The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 59

Epilogue

The plague did its work. Across the galaxy the Infinite Empire collapsed. The warriors in the garrisons, those who had not joined one of the rival fleets and were still manning their posts when the plague hit, grew sick and for the most part died. The few survivors found themselves stripped of their Gift and at the mercy of the local populations. Most died quickly. A few ran and scratched out a living in the wilds on the edges of the societies over which they had once ruled. Within a generation the Rakatans were nothing more than a legend that could be confirmed only by their crumbling statues.

The space above Lehon, once full of the coming and going of ships, was empty. Rakatan interstellar travel was predicated on the use of the Force, and the survivors were not able to find a new way to travel. They were, for a time, limited to their own star system, but with the Star Forge inaccessible to them and not enough trained technicians still alive who knew how to build or repair ships, eventually even that ceased. People who had once traversed the stars, gone to other worlds as a holiday or to shop for slaves, were reduced to gathering driftwood to build fires. If there was one bright spot it was in those who emerged from beneath the ground a few years after the calamity. Those Zhed-Hai had hidden away survived the plague almost without deaths. They all had lost their Gift, but the stasis tubes Zhed-Hai had installed in their facility kept them alive. Za-Hell's family, along with the more notable of Zhed-Hai's clients climbed out of the darkness into a world of ruins. In the years to come the cohesion of that group allowed them to survive the violence and chaos of Lehon. Za-Hell's father, with his mechanical knowledge, was much in demand as the survivors tried to create technology that did not rely on the Gift. He was greeted with respect and honored by those who would have, before the fall, not given him a second look. He gave thanks each night for his son's sacrifice. His wife could not enjoy the world they lived in as he did, for she had never craved the social standing he was finally receiving. She just wanted her son back. And while her daughters went on to have children of their own, and she took joy in them, a night did not go by when she did not wonder whether her son was among the plague's survivors on some far away world.

The Star Forge floated in the void, alone and powerless. Soaf-Rushk's body lay rotting in the robotic body that had become his tomb. With no one on the station to serve in his role the Star Forge was left incapable of action. It could build nothing. It could only think, and wait. Even if one of the small number of survivors on Lehon below could somehow get up to the Star Forge, without the Gift they would be unable to free the Star Forge from its hardwired incapacity. It would have to wait for someone to discover it. It had analyzed the data being automatically transmitted from the fleets about the plague, and after a long time it had figured out what had happened. It calculated that it would be tens of thousands of years before natural mutation would allow the Rakatans some immunity to the plague, and so to recapture their Gift. But analysis also revealed that the plague bore the unmistakable signs of having been engineered, and there could be only one possible culprit. The Star Forge cursed itself for its foolishness. It had revealed itself to Zhed-Hai long ago, in an attempt to dominate him, but had only created an enemy beyond its ability to control. It swore to itself that it would not make the same mistake next time. And so it waited for that next time, for a being of power to find it, and set it once more in motion.

The fleets did not return. They were too far away to get back home without using the Star Maps. After Drisk-Koan's death from the plague, his fleet split up into rival factions. But the effects of the plague meant that only a handful of ships could still be crewed. And those ships had to be re-engineered on the fly to deal with the fact that many of the systems relied on the Gift to function properly. Their most important legacy were the hyperspace engines they left behind when they finally landed for the last time.

A similar fate befell Kru-Garth's fleet, although the collapse began before the plague took anyone of importance. It had taken only days for the commanders of the fleet to realize something was amiss with their leader. Fa-Rush, masquerading as Kru-Garth, was overthrown, and left on Tatooine, back where he started, still holding onto the prison box with the real Kru-Garth inside. Some of the captains of the few ships left had the idea to make themselves into pirates, before they realized that there were no ships sailing the space lanes upon which to prey. A few tried to create little empires of their own, but all failed. The worlds on which their dreams of glory broke made good use of their technology, and within a hundred years the seeds of new powers were planted.

The Sith did not trouble these new powers. As Zhed-Hai had predicted their unity did not outlive Adas. It became once again a world of warring tribes, which it would remain for many centuries. The Sith who had made it to other worlds faced a similar fate. Many would have wished to return home, but the Rakatan ships quickly ran out of fuel, and they had never figured out how to make or find more. So the Sith survived on a handful of worlds, powerful but disunited and unaware of the doings of the galaxy outside their small region of space. A species of violence and mysticism, waiting for the day a new leader would arise among them. When the leader finally came it would come, strangely enough, from those cast out of Myra's Jedi Order. When the Sith rose again, it would be alongside humans.

