Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars; it belongs to Disney now.
Chapter 11:
Han Solo watched as the shuttle came in for a landing in the forest clearing. Once it set down and the ramp lowered, he led the commandos and the two droids up the ramp, then hesitated and did a double take at what he saw inside.
"Is that…Darth Vader?"
"He's dead," Leia simply said. "So is the Emperor, but the battle isn't over yet."
"The Imperial fleet's still fighting?" Han said.
"Not just still fighting," said Luke. "They're winning."
"Well can't Ackbar disengage?" Han asked.
"He's trying," said Leia. "But there are Interdictors present. And whoever his opposite number is, he's good…very good." She frowned. There was something else going to too. Something was…wrong with the Force…no not wrong, but…a presence, there was a presence. Someone was using the Dark Side heavily…it felt almost like a mind-trick but on a much larger scale.
'How is this even possible?'
'Size matters not?' Luke mentally quoted Yoda to her, though he too was unnerved by what he was sensing.
"Well let's get going, then," Han said. "No sense sticking around."
"Can we stop it?" Mara whispered to them. "Whatever or whoever 'it' is?"
"We don't even know what exactly it is or how it's being done," Leia replied also in a whisper. "Though I suppose we could…don't you dare say it Luke."
Luke sighed and nodded. Instead of taking the chairs, they sat down cross legged on the ground.
"What are you doing?" Han asked.
"A Jedi thing," Leia said. "We'll explain later, just keep the shuttle steady."
"Do you really have it to do it right this moment?"
"Yes," they chorused.
"Fine, fine," Han said and took the controls. Was it just him or were they getting even weirder?"
(*)
For four hours after the destruction of the Death Star the Battle of Endor raged. Four hours during which Ackbar had led the Rebel fleet on a mad dash towards the edge of the Interdictor web. Four hours during which the Imperial forces mercilessly hounded the Rebels, their every move anticipated and countered. Even Grand Admiral Thrawn was not that good, but he didn't have to be for he was not the only Grand Admiral present. Deep within the bowels of the Executor, in Darth Vader's meditation chamber in fact, sat Grand Admiral Declann.
Each of the Emperor's Grand Admiral's had their own specialty and whereas Thrawn had the ability to devise tactics that defeated an enemy psychologically as well as physically, Grand Admiral Declann was a Dark Side Adept trained to use Battle Meditation to demoralize enemies and improve the coordination of allies. Declann's meditation had briefly faltered with the Emperor's death but he had since renewed it with a vengeance.
But now Declann's vision of the battle began to falter again. It had started so subtly that at first he hadn't even noticed. Someone else—multiple someone else's—were using the Light Side to counter him. Although they lacked his experience and indeed seemed to not really understand what they were doing, they were each far more powerful in the Force than he was. Furthermore, although they were inexperienced, two of the three Jedi had the particular talent of learning very quickly.
That gift was how Anakin had quickly surpassed many of his peers, though it had also been one of his downfalls because he had relied too heavily on it and had not put in as much practice as he should have. That same gift was also how his children, Luke and Leia, had picked up the ways of the Force and their skill with a lightsaber so quickly—their fighting styles had literally been a mirror of his own. And now Luke and Leia were using that gift to see what Declann was doing and how they might emulate it with the Light Side for their own allies. One on one they wouldn't have made much of a difference, but working together they each reinforced one another.
Grand Admiral Thrawn turned his gaze from his repeater displays when the door slid open and Grand Admiral Declann walked in; his face was beaded with sweat and drawn with lines from strain.
"Why have you stopped your meditation?" Thrawn asked.
"The Jedi who killed the Emperor are disrupting my concentration. Look at the battle." Thrawn turned back to the displays and frowned. A break had suddenly appeared in the Imperial formation; Thrawn started passing orders but the Rebels were already making straight for it, while the Imperials responded stiffly and more slowly than they should have and with a bit of confusion.
"Where are the Jedi," Thrawn asked.
Declann closed his eyes and his face contorted as if he was trying to remember something. Eyes still closed, his hand came up and pointed at a shuttle flying towards the Rebel fleet. "There!"
Thrawn pressed a stud on his chair. "Baron Fel, take as many of your fighters as you can and break off from your current engagement; there is a Lambda-class shuttle approaching the Rebel fleet, on it are the people who murdered the Emperor. Destroy it at once."
"Understood, Admiral," Fel gruffly replied, also sounding under a bit of a strain. "Fel out."
On the displays the 181st began breaking off and heading towards the shuttle but so did many Rebel fighters.
