by Rae Carson
It was her grandfather, his spirit trapped in an artificial form, his power too devastating to contain.
“My grandchild has come home!” he added triumphantly.
He radiated evil, but her feet twitched toward him. She could not look away. There was something oddly compelling about him.
“I never wanted you dead,” he said. “I wanted you here, Empress Palpatine.”
This was nothing she wanted, she reminded herself, even as her feet threatened to step forward.
“You will take the throne,” he assured her. “It is your birthright to rule, here. It is in your blood. Our blood.” Several figures stepped forward, draped in crimson, similar to Snoke’s guard, which she and Kylo had defeated together. Rey had a feeling these guards would prove more formidable adversaries.
She forced herself to sound strong, to back away from the Emperor. “I haven’t come to lead the Sith. I’ve come to end them.”
“As a Jedi,” the Emperor said, his voice oozing contempt.
“Yes.”
He smiled. “No. Your hatred. Your anger. You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me. You will be Empress. We will be one.”
* * *
—
Poe’s X-wing exited hyperspace, and he finally caught his first sight of Exegol.
What a dung heap. It was the deadest, ugliest thing he’d seen in a long while, and he wondered if it had always been this way, or if building a colossal fleet of Star Destroyers here had killed the place.
Beside him, his tiny squadron popped into view—the Tantive IV, Finn’s lander, several more fighters. “Welcome to Exegol,” Poe said drily.
They dived into the cloud cover, and nearly collided with the Sith fleet. Someone gasped into their comm. Their triangled hulls were enormous, but they grew ever smaller as their number stretched into seeming infinity.
“Great dark seas,” Ackbar said. “Look at that!” He angled his Y-wing closer to Poe, determined to keep his new acting general alive at any cost.
“No sign of the Falcon or allies,” Tyce said from her own Y-wing.
“Just find that navigation tower,” Poe ordered. “Help will be here by the time we take it down!”
Please be here by the time we take it down.
* * *
—
Captain Chesille Sabrond stood on the bridge of the Derriphan, looking through the viewport at the rest of the Sith Fleet.
They held formation slightly above everyone else, as the only Destroyer to have already made the climb. Allegiant General Pryde had tasked her crew with observing the ascension and reporting any anomalies.
The fleet was a beautiful sight to behold. Together, they were going to conquer an entire galaxy, and Sabrond was going to play a major role in the Final Order.
She’d have to continue distinguishing herself. Sabrond was under no delusion that captaining a Star Destroyer would be enough. There were thousands of captains. Tens of thousands. Somehow, she’d make sure that Allegiant General Pryde and the reborn Emperor saw her as one in ten thousand.
Sabrond could do it. Somehow. She had come this far. And she was just getting started.
“Incoming transmission on a fleetwide frequency,” said her comms officer, flicking a switch to open the channel.
Allegiant General Pryde appeared on the bridge holo. “All ships rise to deployment altitude,” he ordered. He’d been out in the galaxy for his whole career, only communicating with Exegol rarely. She wondered what that must be like, wondered about the marvels he’d seen. Maybe she’d get a chance to ask him.
“Captain!” said one of her technicians. “We have Resistance craft incoming.”
Chesille Sabrond smiled. She’d been drilling for this moment for years. “Allegiant General?” she asked, though she knew what he would say.
“Use the short-range defense cannons,” Pryde said. “Scatter-fire pattern.”
“Yes, General.” She turned to her crew. “Ready the defense cannons!”
CHAPTER 16
Pryde frowned as more spacecraft popped out of hyperspace all around them, even more than the Derriphan had initially reported. The Resistance had managed to cobble together a small fleet, one he wouldn’t underestimate. Their ships were like bloodsucking insects. Tiny and annoying, but relentless until they’d been properly squashed.
“How did they manage to get here?” Admiral Griss said.
Pryde muttered under his breath, considering. The short-range defense cannons wouldn’t be enough against this swarm of flies. Then he addressed the bridge. “I need another transmission channel to the fleet!”
It took a few seconds. Exegol’s atmosphere made fleet-wide transmissions tricky. It also messed with their sensors, which meant they’d need visual confirmation to eliminate the Resistance threat. And that meant scrambling fighters.
He would do whatever he had to, use whatever resources at his disposal, to end this final, futile act of rebellion.
“You’re on, General,” said his communications officer.
Pryde cleared his throat and said, “Nothing will stop the Final Order fleet from ascending! Scramble fighters! Cannons: Fire at will!”
* * *
—
Poe banked hard as thousands of simultaneous cannon blasts lit up the sky like a nova. To his left, a fighter was stripped of its hull, debris flying off in all directions, until it finally exploded into a fireball.
A quick glance around showed that they’d lost several fighters in just that first volley, and with sensors so unreliable, he had no idea who. This was the price of leadership.
Poe did not have the luxury of grief or regret. Finishing this mission was all that mattered. “Stay at their altitude!” he yelled into his headset. “They can’t fire on us without hitting each other.”
