by Rae Carson
Kylo waited for all his officers to take a good, long look at the severed head before he added, “General Pryde has reported to you the details of my journey to Exegol.” Well, not all the details, of course. Little about the scavenger. But they’d been briefed about the fleet they’d discovered there, that Kylo Ren had made a deal with the remnant of Palpatine and his Sith Eternal movement to commandeer everything for the First Order. “The First Order is about to become a true Empire.”
Silence around the table. Green liquid oozed from the alien’s head and pooled on the surface. Hux refused to look at it, instead staring fixedly at Kylo and his mask.
To Hux, he added, “I sense unease about my appearance, General Hux.”
Hux blinked. “About the mask? No, sir. Well done.”
“I like it,” General Parnadee agreed.
“These allies on Exegol,” came General Quinn’s voice. “They sound like a cult. Awaiting the return of the Sith. Conjurers and soothsayers…” His voice dripped with contempt. Quinn was old enough to have been a junior officer in the Empire, and he had little patience for anything that even hinted at religion or mysticism. He’d have to get over that if he wanted to keep his position.
Kylo studied his officers. Quinn’s words seemed to have made the rest uncomfortable, especially Hux, whose expression had gone completely taut.
“They conjured legions of Star Destroyers,” General Pryde pointed out. “The Sith fleet will increase our resources ten thousand fold.” He turned to General Hux. “Such range and power will correct the error of Starkiller Base,” he said to Hux, leaving no doubt as to whom he thought responsible for that debacle.
Pryde was one of the few officers who never seemed afraid of Kylo Ren, which didn’t sit well. Kylo would have gotten rid of him if he weren’t so competent. Also, it fed General Hux’s insecurity to keep the vastly smarter, wiser, and higher-ranking general around. Petty of Kylo, perhaps, but keeping his officers at odds kept them from uniting against him.
“We’ll need to increase recruitments,” General Parnadee pointed out to General Engell with more than a hint of glee. “Harvest more of the galaxy’s young—”
Engell nodded. She’d doubled recruitment already after the death of Phasma had left a void in that area of responsibility. Kylo appreciated her enthusiasm.
“This fleet,” General Quinn said. “What is it…a gift?”
This was the exact question Kylo did not want to answer.
“What is he asking for in return?” Quinn pressed. “Does he—”
Kylo thrust out his arm, calling on all his anger, all his impatience. General Quinn flew high, slammed into the ceiling. Something in his body fractured loudly, but it didn’t matter if the internal wound was mortal or not because Kylo kept him stuffed against the ceiling, gasping like a fish out of water, gradually choking to death.
Kylo stared his officers down. Hux was visibly shaken. Good. “Prepare to crush any worlds that defy us,” he spat out. “In the meantime, my Knights and I are going hunting for the scavenger.”
The Emperor wanted the scavenger dead. But Kylo had other plans. He wanted to kill the past, yes. Rule supreme over the galaxy, certainly. And the massive fleet on Exegol would help him do it.
But the ambition that cut into his being was the thought of reigning side by side with her.
They were connected. They had defeated Snoke. Together they would be invincible.
CHAPTER 4
The Jedi texts were strewn across her workbench, and Rey was poring over them for the hundredth time. Luke’s added notes on training had been invaluable to her and Leia. C-3PO had translated much of the rest, which had helped Rey learn about the history of the Jedi and the Sith. But some of the writings remained a mystery, their language too old or too secret to be in even C-3PO’s databanks.
The odd thing was that some of the mysterious notations were in Luke’s handwriting, which meant they had been carefully ciphered on purpose. Rey’s friend Beaumont—a former historian and current Resistance intelligence officer—had been working to unlock these portions, and Rey hoped to have answers soon.
