Aftermath: Star Wars (7 page)

Family dinner at the Taffral house: The patriarch of the family, Glen, sits at the head of the table. To his left sits Webb, the older of the two brothers. To his right: Dav, the younger. Webb is broad-shouldered, full-chested, a rounder belly. His hair sits trimmed close to the scalp, like his father’s. Dav is leaner, smaller, a little scruffier, too.

None of them speaks. But it’s far from quiet. The loud scrape of knives on plates. The rattle of a serving spoon against a wooden bowl. The groaning judder of chair legs on the wooden floor of the old farmhouse. Outside, wind whistles through the popper-stalks and it carries the chatter-sounds of the starklebird flocks migrating east.

Dav speaks. “Pass the beans.” Webb gives him a look. “Please.”

Webb grabs the dish, starts to pass it over, then pauses, the dish held fast in his hand. He sets it back down. His jaw is set and his teeth work on pulverizing some seed in the back of his mouth.

“I can’t believe you came back here,” Webb says. The way he says it is like he doesn’t want to say it, like he’s trying to bite back the words. But they come out anyway. “You gualama-loving, tail-kissing scum-shepherd.”

Dav sniffs. “Zowie, Webb, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

Glen just stares out over the table, silent as a judge.

“Oh, I’ll tell you. I’ll let you have it. You betrayed this family the moment you went out there and you became a rebel-lover. Joining the star-damned terrorists like they’re some sort of freedom fighters instead of…instead of the criminals that they are!”

Dav lets his fork and knife clatter against the plate and table. “They’re not terrorists. They started out as an alliance of resistance, but now they’re a legitimate government, Webb. They’re the real deal.” He dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “The Empire’s days are done.”

Suddenly Webb stands up. His chair is knocked backward. “You watch your mouth. That’s treachery, what you just said.”

“The word is
treason,
” Dav says, staying in his seat. “And why’s your nose so far up the Empire’s can, anyway? You failed out of the Academy. They beat your hide senseless day in and day out.”

Webb puffs out his chest. “Made me a better man.”

“Made you a belligerent jerk.”

“Why, you slime-slick no-good-brother—” And with that, Webb launches himself across the table. But he’s half drunk on koja-rum and Dav is sober as the noontime sky and so he steps handily out of the way as Webb crashes into the empty chair and smashes against the wall.

But drunk is still dangerous, and his arms flail out against Dav and the two go down, punching and kicking and calling each other all sorts of names. That is, until Glen clears his throat, picks up a bowl of greens, and wings it against the wall hard as he can. It bangs and clatters. Salad leaves splatter against the wall and ceiling.

The two brothers poke their heads up like whistle-pigs.

“Both of you, siddown,” Glen says, leaning back in his chair. “Sit.”

The two brothers do as their father commands.

“Pop, he started it,” Dav says.

Webb interjects: “Pop, don’t listen to this
treason
monkey—”

“Shut up. Both of you! You two are in dire need of a lesson. I’m an old man. Had the two of you later than I would’ve liked. Figured myself a single man, a simple farmer, until your mother came along—may all the stars welcome her soul.” He holds his hand to his heart and closes his eyes. “So I’ve seen a thing or two.”

Under his breath, Webb mutters in a mocking tone:
“I had to crawl to the academy house on my hands and knees through mud and briar and fell-bears ate off both my legs—”

With his knife, Glen gestures: “Boy, you best clip that line of blabber unless you want me to tan your hide with a dry popper-stalk.”

“Sorry, Pop,” Webb mopes.

“Now, listen. What’s come before will come back around again. Republic was the way of the world before, and it’ll be the way again. And for a time everyone will cheer them on, and everything will be cozy-dosie, but there will come a time when things go sour and someone decides they got a better way of doing things. And the New Republic or the New-New Republic or the Republic We Got This Week will clamp down hard and then those people with the so-called better way will become the brave rebel alliance and the Republic will become the enemy and the wheel will turn once more.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m old enough to remember when the Republic shot itself right in the knee. It wasn’t taken over by the Empire. It
became
the Empire slowly, surely, not overnight but over years and decades. Fruit always tastes nice when it’s ripe. But it can’t stay like that. Every nice piece of fruit will rot on the branch if it hangs there long enough. You remember that.”

