by Renee Ahdieh
After all, she will be there by choice.
The Emperor will meet her in his throne room not to interrogate her (though Mon has heard he conducts certain interrogations personally), but to look down upon her and smile that withered, wax-faced smile. “Senator Mothma. It is so good to finally be reunited.” He’ll say this, or something equally unctuous.
She will be at his mercy forever.
Her Rebel Alliance—the revolution she built on a foundation of bones—will cease to be. The murder of Alderaan, the defeat at Yavin, and the surrender of its commander in chief will be blows the organization cannot recover from. There will be Imperial cleanup operations, but no more planets will die. Why should they, when the Emperor has everything he’s ever desired?
Mon will be humiliated. She will be asked to renounce her cause publicly, and she will do so. She knows the Emperor well enough to expect she won’t be executed—rather, she will be kept alive on the off chance he needs to use her as a warning to his enemies.
In time, she will be forgotten.
In time, her mistakes will be forgotten. Her arrogance will be forgotten.
Her complicity in the deaths of billions on Alderaan will be forgotten.
Mon Mothma is responsible for her own failures. How can she believe she has the right to start the cycle over again—to rebuild the same Rebellion that was defeated once already?
In this future, she will live her life in darkness. In time, perhaps someone else will find a better answer.
—
Mon writes with furious urgency, tapping words into her datapad as her metal case trembles between her ankles. She needs to complete the speech before they reach Coruscant, though that isn’t why she races through it. Instead she’s driven by the overwhelming need to confess, to disavow her life’s work and all the horrors it has bred.
The speech isn’t one of her best, and it won’t get much better—she doesn’t have time to redraft. She doesn’t have anyone to critique her style and rhetoric. She won’t let Cianne learn the truth until it’s too late.
She looks from the case at her feet to the cockpit, where Cianne and the pilot are hunched over the main console. Carefully, she sets her datapad to the side and opens the case. She transfers its contents to the gap under her seat. Cianne or the pilot will find the secrets of the Rebel Alliance stashed there after Mon is gone. They can judge how to use it all themselves.
Like the princess, they’re young enough to choose their own future. Their own means of rebellion. Mon has abrogated any right to choose for them.
She’s failed at her task. Maybe others will do better.
Unless…
No, she tells herself. There’s no time left for dreams. Jan said it himself: Do what has to be done.
She still has the rest of the journey to change her mind. To find another way. She doesn’t believe she’ll succeed.
When laughter emerges from the cockpit, she can’t entirely comprehend it. She hears Cianne’s voice before the pilot joins in. Mon furrows her brow as her aide rushes into the cramped passenger lounge.
“We heard from Base One,” Cianne says. Her eyes glitter wetly.
“And?” Mon asks.
“They destroyed the Death Star. We won.”
—
In the very near future, Mon will reunite with her surviving colleagues in High Command. The Alliance will rally in the wake of its extraordinary victory, and its message will spread like starlight to a thousand worlds. Rebels too young to know democracy, regret, or a lover’s kiss will strike at the Empire again and again under Mon’s leadership.
She will never speak of her Yavin 4 contingency plan.
The conflict will not end swiftly. The destruction of the Emperor’s space station will only amplify the violence. Mon will watch the carnage from safety—from hidden bases in the jungle and under sheets of ice—sending children to die with the swipe of a finger on a tactical map. If victory comes (and it may not, it may still all prove pointless; she may even go through this a second time, with a second space station) it will take many more years.
But Mon believes in victory again.
As her shuttle adjusts course, her newfound hope crushes her like gravity and steals the air from her lungs. She does not hesitate to delete her message of surrender, but she longs for its simplicity—the endless peace of submission to despair. A new scar is etched across her spirit now, the work of the Emperor’s greatest weapon.
She does not weep at her burden. She gives orders to Cianne and steels herself for the years of war to come.
“You ask me, Alderaan had it coming,” Lando Calrissian said. “Playing it all high and mighty as long as they did.”
