A slightly late May the 4th Star Wars fic "How It Should Have Turned Out..."
I put this up on AO3 on May the 4th, but forgot to put it up here.
In which the New Republic thinks for a while that it won, and Leia Organa gets what she deserves.
In retrospect, some people would point out that exiling the strongest Dark -side Force-user in the galaxy to a powerful nexus of the Force might have been an error of judgement. Likewise, that disregarding the advice and concerns on that particular subject of the galaxy’s strongest Light-side Force-user. . .might also have been a sub-optimal course of action.
Not an unforced (or unForced) one, though, to be totally and unnecessarily fair. The Jedi had kept knowledge of the Force and the technologies based on it a close secret in their Order, and Palpatine made serious and mostly successful efforts to destroy it all, lest it be used against him. A generation after the fall of the Empire, no-one in the galaxy knew much about the Force. The educated classes of most Core Worlds did not believe in its existence as more than, at best, one respectable religious belief among many others, or at worst, a myth with which to manipulate the credulous.
So when the stormtrooper mutiny swept through the First Order’s ranks and brought down the government of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, it was remarkably easy for him to persuade his judges in the semi-reconstituted Senate that he no longer had his powers. That they had been stripped from him upon the death of the previous Supreme Leader, Snoke. And for good measure, that there was no point in pursuing the Order to its home-worlds in the Unknown Regions, that all of the Order’s power had been on the Star Destroyers that had mutinied, that the Supremacy had been so damaged by the heroic Vice-Admiral Holdo’s heroic suicide attack that it had been scrapped, and that the First Order had definitely passed on, ceased to be, expired and become one with the Force, was, in short, an ex-Order, and nothing to worry about.
* * * * *
“They won’t listen!” Rey burst into Leia Organa’s office in a well-maintained but unassuming building on the outskirts of Theed. “They think I’m too young, or a fraud, or your puppet, or…I’m not even allowed to attend the trial because I might bias the judges!”
“I know,” Leia said, with her usual resigned irony. It had a bitter edge, now. Naboo had given sanctuary to Padme Amidala’s daughter, (and more importantly, accepted her claim to her share of the Naberrie fortune) but the Core had rejected her. Rey had refused to leave her, despite overtures from a hundred different Senators eager to add the Last Jedi to their entourages, and as her own fame faded, now shared in her mentor’s ignominy.
“I’m sorry, child. This is not the New Republic that I promised you.”
Rey flopped into her usual chair, next to the round window that looked out onto a small, neat public garden. The neighbourhood was shabby but respectable, largely devoted to light industry and wholesale suppliers, and a few scattered residential apartment buildings. This being Naboo it was neither dangerous, dirty nor lacking in public facilities, but it was a far cry from the splendours of central Theed.
The service droid floated over with a large glass of iced fruit juice. Rey loved the cold, in and out, and happily ate frozen desserts in the depths of Theed’s temperate-latitude winter. It was nearly the only thing about the New Republic that she had not found a grievous disappointment. That and the schooling. Leia’s Naberrie inheritance was, among other things, paying for the best tutors to give Rey the education (though she had been careful not to let Rey know it) of a queen. History, law, politics both theoretical and applied, human biology and social psychology, statistics, military tactics and strategy, hyperspace and subspace physics, starship mechanics, martial arts, planetary geology and ecology, economics, languages…Rey had fallen on knowledge like a hungry steelpecker, and watching her wallow in learning like a nerf in a clean mud pond was Leia’s main joy these days.
Rey snapped the straw open and sucked at her juice viciously. “They’re even blaming you for the Hosnian system!”
“Ah.” The grim amusement in Leia’s voice deepened. “Resistance actions provoking the First Order, something like that?”
“Yes! Poe sent me the media report. He’s trying to do something about it, but they’ve pulled up that old lie about him being a secret First Order agent…”
Leia could not suppress her actual growl of anger. “They dare.”
Rey produced a morose chuckle. “He says he’s suing for defamation. Plans to use the proceeds to finance his next election campaign.”
“Ha. He should be so lucky.” Leia sat back with a sigh. A soft chime sounded, and the viewscreen on the wall came to life and the two women turned their reluctant attention to it. The trial of Ben Solo, former Supreme Leader Kylo Ren of the First Order (the revelation of his parentage had been the final blow against what was left of Leia’s influence among the Core Worlds), was resuming.
* * * * *
In the end, the verdict was guilty, but with mitigating factors of coercion and undue influence accepted by the judges, resulting in a sentence of life imprisonment on the distant water-world Ahch-To (the existence but not the nature of which had been revealed in the course of the trial) rather than immediate execution. Kylo Ren had showed no expression as he was led from the court, but through the bond Rey had felt him laughing,
Don’t be too upset, she heard him say through the bond, not unkindly. Your precious galaxy is going to need me alive. I have foreseen it.
Leia took one look at Rey’s face as the sentence was announced, and promptly rescheduled the lesson on the political economy of the Clone Wars. Then she took Rey out to the garden of her modest residence and had her double-dig the entire vegetable patch with an actual spade (Rey was positive that it was an antique that properly belonged in a museum) until she was too exhausted for emotion.
She did allow Rey to use the Force to mix in the compost.
“There, isn’t that lovely? Thank you so much. It’s supposed to rain a bit tonight, which is good. We’ll put the seedlings in tomorrow.”
Rey gulped cold water and wiped bits of compost off her sweaty face with her sleeve. “This is one of those lessons, right? Positive uses of negative energy, that sort of thing.”
Leia regarded her mildly from where she and Lando Calrissian (visiting as he did regularly, in between his usual mysterious plutocrat’s business) sat on the verandah with glasses of iced fruit juice and their feet up. “Lessons are what you make of them, dear. And the vegetable patch needed doing anyway.”
On his next visit, Lando brought a little box full of kyber crystals, allegedly from Palpatine’s own collection.
* * * * *
Somewhat to his surprise, Kylo Ren rather liked Ahch-To, quite aside from its deep connection to the Force. In his first six months he learned Lanai and made friends with the Caretakers. When the Visitors came, he joined the party and made friends with them too. In between language lessons, fishing and helping the Caretakers with their work, he meditated upon both the Light and the Dark, both conveniently to hand in powerful convergences. He spent a lot of time at the mosaic of the Prime Jedi; he did not overlook the Prime Jedi’s resemblance to Snoke’s species (and hoped that the Supremacy still had the tissue samples that Hux had taken from Snoke’s body before having it cremated and the ashes jettisoned into the nearest star). He slept in the Temple at night, cradled in Light, and from time to time climbed down the borehole cave during the day to meditate, wrapped in Darkness.
In his second year, when the Visitors came again, he left with them. There were many Lanai settlements on other islands spread across the planet, and he hopped from ship to ship, lending his strength, size and growing powers to pay for his passage.
At the beginning of his third year, while living in a Lanai town on a rather pleasant tropical archipelago strung along the equator, he managed to make contact with his Knights, and then, with their aid, with Hux. It was not exactly the bond that he still had with Rey, nor was it the fatal expenditure of energy that had killed Luke Skywalker. But as he …made friends with Ahch-To, he could feel his strength growing. Or possibly it was his access to the Force that was increasing; the planet’s strength as a vergence being lent to him more and more as he became more able to channel it. And it found a path for him to his Knights, scattered across the galaxy, and to Hux.
* * * * *
Armitage Hux was also in solitary confinement, on a space station orbiting the Core ice-world Lesan IX. He had been caught on-world when the mutiny happened, but enough of the stormtroopers had remained personally loyal to “Army” Hux that they had been able to bargain for life imprisonment rather than a quick show trial and immediate execution. Hux’s flagship, the Finalizer, had stayed loyal and had disappeared, presumably back into the Unknown Regions. Somehow, the New Republic was less interested in this fact than it should have been. Even those in what was left of the New Republic’s military and intelligence capability who were concerned found the trail cold.
During his second year of imprisonment, with no company but droids and the creeping fear of growing insanity, Hux was suddenly allowed access to reading matter. Mostly works of history and political and social science, to start with, from a very wide ideological spectrum, obviously meant to recondition him in some way; also a large number of works on non-human biology and sociology, planetary science, and general zoology and botany. Hux sneered to himself, but having nothing else to do besides exercise, and design warships mentally, read them. In his third year, in addition to the sudden intermittent presence of Kylo Ren in his head, there came unexpected access to the Royal Naboo University Library System, which apart from its vast standing collection included all research papers on all subjects submitted by both students and staff of the universities, and (marked with an anonymous tag that said “you really should read some of these”) an extraordinary collection of Naboon nature and landscape poetry, epic romances, and histories of Naboon make-up and fashion. Hux raised a ginger eyebrow at this last, kept his thoughts carefully off his face, and read on.
* * * * *
For the first few years after the fall of the First Order, things went as a realistic observer would have expected. That is to say, not terribly well. The New Republic, having escaped annihilation by the skin of its teeth, settled back into infighting and ideological squabbles, in the complacent belief that its values and virtue had (somehow) managed to triumph over its enemies without it having to lift a finger. Development aid and trade preferences to the Outer Rim increased for a while and then fizzled as the Core tried to cope with the massive socioeconomic upheavals caused by both the war and its aftermath.
