by Chuck Wendig
“Phantom Squadron. More like Fancy Squadron,” Sinjir says. “Even fancier is this faint dusting of, what is that on your lip and cheek there? Dirt? Choko powder?” He leans forward with a finger to poke at it.
“Ow, hey,” Tem says. “I’m growing a beard is all.”
“Like Jom,” Jas says.
“Like Jom,” the rest of them echo. Again they raise their glasses. And again they clink and they drink.
Conder leans forward and says to Temmin: “A mouse droid tells me that the New Republic is setting up a new flight academy on Hosnian Prime. And I hear you’ll be a pupil there, is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s no big.”
“Perhaps you’ll actually learn how to fly a ship,” Sinjir says with a wink. “You know they’re not toys you smash in the ground.”
Conder tsks him and says: “Don’t let him sass you.”
Sinjir makes a face. “I am a sassy bastard. It is my nature.”
“Seriously, you should be proud, Temmin,” Conder says. “I bet you’ll miss your mom, though, huh?”
“About that…” Temmin says.
“I’m going with him,” Norra says. Eyebrows arch in curiosity, and she answers their unspoken questions with, “Oh, relax. It’s not like that, I’m not the dutiful mother unable to let go of her star-pupil son. Wedge will be the head instructor there, at least to get the school set up. And he’s invited me to teach, too.” She doesn’t say anything about how she and Wedge have been spending considerable time together. It’s not romantic. That’s what she keeps telling herself, anyway. The memory of Brentin is still fresh like a burn. It’s too soon to let that fade. She wants to hold on to that pain as long as she can. “Apparently they think I’m not too terrible a pilot.”
More congratulations go around.
They talk for a while about what they’ll all be doing. The rise of Black Sun and the Red Key leaves Jas looking to pay her way out of her debts—something her new ragtag crew of bounty hunters can help her accomplish. Sinjir will continue advising the chancellor—and now the race is on to find a third adviser to help balance out the constantly bickering pair of Sinjir and Sondiv Sella. Though Han and Leia aren’t here, the two of them will apparently remain—even though Sinjir notes the princess is quite keen to get back to helping those worlds still in thrall to Imperial remnants.
The night goes on and the moon brightens the Silver Sea. The conversation winds down, and as it happens, they peel away one by one. Jas says she’s off with the new crew. Sinjir makes a vomit-face as he notes that he’ll be subject to yet another early-morning meeting, which according to him “is an act of torture so vile I should’ve been using it as a weapon in my arsenal all along.”
—
Outside the bar, Sinjir sends Conder on as he and Jas hang back. A cool wind comes off the sea. Below them, waves roar against the cliffs. Jas watches Sinjir—there’s something just a little different about him, now. His shoulders aren’t so tight. His angles have softened—if only a little. It looks as if something has left him: a pressure, a burden, some presence she cannot fully know. It has given him an ease of posture, as if he’s found some kind of peace, however strange and temporary it may be.
“Looks like you found your star,” Jas says.
“Conder?”
“Not him. Well, maybe him—I just mean, you found a life. A purpose. You’ve been drifting since Endor. You are takask wallask ti dan no more, Sinjir.”
He leans in and puts an arm around her. “Oh, now, I don’t know about that. Without you, I think I’ll feel quite lost, indeed.”
“You’ll be fine. You’ve gone respectable, remember?”
“Respectable? Bah. I took several steps down on the moral hierarchy going from Imperial torturer to political adviser.”
“I’m just happy you have purpose.”
“Seems we all found our purpose.”
She smirks, cocking her head in such a way that her singular ridge of hair flips over, revealing the side of her scalp where the horn spurs were broken off. “I never lost mine.”
“But it changed a little, didn’t it?”
“Hm. It did. I learned to play well with others, for one.” She sighs. “And I learned that perhaps my aunt didn’t have it all wrong. Maybe I should take more, um, ethical jobs from now on. Nothing wrong with helping people from time to time—as long as there’s a bag of credits to go along with it. One must get paid, after all.”
“You going to be okay?”
Jas frowns. “What? Because of my debts? I’ll be fine. They’ve chased me for this long and now I have this crew watching my back.” She stiffens. “Admittedly, a crew who will probably sell me out as soon as they receive a viable offer to do so, but I will burn that bridge when I get to it.”
“No. I mean because of Jom.”
Jom. That name sucker-punches her. They’ve been saying it all night, and it gut-kicks her every time. “Jom and I were never ever going to have a real thing. But we had something foolish and incomplete going on and I was good with that. He was…” She tries not to break. She holds it together, if barely. “He was an idiot who liked me more than I liked him and that got him killed.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“No. It’s not. It’s his. But I still feel bad about it, and I feel worse because there’s nothing I can do to balance those scales. That is a debt I can never pay back because there is no one to pay it to.”
“Life isn’t all about debts.”
“Life is only about debts. You accumulate them. You pay them out. Others gather debts to you and you try to collect in return.”
“Your whole life is a ledger?”
“More or less.”
He hugs her close. “Your cynicism gives me life, dear Jas.”
