Chapter Text
Nate sighed and stared down into his empty glass. “Hurley, I thought we told you to never contact us again after the incident with Sister Lupe.”
“I know, Nate,” Hurley said. “But I’m not here as your friend, I’m here to hire you!”
Nate raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
Hurley nodded. “Yep. See, it turns out that Sister Lupe wasn’t just smuggling medicine; she was actually working with-” He paused and glanced around the empty bar to check if anyone was listening, completely missing the cameras and bugs that Hardison and Parker had installed when they moved in above the bar, before continuing in a whisper. “The Rebel Alliance, and now I am too.”
“Nope,” Nate said, pushing himself to his feet. “Hurley, my team takes down corrupt businesses and officials, not empires.”
“Please, Nate,” Hurley begged, moving to block his path. “We really need help, and your team is the best of the best.”
“No, Hurley.”
“You don’t have to take down the entire Empire,” Hurley bargained. “Just the Emperor. The Alliance will take over from there. Besides, you could say that the Emperor is the most corrupt person in the entire galaxy. If anyone can do, it would be you.”
Nate pushed past him, refusing to even consider doing as Hurley asked. “Goodbye, Hurley.”
He didn’t look back as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. Nate knew he had better alcohol up there, stuff that would stop the plans already beginning to come together in his brain on how to take down the Emperor. Hopefully the team hadn’t been listening in on them.
0o0o0
“So, how are we taking down the Empire?” Parker asked as she jumped from the ceiling then flopped onto the couch next to Hardison. “Are we going to run a con on him? Or should we just send Eliot in and see what happens?”
“Absolutely not,” Eliot growled from the kitchen, pointing his spatula at Nate to emphasize his point.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sophie said, idling swirling her wine before she took a sip. “It could be fun.”
“Fun? Fun?” Hardison spluttered, staring at Sophie incredulously. “Are you crazy? Fun is not taking down the most powerful man in the galaxy, okay? Fun is slicing into the Banking Clan’s network and emptying out their vaults!”
“Or stealing kyber crystals,” Parker added.
“Yeah, see, we can do that instead of trying to kill ourselves bringing down the Empire,” Hardison said.
“Don’t worry,” Nate said , pouring himself a glass of Corellian brandy. “We aren’t going after the Emperor.”
“Why not?” Parker asked. “Isn’t that what we do? Bring down the bad guys? The Emperor is the worst bad guy of them all, and we aren’t even going to try?”
“It’s not like that, Parker-” Nate began.
“If we were going to target the Emperor, how would we do it?” Sophie interrupted, her eyes narrowed as she stared at Parker.
“Darth Vader,” Nate said immediately. “He’s the Emperor’s top enforcer, head of the Inquisitorius, but to most Imperials he’s the boogeyman. All we’d need to do is get him to turn on the Emperor, and then everything would fall apart.”
The hint of a smirk crept onto Sophie’s face. “So you have been thinking about it.”
“Yes, well, we aren’t going to do it. The only way to get rid of the Emperor is to kill him, do you realize that?” Nate asked.
Parker had gone pale as soon as Nate had said they would have to go after Vader, but she stood up and said “I can’t think of anyone who would deserve it more. He murdered all the Jedi and enslaves or kills anyone who speak out against him. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.”
Silence fell over the apartment after Parker’s declaration, and Nate was careful not to let inferences about her past escape. There something about the set of her jaw and the look in her eye that told him she would go after the Emperor with or without them, and he had given her the beginning of the way to do it. Of course, if she went alone, then she was as good as dead.
“Alright,” Nate said. “But if we decide to do this, it has to be a unanimous decision. Either all of us take him down, or none of us do.”
“I’m in,” Parker said immediately.
“I am too,” Sophie said only moments later.
Hardison reached out and took Parker’s hand, pulling her back down on to the couch. “Are you sure about this, Parker? This won’t be like any job we’ve ever done, and it might set a dangerous precedent.”
“I’m absolutely sure,” Parker said.
“Alright, I’ll do it,” Hardison decided.
