OSSUS

ALONG THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH

Kevv glanced at his infrared screen. Namyr, and whoever her partners were, appeared to be ascending, but they were doing it way too slow for his liking. Sensors showed he was already being homed in on. He hovered directly above the giant sinkhole and opened the Curse’s cargo ramp. “Cargo ramp’s open!” he shouted over comms. “It’s now or never!”

“We’re almost there—”

“Almost there isn’t here! I need you guys to hustle—”

“If the enemy gets there before we do, leave without us!”

“What?”

“You heard me, Kevv—”

“I’m not leaving without you! Just move it, lady!”

The warning sound from the console screamed. He wasn’t dead yet, which meant that the TIE Defender must at last be out of missiles, and perhaps it had received enough damage that its pilot was concerned about overexerting the guns to push them to fire at this distance—at its current range the power in its lasers would dissipate before it reached Kevv, and the pilot probably couldn’t risk dialing up his main guns’ power. We’re both wounded mynocks, determined to kill one another, even though there isn’t much meat left to fight over.

Suddenly, he heard a thunk! and realized it must be the sound of an ascension cable’s grapnel connecting to the cargo ramp. He looked at the view from his ship’s belly cam, and felt a small grain of hope when Namyr appeared onscreen, dangling right alongside a human woman and a tall protocol droid with black plating. But they were still hanging there, still trying to reel themselves up.

“We’re connected! Let’s go!” Namyr’s voice came over comms.

“But you’re not in yet—”

“Just go, Kevv! Go ahead and ascend, just trying not to shake us off!”

“All right! Hang on!”

Kevv throttled up main thrust, and began to rise up between a pair of basalt pillars that flanked him. As soon as he was out from that final, small bit of cover, it would be open season.

* * *

ABOVE THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH

Caz had a bead on the enemy. After chasing off the first craft, and getting confirmation from his sensors that it had escaped into orbit, he knew the YT ship a kilometer ahead of him was alone. A constant alarm was going off in his ear. A fire in the interstitial circuitry in the wall behind him. He had no time to put his TIE in idle and spin his seat around to open the panel to deal with it, he would just have to count on the auto-extinguishers and vents to do the work for him.

The YT shot up and away from the sinkhole, away from the basalt pillars surrounding it.

“There you are,” Caz muttered. “That’s right, come to me.” The YT was visibly damaged, spouting columns of smoke in its wake. Something else was dangling from it. At first he thought it was just part of the ship’s guts, but then he realized it was people, hanging from cables.

What in the…?

After getting over his surprise, Caz sent a quick transmission up to the Emperor’s Might, then checked to make sure all guns were cycled up.

And then he opened fire.

* * *

BENEATH MOUNT GUJAHHL

The vault door was a single slab of a black, rusty-looking metal, and, just as Master Ooroo had said, Ageless’s lightsaber blade did indeed bounce right off it. Not only that, but it caused a quick short, and his energy blade dissolved in an instant, temporarily shorting out. “Well, I’ll be.” Between cortosis and the Koboh matter, this place was just full of things that were lightsaber-resistant. He found the keypad, which was not made of metal or wires, but rather some incredibly intricate clockwork. The wall before him was a crosshatch of gears and spindles, wires that looked to be made of the same cortosis material as the door, and the keypad was made of some species of granite.

With his remaining hand, Ageless punched in the numbers.

There came a loud, guttural grumbling from inside the wall. Then, the gears began to spin so fast they sent out sparks, and then came arcs of electricity that briefly lit up the entire room. All at once, the vault door slid to one side and a rush of dust clouds came out at him. Still hauling the human woman over his shoulder, and lighting his way by summoning up a stoic flame, he marched forward into the darkness.

The vault was a perfect sphere inside, with steps leading down to the nadir. And there, at the center of the room, was a stone pedestal, and sat atop it, perfectly preserved like some intricate work of art, was a fist-sized crystal. At least, it looked like a crystal upon first glance. Upon closer inspection, however, Ageless found that it was roughly cube-shaped, with golden borders, and from within pulsed a faint purple light, which responded to his touch. As soon as his fingers touched the crystal face, that purple light reached out to make a connection to his fingertips.

