“And so…” he said, holding out his hands to his people, “…are all of you.”

This is the moment, Marchion Ro thought. Another step on the path.

“Kassav and his people died, so we could stay free. But that fight isn’t over. The Republic will come for us. And the Jedi. We are no longer Tempests, Storms, Clouds, Strikes. We are one thing.”

Marchion Ro lifted his hands to his head and removed his mask. He stood there, looking out at the thousands of faces. His tool. His weapon. His army.

“We are all the Nihil,” he said.

Throughout the hall, more masks came off, only a few at first, but then a flood, the heavy things dropping to the floor with rattling thuds.

Marchion Ro let his gaze wash across all of them, seeing the eagerness, the understanding.

He turned to look at Pan Eyta and Lourna Dee. Their masks were still on.

“Now,” he said, quietly.

They glanced at each other. Marchion wondered if it would be knives, or if these two would get to live. He hoped for the latter. There was a great deal of work to do.

Slowly, the two remaining Tempest Runners took off their masks. Pan Eyta stood stiffly, his huge, tusked head expressionless—not that Marchion was very good at reading Dowutini emotions. Lourna Dee feigned nonchalance, shaking out her lekku.

Marchion Ro turned back to the waiting Nihil. With a flourish, he lifted his mask into the air.

“For Kassav!” he shouted, and this time there was an answering cheer, a torrent of sound, a release of tension and anxiety. They thought everything was going to be all right.

None of them had ever seen his face before. It didn’t matter that they did now. None of them knew who he was. He wasn’t Marchion Ro, either. His name was…it didn’t matter. Where he came from was gone, other than the lessons it had taught him, and a few tools he had stolen from it when he left.

Marchion Ro lowered his mask, and as he did, a set of small servitor droids hovered up from behind the stage, each holding a metal bowl in its actuator arms.

They floated out above the assemblage, all but one, which stopped near Marchion.

“Kassav sacrificed himself to preserve the Nihil way of life, as did his Tempest,” Marchion said. “He showed us the way. Whatever we have been, our wealth, our power…it’s just beginning. Do you know why? Let me show you.”

Another tap of a control on his belt, and the display being projected by the comms droids changed. No longer a frozen shot of the final moments of the Battle of Kur, it was now a beautiful, complex image of the galaxy in all its breadth and splendor, a slowly rotating spiral filled with countless worlds, countless riches, countless opportunities.