Both Hardison and Parker turned to stare expectantly at Eliot. He narrowed his eyes at them, then turned back to finish assembling his sandwich. It was only once he had cleaned everything up that he turned back and said “We have to make sure no innocents die, alright? No collateral damage.”
Only three of Nate’s tentative plans would have killed someone besides the Emperor, so he was easily able to agree. “Yeah, no, there won’t be any of that, Eliot. We’ll limit the damage to the Emperor and maybe Darth Vader.”
Parker grinned like a nexu, all of her teeth visible. “It’s unanimous, then.”
Nate drained his brandy and slammed the glass back onto the table with a satisfying thunk. “Hardison, I’m going to need everything you can find on Darth Vader.”
0o0o0
Three hours later, the team was gathered around the miniature holographic display of Darth Vader and waiting to hear what Hardison had found.
“Alright, so Nate was absolutely right when he said this guy was the boogeyman,” Hardison began. “I’m going to have nightmares just from reading this stuff. However, I couldn’t find anything about him before the Empire. He just shows up a few months after the Republic fell.”
“Is it possible that he’s a droid of some kind?” Nate asked.
“Can a droid move things with the power of their mind?” Hardison asked rhetorically. “No, they can’t. Vader is some kind of Force user.”
“He’s a Jedi,” Eliot said. “Their lightsaber forms are very distinctive.”
“No Jedi would do what he’s done. No, he’s a Sith. Always two, there are,” Parker said in a croaky voice. “Master and apprentice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eliot asked.
Parker shrugged. “It’s something Master Yoda always used to say when he taught us about the Sith. It has something to do with them being too power hungry to let more than two exist at a time.”
“I think you’re both right,” Nate said. “Once upon a time, Darth Vader was a Jedi, but he found a Sith Master right around the time the Republic fell. The only question is, how does the Emperor play into this? Why does Vader obey the Emperor rather than taking control of the galaxy for himself?”
Sophie’s eyes widened in horror. “Because the Emperor is the Sith Master!”
An uneasy silence fell over the apartment after Sophie’s revelation. Parker, Eliot, and Hardison were exchanging worried glances while Nate was wondering how he hadn’t realized what the Emperor was sooner. He didn’t know much about the Jedi and the Sith, but he did know that they were evil on a whole different scale than the scum his team normally took down.
Nate poured himself another glass of brandy. He was way too sober for this.
“So,” Nate said once he finished his drink. “We need to figure out what it is that Vader wants and convince him that the Emperor won’t let him have it. After that, he’ll do the actual work of getting rid of the Emperor.”
“I’ve got some footage of different Jedi from the deepnet. Most of it is Skywalker and Kenobi, who I seriously doubt became Sith Lords if the stories my Nana told be about them are true, but there are a few other Jedi generals too,” Hardison said. “Eliot, do you think you’ll be able to figure out who it is from that?”
Eliot nodded. “Each Jedi had their own modified lightsaber forms based off the main seven. Even compensating for the armor and the life support suit, I should be able to narrow it down at least.”
“How do you know that?” Sophie asked.
“It wasn’t all that long ago that Mandalore was at war with the Jedi. Every Mando was taught how to fight them,” Eliot explained, the tightness of his jaw and the look in his eyes warning them not to ask any more.
“Alright, first up is Jedi General Plo Koon. He’s a Kel Dor, so he’s already got an air mask, and the rest of the armor would make him look like a human,” Hardison said as he typed in a few commands into the computer, bringing up the holoprojection of Plo Koon.
Eliot tilted his head, examining the holoprojection of Plo Koon as he redirected blaster bolts back at droids with his lightsaber. “The form is the right one, but he’s not the Sith.”
“Why not?” Sophie asked.
“His hands. They’ve got four fingers and heavy claws, not five with fingernails,” Eliot said.
“Vader is probably human, anyways, Hardison, so you should stick to those at first,” Nate said. “The Empire hates non humans, and that didn’t come from nowhere.”
“Okay, then how about General Mace Windu?” Hardison asked as Plo Koon’s holoprojection was replaced by that of a dark skinned human. Rather than fighting droids as the previous Jedi had done, Windu seemed to be doing battle with another Jedi.
“Nope, not him,” Eliot said almost immediately. “The form is all wrong.”
