Aftermath: Star Wars (36 page)

This is a dead place
, Corwin Ballast thinks.

Out there—it’s nothing. Nowhere, stretched wide and made infinite. The dry crust of desert. The whipping tails of dust. Past that: dunes. Mounds of sand, red as fire. They seem to run on forever underneath the cloudless sky.

Behind him: raggedy, ratty tents. Propped up by scraps of rusted pole and rebar, some of it kinked with an arthritic bent. The wind threatens to pick it all up and carry it away, but it never does. These tents have been here for so long they’re a part of the world. Just like the people.

Corwin steps out of his speeder—a limping junker he bought from a couple of anchorites outside of Tuanul. (He gave them more than he owed. Charity. What does it matter now, anyway?) Then he descends among the scavengers, the castoffs, the dregs of the galaxy’s populace. All of them dust-cheeked. Scarred, too—branded by the roughness of this place. A round-faced brute with a crown of wispy black hair and a fat body wreathed in rags steps in front of him, licking his chapped lips and chuckling. “What have we here—”

But Corwin knows the play. He’s no fool. Not anymore. He hooks his thumb around the button loop of his jacket and tugs it back, showing off a lean, mean, vent-barreled HyCor laser repeater.

Seeing it, the rag-man grunts and wanders off in search of prey that doesn’t sting or bite. Corwin, for his part, searches out the bar.

It’s not much to look at. The bar has been welded together out of scrap, the whole thing warped and crooked and shaped into a rough half circle, all of it underneath the cap-top of a 323 Rakhmann concussion-miner. Dust and sand hiss against the canopy of thin metal.

Corwin pulls up a rusted stool next to a socket-eyed skull-face: one of the Uthuthma, with swaddles of chain forming a scarf and obscuring its toothy maw. The alien chatters at him in its language:
“Matheen wa-sha wa-sho tah
.” A statement or a question, Corwin doesn’t know. All he does is wink and give the stranger a thumbs-up. The Uthuthma keeps staring with those dead empty holes it reportedly calls
eyes
. A loud, gurgling throat-clear from behind the bar, and Corwin turns to see the tender—

Big fella. Muscle gone to fat. Nose like a fallen tree. Whole right side of his face is peppered with scars, some of them lumpy with bits of scree and stone. One bit of gravel is bigger than the pad on Corwin’s thumb and sticks in the man’s cheek the way a rock pokes up out of dry, dead ground. “Whaddya having?”

“Whaddya got?”

“Nothing but one thing: Knockback Nectar, they call it.”

“If you only have one thing, then why ask me what I’m having?”

The bartender shrugs and snorts. “People like the illusion of choice. Gives them comfort in these strange times.”

“Then I will have that, my good man.”

“Good man,” the bartender mutters, then pours from an old oil can into a smaller oil can and plonks it down in front of Corwin. The so-called nectar is the color of hydraulic fluid. And bits float in it. Spongy, bobbing bits.

“What is this?”

“Knockback Nectar, I told you already.”

“No, I mean, what
is
it?”

“Ugh. Huh. You know, I don’t ask. They just bring it to me. Something about scraping the lichen rocks from the dead buttes down in the south. I hear tell they pickle it in fuel barrels or some such.”

“It’ll get me drunk?”

“It’ll get a space slug drunk.”

Corwin tips it back. It tastes like sour spit with a motor oil aftertaste. Doesn’t take long before his gums start to feel numb and his teeth buzz.

All righty, then.

The Uthuthma babbles at him again:
“Matheen bachee. Iss-ta ta-hwhiss
.”

“May the Force be with you, too,” Corwin says. His voice is stripped raw after one sip of the Knockback. The words wheeze out. He laughs: It’s a mad, desolate, empty sound. Like this little enclave. Like this whole planet.

“You’re not from here,” the tender says.

“What gave it away?”

“Not many folks
from
here. Most folks…just end up here. Jettisoned like so much worthless cargo. Dropped like waste.”

Corwin shrugs and chuckles and sips his poison.

“You’re a strange fella. You looking for work?”

“Could be. What’s around?”

“Haw.
Pfft.
Not much. Most of the mining is on the far side, and even that’s pretty meager. We do get magnite here, and bezorite, and there’s talk of some new kesium gas wells going up near Cratertown, but that might just be rumor. You got the scavenger packs. You got the Wheel Races north of here. You could say your vows and be an anchorite but, naw, not you. And I’d say you could be a bartender, but turns out that job’s taken.”

“I’ll think about it, thanks.”

The tender keeps on him: “So how’d you end up here?”

“I didn’t ‘end up here.’ ”

“Not from here. Didn’t end up here. How’d you come to be sitting at Ergel’s Bar, then?”

“You Ergel?”

“I’m Ergel.”

“Well, Ergel, I came here.”

“You came here? Of your own free will and such?”

“Of my own free will and such.”

Ergel stands there and stares for a good ten seconds, then bursts out laughing. A big, booming, gurgling laugh like he’s choking on his own lung-meats in the process. His jowls shake and his belly bounces back and forth. “Galaxy’s a big place, fella. Wide open as a nexu’s fang-lined maw. The stars are endless. The worlds are countable, but not by one hand and not by a hundred. You got planets and outposts and stations and spaceships and—” More laughing. “You came
here
?”

