by Jason Fry
She’d been meant to come to this planet, to land on this island, to climb this stair. She was sure of it. Her whole life—all those desperate days hunkered down in Jakku’s heat and dust, all those desolate nights adrift in its cold and loneliness—had been a prelude to this.
A wall rose beside the stairs, which passed through a clearing nestled against the cliff. Several modest stone huts filled the space, conical assemblages of painstakingly corbeled stone, with narrow doorways. They were ancient but well cared for. Some doorways were open and empty, while others had simple doors of weathered gray wood. And one had a door of pitted, rusting metal, adorned with faded red stripes.
Rey glanced at the huts, but knew this wasn’t her destination—not quite.
She followed the stairs up a grassy slope until they ended in a saddle between towers of rock. A figure shrouded in a simple cloak and robe stood at the edge of a cliff, facing away from her out over the endless sea.
After a moment the figure raised its head and turned slowly, peering out from under a cowl. The face above the graying beard was wrinkled and weathered, seamed and etched by hints of extreme climates. But the eyes were a bright blue.
Rey walked toward Luke Skywalker as he pushed back his hood. His left hand was flesh and blood, the right metal and wires. He stared at her, his gaze direct and intense, his expression strange. She couldn’t tell if that was anger, despair, or yearning on his face.
Without breaking eye contact with the man she’d come so far to see, Rey slung her staff over her shoulder, reached into her pack, and removed the lightsaber. She held it out to him.
An offer. A plea.
Emotions chased themselves across the Jedi Master’s face. After several moments he took a tentative step forward, then another. He reached up and took the lightsaber from her hand.
Rey stepped back, her breath catching in her throat, as Luke regarded the ancient weapon. Then he lifted his eyes to hers. She forced herself to hold that powerful gaze and stand her ground.
Then Luke tossed the lightsaber off the cliff.
Rey’s eyes followed its arc through the air, then turned back to Luke, wide with shock.
He walked past her without a word, his strides long and deliberate.
“Uh, Master Skywalker?” she managed, but he had vanished down the stairs.
She hesitated, then hurried after him, to the clearing with the huts. She arrived just in time to see the rusted metal door slam, leaving her alone with the keening birds.
Rey edged up to the door and tapped on it tentatively.
“Master Skywalker, I’m from the Resistance,” she said. “Your sister Leia sent me. We need your help. We need you to come back.”
There was no reply.
“Master Skywalker?” she tried again. “Hello?”
This couldn’t be happening, not after all she’d gone through to get here. She felt like she’d fallen into a bad dream, one in which she spoke but her words made no sound. After a few more moments of silence she began banging on the door.
“Hello?”
* * *
—
Rey found the lightsaber in the grass far below the cliff from which Luke had hurled it. Several of the curious, chubby birds were inspecting it, warbling at one another in puzzlement. She shooed them away and retrieved the lightsaber, rubbing the knuckles left swollen by hammering on the Jedi Master’s door in vain.
Below her, she caught sight of a shape under the waters of a shallow bay—a shape too angular to be natural. She realized it was an X-wing fighter, corroded by long immersion in salt water.
She looked the lightsaber over and was relieved to find it undamaged. She replaced it gently in her pack, her thoughts returning to the Jedi Master sulking in his hut atop the mountain. Had she done something wrong? Offended him in some way? Failed to perform some secret Jedi ritual no one had bothered telling her about?
Rey had no idea—and no inkling about how to fix things. And it was a long way back up the mountain to be ignored for who knew how long.
She gazed morosely at the submerged X-wing. So that was where the door had come from—Skywalker had salvaged one of the wings. Had he stripped it of anything else? Her practiced eye picked out the location of antenna coils, maneuvering repulsors, static discharge couplings, and other gear that she once might have removed and bargained for rations.
I don’t think that’s salvageable. Zero portions.
She smiled slightly at the idea of Unkar Plutt gaping at a starfighter that was now more reef than vehicle. The reactor would still be outputting residual heat, but that would do no one any good except nearby fish and crustaceans. Maybe some of the wiring and conduits would still be intact, inside their protective jacketing. Everything else, though, would be junk.
Granted, that didn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t clean it up and try to pass it off as operational—plenty of unscrupulous dealers back in Niima Outpost had eked out a living that way. But the result would be a malfunction or a breakdown waiting to happen.
Malfunctions and breakdowns, hmm.
If Master Skywalker wouldn’t talk to her, she’d arrange a conversation with someone he couldn’t ignore.
She strode off in the direction of the Falcon.
* * *
—
This time, at least, the knock on the door got a response—an annoyed order to go away.
A moment later the door had been separated from its hinges, bouncing of the far wall, and an angry Wookiee was storming into the hut, snarling and roaring.
Rey followed Chewbacca inside, peeking around the Falcon’s first mate. Luke had changed clothes, and was now dressed in rough-hewn woolens and leggings. She had to admit the shock on his face was satisfying.
“Chewie? What are you doing here?”
Chewbacca, still angry, subjected Luke to another round of bellowing.