“Are you sure?” Hardison asked. “It looks the same to me.”
“There are distinct differences between the different lightsaber forms, Hardison, and Windu’s form isn’t even close to Vader’s,” Eliot said.
Hardison sighed, but switched to another Jedi nonetheless. They went through four more human Jedi, both men and women, but Eliot vetoed them all. Then, Hardison pulled up a holoprojection of General Skywalker.
Eliot squinted and tilted his head to the side.
“Let me guess, something’s wrong with his form too,” Hardison sighed.
“Pull up another holo of him,” Eliot ordered.
Hardison obliged, switching to a recording of Skywalker fighting droidekas.
“That’s him,” Eliot said, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. “That’s Vader.”
The metal table creaked and bent beneath Parker’s hands.
“Parker!” Sophie exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
“He was a hero,” Parker growled, her eyes suspiciously shiny. “Everyone looked up to him, and he betrayed us.” She pushed up from the table and stormed off deeper into the apartment.
Hardison and Eliot silently got up and followed her.
“Poor girl,” Sophie said, a worried expression crossing her face. “Are you sure we can do this Nate? I mean, I don’t remember the Clone War very well, beyond that it was a great time to be an art thief, but I do remember that Skywalker was famous for being able to do the impossible.”
“Well,” Nate began, pouring a little more brandy into his glass. “He’s still human, no matter what extra powers the Force might give him, and all humans want something. There’s always a hook. We just need to find his.”
“Hmm, yes, but we can’t risk getting close to him to find out. We’ll have to rely on whatever we can dig up on him,” Sophie pointed out.
“I know, I know, it’s risky, but I have faith in our team. We’ll be able to figure it out,” Nate said.
Sophie grinned. “Maybe the Force will be with us.”
Nate laughed. “I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
He reached over and switched the projector so that a different display of Skywalker was showing. In this recording, the Jedi was standing next to a short brunette woman in an elaborate dress, having a conversation. The woman was very familiar for some reason, but Nate couldn’t place her.
Sophie gasped. “He was in love with Senator Amidala.” At Nate’s raised eyebrows, she explained. “Look at the way they’re standing, how their shoulders keep them always facing each other, and the eye contact, the way they smile at each other - all indicators of love”
“I believe you,” Nate said. “I was just remembering that Senator Amidala died right after the Republic fell, and that she was pregnant.”
“No,” Sophie said, her eyes widening. “You don’t think-”
“We’d need to look at her medical file to be sure, but yes, I do think she was murdered. It makes too much sense. After all, she was an advocate for sentient rights and democracy, she worked closely with the Jedi, and one of her closest colleagues was Senator Organa, one of the ISB’s top suspects for Rebel sympathies,” Nate explained.
“So, are we thinking of a Lost Heir con?” Sophie asked, an excited gleam in her eye.
Nate stared down at the holoprojector as the recording of Senator Amidala and Anakin Skywalker began to repeat. “We’ll need to talk to the rest of the team first, but yes, I was thinking of something like that.”
“We’re here,” Parker said as she came back into the room, her eyes clear, while Eliot and Hardison following her. “What’re we going to talk about?”
“The con we’re going to run on Vader,” Sophie began. “You see, we figured out that he was in love with Senator Amidala, who was pregnant when she died, so we’re going to run a Lost Heir con on him.”
Hardison frowned. “Isn’t the Lost Heir con for stealing from a rich family? How’s that going to get him to turn on the Emperor.”
“Once Vader meets the lost heir for the first time, we’re going to stage an attack on the heir that makes it look like the Emperor is trying to kill them,” Nate said.
“Oh, so we’re doing the Mandalorian variation, got it,” Hardison said.
“Vader’s a Force user,” Eliot pointed out. “The Mandalorian Lost Heir isn’t going to work on him.”
“Yeah, he’s going to be able to tell we’re lying as soon as we give him the heir,” Parker agreed.
Nate smiled, the beginnings of a solid plan coalescing. “That’s why we’re going to make it seem like it was his idea that Senator Amidala’s baby is still alive. He’s going to find the heir. We’ll just point him right to them.”