Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars)

by Chuck Wendig

  By the end of the old man’s tirade, Galli tries to speak—and cannot. He tries to breathe—and cannot. He reaches for his neck and paws at his throat, a high-pitched keen the only sound escaping his mouth. His face pulses and throbs. His vision begins to go dark.

  This is it. This is me dying. I have failed the lesson.

  Palpatine waves his hand, and the pressure closing Galli’s throat is gone as fast as it came. The young man gasps and tries not to cry.

  Palpatine reaches out and takes Galli’s hand with a grasp that is alarmingly gentle. The man’s skin is papery and thin. It’s almost sharp, too, as if running your hands along his flesh in the wrong direction will slice your own like a razor.

  “It angers me,” Palpatine says sadly, “to think of an Empire that fails its Emperor. But one must admit that it is possible. And in that possibility, it is wise to play the very long game. It is time I look to the unforgivable outcome and plan for that. You are part of that plan.”

  “How?”

  “You, my son, are the Contingency.”

  “What is that?”

  “There are unforeseen costs that must be paid. You may have to be the one who pays those costs, Galli. Which means it is time now to join the Empire. You will serve me in whatever way I require, and if all goes well you will remain the Contingency. If you fail me, then I will find another, for this role is one of great purpose and destiny. Will you be what I require?”

  “I will.”

  That smile returns. “Most excellent.”

  “But I do not know how.”

  “Ah. That will come in time. For now: Do you like opera?”

  The redheaded boy sits on a ship without viewports so he cannot see the endless dunes or the raging war going on above them. All he can see right now is the other children: two dozen of them lining benches on each side of the transport ship, all of them in white, all of them staring at the young child as if he’s a gobbet of meat and they’re a pack of slavering yenavores.

  They are hungry and feral and he tries not to tremble.

  But the boy trembles harder, instead.

  The door to the transport bay opens, and a man steps in—the boy knows this man: Counselor Rax.

  The man comes and stands before the boy, looking down.

  “Hello, Armitage.”

  “Sir,” the redheaded boy says in a small voice. “Hello.”

  “Has your father explained to you what’s happening?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Hm. Brendol does not much like you, I suspect.”

  Tears line the boy’s eyelids as he nods in agreement. “I suspect that is correct, sir.”

  “Listen to you. The pinnacle of a private education. Such a crisp evocation of words for such a young lad. Even in fear you speak clearly and plainly. Well done, Armitage.” The man sighs and kneels down. “I was not initially so fortunate as you. I was born here on Jakku. This horrible world. Those born here are already dead, or so I once thought. But I was reborn. I was brought into the Empire by our late Emperor and made anew. I was turned from the little sand-scoured Jakku savage into something considerably more civilized. I was like you in one way, though: I, too, was scared.”

  “I am scared, sir.”

  “Yes. That is wise. Fear is useful when it guides us—but it becomes dangerous when it governs us. I am here to tell you what is going to happen. We are taking this ship to a location where a second ship awaits. You and these other children will be taken far away. Your father will come, as will I. We will meet others at our destination. Together we will begin something new. We will leave all of this behind. Do you understand?”

  The boy does not, and he says as much. “No, sir. Not truly.”

  The man laughs softly. “That’s fine, Armitage. It will all become clear one day. For now, I leave you with a gift.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “These other children? They stare at you, don’t they?”

  “Y…yes, sir.”

  “They want to kill you, I fear. They want to slash you with their fingernails. They want to bite you until you are just unrecognizable pieces. They would, if given half a chance, beat you with common rocks until all your limbs were broken sticks. Just as I was once a savage of Jakku, so too are these children savage in the same way. Your father’s work has only heightened that impulse. He has sharpened them the way you do a knife.”

  The boy is truly afraid. The urge to go to the bathroom rises, and he is suddenly sure that he is going to wet himself. And he knows, too, that when he does, the other children will pounce upon him at this man’s command. They will smell his weakness and they will slaughter him.