Corwin nods. “I did.”

“Why? I have to know. I have to know what drives a man to this.”

“Matheen vis-vis tho hwa-seen
,” the Uthuthma says.

“Shut up, Gazwin,” Ergel grumbles. “Let the man finish.” Then to Corwin: “Ignore the skull-face. I gotta know.”

Here, Corwin blinks a few times. And every time he does, he sees it happen again right there in his hometown, right in Maborn on Mordal:

His little girl lying there in the open street.

The shallow rise and fall of her chest.

The Imperials entrenched at one end of town. The rebels on the other.

Corwin’s there, off to the side, hiding behind crates of vittles with his wife, Lynnta, and suddenly she’s up and running for the little girl, and then he’s running after her, hard-charging, screaming, reaching—

Laser fire. Crossing both directions.

Lynnta’s head snapping hard the one way—

Then she’s down.

Corwin leaps—

But something burns into his side. Cuts through him. He hears the sizzle of it. Feels his system go through shock: like a bomb detonating underwater.
Boom.

Then he’s out.

When he wakes up weeks later on a bacta drip on a crawler outside of town, his family is gone. Already buried. And neither side won its war, and both sides went home licking their wounds.

“War,” Corwin says. “I’m tired of war.”

“You don’t look like an Imperial. You were a rebel, I bet.”

“No, no rebel, either. Just a man trying to make do with his family.”

“You brought your family here?”

“I did,” Corwin says, but he doesn’t explain that he brought them only in his heart—and in the picture he’s got stuffed in his boot. “Wanted to take them as far away from the fighting as I could. A place where the war will never find us. The farthest-flung nowhere rock I could find on a star map.”

“Well, you found it, buddy. You don’t get more nowhere than here. War ain’t got no reason to roll up on this rock.”

“You promise?”

“If the war comes here, I’ll buy you all the Knockback Nectars you want.”

“Deal.”

“This is a dead place, you know.”

“I know.”

That works for Corwin. A dead place for him: a man gone dead.

And then, she’s back.

Norra cries out in the darkness, and then light rushes in. Everything feels electric. Her body is bright, too bright, everything vibrating and burning and she’s scrambling up and something’s on her arm—she starts to yank at it, and something in her nose and mouth and she pulls at that, too. Gagging. Coughing. Suddenly someone is there. Holding her. Pinning her arms.
Let me go,
she wants to say. She tries to say it but her voice is a scratchy, gargling mess. All she hears is a voice:

“Shh. Mom. Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Temmin. Oh, by all the gods of all the stars, it’s her son. He holds her close. She holds him back.

She sees now: She’s in a white room. Blue skies outside. A medical droid standing off to the side, ready to act.

Temmin kisses her cheek. She kisses his brow with chapped lips.

Norra cries.

Days later, when she has her voice back, she sits in the lounge of the medical building here in Hanna City. Out of the glass she can see the city there—and beyond it, the windswept meadows. Chandrila has been a peaceful place, long separate from the war. It seems an artifact out of time—a souvenir from some other era.

She sits there with two others:

Admiral Ackbar.

And Captain Wedge Antilles.

Wedge looks better than she does, though maybe not by much. He’s walking with a cane right now, though he says that should change soon.

Ackbar, for his part, looks tired.

But he looks happy to see her, too.

“You’re quite something, Norra,” Ackbar says.

“I don’t know about that, sir,” she says. Her voice is still scratchy. She still feels edgy, touchy. Ever since the droid woke her up out of that coma with whatever that chemical concoction was—she feels like an overcharged battery. Like she wants to get up and run, leap, dance. But her body can’t do those things: She feels raw, sore, as tired as an old musk-hound.

Ackbar and Wedge share a look. Wedge nods. Ackbar produces a small box. “This is for you.”

She gives a quizzical look and takes it. Norra hesitates but Wedge urges her on: “Open it, Norra.”

Inside: a medal.

“I already have mine,” she says, “this must be a mistake.”

“One can earn more than a single medal,” Ackbar says, somewhat gruffly. But his lips twist into a strange smile. “Your efforts on Akiva have had tremendous effect.”

“I…hardly see how…”

“Humility is well and good but facts persevere beyond the shadow of one’s own feelings,” Ackbar says. “You saved Captain Antilles. You helped us capture two high-value Imperial targets—General Jylia Shale, and Palpatine’s adviser Yupe Tashu—and confirm the deaths of two others: Moff Valco Pandion and slaver Arsin Crassus.” The way Ackbar says that word
slaver
—it drips with rage and condescension.

“Admiral Sloane,” Norra says. “What of her?”

Wedge sighs. “We got her attaché, Adea Rite. But the admiral herself got away. It’s why you’ve been here for the last month, in a coma. She blew the shuttle and got away in an escape pod.” Norra realizes:
Of course.
The front cockpit of those
Lambda
-class shuttles becomes the escape craft. She finishes the story for him:

“Let me guess. She took that escape craft right to the Star Destroyer—”

“And they took that ship to lightspeed. Yes.”

