Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(24)

“Now the child has returned, and he is a child no longer.” The anchorite tried then to sermonize to them, some nonsense parable about seeds growing in dead ground, but she cut him off and asked:

“Where did he go when he used to disappear?”

“The Valley of the Eremite. Near a rock formation called the Plaintive Hand. That was where he could be found, the stories say. He wouldn’t let anyone get close. He had…traps, he had children protecting it, he had trained beasts to guard it. It wasn’t far from the orphanage…”

“It’s not far from here?” Brentin asked.

“It’s quite far from here. This orphanage is not that one.” The old man’s eyes fell into a dead, faraway gaze. “That one burned down.”

Brentin said, “Let me guess. That was the last you saw of Galli.”

“It was, it was.”

“Do you know what’s there now?” Sloane asked.

“Nothing, as far as I know. Just the valley, the Hand, and the desolation that this world knows so well. But I know this: Now that Galli is back, he has returned to the Plaintive Hand. We’ve seen ships, and none may go that way. For that way is protected.”

“Protected by whom?” she asked.

“By Niima the Hutt.”

—

They needed more information. At first she assumed, who better to ask than the troopers and officers who now occupied this world? Together she and Brentin watched them and waited—but it soon became apparent that this was not the Empire she knew and loved.

These men and women were undisciplined. Their armor was filthy and in disrepair. Their weapons were crusted with the grit of this planet. Many troopers failed to wear their helmets. The officers looked ragged and run-down. And yet they were paranoid. They were brutal—abusing villagers, stealing food and water, lording over the small towns like emboldened bullies. Worst and most important: they were believers in what Rax had done here. They carried his banners. They gathered around and told stories of the man. “They have to buy all the way in,” Brentin said. “This isn’t a military anymore. It’s a militia. Any sign of doubt will be beaten out of them, I wager. And such bold bravado is the only way to justify following the Empire to this place.”

“Easier to lie to yourself that this is what’s best than admit you’ve become part of something terrible?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then we need an unbeliever.” She described the unbeliever simply: Someone who did not want to be here on Jakku. Someone who was swept along and was now caught in the machine and unable to climb out. Someone who was a loyal soldier, but not a sycophant.

Brentin, with his technical skills, helped Sloane rig up a crude listening device. With it, they were able to capture bits of radio transmissions and conversations between Imperials.

Then one day, they heard a trooper (ID# RK-242) telling his superior officer—a sergeant named Rylon—that he wasn’t sure what they were doing here anymore and he wondered if there was any other work anywhere in the galaxy he could be doing.

“I just don’t want to be here anymore,” RK-242 told Rylon.

For that transgression, his fellow troopers—led by Rylon—dragged him out into the desert, stripped off his armor, and beat him bloody. Pieces of his armor littered the ground around him like the fragments of a broken shell, and RK-242 curled up among them in a fetal ball.

That is not Imperial justice, she thought. No honor in that. Just brute-force behavior. How swiftly order begins to disintegrate.

They did not kill RK-242. He remained alive, if broken.

Days later, he was back on duty. Limping around. His armor clicking and clattering as he trembled inside it.

Sloane went to him. Had a little talk at the end of a blaster. RK-242 was thankful to see her—the moment she introduced herself, he began blubbering gratitude, snot bubbling at his nose, saliva stringing together his blistered, split lips. Sloane explained to him that this was all a plot against her—whether that was true or not, it mattered little. She said that Rax had committed a coup and had stolen the Empire from her grip.

“He’s going to destroy us all,” she said.

RK-242, through gulps and sobs, agreed.

And then she pumped him for information. Everything she could. What is in the valley? What is by the Plaintive Hand? What is Rax up to?

The trooper told her everything he knew: Rax called this world “a place of purification.” The unforgiving planet of Jakku would test them, train them, and harden them to stone. The only way to defeat the New Republic, Rax said, was to be transformed into a greater force, a cruel army, an Empire that could survive the unsurvivable.

(That, and RK-242 referred to the man now as “Counselor Rax.” Seems her target had taken a new title for himself. How coy.)

She explained to RK-242 that the only recourse was to remove Rax from power. Violently, if need be. The trooper nodded, gamely. Sloane said she needed to know everything about Rax, about his habits, his role here, anything. But RK-242 couldn’t tell her much: He said the Empire had established a base beyond the Goazon, beyond the Sinking Fields, and it was there that Rax was consolidating his power. Every day, the builder droids added more to the fortress, he said. And daily, too, came deliveries of TIE fighters, AT-ATs, AT-STs, troop carriers, new troopers. New ships arrived in the sky. The Empire gathered its assets, its resources, and its people.