How The Empire Could Have Survived Beyond 'Return Of The Jedi'
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The Battle of Jakku at 5 ABY marked the end of the Galactic Empire. Shortly afterwards, Mas Amedda and Mon Mothma signed the Galactic Concordance on Chandrilla.
But sometimes only a small alteration of events can have a major influence on things to come...
Between 2001 and 2004, Dark Horse released their Infinity comic series for the films of the Original Trilogy. Its tagline was simple: “Alter one event and a new future comes to be”. The four-issue series for A New Hope, for example, tells the story of what would have happened if the torpedoes fired by Luke Skywalker had malfunctioned and failed to destroy the Death Star.
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There are no Infinity comics for the prequel or sequel trilogies, but today we are trying something similar: could the Empire have survived beyond the Battle of Jakku, if only one small event had unfolded differently?
Our blueprint will be Chuck Wendig’s Empire’s End from 2017. Here is a quick recap of what happened at the end of the book: Gallius Rax, the de facto leader of the Empire’s remnants, had staged a massive battle between the Empire and the New Republic. But his goal was not to defeat the new government; it was to wipe out both sides by detonating Jakku and to start a new Empire in the Unknown Regions as part of Palpatine’s Contingency Plan. After initiating the bomb deep inside the planet’s core, he was confronted by his former ally, Rae Sloane, and the New Republic pilot Norra Wexley. Norra managed to disable the bomb, and Sloane defeated Rax. Before he died, he told Sloane to take Palpatine’s private yacht into the Unknown Regions to start anew, which the Grand Admiral ultimately did.
What follows is a depiction of what could have unfolded had one small piece happened differently. The first part (where the change happens) is written in the present tense, as this is the style that Wenig used for his books. After that follows a more Wookieepedia-like description of the events after the Battle of Jakku, right until the end of the first season of Ahsoka.
Enjoy!
The Turning Point
Source: Star Wars News Net
“You shot me,” Rax says, incredulous. His head moves from the smoking hole in his shoulder to the blaster in Norry Wexley’s hand. Before the pilot can raise her blaster to shoot him again, he smashes himself into the woman, his wounded shoulder first. He cries out as the pain in his arm consumes his whole body like a hungry and furious animal feasting on its prey. But aside from his own screams, he hears something else, which makes his ache nearly go away: the snap of a bone cracking in the woman’s arm that is holding the blaster.
Nora feels the weapon slipping from her hand as her arm grows numb. It clatters on the floor, and as her knees give way and her vision becomes blurred from the pain in her arm, she tries to grab it again. She would need to hold it with her other arm, the one that is not as trained for shooting, but that would not matter. The man is standing right in front of her; he is wounded too, and there is no way she could miss him at that distance.
As she sinks to the floor, her back against the wall, she gropes for the familiar piece of metal that has nearly become part of her own body, only to realise that it is not there. No longer there.
With great effort, she raises her head to look directly into the barrel of her own blaster. Rax must have taken it while she was unconscious for a moment.
The last thing that Norra Wexley sees in her life is the flash of her blaster, as Rax pulls the trigger.
Sloane somehow wishes she could have saved the rebel pilot as Rax shot her in the head at point-blank range, but Wexley’s “sacrifice” (if you could call it that) bought her the time she needed. As her arch-enemy turns away from Wexley’s corpse, she jumps to her feet and smashes directly into Rax, ripping the blaster from his hand. As she lands directly on him, she presses the barrel as hard against his chest as she can.
There is still this arrogant smirk on Rax’s face, but beneath it, there is something else: fear.
”You still have time, but you need to hurry,” he says. “When this world explodes, the Empire of old and these filthy rebels will be gone forever. But you can start anew. There is a ship up there. Take it into the Unknown Regions. The course is set, and at he end of your journey you will find everything you need to start a new Empire, a stronger Empire, an Empire that does not rely on the dark magic of a half-rotten old man and his droid enforcer, and you can rule this galaxy and every galaxy for...”
She pulls the trigger, and Rax’s babbling stops. A trail of smoke emanates from the black hole in his chest.
“You talk too much,” groans Sloane as she gets to her feet. Every part of her body aches, but Rax was right about one thing. If the decreasing numbers she has seen when they entered the building are a kind of countdown, there is not much time left. Already, the ground is shaking nearly constantly, and the reddish light from the hole in the ground is getting brighter by the minute.
Sloane starts to run. She is not sure where to go, but upwards seems to be a good idea. At one point, she comes across a computer terminal, and the number on it reads 16. Stumbling, she falls several times, but she gets up again and continues to run. In her head, the numbers count down: 15, 14, 13...
Finally, she reaches the landing platform. Directly in front of her is a sleek-looking ship, its ramp lowered. She sees a man standing inside the hatchway, waving at her. As she approaches, she recognises Brendol Hux.
“Where is Rax?” he asks as Sloane enters the yacht, turning to the cockpit. She does not bother to answer him.
12, 11, 10...
It seems to take her forever until she figures out how to start the engines. Behind her, Hux demands to know what is going on, and Sloane wishes she still had the blaster to shut him up forever.
9, 8, 7...
