Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars)

by Chuck Wendig

  Mon Mothma demands that this take place on Chandrila—the same place that the Empire attacked on Liberation Day. The signing occurs on the crystal cliffs north of Hanna City, under an ancient tintolive tree. The chancellor is flanked by her two advisers: Sinjir Rath Velus, and Hosnian Prime’s Sondiv Sella. Princess Leia is present, as well. The signing occurs during the third hour of her labor, though she only tells her husband this after the ceremony is complete—at which point, he hurries her off to the birthing chamber in the heart of Hanna City.

  The Empire is surrendered with minimal concession. The Instrument of Surrender informing the Galactic Concordance demands not only that all fighting cease on behalf of the Empire, but also that the Imperial government dissolve immediately. After which Mon Mothma signs a further declaration denoting that all still-living Imperial officials are now categorized as war criminals. Non-combatant functionaries within the Imperial government are given conditional pardons, provided they continue to act by the articles of the Galactic Concordance. Mas Amedda, in return, escapes without such formal censure, though certainly the stigma never leaves him. The media and the history books both brand him as a toady and a lackey and one of the willing—if weak—architects of the Empire. Even still, he is granted a provisional (and powerless) government on Coruscant, left with New Republic overseers who help confirm that he remains as little more than a figurehead, continuing his toothless rule over a troubled world.

  After the ceremony is complete, Mon Mothma thanks Sinjir with a bottle of something very expensive: a lachrymead from before the birth of the Empire. Inside the bottle, the liquid—which, if we’re being honest, is really just the fermented tears of the sentient bees of the Nem-hive—has a golden glow, like sunlight on the sea. When you shake it, the glow strengthens. “Hope through agitation,” Mon Mothma explains. “The light glows stronger when we struggle.”

  “From before the Empire, you say?” he asks.

  “From a better day, yes.”

  He thanks her. She asks him if he’ll drink it.

  “No,” he says, to his own surprise. “Not today, at least. This feels somehow too special to violate with my crass tongue.”

  “You’ve matured,” she tells him.

  “Just like this wine,” he says, with a wink.

  —

  The war ends, the Empire dies, but the battle goes on.

  Though the cease-fire is signed, the Battle of Jakku still rages. Its forces there refuse to surrender. They fight past the point of sanity. For weeks. Then months. The shattered Imperial remnant has no strategy. Their base is overtaken. The captains of the lingering Imperial fleet use more dramatic and desperate tactics as the battle rages, many trying to mimic the tractor beam snare that served as Agate’s final maneuver in this life. A few of those captains, utilizing mysterious coordinates, jump into Unknown Space. It is assumed that their disappearance is tantamount to suicide.

  This remnant is like a parasite with its head sunk in the meat of its own certainty, teeth biting tight. It takes months for the fighting to truly end, months for the New Republic soldiers to round up the captives and count the dead, all that time for the Empire’s ghost to catch up with the death of its body and realize that the fight is well and truly over.

  Even then, it doesn’t stop across the galaxy. Remnants remain. Some hide out, waiting for some savior to come save them. Others go out with spectacular flare-ups of violence and viciousness. But these remnants are few. Gallius Rax did the work of destroying the demesne properly. Those that linger cannot stay long. The rest are prisoners, so many that the New Republic has no idea what to do with them.

  On Jakku, the war leaves behind a world of wreckage. Scavengers feast upon the remains. Niima the Hutt emerges even before the fighting is truly over to begin hoarding what she and her people can find. Already a black market forms around the junk and debris—weapons and computers and engines, all littering the sand like the markets of a massive graveyard. Niima sits at the center of this black market like a fat, throbbing tumor diverting blood flow to itself.

  The galaxy heals.

  The people do, too.

  But a grievous injury such as the one caused by the Empire cannot heal without leaving scars behind as a reminder.

  —

  Akiva.

