Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
4 BBY
“On three,” Cassian said, holding the crowbar. “One. Two. Three.”
There was a grinding of metal, and the hinge popped. Evest swung the door of the enormous shipping container open, and they both stood, staring in disbelief.
Despite Luthen saying he didn’t know the contents, Cassian really thought it was going to be credits, or artifacts, or maybe even weapons. He had been wrong.
The woman was in shackles, wrists and legs. She looked bad. Someone had beat the hell out of her. Her eyes were wild, like a feral animal.
He held up his hands, palms open. “Easy,” he said. “Easy.”
He could see the whites of her eyes as she looked between him and Evest.
Slowly, Cassian stepped toward the shipping container.
The woman bolted past him, shockingly fast for how rough she was. He reached for her and they grappled for a moment. She weighed hardly anything, but she was wiry, and very motivated. “It’s okay,” Cassian yelled, trying to calm her. “Easy!”
In the scramble, she managed to get his blade. Cassian immediately released her, dancing back out of range. “Okay, now,” he said evenly. “Let’s all calm down. No one needs to get hurt.”
“Wake them,” she said, thrusting the blade toward them threateningly.
She didn’t strike him as someone trained in hand to hand combat, but she was very scrappy. Cassian knew to never discount someone as agitated as this woman. Anything could happen. This was how people got killed on easy ops.
“What’re you talking about?” Cassian asked.
The woman motioned to the shipping container. “Wake them!”
Cassian nodded to Evest, who entered the container, a large durasteel box. “They’re hibernation pods,” he said. “Two of them.”
The woman motioned Cassian to the shipping container and he nodded. “Okay, okay.”
He got close enough to Evest to see the hibernation pods. They didn’t appear to have been active for long. Odds were the occupants had been placed there within the last day or two. Probably right before shipment. It was hard to tell with the frosting on the canopy, but it looked like two kids.
“Should I wake them up?” Evest asked.
Cassian shrugged. “I guess?” What the hell did it matter to him? He had no idea who these people were. Luthen was going to be pissed. Some wires got crossed somewhere with his intel.
Cassian looked back at the woman. She was injured. More seriously than he initially thought. Someone had definitely beat the hell out of her. It looked like her left shoulder was dislocated.
“Okay, lady,” he said. “We’re waking the kids. Why don’t you put that knife down before someone gets hurt.”
She gave no indication she heard him, her attention focused on the pods.
Cassian looked over his shoulder as the first canopy popped, and then the second. Definitely kids. Young teenagers probably. A boy, and a girl.
“Where are we?” the woman demanded.
“This is my ship. My name is Cassian. Who are you?”
“Where are we going?”
Cassian frowned. “We’re enroute from Malastare to the Kuat system.”
She shook her head. “What’s in Kuat?”
“A rendezvous,” Cassian said. “Look, lady, I thought this was a container of stuff I could fence. Who the hell are you, and why were you in there?”
“Mom?”
The woman pushed past him, towards the kid. “Luke!”
Evest and Cassian both stepped back from the container.
“We have a problem,” Cassian said. The connection was awful, but the signal couldn’t be boosted.
“I don’t care about your problems,” Luthen said. “Do your job.”
“It’s the cargo,” Cassian said.
“Be careful with it,” Luthen snapped. “I need it to make a deal.”
“You’re not going to be making a deal with it,” Cassian said flatly. “It’s a lady. And her kids.”
Luthen had no response. What the hell? “I’ll take care of it,” he finally said.
“Sure, Boss.”
The kids were awake. Evest had given them some ration packs. Despite being hungry, they were in a lot better shape than their mother. Luke was the boy. Leia was the girl. No last names. They wouldn’t tell Cassian where they were from, or why the hell they were in that container.
“Listen, lady, you look like you have to be in a lot of pain,” Cassian said. “Let us take a look at the arm. At least stabilize it.” It was more than just the arm. Her lips were white, and peeling, her eyes sunken in. However long they’d been in that crate, she hadn’t had food or water, and she was still refusing it.
The woman just looked at him. She had been a beauty once. Cassian could tell. Dark eyes and hair, straight brows, fine features. But life hadn’t treated her kindly. Her face was bruised, a few teeth missing. There were hairline scars snaking from the corner of her mouth out to her ear on one side, and bisecting her other eyebrow.
“Please, Mom,” Leia said.
The woman seemed to crumple a bit, and turned to look at Luke in question.
He nodded to her. “They seem okay.” He shrugged. “Pirates, but ... okay.”
Slowly, the woman stood and walked to the table near Cassian. He took a tool and cut the shackles free. First feet, then hands. The shackles on her feet looked like they had been there for years, and he could see the mess of scar tissue on her right ankle. That’s probably why she couldn’t walk very well. Her left hand was mangled, several of the fingers badly broken and poorly healed, the injury years old.
She sat down and Cassian handed her the flask. “Med nog. Just a sip.”
She looked away.
“Mom,” Leia said softly.
With a sigh, the woman lifted the flask to her lips and took a small sip. Almost immediately, her eyes took on a glazed look, and she swayed.
Cassian stepped closer, to steady her. She didn’t react. He took the opportunity to hook her up to fluids with some basic nutrition. He sure as hell didn’t want her coding on him mid-jump. They’d have to stick her in one of the hibernation pods.
With as much care as they could, Cassian and Evest slipped her shoulder back into the socket. She didn’t make a sound. Cassian wanted to think the med nog was doing its job, but he suspected she was simply accustomed to taking a lot of physical abuse.
Cassian stepped back as Evest put a sling on the arm and secured it to her body. What the hell was going on?
“You know the risk I’m taking being here,” Mon Mothma hissed at him. They were kilometers below the surface of Coruscant, in a safehouse that Luthen had never shared with the group. He hated to burn a resource like this, but he needed answers quickly.
