Aftermath: Star Wars Page 9

  A blast from one of the Narquois hits her in the side. Her foot skids out—she crashes down on a table full of spacer parts. Metal clatters against the floor as she slides off. Her body, slack. Her mind, suddenly disconnected from her muscles. A stunning shot, not a killing one.

  Surat stands over her, hands clasped in front of him. He seethes: “The New Republic will make no room for the likes of me. I will not face extinction at the hands of a choir of overly moralistic do-gooders. The Empire allows me to work, and so the Empire remains my friend. And now, as it turns out, I have a new gift for my friend.”

  He claps his hands again, and suddenly his cohorts are picking her up. The Herglic tosses her over his slick, cartilaginous shoulder. She wills her hands to move. Her legs. Her teeth. Anything at all. But it’s all for naught. Her efforts are futile.

  As they carry her out, she thinks: You should have killed me.

  —

  Sinjir steps out of the fading light of day and into the dank underground—well, what to call it? It’s a cantina, probably, at least in part. The name hanging on the door outside says: THE ALCAZAR. But it’s more than just a cantina. By the look of it, it’s also a gambling house. And a house of ill repute. Probably also a slaver market, and black market, and—it’s a whole damn compound, frankly. In this room sits an elevated stage on which plays some warbling gang of so-called musicians. Along the far wall is a long black bar carved out of some dead hunk of lacquered driftwood—and everywhere else, tables of gamblers sit, all praying to catch a little of that magic, whether at pazaak or rolling sheg-knuckles or yanking the lever on the One-Armed Smuggler.

  Gambling. Sinjir never understood it. He had to take punitive measures against any Imperial soldier or officer attempting to gamble in the bunks, the mess, on a long and lonely shift. He decided that gambling was never about the credits. It was always about the risk.

  The risk, and the thrill it brings.

  Sinjir has no love of that thrill.

  He wants to get off this planet as soon as possible.

  “Come on, Ogly,” he says, waving his new friend farther.

  “Orgadomo.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s get a drink.” His own sogginess is starting to dry up and wear off—now’s a good time to replenish that pleasant feeling. And of course find out a little information. He grabs a length of the Twi’lek’s head-tail and pulls him up to the bar. Sinjir gives the bar top a good, wet slap.

  The bartender—a human man, as scruffy as a Wookiee yet somehow slimy like a worrt—turns, popping some kind of thin green leaf in his mouth. He chews it. Green fluid runs down his chin and he licks the one good tooth in his mouth. “Wuzzat?”

  “Two drinks. I’ll have a…” He turns to the Twi’lek. “You first, friend. What are you having?”

  “An…ale?”

  The Twi’lek looks nervous.

  Sinjir makes a face. “He’ll have an ale. I need something stronger. You got ahh, let’s see. Jogan fruit brandy?”

  “Kind of a fancy place you think this is?” the bartender rumbles. “I got ale. More ale. Other ale. Different ale. Grog. And starfire ’skee.”

  “I’ll take that last decoction, then. A jorum of ’skee for me.”

  The bartender grumbles. Begins pouring a glass of something brown and muddy before sliding a bottle of foaming ale to the Twi’lek. “That’ll be ten credits.”

  Sinjir catches the man’s wrist—a gentle hold, and the man’s skin is, as its appearance suggests, sweat-slick and slimy. The man gives Sinjir’s hand a poisonous look as another squirt of green fluid runs down his chin. Sinjir laughs, withdraws his hand, and says, “One more thing.”

  “Go on.”

  “I need to see the man in charge of this establishment. Surat Nuat.”

  “Oh, do you?”

  “I do. And I will pay.”

  The bartender’s eyes flit about. “Then let’s call it a hundred.”

  Sinjir winces. That’s valuable drinking money. He reminds himself that now, it’s also valuable escaping money. He unpockets the credits and slides the small cairn of filthy lucre across the table.

  “Now,” he says. “Where can I find him?”

  The bartender gets a big, nasty grin across his face. Like a smear of mud across the wall, that grin. “He’s coming in the door right now.”

  Sinjir sighs. He turns and looks.

