Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(99)

(It is far more likely that they are dead.) Now he sits in a plush room, more opulent than anything he’s ever seen before. This is the same ship as the last time he left Jakku, but this time he is no stowaway. This is not some cargo space in which he hides.

He sits on a chair.

It is the most comfortable chair he has ever sat in.

He wants to live in this chair. He may be fine dying in this chair.

And dying on this chair may in fact be what awaits him. The man to whom this ship belongs, a man named Sheev Palpatine, is a cipher. Galli has only met him once ever, but the man has haunted his dreams since. Those dark robes, that craggy moon face. They are just dreams, surely, and yet—they seem real. As if the man is truly visiting Galli in some way during those meager hours he could carve out for sleep.

He’s met the man’s droids, too—some are cold protocol droids, others assassins, astromechs, and excavators who helped clear the ground at Jakku. And he’s spoken time and again to an adviser: someone named Tashu.

But Galli has only met the man himself once.

And now he is about to have his second meeting.

He fears that death will be the result. He has been used for one purpose, and that purpose is now finished. The Observatory is built. Galli did what he had to do to keep everyone away. None discovered it, and now it is buried beneath the sands near the Plaintive Hand. My usefulness is over, he thinks. The man will kill him. Part of Galli finds strange comfort in that. Another part of him thinks: No, I will kill the man first. Even though the man has magic, real magic and not the parlor tricks of the anchorites. The way he summoned sand to his hand like a flying serpent…

Wait.

He’s here.

Standing in the doorway. Hands clasped underneath the draping sleeves of his night-black robes. Only half of his face can be seen underneath the hood. In that glimpse, the boy can see the awfulness there: as if dark magic has distorted his visage. It is a good reminder that this man has true power unlike anything Galli has ever seen, and with that, the boy quickly stifles any threat in his mind lest the old sorcerer have the ability to pluck stray thoughts from inside his skull.

Palpatine enters the room and with a gentle swipe of his hand, a chair moves toward him—it eases and whirls, settling in front of Galli’s own chair. The man sits, and his hand begins another gesture: The palm rises, as if asking a worshipper to get off his knees. Galli isn’t sure if the gesture is meant for him, but he soon sees it isn’t—just as the chair moved, a table moves, too, rising out of a telescoping portal in the floor. This table is like no table Galli knows: It is circular in shape but with a square board carved into its top. That larger square is hand-etched with a field of smaller black and white squares, and in those squares are circles of opposite color.

As the table rises, so, too, do pieces from within those circles. Each idol is a carving, crudely sculpted. They are symmetrical on each side of the board: Each side gets the same contingent of pieces. He sees pieces that look like beasts, like men with large hats, like warriors, like something that may in fact be a starship. He also sees pieces at the far end of each side that look not unlike Palpatine himself—tall but bent, and similarly robed. The one piece in front of Palpatine is in black robes with a white face. The piece in front of Galli is clad in white, with a dark countenance.

“Hello, Galli,” Palpatine says.

“Hello.”

“It has been some time.”

He swallows a knot. Be strong. You are not some boy. You are almost a man, now. You are vworkka, not mouse. You have killed for him. With that, he lifts his trembling chin to appear fearless and proud. “It has.”

“The artifacts are in place. The core has been drilled. The sentinels and my adviser, Tashu, report you have been very loyal to us indeed.” He draws a deep breath and shows his yellow teeth in a smile. “The Observatory is done and so is your time on that wretched planet.”

“Yes.” Here it is, he thinks. His death awaits. The ten years since he’s seen this man were just a delay of the inevitable. “I don’t want to die.” He says it not to plead, but just to say it. The man must know.

“Of course you don’t. You have a destiny. Those with destinies are bound to fight for life because life and destiny are irrevocably intertwined.”

“And those without destinies?”

The man waves his bone-white hand dismissively. “They do not know that they crave death, but they do.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“It is not my intention.”

“Then why am I here?”

“As I say, your time on Jakku is over. You are done. You did as I asked and so I am rewarding you with a new life away from that place.”

His heart leaps. Away from Jakku…

“Am I to go back there?”

“Not today. Perhaps one day.”

“I don’t ever want to go back.”

A slow smile spreads. The man’s lips are empurpled. Like a bruise sliced in half so that a tongue and teeth may emerge through the slit. “And yet it may be your destiny. That part is unclear.” Palpatine leans forward, his pointed finger drawing invisible lines over the strange game board there. “Do you know this game, Galli?”

“I don’t.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s a very old game. Shah-tezh, in this iteration, though over the eons I have seen it spawn many variants. Dejarik. Moebius. Chess. In most of the iterations the core mechanism remains.”