by Rae Carson
“As long as those Star Destroyers are on Exegol, we can hit them,” Finn was saying as Chewie joined the meeting, along with Lando and the droids.
“Hit them how?” Tyce asked. The pilot stood beside her wife, Commander D’Acy. The two were not prone to public displays of affection, but it was obvious to Poe they took courage in each other’s presence.
“They can’t activate their shields until they leave atmosphere,” Rose explained.
“Which isn’t easy on Exegol,” Poe added. “Ships that size need help taking off; nav can’t tell which way’s up out there.”
Tyce asked, “So how do the ships take off?”
“They use a signal from a navigation tower. Like this one.” Poe flipped the holodisplay to a new image: an obelisk-like tower jutting from the flat ground, spreading its array like a metal flower opening its petals.
“Except they won’t,” Finn said. “Because air team’s gonna find the tower, and ground team’s gonna blast it.”
“Ground team?” Vanik asked. He was an A-wing pilot and one of Poe’s personal recruits.
“I got an idea about that,” Finn said.
Poe gave him a nod. Finn’s plan for the ground team just might work, though it was a bit unconventional. It would definitely take the enemy by surprise. “Once the tower’s down, their fleet is stuck in atmo. For just minutes. No shields, no way out. And Rose has an idea about that,” Poe said. “Rose?”
“My team’s been analyzing the Sith Star Destroyers,” Rose said. “In order to kill a planet with those cannons, they need an enormous power source.”
“They’re drawing on the main reactors!” Vanik said.
Rose nodded. “We think hitting a cannon might take down the whole ship.”
“That’s our chance,” said Lando. He’d changed his Aki-Aki garb for bright clothing and a knee-length cape. Poe really liked his cape. He’d have to ask about it when all this was over.
“Shields or no shields,” Wexley cut in. “Star Destroyers aren’t target practice. Not for single fighters.”
“We’d be no more than bugs to them,” Connix agreed.
Snap and Connix had a point.
Beaumont leaned forward. “We need to do some Holdo maneuvers,” he said. “Do some real damage.”
Before Poe could answer that they couldn’t afford to sacrifice anyone, Finn jumped in with “C’mon that move was one in a million. Fighters and freighters can take out their cannons if there are enough of us.”
What kind of galaxy had it become, Poe marveled, if freighters were considered war-class ships? He supposed it didn’t matter. Getting their fleet ready was his job, now that Leia was gone. He would do whatever he had to do to get them all ready to fight.
“There aren’t enough of us!” Nien Nunb protested, in his native Sullustese.
Poe nodded at the pilot, saying, “That’s where Lando and Chewie come in. They’re going to take the Falcon to the Core systems. Send out a call for help to anybody listening.” Under Leia’s direction, Poe had been laying the groundwork for months. Allies were out there. And if anyone could smooth-talk them into helping now, it was Lando Calrissian, friend to General Leia, hero of the Rebellion.
Poe continued: “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.” Everyone started to protest; they all remembered Crait as painfully as he did. Poe thought of Zorii’s words and said, “They will! The First Order wins by making us think we’re alone. We’re not alone. Good people will fight if we lead them.”
“Leia never gave up,” Finn said. “And neither will we. We’re gonna show them we’re not afraid.”
“What our mothers and fathers fought for,” Poe said, thinking of his own parents, Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, who had sacrificed so much to fight for the Rebel Alliance. “We will not let it die. Not today. Today we make our last stand. For the galaxy, for Leia. For everyone we’ve lost.”
“They’ve taken enough of us,” Finn added. “Now we take the war to them.”
Around Poe and Finn, people were nodding. Rose’s face was rapt. “May the Force be with us,” she said, with feeling.
“May the Force be with us,” Connix repeated.
Then several called out at once: “May the Force be with us!”
