Two violet-clad Republican Guards escorted Luke through slate gray halls and into the grand foyer of Vader’s Fortress, a large chamber of steel walls and rust-colored walkways meeting at a central platform. The room was surrounded by viewscreens and holograms showing the news from Mustafar, Coruscant, Corellia, Naboo, and many other worlds, a flashing panopticon of images of hard-working aliens striving to keep the New Republic together, as well as a famous vid of three cute hoojibs chasing a ball, and also a dizzying array of alien corpses and grainy images of rough-looking humans snarling at the camera, seemingly proud of their xenophobia. Luke ignored the unending stream of images. Though he had never seen such a maddening stream of information, he intuitively knew that it existed not to inform the viewer, but to elicit an emotional response.

He had kept his feelings in check during his imprisonment, reminding himself that the Force had brought him here. But as soon as he set foot in the grand foyer and saw the white-robed figure standing at the central platform, his heart thundered in his chest.

Leia Organa stood with her back to him, her gaze directed out of a wide, open window, which presented a view of twisting plumes of smoke smeared across a vivid blue sky. Rivers like burning blood cut their way across the tortured land. But Luke could not appreciate the view, for every step closer to his sister felt as if he was falling deeper into a dream.

Upon reaching the central platform, a guard leveled his staff, preventing Luke from coming any closer to the Empress. Without turning, Leia lifted one hand. Luke’s shackles snapped open.

“Leave us,” said Leia.

One guard hesitated, his gaze moving from Leia to Luke. Luke massaged his wrists, then handed the stun cuffs to the guard. Without a word, they turned and left.

Leia turned and Luke’s breath caught in his throat. He had almost expected to see a stranger, or perhaps a monster - but it was only his sister. She was still beautiful, with glossy dark hair framing her lean, pale face, and rosy cheeks that stood out against her white robe edged in gold gleaming in the dark metal chamber.

“I was just thinking of when we first came here together,” said Leia. “It was eight years ago, not long after the Empire fell, and we needed resources. And you…” Her eyes glanced up and down Luke’s figure, taking in his black outfit and worn expression. She winced, and Luke felt something like disgust radiating from her. “You really surprised me, Luke.”

“How so?”

“I wanted to tear this monstrosity down, and build something beautiful in its place. But you didn’t want that. You said this fortress was made by our father. You insisted that he was a good man. A man who… who ordered my torture, and then stood by and watched while it happened. But when we came here, you said that Darth Vader had joined with the Force, along with all the other great Jedi. I didn’t understand it at the time, how you could be so protective of father’s legacy. But I understand it now.”

“You do?”

Leia nodded. With a sad, cynical smile, she said, “It’s because you were tainted by the dark side.”

* * *

The droid 4-LOM, a member of Viddu’s Hounds, held a blaster rifle at his prey. He waved it slowly toward Regis, then toward Sindo, then at Chewbacca, and then stopped at Lando. The insectoid droid made a staccato buzzing sound that almost sounded like laughter.

“Now, should I march you back into your cell?” 4-LOM asked. “Or should I execute one of you, here and now? Feel like going for your gun, Mister Calrissian?”

“Listen - uh, this is a big misunderstanding,” said Lando, trying and failing to smile.

The droid ignored him and lifted his communicator. “Dengar? Zuckuss? You there? I have Calrissian and the Imps held at-”

4-LOM’s head suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks. As the droid did an awkward, jerking dance, the report of a blaster rifle echoed across the windswept platform. Finally 4-LOM’s body seized up, then fell over with a resounding clatter. Workers loading the transport shouted and scattered in a panic.

“We’re under attack!” said Lando, casting his gaze around, looking for cover.

Regis grabbed his arm and, with a smile that chilled Lando’s blood, said, “Easy, Mister Calrissian. That’ll be my buddy, Vasili. See those comm towers on top of that building? He’s likely up there somewhere, grinning ear to ear.”

“Who’s that?” said Lando.

Sindo bent over and pried the blaster rifle out of 4-LOM’s fingers. “This isn’t our first bantha chase,” she said. “We’ve already met one of Luke’s friends. Nice guy, but he didn’t realize what we’re up against. We wanted somebody we trust out there, watching our back.”