In the meantime, she was looking for a clue in the translated texts, anything that might help her interpret her vision. Or better yet, something that would help her find peace. Now that the Force was awake inside her, she had more questions than ever before, about Luke, her connection to Kylo, the Jedi of the past, the nightmarish visions that haunted her. If she could embrace Leia’s calm, she was certain the visions would stop altogether. She’d sleep better, train better, become a Jedi to make Leia—and Luke, wherever he was—proud of her.
Leia heard her brother’s voice once in a while; she’d said as much. But he never revealed himself to her. She didn’t want to consider too hard why that might be. She wasn’t even sure she knew what it meant for a Jedi Master to die. A remnant of Luke remained; she could feel it. But she didn’t understand it. Sometimes the gaping void of what she didn’t know overwhelmed her.
She itched to be in the fight, but the girl from Jakku was still inside her, and that girl yearned to survive. Leia was right; she had to prepare herself. How could she possibly learn all she needed in time? One thing about her visions was absolutely clear: The fight would soon come to her, whether she was ready or not.
“Rey!” Nimi Chireen called, startling her from her thoughts. “Falcon’s back.”
Well, that was a relief. Rey had started to legitimately worry about her friends.
“Thanks, Nimi.” Nimi was a new pilot who’d just been given charge of her own fighter. Poe thought she had great potential.
Rey hurried over to the landing area, which was no more than a cleared space in the middle of the jungle. Good thing the Falcon could land on a credit chip.
She stopped short when she saw her ship, and her heart clenched. Black smoke curled up from the engines. Scorch marks streaked the hull. The sub-alternators were a writhing mass of charred wires and warped housing. What had Poe done?
The pilot himself was striding down the ramp, and she briefly forgot to be angry. She was just glad to see him back safe. “It’s on fire!” Poe was yelling, as droids and mechanics started hosing down the smoking bits. “Whole thing’s on fire. All of it. On fire!” He spotted her approaching. “Hey!”
“Hey!” she said. “I heard there’s a spy?”
Poe seemed a bit haggard, sweat sheening his brow, his shirt blotched with oil stains. He’d apparently done his best to conduct some emergency repairs on the trip back. He said, “Really could have used your help out there.”
“How’d it go?”
“Really bad.”
Something sparked under the Falcon’s belly. “Han’s ship…”
Poe’s face fell even farther when he spotted BB-8 and his dislodged tool-bay rim. “What did you do to the droid?
“What did you do to the Falcon?” she retorted.
“Falcon’s in a lot better shape than he is.”
“Beebee-Ate’s not on fire.”
“What left of him isn’t on fire,” he threw back.
What was Poe talking about? It was just a tool-bay cover! “Tell me what happened,” she said, trying to change the subject.
“You tell me first!”
She gave him a humorless smile. “You know what you are?”
“What?” He raised an eyebrow in challenge.
“You’re difficult. You’re a really difficult man.”
“We’ll, you’re…” Poe made a noise of exasperation.
“Rey!” came Finn’s voice.
“Finn! You made it back!”
Finn was descending the ramp, and his face lit up as she approached. “Barely,” he said. Finn had grown his hair out a bit in defiance of First Order regulation, giving him a more relaxed air. In general, Finn had become easier in his own skin in the months after
Crait.
BB-8 warbled at Poe, telling him about the training mishap, while Rey wrapped her arms around her friend in a tight hug. Letting Finn fly off and put himself in danger without her was one of the hardest things about Jedi training. She was always so relieved when he returned in one piece.
“Buddy, look at you,” Poe said, inspecting BB-8’s damaged casing.
“Bad mood?” Rey asked Finn.
“Me?”
“No, him,” she said, with a nod toward Poe.
“Always,” Finn said, drawing the word out with a flourish.
“Do we have a spy?” she asked.
Chewie interjected with an outraged, multisyllabic moan.
Rey’s eyes widened. “Lightspeed skipped?”
Finn winced. “Oh, boy…”
“I got us back, didn’t I?” said Poe.
“The compressor’s down,” Rey said, and her tone came out more accusing than she intended.
