EPILOGUE

HOTH

ECHO BASE

They found Sark tied in three sets of binders to a chair inside one of the rooms where the Rebels once stabled their tauntauns. He was a little malnourished, and it looked as though someone had sliced at his arms and legs with a burning tool of some kind, perhaps to torture him, but he was conscious and stable. The Rebel spies that were sent to retrieve him pulled him aboard their YT shuttle and fed him and gave him bacta patches.

When they asked him what all these burns/cuts were from, Sark only mumbled, “Lightsaber.”

They flew him out of there, and took him to an undisclosed site far from Hoth.

The winds howled across Echo Base, through its many open corridors. The last sentient beings were finally gone, and the lonely planet kept turning, supremely unaware of the part it had played in a vast civil war.

* * *

NEVARRO

THE OUTER RIM

ONE WEEK LATER…

The door slid open and the tall man walked into the cantina. Almost immediately all the alien beings in the room turned to look at him, and as one they all looked away. In places like this, he knew, people always liked to see who walked through the door. Never know when it might be an enemy of yours, he thought. The tall man thought this would be his problem, too, for the rest of his life. Always looking over my shoulder. Always watching every door. But at least my family is safe.

Indeed, that was what he was doing here. He had taken almost all the steps necessary to vanish from the face of the galaxy. Just one more thing left to do.

The Chandra-Fan was at the bar, and when the tall man stood beside him, he ordered a Whyren’s Reserve. When the Chandra-Fan heard that, he picked up his own drink and walked away, leaving his napkin behind. The tall man pocketed the napkin. He found a booth, sat, drank, and read the message. It was a HoloNet messaging site. He used the HoloNet computer at his booth to leave a message on the message board. The reply he got directed him to the stairs at the back of the cantina.

The man looked around. He figured the Chandra-Fan was part of the coverage around him, making sure he was in the black before clearing him to meet with the boss.

The tall man went to the back of the cantina and walked up a dark set of stairs. There was only a single door at the top that led out onto the roof, where a single table was set up at the roof’s edge, looking over the small town of Otarr. At the table sat a fat Twi’lek male in gold robes, and he was flanked by a pair of Gamorrean guards and a security droid. All three were armed.

“Keetric?” the tall man said, walking over.

The Twi’lek looked him up and down. “Director Abaca?”

Abaca bristled. “You shouldn’t say that name out loud!” he hissed.

“Why not? It’s the last time you’ll ever hear it. After today, that is.” The crime lord reached into his pocket and Abaca tensed, but Keetric only pulled out a pair of fake ID slates. “One for you and your wife, and one for each of your children. Just as we agreed. Now…the transfer?”

Abaca sighed. Using his datapad, he transferred nearly a million credits into Keetric’s bank account. “Done.”

Keetric checked his own datapad. “So it is.” He slid the slates across the table and Abaca picked them up. “So nice doing business. I would say that I look forward to doing business again, but when a man buys those from me,” he pointed at the fake ID slates, “I know he’s not going to be around for a while.”

Abaca looked at him evenly. “Just remember, I paid you extra for your…discretion. I was told you are a man who honors such agreements.”

“Indeed, I do. As long as the price is right. And yours is very right.” Keetric nodded cordially, as though they were old friends saying goodbye. “Have fun in retirement.”

“Likewise.”

Abaca turned and left the cantina and walked quickly down the streets of Otarr, performing surveillance-detection runs, slipping into shops and then exiting out their back doors and into alleyways that led to a tangle of filthy streets. Abaca had memorized the layout of Otarr’s streets, knew them by heart. He also knew how to spot pavement artists—that is, agents walking the streets incognito, pretending to be sightseeing tourists.

The hotel where he and his family were staying was the nicest Otarr had to offer, which wasn’t saying much. It was a well-appointed room on the bottom floor—he always rented the bottom or second floors of hotels; in case he needed to run, he didn’t have far to jump. Abaca looked around the room for his wife and children. “Analya?” he called into the hotel room. But his wife did not respond. Nor did his children. He searched every room.

She must be out getting that airspeeder I asked her to arrange for us. I told her not to take the kids. Why did she not listen?