Though her words cut Lando deeply, he knew the stormtroopers had a point; they were fighting something beyond his understanding, something that ruined friendships and betrayed trust. And imagining Luke now in Leia’s hands, Lando knew he could not claim to be a victim in all of this. He glanced at Chewbacca, and they shared a look of intense discomfort. They were about to risk their lives alongside stormtroopers.

Though Regis could not see Vasili, he flashed a thumbs up in the direction of the distant towers. Artoo beeped and rolled toward their destination, a windowless wing of the detention facility made of reinforced duracrete.

“That’s the armory, right?” said Regis. “Get us in there… if you don’t mind!”

Spurred to action, Lando led them across the platform, then sighed in relief as the door panel accepted the entry code. He stepped inside a slate gray room where two uniformed human guards stood over their comm set.

“Mister Calrissian?” said one. “What are you doing here, sir? We’ve got shots fired outside! What’s going on?”

Lando raised his hands and smiled in a way that he hoped would communicate a sense of calm authority. He prepared to talk his way into getting the guards to unlock the armory, but was interrupted when Regis came up behind him, pulled Lando’s blaster pistol out from his holster, and pressed it to the side of Lando's head.

“Planetary governor’s being held hostage, is what’s happening,” said Regis. “Pull those blasters out nice and slow, then drop ‘em.”

Sindo came up alongside them with 4-LOM’s blaster rifle extended. “Do as he says, or we put you in a body bag! Now!”

Lando held his breath as Regis wrapped an arm around him, making him feel as if he actually was a hostage. The guards exchanged a look, slowly drew their pistols… then dropped them on the ground.

“Now, boys,” said Sindo, “I want to see some guns… and I want my old armor back.”

Lando exhaled as Regis released him and slapped him on the back.

“What have I gotten myself into?” he muttered.

* * *

“You think I’ve joined the dark side?” said Luke. Leia did not make any aggressive movements, but only watched him with a slight, sad smile. And yet Luke felt as if she had cut into him with a lightsaber. “How can you say that? I wanted to rebuild the Jedi Academy! I wanted to help you in… in any way I could!”

“Help me?” said Leia. She approached, and Luke felt an immediate sense of alarm. He forced himself to remain unmoving, to listen only to the Force rather than his fear. “How was excluding historically underserved communities of nonhumans from your little “academy” supposed to help me, Luke? How was excluding me from your projects going to help me?”

Luke suddenly took a step back, and Leia paused. Though they stood motionless, Luke could feel a confusing vortex of potentialities all around him, as if violent intentions were probing at him from all angles. “I wanted to teach you everything,” said Luke, forcing out the words. “You chose politics instead.”

Leia smiled. Luke thought at first that the gesture was insincere, but as Leia slowly circled behind him, he began to believe that she was enjoying his discomfort. Just as he sensed that an attack could come at any time, he knew that she must sense that he had no intentions of attacking her, and so she could enjoy the feeling of power from a position of safety. Knowing that his own sister felt this way as she circled behind him made him feel sick, as if he knew nothing, and could trust no one.

“But the Force is political, Luke. That’s why you let me fight on Endor, putting my life at risk while you snuck off to the Death Star and plotted with our father. I wonder, did he promise you a seat at the table with him?” Leia stopped as she stood directly behind Luke, but he refused to turn and acknowledge the feeling of danger. “Did he promise to rule the galaxy with you, sharing the power of the patriarchy? A boys-only club between father and son? Hm. I wonder.”

“Leia, please, tell me what’s going on!” said Luke, suddenly turning to look at her. “Why are you like this? Why have you turned on your old friends?”

“Turned on you!” Leia snapped. “Unbelievable! It was you who turned on me! While I was trying to get nonhumans to cooperate, begging them to stop killing each other, you had to go behind my back and make deals with them. Recruiting one species while rejecting another. And when you didn’t get your way? What did you do?” Leia’s face flashed with unrestrained rage as the burning flood of betrayal rushed through her all over again, just as painful now as it was back then. “You shook hands with xenophobes, with murderers! You used your power to help them kill those you felt unworthy!”

“That’s not what’s happening!” said Luke, stepping toward her suddenly. As he reached out for her she whirled and stumbled as if attacked. He stopped as she fell against the guard rail that surrounded the platform. Just as quickly as she had moved, she turned and assumed a straight-backed pose of authority. He stopped, recoiling at the bizarre, disingenuous posturing. Something about her felt unreal, like a strange character from a waking dream. He forced himself to continue. “Leia, the people I’m with… they aren’t nice, but they certainly aren’t evil. They’ve had to endure years of punishment for serving a regime that promised them something it couldn’t deliver. They have a legitimate grudge, but they have no court they can go to for any kind of justice. I admit, they’re filled with hate… but Leia, the entire galaxy hates them, too. What are they supposed to do?”