Following Poe’s lead, the squadron dived hard, dodging blasts all the way, toward the endless sea of Destroyers. They swooped into the corridors created by the ships’ hulls, almost daring them to fire.
“Incoming TIEs!” Snap Wexley warned, and Poe was glad to hear his voice. That was one survivor confirmed.
His relief was short-lived. Hundreds of Sith TIEs screamed toward them like giant predator birds, with wicked red and black lines across razor-sharp wings.
* * *
—
Finn stared through his quadnocs as his team piloted the lander Fortitude toward the planet’s surface. He’d used this ship for a few missions before; it was sturdy with decent shields and lots of space for quick crew transport—even if that crew was a bit unconventional.
A TIE dived toward them, and Finn flinched, but the Fortitude’s guns blasted it out of the sky.
He glanced across the crowded cabin at Rose, and their eyes locked. “I’m sure glad someone made time to add a defensive arsenal to this troop carrier,” he said.
“Only because I knew I’d be on it too, as part of the ground team,” Rose said, completely deadpan. “I mean, if it were just you…”
Finn laughed in spite of himself. “Uh huh.”
Rose turned away to hide her smile.
Truth was, Finn had a lot of friends on board, and Rose had just saved all of them.
“Heads up,” shouted the pilot.
A structure rose before them in the distance, tall, silvery, and imposing.
“I see it!” Finn yelled. “I’ve got a visual on the nav tower!”
“Lander,” Poe responded from somewhere high above. “Prep to unload the ground team at the base of the tower.”
* * *
—
Pryde was pleased. They’d already destroyed numerous Resistance fighters. The remaining ships were a skeleton squadron, incapable of mounting any real offensive.
“General,” said his c
omm officer. “They’re targeting the navigation tower. So the fleet can’t deploy.”
Admiral Griss gasped. “We need to get those Destroyers out of there.”
Fortunately, Pryde always had a backup plan.
“Switch over the source of the signal,” he ordered. “To this ship.” His modifications were going to come in handy even sooner than he’d hoped. “We’ll guide the fleet out ourselves.”
* * *
—
A light flashed atop the tower as Finn and his crew approached in the lander. Then the light went off and stayed off. Watching it through his quadnocs, Finn got a bad feeling.
Jannah approached his shoulder. “Finn, we’re good to go,” she said.
“Thanks for doing this,” he told her.
She started to say something, but an alarm beeped in the cockpit.
Tyce’s voice filtered in over the comm. “The navigation tower,” she said. “It’s been deactivated!”
“What?” Finn exclaimed.
“They’re not transmitting from that tower anymore,” she clarified.
“The ships need that signal,” came Snap’s voice. “It’s got to be coming from somewhere.”
Finn’s gaze was inexplicably drawn upward, to the side. The First Order Star Destroyer, the only one not part of the Sith fleet. The Steadfast.
“Call off the ground invasion!” came Poe’s order, which was a smart move, because if the fleet had transferred the signal, it meant they knew Finn and his team were coming. Except…
“No,” Finn said. “The signal’s coming from that command ship.”
“How do you know?” asked Jannah.
They locked eyes, and Jannah nodded. “A feeling,” he confirmed.
Finn spoke into the radio: “The nav signal’s coming from the command ship! That’s where we drop!”
“You wanna launch a ground invasion on a Star Destroyer?” said Tyce, unbelieving.
Finn would have atmosphere, gravity, and a plucky unit of former stormtroopers ready to take the fight back to the bullies. What more did a fellow need?
Luck, he supposed. Or maybe the Force. “Well, I don’t want to,” Finn said. “But that ship’s nav system will be defended from air attacks. If you give us cover to land, we can get to it. And take it out. We gotta keep that fleet here until help arrives!” He leaned over the pilot’s shoulder and pointed. “The command ship. That’s our landing zone.”
As he and Jannah hurried toward the rear hold to explain the plan to the rest of the landing team, he heard Poe’s voice over the comm: “You heard him. All wings, cover that lander!”
* * *
—
General Pryde watched through the viewport, perplexed, as the bulky Resistance craft dived toward the ship. Was this a suicide maneuver? If so, it was folly. An impact would avail them nothing.
The Resistance ship careened into their hull and kicked up sparks as it screeched across. It came to a rough stop against a communications array. The ramp began to descend.
“Sir,” hollered Admiral Griss. “They’re invading our ship; they’ve landed a troop carrier!”
“Jam their speeders!” Pryde commanded.
“I can’t, sir,” said his comm officer, even as his fingers flew across the console, trying everything he could think of. He looked up at Pryde, confusion writ on his face. “They’re…not using speeders?”
* * *
—
Finn and Jannah led the cavalry charge of nearly two dozen orbak riders down the ramp of the lander and onto the hull of the Steadfast. The orbaks had been cooped up for hours, and they ran with joyful abandon, eating up distance at a dizzying speed.
BB-8 kept pace, rolling so fast his markings were a blur, head canted forward with determination.
“Doing great, buddy!” Finn called down to him.
He tossed a quick glance over his shoulder to check on his team. Behind Jannah’s company of riders came the rest of his friends, pouring from the lander on foot: Rose, Connix, Beaumont—anyone who could hold a blaster. So far, so good.