Ageless felt a rush through the Force, and all at once many voices spoke in his head, a fugue of debating entities, arguing, laughing.

And then, silence.

He lifted the holocron slowly, half expecting a trap. Then he brought it up to his eyes, and gazed into its light. Something called to him then, something like out of a half-remembered dream. He was supposed to be here. He was meant to find this. But why?

Suddenly, it was as if Ageless could see the whole of his existence, right up until his death, or at least he felt these things. All events seemed to surround this moment of finding the Dark Holocron, each other moment orbiting this central event. This very moment was like a star whose gravity attracted all the other events of his life.

The feeling faded almost as soon as it had appeared, and then he placed the cube in a pocket and carried on across the room, to where a set of stone stairs led up. It was a short trip up, and then he came to yet another complex piece of machinery, a tube fashioned out of cortosis and with the same strange clockwork as before. There was a large tube encased in the rock, almost completely encased behind millennia of stalagmite growth. It took him a moment to realize what the large tube was.

A turbolift. Designed to resist rust and decay, built of cortosis to keep Sith from breaching from the other side.

He used his lightsaber to cut away the stalagmites. He had to lay the woman down to the do the work, and it took him several moments. When he was finally done, he pulled a lever on the right side of the lift, and sparks shot out, just like before. The doors parted. He picked the woman up, stepped inside, and the doors shut behind him. It must have had pressure plates, and knew when someone was aboard, because it started up almost immediately.

The gears within the walls screeched, and he felt disoriented by the speed at which the lift was ascending.

When the doors opened again, he was staring out from a mountain peak, out across a far sweeping plain of basalt pillars and flatlands. He looked around for any sign of habitation, any sign of Imperials or Kevv or the droids or anyone.

He saw nothing. Nothing but a sunrise and vast rocky canyons.

For a moment, Ageless felt like he’d come to the end.

Then, he closed his eyes, and reached out through the Force. He centered himself, enhancing his senses. When he opened his eyes again, he felt his gaze drawn to a spot lower down the mountain, and then just north of it. There, about half a kilometer, bathed in the light of morning, was the cliff face he and Namyr had originally used to enter the subterranean cave system. And, parked beside the very cave entrance he and Namyr had entered, was a small, slender ship, with a blunt nose.

If he wasn’t mistaken, it was some kind of Star Yacht. Ageless thought it was a good bet that the ship belonged to either the Voice of Ether or the woman he was carrying.

Let’s find out, he thought.

Ageless had to improvise here. He lowered the woman to the ground gently. Then, slowly, he wrapped his legs around her waist, clenching her between his thighs. He reached around her neck with his arm, like he was going to choke her—which he might have to do if she woke up—and he held her like this as he fired his ascension cable one-handed to the nearest basalt pillar.

Then, he activated the pull switch, and they went zipping across the open valley.

He would not be able to cling to the pillar one-handed and somehow fire the ascension cable, so, halfway across, he hit the button to recall the grapnel, and it released its hold of the pillar and retracted. He fell for five full seconds, holding the woman between his legs, reaching out to the Force for calm and focus—

Ageless fired the ascension cable to the next basalt pillar, and then swung across. When he was almost to it, he did the same maneuver again, retracting the grapnel, falling towards the canyon floor for several seconds while he used the Force to guide his aim, and fired at the next pillar.

He swung along the valley like this, each moment hoping that the Force would not fail him. When he finally reached the ship, he released the woman. He stood up, panting, swaying on his feet. He was dehydrated, his body had lost a limb, and he’d been battered by his enemies. Yet still he stood.

Ageless marshaled all of his thoughts and focus on surviving. He had made it this far…

Just a little bit further, he thought, and hauled the unconscious woman back onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He could almost see Dathomir now. If he made it out of here, he vowed to return to Dathomir and continue his studies into his ancestors’ ways. Just a little bit further.

