De Imperatoribus Galacticis: The Conclusion.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

De Imperatoribus Galacticis

"On the Galactic Emperors"

Epilogue

(As continued from Chapter the Twenty-Seventh.)


The Imperial Palace
Coruscant


The core hewed to the Empire, and with it, the stockpiles of the Deep Core. So, to, did most of the liberated territory which had been retaken from the Vong, adding great swathes of the mid rim, expansion region, and outer rim to the Empire. The Colonies and the Inner Rim mostly followed the same course. The Corporate Sector Authority kept its gains, but paid homage and tribute to the central government. The Chiss were independent, as legal equals in the governorship of the Condominion, but locked into alliances of military assistance with the Empire.

Teneniel Djo had pulled a masterstroke of a political manoeuvre: She had secured the recognition of all Hapan gains at the expense of the Vong, with the simple and terse declaration “We are fresh, and you are not”. Nobody wanted another war, and so diplomacy prevailed. The Empire and the Hapan Star Cluster had even collaborated in the dismantling of the Hutt territories in punishment for their collaboration with first the Vong and then the Separatist movement. That left, of course, the Separatists themselves.

Defeat had sapped Leia's ability for politics (some said, also, her estrangement from her daughter), and it was Bel Iblis who had concluded the terms, cynically. Pardons for all; the Separatist sectors of the mid rim, expansion, and outer rim along a vast swath of half of the outer galactic disk were formed into a federal republic, fully independent. They controlled Wild Space and the Unknown Regions beyond; nothing more, though they had, in the end, and reluctantly, participated in the division of Hutt Space lest their enemies gain so much more. A poisonous legend—a galactic Dolchstoßlegende, some fretted—was spread by Leia's partisans about the circumstances in which the Baron Fel had decided to commit to Sule's cause. But if that was going to cause trouble, it would cause it many decades in the future, not right now.

Only sixty-two percent of the territory of the old Galactic Empire had been unified by the Regency Council. But the number was pushed above seventy percent by the CSA, the Condominion, and the Chiss; and the last two counted as additions to the overall galactic family, their resources able to replace the lost trade with the swathe of the mid and outer rim under the control of the Separatists. Not less than eighty-five percent of the population and the industry of the galaxy were under the control of the Empire, however, and that was what really counted.

The situation in the Milky Way was more complex. There, Harlann Quir ruled as Emperor over a shakey confederation of the native races. For the moment his rule had not been challenged. There were other things to be done. In the past six months, Pellaeon's fleet had been better occupied with the grim but necessary task of suppressing the Second Yevethan Rebellion, and extirpating that mad species from the history of the galaxy for all time, killed down to the last member which could be found. Then the fleet had been directed against the communitarian rebels who had overthrown the remnants of Vong power, at the behest of Nom Anor. A short, swift campaign had broken their power, and the scheming Vong was left to rule over a few dozen billions of low-caste rebels clinging to a few forgotten backwater systems on the edge of the galaxy. The Empire controlled access to the Milky Way gate, and someday it would return; that was just a matter of time. But still other things were far more important than even that.

Today, the newborn Emperor, christened Sule after his father, had been legally crowned as the Galactic Emperor. He was guarded by a regency council consisting of his mother, Martina Tienyz; the Grand Admirals of the new regime, Kalar-Leben and Pellaeon, the Baron Fel, also Viceroy of the Condominion, and Vergere, the enigmatic force heretic who had been placed as governoress of the infant Emperor by the express directive of Jaina Solo during her mediation of the negotiations for the formation of the Regency Council. That, in turn, had only happened after long conversations between Vergere and Jaina, and these had resulted in a reordering of the affairs of the Jedi which few, even in the heights of the Imperial power structure, really understood.

Elise watched the proceedings silently, thinking of all that would have to be done, and shuddering each time the name Sule was mentioned. She could not help but think of her dead friend, even though it referred to his son; and now her god-child. Emperor Sule II, of the House of Tienyz. From time to time, though, she would glance over to Huavara, splendid in her uniform that bore evidence of her swift promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. I'll train you hard, kid, and make sure you live up to the family name, but your future is a bright one, she thought with a trace of motherly indulgence.

It would be a long and lonely future, but there was peace, and Martina, and now Mystrela's grand-niece; and these memories and challenges and her one equally-suffering friend, they were enough to make Elise think that indeed it was a future worth living. Not just for her, but for all the galaxy, the poor like herself and her doomed mother, who yearned for a peace which had at last come. Here, anyway; for there is still work to be done, elsewhere. Work to be done, indeed. The Vong had come to Imperial Centre; but from Imperial Centre, someday, would come great fleets, heading out to the Vong's home galaxy, to wipe the fatal error of the Old Sith from the face of the universe, and stabilize the balance at last.

Though, of course, only two people really thought of it that way, and one of them was dead.


