Incoming transmission…
After many months of debate, the borders of the post-war Galaxy have been decided.
The Mandalorians shall retain their historical boundaries.
The New Republic shall annex the following worlds:
Aargonar
Abraxin
Abrion Major
Acherin
Agamar
Alliga
Altyr V
Ando
Antar 4
Atraken
Axion
Axxila
Bassadro
Bestine IV
Bomis Koori IV
Boz Pity
Castell
Cato Neimoidia
Caramm V
Celanon
Christophsis
Clak'dor VII
Colla IV
Corlax 4
Dac
Dagu
Dantooine
Deko Neimoidia
Diado
Donovia
Druckenwell
Duro
Elrood
Emberlene
Enarc
Endor
Falleen
Felucic
Foerost
Fondor
Gentes
Geonosis
Gwori
Haurgab
Halowan
Hypori
Iego
Jabiim
Kabal
Kalee
Karkaris
Kinyen
Kooriva
Koru Neimoidia
Kromus
Lola Sayu
Makem Te
Metalorn
Minntooine
Moorja
Murkhana
Mustafar
Muunilinst
Mygeeto
Neimoidia
New Alderaan
New Bornalex
New Plympto
Nexus Ortai
Nivek
Null
Nyriaan
Olanet
Onderon
Ord Canfre
Ord Cestus
Ord Janon
Ord Radama
Ossus
Pammant
Praesitlyn
Queel
Qiilura
Queyta
Raxus Secundus
Raxus Prime
Rhen Var
Ringovinda
Rodia (Briefly)
Ryloth
Saleucam
Scipio
Serenno
Siskeen
Skako
Sluis Van
Sullust
Sy Myrth
Tarhassan
Teth
Thaere Privo
Thule
Thyferra
Tibrin
Togoria
Troxar
Uba IV
Ukio
Umbara
Utapau
Vandon
Viidaav
Vjun
Xagobah
Yag'Dhul
Zaadja
Zygerria
The remainder of the galaxy shall be remain under the domain of the Galactic Empire.
We will be back after the break to bring you more galactic news!
—
Sheev Palpatine felt trapped. The skies over Anilorac had been lousy with Republic fighter-bombers coming down from the north.
He and the handful of loyalists who clung to him through thick and thin moved by night and lay up by day, like any hunted animals.
Only threads of the Empire still fought on after the surrender order. Pockets of resistance near the Unknown Regions. If the war would go on, if the war could go on, it would have to go on there.
One thing wrong: Palpatine hadn't the faintest idea how to reach his alleged redoubt. "What are we going to do?" he demanded of Tiaan Jerjerrod.
"My Emperor, what can we do? They're squeezing us tighter every day, the bastards." Jerjerrod answered.
"What are you doing here, Moff Jerjerrod? Why don't you give yourself up to the Republic? You've never been a particularly vocal proponant of the New Order ."
"If things were different, I might," Jerjerrod said calmly. "But I'm the man who blew up Kalevala, remember."
"I'm not likely to forget." Palpatine's laugh sent shivers down the spines of all who heard it. "You escaped again, too, in spite of everything."
"Bad security," Jerjerrod said. "If we had another Death Star, we could get it up there."
If Palpatine had been born of a lower class, he might have cussed. He had spent all of his rule looking for ways to achieve immortality. Now, he wished he had taken the time to learn the all-destructive powers of the ancient Sith, such as Darth Nihilus.
Jerjerrod continued, "In case they find out who I am, I expect I'm dead. Which means I'm all yours, my Emperor."
Fighters droned by overhead—Republic fighters. They were going to hit something farther north. With a sigh, Jerjerrod asked, "How are we going to make it out West? Do you think we can get a shuttle to land anywhere near here? Do you think it could fly across two sectors without getting shot down?"
"I wouldn't imagine so," Palpatine answered mournfully. "However, we have no other option if we are to survive."
When his shrunken entourage drove into Sparta, he found the colonel in charge of the town's defenses lost in gloom. "Rebels are on the way, and I do not know how to stop them," the officer said.
"Do your best," Palpatine answered. "Now transmit me to the nearest shuttle station under Imperial control." And he did. And he persuaded the authorities there to fly it down to Sparta.
"If it gets shot down—" some officious fool said.
The fool didn't have time to finish his sentence when his neck was snapped through the Force. The officer who took his place didn't dare even think of refusing his Emperor.