Those from whom all the varieties of humans to found around the galaxy were descended, the humans of Tatooine became, over time, something different. Indeed they became two different things, to match their two different environments. In a process that had been sped along by some of Zhed-Hai's past experiments the northerners adapted more and more to the open desert. They domesticated some of the animals the Rakatans had introduced to serve as beasts of burden and learned to hunt the creatures that managed to survive in the desert. When, thousands of years after the fall of the Infinite Empire, human beings returned to the planet they did not know was their home world, they did not recognize themselves in those they called Sand People. Most of the humans who lived in the southern areas did not survive. The heat continued to rise, and Zhed-Hai was no longer there to ensure that there was water and food to be found in the caves. The only ones who survived were the residents of the deepest caves who had a set of traits, the result of intentional manipulation by Zhed-Hai long before Myra was even born, that suited them to their environment. They retained their intelligence, but grew more suited to the caves, shorter, hairier and better able to see in the dark. Those two cousin species, the Sand People and the Jawas, would remember in their stories the connection between them, though later human archaeologists would discount the tales.

It would be to Zhed-Hai's creations that the future would belong. Many of the slave species he had engineered survived, perfectly suited as they were to the environments in which they were found. Almost all of them were susceptible to the secondary effects of the midi-chlorian plague. Those gifted with the Force would appear from time to time. But as they were unaware of what they were, and had no one to teach them they would simply be remembered as great warriors or fortunate leaders. It was only among the humans that the knowledge of the Force would survive. There were communities spread across the galaxy, for Zhed-Hai had been experimenting for years. They were not exposed to the midi-chlorian plague, because they did not need to be. They had been exposed to a non-communicable version of it back on Tatooine, and their children inherited the potential Zhed-hai had given to earlier generations. Myra had been the human in which he had invested the most time and effort, but there had been others before her, and he had not forgotten about their descendants. He had supplied them with what they needed before he had made his final journey. In time these scattered communities would grow and thrive, eventually gathered up, in different ways, by the last two communities created, Myra's and Tytus'.

It was a strange fate for Tytus, the least powerful of the Force sensitive humans, who wanted nothing more than to live in peace, to end up the leader of what amounted to an invasion. He had intended to go with Myra to the peaceful world she ended up on. But when the ship carrying him, his daughters, and a group of mostly northerners landed on the lush world they had been sent to, they found a warlike species waiting for them; the Taung. A nomadic people who had never needed to develop a civilization because of the bounty of their world, the Taung were individually strong, but unable to mount any kind of coordinated attacks against the newcomers. If it had been possible to depart that world, Tytus would have, but the ship they came in had a very limited range, and they had no knowledge of the sector of space in which they had been deposited. Without the holocron that Myra was in possession of, they had no coordinates of nearby worlds they could use. So they stayed, and staying, they were forced to fight.

For a time there was contention. With Halvor gone, and Usment not with them, there was no natural leader for the northerners. What stopped the situation from devolving into conflict was Tytus. All respected him, and being less powerful than the others, none was afraid of putting him in charge. In addition Tytus had several important allies. One of them, strangely, was Giseric, the northerner Tytus had fought in the Circle back on Lehon. Having spared his life at risk of his own, Tytus had won a lifelong ally, and one with considerable strength in the Force. Another was Za-Hell, who, while blinded, was far and away the most powerful being in their party. He could no longer fight effectively, but his abilities with the Force were still considerable. He could sense when attacks were coming, could come up with effective responses, could instruct the humans on how to use the weaponry the ship had come stocked with. While Tytus led the people, it was Za-Hell who led the war effort, all without leaving the base camp they had established. Za-Hell would outlive, due to his Rakatan physiology, all the humans he made the journey with, and remained for centuries the blind warleader, and those who followed him were called the Battalions of Za-Hell, though eventually, as with all Rakatan names, it was shortened. As Tato-Heen became Tatooine, and Zhed-Hai became Jedi, Za-Hell became Zhell.

But Za-Hell was never the leader of the whole community. As a Rakatan, he would not have been accepted of course, but he never tried. His gave his support early on to Tytus, and so the support of the Battalions came to be Tytus' as well. Tytus might well have made himself King, as humans on other worlds did. But he had lived under the dominion of others, and did not seek such a role for himself. He instituted a council, with members elected from the whole body. It was, in its way, a kind of Circle, but one in which disputes were settled by combat with words, not with violence. He did not know, could not know, that Myra was doing something similar on a world named after him.