“So you believe the rumors?” Jaff responded. “You really think the Imperials destroyed an entire planet?”
“Well, something turned Alderaan into a bunch of little rocks—and it seems like the Empire’s style. You know what I mean, right?”
Lando flicked his gaze across the table, just a quick little scan across the pile of fleshy folds the Verosian called a face. Jaff Basan was strange looking, even in a galaxy with no lack of strange. Lando wanted to catch his reaction to that last statement—but, you know, without being obvious about it. You didn’t want the other guy to figure out he was being played. Jaff was no amateur, though. His face maintained the same bland expression, the Verosian equivalent of a pleasant, noncommittal smile, that he’d kept on his face for the entire game so far.
Lando and Jaff sat across from each other at a low table, drinks in front of them, surrounded on all sides by a silent audience, wealthy degenerates from all across the galaxy. Activity at the other gambling stations in the casino had slowed to a crawl as word spread of what was happening here—an actual game of Klikklak between Lando Calrissian and Jaff Basan.
Klikklak was named for the sounds made by a large insect native to the forests of the planet where the game was invented. The bugs called out to each other klik and answered klak, the sounds traveling for kilometers through the trees. And that was the game: just a conversation. Each player got one card from a standard sabacc deck. Then, for a little while, they just…talked. Had a little chat about whatever they felt like. To an observer, Klikklak usually seemed pretty light, pretty casual. It wasn’t.
When the allotted time was up, each player pressed a single button on the table between them, locking in the one decision required by the game’s rules: whether they thought their card was higher or lower than the other guy’s. That was it. The entire thing. You won by being right when your opponent was wrong. If you both guessed right, or both guessed wrong, the game was a push—but the house still took its 10 percent commission, the worst possible outcome. There was some dignity in losing, but when nobody won but the house? Forget Alderaan—that would be a tragedy.
The trick to Klikklak was the conversation. You had to use those ten minutes or so not only to try to figure out what your opponent had, high or low, but also to get them to guess the way you wanted them to go. You had to figure them out, and misdirect them at the same time. Lando loved it. If gambling could ever be called art—and as far as Lando Calrissian was concerned, it absolutely could—then Klikklak was its highest expression.
Jaff was a tough opponent, though. Lando didn’t know much about Verosian physiology. Always a tricky situation, especially since humans were among the most common species in the galaxy. That made them underdogs in games like Klikklak. Jaff probably knew what most human facial expressions signified—but Lando was flying blind, trying to piece together what a little tremble of the antennae might mean, or a slow, languid blink of an ocular membrane.
Still…you know…exhilarating.
“What do you mean?” Jaff said.
“Well, didn’t the Empire get all up in your planet’s business, too?”
Jaff made the sort of wobbly snort that passed for a chuckle.
“They’re in everyone’s business, aren’t they?”
“Not mine,” Lando said. �
�I stay clear. That is my business.”
“Oh really?” Jaff said. “I thought it was losing at cards.”
A little held breath from the audience, as they waited to see how Lando would respond. But insults were part of the game, nothing to get all worked up about. Lando glanced around the room at the watchers. Beings from more than twenty different worlds, united by a single expression of rapt fascination. They were watching two masters at work, and they knew it.
Lando grinned self-deprecatingly, lifting one arm to the crowd, letting himself be the butt of the joke, giving the audience permission to laugh with him. He took over the moment, not watching Jaff’s reaction, but of course he was absolutely watching Jaff’s reaction, and there—there it was. The tiniest flush of green on the folds of his neck. The same flush he’d seen when Lando had mentioned the Empire.
Jaff Basan came from Veros, and Veros had once been an extremely wealthy planet. Technically, it was still a wealthy planet, but that wealth was now in the hands of the Empire, instead of the bank accounts of the familial alliances that had ruled the planet for centuries, one of which was the venerable House of Basan. It had all happened decades ago, and Jaff was still rich—very rich, or he wouldn’t have been allowed entry to this room at all—but there had to be a twinge when he thought about what had been taken from his family. Frustration, expressed in a spray of viridian across the gill-like fronds on his neck.
