▸ Column · The Galactic Empire — a junior Imperial officer whose superior claimed sole credit for a fleet logistics system before the Admiralty.
DARTH VADER replies.
Replied to by Darth Vader, with a rebuttal from Luke Skywalker.
The letter
For four cycles I built the fleet's supply-projection system alone — every duty shift, every rest period spent at the console. When my commanding officer, Captain Renata, presented it to the Admiral of Operations, she said "we assembled this," then fielded twenty minutes of questions about my engineering as though every choice had been hers. I sat three seats down the table. I still hold her written order in the datalogs: the project was "entirely in your hands." When I raised it the next shift, she laughed — that is simply how joint briefings are run, and I should be honored the Admiral was impressed. Now the sector's supply director commends her "initiative on the analytics front" to the whole command. Do I transmit the director that logged order, say nothing and request transfer to another posting, or find some middle course that does not brand me a petty keeper of scores?
Darth Vader replies
You hold the proof in your hand, and you feel its weight as a weapon. Keep it, you think, and you can make her small, set the ledger right, reclaim what was taken. I know this arithmetic. I served a master who claimed every victory I bled for as his own design, and I told myself the recognition did not matter — that the power beneath it was enough. It was not. History credits other men with fleets I commanded. I was the most feared being alive, and I was utterly alone inside the armor that bought me the fear.
Hear me. That record you wish to transmit will not return what the theft took from you. You want to be seen. A weapon makes a person submit; it does not make them see you. And if you spend yourself keeping the score, the keeping becomes the whole of you. I kept mine for thirty years. Look at what was left of the man underneath.
There is a door behind you. The director praises a counterfeit; the posting feeds another's glory and will go on feeding it. Do not burn her down to feel whole — that hollow I know to the floor of it. Walk through the door. For your own sake. Not her ruin. It is not too late for you to stand somewhere your work bears your name.
— Darth Vader
Luke Skywalker weighs in
He always says "walk through the door." That's just leaving the way he left — calling surrender wisdom because retreat is the only mercy he trusts. Don't.
I felt the urge to burn someone down once. I threw my weapon away, and I'd do it again. But throwing the weapon away isn't the same as saying nothing. You're not a scoreboard-keeper for telling the director, plainly, "I built this — here's the record." That's not revenge. That's the truth, and the people deciding your future deserve it. Don't aim it to make Renata suffer. Aim it so you're seen. Then decide if she's worth reaching — or if you've outgrown her. Don't quit on yourself before you've tried the honest thing.
— Luke Skywalker
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