Rearmament, begun after the Hosnian cataclysm, did not end entirely, but proceeded by fits and starts from world to world. In a small victory, Leia Organa managed to persuade the King of Naboo (another Naberrie, the grandson of Padme Amidala’s first cousin) that his system could not depend on the New Republic for military protection, and to quietly invest some of Naboo’s wealth into a small but serious self-defence force. The New Alderaanians had never needed persuading, but lacked the money, and were unfortunately too far from anywhere to be worthwhile allies to any system with enough money to fund their defence.
The former stormtroopers were given a world of their own as promised (Maknak III in the Mid-Rim, human-habitable and even reasonably pleasant, though in a navigationally tricky bit of space far from the main hyperspace routes), but little of the investment, development and integration aid, or trade preferences, that they had also been promised.
The New Republic was considering changes to some of the more restrictive trading and taxation regimes that had helped to keep the Outer Rim poor, but as usual nothing was moving terribly fast. And in the meantime, Maknak needed access to other worlds for technology that they could not produce themselves with the limited capability that they had been allowed. No one really trusted ex-stormtroopers, certainly not enough to let them keep their Star Destroyers’ top-of-the-line mining and manufacturing facilities.
Finn discovered to his chagrin that his status as leader of the mutiny and war hero had a shorter galactic half-life than he had expected. When Poe, now Senator for Yavin IV, approached him in the second year after the mutiny, suggesting that he support Leia’s election as Senator for Maknak, he agreed.
Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, Leia won. It turned out that her former enemies were possibly the only people left in the galaxy who respected her military record, strategic understanding (she had, after all, been perfectly correct about the threat that the First Order had posed to the New Republic), and even her rumoured Force powers. For the ex-stormtroopers, the War-witch had been an honourable enemy, had fought hard to win them decent terms and treatment, and now was the only New Republic leader (and herself abandoned by her own people, as they had been abandoned) to care what became of them.
“Follow me,” she said to them, as she had said to the Alliance, and the Rebellion, and the Resistance, “Follow me and I will never leave you behind.” And by an overwhelming percentage of the vote, they did.
Leia moved to Maknak, bought a compound in Raemyo, the only settlement of any size, and quietly began using Senatorial privilege to import technology that would otherwise have been beyond Maknak’s means. Naboo signed a Memorandum of Understanding to grant library privileges and distant learning access to Maknaki citizens (Armitage Hux was also granted citizenship in absentia; no one argued, since he was not expected ever to leave prison alive; the bureaucratic argument that there would otherwise be an empty spot on the form was also compelling). New Alderaan offered a bilateral free trade agreement. The Bespin Corporate Social Responsibility Department offered business development advice, second-hand mining and refinery equipment, technical training, and self-replicating fabricators of unspecified origin and no warranties.
Please convey my congratulations to her, Kylo Ren said in Rey’s head.
* * * * *
Back in the Senate and in her element, Leia argued and manoeuvred, this time as a neutral, unaffiliated Senator willing to vote pragmatically with any faction depending on what suited her world, and consequently one who was courted (very quietly, being still officially something of a pariah) by all. She brought Rey with her, a young, unnoticeable aide, her powers by now forgotten or disbelieved, and thereby the more useful in practice.
Your mental influence skills are really improving, Kylo said approvingly. You need a bit more subtlety and focus, though. Not all species are as easy to influence as humans. See, like this…”
* * * * *
The bond had changed after he was sent to Ahch-To. They seldom saw each now while waking, though their shared dreams (the Force bond sneered at the need for relativistic shielding when communicating across ten thousand light-years) were vivid and frequent. In her sleep Rey swam with him in the warm green seas of Ahch-To’s equator, and sparred with him on a sandy training floor under huge bright-flowered trees. In his dreams he walked with her on the silver shores of Naboo, flew with her among the topless towers of Coruscant, and stood by her side on the verandah of Leia’s house, looking out at the rose-golden vegetation of Maknak. But during their overlapping waking hours his presence in her mind was a delicate but permanent shadow, as was hers in his. After a few serious spats about privacy, they reached agreement about the activities that would be politely ignored, and she became used to having an intermittent, not unfriendly observer and conversation partner during her daily routine. It was strangely comforting, always having someone to talk to.
Around the same time that Kylo managed to reach Hux, he helped Rey to rebuild Anakin’s lightsaber in one exhausting ten-day period, sleeping and waking, after which they closed the link by mutual consent for a month just to get a rest from each other.
* * * * *
When they next met in their dreams, he offered her a great, blue-green shell and said,
If she’s interested in the Order’s subspace pathfinding technology, let me know.
What?
Starkiller tech, at non-lethal levels. That world of hers is too isolated for prosperity. It needs to find its own hyperspace connections. The Order’s tech can do it for them.
Rey listened, closed the bond (warning him first) and went to find Leia.
They were on Coruscant, where the new Senate had decided to return permanently, since no other world had been willing to take the risk of hosting the government. As a poor, new settlement with an unaffiliated Senator, Maknak could not afford quarters better than the basic allotment, so Leia, Rey, Finn, Threepio, Artoo and the handful of ex-First Order staffers who had come with them from Maknak squeezed into a small, shabby suite on the lowest office floor of the Senate building.
The delegation of the Republic of New Alderaan, hardly richer itself but in possession of the much larger and finer set of rooms that it held as the recognised successor state to the Kingdom of Alderaan, had graciously and rather nervously offered to share. Leia had with equal grace refused, to everyone’s relief. In return the Senator of New Alderaan, (a pleasant young lady who was actually her second cousin once removed), made a point of deferring to her publicly, addressing her as “Your Highness” on the Senate floor and “Aunt Leia” in private, and wherever possible, voting with her.
Rey had never explicitly mentioned her bond with Kylo Ren to his mother, but Leia’s utter lack of surprise when she heard about it reassured Rey that she had not in fact been deceiving her mentor and mother-figure in the slightest. When Rey had finished explaining Kylo’s offer, Leia sat back in her chair and instead of responding directly said, “The Core Alliance is planning to impose punitive tariffs on all Outer Rim worlds that gave allegiance to the First Order.”
Rey blinked, startled.
"How can they do that? Those worlds were conquered.” She stopped, reconsidering. “And the ones who weren’t had good reason to join the First Order!”
One thing New Republic intelligence had managed to find had been the collection data for all stormtroopers, resulting in a (short-lived) spasm of shame at the conditions on the worlds from which the First Order had obtained its child soldiers; the grant of Maknak had come from this. There had by and large been no need for kidnapping. People (or their existing owners) had willingly sold their children, or even given them away on the promise that they would be fed. Only a handful of the ex-stormtroopers on Maknak chose to seek out their families of origin, and most of those came back afterwards, to the only people in the galaxy who truly understood them.
“Would the Senate actually support something like that?”
“Probably not,” Leia said, “but it won’t matter. Systems have the right to set their own trading terms, where they don’t have existing treaty obligations, and the Core Alliance worlds still control the major hyperspace routes. I have been assured that the needs of the populations concerned will be taken into account, and that development aid will of course continue.”
“And half of it will go straight back out, to Core consultants and companies!” Rey had had some difficult encounters both in Coruscant and on Maknak, with well-meaning aid organisations keen to tell the stormtroopers how to become proper citizens of the New Republic.
Leia shrugged. “So. This offer comes at a very opportune time.”
Rey looked up, suddenly alert. “Too opportune?”
A very faint grin touched Leia’s mouth, disconcertingly reminiscent of her son’s. “Go on.”
This was a familiar exercise. Rey was more truly Leia’s apprentice than she had ever been Luke’s. Apart from her formal education, Leia had taught her aide all she knew of the black arts of applied politics: how to read a text and a sub-text, how to ferret out information that someone wanted to hide, how to assess an offer (of anything), how and what to look for before, during and after every meeting, Senate sessions, informal consultation, chats over meals, in corridors, in the ladies’ refreshers….
Rey stood up and began to pace; she always thought better and faster when moving, the legacy of Jakku, where quick reaction meant life and being caught by surprise was death.
“Point one,” she said, extending a finger. “We know that the First Order had support from a lot of Senators. Mostly from the old Centrist faction, but quite a lot of unaffiliated ones as well, especially those from the further parts of the Mid Rim.
“Point two. Most of those died on Hosnian, but some of their organisations remain, and are probably still in contact with the remains of the First Order. Their bases of power were the Core Worlds, and Core World commercial interests.
“Point three.” She hesitated. This was sensitive. Leia nodded encouragingly. “Kylo Ren has been in contact with us, with me, for years now.” She stopped again. Leia said, “If I worried about him knowing what I… we are doing, I would have told you. Go on.”
Rey drew a deep breath. “Outer Rim worlds, with which we are known to be friendly, if not formally allied, are being threatened by Core Alliance social ideologues, allied to economic populists, some of whom we know have long had connections with the First Order. At the same time, we are being offered a way to help them, and also Maknak and worlds in a similar situation in whatever sector they are. By the First Order.”
She sat down in her chair with a thump. “We’re being manipulated.”
Leia nodded. “Yes, we are. In a blatantly obvious way, too.”
Rey sighed. “Right. So obvious that a blind tooka couldn’t miss it. So, not manipulation exactly? An… offer of alliance? As open as they can get?”
“Ask…my son.”
When she opened communications with him again, Rey dispensed with subtlety. The bond didn’t allow outright lies, anyway, though avoidance of tricky subjects was possible. Even so, Rey generally knew when something was being avoided, since subtlety wasn’t Kylo’s strength either.
"Your mother wants to know why you are offering to help us, and what you want in exchange, and what effect you want, think, hope or expect it to have on us, Maknak and the galaxy as a whole." There, that should be comprehensive enough.
