Aftermath: Star Wars (31 page)

Jawas stink.

That’s something Adwin Charu didn’t expect. Most of this planet has that
hot sand
scent to it—like the inside of his mother’s clay oven before she put dough into it. Like everything’s baking. But soon as he stepped inside this sandcrawler, the odor hit him like a fist. A musky, animal smell. And suddenly he’s forced to wonder if each Jawa is just a fraternity of wet rats gathering together under brown robes and a black face veil.

They hiss and jabber at him. And he tells them again, like he’s been telling them for the last half hour: “I don’t
want
any of this.
This
—” He sweeps his arms in a broad gesture, indicating the dimly lit heaps of junk all around him. “—is all
worthless
to me and my company. I need to see the
real
goods.” He enunciates words like he’s speaking to someone hard of hearing. As if it’s doing any good at all—these stubborn little stink monsters don’t seem to hear him, or understand him, or maybe they just don’t care. But he knows the stories: They sell the dross to the rubes, but every sandcrawler has a real collection, too. Valuable goods to those in the know.

Adwin has a job here. And it’s not to come back to his boss with an armload of malfunctioning garbage.

The Jawas click and whisper.

“I
need
droids, weapons, mining tools. I
know
these sandcrawlers are old mining vehicles. You
stole
them. Least you could do is—”

From behind him, someone clears his throat.

Adwin glances back, sees a man standing there. Angular fellow. Leathery skin. Pinched eyes. Amused smile.

“Ahoy there,” the man says.

“Uh-huh,” Adwin answers. “Fine. If you’ll excuse me?” Irritated, he adds: “I hope to be done here soon, provided these
things
comply.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man says, still grinning like he knows something. He steps in out of the bright desert sun, brushes some dust off his long jacket. “Not a local.”

“No. How did you know?”

The man chuckles: a rheumy, growly laugh. “You’re too clean, for starters. Spend some time here, you get dust all up in your fingernails and nose hairs. Sand in your boots. But the other thing is, you gotta know how to handle the Jawas. These little scavengers, they work on rapport. You buy something now, something small, then you come back and then you buy bigger. And eventually, after a dozen or so visits, you start to see what they really have on offer. The real goods.”

Adwin scowls. He doesn’t have the patience for this. “I don’t have the luxury of time. My boss won’t allow it.” He sighs. This is worthless, then. “I suppose I’ll have to take my chances in…what’s that town? Behind us?”

“Mos Pelgo,” the man says.

“Yes. Well. There or Espa, I suppose.” Adwin sighs. He begins to push past the man. The man extends the flat of his hand—he doesn’t touch Adwin, but does block his way out.

“Now, hold on, friend. I happen to have the rapport you need with these little fellas. I’d be happy to vouch for you.”

Adwin narrows his eyes. “You would?”

“Sure thing.”

“And why would you do that?” He squints harder, suspicion twisting his face into an uncertain sneer. “What’s the price?”

The man laughs again. “No price, no price. Just hospitality.”

This planet: back-end water-farming bumpkins. Fine. Adwin can use that. He’s comfortable exploiting the naïveté of others. “Yes. Yes. That would be excellent. Thank you—ahh? Your name?”

“Cobb Vanth.”

“Mister Vanth—”

“Cobb, please.”

“Ah. Cobb. Shall we, then?”

The man steps forward, scratching at his stubbled face. He starts talking to the Jawas. They gabble at him in their rat-tongue and he says, “Uh-huh, no, I know, but I come bearing credits and so does he.” Cobb turns to Adwin and gives a wink. The Jawas whisper and babble. “Okay, then.

“Come on,” Cobb says, and they follow a pair of the little hooded weirdos to another door in the back next to an upside-down gonk droid. The door hisses open, then shuts again behind them. Lights click on. Brighter here than in the other room. And sure enough: These are the goods.

A protocol droid. A pair of astromechs. A rack of weapons—Imperial-issue, by the looks of it. Against the far wall: a series of panels from what looks like a Hutt sail barge, plus a few other Huttese artifacts—some charred, others twisted. All of it, wreckage.

“Perfect, perfect,
perfect,
” Adwin says, clapping his hands. He immediately heads over to a shelf and starts looking through bins, boxes, wire crates. Cobb pokes around, too, though Adwin mostly loses track of him until Cobb says:

“You’re with that new mining company.”

