The Loyalty of the Dark

Chapter 39

"Skywalker, what did you do?!?!" Zilla yelled as she came upon the cockpit to find Luke Skywalker messing with the controls.

"Nothing! I swear!" the boy said, hands snapping up as she slipped into the pilot's seat. "I was trying to figure out what happened!"

"I take it this wasn't a planned stop," Anakin said, the only calm voice between them. Zilla reminded herself that she really shouldn't be yelling Skywalker every time she was upset with the younger of the two.

"No."

"....Uh, Eclipse, tell me that isn't what it looks like," the Commander muttered, eyes on something above them. She looked up to find one of the newer star destroyers that had been coming out of Exagol's shipyards the past few years.

"It's exactly what it looks like," she responded, pulling the ship away as she sent the engine into full throttle.

"What does it look like?" Anakin asked.

"An interdictor. Like the ones in Vader's fleet," the younger Skywalker answered.

"Thrawn had more than three, my Master isn't the only one who had them," Zilla corrected.

"And those do what?" the General asked.

"Make it impossible to jump to lightspeed. Or pull us out while in it."

"....Where the hell did that tech come from?"

"No clue. It's a good few years old in the other timeline, but these have been coming out of External's ship yards for a while despite the fact the engineers responsible are well out of reach," Zilla answered. "Force, they're a pain."

"You're telling me! I hated these things," the Commander stated. "Only way to escape is to blow up the gravity wells."

"Then why are we running?" Anakin asked. She could feel both of them turning to stare at the back of her head.

"They're shooting at us...."

"And do you know why they haven't hit us yet?" Zilla responded, voice laced with sarcasm as she sent the ship into unfeelable spins to dodge the lasers she could see with the Force's help. She felt them move out of the gravity well's pull and shoved forward to lightspeed without the coordinates implanted.

Which, despite the cries of horror from behind her, was exactly what was needed. Stars, planets, asteroids, interdictors, and other objects in the way were dodged with the ease of a well practiced pilot who knew what was ahead—with the Force's assistance of course.

And Zilla was a practiced pilot. Her Master had taught her after all.

But that said, there were some things that couldn't be properly dodged back-to-back at the speed of light.

The Empress cursed as she pulled the lever back, dropping the ship from lightspeed as she spun it around, praying she could get moving back the way they'd come quickly enough, only for the ship to freeze in space.

"No.... No, no, no!" Zilla yelled, pressing the engines to full throttle only for nothing to happen.

"....Don't burn out the engines," Anakin stated, leaning over her to cut the power and turn off the ship. She let him, knowing it was useless. Of course, the one time getting caught was neither an option and liable to be the most embarrassing for her, it happened. "Tractor beam."

"Uh.... Eclipse?" Commander asked, stretching over the controls to try and get a good look at the tractor beam's owner as their direction shifted to travel towards the ship.

"Humm?" Zilla responded, eyes flicking over the control consul to see if there was anything she might be able to use to get out of the tractor beam when combined with a few old tricks—nothing was coming to mind quickly enough.

"Tell me I'm wrong, but is that...."

"What the hell is that thing?" Anakin asked, voice sounding rather impressed. The Shadow looked up to find most of the viewport had been filled with a ship. A very big ship. "She's ginormous."

A very big ship that should certainly not be there. And if there, certainly not surrounded by interdictors and other gravity well like things which was the reason Zilla couldn't get them past it in the first place.

"A super star destroyer," the younger Skywalker breathed. "How is that possible?"

"A what?"

"Super star destroyer, Executor-class. Four-ish years old in the other timeline. I've only ever seen Vader's up close before.... That looks exactly like the Executor."

"That's because it is," Zilla whispered in amazement.

"But that isn't—"

"I can recognize my own Master's flagship. That is the Executor."

"Then who the hell does it belong to now?" Commander Skywalker asked.

"One of Palpatine's people more likely than not. Hide from the Force, I'd rather not risk them knowing the ship is occupied when we are boarded."

"You have a plan?" Anakin asked as the two did as told, their presences disappearing and not a moment too soon as she felt something probing the ship through the Force a micromoment before following suit herself.

"I'm improvising one...." Zilla responded, sliding over to the ship's manifest and hurriedly typing into it before pulling out a secret drawer that held a Sith Wayfinder—a useless one considering nothing was programmed on it unlike the others that were too precious to lose and therefore destroyed before capture, but the enemy didn't know that. "Commander, I believe you'd be familiar with this. There are secret compartments in the hold."

"On it. Want to eject an escape pod while we're at it?" the boy asked.

"Yes."

"Come on, Father," he said, already turning to leave the cockpit.

"Zilla—" Anakin began.

"I'll be right behind you. I need to plant this," she responded, holding up the red pyramid as she finished the fake message and ran a code implant to change up the date of the last entry as well as the ship's identifying name while hiding as much as she could about its capabilities and before undoing some of the failsafes so the other ship would have less trouble remotely comondering the controls in order to make her ship seem less special. Not long later, she had finished implanting the Sith Wayfinder into its proper place with the hyperdrive before she joined the men under the floorboards.

"For the record, I have a bad feeling about this," the Commander muttered as they listened to the ship groaning as the landing gear was remotely deployed, the darkness of the compartment only broken by the glow of her wires

"It worked for you on the Death Star," Zilla responded factually. "And we could sense you aboard. They haven't."

"And how is that supposed to make me feel any better?"

"Quiet," Anakin hissed as there were clanks of the ramp being lowered. Zilla wasn't frightened, she had been Vader's Shadow and as such was not frightened of being captured by the enemy nor fighting it. That said, she knew better than to attempt to take on the entire Executor with only two Jedi backing her which is why they were hiding and not preparing to storm out of the ship in a blazing fury of blaster fire.

All the same, she didn't resist when Anakin slipped a reassuring hand into her own.