She was awake. This was not something that she could trust to the vagaries of their shared dreams, which could sometimes veer unpredictably from the concrete and realistic to the abstract and metaphysical. Rey still remembered the baffling occasion when they had gone without warning from lounging together on the beach at sunrise to being simultaneously molecules of water cycling in an endless wave, and the porgs diving into it, also endlessly. Kylo had been unhelpful when pressed for an explanation (sorry, Luke didn’t approve of dream interpretation, and Snoke didn’t approve of dreams).
His first response was outright laughter, which she had expected. She waited patiently.
You don’t think that I simply want to do something nice for my mother?
Rey continued to wait. That was one of her strengths. Speed of reaction had mattered on Jakku, but so had the ability to stop, assess, and hopefully, avoid a trap. She had waited in the desert for fifteen years, patient as a saarlac. Kylo never won this particular contest.
Nothing has changed with the New Republic. The problems that let the First Order in have not been solved, or even seriously addressed. Hosnian gave them a jolt, but thanks to your friend FN-2187…
"Finn.”
…Finn, the Core Worlds have been able to slide back into their comfortable status quo, while the Outer Rim, and the Western Reaches and everywhere in the galaxy that lacks desirable location or product struggles and bleeds.
Rey considered this. “You still haven’t made an argument for why we should ally ourselves with the First Order. Hosnian was not acceptable. And Leia briefed me about the Amaxine Warriors and the First Order’s connections with the Hutt cartels.”
Which I wiped out, if you recall.
That was true. Most of Kylo Ren’s reign as Supreme Leader had been taken up by the proposition that Starkiller Base had been unnecessary overkill when it came to planetary destruction, demonstrated upon his predecessor’s strongest supporters. The swamps of Nal Hutta had been the first to boil, but not the last, and the socio-economic disruption caused by the fall of a major part of the galactic underworld had shaken the tottering New Republic even further.
Rey hesitated, then said reluctantly, “That…wasn’t acceptable either. Not every Hutt is a criminal.”
She felt him grin lazily over the bond. No, but I got most of the ones that were. It will take at least another generation before what’s left of the Niktos manage to replace them, and hopefully we’ll have sorted things out before they get there.
And that was the crux of it. “Who’s ‘we’, exactly?”
Me. You. My mother and her followers and allies. Hux. The First Order. There are bigger threats out there, and the galaxy needs to be strong to face them. Palpatine was watching for something, out in the unknown, and it wasn’t because he wanted to make new friends, though the Dark Side rotted his brain and his judgment before he got anywhere. I thought at first that the threat he was chasing was Snoke. But after he, ahem, died, his Navigators told me what they knew, and what they feared.
. . . . .
That was not the end of it, of course. Leia as Senator was merely a representative, the Maknak Development Council was the planet’s elected ruling body, and it had to agree. Since they were all ex-First Order traitors, this was obviously going to be a little awkward.
"They need assurances that this is not going to end with all of them executed as traitors to the First Order. Leia and I do too."
Kylo said, Things are a bit different in the Unknown Regions now. The stormtrooper mutiny…shook a lot of people’s faith how we’d been doing things. There has been, hmm, something of a shake-up in their, hmm, approach to life.
Well obviously, since neither he nor Hux was now in a position to give orders to anyone.
Don’t be too sure.
According to Kylo, the First Order had dealt with its reverses with a small yet disciplined orgy of back and front-stabbing, after which a new leadership had emerged led by the old leadership, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, come out of retirement exile to clean up her successors’ mess. The new-model First Order had dedicated itself to revamping its recruitment and training programme, and using its subspace technology to establish new trade routes within the Outer and Middle Rims. In the process, they were also clearing out the small gangs and pirate crews that had survived the immolation of their greater colleagues.
“So we’re back to the Empire.”
Sloane wanted a better Empire. She’s seen that the First Order as it was . . . .is not how to get there. She’s an idealist, but pragmatic with it. I think she’d actually get along with my mother, at least now. And Hux will listen to her.
“Hux.”
He’s not what he was, either. If the facts contradict his beliefs he will change his beliefs. Snoke thought that he was a rabid dog, and that was not the only thing that Snoke was wrong about. Hux wants a better Galaxy too.
“Will he listen to you?”
Yes.They’re citizens of the New Republic now, and will have no reprisals of any sort, direct or indirect, taken against them by the First Order, its allies, vassals, employees or contractors, ever. On my word as Supreme Leader.
“You’re not the Supreme Leader any more.”
Yes, I am. They see what’s out there too. And they know they will need the Force to deal with it. And that means me, and also you.
. . . . .
There was still rather more to it than that, obviously. Grudgingly, Kylo shared a great deal more information on what the First Order was actually doing now, on Leia’s assurance, through Rey, that it would not be shared with New Republic authorities. Leia had snorted, and said “Given that they’ve never believed anything I said about the First Order, does he think that they’re going to change their minds now?”
. . . . .
“So, we say yes.” It was not a question.
Leia sighed and shut her eyes. Senators had access to top of the line medical care. She looked younger than she had even five years ago, lines erased, skin smooth and taut. But her eyes when she opened them again were old. Tired, rueful, gentle, cold. Utterly illusionless.
“We say yes.”
* * * * *
Two months later, Galactic Standard Time, the galaxy was (briefly) transfixed by the news that Armitage Hux, the Starkiller himself, had managed to commit suicide in his solitary prison. Holochannels all over the galaxy showed the same visuals - the recording of his genocidal speech on Starkiller Base, screaming his hatred at the Galaxy, recordings of his trial and conviction, and then the images of his pallid, naked corpse, before it was bundled in a sheet by the droids that had somehow failed to guard him from himself, and jettisoned to burn up in Lesan IX’s thin atmosphere.
Another three months after that, when Armitage Hux had essentially been forgotten by the wider galaxy, a tall, lean, youngish man with pale skin, bright blue-green eyes, an Outer Rim accent, and hair of a pleasant but uninteresting shade of brown, arrived on a small freighter ostensibly from Arkanis. On his entry form, he claimed to be the owner of a small geo-engineering business, looking for backers for a revolutionary new surveying technology.
He asked for a meeting with the Senator, who happened to be on-world at the time. His request was granted and he came to call on Leia at the Senator’s pleasant compound on the outskirts of Raemyo.
The ex-stormtroopers had chosen a good location for their settlement: on the equator but at a high altitude, a wide, fertile plateau surrounded by mountains on two sides, connected to the interior on a third via several ranges of foothills, and open to the sea on the fourth. It was clement all year round, well-watered from regular rainfall and mountain run-off, and there were several easy routes through the hills into the interior, and down to the coast. Leia’s compound had been laid out as a series of attractive and discreetly fortified pavilions in a large garden (herb and vegetable patch, orchard, ornamental pond for edible aquatic life, meditation garden, exercise-lawn, potting-shed). The pavilions, especially but not only her office and her residence, were linked by sheltered but airy walkways, and, just in case, an armoured escape tunnel.
Two of Leia’s staff droids (repurposed assassin models originally from Bespin, a donation by Lando Calrissian) escorted the visitor up to her receiving-verandah. If they recognised him they did not say so. Leia sat in her favourite armchair (a deceptively delicate-looking affair carved of Maknaki wood-equivalent), giving the distinct impression that it was her throne. Rey was in a simpler chair by her side but just a little behind, trying to look unimportant and secretarial.
“Good day, Senator,” the man said, bowing politely in good Core style. His smile was small and feline.
“My name is Taj Sloan. I believe that you know who sent me.”
Leia looked him up and down, expressionless. “I also know the conditions that he agreed to. Will you and yours abide by them?”
The man who called himself Taj Sloan returned her stare unblinking, his pale eyes bright and cold. “I will. They will.”
Leia nodded. “Very well.”
That disconcerted him; Rey felt the slight twitch of emotion, though he gave no outward sign. “You don’t require further assurances?” He sounded faintly disappointed.
Leia raised an eyebrow. “Either your word is good or it isn’t, and therefore further assurances are either unnecessary or worthless. Time will show which, but I am more inclined, knowing your history, to think the former.”
He did not smile, but a certain grudging respect appeared in his demeanour. It promptly disappeared again at Leia’s next remark.
“You will have to go and talk to the stormtroopers, before anything else, of course. They’ve been expecting you.”
* * * * *
Taj Sloan did not look particularly happy to be escorted on his way by Rey, on a two-person air-hook of Clone Wars vintage (tough, cheap, easily maintained and repaired; there were more arms-dealers in the Galaxy than the elite of Canto Bight). She was unmoved.
“The Senator wants me to keep an eye on you. I’ll stay outside while you talk to them, but if there’s any kind of problem, I’ll be there to help.”
His sidelong glance was bitterly amused. "Defended by the Jedi. Who would have thought?" His emotions said a different thing, though; despite everything he was glad not to be alone for this.
Raemyo wasn’t a typical New Republic Human town. The ex-stormtroopers, accustomed to barracks living, didn’t take well to solitude, so housing was communal, as was child-care, and indeed, child-bearing, via the reproduction lab, a large, peach-pink building bearing the words “LIFE CENTRE” in rainbow letters (the stormtroopers had discovered a taste for colour). Rey saw Taj Sloane wince slightly, and grinned; Leia had too, it was presumably some sort of Core aristocrat thing. She herself, being an unabashed peasant, liked the cheerful hopefulness of it.
