Aftermath: Star Wars (20 page)

It’s morning, and Adea waits for Admiral Sloane.

Adea realizes that in the grand scheme of things, she is of little import. An attaché. An assistant. She hands papers. Fetches cups of caf. Asks for signatures. Delivers communications.

But one day, maybe she’ll be something more.

This is a glorious time to be alive.

The Empire is reeling. That is, itself, not a good thing. But in those cracks and fractures waits opportunity. Every crack is a place where Adea can ease the tip of her foot. She can widen those gaps and find a place for herself in there. It’s why she admires Sloane so much.

The admiral understands. The admiral is making the best of this situation. And right now, Adea has bad news to deliver.

That thrills her, honestly. It shouldn’t, probably. Bad news is, by its designation, declaratively and objectively bad. But it’s the reaction that matters. People are made under duress. They are formed by crisis. Adea grew up on Coruscant. But her parents were not important people. Her father was a welder. Not so low that they had to work in the bowels of the city-world—he worked prime jobs for the Empire. But he still got his hands dirty. And burned, and cut, until one day they were arthritic claws of scar tissue and callus.

She always marveled how the laser-welders could make or break things. How they could join pieces together—or cut them apart.

This is like that.

Crisis will bring them all together or destroy them. But she believes that Sloane will be made by this crisis. Not just this small one she’s about to hand-deliver, but the larger crisis.

She admires Sloane greatly.

She would hate to disappoint the admiral.

Rae stands under the spray of an ice-cold shower.
Piped in straight from the canyon,
the satrap said.
The purest water you will find on Akiva. The old Ahia-Ko people believed the water was so pure, it could take from you your sins and leave you a better person.

If only that were true.

She keeps the water cold because that’s how the showers were on her first assignment so many years ago. When she was just a cadet aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer
Defiance.
She grew to like it. The cold water toughened her. Woke her up. Just like it is now.

Plus, it’s a necessary contrast with the heat here. Soon as she steps out of the shower, that heat assaults her—yes, the hot, humid air is invisible, but no less tangible. It feels like she’s walking through boiling swamp water. Drowning while standing.

Out in the luxurious room that the satrap has furnished for Rae, Adea awaits. Morning light illuminates her as she stands there, dutiful as a coatrack, the holoscreen in her hand.

“You got some sleep?” Rae asks, toweling off her head.

“Yes, Admiral,” Adea says, averting her eyes and blushing as Rae dries and dresses herself. Adea isn’t true military. Rae sometimes forgets that those outside the navy or the army don’t share the same experience. Sloane’s nudity isn’t meant to be anything other than a transitional state. Nothing romantic, nothing shameful. It is a practical fact of existence.

“Good,” Sloane says. “Sleep will be necessary for the day ahead.”

“I thought the meeting went well.”

“The meeting went well the same way a crash landing goes well. It was an ineffective, inconsequential first step.” Rae steps into her uniform, smoothing out the wrinkles—at least that’s one good thing the humidity gives her. (And her hair looks actually sort of amazing for the first time in how many years. Appearance figures very little into how she sees herself, but once in a while it’s nice to remember what she really looks like.) “We will try again today. That said, I don’t expect much. This is just the first summit. We may need more. Bring in more voices. Tell Morna that she should have the shuttle ready just after dinner.”

“Of course, Admiral. Do you expect that we will summon the
Vigilance
back to orbit, or should Morna plot hyperspace calculations into the shuttle compu—” Adea’s screen flashes. Once, twice, then goes red.

Rae furrows her brow. “What is it now?”

“We have a situation. An…incursion.”

The transport buckles and bounces along the cloud tops of Akiva. The sun forms a hot line over the swirling curls of white, looking like melting steel. Down below, the barely seen city of Myrra. Hidden behind the clouds, and when sight of it emerges, it remains garbed in a gauzy pink haze.

Sergeant Major Jom Barell of New Republic Special Forces (SpecForces) looks to the five men and women standing to the right of him at the open door. On their torsos sit carbon-lace armor, the shoulders marked with the sigil of the New Republic: the Alliance starbird, now inside a sunburst. The symbol of a changed day, a new dawn. The phoenix, truly reborn.

The soldiers standing here with him: Corporals Kason, Stromm, Gahee’abee, Polnichk, and Durs. He knows which is which, even though their faces are concealed behind the orbital drop masks.

He gives the nod. “Drop!”

