Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(85)
Rax bellows one last entreaty:
The battle is upon us. Go! Go and drag them down to the ground and break their necks with your boots! Take their heads! End their tyranny!
And now he must go collect the others and board a ship before it’s too late. The Observatory beckons, and it is time for his egress.
—
No, no, no…
Sloane is on her knees. Her hands are bound. So are her ankles. Brentin has fallen over, letting himself topple to the side and curl in on himself. The two of them are up on the roof of the Empire’s command building, underneath the flap of a tent. They are alone. No one watches them. At first, Sloane thought, How strange, but now she sees: She has nowhere to go even if she could get free. As she and Brentin are forced to sit there and stomach Rax’s speech, she tries to understand what’s even happening here. Why let her witness this? What is she even meant to see?
The man’s speech is base and dull and full of the pompous rhetorical milk on which Gallius Rax is fed, and yet—it works, doesn’t it? Sloane feels it in her own belly. The trumpeting, triumphant roar of an Empire spurned. The fear of a New Republic ascendant. The certainty of being in the right and committing violence against those in the wrong…
And with that, a tiny mote of doubt plants inside her belly. The seed grows fast tendrils, and she wonders: Am I the product of confidently championed lies? Was this my Empire all along? Will it die here on Jakku?
As Rax’s rhetoric finishes, the sky opens up and—as if perfectly timed to the conclusion of his speech—the battle begins.
Capital ships rage in the planet’s orbit. Weapons fire drums like thunder. Specks appear in the sky and turn from translucent ghosts to buzzing black flies—starfighters spilling out of the New Republic ships. Already they enter atmosphere, scoring the ground with plasma.
And the Empire roars to meet it. TIE fighters lift off and in moments are launching forth like rocks from a slingshot. Soon the sky is chaos. Fighters erupt in flame. Laserfire rends the air. X-wings and TIE fighters dance in and around banded clouds while Imperial walkers turn to march out into the desert, ready to protect the base at any cost.
The battle in the skies has begun and soon, the ground war will rise.
The numbers of the New Republic fleet are superior. She can see that from here. Perhaps Rax stoked the proper ferocity in his troopers, and maybe, just maybe, his people can coordinate a proper pushback. Hodnar Borrum is one of the smartest ground war strategists, and the troops trust him. But if she’s correct, Randd is the man in charge of the skies—and though the grand moff is a capable leader, he does not have the courage or the inventiveness to win a fight of this magnitude.
Sloane wishes suddenly to be up there. That is her place: commanding those ships, ruling the heavens, destroying any who dare defile them. The Ravager casts a massive shadow, and she knows that whoever is in command of that ship is wrong for the job. It should be her. She could save the Empire with the Ravager. If she had a chance to get to it…
Such ego, she thinks. Perhaps the firepower of that SSD will afford them the chance to save the day. The Empire may win this battle.
But even if it does—at what cost?
And what else does Rax have up his sleeve?
What is the show? Who is the audience?
The stone trembles. Dust streams from the cavern ceiling, and scree streams from the smooth boreholes that populate Niima’s temple. Norra looks to Jas, worried. “Do I want to know?”
It’s Bones that answers. The droid tilts his skullish head toward the ceiling and he hms. “I AM INTIMATELY FAMILIAR WITH THE SOUND OF VIOLENCE AND THAT IS THE SOUND OF VIOLENCE.”
“War,” Jas says. “Now we’re really in the thick of it.”
Could it be that the New Republic has finally brought its fleet here? Norra isn’t sure what to think about that. She wondered if it was going to be like Kashyyyk—an Empire-controlled planet left to suffer due to the hesitant whims of a nervous voting body. “It’ll complicate things,” she says.
Jas shrugs. “At this point, I’m not sure it can get any more complicated, Norra.”
With that said, the two of them finish putting on their Imperial officer uniforms. Norra in noncom black, Jas in the standard gray. Norra’s outfit indicates her role as a prison administrator, whereas the bounty hunter’s bars serve to show her ranking as an army staff sergeant.
Bones asks: “DO I GET A UNIFORM?”
“I don’t think they have anything in your size,” Norra answers.
“Maybe if we collapse you down, you can be a mouse droid.”
Norra laughs. It feels good to laugh—even if it’s short-lived. Even that small moment of mirth makes her feel better. Like they can do anything. A little part of her thinks that they can pull this off. Yes, it’s dangerous. And completely foolish. Probably a suicide mission. And yet what choice do they have? She still wants Sloane, but Brentin is now the priority. It’s no longer a mission of vengeance but rather one of rescue.
Niima, to their great surprise, has chosen to help them. (Though, really, her aid is not driven by kindness, but rather revenge. Turns out, the Hutt overlord cares little for being perforated by blasterfire.) She’s furnished them with an (old-make) Imperial shuttle, a couple of (dusty, moth-nibbled) uniforms, and (hopefully solid) high-ranking codes.