Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars)

by Chuck Wendig

  The world shudders. A fierce growl grumbles up through the bore, and the orange light glows suddenly red—the blue threads of mist turn black. Palpatine was right. The artifacts contain a great deal of energy.

  And now they have dropped into the core of this world. With the well open, that energy will vent. So begins the chain reaction that will destroy everything. The planet will soon begin to crack. It shall break apart. It’ll swallow the Empire and the New Republic fleets and soldiers whole. When it does, it will leave this galaxy to the scavengers and the scum, rotting like a fruit lying forgotten in the dirt. Though an idle thought troubles him: All fruit, no matter how rotten, can leave behind seeds…

  It’s time to leave. The Imperialis awaits. His destiny calls like a seductive whisper. But then he realizes, he’s hearing voices. Real voices. He is not alone in here, not anymore. And one of those voices, he recognizes.

  Hello, Sloane, he thinks.

  —

  The ground shudders suddenly beneath them, moving hard to the right—Norra nearly loses her footing. Brentin helps to steady her, and she pulls out of his grip, casting him a suspicious look.

  “You don’t trust me,” he says.

  “I don’t,” she says under her breath. I don’t know what’s in your head. I don’t know if the chip is still controlling you. I don’t know why you were with her of all people. He’s about to say more, but Sloane interrupts—

  “Look,” Sloane says, pointing to a bank of octagonal computers. Above them, holoscreens flash red. A diagram shows what looks like a mining bore down through layers of mantle and schist. It’s pulsing white. A number sits above it—a percentage, slowly dwindling.

  “What am I seeing?” Norra asks.

  “I don’t know,” Sloane answers.

  Brentin hurries over to the machine, looking down at a keyboard with a quizzical glance—the keys are triangular, most gold, some silver. He ignores those and instead moves his hand to the holoscreen itself, and when his fingers touch it, it swipes away and fills with scrolling data. “I…oh, no.”

  “What is it?” Norra and Sloane say in unison before giving each other a dirty, dubious look.

  “The integrity of the planet has been compromised. Something…something is affecting the mantle. A system of tremors causing a cascading failure from the core up. This shaft, this…borehole, it’s the key to it, a channel focusing the seismic wave. There are baffles here—telescoping vents to close the shaft, but they’re on lockdown.”

  “What does that all mean?” Sloane asks.

  “It means this world doesn’t have long.”

  Norra’s knees nearly buckle. Temmin…he’s here. Jas, too. Wedge. The whole damn Republic fleet. If Jakku goes, they all go.

  “Can you close it?” Norra asks.

  “I can try.”

  “Do that,” Sloane barks. “I’m finding Rax. He has to be here somewhere.” Her voice sounds threadbare and desperate.

  Norra points her blaster at the other woman. “No.”

  Sloane stares down the barrel of the pistol. “I’m not the enemy here.”

  “You’re my enemy. You corrupted my husband. You’ve brought him on this lunatic’s journey. You—”

  “What I am is running out of time. Rax is the one behind all of this. Put that pistol down, Norra Wexley. Let me do what I need to do.”

  Brentin now comes up behind Norra, and she flinches, fearing he’s there to attack her—but all he does is say, “Please, Norra.”

  Her hand shakes so hard she’s afraid it might fall off.

  Norra lowers the pistol. “Go.”

  “You could give me the pistol.”

  “Only way I give you this pistol is by pulling the trigger first.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t need a blaster anyway—I am weapon enough.” Sloane nods, as if summoning enough courage to make her last statement true. Then she turns on her heel and walks away, heading down an adjacent hallway. Not once does she look back over her shoulder.

  Norra wheels on her husband and hisses at him: “You need to fix this. Brentin, listen very closely. Temmin is here, on Jakku. Your son. If you love him, and you love me, and you care at all about the New Republic that you once fought to build, fix this.”

  Fear and uncertainly flash like lightning in Brentin’s eyes, but he nods and in a quiet, firm voice he says: “I will.”

