by Chuck Wendig
“Yes, and I want you to rescue him personally.”
“Rescue? Truly rescue? Or are you again speaking in metaphor?”
It would not be the first time Sloane had been tasked with eradicating those in the Empire whom Gallius Rax considered inept or a competitor. The events on Akiva were only the beginning in that regard, and the list of the missing and dead at his hands has grown considerably since. Rax refers to the winnowing down of the Empire as the sharpening of a blade, but even still she finds the idea troublesome. Sickening, even.
He shows his teeth in a grin. “For now, rescue. Hopefully, he will appreciate our efforts and in good faith he’ll join us. He has a child—a bastard boy, as I understand. Not born of his wife, Maratelle, but of some…kitchen woman. Don’t worry about the mother or the wife, but a child is a child and blood is blood, so make sure the boy finds rescue, as well.”
“Is it wise to devote resources to rescue his boy?”
“The Empire must be fertile and young. Children are crucial to our success. Many of our officers are old. We need that kind of vitality. That brand of energy you get with the young. The Empire needs children.”
The Empire needs children.
That sentence repeats in her mind again and again.
Each time, it grows more terrifying.
And yet, he’s not wrong, is he? The New Republic is driven by the young. Though it may be naïve, its rebels are believers. They are vibrant and, though not always capable, driven.
She adds: “We can reinstate some of the breeding programs from the earlier days of the Empire. To encourage our people to start or grow their families. We can reward them for it.”
His hands clap together. He beams. “Yes. I knew we made a good team, Rae. When we are done with the galaxy, there will be no worlds left to conquer. They will all be ours. Thank you.”
She offers a reticent nod. “Of course.”
“Once all this messiness is complete, and Hux is with us, I believe we may have our Shadow Council and the future of the Empire will be clear.”
Shadow Council? She doesn’t even have to ask. The look on her face is enough to prompt Admiral Rax’s response:
“I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you? I’m forming a Shadow Council to govern the Empire from behind the scenes. Only the finest of our kind: the first and highest order of Imperial minds. Once Hux is on board, we will have our inaugural meeting—you are, of course, a member. But more on this when you return. Safe travels, Admiral Sloane. May the stars speed your success.”
Now go fetch, she expects him to say. But all he does is turn around and step once more into the blue glow of the star map.
—
Gallius Rax’s words cling to her like a bad smell. Faith will light our path. The Empire needs children. I’m forming a Shadow Council…
This is not how you rule an Empire. The man wants a cult, not a government. The rumors about Palpatine always ranged from the strange to the sinister: dark fairy tales of him sacrificing creatures or hunting children, stories of him disappearing for months on end, fears that the old man was eternal and had lived not one life but many. No matter how true or how false those stories were, one fact remained true, which was that Palpatine never let the Empire fall into instability. He ruled as more than a politician and more than some hooded theocrat. Imperial worlds never went hungry. They never fell to lawlessness. Though the galaxy was held fast and firm in the Empire’s carbon-jacketed gauntlet, that was for the good for the galaxy—a galaxy too big to be left to its own devices, too mad and too scattered to survive without strong governance and clear vision to unify it. If Palpatine knew one thing it was to put people in place to run the machine. He trusted them. He let them do their jobs. The Emperor knew when to delegate.
Rax keeps too much, too close. His hands on all the controls.
Sloane does not know what the endgame is here. That troubles her. Gallius Rax is so in love with artifice. So what, then, is he hiding?
Ahead, toward the turbolift, Adea stands and waits. The girl’s back is straight, and her eyes are flinty and clear: That is the pride of the Empire. Adea Rite is the type of person they should be striving to elevate—an administrator, loyal and true. In love with data. Logistics. Cause and effect, truth and consequence. She is a much better Imperial than someone like Brendol Hux—a slithering thing who views people as tools and props. (No wonder, she thinks, that Rax wants him kept alive.)