“The feeling is reciprocal. Regrettably—I have to go.”
“We’ll see each other again, won’t we?”
“I don’t know,” she answers, and it’s an honest answer.
“Fair enough.”
He kisses her temple. She holds him for a little while longer, lingering on the cliff as the sea rolls in, bashing against the rocks. And then she goes her way, and he goes his.
—
“We’ll see them again,” Temmin says.
“I know.”
“I miss Dad. I miss Bones. They should’ve been here.”
“I know. I miss them, too.” She looks to her son. Even now, it’s strange to see how he’s grown up in this short time since she returned to Akiva. His cheeks are rounder. Hair, bushier. His eyes are a bit darker now, too. Temmin’s filled out in his shoulders—when he was a baby, she marveled as he transformed into a toddling thing, and later was floored by the swift transition to the boy he became. Then boy to teenager, and now a teenager to a proper young man. So many changes.
It saddens her at the same time it thrills her.
“We’re going to be okay,” he says, patting her hand as if sensing her distress. He has a good head on him. Maybe it took a little while to screw it on, no thanks to her. Leaving him on Akiva? Throwing him into a war? I’m basically the worst mother ever, she thinks. But they’re both alive. And she decides to forgive herself, then, for all the things that happened. Justice and revenge are two warring forces, but for her, she rejects them both. No need anymore to get revenge on herself for what she did, or seek justice and recompense for the kind of mother she’s been. Forgiveness for herself comes blooming inside her, bright as a star and warm as the noonday sun. Maybe it’s the drink. Maybe it’s a night out with friends. But it feels like a great deal of ugliness in her is suddenly washing out to sea. Gone away, goodbye.
“Love you, kiddo,” she says to her son.
“Love you, Mom.”
“It’s past your bedtime, Snap.”
He snaps his fingers, to demonstrate. “Or we could just stay up all night and watch the boats go out to catch fish in the morning.”
“Just this once. Then we gotta pack. The Corellian Academy calls.”
Traveling the abyss beyond the known galaxy takes months.
The months for Sloane are hard and lonely. The Imperialis is a cold, impeccably designed ship, and she shares it with a pack of wild children and the haggard, haunted remnant of the man named Brendol Hux. The early days of the trip were spent worrying about whether or not one day Hux would rally his vicious orphans to slay her while sleeping. But once she saw that the children listened to Hux’s own son—a pale slip of a boy with a tousle of red hair—she went to him and asked young Armitage to make a deal with her. She said to Armitage: “If you’re willing to keep me safe from the children, then I will keep you safe from your father. Do we have an accord?”
The boy nodded and said that they did.
And then she found Brendol Hux in his room, and she showed him a swatch of Rax’s bloody cape and the data spike containing the map coordinates. She said that she knew Brendol always hated her, and that the feeling was mutual, but if they are to carry forth the banner of the Empire, then they are to be allies, however reluctant.
The oaf made a mistake, then: he came at her. His hands reached for her throat. Even beaten and bruised as she was, it took her no time to hyperextend his knee with a hard kick. As he doubled over, mewling, she grabbed a hank of his messy hair, and she began to beat him. She hit him, punching and kicking the man until he was on the floor, on his knees, whimpering. Sloane told him: “If you ever cross me, I will visit this same violence upon you a hundredfold. Whatever waits for us out here, you’re with me. You will not betray me. You will not question me. Do you understand?”
He nodded. Smiling through tears. Blubbering that he was her man.
Then she added, “Your son. Armitage. I know you don’t like him. I suspect you hurt him—psychologically or physically, I don’t know, and I don’t care. You will leave him alone. And you will teach the boy everything that you know. Are we clear?”
More blubbering, more nodding.
That solved that problem.
It did not, however, solve the problem of her loneliness. For the duration of the trip, she remained away from the children, away from Hux. She kept to herself, occupying her time looking at the ship’s records—studying its history, its flight time, its communications, its weapons. The ship, like all of Palpatine’s yachts, bears the maker-mark of Raith Sienar. It is perhaps unsurprisingly well-fitted with hidden ordnance; most yachts, after all, are not loaded for bear with Umbaran electromagnetic plasma cannons. Also unsurprising is that this ship, given that it’s a replica, has had very little flight time. It went from the shipyard over Castell to Jakku, and has remained there for years—going all the way back to when Sienar was a Republic corporation.
What is surprising is that, not long after takeoff, the ship transmitted a very small packet of data to a dozen different sources. Ship transmitters, by the look of it. And it takes digging to unlock even this much. Sloane had no one to ask but the strange droid piloting the ship, and so she asked the sentinel, “What did we transmit? And to whom?”
The sentinel answered, “Path coordinates. Sent to Imperials considered loyal.”
“Who considered them loyal? Rax?”
“Emperor Palpatine.”
“Are you loyal to Palpatine?”
“All sentinels and messengers are programmed to serve his will, even in death.”
“Good,” she said. Though she was not then, and is not now, sure how good it really is. What waits for them now remains a mystery. Who waits—and who will follow in their wake—is an even more troubling conundrum.
And all that assumed they even make it.