  The jungle is thick, though the air is thicker. The funeral traditions of the world are many, but this is the one that Norra and her family cleave to: Brentin Wexley’s body is wrapped in a gauzy cloth. Friends and family heap him with garlands of hai-ka flowers, which are as orange and as soft as the tail feathers of a firebird. Then they sing songs and tell stories over him before sinking him in the salt marsh. The salt will eat the body over a short time, and it will claim him. He may return to Akiva as a child of Akiva—from water they arise, to water they return. Atoms to atoms.

  But before the body sinks down, Temmin rushes up to his father and places across him a different honorific—

  A metal arm. A droid arm. It belonged to Bones, and is the only part of his mechanical friend he was able to rescue from the sands of Jakku. Temmin, trying desperately not to cry, whispers: “Bones, you watch over my dad, okay? Keep him safe.” Then he hugs both of them together.

  The salt mire takes the body.

  Norra falls to the ground, crying, and Temmin holds her for a time as his aunts stand by. When all the others have gone, he helps her stand. They spend a few days with the aunts, and then it’s time to go home.

  —

  Thanks to a friend who is now apparently a high-ranking adviser to the chancellor of the New Republic, Jas Emari not only gets Dengar, Embo, and Jeeta full pardons, she actually manages to get them some money from the New Republic. Not as much as she promised, no. But it’s enough to stop them from killing her—and enough to convince them to remain formed up as a new crew. Dengar seems particularly pleased by this turn of events. “Times, they are a-changing, my little gompers. We’re gonna need to watch each other’s backs, eh?”

  Even still, she takes some time on Chandrila to herself. She tells her new crew she’ll track them down when the time is right.

  For now, she says, she has to find somebody else.

  The story made its way to her that Jom Barell went to Jakku to save her. Laughable, really, because what? He’s going to save her? Oh, so she can’t take care of herself? Jas feels she’s proven very well that she has, and so her plan is to go to his apartment, look him dead in the eye (the one eye, since the other is gone), give him a stern lecture on her ability to save herself thank-you-very-much, and then kiss him until he can’t breathe. But when she gets there, he’s not at home.

  Someone else is there. A woman. A commando, by the uniform. Jas feels embarrassed, and she stammers an apology—

  The woman just says she’s here to collect Jom’s things.

  “Why? Where’s he gone?”

  “Gone to where we all go,” the woman says. Jas still doesn’t understand, so the woman spells it out plainly: “He died on Jakku.”

  It takes too long for Jas to understand. Even when it hits her, it still doesn’t hit her. The woman says there’s a video from the U-wing—and she asks if Jas wants to see it. She doesn’t, but she says yes anyway, so she watches it. It’s short and choppy—standard for a combat-cam. The ship drops into atmosphere and the SpecForce commandos are hanging near the exit, ready to jump out and join the war even before the damn thing has a chance to land. Jas sees Jom there, and he leans in toward the cam and gives it a wink and a hard nod. “New Republic, ahuga—”

  And the rest of the commandos, men and women, echo that word:

  “AHUGA!”

  Some battle cry Jas doesn’t understand.

  Jom smirks one last time—

  From outside the door, from the surface of Jakku, Jas sees the glint of something. A missile, maybe. Concussive, probably.

  None of the others see it. None except Jom. He bellows, “Incoming!”

  And then he does the unthinkable. Jom puts his
foot down on the lip of the open door, leaping right past the beam cannon placement and out into open air. He stays aloft, pulsing his jetpack—two hard burns of blue energy out the back—and he heads right toward the missile.

  The U-wing pivots to port side, lifting up and away from the incoming projectile. As it moves, Jom disappears out of frame—and Jas feels her innards tightening as she inwardly screams that she wants the camera to shift back down again, down, down, so she can see him one last time.

  Everything goes white and pixilated.

  “I…I don’t understand,” Jas says when the vid is over. “He should’ve mounted that cannon—”

  “Would’ve taken a few seconds to spin up—by then, too late.”

  “He didn’t need to do that.”

  “He did. And he saved us.”

  That’s all Dayson needs to say.

  Jas thanks the woman and leaves. It takes days for her to process it. Days of walking around like she’s in someone else’s body, days until the truth of the thing hits her with the impact of a wall falling upon her: He came to save me, and he died in service to that. He followed his heart, and it got him killed. And then she’s left to wonder: Would she make the same choice? Does she have a larger purpose, a greater debt, and is she willing to pay it? Maybe she’s the one without a star.