“Do you like it?” she asked as they flew, waving at the city passing below. “Leia got in some Naboon town planners to give technical advice, but the basic concept was all theirs. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
Taj Sloane looked down. Neat, pastel-coloured residential buildings, each with its own fruit and vegetable garden, lined the tidy streets and canalised waterways. The ground floor of each building was dedicated to shops and offices; larger workshops and manufactories were interspersed with the residences, creches, and health facilities. The waterways provided aquatic foodstuffs, and a useful additional means of transport and recreation.
“Yes,” he said softly. “It’s nice.”
The Maknak Development Council met in an unobtrusive pale green hall that looked out over one of the many public gardens that dotted the town; the large pond in the middle was part of the emergency water supply.
Rey landed the skyhook outside the front door, which was open. Finn was waiting outside, in his capacity of MDC Chair, wearing his badge of office, an oval brooch divided down its longitudinal axis, one half green and one half red, with a green dot on the red side and red dot on the green, equilaterally balanced (Rey had suggested it, based on the image of the Prime Jedi on Ahch-To that Kylo had shown her; the colours had been the stormtroopers’ choice).
Taj Sloane offered a small bow. “Chairman,” he said, in an utterly neutral tone.
Finn nodded back. “Mr Sloane. Welcome. Come in.” He looked behind Sloane at Rey and said seriously, “The Senator needn’t worry, ma’am. It will be all right.”
“No worries.” Rey indicated the nearest tree with her chin, pulling a packet of dried waterweed out of her pocket. Its long, trailing, aerial roots drooped decoratively into the pond, and a number of local waterfowl were already gathering hopefully. “I’ll be there when you’re done.”
She was there for a good couple of hours, enjoying the cool air, feeding fish and fowl, and from time to time being buffeted by the swelling waves of emotion that were coming from the building (meditation was quite impossible).
What’s going on in there? Kylo asked, then read it from her and answered himself. Ah.
The emotions were not all negative, not by any means, but they were strong.
Yes, Kylo said. He is.
At last, as evening was drawing on, things seemed to calm down (possibly from sheer exhaustion; Rey was tired, and she hadn’t been generating any of all that feeling herself). Eventually the door opened and Finn came out, followed by Taj Sloane and the rest of the MDC. All of them looked as if they had been, at the very least, crying.
Rey strolled over, trying to emanate goodwill, calm, and the suggestion that perhaps everyone might feel better after a cup of tea and a biscuit (the years with Leia had rubbed off in more than one way).
Finn offered her a slightly watery smile. “It’s all right, Rey, tell tthe Senator that everything’s…all right. We’re going to show the Gen…Mr Sloane around town, and we’ll all have dinner, and he can stay with us tonight, and we’ll have him up to the Senator’s for the breakfast meeting tomorrow, right and tight.”
She could read Sloane’s agreement (though ‘agreement’ was a paltry term for the ferocious intensity with which he wanted to be with them all), so she wished them all a pleasant evening, took her skyhook and went home for dinner with Leia. She didn’t have to say much when she came into the dining-room. Leia was already there, with a large Corellian whisky-and-water in front of her. Her eyes were a little red-rimmed as well.
“I know,” Leia said before Rey could speak. “I felt it too.”
. . . . .
The freighter began making regular trips ….somewhere, and returning to Maknak carrying a variety of items of . . .ambivalent use, all of which disappeared into the piece of land and its appurtenant buildings and utilities that the Council had granted to Taj Sloan. They were not secretive. Mr Sloan hired a significant number of Maknaki with engineering or mathematical skills, enrolled more in an ongoing training programme, and reported to the Senator and the Development Council regularly.
About six months after Taj Sloan first arrived on Maknak, the freighter came back from one of its regular trips, and along with its inanimate cargo, unloaded six neatly-dressed, youngish people: A green, male Twi’lek, a blue, female Twi’lek, two light-skinned dark-haired Human females, a dark-skinned, light-haired Human male, and a male Nagai. They identified themselves as associates of Taj Sloan, moved to his compound, and asked to call on the Senator. The request was granted and Leia, with Rey, received them in her office visitors’-room in her compound, the arrival of a regular monsoon having rendered the verandah unsuitably damp.
They bowed punctiliously and in unison, and the Nagai, who seemed to be their spokesperson, said formally, “Your Highness, our Master sends us to you, and offers our unconditional service to you, his most honoured lady mother, and to the Lady Rey, his heart’s sister.”
Leia’s eyebrows shot up, and there was a squawk in Rey’s mind, so sudden that
she jumped.
I never told him to say that!
The Nagai smiled with unexpected sweetness at Rey, bowed again, this time quite clearly to her, and said, “If that was my Master, my lady, I assure you that what I say is completely accurate.”
Rey glanced at Leia’s left hand, and saw the quick triple tap of index finger against thumb that meant “will tell you later”.
“Be that as it may, young man…” Leia said severely, though Rey could tell that she was working hard to suppress laughter.
The Nagai nodded, with an air of sober deference that fooled no-one.
‘I am Mora, Your Highness.” He gestured at the Twi’leks. “These are Antulla,” the man lifted his right lek; its pale green tip twitched politely, “and Lenalla,” the woman bowed in Twi’lek style, both pale blue lekku curving. The two Human women were Salhane (tall and hook-nosed with a long braid hanging down her back), and Raxat (short and stocky, with short, curly hair, broad cheekbones and narrow eyes); the Human man was Jevati.
Leia’s sardonic grin reminded Rey suddenly of Han Solo; from the odd flinch in her mind, Kylo thought so too.
“If I shout “Ren!”, will all of you come running?”
Mora (Ren) waved a pale, deceptively delicate hand. “Not at all, Your Highness. We take shifts, so it will only be one, or at most two, if Lady Rey should happen to be in danger as well.”
“I’ve been looking after myself for a while,” Rey observed, not bristling. Bodyguards in the Core were a mark of status as well as functional members of staff. She knew better now than to take offence at the implication that she needed a minder.
“And how much more easily you will be able to do so, my lady,” Mora Ren said sweetly, “with another pair of eyes to watch your back for you.”
. . . . .
Taj Sloane’s company patented its Pathfinder system under New Republic law on New Alderaan and Naboo (and went in with Lando Calrissian on manufacturing facilities in those two systems plus another on one the many moons of Bespin V. They began selling it, deliberately focusing on smaller systems away from the main hyperspace routes.
A spin-off of the technology invented by one of Sloane’s Maknaki students became the foundation of a much improved subspace holocomms system, which again, was first sold quietly in the Mid and Outer Rim, and then everywhere where regular holocomms technology was either unavailable for technical reasons, or unaffordable ( a substantial chunk of the Galaxy). The MDA decided that the technology should be owned by a non-profit foundation, dedicated first to the development of Maknak and the maximisation of the potential of all Maknaki citizens, and then the same for citizens of needy worlds, wherever they were. Leia built on her support for Outer Rim interests, and gradually became recognised as a faction leader in her own right. By the time the Core noticed and started proceedings to prosecute her and her allies for separatism, it was too late.
. . . . .
Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, founder of the First Order and its Deputy Leader for nearly a decade, was an old woman, but still formidable. Her stare, especially through the new Maknaki holocom system, was daunting.
“So,” the Grand Admiral said, “We have come to the moment of decision, then.”
Leia Organa was twenty years younger, but face to face, even by holo, it was obvious to all present that they were different uniforms from the same fabricator.
“The moment of decision came a long time ago,” she replied. “This is your moment of choice. You know what’s coming. Ben showed us all, and I know that Taj has kept you briefed. The Galaxy needs to be united for this, or at least, enough of it. The New Republic is not the Old. It’s not even the Alliance,” and for a moment her bitter sorrow and regret were unhidden. Grand Admiral Sloane nodded slowly. She had seen the Empire’s fall and the First Order repeat its mistakes, and she understood.
“This is the last chance that we have,” Leia said. “If you disagree, then what have all the last few years been about?”
. . . . .
Ten years almost to the standard day from his exile, Kylo Ren strolled out of his small but comfortable house outside the Lanai settlement where he had been living for the last several years. He stood on the beach, shading his eyes with his hand, and waited, smiling, as the massive winged shape of Supremacy popped into existence far above. The shuttle that sailed smoothly down towards him was pleasantly familiar, and his smile grew into a brilliant grin as it touched down and released…
“Rey,” he said her name out loud for the first time in a decade, as she ran down the ramp and into his arms. “Hello, my love.” In a sense they had already been together for ten years. In another….they had not. Her strong arms around him holding him as if she would never let him go, his name ringing in their conjoined thoughts, Kylo, Kylo, Kylo, here, here, here, and the shining relief of her mind and body against his, were like the hammering ocean waves of winter, threatening to drown him in joy.
There was a delicate crunch of footsteps on sand, and he looked over Rey’s head to see the group of people coming more decorously up the beach. Armitage Hux in his own proper self again, dark uniform immaculate and trim. Finn in civilian clothes, brightly coloured but plainly cut, and moving with the weight and dignity of high office. Behind them the Knights of Ren, all in blindingly bright Maknaki colours, waved cheerful greetings. And in the centre of them all, shortest of them by far but still towering among them, robed in Alderaanian white, and with a Queen’s braids crowning her…
Rey felt the shift of his attention and released one arm, so that they could stand hand in hand and face her together.
“Hello, mother,” the Supreme Leader of the First Order said. “Or should that be, greetings and salutations…Your Imperial Majesty.”
