Chloe knew better than to expect a rapturous reception upon their return, but even so she was disappointed. The secret hanger was empty when the Rogue Shadow docked. A successful mission deserved some sort of acknowledgement, surely? Even after Calos....

She pushed that thought away. The job was done, what more needed to be said? She had done it well - in her eyes, at least, although Starkiller had barely acknowledged the fact on returning to the ship - and they had lived to fight another day...Or to kill more Jedi Knights, if that was what Lord Vader's scruffy, uncommunicative agent was really up to.

She had seen the second lightsaber hilt hanging from his belt, and she knew what that probably meant.

It had taken thousands of clones warriors to completely wipe out the Jedi. That was the official version - ignoring the rumors she'd heard about Darth Vader's ongoing hunt for the last survivors of that strange and deadly sect. 

From the stories she had been told by her father as a child, she'd imagined them to be monsters four meters high sucking the lifeblood out of the Republic. Now it turned out they still existed, and young men went forth to do battle with them alone.

Could they really be so reduced, these villains that had once held the galaxy in their thrall? Or...could the young man who was now her travelling partner possibly be so powerful?

The landing struts had barely touched the metal when he was on his feet and heading for the door.

She leaned back into her seat and ran her hands across her temples. Her skin felt oily and covered in grit, as though Chloe had been the one running around in the smoke and mess above Nar Shaddaa instead of watching it from the feeds she'd managed to slice into from one of the facility's cams. She wanted to check over the ship and get into the refresher and scrub the dirt away. She hadn't felt clean for weeks...

The voice of Starkiller almost made her jump out of her skin. She had thought him long gone.

"Good work, Chloe," he said. "I'll leave PROXY here to help you run through the checklist."

"Thank you, but I - " By the time she turned her seat around, the cockpit was empty of anyone but her and the droid. PROXY stared back at her with unwinking photoreceptors. She didn't want to admit that he made her slightly nervous, so she flashed her warmest smile and hauled herself out of the seat.

"Well, let's get to it! I've got a report to write before I get any rest - if anyone other than me will ever read it..."

PROXY proved an efficient and unobtrusive co-worker. He followed instructions, showed initiative, and did his level best to stay out of her way. That was more than she could say for half of the real people she had worked with since graduation from the Imperial Academy on Corulag. 

Together they checked over the ship in record time, noting only a few small carbon scores on its port side and, near the aft sensor array, a blaster burn that had been weakened so much by the shields, it would barely have fried an egg.

When they were done, she dismissed the droid, telling him to go and take and oil bath or whatever he did for relaxation, and then she set off to her quarters to work on the mission report she insisted had to be completed.

That wasn't entirely a lie: She did need to report in detail to Lord Vader, just as she had on every mission she'd ever flown for him. The thing was...she didn't really need to do it right away. It could wait a standard hour or two, or even until the morning. But there was something else on her mind,  something much more important that really couldn't wait any longer...

Is there a psychological profile in there, too? she had asked the droid before they'd set off on their first mission together.

Yes, the machine had told her, but it's restricted.

That fact had burned in her all the way to Nar Shaddaa. It came as no surprise that such a file existed somewhere in the vast bureaucracy that was the Imperial Navy. Everyone probably had one, except Darth Vader and the Emperor.

What ranked was that it was being talked about. PROXY knew where it was, and the wretched machine might even had read it, for all his protests about it being restricted. A droid capable of impersonating Jedi Knights might have unknown capacities for deception.

She wanted to know what that profile contained. What was it telling people about her? What secrets did it reveal to the galaxy in general - about her early life, her father, her career? About Callos?

Her mouth was set in a determined line when she reached her quarters on the forty-first deck and activated her datapad. Handpicked for special duties by Darth Vader himself, she had a certain degree of access to files normally hidden to those of her rank. Would that be sufficient for her to locate and read the file she wanted? There was only one way to find out.

Carefully, and thoroughly, she began slicing into the flagship's data banks.

The first files she found concerning her contained nothing unexpected, little more than the brief bio PROXY had given Starkiller in the hanger bay. She skimmed over them in seconds, probing deeper through the architecture of the data banks, seeking forgotten or overlooked corners of information.

More snippets emerged:

One talked about her mother, a woman she had barely remembered who had been killed in a crossfire between Imperial and loyalists and insurgents on their home planet. She had been a teacher. 

The file contained a holo Chloe had not seen before, an image of her mother with her long blonde hair pinned back by a brooch made from a round black stone. Her eyes looked lively and amused. She seemed terribly young to be a mother, and be dead...

Among a list of high-ranking Corulag graduates, she came across her name appended to her academic record. The list of subjects and grades filled her with pride, as it always did, but with the emotion came sadness.

She had worked so hard and achieved so much, not just for herself, but for her father, too. A distant and strict man, especially after the death of his wife, he had been a fierce admirer of those serving the Empire. A civilian engineer, he would have signed up for the Academy himself had he not failed the physical. 

So he should have been proud of his daughter, who had graduated with such honor and gone on to achieve everything he had ever wanted. Why, then, had he not even showed up at her graduation? It didn't make any sense...

That was an old, familiar hurt...The profile could talk about that aspect of her life as much as it wanted and she wouldn't think twice about it. She hadn't seen her father in years, and she wouldn't mind if she never did again. Only in recent days, away from her former squadron mates and lying alone in her bunkroom at night, did she ever wonder what had become of him.

Would she end up as bitter as him? How many more missions like Callos would it take before she forgot why she had joined up in the first place?