  —

  She finds him waiting for her. Down a set of steps, past a wall lined with what look to be powered-down droids, Rax waits. An infernal glow rises behind him, with blue embers whirling in the air above.

  “Hello, Rax,” Sloane says.

  It’s just her in here with him. She has nothing. No weapon. That damnable Norra Wexley wouldn’t lend her a blaster. That awful woman was stubborn as the roots of an old tree. Smart move, admittedly. Sloane thought to simply take it from the woman, but in no world does she believe Brentin Wexley would allow that. And so she tells herself what she told them:

  I am weapon enough.

  At the very least, she knows they won’t be leaving her behind. The shuttle gave up the ghost moments before landing: It was already shot to hell when they took it from the Imperial base, and as the ship settled toward the ground, coming in to land through the blowing sand and whipping dust, the engines gave out, the repulsors failed, and the whole ship thudded dully as it dropped. The panel went dark. The ship died. There goes our ride, she thought. Good news was, they didn’t have to use the shuttle to blast the doors open. The door wasn’t locked. She stepped to it and it opened.

  No turbolasers. No defenses at all. An unlocked door. Worry seized her: Was Rax even here? Were they too late?

  Now she knows. He’s here. This ends.

  Rax looks unarmed, as well. She sees no holster at his hip. Only him standing there, shoulders back, chest puffed out in his white naval uniform, a red cape sweeping behind him. My, he looks pleased with himself, she thinks. A smug twist to his lips adds further demonstration.

  She thinks to punch that smug look right off his face.

  “Did you see the show?” Rax asks her.

  “I did,” she answers. “Was it all for me?”

  “No. The whole galaxy was my audience. But you…” He kisses the air. “You know more than most. Which means you understood it better than almost anybody else.”

  “I don’t understand any of it. So why don’t you explain it to me?” She holds up both her hands and gives a little shrug. “You’re so proud of what you did here. Tell me. What was this all about, Counselor? Or should I call you Galli? Precious little orphan.”

  That stings him. He tries not to show it, but his lip twitches, his brow flinches. Her barb lands. “I don’t have time for this. I am leaving.”

  Her hands form fists. “Only way out is through me.”

  “So be it.” Rax walks toward her. Slow determination seems to urge him forward, the same determination of a predator stalking its prey—sure-footed, but with an easy, affable gait. Almost as if to say, Don’t worry your little whiskers about me. I won’t hurt you, little creature.

  “I will say this,” Rax comments as he takes one deliberate step after the next. “You were so close to it. We were so close. I always thought you’d be with me here at the end. And here you are.” His face goes sour. “Just not how I pictured it.”

  “You still thought I’d work with you? After Akiva? After Chandrila? You threw me into the fire again and again.”

  “Fire forges some blades.” He makes a dismissive gesture with his hands, like someone throwing away a bit of garbage. “And it ruins others.”

  He’s dead ahead of her now. Rax stops walking. He smiles.

  “I’m not letting you leave here alive,” she says.

  “How does this work, then? I don’t have a blaster.” He tugs back the curtain of his cape to show the void of weapons at either side. “I suppose I should have brought one. You should have, too.”

  “If wishes were starships—”

  He fin
ishes the refrain: “Then farmers would fly.”

  Sloane pitches forward into the breach, moving fast. Everything has been coming to this moment and she’s like a compressed spring coming unsprung—like she’s been saving up all that hatred and all that rage, tamping it down deep, so deep that it’s ready to burst out like a scalding geyser. The rage and the hate end at the front of her fist.

  Rax isn’t a boxer. He hasn’t had to fight his own fight since forever—maybe since never. He doesn’t see the hit coming.

  The fist clubs him in the nose. It gives way with a pop.

  He goes down, and she drops atop him, snarling.

  —

  At the computer, Brentin’s fingers move hesitantly over the keys. He hits one button and the holoscreen flashes angrily, a pulse of red light filling the room. Brentin curses and closes his eyes, refocusing.

  The ground quakes again, sending her heart into her throat. Norra sees the percentage dwindling. Now it’s down to 47.

  “We should’ve given her the blaster,” Brentin says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Sloane. She’s alone. And unarmed.”

