D-O was hooked into a console, and Finn stood with Poe and Rose, staring at it, waiting for the information he knew would come. D-O twittered a question, and BB-8 beeped encouragement, assuring the little droid that all was well, that this was his mission.
Finn found himself fidgeting with impatience. A few strides away, C-3PO was similarly hooked up to R2-D2.
"Artoo, have you heard?" C-3PO said suddenly. "I'm going with Mistress Rey on her mission!"
R2-D2 chirruped in clear frustration.
"What do you mean, I already have?"
"There!" Poe pointed. Information flashed across the console screen: diagrams, maps, navigational codes, atmospheric data, asset distribution, tower logistics…
Finn exchanged an excited glance with his friend. "Everything you ever wanted to know for an air strike on Exegol."
"Except how to get there," Poe said, frustrated. "You see these atmo readings?"
Finn nodded. "A mess. Look at those magnetic cross fields."
Rose leaned closer. "Gravity wells? Solar winds?" she said in a disbelieving voice. Which worried Finn. If their top engineer thought Exegol's atmosphere presented an insurmountable obstacle, their mission was doomed before it had begun.
"How can their fleet even take off in that?" Poe said.
Which begged the question: How could they land in that? Fight in that? There had to be a way…
"I'm terribly sorry," came C-3PO's voice. "But he insists!" The golden droid waddled toward them, gesticulating with his arms, the little astromech following behind. "I'm afraid Artoo's memory bank must be crossed with his logic receptors."
Finn was glad the real C-3PO was back, but this was not the time—
"He says he's getting a transmission from Master Luke!"
R2 was practically singing as he plugged into one of the console's dataports. A subspace radar map appeared on the display. A blip showed as IN FLIGHT, bearing an X-wing signature.
Poe called up the identification. "That's an old craft ID. AA-589." He stepped back, blinking. Turned to Finn. "It is Luke Skywalker's X-wing."
"It's transmitting course-marker signals," C-3PO said. "On its way to the Unknown Regions!"
Finn was nearly overcome—with relief, with joy, with hope. "It's Rey," he said, with absolute certainty. "She's going to Exegol." He gripped Poe's shoulder. "She's showing us how to get there!"
Poe considered. Finn watched as his friend came to a steady conclusion. "Then we go together."
—
Pilots and ground crew, mechanics and officers, all rushed toward the Tantive IV. Poe had called a briefing, and Rose had quickly rigged a holodisplay under the blockade runner's giant belly. It sat atop cargo cases, and the image flickered in and out, but it would do. Finn had the floor, and Poe was happy to give it to him. Leadership was much easier when shared.
"As long as those Star Destroyers are on Exegol, we can hit them," Finn was saying as Chewie joined the meeting, along with Lando and the droids.
"Hit them how?" Tyce asked. The pilot stood beside her wife, Commander D'Acy.
"They can't activate their shields until they leave atmosphere," Rose explained.
"Which isn't easy on Exegol," Poe added. "Ships that size need help taking off; nav can't tell which way's up out there."
Tyce asked, "So how do the ships take off?"
"They use a signal from a navigation tower. Like this one." Poe flipped the holodisplay to a new image: an obelisk-like tower jutting from the flat ground, spreading its array like a metal flower opening its petals.
"Except they won't," Finn said. "Because air team's gonna find the tower, and ground team's gonna destroy it."
"Ground team?" Vanik asked. He was an A-wing pilot and one of Poe's personal recruits.
"I got an idea about that," Finn said.
Poe gave him a nod. Finn's plan for the ground team just might work, though it was a bit unconventional. It would definitely take the enemy by surprise. "Once the tower's down, their fleet is stuck in atmo. For just minutes. No shields, no way out. And Rose has an idea about that," Poe said. "Rose?"
"My team's been analyzing the Sith Star Destroyers," Rose said. "In order to kill a planet with those cannons, they need an enormous power source."
"They're drawing on the main reactors!" Vanik said.
Rose nodded. "We think hitting a cannon might take down the whole ship."
