One of the survivor entered the briefing chamber with a limp. The man was an Imperial logistics officer, not a front-line soldier. He looked pale and very aware that he had been summoned before Darth Vader.
Commander Garrick Wick stood near the entrance, his expression unreadable. He had arranged the meeting quickly after Vader requested to speak with the survivors of the supply convoy attack, the orbital supply fleet that had been intercepted before its cargo could reach the planet.
Those supplies had been meant to stabilize the campaign.
Food. Fuel. Ammunition. Medicine. Cold-weather gear. Replacement parts. Military droids. Everything Kaiser required to remain under Imperial control.
Instead, the rebels had struck before the convoy even entered Imperial orbital protection.
Half the supplies had been lost.
Several ships had been destroyed.
Others had been captured.
And now Vader wanted answers.
The logistics officer stopped several paces from the table and saluted as sharply as his damaged arm allowed. “My Lord.”
Vader stood before the central holoprojector, his black armor casting a long shadow across the chamber floor. “Your name.”
“Lieutenant Marvek Tollen, my Lord. Assigned to the transport Kestrel Nine.”
“Tell me about the attack.”
Tollen swallowed. His eyes flicked briefly toward Commander Wick before returning to Vader. “We dropped from hyperspace outside Kaiser's outer approach corridor, exactly as ordered. We expected minor harassment, perhaps a few starfighters, but nothing serious.”
His voice tightened at the memory. “They were waiting for us.”
Vader remained silent, allowing him to continue.
“They came from behind the gas giant's debris field. Small ships first. Fast. Too many to be pirates. Then came larger vessels, disguised beneath sensor interference. They struck the escorts before our formation could tighten. Communications jammed almost immediately.”
Commander Wick's jaw hardened. He had already read the official report, but hearing it from a survivor carried a different weight.
Tollen continued, gaining steadiness as he spoke. “At first we believed they wanted to destroy the convoy. Then they changed tactics. Their fighters disabled engines and shield generators instead of targeting cargo holds. Whoever planned the attack knew exactly which vessels carried food, medicine, and fuel.”
That caught Vader's attention, though he gave no outward sign.
The rebels had not struck randomly.
They had known what to take.
“What resistance did your crew offer?” Vader asked.
“Standard internal defense protocols were activated. Blast doors sealed. Security teams deployed. We had clone troopers aboard, but not enough.” Tollen's mouth tightened with shame. “The boarding parties moved too quickly.”
“Describe them.”
The lieutenant hesitated. “Mixed force, my Lord. Rebels. Some former Republic military, judging by their tactics. A few alien fighters. At least one pilot who moved like a professional commando.” He paused, then added, “And Jedis.”
The chamber seemed to grow colder.
Commander Wick glanced toward Vader, but Vader did not move.
“How many?” Vader asked.
“Two confirmed, my Lord. Possibly more, but I personally saw two.”
“Describe them.”
“One was male. Human. Dark hair. Beard. Green lightsaber.” Tollen frowned, trying to recall details through pain and fear. “He fought like a veteran. Not young. He seemed to know clone tactics. He disabled our men quickly, but he did not kill unless forced.”
Quinlan Vos.
Vader recognized the description immediately. He had expected as much. Vos had already become an irritant in several rebel operations. A survivor of the Jedi Purge. Unpredictable, difficult to track, and irritatingly resourceful.
“And the second?”
“A woman, my Lord. I don't know her species. Orange skin. Blue and white head-tails.” He gestured awkwardly near his head. “Montrals, I think. She carried two lightsabers.”
Vader's entire focus sharpened.
The sound of his respirator remained steady, but inside the armor something ancient and buried stirred.
“Continue.”
Tollen lowered his eyes, mistaking Vader's stillness for impatience. “Her blades were white. Both of them. I've never seen lightsabers like that before.”
White blades.
Orange skin.
Blue-and-white montrals.
The description was not enough.
The galaxy was vast. Species repeated patterns. Warriors copied techniques. Survivors changed weapons.
