Empire's End: Aftermath (Star Wars) Page 3

  Fine. He’ll head back to his ship and use the cutters there. But before that happens—he extends his thumb, opening up a comm channel to make a call to Underboss Rynscar of the Black Sun. The face that appears is her true face, the one Rynscar keeps behind that rusted demon’s mask. Her true face is pale, with dark eyes. Her lips are painted the color of dirty emeralds.

  She sneers. “What is it, Swift?”

  “Jas Emari.”

  “You say that name like it is a key unlocking a door. What of her?”

  “Is it true? There’s a bounty on her head?”

  Rynscar lifts her brow. “It is true.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “She did nothing. Which is quite the problem. She has debts. More now than when she started, given Nar Shaddaa.”

  “Gyuti wants her head?” Mercurial asks.

  “He does.”

  “And he’ll pay handsomely for it?”

  “He will. Fifty thousand credits.”

  “I don’t want credits.”

  She hesitates. “Are you saying you have Emari?”

  Not yet. “I will.”

  “Let’s say you do. What do you want in return?”

  He grins. A cocky, lopsided smirk. “A case of nova crystals.”

  “A dozen,” she counters.

  “Twice that.” When she doesn’t answer, he says: “I know Gyuti, and I know for him this is personal. It burns him that she keeps slipping the leash. Makes him look bad in front of the Hutts and everyone. I know where she’s going, so I’ll get her, but I need real currency.”

  “Why that much?”

  Again Dengar’s words echo: We gotta band together. Form a proper union. “I need a crew to get this done.”

  Finally she says: “Then get it done.”

  “I’ll get my crystals?”

  “You’ll get your crystals.”

  Mercurial ends the call and cackles. Time to get paid, because he knows where Jas Emari is going:

  The nowhere sandswept deadlands of Jakku.

  Leia startles at the sound of a furious pounding on the door, her knee banging into the table above which a glittering star map is projected. The map flickers, and when the voice comes through the door—“Leia! Leia!”—she struggles to stand swiftly, almost forgetting the tremendous living weight around her midsection. The child inside her kicks and tumbles as she endeavors to get upright. Calm down, little angel. You’ll be free soon enough.

  “Mum,” says her protocol droid, T-2LC. “It appears as if someone is at the door.”

  “Yes, I hear that, Elsie.” She winces as she moves out from around the couch. That couch was supposed to be comfortable—but all it does is swallow her up like a devouring sarlacc. “It’s just Han.”

  “Is he in danger, mum? He sounds like he’s in danger. Should I open the door? I don’t want to let the danger in, but—”

  “Leia, damnit, the door,” Han says from the other side. His voice is followed swiftly by more thumps and thuds. He’s kicking the door, she realizes.

  “I’m coming!” she yells back. To the droid she says: “I’ll get it.”

  “But your condition, mum—”

  “I’m not dying, I’m pregnant,” she snaps back, then opens the door. Han wastes no time in almost falling through it, his arm cradling a lumpy, uneven bag of something.

  “Took you long enough,” he says, smirking as he juggles his footing and skirts past her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as he does.

  “Don’t you know,” she says, shooting T-2LC a dubious look, “I have a condition.”

  “Elsie, I told you, Leia doesn’t have a damn condition.” But then, more seriously and in a lower register, he says to her: “You do need to slow it down a little bit.” He gestures toward the star map. “For instance.”

  “I am in command of my own body, thank you very much.”

  “Tell that to the little bandit,” he says, dropping the sack of whatever down on the counter in the kitchen. The little bandit is what he’s taken to calling the child currently wrestling inside her belly.

  “You mean the little angel.” She follows him into the kitchen, and T-2LC’s whining servomotors behind her indicate he’s following closely behind because someone (Han) told the droid to keep close to her in case she falls. Never mind the fact the droid stays so close to her, she’s nearly tripped on his metal feet half a dozen times already. “What did you bring?”

  Han winks, thrusts his hand down into the bag, and pulls it out gripping a jogan fruit. “Look.” He gives it a lascivious squeeze.