  Norra bares her teeth at him, then gestures at him with the weapon. “Brentin, I don’t even know which part is you and which part is the chip in your head. Until we get it out, I’ll never know. Just turn this thing off.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, staring down at the keys, his fingers moving frantically. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

  “Now isn’t the time.”

  “Now might be the only time, Norra. I want you to know, the man who did those things on Chandrila—it wasn’t me.”

  “…I know. But I also don’t know which man you are now.”

  “I’m me. It’s not the chip.”

  “So why are you with her?” Norra seethes. “She’s the enemy, Brentin. The one you promised to fight against with tooth and claw when you joined the Rebellion. And now here you are, traveling with her? Maybe that chip in your head scrambled your brain, but she’s not your wife.”

  “She isn’t with the Empire anymore.”

  “Oh. That’s comforting. I’m sure that erases everything she’s done.”

  “It doesn’t. I know it doesn’t. But…” Her husband utters a wordless moan that devolves into a frustrated growl. The screen suddenly flashes red again and he squeezes both of his hands into fists. “I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t, okay? All I know is, even if I wasn’t in control of myself, I did a bad thing and I want to fix it. Sloane wanted the same thing, I think, and we found ourselves together here with common purpose—”

  “ ‘Together.’ That’s great.”

  “Not like that,” he pleads. “Please. I love you. I’m here for you. And for Tem. I wanted to do something right to counteract the wrong I’d done. Being on Jakku, it felt good. It felt like justice.”

  “What do you want to do, Brentin? Go in after her?”

  “She needs our help. She’s not as bad as you think she is.”

  “And she’s still not any good.”

  “There’s a greater evil in there—”

  “Then let her fight it by herself.”

  —

  Anger and hatred are blinding. Sloane realizes that too late. When she unleashed them, it was like a white flash. It was satisfying and warm. But it blinded her. Rax took the hit and went down, but it was way too easy. Soon as she’s on top of him, she sees that glint in his eyes—clever and wary—and she knows she’s just been lured into making yet another mistake.

  His fist pistons into her side. Right where the ribs never healed, right where Norra shot her back on Chandrila. And the fist—it doesn’t hit like a set of hard knuckles. It has a peak to it. A sharpness. Pain hits her there like a lightning strike and she howls. Her eyes are closed for half a second—

  And then her head rocks backward as he lurches upward, slamming his forehead into her lower jaw, bam. Her teeth dig into her lip. Blood fills her mouth and she falls off him. Stars dance and light smears across her vision. She gags on her own fluids as she crab-walks backward, anguish washing over her like a tide of acid.

  Rax is back on his feet and marching toward her. Sloane tries to stand but he drives the nose of his boot into her side. The same side. Something gives way. A bone. A rib. She cries out and slumps.

  He has something in his hand. Rax gives it a little twirl—

  A carving of some kind. A hooded figure.

  He moves it back to the palm of his hand, letting the top of it poke through the gap between his knuckles. Playfully, he stabs at the air with that fist, swish, and now she knows what hurt so bad when he hit her.

  “A piece from a Shah-tezh board,” Rax says, his words dripping with satisfaction. He’s like someone preening in the mirror. “Hurts, I wager. I saw you favoring that side back at the base, by the way. Seems my instincts were right to hit you there.” His haughty smile is suddenly empty of mirth and falls slack on his face. “I really am disappointed it ended this way. You should’ve been with me now as an ally.” Something crosses his face that looks like an epiphany. “You were an outcast, too, in a way. Weren’t you? Held at arm’s length by an Empire that did not want to know you—”

  The ground rumbles. A crack suddenly splits the floor.

  “What is happening?” she asks.

  “The end of all things,” Rax says with a theatrical pout.

  She kicks out with a foot, hoping to surprise him and catch him in the knee—he’s close now, tantalizingly so, and if she can drop him—

  Rax catches her foot and swings her sideways with surprising strength. Her body crashes into one of the pillars. More pain radiates through her in concentric ripples.

