Epilogue

Cindy sor Valetta walked down the settlement's main throughway hand in hand with her husband. "Did we do the right thing?"

"You won't renege now, dear. Why torment yourself?"

"Funny. We know what's to come, and none of the decisions are any easier."

Rieekan considered. "I'm not exactly thrilled, either."

"Particularly with all the snark. If I hear someone call me 'Majesty' one more time…"

She stopped. "Something wrong?"

"I don't believe it."

"What?"

"We didn't build that."

"'The Captain's Table', the Alliance general read. "No… what is it?"

"You can see it?"

"Yeah. Looks like everything else we improvised here. But no, from the plans I recall, there's nothing there."

"You must have had a ship command sometime," she said. "Before we met."

"I did. Crevasse City. We had to scrap her after Scarif."

"Well, then we can go in together." She smiled. "I'm not sure what we'll find."

What she found as soon as they entered was a tight embrace. "Cindy!" Thanya Ferraro exclaimed. "We won!"

"Hi," Blair Caruthers said, with Princess Ruffel by her side as before.

"I don't understand."

The two members of her old crew, now captains in their own right, turned heads. "We've spoken."

"This is my first time at the Table since we've left our galaxy," sor Valetta said.

"Why are you surprised?" A Ferengi strode up. "Admiral Nog, Captain. You know time doesn't flow the same way everywhere even in normal space. And the Table is a force all its own. If you've met Cindy here, that doesn't mean she met you. Yet."

"Quite right," someone else approached. "These guys tend to be circumspect with me, which makes me think they know something of my future. But the owner won't let me know. Frustrating–"

"Han Solo," Rieekan said. "If anyone can circumvent the rules…"

"So do we get to hear what happened to you?" Ferarro asked. "I mean, after our experiment went awry thanks to Voss Torel."

Cindy and Carlist exchanged a look. "We'd better," she said. "This needs a stiff drink, though. "Tequila, I think."

A glass quickly appeared in her hand. "After the surge wrecked our tractor beam projector, severing our hold on the McPherson with you aboard, the Vicksburg lost control for a little…"

Ruby Blake felt a jolt and flung open her eyes. She shivered as she realized that her uniform was soaking wet with icy water, as was her face, hair, and half body.

A loud splash from her right caused her to turn, and instinctively try to leap forward. Both her legs and arms were restrained though, preventing her from attacking Voss Torel. The Imperial agent tossed aside a bucket and looked down as Ahsoka Tano, just as wet as her, stirred into consciousness.

"Wake up, you idiots," he greeted. "I know you can escape, but it will take you a few seconds, which gives me the opportunity to bring our predicament to your attention." He pointed forward. Blake realized they were in the main lounge of the Vicksburg, which was the only common space onboard to have an actual viewport.

"We're deorbiting," Blake said.

"Power's out on this rustbucket. So is most of the crew. Now, I'm certain that if dear Captain sor Valetta was here, she'd be thrilled to know I'm aboard and am about to die."

"That's—"

He laughed. "Your captain has a death wish. Everything she did here says so. Enough. I don't have a death wish, so rebel scum or not, we're on the same side."

"Ever consider being more polite?" Ahsoka snapped.

"Honesty over manners, Jedi Tano," he retorted. "I want to use the Force to slow down the ship's descent so it isn't destroyed in the crash. Two people working together have a better chance than one—so that's what you're here for. Three would have been better, but your misfortune is not a mystery to me, despite your attempts. Still, you may be able to instruct her better than I."

"And if we refuse?" Blake demanded.

"You're Jedi. You won't."

"I'm no Jedi."

He didn't bother with words, and only looked at Ahsoka. "Better decide quick. We're almost at the atmosphere."

"You expect us to do it while tied up?"

"So you are in?"

"Fine," Blake grunted. "You're wrong about the captain, and I'm certainly not going to sacrifice the whole crew just to kill you."

"Thank you," Torel hissed out slowly, before activating the lightsaber embedded in his prosthetic and making two strokes to cut the Jedi's restraints. Ahsoka rose, stretched out and then motioned for the other two to approach the viewport.

They sat down on the deck, cross-legged, in a circle and joined hands. Blake expected a turmoil of nasty emotions to emanate from Torel, but instead, was barely able to register his presence. He was suppressing things, and in another surprise, she actually felt Ahsoka's thoughts, though they were much hazier than Torel's. Still, they could get the sense of direction from her, and Ruby and Torel poured their own strength together and strained to make the fall slower.

Fire blazed outside the viewport as the Vicksburg's altitude turned to heat. The ice water in which the Imperial soaked them quickly stopped producing shivers and was soon joined by warm sweat form all three of them. It wasn't just that, absent life support, the outside heat was heating up the inside; the nearly constant employment of the Force was work, taking its tall on the three of them. No one talked, no one dared make a breath out of sync from the others.