Ahead of them, a Sith troop carrier landed and spit out dozens of crimson-clad troopers. They spread out in formation and began firing.
Finn’s rear team fired back, providing them some cover. One stormtrooper went down right away—Connix, no doubt, who was a crack shot.
He reached into the munitions bag hanging from the saddle. Homemade explosives, cobbled together with what the company could find on Kef Bir, but effective nonetheless. Finn sighted a squad of troopers, took aim, and tossed the bomb, allowing it to arc just as Jannah had taught him.
It exploded into fire and black dust, knocking several stormtroopers backward.
“One lesson!” Finn shouted to Jannah. “Did you see that?”
“You had a great teacher!” she hollered back.
They were almost to their destination. Finn and Jannah grabbed their bags of explosives, jumped from their orbaks, and sprinted along the hull. BB-8 kept pace at their heels.
Another Final Order troop lander touched down on the surface nearby. The ramp descended and out poured a company of crimson stormtroopers, who immediately began firing. Several of them engaged red jetpacks, which lifted them into the air so they could fire from a superior vantage.
Finn was really tired of jet troopers. He fired back, most of his shots going wide, as he and Jannah pressed forward. They had to make this happen fast. More trooper carriers would come. They would be overwhelmed in minutes.
Or worse, the ship would simply leave atmo, instantly killing them all. The orbak riders deployed around them and aimed a barrage of covering fire at the jet troopers.
Finn and Jannah reached the nav deck. Ahead was a bunkerlike structure, built out from the hull to prevent interference from interior ship frequencies.
“This is it,” Finn yelled.
“Beebee-Ate, do your thing!” said Jannah, whipping up her makeshift bow.
The little droid extended a pilex driver and unscrewed a panel. Finn began placing explosives as Jannah fired shot after shot with her bow and arrow, covering them. One shot hit a jet trooper, who spun up into the air, missiled into an oncoming TIE, and sent it crashing onto the Destroyer’s surface.
“Almost there,” Finn said, working as fast as he could.
* * *
—
The Emperor said, “The time has come!”
As one, thousands of disciples fell to their knees, chanting something in a language Rey had never heard.
Palpatine’s eyes widened with zeal. “With your anger, you will take my life, and you will ascend. As I did, when I killed my master, Darth Plagueis.” He grinned, showing gray teeth and oozing red gums. “Now. Raise your saber and strike me down.”
Rey frowned. Luke had warned her about this. “All you want is for me to hate. But I won’t. Not even you.”
“Weak! Like your parents.”
She shook her head. “My parents were strong. They saved me from you.”
As if reading her thoughts about Luke, the Emperor said, “I’ve made this very proposal before. But on that unfortunate day Luke Skywalker had his father to save him. You do not.”
The cavernous room shook. Light poured down as a vast stone ceiling opened, revealing Star Destroyers silhouetted against a furious sky. The Resistance fighters were gnats in comparison, darting in and out, dodging fire from monstrous cannons and Final Order TIEs. Explosions lit up the sky. Her friends were dying.
“They don’t have long. And you are the one who led them here,” the Emperor pointed out.
Tears filled her eyes. The Resistance fighters were losing badly. The Emperor was manipulating her, yes, but he was doing it with the truth. This was her fault.
“Strike me down. Take the throne as Empress. Reign over the new Empire and the fl
eet will be yours to do as you wish. Only you have the power to save them all. Refuse and your new family dies.”
The thought swelled in her head, until she was giddy with it. Empress. Would that be so bad? Maybe taking on this mantle would be worth it. To bring peace. To save her friends. The whole galaxy would have no choice but to be saved.
Rey stared, agonized, at the battle above her.
“Very well,” Palpatine said. “Finish them.”
“Wait!” she said. “Wait.”
He paused, thinking she was nearly his. But a presence was making itself known to her, even through the cloud of evil and rage and terror. She gazed off into the distance for a moment, probing, all the while shielding her thoughts.
Kylo Ren had given her lots of practice at shielding her thoughts.
She turned back to the Emperor, filling her mind with thoughts of surrender. With resignation.
Her grandfather smiled indulgently. “Good,” he said. “It is time for a scavenger to rise as an empress. Strike me down and pledge yourself as a Sith.”
* * *
—
It had taken Ben Solo too long to climb through the ruins of the Death Star in search of a hangar bay, even longer to find an old scout-class TIE and coax it into flying for him. He’d then followed Rey’s transmitted tracking markers toward Exegol, but the scout’s barely functioning navicomputers had taken a wrong turn, and he’d found himself grinding through unknown rough space. It had taken all his concentration to correct his course and get back on track.
All that had been the easy part.
He landed his TIE scout beside an old Rebellion X-wing. He couldn’t help pausing to stare at the two ships. Old enemies, parked side by side.
Something tingled at the base of his skull, a familiar awareness…Rey! She sensed him. She understood that he was Ben again. He caught a wave of relief from her, of joy. Then, abruptly, nothing.