  She sighs, crestfallen. “Is that…whole bag full of jogan fruit?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I cannot possibly eat that much jogan fruit.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Let me rephrase: I don’t want to eat that much jogan fruit.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  “Not that good.”

  “The doctors—”

  “Dr. Kalonia said to incorporate jogan into my diet, not to replace everything with jogan fruit.”

  He sweeps up on her, cradling her face with his rough hand. He strokes her cheek gently. “All right, all right. I’m just trying to do right by you two.”

  “I know, Han.”

  “If I think I can help, I’ll always help. With whatever you or our son needs. You know that, right?”

  She laughs. “I know.”

  It’s been hard for Han. He won’t say it out loud, but she can see it on his face. Her husband needs something to do. He’s bored. Chewbacca’s back home, looking for his family. Luke’s searching the galaxy for old Jedi teachings. Han Solo’s got nothing to smuggle, nowhere to gamble, no foolish Rebellion to fight for.

  He’s like the Falcon: retired to a hangar somewhere, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  So he buys fruit.

  Lots and lots of fruit.

  And, of course, he worries about her. He turns her toward the table and the star map. “You’re not still on this, are you?”

  “What?”

  “Leia, Kashyyyk was a fluke. We got lucky.”

  “I’m always lucky with you by my side, scoundrel.”

  He shakes his head. “You joke, but this is nuts.”

  “It’s not nuts,” she says, suddenly irritated. “What we did on Kashyyyk was the right thing to do, and you know it. If we could formalize that process, if we could target other worlds that the Senate is too cowardly to liberate, then maybe we could—with the unofficial sanction of our friendly chancellor—find a way to do right by those worlds. Which means not only do we save whole systems, but those systems might swing our way and join the chorus of voices here in the New Republic.”

  He sighs. “I dunno. Can’t somebody else handle this? Just for now…”

  “Look,” she says, heading over to the star map. “Tatooine. Kerev Doi. Demesel. Horuz. All worlds still in thrall either to some Imperial remnant or to criminal syndicates or gangs. Rebellions work. We’ve seen it. We’ve helped make it happen.”

  “You know Mon’s not going to go for that.”

  “She already has. In a way.”

  In the aftermath of the attack on Chandrila, the New Republic was left reeling. Already the whispers arose: The New Republic cannot protect itself, how can it protect us? Already the accusations have been aimed at Mon Mothma’s head like turning rifles: She is weak on military presence and now she’s injured, how can she truly lead us? Leia and Han came back bringing a much-needed—if illegal and unexpected—victory for the New Republic at a time when it badly needed it. Yes, Chandrila was attacked. But they saved Kashyyyk. They ran off the Empire and liberated the Wookiees. It was a win. And it stopped the Senate from hemorrhaging loyal senators.

  She starts to say, “If we could aid rebels on each of these worlds—”

  “Mum,” T-2LC chimes in, literally thrusting his copper-shine protocol droid head in front of her. “You have a call.”

  “I’ll take
it here.” She settles back down into the couch, then swipes the star map off the projector. A new image replaces it: the face of Norra Wexley. Once a pilot for the Rebellion, and recently the leader of a team of “Imperial hunters,” tracking down the Empire’s many war criminals when they fled to various corners of the galaxy to hide. She had helped Leia in a different capacity, finding her missing husband and helping Han free Chewbacca and his planet from the Empire. Now, though? Norra is out there looking for prey most elusive: Grand Admiral Rae Sloane.

  Sloane is a mystery—like a seed between the teeth that Leia cannot work free. First, the self-proclaimed grand admiral went and admitted that she was in fact “the Operator,” a high-level, confidential informant who had helped the New Republic win vital battles against the crumbling Empire. Then Sloane offered to talk peace, and so she asked to come to Chandrila for that very purpose. And while she was present, those captives freed from the prison ship that had held Chewbacca turned on the New Republic, assassinating various high-level figures and injuring many others. The tally of the dead is too long. Senators, diplomats, advisers, generals, admirals.