“I know,” Poe said. “I was there.”
“You can’t lightspeed skip the Falcon,” Rey said, unable to stop herself. How could Poe take that kind of risk with the Resistance’s most precious asset? Besides, she loved that ship…
“Actually, it turns out you can,” Poe said, unblinking.
“Guys,” Finn said, trying to sound reasonable. “We just landed.”
“What happened?” Rey asked.
“Bad news is what happened,” Poe said.
Rey felt her frustration build. She understood that Poe had just been through something, but she needed information. She turned to Finn. “Did we make contact with a spy or not?”
“Yeah. We got a mole in the First Order.” Finn confirmed. “They sent us a message.”
Poe started to head off, but he couldn’t resist throwing some final words at Rey over his shoulder: “You dropped a tree on him.”
“You blew both sub-alternators,” she slung back.
“Guys,” Finn said.
“Maybe you should be out there with us,” Poe said, rounding on her. He was good and angry now, but Rey could sense it had little to do with BB-8.
“You know I want to be!”
“Rey…” Finn said.
“But you’re not,” Poe said. “You’re here training for what?” He took a deep breath, as if considering. Rey could see the exact moment he decided to give it to her straight. “You’re the best fighter we have. We need you out there, not here.”
Rey had nothing to say to that. Poe was right. But Leia was right, too. Rey needed all the training she could get to face what was to come. She wished there was a way to make both of them happy.
Poe caught sight of someone, and Rey was relieved to no longer be the subject of his merciless glare. “Junior!” he called out.
Aftab Ackbar, son of the late admiral, approached quickly. The young Mon Calamari was a decent pilot, and he had also displayed some of his father’s flair for tactics. Leia had gotten him up to speed as fast as possible and was delighted with his progress.
“Get Artoo’s data transferred and into reconditioning,” Poe ordered.
“Yes, Commander,” Ackbar said. He left with the droid, while Poe and BB-8 headed toward Rose’s repair station.
Rey and Finn walked together toward the Tantive IV and passed the blockade runner’s giant skids.
“What’s the message?” she asked Finn.
* * *
—
Everyone had gathered beneath Leia’s ship for the debriefing: All Rey’s friends, Leia’s advisors Maz Kanata and Commander D’Acy, even the droids.
Poe addressed the group. “Thanks to See-Threepio and Beaumont, we’ve decoded the intel from the First Order spy, and it confirms the worst.” He waited a moment, as though reluctant to continue. After a deep breath, he added, “Somehow, Palpatine has returned.”
Rey gasped along with everyone else.
Rose frowned. “Wait…do we believe this?”
Rey thought of the transmission that had flooded the galaxy, remembered her own dark visions. “We believe it,” she said.
Aftab Ackbar was shaking his head. “It cannot be. The Emperor is dead,” he insisted. “Killed aboard the second Death Star.”
Beaumont murmured, “Dark science…cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.” He stared off into the distance as if lost in thought. His mental catalogue of Sith lore was vast, and if he thought it was possible for the Emperor to cheat death, then Rey did, too.
Besides, Luke’s notes had mentioned that Sheev Palpatine had been obsessed with the idea of living forever. He’d claimed to Anakin that he’d discovered the secret of eternal life from his own master, Darth Plagueis, right before betraying and killing him. Luke had assumed it was a lie, meant to tempt Anakin to the dark side. But what if there was truth to it?
“He’s been planning his revenge,” Poe continued. “His followers have been building something for years. The largest fleet the galaxy’s ever known. He calls it the Final Order. In sixteen hours, attacks on all free worlds will begin.”
Chewie warbled something.
“In the Unknown Regions,” Poe answered. “The Emperor and his fleet have been hiding there, on a planet called Exegol.”
Rey’s eyes flew wide. Exegol.
R2-D2 danced in place, demanding that C-3PO tell everyone about Exegol.
