Chapter fourteen:

The building looks just the same as it did in my mind's eye. A medium sized skyscraper, one of the trio erected on a platform a few miles below. It's a spire of coppery colored metal, it was a wonder I'd been able to recall the title marked above the entrance. 'Sandy Shores Retirement Clinic'; by that name and my description Kelsch had been able to locate the building in his database.

We'd spent a few hours planning, a few more getting set up, and now we were in position. I hadn't wanted to wait. The time is ripe.

As the fall of Coruscant continued, plenty of Rebel attacks had been focused on the Imperial Palace. So much that, despite enthusiastic defense on the Imperial's account, it was now little more than a bombed out shell. Palpatine, however, had been nowhere to be found. I figured the palace was a decoy, and Palpatine had taken refuge in another random building. This one.

Time was of the essence, as the building's current defenses were a powerful force field generator on its roof, keeping all undesired energy and matter out on the surface, while the service tunnels below ground were guarded by a veritable army of enemy soldiers. Our spy droids had been lucky to escape detection. Still we'd managed to come up with a serviceable plan. I figure it's one Syra would have approved of, it's suitably dramatic. Overkill, after all, is underrated.

After the shield was down, and the Stormtroopers poured out of the building, the rebel faction would meet them, and a small six-man team would slip past them into the building to seek out the Emperor, while a battle raged outside.

It might mean losing all our troops, breaking them against a sea of white. I hadn't been able to contact Rebel command, take charge. Too many jamming signals flying around. We just might be going to our deaths. But it wasn't a bad way to go. Trying to accomplish something big right up until the end.

I've been running a long time, not sure what I want, what I'm looking for, other than to keep on living. Maybe that's enough. I know it can be enough. But I know now that I have to do this. Palpatine is the key. He controls it all, everything in the galaxy flows and ebbs according to his influence, whether it wants to or not. There's no one else like him. And there is no one else like me. Forged in battle, trained by a life in the highest and lowest of stations; I could always keep running, keep living his shadow, but I think I'm through with that. It's time to play one more time.

"The charges are set," says Hermia, finger to her earpiece. "Everyone is in position." Hermia's traded her little blue dress for tight black clothing. It doesn't suit her. She still seems more like a serving girl than a soldier. She stands at the window, staring across at the clinic. This is the right floor. I can feel the black hole in the force just across from us. It makes it hard to focus. Almost like the first time I experience Zanna's pheromones, only a hundred times stronger.

The six of us have made our way up her, setting up base on a floor near the top of this abandoned office building. It was either this or the evacuated hub of a small restaurant franchise just across from us, forming the three-building triangle between the office complex and the clinic. We went with the office.

Hermia is almost giddy with excitement. As for me, I wouldn't mind lying down for a few hours. But either there'll be time for that later, or we'll all be dead. Kelsch drums his fingers on the large harpoon launcher on the floor before him. He sits cross-legged, blaster rifle across his lap. Zanna is here too, checking her teeth in the mirrored blade of her combat knife. Doggs appears to be meditating, while Galen is a whole lot antsier, bouncing around on his seat. Kelsch has agreed to let me go in after Palpatine as long as he leads the team. It's a fair enough compromise. I agreed as long as I got to pick the remaining team members. They might not be the finest soldiers now at my disposal, but I'd fought alongside each and every one of them. I knew how they worked; I've seen how they fight. I could play off of them.

I could play of Primith too, but she was somewhere down below.

She'd come to me, sometime after my speech through Kelsch's comlink.

"I'm going to fight," she'd said. "We need everyone. Every single gun. Don't you dare make me stay back, don't try and protect me. You need me."

"Okay." I said.

"Okay?" she asked.

"Okay," I said again. "You're coming."

"Oh…" Primith trailed off. I don't have the heart to tell her that I wasn't all about protecting her. That was one reason I'd volunteered as tribute, a big reason. But I wasn't the same person, not anymore. I didn't have the patience to focus on protecting just one person, preserving just one girl. It was everything or nothing. The force or oblivion.

"But," I said, "I do want you to stay back."