One by one, they unclip and leap into the clouds. Slugthrowers on their backs. Arms stretched out, as if trying to reach for the sun.

His turn.

Barell hates jumping. Give him anything else.
Anything.
Creeping through some Naboo swamp. Freezing his tail off in some ice-walled snow base. One time, they had to fly a gunship through an electrical superstorm over Geonosis to root out some Imperials that had gotten it in their heads to start up the old Geonosian droid factories again—the storm was all lightning and heavy winds and hale peppering the side of the craft so hard it left little
dents
in the metal. He was pretty sure they were dead before they even landed. And that was
still
better than jumping out of a ship.

Especially a suborbital drop.

Well, it is what it is.

Barell jumps after Durs, the last in the line. It feels like it always does—his guts sucking out through his hind end, his heart left somewhere behind in the sky above him, the panic, the terror. And then—

The air rocks. A concussive wave hits him. His body spins like a spun top and above him he sees it—the side of the transport, blown open, black smoke bellowing as flames flash and sparks shower. The ship lists and starts to tilt as it goes down—

He tries to comm, but it’s no good, he knows that. There’s a comm blackout. Nothing he says is going to go anywhere.

Best he can do now is drop and try not to die.

But that’s a far trickier task than he expected—because below him, he sees Corporal Kason at the front of the line disappear in a flash. Something comes up from the ground: the blinding streak from a turbolaser. One minute, there’s Kason, and the next he’s just a red spray and a torn-up tatter of carbon-lace armor spiraling through the clouds.

We’re dead,
Barell thinks.

Another blast and Stromm is next—a flash and he’s gone. Barell dives down through the space where Stromm was just two seconds before.

Barell signals the others: “We’re pigeons to hunt up here. We need to be falcons—engage para-wings.” It’s too soon, they’re too high up. The winds up here could kill them. But what choice do they have? Below him, the other three snap out their arms and legs—and their wing-suits engage.

It’s too late for Gahee’abee—the moment the Kupohan’s para-wings extend from wrist to ankle, he’s gone. Another searing blast from the surface of the planet and he’s just ragged wing strips caught on the wind.

A quiet morning in Myrra. The rains have stopped. Heat rises off the rooftops and streets, leaving everything smeary behind the vapor blur. A pair of cerulean skycatchers duck and dive in the air above Norra’s head, chasing one another in what might be a territorial dogfight or a mating dance. Or both, perhaps, given the nature of those plucky blue birds.

It feels calm up here on Esmelle and Shirene’s rooftop as she sips her tea. But the serenity outside does nothing to quell the chaos inside.

Norra knows this feeling. Suiting up for her Y-wing. Sitting there in the hangar on
Home One,
waiting for the signal, waiting for the jump to lightspeed. It was quiet, then, too. A few murmured voices here and there. A droid burbling past. The sounds of the old frigate—a
tink-tink-tink
in the pipes behind the walls, a faint groan of metal on metal, the rumble of the air scrubbers kicking on.

She tries not to feel sick, but today is like that day.

She just wants to go home.

But duty calls once more.

Downstairs in the basement, Temmin works on his droid. The other two managed some sleep. Norra did, as well—though just a few hours, and even those were not without trouble.

But the boy kept working. She admires him. He’s like his father, single-minded and driven. But he’s got her stubborn streak. Her anger, her cocky sure-footedness—the same sure-footedness that made her leave this planet and join the Rebel Alliance under the foolish assumption she
alone
would be able to find out where they were keeping her husband and…what? Rescue him? Like he was a princess trapped in a tower like the old fairy tales? What a blubber-headed notion that was.

Across the way, up toward the orchard, she sees another rooftop—an older couple sits up there. She recognizes them. They’ve been here for years, those two. The pair: a couple of old shriveled Bith. She forgets their names, though Esmelle probably knows them. The two Bith sit there under an umbrella, watching the sunrise over the distant jungle, sipping from a single cylinder—probably a cup of oratay slurry. Bith seem to love the stuff.

Peaceful people, the Bith.

Norra wishes she could be like them—

Just then, a sound in the distance. A sound Norra knows deep in her bones before her ears even receive it—the roar of a TIE fighter.

It streaks past, flying low. Toward the city center.

The Bith—the peace-loving, oratay-sipping Bith—stand up. The old man has a blaster rifle he yanks out from under his chair, and next thing Norra knows he screams a babble of profanity in his native tongue before firing futile laser bolts at the screaming Imperial fighter.

The Bith woman, she shakes her fist and joins in the tirade.