  “I…”

  “The gift. You want to know about the gift. Here it is, Armitage: You will lead these children. They will serve you. And one day soon your father will pass down his teachings to you, and you will learn to do what he did. It will be your life’s work to take children like these savages and hammer their malleable minds into whatever shape you so require. They will be tools built for the work at hand. That is my gift to you, boy. One day your father will die. One day soon, I fear. And you will take his place.”

  He stands then and speaks to the other children. “Listen to me closely. This boy, Armitage Hux, commands you. You will do as he decides. You will give your lives for him if you must. Nod if you understand.”

  They all nod in a simultaneity that both disturbs and thrills Armitage.

  “Thank you,” Armitage says to Counselor Rax.

  “It is my pleasure. The future of the Empire needs you. Now sit tight. We’re almost at the Observatory. Our destiny isn’t long now.”

  With that, Rax turns on his heel and walks back through the rows of children and back out of the transport hold. The door seals shut behind him.

  The children all turn once more toward Armitage to stare. He fears that this has all been some trickster’s ruse, some game played upon him—they won’t listen to him. He doesn’t command anything or anyone. They’ll laugh at him and, as the man said, they’ll beat him, claw him, bite him.

  He draws in a quick intake of breath and points to one of the children with a wavering finger—the child is a boy like him, but with tar-dark hair and sun-marked skin. “You,” Armitage says to him.

  The boy says nothing.

  “Do you agree to do as I say?” Armitage asks.

  The dark-haired boy nods.

  Armitage balls his fingers into fists as he steadies himself. “I want you to hit the boy to the right of you. Hard.”

  The dark-haired boy turns to a sandy-haired, sallow-cheeked lad. Then he raises a fist and clubs that other boy in the side of the head. The boy cries out. A line of blood crawls from a small gash in the victim’s cheek.

  Armitage feels a strange and sinister buzz of excitement.

  Once again the light of Jakku presses hard against Sloane’s eyes as she and Brentin are ushered forth by Norra Wexley and that mad droid. When her eyes adjust anew, the first thing she sees in the sky is her ship.

  The Ravager.

  Sloane has a pang deep inside, like a string being plucked, the resultant vibration humming in her marrow. Regret courses through her like a poison. A choice presents itself, now: She could run, or overpower Norra, in order to steal a ship. She could take that ship up to the Ravager. She could land and regain control. Not an easy task, no, but she is confident in her ability to get it done. Then she could take her ship and just…go.

  It would not be an act of cowardice. It would be one of survival. The Ravager is a Super Star Destroyer—a dreadnought of mighty proportions. It is by itself a massive flying city. It has enough room to contain a powerful remnant of the Empire. It has the weapons to hold off a whole fleet—as it is doing right now by pushing back the New Republic armada. She could take the Ravager. She could spare some portion of the Empire and flee into the stars with that massive vessel. With it she could start over again.

  The Empire could start over again.

&n
bsp; But that would mean setting her vengeance aside.

  And that is something she just cannot do. The urge for revenge is like a hook in her cheek, and it’s drawing her miserably toward it, tug, tug, tug.

  Rax has ruined it all. He has touched the Empire with a filthy hand, and foul streaks of his treachery are everywhere, corroding all that she loves. The Empire to Sloane was an entity of order and discipline. It was about upholding stability in a chaotic galaxy. It was about vanquishing uncertainty and providing a way of things: a schematic, a backbone, a path for all to follow if they wanted to be safe.

  And now it’s this. A wild, brutal remnant, like a broken spear stuck in the sand. The troopers have turned to common thugs. The officers are haunted and overwhelmed. This is a primitive place, and it has made them primitive in return. The Empire that she loved is gone. That revelation reaches her again, and this time for the last time.

  In her heart, she lets the Ravager go.

  Just as she let Adea Rite go.

  And just as she is letting all the hopes for the Empire’s future go.

  Norra’s blaster prods her in the back. “You want to keep moving? We don’t have time for sightseeing, Admiral.”