* * *
—
Lando Calrissian watched as everyone prepped for battle. It was like plucking the sweet strings of memory to see it all happen again. Ground crew moving fuel lines from ship to ship. Pluck. Droids loading into fighters. Pluck. Comm officers making console adjustments and testing frequencies. Pluck. Commander D’Acy kissing Tyce. Pluck. Wedge’s stepkid Snap Wexley, hugging his wife Karé goodbye. Pluck.
More impossible odds. Another cause he unexpectedly found himself willing to die for.
Chewie hollered down to him that the Millennium Falcon was ready to go, and he realized he’d been observing the Ajan Kloss preparations because he was putting off the inevitable. Stepping foot inside the Falcon again was going to hurt.
Lando took a deep breath, gathered his cloak, and climbed the ramp.
He entered the curved corridor. At his feet were secret compartments, lined with a sensor-confusing amalgam of rare metals and conductive mesh. He’d smuggled a lot of stuff in those compartments—jewels, weapons, Imperial identichips, himself. His buddy Han had smuggled even more.
To his right were the cockpit and lounge, to his left was the cargo hold. He loved that hold. Lando had transported legal cargo, too, though it had most often been cover for more valuable, less legitimate goods. Often, though, his cargo hold had remained empty. Or at least not quite full. He’d thrown a lot of great parties in that hold.
He turned right and headed toward the lounge. Chewbacca seemed to understand that Lando needed to take his time, so he motioned that he’d be waiting for him in the cockpit.
“Thanks, Chewie.”
The hologram board and lounge seat were exactly the way he remembered them, though the stuffing in the seat was starting to come out at one seam. An easy patch.
He smiled. Han and Chewie had always had too many things on their minds to notice something so inconsequential. Back when he owned the Falcon, he would have fixed it right away.
Behind the lounge was the guest bunk, a place he’d slept often in the days of the New Republic, and he felt a pang so sharp it was like a stab to his chest. Leia had always managed to find some essential errand for him, and Lando had ended up an unofficial second mate on a ship that used to be his.
He missed them both so much. It had been a manageable sorrow, when he’d been on Pasaana with the Aki-Aki, knowing that his friends were out there somewhere, alive. But now that they were gone…
Lando passed the galley and headed toward the captain’s cabin. When he had owned the Falcon, the ship could only sleep four comfortably, two in the guest bunk, and two in the captain’s cabin. Then that cheater Han had won the ship from him in a fateful game of sabacc, and the first thing he’d done was retrofit the cape closet to create a first mate’s bunk for Chewie and a hidden compartment.
Lando had been outraged. It seemed so silly now.
He peered into the captain’s cabin. The Falcon had endured a rotating crew for the last few months. He had no idea who slept here, if anyone. The room contained a triple bunk now, because Han wanted to squeeze more people in. For a while, he’d thought he’d take his new family on a run or two.
Lando understood. He’d have given anything to have his little girl by his side as he traveled the galaxy on the Lady Luck. But it was not to be, for either of them.
He stepped toward Chewie’s bunk and the compartment it was hiding for a closer look, but then he hesitated. The Wookiee was waiting for him in the cockpit, but surely he wouldn’t begrudge his old buddy a peek inside? It used to be his cape closet.
Lando rea
ched across the bunk for the rivet that was really a button, and the panel whisked open. The first thing that hit him was the smell of Wookiee fur. Not unpleasant, once you were used to it, but a little surprising just the same. The compartment was small, with a grate for ventilation; Han must have used this hidey hole to smuggle live cargo. No trace of Lando’s closet remained.
Inside was a small metal shelf. And on the shelf was a hologram disk, the edges worn with use. It was none of his business. Probably a treasured memory from his homeworld of Kashyyyk. Chewie was over two centuries old, with a long history of family and friends Lando knew nothing about.
He started to leave, but stopped. He couldn’t resist. He was a scoundrel, after all.
Lando reached forward and flicked the hologram switch.
An image of Chewbacca himself was projected onto the disk in soft blue. He held a small human child in his arms. Lando leaned closer.