It hits Norra, then. Of course.
Of course.

She’s about to turn around and head back inside when out over the city center, an explosion rocks the sky. Norra spins, and sees up there in the clouds something burning—a small black shape. A ship. Suddenly listing hard and plunging through the whirling clouds.

Another flash—a cannon blast from a turbolaser punches up through the sky. It hits…something up there. Something small.

A soldier, maybe.

Her middle tightens. A rebel soldier?

It makes sense.

But that means their timetable just changed.

Whong! Whong! Whonnnng!

With the last hit from the spanner, the battle droid’s eyes pulse and flicker back to life. The speaker underneath the thing’s pointed metal beak utters a grinding, stuttering sound: “RRRRRRRRggggRRRRR.”

Temmin hits it again.

Whong!

“RRRRRROGER-ROGER.”

The droid stands up. Servomotors whir as it regards its repaired arm—an arm that’s not so much an arm as it is an astromech leg. It spins the leg around, slow at first, then faster and faster until it’s just a blur. “THIS IS NOT MY ARM.”

“I know, Bones. Sorry.”

“THIS IS AN ASTROMECH LEG.”

“No, no, I know.”

“ASTROMECHS ARE INFERIOR. THEY ARE BEEPING BOOPING TRASH CANS. I AM MADE INFERIOR BY THE INCLUSION OF THIS NON-ARM.”

Temmin shrugs. “I promise, I’ll get you fixed up when we get back to the shop. Right now, this is what my aunts had around.” Down here in the basement workshop is where he first built Bones—cobbled together from scrapped droids he found in the catacombs beneath the cities. Debris and ruination from the Clone Wars. When the factory down there—now a gutted, flame-charred crater—still pumped out droids for the Separatists.

He reaches for the spanner, and collapses it—it’s a little multitool he always keeps at his belt. Can become nearly any tool he needs just by telescoping out different prongs. He twirls it, pops it back on his utility belt.

“PERHAPS I CAN STILL BE FUNCTIONAL.” The droid thrusts the astromech leg forward. “I CAN BLUDGEON THOSE WHO WOULD HURT YOU. I WILL BEAT THEM TO A GREASY TREACLE-PASTE. DO NOT WORRY, MASTER TEMMIN. YOU ARE SAFE.”

“Thanks, Bones.” Temmin throws his arms around the droid. The droid returns the hug—admittedly, with one arm. The astromech leg just kind of…pats him on the side of his arm,
pat pat pat.
“I thought I lost you.”

He’s had Bones for a while now. The thought of losing this droid…

“I DID GOOD. I CAME BACK.”

“You did. Thanks, Bones.”

“ROGER-ROGER.”

A creak of a board—someone shifting weight on the plankwood steps. It’s his mother. They stare at each other for a few moments. Like they don’t know how to deal with each other. Because they don’t, do they? They’re strangers to each other. He realizes that now. He lifts his head. He’s embarrassed. Did she see him hug his droid? Ugh. “Mom. You could…knock or something next time.”

“Temmin, something has happened. And…I think I have a plan.”

“I’ll be right up.”

She waits there for a moment. “I’m…”

“What? Spit it out.”

“I’m glad we’re back together. And I’m glad your droid is fine. He seems to mean a lot to you.”

“No! He doesn’t. He’s just a droid, okay? I said I’ll be right up.”

His mother offers a small smile and nod, then returns upstairs.

When she’s gone, Temmin whispers to the droid: “I didn’t mean that.”

“I KNOW.”

“You’re the best.”

“I KNOW THAT, TOO.”

Esmelle meets her at the top of the steps. Her sister gently closes the door. Worry crosses the woman’s face. Her features bunch up like a drawstring cinched tight. “Is the droid okay?”

“I think so.” Norra neglects to mention the astromech arm that has now replaced his missing one. “Sort of?”

“That droid means a lot to him.”

“So I gathered.”

“No, you don’t get it. He built Mister Bones the year you left. Temmin doesn’t have many friends. That droid might be it.”

“You can’t be friends with a droid.”

“Well, he is. Temmin was getting taunted and beaten by a gang of…young tyrants. Bones protected him. He’s not just a bodyguard. When you took off on your…
trip
…”

“I get it,” Norra snaps. “You think I should feel bad about leaving. I do feel bad. I felt bad then. I feel worse now. I’m trying to fix things.”

“And yet here you are. Doing more work for the rebels. It’s your son that needs you, Norra, not this…crusade of yours.”

