Dear Mrs. Needa:

It is my unpleasant duty as the commanding officer of your husband, Captain Lorth Needa, to inform you of his death in the service of the Empire.

I knew your husband personally and found him to be the kind of officer who never passed the buck, always forthright and honest to a fault. Indeed, I remember the last words I said to him were to accept his apology for, oh, gosh, what was it? Wait, here it is in his service report:

…failing to catch a busted-ass little freighter piloted by a Wookie and a guy who doesn’t know that a parsec is a unit of distance not time, despite having about 8 fricking star destroyers and 500 TIE fighters at his disposal.

I’m not sure how I could have forgotten that. Probably because I’m still in too much grief over the death of such a noble soul.

You will note from the enclosed report that the official cause of death is listed as “broken neck resulting from fall into one of those open pits on the bridge of the star destroyer.” Tragic. There really should be a railing around those. I have no idea why there isn’t a railing. It’s just a couple of open pits in the floor where technicians sit so that… what? So that the people standing on the upper level can see out the window? I don’t even know why we have windows! We could just have view screens. We have faster than light engines and we need glass windows?! It doesn’t make any sense! And they put the bridge on a tower on top of the ship! It’s crazy! Some day one of these Rebel scum is just going to kamakazi right into a star destroyer bridge! Mark my words! I keep telling them we could just have view screens and have the bridge all the way inside the ship in the most protected part but all I hear is blah blah blah screens cost money and blah blah blah tradition. The whole thing is almost criminally negligent (or would be if the Emperor hadn’t done away with all the liability laws). It makes me so angry sometimes I just want to choke the whole star destroyer design team to death!

But I would never do that.

Anyway, during these most difficult of times, I want you know this: Lorth was a stand-up guy who never shirked his duty. And that’s the way he went out. He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the Empire and you have my gratitude as well as that of Emperor Palpatine himself.

Sincerely,

Lord Darth Vader

Notes:

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