"That's our chance," said Lando. He'd changed his Aki-Aki garb for bright clothing and a knee-length cape. Poe really liked his cape. He'd have to ask about it when all this was over.
"Shields or no shields," Wexley cut in. "Star Destroyers aren't target practice. Not for single fighters."
"We'd be no more than bugs to them," Connix agreed.
Snap and Connix had a point.
Finn jumped in with "Fighters and freighters can take out their cannons if there are enough of us."
What kind of galaxy had it become, Poe marveled, if freighters were considered war-class ships? He supposed it didn't matter. Getting their fleet ready was his job, now that Leia was gone. He would do whatever he had to do to get them all ready to fight.
"There aren't enough of us!" Nien Nunb protested, in his native Sullustese.
Poe nodded at the pilot, saying, "That's where Lando and Chewie come in. They're going to take the Falcon to the Core systems. Send out a call for help to anybody listening." Under Leia's direction, Poe had been laying the groundwork for months. Allies were out there. And if anyone could smooth-talk them into helping now, it was Lando Calrissian, friend to General Organa, hero of the Rebellion.
Poe continued: "We've got friends out there. They'll come if they know there's hope." Everyone started to protest; they all remembered Crait as painfully as he did. Poe thought of Zorii's words and said, "They will! The First Order wins by making us think we're alone. We're not alone. Good people will fight if we lead them."
"Leia never gave up," Finn said. "And neither will we. We're gonna show them we're not afraid."
"What our mothers and fathers fought for," Poe said, thinking of his own parents, Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, who had sacrificed so much to fight for the Rebel Alliance. "We will not let it die. Not today. Today we make our last stand. For the galaxy, for Leia. For everyone we've lost."
"They've taken enough of us," Finn added. "Now we take the war to them."
Around Poe and Finn, people were nodding. Rose's face was rapt. "May the Force be with us," she said, with feeling.
"May the Force be with us," Connix repeated.
Then several called out at once: "May the Force be with us!"
—
Lando Calrissian watched as everyone prepped for battle. It was like plucking the sweet strings of memory to see it all happen again. Ground crew moving fuel lines from ship to ship. Droids loading into fighters. Comm officers making console adjustments and testing frequencies. Commander D'Acy kissing Tyce. Snap Wexley hugging his wife Karé goodbye. More impossible odds. Another cause he unexpectedly found himself willing to die for.
Chewie hollered down to him that the Millennium Falcon was ready to go, and he realized he'd been observing the Ajan Kloss preparations because he was putting off the inevitable. Stepping foot inside the Falcon again was going to hurt. Lando took a deep breath, gathered his cloak, and climbed the ramp. He entered the curved corridor. At his feet were secret compartments, lined with a sensor-confusing amalgam of rare metals and conductive mesh. He'd smuggled a lot of stuff in those compartments—jewels, weapons, Imperial identichips, himself. His buddy Han had smuggled even more.
To his right were the cockpit and lounge, to his left was the cargo hold. He loved that hold. Lando had transported legal cargo, too, though it had most often been cover for more valuable, less legitimate goods. Often, though, his cargo hold had remained empty. Or at least not quite full. He'd thrown a lot of great parties in that hold. He turned right and headed toward the lounge. Chewbacca seemed to understand that Lando needed to take his time, so he motioned that he'd be waiting for him in the cockpit.
"Thanks, Chewie."
He ducked under the bulkhead and entered the cockpit. Chewie greeted him, and Lando spent a precious moment staring at his friend. Leia had held out hope for Ben until the very end. Turned out, Chewie felt the same way.
He settled into the pilot's seat.
Chewie moaned loudly.
"You said it, Chewie," Lando agreed. "One last time."
—
Poe's X-wing was almost ready. He watched as a crane lifted R2-D2 into the ship's astromech compartment. He'd miss having BB-8 with him, but his buddy had another assignment. Besides, R2-D2 had logged more X-wing hours than any other droid on the base, and he and Poe made a good team.
"I don't know of any droid ever returning from the Unknown Regions," C-3PO said tremulously. "But you're no ordinary droid."