Already the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. He pulled out his blaster pistol and checked every room, every closet, and then the hallway. He used a scanner to look for surveillance bugs in his room, and found none. He picked up his commlink and called QX-14, but the droid did not respond. QX was supposed to be stationed on the roof of the hotel, watching not only for Abaca’s approach and to make sure he was in the black, but also watching the skies for any suspicious-looking airspeeders that might be buzzing around the hotel.

Then, he heard a tweet. Almost like a bird’s chirp. He walked over beside the bed near the window, and there, on the bedside table, was a commlink he had never seen before.

A sinking feeling in his gut, Abaca lifted it up and said, “Where is my family?”

“They’re safe,” a familiar voice said.

“Ageless—”

“Don’t move from where you’re standing, Director. If you do, I will pull the trigger and that will be the end of you.”

Abaca closed his eyes and realized what a fool he had been. The commlink had been positioned on the bedside table near the window, just so he would be standing there when he picked it up, and one of the curtains had been pulled back. He turned and looked outside. Across the street was another hotel, and, about midway up, one of the windows was open, and Abaca could see the barrel of a DC-15x sniper rifle. At least, if Abaca wasn’t mistaken. Those rifles fired blue, hyper-ionized plasma bolts that could smash through most armored droids. If Abaca even twitched the wrong way, he knew he was dead.

“Where is my family, Ageless?” he asked again.

“Just sit still, Director,” Ageless said. “People are already on their way to scoop you up, so we don’t have much time. If you try to leave the hotel, I’ll shoot you through any of the open windows. I left plenty of them open when I was there.”

“I see. And who am I waiting to come arrest me? Not the Empire, unless you were able to convince them you weren’t in on all of this, along with me and Zumter.”

“I’m still disavowed, but I’ve got word that may change soon. IIS wants some of us to come back in. No you, though. You they have a standing kill order on.”

“Son…I never intended—”

“I’m handing you over to the Rebellion,” Ageless said. “Unless.”

Abaca waited. “Unless what?”

“I need some information.”

“Well, seeing as how you’re holding all the sabacc cards, let’s hear it. What do you want?”

“Besides capturing Zumter, I also captured Sark. He told me about a little mission he ran for you on a place called Dagobah. Little out-of-the-way planet, not much to recommend it besides swamps and a million creatures trying to kill anyone that touches down. Do you recall that mission, sir?”

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“I do,” said Abaca, still looking across the street at the barrel sticking out of the window. “What do you want to know about it?”

“Why did you send him there?”

“Reconnaissance.”

“He told me that much. What was the recon for?”

“An old Jedi Master, supposedly long dead. The Emperor…he…he said he had a premonition. He saw this unknown Jedi Master hiding in a dark, damp place. Said there were a couple dozen worlds he felt it could be.”

“A premonition?”

“The Emperor can be a strange one.”

“Sark said he didn’t find much there.”

“Not much, no.” Abaca started talking fast, trying to save his own skin, and his family’s. What did it matter if he spilled the beans about classified operations now, when that whole part of his life was over? “But he was accompanied there by Vader.”

“Vader? He went with Sark to Dagobah? Why?”

“I don’t know, but after that, I put Sark on quite a few hunt-and-kill missions, looking for Jedi that went unaccounted for after the Purge. On the Emperor’s orders, Sark went Jedi-hunting. He only ever found one, but the Jedi got away. After that, I retasked Sark to start looking into why, exactly, this was so important to the Emperor. He found a couple of interesting things about Vader. He followed the Dark Lord for a while, almost got spotted by him twice.”

“You were spying on our own people?”

“Yes,” Abaca snorted. “We always did that. Everyone in the Empire spies on everyone. Nine hells, son, we even spied on the Emperor, from time to time. Though I think he might’ve known it. Probably would’ve been disappointed in us if we didn’t.”

A long beat of silence. Abaca thought maybe Ageless had stopped listening.

Then, Ageless finally said, “Tell me what you know about Vader.”

“Why? Why are you suddenly so interested?”

“Call it professional curiosity.”

Abaca sighed. He was surprised to find he was sweating, and he wiped his brow. “Vader is a spook. Whatever else was known about him before the Jedi Purge was wiped away. He may be a Jedi himself—you’ve heard the rumors of his powers, and the fact he’s damn good with a lightsaber—but I could never confirm this. Some believe he’s simply a highly-advanced droid.”