  “You think I can’t fight?” he says with a hook-lipped sneer. His eyes are alive with a mania she has never seen in him before. “As you said, I was an orphan on this world. I was a child when I killed my first man, a scavenger who came upon this place and thought he’d found a treasure. I crushed his throat with my bare hands. I killed men, beasts, other children. You boxed to win trophies. I fought to save my life and serve my Emperor.”

  Through a bubble of spit and blood, she says: “I don’t serve the Emperor. I serve the Empire.”

  “Your Empire is gone. I have killed it.” He tilts his head as if he’s listening for something. “You have friends. You aren’t alone. Let’s call them to us, shall we?”

  He drops on top of her, grabbing for her left hand. She struggles to pry it away, but he presses down with his knee, pushing her shoulder to the floor. He grips her smallest finger on that hand and—

  Snap. He levers it backward until it quickly breaks.

  Sloane screams.

  “Yes. Cry out. The bleat of an animal summoning its pack.” He grabs the next finger in. “Again!”

  He breaks that one, next.

  He hums a song, one swallowed by her pair of screams. Only later will she recognize it for what it is:

  The Cantata of Cora Vessora.

  —

  Sloane’s scream reaches their ears.

  The percentage on the holoscreen is down to 33. The walls have begun to split. The floor, too. The tremors do not come erratically—now they are constant, a low-grade rumbling as dust streams down around them.

  The war is ongoing inside Norra’s heart. Rebels versus Imperials. Freedom versus oppression. But it’s more complicated than that. Now there’s a war between her and her own husband. Who is he? What has he become? Can they ever be the same again? And then there’s the battle over Sloane. Norra wants to leave that woman to her business. Let her win or let her die. Whatever is going on beyond that door is not her business, she tells herself. Let them scrap it out and whoever emerges will either find themselves dragged before a New Republic tribunal, or meet her blaster. (Even that is a war of grave indecision. Again the confrontation of the old dichotomy: justice versus revenge. Justice is of the mind. Revenge is of the heart. Which wins out? Which deserves to win?)

&
nbsp; Sloane has seized upon revenge. Norra saw that in her.

  If she lets her be in there alone, isn’t she doing the same?

  Doesn’t that make her no different from Sloane?

  Then: a second scream. Alive with pain.

  Blast it all to hell.

  She turns away from the computer and raises the pistol. Brentin asks: “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she responds. It’s an honest answer.

  “You’re helping Sloane.”

  “Maybe. No. I don’t know. You stay here.”

  “I’m getting somewhere—I’ve closed one of the baffles, I just need to slice through the defenses to get the others.”

  “Hurry.”

  Norra marches off toward the sound of Sloane’s cries.

  Ahead is a long hallway. It descends at an easy angle. Red lights around black metal cast everything in a diabolical glow. Pillars line the side like dark, gleaming guards. Beyond, in the walls, she spies the empty, implacable faces of droids sealed into the walls. It reminds her of the prison ship on Kashyyyk, and she fails to repress a shudder.

  Where does this passage go? What awaits at the end? No sign of anything or anyone here. It’s eerily quiet. She’s about to yell for Sloane—

  But then she sees her. The woman is alone on the floor, unconscious, her hair splayed out around her like a spreading puddle. Behind her is a massive pit from which emits a hellish glow. The borehole, she thinks.

  Sloane lifts her head, casting a bleary eye to her.

  “Run,” Sloane says, her voice mushy.

  The warning comes a moment too late.

  Someone steps out from behind one of the pillars. Norra cries out, raising her blaster—but the heel of the man’s hand catches her right under the chin, driving up under Norra’s jaw so hard her whole head rattles. The dark behind her eyes explodes with light and the man’s other hand catches her blaster, twisting it out of her grip handily, so handily in fact that she’s shamed by how easily she lost her one and only weapon. She cries out and tries to flee, but—

  The blaster cracks her in the head and as she staggers forward onto her hands and knees, she looks over her shoulder to see him raise the weapon. This man in naval whites. This man in his red cape. Gallius Rax. The architect behind everything, if Sloane is to be believed.