Crusade. That’s how Esmelle sees it. Norra snarls, “War is coming to Akiva, Esme. Not later. Soon. Now, maybe. You can pretend that it won’t land on your doorstep, but trust me, you
soft-handed, weak-backed
sister of mine, no amount of wishing will hold back the tide. Now step aside. I don’t have time for this conversation.”

Her sister protests, but Norra pushes past her.

“Can’t I just sit back and watch?” Sinjir says. It’s just him and Jas. In front of them, another display of kitchen implements and foodstuffs. The map of Myrra has grown since last night. “All this business is really quite distasteful. I could sit back, hold up scorecards. Do a little proper cheerleading?”

He takes a nip from the unlabeled bottle. The liquor is sweet. Honey on the front, and lavender at the finish. The taste lingering on his tongue is coppery, almost electric, like he’s licking the top of a thorium battery.

“I told you, I need actual help, not the illusion of help.” Jas stares at him, sees him drinking. She snatches the bottle out of his hands, sniffs it.

“Hey! That’s no way to be.”

“You’re a drunk.”

“I’m no such thing. I’m no drunker than a pickle. I brine myself in order to maintain a low level of…” He waggles his fingers in the air. “
Fuzziness
. I find life is so much more pleasant that way.”

“I need you clear.”

“Oh,” he mopes, “we’re perfectly clear.”

The bounty hunter stares holes through him. “What happened to you? On Endor. I do remember you. Standing there, covered in blood. Yours?”

He sneers. “I do not want to talk about this.”

“And yet, here we are, talking about it.” She sits down. Sighs. “I became a bounty hunter because I did not like the life my mother had chosen for me. It felt…overly arranged. It
choked
me. So I took after my mother’s sister: Aunt Sugi was a bounty hunter, too. Thing is, Sugi always worked with a crew. She was no lone bird, no rogue operator. One thing I learned from her was, if I was going to work with a crew, I had to trust them. I had to know them. So I didn’t work with a crew. Because I trusted myself above anyone else. Now, here I am. Working with you.”

“Which, let’s be honest, makes you very fortunate. I’m really very cool. It’s almost as if you’ve won the Empire Day lottery.” He smirks. “Hey, if you have a ship, where is it? Can’t we use it to just…flit off this rock? Go find something better to do?”

“It’s a few days’ walk out into the jungle,” she says, but the way she says it indicates that the Zabrak isn’t buying any of it. “Had to make sure my trek into the city was unseen.”

“Convenient. By way of grave inconvenience.”

She stares holes through him. “What happened that day? On Endor?”

“You know what happened. You were there.”

“To you
.
What happened to
you.
”

“I…” Sinjir puts forth a grim smile, trying not to speak aloud the memories that are tearing him apart. “
Fine.
You really want to know? You won’t stop poking? Let’s have it, then.” He swirls the honeyed liquid around the bell of the bottle. “So, like I said, I was an Imperial loyalty officer on the base of Endor and—
oh look it’s Norra!
” He nearly drops the bottle when he sees her step into the kitchen.

Her. Norra. Standing right there. Fuming. Chest rising and falling like that of a beast who smells blood on the wind. He should’ve heard her come up. But with the drinking and the talking…

“An Imperial,” she says.

“I’m sure you misheard me,” he says. “I said…mImperial?” He frowns and
hmmphs.
“That’s not a word, is it.”

“An
Imperial,
” she says again. Louder this time.

“Norra, listen—”

She charges at him. Tackles him into the counter. Bowls clatter. The saltcellar spins off the edge of the table and shatters. Her hands wrap around his throat and her face hovers over his.

“I should’ve
known,
” she says. “You didn’t carry yourself like one of us. Too
superior,
too
nose-at-the-sky.
That accent, too. Crisp like a bitten cracker. You sonofagundark—”

The click of a blaster.

Jas presses it to the side of Norra’s head.

The bounty hunter speaks in a calm voice. “Norra. You are going to have to make peace with this. If you can’t make peace, everything falls apart. He was an Imperial. And we can use him.”

It’s like watching the mist clear out over lake water. The fight goes out of Norra and she falls into this thousand-meter stare. Sinjir eases out of her slackening grip and rubs his throat.

“We can use him,” Norra says. “You’re right.” Her focus snaps back and it’s as if she’s made a decision. “Something has happened. The timeline has changed. We need to move now.”

From behind them, Temmin says: “Am I interrupting something?”