Chapter 2 (Mon Mothma—Location: Nhei Klep Station, Sullust System)

The innocuous station orbited the innocuous, medium-sized, brown planet, which in turn orbited its innocuous, yellow, star in this innocuous region of the Outer Rim. The plain station itself was chiefly a collection of a series of warrens and chambers, windowless and—to humans—seemingly confining, mimicking the living conditions of the subterranean-dwelling Sullustans on the planet below. However, the station did house a few personal quarters for foreign dignitaries which sported immense viewports comprising almost the entire side of the suite which offered spectacular vistas of the stars just beyond the transparisteel. Mon Mothma, leader of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and nominal Commander in Chief of the Alliance armed forces, was in one such room now, staring out the viewport at the stars, and digesting the news which had just been relayed to her.

The stars. Orbiting them were millions of worlds, with trillions of people, which were oppressed and crushed under the tyrannical control of the Emperor and his New Order. Or at least under the New Order.

The starscape from Sullust being foreign to her, and astrography not being one of her fortes, Mon Mothma probably couldn't pick it out from among the numerous scintillating jewels in front of her even if she had tried. But one of those stars out there was the star which the forest moon of Endor orbited. One of those stars was where Emperor Palpatine had died. One of those stars was where the Death Star was defeated before it could murder another world. One of those stars was where the Empire was dealt its greatest blow in its short existence.

And one of those stars was where the Galactic Empire began to die.

The Emperor had been a cruel, harsh, and tyrannical dictator. Billions of Alderaanians and Caamasi had been murdered because they were viewed to be a threat to the Empire. They were a threat to Imperial oppression, but they were also pacifists. Emperor Palpatine had condoned the genocide of peoples who could not militarily oppose him. That then marked him as a coward, too.

He had allowed the enslavement of several nonhuman races. Some, such as the Wookiees, Mon Calamari, and her own hosts, the Sullustans, were once full-fledged citizens of the Republic, with equal standing with humanity and long members of the galactic civilization along with their human counterparts. But the Rights of Sentience were stricken from the Constitution, alien worlds were given human governors and representatives, and aliens from all over the Galaxy were reduced to being considered subhuman, and hardly more than animals. That would soon change.

Whether Palpatine was corrupt from the days before he was Senator of Chomell Sector, or whether his corruption sprang up from the power bestowed on him by the Emergency Powers Acts was something that would be debated for decades. Mon Mothma had been fooled by the Senator, once taking him as a fellow colleague who supported their common Republican form of government which had served their civilization for so long. She could not blame those Senators and Representatives who had voted the Chancellor in as Emperor, and who had approved of the legislation establishing the New Order. Many of them were as sidelined by the laws as she was. Some of the alien senators legislated themselves and their constituents into chains. No, the government which would replace the Empire would not punish them. They—and the Galaxy—had already paid enough.

Turning from the viewport and the stars, but not from her ruminations, she walked over to her bed, and picked up two of the static holographs that she had taken out of her satchel and placed there upon hearing word that the Emperor had died, and the Empire defeated. Out of necessity being a Rebel leader in hiding, she traveled exceedingly light, but even still, there were some momentos that she believed she had to bring with her.

Looking at both pictures, though tending more toward the one in her right hand, she felt as though she was addressing each in person.

"We did it," Mon Mothma whispered, a slight dusting of tears beginning to water her eyes. "The Emperor is defeated. The Empire is defeated. The Republic will rise again. We have won."

Gently putting the holograph in her left hand—Senator Bel Iblis—back onto the bed, she devoted her attention to the man in the other holograph. Bail Organa and she had been close friends even back before they had jointly decided to form the Alliance. Now he wasn't here to see the success of what he had helped begun. As she looked at her friend's visage, she wondered how many others had lost friends and loved ones to the Empire—how many had given their lives so that the Empire might be overthrown, and democracy returned to the Galaxy. At least now she had evidence that they had not fought and died in vain. The Emperor was destroyed while in his monstrous creation. The Empire itself would be the next to be vanquished.

And freedom for the Galaxy would march on. Democracy, civilization, the Republic, a New Republic, would resume.