The shuttle landed late in the afternoon. Ground crew personnel swarmed out with camouflage nets to make it as invisible as they could. "Do we really want to do this?" Ferd Koenig, Minister of Justice, asked.
"If you don't, then stay here," Palpatine answered. "Say hello to the rebels when they catch you." The Justice Minister bit his lip. He got on the shuttle with everybody else.
After they got airborne, the pilot asked, "Want me to put on my wing lights?"
"Yes, do it," Palpatine answered. "If the rebels see them, they will think we are one of theirs."
"I hope so," the pilot said with feeling, but he flicked the switch. The red and green lights went on.
The shuttle droned south and west—more nearly south than west at first, because neither the pilot nor Palpatine wanted to come too close to the New Republic lines.
Turbulence made the shuttle bounce. Somebody gulped, loudly. "Use the airsick bag!" three people shouted at the same time. The gulper did. It helped—some.
And then turbulence wasn't the only thing bouncing the shuttle. Shells started bursting all around it. Suddenly, the road through the air might have been full of potholes—big, deep ones. A major general who wasn't wearing a seat belt went sprawling.
For the first time in his life, Sheev Palpatine was afraid.
Engines roaring, the transport dove for the deck. The antiaircraft guns pursued. Shrapnel clattered into the wings and tore through the fuselage. Somebody in there shrieked, which meant jagged metal tore through a person, too.
"We're losing fuel!" the pilot shouted. "Lots of it!"
"Can we go on?" Palpatine had to bellow at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.
"Not a chance," the pilot answered. "We'd never get there."
"Can you land the shuttle?"
"If I can't, we're all dead," the man answered.
Palpatine remembered that he hadn't been thrilled about landing at night even in Imperial-held territory. How much less enthusiastic would he be about a nighttime emergency landing on enemy soil? He hated having his fate in somebody else's hands. If he was going out, he saw himself fighting armies of rebel soldiers by himself and killing plenty of them before they finally got him. This way…
"Brace yourselves!" the pilot shouted. "Belts on, everybody! I'm putting it down. I think that's a field up ahead there—hope like hell it is, anyway. Anybody gets out, let Beckie know I love her."
One of the engines died just before the shuttle met the ground. It landed hard, hard enough to make Palpatine bite a small chunk out of his tongue. He screamed with rage and pain. The shuttle slewed sideways. The transport tried to flip over. The wing broke off instead. The fire started then.
"Out!" the pilot screamed. "Out now!" The shuttle hadn't stopped moving, but nobody argued with him. Palpatine was the second man out the door. He had to jump down to the ground, and turned an ankle when he hit. Nearly swearing, he limped away.
Tiaan Jerjerrod wondered how many nasty ways he could almost die. This blaze was a lot smaller than the radioactive fire he'd touched off on Coruscant, but it was plenty big enough to give a man an awful fore-taste of hell before it finally killed him. To the poor chump roasting, how could any fire be bigger than that?
He'd scrambled away from the burning shuttle right after the Galactic Emperor. Was everybody out? He looked at the pyre that had been a transport. Anybody who wasn't out now never would make it, that was for damn sure.
"Where the hell are we?" Ferdinand Koenig's deep voice came from over to the right.
Nobody knew, but they weren't free and clear, not by a long shot. "Let's get out of here," Jerjerrod said. "This field will be swarming with rebels in nothing flat."
Some of the Imperial big shots weren't going anywhere. "I think my leg is busted," said the general who had replaced Grand Moff Tarkin as governor of the Outer Rim. Jerjerrod couldn't remember his name; as far as Jerjerrod was concerned, the officer wasn't worth remembering.
"I'm not going anywhere quick."
"You can surrender, Willard. They're not shooting soldiers— only politicians," Sheev Palpatine said.
"Just don't tell them I'm near."
"I wouldn't do that, Majesty," Willard said. First name or last? Jerjerrod wondered. Hell, it didn't matter to anybody but Willard any more.
"Moff Jerjerrod is right," Armand Isard said. Jerjerrod blinked. He hadn't even known the Director of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order got on the shuttle. Isard was so quiet and self-effacing, he could disappear in plain sight.
Sly Moore was hurt, too, hurt badly. "I don't want the rebels to get me, Lord Sidious," she told Palpatine. "Will you please put me out of my misery?"
"I don't want to do that." Palpatine said.
He genuinely liked Moore, as much as he was capable of liking anyone.
"Please," Moore said. "I can't go on."
