by Jason Fry
Truths that Snoke had learned and made to serve his own ends.
One obstacle had stood in his way—Skywalker. Who had been wise enough not to rebuild the Jedi Order, dismissing it as the sclerotic, self-perpetuating debating society it had become in its death throes. Instead, the last Jedi had sought to understand the origins of the faith, and the larger truths behind it.
Like his father, Skywalker had been a favored instrument of the will of the Cosmic Force. That made it essential to watch him. And once Skywalker endangered Snoke’s design, it had become essential to act.
And so Snoke had drawn upon his vast store of knowledge, parceling it out to confuse Skywalker’s path, ensnare his family, and harness Ben Solo’s powers to ensure both Skywalker’s destruction and Snoke’s triumph.
Now the endgame he had foreseen was at hand.
Snoke waved and Rey’s binders parted and clattered to the floor—a trivial demonstration of the Force. He noted approvingly that it no longer awed her.
“Come closer, child,” he said.
She refused him and Snoke reached out with the Force, whose power had waxed even as his body had withered. To his delight he found Rey strong—even more powerful than he’d imagined. Strong with the Force, and with the kind of towering will that made her able to command it.
She would have made a fitting instrument for Snoke—if he’d still had need of such crude tools.
“So much strength,” Snoke said, savoring the currents of power in the room and the chaos of their collisions. “Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise.”
Another seemingly offhand gesture and Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber ripped itself free of Kylo’s grasp, tumbling past Rey to smack into Snoke’s hand. He turned the weapon gently, admiring both the skill of its construction and the power coiled within it. To Snoke’s eyes, the weapon’s very form revealed the Jedi lineage behind its creation, a string of once mighty names that no longer had any meaning.
“Skywalker, I assumed,” he said. “Wrongly.”
He set the lightsaber down on the throne’s armrest and pinned Rey with his gaze.
“Closer, I said.”
She resisted him again, but this time Snoke didn’t limit himself to testing her defenses. He used the Force to compel her body, yanking her centimeter by slow, unwilling centimeter toward him across the polished floor.
* * *
—
The rumors began flying even as Holdo’s loyalists and Poe’s mutineers found shelter behind equipment cases still waiting to be loaded into the Raddus’s transports: General Organa was ready to retake command.
But for which side? That was less clear, and led to the odd spectacle of fighters on either side of the hangar alternating firing stun blasts at each other with trying to hear what was being said over their comlinks.
The firing stopped when the hangar doors opened to reveal the slight figure of the general, followed by C-3PO and several soldiers and pilots—one of whom had Poe’s limp body slung over his shoulders.
For a long moment, no one said anything.
“I just got back on my feet—if it’s all right with everybody, I’d prefer to stay that way,” Leia said quietly.
She walked into the middle of the hangar, between the two sides, and put her hands on her hips. “Now, where is Admiral Holdo?”
Holdo emerged from behind a stack of crates and the two women regarded each other for a moment.
“Amilyn.”
“Leia.”
They embraced. Slowly, in ones and twos, soldiers and pilots on both sides holstered their weapons and stood.
“We’re about to make planetfall,” Leia said, once they’d parted. “If the First Order follows us down, I recommend we all shoot in the same direction.”
She stepped away from Holdo and began conferring with D’Acy. Holdo indicated which crates needed to be loaded first. After a few sheepish looks back and forth, the loyalists and mutineers realized that was it. They began carrying boxes, their divisions erased.
Holdo checked that Poe was breathing, then signaled for two soldiers to carry him aboard one of the transports. She turned to Leia.
“That one’s a troublemaker,” she said. “I like him.”
“Me too,” Leia said with a smile. “Now board your transport.”
Holdo raised an eyebrow at her old friend.
“For the transports to escape, someone has to stay behind and pilot the cruiser.”
Leia fixed her with a look Holdo knew all too well. She’d seen it on Alderaan, during the pathfinding expeditions of their youth, in the Apprentice Legislature on Coruscant, and in various impressive-looking legislative chambers as the New Republic Senate moved from world to world. Her friend was marshaling her arguments and preparing to give a speech.
Holdo had no doubt that it would be an effective one. But the time for speeches was over.
“I’m afraid I outrank you, Princess,” she said, gently but pointedly. “And an admiral goes down with her ship.”
Leia stopped and her chin dipped.
“Too many losses,” she said quietly. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“Sure you can,” Holdo replied, and Leia looked up in surprise. “You taught me how.”
Leia looked up at her and almost smiled. Were the situation different, she might even have laughed—the full, robust laugh that had rarely, if ever, been heard in her never-ending rounds of diplomatic summits and Senate debates and military strategy sessions. But then Amilyn had always had that effect on her—a gift for saying what reached your ears as the wrong thing but turned out to be perfect.
She’d miss that. She’d miss her.
“May the Force—” Leia began, only to hear her friend was saying the same words.
They stopped, deferring to each other.