“Pop,” Dav says. “It won’t be like that this time.”

“He’s chosen his side,” Webb says. “And I’ve chosen mine.”

“And that’s the damn problem!” Glenn says, pounding the table. “Both of you, picking sides. Side you
should
pick is your family. No matter what. Above all else. But here you sit, bickering like a bunch of starkles over which one gets the first and last worm. You know the Lawquanes? Old man Cut, he fought in the Clone Wars. He saw the truth of things: No side in war is the right side. He did the right thing. Settled down. Had a family. Never got drawn back into the muck. But you two. Not good enough for—”

A sound. A pair of screamers. TIE fighters.

The Empire doesn’t come out this way. The realization settles in fast.

“You gave me up,” Dav says, horrified.

Webb looks shameful. “The Empire pays to give up rebel scum.” But his words don’t sound as sure now. Regret and guilt mingle in there.

Suddenly, a stun blast. The air flashes with blue and Webb cries out, dropping face-first into a bowl of mashed chokeroot. Dav goggles. “Pop…”

“You believe in what you’re doing, Dav?”

“I…do.”

“Fine. Good enough for me. I hope you’re right.” He sighs. “Best run now. Go out the back window. Take the speeder bike in the barn.”

“Pop…thanks.”

“Now go.”

“What will you do?”

Pop shrugs. “I’ll tell them the truth. That you overpowered me, shot me, and ran.” He turns the gun toward himself and fires. The stun blast knocks the old man back into his chair. His heels kick up and he moans.

Dav blinks back tears. Then he rushes over, grabs the gun, and heads out the back window just as the front door breaks down.

Above the city of Myrra, a haze. Even the sun, bright and bold and punitive, seems to have to push its light through the thick and gauzy air. Heat vapors rise, distorting everything. The humidity of this place is seen as much as it is felt.

So it takes a moment for Jas Emari to confirm what it is that she’s seeing—there, descending from the heavens as if a divine chariot, a ship glinting in the sun. A yacht, in fact: ornate and opulent, gleaming brass and carmine piping, a ship built as much for its looks as its function.

It is the yacht of Arsin Crassus.

The Galactic Empire is a leviathan of force—a carbon-armored fist crushing those systems that would dare to deny its authority. But such force and such authority could not be conjured out of nothing. Even the Sith could not manage such magic. It was one thing that made the difference:

Credits.

Money.

Crassus is one of the Empire’s main moneylenders. Has been for decades. The story goes that he was once a young man in the Trade Federation, and helped the as-yet-unformed but burgeoning Empire lead the Federation heads to slaughter on Mustafar while then plundering all their accounts to help fund the new government. And that’s where he’s been, since: helping the corporate side of Imperial government.

He’s also a slaver.

And today, he is her target.

Jas clings to the rusted old tower rising high above Myrra’s defunct capitol building. Cables cinch around her waist and her right thigh, belting her to the structure so that she can lean out with some freedom of movement and, more important, freedom to both of her hands. All without falling.

The bounty hunter has been here for some time. Waiting. Barely sleeping. She’s tired. Her muscles ache. But this is the job. (The life of a bounty hunter offers a great deal of watching and waiting—those long stretches accompanied by very short, sharp bursts of action.)

She unbuckles the rifle from her back: a long-range rifle the Zabrak constructed herself. Based on an old Czerka slugthrower, she modified it to fire different rounds according to her needs depending on which barrel and which chamber she brings to the weapon. Jas once heard the story that the Jedi constructed their own lightsabers and she figured, well, why can’t she do the same with her rifle? So she did. Because she can do whatever she wants.

Jas lifts the rifle to her shoulder, then with her left hand pulls down the telescoping unipod that clicks into the D-ring at her waist. (It gives the rifle that little extra stability, especially in such an unstable position as this, hanging a hundred or so meters up in the air, staring out over the sprawling city.) She presses her eye to the scope.

There, the yacht. The scope gives her critical data—the heat coming off the back of it, the ship’s speed and trajectory, any biological signatures (those are presently nil given the yacht’s shielding).