"I won't-"

I raised my hand to stop her. "You're a medic. That's what you're good at. I know you can shoot, but you'll hurt the Empire more if you spend the battle patching wounds."

"That's true," Primith said, "That's what I'll do. As long as I'm coming." She hesitated, almost leaving, and then embraced me, resting her head against my shoulder. "I love you," she whispered.

"I know." I buried my face in her hair.

I blink as Kelsch claps, jumping to his feet. The rest of our strike team clambers to attention, but Kelsch has eyes for me alone.

"So," he says. "Shall we begin?"

"Might as well," says Zanna, "I'd like to see the fireworks before I get shot, rather than after."

"I…uh," the wind seems to have gone out of Kelsch's sails a little.

"It's time," I say. "Start the countdown."

"You heard the girl," Kelsch says into his comlink. "Oh, you didn't? Well, she said to start the countdown. So start it. Yeah. Thanks." The comlink goes back on his belt. He's no President Coy, that's for sure.

Hermia's face is practically pressed against the window. I join her. I want to see this. "Three," Hermia whispers, holding up that many fingers. "Two. One." She wiggles her gloved digits. "Boom."

A rumbling shakes the floor beneath me, and second later roiling balls of flames burst from the base of the restaurant offices across from us. Plates and bits of metal arc through the air, smoldering. The skyscraper tips as its base is fractured. Slowly at first, then faster, the tower falls. Just as we'd aimed. Hundreds of tons of pretentious metal architecture slam into the force field protecting the clinic.

The field flickers and shimmers and sparks as bits and pieces of flaming building penetrate its surface or rebound away. It hadn't been built with this kind of impact in mind.

As the force field sputters, a single battered shuttle, our Rebel cell's one aircraft, emerges through the smoke. It lets loose with a pair of improvised torpedoes, packed with explosives and hacked guidance systems. Their aim is true, as they pass through the force field unharmed as it flickers off and on again.

The missiles arc upward toward the top of the clinic, and detonate in a geyser of flame and smoke, ripping through its topmost spire. Its emitter destroyed, the force field dies in an instant, leaving the clinic unshielded. Our pilot opens fire with every blaster and rocket he has, even as the remnants of the other skyscraper break across the square, showering the clinic in debris. When the dust clears, the plaza is cratered, strewn and even in some cases impaled with the remnants of a building, and the clinic is battered and dented, a dozen holes torn through its surface, half a dozen fires burning deep inside.

"Who knew a retirement home would ever look so inviting," Doggs says, and raises his blaster. Hermia jumps back as the window in front of us shatters outward as he shoots it open. The smoke billows into the room.

I watch our troops appear far below, from side doors and maintenance hatches in the street, converging on the clinic from every direction. A wave of white armor spills forth from the clinic. The stormtroopers open fire, and Rebels begin falling left and right. We only have a couple more waves in store. There's no time to waste.

Kelsch fires his harpoon. It arcs away, stringing a thin metal cable behind it all the way till it clamps into the wall of the clinic. He lets the base seal itself to the floor. The zip-line has powerful magnets at both ends. Operator error is going to be our real concern.

Hermia is first up; catching the handle Kelsch removes from his belt and tosses to her. She hooks it over the cable and with a shrill holler she's out in open air, and gravity and momentum propel her down the cable and to the side of the clinic.

Barely able to avoid a nasty impact at the far end, Hermia arrives. Clambering against the wall of the clinic, she cuts a long arc and a few short stripes with a laser cutter, before disappearing through the freshly and irreparably opened window into Palpatine's lair.

"See you on the other side," Kelsch presses a handle into my hand.

"Right," I grip it, just a bit intimidated by the several mile drop before me. "I'll be there." Heights weren't a particularly notable phobia of mine. But I'd never faced anything like this. It was fair to be a little concerned, but it's also fair to stop whining and get the damn thing over with.

I whip the handle over the cord and feel it click into place. Taking a deep breath, I kick off and then there's nothing under my feet but a very long drop to the battlefield. My arms ache and my eyes sting as the opposing building rushes toward me. I wrap the force around myself and slow my impact to a gentle bump. I clamber to the hole in the glass and climb into the building. I give Hermia's outstretched hand an unenthusiastic slap of a high five.

