Star Wars: The Padawan Menace

Asher Senesca

Asher tries to control his breathing, but he finds it unnervingly difficult. Every muscle in his body is completely still. He thinks he might be able to hear his heart beating and his nose inhaling air, and it scares him that, just below his feet, the Emperor might be able to hear him. He's sitting in an air duct just above the conference room. There's a similar air duct just across the room, an air duct for hot air, and Lana is sitting in that one (hopefully). Below them, the Emperor is having a rather boring conversation with Riq, whose eyes are yellow.

"... They just disappeared, my Lord," Riq says. "I was chasing them into Lord Vader's meditation chamber, but they were nowhere to be found."
"And what of the guards I sent in there?" The Emperor says, his oily voice causing a shiver to run down Asher's spine.

"On the floor, my Lord," Riq says. "It didn't seem that any of them had taken a blow anywhere."

"What?" The Emperor cries.

"Exactly! But, my Lord, I was able to reach out to the girl, Lana, while chasing her through a hall. Her primary goal was not to convert me to the Light Side, but rather to find and retrieve the blueprints for the second Death Star. They are on a disk somewhere, safely, I am sure."

The Emperor pats his robe thoughtfully for a second, and Asher realizes that's where the disk is. An entire galaxy's safety is depending on that one disk. Then the Emperor takes out the disk.

"If I may ask, my Lord, knowing how the Rebels think," Riq says, "don't you think they would already know if you had the plans on you? They seem to catch on and learn things pretty quickly. And, with all respect where it is due, my Lord, they always seem to be one step ahead of us- of you."

"I know this," the Emperor agrees. "Fine. Take the disk to Darth Vader immediately. No shortcuts, no interruptions. And you still have your cute little Padawan Sithsaber?"

Riq cringes and nod. "Yes, my Lord."

"Good. Keep it with you in case of a, ah, mishap." Then comes the moment of truth.

Asher leans in with wide eyes as the Emperor himself willingly hands over the disk to Riq. Good. Neither Asher nor Lana was needed. And then, suddenly, as Riq puts the disk in his gray tunic's pocket, Asher is able to see through the disk's metallic reflection that Riq's eyes have just instantaneously turned to an icy blue. He'd put his guard down while putting the disk away. Asher's heart sinks to his feet with dread. His hand wraps around his WESTAR 25. The Emperor looks up at just the wrong time. His eyes narrow. He's noticed.

"You," he says. Just the one word.

"Me?" Riq repeats, puzzled and taken aback. "My Lord, is something wrong?"
The Emperor reaches out with lightning speed to grab the disk, but Riq quickly snatches it back. "My eyes!" He gasps. "They must've-!"

Just then, Lana kicks open her air duct from the other side of the room and judo-flips onto the floor, landing on her feet, and almost instantly her lightsaber is ignited and held in the Jedi Ready defense stance.

The Emperor raises an eyebrow, taking in her black and gray leotard, jumpsuit, and cloak, which Lana quickly shrugs off. It falls behind her, unnoticed. His forehead wrinkles when a strand of hair falls from her braid and falls over her shoulder. It's a tightly woven braid that reaches almost to her midsection. The braid of...

"A Jedi Padawan?" The Emperor says. "My, my. And I thought the Jedi were all but gone since Order 66."

"Not all of them haven't," Lana says.

"Oh, really?"

"Your apprentice is Darth Vader, isn't it?" Riq says.

Asher's heart is pounding. He isn't coming out of his air duct now or maybe ever- he's terrified out of his skin.

"Yes, not that it matters," Darth Sidious (the Emperor) says. "Why?"

"I was talking to Artoo-Detoo, an astromech droid and a friend of mine," Lana says. She's trying to stall the Emperor. And Asher knows what's coming next. He's talked to his dad, the Rebel pilot Zev Senesca, about strategies like this: In order to scare off your opponent, you need to tell them something they don't know. Something that makes them stop and think, which on average gives you three and a half seconds to bolt. The element of surprise. But what could the Emperor, the ruler of the entire galaxy, not know at hand?

"Artoo knows something that no one else knows. No one else who's alive, anyway," Lana says. "No one except for me and him."

Asher's heart is pounding. Where is she going with this? He wonders.

"Guess what?" Lana says, her voice low and soft, but her tone eccentric and eager, like she knows the biggest secret in the galaxy. Which, of course, she does.

"What?" The Emperor asks, sounding impatient and annoyed.

"The pilot who blew up the Death Star-"

"Luke Skywalker!" Riq provides.

"Yeah, that's him," Lana agrees. She says her words short and precisely, so as not to mess up the sentence at all. "He-is-the-son-of-Anakin Skywalker."

The Emperor's mouth falls open. For one of the first times in his long life, he is in utter speechlessness.