“The planet does not appear on any star chart,” the protocol droid began, but Rey was hardly paying attention. She’d heard that name in her vision. She’d seen it before. She was sure of it. “But legend describes it as the hidden world of the Sith.”
Rey had to get back to the Jedi texts. She slipped away while the others continued to talk and sprinted up a rise to the rocky bit of ground that made up her “quarters.”
As she reached her workbench, she heard Commander D’Acy say, “He must have been behind the First Order. It was Palpatine.”
“Palpatine’s been out there all this time,” Poe agreed. “Pulling the strings.”
“Always,” came General Leia’s voice. “In the shadows from the very beginning.”
“If we want to stop him,” Maz said, her gentle voice penetrating the din with quiet authority, “we must find him. We must find Exegol.”
Rey rummaged around in the crate where she kept the Jedi texts. Where was it? She tossed one aside. Then another.
“Is that all?” Rose asked.
“I wish it were,” C-3PO said. “But I’m afraid that the Emperor has been discovered by Kylo Ren. Now the two are on the verge of…”
“What?” Connix prompted.
Rey glanced toward the others as Threepio flicked the switch on a holo disc, saying, “If my decryption is correct, they are on the verge of launching an unstoppable new Empire.”
Ships in miniature manifested above the holo disc. They were tiny and blueish, giving little clue to their actual scale. But there were so many. They were like stars in the night sky.
“They’ll crush us!” Aftab said. “My father warned this day would come.”
Rey dug deeper into the crate. The text she was looking for had a large round seal on the front…There! She grabbed it and rushed back down to the group.
They hardly noticed when she returned. Everyone’s faces had fallen. They were all thinking the same thing.
“We’re not ready,” Beaumont said. “Only half our ships are working. We have no large-scale weapons.”
Rose raised her chin. “So we fix them. Fast.”
“Friends,” Leia said, her voice commanding attention. “This is the only moment that counts. Everything we’ve fought for is at stake.”
“If this fleet launches,” Beaumont said, “freedom dies in the galaxy.”
Softly, Rey interjected: “General. May I speak with you?”
* * *
—
“I know how to get to Exegol,” Rey said, her finger tracing as she searched, “because your brother wrote about it in the Jedi texts.”
Leia perked up. “Tell me!”
“Luke searched for it. He nearly found it.” Rey spotted what she was looking for and brought the book closer. “There are ciphers here I can’t read, but he said, ‘to get there you need one of these.’ A Sith wayfinder.” She pointed to a drawing of a pyramidal object. Rey looked up at Leia, eyes wide. “They lead the way to Exegol.”
Leia’s breath came fast. If Luke had already been searching, then they simply had to find his trail and pick up where he’d left off. This gave them somewhere to start. It gave them hope.
“If we’re to find this fleet,” Rey continued, “to stop what we both feel is coming, I need to finish what Luke started. Find Exegol. Find the Emperor.”
Now Leia’s breath came fast for a different reason. “No,” she choked out. Rey wasn’t ready. There was so much left for the girl to learn! If Rey left too soon, she could be drawn to the dark side. Leia had sensed her pull to the dark, the same way she had sensed it in Ben years ago.
But as Rey’s eyes continued to plead with her, Leia had to face the truth: Rey needed more training, it was true. But the real reason she couldn’t bear to see the girl go was that she’d grown deeply fond of her. Luke had told her that the Master-Padawan bond was strong. But he hadn’t warned her that she might come to see her apprentice as the daughter she’d never had.
“What have I been training for if not for this?” Rey said. “I don’t want to go without your blessing. But I will.”
Leia was still shaking her head.
“I will,” Rey insisted. “It’s what you would do.”
Leia had no answer for that.
* * *
—
After Rey left, Leia sat heavily on a couch inside her cavern quarters. Ramifications were hitting from all sides. The massive fleet Ben—he would always be Ben to her—had discovered could mean an end to the Resistance, the end of hope for the galaxy. Worse, it would be at the hands of Palpatine himself.