A blaring alarm fills the interior of the clinic with a dull roar. We stand in a deserted curved hallway with an arched ceiling and a several picture windows stretching away in either decoration. The floors are synthetic wood and the walls are carpeted in whites and greys. Any sharp corners or hard edges are few and far between.

Galen arrives, climbing through the whole in the window to sprawl across the floor. Much less graceful than me, then again, I used more force. "Add that to the list of things I never want to do again," he says. I ignore him and glance out the window. Hermia offers him a high five, but not a hand up.

It looks as though the odds are not entirely in our favor. But they could be worse. The Rebels are holding their ground at least, taking cover behind the corners and angles of broken building scattered about below. Some improvise hand-held shields from the debris to aid in their intent to advance. The Stormtroopers manage to set up multiple heavy blaster cannons, shredding Rebel soldiers and their cover. But almost every cannon nest erected is blown to oblivion a well-aimed grenade, or even taken down by the suicide charge of a couple of brave, ergo stupid, men.

I cast my gaze about for Primith, but I see no sign of her.

Zanna speeds down the zip line to join us. "Lovely place," she gazes about, as Galen helps her into the hallway. "Could use more color. Doggs is right behind me, by the way."

"Looks like we're basically coming across from lightest to heaviest," says Galen.

"You shut your mouth," Zanna tells him, as I watch Doggs emerge from the building at the far end of the zip line. I don't sense the danger until he's en route.

A shadow passes over us, as the burning wreckage that was the Rebel shuttle spins past in a downward curve. "Aw, shit," I say as it tumbles right through Dogg's path.

The cord snaps on impact. The figure that is Lyle Doggs falls away, spinning end over end, down and down and down until all that I can make out is a little red splash on the ground far below. Splat.

I'm not the only one who swears. Galen gasps. Hermia gives a little whimper. Kelsch watches in horror from the building opposite.

The floor vibrates, and a few nearby windows even shatter, as a TIE fighter comes in to a hover, its engine facing us. It opens fire on the office building, and I watch Kelsch incinerated by green light.

The TIE fighter turns toward us. "I think you know how this one goes," says Hermia, scrabbling at her belt. She hurls a handful of grenades out the window. I catch all but one in midair with the force, and propel them forward, like they're clutched in a massive, invisible fist.

The grenades explode and turn the pilot housing pod in the middle of the fighter into a burned out shell. The Tie fighter drops away to be swallowed in a ball of fire a few stories above the ground.

Zanna lays a hand on my arm. "Tears later, blood first," she says.

We turn to go until-

The hallway explodes inward several yards down, showering us all with dust and glass. Several TIE fighters are zooming straight for us, right outside the windows. Suddenly a pair of them are engulfed in flames. One downed fighter bumps into another, sending it spinning into a nosedive in the other direction. A V-formation of Rebel Alliance fighter ships swoops down to engage the TIEs. None of those customized civilian shuttles; these are the kind of ships that they Kryat's hold had been stuffed with. The real deal.

As the dogfight unfolds before us, I see troop transports landing on the ground, Rebel soldiers with better weapons and armor than our local allies spill out to engage the foe. Smoking Stormtrooper helmets hit the ground one after another.

"Hell yeah," Galen beams. "Now let's go kill this guy."

Carrying our blasters at the ready, the four of us move deeper into the building. It wasn't just to get away from friendly fire from the combatants outside. I know right where to go. I can feel it.

We proceed down a wide passageway. The door opens before us to reveal two dozen stormtroopers marching right toward us. "What in the-?" I hear one of them gasp.

"Light the bitches up," their commander shouts, and we scatter, firing as we go. I shoot a trooper in the chest. Galen nails one in the leg and Zanna gets a headshot before their blasterfire tears of the floor where we've been. We take cover against the door way, me and Hermia on one side, Galen and Zanna on the other.