Palaptine’s yacht rises from the platform oh so slowly, as if Jakku’s gravity would not want to let go of the precious thing that has been there for so long.
As Sloane pushed the lever and the ship shoots into the atmosphere, she can see that the battle is still raging on, and it seems as if the Empire is losing.
6, 5, 4..
Sloane activates the ship’s communication and selects an open frequency. What she is about to say will be broadcast both to the ships of the Empire and the New Republic, but she does not care.
“This is Grand Admiral Sloane,” she yells into the com unit. “To all ships in orbit around Jakku. The planet is about to explode. Leave orbit immediately. I repeat - leave orbit immediately. This is no drill.”
As the sky turns from blue to black, she is not sure if her message has been received or if anyone follows her order, and again, she does not care.
3, 2, 1...
As Jakku ceases to exist in a giant ball of fire, a massive wave of dark side energy hits Palpatine’s yacht like an iron fist, knocking out Palpatine’s yacht and everyone in it.
Aftermath
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The explosion of Jakku created a black hole in the spot the planet had once been, leaving the Imperialis drifting dead in space. When Sloane tried to get the ship back online, she found parts of a star map that seemed to lead to a spot far inside the Unknown Regions, just as Rax had told her, but it was far too fractured to even try to get there. And without a functional hyperdrive, it took her, Brendol Hux, and his child soldiers weeks to even reach a former Imperial outpost.
There she learned that Jakku’s end had destroyed big parts of the Imperial fleet, although at least some ships had been able to flee the system after her warning. But the navy of the New Republic was in even worse condition. Most of the ships had probably thought that her message was just a ruse, and when they realised that the planet was indeed going to explode, it was too late, and they were either destroyed immediately or sucked into the black hole.
Leia Organa and Mon Mothma were still alive, but as they lacked an operative fleet, their efforts to bring the galaxy under control had practically come to an end. From the information that Sloane could gather, it seemed as if the size of the armadas of the former Empire and the New Republic were more or less even.
A Galaxy In Chaos
Source: ScreenRant
Without a controlling force, countless star systems fell victim to crime syndicates like the Hutts or the Pykes, and although Sloane had no sympathy for them, she tried to stay out of their way and let what was left of the New Republic deal with them. Every X-Wing and every frigate that was destroyed by one of those criminals was one ship less she had to worry about.
Over time, she learned that there were roughly 20 Imperial capital ships left and a few dozen other bigger vessels that were under the command of former Imperial officers. As a Grand Admiral, Sloane outranked nearly all of them, and although she did try to convince them to follow her lead, she shied away from using force to make them, if they refused. Some decided to join her later when the pressure from the sprawling criminal underworld became too strong.
Although it was tempting to attack the New Republic in this time of crisis, she refused to engage in any major conflict, upholding the belief that the Empire was truly gone.
Forging New Alliances
Source: SWRepMatters
Sloane allowed Brendol Hux to train the child soldiers that had been on board the Imperialis (one of them being his bastard son), something that Rax had promised him once they would have reached their mysterious destination in the Unknown Regions. She even let him make raids on various orphanages to “recruit” new cadets. If the Empire were to rise again, it would need soldiers and pilots, and as long as Hux had something to do, he would not interfere with her own plans.
Although her fleet was still small, she offered the crime syndicates her help in escorting transports or raiding ships and warehouses of their enemies. Sometimes she was able to play both sides, spreading rumours about who had been responsible for the loss of ships and infrastructure and stirring up fights between the various criminal factions. After all, this scum would have to be dealt with sooner or later, but right now Sloane was not yet in the position to do so.
Crushing The Shadow Council
Source: ScreenRant
When Sloane learned that some former Imperials had formed a so-called Shadow Council under the leadership of Moff Gideon, she decided that it was time to strike. Giving the impression that her group would be willing to join the Council, she sent Hux as her representative. It soon became clear that the various warlords were only after their own interests and not really willing to forge a formal alliance, so Sloane decided that this group was useless to her. At least she managed to learn about the whereabouts of the Council’s leaders.
Spreading rumours about a long lost mystious fleet of battleships in the sectors, the council leader hid, leading to massive space battles between the Pykes, two Hutt clans, the Black Sun, and the New Republic, ending not only the former Imperial cells, but also weakening the underworld and the forces of the dreaded New Republic.
In a stealth mission, Sloane and a small commando group managed to kill Gideon, practically putting an end to the Shadow Council.
Another Grand Admiral
Source: Comicbook
4 years after the Battle of Jakku, Rae Sloane was the undisputed leader of the Imperial Forces, with some even calling her “Empress”. She operated a vast network of spies both within the underworld and the New Republic, which still struggled to create a sense of order in the galaxy and was not aware of the power Sloane had consolidated. As her fleet and her personnel grew larger, she became bolder in letting the galaxy know that the Empire was still very much a faction to be reckoned with, and Sloane knew that the time would soon come to start an all-out assault on the new Republic, taking back Coruscant and ending the failed rebellion once and for all.
When she was plotting her next steps, news broke that Grand Admiral Thrawn had returned from another galaxy with an army of undead stormtroopers....
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Source: Chuck Wendig: Aftermath - Empire’s End
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