Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars)

by Chuck Wendig

  That gives the New Republic the advantage of coming at the arena from all angles except below.

  But the advantage of the Empire is that the fleet is neatly compressed—it has created a nearly perfect defensive perimeter formed of its own Destroyers, with the Ravager at the heart of it. That dreadnought has the chance to fire its considerable armament from relative safety, but its angle of attack is limited by the ships that form a sphere of perimeter. It cannot fire wantonly and without regard for its own ships.

  That is war. It is the placement of ships. It is the advantages and disadvantages of those placements. It’s about how you move, how you fire, what weapons you bring. Every piece fits into the larger whole: ammunition in a blaster, blaster in a pilot’s hand, pilot inside a starfighter or frigate. Everything is a resource. How do you expend them? In what direction? At a distance, war is a game, however deadly—usher this ship there, that ship here, converge, fire, dominate, defend.

  But when you’re in it, there exists no distance at all.

  When you’re in it, the decisions you make feel less tactical and more elemental—for you are part of two forces crashing together like waves, like two mountains toppling into each other, like two planets colliding and breaking apart. There exists no distance, no separation. Not for Commodore Kyrsta Agate, at least, who cannot separate herself out from the orchestrated chaos beyond the viewport of her Starhawk—no, she and her crew and her ship are part of the fabric of the battlespace. She is not a divine hand engineering the movement of pieces on a game board.

  Rather, she is one of the pieces.

  The bridge is swarming with tension. Comm officers keep her in touch with Ackbar and the other Starhawks. Weapons officers, led by Ensign Sirai, a Pantoran, coordinate all systems to ensure the most effective targeting. A trio of white-helmeted navigators sit nearby, guiding the ship’s movement through the battlespace—cutting through the chaos like an ax.

  And Agate stands in the center of it all. She gets commands from Ackbar. She relays her commands to the bridge via the senior officer, Lieutenant Commander Spohn. All the while, she feels like she is the star around which everything else orbits. She’s not, of course, but she suspects every officer commanding a capital ship feels this way—out there, in the broad viewports that rise above her like the arches of a cathedral, TIE fighters slash past, chased by or chasing New Republic ships. Corvettes lead the charge, pushing on toward the Destroyers, launching their full armament ahead of them—torpedoes that leave indigo streaks in the black. The other two Starhawks slide in on each side of the Concord—to starboard side is the Unity, to port is the Amity.

  Agate feels it all. As if her skin, her veins, her nerves, are all connected to the battle by puppet strings. Her flesh prickles. The hairs on her neck stand tall. It’s the strangest feeling, and it never fails to find her: the suspicion that if she blinks or twitches a finger in the wrong way or dares to cough or sneeze, somehow that movement will ripple out across the battle—her ship will crash, her friends will fall, the enemy will conquer them all. Absurd, but that is how Agate feels about war. No distance to be found at all. It is intimate. It is anxious. She is part of it and it is part of her, the same way a heart is not separate from the body in which it beats.

  One of the corvettes goes up in a bright ball of coruscating energy.

  An X-wing spirals, sparking, through space.

  One of their Nebulon frigates breaks in half—its front end still firing the full detachment of weapons, peppering the side of a Star Destroyer.

  Agate feels it all. Every death feels like her own.

  But that is the trick, isn’t it? She can’t let it overwhelm her. That will come when it’s all over (should she survive): At night, it’ll feel again like she’s dropped over the edge of an abyss. Like she’ll want to die. She’ll bite a belt or the side of her bed to stop all the thoughts and the endless loop of violence replaying in her head over and over.

  All she allows now is that slight shaking that always comes, the one she cannot deny, the one that has become part of who she is. Everything else, all the other tremors, will wait until nighttime. Again, if she survives.

  For now, she and the other two Starhawks have one job:

  Bring down that dreadnought. Destroy the Ravager, end the fight.

  Let’s get to it, then.

  —

  Temmin is lost.

  He told himself he’d be fine. He thought, I’ve piloted ships before. And weeks before he was right here, in the same space, above Jakku—he survived that, and he told himself he could survive this.

  But now he’s not so sure.