“He says you’re coming back with us,” Rey said.
Luke spared her an annoyed glance.
“I got that,” he said, before turning his attention back to the Wookiee. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Chewbacca snarled indignantly.
“How did you find me?” asked Luke, still acting as if Rey weren’t there.
“Long story,” Rey said. “We’ll tell you on the Falcon.”
“The Falcon? Wait…”
Rey recognized the instant he realized what was wrong.
“Where’s Han?” Luke asked Chewbacca.
The Wookiee’s anger drained away, leaving him slump-shouldered with misery. He moaned pitifully. Rey hesitated, then stepped forward. The least she could do was spare Chewie this part. But that meant it was up to her to tell Luke that Han Solo was dead.
As the turbolift doors shut, General Hux tugged at the cuffs of his uniform, even though he knew they were perfect. He tried not to think how long it had been since Supreme Leader Snoke had summoned him to his throne room aboard the enormous warship known as the Supremacy.
The Supremacy was a massive flying wedge, measuring 60 kilometers from wingtip to wingtip. Its designers had anointed it the first of the galaxy’s Mega-class Star Destroyers, but such a classification struck Hux as essentially meaningless. True, the Supremacy could deliver the destructive power of a full fleet. But that was a decidedly narrow perspective from which to assess its capabilities. Within its armored hull were production lines churning out everything from stormtrooper armor to Star Destroyers, foundries and factories, R&D labs and training centers for cadets. The Supremacy’s industrial capacity outstripped that of entire star systems, while its stores of everything from foodstuffs to ore ensured it could operate independently for years without making planetfall.
All of which was by design. Snoke had been steadfast in his refusal to designate a world as capital of the First Order, explaining icily that he had far more in mind
for his regime than ruling the handful of sectors it claimed in the Outer Rim or colonizing clusters of worlds beyond the frontier.
Such ambitions would make the First Order no different from the various nonaligned states that had sprung up in the wake of the Galactic Civil War, or the hermetic kingdoms of the Unknown Regions—many of which had been dismantled or destroyed by the First Order during its secret rise. No, Snoke had a grander destiny in mind—the First Order would restore all that had been stolen from the Empire, and then build upon that rebuilt foundation.
But until that promise was fulfilled, the First Order’s capital would be mobile. It would be the Supremacy.
It was a strategy Hux had helped formulate. The Supremacy couldn’t be cut off from its supply lines, as it carried them with it. Besides, Hux had seen the dangers of fixed capitals—they had their own gravity, drawing in everything from fleets to economic muscle to intellectual talent. They were cultural centers but also sinkholes—and that made them vulnerable.
Hosnian Prime had proven that vulnerability, Hux thought, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. The former capital of the New Republic was now a charnel house—the churning ember of a star, orbited by shattered planetary cores being slowly drawn into rings of dust and ash. Millennia from now, the Hosnian system would remain as a monument to the day the First Order had swept away the Republic’s weakness and dishonesty, reestablishing the principle of rule through strength and discipline.
And the name of Armitage Hux would be remembered, too—of that he was certain. It would be exalted as builder of the First Order’s armies, architect of its technological revolution, and executioner of the New Republic.
And, very soon, the destroyer of the Resistance.
For which he would earn another reward, Hux mused.
Commander of the Supremacy would be an excellent title…surpassed only by that of Supreme Leader Hux.
Hux almost whispered those three words to himself, but caught himself in time. Snoke had spies everywhere in the First Order—including, quite possibly, electronic ones in the turbolift leading to his private domain at the Supremacy’s heart.
The doors opened and Hux stepped into that domain, one of the few beings ever accorded the privilege of seeing Snoke in the flesh. The First Order’s leader sat on his throne, flanked by eight members of his crimson-armored Praetorian Guard. Banners bearing the regime’s emblem hung overhead, reflected in the gleaming black floor, and red curtains veiled the chamber’s viewports. In the throne room’s shadows, Hux glimpsed droids attending to their duties and the mute, purple-robed aliens that had helped the First Order blaze hyperspace lanes through the Unknown Regions.
As soon as Hux dropped to one knee, Snoke’s blue eyes were upon him, glittering in his ruined face.
“General, I handed you a war hammer and pointed to a nug-gnat,” he said.
“As I assured you, Supreme Leader, the setback is merely temporary,” Hux replied.
Snoke studied him appraisingly. The Supreme Leader wasn’t the towering figure seen in his holographic broadcasts, but he still dwarfed a human. The face was asymmetrical and the body hunched, but Snoke radiated power. A malign energy seemed to emanate from him, one that Hux imagined he could feel sending questing tendrils into his brain.
Hux knew the Force was real—his body still ached from being slammed to the deck of the Finalizer. But such sorcery was a last dying echo of ancient history, unreliable and unpredictable where technological prowess delivered certainty. Snoke commanded no legions of Force warriors, as the Jedi once had. No children were plucked from the ranks of First Order stormtroopers after displaying abilities beyond those of ordinary beings. There was just Snoke, and his loathsome creature Kylo Ren.