. . . . .
In which the New Republic thinks for a while that it won, and Leia Organa gets what she deserves.
In retrospect, some people would point out that exiling the strongest Dark -side Force-user in the galaxy to a powerful nexus of the Force might have been an error of judgement. Likewise, that disregarding the advice and concerns on that particular subject of the galaxy’s strongest Light-side Force-user. . .might also have been a sub-optimal course of action.
Not an unforced (or unForced) one, though, to be totally and unnecessarily fair. The Jedi had kept knowledge of the Force and the technologies based on it a close secret in their Order, and Palpatine made serious and mostly successful efforts to destroy it all, lest it be used against him. A generation after the fall of the Empire, no-one in the galaxy knew much about the Force. The educated classes of most Core Worlds did not believe in its existence as more than, at best, one respectable religious belief among many others, or at worst, a myth with which to manipulate the credulous.
So when the stormtrooper mutiny swept through the First Order’s ranks and brought down the government of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, it was remarkably easy for him to persuade his judges in the semi-reconstituted Senate that he no longer had his powers. That they had been stripped from him upon the death of the previous Supreme Leader, Snoke. And for good measure, that there was no point in pursuing the Order to its home-worlds in the Unknown Regions, that all of the Order’s power had been on the Star Destroyers that had mutinied, that the Supremacy had been so damaged by the heroic Vice-Admiral Holdo’s heroic suicide attack that it had been scrapped, and that the First Order had definitely passed on, ceased to be, expired and become one with the Force, was, in short, an ex-Order, and nothing to worry about.
* * * * *
“They won’t listen!” Rey burst into Leia Organa’s office in a well-maintained but unassuming building on the outskirts of Theed. “They think I’m too young, or a fraud, or your puppet, or…I’m not even allowed to attend the trial because I might bias the judges!”
“I know,” Leia said, with her usual resigned irony. It had a bitter edge, now. Naboo had given sanctuary to Padme Amidala’s daughter, (and more importantly, accepted her claim to her share of the Naberrie fortune) but the Core had rejected her. Rey had refused to leave her, despite overtures from a hundred different Senators eager to add the Last Jedi to their entourages, and as her own fame faded, now shared in her mentor’s ignominy.
“I’m sorry, child. This is not the New Republic that I promised you.”
Rey flopped into her usual chair, next to the round window that looked out onto a small, neat public garden. The neighbourhood was shabby but respectable, largely devoted to light industry and wholesale suppliers, and a few scattered residential apartment buildings. This being Naboo it was neither dangerous, dirty nor lacking in public facilities, but it was a far cry from the splendours of central Theed.
The service droid floated over with a large glass of iced fruit juice. Rey loved the cold, in and out, and happily ate frozen desserts in the depths of Theed’s temperate-latitude winter. It was nearly the only thing about the New Republic that she had not found a grievous disappointment. That and the schooling. Leia’s Naberrie inheritance was, among other things, paying for the best tutors to give Rey the education (though she had been careful not to let Rey know it) of a queen. History, law, politics both theoretical and applied, human biology and social psychology, statistics, military tactics and strategy, hyperspace and subspace physics, starship mechanics, martial arts, planetary geology and ecology, economics, languages…Rey had fallen on knowledge like a hungry steelpecker, and watching her wallow in learning like a nerf in a clean mud pond was Leia’s main joy these days.
Rey snapped the straw open and sucked at her juice viciously. “They’re even blaming you for the Hosnian system!”
“Ah.” The grim amusement in Leia’s voice deepened. “Resistance actions provoking the First Order, something like that?”
“Yes! Poe sent me the media report. He’s trying to do something about it, but they’ve pulled up that old lie about him being a secret First Order agent…”
Leia could not suppress her actual growl of anger. “They dare.”
Rey produced a morose chuckle. “He says he’s suing for defamation. Plans to use the proceeds to finance his next election campaign.”
“Ha. He should be so lucky.” Leia sat back with a sigh. A soft chime sounded, and the viewscreen on the wall came to life and the two women turned their reluctant attention to it. The trial of Ben Solo, former Supreme Leader Kylo Ren of the First Order (the revelation of his parentage had been the final blow against what was left of Leia’s influence among the Core Worlds), was resuming.
* * * * *
In the end, the verdict was guilty, but with mitigating factors of coercion and undue influence accepted by the judges, resulting in a sentence of life imprisonment on the distant water-world Ahch-To (the existence but not the nature of which had been revealed in the course of the trial) rather than immediate execution. Kylo Ren had showed no expression as he was led from the court, but through the bond Rey had felt him laughing,
Don’t be too upset, she heard him say through the bond, not unkindly. Your precious galaxy is going to need me alive. I have foreseen it.
Leia took one look at Rey’s face as the sentence was announced, and promptly rescheduled the lesson on the political economy of the Clone Wars. Then she took Rey out to the garden of her modest residence and had her double-dig the entire vegetable patch with an actual spade (Rey was positive that it was an antique that properly belonged in a museum) until she was too exhausted for emotion.
She did allow Rey to use the Force to mix in the compost.
“There, isn’t that lovely? Thank you so much. It’s supposed to rain a bit tonight, which is good. We’ll put the seedlings in tomorrow.”
Rey gulped cold water and wiped bits of compost off her sweaty face with her sleeve. “This is one of those lessons, right? Positive uses of negative energy, that sort of thing.”
Leia regarded her mildly from where she and Lando Calrissian (visiting as he did regularly, in between his usual mysterious plutocrat’s business) sat on the verandah with glasses of iced fruit juice and their feet up. “Lessons are what you make of them, dear. And the vegetable patch needed doing anyway.”
On his next visit, Lando brought a little box full of kyber crystals, allegedly from Palpatine’s own collection.
* * * * *
Somewhat to his surprise, Kylo Ren rather liked Ahch-To, quite aside from its deep connection to the Force. In his first six months he learned Lanai and made friends with the Caretakers. When the Visitors came, he joined the party and made friends with them too. In between language lessons, fishing and helping the Caretakers with their work, he meditated upon both the Light and the Dark, both conveniently to hand in powerful convergences. He spent a lot of time at the mosaic of the Prime Jedi; he did not overlook the Prime Jedi’s resemblance to Snoke’s species (and hoped that the Supremacy still had the tissue samples that Hux had taken from Snoke’s body before having it cremated and the ashes jettisoned into the nearest star). He slept in the Temple at night, cradled in Light, and from time to time climbed down the borehole cave during the day to meditate, wrapped in Darkness.
In his second year, when the Visitors came again, he left with them. There were many Lanai settlements on other islands spread across the planet, and he hopped from ship to ship, lending his strength, size and growing powers to pay for his passage.
At the beginning of his third year, while living in a Lanai town on a rather pleasant tropical archipelago strung along the equator, he managed to make contact with his Knights, and then, with their aid, with Hux. It was not exactly the bond that he still had with Rey, nor was it the fatal expenditure of energy that had killed Luke Skywalker. But as he …made friends with Ahch-To, he could feel his strength growing. Or possibly it was his access to the Force that was increasing; the planet’s strength as a vergence being lent to him more and more as he became more able to channel it. And it found a path for him to his Knights, scattered across the galaxy, and to Hux.
* * * * *
Armitage Hux was also in solitary confinement, on a space station orbiting the Core ice-world Lesan IX. He had been caught on-world when the mutiny happened, but enough of the stormtroopers had remained personally loyal to “Army” Hux that they had been able to bargain for life imprisonment rather than a quick show trial and immediate execution. Hux’s flagship, the Finalizer, had stayed loyal and had disappeared, presumably back into the Unknown Regions. Somehow, the New Republic was less interested in this fact than it should have been. Even those in what was left of the New Republic’s military and intelligence capability who were concerned found the trail cold.
During his second year of imprisonment, with no company but droids and the creeping fear of growing insanity, Hux was suddenly allowed access to reading matter. Mostly works of history and political and social science, to start with, from a very wide ideological spectrum, obviously meant to recondition him in some way; also a large number of works on non-human biology and sociology, planetary science, and general zoology and botany. Hux sneered to himself, but having nothing else to do besides exercise, and design warships mentally, read them. In his third year, in addition to the sudden intermittent presence of Kylo Ren in his head, there came unexpected access to the Royal Naboo University Library System, which apart from its vast standing collection included all research papers on all subjects submitted by both students and staff of the universities, and (marked with an anonymous tag that said “you really should read some of these”) an extraordinary collection of Naboon nature and landscape poetry, epic romances, and histories of Naboon make-up and fashion. Hux raised a ginger eyebrow at this last, kept his thoughts carefully off his face, and read on.
* * * * *
For the first few years after the fall of the First Order, things went as a realistic observer would have expected. That is to say, not terribly well. The New Republic, having escaped annihilation by the skin of its teeth, settled back into infighting and ideological squabbles, in the complacent belief that its values and virtue had (somehow) managed to triumph over its enemies without it having to lift a finger. Development aid and trade preferences to the Outer Rim increased for a while and then fizzled as the Core tried to cope with the massive socioeconomic upheavals caused by both the war and its aftermath.
Rearmament, begun after the Hosnian cataclysm, did not end entirely, but proceeded by fits and starts from world to world. In a small victory, Leia Organa managed to persuade the King of Naboo (another Naberrie, the grandson of Padme Amidala’s first cousin) that his system could not depend on the New Republic for military protection, and to quietly invest some of Naboo’s wealth into a small but serious self-defence force. The New Alderaanians had never needed persuading, but lacked the money, and were unfortunately too far from anywhere to be worthwhile allies to any system with enough money to fund their defence.
