Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(125)
“Why? Where’s he gone?”
“Gone to where we all go,” the woman says. Jas still doesn’t understand, so the woman spells it out plainly: “He died on Jakku.”
It takes too long for Jas to understand. Even when it hits her, it still doesn’t hit her. The woman says there’s a video from the U-wing—and she asks if Jas wants to see it. She doesn’t, but she says yes anyway, so she watches it. It’s short and choppy—standard for a combat-cam. The ship drops into atmosphere and the SpecForce commandos are hanging near the exit, ready to jump out and join the war even before the damn thing has a chance to land. Jas sees Jom there, and he leans in toward the cam and gives it a wink and a hard nod. “New Republic, ahuga—”
And the rest of the commandos, men and women, echo that word:
“AHUGA!”
Some battle cry Jas doesn’t understand.
Jom smirks one last time—
From outside the door, from the surface of Jakku, Jas sees the glint of something. A missile, maybe. Concussive, probably.
None of the others see it. None except Jom. He bellows, “Incoming!”
And then he does the unthinkable. Jom puts his foot down on the lip of the open door, leaping right past the beam cannon placement and out into open air. He stays aloft, pulsing his jetpack—two hard burns of blue energy out the back—and he heads right toward the missile.
The U-wing pivots to port side, lifting up and away from the incoming projectile. As it moves, Jom disappears out of frame—and Jas feels her innards tightening as she inwardly screams that she wants the camera to shift back down again, down, down, so she can see him one last time.
Everything goes white and pixilated.
“I…I don’t understand,” Jas says when the vid is over. “He should’ve mounted that cannon—”
“Would’ve taken a few seconds to spin up—by then, too late.”
“He didn’t need to do that.”
“He did. And he saved us.”
That’s all Dayson needs to say.
Jas thanks the woman and leaves. It takes days for her to process it. Days of walking around like she’s in someone else’s body, days until the truth of the thing hits her with the impact of a wall falling upon her: He came to save me, and he died in service to that. He followed his heart, and it got him killed. And then she’s left to wonder: Would she make the same choice? Does she have a larger purpose, a greater debt, and is she willing to pay it? Maybe she’s the one without a star.
She spends the next week in bed, staring at the ceiling.
—
War is about loss, yes. But when it ends, joy surges. How could it not? Burying the dead is a somber act, but the celebration that follows confirms that they did not die in vain. They died to make the galaxy free.
And my, does the galaxy celebrate. Not only has the Empire’s gauntleted fist let go of the galaxy’s neck—it is gone entirely. The oppression is at an end and so the celebrations go for weeks. Fireworks on Chandrila. Festivals of food on Nakadia. Nonstop parties in the streets and on the rooftops of Coruscant. And this time, the Empire isn’t there to stop it. They do not police these carnivals and festivities. No troopers show up to fire upon the parades or execute protestors. It’s just one more sign that the Empire is well and truly gone. The New Republic demonstrates that it is the polar opposite of the Galactic Empire: It encourages the celebrations, it holds official revels and pageants and exultations of joy. Wherever the New Republic’s light touches, it marks the occasion with a holiday.
Liberation Day is remade into the seven-day Festival of Liberation.
—
And then, there is the matter of a child.
On the day the Instruments of Surrender are signed, a child is born on Chandrila to Leia Organa and Han Solo. Friends and family gather. Rumors fly about who was there and who was not. Some say that the golden boy, Luke Skywalker, made an appearance and then was gone again, off on some untold mission. Others say his absence was conspicuous. Missing, too, was Solo’s copilot, who is said to have finally found his own Wookiee family on Kashyyyk. Stories of the birth range from the dramatic and fortuitous to the utterly inauspicious—one story suggests that the birthing chamber was occupied for three whole days while Leia struggled. Another tells the tale that it was fast and painless: She merely needed to calm herself and meditate to make the moment as untroubled as a mountain lake. Some say the boy was born with a shock of black hair, others that he had a full set of teeth, others still that he was just a baby like any other, sweet one moment, screaming the next, and nestling at his mother as any healthy child does.
What is known is this: The child’s name is Ben, and he takes his father’s last name, even as Leia keeps only her own family name, Organa.
—
Han looks into the eyes of his son.
My son.
How the hell did that happen? Well, he knows how that happened—a night under the stars in the canopy of Endor trees. But in the larger sense, the galaxy is a far stranger place than he figured on if it’s letting him be a father.
Solo stands in the nursery, alone. The boy, Ben, wriggles and gurgles in the round white bubble of protection that is the infancy cradle. Han leans forward over it, arms crossed on the rail while looking down at the child’s chubby face and dark eyes. They regard each other. The child burbles.