For a moment, Sloane’s mind drifts to a fantasy where Adea Rite is more than just her assistant—Adea would make a fine daughter. Sloane never chose that path, of course, never thought to raise a family lest it be yet another excuse for the men in power here to keep her from rising in the ranks, but now she wonders what her life would have been had she gone that route. A family. A husband. A daughter like Adea…
As Sloane steps into the turbolift, Adea follows after and hands over a datapad with an adjusted schedule on it. The door closes behind them, just as it closes on Sloane’s fantasy of having a family. That dream is one that has come too late, she decides.
Sloane takes the datapad but doesn’t look at it. Instead, her eyes stare off at an unfixed point a thousand kilos away.
“Is something wrong?” Adea asks.
The turbolift begins to move, taking them down into the lower levels of the Ravager, the Empire’s last Super Star Destroyer. But therein a question suddenly persists: Is it? She has taken it on as fact, but Rax said that fact and truth are separate things. Sloane reminds herself that it is time for a new accounting of all the naval ships. In fact—
She stops the turbolift.
“Adea,” she says. “I need your help.”
The young woman looks around, confused. “Why are we—?”
“Because this is a sensitive conversation and I can’t have anyone listening in whom I can’t trust.” And the list of who I trust is shorter than I would prefer. “I…admire Admiral Rax, but he is a cipher. I am not sure I trust his hand to be steady in ruling the Empire, yet.”
Adea is one of those who is well aware that Sloane’s power in the Empire is secondary to Rax’s. Many of the officers on this ship know it, which means ultimately many in the Empire will know it soon enough. But Sloane can’t concern herself with that right now.
“I will launch another search into his history,” Adea says.
“No. I’ll handle that this time. Not because I don’t trust you but because I need you on other things. First, get me a proper accounting of all the ships that were in Imperial service when Palpatine still lived. Second, I need you to put me in touch with the bounty hunter again. Find Mercurial Swift and arrange a meeting. Oh, and I’ll also need a draft of a new breeding program initiative. For every child an Imperial has, they get a reward: credits, perhaps, or a boost to paid leave. Can you do these things for me?”
“I can.”
Those two words: precious and perfect.
I can.
No argument. No question. Just the affirmative.
“Good.”
“What are you going to do, Admiral?”
“Everything is bound up in a knot right now, Adea, a knot I can’t quite untie. You know the best way to undo that kind of knot?” She smirks. “You cut right through it.”
The atoll of Kolo-ha: the mouth of an extinct undersea volcano pushed up out of the water and given new life as an island. This island is a claw-shaped thing, its soil rich and black like powdered soot. The plants that grow up out of its small jungle are twisted together, with bright flowers whose petals snap at the air as buzzing insects pass. Beyond the island is a ring of shimmering sediment beneath the sea—an aggregate of crystalline matter that, as it turns out, is actually composed of the fossilized corpses of gelatinous chomong, drifting sea creatures that look like diaphanous blobs of glowing flesh.
The local Velusians eat them, Mon Mothma had said before adding: Raw.
Leia shudders at that thought. Her time as princess, ambassador, and general has led her through
an unholy host of culinary trials and tribulations—pickled coodler-roe on Goliath Mal (the texture alone was enough to haunt her), half-rancid durang fruit (which tasted not unlike how death smells), skewered mandlertok over an open fire (she admits that those little lizards were actually quite good once you got past how they popped when you bit into them). Curiously, the worst of all remains the protein paste they sometimes had to eat in the early days of the Alliance. Looked and tasted like hull caulk. Actually, it might’ve been hull caulk for all she knew.
Eating strange things is what you do with galactic citizens that are not you, she reminds herself. It is a welcome honor, if an occasionally uncomfortable one. Thankfully, that will not be her task today. The native Velusians do not occupy the island of Kolo-ha. No one does.
She stands on the deck of a floating cruiser—what once was a luxury swiftwing pleasure-liner, though it has seen better days. Much of what the New Republic possesses for equipment remains dinged, dented, blast-scarred, or just plain old. That is changing slowly, as they ramp up their own political machine and oust the Empire system by system. But for now, this old thing—which transitions well enough from sea to sky to the stars—will have to suffice.
