Star Wars: Dark Angel, Dangerous Games

Disclaimer: Star Wars is the sole property of Lucasfilm, LTD. The following piece was written for entertainment purposes only and not for profit.

*

Rumors are fascinating things. Little oddments of information, whether false or true, that come alive. Rumors can fly like whispered locusts through the aristocratic fields of cultured boredom and political intrigue, and can grow more heads than an Ibanjii mire snake with every passing murmur. And, if wielded correctly, a rumor can be a weapon more devastating than ten Death Stars combined.

This particular rumor could not have hit at a better—or worse—time, depending on one's own point of view. Just days before the Coronation Day Ball and the Throneworld's anniversary, when hundreds of thousands of the Empire's sycophantic privileged were already descending upon the city-planet of Coruscant, the hushed gossip had begun to broaden. Where it began, no one was entirely certain, but after a few days of circulation, why should that matter anyway?

Which was exactly what Prince Xizor had hoped for.

"So, have you heard, Lord Xizor?"

The Falleen prince lazily lifted his attention from the mouthpiece of his harga pipe and turned it to the fatuous Bimm lady lounging at the other side of the pillowed pit. "Heard what, Lady Umba?"

The stumpy, velvet-swathed furred alien tittered, as did the rest of the group sprawled around the towering waterpipe. "Oh come now, Xizor, if there is anyone who has his finger on the pulse of Coruscant's elite, it's you," she said as she brought her end to her lips.

"Why," piped a lanky human female with an impossible hairdo, "I heard it weeks ago already, on Corellia."

"Weeks ago, you say?" Xizor asked. "Simply amazing." Considering Guri just leaked it four days ago. "Well, don't I feel out of the loop?" He took a long, slow drag of harga smoke through his mouthpiece, blowing it out in intricate rings, watching them break against the sumptuous tapestries hovering above. He raised an eyebrow. "Well, do tell—or are you ladies just teasing me...again?"

The silly duo both chirped titters and turned over their shoulders to make sure no one—or everyone—in the private member-only drug den would hear before they whispered in unison, "Darth Vader has taken a MISTRESS!"

"No!" Xizor whispered with believable disbelief.

"Yes!" they both replied.

"No!"

"YES!"

"Well, pull my ears and call me a Twi'lek!" Xizor chuckled. The inebriated pair howled with laughter. Bringing his drink of potent mandragori to his lips, he glanced about the drug den to make POSITIVELY sure they were being heard before he continued. "Are you quite sure?"

"Well," huffed the bony human, patting the tower that was her hair, "can you explain where he was for three months after the Battle of Yavin? Rumor has it he found solace the arms of a lower Hapian princess!"

"No!" Xizor whispered.

"Yes!"

"No!" exclaimed another female, a feline-like Jazbanin, whose head popped up from a neighboring pit, "She's a Dathomir witch!"

"What?" shrieked the females with uproarious laughter.

A twisted smile spread across Xizor's face. "And where did you get THAT information, Contessa? It seems a bit far fetched."

"It only makes sense," the lanky Contessa purred, "Lord Vader would choose a woman as close to his kind as possible, wouldn't he?"

"No, no, no!" corrected the fuzzy Bimm, "she's an Enforcer! With His Majesty's Inquisition!"

Xizor grinned a slow smile. "And you know this how, Lady Umba?"

"I saw it on the holonet, on the Society channel. Ingor Riann's show! He actually parked outside what he thought was her complex, and broadcasted live! So it must be true! He even reported that she would be at the Coronation ball tonight! He said that the Emperor himself sent her an invitation!"

"No!" shrieked the women.

"Yes!" Lady Umba shrieked back.

Xizor's smile grew even wider. Excellent work, my dearest Guri, he thought to himself as the drugged and drunken society women cackled and yelped at each other. The information his android spy had discovered and leaked had actually made it to the holonet—and the Society channel no less. Oh, this was turning out better than he had planned.

However, his smirk melted as his thoughts turned to the Dark Lord. Assassination attempts had proven useless—that blasted sorcerer somehow always managed to thwart his efforts, whether through his magic, his own personal army, or just sheer luck. Everything around him was armored—his transport, his castle, his troops, even himself. The security he surrounded himself with was impervious. Vader had proven himself untouchable. Or had he?