  A Sullustan is coming in the door. Milky eye. Smug, self-satisfied look. He’s trailed by a pack of punks and thugs. The way all eyes turn toward him—a mix of genuine awe and utter fear—tells Sinjir that this alien is the real deal. That this is, indeed, Surat Nuat.

  He’s about to turn and demand his credits back.

  But then he sees someone else.

  A woman. Zabrak—or is it Dathomirian? Or Iridonian? He’s not sure of the distinction or if one even exists. Those pale eyes. The dark tattoos forming spirals and knots on her cheeks and brow and chin.

  His breath catches in his chest—

  —

  Sinjir stands there. Ferns up to his hips. A fallen tree across the soft, spongy moss of Endor. Beneath him, a rebel. Dead. The man’s outer clothes—vest, poncho, camouflage pants—now hanging on Sinjir’s frame. He puts the helmet on, too. Blinks. Swallows. Tries to focus.

  A bead of blood drips down Sinjir’s head. To the end of his nose. It hangs there before he sneezes it away.

  His ears still ring from the sound of the shield generators going up.

  His hands are filthy with dirt and blood. His own blood.

  Superficial cuts, he tells himself. Nothing deep. He’s not dying.

  Not today, anyway.

  Then: the snap of a stick.

  He turns—and there she is. An alien. Sharp thorny spurs forming a crown on her moonlight-blue skin. She turns and sees him. The tattoos on her face—whorls and corkscrews of black ink—almost seem to turn and drift, like snakes entwining with other snakes. But when he blinks again, that stops. Just an illusion. He’s still shaken up. Maybe she’s not even real.

  She nods at him.

  He nods at her.

  And then she yanks on what looks like a vine—and a whole swath of netting, netting woven through with sticks and blankets for purposes of hiding something in plain sight—pulls away. Underneath is a speeder bike.

  The woman cinches a rifle up on her back.

  She gives Sinjir one last look. Then the engine of the speeder bike revs and she’s gone, whistling through the underbrush and between the trees.

  —

  —he knows her.

  “I know her,” he says. Low enough so that only his new friend hears.

  The Twi’lek grunts in confusion.

  “Her,” Sinjir clarifies. “The one with Surat’s thugs.” I saw her on the moon of Endor. “I don’t know her know her. Never mind. Come on.”

  He hops off the stool—

  Then quick darts back to the bar, and slams back the ’skee. It tastes like he’s drinking pure laserfire, and it carves a hot, burning channel deep through his core. Sinjir shakes it off, then pursues Surat and his entourage.

  Out the window, past the endless black, a repair droid totters past, carrying bits of scrap, its welding torch dangling by a long, black tube. Even after these many months, Home One still requires a last few repairs from the battle over Endor. Ackbar thinks: It is a good thing we won that battle. It was their last true shot. They gambled everything. And they almost lost it all. By the grace of the stars and the seas and all the gods and all the heroes, somehow, somehow, they managed.

  He clears his throat. His time is up. With a webbed hand he grabs the plastic bottle and squeezes moisturizer into his palm and then rubs it on his neck, his bare shoulders, down the length of each red arm.

  A deep breath.

  Then, he is again under attack. He moves fast, picking up the kar-shak—the net-pole, a traditional Mon Calamari weapon—and whirls about in the padded room. A stormtrooper rushes up, the blaster rifle raised.

&nb
sp; Ackbar grunts in rage, spinning the kar-shak and cracking the stormtrooper in the helmet. The end of the stick: barbed like a gaff hook. It whishes clean through the air, and clean through the white Imperial helmet.

  As it passes, the stick interrupts the hologram for just a moment—

  Then the stormtrooper is back, and Ackbar’s enemy topples.

  A second one comes up, and a third, and Ackbar captures the one’s head in a net, and flings him into the other—again their holograms disrupt, then flicker back to life before dropping.

  One, two, and now three stormtroopers enter from the corner projectors and—

  Someone clears his throat.

  Ackbar stops.

  “Pause,” he barks. The trio of incoming troopers freeze. Shimmering.

  There, at the door, a young man. A cadet. “Sir,” he says. A small fear shines in his eyes. But he stands tall, just the same. Chin up and out. Hands holding a screen pressed to his chest. “If this is a bad time—”

  “Deltura, isn’t it?”