Vader forced the thought down.
“Her fighting style,” he said.
Tollen drew a slow breath. “Fast. Extremely fast. She used both blades separately, but not like a berserker. Every movement had purpose. She deflected blaster fire from multiple angles while advancing. She moved through the corridor as if she already knew where every soldier would stand before they moved.”
He shuddered faintly.
“She did not fight like the male Jedi.”
“How did she fight?”
The lieutenant searched for words.
“Like... like she had spent her entire life fighting beside soldiers.” His voice became quieter. “She knew how clones moved. She knew when they would fire. She knew their formations. Our men tried to pin her at a junction, and she broke through without hesitation.”
Tollen looked up again.
“One clone captain ordered thermal charges armed near the fuel storage. She reached him before he finished the command. I don't know how. One moment she was halfway down the corridor. The next she was there.”
A long silence followed.
Vader turned slightly toward Commander Wick. “The others.”
Wick immediately nodded toward the guards. “Bring in the next survivor.”
One by one, the survivors entered.
A clone sergeant with half his face hidden beneath fresh synthetic skin described fighting a “small alien Jedi woman” who moved through smoke and blaster fire like a ghost. A transport pilot remembered seeing two white blades cutting through security droids near the aft hangar. A wounded engineer insisted she had saved several crew members when a fuel line ruptured during the boarding, forcing rebels and Imperials alike away from the explosion before continuing the attack.
None knew her name.
All remembered her.
The final survivor was a young communications technician barely old enough to have completed academy training. His hands trembled visibly as he stood before Vader, but his memory proved the clearest of them all.
“She spoke to the clones,” he said.
Vader's head turned fully toward him.
“What did she say?”
The technician swallowed. “I only heard part of it. The internal comms were damaged, and I was trapped inside the relay alcove. She told them...” He hesitated, struggling to remember the exact words. “She said, ‘You don't have to die for this cargo.’”
Commander Wick frowned.
The technician continued quickly. “Then one of the clones called her a traitor. She... she stopped for a second. Just enough that I noticed.” His voice lowered. “She looked hurt.”
Vader stared at him.
The technician had no idea what he had just done.
No idea what memories his words had dragged from places Vader kept buried beneath armor, fire, and hatred.
A traitor.
Ahsoka had been called that before.
By the Order.
By soldiers.
By people who had once trusted her.
She had walked away from the Jedi because they had failed her.
Because he had failed her.
Vader's gloved hand closed slowly into a fist.
“Leave,” he said.
The technician nearly stumbled in his haste to obey.
Commander Wick dismissed the remaining officers with a sharp gesture. Within moments, only he and Vader remained inside the briefing chamber.
“My Lord,” Wick said cautiously, “do you know this Jedi?”
Vader remained facing the empty doorway.
For several seconds, he did not answer.
“Every recording from the convoy attack.”
Wick straightened immediately. “My Lord?”
“Security feeds. Flight recorders. Droid memory cores. Fighter gun-cameras. Damaged files. Corrupted fragments. Everything.”
The commander's uncertainty vanished beneath discipline. “At once.”
“And no copies are to be transmitted beyond this ship.”
That command made Wick pause for the briefest fraction of a second.
Then he bowed.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Vader turned toward him at last.
The red lenses of his mask reflected the pale light of the holoprojector.
“Now.”
Wick left immediately.
Vader remained alone in the chamber.
The frozen world of Kaiser rotated silently above the table, but he no longer saw it.
Orange skin.
Blue-and-white montrals.
Two white lightsabers.
A voice telling clones they did not have to die for cargo.
It could be coincidence.
It could be deception.
Yet deep within the silence of his armor, buried beneath the constant rhythm of machines keeping him alive, something impossible had begun moving.
Hope was dangerous.
Hope had burned on Mustafar.
Hope had died with Padmé.
Hope had been buried with Anakin Skywalker.
And yet...
Vader stood there for a long time before the first recordings arrived.