“You take it,” Leia said. “I’ve said it enough.”
“May the Force be with you always,” Holdo said with a smile.
Leia put her hand on her friend’s arm as the first transports rose ponderously from the hangar’s deck and headed for space.
* * *
—
Rey tried to resist, commanding her feet to remain planted on the floor of Snoke’s throne room, but it was hopeless—she was pulled closer and closer to the Supreme Leader. As on Takodana, with Kylo Ren, she found that both her mind and body had been invaded and overwhelmed. The feeling sickened her—her stomach wanted to revolt, as if Snoke were a physical malady it could purge.
“You underestimate Skywalker,” she warned the gaunt, robed figure, her voice strained by trying to keep her distance. “And Ben Solo. And me. It will be your downfall.”
Snoke’s eyes glittered with feral amusement. Few things were more entertaining than an opponent who mistook a little bit of knowledge for the entire picture. Their downfalls were so much more satisfying—provided that before the end, they were confronted by the sheer scope of their folly and failure.
He studied Rey, still futilely struggling against his will, and decided he had time to teach her this final lesson.
“Oh?” Snoke asked, radiating mock concern. “Have you seen something? A weakness in my apprentice? Is that why you came?”
He laughed at the dawning horror on her face, and her attempt to hide it. There was nothing she could hide from him—not with her defenses so inadequate. Not even her thoughts—her deepest fears and secrets—were safe from him.
“Young fool,” Snoke said. “It was I who bridged your minds. I stoked Ren’s conflicted soul. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you—and you were not smart enough to resist the bait.”
Kylo Ren had remained kneeling in the throne room as Snoke tormented Rey, his face an impassive mask. Now he looked up in surprise, his eyes locked
on his master.
Snoke ignored the pleading look on Kylo’s face—just as he ignored the sickly waves of pain and confusion that rolled out from him into the Force.
But he did not ignore the fear in Rey’s face. Her shock at learning Snoke’s role in forging her connection with Kylo had disrupted what meager defenses she had. With her concentration broken, Snoke dragged her to his throne, her face paralyzed just centimeters from his own.
Holding Rey pinned there, Snoke considered Kylo.
He had seen his apprentice’s enormous potential when he was still a child—the latent power of the Skywalker bloodline was impossible to miss. And he had also seen how to exploit the boy’s feelings of inadequacy and abandonment, and his mother’s guilt and desperation to contain the darkness within her child.
And indeed, Ben Solo had performed the role Snoke had envisioned for him perfectly. The combination of his potential and the danger he posed had lured Skywalker into seeking to rebuild the Jedi. His power had then destroyed all Skywalker had built and sent the failed Jedi Master into exile, removing him from the board just as the game entered a critical phase.
But what role the boy would play in the future was less clear. He called himself Kylo Ren, but as with so much else about him, that was more wish fulfillment than reality. He had never escaped being Ben Solo, or learned to resist the pull of the weak and pathetic light, or had the strength to excise the sentimental streak that had destroyed his legendary grandfather. And then there was his most glaring failure of all: his inability or unwillingness to use his power to redirect the course of his own destiny.
Snoke had once seen Kylo as the perfect student—a creation of both dark and light, with the strength of both aspects of the Force. But perhaps he had been wrong about that. Perhaps Kylo was an unstable combination of those aspects’ weaknesses—a flawed vessel that could never be filled.
Snoke pushed the thought away. There would be time to consider Kylo’s fate later, after the Resistance and the last Jedi had been destroyed.
And both of those goals were now at hand.
Snoke turned his attention back to Rey, still gamely struggling to fight something she had no hope of contending with, let alone defeating. It was a pity about the girl, whose unexpectedly strong powers intrigued him. But her role in the story was just about over. She had one final service to perform, after which she could be discarded.
“And now you will give me Skywalker,” he told her. “Then I will kill you with the cruelest stroke.”
He saw horror in her eyes—followed by stubborn defiance.
“No!” she managed.
“Yes!” Snoke replied, exultant. He raised his hand and hurled her across the room with the Force, then held her in the air as he smashed aside her resistance and began rifling through her thoughts, her memories, making them his to do with as he would. The skin at Rey’s temples pulsed in waves, a physical manifestation of the violent intrusion into her mind.
“Give me everything,” Snoke commanded.
The very air between them bent and wavered as Snoke harnessed the Force and made it his weapon. Rey thrashed in pain, screaming and seeking an escape that didn’t exist.
Kylo could feel Rey’s pain and panic, a bright roar in the Force that overwhelmed all else—even the dark presence of Snoke. But he did not intervene. Instead, he lowered his head and awaited his master’s command.
* * *
—
Poe woke up slowly and then all at once. First his eyelids fluttered as consciousness returned; then he sat bolt upright, panicked, as pieces of his memory returned, jangled and misaligned.
We’re in danger. Jump to lightspeed. Save the Raddus. Hold the bridge.
