She wondered how many children were being brainwashed into hating her in the mere seconds she watched it. It was years since she’d been a member of the Junior Senate and had visited an academy herself, but she remembered the experience. The Empire stripped them of their identities beyond numbers and gave them a faceless helmet to march onto the streets with, and they justified it with your sacrifice is necessary for the safety of the Empire.

One of the soldiers in her escort, Grey, nudged her. “This is our stop, miss.” He couldn’t call her Your Highness here, but she could tell he wanted to.

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

It was a short walk from the bus stop to the towering building that held Tarkin’s private penthouse. She was wearing enough makeup to disguise herself that it caked on her upper lip, but she still hesitated to look the receptionist in the eye.

The woman seemed the epitome of discretion, though, and clearly knew what was going on: she said, “Sir Tarkin has been expecting you, miss,” and waved them right up.

He met her on the top floor. Leia stepped out of the sleek turbolift into an equally as sleek—to the extent it looked uncomfortable—hallway. Tarkin was a reedy man without the bulk his elder relative had had, but the same skeletal features and proud mouth. Two stormtroopers flanked him, which Leia tensed at, but she sensed no immediate aggression from them. They seemed young and small, as well—shorter than Luke had been in the armour—so she could only assume they were some favoured students, here as extra protection.

His eyes widened when he saw her. “Are you…?”

“Princess Leia of Alderaan,” she confirmed, stepping forwards to extend her hand. He looked at it for a moment, as if expecting it to be rough with Rebel callouses, but her skin was as clean and soft as when she’d been in politics.

The way she saw it, she was still in politics.

He took her hand and shook it limply. She tried not to grimace. They needed his money, not his skills in charisma.

“Sir Tarkin,” she said. “I understand you have been reluctant to continue funding us since your uncle destroyed my planet.”

“Cousin,” he corrected. “Second-cousin, uh—” She stepped towards a door; he panicked, before realising she had no intention of snooping, just in him actually inviting her in. “—thrice-removed. I apologise for my poor manners, Your Highness. Please, come in. Sit down.”

He opened a pair of great double doors onto a living room, half of which was comprised by a balcony. The tropical storms that were endemic in summer meant that there were currently a set of transparisteel doors separating the living room from the outside veranda, but Leia paused to glance at the view, nonetheless. A storm was indeed rolling in: lightning flashed, and the beginning pitter-patter of rain began to strike the doors.

“Not your escort,” he said hurriedly, when Grey and his team tried to follow them. “Your escort, and mine, must stay outside.” She narrowed her eyes at him; he smiled sheepishly. “Confidential information. Details, bank records, precise deals; I can’t risk any of this reaching beyond your ears and mine, I’m sure you understand—”

“I understand,” she cut him off. “I am not pleased by it, but I understand. Captain,” she turned to Grey, “wait just outside the door. I will call on you if required.”

“Likewise, Veers,” Tarkin added. “All of you wait outside.” They exited through a different door—one that presumably went to an antechamber of some kind.

“Veers?” Leia asked, eyebrows climbing.

“General Veers’s son, yes. Very talented boy. Has a good sense for right and wrong.”

“I’m hoping you do as well, Sir Tarkin. Otherwise, my trip here has been a waste, as has our entire association.”

“No, don’t give me that.” He finally sat down on the sofa opposite her. He hadn’t even offered her any drinks for her to be suspicious of; his hosting skills were deplorable, and his political skills even more so. “No, I reserve the right to judge whatever the hell happened on DS-1.”

“DS-1? You would use the official, clinical term for it? It is natural that the Empire does not want to call its own device a Death Star, but I would have hoped you’d know better.”

“What happened?” he snapped. “My cousin—”

“Second-cousin-thrice-removed.”

“—died there. Because of you and your lot. Are you friends with the pilot?”

“I am. He’s a good man.”

“A good man who killed my cousin.”

“Was your cousin a good man?”

He hesitated, sensing her trap, but not having the acumen to dodge around it. He blundered into it, instead. “I never personally experienced any issues in his company.”

“A good man who killed my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, every other relative I could possibly have, and several other billion people when he destroyed my planet?”

“That rumour is unsubstantiated.”

She stood and made to leave. “If you choose to make such a baseless, transparent argument, we have nothing to discuss here.” She shouldn’t have let herself hope. Not when it came to Imperials. Luke was naïve, but she should know better. “You clearly funded the Alliance for a reason. I am increasingly sure it was to satisfy your own conscience, until it suddenly became too dangerous for you to stand.”

He stared at her.

“Am I right?”

“Is this how you speak to all your benefactors, Princess Leia? If so, I—” He cringed at her glare but kept talking. “—I am unsurprised that you find yourselves so desperate for funds.”

She stopped, halfway to the door.

He was right. She couldn’t afford to alienate him. They had won a small victory, but the war loomed before them, and the future was dark. They needed to take the blood money of grubby-handed scions like him who still bore fragile loyalty to the families who had raised them so wrong.

But if she turned around now, he would know he had her. She refused to let him dominate the discussion.