Leia shook her head and turned away.

“It’s a hard question, but you must face it, Leia. How can they live in peace when so many are against them? The things they do and say are disturbing, but does that mean they should be erased? Do we have the right to drive them into a dark corner, and never consider their arguments? As Jedi, don’t we have a duty to love people for who they are, rather than force them to be what we want them to be?”

“They’re killers.”

“Then give them a means of surviving some other way. Give them a place where they can live and work, and don’t make it obvious that you’re making deals with everyone who wants them gone.”

Leia turned and faced the window once again. “They started this fight, Luke. Not me.”

“Then show them that peace is a viable option. Show them that you want to live in peace with humans, and that you’re interested in giving them a future.”

Leia sighed. Luke tried to feel out through the Force, hoping to sense whether or not she was being swayed. She slowly turned toward him, and his heart raced as he sensed that she was opening up to him. He was shocked to see her face twisted in a mocking, leering grin the likes of which he had never seen on her face before. Her crooked, lopsided smile looked like a jagged tear ripped into a beautiful painting.

“But I am interested in the future of the human race,” she said. “I will give us all a peaceful and new way of life, a great reset that will make all things equal between us.” Leia tilted her face back as her eyes stabbed into Luke. “The future of the human race is hybridization, Luke. We’re going to become aliens. And that’s a good thing.”

Luke’s mind reeled at seeing her delight in something so obviously horrific, but before he could respond, the viewscreens all blinked, as if the stream of endless news was being interrupted. Then a single image appeared on every screen.

* * *

Lando stalked from one end of the room to the other while Sindo and Chewbacca ransacked lockers filled with seized weapons. He was far beyond pretending to play it cool, and was now wrestling with the fact that he had just thrown his life away on a gamble with a couple of strangers. As if sensing his unease, Regis stopped in the middle of buckling on his breastplate and gave him a serious look.

“What?” said Regis. “Having second thoughts?”

Lando shook his head, but then said, “Yes.”

“Well, don’t,” said Regis. “You didn’t lose anything. Neither did I.” Regis slapped his breastplate to make sure it was secure, then said, “This is how we put it back together, Mister Calrissian.”

“Found it!” Sindo shouted. She drew her stormtrooper helmet out of a locker.

“Do you guys really think it’s a good idea to go out there in your stormtrooper armor?”

Ignoring him, Sindo pulled her helmet over her head, then said, “Vasili? Vasili, you there?”

Turning her radio to broadcast through her vocalizer, they heard static, then a man’s voice came through Sindo’s helmet.

“There you are! You guys took long enough, you know.”

“Vasili!” said Sindo. “Nice shot out there! You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, but I’m on the move. Those bounty hunters are flying around looking for me. They’re all over me like stink on a Wookiee. Oops. That Wookiee isn’t there right now, is he?”

Chewbacca drew his bowcaster out of a locker and primed it loudly, but said nothing.

“Tell Vasili to keep his head down and make for the ship,” said Regis. Sindo nodded and, as she spoke with Vasili on her comm, Regis turned to Lando. “Looks like things are going to get hot as soon as we walk out of here. We need some kind of distraction.”

“I know,” said Lando. Racking his brain, he turned to look for Artoo. He found him jacked into a data port. “Artoo! Can you…”

Artoo beeped once, then fell silent.

“Busy? Doing what?”

“What’s he doing?” said Regis.

“Says he’s talking to the news streams,” said Lando, shrugging. “Not that that’s going to do us any good.”

* * *

Ash blew through an open-air wet market in the lower levels and human laborers in patched coveralls and soot-encrusted breathing masks gathered around Mustafarian scunti vendors and waited for ladles of cold bone broth. From a second floor balcony an old Twi’lek man called out the services of his pleasure moof, bidding the curious to come upstairs and experience forbidden bliss. A group of laborers stood slumped against the wall of an alleyway, pulling their masks aside as they shared a deathstick between them. Two Mustafarian security guards in red uniforms pretended to watch the crowd while discussing how many credits an officer could get out of drug dealers, gamblers, and pimps who lacked the inclination to spend time in prison. While they did not want their illicit business to be overheard, the blaring viewscreens and holographic news streams and the roar of the marketplace made it so they had to shout while leaning into one another just to be heard.