She scowls. Disappointment stabs her in the gut.

Wedge reaches out and clasps her hands. “We’ll find her. We still took down two Star Destroyers. It was a victory for the New Republic.”

She nods and forces a smile. “Thank you, Captain.”

“There’s something else,” Ackbar says.

“Sir?”

“I have more work for you if you want it.”

“I…I don’t know, sir. My son. I…”

“Just hear me out, will you?”

She nods. She listens.

And in the end, she says yes.

Akiva. Still hot. Still muggy. A storm came through the night before, and now the landing pad is littered with palm fronds and the fat, broad leaves and crinkly blue blossoms of the asuka trees. The flowers lie matted against the ground, still pretty in their way, but drowned looking, too.

Norra stands there, a sack over her shoulder.

Temmin stands with her. He has a bag with him, too.

A New Republic flag flies over this landing pad, and a Corellian corvette roars overhead. Akiva: the first Outer Rim planet to officially have joined the contingent of worlds pledging themselves to the New Republic. The satraps saw the Empire’s betrayal—and the rage of the people of Myrra—and decided that the only way to save their skins and their rule was to give it over, in part, to the Republic. (And Norra thanks the stars that the first order of business was routing out corruption and crime—Surat fled, but the rest of his gang went down. Many in prison. The rest went out in what they probably thought was a blaze of glory but what instead will likely end up as a bloody and brutal footnote in Akiva’s history books.)

“Are you sure about this?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“You can stay here. I understand.”

“I don’t want to stay here. I thought this place was home. It’s not.”

She smiles. “It still could be.”

“You’re my home. Wherever you go, that’s where I live.” She pulls him close.

He says: “Do you think we’ll find Dad still?”

“It’s possible. Those data cubes you stole from Surat had a lot of information about the Empire’s criminal dealings.” Jas was the one who translated them. Looks like Surat may have been collecting that information in case he ever had to bargain his way to freedom with the burgeoning New Republic. Temmin stealing that from him bought him the only chip he had to play. The archive offered a bounty of information connecting the Empire with several crime syndicates across the galaxy. “The Hutts and other syndicates operated black-site prisons for the Empire. I’m hoping our journeys will take us there.” The holocrons will in part inform their new mission. “But I also don’t want to promise anything. Not like I did before. I don’t know what’s going to happen out there. You have to know that, Temmin. But we’ll try. Okay? We’ll try.”

“I know.” He looks up. “Hey, here’s our ride.”

A ship drifts down, its twin engines pivoting and firing against the ground to slow its ascent. It’s an SS-54 assault ship. On the side is the scratched-up painting of a little tooka doll holding a sharp knife. The words that were above it are mostly gone, except for two:

PLAY NICE.

It settles down, and once it does, three people step off. Jas is first off the ship, craning her neck and cracking her knuckles. Sinjir follows after. He’s still got that rough-hewn edge. His scruff has grown out a bit more. Though that Imperial
vibe
still hangs about him like a miasma.

Last off, a man with thick muttonchops that connect to a bushy mustache. Arm in a cast, blaster at his side. Helmet palmed in his hand.

He steps off and heads right for Norra, hand out.

“Norra Wexley, I’m guessing?” he asks.

“Jom Barell,” she says, shaking his hand. “A pleasure to meet you finally. I just want to say again I appreciate you fighting the fight on Myrra. I had thought all of you SpecForce guys and girls died that day. I’m happy I was wrong and thanks for taking the initiative.”

Temmin walks past and mutters: “Though you almost killed us.”

“Your boy?” he asks.

“My boy,” she says.

Temmin gives Jas a hug. Then gives Sinjir a punch to the arm.

Norra calls after: “Temmin, I think you’re forgetting something.”

“Oh! Yeah.” He sticks both fingers in his mouth and whistles. “Yo. Bones! Let’s roll.”

From far off the field, Mister Bones jerks his head up. The droid, which Temmin and Norra rebuilt together from scrap in Esmelle and Shirene’s basement over the last week—a “family project,” she said—waves. In one hand, a flower. In the other, a blaster.

“ROGER-ROGER!”

The battle droid jogs past, leaving small craters in the landing field. Which tells Norra they still have a little work to do on his pneumatics.

Jas and Sinjir come up to her.

Jas says: “So, we ready to hunt some Imperial war criminals?”

“Oh, I
guess,
” Sinjir says, pouting. “I like to pretend we’re going to be hunting down dangerous prey, but most likely we’re going to be chasing a bunch of pudgy Imperial accountants across backwater worlds.”

“Duty calls,” Norra says. “I’m glad you all answered it with me. I didn’t think you’d go for it. Ackbar suggested we all work together again and…I thought he was crazy.”

“There’s money,” Jas says with a shrug.

“And there’s drink,” Sinjir adds.

Jom frowns. “Oh, this is going to be fun. Come on. The job awaits.”

Norra smiles.

Temmin stands on the ramp of Jas’s ship. He waves. She waves back and heads aboard, ready to see where the next adventure takes them.