“We cannot deal with people we cannot trust,” she said. “Your loyalties are obviously split, between your family and your conscience. It is a division that all of us who have been raised in the Empire have to grapple with.” She turned back to him. “The Alliance is made of people who were strong enough to commit, despite these two sides. I am sorry, but I cannot tolerate a man who cannot make that choice and uses flimsy excuses about the morality of killing a murderer to cover that up.”

She’d calculated correctly, she thought. He was on the back foot again. Too weak to make the decision, and he knew it, but too smart to delude himself that if he did nothing, he wouldn’t be complicit in Imperial atrocities.

“I am a sympathiser,” he insisted. “We all are—all the boys I have with me here today, as well, because I know I can trust them. I can trust their sympathies and their moral code.”

“Like the son of General Veers?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“He’s a good kid.”

“But can he—any of you—commit?” she pressed. “To either side. Can you make that choice?”

Her words did… something… to him. He straightened up, his posture as military-perfect as his second-cousin-thrice-removed’s had been. His face folded into something dark.

“Yes, Princess Leia,” he said. “I can. Boys!”

It happened before she could blink. The door burst open again, and the Imperial stormtrooper cadets filed out, their helmets down like they were about to use them as battering rams. One seized her from behind; before she could cry out to alert her own escort, he jabbed a hand over her mouth. She bit it, but the armour was hard.

“The new Governor of Eriadu will forgive all of our suspicious behaviour when we deliver you to him,” Tarkin informed her. “Do not condescend to me, Princess Leia. I know this choice of which you speak, and I know that I have made the right one.”

“You haven’t,” she got out. Even when she was restrained, he flinched at the harshness in her tone. “You’re far too weak to have.”

“Evidently not. Stun—”

She kicked the trooper holding her in the groin and twisted out of his grip. Before they could fire, she ducked out from between them, made to run—

But there was only the balcony behind her, with the storm blowing in.

“Freeze, Princess—”

She fumbled for the latch and stumbled back, until her back hit the railings, hoping for a fire escape, something to jump to, anything she could use. None revealed themselves.

She was too high up. She had cornered herself, and now there was nowhere to run.

The troopers raised her blasters at her. She willed herself to still. Rain lashed their pristine white armour, dripping in rivulets down their blank, plasteel faces, fierce winds knocking over the neat furniture. Tarkin was glaring at the storm for the indignity of it.

“Someone made your choice for you, didn’t they?” she accused him. “They spotted a number trail, found out about your moment of compassion, your desire to use your pocket money to fund people who’ll do more for the galaxy than you ever will. And they gave you an ultimatum, before you disgraced them, once that you did not have the strength to refuse. You made your decision before I ever landed on this planet.”

“My mother reminded me of what Rebel propaganda had made me forget,” he spat. “The Empire is noble.”

“I don’t think it’s Rebel propaganda that’s been the real danger, to you. We’re not the ones who pretend that my planet is still intact.”

“You are the one pretending you still have a modicum of authority. I don’t even have to call you Princess—you’re a princess of nothing.”

She refused to let herself flinch. Thunder rumbled hungrily in the distance. “And yet you do,” she said. “Everyone in the Empire still does. The moment you’re faced with authority, you follow it with blind obedience.” She looked over the stormtroopers. All kids, who were apparently on an ISB watchlist for suspected sympathies, chosen by Tarkin for this task because their presence would make him feel better about his own inadequacies. They had obeyed him. He was their vice-principal. “That’s what you have all be taught.”

The troopers were utterly faceless. The regulations on height meant they were even the same stature, none shorter or taller than the others. She knew one of them was Veers, but she could never have guessed which.

That made her, suddenly, angry. She had always been angry—her anger at the Empire was something she had stoked since she was a teenager, slow-burning, only to flare with violence and hatred after Alderaan had died. But this was specific. This was an intense blend of both disdain and pity for these people, good people, who nonetheless did no thinking for themselves, because it was easier to follow orders.

The storm shone around her, dark and cold and bright and strong. Something deep inside her rumbled in unison with the thunder.

“Stun her!” Tarkin ordered.

“No,” she replied. “I order you to put your weapons down.”

Lightning flashed. It illuminated the smooth, instant motions as they did.

Tarkin gaped at them, and then he was a trembling excuse for a man when she faced him again, hands clenched at her side, her clothes clinging clammily to her like a second skin she needed to shed.

“You will continue to fund us,” she ordered. “You will use every last bright spark in that cowardly and clever brain of yours to make sure you do not get caught this time. But you will double your donations. I will leave this planet unharmed, and the Alliance will be the stronger for it.”

He bowed his head mindlessly. “Yes, Your Highness.”

She stepped back inside. For a moment, she thought to close the doors, but her stomach tugged, and a stray wind slammed them shut behind her.

“We’re done here.” She said to the stormtroopers, “Follow me.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” they chorused as one.

She opened the door and stepped out. Grey scrambled to attention. “Your Highness—”

He paused, taking in her soaked clothes, the troopers flanking her.

“They will be escorting us back to the spaceport to ensure we are left unharmed,” she said.

They did, indeed, escort Leia and the others back to the spaceport. They accompanied them on the Falcon all the way back to the Rebel base, where they shed their stormtrooper armour but not their stormtrooper tendencies and became the most reliable soldiers the Alliance had.