She points the weapon toward the raised landing platform atop the satrap’s palace—the home of Satrap Isstra Dirus, a venal governor known for caring very little about the people of his city and very much about how fat his pockets have become with other people’s credits.

In a perfect galaxy, he would be a target, too.

But Jas Emari is a professional. No collateral damage. Whether it’s justified or not.

Through the scope she sees it:

The yacht, easing in for a landing. Steam burns off in ghostly plumes. It lands, rocking softly as it does. A gangplank descends. The satrap emerges: a tall man, handsome once, though even through the scope she can see the lines etching into his stony face like water carving channels into a mountain. He’s all smiles and gentle applause. Bowing and scraping because he knows which side of his muftari bread is spiced and salted; Jas has seen his records, seen how the flow of credits stems from various Imperial corporations and trickles into his limitless coffers. The planets of the Outer Rim are a very good place to hide money and procure illicit goods (slaves included), and Akiva is just such a world. Behind the satrap: two of his guards. Tall helmets with red plumage. Each with vibro-pikes taller than those helmets, their blade tips pointed skyward.

Crassus steps down off the plank, attended to by his own guard: women in hardened-lacquer animal masks. Slaves, too, most likely.

The man himself makes no small target—he’s big and round, with a beard dyed the color of deepest space, a glittering robe trailing behind him like a peacock with its tail in the dirt. He claps his hands and then takes both of them and clutches the wrists of the satrap.

They laugh.

Ha, ha, ha.

Time to end your mirth, Arsin Crassus.

But then her scope flashes—

Incoming ships.

Jas pivots the rifle, following the arrows inside the scope’s display—and there she sees an Imperial shuttle,
Lambda
-class, descending through the spiraling cloud cover. A second and third arrow blip.

Two more shuttles.

And with them, TIE fighters.

She swings the rifle back to the platform. Crassus is still there (she hisses panicked breath through her teeth, glad to have not missed her opportunity thanks to a distraction), now standing elbow-to-elbow with the satrap. His own guards have lined up, waiting. Crassus has taken off his robe and one of his guards is now cooling him off with an unfolded fan.

Then, walking in from the rooftop door: three stormtroopers.

Curious.

Take the shot,
she thinks.
Earn the credits.

But—

But.

Something’s happening. Her intel didn’t detail any of this, and now she curses herself for falling into a familiar trap. She operates too often with blinders on. She sees the target and makes a beeline for it—and sometimes, when she does that, she misses things. A bigger picture. Unseen enemies.
Complications.
The view of the scope is all the view she needs, or so she believes until reality proves otherwise. She’s been hunting Arsin Crassus now for a month, following his self-important vapor trail as he flits about the galaxy like a scared thatch-sparrow, and when she heard of the meeting between him and Satrap Dirus, she looked no farther.

Turns out, she should have.

Her finger hesitates, and one by one, the shuttles begin to land.

The shuttles, alighting in a half circle, begin to open up.

Their guests begin to spill out.

And with it, her breath catches in her chest. She feels like someone who has dug a hole in their backyard only to find a trunk full of Old Republic dataries—a box of unexpected treasure.

Arsin Crassus, yes.

Then: someone she doesn’t know, someone in an absurd piece of headwear (if Jas had to describe the hat, she would suggest it looked like someone had killed an emerald kofta-grouse and stuck it on his head) with the lush, plush, purple robes of an old Imperial adviser.

Out of the next shuttle comes someone she recognizes instantly: Jylia Shale. An old woman, shrunken up like a gallstone and with all the hardness of an uncracked koja nut. Shoulders forward, hands clasped behind her back, Shale wears the crisp Imperial-gray uniform, her hair done up in an austere bun atop her head. She comes with a pair of red-helmeted, red-cloaked Imperial Guards. Part of Palpatine’s own royal protection.

And then, from the final shuttle.

Moff Valco Pandion.

Stiff, hatchet-chinned, a scar running across his brow, the kind of scar that looks like it has a story behind it.

And there, on his chest, a curious emblem: a rectangular one, with six blue squares in the top row, and three red and three yellow below it.

That, the emblem not of moff, but rather: grand moff.