  Wedge said the plan was simple: They weren’t meant to be here at the battle, so their role was to provide support. Stay out of the way of the big ships, and pick off the TIEs swarming around.

  Phantom Squadron leapt out of lightspeed late to the battle, and like a massive beast it swallowed him whole.

  TIEs roar past. He’s separated from the others. Ahead, Star Destroyers loom in space that turns with a kaleidoscopic twist. A Corellian corvette plunges through open space in front of him, its back end breaking apart in plumes of fire that go from red to green to gold as different gases and fuels vent into the black. Temmin screams, pulling back on the flight stick and trying to right the old X-wing he pilots—but he doesn’t know which way is up, down, left, right. Use the screens. Use the console. He looks, finds the stabilizer display, then looks up again and—

  Alarms go off.

  I’m about to crash into the side of a New Republic frigate. The side of that ship looms large, coming up fast like a wall crashing down—

  Another scream as Temmin turns the X-wing starboard, spiraling through the battle zone so fast he feels like he’s about to puke in his helmet.

  The ship rocks with laserfire coming from behind. His astromech—a hexagonal-domed droid with designation R3-W5—whistles, and his screen fills with warnings. His scopes show he’s not alone—a pair of TIEs are on him like a set of blackflies on a nerf’s haunches, except he doesn’t have a tail with which to swish them away. And he just can’t shake them. They sense the stink of sickness on him—he’s like the weak one in the pack, the one a predator knows instinctively to hunt. Blast it all to hell, c’mon, Temmin, get your head out of your hind end and stay alive—

  Boom. One of the TIE fighters explodes, turning into a fiery cannonball alongside him. It tumbles away, destroyed. Koko’s voice fills his comms with a whoop and a holler. The Narquois cackles and says: “One down, the whole damn Empire to go!” The fuzzy blue pilot whistles and belches into the mike just before his X-wing whips past.

  Next it’s Jethpur, the Quarren: He says something in Quarrenese, but Temmin has no idea what it is. Yarra fills in the details: “Jeth is right. Snap, you’re like a sparking wire out there.” The Twi’lek comes out alongside him as her Y-wing blasts through the second of the TIEs sticking to him like a burr.

  Wedge’s X-wing pulls out in front. “Everyone form up on me. Snap, you good? You want to set coordinates home, nobody would blame you.”

  “I’d blame you!” Koko barks, then belches again.

  “No,” Temmin says, even though he wants to say Yes, yes, yeah, I totally made a mistake, I need to go home, I didn’t think this through. But then he thinks of his mother. She’s here. So is he. “I’m good. I’ll stick with you. But I gotta be honest, it’s crazy up here.”

  And it is. Even forming up behind Wedge and having someone to follow—the sheer amount of visual information is about to give him a nosebleed. Streaking lines of plasma. Torpedoes corkscrewing in the distance between capital ships. Fighters everywhere, and fire, and debris, not to mention that ring of Star Destroyers protecting the dreadnought from the encroaching New Republic capital ships…

  “Kid’s right,” Yarra says. “It’s a little too hot here. Could use some room to breathe.” Above them, an A-wing shears through the vacuum. “Got ideas?”

  It’s Temmin who has one: “Maybe we h
ead down below. We can punch a hole in their air-to-space defenses, get some clearance for our ground forces.” It’s a dumb idea, he knows it is. And a selfish one—he just wants to get the hell out of here. And he wants to be as close to Jakku as possible. That’s where his mother, his droid, and his friend Jas are.

  So it surprises him when Wedge agrees. “Snap, that’s a fine idea. All right, Phantom Squadron. Let’s get a closer look at Jakku. Take out as many of the bad guys as you can on the way.”

  Koko whoops.

  Temmin takes a deep breath and pushes down on the flight stick, following Wedge and the others through the chaos. I’m coming, Mom.