"About to impact!" Ruby gasped out as her connection with the Force tingled from the ground approaching. Stupid, really. Both her companions, with their vastly greater experience, would have felt it long before she did.

The crash made them all lose balance and roll about on the deck. The motion continued, but far less smooth as Vicksburg wrecked various obstacles while sliding across the ground at more than a hundred clicks per hour.

Ruby rose to look around when the viewport shattered, shards flying everywhere, and a tree trunk sped across the lounge. She barely had time to see where it was going, cried out "No!" and lifted her hand to push the former Jedi out of the way…

Too late. Ahsoka, more exhausted than the other two, and without access to the Force, couldn't react in time either. The tree smashed her body and kept going before plastering her against the bulkhead, producing an explosion of blood and flesh, some of it splattering on her.

The ship lost all its momentum twenty seconds later. Tears, sweat, and blood mixing on her face, Ruby rose once more and, with an absurd hope, walked across the tilting deck to Ahsoka's body. An arm was sticking out from under the tree trunk. She felt it. No pulse. She pulled, and it came out, severed above the elbow.

Catching a movement with her peripheral vision, she leapt up. Torel was standing next to the broken viewport, looking outside. Sunlight, splotchy because it was coming through a canopy of leaves, filled the Vicksburg's lounge. More trees rose ahead of them.

"Where the hell were you?" Blake demanded. "You saw that tree coming! You could have saved her!"

"I didn't see it in time."

And he was lying. She didn't know what made her certain—the Force, probably. Certainly not her own mind; she wanted very much for his failure to save Ahsoka to be a case of bad luck and not a choice she'd just seen him make. But Imperial to the last, he treated Ahsoka exactly as you would expect to treat an enemy. Kill them as soon as their use to you was done.

A lightsaber found its way into her hand almost of its own accord. Igniting it, she marched towards Torel in fury. He only shook his head.

"I'm afraid this will have to wait," he said, and jumped out the viewport. She heard a rustling impact below, but by the time she got close enough to look down, he was gone. She tried feeling the Force. Lots of life, but nothing specifically Torel.

When the tractor beam connection between the two ships had snapped, the shock made almost all the crew lose consciousness—as, in fact, Ahsoka and Ruby had, having been forced out of it by Torel's intervention. As the rest of them woke up and began organizing, eventually, Ruby was found by Evaan Verlaine, sobbing over what remained of Ahsoka.

Ruby didn't remember that. Evaan silently pulled her into an embrace and let her collapse in grief and fatigue before picking her up and carrying her to sickbay.

"Nine hundred and fifty-seven remaining," Raya summarized. "Lost eighty-five."

"Any hope of fixing her?" Captain sor Valetta pointed at the Vicksburg lying on her side with a kilometer-long stretch of mowed-down forest behind.

"Not likely," Rieekan commented with a sad smile. "Even if this planet has a working shipyard, which doesn't seem likely, all of us together can't drag it."

"How's Ruby?"

"Still in an induced coma. Dr. Shar insists on at least another day before trying to restore consciousness. Verlaine refuses to leave her bedside."

"Let her," sor Valetta said. "Shipyard, hell—what do we know about this planet?"

"Pretty much what we see right now, unfortunately," Raya said. "The sensors were down during descent; I can't even tell you if we're on a continent, a large island, or a landmass covering the whole planet."

"No working shuttles?"

"Wrecked in the crash."

Cindy signed. "Carlist… this is going to come up if we're stuck here. With the ship gone, there's no basis for my being in charge. Not everyone here is part of my crew, and in the Alliance, you outrank me."

Raya snorted. "Is this really the time, your majesties?"

That produced several laughs. "If we contact either the Alliance or the Federation," Rieekan said, "it will be moot. If we can't, we'll need to organize on a new basis anyway."

Raya and Cindy exchanged looks when the general mentioned the Federation. "You think we could be back in our galaxy?" the security chief asked.

"We're not," a new voice interrupted.

"Lieutenant Deeta?"

"Yes, ma'am," the Rodian approached. "I've found where we are."

"How?"

"Astromech droids. One we had got a small glimpse during our fall, and I've had them observe the star patterns last night. It's not as complete a picture as we would get from orbit—"

"But you got enough?"

"Yes. First—we're still in our galaxy."

Raya sighed. "Oh, well."

"Second, the star pattern produced no exact matches, although one location came close."

"We're in an unknown system, then?" Rieekan concluded.

"No, General. From no location in our galaxy can you actually observe this pattern. That's why it took me so long—I had to get the search parameters right to understand what was happening. And then I didn't believe the answer I got, so I ran the data again."

"And you got the same answer."

Deeta nodded. "You're not going to believe me, either. The astrogational data says we're on Coruscant."

Rieekan managed to suppress a burst of laughter. Sor Valetta, with neither personal experience nor cultural context to associate with the name, merely raised her eyebrows. "Doesn't look like the holos I've seen," Raya stated flatly.

