Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(64)

Rax sent him a handwritten letter—a rare thing to see, something only Palpatine himself was known to do from time to time—when this all began. It said, quite simply:


Glorious leader of the Empire,

I have taken Jakku. I have brought the Empire with me. You are still its leader in name. But you will be confined to your quarters until it’s all over. Do not try to leave. The doors are sealed (even the ones to the balcony, in case you entertained the idea of jumping), and any attempt to escape will be met with reciprocal violence meant to hobble you. I assure you, this is to keep you safe so that you may lead us again one day.

With great honor and respect,

Counselor Gallius Rax





What a pompous gas-bladder.

Rax was making no joke when he said he would hobble Amedda given any escape attempt. Just days into his cozy imprisonment, he tried to assault the two guards outside his door. He broke a plate across one’s head, threw a clumsy, telegraphed fist at the other. They handily dispatched him. Before he knew what was happening, a boot connected with his knee and he went down on the floor. One grabbed that leg and gave it a twist—the tendons tweaked and he couldn’t walk for days. Even now it gives him some trouble, with lightning whips of pain going up from his heel and into his hips. Woe and misery.

They bring him food—good food, not victuals fit for an Emperor, no, but it’s not gruel, either. Most days he’s alone, the exception being when they bring him those meals. He wondered at first why they didn’t just kill him. Why would Rax want him around? Then they showed him. Blaster pressing hard against the back of his head, a band of ISB agents forced him to record a holovid, thanking the troops for their service, thanking Gallius Rax for his military leadership, and assuring the Empire that victory would soon be theirs. They force him to do this from time to time. Once every month or so. It is soul crushing. He’d rather die.

(Though sometimes, that desire to find death is supplanted by something else: a parade of fantasies where he wraps his fingers around the neck of Gallius Rax and crushes the man’s windpipe.) For a time, he hoped that Sloane was his salvation. They had a common enemy. But Rax found a way to end her. Lured her to Chandrila where, as the rumor goes, she fell off a skybridge to her death.

And now Mas Amedda has nothing and no one. He looks around his quarters. It is filthy. He has not washed himself in days. The room’s practically a midden heap at this point. Even his clothes are dirty. He would send them down the laundry vacu-tube—but that stopped working days ago.

Instead, he sits. He makes tea. He stares at the wall.

Inside this room, all is quiet and serene.

Outside in the city, madness has taken hold. He can see it from his windows when he chooses to look. Once in a while, an explosion will bloom in the distance. Anytime he opens the blinds, he can spy wreckage—usually Imperial, an ISB speeder or ship, sometimes crashed into the ground, sometimes into a rooftop. When they bring him food, he asks questions: What is happening? Who is out there? Are we safe? The only answer he gets is that he can be assured that the Imperial Palace is impenetrable. Then the guard will say something along the lines of, “The city is fine and remains under ISB control.” Which is a lie so obvious it’s like an ugly nose: Everyone can see it, even the one who wears it.

This is the best that Mas can figure: They have lost Coruscant.

Given that he has not seen New Republic ships, he wonders to whom it has been lost. Is there still an Imperial blockade in space? Or has the criminal underworld finally ruptured like a straining boil? Have the inmates taken over the asylum? He always warned Palpatine that curating such a close connection to the underworld—and keeping them so near—was a dangerous gambit. Mas Amedda is a creature of law and order—a man of numbers, a man of rules. Cozying up to scum like that always bristled him.

Though he never said much in objection, did he? The Emperor had his design. He did not brook dissent. He did not brook something so disagreeable as a dubious glance. Palpatine only accepted advice when it was asked for—and never before.

The Empire. What a grand and malignant failure. A pile of waste, and Mas Amedda is seated precisely at its pinnacle.

He wants to weep. But he has nothing left.

He sleeps for a time.

Then, a noise. It must be mealtime once again for the prisoner.

No. This sound is coming from…

The laundry vacu-tube?

It’s faint, the sound. A thumping here. The straining of thin metal there: da-dunk, barrump. A faint susurrus following.

Ah. Someone is, at last, repairing the damnable vacu-tube. Well, at least he’ll be able to get his clothes clean once again. If he cares enough to bother. And maybe he doesn’t.

With that mystery solved, Amedda again drifts off to sleep.

That is, until another noise startles him awake. This time, when his eyes pop open, he discovers with bowel-clenching shock that he is not alone.

He is, in fact, surrounded.

Filthy urchin children form a half circle around his chaise, and their presence confirms for him what he has long feared: His mind has been well and truly lost and he is now in thrall to a very vivid hallucinogenic life. At the fore of this vivid delusion is a soot-cheeked redheaded boy, his lip cleft by a fishhook scar, giving him a natural sneer.

Naturally, the child has a blaster. They all do.

“Go on, do it,” Amedda says drearily.