Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(116)

Now that Palpatine is gone, the original purpose of the Observatory can be maintained. The game is lost. Time to exit and find a new demesne.

The Empire is dead.

But the Empire can live again under Rax.

First, though, preparations must be made. Beyond the map chamber is one more hallway—this one with steps leading down. As Rax passes the computers, he sees on the far side a gift that Palpatine left for him:

It is a broken Shah-tezh board. It lies shattered on the floor in halves. All around it are the pieces, also broken. Only two pieces remain: the Imperator and the Outcast. He wonders, is that how Palpatine saw him? As the Outcast? This is new. Gallius never knew that. It hits him like a slap to the face. He wants to struggle against it, to rage against the idea that he was some kind of exile at the margins of the Empire…

And yet he was, wasn’t he? Rax always kept a distance. His role was never to preserve the Empire but to destroy it.

He snatches up both pieces. With a juggle of his fingers he rolls the two figures around in the palm of his hand. Whatever Palpatine thought of him before, he is no longer the Outcast. Rax has become the Imperator.

Gallius pockets both pieces and continues on, humming his favorite cantata as he goes. The hallway ahead is lined with artifacts of the old Sith Empire: a red mask, a white lance, a bloody banner, a holocron so black it seems to consume all the light around it. Between each of the artifacts is a smooth-faced sentinel droid, slumbering in its chamber, ready to be woken if a threat approaches.

Beyond all that is the well. The well is a channel bored through the schist and mantle of Jakku, drilled so deep it touches the center of the world. The well glows with wisps of blue mist winding up through orange firelight. The light pulses and throbs like a living thing. Palpatine told him that once, this world was verdant—overgrown with green and home to oceans. He said that though the surface of the world no longer shows it, the core still has that vital spark of life essence. (And, he added, “That essence disgusts me.”)

Tashu gambols down in front of the artifacts, his fingertips dancing along their cases. He mutters to himself, and Rax sees that he’s chewed his own lips bloody. “Are you ready?” he asks Palpatine’s old adviser.

“I am,” Tashu says, turning. His cheeks are wet with tears. His teeth slick with red. “Palpatine lives on. We will find him again out there in the dark. Everything has arranged itself as our Master foretold. All things move toward the great design. The sacrifices have all been made.”

Not all of them, Rax thinks.

“You must be clothed in the raiment of darkness,” Rax says. “The mantle of the dark side is yours to wear, at least for a time. At least until we can find Palpatine and revivify him, bringing his soul back to flesh anew.” This is all a lie, of course. He believes none of it. It is a ruse sold to Tashu. (Lies are like leashes. Tug them just so, and all who believe them will comply.)

And the lunatic believes it because lunatics always believe the things that confirm their view of the galaxy. Tashu’s view is that the dark side is all, that Palpatine was the Master not just of the Empire but of everyone and everything, and that through all of this, the Dark Lord will be reborn.

Good. Let him believe that.

Rax helps him carry the lance and the banner. He carefully puts the mask upon the man’s head, tightening it with black leather straps and a buckle of old tarnished chromatite. Tashu owns many masks, all of which he believes contain some fragment of the dark side. But never before has he worn one like this: It is a vicious, bestial thing with tusks of coiling black steel and eyes of blood-red kyber crystals. As it snaps against his face, Tashu tightens up, a hungry moan ill contained behind his clenching jaw.

“The final piece,” Rax says, handing Tashu the holocron. Even as the man takes it, it seems to leach the light from all around. Tashu goes even paler as he touches it. The veins in his hand stand dark in contrast.

“Yes,” Tashu says. One word, short, clipped, ecstatic. His arms stretch out by his sides. His hands shake. “Yes. I can feel it. I am a locus of dark energies. All the death and despair of the world is filtering through me. I can feel it on the back of my tongue. Captured there like a struggling moth—”

“Then come, let us pray.” He interrupts Tashu because if he does not, the man will continue to gabble for minutes, hours, perhaps until both of them have died of old age and gone to dust. Gallius Rax leads Tashu the way a parent leads a child, by the hand. Together they go to the well.

As they approach, a narrow platform extends out, as if sensing their presence. It drifts out over the well: a plank they must walk.

They go out together. Out here, the air is somehow both hot and cold. Warm breath interspersed with wisps of ice.

“Palpatine will be pleased by you,” Rax says.

“Yes. He will. And by you, too. We have done it. We have punished the undeservers. We have activated the Contingency. Let us speak a prayer to the darkness, a prayer to all the things that wait—”

“First, my brother, I’d like to ask you something.”

“Yes, little Galli?”

“What will you say to him when you see our Master again?”

“I—”

Rax gives him no chance to answer. He pushes Tashu.

The man cartwheels through the mist and the light, spinning, screaming—his body hits the side and slams against the rock, silencing his cries. The body goes and goes until Rax cannot see it anymore.