(*)
"We've got incoming," Han announced, powering the shuttle's shields to maximum. "Are you Jedi done yet?" When he got no answer, he turned to see them still sitting on the floor meditating, their faces beaded with sweat. "That would be a no." Although the shuttle's shields could take a beating from Starfighter-quality weapons, or at least from laser cannons, not being able to maneuver severely limited his options.
Han gunned the throttle as much as possible and the shuttle shot forward. The TIE Interceptors, however, were many times faster and easily kept pace, pounding the shuttle's shields with their laser cannons. Warning alarms blared in the cockpit as the shields started to flicker but then the firing stopped and the TIE's were forced to break off when X-Wings and A-Wings arrived and engaged them, a dogfight breaking out all around the shuttle even as its course carried it into the midst of the Rebel fleet, which was itself finally starting to emerge from the mass shadows produced by the Interdictors, which could not reposition very quickly with their gravity well generators engaged.
Finally, with flickers of pseudomotion the battered remnants of the Rebel fleet jumped to hyperspace.
"They should not have been able to get that far," Thrawn said. "They should not have been able to escape."
"You underestimate the Jedi at your own peril," Declann replied.
Thrawn sat back and steepled his fingers. "Even with their escape, even with the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the Death Star, the losses they took to do it will have them demoralized and crippled. The war may not be over yet, but it is far closer to ending."
Declann snorted. "Maybe, but the Emperor is dead; so is Darth Vader, the only person who might have been capable of succeeding him. Who will rule the Empire now?"
That was a question even Thrawn had no answer to.
(*)
Had his species been capable of tears, Admiral Ackbar would surely have wept at the final report of losses taken in the Battle of Endor. Two-thirds of their capital ships were gone and the survivors were all heavily damaged—most possibly beyond repair, that any had escaped at all was remarkable; their Starfighter squadrons had suffered almost 90% casualties.
"I know it's bad," Mon Mothma said, sitting across from him in the conference room on Home One. The entire Alliance High Council was assembled to discuss how to proceed.
"It's worse," Ackbar replied. "In fact, I'm not sure if we even can recover from this."
"Don't say that," she said. "As long as one Rebel lives the fight goes on."
"True," Ackbar admitted. "But this battle proved beyond any doubt why my doctrine to avoid conventional engagements was correct. We may have achieved our objective, but we won't be fighting any more battles any time soon."
"There may be a way to quickly rebuild our strength," Borsk Fey'lya said.
"And how would we do that?" Ackbar asked.
"I refer to the Katana Fleet," Fey'lya replied.
"A myth," said Ackbar dismissively.
"Not so," said Fey'lya. "For I know someone who has already found it." If Fey'lya had intended to get everyone else's attention, he had succeeded beyond all expectations for the councilors were all staring at him with wide eyes, surprised and disbelieving expressions, or their species equivalent.
"What are you talking about?" General Cracken asked. In reply Fey'lya pressed a button on his comlink and the door to the conference room swung open. Everyone was even more surprised to see the man who stepped inside.
"I know we have had our differences, Mon," Garm-Bel-Iblis began. "But it is my hope that we can get past them and again work together towards our common goal of defeating the Empire."
"We do indeed have a lot to get past, Garm," Mon said, her eyes watering up in a brief show of weakness she would never have shown in public. "But the mark of a good leader is that they can admit that they were wrong, and I was wrong to drive you away. We need you, now more than ever." Garm nodded and took a seat at the table. Mon Mothma wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "So tells us Garm, how did you ever find the legendary Katana Fleet?"
Garm smiled. "I only have five of the ships at the moment," he said. "But I know someone who can tell us where the rest are."
(*)
On another small forested moon in a system hidden from the Empire, Luke Skywalker set fire to a small pyre built around his father's armor. Standing next to him were Leia and Mara and as they watched, Mara took Luke's hand. Finally turning away, they saw several shimmering, smiling figures standing nearby—Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Anakin Skywalker and a beautiful woman that Leia and Luke quickly realized was their mother, Padme Amidala. Luke didn't know how long the figures were there but finally they vanished back into the Netherworld of the Force.
Mara finally broke the silence. "So, what now? As far as I know, there isn't any chain of succession in the Empire."
"No, there isn't," Leia agreed.
"That doesn't surprise me," said Luke. "And even with the losses they took today, the Imperial military is still many times stronger than the Alliance."
"And the Alliance took even heavier losses," Leia said sadly.
Mara added, "And there are still many Imperials who will refuse to surrender simply because Palpatine is dead; people like Sate Prestage, Ars Dangor and Ysanne Isard, to say nothing of the Grand Admirals."
"It's not over yet." Leia admitted with a sigh.
"No," Luke said. "But this is, perhaps, the beginning of the end."
(*)
A/N: But it is the end of this fic. I may one day write a sequel but at the moment I am very busy with my classes.