Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars) Page 13

  The trooper stands there, looking from her to the droid. The officer just laughs. Bones, for his part, seems to pay no attention to any of this. In the center of his narrow, rib-cage-like chest sits a black restraining bolt.

  “You’re telling me you own this droid?” the officer asks.

  “I am. You let him go. And me too. Or you’re in deep spit.”

  “Hm.” The officer grabs the stormtrooper’s blaster rifle. “This droid?”

  He points the blaster and fires. The droid’s arm spins away, detached from the body. The shoulder socket sparks as the arm hits the ground.

  “No!” she cries out. “Wait. Please—”

  “Are you sure you mean this droid?” Effney says through a venomous scowl and slams the droid up against the cage. Clang. She reaches for Bones through the metal, but suddenly the air lights up with blasterfire. She can’t see the officer, not at first, because Bones’s frame blocks her view—but as laserfire tears bits of the droid off, piece by piece, so does her view of that officer become more complete. His face is a mask of rage, and again she has that image of sanity being scrubbed away, revealing something altogether more monstrous underneath.

  Bones stands there. And takes it. Parts of him, shot off by the blaster rifle, limbs and bits banging against the cage before hitting the ground.

  Until he has been broken apart into a pile of constituent pieces.

  Until Effney is standing there, sweating, panting, leering.

  Until she, too, is broken, collapsing backward. She sobs, though again no tears come out. She turns and throws up, but it’s just dry-heaving. Norra curls up on her side and gazes into the eyes of her son’s droid—eyes that flicker before finally going dead and dark.

  Effney offers a dismissive sniff. He tosses the blaster rifle back to the trooper, who barely manages to catch it. “Sorry, scum. It seems this droid is malfunctioning.” To the trooper, he says: “I suppose Borrum won’t get to see this curious antiquity after all.”

  “Should I clean it up?” the trooper asks.

  “No. Let her look upon the wreckage of this mutant machine.” He gasps, suddenly. “Gods, it’s hot. I need water, let’s go.”

  They walk away. Bones remains in pieces. Norra curls up into herself.

  A patch of blood decorates the stone wall of her cell.

  It’s dry now. Dry for days, maybe. And once Mercurial catches sight of her, it’s easy enough to see what happened: She fought back, and Niima’s blank-eyed slave-boys roughed her up. The side of the Zabrak’s head is scuffed raw and scabbed over. Her hair—normally thrust up like the feathers of a proud bird—flops over that side of her head, matted there with blood. The blood’s dried in purple streaks down the deep-sea blue of her skin, forming new tattoos all the way to her jawline, framing that famously vicious grimace of hers.

  Jas Emari. You are mine.

  He doesn’t bother greeting her. No words. Just a smile, big and beaming. It’s enough to show her: I’m the one who caught you, little fish. She thought she outsmarted him back on Taris. And, he admits, she did. But it was only a temporary embarrassment—a failed move in a bigger game.

  A game he just won.

  He nods to Niima’s freaks. They murmur and mumble as three of them storm into her cell, looping rope—rope! Of all the primitive things—around her wrists and dragging her out.

  Mercurial is glad to have Niima’s hospitality—and he’s just as glad the Hutt isn’t here. He doesn’t know Niima, but he knows Hutts. They’re given over equally to brutality and formality, and he has no time for either of those things. (Plus, they’re disgusting. Giant, slime-lubed parasites drinking from the blood flow of the universe. Mercurial has little issue with parasites, given that he is one himself. But the slime? That, he can do without.)

  Haughtily, Mercurial leads the way. The Hutt-slaves drag Jas behind them, and she struggles to keep up. The bounty hunter is buoyant with triumph. He feels a spring in his step. This is going to be a good day. Her capture was easy. He thought he’d have a long hunt ahead of him, so he hired a whole crew to help. And then the girl just drops into his lap?

  An easy win. One that still required him to be in the right place at the right time, of course. He deserves it. He deserves the payment, too.

  But does his crew?

  Maybe he won’t pay the crew, after all. A few credits to get them on their way. Or maybe no credits at all…after all, what work did they do? It darkens his feeling of victory, a little. Having to share the cut with those old knobs? It would be much better to keep it all—especially since they did literally nothing except come along for the ride.