  Was I on the list of targets? Leia wonders that even still. If a twist in fate—Han going off half-cocked to save a whole planet all by his lonesome—hadn’t set her on the path she took, would she have been standing there on the stage that Liberation Day?

  No way to know. The list of targets remained embedded in minuscule control chips planted at the brain stem of each returning captive. Too easy to miss on a general scan, and too sinister to even consider real until it was far too late. By the time they discovered the chips—weeks after Liberation Day was already over and the blood had been scrubbed from the plaza stone—they had fritzed out, malfunctioned in some kind of planned degradation. Leia’s own payroll slicer, Conder Kyl, wasn’t able to find anything, either. If Conder can’t find it, then there’s nothing to find.

  Point is, Sloane fled Chandrila. An act that coincided with the Empire going dark. Outside a few splinter remnants, the enemy has gone silent.

  Which disturbs Leia considerably.

  “Norra,” Leia says. She owes this woman a debt. Norra’s own husband was one of the assassins, and Leia tries to imagine what that must do to a person’s own heart and mind. Even more, what that must do to a wife and mother’s heart and mind. (Motherhood has been on Leia’s mind a lot recently, unsurprisingly. What Norra has gone through for the Rebellion and for her family is both admirable and harrowing. Could Leia do the same? Could she walk that line? And then a troubling question she’s almost afraid to answer: Where do her true allegiances lie? She has a family to raise, but a galaxy to help lead…) “Tell me some good news, please.”

  “We found Swift.”

  “The bounty hunter. Good. Did he give you anything?”

  “He did. He said Sloane went to a planet in the Western Reaches called Jakku. Know anything about it?”

  Leia does not. She gives a look to Han, who clears his throat and waves to the hologram. “Hey, Norra. Jakku, huh? I know it. Been there once, years ago. You know, the usual: bringing bad things to bad people. There’s nothing there. Miners, scavengers, dirt merchants. They got some kinda hokey religion there in the south, and there’s the Wheel Races in the north. Otherwise—c’mon, it’s a wasteland. Makes Tatooine look lively.”

  “Why would Sloane go there?” Leia asks.

  “Beats me,” Han says. “Maybe she’s looking to get away. Run and hide. Nobody would look for her on Jakku.”

  Norra says, “Swift thought it had something to do with another Imperial. Someone named Gallius Rax.”

  That name isn’t familiar to Leia, and she says as much. Something about all this feels wrong. A feeling of worry has burrowed under her skin. “Norra, come home. Perhaps it’s time we present this to the chancellor—”

  “Respectfully,” Norra says, “I’d like to scout the planet first. Time is slipping through our hands like so much rope, and I’d rather not lose any more of it. After what happened on Chandrila, we need to report more to the chancellor than just the word of some bounty hunter. At least let us take a pass, see if we can’t uncover…something.”

  Leia gives Han a look. He twists his mouth into a lopsided grin. “Hey, don’t look at me. You know what I’d do.”

  “Yes, you’d run off like a madman, right into danger.”

  He shrugs. “A smart bet.”

  All the more reason to warn Norra away from that course of action. Any plan whose best endorsement is a thumbs-up from Han Solo is trouble. Still, Norra isn’t Han. She’s smarter than that. Isn’t she?

  “Go,” Leia says, finally. “See what you find out, and then we’ll have something to bring to Mon.”

  “How is the chancellor? Her injuries?”

  “They’re healed, mostly.” Though far deeper injuries remain: injuries to the woman’s spirit and to her career. “She’s fine, I’ll tell her you were asking. And eventually, we can tell her what we’ve been up to.”

  “Thanks, Leia. I appreciate your help in all this.”

  “It’s you who’s helping me, Norra. You’re helping me and the whole of the galaxy if you can find Sloane’s scent out there. Just be careful. If you see the Empire, do not engage. Do you understand?”

  “I hear you loud and clear,” Norra says. “I’ll see you soon.”

  And then she’s gone.

  The Moth floats above Taris.