  —

  Black pillars of smoke rise above the horizon as Norra pulls the Imperial shuttle over the last canyon ridge and back down over the dunes. Above, she sees the two fleets in orbit. The skies flash and pulse with the lightning of ship-to-ship artillery. Down here, fighters already swarm. The New Republic is establishing landing zones a hundred klicks east, toward Cratertown—she sees the U-wings swooping in like fat birds, disgorging commandos. Already she’s starting to see the sands littered with debris: skeletal husks and bent beams smoldering in the hellish Jakku sun. Her eyes follow movement and she sees a larger ship—a corvette, by the looks of it—streaking down toward the surface of faraway mountains. The way it moves, it’s like slow motion—fire and smoke trailing as bits fall away, catching the light. Like a firework falling back to ground. It would be beautiful if she didn’t know there were lives at stake. Those inside may already be dead. If not now, then soon, when it hits. (A sad reality of every downed ship: Not everyone makes it to an escape pod.)

  “I got a bad feeling about this,” she tells Bones, who sits dutifully next to her. Servos whine as the droid turns his head toward her.

  “PREPARE TO FIRE ALL CANNONS,” Bones says—his voice warping so that it has a strange, hard-angle accent to it. “COMMENTARY: I SAY WE BLAST THE MEATBAG AND SAVE YOU THE TROUBLE, MASTER.”

  “Bones, are you all right?”

  The droid seizes up for a moment, then relaxes once more. “SORRY, MASTER TEMMIN’S MOM.” The droid shrugs. “GLITCH.”

  Great. Flying into a war zone with a malfunctioning battle droid. In a stolen Imperial command shuttle, no less.

  Ahead, the raging battle is like a storm. It has margins. It contains darkness. And she flies right into the heart of it.

  Soldiers march below. Blasterfire pocks the underside of the shuttle—because those are Republic soldiers and she’s in an enemy shuttle. Of course they’ll take their shots. She eases back on the stick, lifting her ship higher in the air, away from the ground forces.

  It’s about five hundred klicks yet to the base—

  Her screens flash red. Two ships drop down from below and form up fast on her tail. Two Republic starfighters. The galaxy apparently thinks she enjoys irony, because the two ships it serves up are Y-wings, just like the one she used to pilot.

  The shuttle shakes as they fire on her.

  Her options are few, and none of them are good. She could try to signal them, but at best they won’t believe her, and at worst she risks the Empire picking up her transmission and realizing she’s stolen their ship. She could try to take them on, but the last thing she wants on her conscience is a pair of downed allies who had to die just so she could keep her cover. The one option she has is just to outfly them, which isn’t easy in this bucket-belly shuttle. A shuttle is an easy target.

  But maybe they don’t want an easy target.

  What if she gives them a better target?

  There, ahead: just over those mounding dunes, one massive AT-AT walker marching over the surface of Jakku. It’s not alone: A pair of two-legged AT-ST chicken walkers strut on either side of it, firing cannons at a wave of advancing Republic soldiers.

  There. That’ll give the Y-wings something to deal with. The Y-wing is a better bomber than it is a dogfighter—and that AT-AT will make a tantalizing target. Norra grits her teeth and brings the shuttle in low, aiming right for the stooping cockpit head of that big walker. The Y-wings just need to see that they have a better bull’s-eye and—

  As she closes in—close! too close!—Norra pulls up on the shuttle hard. It shudders as it hits a patch of turbulence—she cuts the engines so the shuttle moves into a stall.

  Beneath her, the Y-wings blast past. On toward the walker.

  Did it. Now to get this ship out of its stall—

  The engines rev but don’t fire.

  No, no, no, c’mon, you old piece of Imperial scrap, c’mon—

  The shuttle crests atop a pillow of air…and starts to fall back toward Jakku. Back toward the walkers, the soldiers, toward the unforgiving sand and stone. The ship spirals. Norra roars in frustration as she struggles with the controls, trying to get the engines to fire…

  —

  Down here it feels like he can breathe. Space is dizzying, but the planet’s surface as an entity separate from the blue sky gives Temmin his bearings. And with his bearings comes his confidence.

