Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars) Page 2

  He cries out and goes low with the next attack—his baton whips around, catching the second attacker behind the knee. His foe, a tall man with a hawk’s-beak nose and dark eyes, curses and drops hard on his tailbone. He recognizes this one, doesn’t he? Imperial. No. Ex-Imperial. Working for the New Republic now—now he wonders, Is this about the Perwin Gedde job? It’s coming back to him now. He stole their target right out from under them. What do they want? Credits? Revenge? Is he on their list?

  Doesn’t matter. I have no time for whatever this is. The girl isn’t worth it. The payout is garbage. It’s time to go. The fallen vent stack tower is his escape route, so he leaps to his feet and bolts fast across the rooftop. Another stun blast warps the air around him (the older woman reclaimed her weapon), but he leaps and slides onto the crumpled tower now serving as a bridge. He rights himself and runs, feet banging on the metal. The vented durasteel provides texture that helps him keep his footing, and he charges down the bridge and toward a break in the factory wall next door. Nobody follows. His assailants are slow, too slow. Because, he reminds himself, nobody is as fast as me. Mercurial Swift, triumphant again.

  He leaps across the gap—

  And an arm extends across the open space and slams hard across his trachea. His heels skid out and Mercurial drops onto his back, the air blasting out of his chest as his lungs collapse like clapped hands.

  “Hi,” says a voice. Another woman. This voice, he knows.

  A fellow hunter, a bounty killer and skip-tracer like him: the Zabrak, Jas Emari. She steps over him, and as his eyes adjust he sees her juggling a toothpick on her tongue and between her teeth. She cocks her head, a flip of hair going from one side of her spike-laden scalp to the other.

  “Emari,” he wheezes, air finally returning to his reinflating lungs.

  He wastes no time. He brings one of his batons up fast—

  But she is faster. A small blaster in her hand screams.

  And all goes dark.

  —

  It has taken them months to capture Swift.

  Months to set up a false sting—months to steal ID cards from the Gindar Gang, to pin it on a young woman (who blessedly was happy to do her part in seeing the Empire take its licks), to falsify a bounty on behalf of the Gindars (one they had no choice but to pretend they initiated when hunters came knocking at their door to accept the bounty). They had to make it look good, make it look tantalizing to a bounty hunter like Swift—but not too tantalizing, because Jas assured them that when a job looked too good, too easy, it set one’s teeth on edge. Nobody wanted to spook him, so it had to be done gently, slowly, with great caution and care. And all the while, Norra’s guts twisted in her belly like a breeding knot of Akivan vipers, the nasty thought haunting her head again and again: While we waste time, Rae Sloane drifts farther and farther away. And so did their chance at justice.

  It feels good to have caught Mercurial Swift in their little trap—he’s the one bounty hunter known to interface exclusively with Sloane. But it’s bitter candy, because they have bigger prey. He’s just one rung in the ladder.

  Please, Norra thinks. Let it be the final rung.

  She’s tired, and she’s coasting on the fumes of anger. It’s burning her out, stripping her down, leaving her feeling raw inside her heart.

  But at least they have him.

  Mercurial Swift hangs from a bent pipe here in the old munitions factory, his arms extended above him, his wrists cuffed. Night has fallen on Taris. Outside, vapor lightning colors the dark clouds ocher, while down below snorting scutjumpers click and scurry amid the wreckage of this world, hunting for bugs to eat.

  “I hate him,” Sinjir Rath Velus says, leaning in and staring at their prey. His nose wrinkles as if he’s smelling something foul. “Even unconscious the man looks so bloody smug. And trust me: I know smugness well.”

  Jas twirls one of Swift’s batons in her hand. She jabs it in the air. “He’s smug but crafty. These batons are practically art. One end is concussive. The other end, electric. Kill or stun. And the second baton can be modified with a hypoinjector for poison.”

  “Let’s wake him up,” Norra says, suddenly impatient. “I want answers and I’m tired of waiting.”

  “We’ve waited this long,” Jas says. “We can wait a little longer.”

  “I want Sloane. I want justice.”

  “You want revenge,” Jas says. It’s a conversation they’ve had before. Many times, as a matter of fact. Round and round they go. Sinjir just sighs and shakes his head as Norra responds:

  “Revenge and justice are two sides of the same coin.”