  “Ensign Deltura, yes, sir.”

  “No, now is a fine time,” Ackbar growls, and sets his stick down. “I am to assume this is important?”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “And why isn’t Commander Agate bringing this to me?”

  “She is occupied with repairs, sir.”

  Ackbar harrumphs, then steps forward. His sharp fingers click together. “Very well. Let’s see it.”

  Deltura hands over the screen.

  The admiral looks over it. His big yellow eyes turn back toward Ensign Deltura. “And you’re sure about this?”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Antilles hasn’t checked in, and his comm won’t answer. We can’t even ping it.”

  “His last known location?”

  “Raydonia.”

  “And he found nothing there.”

  “No, sir.”

  “And I will hazard a guess that says we are not certain of his next jump?” The ensign shakes his head because that’s not how Wedge wanted to play this, was it? Captain Antilles saw no harm in doing some light scouting. He said it would feel like a “vacation”—just him and the Starhopper. Alone with his thoughts.

  Ackbar thinks: I warned him of this.

  I’m sure I won’t find anything, Wedge said at the time.

  You don’t know that. One does not want to casually stumble upon a pit of eels, Ackbar cautioned. But it can happen.

  Just doing my due diligence. It’ll be nice.

  “Nice.”

  Harrumph.

  The ensign says, “The five closest worlds to Raydonia offer a glimpse of where Captain Antilles could have been heading next.” On the screen: a list of five planets. Mustafar. Geonosis. Dermos. Akiva. Tatooine. Any of them could make sense—they know the Empire has gone to ground. “Mustafar makes some sense, as does Geonosis—”

  Deltura is looking at him. Wanting to say something.

  Ackbar pauses. “What is it?”

  “There’s more.”

  “And?”

  “Something more than what’s on that screen.”

  “Spit it out, Ensign. I don’t care for this waffling.”

  “We have intel. From the Operator.”

  Ackbar steps closer to Deltura. “And how do you know about the Operator? That is classified information, Ensign.”

  “Commander Agate cleared me.”

  “Commander Agate seems to trust you.”

  A curt nod. “I hope so.”

  “Then I do, too. What is this intel?”

  When Deltura tells him, Ackbar feels all the moisture go out of him. They keep the air in this ship as humid as possible—it is a Mon Calamari ship, after all—but he suddenly feels bone dry. Desiccated. He feels again on the precipice of something bigger, something dangerous. Some shadow unseen in the margins. “Are you certain?”

  “No. We have no spies in the region that we know of.”

  “I’m older,” Ackbar says, suddenly. Staring off at nothing. “The reason I do this—stand here and take my kar-shak and continue to practice my kotas—is because I wish to stay sharp. And flexible. And ahead of my enemies. I know one day that I will fail at this, and we almost failed above Endor. We rushed in. Careless. It almost cost us everything.”

  A moment of silence between them. His nostrils flaring.

  “Sir—”

  “Yes, yes, send scouts to each of those planets. But send two scouts to Akiva. We must be sure before we commit to anything.”

  Deltura salutes. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  As the ensign leaves, Ackbar is left alone once more. And he truly feels it, for a moment: the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. An illusion, of course. He is not the standard-bearer for the New Republic, and nothing hinges on him. But the pressure remains, just the same.

  And with it, a worrying thought persists: As an informant within the Empire, the self-titled Operator has not steered them wrong yet. His pinpointing of vulnerable Imperial routes and convoys, as well as supplying them with a list of likely governors and other galactic leaders who would gladly betray the Empire, was all of immeasurable help.

  So why, then, can’t Ackbar shake the feeling that once again they are about to fall into a trap?

  “We have a problem.”

  Someone shakes Temmin awake. He gasps and sits up in the bed in the nook upstairs in their house. Thunder booms like cannon fire outside, like ships in the sky tearing one another apart—flashes of lightning like fire. It’s a mausim—an old Akivan word for one of the annual storms that rise up and signal the start of the wet season. The clouds turn black and tighten over the city like a noose. A mausim-storm can last for days, even weeks. Flooding the city with heavy rains. Heavy winds stopping traffic.