The infuriating thing about Klikklak was that having a high card wasn’t always good, and low wasn’t always bad. Lando’s card was precisely in the middle of the deck—he couldn’t even use the odds to help him. But that didn’t matter, really. In Klikklak, the cards were, in many ways, irrelevant. The game was about coming to a complete and thorough understanding of another being in the space of a single conversation, and if you couldn’t manage that, you were lost.
But Lando was not lost. He had Jaff dead to rights. He’d pieced together that the little flush of green meant frustration, and he’d also seen it whenever he’d slipped references to things being high, or tall, or above into the conversation—little signifiers, meant to be perceived by Jaff as accidental—subconscious nudges to help him think Lando’s card was on the high side. Every time he did it, another green flush, which meant Jaff was annoyed, which meant Jaff’s card had to be high, too, because it was hard for him to decide whether Lando’s high card was higher than his high card. Put all of that together and Lando’s bet was easy. Low.
“Shall we?” Lando said, gesturing toward the buttons on the table’s surface, hidden from the other player by a small screen, which were used to indicate the high/low bet.
Jaff nodded politely, and moved one of his appendages behind his own screen.
Lando kept his smile smooth and his breathing steady—no external signals for Jaff to read—but inside, he was already laughing. This was it. At last. With the credits he was about to win, he could pay off his more pressing debts, put some money down on a ship, get mobile again, see what sort of delights the galaxy had to offer a man of Lando Calrissian’s unique abilities and sensibilities.
He touched the button on the table, caressed it, savoring the moment.
And then, a shout, a command uttered in the gravelly, compressed, inhuman tone that anyone living in the Empire’s galaxy recognized immediately.
“Hands in clear view! Anyone who moves will be shot. There will be no second warning,” the stormtrooper said.
The room froze as everyone slowly turned to look at the squad of Imperial troops that had entered the little space. Five ordinary troops plus an orange-pauldroned sergeant—but also, somewhat unusually, a black-clad Imperial officer. Lando thought it was a lieutenant, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d never bothered to memorize the rank insignia—the Calrissian policy with respect to Imperial officers was the same top to bottom: avoid.
The officer’s face was cold, icy, clenched tight. It read to Lando like barely restrained rage. Anger at some great personal injury.
“This is an illegal gambling establishment, in violation of Imperial Statute Seven-Five-Nine-Point-Eight. You are all ordered to vacate the premises immediately. Any credits you have deposited with the room’s cashier are forfeit.”
A rumble of discontent rippled through the room. Everyone had money stashed with the cashier in exchange for the credit chits they used to gamble. Lando himself, in particular, had the very large wager he had placed on the Klikklak game. Thousands of credits, carefully amassed over long nights at gambling tables much less reputable than this one, scraped together from gigs that were so far beneath his talents that it almost physically hurt to take them. About to evaporate like smoke.
Movement in the crowd as a large, robed gentleman stepped forward, rings on his fingers glittering in the low light, heavy jowls lifting to lavish a generous smile on the presumed lieutenant. Luck Luck Freidal, owner of the casino, and a man with potentially more to lose that evening than any gambler in his establishment.
“My friend, is there a mistake?” Freidal said. “Everything here is legal. People are just having a nice evening.”
“Not anymore. This is over,” the officer said, his tone colder than the dark side of an ice moon.
The smile on Freidal’s face wavered, just a touch.
Oh no, man, Lando thought. Don’t do it. Don’t you see? The man’s just looking for an excuse.
But Freidal apparently did not see, or decided the risk was worth it, in the desperate hope that this obvious misunderstanding could be cleared up, that there was a way to salvage his reputation and his business before word spread that Luck Luck Freidal couldn’t keep his illegal gambling den clear of Imperials.