  “I don’t know if you would’ve said that before Chandrila.”

  “It’s a little galling that you’re the one judging me,” Norra snaps.

  Jas holds up surrendering hands. “No judgment. I far prefer revenge as a motive. Justice is a jumping bull’s-eye. Revenge sits still right here.” She taps the center of her chest. “I admire revenge. It’s pure. It also happens to be the thing that pays me most of the time. I just think it’s valuable to know which one is which, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

  She’s wrong, Norra thinks. That day on Chandrila was a nightmare: her own husband joining the rest of the mind-controlled captives from Kashyyyk to sweep across the stage and plaza in a wave of assassinations. The funerals went on for days. The mourning still continues, months later. This is one of those times when the needs of justice and the urge for vengeance line up neatly, like the metal sights at the end of a scatterblaster. And isn’t justice really just a name for institutional revenge? Commit a crime, pay for the crime. Castigation arrives regardless of whether it’s at the hand of a governmental body or a lone soldier.

  At least, that’s what Norra tells herself. And she’s about to tell them all the same thing when Sinjir moans and interjects: “Both of you, please stop droning on about this. It’s giving me a brain-ache. Let us wake up our new friend, if only so I can stop listening to you and start listening to him.”

  With that, Sinjir reaches up and plunges the tips of two fingers into the unconscious bounty hunter’s nostrils. He tugs upward, hard. Mercurial’s eyes jolt open and he sucks in a hissing breath.

  “Wakey-wakey,” Sinjir says all too cheerfully. “Time to move and time to shake-y.” As an aside, he says: “My mother used to say that. Sweet woman. If I didn’t get out of bed fast enough, her sweetness turned rather sour, though, and she would whip me with a broom.” Now, back to Mercurial: “I don’t need to hit you with a broom, do I? Are we awake?”

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” the bounty hunter says, wrenching his head away from Sinjir’s nose-probing fingers. His eyes focus on Jas. “You.”

  “Hello, Mercurial.”

  He laughs, a small, sad sound.

  “What’s funny?” Jas asks.

  “Something someone said to me once. Dengar, actually.” He flashes a smile. “He said the day would come. ‘Bounties on the bounty hunters.’ Seems today is that day, hm?”

  “Dengar,” she says, the words sounding to Norra like they’re spoken around a mouthful of something spoiled, something foul. “I hate to admit it, but that slovenly lump of congealed sweat could be right: I have a bounty on me, after all.”

  “That’s right. I remember Rynscar saying Boss Gyuti had put a number on your head. That number doubled, recently, didn’t it?”

  “Tripled,” Jas says. Like she’s proud. Maybe she is. “It’s a big bounty. You, however, are surprisingly without one.”

  His eyebrow arches sharply. “Then why am I here?”

  “Because we have questions,” Norra says.

  “Is this about that mess on Vorlag? I thought I recognized you up on the foundry roof. Gedde was all too easy, you know.”

  Jas says, “I knew that had to be your handiwork. The mycotoxin gave you away.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

  “We don’t care about Vorlag,” Norra says. Extracting Gedde—only to have h
im die in their care thanks to a slow-acting poison hidden in his spice—feels like a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then. “We care about the one who paid you to take him out. We care about Sloane. Grand admiral of the Galactic Empire, and now—out there somewhere. In the wind. In the stars.”

  “Don’t know a ‘Sloane,’ ” he says, but the way the corner of his mouth tugs upward, as if on an angler’s hook, is telling. “Sorry.”

  Sinjir gives Norra a look.

  Norra gives Sinjir a nod.

  With that, Jas eases aside, and Sinjir formally takes up her position in front of the dangling Mercurial Swift. The ex-Imperial clucks his tongue as he starts in on Swift. “If I asked you the question, What is the most important part of your body, you would—as the ego-fed narcissist that you are—say…”

  “My mind,” Swift answers.