And Skywalker, whom Snoke and Ren had hunted so avidly, at the expense of much else that needed doing.
“After your failure today, General, your assurances do not inspire confidence,” Snoke said.
Hux’s shoulders tensed at the icy anger in his voice. He forced himself to remain impassive. If Snoke had wanted to kill him, he would have done it aboard the Finalizer, where Hux’s demise would have served as an object lesson to others. He wouldn’t have wasted time by summoning him here to do away with him in secret.
“You say you can track the Resistance fleet even after its escape to hyperspace—something no military force in galactic history has been able to do,” Snoke said, and Hux relaxed. Now the Supreme Leader was in Hux’s arena.
“No military force in galactic history had access to the technology we have created, Supreme Leader.”
“The Resistance fleet will be on the other side of the galaxy by now,” Snoke said. “In any of a billion star systems. The prospect of checking them all makes me weary, General.”
“We need not check them all, Supreme Leader. Our tracking system’s computer network contains millennia worth of data: every after-action report from Imperial history, as well as many from the Republic’s Judicial Forces and Planetary Security Forces. It contains astrogation reports, briefings from scouts and commercial guilds, Separatist intel—”
“A full inventory would be tedious,” rumbled Snoke.
Hux dipped his chin. “Of course, Supreme Leader. “Our sensors pinpoint the target’s last known trajectory, and tracking control analyzes it against our data sets. Trillions of potential destinations are sifted and reduced to hundreds, then dozens, and finally one.”
“And so why are we not headed to that lone destination?” Snoke asked.
“We are cross-checking the results of our initial analysis, Supreme Leader,” Hux said. “The final calculations should be complete within minutes.”
Snoke leaned back in his throne, considering that. His guards stood unmoving in their imprisoning red armor. Behind him, the alien navigators carried on their inscrutable work.
“So your solution to this ancient problem is no conceptual breakthrough,” Snoke said. “Your invention is a product not of genius, but brute force.”
“Brute force is underrated, Supreme Leader,” Hux said with a smile. “The New Republic’s home fleet is destroyed, and its surviving senators have dissolved the remaining task forces to protect their homeworlds. Their division makes them defenseless. No power in the galaxy can stand against us, Supreme Leader.”
His comlink trilled out a high-priority alert.
“With your permission, Supreme Leader?” Hux asked, and was favored with a nod. The message was the one he had hoped to hear.
“We have the Resistance fleet’s coordinates, Supreme Leader. Five-nines confidence level.”
“Then go, General. You’ve explained how your invention works—now show me that it does. Bring Organa’s rabble to heel.”
As Hux got to his feet, the turbolift opened behind him and Ren stepped into the throne room, face hidden behind his black-and-silver mask. Hux couldn’t resist grinning at him.
“Hux’s new toy appears to be working,” Snoke told Ren. “The Resistance will soon be in our grasp.”
“Thank you, Supreme Leader,” Hux said, and stepped into the lift.
Snoke had summoned him to answer for his failure, and sent him away praising his inventiveness. Hux knew Kylo Ren had arrived with no accomplishment that might deflect the Supreme Leader’s wrath—he’d needed to be rescued from Starkiller Base as it came apart and spent much of the time since then being put back together by medical droids.
Snoke had shepherded the First Order through its years in the galactic wilds, transforming a band of Imperial refugees into a weapon forged to reclaim the galaxy. As such, he would always be remembered. But Hux knew the future would need a different kind of leader—one able to direct the galaxy’s industries and nurture their innovations, while commanding its citizens’ respect.
Snoke wasn’t that leader. And neither was Ren.
* * *
—
“You wonder why I keep a rabid cur in such a place of power,” Snoke said once they were alone. “Mark this—a cur’s weakness, properly manipulated, can be a sharp tool.”
Kylo ignored that—he was in no mood for Snoke’s teachings, not after all that had happened.
“How’s your wound?” Snoke asked, making no effort to hide the derision in his question.
“It’s nothing,” Kylo said.
That wasn’t true—the lightsaber slash to his face had been closed with microsutures, but Kylo would bear its scar for the rest of his life. And his abdomen ached where a bolt from Chewbacca’s bowcaster had struck—a blow that would have been instantly fatal if Kylo hadn’t instinctively contained its energy with the Force.
“The mighty Kylo Ren,” Snoke said, considering his student. “When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see: raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special—the potential of your bloodline. A new Vader. Now I fear I was mistaken.”
Behind his mask, Kylo glowered at the tall figure in golden khalat robes.
“I’ve given everything I have to you—to the dark side,” Kylo said, his voice distorted by his mask. “Everything.”
“Take that ridiculous thing off,” said Snoke, his voice dripping with disgust.
Shock froze Kylo momentarily. He slowly reached up and removed the mask, revealing his scarred face. Snoke rose from his throne, the slow shuffling of his feet hinting at pain that dogged every step. Kylo stood stone-faced as Snoke approached him, willing himself to remain still as one finger stretched for his cheek, then higher.