“But you never believed that,” Ageless said.

“No.”

“And you kept digging?

“Yes.”

“What did you find?”

“Just one thing. Well, two things, maybe. I found a medical droid that had been in service for decades, one of Emperor Palpatine’s personal physicians, and I happened to get another of our Kingdom assets close enough to rip a copy of its memory. That medical droid had some old memories buried deep inside its hardware, memories of being there when Vader was first put into his body suit. The droid was there when they picked him up from a planet called Mustafar.”

“Mustafar? The place covered in lava?”

“That’s the one. Vader had been badly burned, to the point no one recognized him. But he was definitely Human. The droid’s memory told us that when Vader awoke from his coma, he asked for someone named Padmé, and the Emperor informed Vader that he had accidentally killed her.”

“I see. And the other thing?”

“I discovered that Vader once paid a visit to Tatooine, to some burned-out moisture farm belonging to a bunch of nobodies. I learned the farm used to belong to a family called Lars. I never knew what Vader’s interest in that farm was, but I do know that he didn’t give the order to burn the farm and kill the farmers. He showed up afterwards. And I know that the stormtrooper unit that accompanied him down to the planet claimed they had never seen him so quiet. Apparently, he stood there for days, walking around the place, often sitting down in the sand. Like he was…I don’t know…meditating.”

Ageless had gone quiet.

“Ageless?”

“I’m here. Thank you, Director. You’ve been a big help.”

Abaca held his breath. “Does that mean you will let me go?” Looking out the window, he saw the sniper rifle recede back into the darkness of the window. “Ageless? Ageless, are you there? Age—”

Just then, the door to his room was kicked down and six beings entered with guns. A tattoo-faced female Mirialan was at the head of the group, moving in a tactical formation as they brought their blasters to bear on Abaca. He threw up his hands in shock and fear.

“Director Abaca,” the Mirialan said. “My name is Fera. I’m with the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Your family is waiting for you in our ship at the spaceport. Why don’t we take you to them?”

* * *

Ageless watched from across the street as the Rebels led Abaca quietly into a speeder waiting just outside the hotel. Abaca was looking around, probably searching for Ageless, but he never saw the Zabrak on the sidewalk, his hood pulled up over his horns so he could pass for a Human.

Once the speeder was gone, Ageless walked casually across the town of Otarr. In his right hand was a duffel bag containing the collapsed DC-15x sniper rifle, as well as his last false ID slate he had taken from Echo Base. He had just one last fake identity left that neither the Empire nor the Rebellion knew about: he was now traveling as Ven Lor Takka, of Nar Shadaa. That got him past the security at any Imperial-controlled spaceport, and he knew that, if he wanted to, it could get him free and clear to a new life.

And perhaps he would indeed disappear into that life soon. In the last few weeks, he had realized he was growing tired of killing, tired of surrounding himself with death. Perhaps he would return to Dathomir, to what was left of his family. Just disappear, he thought. Leave the War to the rest of the galaxy. That sounded relaxing.

But there was something else bothering him.

Abaca’s answers to his questions had only raised more questions. Questions that had started on Cloud City, and had persisted after his interrogation of Sark on Hoth. There was something going on here between Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, a schism of some kind that might prove disastrous to the Empire. And there was something about Luke Skywalker that nobody besides Ageless seemed to know. A mystery enshrouded in shadow, a conspiracy that perhaps engulfed the Emperor himself, exposing some kind of weakness.

Dagobah. A lone Jedi that Sark had nearly captured, but escaped. Tatooine. Dead moisture farmers. A woman named Padmé. Vader’s claim of fatherhood to Skywalker. Vader’s claim that it was both his and Skywalker’s destiny to destroy the Emperor.

The Jedi Purge. Ageless was sure it all started there. Somewhere amid those murky, bloody years of the Clone Wars, and the immediate aftermath, there lay answers to all his questions.

Ageless was more than disillusioned by the Empire that ever before. He felt more than just betrayed. There was a cancer eating at the galaxy, and he had helped that cancer spread.