  He ponders this as they walk down the smooth stone passageways of Niima’s cavernous temple. In this, she’s quite unlike the other Hutts he’s known. They favor opulence and amusement. Jabba’s palace on Tatooine was positively baroque. This, though, is about as spare as they come: It’s just boreholes and tunnels sculpted out of the fire-red stone. The tunnels are smooth in some places, scalloped in others, and he doesn’t know if they’re natural to the landscape or if the Hutt chewed or somehow secreted her way through the rock. Stranger still, there’s almost nothing powered here. Minimal electricity. No droids that he’s seen. Even Emari is bound with rope—not chain, not shackles, not cuffs. Common rope.

  They pass by more cells. In one of them, the Hutt-slaves hold a man down, carving off hanks of the old spacer’s hair. The man screams as they shear him down to the skin. The freaks stuff something in his mouth—a dirty rag. One of them sticks a needle in the corner of his eye. His screams dissolve into mushy murmurs behind the gag. A puff of coppery dust and they begin to paint the man’s face red…

  They’re making more of themselves, Swift thinks. Niima enslaves her acolytes, and in turn they make more acolytes. Like a spreading disease.

  He keeps moving, putting forth a brisker pace. The sooner he can be done with this, the better. His ship, a Corellian shuttle, awaits.

  Still. Something nags at him. His good feeling is eroding, fast.

  He also doesn’t like that Emari hasn’t said a word. She’s keeping her mouth shut, and while that should please him, it doesn’t. Because it means she’s not giving him any satisfaction at all.

  And Mercurial demands satisfaction.

  The bounty hunter tells himself he’s not going to say a word, either, and next thing he knows he just can’t help himself. He keeps walking, facing forward as the words tumble out of him: “I don’t think you appreciate the trouble you’re in, Emari. And I don’t think you get that I’m the one thing standing between you and Boss Gyuti taking your head as a trophy. So now’s the time.” He grins, flippant. He makes a lasso gesture with his finger above his head. “You want to beg, beg. Plead if you can. Cut me a deal. C’mon, Emari. You’re a bounty hunter. You know the art of the swindle. Unless you just want me and my crew to bring you in…”

  And yet, nothing.

  So disappointing.

  He stops suddenly and rounds on her. “The bounty is for you alive or dead, Emari, and I’m happy to take your head—wait, what are you doing?”

  Her hands, bound in front of her, hang in front of her mouth. Her cheeks bulge until they don’t. A slick string of saliva connects her lower lip to her knuckles. Her eyes flash with mischief.

  Mercurial only realizes what’s happening when it’s far too late.

  Jas tilts her head—and the hair upon her scalp flips from one side to the other. When it does, it reveals the topography of her skull, and gone from that side of her head are her spikes.

  Three of them. Broken off. The nubs puckered with dry blood.

  Where the…?

  Oh. Oh, no.

  The spikes are in her hand.

  Swift staggers backward, heels scuffing stone as he reaches for the batons that hang at his side—

  Emari’s hand forms a fist around the spikes as she moves forward fast, too fast, and already those bony thorns are thrust up through the gaps in that fist, sandwiched bet
ween squeezed fingers—

  His fingers find one of his batons—

  Slow, too slow, the Hutt-slaves don’t even know what’s happening—

  Her fist flashes in front of his face. Three spikes slash—drawing sharp lines from his chin all the way up to his brow. Pain throbs. All he sees is red. He whips out the baton but his fingers fumble, and it drops.

  Swift trips over his own foot. His shoulder slams hard into the wall as he falls. Above him, he sees the blurry image of Jas Emari vaulting over him—with a pivot-twist of her wrist, she uses the rope to yank two of the Hutt-slaves with her, and both of those freaks collapse into Swift just as he tries once more to stand. Her knee connects with one of their heads—and that head slams into the bridge of Mercurial’s nose with a dull pop. Behind his eyes he sees hyperspace streaks. He roars with rage.

  When next he opens his eyes, he sees Jas stab out with a high kick—taking out the last Hutt-slave. The neck snaps. The slave drops.

  Jas Emari backpedals. Sawing at the rope with her own horns.

  “Emari,” he growls, trying to stand.

