Aftermath: Star Wars (14 page)

A pebble wakes him up.
Pock!
It beans off his head—a head that feels like its been stepped on by the crushing leg of a passing Imperial walker—and lands next to his face. Clattering into a small pile of other pebbles.

Sinjir groans and tries to stand.

The ground beneath him shifts and swings—and he feels suddenly like he’s falling, even though he’s not. Vertigo assails him.

He blinks. Tries to get his bearings.

He’s in a cage. Iron. Rusted. Shaped like a birdcage, except
person
-sized, though only barely. It dangles from a thick, heavy-gauge chain. A chain that ascends through the jagged, dripping rock above into a long, dark well. Below him—

Is nothing.

A massive rift, a black chasm between craggy, wet walls. Walls barely lit by braziers of light along a far wall—a wall that sports a narrow metal walkway bolted into the glistening rock.

A figure walks along that path. A Sakiyan, by his hairless scalp and ink-black skin. The guard has in his hand the end of a leash, the leash wound up around his wrist all the way to the elbow. At the other end of the rope? A long, red-eyed beast. Skin as rough and ragged as the wall it passes. A narrow maw with many teeth. A sallow belly dragging along the ground.

“You’re awake” comes a voice from behind him.

Sinjir startles. It causes his own cage to swing, which in turn makes his head pound harder. He idly considers throwing up.

There, behind him: another half dozen cages like his.

Only two of them are occupied.

In one: a skeleton. Not human, though humanoid. Something with a horn on its head. What little skin is left on those bones looks like tattered rags and strips of rotten leather.

In the other: It’s her. The Zabrak bounty hunter.

Thankfully, it’s she who spoke. Not the skeleton. Because…gross.

“You,” he groans. “You were throwing pebbles at me.”

“Yes. Me. The one you tried to buy.”

“Not like that. Not like you think.”

“Then like how?”

He leans his forehead against the cool iron. Water drips down on his head, runs down to the end of his nose (
a bead of blood hangs there until he sneezes it away:
a returning memory that hits him like a seismic wave). “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

“I do not.”

Disappointment pulls him down like quicksand. “I thought we shared a special moment.”

“Clearly, we did not.”

“Endor,” he says. “After everything. After the rebels secured their victory, I…we saw each other.”

She hesitates. “Oh. Right.”

“So, you remember.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, come now. Don’t you think that’s something? A moment of cosmic significance? The galaxy trying to tell us something? I mean, what are the chances?”

She sniffs. “I don’t have a droid around to tell me.”

“Let’s just assume
astronomical,
then.”

“And that means what?”

“I…I don’t know, I just expect it means something.” Suddenly, a pebble appears out of the half darkness and
thwack
s him in the head again. “Ow! Do you have to keep doing that? I’m awake.”

“Everything means something, but not every something
matters.
I don’t believe in cosmic significance. I don’t care for magic or the Force or kissing a chit and throwing it into a fountain for good luck. I care about what I can see, taste, smell, and—most important—what I can do. You mean nothing to me until you do. You’re a rebel?”

He chews on his lip. “Yes?”

“Why are you here?”

“I came to see Surat to find a way off this damp, jungly rock. Incidentally, did you see what happened to my friend? The tail-head?”

“They carried his body out after they dragged yours away.”

“Is he…?”

“Dead, yes.”

Sinjir shuts his eyes. Says a small, meaningless prayer for the eager-eyed fool. What was his name?
Orgadomie, Orlagummo, Orgie-Borgie, whoever you are, you didn’t deserve that.

“Why are
you
here?” he asks.

But the Zabrak ignores the question. She cranes her neck, staring out.

He follows her gaze. On the walkway, the guard and the leashed creature disappear into a tunnel and are gone.

“I’m planning on getting out of here,” she says.

“Ah, well. Good for you. Can I come?”

She reaches up, fidgets with her scalp. He watches as her fingers drift along the barbed horns that form a thorny crown on her head—she grimaces as she breaks one of them off with a loud
snap.

He says, “That looks like it hurt.”

“It didn’t. It’s fake.” She teases something out of the horn—something metal. Like a key. She begins to use it on the lock at the door.

A lock pick.

Clever.

“You can come with me if you’re useful,” she says.