  “Your mind,” Sinjir says, simultaneous with Swift. “Yes. And then I’d roll my eyes like I am now—here, look, I’m rolling them.” He does indeed roll them. “I’d say, No, no, silly, I need your mind keen and sharp, fully aware of what is about to be done and what is happening as it happens. I’d note that what’s precious to you is your hands. Your fast hands, spinning those nifty little batons around like a man from the Nal Hutta circus, and I would note that the hand has so many tiny bones, none so strong as your batons, and it would be dreadfully easy to break each of them, one after the other, as if I were playing the keys of a melodium. And you’d bluster—”

  “Break my hands,” Swift hisses. “Do it. Cut them off for all I care. I can afford their replacements. Metal machine hands would—”

  “Help you do your job better, yes. I know. And how right you are. The bones in your hand are such small thinking. All of your body is! It’s amateur hour interrogation, really. Ah. Time then to go deeper. More aspirational. Forget flesh and bones and blood. Well. Hold on now. Blood. That’s interesting.” He leans in, practically nose-to-nose with the bounty hunter. Swift struggles. Norra wants to warn Sinjir to be cautious, but he’s like a hypnotizing serpent—Mercurial won’t do anything. Not yet. Not now. He’s rapt. The mystery of the threat to be revealed has been fitted around his neck like leash-and-collar, tugging him forward. “Your name, your true name, is not Mercurial Swift. Is it, Geb? Geb Teldar. Right?”

  A flinch as Mercurial retreats from that name like a buzzing fly. “I don’t know that name,” he says. But he does. Even Norra can see that.

  “It’s not really as snazzy as ‘Mercurial Swift,’ ” Sinjir says, making a pouty face. “I mean, is it? Geb Teldar.” When he says those words, he deepens his voice, flattens his lips, makes his accent sound common and muddy. “Oy, my name’s Geb Teldar. I’m a pipe fitter from Avast. I’m Geb Teldar, faithier stall-mucker. I’m Geb Teldar, droid-scrubber extraordinaire. It’s really very…bleh, isn’t it?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Thing is, Geb? Once we knew your real name, it was easy to find out other things, as well. You’re from Corellia, aren’t you?”

  Swift—or, rather, Teldar—says nothing. His eyes shine with what Norra believes may very well be fear.

  In the palm of Sinjir’s hand is a flat disk—a holoprojector. He taps the side, and a single image shines in the space above it: a nice house in the Vrenian style, square and boxy but with climbing flowers up its corners and a lace-metal trachyte fence surrounding it. The door is tall and narrow—and by the door stands a droid familiar to most of them standing there.

  Mercurial’s cheek twitches. “Is that—”

  “A B1 battle droid,” Sinjir answers, “it is, indeed. I’m sure he had a proper designation at some point, but we call him Mister Bones, in part because he’s very good at pulling the bones out of people’s bodies. Oh. Perhaps you were instead asking a different question, and to that the answer is: Yes, Geb Teldar, that is the house of Tabba Teldar, and if I read the intel correctly, she is…your mother?”

  The captive bounty hunter’s face twists up like a juiced fruit. He bares his teeth in a feral display as he seethes: “How did you find her?”

  “It was an ordeal,” Norra interjects. “But less than you’d think. You’re arrogant and people don’t like you. All it took was one bouncer in one seedy club to tell us that he heard sometimes you send an infusion of credits to someone living in Coronet City. Cross-referenced with the ever-growing New Republic database, which ties in now with CCPS records. And so it revealed Tabba Teldar to us. Which was enough.”

  “You’re New Republic,” Swift says, suddenly smug. He winces as his arms strain above his head. “You wouldn’t do anything to her. You’ve got a code. You have to follow the law.”

  Sinjir looks to Jas, then the two of them erupt into laughter. Norra doesn’t, because she’s not in the mood, not even for the pretense of this faux-amusement acted out. But they sell it, and Sinjir—when he’s done laughing and wiping tears of hilarity from his eyes—says with sudden, dire seriousness: “This is all very off-the-books, Gebbo, my friend. The NR doesn’t even know we’re out here. We’re like a proton torpedo without guidance—just launching through space, rogue as anything. Jas, as you know, is a bounty hunter. As for me—oh, my name is Sinjir, by the way, Sinjir Rath Velus—I was once an Imperial loyalty officer, which meant I secured and tested the loyalty of my fellow grayshirts in whatever way was most motivating for them and me.”