The heavy enemy fire forces us to remain in cover as the stormtroopers advance. Galen leans around the wall to fire, but is quickly forced back. He doesn't take anyone down.

I clench my fist, yanking a stormtrooper of his feet and into the way, so his fellows shoot him in the back. That leaves twenty of them.

"This is my last one, unfortunately," Hermia warns me, as she bowls a grenade at the troopers. The blast is deafening in this enclosed area. Shrapnel coats the nearby walls as I cover my face. I can still tell what's going on, feel the death. The grenade tears three stormtroopers to lifeless bits, and the impact knocks half a dozen more off their feet.

"I thought you only had one," I point to the grenade in Hermia's hand.

"Different kind," she says, "And it's my last of these as well." She throws it and the grenade bursts, filling the hall with thick grey smoke.

The Stormtroopers are disoriented and shell-shocked. But I can still tell where they are even if I can't quite see them. A Jedi uses all her senses. So I charge, breath held, eyes stinging.

I shoot two stunned stormtroopers where they lie. I dodge a blaster bolt and shoot a standing trooper in the neck. Another aims at me but I knock his gun aside with the force and his shot goes wild. I shoot him down. I'm about to take out another, but Hermia blasts him before I squeeze my trigger.

Galen and Zanna charge into the fray. The stunned stormtroopers are getting back to their feet as the smoke clears, sucked away by the ventilation system. Galen kicks one of them in the head and shoots him in the back.

Zanna pounces, landing on a Stormtrooper. She shoots him point blank as the slam into the ground. Backhanding the blaster from another's grip, she yanks the trooper against her, using him as a shield as one of his allies shoots him in the back. She hurls the body away, as she shoots the source of that friendly fire in the gut.

I slam two stormtroopers into each other with the force, and Hermia finishes both of them off for me.

Galen shoots a Stormtrooper in the arm, and the soldier's blaster goes flying away, but the trooper still slams into Galen, ramming him into the wall. Galen brings up his legs and kicks the stormtrooper away, melting his faceplate with blasterfire. Another trooper aims right at Galen's head, till Zanna shoots him in the foot, making the shot go wild. Both Galen and Zanna shoot the falling trooper dead.

I grab a Stormtrooper's blaster, forcing the barrel away from me. He grabs my shoulder with his other hand and I blow his side wide open. Their armor isn't so effective when you aim for all the nooks and crannies.

A recovering Stormtrooper tackles me around the waist. Hermia shoots him in the butt, but I still go sprawling. I roll aside as a Stormtrooper fires into the floor where I'd been lying, and propel myself to my feet. I slam into him, shoulder first, and press him back into the wall, firing again and again into his chest.

I turn to find only one Stormtrooper left standing. I splay my fingers and thrust my left hand out. The stormtrooper is thrown off his feet and slams into the wall. His neck is already bent at an odd angle, but that doesn't stop my three companions from shooting him again and again.

We stand in a pile of dead Stormtroopers. I catch my breath, coughing the last bit of smoke from my lungs. Galen wades through the mess. His blaster sounds a few more times, he's making sure no one's getting back up.

"Wow," Zanna says, joining me. "I forgot what fighting alongside you was like."

"As in incredibly awesome," Hermia beams, "You made that super fun and easy. Like where have you been all my life?"

"You watch the Force Games much?" I glance at her.

"Every year."

"It shows."

I walk on, Zanna by my side, as Hermia mumbles, "Well yeah, they show it every year. Till now at least I guess…"

Galen falls in step behind me as Hermia catches up. "We there yet?" he asks.

"Just about," I say. The Emperor's aura is strong. So strong it overpowers everything else. Including the presence of his guards…

Two figures in billowing red robes over blood-red armor and helmets with a single black slit approach as we round the corner, their blaster rifles are already up to fire. Hermia screams as her shoulder is torn asunder. She falls as we take evasive action.

I grab the Imperial guards with the force, twist their bodies towards each other and as their rifles discharge they blow each other's bellies wide open.