The Sith Lord muttered to himself. He started to turn away, then turned back. Jerjerrod had rarely seen him indecisive—wrong often, sometimes disastrously so, but hardly ever at a loss.
"Hurry," Moore said. "You can't stay here."
Palpatine raised a hand towards her, and her wide and pained eyes slowly closed, as if she had fallen asleep. Death rattled her lungs, and she died.
"Come!" Now he almost shouted. "Let's get away from here."
They stumbled and limped through the field. The only light came from the burning shuttle, and they were trying to put it behind them as fast as they could.
They were in trouble. Sheev Palpatine yelled for the pilot and asked him where they were. "Somewhere east of Alta—can't tell you closer," he replied. "I was going to fly south a little while longer, then swing west. That's about as good as I can do right now. Beg your pardon, my lord, but I'm fucking surprised I'm in one piece."
"You did good, son," Palpatine said—he patted the pilot on the back. "Where is the nearest settlement?"
"Let's find a road," Jerjerrod said. "Sooner or later, a road's got to take us into a town." He didn't say what kind of town a road would take them into. They just had to trust to luck on that. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Palpatine's mournful comment followed it.
He found the road by the simple expedient of stepping down into it. He came closer to hurting himself then, than he had in the shuttle's crash- landing. "Which way?" Ferdinand Koenig asked. North or south, east or west? was supposed to follow that question, but Jerjerrod had no idea which direction was which. Evidently, neither did anyone else.
But there was the moon, a thin waning crescent, so that had to be the east. Which meant the North Star should be about...there. And there it was, with the rest of the Little Dipper curling from it.
Palpatine worked it out at the same time as Jerjerrod did. "This way," he said, pointing. "We will keep on heading south." He'd most likely spent more time in the field than anybody else here. He would be able to figure out which way was which as soon as he set his mind to it.
Down the road they went, a ragged squad, some hale enough, others limping. Most of them had pistols; one officer carried a blaster-rifle. If rebels came on them, they wouldn't last long. Jerjerrod understood that perfectly well. He wondered how many of the others did.
He also wondered how long they could keep going. Sooner or later, their minor injuries would catch up to them. And more than a few of them were, to put it politely, not men accustomed to taking much exercise. Ferd Koenig, in particular, resembled nothing so much as a suet pudding in a gray Imperial Army uniform.
Jererrod realized they should have changed into civilian clothes before they got on the shuttle. Too late to worry about that now. Too late to worry about a lot of things now.
"Can we get away?" somebody asked.
"Believe it," Palpatine said instantly. "If you believe it, you can do it. That's what life is all about. Believe it hard enough, work for it with everything you have, and you will get it. Look at me."
He was right—and he was wrong. He'd climbed from nowhere to the top of the heap in the galactic government. He'd ruled the galaxy for twenty years. And now the Galactic Empire—is getting it all right, Tiaan Jerjerrod thought.
Off in the distance, like the roar of faraway lions, he heard the rumble of truck shuttles. They neared far faster than lions would have, and they were likely to be far more dangerous. "Hit the dirt!" Jerjerrod sang out.
The Imperial dignitaries scrambled off to the side of the road and hid behind bushes and in ditches. It would have been funny if it weren't so grim. This was what the Galactic Empire had come down to: a dozen or so frightened men hiding so the rebels wouldn't catch them.
One after another, the heavy trucks pounded past. Exhaust stank in Jerjerrod's nostrils. He got a glimpse of soldiers in green-gray in the rear compartments and heard a couple of windswept snatches of bad language in Outer Rim accents. Then, after a few seconds that were among the longest of his life, the last deuce-and-a-half was gone.
"We must make it to a settlement fast, aquire vehicles, and get the fuck out of here." That seemed like good advice.
"Let's get moving," the pilot said. He was younger than just about everybody else there—and also the man the rebels were least likely to shoot out of hand if things went wrong.
Move they did. Fifteen minutes later, they all hid and flattened out as more trucks growled up the road. These machines had an ambulance with them, which likely meant the rebels had indeed found the head of the Imperial General Staff. Would they rough Willard up? Would he keep quiet if they did?
Jerjerrod began to pant. His feet started hurting—he was wearing dress boots, not marching boots. The sky lightened in the east. "Where the hell's that town?" somebody said, voice numb with fatigue. "Feels like we've been going down this damn road forever."
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Jerjerrod said. He was definitely getting a blister on his left heel. If it worsened, he wouldn't be able to keep up. The rebels would catch him—and, he suspected, that would be that in short order.