“I’m very useful. A very useful rebel, indeed.”

The lock pops, and her door clangs open.

“I’m not hearing much in evidence of that.”

She jumps out of the cage backward, catching the lip of it with her hands. The whole thing swings back and forth. The Zabrak swings a few good times, then bends her back in a way that Sinjir is fairly certain would shatter his spine like a falling icicle. Her legs swing all the way up, her feet closing around the top of the cage. Her hands let go.

Her legs swing her upper torso back up.

“You’re…limber,” he says.

“And you appear useless. Condolences.”

She quickly climbs the chain above her cage, disappearing into the hollow space.
No, no, no!
She’s his one chance! He’s in this cage because he tried to save her!

“Wait!” he calls. “I’m not a rebel! I’m an Imperial!” He shouts louder: “An ex-Imperial loyalty officer! I stole a rebel’s clothes on Endor! And his…” But she’s gone. Her cage has already stopped swinging. “Identity.”
And his life and his ship and apparently his moral center.

Well then.

He groans. Again considers puking.

But then: His cage shudders.

And the Zabrak’s upside-down face appears level with his own.

She scowls. “A loyalty officer. You just became interesting. And useful.” The bounty hunter holds up her lock pick. “You’re going to help me catch my quarry. That’s the deal. Take it and I open this door. Leave it, and Surat will likely sell you to the Empire. They don’t care much for deserters, I hear. Once, there might have been a tribunal, but these days they will shoot you in the street like a lowly cur.”

“I’ll take the deal, as long as you help me get off this planet after.”

She considers it. “Done.”

As the Zabrak goes to work on the lock, she says: “I’m Jas Emari.”

“Sinjir Rath Velus.”

“A pleasure. If you try to frag me over, I’ll gut you where you stand.”

“Noted.”

The door pops open and she offers a hand. “Let’s go.”

Toomata Wree—aka Tooms—pokes around the boy’s junk shop. The others have gone. Once the boy himself showed up, all the digging and messing around in here stopped. Surat said they’ll get the information from the kid
proper-like,
because while the kid’s a punk, he’s just that. He’ll fold like a bad gambler and tell them how to get into the down-below of this joint, so they can steal back Surat’s prize and any other goodies they find.

Tooms fishes in his pocket, pulls out some numbspray. He gives his bruised face a couple of good mistings—
psst psst psst
—and instantly the pain subsides underneath a carpet of sweet anesthesia.

That battle droid did a number on him.

A
battle droid,
of all things.

Kid might be a punk, but kid’s also got talent.

Whatever. Right now, Tooms looks around the shop. Maybe he’ll find something here for his girl, Looda. He’s on the outs with her (the same rigmarole:
You work too much, Toomata, you do not care about me, if you like Surat Nuat so much why do you not make him your lover
), so a little prize might go a long way. But all this stuff? Droid parts and conduits and pieces blown off spaceships. Over there are evaporator parts. Below them: vaporator parts. Then circuit boards in a half-rotten box. Then a box full of wonky thermal detonators—paperweight duds.

Then he sees something:

The head of a translator droid. Tarnished up, but still shiny. Looda, she likes shiny things. Maybe he could do something with it. Put a couple blood orchids in it, or hammer open the head and use it as a…a dish.

He reaches up for it, his fingers grabbing for the eyes—

The head doesn’t budge off the shelf. It’s bolted down.

He pulls harder—

And the eyes suddenly sink into the droid’s skull with a
whir-click.

A door opens up. A small wind kicks up through the open space and the Rodian sees a set of steps down. This is it.
This is it.
This is the way into the basement! Into Temmin Wexley’s
special stash.
Tooms grabs for the comlink at his belt but then pauses. Maybe he should go down there, take a quick look for himself. You know. For Looda.

He chuckles, then steps toward the door.

Behind him, a voice: “Where is my son?” A woman’s voice.

The Rodian purses his cracked, split lips—then he moves fast, spinning around, reaching to draw the blaster at his side—

The woman shoots first.

The shot takes him in the stomach. He cries out, staggering backward as he tries to raise his own blaster—but the woman shoots again, and his weapon spins out of his hand. He clutches at his seared, smoldering middle.