  She spends the next week in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  —

  War is about loss, yes. But when it ends, joy surges. How could it not? Burying the dead is a somber act, but the celebration that follows confirms that they did not die in vain. They died to make the galaxy free.

  And my, does the galaxy celebrate. Not only has the Empire’s gauntleted fist let go of the galaxy’s neck—it is gone entirely. The oppression is at an end and so the celebrations go for weeks. Fireworks on Chandrila. Festivals of food on Nakadia. Nonstop parties in the streets and on the rooftops of Coruscant. And this time, the Empire isn’t there to stop it. They do not police these carnivals and festivities. No troopers show up to fire upon the parades or execute protestors. It’s just one more sign that the Empire is well and truly gone. The New Republic demonstrates that it is the polar opposite of the Galactic Empire: It encourages the celebrations, it holds official revels and pageants and exultations of joy. Wherever the New Republic’s light touches, it marks the occasion with a holiday.

  Liberation Day is remade into the seven-day Festival of Liberation.

  —

  And then, there is the matter of a child.

  On the day the Instruments of Surrender are signed, a child is born on Chandrila to Leia Organa and Han Solo. Friends and family gather. Rumors fly about who was there and who was not. Some say that the golden boy, Luke Skywalker, made an appearance and then was gone again, off on some untold mission. Others say his absence was conspicuous. Missing, too, was Solo’s copilot, who is said to have finally found his own Wookiee family on Kashyyyk. Stories of the birth range from the dramatic and fortuitous to the utterly inauspicious—one story suggests that the birthing chamber was occupied for three whole days while Leia struggled. Another tells the tale that it was fast and painless: She merely needed to calm herself and meditate to make the moment as untroubled as a mountain lake. Some say the boy was born with a shock of black hair, others that he had a full set of teeth, others still that he was just a baby like any other, sweet one moment, screaming the next, and nestling at his mother as any healthy child does.

  What is known is this: The child’s name is Ben, and he takes his father’s last name, even as Leia keeps only her own family name, Organa.

  —

  Han looks into the eyes of his son.

  My son.

  How the hell did that happen? Well, he knows how that happened—a night under the stars in the canopy of Endor trees. But in the larger sense, the galaxy is a far stranger place than he figured on if it’s letting him be a father.

  Solo stands in the nursery, alone. The boy, Ben, wriggles and gurgles in the round white bubble of protection that is the infancy cradle. Han leans forward over it, arms crossed on the rail while looking down at the child’s chubby face and dark eyes. They regard each other. The child burbles.

  While Leia is in the other room taking a shower, Han says in a low voice: “Hey. It’s you and me, kid. Whole damn galaxy against us but we’ll make it through okay. I’m not always gonna be the best dad—c’mon, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I can barely take care of myself. But I’ll always keep us pointed in the right direction…even if we zig and zag a little to get there. There’s your first lesson: Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t mean following a straight line. Sometimes you gotta—” He takes his hand and gestures with it like it’s a fish swimming this way and that, left and right and up and down. “Don’t tell your mother I said that.”

  Ben starts to cry. It comes on fast, like a tropical downpour. He’s staring up, all innocent, and then it hits, boom. The little body tightens up and his mitts make little rubbery fists and punch the air. His white cheeks bloom with red. The sound coming out of him is like a storm siren.

  Han winces. Ah, hell. He looks around him like there’s gotta be something or someone there to save him—nearby, he finds a small tooka doll that Lando sent over, and he takes it and thrusts it into the air above the boy and wiggles it. “Here. Look. The cat is, ahh. The cat is dancing? Dancing tooka. Come on, kid, you gotta give me something here.”

  It does nothing to stem the tide of tears.

  Han growls, looking around for something else. He’s about to yell for Leia—but there she is, coming in through the doorway. “He’s, ahh, you know. He’s making that sound again.”

  “He’s crying.”