“I know,” Luthen replied. “But you need to hear this.”
She looked at him.
“I had a team intercept the package we discussed,” he said.
She sobered instantly, straightening up.
“The contents were unexpected," Luthen said.
“Unexpected? We didn’t have any idea what the bloody contents were,” Mon bit out. “It was a wild guess, based on your intelligence.”
“Good intelligence,” Luthen replied firmly. “And if memory serves, you and your compatriots agreed to the risk.”
“You lectured us,” she said sourly, “on using the Empire’s tactics against them.”
“Why fight the Emperor and Vader if we can get them to fight each other,” Luthen replied evenly. He took a breath. “I stand by that. And I stand by the fact that the shipment we intercepted was something that the Emperor went to great lengths to conceal from Vader.”
Mon crossed her arms over her chest, frowning. “You said that there was a problem with the shipment.”
Luthen looked away. “I don’t know that it’s a problem,” he said. “It’s unexpected.”
“Well?”
Luthen held out the datapad. “Do you recognize her?”
Mon looked at the picture. Then she frowned, her eyes narrowing. She looked at Luthen. “You found this woman?”
He nodded.
Mon frowned. “I can’t be certain. It’s been years. But it looks like Padmé Naberrie. Senator Amidala, from Naboo.” She met Luthen’s gaze. “But she’s been dead since the Republic fell. I attended her funeral.”
“Well, she looks like hell,” Luthen said. “But this woman is very much alive. I can’t say for certain if she’s your missing senator or not. She isn’t talking to my operatives. She also has two kids with her.”
Mon shook her head. “This makes no sense. Padmé died before Vader even rose to power. What connection could she possibly have to him and the Emperor?”
“I don’t know,” Luthen said, “but the Emperor does. And we need to figure it out too.”
“Where is she?”
“Currently in the Kuat shipyards,” Luthen said. “But that’s stopgap. We need somewhere more permanent to move her and the kids until we can sort this out.”
“Let me speak to some people,” Mon said. “I’ll find a safe haven.”
Cassian looked up as the girl, Leia, walked down the ramp. He was standing outside the ship, ostensibly repairing damage, but mostly just keeping an eye on things. He hated being in a port this busy.
“Where are you taking us?” Leia asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked up at him.
“Don’t know yet, kid,” Cassian said. “I’m waiting on my contact.”
“A buyer?”
Cassian cursed under his breath and frowned at Leia. “I was looking for stuff to sell,” he told her. “Not people. I’m not a slaver. My contact is going to get you somewhere safe.”
Leia didn’t look convinced.
“How’s your mom doing?” He already knew the lady was in a bad way. As far as he could tell, the kids were fine. The kids were meant to arrive safely on the other end of their trek. The same wasn’t true for the woman.
Leia shrugged, clearly worried about her mom.
“Were you guys on Malastare?” Cassian asked. “That’s where I picked up the package.”
Leia shook her head.
“Come on, kid,” Cassian said. “You have to give me something. I stole a shipping container, expecting it to be full of credits, and instead it’s got a crazy lady and two kids in suspension.”
“She’s not crazy.”
He frowned at Leia. “Do you have people? Family? Friends? A dad?”
Leia shook her head, her eyes fixed in the distance. “It’s just us. We don’t have anywhere to go.”
Cassian tried a different approach. “Earlier, your brother said that me and Evest are okay, that we’re just pirates.”
Leia looked at him.
“Does your brother .. know things? Can he do things that most people can’t? Is that why you’re being so secretive?”
“Anyone with eyes can see you’re pirates,” Leia said. “Luke’s not an idiot.”
It was a good answer. Cassian was also pretty sure it was bullshit. That boy, Luke, was Force sensitive. Which might be able to explain why they were so secretive, and why he was in that crate. It didn’t explain Leia or her mom.
“I didn’t realize you were making a personal trip,” Cassian said.
“These are unusual circumstances,” Luthen replied, following Cassian inside the ship.
Luthen motioned to Evest. “Wait outside.”
The cargo hold was mostly empty. Cassian had dumped the container. The woman sat on the ground, her arm in a sling. There was a kid on either side of her. They were young teenagers. All of them were dressed in threadbare rags and could use a shower. Physically the kids looked fine. The woman was a mess, covered in bruises and abrasions, which he suspected was just the tip of the iceberg.
“This is Luke,” Cassian said, pointing to the boy. “That’s Leia. And their mother won’t tell me her name.”
“Her name is Padmé,” Luthen said.
Padmé’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t speak.
“Here’s the situation,” Luthen said. “The people we took you from are going to want you back. I’m willing to help you on one condition. I need to know why you’re important to Vader.”
Padmé looked at him and shook her head. “That name means nothing to me.”
Cassian snorted. “You want us to believe you’ve never heard of Darth Vader?”
Padmé’s expression remained flat. “No, I haven’t. What does this have to do with us?”
“What about Palpatine?” Luthen pressed.
Padmé flinched.
“So you know the Emperor.”
“Everyone knows the Emperor,” Padmé said quietly.
“Why did he hide you from Vader?”
Padmé said nothing, and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m trying to help you,” Luthen snapped.
“No you’re not,” Padmé said bitterly. “You’re trying to use us, against someone named Vader.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I haven’t seen Palpatine since before the fall of the Republic. I haven’t seen anything, except the back room of a cantina in a mining colony on the ass end of the galaxy. Look at me. I mean nothing to anyone. So you might as well cut your losses and dump us now because we’re not the payday you thought you were getting.”
Luthen frowned, and admitted defeat. However temporarily. “Get Evest,” he snapped to Cassian. He looked at Padmé and her kids. “I’m sending you to Alderaan. If you want to walk away from there, that’s your call.”
***
END CHAPTER 1