The former stormtroopers were given a world of their own as promised (Maknak III in the Mid-Rim, human-habitable and even reasonably pleasant, though in a navigationally tricky bit of space far from the main hyperspace routes), but little of the investment, development and integration aid, or trade preferences, that they had also been promised.
The New Republic was considering changes to some of the more restrictive trading and taxation regimes that had helped to keep the Outer Rim poor, but as usual nothing was moving terribly fast. And in the meantime, Maknak needed access to other worlds for technology that they could not produce themselves with the limited capability that they had been allowed. No one really trusted ex-stormtroopers, certainly not enough to let them keep their Star Destroyers’ top-of-the-line mining and manufacturing facilities.
Finn discovered to his chagrin that his status as leader of the mutiny and war hero had a shorter galactic half-life than he had expected. When Poe, now Senator for Yavin IV, approached him in the second year after the mutiny, suggesting that he support Leia’s election as Senator for Maknak, he agreed.
Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, Leia won. It turned out that her former enemies were possibly the only people left in the galaxy who respected her military record, strategic understanding (she had, after all, been perfectly correct about the threat that the First Order had posed to the New Republic), and even her rumoured Force powers. For the ex-stormtroopers, the War-witch had been an honourable enemy, had fought hard to win them decent terms and treatment, and now was the only New Republic leader (and herself abandoned by her own people, as they had been abandoned) to care what became of them.
“Follow me,” she said to them, as she had said to the Alliance, and the Rebellion, and the Resistance, “Follow me and I will never leave you behind.” And by an overwhelming percentage of the vote, they did.
Leia moved to Maknak, bought a compound in Raemyo, the only settlement of any size, and quietly began using Senatorial privilege to import technology that would otherwise have been beyond Maknak’s means. Naboo signed a Memorandum of Understanding to grant library privileges and distant learning access to Maknaki citizens (Armitage Hux was also granted citizenship in absentia; no one argued, since he was not expected ever to leave prison alive; the bureaucratic argument that there would otherwise be an empty spot on the form was also compelling). New Alderaan offered a bilateral free trade agreement. The Bespin Corporate Social Responsibility Department offered business development advice, second-hand mining and refinery equipment, technical training, and self-replicating fabricators of unspecified origin and no warranties.
Please convey my congratulations to her, Kylo Ren said in Rey’s head.
* * * * *
Back in the Senate and in her element, Leia argued and manoeuvred, this time as a neutral, unaffiliated Senator willing to vote pragmatically with any faction depending on what suited her world, and consequently one who was courted (very quietly, being still officially something of a pariah) by all. She brought Rey with her, a young, unnoticeable aide, her powers by now forgotten or disbelieved, and thereby the more useful in practice.
Your mental influence skills are really improving, Kylo said approvingly. You need a bit more subtlety and focus, though. Not all species are as easy to influence as humans. See, like this…”
* * * * *
The bond had changed after he was sent to Ahch-To. They seldom saw each now while waking, though their shared dreams (the Force bond sneered at the need for relativistic shielding when communicating across ten thousand light-years) were vivid and frequent. In her sleep Rey swam with him in the warm green seas of Ahch-To’s equator, and sparred with him on a sandy training floor under huge bright-flowered trees. In his dreams he walked with her on the silver shores of Naboo, flew with her among the topless towers of Coruscant, and stood by her side on the verandah of Leia’s house, looking out at the rose-golden vegetation of Maknak. But during their overlapping waking hours his presence in her mind was a delicate but permanent shadow, as was hers in his. After a few serious spats about privacy, they reached agreement about the activities that would be politely ignored, and she became used to having an intermittent, not unfriendly observer and conversation partner during her daily routine. It was strangely comforting, always having someone to talk to.
Around the same time that Kylo managed to reach Hux, he helped Rey to rebuild Anakin’s lightsaber in one exhausting ten-day period, sleeping and waking, after which they closed the link by mutual consent for a month just to get a rest from each other.
* * * * *
When they next met in their dreams, he offered her a great, blue-green shell and said,
If she’s interested in the Order’s subspace pathfinding technology, let me know.
What?
Starkiller tech, at non-lethal levels. That world of hers is too isolated for prosperity. It needs to find its own hyperspace connections. The Order’s tech can do it for them.
Rey listened, closed the bond (warning him first) and went to find Leia.
They were on Coruscant, where the new Senate had decided to return permanently, since no other world had been willing to take the risk of hosting the government. As a poor, new settlement with an unaffiliated Senator, Maknak could not afford quarters better than the basic allotment, so Leia, Rey, Finn, Threepio, Artoo and the handful of ex-First Order staffers who had come with them from Maknak squeezed into a small, shabby suite on the lowest office floor of the Senate building.
The delegation of the Republic of New Alderaan, hardly richer itself but in possession of the much larger and finer set of rooms that it held as the recognised successor state to the Kingdom of Alderaan, had graciously and rather nervously offered to share. Leia had with equal grace refused, to everyone’s relief. In return the Senator of New Alderaan, (a pleasant young lady who was actually her second cousin once removed), made a point of deferring to her publicly, addressing her as “Your Highness” on the Senate floor and “Aunt Leia” in private, and wherever possible, voting with her.
Rey had never explicitly mentioned her bond with Kylo Ren to his mother, but Leia’s utter lack of surprise when she heard about it reassured Rey that she had not in fact been deceiving her mentor and mother-figure in the slightest. When Rey had finished explaining Kylo’s offer, Leia sat back in her chair and instead of responding directly said, “The Core Alliance is planning to impose punitive tariffs on all Outer Rim worlds that gave allegiance to the First Order.”
Rey blinked, startled.
"How can they do that? Those worlds were conquered.” She stopped, reconsidering. “And the ones who weren’t had good reason to join the First Order!”
One thing New Republic intelligence had managed to find had been the collection data for all stormtroopers, resulting in a (short-lived) spasm of shame at the conditions on the worlds from which the First Order had obtained its child soldiers; the grant of Maknak had come from this. There had by and large been no need for kidnapping. People (or their existing owners) had willingly sold their children, or even given them away on the promise that they would be fed. Only a handful of the ex-stormtroopers on Maknak chose to seek out their families of origin, and most of those came back afterwards, to the only people in the galaxy who truly understood them.
“Would the Senate actually support something like that?”
“Probably not,” Leia said, “but it won’t matter. Systems have the right to set their own trading terms, where they don’t have existing treaty obligations, and the Core Alliance worlds still control the major hyperspace routes. I have been assured that the needs of the populations concerned will be taken into account, and that development aid will of course continue.”
“And half of it will go straight back out, to Core consultants and companies!” Rey had had some difficult encounters both in Coruscant and on Maknak, with well-meaning aid organisations keen to tell the stormtroopers how to become proper citizens of the New Republic.
Leia shrugged. “So. This offer comes at a very opportune time.”
Rey looked up, suddenly alert. “Too opportune?”
A very faint grin touched Leia’s mouth, disconcertingly reminiscent of her son’s. “Go on.”
This was a familiar exercise. Rey was more truly Leia’s apprentice than she had ever been Luke’s. Apart from her formal education, Leia had taught her aide all she knew of the black arts of applied politics: how to read a text and a sub-text, how to ferret out information that someone wanted to hide, how to assess an offer (of anything), how and what to look for before, during and after every meeting, Senate sessions, informal consultation, chats over meals, in corridors, in the ladies’ refreshers….
Rey stood up and began to pace; she always thought better and faster when moving, the legacy of Jakku, where quick reaction meant life and being caught by surprise was death.
“Point one,” she said, extending a finger. “We know that the First Order had support from a lot of Senators. Mostly from the old Centrist faction, but quite a lot of unaffiliated ones as well, especially those from the further parts of the Mid Rim.
“Point two. Most of those died on Hosnian, but some of their organisations remain, and are probably still in contact with the remains of the First Order. Their bases of power were the Core Worlds, and Core World commercial interests.
“Point three.” She hesitated. This was sensitive. Leia nodded encouragingly. “Kylo Ren has been in contact with us, with me, for years now.” She stopped again. Leia said, “If I worried about him knowing what I… we are doing, I would have told you. Go on.”
Rey drew a deep breath. “Outer Rim worlds, with which we are known to be friendly, if not formally allied, are being threatened by Core Alliance social ideologues, allied to economic populists, some of whom we know have long had connections with the First Order. At the same time, we are being offered a way to help them, and also Maknak and worlds in a similar situation in whatever sector they are. By the First Order.”
She sat down in her chair with a thump. “We’re being manipulated.”
Leia nodded. “Yes, we are. In a blatantly obvious way, too.”
Rey sighed. “Right. So obvious that a blind tooka couldn’t miss it. So, not manipulation exactly? An… offer of alliance? As open as they can get?”
“Ask…my son.”
When she opened communications with him again, Rey dispensed with subtlety. The bond didn’t allow outright lies, anyway, though avoidance of tricky subjects was possible. Even so, Rey generally knew when something was being avoided, since subtlety wasn’t Kylo’s strength either.
"Your mother wants to know why you are offering to help us, and what you want in exchange, and what effect you want, think, hope or expect it to have on us, Maknak and the galaxy as a whole." There, that should be comprehensive enough.