"I still don't understand," sor Valetta said. "I thought you discovered no location is like this?"

"Not on the current charts. But stars move, so these patterns change over time."

The captain's eyes instantly flung open. "I don't like where this is going."

"Yes, but to be noticeable, it has to be a long time," Raya said.

Deeta nodded. "And this explains everything. We are on Coruscant. Coruscant as it was SIXTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO."

"You're saying we traveled back in time? That's impossible."

It was sor Valetta who had to suppress laughter. "Oh, it's very possible. And you know what—if I we had the Vicksburg operational, I'd get us back."

"But we're not going to get the Vicksburg operational," Deeta said.

"What makes you so certain?"

"While we were in the void," Deeta softly began, and sor Valetta inwardly cursed herself. No one wanted to relieve those dreadful months. "I've been reading through your libraries. Histories, entertainment, science… and right there in the open was the answer to a great mystery."

"What?"

"One with a lot of speculation behind it and very little data. The origin of Humans in our galaxy. Historical records made it clear that it was somewhere in the Core, with Coruscant, Alderaan, and Corellia being the most common contenders. Or the ones with the loudest partisans."

"But you said there wasn't much data."

"Alderaan and Corellia have archeological sites of about the same age. Everything on Coruscant is buried. But there is no evidence of actual Human evolution on any of them. And now it's clear why." Deeta sounded animated now. "I could never have published anything of the sort under the Empire."

"As a Rodian commenting on human history?" Raya asked.

"And the very premise," Deeta answered. "That Humans didn't evolve on any planet in this galaxy. They evolved in yours. On Earth."

"That's not news to anyone here," Blake said.

"It was to me, and the evidence was beyond anything any candidate planet here had. The fossil finds. The DNA reconstructions. The fauna of your homeworld, with creatures like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans still extant only two centuries ago."

Tears welled up in both womens' eyes. "There's a reminder I didn't expect," sor Valetta said.

"The lack of evidence was why Coruscant was the most commonly held opinion. But it was still just an opinion. Until now. Now it's fact."

"But you just said humans didn't evolve on Coruscant," Raya protested.

"They didn't. But in this galaxy, Coruscant is the human homeworld. Or rather, it will be."

The realization hit first the captain and then, almost simultaneously, both Raya and Rieekan. "OH…" they said in unison. "OH."

"That's why you say we won't restore the Vicksburg and leave. That would change the past. We are the past."

"What did the captain say that got you all teared up?" Verlaine asked as she and Ruby got ready for the night. They'd been on the planet two days now, and this afternoon, sor Valetta gathered the entire crew, praised them for their hard work, and then informed them of Deeta's discovery and what it entailed. The discussion on the implication of their time travel had lasted for hours afterwards, despite that for most Stafleet officers, it was well-treaded ground.

"Oh. The apes." Ruby had to control herself to keep from crying again. Verlaine saw that many Earth natives had trouble containing their sorrow at a very specific point in sor Valetta's speech that didn't seem all that unusual to her.

"The what?"

"Great apes. A couple of species very closely related to humans—diverged between five and ten million years ago. And now they're all gone. We killed them."

"What do you mean?"

"We as in humans. It's been going on for centuries… habitat destruction, outright hunting… not a proud chapter in Earth's history. By the time enough people saw the danger and took action, there were too few of them left to survive unassisted. Then World War III happened, and the assistance stopped."

Ruby pulled out her PADD and showed her girlfriend several flat images of large hairy primates. "After Zephram Cochrane and First Contact, there were proposals to use cloning and other techniques to recreate the apes. Forbidding this was one of the first acts of the United Earth government."

"Why?"

"So that the impact would last and remain for the future generations. 'Oh, we can just fix our mistakes.' No. Not all of them. Seems to work—even generations later, as you saw today. It certainly impacted me when I had that lesson in school."

"And that law is still in force?"

"Oh, you get repeal proposals every fifty years or so—and the arguments made at the time are rehashed. But I think there's a general consensus that even if we do it, the creatures we make won't be the apes. They'll be artificial constructs made by us for us—and presenting them as anything else will simply be fraud. If you want the visual experience, there are holodecks—and being aware it's not real is another reminder."

"You are very unusual," Verlaine said. "Well, you personally are—but so are your people. Many would just declare that they are not responsible for what their ancestors did and leave it at that."

"Responsible? No. But we must not repeat their mistakes, and for that, we must know what they were—and, since we are not Vulcans for whom logic is sufficient, we must feel those mistakes. Funnily," she commented off-hand, "I've never seen anyone deliberately distance themselves from any triumphs of their ancestors."

She looked up into the night sky. "I'm still looking for the constellations I learned as girl—and of course, failing."

Verlaine reached around her from behind. "If this is where it all begins… will you continue learning about the Force? Are you the first Jedi?"

"Not much of one."

"It's alright," she whispered. "Torel isn't much of a Sith."