  The long-legged Sinjir Rath Velus sits on the lower bed in the back bunk, the hilt of a vibroknife flipping between his fingers, over his knuckles, and from one hand to the other. Back and forth, the blade dances. Around him, the ship is alive with activity: Norra off talking to Leia, updating her on their progress (“We found Swift”); Jas shuttling from room to room, looking for her ammo belt (“I swear, if that droid misplaced it, I’m going to turn him into ammunition”); Temmin stalking the hallways, moaning again about how his mother keeps him in the ship and out of danger (“I’m an adult now, you know, basically, and I can handle myself”); Mister Bones humming along, tapping and whirling about, singing some song in Huttese:

  LA YAMA BEESTOO, LA YAMA BEESTOO

  CHEESKAR GOO, CHEESKAR GOO

  WOMPITY DU WERMO, WOMPITY DU WERMO

  MI KILLIE, MI KILLIE…

  Sinjir remains sitting and silent. The knife hilt rolls and turns. Sometimes he looks down and sees blood on his hands. Real, fresh blood: the fingertips wet and greasy with it. He thinks: I cut myself. The blade is out and I am injured. But then the blood is gone again. An illusion. A dream. Real until it’s not.

  Eventually, Jas moves past the bunkroom, the ammo belt slung over her shoulder, and she reverses and storms up to Sinjir and says, “It was in the kitchen. Why was it in the kitchen?”

  He has no answer, so he shrugs, the blade still dancing.

  She narrows her eyes. “What’s your problem?”

  “I have no problem. I am a man unburdened by conflict.”

  “Sure, and I’m a baby Hutt-slug.”

  “You’re slimy, but not that slimy.”

  She kicks him in the knee. Not hard.

  “Ow.”

  “No, really, what’s your malfunction?”

  “For starters, I don’t have anything to drink.”

  She sits down next to him. “Thought you quit drinking.”

  “Hardly. I quit drinking Kowakian rum, because even though it tastes like the sweet, syrupy glow of pure liquid stardust, it invokes the kind of hangover that makes you feel as if you’ve been romanced by an irascible rancor. It is the kind of hangover that makes you plead for death while hiding in the darkness under your bedcovers or even under the bed itself. No more Kowakian rum for me.” He sniffs. “Everything else is fair game.”

  “You’re doing that thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing where you use mockery, sarcasm, and derision to deflect a sincere question.”

  “Ah, that thing. It’s a very good thing.”

&nb
sp; “I’m not going to pull teeth. If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on with you, I won’t pry—”

  “Takask wallask ti dan,” he says. “Do you remember telling me that phrase? On Kashyyyk after our work was done?”

  “I didn’t just tell it to you. I called you that. A man without a star.”

  He finally stops moving the blade between his hands and stoops over, rubbing his eyes. “I feel like you were wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong often, so okay, lay it out for me.”

  He turns to her. “This is my star. Not this ship, but this life. A life where I threaten people and make them do things. I tell them I will break their hands, kill their mothers, ruin all that they hold dear. I know how to find weakness. I know how to exploit it. And…” His voice drifts and he almost fails to summon the next part. “I think I enjoy it.”

  “If you enjoyed it, you wouldn’t be telling me this.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Besides, you could’ve actually chosen to hurt Swift. I wouldn’t have stood in your way. But you didn’t. You did it with words, not violence.”

  “Words can be violence.”

  Jas shrugs. “Sinjir, you need to think less. That brain of yours is a whole lot of trouble.”

  “Now you know why I drink.”

  “You ready for what’s on Jakku?” she asks, changing the subject. He knows the subject at hand bothers her. Jas cares little for self-reflection in herself or others. She is not only a woman with a star—he suspects she is the star itself. Implacable, serving itself, disinterested in debating right or wrong. She doesn’t orbit you—you orbit her.

  He plays along, letting the current of the conversational river take him where she wants it to go. “If I overheard the conversation right, it sounds like what’s on Jakku isn’t much at all.”

  “It’s not Jakku. I’m worried about Norra.”

  “Norra will be fine.”

  “She’s on edge.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  Jas drives the point home further: “She’s becoming like me.”

  “Nobody could become like you, dear heart. Besides, I noticed you were the one advising caution down there.”