Epilogue
The funeral for Mace Windy and Kane Highsinger paid them the honors due to two such noble Jedi Bendu warriors. By the light of the pyres against the moonlit night sky, Bail Antilles and Mara Windom could be seen holding hands.
Colonel Owen Lars was ransomed, and returned to Imperial service. Prince Luke told him that he had fought with honor, and that the Galactic Empire would be a better place with men like him in its ranks.
The Emperor Alexander’s position grew increasingly unstable, and his sons and subordinates began jockeying for position, each hoping to succeed a man who looked increasingly ill-equipped to lead a major galactic power.
A suitable time afterward, a lavish wedding ceremony for King Clieg Highsinger and Jaina Vao was held on Norton II.
Elora Danan joined Han Solo as queen of his tribe of Hubble nomads, roaming through desert lands on Aquilae, now beginning to sprout strange green and blue plant life.
Elora remained blind, for Aquilaean cloning technology could not yet reproduce human eyes; and the only producers of mechanical eyes were Imperial laboratories, whose work remained suspect.
Han Solo had himself lost an arm in the great battle of the Aquilae sand flats, but he refused a prosthesis, arguing that to accept such artificial aid was not “the warrior’s way”. It took a bit of time, but he soon became adept at riding a krayt dragon and shooting a laser-rifle at the same time, though he now had only three hands.
King Luke Skywalker married Princess Cora Sunrider, thereby healing the ancient blood feud between Alderaan and Aquilae.
Luke replaced his lost right arm with a mechanical one of silver, as a way of showing off his valor as a warrior via his injuries in battle. One side of Cora’s face was burned, and one of her brown eyes was now blind, but, like Elora, she had no way of replacing it without turning to hated Imperial devices, which she refused to do.
Bail Antilles remained at King Luke’s court, as his new chief warlord. He married Mara Windom within the year.
Chuiee Two Thorpe was recalled to the capital of the Alliance of Independent Systems, where he took up the position as Warlord to the Chairman that had been vacated by Mace Windy. The scar on his cheek testified to his trial by fire in the Aquilae Affair, as it came to be known.
Chuiee wedded Princess Leia of Aquilae – Luke Skywalker’s sister, whom he had come to know as Zena.
Luke’s mother had given birth to twins, a boy and a girl, but shortly thereafter, one of them had been stolen by an Imperial agent. The agent came to grief, and the babe was sold as a slave to a master who had a reputation as being better than most.
A birthmark on Leia’s upper left arm, recorded at her birth, confirmed her identity – as did her allergy to the poison used on Norton II, a rare disorder shared by others in the Skywalker line.
Her glorious red hair grew back in time, but the prisoner number branded in Alderaanian numerals on Leia’s forehead, and her empty sockets where bright eyes had once been, testified ever afterward to the cruelty of the late Empire under Alexander Xerxes XII.
This suffering was not, however, reflected in Leia’s demeanor – for, she came to be known as one of the best hostesses of the Alliance capital. But under explrt tutelage, she also learned the arts of lightsword combat. Very quickly, despite her blindness, the erstwhile Zena became one of the best duelists in the Alliance, and a worthy partner to Chuiee Thorpe when they went on undercover missions for the Chairman.
As one of the first acts of his reign, Prince Luke dedicated two giant statues, in white marble with gilt adornments, of Kane Highsinger and Mace Windy – the two Jedi who, through the shedding of their blood, made possible the restoration of the Skywalker line to its throne, and perhaps the greatest check on the power of the Galactic Empire in living memory.
And now, though eons have passed and the statues lie partially destroyed through ages of wear by the desert winds, the inscriptions on their pedestals still testify to the high regard these worthy men were held in.