  She cuts through the rope. “Please don’t hurt me, Mercurial. Please don’t take me to Boss Gyuti.” She makes a gesture at him with her free hands—the backs of each finger swiped along her cheeks as her upper lip twists into a sneer. He assumes it’s a rude gesture.

  Then she finds one of the bolt-holes leading up through the Hutt’s temple—she clambers her way up through the space and is gone.

  —

  Her head hurts. Bad. The horns on her head are bone. Breaking them off meant breaking her bones. Slamming the side of her skull against the unforgiving stone wall of her cell and snapping them off one by one was no easy feat. After each attempt, she had to sit. She tried not to throw up. Once, she passed out. And then it was back up at it again—wham, wham, wham. Blood slicking the wall. Her brain doing dizzy loops. Until she had three of her thornlike horns in the flat of her palm.

  Three keys.

  She’d had one actual key hidden there—a lock pick concealed in a fake horn—but the Hutt-slaves found it and took it away.

  Which left her with one choice: break off the horns.

  They were her way out. And she needs it, too, quick as anything, because this vicious diversion paid an unexpected bounty: She knows where Rae Sloane is. She saw her. Here in the temple, working with Niima the Hutt. Going together on some kind of expedition.

  She has to get back to Norra. And fast.

  She had no idea who was coming for her, but it being Mercurial both pleases her greatly and worries her deeply. Swift is no fool, and he said something about bringing a crew. Him? Working with a team? Mercurial doesn’t play well with others. These are strange days, indeed.

  Whoever they are, they’re now a part of her plan.

  They came here somehow. A ship, she assumes, if he has a crew with him. And if he has a ship? Then that ship has clearance codes. Clearance codes mean they can take to the air and the Empire won’t shoot them down on sight. It won’t be an advantage they can use forever, but it’s something.

  First, though, she has to get to that ship.

  And then she has to take it.

  The tunnels here in Niima’s temple are a worm-eaten labyrinth—she thinks she’s headed in the right direction, but suddenly the tunnel curves back on itself and goes the other way. Most of the tunnels look the same. Every time she believes she’s figured it out, the tunnels prove her wrong, and she worries suddenly that she’s going over the same area, again and again. Is this mark a scuff mark from her boot?

  Fear assails her. I could die in here. I could get lost and starve to death. Or they’ll come for her. She stops crawling and takes a moment just to listen—turning her ear to the tunnel ahead.

  Sounds. Scraping. Murmuring. Coming closer.

  Jas hunkers down and lies in wait as the sounds grow louder. It’s them. Niima’s mind-wiped acolytes. Can they smell her? Do the Hutt-slaves know their way through this maze?

  From an intersecting tunnel, one appears. Pale face. Sharpened teeth. The slave’s mouth widens in alarm, mad eyes flickering, and he comes at her fast—scurrying like an animal, teeth snapping at the air, clack, clack, clack.

  She kicks out with a boot, catching him in the mouth. Teeth shatter and her foe gags on them. A little voice inside her says, He’s a slave, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, don’t kill him, but it’s too late for him—there’s nothing there, no mind, no rational thought, just pure feral zeal. Jas has to do what she’s gotta do.

  But even taking that time to worry about it distracts her.

  Hands come at her from behind. They close around her throat and drag her backward—the back of her skull slams into the stone. Nausea rises in her, threatening to take her insides and send them outside, nearly overwhelming her as the second Hutt-slave draws her back through the tunnels. She kicks her legs and paws fruitlessly at the stone, trying to get her moorings, working hard as hell not to be wrenched away by this gabbling, mind-wiped mutant—but it’s no use.

  Instead of resisting, she decides to go with it. Like a swimmer, she pulls herself in the same direction the Hutt-freak is dragging her—it gives her just enough momentum to overtake him and crash into him.

  They bowl over. She fights into position. He howls as she crunches an elbow into his trachea. The howl is cut short, stopped by a squeaky gurgle. Jas doesn’t stop and wait. It’s time to move again—and so she does, finding an adjacent channel and wriggling through. Anytime she finds a new borehole, she takes it. Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t vomit. She’ll find something. Some way out. Some way forward—

  Another sound halts her progress.

  This time, the sound isn’t coming closer.