She steps closer to him, revealing her face under the hood. A dark-eyed, steely glare awaits. He recognizes her from the shop that day. The scowl on her face is deep. The boy’s mother thrusts the pistol under his chin.

“I’ll ask one more time: Where is my son, Temmin?”

The boot presses down on the back of Temmin’s neck.

His hands are pulled taut behind his back, swaddled in chains and held fast with a pair of magnetic manacles. He tastes blood and dust.

“You stole from me,” Surat says, pressing down with his boot. Temmin tries not to cry out, but it hurts, and a sound escapes his throat without him meaning—a wounded-animal sound.

He’s here in Surat’s office. It’s a spare, severe room—red walls lined with manacles. In the middle, a desk whose surface is made from some Sullustan frozen in carbonite. On that desk is a blaster, a collection of quills in a cup, a bottle of ink. The room features only one other piece of furniture: a tall black cabinet, sealed tight with a maglock.

“I…didn’t…,” Temmin says. “It was an accident. I didn’t know—”

He’s yanked up off his feet. The Herglic does the lifting. Surat stands there in front of him, pursing his lips almost as if he wants to kiss the air. The Sullustan gangster runs an index finger under his own cheek flaps, flicking dirt away with thumb and fingertip. “You are lying to me, boy. And even if you were not lying, what does it matter? You have slighted me and that slight must be repaid in kind. Otherwise, how will that look?”

“It will look merciful—”

The Sullustan grabs Temmin by the throat. He squeezes. The blood starts to pound in Temmin’s temples as he wheezes and gurgles, trying desperately to catch a breath—his whole face starts to throb. Blackness drifts in at the edges of his vision like pools of spilled oil.

“The only Mercy I have ever had was a Corellian slave girl. She was nice to me. I was nice to her. Mostly.”

Then the criminal overlord lets go. Oxygen rushes back in through Temmin’s burning throat. He gasps and coughs, spit dangling from his lip.

The Herglic kicks him in the back of the knee and Temmin falls once more. And with his arms behind his back, the best he can do is take the hit on his shoulder so his head doesn’t snap against the hard metal floor.

“Let me tell you who I am,” Surat says. “So you know what I can do. I killed my own mother for daring to speak back to me. We lived in a wind-harvest tunnel on Sullust, and I threw her into the blades. When my father found out, he of course wanted to hurt me like I hurt her, but my father? He was a soft, pliable man. He tried to hit me and I cut his throat with a piece of kitchen cutlery. It was my brother that proved the greatest challenge. We fought for years. Back and forth, from the shadows. He was ruthless. A worthy challenger, Rutar was.” The Sullustan nods sagely, as if lost in memory. Suddenly he perks his head up and nods. “That’s him there.” He points to the desk. “He’s the one frozen in carbonite. Some say I learned that trick from the Empire, but I assure you—they learned it from me.”

“Please,” Temmin says, bubbles of saliva forming and popping on his lips. “Give me a chance to make it right. I can repay you. I can be in debt—”

“The question is, what can I take right now? An ear? A hand? My brother took my eye in our final battle—” Surat cocks his head so that the Sullustan’s one milky, ruined eye is pointed right at Temmin. “And that has become my way. My foes must leave having given something vital. Not just money. Credits are so
crass.
But something necessary. A piece of themselves offered and taken. What do you offer?”

“Not that, not that—you can take my shop, you can have my droids, I’ll give you back the weapon, anything. Let’s just…let’s talk it out. We can talk this out. Can’t we?”

Surat sighs. “I think the time for talk has passed.” And then he thrusts his finger up in the air and a big smile parts his strange face. “Ah! Yes. You do love to talk, don’t you? I shall take your tongue.”

Temmin gets his legs underneath him, tries to stand as he cries out in anger and fear. The Herglic knees him in the side and knocks him down.

The slick-skinned brute laughs.

Surat says, “Gor-kooda, take him to the cistern. I will get my things.” Then Surat saunters over to his cabinet. He pulls back a sleeve and reveals a bracelet, then waves the bracelet over the maglock. It pops.

As Gor-kooda the Herglic drags Temmin out of the room kicking and screaming, Surat removes a long surgical gown and begins to put it on. Humming as he does.

“This
doesn’t
seem essential.”