As she stands there, a woman in white joins her—with her, that flash of fire-red hair that belies the woman’s calm, placating smile. Mon Mothma has that effect. She is serene, even when she is worried or when she is angry.
Mon says, “You seem uncertain.”
“This is all more than a little deranged,” Leia says. “What are we doing out here? This surely can’t be a real plea.”
“Maybe it isn’t. It seems earnest enough. And it’s not as if we’re unprotected.” The chancellor’s eyes drift heavenward—there, beyond the atmosphere, is a fleet of New Republic ships. And ahead of them, on the atoll, their own soldiers—the most elite, the most capable—wait for what may come. “They’ve already combed the island. Relax, Leia. We are safe.”
“It could be a trap.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“As I should,” Leia says. “Every good thing in this galaxy seems to twist and turn in our grip like a serpent—just as you think you’ve got it by the tail, it whips its head around and takes a bite.”
“Where’s that idealist I met on Alderaan?” A rare smile tugs at Mon’s mouth. “We don’t see enough of each other, Leia. I miss you. How’s your husband?”
“He’s good,” Leia lies. She adds another lie to the heap, because once you’ve set one down as the foundation, why not build a house and live there? “His mission goes well. He’s a changed man.”
Mon watches her. Is that suspicion glinting in her eyes, or just more paranoia on Leia’s part? “I gather it must be hard being married through all of this. But I promise that the transition will be over soon enough. And peace, prosperity—and stars help us, a little normalcy—will return soon enough.” Again her eyes tilt skyward. Leia sees it, too: a ship entering atmosphere. A nondescript mine craft: a Kinro 9747. Even from here Leia can see the plasma scarring and the pockmarks from debris.
From behind them, the voice of Staff Sergeant Hern Kaveen—a bearded Pantoran who works on the protective detail around the chancellor. (Leia has been told she needs a protective detail as well, but she has told them that she will be her own protective detail, thank you very much.)
“He’s here, Chancellor,” Kaveen says. Behind the mining ship fly two flanking Y-wings—weapons ready, just in case.
“He’s alone?” Leia asks.
“It’s just one ship, and only one bio-sig aboard.”
On the atoll, a space has been reserved upon the beach for landing—and the Kinro 9747 hovers over the makeshift pad, its exhaust blowing a hissing wave of sand into the sea before finally settling down.
A passel of New Republic soldiers, their weapons raised, surround the ship. As soon as the landing ramp descends, the soldiers storm inside.
Despite the warm, balmy sea air, Leia suddenly feels cold. She knows what could come next: The ship suddenly detonating, killing those men. Or maybe it would be filled with something worse: a biological agent, a chemical weapon, some starving creature like a cybernetically enhanced rancor monster…at this point, nothing would shock her short of the black, gleaming visage of Vader himself stepping off that ship and into the sand.
But then Kaveen confers with the soldiers on the comm.
He relays their response: “Chancellor: They’ve given the all-clear.”
Mon nods.
And that’s all it takes.
The soldiers escort the pilot of the mining ship off and onto the beach.
Mas Amedda is an imposing figure. His Chagrian skin is the blue-gray of troubled waters (failing to match the bright aquamarine of the ocean here on Velusia), and his long, horn-tipped tentacles give him the cut of something sharp and poisonous. Which, Leia supposes, is not entirely inaccurate: There stands the man who was once Emperor Sheev Palpatine’s chief administrator and has now become the proxy Emperor, at least in name and in politics.
He watches them from the beach. His gaze remains fixed upon them, in fact, even as the soldiers bind his hands behind him and help him step onto the seaspeeder. The craft pivots in the water and flies toward the old pleasure-liner, twin trails of sea-spray cast in its wake.
“Here we go,” Leia says.
As they approach, she sees that the imposing figure is less so, now. He looks old. Weathered and worn. The tentacles topping his head seem wilted. His stare is hollow and, dare Leia say it, hopeless.