A title assigned, or a title claimed and taken?

There, on that platform, stand three significant targets. Crassus is the intended target, but Shale? Pandion? Better payouts. Pandion in particular is the highest number in the Pazaak card deck handed out by her contact within the New Republic: The higher the number of the card, the more valuable the target. And there are three of those targets.

Butterflies turn inside her stomach.

Kill Pandion.

The New Republic will want them alive but will still pay quite a bit for their corpses. As long as they aren’t disintegrated, of course—handing in a jar of greasy ash isn’t a good way to get paid. She always intended to kill Crassus. Better a man like that be put in the ground than be thrown in a cell. Penance for his crimes.

On the landing deck, Pandion joins the others, though he remains a step or two back: distant, haughty, purposefully separate. The others are having a conversation. Introductions, perhaps, or reintroductions.

Jas plays this out in her head. She takes off the blinders, tries to think beyond the moment, beyond the pulling of a trigger.

Killing Pandion, or any of them, is an option.

A single shot, and one is down. With it: a significant payday.

The others will scatter. Back to the shuttles or in through the palace door. If they go back to the palace, then maybe,
maybe
she will have a shot at taking out or capturing the others. But if they return to the skies? Then that chance will be gone.

A wind blows. A warm wind, even up here. Like the breath of a beast. Hissing past the thorny spikes rising off the top of her head.

That could work.

Let them go. Get one target.

But there exists a larger play. All of them together. A coup, for her. Jas had a name with the Empire. A name, too, among many of the crime syndicates here at the Outer Rim—with the Hutts, Black Sun, the Crymorah, the Perlemian Cartel. But with the destruction of the Death Star (
again
), and with the switching of her own allegiance, her name and her reputation are in flux—as is so much of the galaxy. If she’s going to earn her keep, that means taking bigger risks. Playing it safe—slow and steady—is not an option. She reaches the decision and puts away the rifle.

One target is not enough.

She has to take them all.

And I have to do it right now.

Turbulence as the shuttle enters Akiva’s atmosphere. Sloane sits in the navigator’s chair—a non-essential role given the short distance they’re flying, though she could fill it capably if needed—and watches the darkness of space give way to the washed-out light of the planet below. Clouds brush past the glass, and the heads-up display designates the horizon line, their trajectory, their plotted course.

Next to her, her pilot—Morna Kee. Been her pilot for some time now. A capable pilot. A loyal Imperial. A
faithful
Imperial. It’s nice to have people around whose names she knows. But their defeat over Endor, plus the New Republic making deals with governors and sector heads left and right in order to scoop up Imperial naval ships? Not to mention the threat of internal schism. It’s left her reeling. Grasping for details she once found vital. Details that can no longer be important.

Behind her: the archivist, the little man who will take notes on the meeting, inscribing the results of the summit so that the history of the Imperial resurgence is neatly writ and officially recorded. Next to him, her assistant on this mission, a bright-eyed young Corellian woman named Adea Rite. Then a half squadron of stormtroopers. Those with the best test scores, taken from the rosters of the
Vigilance.
They stand guard over her new prisoner: Captain Wedge Antilles. The rebel lies on a floating medical table, unconscious from the drugs pumping into his arm. The medical droid hovers over him, checking vitals, securing the tubing.

A fly in the ointment, that one.

A dangerous one. The rebels will come looking.

And then what?

Pressure lives in the hinge of her jaw. This has to work. All of it. The meeting must yield results. The future of the Empire—and the stability of the galaxy—is counting on that.

The meeting wasn’t her idea alone, though those gathered think it is. All the more reason for this to play out according to her design and without any further hitches.
If this falls apart, they’ll blame me.

Below, the city of Myrra. A sprawling, choked mess. Strange-angled buildings pushing up out of the jungle, though not without the jungle trying to fight back: vines like cruel fingers draped over the walls and clay-tile rooftops as if they’re trying to pull apart the city in slow motion. Between the buildings are pathways too narrow to be called roads—just alleyways, really, and one of the things that makes Imperial occupation here tricky. Those “streets” are too narrow for any of their transports with the exception of speeder bikes, and even then the corners are too sharp for those speeders to turn.