An Imperial-class Star Destroyer was a titan of the deep void. Measuring 1600 meters from stem to stern, the dagger-shaped warships were an exemplary display of awe-inspiring Imperial might. Each came equipped with 72 top of the line TIE fighters and 9700 fully-equipped Stormtroopers, complete with all manner of ground attack vehicles. Additionally, each of the mile-long warships packed enough firepower to level an entire unshielded continent on its own. Most planets chose to surrender before daring to face the wrath of even one of these supremely lethal juggernauts.
Coruscant’s defense fleet had fifty of them.
This was in addition to more than a hundred Victory and Venator-class Star Destroyers, dozens of Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers, hundreds of Carrack-class light cruisers, orbital Golan battle stations, and of course more patrolling starfighters than the Harmony’s scanners could properly count. The Empire’s message was as simple as it was unmistakable: this our turf. Touch it and die.
Still, for all the thoroughly intimidating symbolism of the fleet, Twilight’s rational mind understood that its practical effect on their mission was not as great as it seemed. Millions of civilian starships entered and left the planet each and every day. The city that covered the entire planet required an endless flow of outside resources to maintain itself, and beings immigrated or emigrated by the tens of thousands. As it had been in the days of the Republic, the traffic control barely had the time and staff to identify each incoming ship and clear it for landing. Inspecting anything but a small portion of them in any serious detail would have been all but impossible.
That was what Twilight told herself, as the small freighter zipped underneath the massive silhouette of a Star Destroyer. Just one among a hundred thousand ships in one narrow stream of traffic, the Harmony did not noticeably stand out from the crowd. The princess could even see a trio of ships from the same model on her scanners within a few miles of her position. Nothing about she, her ship, or the other beings safely stowed away within should attract any undue attention. To the Empire’s eyes, she was just one of a million freighters carrying foodstuffs from distant Taanab.
Behind the front lines of the Imperial Navy’s patrol, Twilight spotted a Secutor-class Star Destroyer hanging in high orbit, presumably acting as a command ship. At 2200 meters in length, these behemoths dwarfed even their Imperial-class brethren. In spite of her thorough academic study of the galaxy’s modern warships, it still boggled the princess’ mind that anyone would want to build a warship that large. The weapons, material, and crew required made each one a major resource sink. As she stared awestruck out at the craft, Twilight concluded that it must be intended as the Imperial Navy’s ultimate battleship. Surely the Empire couldn’t require a starship bigger than that.
Aboard the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Justice, Agent Kallus was in a sour mood. Fresh off his role in the Empire’s triumph at Lasan, he had been humiliated by the debacle on Serenno. The public execution of the black market arms dealer had put the fear of the Empire into the planet’s criminal elements, but in truth the man simply hadn’t known anything terribly substantive. The most he had been able to get out of his physical description of the woman and the presumable alias she had given was a tentative connection to a similar-looking human female who had arrived on the planet some weeks before the breakout. Yes, she looked similar, had no clear past, and had left the planet for parts unknown days afterwards, but that was all. He had no proof, and more pertinently no idea where she had gone. The most he had been able to do was flag her ship in an ISB database as one of interest, and leave a request to alert him should it show itself in an Imperial port any time in the future.
Reporting the breakout and his failure to contain it to his superiors in the Imperial Security Bureau had been a humiliating experience. Compounded by the rebels’ subsequent evasion of recapture, they had been most disappointed. His star, on the rise after the Fall of Lasan, had been slapped back to earth. He still had his status as Senior Field Agent and all the many benefits it entailed, but how long would the recent promotion last after Serenno? Ominously, he had yet to even receive a new assignment from ISB headquarters on Imperial Center. For a man who harbored ambitions to rise much higher in the Empire’s ranks, that was a very bad sign.
Kallus shook his head. He needed to deliver something, and soon.
Countless light-years distant, on Equus, Princess Celestia was seated at the same circular oak table where Twilight had laid out her plan. With her were Princess Cadence and Prince Shining Armor, soon to be the very last of Equestria’s royalty left on the planet. Celestia’s niece looked physically weaker than usual, but in much better spirits. The reason was very simple: the recent birth of the couple’s firstborn son. In happier times, that event would have been cause for celebration. Then again, in happier times Celestia wouldn’t have needed to call this little meeting in the first place.
“Auntie…” Cadence looked hesitant. “I’m not sure if I can manage that.”
“You can and you must,” Celestia declared firmly. “When I am gone, you will be only alicorn princess left on our world. Without Luna, Discord, Twilight, or myself on Equus, you are the only one with the magic required to make the sun and moon move. And,” her voice softened. “I know you, Cadence. You are a strong, talented, brave mare. I have faith in you.”
“I still don’t know,” Cadence’s eyes wandered towards her hooves. “Leaving all of Equestria in my hooves like that…” she shivered, her ears folding back. As she thought of it, the princess of love seemed to shrink. Her husband gave Celestia a worried glance, then put a comforting leg around her shoulder. She nuzzled close to him, still looking small. “The last time… the Crystal Empire…”
Celestia grimaced. Her niece still blamed herself, as if there was anything more she could have done. “What happened there was not your fault,” she said, gently but with a firm undertone. “The empire was a victim of the cruelty of General Grievous. If anything, its destruction is my responsibility. If I had only been less quick to give in Admiral Tarkin…”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Cadence countered. “I was the ruler of the Crystal Empire when the attack came! I should have been able to defend it! I… I…” she buried her head in her husband’s chest. “I failed.” Tears trickled down her soft pink cheeks. Shining Armor nuzzled her softly, and began whispering gently in one of her ears.
