates pretty much say it all."
"Yes. I don't doubt that this is the unit that the spy was using to send out information. I just question the owner's identity," Leia said, hearing her own voice raise a notch, as the Com Chief turned slightly, nervous. It was, after all, he who had put all the pieces together when the standard-issue comlink had been returned to him for reassignment.
Slowly, it all came out...it all came out, and Leia felt physically sick.
Madine was right, of course; they'd known they had a spy passing on information; had been trying to catch him for almost a year. But he'd always avoided every subtle trap and every carefully-laid snare, worked out to the smallest detail by the Command staff...of whom Luke was a member.
Had he betrayed them? Had he sat in those meetings with that earnest smile, always full of suggestions, always frustrated at their failure...had he sat there and quietly laughed at them all, knowing that they were so close to their infiltrator and yet light-years away?
She shook her head as the facts were carefully read out, biting her nail to the quick until it bled, the pain strangely comforting, a distraction from cold reality.
It wasn't Luke. It wasn't Luke they were talking about...was it?
But there were so many incidents and slowly they added up.
It was his unit--always his unit which seemed to be involved. First of all the Rogues, who always seemed in the thick of it, stumbling from one hazardous incident to another. Then, when he'd been made Unit Commander, it was always his unit who'd had the close shaves, always his unit under close pursuit, bugging out just a hair's breadth in front of the Empire, as they had done on Hoth. Han had said it more than once; that Luke was a trouble-magnet.
Han. Leia felt a burning in her throat at the realization. What was happening to him now? Because if Luke really was an Imperial operative then...
She frowned, uncertain all over again. No, no, he wasn't. He wasn't. Whatever was going on, it wasn't what it seemed. Luke would never betray them. He would never betray her. She knew him too well.