Vader was a jealous man; he could feel it in his bones. And, judging by the wild dishevelment of his mistress as she left his fortress, Xizor surmised that he was a possessive one as well. Also, the Dark Lord's unpredictability was that of legend, judging from the treaties with planetary governments habitually broke and the contracts with various galactic industries that he conveniently ignored. It was certainly impossible that he implicitly trusted this mistress, or that he would remain loyal to her. And the odds that she would remain faithful to him were remote at best.

Fidelity was a disadvantage to any ambitious whore.

Distrust, possessiveness, capriciousness—Xizor could smell blood in the water. Vader's weaknesses could be turned against him, and easily at that. The target of assassination this time would be the Dark Lord's reputation.

Vader's public humiliation would undoubtedly diminish his power within the Empire as well as his favor with the Emperor. If the Dark Lord could not control his woman, how could he possibly hold the galaxy within his grip? It was a beginning, the chink in the armor he had longed for. And through that chink his real assassins would slip, exacting the revenge Xizor had coveted for years. Revenge for the deaths of a quarter million of his fellow Falleens, including his own family, that Vader had ordered years before.

Xizor could hear it now—Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, Planet Killer, Scourge of the Galaxy—

Cuckold.

He turned his slit eyes back to the drug pit's other occupants. The women still babbled, but the subject had morphed into speculation of the lovely beast's looks. On and on they chattered about possible hair color, race, height, eyes, origins, and so on. None of them were correct.

His thoughts drifted. She was exquisite, wasn't she? Her face was a bit too angular and her nose a bit too narrow for perfect beauty. But that wild scarlet hair that snaked about her sharp features, and those eyes, like hot Arisand crystals...and there was something else about her, something animalistic, almost reptilian. Yes, beast was a suitable description. Ah yes, he would enjoy this one. Perhaps even keep her for a while, further adding to Vader's humiliation—that is, if Dark Lord didn't kill her in a fit of jealous rage. He imagined those long pale legs spread, her slick sex laid before him, and those silver eyes gleaming with lust. He envisioned her on her knees, her wide mouth sucking him off, and then on all fours, screaming his name as he pounded her zealously from behind...

His cock twitched.

The ladies suddenly stopped their chatter, and their heads slowly turned in the way to the Prince. With all of his musings and the arousal that came with it, his Falleen pheromones had kicked in hyperdrive, filling the air around him. The women's breathing suddenly became slow and deep, as carnal desire threatened to overtake them. Xizor had to decide quickly between them, and the decision was not a difficult one. "Contessa..." he crooned softly, huskily, "would you care to join me for a..." He raised his glass. "Private drink?"

The Jazbanin drew a shuddering breath as the other simpletons groaned in defeat. She stepped through the pillowed floor to the Prince and sank to her knees, running a paw-like hand up Xizor's inner thigh. "I'd be honorrrrrrred," she purred.

Xizor looked up, and his smile instantly disintegrated as he looked upon the remaining two. "Good day, ladies, " he snarled.

As the ladies sulked away, he leaned back into the pillows, allowing the Contessa better access to the front slit of his silk trousers. As she lowered her lips unto his hard shaft, Xizor murmured to no one in particular, "Let the games begin."

* * *

Despite the Emperor's decree that the city-planet's artificial chronometer be kept at constant night for the length of his Coronation celebrations, Coruscant's skies were bleached as day over the Imperial Palace. Illumination drones, some forty meters wide, floated above the palace, setting alight the nighttime heavens halfway around the globe with their synched holographic light shows. Adding further to the haze was the glow generated by the repulsor engines of thousands of speeders glutting the airways to the Palace for miles, each waiting for their opportunity to pull into the red-carpeted palace port so that its occupants, human and alien, bejeweled and dressed in outrageous finery, could emerge to the snaps and pops of hundreds of holocameras lining the stretch leading inside. Grand stanzas of choral opera blared from immense speakers, bouncing off the neighboring starscrapers, resounding in a harmonious cacophony.

Perhaps the only thing that could have drowned out the thunderous music was the earsplitting chatter and squeals of the Emperor's guests. The highest ranks of royalty, nobility, aristocracy, and military in the Imperial elite swarmed over the red carpet, posing for the holocams, slapping each other's backs and kissing each other's cheeks as they slowly made their way through the Palace doors.

It was a night of pomp and music, of color and light, of splendor and frivolity.

Lord Vader hated every second of it.