  “Just Sloane,” she says. “I’m an admiral no more.” Just a rebel like you. She keeps moving toward the shuttle.

  And toward her vengeance.

  —

  Ackbar’s chair swivels from station to station as he examines the battle map—his massive gelatinous eyes flick their gaze among screens, assessing the situation. And the assessment is not ideal.

  This should have been easier. The New Republic fleet is larger. The Empire has been waning. On paper, it’s an easy victory—

  And yet, so far, it has been anything but. They’ve already lost a contingent of corvettes. Two frigates are down. Countless starfighters have been lost to the swarm of TIEs that fill the void.

  Of course, Admiral Ackbar is a student of history, and in many cases smaller, lesser forces have outmatched and outfoxed their betters. The Ghostfinder fleet versus the Sith armada. The Mandalorians versus the Grand Army of the Republic. And, of course, the Rebel Alliance versus the Empire.

  History is rife with examples of weaker forces routing the stronger. And that may happen here, too, if they’re not smart and cautious.

  The Empire has changed their tactics—they are fighting with a brutality and a chaos that has never been seen in their repertoire. One frigate broke in half when a single TIE bomber crashed head-on into the bridge connecting the two halves of the ship. They expend their weapons in every direction. Their attacks offer no rhyme or reason—the old Imperial maneuvers, always so neatly predictable and textbook, either are being willfully ignored or have simply been forgotten. That lends their defense a desperate, dangerous edge. It is, quite honestly, hard to combat. (It’s also, Ackbar supposes, exactly what made his own fleet so difficult to fight as rebels.)

  The other component is that damnable dreadnought. It has ten times the weapons loadouts of a single Star Destroyer—its shadow is deeper and wider than the dark of space beyond it. The other smaller Destroyers circle it, parting long enough to allow torpedoes and turbolasers to lance out in the divide, injuring the New Republic fleet while protecting it. It’s like a hive protecting its queen. But if we kill the queen, the hive will die.

  Right now three of the best and brightest ships in their fleet are surging against the Imperial fleet in order to take down that dreadnought—the Unity, the Amity, and the Concord. Those three Starhawks, with their blunt hatchet-fronts, are meant to drive a wedge in the Empire’s cordon of Star Destroyers—but they’re simply not breaking through. They’re tangling with the Destroyers while taking fire from the Ravager. Taking all of the brunt while earning little of the advantage.

  He thinks to engage with Agate to discuss a new strategy—

  But that will have to wait, as the hologram of General Tyben appears. Tyben is a narrow-shouldered man, his head as square and bald as a cube of ice (and he’s near as pale, too). His features are knotted with worry.

  “Status report?” Ackbar asks.

  “Ground forces are finding some success, Admiral,” Tyben answers. The hologram flickers—not uncommon given the chaos of battle. So many frequencies and energy sources to interrupt the transmission. “We have pushed their line back, klick by klick. We may be advancing on their base by nightfall—that is, if we can stem our casualties. We’re hemorrhaging lives. The Empire is fighting less like the Empire and more like an insurgent force, Admiral. They take risks. They sacrifice their soldiers. It’s pandemonium but they seem to be using it to their advantage and not their detriment.”

  “We are experiencing similar up here,” Ackbar growls. “But we are not so fortunate as you—we have gained little ground. Keep pushing forward. If you find success on the ground it may earn us an edge here.”

  Tyben nods, and hesitates before saying: “I should be there.”

  “You are best on Chandrila, kept at a distance.” And he is. Ackbar told the chancellor to keep one of their best military strategists in reserve, safe with her. He warned her to be wary that Jakku could be a ruse: The Empire tempts them to attack, thus leaving both Chandrila and Nakadia vulnerable to predation once more. That meant dividing their forces and keeping security high in the New Republic worlds. Still, that seems to have been a false concern. There has been no sign of any threat as yet. “You have your men on the ground led by Lieutenant General Brockway.”