* * *

ABOVE THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH

Namyr finished climbing up onto the ramp, and even as Kevv banked the ship rather roughly away from the incoming TIE, she reached down to haul up Doctor Aphra, who in turn helped her droid up onto the ramp. The Curse banked sharply again, and Namyr gasped as she lost her balance and fell from the ramp—

Only to be snatched back from the brink of death by Triple-Zero. The droid had hold of her wrist, and hauled her back up. Namyr looked down at Ossus’s surface, now a kilometer below them, spinning as it was. She had very nearly been a goner.

“Thanks,” she said, pushing past him and running up to the ramp. “I’m going to help Kevv in the cockpit, he may do better with a co-pilot—”

“Hang on a minute!” Doctor Aphra said. She was the last one into the ship, and slapped the control to close the ramp. “What the blazes are we supposed do?”

“If either you or your droid are good on guns,” Namyr called over her shoulder, racing down the corridor, “then I suggest you get to the topside turret! Now!”

“A turret only has a seat for one!”

“Then one of you make yourself useful and perform some damned maintenance on this thing! Can’t you see we’re on fire?”

Namyr moved through corridors still hazy with gray smoke. Coughing, she fanned the air in front of her face, for what little good it did, and when she entered the cockpit she felt Kevv juice the inertial dampeners, because her guts gave a little lurch. “Hey, partner,” she coughed, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat.

“Namyr! Thank the old gods!” Kevv said. “Where are those others you brought onboard?”

“They’re getting on the turret,” she said, strapping in. “Tell me what I need to do to help.”

“I’ve lost almost all backup generators and reserve power, so shields won’t help us now. I’ve got no chaff, nothing to shake him with—”

“So what can I do?” she repeated.

“You focus on sensors, and I’ll concentrate on the piloting. Coordinate with the person in our turret, let me know when and where I need to move to put the enemy in our sights.”

“Got it.”

Namyr and Kevv settled back into their old routine of piloting and co-piloting; her calling out short commands in brevity code, and him giving out the occasional “Understood” or “Making the adjustment now.” She suddenly heard the thunder of the turret, and they both felt the Curse shake and judder from it. She checked the rear cams. “Looks like our passengers are earning their keep already.” She pulled on a headset and set it to the crew channel. “This is Namyr in the cockpit. Who’s that on the guns?”

“That would be me,” said Triple-Zero in his monotone-yet-ominous cadence.

“Where’s Aphra?”

“She’s conducting maintenance aft, as you requested. She saw the damage to the main hyperdrive hub, and went to make sure that the drive’s motivator is still in working order.”

“Well,” said Kevv, “whoever she is, she knows her stuff. If the motivator is damaged, we won’t be leaving this place.”

“Hang tight, Triple-Zero,” Namyr said. “We’re going to coordinate to get that TIE in a favorable position for you to fire.”

“For right now it’s keeping its distance, though my stutterfire shouldn’t concern it too much, since the Defenders are so nimble. Analysis: this TIE’s movements demonstrate the quality of a tactic known as corralling.”

“Corralling?” she said, though by the dour expression on Kevv’s face it seemed he knew what this term meant.

“Yes,” the droid said. “He’s chasing us and giving off occasional fire to keep us moving, making it so that we cannot go anywhere but up, and in a straight line. He seems to know we have limited maneuverability due to damage, and he is practically showing us the way out. Conjecture: this pilot is trying to make us think that we’re getting away.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Classic corralling tactic,” Kevv said. “He may be right. The TIE’s behavior is certainly in light with it.”

Namyr checked her scopes. “I don’t see anything in orbit above us. No squadrons, no major ships.” She had to think for a second. Then, she had a creeping suspicion. “Wait, you said the Empire is pulling out of Ossus?”

“Yes.”

“But is that Gozanti-class still up in polar orbit?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

“Because I’m thinking about a Lastokli-khin maneuver.”

Kevv looked at her. “Play peekaboo behind the planet—or in this case, at one of the poles.”

Namyr checked the ship’s GPS. “We’re close to the equator.” She looked up through the clouds, which were just now clearing away, and she watched as the blue sky slowly faded and the pinpoints of starlight started showing through. “When we emerge, they could perform a sublight jump right on top of us.”