The journey through the Unknown Regions has been harrowing. Taking short hyperspace jumps through the chaos has been like navigating a dangerous maze at full speed. But the sentinel assured her the path was safe. They skirted superstorms and saw strange creatures out there in the blackness of the void. They lost system power when a magnetic burst of mysterious origin cascaded through space—but it was only for a few hours, and with power restored they were able to continue on.
It doesn’t help that all along her side has ached fiercely. Every morning she checked the old injury, and though the bruise has faded, the ribs look soft and caved in. And even the faintest fluttering touch of her fingertips upon the skin causes her great pain. Something is broken inside. She tells herself she will fix it when they land on the Eclipse. If they land on the Eclipse.
Truth is, Sloane almost didn’t come on this journey.
When she finally shut down the self-destruct mechanism on the Observatory—the one that would have split the world of Jakku in twain, wiping out both the Empire and the New Republic forces—she thought about remaining there on that world. Then she toyed with the idea of following Norra and looking for her own way to the New Republic. Maybe they would imprison her. Maybe they would give her a job. Maybe someone would quietly slit her throat and dump her in the sea. No matter the outcome, at least she would find some purpose, however short.
But then the old ambition came alive once more—a campfire she thought was dark, suddenly glowing once more with a kindled ember. If there is a chance to rebuild the Empire, shouldn’t I take it? Couldn’t she make it better? In her own image? She felt the promise of a frontier nation born of loyalty and order and not given over to the backstabbing and incest of the Empire that Palpatine created and Gallius Rax destroyed. They are pioneers in this space. They are the first outside the charted limits of the galaxy.
She realized: It can be mine, if only I am willing to take it.
Soon, they will be at their destination.
And soon, it will be hers to take.
—
The Imperialis glides gleaming around the edges of a geomagnetic storm—at a distance, it looks like threads of hazy light, diaphanous and spectral, emerging from a blue-black cloud and finding one another in the void. The light braiding and twisting.
“There,” Brendol Hux says. Hux has cleaned himself up. His hair and beard are trimmed. He’s lost some of the paunch he brought with him. Sloane sees what he indicates: in the distance, the lean blade of a Super Star Destroyer dreadnought floats beyond the light and in the black.
She knows that ship.
The Eclipse.
To the sentinel droid piloting the Imperialis she says, “Take us in. It’s time to rejoin with those who came before.” She does not fully know who was sent ahead. Hux did not know himself. Is it the original crew of the Eclipse? Were the others hand-selected by Palpatine, or by Rax? She cannot say, and she is eager to solve that riddle—and worried about the answer. If those present are loyal to the others, but refuse loyalty to her, then her stewardship of this new Empire will be woefully short. She knows that no matter what, her struggle has not ended. It has only begun, and this worries her considerably.
Her worries are myriad. Will Hux betray her when they join with the others? Who comes after? Do they serve him, or her? Can she be the legacy of Palpatine, or must she always contend with the ghost of Gallius Rax, his presence lingering in those who remain? That man’s influence was a virus. Infectious and potentially incurable. Then there comes a question of the children: those bright-eyed monsters. They train every day here on board the ship at the urging of both Brendol and his son Armitage. Armitage has grown more vicious during these months, even for such a small boy.
Sloane likes him. But she worries about him, too.
They could colonize it all.
Their new galaxy will never have known a time without an Empire.
That thrills her.
And, indeed, it worries her, too.
“It’s time to start over,” she says to Hux. “That is our first order. To begin again. And to get it right, this time.”
“Yes, of course, Grand Admiral. Anything you need. Glory be to Grand Admiral Sloane.”
“No,” she says. “Glory goes only to the Empire.”
&
nbsp; My Empire, she thinks.
To Luke S.,
wherever you are
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I think the biggest acknowledgment I need to make is to those architects and dreamers who made this galaxy as real to me as they did to so many others out there over the last (gulp) four decades: George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Leigh Brackett, Irvin Kirshner, Dave Filoni, Timothy Zahn, J. J. Abrams, and soon, Rian Johnson. That’s only a spare, cut-down list of the hundreds, even thousands of people who have shaped this galaxy of stories in some way, big or small, over the years.
Thanks, too, to Grand Admiral Editor Elizabeth Schaefer, Vizier Tom Hoeler (who also has a side job as a Huttese translator and songwriter), and Super Secret First Order Literary Agent Stacia Decker.
BY CHUCK WENDIG
STAR WARS
Aftermath
Aftermath: Life Debt
Aftermath: Empire’s End
THE HEARTLAND TRILOGY
Under the Empyrean Sky
Blightborn
The Harvest
MIRIAM BLACK
Blackbirds
Mockingbird
The Cormorant
Thunderbird
OTHER NOVELS
Zer0es
Invasive
Atlanta Burns
Double Dead
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHUCK WENDIG is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He’s the author of many novels, including Invasive, Blackbirds, Atlanta Burns, Zer0es, and the YA Heartland series. He is co-writer of the short film Pandemic and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus. He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, son, and red dog.
terribleminds.com
@ChuckWendig
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