Guilt. It was an emotion he thought had been trained out of him, but it was there. In his sleep, the guilt followed him. It followed him into the strange dreams where he sensed some innate and frightening power from within himself. The same dreams where he heard the Dark Voice speaking to him from behind a veil.

Dagobah. I wonder if I could find answers there. Sark and Abaca seemed to think a Jedi Master may have resided there. Even the Emperor thought so.

But there was also the invitation from IIS to return. The Kingdom was dissolved, all its departments reassigned, but they wanted their operatives back. Abaca and Zumter were disgraced, and now in the hands of rebels, but Ageless could go back to them. He could be their agent.

Or a double agent working for the Rebel Alliance.

He thought about this while he hopped onto a rented speeder bike and rode it out into the mountains, where his ship was parked.

By the time he reached the YT-2400—formerly the Hard Leaf, now rechristened the Dathomirian Curse—the agent once known as Ageless Void had made up his mind. He stepped on board and was greeted by R-3PO and R4, both of whom had been pottering about the ship and cleaning up during his absence.

“How did it go, sir?” said R-3PO. His speech was better, ever since Ageless had taken him to a droid repair shop and gotten him a new vocabulator.

“It went well enough.”

“Did you get all your answers?”

“Not all of them. But I got a few more questions. And I’ll take a good question over a lie.”

“I have never heard it said that way, sir, but I’ll take your word for it.”

R4 came trundling up, twittering happily about the job he had done on the life-support.

Ageless stood in the cargo bay, looking at them. “Listen, you two don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. You don’t belong to me. And I think you both preferred it when you were working for the Rebellion. If that’s still both your wishes, go right ahead. You helped me get this far and I’m…grateful.” It felt strange saying that to droids, but the truth was he had never spent this long in any droid’s presence, and had never gotten to know them like friends, the way some people did. “You especially,” he said to the protocol droid. “You pulled me out of that ice, dragged me back inside Echo Base. Probably would’ve frozen to death out there if it wasn’t for you.”

He nodded at them.

“You’ve both earned the right to go wherever you want.”

“Might I ask, sir, before we make our decision, what are your goals?” R-3PO said.

He sighed. “I’m going after answers to my questions. And I’m…well, to tell you the truth, I’m still figuring all this out. Trying to figure out who I am without the Empire, without the Kingdom to tell me what to do. But I do know that where I’m going, it’s going to pit me against the most powerful people in the galaxy. Maybe even the Emperor himself. You two might not want to be there for that.”

R4 tweeted something, and R-3PO said, “I quite agree. Arfour and I feel that, if you are setting yourself against the Empire itself, then you are with the Rebellion, whether you verbally ally yourself with them directly or not. Therefore, sir, we are still glad to be in your service, and would be delighted to conduct further mischief.”

Ageless couldn’t help it. He laughed. He had not laughed in a long, long while. He forgot how much he missed it.

“Further mischief. All right,” he said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Of course not, sir. And, eh, where are we going next?”

“I have a few stops to make around the Outer Rim, a few places where I hid some more weapons caches back when I was with the Kingdom, a bit of credits, things to keep us moving and keep us safe. I may get in touch with some old contacts of mine. After that…I think we’ll be taking a trip to Dagobah.”

“Where is that, sir?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Never been there. Only ever vaguely heard it referenced before. But,” he added, stepping into the cockpit and cueing up the Curse’s engines, “I intend to give that planet a thorough examination once we get there. Strap yourselves in. There’s an Imperial fleet moving through this system, and if we happen upon them, we may need to make a run for it.”

“Another dangerous adventure, sir,” R-3PO commented.

“Yeah,” Ageless said. “One more time through the fire.”

The Dathomirian Curse lifted off from Nevarro and turned towards the night sky, and her engines roared as she began the climb. Behind her was nothing but rocky mountains and dust for as far as the eye could see. Large lizards preyed upon the smaller ones, and insects sought refuge in small hives, chittering and singing their mating songs long into the night.

The world kept on spinning.

And beyond it, the Galactic Civil War raged on. Ghosts moved between the stars, spies and agents of every kind. The ageless void kept them all in its cold embrace, as it always had, as it forever would.