“But planets are big. They’d have to know exactly where we are, or else they’d overshoot us.”

“Not if that TIE pilot set out a transmission to let them know where he meant to chase us. And he’d only have to give a good guess about our trajectory once we exit atmo, and the Gozanti would only need to get close enough to use its tractor beam.” Namyr typed up a command in her main sensor, and went through a backlog of frequency recordings, which ships often kept track of, even if they didn’t tell their pilots. “Dank ferrik.”

“What is it?”

“A transmission was logged, but it looks like you missed it. The computer tried to alert you, but I guess you were too busy trying to stay alive. That TIE sent up a transmission a few minutes ago, around the time you were hauling us aboard.”

“Are you serious? Blast! Can’t believe I didn’t think to check—”

“It’s fine, you were busy trying to keep us all alive. Your attention was split, you couldn’t have known. But, Kevv, this means we’re very likely headed into a trap.” She added, “And we likely won’t get far enough from Ossus in time to be clear of its gravity shadow, which means we can’t jump to lightspeed or else we’ll be ripped apart upon entering hyperspace.”

Kevv’s eyes narrowed. Then, he banked slightly to starboard, and the stars in front of them shifted. They were now well above Ossus, and could look down on the red-brown surface.

Namyr shot him a look. “What are you doing?”

“That Gozanti was parked in polar orbit. The north pole. So, I’m going to make for it.”

Namyr blinked. “You’re…you’re going to fly into the trap?”

“The Teshkha maneuver,” he said, looking at her seriously.

She blinked in disbelief. “Kevv, no. No, that’s too dangerous.”

“What other choice do we have, Namyr?”

She thought about it. Tractor beams were notoriously wide in their arc, they cast a wide net and then tried to home in fast to catch their prey. But their engineers and gunnery teams were usually more focused on catching something flying away or parallel to them, and almost always had preset firing solutions ready to enact. That meant if you flew directly at them, as the famous Rebel pilot Rom Teshkha had done on four separate occasions, you could get within their firing arc before the Imperial crews had time to adjust the aim or the arc.

It usually only gave you seconds, but sometimes seconds were all you needed. Then you had to fly close to the Imperial ship’s hull, hugging it close, avoiding its turbolasers and looking for a way to fly over its full length and away from its stern, where its thrusters were, and where its biggest blindspot was for tractor beams.

“Flying directly towards a capital ship like that at high speed does make it difficult for the tractor beams to lock on,” Namyr said. “But besides Teshkha, I’ve only heard of a handful of pilots that pulled it off, and most of those were turned to paste when they couldn’t slow down in time and crashed into the Imperial ship’s hull.”

“Just trust me, Namyr,” Kevv said, setting the course. “I need you to trust me, and stay on scopes to help me. I can’t do this without you.”

She gave him a solemn look, then nodded resolutely. “All right, Captain. It’s your ship. Or it is now. Tell me what to do.”

* * *

IN ORBIT ABOVE OSSUS

Caz moved in behind the YT, keeping it in his sights, giving off only the occasional stutterfire shots to harass it, keeping the target moving. He was certain he had them now, for they were seemingly trying a last-ditch effort to turn back towards the planet—or wait, no…no, they were now turning hard again, making a heading pole-ward. He thought that was odd.

Yes, he thought that was very, very strange.

Until he remembered how tricky these Rebels had been so far. They slipped onto the planet posing as random asteroids, and they evaded us for days down below, hiding in the K’tuzian Stretch for the gods know how long. These Rebels are good. He looked out his viewport at the YT, its dorsal turret firing at him…but not with too much enthusiasm.

No, he thought. They can’t be. They can’t be about to attempt the—

But even as he thought it, the Emperor’s Might suddenly popped into existence, right in front of the YT, having performed a sublight micro-jump directly into its path. And then he saw the YT accelerate towards the Imperial ship, and Caz knew then that he was flying against a daredevil, or an absolute madman.