He stood looking over the display from the balcony of his private chamber within the Palace. The only movement that betrayed his perfect stillness was the slow, deliberate tap of his finger on the balcony rail. He had been there for hours, watching the horde inch over the red carpet like maggots over rotted flesh. Sycophants and bootlickers, all of them, he mused in disgust.

He heard the doors hiss open. He didn't turn around. "You have an irritating habit of entering unannounced, Jixton."

"Well," Wrenga Jixton began, leaning on the door jamb and sliding a small vibro-blade from his belt, "I figured since you like to crawl around in people's heads uninvited, you'd already know I was coming, Uncle D." He began to pick under his nails with the tip of his blade. "Don't you believe in lights? It's like a tomb in here."

Under his mask, Vader blew a slight sigh of exasperation. He had surmised long ago that all Corellians, especially this Corellian, were as obnoxious as they were capable. If Wrenga Jixton weren't the best agent that had ever served him and didn't amuse him somewhat, he would have thrown this upstart out of an airlock years ago. "Is it done?" he asked, a trifle impatiently.

"Done, and done." Jixton grinned, a smile smeared with lax menace. "The reporter Ingor Riann has been arrested and executed. He won't be bothering you again."

"He was warned numerous times that any intrusion upon my solitude was tantamount to high treason," Vader rumbled. "I'm sure his surviving colleagues on the holonet will not make the same error in judgment." He turned slightly over his shoulder. "Has the leak been located?"

"Unfortunately, no, not yet. But I have word from Intel that the officers are, I quote, 'working diligently' on the matter—"

"Abort the search," Vader ordered quietly.

Jix's brows rose almost to his hairline. "Abort?"

"They are better used elsewhere. Ingor Riann will serve as an example. The matter is closed." With that, he turned back to the crowd below, resuming his search.

Jix pursed his lips, observing Vader carefully, before deciding to break the silence. "Ballroom's filling up. Everyone's getting juiced. And you are the talk of the town. Everyone is wondering where you are."

"I'm sure they are," Vader replied dryly.

"And, of course, your lady. It's all anyone is talking about." His boots clicked casually as he sauntered toward the Dark Lord. "You have to admit, Uncle D, that this is definitely a scale-peeler. Admirals and nobles with mistresses are a credit a dozen, but you?" Slowly and a tad menacingly, the Dark Lord turned to face him. Jix nervously cleared his throat. "Uh...what I meant was—"

"Do you believe, as does the rest of the galaxy, that I am not entitled?" Vader asked.

Jix's mouth opened and closed several times as his brain scrambled to shove words into it. "Well...no...um...it's just that...well, you are a busy man. I just figured you didn't have the time. You never seemed all that interested in the opposite sex."

"You mean the opposite sex was never interested in me." He turned back to the crowd.

"Now that's not true, Uncle D. You're...well, you're tall, rich, powerful and...utterly frightening. Girls dig that."

"If you are attempting to either humor or compliment me, you are failing miserably at both." At that moment, Vader's attention riveted to the glossy black speeder escorted by four Imperial Black Hole Stormtroopers on speeder bikes that pulled up to the red carpet platform. He watched the hordes of guests turn their heads to the newest arrival, and part to the edges of the carpet. A footman extended his hand, grasping that of a tall, willowy figure that stepped from the speeder. Shrouded from head to foot in a shimmering deep scarlet cloak that trailed several meters behind, the figure's face was featureless behind a long hood. The four black-armored troopers fell into their positions on each side of the tall stranger.

The figure held herself proud and tall, facing forward, her pace slow and deliberate, as if she were fully aware of the hundreds of eyes staring. The holorazzi went berserk, rushing the carpet just to get a glimpse of the guest. Vader watched the crowd of elite gawk and gasp as the troopers pushed the reporters back with the butts of their blasters. But the scarlet-draped Amazon showed no concern in her posture or gait, continuing unhurriedly down the carpet.

Jixton actually dared to join the Dark Lord on the balcony, and leaned down. "That's her?" He blew a soft whistle. "A tall cool drink of aquabliss, isn't she? And shrouded in mystery. Literally." He stood up, adjusted his jacket and straightened his collar. "So, when do I get to meet her?"

Vader drew himself up, and hooked his thumbs into his belt in the usual manner. He glared down at Jixton and growled, "You don't," before he strode off the balcony through his expansive chamber and out the door.

Jixton heaved a defeated sigh. He quickened his pace to catch up to the Dark Lord walking fiercely down the hall. "She must be something, Uncle D. She's even been to your fortress. Why haven't you ever invited me?"

