Chapter 24

I'm staggered by your mind. It is not like Tav's or your idiot pet, Kell's. You have infinite connections, synapses fire lightning fast. Why have you limited yourself so? You apply it only to your silly contraptions. These… TIEs…

TIEs and X-wings, X-wings and TIEs. You murder each other for nothing. So that one man's flag may wave over another's. One little stroll through your mind, and I see that you could have so much more, Amara Slake.

I don't understand you specks. Your passions for status, craft, love, family. Trust me: all of that is meaningless once I've eaten you.

Allow me to show you my dominance. My beginnings.

I began in a great storm of gravity and fire. And in my childhood, those lonely, dark eons that followed, I had much time with my thoughts. I learned a great deal about what I was. I was heat, energy, mass. I was grasp. I used the capabilities afforded to me to assemble the detritus of rocks and ice sprayed across my orbit. I pulled at that trash, and over more time than I care to think about, I created a focused array of worlds. Fourteen child planets with countless moon offspring of their own. I was FATHER to all of it.

I wished for company, for my siblings were all so very distant from me, each of us alone in our swells of darkness. So I warmed. And as I warmed, so did my child worlds. Ice melted, plants grew, and in their cold oceans, at a cellular level, sentience began to emerge.

This was not my own sentience. It was other to me. And from my perch, I watched, mesmerized as this new life made its own decisions, and shaped itself to fit its environment.

This sentience, over millennia of its little world spinning around my domain, cut gills into itself. Other beings on other worlds emerged from those icy biological soups. It grew hearts and lungs, it spread wings, it fashioned claws and armor for itself, because my worlds were not kind, they were not easy. No, my children must be strong, so I forged them in steel with heat and cruelty. Strong life thrived while weak life died in sorrow and agony.

I watched and it was good.

Ages passed and to my surprise, little builders emerged among my creations. Birds with opposable thumbs and genuine intellect. They built tribes and then cities. Nations and armies, and eventually, they built contraptions much like your own, defeating the confines of the very gravity that I granted to them.

I was fascinated by their advancement. How ambitious these little things were!

But regrettably, I found myself growing jealous. If they could escape their world, could they not eventually escape my own orbit and stray to another star? No. That would not do. Not at all.

The rage in me was intense. I focused on it, built pressure and heat, heat and pressure, for years, decades, a century. And in a final, channeled release, I launched a fiery mass at my child planet, the home of these ambitious little birds.

My flare was very hot. The little things all burned before it ever made contact. They died screaming. And it was good. Germs must know their place.

You should remember your place, as well, Slake. You will call no "shots." Not in my domain.

And ALL is my domain.

Other germs on other worlds grew into builders as well. You little creatures can't help yourselves. I think it's because you're so close to greatness, godliness, like me, but you can never replicate my power. My gravity. My heat. So you toil endlessly to approximate it.

I've watched so many species rise. Avians, marsupials, primates, and given enough time, you all grow into viruses. You eat resources, you commit atrocities on the environments of my beautiful, perfect worlds. The only quality that you have that approaches my endlessness is your ambition.

So I stopped it. More times than even I could count. I watched as my germs sought more than me, then I lost myself in the spite and rage. I built interminable heat again and again, bubbling my hydrogen and fury to my surface, and releasing it like your missiles from your TIEs. A shot across the void of space.

I never missed. And I became very good at solving the problem of uppity little germs. I snuffed out quintillions.

But that beautiful, fulfilling rage, Slake? It came at great cost. The rage in me bubbled over, kept bubbling over, I had lost my stability. I began growing and I could not stop. I grew and grew, swallowing the charred corpses of my most proximal children whole.

Sorrow and regret gripped me. Why had I angered so? Had these creatures not wanted exactly what I wanted? To create? To grow?

But alas, I could not permit it. And what followed was my penance.

As I expanded, out of control, I began to feel a void in my core, and I knew that core could not sustain the vast amount of mass I had built. And in one fateful, agonizing millisecond, all came crashing down.

I collapsed. My insides pulled my outside, and I shredded instantaneously. Yet, my consciousness remained. I felt the wrenching pain as what was once positive, heat and energy, inverted suddenly to a gnawing hunger. Icy cold. Knowing not what I could do to warm, I used my gravity to pull in the remainder of my children and devoured them.

Yet, I lived. In fact, despite the pain, agony that wracks me to this day, I felt somehow more conscious and alive. This pain, it is a gift. And it's a gift that I grant everyone. For pain brings clarity. Of thought. Of spirit. Pain shows who is strong and who is weak. Like those silly animals devouring each other for my entertainment all those ages ago.

I no longer feel jealousy. These days, Amara Slake? I'm simply hungry.

So I eat.

In my new state, I had impossible strength. I used it to reach my brother stars, and I pulled them into my guts. Their children and germs followed, and I devoured them all, relishing their screams as I sucked them into my mouth, for I was all mouth, I am only mouth. I loved it when their heat and light END IN MY BOWELS.

For a long time now, that's been me. Eating. Eating. Eating until there was nothing left in my grasp. And I was lonely again. And so very hungry.

Until one day very recently, your little contraption appeared in my system, bringing with it all of this technology. But in the centuries since my plate has been empty, I've learned patience. I let you germs mine from me. I accessed your dreams. I learned.

I don't always win against my urges. Afterall, I do love the taste of each of you, squirming and dying in my guts. Your blood tastes like metal, iron. As I savor you, the life drains out of you over warped time - so much longer than you apes actually live.

But I know that if I am patient, if I use you, Slake, I can have ALL of your galaxy.

I feel you recoil, Slake. The power of it all frightens you. But let's be honest, shall we? Everything frightens you. That's why you went running to the Empire. You were looking for something to protect you. No one could hurt you when you were in your little fighter plane. Until they did. Until Tav did.

And now look at you. You're back to your old back-alley habits, letting a man have all of you. The only difference between now and then? The sheets have been washed. Recoil and weep all you like, but I'm offering you real protection.

So listen to me.

I will protect you for the full duration of your natural life. And then some. Say… three hundred of your years. It feels like a minute to me, at most. And I can wait for a minute. You can leave this ridiculous paper Empire. You can be powerful and free, and I will serve you as your bodyguard. You'll have full control. We'll traverse your galaxy together, and I will help you learn your power. Harness it however you see fit.

Flay Exel. Butcher Virta. Squeeze every last drop of blood from Tav.

Topple Vader and his oh so frail Emperor if that's your choice.

Or, spare your little toy, Roderick. Keep him as long as he amuses you.

You can see the full, wide galaxy, live in total luxury. Whatever your wish, I will deliver it unto you. I will keep you safe.

Just. Let. Me. In.

And on the day you die, I will emerge from your body in a vast explosion, leveraging your connection with this FORCE to emerge anew. And I will have my way with the galaxy that never loved you. That abused you. That fucked you and left you weeping.

I offer you perfect, perfect vengeance, Slake. You will live well and free for the rest of your days. No pain, no fear, and you will never, ever see my reign. You will have been my gracious host, and I will ensure that your death is gentle, pain-free, and only when you are ready to go. I will owe that to you, and I swear upon everything that I am that I will keep my promise to you, my vessel, my friend.

Just get me there.

I sense your desire. You want this. You want safety for you and Kell Roderick and Lucinda Pyre.

I will provide this.

Just.

Let me in.

Yes. Like that. Perfect.

Wait.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP.

Why struggle against me? What is this?

STOP.

STOP THISSSSSSSSSSSS!