  “But with me present—”

  “We have no time for this, General Tyben. I thank you for your concern and your update.” Ackbar ends the holographic transmission, then turns to open a channel to Agate. But his webbed hand pauses, held fixed over the console as he gazes out the viewport of the Home One bridge—

  His blood goes cold as saline as he watches the tragedy unfold.

  One of the Star Destroyers—the Punishment—turns its nose drastically starboard. It turns right toward the Starhawk Amity. And the Amity has little room to maneuver given its proximity both to Agate’s Concord and to the battle raging all around it.

  It’s suicide, Ackbar thinks. He believes it must be an accident, but it seems to be deliberate. The Punishment’s nose is like a sweeping blade, and it crashes into the blunt fore of the Amity, shearing through it. Fire blooms in space. Bodies drift. And the Punishment keeps going. Thrusters burn at the back and repulsors fire along the side—the Destroyer becomes a weapon as it cuts the Starhawk in half, debris from both ships cascading outward as lightning coruscates between the two obliterated vessels.

  Agate’s own ship is right in the middle of it all.

  He hurriedly opens the channel.

  —

  Everything focuses to a sharp point. Agate hears Ackbar in her ear, is faintly aware of his presence cast in holographic blue to her right. He’s warning her about the debris field coming her way, but he doesn’t need to tell her about it. She sees it on her screens: A hundred red motes blink like furious eyes winking in the dark. Each is a piece of debris, and each piece rockets toward her like a weapon—the wreckage of not one ship but two.

  That wave of destruction will be here in less than three minutes.

  She yells for Spohn to strengthen the port-side shields. But she knows they’ll only hold up so long. That many fragments? It’s too much.

  “Abandon ship, Commodore!” Ackbar roars. “That is an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” she says, her voice sounding a thousand light-years away.

  This is what it comes down to, she thinks. Her return to war is over as quickly as it began. Their brute-force strategy to break the blockade of Star Destroyers has ended. The Amity is down. The Concord won’t last. She barks for the communications officer to warn the Unity—they have room to maneuver, to get out of range. Not only will the Concord create its own debris field, but with that Star Destroyer gone and the two Starhawks vacating the field, that will leave the Unity vulnerable to attacks from that massive drea
dnought waiting in the center of it all.

  Abandon ship.

  She makes the call. It’s the right thing to do. And they’re going to have to move fast—worst thing is, they can only use the pods on the starboard side. Otherwise, they’d launch right into the wave of wreckage.

  Red lights pulse. Klaxons blare. A flurry of activity rises around her as the people of the bridge do as they have been trained to do, streaming efficiently and effectively toward the exits—the capital command crew have escape pods all their own and within spitting distance of the bridge.

  Her artificial eye focuses on the screens. She sweeps her finger ahead, fast-forwarding the expected consequences of what’s coming—the computer is predictive and models the likeliest outcome. The debris will damage, but not destroy, the Concord. It will, however, leave them open to attack from the dreadnought. And they’re close enough to the top of Jakku’s atmosphere that the ship will likely drop toward the surface. Crashing into sand and stone. They will lose the Concord one way or another.

  Spohn grabs her elbow. “Commodore, it’s time.”

  “I’m coming,” she says. “I’ll be right there.”

  But it’s a lie.

  “Commodore—”

  “I said go. I’ll be along.”

  Ackbar starts to ask her what she’s doing. She ends communication with him. I am sorry, Admiral. But she realizes something:

  If the destruction of the Punishment and the Amity open up her ship to attack by the dreadnought—

  Then it also opens up the dreadnought to attack by the Concord.

  She has her chance.

  It’s one she likely cannot survive. But the costs of war are heavy, even in victory. That has been one of her guiding, governing principles. It is a grudging reality that informs all that she does in battle.

  Her hand is no longer trembling. It has been stayed, perhaps by the first moment of certainty she’s felt in a very long time. How about that.

  She uses her newly steady hand to urge forward the Concord’s throttle so that it seizes the gap in the Star Destroyer barricade, thrusting hard toward the dreadnought. Above her head, lights flick from red to green: pod bays launching one after the other as her people abandon ship.