She was awake. This was not something that she could trust to the vagaries of their shared dreams, which could sometimes veer unpredictably from the concrete and realistic to the abstract and metaphysical. Rey still remembered the baffling occasion when they had gone without warning from lounging together on the beach at sunrise to being simultaneously molecules of water cycling in an endless wave, and the porgs diving into it, also endlessly. Kylo had been unhelpful when pressed for an explanation (sorry, Luke didn’t approve of dream interpretation, and Snoke didn’t approve of dreams).
His first response was outright laughter, which she had expected. She waited patiently.
You don’t think that I simply want to do something nice for my mother?
Rey continued to wait. That was one of her strengths. Speed of reaction had mattered on Jakku, but so had the ability to stop, assess, and hopefully, avoid a trap. She had waited in the desert for fifteen years, patient as a saarlac. Kylo never won this particular contest.
Nothing has changed with the New Republic. The problems that let the First Order in have not been solved, or even seriously addressed. Hosnian gave them a jolt, but thanks to your friend FN-2187…
"Finn.”
…Finn, the Core Worlds have been able to slide back into their comfortable status quo, while the Outer Rim, and the Western Reaches and everywhere in the galaxy that lacks desirable location or product struggles and bleeds.
Rey considered this. “You still haven’t made an argument for why we should ally ourselves with the First Order. Hosnian was not acceptable. And Leia briefed me about the Amaxine Warriors and the First Order’s connections with the Hutt cartels.”
Which I wiped out, if you recall.
That was true. Most of Kylo Ren’s reign as Supreme Leader had been taken up by the proposition that Starkiller Base had been unnecessary overkill when it came to planetary destruction, demonstrated upon his predecessor’s strongest supporters. The swamps of Nal Hutta had been the first to boil, but not the last, and the socio-economic disruption caused by the fall of a major part of the galactic underworld had shaken the tottering New Republic even further.
Rey hesitated, then said reluctantly, “That…wasn’t acceptable either. Not every Hutt is a criminal.”
She felt him grin lazily over the bond. No, but I got most of the ones that were. It will take at least another generation before what’s left of the Niktos manage to replace them, and hopefully we’ll have sorted things out before they get there.
And that was the crux of it. “Who’s ‘we’, exactly?”
Me. You. My mother and her followers and allies. Hux. The First Order. There are bigger threats out there, and the galaxy needs to be strong to face them. Palpatine was watching for something, out in the unknown, and it wasn’t because he wanted to make new friends, though the Dark Side rotted his brain and his judgment before he got anywhere. I thought at first that the threat he was chasing was Snoke. But after he, ahem, died, his Navigators told me what they knew, and what they feared.
. . . . .
That was not the end of it, of course. Leia as Senator was merely a representative, the Maknak Development Council was the planet’s elected ruling body, and it had to agree. Since they were all ex-First Order traitors, this was obviously going to be a little awkward.
"They need assurances that this is not going to end with all of them executed as traitors to the First Order. Leia and I do too."
Kylo said, Things are a bit different in the Unknown Regions now. The stormtrooper mutiny…shook a lot of people’s faith how we’d been doing things. There has been, hmm, something of a shake-up in their, hmm, approach to life.
Well obviously, since neither he nor Hux was now in a position to give orders to anyone.
Don’t be too sure.
According to Kylo, the First Order had dealt with its reverses with a small yet disciplined orgy of back and front-stabbing, after which a new leadership had emerged led by the old leadership, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, come out of retirement exile to clean up her successors’ mess. The new-model First Order had dedicated itself to revamping its recruitment and training programme, and using its subspace technology to establish new trade routes within the Outer and Middle Rims. In the process, they were also clearing out the small gangs and pirate crews that had survived the immolation of their greater colleagues.
“So we’re back to the Empire.”
Sloane wanted a better Empire. She’s seen that the First Order as it was . . . .is not how to get there. She’s an idealist, but pragmatic with it. I think she’d actually get along with my mother, at least now. And Hux will listen to her.
“Hux.”
He’s not what he was, either. If the facts contradict his beliefs he will change his beliefs. Snoke thought that he was a rabid dog, and that was not the only thing that Snoke was wrong about. Hux wants a better Galaxy too.
“Will he listen to you?”
Yes.They’re citizens of the New Republic now, and will have no reprisals of any sort, direct or indirect, taken against them by the First Order, its allies, vassals, employees or contractors, ever. On my word as Supreme Leader.
“You’re not the Supreme Leader any more.”
Yes, I am. They see what’s out there too. And they know they will need the Force to deal with it. And that means me, and also you.
. . . . .
There was still rather more to it than that, obviously. Grudgingly, Kylo shared a great deal more information on what the First Order was actually doing now, on Leia’s assurance, through Rey, that it would not be shared with New Republic authorities. Leia had snorted, and said “Given that they’ve never believed anything I said about the First Order, does he think that they’re going to change their minds now?”
. . . . .
“So, we say yes.” It was not a question.
Leia sighed and shut her eyes. Senators had access to top of the line medical care. She looked younger than she had even five years ago, lines erased, skin smooth and taut. But her eyes when she opened them again were old. Tired, rueful, gentle, cold. Utterly illusionless.
“We say yes.”
* * * * *
Two months later, Galactic Standard Time, the galaxy was (briefly) transfixed by the news that Armitage Hux, the Starkiller himself, had managed to commit suicide in his solitary prison. Holochannels all over the galaxy showed the same visuals - the recording of his genocidal speech on Starkiller Base, screaming his hatred at the Galaxy, recordings of his trial and conviction, and then the images of his pallid, naked corpse, before it was bundled in a sheet by the droids that had somehow failed to guard him from himself, and jettisoned to burn up in Lesan IX’s thin atmosphere.
Another three months after that, when Armitage Hux had essentially been forgotten by the wider galaxy, a tall, lean, youngish man with pale skin, bright blue-green eyes, an Outer Rim accent, and hair of a pleasant but uninteresting shade of brown, arrived on a small freighter ostensibly from Arkanis. On his entry form, he claimed to be the owner of a small geo-engineering business, looking for backers for a revolutionary new surveying technology.
He asked for a meeting with the Senator, who happened to be on-world at the time. His request was granted and he came to call on Leia at the Senator’s pleasant compound on the outskirts of Raemyo.
The ex-stormtroopers had chosen a good location for their settlement: on the equator but at a high altitude, a wide, fertile plateau surrounded by mountains on two sides, connected to the interior on a third via several ranges of foothills, and open to the sea on the fourth. It was clement all year round, well-watered from regular rainfall and mountain run-off, and there were several easy routes through the hills into the interior, and down to the coast. Leia’s compound had been laid out as a series of attractive and discreetly fortified pavilions in a large garden (herb and vegetable patch, orchard, ornamental pond for edible aquatic life, meditation garden, exercise-lawn, potting-shed). The pavilions, especially but not only her office and her residence, were linked by sheltered but airy walkways, and, just in case, an armoured escape tunnel.
Two of Leia’s staff droids (repurposed assassin models originally from Bespin, a donation by Lando Calrissian) escorted the visitor up to her receiving-verandah. If they recognised him they did not say so. Leia sat in her favourite armchair (a deceptively delicate-looking affair carved of Maknaki wood-equivalent), giving the distinct impression that it was her throne. Rey was in a simpler chair by her side but just a little behind, trying to look unimportant and secretarial.
“Good day, Senator,” the man said, bowing politely in good Core style. His smile was small and feline.
“My name is Taj Sloan. I believe that you know who sent me.”
Leia looked him up and down, expressionless. “I also know the conditions that he agreed to. Will you and yours abide by them?”
The man who called himself Taj Sloan returned her stare unblinking, his pale eyes bright and cold. “I will. They will.”
Leia nodded. “Very well.”
That disconcerted him; Rey felt the slight twitch of emotion, though he gave no outward sign. “You don’t require further assurances?” He sounded faintly disappointed.
Leia raised an eyebrow. “Either your word is good or it isn’t, and therefore further assurances are either unnecessary or worthless. Time will show which, but I am more inclined, knowing your history, to think the former.”
He did not smile, but a certain grudging respect appeared in his demeanour. It promptly disappeared again at Leia’s next remark.
“You will have to go and talk to the stormtroopers, before anything else, of course. They’ve been expecting you.”
* * * * *
Taj Sloan did not look particularly happy to be escorted on his way by Rey, on a two-person air-hook of Clone Wars vintage (tough, cheap, easily maintained and repaired; there were more arms-dealers in the Galaxy than the elite of Canto Bight). She was unmoved.
“The Senator wants me to keep an eye on you. I’ll stay outside while you talk to them, but if there’s any kind of problem, I’ll be there to help.”
His sidelong glance was bitterly amused. "Defended by the Jedi. Who would have thought?" His emotions said a different thing, though; despite everything he was glad not to be alone for this.
Raemyo wasn’t a typical New Republic Human town. The ex-stormtroopers, accustomed to barracks living, didn’t take well to solitude, so housing was communal, as was child-care, and indeed, child-bearing, via the reproduction lab, a large, peach-pink building bearing the words “LIFE CENTRE” in rainbow letters (the stormtroopers had discovered a taste for colour). Rey saw Taj Sloane wince slightly, and grinned; Leia had too, it was presumably some sort of Core aristocrat thing. She herself, being an unabashed peasant, liked the cheerful hopefulness of it.