It was Ben, dark-haired, chubby-fisted. He kicked his legs and yanked on Chewie’s fur, shrieking in delight. Chewbacca just cuddled him close, making a sound that was almost like a purr.
Lando flicked off the hologram. He couldn’t watch anymore. The First Order had taken so much from them. From all of them.
It was time for Lando to fight back. He left Chewie’s quarters, going over their plan in his head. He couldn’t rally their allies individually in the short time they had. So Beaumont and Connix had plotted a course that would take them past First Order jammers, where they could transmit a call for help at strategic coordinates. A few key figures, like the former Mon Calamari ambassador, would be contacted directly and given the special Calrissian touch, but mostly their goal was to jump, transmit, jump, transmit, over and over again until time ran out.
He ducked under the bulkhead and entered the cockpit. Chewie greeted him, and Lando spent a precious moment staring at his friend. Leia had held out hope for Ben until the very end. Turned out, Chewie felt the same way.
He settled into the pilot’s seat.
Chewie moaned loudly.
“You said it, Chewie,” Lando agreed. “One last time.”
* * *
—
Poe’s X-wing was almost ready. He watched as a crane lifted R2-D2 into the ship’s astromech compartment. He’d miss having BB-8 with him, but his buddy had another assignment. Besides, R2-D2 had logged more X-wing hours than any other droid on the base, and he and Poe made a good team.
“I don’t know of any droid ever returning from the Unknown Regions,” C-3PO said tremulously. “But you’re no ordinary droid.”
Poe was about to climb into the cockpit when he saw Finn hurrying off toward the lander. He jogged over to intercept, Finn saw him and paused, and then they clapped each other on the shoulders.
Poe wasn’t sure who moved first but all of a sudden they were hugging like the brothers they were.
They stepped apart, and Poe became keenly aware that one of them was missing. He frowned. “What’s waiting for her out there?” he asked Finn.
Finn’s face was grim. But he said, “We’ll see her again. I know we will.
“You know…” Finn hesitated.
“I know a lot of things.”
“You’re a general now, the general—should you be, uh, flying a fighter?”
Poe took a deep breath. He’d expected this, but he hadn’t known who would be the first to bring it up. He was glad it was Finn. “I’m a pretty good pilot,” he reminded his friend.
“Pretty good,” Finn shrugged.
“If we’re going to have any chance on Exegol, we need every pretty good pilot we have inside a fighter. That’s a decision that I’ve made as general. But come talk to me about it again after the battle’s over.”
Finn mock-glared. “I will.”
Poe gave Finn’s shoulder one last squeeze, and they both hurried off.
He passed C-3PO on his way to the cockpit. Come to think of it, the golden protocol droid wasn’t so bad. It had been hours, maybe a whole day, since Poe had found him irritating. Poe patted the droid on the shoulder. In his own strange way, C-3PO was his brother, too.
He reached for the ladder. His arm still smarted from the blaster burn he’d received on the Steadfast. But he was Poe Dameron, ace pilot, acting general of the Resistance, and he could fly anything, even one-handed.
He climbed the ladder into the cockpit.
* * *
—
Allegiant General Pryde stared out the viewport, hands clasped behind his back. They’d made it through red space without incident and had entered normal hyperspace. Streamers of light rushed by, illuminating the beautiful, perfectly ordered bridge and the faces of its officers.
Pryde loved this ship. The Steadfast was officially the mobile command center of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, but Ren didn’t know it like he knew it. The Supreme Leader had no idea the modifications that had been made, no idea how special it was.
Admiral Griss approached. “Entering the Unknown Regions, sir.” A simple announcement. It used to be Hux’s job to inform Pryde of such things, except Hux wouldn’t have been able to resist adding something ingratiating. Would you like me to prepare your personal shuttle? Shall I have a ground team waiting? May I fetch you a hot beverage? Pryde smiled unkindly. He’d been so glad for an excuse to kill the sniveling rat.
The ship came out of lightspeed. Exegol loomed before them, dark and hazed, crackling with power and ferocity.