The archive chamber aboard the flagship was located three levels below the command bridge. It was not a grand room, merely a secure intelligence vault containing rows of encrypted data terminals and projection stations. Normally, analysts reviewed combat recordings before summarizing relevant details for commanders.
Vader had ordered them out.
One by one, the recordings began playing.
The first showed only chaos.
Rebel fighters streaked past an escort frigate while turbolaser fire filled the atmosphere. The second recording came from a transport corridor moments before the camera lost power. The third showed smoke, shouting, and clone troopers forming defensive lines near a sealed blast door.
Vader watched them all.
Minutes became hours.
He did not move unless changing recordings.
The archive chamber filled with ghosts.
Blaster fire flickered across his armor. Explosions flashed against the polished black of his helmet. Dying men shouted warnings. Rebel boarding parties rushed through corridors. Clone troopers fought with discipline even as their lines collapsed.
He saw Quinlan first.
The Jedi appeared in a damaged helmet recording, his green lightsaber cutting through a security door before he rolled beneath a volley of blaster fire. Vos moved with the infuriating unpredictability Vader remembered, using the environment, broken machinery, smoke, and even falling debris as weapons. Age had not dulled him. Survival had sharpened him.
Vader marked the recording and continued.
More footage followed.
Then, near the fourth hour, one corrupted file finally stabilized.
The recording began in a cargo junction aboard one of the captured transports. Smoke filled half the corridor. Red emergency lights flashed overhead. Clone troopers had formed a barricade around several fuel containers, their rifles trained toward a sealed door at the far end.
The door cut open.
Green light appeared first.
Quinlan Vos stepped through.
Blaster fire erupted instantly.
He deflected the first volley, moving sideways rather than forward, drawing fire toward himself.
Then a second figure entered behind him.
Two white blades ignited.
Vader stopped breathing.
For one impossible moment, even the mechanical rhythm of his respirator seemed to falter.
The figure moved through the smoke, turning aside blaster bolts with effortless precision. The recording flickered, distorted by heat and damage, but the image remained clear enough.
Orange skin.
Blue-and-white montrals.
Twin white lightsabers.
Ahsoka Tano.
Alive.
The name did not pass Vader's lips.
It did not need to.
He knew her.
She had grown older. Her movements had changed, refined by years of survival and war, but the foundation remained unmistakable. The aggressive forward momentum. The sudden reversals. The way she used one blade to defend while the other struck low. The way she trusted motion more than stillness.
It was her.
Vader stared at the hologram.
The recording continued.
A clone captain shouted an order. Ahsoka surged forward, closing the distance before he could finish. She struck the rifle from his hands, swept his legs out from beneath him, and turned just in time to deflect three bolts aimed at Vos. Her second blade disabled a security droid without cutting through the clone lying beneath it.
Alive.
The word echoed inside him.
Alive.
He replayed the recording.
Then again.
Each time the truth became more undeniable.
Ahsoka had survived the war.
She had survived Order 66.
She had survived the Empire.
A strange sensation spread through Vader's chest.
At first, he did not recognize it.
Not triumph.
Not the grim satisfaction that came from destroying enemies.
It was quieter than those things.
Warmer.
For one brief moment, the archive chamber seemed to disappear.
He was no longer standing inside a dark Imperial vault aboard a warship orbiting a frozen world.
He was back in another time.
A training room aboard a Republic cruiser.
A young Togruta Padawan rolling her eyes at him.
“I'm not reckless, Master. I'm aggressive.”
“You're reckless.”
“You're impossible.”
“So are you.”
He remembered her laughter.
Her stubbornness.
The way she challenged him when others obeyed.
The pride he had felt watching her become stronger.
The fear he had refused to admit whenever she was in danger.
For a moment so brief that no one else would ever have noticed, the armor around Darth Vader felt less real than the memory of Anakin Skywalker.
And somewhere beneath the mask, hidden from the galaxy, from the Empire, from Sidious himself...
Anakin smiled.
Small.
Broken.
Almost painful.
But real.
And for the first time in many years, Darth Vader felt happiness.