  It’s distant. Someone yelling.

  It’s him. It’s Swift.

  (She gets a small thrill from hearing the panic in his voice.)

  She focuses on that sound, zeroing in on the direction.

  That’s the way she heads, now—through tunnels that corkscrew, where the Hutt-slaves have carved mad icons of their mistress, Niima. And then, from an adjoining tunnel she feels it—

  A faint current of air.

  With it, a smell: metal, kesium, ozone. The smell of a starship. That means a hangar bay or landing pad. A new sound arises, too. This sound is musical and discordant in equal measure, and now she knows she’s close, because as they dragged her through Niima’s temple, they pulled her through the Hutt’s throne room—a cathedral-like area shot through with holes that hummed and howled like a wind instrument, like a musical organ formed of ancient stone. Whether that was designed intentionally—lunatic music to appease the slug—or is simply a natural effect, Jas doesn’t know and doesn’t care. It means the way out. It means freedom.

  She follows the air and the strange music and starship stink that it brings. Ahead, a smooth borehole dropping down awaits…

  The bounty hunter drags herself along it on her belly. She peers through the space, and sure enough, there she sees the prize. A shuttle by the looks of it—an older-model Corellian ship. Flat, short wings. Big, tubby engine. At the fore hangs a blunt nose cone. That’s my way out.

  One problem: It’s got a guard. The rest of Swift’s crew, whoever they are, don’t seem to be here—they’re probably off looking for her. Jas isn’t a gambler but she’d bet credits that’s what Swift was yelling about.

  One guard, though? She can handle it.

  From here, she spies the broad, rimmed hat of a Kyuzo. Familiar. Too familiar. It can’t be…

  As he turns, looking around the room, she spies his face and recognizes the bounty hunter who used to run with her aunt’s crew: Embo. It’s him. Even now, she misses him sometimes. He was quiet, and spoke only in his native tongue. But she took the time as a child to learn his language, and as a result they became close. Like family, in a way. (Jom Barell reminds her a bit of Embo. Silent, deadly, but sweet, too. Hard to get close to, but once you do, you see how good
he can be.)

  Of course, if this is really him—then what? Does he know he’s here to hunt her? Does his loyalty side with the job—or with her? And if he sides with the job…mercy. The Kyuzo are capable fighters. Embo is older, now, but if she had to lay credits down, she’d bet he hasn’t lost a step.

  She must tread carefully.

  Jas centers herself. She’s still dizzy, but she’ll have to push past.

  With a fluid, silent movement, she slips through the hole and hangs there, her fingers finding a narrow, smooth groove in the stone to help hold her. Her feet dangle. Below, Embo paces near the shuttle’s ramp—he’s a good way down, but she can handle the jump as long as she doesn’t go straight to the ground. Instead she swings herself forward and—

  Jas is in midair. Arms out. Legs crouching as she lands atop the shuttle. Whump. She lands as quietly as she can, but still, it makes a noise even as she ducks and rolls. There’s no time to waste as she quickly sidles forward, ducking behind one of the shuttle’s fins and flattening herself against it.

  Footsteps. A grunt. Embo is looking…

  If I can just sneak past him, this gets a whole lot easier.

  Jas whips down along the aft side, jumping from one engine booster to the next, until she’s on the ground and creeping up alongside the ship—maybe, just maybe, if she can dart inside, Embo won’t even see her. Then she can fire up the ship and—

  A tall shape lurches into the space in front of her. Perfectly silent. A bowcaster points at her—a crossbow big enough to take her head clean off her shoulders at this range.

  Embo has found her. Orange eyes glow in the dim half dark of the temple hangar. His breastplate is scarred up, the gold long since worn off, and the red Kyuzo battle-shirt is ragged at the hem.

  “Embo,” she says, startled.

  The bowcaster doesn’t waver. He tilts his head and in his Kyuzo tongue says: “Old friend. It is you.”

  She licks her lips, looking around. Embo could kill her. He could end it for her right now. He’s gone up against bounty hunters, pirates, Jedi, Sith—and he’s either triumphed or survived to fight another day. She swallows a hard lump and feels her palms sweat. “It’s good to see you again, Embo. It’s, ah, been a while. Marrok around?”