Pryde’s hands began to shake, and he clasped them even tighter. His life’s work had led him here. He took a deep breath to steady his voice and said, “Soon worlds will burn. Our lord will rise again.”
* * *
—
Rey exited hyperspace. The planet Exegol was finally before her, shrouded with dark clouds that flashed bright with lightning. The instruments on her console beeped warnings about the approaching atmosphere.
She ignored them, angling downward into the clouds, grateful to be piloting Luke’s X-wing. It was old tech, and it had taken some fast thinking and even faster fingers to get it flight worthy—the wing patched with the door to Luke’s hut, shield panels scavenged from the TIE wreckage, and a hefty amount of rewiring. It might never fight again—not without help from Rose and her parts-requisition channels. But it was still fighter-class, and its transition from vacuum to atmo was seamless. Rey had needed its added stabilizers to fly Exegol’s unfriendly skies.
Her ship dipped below the cloud line and she gasped. The Sith fleet spread out before her, even more vast than her vision had led her to believe, shining bright in relief against the perpetual storm, stretching as far as her eyes could see. The vessels were based on an older model, from the days of the Galactic Empire, but they were so much bigger than those. Extra gun turrets and laser cannons attested to a much greater ordnance capability than her Resistance friends were expecting.
Her ship wobbled a little—gravity well! She compensated quickly, and cruised to an altitude considerably below the Sith fleet. Exegol was a horror of a planet, but its atmospheric anomalies might confuse the Destroyers’ sensors and keep them from noticing her tiny ship. In fact, she was counting on it.
Moments later she was on the ground. The air was hot, the soil fissured with dryness. A dark building breached the clouds ahead of her, and for the briefest moment she considered giving in to terror. Such malevolence radiated from the building that she knew exactly what—who—she would find inside. Even more terrifying was the fact that the presence was familiar. As though some form of it had been watching her, maybe her whole life.
Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi.
Rey pressed on.
She stepped beneath a massive monolith that seemed to hover in the air. She would trust Luke and his lightsaber to light her way.
Rey removed the lightsaber from her belt and ignited it. She startled a bit when the secti
on of floor she stood on detached from the rest, began to descend. She looked around, alert to any sight or sound, but all was as silent as death.
Then a rumble sounded, too distant to identify.
The lift settled, and Rey stepped off. She raised her weapon, and its blue light snagged on huge stone faces, sparking with electricity. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that the statues commemorated Sith Lords who had come before. This place of evil must have been here for centuries, maybe millennia, for the air was heavy with the weight of time and dark secrets.
Rey was suddenly aware that she was not alone. Figures scurried in the shadows, but she sensed no immediate threat from them, so she continued on. A few more steps took her past a dizzying array of lab equipment—monitors, tubes, some kind of tank, all empty and abandoned.
Just like the planet’s surface, the floor here contained fissures, and light flashed deep down—Rey couldn’t tell how deep—as though Exegol’s entire crust had formed around a core of electricity.
She came to a narrow stone corridor, and her gaze was pulled forward. A chill pimpled the flesh of her arms, because resting upon a dais was the shape from her vision. A chair with spikes curving up and around it, like a halo of giant thorns. The throne of the Sith.
Rey stepped toward the dais. The rumble grew louder.
The corridor broke open into an an amphitheater as big as a hollowed-out mountain, brimming with robed figures. There were thousands of them, faceless in the dark distance, but pulsing with zealotry. Religious disciples, awaiting the return of the Sith. As she approached, the rumbling swelled, became a collective, worshipful welcome.
“Long have I waited,” came a voice from her nightmares, deep, resonant, and slow, as though he had all the time in the galaxy.
Rey turned toward the voice. A robed figure materialized, suspended from strange machinery. Her grip on the lightsaber tightened when she saw his face. He was monstrous, repulsive, with red-rimmed eyes, skin barely clinging to his skeletal form, disintegrating into oozing sores. One of his hands had half rotted away.