Freidal leaned in closer to the Imperial officer and uttered a few low words. Lando couldn’t hear them, but he had a pretty good idea of what was being said: Hey, man, I’m paid up this month. What the hell are you doing? Don’t we have an arrangement?
Lando saw the officer’s face turn even colder, which he would have said was impossible. He saw Freidal pressing his case, saw the troopers taking a tighter grip on their rifles. He saw it all, and knew exactly what was about to happen.
Lando had a blaster under his cape, at the small of his back. Just a little thing, but it packed a wallop. He was better with it than anyone in this casino knew—than anyone alive knew, in fact. He could take out the lieutenant, the stormtrooper commander, maybe even one of the underlings, before they reacted. And by the time they did, some of the other illicit weaponry in the room would be out from under cloaks and hidden holsters. These idiot Imperials had no idea how outnumbered they actually were in here—they’d all be gunned down in no time. Someone just had to make the first move. Someone had to play hero.
Lando Calrissian loved heroes. They thought the galaxy owed them something. Like they mattered, somehow, in some bizarre way that meant the fundamental rules of reality were tilted in their favor. Heroes believed, honestly believed that things would just…work out for them.
Heroes were Lando’s favorite opponents at the gambling table. The worse the odds got, the bigger they bet.
Because heroes were suckers.
Lando slowly, carefully moved his hands up above the edge of the Klikklak table. They were empty.
The Imperial officer nodded once, tightly. Two quick shots from a blaster rifle, and then a thud as Luck Luck Freidal hit the floor, a smoking hole where his heart had been. Lando would have to find his next game somewhere else.
The lieutenant looked out at the room. The murder he’d just ordered appeared to have done exactly zero to cool the rage seething behind his eyes.
“Disperse,” he said.
Lando’s eyes shifted to the safe across the room where Freidal kept the wagers on the various games until they were paid out. Millions of credits in that safe, many of which had, just minutes ago, belonged to Lando Calrissian.
Lando closed his eyes for a moment, sighed deeply, then dispersed.
—
Another bar, across the city
, in a less desirable zone. The sort of place Lando had sincerely hoped he would never have to set foot in again. A place where work could be found, for individuals with unique abilities, sensibilities, and moralities. Work had suddenly become very important. Lando needed a gig to make up those credits he’d just lost, and quick, or he’d be in trouble. More trouble.
So much for hope, he thought, stepping through the door, immediately suffused by the miasma of spilled drinks and dead dreams that places like this always shared.
Lando walked to the bar, sensing the eyes of almost every being in the place watching him. He owed debts to at least half of them, ranging from credits to blood. He reached the bar, then turned around and smiled.
“Hey, guys. Long time,” he said. “How about a round on me?”
The bartender, of a species with arguably too many eyes, tapped Lando’s shoulder.
“You buying a round for the bar? How you gonna pay for it, Calrissian?” he said.
“Put it on my tab, Okkul,” Lando said, not turning.
“Your tab? Your tab?” Okkul said, his tone rising into an aggrieved whine that could pierce durasteel. “You honestly think there’s credit for you in this bar, after…”
Lando pulled a credit chip from his pocket and placed it down on the bar, doing it theatrically, making sure plenty of people saw him do it.
“That should handle it. Everything I owe you and the round for the house.”
Okkul’s attitude mellowed considerably after that, and, more important, it meant Lando was safe, at least for the time it took for the bar’s patrons to obtain and consume their drinks. You don’t shoot the guy buying the booze. Usually.
Lando moved toward the end of the bar, where a man sat reading from a datapad. Lando joined the man, lifting his glass to his mouth.
“Nice gesture,” Lobot said. “So you won?”
Lando drained his drink—a barely drinkable local brandy, but what could you expect, really—and set the glass down on the bar, signaling to Okkul to bring him another.
“I’m gonna need to you to cover this next one, Lo, and all of the many others I plan to consume this fine evening. Those were my last few credits. Your man Lando is officially skinned.”