The first thing he saw was the backs of Resistance uniforms—soldiers, techs, and pilots, as well as droids. Then, behind them, he saw the viewports of a U-55 loadlifter.
And through those windows, deep space—and the bulbous shape of the Raddus, rapidly shrinking.
“No!” Poe gasped, struggling to his feet. Heads turned to regard him, and his fellow Resistance members looked variously concerned, pitying, or angry.
Someone was calling his name. He knew that voice—it was General Organa.
It all came back to him—his profound relief at seeing Leia enter the bridge ahead of Resistance fighters loyal to Holdo, followed by the sight of her raised blaster and the blue concentric circles of energy that had sent him into oblivion.
“Poe!” Leia said again. “Look!”
He found her, standing in front of the windows on the other side of the transport, near C-3PO and a gaggle of officers. She was beckoning him over.
Poe forced his legs to work—his muscles were still tingling and twitching, numbed by the aftereffects of the stun blast. The officers made room for him and Leia took his hand—he wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a comfort, an apology, or concern for his shaky legs.
Filling the viewports on this side of the transport was a pale white planet adorned with dark streaks.
“What is that?” Poe asked. “There are no systems anywhere near us.”
“No charted ones, no,” Leia said. “But there are still a few shadow planets in deep space. In the days of the Rebellion we used them as hideouts.”
“The mineral planet Crait,” D’Acy said, studying the bright globe below them.
“There’s a rebel base there?” Poe asked.
“Abandoned but heavily armored,” D’Acy explained. “With enough power to get a distress signal to our allies scattered in the Outer Rim.”
“The First Order’s tracking our big ship,” Leia said. “They aren’t monitoring for small transports.”
Now Poe understood. The transports were small—not much more than twenty meters long—and simple craft that output relatively little energy. The Resistance techs had worked feverishly to install bafflers that reduced that energy even further. With the First Order content to pursue the Raddus at a distance, its sensors could easily miss the stream of small craft departing the heavy cruiser.
“We’ll slip down to the surface and hide unnoticed until they pass,” he said. “It’ll work.”
But he immediately realized something else: It would only work if the eyes of the First Order sensor officers remained fixed on the Raddus. The transports would escape, but the heavy cruiser would not. And neither would anybody who’d stayed aboard.
Poe had a pretty good idea who that was.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asked Leia plaintively.
Leia’s eyes were gentle. He felt her fingers working at the cuff of his jacket and looked down to see she’d taken the beacon from around his wrist, restoring it to its place around her own.
“The fewer who knew, the better,” she said. “Protecting the light was more important to her than looking like a hero.”
Contemplating that, Poe turned to look back out the window, at the rapidly shrinking shape of the doomed Raddus.
* * *
—
Aboard the heavy cruiser’s temporary bridge, Holdo stood alone at the controls, going over a checklist she’d long since committed to memory.
The Raddus’s system controls had all been redirected to the bridge. She could fire every turbolaser battery on the ship from here. The shield envelope was functioning properly, and a few simple commands would redirect additional power to the rear deflectors once the heavy cruiser’s fuel ran out.
Holdo had no illusion that she could target enemies with anything approaching the accuracy of an on-site gunnery crew, or that the Raddus’s shields could stand up to a lengthy barrage once the First Order warships came within close range.
But none of those things was the goal.
The goal was to keep the ship intact as long as possible—intact and posing a threat to its pursuers. That would keep attention on the Raddus and no
t the small, hopefully undetectable craft slipping away from its belly and down to Crait.
With her people safe, Leia would know what to do—she always did. She would summon their allies, find a new base of operations, and quietly work to turn the New Republic’s planetary defense forces and home fleets into a force capable of opposing Snoke and his generals.
Into a new rebellion.
The work would not be quick or easy. It would demand patience, the strength to endure the suffering of planets in the First Order’s grip, and the wisdom to choose when, where, and how to fight.
But Holdo knew there was no one better to lead such an effort than her old friend—who, after all, knew a thing or two about what ragtag, fractious bands of insurgents could accomplish.
Holdo would not live to see it, and that grieved her—both because she loved life and because she knew Leia would need her in the months and years ahead.
But the faith of her homeworld of Gatalenta taught that no one who reached salvation arrived there alone—they brought along all those whose love and compassion had helped deliver them.
She had always found that thought a comforting one—the more now in the solitude of the bridge.
“Godspeed, rebels,” Amilyn Holdo said quietly.
* * *
—
Captain Phasma marched through the corridors of the Supremacy at the head of a cordon of stormtroopers who surrounded Finn and Rose. DJ skulked alongside the column, obviously ill at ease.
The journey ended in a huge hangar prepared for war. Dozens of TIE fighters were fueled and ready, tethered to their support lines. Troop transports waited to receive soldiers. Scout walkers stood in front of heavier, four-legged war machines, which were attached to the drop ships that would bring them planetside. And a full stormtrooper regiment stood in parade formation.