Poe was about to climb into the cockpit when he saw Finn hurrying off toward the lander. He jogged over to intercept, Finn saw him and paused, and then they clapped each other on the shoulders.
Poe wasn't sure who moved first but all of a sudden they were hugging.
They stepped apart, and Poe became keenly aware that one of them was missing. He frowned. "What's waiting for her out there?" he asked Finn.
Finn's face was grim. But he said, "We'll see her again. I know we will.
"You know…" Finn hesitated.
"I know a lot of things."
"You're a general now, the general—should you be, uh, flying a fighter?"
Poe took a deep breath. He'd expected this, but he hadn't known who would be the first to bring it up. He was glad it was Finn. "I'm a pretty good pilot," he reminded his friend.
"Pretty good," Finn shrugged.
"If we're going to have any chance on Exegol, we need every pretty good pilot we have inside a fighter. That's a decision that I've made as general. But come talk to me about it again after the battle's over."
Finn mock-glared. "I will."
Poe gave Finn's shoulder one last squeeze, and they both hurried off.
He reached for the ladder. His arm still smarted from the blaster burn he'd received on the Steadfast. But he was Poe Dameron, ace pilot, acting general of the Resistance, and he could fly anything, even one-handed.
He climbed the ladder into the cockpit.
—
General Hux stared out the viewport, hands clasped behind his back. They'd made it through red space without incident and had entered normal hyperspace. Streamers of light rushed by, illuminating the beautiful, perfectly ordered bridge and the faces of its officers.
Admiral Griss approached. "Entering the Unknown Regions, sir."
The ship came out of lightspeed. Exegol loomed before them, dark and hazed, crackling with power and ferocity. Hux's hands began to shake, and he clasped them even tighter. His life's work had led him here. He took a deep breath to steady his voice and said, "Soon, all worlds that defy us will burn."
—
Rey exited hyperspace. The planet Exegol was finally before her, shrouded with dark clouds that flashed bright with lightning. The instruments on her console beeped warnings about the approaching atmosphere.
She ignored them, angling downward into the clouds, grateful to be piloting Luke's X-wing. It was old tech, and it had taken some fast thinking and even faster fingers to get it flight worthy—the wing patched with the door to Luke's hut, shield panels scavenged from the TIE wreckage, and a hefty amount of rewiring. It might never fight again—not without help from Rose and her parts-requisition channels. But it was still fighter-class, and its transition from vacuum to atmo was seamless. Rey had needed its added stabilizers to fly Exegol's unfriendly skies.
Her ship dipped below the cloud line and she gasped. The Sith fleet spread out before her, even more vast than her vision had led her to believe, shining bright in relief against the perpetual storm, stretching as far as her eyes could see. The vessels were based on an older model, from the days of the Galactic Empire, but they were so much bigger than those. Extra gun turrets and laser cannons attested to a much greater ordnance capability than her Resistance friends were expecting.
Her ship wobbled a little—gravity well! She compensated quickly, and cruised to an altitude considerably below the Sith fleet. Exegol was a horror of a planet, but its atmospheric anomalies might confuse the Destroyers' sensors and keep them from noticing her tiny ship. In fact, she was counting on it.
Moments later she was on the ground. The air was hot, the soil fissured with dryness. A dark building breached the clouds ahead of her, and for the briefest moment she considered giving in to terror. Such malevolence radiated from the building that she knew exactly what—who—she would find inside. Even more terrifying was the fact that the presence was familiar. As though some form of it had been watching her, maybe her whole life.
Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi.
Rey pressed on.
She stepped beneath a massive monolith that seemed to hover in the air. She would trust Leia and her lightsaber to light her way. Rey removed the lightsaber from her belt and ignited it. The blue blade lit up the fog around her. She startled a bit when the section of floor she stood on detached from the rest, began to descend. She looked around, alert to any sight or sound, but all was as silent as death. Then a rumble sounded, too distant to identify.
The lift settled, and Rey stepped off. She raised her weapon, and its blue light snagged on huge stone faces, sparking with electricity. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that the statues commemorated Sith Lords who had come before. This place of evil must have been here for centuries, maybe millennia, for the air was heavy with the weight of time and dark secrets.