  “Right. Yeah.” Han holds up a finger. “It’s not my fault!”

  “Han,” Leia says, coming over to him, still in her towel. “It’s okay. He’s a baby. Babies cry. It’s how they tell you they want something.”

  “Oh. Yeah, no, of course. Maybe you could do your—” He mimes his hand floating in the air in an almost religious gesture. Leia has a connection with the kid that he can never have. Like Luke, she has the Force. That’s a thing he never used to believe in, but since getting caught up with this group, he’s seen a whole lot of strangeness just to believe it’s just a bunch of hooey. Leia can’t do what Luke can do and maybe never will, but she can quiet the kid with but the faintest of gestures. He hates to admit it, but he’s jealous of that. Han will never have that with Ben. They’re connected in a way he can’t even begin to understand. “You know. Use the Force.”

  “Why don’t we try something else?”

  “A little brandy on his gums?”

  “Pick him up,” she says.

  “Just…pick him up?”

  “Yes. He’s your son. Use your hands. Go on, Han. Pick him up. He wants to be snuggled.”

  “I smuggle, not snuggle.”

  “Han.”

  He sighs. “Okay! Okay.” He stoops down and gingerly reaches for his son. He hoists him up and Ben twists and turns in his grip. He’s so small. Han thinks how easy it would be to break him. Or to drop him. The boy is vulnerable to everything. And so he does what feels most natural—he protects the kid by bringing him close to his chest. And just like that—

  Ben stops crying. The boy nuzzles up against his collarbone. He burps once, his dark eyes pinch shut, and he’s out like a light.

  “See?” she says. “You don’t need the Force at all.”

  “But I’ll never have what you have with him.”

  “You don’t have to,” she says, sweetly. “You will have your own thing, because you’re his father.”

  —

  Weeks later, Norra’s old crew gathers again. Not for an assignment. They gather because it may be the last time they see one another for a while. Maybe forever, given the way things sometimes go. The tavern they find themselves in is one of Sinjir’s favorites, up on the side of a cliff overlooking the Silver Sea. They gather to drink, and they drink to
Jom, and to Auxi, and to Brentin Wexley, and of course they drink to Mister Bones and tell stories about that mad dancing murder-droid until they’re all laughing so hard they’re crying. They drink to the Empire and to the New Republic. They drink to Leia and Han and the new baby who surely is keeping them up at nights. (“Squalling grub-monkey,” Sinjir calls the boy.)

  When they talk of the child, Sinjir adds, as if surprised: “Did you know: The child did not smell bad. Not at all.”

  Conder laughs and explains, “Sin thought the baby would stink.”

  “Of course I did. Babies are foul little gobbos, covered in their own infant slime. I expected them to smell sour. Or…diapery.”

  “Oh, Sinjir, no,” Norra says, her cheeks blushing with a bit of inebriation from the junipera she’s been drinking. “No, no, no. Babies smell wonderful. They smell sweet and fresh and innocent.”

  “Sounds like you want to eat them,” Sinjir says. “Wait, maybe we should eat them. Like wriggling little loaves of bread, they are.”

  Conder drives an elbow under his ribs. He oofs.

  Norra continues: “Stop it, there’s nothing like the smell of a new baby. That little star-child smelled like he was made of clean towels. This one here used to smell so good—” She leans into her son, who of course drinks a sensible jogan-juice. Temmin wrinkles his nose in embarrassment and fails to pull away from his mother as she pinches his cheeks and makes a sound like wooshy gooshy woo.

  “Mom.”

  “Oh, relax, Tem. I’m your mother. I’m allowed to embarrass you from time to time. It is my parental right, sacred and omniversal.”

  “Ugh.”

  Jas leans back with a scoundrel’s ease and clucks her tongue. “I think we’re supposed to call him Snap now, isn’t that right?”

  Again he’s embarrassed. Blushing as he does. “That’s what the other pilots in Phantom Squadron call me. It’s because I can turn like this—” He snaps his fingers, pow. Everyone knows it’s because of his nervous habit—one shared by his father, once. But no one corrects him on it today.