Behind the pair, six more Imperial guards stand before a large pair of doors. Looks like we've come to the right place. Four carry force pikes, and two more have rifles. The pike guards charge, as the others raise their blasters. Zanna manages to shoot one of them in the face. As he falls, the other dodges Galen's shots. I duck under his return fire and trip the guard up with the force. I manage to shoot him dead before he hits the ground.

The pike guards reach us. Galen ducks, crumpling to the floor under the sweep of a pike. He kicks out, catching his guard in the knee. The guard stumbles away, and Galen shoots him.

A guard comes right toward me, and I bound back out of the way of his pike. Not only razor sharp, it would pack a mean electrical charge, probably even enough to stop a heart. It would not do to get tapped by that. I rip the pike from the hands of the guard further behind me using telekinesis, and ram it into the back of the foremost guard. Yep, heart-stopping. I shoot the disarmed guard in the chest. Twice for good measure.

Zanna dodges and shimmies around the final guard's pike, getting in close before blowing several holes through his chest. She grabs his pike out of the air as he falls.

Hermia limps over to us. She's all pale, left hand stained red, clutching her right shoulder, which is little more than a crater of bone and gristle with a limp arm dangling off it. "Well," she says faintly, "That wasn't so bad."

Hermia gasps as the bloodstained length of a force pike emerges through her chest. A bubble of blood forms on her lips as she crashes to the floor. More guards in red robes tramp down the hall toward us. Every one of them carry pikes, save for the unarmed one who threw his weapon right through Hermia's back. He turns aside, to fall back through the ranks, but Zanna hurls her pike through his back and his comrades march right over him. I count ten, twenty, thirty and then I stop counting because they're upon us.

Zanna and Galen have been firing wildly into the red army, but I can do them one better. I let loose, and a telekinetic shockwave knocks the first few rows of guards off their feet. A few of them even impale each other as they go tumbling, slamming into the ceiling and the walls.

I fire, moving my blaster left to right, mowing several guards down, Zanna aims from behind me, picking off several with head shots, a few guards get past but Galen is ready to shoot them down.

For a few seconds, we're actually doing pretty well. Then one of the pikes gets in close enough to whip the blaster out of my hands. Even the second-long second-hand contact is enough to set my arm tingling. I dance back behind Zanna, but the guards are already closing in. As she fires into the host, guards already come at me from either side. I leap as they stab, slamming them together with the force, they run each other through to the hilt. I kick another guard in the head as I come down, knocking him on his back. I land in a crouch and force push a guard back into his fellows.

Nearby, Galen ducks under a pike as it stabs into the wall, gouging the plaster. He rams into the guard at a low angle, flipping the red guard over, and shooting him as he slams into the ground. Galen kicks the fallen pike into the air and Zanna catches it, whipping it through the air, and through the torsos of multiple enemies. She knocks pikes out of the way to clear the path to shoot down man after man.

I dance. Moving, ducking, vaulting high, sliding low, moving through the guards as if in a trance. They can't touch me. All they can do is stab each other. When I let them. My punches stun and disorient as my telekinetic blows shatter bone. There's another blaster, only a small pistol, in my belt. I think of it and it flies into my open palm. I fire again and again, find my mark every time.

The bodies are really piling up. Zanna swings her pike one way and her blaster the other, clearing the way before her, "Kara," she calls. "Go on ahead. We can hold them."

It seems as though the flow of red guards has slowed to a trickle for now. She's not a Jedi, not trained with the force at least, but Zanna has got one hell of a bloodlust on her. She can probably take them all.

I glance at Galen. He's struggling with a red guard over his pike and Galen's gun, while another red guard, his legs blown away, beats at Galen's feet, trying to trip him up. Galen kicks that guard in the head repeatedly. I reach out and shoot both guards in the head for him.

"If you don't save any for me," I tell Zanna, "That'll be totally fine." I dart for the doors before any more enemies can intercept me, and slip through. Surprisingly unlocked, they slam shut quickly behind me.

The room is large and sparsely lit. I place it as some sort of ballroom or dining hall. There's a wide open space in the middle of the room with several chairs and round tables erected along the edges.