Making sure his IFF transponder was on, so that the Emperor’s Might’s guns didn’t mistakenly fire on him, Caz dumped all power into thrust once more. Even as he closed in, the dorsal turret fired on him, forcing him to jink left and right, which made it all the more dangerous, as the Might opened fire in a glowing barrage, and the more Caz maneuvered the more he increased his chances of accidentally falling victim to friendly fire.

The YT made it beyond the expected tractor beam arc—Damn fools! They need to stop being so regimented, so predictable, because the bloody Rebels know about the presets! But no use crying over spilled Jawa juice.

Caz opened fire, realizing that every time he missed, some of his shots would crash against the Might’s hull. They could survive it, that hull was practically impregnable to simple fire. But some of the turrets were vulnerable, and the YT did surprise Caz when it suddenly opened fire from its forward guns and started taking out turrets as it zoomed around them. The dorsal turret kept its fire focused on Caz, who had closed within a hundred meters of his enemy.

This was going to be tight.

Both Caz and the YT were now hugging very close the Might’s hull, zooming around the field of fire, taking shots at each other as they zipped around the Might’s starboard wing and headed for its rear thrusters.

No, he thought. No, not now. No this close.

Beneath them, the Emperor’s Might was already turning hard, adjusting its course to bring about its broadside and put the YT back in the field of its tractor beams. Caz’s incessant firing was overheating his guns. He didn’t care. He didn’t listen to the warning chimes. He just kept pouring on the heat, until at last he saw one of the Might’s tractor barrels extend from its starboardside wing, and, with swift action, locked onto the YT.

Caz saw the Rebel ship become frozen in space. He laughed. It must’ve really stressed the YT’s inertial dampeners and artificial gravity, and the crew was probably slung against their seat restraints, if they were buckled in at all. He smiled, and closed in on the Rebel scum, lining up his shot on its rear hull—

Until something exploded in his periphery, just barely noticeable as he flew by it. The tractor barrel suddenly shattered, flashed white, then was doused, as bright red laserfire tore into it.

Caz jerked his head around and saw a ship zooming quickly overhead. He knew it immediately. A mid-luxury craft, a SoroSuub Nelgian-class Star Yacht II, brought here by the red-headed woman on a secret mission. He’d only ever heard whispers about her, rumors that she was the Emperor’s pet or private spy or something. He hadn’t known her true purpose on Ossus and he hadn’t cared.

Until now.

As soon as the tractor barrel was destroyed, the YT was once again free, and the ship banked hard to its port and joined the Star Yacht as they raced once again for the rear of the Emperor’s Might.

What the blazes? Are they working together?

Caz tried intercepting their transmissions. He got a garbled crisscrossing of messages: “—Ageless, that you? Where did—” and then “—just maintain evasive—” and then “—Kevv, on your six! Look out!”

Kevv? Ageless? Names he didn’t know.

Caz didn’t have time to figure it out, he could only pick one of the targets and he opened up once more on the YT. That’s when he saw the friendly blips on radar. TIE Interceptors being released from the Might’s hangar bay. A dozen of them now poured over the top of the Gozanti, and they came directly at the two enemy ships, forcing them to split up. Caz went after the YT, the other TIE squadrons split up to give chase.

The two Rebel ships seemed to coordinate, flying over the opposite edges of the Might, and converging around its belly, flying past the very hangars that had just deployed the Interceptors. Caz checked to make sure the Might’s crew had thought to jam their transmissions. They had not. They hadn’t been ready to do that, what with assuming they only had one enemy fighter to worry about. Damn them, they’re too slow! Incompetent fools, they’ve become too complacent! He sent a request to the Might’s bridge to have transmissions jammed.

But as soon as it was done, he saw the YT and the Star Yacht suddenly break away from the Might and make for deep space. They were now getting well beyond the reach of the Gozanti, who would not be able to turn in time to bring about its other tractor barrels.

Caz watched as the YT and the Star Yacht coordinated efficiently, splitting up and coming back together, confusing the targeting systems of the Imperial fighters. The YT’s dorsal turret winged two Interceptors, forcing them to spiral out of control, and the Star Yacht’s pilot simply ran interference, creating chaos by flying directly into the path of each Interceptor, forcing them to break away. It was a symphony of coordinated attacks, feints, hit-and-fade maneuvers.