  Temmin sniffs, rubs his eyes. It’s his father. He stoops down and kisses Temmin on the brow.

  “Dad…whh…what’s going on.”

  A voice from the door. Mom. “Brentin. What is it?”

  Dad answers: “I’m sorry. I’m so—”

  Downstairs, a pounding at the door.

  Then another boom of thunder.

  Brentin stoops, holds his son tight. “Temmin. I need you to be good to your mother. Promise me.”

  Temmin blinks, still sleepy. “Dad, what are you talking about—”

  Mom is there, now, standing by the bed, a concerned face revealed with every pulse of lightning. Downstairs—more pounding, and then their visitor seizes upon impatience as they break in. Mom cries out.

  Brentin says to his son: “Promise. Me.”

  “I…promise.”

  His father gives him one last hug. “Norra. Help me with this—” He hurries to the window, a window covered with a slatted metal shutter. Meant to keep the storm out—should the wind break the glass, the shutter will react, the slats will slam shut, and the whole thing will vacuum-seal. The two of them go over, one on each side, pulling the levers that hold the shutters to the frame. Mom says:

  “Brentin, what is going on?”

  “They’re coming for me. Not for you. For me.”

  Voices. The crackle of a comm. Footsteps. Suddenly others are in the room. The white armor of a pair of stormtroopers. The black outfit of some Imperial officer. Everyone is yelling. Blasters up. Dad is saying he’ll go peacefully. Temmin cries out. Mom gets in between the troopers and Dad, her hands up—one of them hits her in the head with the back of his rifle.

  She cries out, goes down. Dad leaps, calling them all monsters, banging his fists against the one’s helmet—

  A pulse from a blaster. Dad cries out and drops. They start dragging him out. Mom starts crawling after them on her hands and knees and the officer in black stays behind, stoops low, and shoves a datapad in front of her face. “The arrest warrant for Brentin Lore Wexley. Rebel scum.”

  She claws at his boot and he shakes her free.

  Temmin checks on his mother. She’s collapsed in a heap, crying. Grief and fear are tamped down underneath a sudden surge of ang
er. Temmin gets up, runs downstairs. Already they’ve got his father out the front door. Dragged out into the rain, into the street where water runs over their boots as they splash forth. Temmin bolts outside into the hard slashes of rain—everything feels like a nightmare, like this couldn’t be real, like the sky has cracked open and all the evils have come tumbling out. But it is real.

  He calls out for them to stop. The officer turns and laughs as the two stormtroopers toss his father into the back of a bala-bala, one of the small speeders used to navigate the tight channels and streets of Myrra.

  The officer pulls his pistol.

  “Stop,” Temmin says, his voice more like an animal in pain than his own voice. “Please.”

  The officer points the blaster.

  “Do not meddle, boy. Your father is a criminal. Let justice be.”

  “This isn’t justice.”

  “Take a step and you’ll see what justice is.”

  Temmin starts to take a step—

  But a pair of hands catches him around the middle, yanking him up off his feet. Temmin kicks. Screams. His mother in his ear: “Temmin, no, shhh, not like this. Back inside. Back inside!”

  “I’ll kill you!” he screams, though at who, he doesn’t even know. “I promise, I’ll kill you for this!”

  —

  “We have a problem.”

  His mother, in his ear.

  Whispering.

  “Wuzza,” he blurts, his mouth tacky and dry.

  “Shh,” she cautions him. “We’re in danger.”

  He draws a deep breath. Temmin tries to get his bearings. Cargo bay. Small ship. Freighter, maybe. Corellian design. They’re behind a stack of carbon-shell crates on a pallet. A hoverpallet, by the look of it, though right now it’s powered down and set against the metal of the ship’s floor.

  Then he spies it:

  A body.

  A dead man. Turned on his side. Half of his face a moon-skin of scars, cratered with old burns. His eyes are empty, have lost their luster.

  To his left, the bay door. Large enough for a trio of these crates, side by side. To his right, the sealed door—should go to the rest of the ship. The bunk, the gunner station, the cockpit, the head.