Palpatine pointed. "Sign up ahead." Half an hour earlier, they wouldn't have seen it till they were right on top of it.
Jerjerrod, with his weak eyes, would have been one of the last men to be able to read it. Somebody called out the name of the town on the sign and said it was a mile and a half off, so he didn't have to.
"Where the hell are we?" Ferd Koenig demanded—the name meant as little to him as it did to Jerjerrod.
"Directly in the center of Gorga," Palpatine answered confidently. Did he carry a map of the galaxy in his mind detailed enough to include a nowhere of a place like this one? Jerjerrod wouldn't have been surprised. Palpatine knew all kinds of strange things, and remembered almost everything he heard. That wasn't the problem. The problem was, he'd come up with too many wrong answers from what he knew—or maybe, if you went and aimed the Empire at the Rebellion, there weren't any right ones.
—
Cassius yawned. He hadn't been on patrol all that long, but the antiaircraft fire woke him up ahead of when he would have had to crawl out of the sack anyway. He wondered what the hell was going on. The Imperials hadn't sent any TIEs over Isis for quite a while.
He yawned again and shook his head. For all he knew, somebody'd got a wild hair up his ass and started shooting at a Republic fighter, or maybe at something imaginary. You never could tell with something like that.
"What's happening?" he asked Gracchus when he replaced the other Wookie at the north end of town.
"More blasters," the older man replied.
"I knew that," Cassius said. "Got me up early. See a real fighter, though?"
"Not me," Gracchus said. "Something funny is going on, though. They wouldn't have sent out so many soldiers in trucks if it wasn't."
"Soldiers?" Cassius echoed. Gracchus nodded. "Huh," Cassius said. "Bet you're right, then. They got something all right, or they think they do."
"I know what I'm going to get." Gracchus yawned till his jaw seemed ready to fall off.
"I'm going to get some sleep. You can march around the next few hours. I'm gone." He patted Cassius on the back and headed off toward the Wookie guerrillas'—the Wookie auxiliaries', now—camp.
All mine, Cassius thought, and then, Hot damn. By now, the humans in Isis were pretty well cowed. They hadn't given any real trouble for several weeks.
That thought had hardly crossed his mind when he heard somebody's voice in the distance, floating through the clear, quiet early morning air. He started to bark out a challenge—it was still before the Republic's curfew lifted. Then he looked north along the highway that led down from Athens.
The rosy light of dawn showed them well enough. Cassius didn't think they could see him: he stood in the deep shadow of some roadside pines. He scurried behind one of them. Challenging that many men when he was by himself didn't seem like a good idea. Maybe they were Republic troops, in which case a challenge would be pointless. If they weren't, they were trouble. That many Imperials wouldn't be running around together at daybreak unless they were trouble.
He waited and watched as they got closer. He almost relaxed—they were in uniform, and who but N.R. soldiers would be in uniform around here? But then he saw that the uniforms were gray and butternut, not green-gray. He wanted to scratch his head, but he stood very still instead. Whoever these people were, he didn't want them spotting him. One of them carried a better rifle than his, and almost all of them had holsters on their belts.
"Come," a rangy, elderly man up near the front of the pack said loudly.
"We're almost there."
That voice...Cassius knew it instantly. Anyone in the Galactic Empire would have. Anyone alien in the Galactic Empire would have reacted as he did. The blaster-rifle leaped to his shoulder. He could almost fire over open sights—the range couldn't have been more than a hundred yards. He'd never aimed so carefully in all his life. Take a breath. Let it out. Press the trigger—don't squeeze.
"Get us some speeders, and—" the rangy man went on as the rifle roared and bucked against Cassius' shoulder. The bolt caught the fellow right in the middle of the chest. He got his left foot off the ground for one more step, but he never finished it. He crumpled and fell instead.
Cassius worked the bolt and fired again, as fast as he could. Sheev Palpatine jerked before his face hit the asphalt. While he was lying there, Cassius put another bolt into him. This one left a burning hole in his head. Cassius chambered one more round. When you were shooting a snake, you didn't know for sure what it took to kill him.
One of the men in butternut knelt by the deposed Emperor. He leaned toward Sheev Palpatine. Cassius could easily have shot him, too, but waited instead to see what happened next. The man started to feel for Palpatine's wrist, then shook his head, as if to say, What's the use? When he rose, he seemed suddenly old.