"Because you irritate me."

"Well, yes, I have that effect on people, I guess." He let out a light amused snort. "But then again, although I have many talents, there's one or two that I definitely can't provide for you, huh, Uncle—"

Wrenga Jixton never saw Vader's huge black hand bolt out of his robes and clutch him by the throat. Before he realized it, he was slammed into the wall, his feet dangling a meter off the floor. He could still breathe, but not terribly well. Oh yes, it was official: He had crossed the line this time.

"Let me make this perfectly clear," Vader said, never raising his voice. "The subject is closed. And in the future, I advise that you keep your opinions to yourself regarding situations that you could not possibly understand." He tightened his grip just slightly to drive his point home. "Am I understood?"

Jix attempted a hard swallow. "Absolutely, Uncle—er, Lord Vader." Vader opened his hand. Jix slid down the wall until he landed hard on his feet and gulped deep long breaths.

"Keep yourself sober tonight, Jixton. I am going to need your 'special talents' before the evening is over." He turned away and resumed his pounding stride to the ballroom.

Jix straightened up as he watched the Dark Lord. "Note to self," he muttered, rubbing his throat, "Vader's lady is strictly off limits." He cocked an eyebrow at the thought that this could be more than just a carnal arrangement. "Lady Vader...?"

* * *

"Lord Vader," Palpatine crooned. "Come, my friend, you have been missed."

"Forgive my absence, Your Majesty," Vader said as he came from the shadows behind the Emperor's onyx throne. He took his place at the Emperor's right hand and bowed slightly before continuing. "There were reports of Rebel activity in the ruins of the Acherin system. I authorized the Imprimatur to investigate."

"Excellent, Lord Vader. I wonder, however, how long it actually takes to authorize a reconnaissance mission? You were gone so long, I was beginning to think you were avoiding us." He chuckled thickly, then gestured before him. "I hardly need to introduce you, do I, gentlemen? You remember our good friend Prince Xizor?"

Vader straightened and turned his mask toward the opulently dressed Falleen prince. Gathered on the stairs behind him was a flock of young, attractive concubines varying in humanoid race. Some were courtesans, the others daughters or sisters rebelling against their titled patriarchs, all of whom had shared Xizor's bed for an invitation.

Force, how he despised this man. "Your Highness."

"Lord Vader," Xizor replied from deep in his chest, bowing from his waist. "It has been too long since last we met." He rose, and when his gaze penetrated Vader's opaque eyescreens, a slick smile appeared. "I cannot tell you how much I've been looking forward to this evening. His Majesty's festivities are never short of amusement and delight." He lifted his glass of frothing wine. "And one can always expect a...surprise to be part of the night's enchantment." He brought it to his lips.

Vader could not read Xizor's thoughts or emotions: Like the Hutts, the Falleen were one of few races in the galaxy whose biochemical makeup could block the Force from their minds. But he did catch the shrewd smile, and the quick fleeting glance he gave the Emperor from over the rim of his glass. Suspicion glimmered in the back of the Dark Lord's mind. "I am sure you will enjoy all this evening has to offer, Prince Xizor," he answered, blending a lilt of menace in the courtesy. "And more."

Palpatine's croaking voice cut the moment. "Prince Xizor, you and your lovely companions, as always, bring beauty and grace to our presence. Please," he offered with a sweeping gesture, even as his face cracked with its wicked grin, "partake."

Xizor bowed again. He turned to his bevy of beauties and led them down the stairs to meld into the crowd. Vader watched him for a brief second, then scanned the floor for the face of Wrenga Jixton. Jixton caught the Dark Lord's brusque nod toward the Falleen prince, and immediately set upon following him through the throng.

Vader's attention was once more drawn by the Emperor's coagulated chortle. "Although this is a celebration of MY reign, it seems our distinguished guests are far more interested in YOU, my friend."

Vader viewed the rest of the ballroom. Below from the ballroom floor and above from the repulsor balconies, they gawked. They ignored the lilting chorale music, and the introduction of the guests called as they entered the grand ballroom and strode the long carpet to greet the Emperor. Ten thousand nobles, aristocrats, admirals, generals, male and female, reptilian and mammalian, all their eyes fixed on him, all leaning into each other, and all whispering. He glared back at them, pulling his expressionless gaze slowly across the assembly before he spoke again. "Certain information was leaked to the media."