In the middle of the room there is a chair, a big black heavily cushioned one, and upon it sits the Emperor. I can tell it's him; I feel his presence more than ever before. It's as if he sucks all the light in the room away. I stride slowly toward him, cautious. He just sits, his nose whistles when he breaths.

The Emperor's eyes drift open. Though the force tells a different story, visually he's not very imposing at all, a small, shrunken, wrinkled old man, with bad teeth and yellowy eyes. He wears a hooded black robe that covers him from head to foot. Only his face and the tips of his fingers are visible; A gnarled cane of black wood leans against his chair.

"I thought you'd be taller," I say.

"I thought the same of you," his voice is a shrill rasp, if that's even a thing.

"Oh." I'm not really sure what to say. Here was the most powerful man in the galaxy, I didn't feel quite ready to try to up and punch the guy. "Um. It's all muscle."

"I'm sure it is, little girl," Palpatine chuckles. It's the most joyless laugh I've ever heard and I should know; I've delivered some real good ones myself. "I have always considered the possibility that we will meet." He says.

"And there's only one way it will end," I say, raising my gun. Palpatine seems to type to talk to in melodrama, and I've had practice. Talking a good talk might distract him, ever so slightly.

Palpatine spreads his arms as wide as they will go, which isn't very far, admittedly. "You would strike me down? An old man? Defenseless? Helpless?"

"Hell yes sir," I say, and squeeze the trigger. The blaster immediately falls apart in my hands. Its individual components land at my feet, instantly disassembled.

"You're not at all like the Skywalker boys," Palpatine says, and now he really does sound pleased.

"Does that mean you're going to offer me money?" I ask, lowering myself into a crouch, as if I'm about to kneel before him. "Power? Men? Together we could rule the Galaxy?"

"Do I look like a fool?" Palpatine scoffs.

"I'll get back to you," I slip the knife from boot and hurl it right at his chest. The knife halts in midair. I'd been guiding it with the force, but no matter how hard I push and shove the knife will go no further. I'm helpless to keep it from flipping to point at me, and speeding right toward my heart. I'm only able to stop when I catch the hilt in my hands, the tip of the knife stabbing an inch into my left breast. Blood stains my shirt. Sweat rolls down my face. I can feel the Emperor's power, surrounding the knife, surrounding me. It's a wonder I can keep him from crushing me like a worm. That's what I must seem to him after all. Maybe that's why I detect just the slightest bit of surprise is his rheumy old eyes as I push back

The knife flicks upward, sticking into the ceiling far above us.

Tables and chairs from the corners of the room move through the air toward me and I'm already running. I duck and roll beneath a table, vault over a chair. I bring up a table of my own as a shield; it bursts to slivers of wood as projectiles slam into it. Furniture flies all about me. I grab a chair; swing it to smash down another chair, before hurling it at Palpatine. It shatters feet away from his face.

I clap my hands, rising inches into air, as a shockwave smashes the whirlwind if furniture surrounding me. I follow it up with a force push, and am amazed to watch Palpatine's chair actually begin to tip backwards.

I don't get to see him hit the ground, as the base of a table slams into my back, knocking me off my feet. The rim of another table comes up under my chin; my mouth fills with blood as I chomp down on my tongue. I raise my arms to cover my face as chair after chair smashes over me, and double over as a table takes me in the gut. I try to fight back, push them all away. But there's too many, he's too strong. All I can do is take it. Blow after blow after blow.

And then the next blow doesn't come. I lay a bloody heap on the floor, but I manage to rouse myself, push myself up. The Emperor is standing, clutching his cane.

"And now Kara Evenstern," the little old man proclaims, "You will die."

The Emperor lets his cane topple as he spreads his fingers. Blue lightning shoots from his fingers and envelops me and all I see is lighting and all I feel is pain.

The child of fire is burning. Smoke billows from my clothing as it burns away. The flesh should peel from my bones, but it doesn't. Not yet. The force is still with me for this ever so small bit of protection. Instead it only feels like I'm being skinned alive. I think I can hear the Emperor laughing. I can feel his emotions flowing through me. Anger, hatred, lust for power and violence.

