Epilogue

I don’t even know why you were so eager to have my fleet come here,” said Admiral Ackbar in his gravelly voice. He turned and regarded Luke Skywalker through his goggly eyes. They were on Drall, as Ackbar had been curious to inspect the repulsor. “There was hardly any work left for my ships to do—thanks to Admiral Ossilege and Gaeriel Captison.”

“Thanks to them, yes, sir,” said Luke. Luke thought of Gaeriel, thought of her daughter, Malinza. Luke had promised Malinza he would take care of her mother. How was that debt to be paid? He thought of Ossilege, of the difficult, impossible man who also had a knack for doing the difficult, the impossible. “I will mourn them both for a long time to come. But we have won. Thanks to them, and many others. And in large part thanks to those three children, over there.”

Anakin and Jacen and Jaina were racing around, climbing around the hummocks of dirt that the repulsor had forced up when it had shoved its way out of the ground. They were being chased by a laughing Jenica Sonsen and a Belindi Kalenda who was too busy making ferocious faces to laugh. They were playing in the shadow of the repulsor. Once hidden underground, the top of the cylinder now rose a hundred meters up out of the ground.

Han and Leia laughed out loud as their children turned the tables and started chasing Sonsen and Kalenda. Mara watched the fun, smiling quietly, and even Chewbacca was enjoying the show. Not far off, Ebrihim and the Duchess Marcha were lounging on the ground, intent in conversation. Judging by their eager, focused expressions, they were either talking over some complicated matter of state or, more likely, dissecting some particularly juicy bit of family gossip.

It was probably the latter but Luke hoped it was the former. The Duchess would need the practice. Leia had told Luke of her plan to appoint Marcha the new Governor-General of the Sector.

Dracmus sat by the two Drall, apparently so enthralled with their conversation that she had fallen sound asleep.

Luke heard a high-pitched voice raised in protest behind him, answered by a rapid, high-pitched twittering that sounded far from complimentary. He turned around to see Artoo and Q9 at it again, bickering over some fine point of droid design or other. Threepio was standing between them, trying to calm them both down. Luke had a feeling Threepio would meet with his usual degree of success.

“You know,” he said, “it’s the beings on this plain, the humans and the Selonian and the Drall and the Wookiee and the droids right here. They’re the ones who won this war. Not the ships or the guns or the hardware.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Admiral Ackbar. “But no one wins a war. There are just different degrees of losing. The damage done on these worlds is shocking. Shocking. It will take them many years to rebuild it all, to sort out all the loose ends.”

Luke nodded. But at least some of the loose ends were being tidied up already. Admiral Ackbar brought news of the arrest of one Pharnis Gleasry, a self-styled agent of the Human League, part of the spy ring that had sliced its way into far too many government files back on Coruscant. It had taken very little to get Gleasry singing like a bird. The whole Human League spy ring back in Coruscant had been scooped up and thrown in jail where they belonged.

There was, of course, the question of what to do about the next star on the starbuster list. The short-term solution was to de-imprint the repulsor controls so they could be used by someone over seven, be ready with the right targeting numbers, and simply fire this repulsor—or the one on Selonia—as needed. Once it was too little, and too late, the Sacorrian Selonians had indeed caved in altogether. The long-term solution was to get the shutdown codes from the Triad. As the Triad was in an understandably cooperative mood—what with the New Republic occupation troops already on the way—that didn’t seem likely to be too much of a problem. Someone had started the completely false rumor that the New Republic Navy was going to re-aim Centerpoint straight at Sacorria’s sun, and leave it that way through all the starbuster pulses until they got the shutdown code. The rumor might well encourage cooperation.

And then there was the whole question of studying Centerpoint, and the repulsors on the other three worlds. Who had built the Corellian system, and when, and why, and what had happened to them? Well, some ends were looser than others. Those mysteries might easily take centuries to be solved—if they ever were.

There was one other loose end that Luke took a personal interest in. But he had a feeling that it would get sorted out without undue delay.

“You know,” said Admiral Ackbar, “you said it was the people here who won this war. I can’t help noticing two rather prominent names that seem to be missing. They were on the transport with us. Where in the world have they gone to?”

Luke smiled. He knew exactly where they were, but he had a feeling they were not much in the mood for company. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Admiral. They’re both the sort who are pretty good at taking care of themselves.”

*   *   *

“Lando?” asked Tendra as they wandered about on the churned-up land that the rise of the repulsor had produced. It was not the loveliest of landscapes, but it did have the advantage of providing a good deal of privacy behind every hummock and furrow of ground.

“Yes?” Lando asked. “What is it?” Tendra had found herself on top of a higher than usual clump of loose rock. Lando offered his hand, and she took it, used it to steady herself as she slipped and slithered down into the next little furrow of ground. He did not let go of her hand once she was on level ground, and she did not let go of his.

“Remember how I told you that a Sacorrian woman is not allowed to marry without her father’s consent, no matter how old she is?”

Lando felt a little flutter in his chest, a flutter of fear, and excitement, and interest, all mixed up together. “Yes,” he said, managing to keep his voice steady. “What about it?”

“Well,” she said, “there’s just one thing. We don’t have to do anything about it immediately, but there’s something more I want to tell you about that law. An interesting legal technicality. It’s been well established by many precedents that a Sacorrian woman is not bound by that law—if she is outside the Sacorrian system. If she were on, oh, Drall for example.”

“Is that so?” Lando asked, quickly regaining his old equilibrium. The idea needed time, and thought—but he definitely liked it at first glance. He smiled, and looked at her lovely face. “Is that a certifiable fact?” he asked.

“It is,” she said, smiling right back at him.

“Then why don’t we get back to the Lady Luck and discuss the whole matter over dinner?” he asked. “I’ve always found legal technicalities to be downright fascinating.”