  He snaps his fingers, cracks his knuckles, and grips the flight stick. He brings his fighter in and follows the rest of Phantom Squadron—Wedge calls for them to break formation over the battlefield and take out any TIEs or troop carriers they see. Temmin moves the X-wing down over the rolling hills of sand, and now, now he’s starting to feel it. The ship feels less like a machine in which he sits and more like a part of him—like a limb, like a set of wings, like an extension of his mind. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Ahead, a transport catches air over a dune, and he scissors his wings open and opens fire with all four laser cannons—the wings spit burning light, and he doesn’t even need to scan his scopes. Every blast hits the transport, and the front end of it craters in, dipping down into the sand and flipping its back end over its front. Whoom.

  Koko’s mad hoot fills his ears as he pulls up on the stick. “You’re like a surgeon with that thing, Snap!”

  Damn yeah I am.

  Not far to port, a TIE striker pinwheels through the air, smashing into the sand thanks to Wedge, who crosses his T-65 in front of Temmin’s. In the distance, Temmin can see a walker stomping across the sand, firing at a pair of Y-wings that circle it like starving vultures.

  Over the comm, Wedge says, “Let’s give the Yellow Aces some love, help them out with that walker.”

  Phantom Squadron whips toward the walkers. Temmin thinks to engage the AT-STs—

  But a better target presents itself—an Imperial command shuttle spiraling down toward the ground. He thinks to let it be, because that ship is about to be scrap and vapor. And yet, suddenly, the engines glow blue as they refire, and the shuttle pulls out of its tailspin just moments before impact. It catches air, the one wing nearly drawing a line in the sand before righting itself and heading in the other direction.

  It’s a command shuttle. That means officers are on board.

  Officers are high-value targets. That he knows from his days hunting Imperials with Mom and the others. Officers are their ones with faces on the pazaak cards—when you’re fighting a monster, you cut off the head and the hands. And that’s what he’s going to do here. He radios to Wedge: “See that Imperial shuttle, Phantom Leader? It’s fleeing, but I’m going after it.”

  “All right. Good hunting, Snap. Don’t range too far.”

  “You bet, Phantom Leader.”

  Temmin grins, and guns the starfighter toward his new target.

  —

  Just as Norra rights the shuttle and points its nose toward the locational reticule of the distant Imperial base, a new blip appears on her scopes, blinking a warning.

  An X-wing. Older model—a T-65C-A2.

  She moves to evade. Lasers bolt past. Just as she thought she was safe, the chase begins anew. Her heart hammers against the inside of her breastbone—and the ship shudders, too, as the wing takes a hit, peppered by fire from whoever it is that’s pursuing her.

  Norra brings the shuttle low over the dune
s, then high over an arched rock formation that looks like a man on his hands and knees—she whips left, right, but the X-wing isn’t persuaded to pull away. It stays on her like it’s got a tractor beam lock, perfectly lined and ready for the kill.

  More laserfire. One of the shuttle’s engines goes out. The ship lists left. The inside of the cabin fills with the stink of ozone and burning electric.

  What a thing, she thinks. To be taken out at the end by my own side.

  The cabin flashes. Missile lock! That X-wing will be loaded for bear with proton torpedoes—that is no surprise. What’s a surprise is that whoever is piloting that thing would expend one to take out a command shuttle. It’s overkill. The pilot flying that fighter is naïve—there are far better targets out here for that ordnance.

  Bones, to her surprise, suddenly stands up. The little antenna at the top of his skull (which is itself bolstered and fixed to a small and narrow pinbone) begins to blink green.

  “Where are you going?” she says through gritted teeth, trying to maintain control of the shuttle.

  Bones does not answer. Instead he hits a button on the console.

  The ramp. He’s lowering the ramp. He’s getting off the ship.

  “Bones! Get back here! Bones!”

  —

  A thrill rises inside Temmin’s belly; his blood is up, his nerves are buzzing like vibroblades. He’s stayed on the shuttle’s tail like he’s been glued to it—and it’s enough to earn him an easy missile lock. Ahead, the shuttle squares out in front of him, and his thumb finds the top of the flight stick. He has no conscience in this moment. He doesn’t think about who is in that ship. He knows it’ll kill them but he doesn’t think of it that way. Temmin feels something altogether more vicious and aloof—he just wants to win, he just wants to score a victory for the Republic, and the Empire here is less a shuttle carrying officers and more a symbol.