FLYING SOLO ➳ luke skywalker

TWENTY-ONE! THE EXECUTOR

DARTH Vader. Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces. Until she had seen him on the Death Star all those moons ago, the day he struck down Old Ben, Analia had believed him to be a myth. He was feared, of course. Even when she thought his existence was nothing more than Imperial propaganda, the mention of his name had made her bones rattle. A story doesn't have to be true to inspire fear. She thought of the cautionary tales she had heard in her youth on Daiyu, although very few circulated on that foresaken planet.

But she knew now that Vader was no mere cautionary tale. The stories about him, about things he had done, atrocities he had overseen—they were all true. Of all the Star Destroyers in the Imperial fleet, Analia just had to have been brought aboard Darth Vader's. He would still tower far above her had she not been shackled to a chair. His heavy mechanical breathing shook her bones, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her fear manifested as acidic vomit in her mouth. She swallowed it back down.

"Where is Skywalker?"

Analia couldn't have spoken, even if she wanted to. Terror had ahold of her by the throat, squeezing tight. Her mind was racing without forming a single coherent thought. Even if she managed to formulate any words, they would have died in the back of her throat.

Then she was choking—literally, this time. Vader raised his fist and curled two gloved fingers, and an invisible grip locked around Analia's neck, squeezing tighter and tighter. She spluttered. Her hands instinctively tugged at her restraints, making to claw desperately at her throat. Her body lurched in the seat. Black seeped into the edges of her vision. Her lungs burned, screaming, and she saw a flash of yellow eyes. 

Vader released his grip and Analia gasped shamelessly, gulping down breaths of air. The skin around her neck still prickled where the Force had compressed her trachea. 

"I won't repeat myself again." Perhaps Analia was imagining things, what with her spinning head, but she was sure the floor gave a fearful tremor as Lord Vader spoke. "What connection have you to Skywalker?"

He knew they had arrived together, that much was certain. Analia wasn't all that surprised; it wasn't as though they had kept that piece of information a secret. They showed up at the same time in identical rebel starfighters, after all. She was still heaving for breath. Though she willed herself to, she couldn't find the courage to raise her head and look Lord Vader in the face.

Quick as a blaster shot and with less warning, blinding pain exploded behind Analia's eyes. She slammed her lids shut against the anguish but this offered no relief. Her muscles contracted, twisting and cramping, as an intense sweat broke out across every inch of her body. Pressure pushed against her head from every angle. The pain was so sharp, so raw, she was sure her skull was going to crack under it. She was deaf to her own wail that tore itself free from the deepest parts of her chest. 

With each blazing image there came a jolt of burning agony. Buildings studded with squares of fluorescent neon light scraped a smog-filled sky. Donio Xenos, all black stubble and facial scars, beat down on her with a metal beam, demanding that she fight back. Shattered glass and piles of bodies in cantinas and back alleys. Rivers of blood coming to rest in pools at her booted feet. Blaster fire, daggers at throats, explosions rocketing dirt into the air. A young Princess Leia fighting to free herself from her bonds. Han and Chewbacca leading her, shackles on her wrists, up the ramp of the Millennium Falcon. A farmboy in Mos Eisley cantina, a farmboy half-dead in the cold. A kiss in the snow. Yellow eyes and purple hair and a red lightsaber radiating heat. 

If ever she had wished that Yoda's suspicions regarding her Force sensitivity were true, it was then. Inside her mind she screamed for Luke, for Ben, for anyone to save her.