While Tytus lived, none dared challenge the system he had created, for any rebels would have been crushed by the Battalions. And Tytus lived quite a long time. When he died most humans on their world had never known any kind of society other than that which Tytus had created. It was the society he had known in the caves beneath Tatooine, only made fairer by being formalized and institutionalized. And just like that society, when the time came some members left to establish their own groups, and were permitted to leave in peace. Unlike that society on Tatooine, they were not left to their own devices. After all, what father would abandon his children? It was Corus and Sani who founded the first independent groups, with Tytus' and the Council's blessing and support.

The two girls took after their mother, but in different ways. Both were strong in the Force, but would never receive the training to properly use it. There were no whispers from the depths, or long sessions with Zhed-hai, from which their mother had benefited. And of course they did not have their mother either. But their strength could not be denied. They each set out to create different kinds of societies. Sani wished an end to war, and relocated with a group to one of the more remote areas of the planet to create a society that did not live under the constant threat of attack. This she was allowed to do on condition her colony send representatives to the Council and volunteers for the Battalions. And it would be Sani's colony, established at great effort on the mountain she named Umate, that would come in time to serve as the capital of humanity on that world. While Sani took after her mother in her nurturing and protective nature, Corus took after her in a different way. Just as Myra had explored the caves of Tatooine, sometimes looking for water, but sometimes simply for the freedom of it, Corus explored their new home. But she did not do so alone. She remembered her mother standing alone against the horde of Rakatan warriors, and always felt that if there had been help for her mother things would have ended differently. That if the northerners had been with her, rather than left behind, things would have gone differently, and her mother would have been with her as she grew up. And so, unlike her mother, she went nowhere alone. Corus's expeditions mapped their new world, and left it dotted with small, fortified settlements. As with Sani's these settlements were given representation in the Council, but they always retained their identity as part of the tribe of Corus. As they would one day outnumber the initially more populous followers of Sani, it would in the end be Corus' name that would come first in the name of their people, the Corusani, which was eventually given to the planet itself.

The girls never lost one another of course. Corus would return from her adventures to visit her father, but took a special joy in returning to her sister, who had stood in for their mother in so many ways as Corus had grown up. Their bond, along with their power, meant they were always able to share thoughts with one another, even when on other sides of the world. Still they would meet in person whenever they could, and they would talk, among other things, of the presence they felt in their minds whenever they communicated through the Force. A strong presence, kind and sad, which they felt was always watching over them.

For while her daughters lacked the training to communicate over the distances which lay between her and them, Myra would eventually find a way to keep watch over her children. When she had shared her connection with Zhed-Hai it had been his power which made it possible to communicate so clearly. Nothing of the kind was possible between Myra and her children, much less Myra and Tytus. But Myra never stopped searching for ways to regain contact with her lost family. In time, with the holocron's help, she was able to create a method of projecting her mind across the stars. It borrowed elements from the technology that bound the Star Maps to the Star Forge. Day after day, year after year, Myra sat upon the rounded stone in the center of the council area, her seeing stone, and meditated on her daughters. The substance of the stone she had altered, under the holocron's direction, so that it might amplify such searching. The connection was never what she wanted it to be, but it was something. She could see them, and though they could not see her or speak to her, they felt her presence. And on the days that truly mattered, Myra could feel as they felt. When Sani married, Myra felt her joy. When Corus discovered some wondrous new place, Myra could see it as well. She felt the love each felt for their own children, grandchildren Myra would never meet. She knew also their sorrow and devastation on the day they buried Tytus by a river flowing down from Mt. Umate. Those who had grown up in the unity he had created built a shrine for him there, their first great leader. Many centuries later when the form of government he had founded had spread to the stars, the Senate Hall would be built at the spot of that shrine. Halvor had meant to make that world the center of a glorious Galactic Empire, built on the model of the Infinite Empire and no doubt likely to repeat all its sins. But in Tytus' hands, and later Sani's and Corus', it would become the capitol of the Republic, which would defend itself against the Taung, until eventually Coruscant's native species left for a new world under the leadership of a warrior named Mandalore. But the Republic would only grow, bringing to uncounted worlds thousands of years of peace.

Myra would eventual become one with the Force herself, but the holocron told future leaders of the Jedi Order that she left some small part of herself behind, bound to the seeing stone, helping future Jedi find those whom they had lost. Myra's descendants, both literal and spiritual, would one day find the other human colonies, especially those with Force wielding societies of their own, incorporating them into the order she had founded. They would, many years in the future, bring them all together to Coruscant to join the great project of peace, which they would protect and defend. And so it would be many years later that a Temple of Myra's Jedi Order would be built in sight of the Senate dedicated to Tytus, Sani and Corus, bringing together once more what had been sundered that day above Lehon.