The rest of the Imperials might have turned to wax melting in the sun, too. When Cassius saw they slumped and sagged, he began to believe Palpatine was dead—began to believe he'd killed him. Were the tears in his eyes joy or sorrow or both at once? Afterwards, he never knew.
"Surrender!" he shouted blurrily, and fired another shot over the Imperials heads.
As if on cue, Gracchus ran up the road from Isis. Four or five human men in green-gray pounded after the Wookie. One by one, the Imperials standing in the roadway raised their hands above their heads. The officer with the blaster-rifle carefully set it on the tarmac before he lifted his.
Only then did Cassius step out from behind the tree. Gracchus skidded to a stop beside him. "Who are they?" the guerrilla chief panted.
"I don't know, high-ranking Imperials, that's all I can tell you," Cassius said. "But I just shot Emperor Palpatine. That's him on the ground there, and he's dead."
"No," Gracchus whispered. The N.R. soldiers heard Cassius, too. They stared north toward the knot of Imperials and the corpse in the road. Then they stared at Cassius.
"I'd give my left nut to do what you just did," one of them said. "My right nut," said another.
"Do you know how famous you just got?" a third one added.
"It doesn't matter," Cassius said. "He killed my whole family, the son of a bitch. I heard his voice, and I knew who it was and then—bang!"
Gracchus set a hand on his shoulder. "You have that. The rest of us, we have nothing. He killed all our families. But you killed him? You really did?" His voice was soft with wonder.
"I sure did." Cassius sounded amazed, too, even to himself. "Now I want to see him dead."
He walked forward, his rifle still at the ready in case any of the men ahead tried something. He had only one round left in the cartridge, but he wasn't too worried about that, not with Gracchus and those N.R. soldiers to back him up.
Cassius stirred the body with his foot. Sheev Palpatine's lean, hungry face stared sightlessly up to the sky. A fly landed on his cheek.
"Well, you did it. You just sank the Galactic Empire." Moff Tiaan Jerjerrod said
He looked as if he wanted to say more. Telling off somebody with a blaster was never a good idea, though.
Another man, a heavy fellow in a gray Army uniform, figured that out, too. He said, "Who would've reckoned a...non-human could kill the Emperor?" The pause meant he'd almost said alien, or more likely creature, but he swallowed anything like that before it got out.
"Who the hell are you people, anyway?" one of the N.R. soldiers—a sergeant—demanded.
"Ferdinand Koenig, Justice Minister," the heavy man answered. Cassius almost shot him, too. Koenig ran the camps. He was Sheev Palpatine's enforcer. But shooting anybody with his hands up wasn't so easy.
"Tiaan Jerjerrod, Grand Moff," said the man who had spoken earlier
"Force!" the sergeant in green-gray said. "You're on our list! You're the asshole who blew up Kalevala!"
"You know that?" Jeejerrod blinked, then actually bowed. "Always an honor to be recognized," he said. Cassius found himself surprised into admiration. Jerjerrod had style, in a cold-blooded way.
The other Imperials gave their names and ranks. The only one Cassius had heard of was Armand Isard, whom he thought of as the Empire's chief liar. But the rest were all big shots, too, except for a young captain in a pilot's flight suit.
Three command vehicles rumbled up from Isis: probably called by hologram. Their mounted guns added to the N.R. firepower. A photographer jumped out of one of them. "Whoa," he said, aiming his camera at the corpse in the road. "That really is the motherfucker, isn't it?" He took several pictures, then looked up. "Who punched his ticket for him?"
Gracchus gave Cassius a little shove. "This fella right here."
A flashbulb went off in Cassius' face. He saw green and purple spots. "Way to go, sonny. You just turned famous, know that? What's your name, anyway?"
He answered, but the photographer's confused face showed that he didn't understand the Wookie's language. One of the Republic troops answered in Basic. Now two people, both humans, had thrown fame in his face.
More command shuttles and a halftrack came up the road. Some of the people who got out were soldiers. Others were reporters. When they found out Cassius had shot Sheev Palpatine, they all tried to interview him at once. They shouted so many questions, he couldn't make sense of any of them.
Some of the reporters started grilling the captured Imperials, too. The prisoners didn't want to talk, which seemed to upset the gentlemen of the press.
Cassius kept looking at the body every so often. I did that, he told himself. I really did.
"Ignore these mouthy fools," Gracchus advised him. "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. You've done something."
It wasn't enough. If Cassius could have killed Sheev Palpatine five million or six million or eight million times, it might have come close to being enough. But he'd done all he could do. He made himself nod. "Yeah," he said.