In a small holo appended to the last file she had found, her father looked at her with empty eyes around his narrow, imperious nose. She closed the window with an impatient flick of her index finger.

This was getting her nowhere. Searching through archives for her name could leave her mired in trivia for days. There had to be a better way.

She leaned back in her seat and thought for a moment. It was PROXY who had alerted her to the existence of the file, so the droid must have access to its location, if not the actual contents. Therefore, if she could somehow pin down the information PROXY had scanned in the last day or two, she might get a result.

Time had passed during her search. She barely noticed her weariness, trained as she was to spend hours in the cockpit on full alert. She could grab a short nap later to catch up on what she lost.

It took her just a minute to find an ID that looked like it might belong to the droid - one not on the official log with access pretty much everywhere - and she begin following it through the data banks. 

Like most advanced droids, PROXY had a lively, curious nature. His ruminations led him through numerous fields, including history, repulsor maintenance, astrography, and psychology. It could take her a full night to find just one address among all the others. But she persisted, determined to know what her superiors really thought of her after Callos!

Without warning, her screen cleared. She blinked bleary eyes at a new view, a data feed she appeared to have unintentionally sliced into. It was occasionally accessed by PROXY, showing a gunmetal-grey corridor leading to a heavy, secure door. Someone was pacing restlessly back-and-forth. There was also breathing: heavy, rhythmic breathing, as of lungs straining at a mechanical respirator...

A shock of adrenaline suddenly rushed through her. Only one person in the galaxy breathed like that! She must have patched by accident into Lord Vader's private chambers!

Her hand reached up to cancel the feed, lest she be discovered spying on him, but before she could complete the command, the door hissed open and her curiosity was caught. 

Revealed in the doorway was Starkiller, a picture of impatience and restraint. He had clearly been waiting to speak to the Dark Lord all this time. In four quick paces he walked past the vantage point of her hidden security camera and out of view.

With a series of hesitant commands, not quite believing her audacity, she tested to see if the viewpoint was movable. It rotated smoothly to bring Starkiller back into sight, revealing a room as empty of personality as the rest of Darth Vader's secret hideout. The Dark Lord himself stood with his back to the room, starting at the burning red sun outside.

Starkiller knelt behind behind Vader and waited. He seemed well accustomed to doing that, despite the energy boiling through him, barely concealed by his skin.

Without turning, Lord Vader asked, "Master Kota is dead?"

Starkiller didn't answer straightaway. He raised his head, considered the question, and then said, "Yes."

"His lightsaber."

Starkiller unclipped the second weapon from his belt. Vader turned just enough to reach out with one hand, and then the fallen Jedi's lightsaber was snatched into Lord Vader's grasp as though by invisible fingers.

Chloe let out a surprised gasp and stifled it under both hands, irrationally afraid that the Dark Lord might hear her through the one-way security link.

Oblivious to her scrutiny, he turned back to the viewpoint and examined the lightsaber in his hands. Starkiller waited, immobile, as though he could have knelt there all night.

Finally, though, Vader spoke again.

"My spies have been watching another Jedi. Kazdan Paratus is hiding on the junk world of Raxus Prime."

"I'll deal with it as I dealt with Rahm Kota." said Starkiller unhesitatingly.

Well, that's that, Chloe thought, abandoning all hope of sleep that night. No rest for the wicked. She moved to disconnect and get ready for the call to arms, but her finger hovered over the switch, unable to let the moment go. Her position was an illicit privileged one, and hard to abandon.

Vader looked up from the lightsaber and turned to face the young man kneeling before him.

"Kazdan Paratus is far more powerful than you!" the black-masked figure said, filling Chloe with apprehension. "I do not expect you to survive. But should you destroy him, you'll be one step closer to your destiny!"

Starkiller nodded eagerly. "The Emperor."

"Yes. Only together can we defeat him."

"I will not fail you, Lord - "

Chloe's finger stabbed down hard on the cutoff switch and she recoiled into her chair. Apprehension had become pure horror! Could she possibly have heard correctly? The Emperor? Vader and his dark apprentice were going to betray the Emperor?

No, she told herself, getting up from her chair and pacing back and forth across the small room. It couldn't be true. There must be more to it than she thought. Perhaps if she'd kept listening...

When she tried to get the feed back, the connection was gone. The screen remained resolutely blank, as though taunting her fearful concerns.

Darth Vader had been Palpatine's right-hand man for as long as the Emperor had been in power! It was inconceivable that he would turn on his Master now. Even if he was considering it, what could he and one scruffy agent do against Imperial Guards and well-armed aides who attended the Emperor everywhere he went? The thought was preposterous! She had to put it out of her mind as a product of fatigue and go about her duty as though nothing had happened.

It wasn't as if she could turn either of them in on such flimsy evidence. If she tried, she'd be killed for sure, whether the accusations was true or not...

Right on cue, her communicator buzzed.

"Yes?" she said, speaking as though nothing untoward had happened.

"I need you in the Rogue Shadow," Starkiller informed her, as she had known he would. "We have a new mission."

"I'll be right there."

She took a moment to smooth her uniform and her hair, and to rub the dark circle under her eyes, then she hurriedly shut down her datapad and left the room....

Author's Side-Note: A rather short chapter, but I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and enjoy seeing things from Chloe's perspective. What are your thoughts on Chloe's spying and what she heard Vader and Jack/Starkiller said?

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe, and I hope you all are having an amazing day!