Adwin turns. “Hm? Oh. Yes.”

“The Red Key Company, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one. How’d you know?”

“I have a way of sussing things out. I know that things are changing. Not just in the galaxy, but here at home, too. The Hutts still haven’t shaken out who’s next up to fill Jabba’s throne—if you can call that flat slab of his a throne. Seems like this might be a new day for Tatooine.”

“Yes, we certainly hope so,” Adwin idly responds, mostly ignoring the man’s small-talk prattle. He’s happy Cobb got him in here but now wishes the man would just leave him alone.

Adwin spies a large, long box on the floor. He whips off the ratty cloth that’s covering it and—

Oh, my.

From the box, he withdraws a helmet. Pitted and pocked, as if with some kind of acid. But still—he raps his knuckles on it. The Mandalorians knew how to make armor, didn’t they? “Look at this,” he says, holding it up. “Mandalorian battle armor. Whole box. Complete set, by the looks of it. Been through hell and back. I think my boss will appreciate this.”

“I actually think I might take that home with me,” Cobb says.

“I think
not,
” Adwin says, turning around, the helmet tucked under his arm. The blaster at his hip suddenly feels heavy, pendulous. Eager to be drawn. A strange sensation, that. Adwin feels like he’s really getting into the spirit of this planet. He’s never had to shoot a man before.

Maybe that day is today. An exhilarating feeling, oddly.

Cobb grins, crosses his arms. “What are you thinking, company man? See, I could really use that armor. I figure being a newly appointed lawman—”

“Self-appointed, I think,” Adwin says.

But Cobb doesn’t take the bait. “Being a lawman, I could use some protection against those corrupt types who might think to seize the opportunity here on my planet. That armor is mine.”

Adwin smirks. He takes his thumb and pulls back his tunic, revealing the blaster. “Cobb—”

“Sheriff Vance, to you.”

“Oh.” Adwin laughs. “
Sheriff,
I’d hate to have to draw this blaster—”

Cobb Vance’s hand is up in a flash—there’s the shriek from his own blaster, and it punches a cauterized hole clean through Adwin’s shoulder on his right side. His hand goes limp, lifeless. The helmet clatters out of his other hand. He backs against the shelf, terror-struck.

“You, you monster…”

Cobb shrugs. “Oh, now. I’m no monster. No worse than your boss, that Weequay dung-muncher, Lorgan Movellan. I know his scam. I know all the scams. Afraid the Republic is back and gonna put their boot down on all the lowlifes and scum-lickers, the syndicates are trying to find new ways to appear legit. And with the Hutts fighting one another for control, bunch of these little quote-unquote
mining companies
are swooping in with brutes like your boss at the helm. A new age of mining barons. Won’t fly. I’m here now. Me and others
like
me. Bringing the law to this lawless place. And that starts with me shooting you and taking that armor out from under you.”

Adwin whimpers. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m leaving you alive so you can go tell your boss that he’d best pack up and hit the hyperspace lanes out of this sector, lest he wants me coming for him in my new—well, new to me—suit of armor.”

“I will,” Adwin says, sinking to the floor. He watches Cobb pick up the box of armor before heading to the door.

On his way out, Cobb says: “Next time you wanna pretend to be a gunfighter, best to shoot first, talk later. Bye now.”

Whap.

The rock crashes hard against the stormtrooper’s helmet. The helmet spins and visibility is lost. Jom Barrel dances around to the front of the armor-clad Imperial and gives a hard kick upward—the toe of his boot catches the stormtrooper’s blaster hand. The hand snaps back. The blaster leaves the grip and spirals forward.

Jom catches it and fires three bolts into the stormtrooper’s chest.

The body drops atop the other three troopers.

Jom’s one broken arm still dangles at his side.

Not bad for a bird with a busted wing,
he thinks.

He starts to climb up the ladder that leads up to the turbolaser ground-to-orbit turret, but as it turns out, climbing up the ladder is the hardest part. He has to lean into it. Take it slow. Haul himself up with one good arm, the stormtrooper’s blaster rifle bolted onto his back.

It’s a miserable endeavor.

Lots of grunts and growls.