“Do you like it?” she asked as they flew, waving at the city passing below. “Leia got in some Naboon town planners to give technical advice, but the basic concept was all theirs. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
Taj Sloane looked down. Neat, pastel-coloured residential buildings, each with its own fruit and vegetable garden, lined the tidy streets and canalised waterways. The ground floor of each building was dedicated to shops and offices; larger workshops and manufactories were interspersed with the residences, creches, and health facilities. The waterways provided aquatic foodstuffs, and a useful additional means of transport and recreation.
“Yes,” he said softly. “It’s nice.”
The Maknak Development Council met in an unobtrusive pale green hall that looked out over one of the many public gardens that dotted the town; the large pond in the middle was part of the emergency water supply.
Rey landed the skyhook outside the front door, which was open. Finn was waiting outside, in his capacity of MDC Chair, wearing his badge of office, an oval brooch divided down its longitudinal axis, one half green and one half red, with a green dot on the red side and red dot on the green, equilaterally balanced (Rey had suggested it, based on the image of the Prime Jedi on Ahch-To that Kylo had shown her; the colours had been the stormtroopers’ choice).
Taj Sloane offered a small bow. “Chairman,” he said, in an utterly neutral tone.
Finn nodded back. “Mr Sloane. Welcome. Come in.” He looked behind Sloane at Rey and said seriously, “The Senator needn’t worry, ma’am. It will be all right.”
“No worries.” Rey indicated the nearest tree with her chin, pulling a packet of dried waterweed out of her pocket. Its long, trailing, aerial roots drooped decoratively into the pond, and a number of local waterfowl were already gathering hopefully. “I’ll be there when you’re done.”
She was there for a good couple of hours, enjoying the cool air, feeding fish and fowl, and from time to time being buffeted by the swelling waves of emotion that were coming from the building (meditation was quite impossible).
What’s going on in there? Kylo asked, then read it from her and answered himself. Ah.
The emotions were not all negative, not by any means, but they were strong.
Yes, Kylo said. He is.
At last, as evening was drawing on, things seemed to calm down (possibly from sheer exhaustion; Rey was tired, and she hadn’t been generating any of all that feeling herself). Eventually the door opened and Finn came out, followed by Taj Sloane and the rest of the MDC. All of them looked as if they had been, at the very least, crying.
Rey strolled over, trying to emanate goodwill, calm, and the suggestion that perhaps everyone might feel better after a cup of tea and a biscuit (the years with Leia had rubbed off in more than one way).
Finn offered her a slightly watery smile. “It’s all right, Rey, tell tthe Senator that everything’s…all right. We’re going to show the Gen…Mr Sloane around town, and we’ll all have dinner, and he can stay with us tonight, and we’ll have him up to the Senator’s for the breakfast meeting tomorrow, right and tight.”
She could read Sloane’s agreement (though ‘agreement’ was a paltry term for the ferocious intensity with which he wanted to be with them all), so she wished them all a pleasant evening, took her skyhook and went home for dinner with Leia. She didn’t have to say much when she came into the dining-room. Leia was already there, with a large Corellian whisky-and-water in front of her. Her eyes were a little red-rimmed as well.
“I know,” Leia said before Rey could speak. “I felt it too.”
. . . . .
The freighter began making regular trips ….somewhere, and returning to Maknak carrying a variety of items of . . .ambivalent use, all of which disappeared into the piece of land and its appurtenant buildings and utilities that the Council had granted to Taj Sloan. They were not secretive. Mr Sloan hired a significant number of Maknaki with engineering or mathematical skills, enrolled more in an ongoing training programme, and reported to the Senator and the Development Council regularly.
About six months after Taj Sloan first arrived on Maknak, the freighter came back from one of its regular trips, and along with its inanimate cargo, unloaded six neatly-dressed, youngish people: A green, male Twi’lek, a blue, female Twi’lek, two light-skinned dark-haired Human females, a dark-skinned, light-haired Human male, and a male Nagai. They identified themselves as associates of Taj Sloan, moved to his compound, and asked to call on the Senator. The request was granted and Leia, with Rey, received them in her office visitors’-room in her compound, the arrival of a regular monsoon having rendered the verandah unsuitably damp.
They bowed punctiliously and in unison, and the Nagai, who seemed to be their spokesperson, said formally, “Your Highness, our Master sends us to you, and offers our unconditional service to you, his most honoured lady mother, and to the Lady Rey, his heart’s sister.”
Leia’s eyebrows shot up, and there was a squawk in Rey’s mind, so sudden that
she jumped.
I never told him to say that!
The Nagai smiled with unexpected sweetness at Rey, bowed again, this time quite clearly to her, and said, “If that was my Master, my lady, I assure you that what I say is completely accurate.”
Rey glanced at Leia’s left hand, and saw the quick triple tap of index finger against thumb that meant “will tell you later”.
“Be that as it may, young man…” Leia said severely, though Rey could tell that she was working hard to suppress laughter.
The Nagai nodded, with an air of sober deference that fooled no-one.
‘I am Mora, Your Highness.” He gestured at the Twi’leks. “These are Antulla,” the man lifted his right lek; its pale green tip twitched politely, “and Lenalla,” the woman bowed in Twi’lek style, both pale blue lekku curving. The two Human women were Salhane (tall and hook-nosed with a long braid hanging down her back), and Raxat (short and stocky, with short, curly hair, broad cheekbones and narrow eyes); the Human man was Jevati.
Leia’s sardonic grin reminded Rey suddenly of Han Solo; from the odd flinch in her mind, Kylo thought so too.
“If I shout “Ren!”, will all of you come running?”
Mora (Ren) waved a pale, deceptively delicate hand. “Not at all, Your Highness. We take shifts, so it will only be one, or at most two, if Lady Rey should happen to be in danger as well.”
“I’ve been looking after myself for a while,” Rey observed, not bristling. Bodyguards in the Core were a mark of status as well as functional members of staff. She knew better now than to take offence at the implication that she needed a minder.
“And how much more easily you will be able to do so, my lady,” Mora Ren said sweetly, “with another pair of eyes to watch your back for you.”
. . . . .
Taj Sloane’s company patented its Pathfinder system under New Republic law on New Alderaan and Naboo (and went in with Lando Calrissian on manufacturing facilities in those two systems plus another on one the many moons of Bespin V. They began selling it, deliberately focusing on smaller systems away from the main hyperspace routes.
A spin-off of the technology invented by one of Sloane’s Maknaki students became the foundation of a much improved subspace holocomms system, which again, was first sold quietly in the Mid and Outer Rim, and then everywhere where regular holocomms technology was either unavailable for technical reasons, or unaffordable ( a substantial chunk of the Galaxy). The MDA decided that the technology should be owned by a non-profit foundation, dedicated first to the development of Maknak and the maximisation of the potential of all Maknaki citizens, and then the same for citizens of needy worlds, wherever they were. Leia built on her support for Outer Rim interests, and gradually became recognised as a faction leader in her own right. By the time the Core noticed and started proceedings to prosecute her and her allies for separatism, it was too late.
. . . . .
Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, founder of the First Order and its Deputy Leader for nearly a decade, was an old woman, but still formidable. Her stare, especially through the new Maknaki holocom system, was daunting.
“So,” the Grand Admiral said, “We have come to the moment of decision, then.”
Leia Organa was twenty years younger, but face to face, even by holo, it was obvious to all present that they were different uniforms from the same fabricator.
“The moment of decision came a long time ago,” she replied. “This is your moment of choice. You know what’s coming. Ben showed us all, and I know that Taj has kept you briefed. The Galaxy needs to be united for this, or at least, enough of it. The New Republic is not the Old. It’s not even the Alliance,” and for a moment her bitter sorrow and regret were unhidden. Grand Admiral Sloane nodded slowly. She had seen the Empire’s fall and the First Order repeat its mistakes, and she understood.
“This is the last chance that we have,” Leia said. “If you disagree, then what have all the last few years been about?”
. . . . .
Ten years almost to the standard day from his exile, Kylo Ren strolled out of his small but comfortable house outside the Lanai settlement where he had been living for the last several years. He stood on the beach, shading his eyes with his hand, and waited, smiling, as the massive winged shape of Supremacy popped into existence far above. The shuttle that sailed smoothly down towards him was pleasantly familiar, and his smile grew into a brilliant grin as it touched down and released…
“Rey,” he said her name out loud for the first time in a decade, as she ran down the ramp and into his arms. “Hello, my love.” In a sense they had already been together for ten years. In another….they had not. Her strong arms around him holding him as if she would never let him go, his name ringing in their conjoined thoughts, Kylo, Kylo, Kylo, here, here, here, and the shining relief of her mind and body against his, were like the hammering ocean waves of winter, threatening to drown him in joy.
There was a delicate crunch of footsteps on sand, and he looked over Rey’s head to see the group of people coming more decorously up the beach. Armitage Hux in his own proper self again, dark uniform immaculate and trim. Finn in civilian clothes, brightly coloured but plainly cut, and moving with the weight and dignity of high office. Behind them the Knights of Ren, all in blindingly bright Maknaki colours, waved cheerful greetings. And in the centre of them all, shortest of them by far but still towering among them, robed in Alderaanian white, and with a Queen’s braids crowning her…
Rey felt the shift of his attention and released one arm, so that they could stand hand in hand and face her together.
“Hello, mother,” the Supreme Leader of the First Order said. “Or should that be, greetings and salutations…Your Imperial Majesty.”
. . . . .