I try to remember Thea. Reach for the ideas she'd taught me. I reach for love, for humility, for honor. But they're all for not. They feed him only, their twisted by his consciousness into more and more hurt and pain, pain, pain.

I can barely even tell when I receive a moments respite from the onslaught. "Get away from her," I hear Galen say, "You bitch." I crack my eyes open to see Galen standing over me, face all determined, unloading his blaster at Palpatine.

The bolts shimmer and flow right past the Emperor. He barely even acknowledges the boy, as he strokes a glimmering ball of lighting energy into existence. He lets the ball fly and Galen screams as it nears him. He bursts from the waist up, exploding outward, coating me and everything in the vicinity with blood and meat. Galen's legs, with a jagged rip where his hips ended, fall to their knees. One more pledge of fealty for Palpatine.

Palpatine looks back to me, with a twinkle in his eye and flicker at his fingertips. Another stream of lightning rushes through me from head to toe. But I've had a second of freedom, a second of thought.

The light and the dark side, they just feed into each other, just like their eternal war. But good and evil aren't inherent. They were ideas, thoughts in the minds of men and woman. Beyond the light side and dark side there was only the force. There is only calm. There is no emotion, only existence. It is there I find solace. It is there that I find strength. It is only pain. It is only power. None of it matters. None of it has ever mattered.

Despite all the powerful energy pouring down on me, I push myself up on my hands and knees. One foot, then another, and then I stand before him.

"No…" Palpatine whispers as I begin to walk. Enveloped in blue electricity that breaks against my chest and presses against me at every step, I just keep walking.

"No," Palpatine whispers, half to himself, half like a senile old man. "This can't be. You can't do this. You can't."

I don't like people telling me what to do. The electricity plays around my fingers, crackles and jumps. And it's not all just his anymore. We're only feet apart now.

I clench my fists.

The explosion of electricity shorts out every circuit in the room. The Emperor goes flying off his feet. The walls and ceilings are covered with scorch marks and burns. Blue sparks still play across a few of them but dissipate rapidly.

The cane is back in Palpatine's hand, as he pulls himself back to his feet. "I don't suppose I have time to rethink your offers," he says.

I reach down and scoop a metal capsule of the ground. Injecting it with the lightning that lingers on my fingers I hurl it at him. The power battery of my blaster pistol explodes with a flash and bang, knocking Palpatine back off his feet.

I walk slowly toward him as he gets back up, more slowly than before. His robe is smoldering, his wrinkled flesh is red and raw, peeling away like a sunburn, but only if that sunburned tissue had nothing but stringy meat beneath.

He swings his cane at me, it's almost funny. Next he'll be shouting at me to get off his land. I duck under the cane, ram my shoulder into him, send him flying back. When I feel him he's just skin and bone. There's something hard on his belt, and I grab it up, as I force blast him away into the wall.

The metal canister feels right in my hand. The lightsaber activates, an emerald blade deploying, humming in the air before me. The hilt is still cold.

Palpatine's eyes grow wide. "I-"

He never finishes. I close the distance in an instant, and the lightsaber comes down. It cuts through him nice and easy, splits his skull and burns right down. It reaches about his navel before Palpatine pops. I'm thrown backward off my feet as concentrated cloud of dark energy pours into the air, rushing away and dissipating as suddenly as it had come.

I climb back up, wobble on my feet. I chop Palpatine's corpse up a bit more, just to be sure. Then I turn and walk away. I walk through the sea of broken chairs and tables, Galen's legs mixed up in them somewhere.

Outside of the doors, there's a sea of red. It's hard to tell where the bodies end and the pools of blood begin. Zanna is on her knees, choking one last red guard to death.

"Kara," she announces my name in surprise. In a sudden show of strength, she twists the guard's head all the way round, snapping his neck. I stand before her, ragged and in rags, an activated lightsaber shimmering in my hand.

Zanna sits back on her haunches and just stares at me for a moment, drinking it all in.

"Well," she says finally, "It looks like you had a pretty successful day."