Rey was suddenly aware that she was not alone. Figures scurried in the shadows, but she sensed no immediate threat from them, so she continued on. Just like the planet's surface, the floor here contained fissures, and light flashed deep down—Rey couldn't tell how deep—as though Exegol's entire crust had formed around a core of electricity. She came to a narrow stone corridor, and her gaze was pulled forward. A chill pimpled the flesh of her arms, because resting upon a dais was the shape from her vision. A chair with spikes curving up and around it, like a halo of giant thorns. The throne of the Sith.
Rey stepped toward the dais. The rumble grew louder.
The corridor broke open into an an amphitheater as big as a hollowed-out mountain, brimming with robed figures. There were thousands of them, faceless in the dark distance, but pulsing with zealotry. Religious disciples, awaiting the return of the Sith. As she approached, the rumbling swelled, became a collective, worshipful welcome.
"Long have I waited," came a voice from her nightmares, smooth, resonant, and slow, as though she had all the time in the galaxy.
Rey turned toward the voice. A robed figure materialized. Her grip on the lightsaber tightened when she saw her face. She was monstrous, repulsive, with red-rimmed eyes, skin barely clinging to her skeletal form. One of her hands had half rotted away.
It was the Sith Eternal, Abeloth.
"Welcome, Rey!" she added triumphantly.
She radiated evil, but Rey could not look away. There was something oddly compelling about her.
"I never wanted you dead," she said. "I wanted you here."
This was nothing she wanted, Rey reminded herself, even as her feet threatened to step forward.
"You will take the throne," Abeloth assured her. "It is your destiny." Several figures stepped forward, draped in crimson, similar to Snoke's guard, which she and Kylo had defeated together. Rey had a feeling these guards would prove more formidable adversaries.
She forced herself to sound strong, to back away from the creature. "I haven't come to lead the Sith. I've come to end them."
"As a Jedi," Abeloth said, her voice oozing contempt.
"Yes."
She smiled. "No. Your hatred. Your anger. You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me. You will become the most powerful being in the galaxy."
—
Poe's X-wing exited hyperspace, and he finally caught his first sight of Exegol. What a dung heap. It was the deadest, ugliest thing he'd seen in a long while, and he wondered if it had always been this way, or if building a colossal fleet of Star Destroyers here had killed the place.
Beside him, his tiny squadron popped into view—the Tantive IV, Finn's lander, several more fighters. "Welcome to Exegol," Poe said drily.
They dived into the cloud cover, and nearly collided with the Sith fleet. Someone gasped into their comm. Their triangled hulls were enormous, but they grew ever smaller as their number stretched into seeming infinity.
"Great dark seas," Ackbar said. "Look at that!" He angled his Y-wing closer to Poe, determined to keep his new acting general alive at any cost.
"No sign of the Falcon or allies," Tyce said from her own Y-wing.
"Just find that navigation tower," Poe ordered. "Help will be here by the time we take it down!"
—
Captain Chesille Sabrond stood on the bridge of the Derriphan, looking through the viewport at the rest of the Sith Fleet. They held formation slightly above everyone else, as the only Destroyer to have already made the climb. General Hux had tasked her crew with observing the ascension and reporting any anomalies.
The fleet was a beautiful sight to behold. Together, they were going to conquer an entire galaxy, and Sabrond was going to play a major role in the Final Order. She'd have to continue distinguishing herself. Sabrond was under no delusion that captaining a Star Destroyer would be enough. There were hundreds of captains.
"Incoming transmission on a fleet wide frequency," said her comms officer, flicking a switch to open the channel.
General Hux appeared on the bridge holo. "All ships rise to deployment altitude," he ordered.
"Captain!" said one of her technicians. "We have Resistance craft incoming."
Chesille Sabrond smiled. She'd been drilling for this moment for years. "General?" she asked, though she knew what he would say.
"Use the short-range defense cannons," Hux said. "Scatter-fire pattern."
"Yes, General." She turned to her crew. "Ready the defense cannons!"