It takes what seems like a galactic epoch, but somehow he manages to get to the top and pop the hatch. He starts to climb inside—

“Don’t move,” comes a voice.

A young Imperial gunnery officer in his little officer’s hat stands there. A small Imperial blaster pointed. That hand shakes just so.

Jom sighs. He climbs all the way through—“Slowly!” as the Imperial warns him—and lifts his one hand up to placate.

“Both hands,” the officer says. He’s a fresh-faced nobody. Cheeks like marshmallows. Scared eyes like livestock about to meet its maker. The kid stands in front of the gunnery console—through the glass, Jom can see the twin turbolaser barrels aimed heavenward.

“One’s broken,” Jom says.

“I said…both hands.”

Jom growls. Fragging kid. He winces as he lifts his broken arm. White-hot pain arcs across both shoulders. He bares his teeth and stares through watering, wincing eyes.
“There.”

“Now…on your knees.”

“You’re young.”

“Wh…what?”

“
Young.
Like a baby whilk calf—don’t know a whilk? I grew up on a farm. Long-legged critters. Meat tastes stringy, but the milk is good, and their hides make for fine leather. Their babies are clumsy, fumbling things. Knock-kneed and dumb as a box of retainer bolts. You’re just a baby.”

“I am not,” the officer insists, gesturing again with the blaster.

“Uh-huh. Lemme guess how it’s been. Your top officers are mostly gone now. A lot of them went up with the Death Star or the ensuing battles. Some got sold out by governors. So now the officer pool is either guys like you who are really young and untested, or really old and are being brought back in from the pasture because they got nobody else.”

“I am not untested.”

“Not anymore, you’re not. Because I’m testing you. Here’s my test: You can run or you can die. I’d not fault you for running. You wouldn’t be the first Imperial to abandon his post. Some of you are finally figuring out you lost the war and you’re just clinging to debris. It’s okay. You can go, and they won’t ever find you.” Jom steps sideways, circling a bit closer to the officer and the gunnery console behind him. “Go ahead.”

“I…”

“No judgment here, pal.”

The officer lowers the gun, takes one ginger step forward. Like someone easing across the surface of a frozen lake, moving slowly lest the whole thing crack and shatter and dump them into the hoarfrost depths.

Jom thinks:
Well, that went better than expected.

But then a look crosses the young officer’s face—another flash of fear, but this time it’s different. A greater fear. A fear of his own people and what they’ll do to him if he runs.

The officer makes a decision in that moment. He raises the blaster anew—but by the time it’s up, Jom is already charging forward like a bull. He slams into the Imperial, lifting both of them off the ground and slamming the young officer back onto the console. The young officer goes still, and rolls off onto the ground. He curls up, moaning.

Jom takes the blaster pistol, picks up the kid, and shoves him in a footlocker trunk toward the back. “Shoulda made a different choice, kid,” Jom says, then slams the trunk down. Inside, the officer yells and weeps.

Jom winces and sits at the console.

He pulls up radar—one ship.

Incoming.

He taps on it, and data cascades across a trio of screens in front of him—it’s a yacht. A Ryuni-Tantine Vita-Liner. Fancy ship, if a little old, for the richest in the galaxy—what Jom and his friends used to call the “upper-atmos,” because on his world, Juntar, the richest of the rich used to live up in the sky in these floating mansions while the rest of the world toiled on the farms and in the dirt-cities below. The yacht is from an older day—Clone Wars era. A day of greater pomp and circumstance.

It’s got a trajectory toward the palace.

He checks its signature, because somehow, it’s made it through the blockade—and sure enough, the code that flashes checks out:

It’s an Imperial code. Which makes that an Imperial ship.

Jom chuckles and spins up the cannons. He pulls out the manual controls and tilts the two barrels of the massive turret toward the yacht—the ship coming in low and slow out of the clouds, its side gleaming in the sun like a sheen of liquid light. Jom grins and winks. “Bye-bye, little ship.”

He pulls the twin triggers.

Nothing happens.

Pull, pull, pull.
Click, click, click.

Nothing.

“Fraggit!” he bellows. Slamming the officer into the console must have damaged…
something.

He watches the yacht ease toward the palace. Safe as a star-whale in an empty ocean.
No, no, no.
He has to fix this thing. And he has to fix it now. Because he’s taking out that ship, one way or another.