Yavin System
Moon Yavin IV


Jaina didn't really know why she'd gone here. Geo-political reasons, perhaps, as it was on the ill-defined border between the new territories of the Corporate Sector Authority and the Hapan Star Cluster; or perhaps just sentimentality. The Jedi Order which Jacen had essentially taken control of as Luke turned inward, at the fate of the galaxy, to reclusively ponder with his wife at his side in empty and peaceful places; they had moved to Tatooine, to school themselves to discipline in the rigeurs of the desert. Jaina, for the moment, had no apprentices. The time for that had not yet come.

This was time for something else entirely.

Jaina stalked the halls of the remnants of some of the more distant, far-flung temples which vaguely survived intact, and she waited. The sun was rising outside, and hope came on the wings of a new day for the fourth moon of Yavin.

“Jaina.”

Jaina Solo spun around, and saw Miat Temm standing there, perfectly unblemished, as though the epic duel and the vicious murder after it had never happened, with a fond smile upon her lips and colouring her face pleasantly. In a moment, she had rushed to the woman, and hugged her—half out of her affection, and have to see if she was astral, as the spirits which her uncle had seen, and her mother, had been.

She was not. She embraced Jaina back firmly, and in that moment, Jaina knew that everything she had said had indeed been true. The tiny seed of doubt that remained was crushed, and so Jaina knew that she could begin. But with that out of the way...

“Don't ever leave me again.”

“We'll have eternity, just like I promised.” A moment, a pause: “It is, indeed, a very lonely life, Jaina. But hope sustains you from madness; and the hope that we shall have each other is more than sufficient for me, as I know it shall be for you. That, too, is after all a choice.

“And one I've already made.”

“So you have. Let's spend some time together, then, yes? We can deal with the plans, later; we have all eternity, after all.”

“Until the universe itself dies.”

“Eternity enough for me.”


Vong Home Universe
Twenty-five years later


“Your Excellency, we have entered firing range.”

“Excellent. Stand by for ignition,” Huavara di Kuat replied with cool, clipped precision. She bore the title of Grand Moff and the rank of Admiral in the Imperial Starfleet, and with the highest political title in the fleet she was its effective commander, and more importantly, the commander of its joint-operations unit, the centrepiece of the 'cleansing expedition'.

The Vong had come to their home galaxy, and reaped and slaughtered countless thousands of trillions of sentients. Revenge had been delayed by several decades, but in the end it had come. It had to come; no race would ever be allowed to forget the lesson of the punishment for the Vong, which would be left to spread out through every galaxy of their cluster, and perhaps beyond. Send everything you have at us, and then do it again, and we'll still drive you off—and then, and it doesn't matter how many years later, how long it takes—we'll counterattack. And that will be the end of you.

“Standing by ignition. All sectors report ready.”

The screen ahead flashed from a panoramic of space into a targeting diagram.

They had come to this galaxy with a great fleet, to explore it, to colonize it, to exploit its mineral wealth, but most of all, to cleanse what remained. It had been estimated that in the internicine wars of the Sith-formed life which had inhabited in this galaxy, perhaps ninety to ninety-four percent of its planets had been blasted clean and rendered uninhabitable. But that left six to ten percent, and that was millions of worlds which could still pose a threat, nevermind all of the little space-based habitats—or large ones—which still existed and had formed their own civilizations.

All of them would face the wrath of the Empire, unless the force adepts along for the ride judged them worthy to live. There would be no other criteria for survival, and the expeditionary force carried with it enough firepower to make that very much a reality, without exceptions, and without a real chance of being defeated. This was less of a military campaign, and more of a campaign of extermination: One that had been sanctioned as necessary by every moral authority known to the Galactic Empire.

Now, they had arrived, established their bases and supply dumps, and begun to hunt through the rubble in search of the threats that remained. A few battles had been fought, in which they had been entirely victorious, and a few stations had been destroyed without incident. But the survivors of this war-torn, lunatic galaxy, would not understand that their madness was being put down until today, for today, the first planet infected with the force-dead creations of the Old Sith would be cleansed, in the one way that the Empire knew to make it a sure thing.

“Commence Primary Ignition,” Huavara ordered, three clipped words, delivered without emotion in her distinct upper-crust accent, words that heralded the death of planets. The Empire always struck back.




Finis

[Ford Prefect]

Now that's an ending!

Hat's off to the Duchess!

[darthdavid]

Great work.

[Setesh]

Finis at long last, its been a long and terrific road Duchess, this is easily one of the best I've ever read. That and you ended masterfully.

[Tanner]

Is there place I can read the whole story at once?

[phongn]

Is there place I can read the whole story at once?

The easiest way would be to do a search on this board.

[Darth Fanboy]

Check the fanfic archive @ Daltonator.net and see whatevers there also, I dont know how up to date it is but it should have a bunch of them in one place.

[Elessar]

I just spent the last four hours reading chapters 20-27 + both unnumbered pieces. Great stuff... glad I waited for it all.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Thank you kindly. I hope to have the complete file up on the archive at some point, and maybe it will even be placed in the completed fanfics forum here, though that would take some footwork from the mods since it's been posted in several forms over a period of years.

I'll be glad to answer any questions anyone has about the story now that it's finished, incidentally.