“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You go ahead. Save the world. I’m going to leave, now,” Norra says, sighing and wiping tears away. The blaster clatters from her hand. “Let’s hope Brentin is right and you aren’t as bad as I think.”
Sloane gives her a small nod. “Good luck, Norra Wexley.”
“You too, Grand Admiral Sloane.”
Norra turns and goes back down the steps to claim her husband.
—
Outside, the air is red, choked with dust. Norra tucks her chin and mouth under the collar of her shirt, affording her some small reprieve. Brentin is heavy, but a burden she feels necessary to bear. She intends to take him back to Akiva. Back to where she can bury a body in the salt marshes as is the way of her people. Back to the world where he’s not just a memory. Where he can be a face that her son can touch. A body over which Temmin can grieve.
But where? Where will she go?
Again the ground shudders. She staggers, dropping to one knee, then struggling to stand anew.
The shuttle. It’s safe there, at least, from the storm. She takes him inside the darkened Imperial ship. She summons as much saliva to her mouth as she can muster (which is very little) and she cleans his cheeks.
Then she tries to start the ship.
No go. It’s dead. The engines have failed, and the fuel cells have died trying to give life to this ruined machine.
She is stranded.
She sits in the pilot’s seat. She eases Brentin into the seat next to her. Norra holds his cold, stiff hand. For a time, she sleeps.
The sound of a ship’s engine wakes her. She looks out the cockpit viewport and sees through the dust storm a gleaming, shining vessel rise up through the crimson clouds—the yacht moves swiftly and is gone. A hallucination, she thinks. Some dread phantasm to tease her. Look at the pretty shiny ship. Don’t you wish you could be on it?
Sleep takes her again. Sleep like death, dark and dreamless.
The same sound, a replay of the last, draws her once more out of the deep: ship engines humming. She peers out and sees nothing.
But the scuff of a heel behind her has her lurch to her feet.
Sloane.
“Norra!”
It’s not Sloane. It’s Jas. Jas, flanked by a tall Kyuzo alien in a broad, domed hat. Jas Emari, her savior. Jas Emari, her ride home.
An empire does not end all at once, and this one, the Galactic Empire that began when Palpatine stole the Old Republic, is no different.
For this empire, it is death by a thousand cuts. A slow bleed that began perhaps not when the first Death Star was destroyed, but very early, when it killed the Jedi to make way for its regime. When a pair of twins—one named Luke, the other named Leia—fell through the cracks, lost to their father and to his dark Master, both of whom were blinded by hate and ego. Other injuries only hastened its demise: the birth of the Rebellion, the death of their first superweapon, the distrust that widened the gap between Vader and the Emperor, and of course the Empire’s colossal loss at Endor.
Now an even greater loss at Jakku was the final wound. History would remember that the New Republic was victorious on this day, and that is true. History will forget, however, how in reality this final wound was a self-inflicted one: a contingency plan by a callous, vengeful Emperor who never wanted his Empire in the hands of a successor.
Even still, though the Empire’s death comprises a thousand cuts, only one thing makes it official: The signing of a cease-fire, one that accords both the end of combat and the full, unconditional surrender of the Galactic Empire.
Mas Amedda comes out of hiding, rescued (in his account) by a gaggle of Coruscanti children who had helped form the backbone of their own resistance movement. He had been held captive by his own people, on order from the usurper, Gallius Rax. Now free, and with Imperial forces destroyed, he was free to sign a meaningful Imperial Instrument of Surrender.