But the YT was hit, and Caz saw atmo leaking out into space in great white clouds.

He grinned.

Caz kept homed in on the YT. Almost got you. You’re slipping. Almost got you.

And then the Rebel pilot did something Caz did not expect. He performed a Corellian Sendoff, by flying in such a way as to lure in two enemy fighters, letting them get in close, and then flying directly towards the Star Yacht, putting the Interceptors in danger of colliding with it, forcing them to break away quickly. And one of the TIEs collided with another that had been closing to intercept.

A Corellian Sendoff, he marveled. I’ve never actually seen one done.

His respect for these Rebels increased as much as his hatred for them.

Another of the Interceptors was winged by the YT’s dorsal turret. Another one was blasted to pieces by the Star Yacht. The two enemy ships were heading into deep space and were getting close to being able to make the jump to lightspeed.

Caz couldn’t allow that final insult.

When yet another Interceptor was blasted by the YT’s turret, he threw all caution to the wind and overheated all systems, firing until his guns redlined. A fire broke out in the interstitial wiring somewhere behind him, the cabin was filling up with smoke but that’s what his full-masked helmet was for. The green lasers of his TIE hit one of the YT’s rear thrusters. He grinned, still pouring it on—

And then, all at once, his screens went blank. Everything just shut off. His cockpit went dark but for the stars ahead. His fighter had completely died, and he was flying a dead stick. A fire erupted from beside him. The Star Yacht took a potshot at him as it went by, enough to tear off his portside wing and send him spinning. He became dizzy, watching the stars spin in front of him like a vortex of tiny glass shards. He watched in rage as the two enemy ships made the jump into hyperspace.

“No! Noooooo!”

Caz banged against his controls. Flames licked him, hot enough that he felt it through his flight suit. Hotter and hotter. No, it couldn’t end like this. If a pilot gets taken out, it’s quickly, shot out of the sky or in the void of space in a flash of glory.

Not like this…

The flames intensified. The auto-extinguishers had all failed.

Not like this…

Through his visor, he saw nothing but smoke and flames. He began to feel his skin burning, and watched the material on his sleeves begin to boil and peel. The main reactor to his engines, it must have ruptured, pouring its heat into the cabin.

Not like this…

Suddenly the flames were on his skin, the heat and smoke crawling up through his suit and into his mask, choking him.

Not like this…

Through the smoke and flames he could barely make out the stars spinning, the same stars where his enemies had made their successful retreat. He began to feel his flesh searing, sizzling, he began to lose consciousness.

Not like this…

And then Cazrael knew nothing else.

* * *

THE FOREST MOON OF ENDOR

There was a strange noise in the air, many voices singing in chorus. Luke heard it clearly, coming from far away, just over the crackling flames of his father’s funeral pyre. Luke had assembled the pyre himself over the last few hours, as the sun set between the giant trees of this ancient forest. There was plenty of wood, his lightsaber made the cutting easy. He’d heard fallen Jedi used to burn their dead in such a pyre, surrounded by their Jedi peers. He wasn’t sure if that was true, or only a story. A story from a certain point of view, perhaps, or else exaggerated, or fabricated entirely. So much had become legends. Like so much of the story of Anakin Skywalker and his Emperor.

Luke felt the pulsating power of the Force all around him, sensed someone watching him. He glanced over his shoulder. No one there. He also had the strangest sense that his actions here had reverberated across the galaxy, that the vision he’d seen just after surrendering himself to Vader, and the Zabrak in that image, had somehow been linked to his actions on the Death Star. Somehow, handing himself over to the Emperor had drawn the Emperor’s gaze away from whatever was happening on Ossus, giving that Zabrak and his companions a chance.

