Force Destiny

Consequences of War

The Hutt ships had been destroyed. The TIE fighters had long since stopped engaging them. Around the time he last spoke with Finn, there had been a mass exodus of TIEs that fled directly to Ilum. Without a single hostile shot fired, the swarm of fighters immediately surrendered to the Alliance. Some even joined the firefight to bring the Finalizer down. They had systematically disabled the destroyer until it had become inoperable heap of durasteel floating through space. The other coordinated attacked on the flotillas around the galaxy had been equally successful.

It seemed impossible hours ago, but they had done it.

The First Order had fallen.

Or, at least, it would fall soon. The only problem was Poe refused to make the final, debilitating, assault. The other pilots had followed his orders of non-lethal hits as best they could. There were a few strikes he feared could have proven lethal to the others still aboard the destroyer, and Poe had lost his temper with the unfortunate pilots, but, as far as he could tell, the reactor remained functioning. He knew that Finn and the Millennium Falcon should have left the Finalizer with the mass exodus.

It had been too long.

Something had happened to his friends. At first, he thought they were just ensuring the others escaped first. Then the fighters stopped coming, but there was still no freighter. Then he assumed the Falcon had become disabled in the firefight, or had otherwise malfunctioned—which wasn't improbable in the realm of possibilities. But he had sent a squadron back for them. The Falcon was empty, though its pre-launch procedures were completed, suggesting they had been interrupted mid-launch sequence. Even after the foreboding news, Poe stalled. Maybe they had chosen to go back for Ben. He had given them all the time he could. But the eyes of the fleet were on him, and he couldn't delay the inevitable in denial any longer. His friends weren't coming.

Perhaps it made him a terrible leader, but he couldn't bring himself to take down the Finalizer until they were found. He had made a promise.

"Admiral?" a voice rasped over his comlink. "It's Black four on the Falcon."

This was it. This was when he had to make a choice. With a slow, shuddered exhale he picked up the comlink. "This is Admiral Dameron."

"Sir, you asked me to stop anyone from taking the freighter, but you might want to talk to this one."

Poe sighed. "Go ahead."

"Poe?" the new, but encouragingly familiar voice said over the comlink.

"Finn?" Poe whooped and laughed into the cockpit, kicking and drumming on the panels in a relieved hysteria. "Buddy! It's a success! All of it! You should see how many stormtroopers have fled to Ilum to surrender! Where are you?"

"We're leaving on the Falcon now," his friend answered.

Poe felt like he could breathe again, but he had to ensure he kept his promise to Ben. "Is Rey with you?"

"Rey's with Ben." The way he said it made it sound as if Ben wasn't with them, and if Rey and Ben weren't with them, then Poe couldn't destroy the Finalizer until they were.

"Ben didn't want you to leave without...."

"They're getting on an escape pod, but we're meeting them on the far side of Ilum," Finn assured him. "We all got separated. There were some complications with the clone, but we got—"

Poe's eyes were drawn from the hangar bay entrance to the comlink in his hand. "Clone?"

"Yeah, it involves a resurrection machine and a story for later." The Force Destiny. Ben had told him about the darkside machine and the plans to resurrect Sidious and an army of darkside users when he was on the Falcon. As Poe had waited to destroy the ship, they had been fighting against serious evil. The battle had been far more consequential than he had imagined. They had been delayed because they were in mortal peril—the entire galaxy had been.

Poe could barely bring himself to ask the question that held the fate of the galaxy in the balance: "Is Sidious dead?"

"Technically, no, but he's frozen in Carbonite. If he's ever unfrozen, he'll die, because I stabbed him with Ben's lightsaber."

Poe hollered in excitement. "Look at you, Big Deal! Wait 'til the galaxy hears about this! You'll be famous!" As his enthusiasm faded, the remainder of Finn's words settled over him. "Wait, why'd you have Ben's lightsaber? Is he okay? Everybody's okay?" Why was that question unsettling in a way that caused a shiver to run down his back?

"Yeah," his friend said, but it almost sounded as if he was entirely convinced either. "We were separated and he threw it to me, but he's fine. We're all...fine."

"Good. Good. Finn, I...." Poe cleared his throat. There was so much he had to tell Finn, so much to apologize for. But they had time. It was the one thing that hadn't been promised to them at the beginning of the war, but now, all they had was time. He could tell them all what needed to be said, in time. Poe's attention was drawn to the hangar as the freighter rocketed out into space. "I'll meet you on the other side of Ilum, then. I thought I'd come aboard before Ben and Rey get there."

"I need to talk with you first," Finn said hesitantly. "About Ben."

That wasn't what he was expecting. "About Ben?"

"About what happens now to the Supreme Leader of the First Order." The connection grew quiet. "What will the Alliance do?"

Judging by Finn's tone, he knew full well what the Alliance would do to Ben. "Look, there is a group of other generals on my council and they—"

"Will they throw him in prison?"

Poe knew what they would do, which meant he knew what he had to do, even if he risked imprisonment himself. "For what he's done, they'll probably execute him, Finn. We're talking genocide. I can't erase that, which is why—"

"But if it weren't for him—"

"I know. I know," Poe assured him. "That's why I want you to pick me up. I have something he needs. Then he can take my fighter and disappear in the Outer Rim. The Alliance will never find him, and I'll make sure they never look for him."

"What about Rey?" Finn whispered.

Poe hadn't planned that far, but from the moment Ben allowed himself to be captured by the First Order to save their friends and the galaxy, Poe knew—despite the atrocities Ben had committed—he couldn't allow the former Supreme Leader to be captured by the Alliance. It went against everything he knew to be "just" and "right," but he had never felt less conflicted about a decision. "We'll give him the comlink," he assured his friend, "and he can send for her when he settles down somewhere."

"You'll let him escape?" As his friend spoke, Poe watched an escape craft blast from the side of the destroyer. The craft's transponder codes were registered as the Supreme Leader's private escape shuttle. It has to be them. Focusing on the craft with his thermal scanner, he saw two bright, glowing heat signatures. Force-users. There was no doubt in his mind it was them.

Poe smiled. For the first time since the war had begun, he didn't feel the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.

"I don't think we'd have won this without his help," Poe told his friend. It may have been the first time he admitted it aloud, but it wasn't the first time he had thought it. "And I personally wouldn't care if the guy dropped dead, but I owe it to Rey and Leia, and probably the rest of the galaxy to do this."

"Good." Finn sighed in relief. "Then I'll see you on the other side of Ilum."

Poe turned his attention to the comms for the fleet. "It's time to burn the First Order down! I'm going in for a fatal hit!" He set his sights for his target and engaged his thrusters.

There were cheers and shouts over the comms as the others distanced themselves from the broken vessel. Soaring across the burning mass of durasteel, Poe rolled his fighter to the belly of the destroyer. His target was the massive compartment for the hypermatter annihilator reactor. There was a glow from inside as the outer wall had already been breached. "Let's do this, buddy," he said to Beebee-ate. "Full thrusters." He pushed the throttle forward as far as it could go. As he passed the reactor compartment, Poe fired two missiles into the opening and banked to the right to put as much distance between him and the reactor as swiftly as possible.

In a bright flash, the Finalizer burst into a fireball behind Poe as he made his way around the white world to the Millennium Falcon.