The solar princess looked glum. She wasn’t sure what she could say to make Cadence feel better. And in truth, in retrospect she didn’t really know what she could have done differently all those years ago. Even if she hadn’t turned over Grievous, even if Master Kenobi had stopped Admiral Tarkin from executing his own bombardment, even if they had returned Grievous to the Confederacy, it would almost certainly have been just as bad for them. After the Clone Wars had ended with the Separatists’ collapse and the Empire’s rise, the latter had exacted swift and brutal vengeance on many of the former Confederacy’s allies. The Jedi were destroyed and Tarkin had become a Moff, a governor of an entire sector. He would certainly have remembered the slight, and with no Kenobi to stop him, and no one to help… Equestria probably wouldn’t exist. Period.
As husband and wife held each other close, the latter’s tears began to dry up. Shining Armor glanced at Celestia.
“Why do you even have to go?” he asked. “Can’t you just say you’re too busy?”
“Too busy for Emperor Palpatine?” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “How realistic do you suppose that is? What are the chances of anypony even believing that for a moment?"
The unicorn avoided answering. “I still think it’s a trick,” he said. “A plan to get you away from here, out of sight of-”
“Why bother?” she cut off his theorizing. “They could kill me at any time. It’s not as though I have any means of detecting an orbital turbolaser battery targeting my office. And they’ve already shown that they can steal my sister in broad daylight with impunity. There’s no reason to suspect a trap, simply because there’s no reason for them not to just barge in and take whatever they want,” she paused. “I think the Emperor really will hear me.”
“You think Palpatine has suddenly grown a heart?” Shining sounded… less than convinced.
Celestia frowned. “I don’t think he’s quite so bad a man as some say,” she said, finally. “To me he seems a sincere old man who has been through a lot and is surrounded by a variety of opportunists, vicious cutthroats, and other less than savory types.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m the only one here who’s actually spoken with the man. And to me, his sorry at our suffering seemed sincere. He did help us when we were of no use to him or the Republic. Millions more ponies would be dead without his intervention. And he just agreed to listen to me when no one else did.”
“You call what the Empire has done to us help?”
“We have suffered, yes, but at the hands of a vast and impersonal bureaucracy shaped by vicious galactic war. Not once by the Emperor’s own orders.”
“You really think that he doesn’t know what’s happening here?”
“This is a very big galaxy, Shining Armor,” Celestia said. “I doubt Palpatine so much as knows the names of a quarter of the planets in the Empire. Much less the details of their present condition. And I seriously doubt the bureaucracy is going to paint him an accurate picture.”
“You seem dead-set on defending the character of a man you barely know.”
“What can I say?” she shrugged slightly. “I am very familiar with the goings-on in government. There are far more layers of it than just the ruler and the men on the ground, implementing his every order to the letter. One does not necessarily have to be a corrupt leader to head up a corrupted system.”
“Why are you so eager to take up his case?”
“Because I like to think the best of everyone.”
And, of course, because she wished for it to be so.
Luna stood on the bridge of the Arquitens-class light cruiser Starry Night as it fired up its engines and lifted out of the Devastator’s hanger bay. The small ship swiftly soared through the void and away from the massive Star Destroyer. Darth Vader remained aboard the vast warship, leading it on whatever mission it was that the Emperor had given him. Idly, the dark alicorn speculated briefly on what it might be.
“Heading, sir?” a young man in a Lieutenant’s uniform interrupted her thoughts.
“Imperial Center, Lieutenant Hayes,” Luna said, sounding authoritative.
“Yes sir,” Hayes saluted, and crew members began imputing coordinates to the navicomputer with admirable efficiency. Their captain’s recent and gruesome demise seemed to be motivating them quite well.
“What’s our estimated time to arrival on that?”
A crew member glanced down at a terminal. “Computer says four days. Three if we push her a bit.”
“Push her,” Luna commanded.
“If we do, we’ll probably need some repairs once we get there,” Hayes cautioned.
“Push her,” she repeated, totally unconcerned with damage to Imperial property.
“As you wish.”
Men hurried to do as she said, no doubt remembering whatever Darth Vader had said when informing them of their new overseer. Watching them work, Luna found the sensation of being obeyed once again, even if at the word of another, very pleasing.
“Computer’s calculated our route.”
“Then make the jump to hyperspace at once!”
“Aye, sir!”
There was a loud whine, and then the stars and void dissolved into a swirling, endless tunnel of blue streaks as the Starry Night shot into hyperspace. Again, Luna found the sight pleasant, almost comforting in its own way.
Not that she needed comfort. She had a ship, she had a squad of Stormtroopers, and she had a target. But more than anything else, she had the dark side of the Force. That poor fool and anyone who stood between them didn’t stand a chance.