(C98) The Wheel's Epilogue
Excerpt from ONE PEOPLE, ONE STATE, ONE DESTINY
“For years, we fought. We bled. We sacrificed everything in the struggle against tyranny. The Republic sought to keep us shackled, to drain our worlds of their wealth, their strength, their future. They called us Separatists. Traitors. Dissidents. They lied. They always lied. All because we dared to demand the one thing they would never grant us: our freedom. We were never the betrayers–we were the betrayed!”
“And when the power of Core came to steal back the future we forged for ourselves, we did not let them! We built the fleets they said we could never build. We mustered the armies they believed we could never muster. And today, I can stand before you not as a rebel, not as a soldier in a war of survival, but as a free woman. A free citizen of a free nation! A Separatist State of our own. A Confederacy to call our home! A Confederacy of Independent Systems!”
“With our own determination, with our own strength, with our own might of arms, we have taken back everything that had always belonged to us! Our wealth! Our freedom! Our future! And we will never let them go again!”
“Our armies, our fleets, our people, have cast off the chains of the Core’s dominion. Look to Coruscant and see what remains of the Republic! Nothing but shattered remnants, grasping at power, fighting over the ruins of their own making, torn apart by the very rot we sought to escape.”
“But do not mistake their downfall for our security. Even in death, the Core’s greed is insatiable. A dictator sits upon Coruscant’s shattered throne, commanding the war machine that would see our ruin once, and will see our ruin again. And what of the so-called ‘Restorationists’ of Chandrila, of Humbarine, of Alderaan? They dream of the old days, when they could rule us from their ivory towers, when our people were nothing more than resources to be exploited.”
“And if we are not ready, they will come for us!”
“They will call us warlords, extremists, and criminals. They will whisper of peace, of compromise, of reconciliation. They are lies. Lies, just as they always have been. They do not seek peace–they seek to undo everything we have fought for! They seek to restore their dominion over us, to demand our obedience, to turn our hard-won independence into another chapter in their history of conquest!”
“Today, we lift our heads high and declare to a new galaxy: they will never again hold dominion over us. We have broken their grip. And we will never bow again!”