Watching the flames consume the dark visage of his father, Luke puzzled over that. In his vision, Luke had seen a female Human and a male Zabrak, and he’d heard a voice much like Yoda’s. It had told him that “a matter of much importance rests on Ossus.” And immediately after the Emperor’s death, Luke had sensed a strong emotion emanating from the explosion that marked Palpatine’s final breath: hatred. It had been so focused, sent elsewhere, like a radio transmission.

But who was the recipient?

He shook away the thought. Now was not the time for this. Now was the time for celebration. He had to allow himself more than just closer. So, he turned and followed the sound of singing, of celebration, of laughter and cheering.

It was a long walk through the woods, listening to the sounds of forest vermin scuttling for cover. The night deepened. He was never more acutely aware of how alone he was, the last Jedi, the last practitioner in the ways of the Force. Never more aware than now, walking alone in a dark forest.

A voice reached out from somewhere. It sounded familiar: Not the last of the old, Luke. The first of the new. Might’ve only been his imagination.

When at last he reached the Ewok village, and saw Lando, Chewie, Han, Leia, Wedge, Ackbar, Threepio, Artoo, and all the others, he felt such joy as he’d never felt. This victory…it had been a long time coming. Let them all bask in it. Let them all have this moment, Luke included, and recognize what a journey it had been, how much time and sacrifice and courage had been put into it.

Luke took a moment to himself, looking around at the joyous Ewoks, who had their forest all to themselves again. He looked at Artoo and Threepio dancing alongside the Ewoks. Lando was by the fire, regaling his story to Chewie—apparently, Lando and Nien Nunb had narrowly escaped the Death Star’s destruction in the Falcon. None of them had been aware that Luke was on the Death Star at the time. He’d very nearly lost his life in his attempt to redeem his father, and ensure the Emperor’s focus was solely on him.

Or something had been guiding me, he thought.

With the Emperor’s focus totally on Luke, he’d not seen what was transpiring on Ossus. If he had, if the Emperor had somehow expanded his mind via the Force, expanded his sight enough to see the events on that distant world, then he might’ve left the Death Star immediately to see to it himself. And then he wouldn’t have been there when it blew. And yet Luke’s decision to redeem his father had been his own…

The Force was working through me, making me an instrument. Or was it the other way around?

Doubtless, it would be something he would forever be contemplating. The Force was powerful and all around him, yet it was also mysterious.

Luke was confident now that the Emperor’s power in the Dark Side had been far-reaching, and influencing those around him. He was already hearing stories about how the Imperials had suddenly all been very clumsy in those moments just before the Death Star blew up, making erratic movements, the admirals in the ships above Endor had suddenly made terrible tactical errors that Admiral Ackbar had seized upon.

He was directing them. The Emperor…he was using some sort of power to keep them all coordinated. And when he died, they all lost their unit cohesion. No more coordination. They simply fell apart. Luke had read about a rare Force ability called “battle meditation,” and he now realized the Emperor had been exerting his will on all his forces all across the galaxy in this way.

He smiled as Wedge came over to see him. Shook his hand. They spoke briefly about what it had been like for them both. Luke left the part out where he’d redeemed Vader, and where Vader had killed the Emperor. Who needed to know that? What purpose would it serve now to know that Vader was a fallen Jedi, and that he had been Luke and Leia’s father? What purpose, besides spoiling Leia’s good name? Especially since she had a goal of going into politics.

Tell your sister you were right. His father’s last words drifted through his mind, for here she came now. Leia was heading over to him. But just before he walked over to talk to her, he sensed something. A presence. Many presences. He turned and leaned against a post, and looked into the darker end of the village. And there, glowing blue and yet translucent, he thought he saw Obi-Wan, Yoda, and…

…his father.

They looked at him, smiling, and they seemed to be sending him their approval.

Not the last of the old Jedi, Luke. The first of the new.

Leia came over and put her arms around him, shaking him. He turned to her, smiling, and then went to join the others by the fire. He went to join those who had helped him achieve this victory, to celebrate them, to celebrate dead heroes of the Rebellion, and to celebrate the unsung heroes that would never get the glory, like those at Sullust and Hoth, Ord Mantell and Nar Shaddaa, Alderaan and Malastare.

And the unknown heroes on Ossus.