The seaspeeder slows to a halt below the deck of the pleasure-liner.
Leia and Mon step to the edge, looking down at him.
“May I come up?” he asks. He offers a lifeless smile.
“No,” Mon says. “You will speak to us from where you stand.”
He wastes no time. “I offer myself to you as prisoner. I, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda, head of the Imperial Ruling Council, turn myself in to Chancellor Mon Mothma and Princess Leia Organa of the New Republic. Take me away.”
It’s Leia’s turn to say it:
“No.”
Tectonic shock crosses his face. “Wh…what?”
“We do not accept your ‘surrender.’ ”
He turns suddenly toward the soldiers, panicked. “Will you kill me? Here and now? It’s not in you. It’s not like you. This…this isn’t—”
Mon calls down: “Calm yourself, Mas. We do not execute our prisoners—or those trying to be our prisoners.”
“We simply don’t accept you as a prisoner,” Leia adds.
“B-but,” he stammers, “I am the head of the Galactic Empire. I am its pinnacle. No target is greater than me. I am a prize!”
“You’re a figurehead,” Mon says.
“I know things! Names. Details. I can help you. I…I came all this way, I fled the throneworld.” His voice booms, but the desperation in it is keenly felt. “I will not be denied my surrender. It is against the Galactic Accord of Systems established in the fiftieth year of—”
“The Empire has long ignored the accord. It is considered obliterated thanks to your efforts. And the names and details you know are, I suspect, far less impressive these days than you’d have us believe, Mas.”
Leia smiles. “But there is a deal to be struck here if you’re willing to make it, Grand Vizier.”
“Anything. Anything at all.”
“Sign a treaty of surrender.”
He laughs at first, and then the laugh dies in his mouth. “You…you’re serious. You want me to surrender…the entire Galactic Empire?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t…” But again he swallows the sound.
Leia suspects what he was going to say, and she helps him finish his statement: “You don’t have the power, do you?”
“I…”
“So, get it back. And then bring a treaty to our door.”
“That,” the chancellor says, “is the only deal we will make, and the only deal that ea
rns you a life beyond this existence. Anything less than that will be met with a charge of war crimes and a brutal trial to follow—if your own people don’t jettison you from an air lock first.”
“How do I accomplish this?”
Mon shrugs. “You’re an administrator. So administrate.” Then, with a curt nod, the soldiers turn him back around, facing the island. The seaspeeder’s engines thrum to life, and it returns to the atoll. All the way, Mas Amedda protests and pleads until his voice is swallowed by the sound of the sea. In the distance, they watch as they shove him off the speeder and onto the sand. They cut his bonds. He’s left standing, gaping, shocked.
“It was our only play,” Mon says.
“I know. For a big fish, he’s surprisingly little. Still, I worry we just made a terrible mistake. It could’ve been a coup. We could’ve spun it as a victory for the New Republic.”
“Mm. True. But you don’t strike me as the type to want to spin anything. Unless war has changed you?”
Leia sighs. “It has not. I’d rather play the long game and secure a real victory, not a ceremonial one.”
“Good. Now let’s get back to Chandrila. The war goes on.”
They expect a fight, but the TIE following after the Halo turns back before breaking atmosphere and returns to the surface of Vorlag. Considering how those things are usually like burrs stuck to your back, Norra half wonders if there’s something they don’t know—maybe they’re flying into a trap, or out into some random asteroid field that the TIE would never survive. (And even then, wouldn’t it continue to follow?)
But the Imperial fighter turns and goes, lobbing off a few lazy shots before peeling away and disappearing.
Temmin sits at the controls and says, “That was weird.”
“It was.” Though she starts to round on a theory. “Maybe the Empire is hurting that bad. Maybe they can’t stand to lose even a single TIE. Or maybe they just don’t care anymore.”
“You mean…maybe we’re winning?” Temmin asks.
“Maybe we are, Tem. Maybe we are.”
The burst of confidence and comfort in her heart doesn’t last long—outside the cockpit, in the belly of the Halo, loud voices rise in a clamor.