  “We follow no law but our own,” Jas says.

  Mercurial visibly swallows. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “We won’t,” Norra interjects, “as long as you tell us what we need.”

  The dam of his resolve cracks, shudders, then breaks, and the words come gushing out of him fast and desperate—gone is the pretense of ego and arrogance, gone is his preening self-confidence. “I haven’t spoken to Sloane in months. Last time was just a transmission. She was looking for a ship on Quantxi. The Imperialis. Coordinates on that ship were tied to a, uh, an Imperial officer, a high-ranking admiral named Rax. Gallius Rax. She wanted to know the coordinates—where he was from, what system, what world.”

  Sinjir grabs his jaw and squeezes. “Tell us, what world?”

  “Jakku.”

  The three of them all share looks. In their eyes: confusion. Norra’s never heard of it. Not that she’s some kind of galactic cartographer—out there in the black are thousands of systems and millions of worlds. Swift fills in more information: “It’s in the Western Reaches. I don’t know any more than that because I never had reason to care.”

  “Did she go there?” Norra asks.

  “I…I think so. I don’t know.”

  “There’s more,” Sinjir hisses. “I can see it on your face. Something else you’re not telling us, Gebby. Don’t make me call our droid.”

  “Sloane wasn’t alone,” Swift says.

  “Do tell.”

  “She was…injured, and in a ship, I think some kind of stolen Chandrilan cargo cruiser. There was a man with her. I didn’t get his name. I could barely see him.”

  “Imperial?” Sinjir asks.

  “I swear, I don’t know.”

  Norra to Sinjir: “Do you believe him?”

  “I do.”

  “Then we’re done here. I’ll call in Temmin.” The younger Wexley, her son, is in orbit above Taris, piloting the Moth with his battle droid B1 bodyguard, Bones.

  “We could haul Swift back to Chandrila,” Jas offers. “He’s worked for the Empire. Maybe he knows more than we know to ask.”

  “No. No time for that,” Norra says.

  “No time? We’ll be headed that way anyway—”

  “We will not. We’re headed to Jakku straightaway.”

  Jas scowls. “We’re not ready for whatever’s there. We don’t even know where it is. Norra, we need to take the time, plan this out—”

  “No!” she barks. “No more planning. No more time. We’ve wasted enough already on this one—” She jabs a thumb against Swift’s breastbone for emphasis. “And I will waste no more. We don’t even know that Sloan
e is still on Jakku—so we need to pick up whatever trail is there before it goes so cold we can’t find it.”

  “Fine,” Jas says, her voice stiff. A voice inside Norra’s head presents a warning: Ease off, Norra. Jas might be right, and even if she’s not, you don’t need to bark orders at her. This isn’t who you are. But every part of her feels like a sparking wire. Like she can’t control it or contain it. Jas asks: “What do we do about Swift, then? I could…dispatch him.”

  “Emari,” Swift pleads, “there’s no bounty, there’s no value in killing me, it’s just not worth it—”

  Norra sees her opportunity. She yanks one of Swift’s batons from Jas’s grip and spins it around. With a quick slide of her thumb she brings the electro-stun end to life: The tip of it crackles like static, and a blue elemental spark dances between two prongs.

  She sticks it in Swift’s side.

  He makes a stuttering sound as the electricity ravages him. Then his head falls, chin dipping to his chest. A low, sleepy moan gurgles from the back of his throat. “There,” Norra says. “Let’s go.”

  —

  Morning comes to Taris, and with it, Mercurial comes to life just as much of the planet—its scavengers and scutjumpers and its clouds of sedge-flies—goes back to hiding from the encroaching light of day.

  The bounty hunter takes some time, then eventually flips his body up so that his legs wrap around the pipe married to his cuffed hands. He hangs there, then jostles his body, slamming it down again and again until the plastocrete at the far end cracks and breaks free, the pipe crashing down—and him crashing down with it.

  His muscles aching, Mercurial scoots free of the pipe. He calls upon his body’s memory of a different life as a young dancer in a Corellian troupe and leaps backward over the loop of his cuffed wrists.

  He tries to find his batons—one of the concussive ends will make short work of these magnacuffs—but Emari must’ve taken them.