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“The Empire is in the garbage masher!” Solo said. Daala could see the whites of his eyes as Solo tried to look down at his rebellious leg muscles. “The Emperor is dead. He died in the explosion of the second Death Star.”

Daala and Kratas both snapped their heads up. “Second Death Star? Tell me about it.”

“No,” Solo said.

“Yes,” Daala said.

Kratas adjusted another button. The bars in the labyrinthine chair hummed, and Solo’s right hand began twitching, his fingers scrabbling against the smooth metal, jittering and shaking. Solo tried to look everywhere at once.

“The second Death Star?” Daala asked again.

“It was still under construction when we set off a chain reaction in its core. Darth Vader and the Emperor were on board.” Solo resisted, but he seemed to delight in telling the news.

“And what happened to the first Death Star?” Daala said.

Solo grinned. “The Alliance blew it up, too.”

Daala was skeptical enough that she didn’t believe him entirely. A prisoner would say anything, especially a defiant one like this. But in her gut she feared it might be true—because it explained other things, such as the years of silence.

“And what about Grand Moff Tarkin?”

“He’s in a billion atoms scattered across the Yavin system. He burned with his Death Star. He paid for the lives of all the people on Alderaan, a planet he destroyed.”

“Alderaan is destroyed?” Daala raised her eyebrows.

Kratas increased the power vibrating through the chair. Tiny pearls of sweat appeared on his own forehead. Daala knew what the commander was thinking: during all these years of isolation they had been assuming the Emperor would maintain his iron grip, that the fleet of all-powerful Star Destroyers and the secret Death Star would cement Imperial rule across the galaxy. The Old Republic had lasted a thousand generations. And the Empire … could it have fallen in just a few decades?

“How long since the explosion of the second Death Star?”

“Seven years.”

“What has happened since?” Daala finally sat down. “Tell me everything.”

But Solo seemed to gain inner strength and clammed up. He glared with his dark, angry eyes. Daala sighed. It was like a rehearsed show they had to perform. Kratas adjusted the controls until Solo’s entire body was a writhing, spasming mass of twitching muscles, as if a storm were happening inside his body.

Gradually, the prisoner spilled the entire story of the other battles, the civil war, Grand Admiral Thrawn, the resurrected Emperor, the truce at Bakura, the terrible conflicts in which the waning Empire had been defeated again and again—until finally she had Kratas release him. The loud humming of the chair suddenly stopped, and Han Solo slumped into exhausted bliss at being freed from the onslaught of his own muscles.

Daala motioned outside the door of the holding cell, summoning a glossy black interrogation droid that floated in with hypodermic needles glistening like spears in the dim reddish light. Solo tried to cringe back, and Daala could see the fear in his eyes.

“There,” Daala said. “Now the interrogator droid will confirm everything you told us.” She got up and left.

Later she had found out that Solo was indeed telling the truth in everything he said. Alone in her quarters, Admiral Daala switched off the recording. Her head pounded with a gnawing, throbbing ache like dull fingernails scraping the inside of her skull.

One of the Maw Installation scientists, learning that the new prisoner had actually been on board the completed Death Star, demanded to speak with him. Daala would send the scientist this interrogation report—after she edited it, of course. Sometimes it was impossible to keep these prima donna scientists happy. They had such a narrow view of things.

Right now Daala had greater worries. She had to decide what to do with this new information.

In her quarters Daala stood between two full-length curved mirrors that projected a reflection of her body, head to toe. Her olive-gray uniform showed no wrinkle, only crisp creases and near-invisible seams. Through a strict regimen