A viewscreen showing alien bodies laid out somewhere on Tatooine suddenly turned to snow, then showed a woman in a white robe. The perspective was skewed, as if filmed by a child tilting a camera upward. One after another, the other viewscreens flickered, then showed the same image.

“Frustrated humans?” the on-screen woman snapped. Her voice echoed throughout the market, overpowering the steady roar of the crowd. “The era of making excuses for human behavior is over. It ended the day that I took power. You think Imperials are the only problem? Humans have been butchering aliens long before the Empire. Human history is nothing but the subjugation and enslavement of aliens by privileged humans!”

By now the crowd had fallen silent, their heads craned upward at the viewscreens they normally fought to ignore.

“That’s the Empress!” someone shouted.

“It’s Empress Organa!” said another, almost simultaneously.

Due to the vid’s odd perspective, they were beginning to understand that the recording had been made without the Empress’s knowledge. They watched in awe as she pointed her finger at some human’s chest, bullying him into submission.

“For thousands of years,” the Empress continued, “humans have pushed everyone else around. And now that we’ve finally created equality between the species, what do the humans do? They lash out with senseless violence! Or, if they’re anything like the scum of Mustafar, they jump off the nearest ledge…”

“What is this!?” a young laborer shouted.

At that moment a can of Big Lava Drank flew over the crowd and hit one of the screens, creating a cracked webbing that distorted the face of the Empress. Still her voice echoed throughout the market.

“They can’t stand a level playing field. They would rather burn to death in molten lava than give any nonhumans a chance. If you want to keep any of these disgusting humans around, then I suggest you keep them drugged up and zoned out, and clicking notifications on their newsfeeds.”

“Click this!” a masked laborer shouted as he smashed a heavy pipe into a shop window. The high-pitched ring of breaking glass was like a signal to the crowd. Humans grabbed whatever was closest at hand - their drink, food being sold at stalls, even chairs - and threw them at the screens or shop windows. As if forgetting his role, a Mustafarian law enforcer immediately turned and ran, and like predators darting toward movement several humans raced after him. Two officers who drew their stun batons soon found themselves in something like an ancient warzone with young men swinging sticks of scunti kabob and garbage cans with long-suppressed rage.

“... Human history is nothing but the subjugation and enslavement of aliens by privileged humans!” repeated the Empress, her myriad cracked and spiderwebbed faces receiving an endless torrent of food and drinks thrown by angry laborers and pillheads who had lost hope long ago.

“H-hold on, guys!” an Utapaun merchant said as he tried to cover his merchandise even as it was snatched by angry rioters. “I’m s-sure this is… this is just a, uh-”

“Privileged humans!” an older man spat, his grizzled face turning into something like a red prune as he grasped the merchant’s stall and heaved. Hundreds of cheap Twi’Lek “cutie models” spilled onto the ground and broke under the boots of laborers pushing against officer reinforcements sent in to quell the riot.

* * *

The voice of the Empress echoed throughout the undercity where the poor lived, or rather, flopped on their mats in-between shifts. In one little hovel, a doorway banged open and a young man stumbled inside, his mouth hanging open as he fought to catch his breath. An older man who sat glaring at his viewscreen turned to look at the young man.

“It’s happening!” the young man shouted. “Riot in the market! They’re killing people, sir!”

“I told you this would happen,” said the older man. He stood with grim determination, carrying himself like some ancient warlord rather than a factory custodian indebted to the company health clinic. “The Empress has undoubtedly begun a campaign to exterminate all humans on Mustafar. I’m sure of it!”

“Should we g-get the lads together?!” The young man tried to sound like a hardened military operator, and could not help but cringe at the sound of his own voice cracking.

“Yes, get them together,” said the old man. He jerked the covering from his coffee table, revealing an oversized chest that he flung open. Inside sat an assortment of yellowed stormtrooper armor and blasters wrapped in protective plastic.

“I’ll get… oh, here they come, sir!” The young man cupped his hands to his mouth as he prepared to shout at his friends racing down the street.

“Good. It's time.” The old man lifted a stormtrooper helmet. His lips pulled back in a chilling grin as he said, “Hail Vader, and hail the Emperor!”

“We on a rampage, boys!” the young man shouted.