by Chuck Wendig
Jom Barell is drowning. He cannot get air and he struggles against the sea as it drags him down. His lungs burn. Something coils around his foot—sea-vines or an eel. He can’t get traction. His hands flap like the broken wings of a dying bird, a bird who can’t lift off, who can’t escape what’s coming—the salt water fills his nostrils and his one empty eye socket and the other eye bulges like a cork in a bottle about to pop—
“Wake up!”
He gasps and sits up. His clothes, his sheets, everything pickled in sour sweat. But still he can’t breathe, and he grabs at his face and finds something there—a wet cloth. He flings it away like it’s vermin.
Someone is standing by the bed. Jom grunts and throws a punch—
But the trespasser handily sidesteps it.
He glares through one bleary, sleep-pebbled eye at his intruder. Jom knows the cut of that jib: a shadow long and lean, skin the color of sakai-wood, everything sharp as a pair of snip-shears.
“Sinjir,” Jom snarls. “How nice of you to pay me a visit and…” He picks up the washcloth. Water drips from its corners. “And drape a wet washrag over my face as I slept.”
“A small torment in an attempt to wake you up,” the ex-Imperial says.
“You could’ve tried, oh, Hey, wake up, Jom. Or how about a nudge? Maybe a little tickle.” His voice sounds like gravel grinding in his lungs.
“I don’t go right to simulated drowning, you old gill-goat. Don’t you military types sleep light? I tried the sweet-talking and the gentle shake-shake-shake, but as it turns out you sleep like you’re temporarily dead. I yelled, nothing. I kicked your bed and…nothing. That’s when I turned to torture, when everything else I tried failed.” Sinjir hms. “The story of my life, really.”
Jom drapes his legs over the bed. He feels around nearby for his eyepatch, which he pops on over his head and missing eye. They offered to do something better for him—a fake one or, even better, some kind of ocular implant—but he told them to shove it. A proper old eyepatch it would be.
“What do you want, Rath Velus?”
“God, you stink. You were drinking, you naughty lad.”
“And I’ll be drinking again as soon as you leave me alone.”
Things have been tough for Jom. (A small voice reminds him: You made them tougher, though, didn’t you?) After Kashyyyk, he felt lost. Publicly they gave him a medal, but privately he’d abandoned life as a commando. They chastised him for abandoning his role and breaking rank. He didn’t know if they’d take him back…
He never asked.
He just…didn’t have it in him. Didn’t have anything in him, it seemed. Like he was a cup tipped over, his contents spilled out.
It had (and has) nothing to do with Jas, he reminds himself daily, nightly, hourly, every-waking-momently. It’s definitely not that he loves her and misses her and feels lost without her—because no, hell no, that would make him a fool. A starry-eyed, gas-brained fool.
(Fine, maybe it’s that he misses her.)
But he also misses work. Proper work. He’s out of SpecForces. That, thanks to Kashyyyk. He went astray there, committing himself to an unsanctioned—meaning, illegal—military action. Of course, it was a military action that went well, and brought success to the New Republic at a time it needed it. Which means his discharge was an honorable one.
But he’s still out.
So, he drifts. He takes jobs where he can. Recently, he washed up on the shores of the Senate, working as a bodyguard in the pool of freelancers the Republic is using to provide extra protection for its politicians. (Their first vote after Liberation Day was to give themselves extra security. Which was probably smart, but to Jom reeks of overindulgent self-protection.) He’s assigned to whatever senator requests protection. It’s dull work. He’d rather be back with his fellow commandos, dropping down out of orbit, into atmo, locked and loaded with his mates at his back.
Those days, he fears, are done.
These days, he works for the Senate when they need him. The rest of the time, he sleeps. He drinks. He showers—occasionally.
Sinjir says, “And here I thought I had a problem. At least I don’t wake up smelling like I’ve been brining in my own grief-sweat for three days. I mean, I think we need to face the delicious irony that right now, I am sober as a vicar and you’re the one sauced to the gills.”
“Go back to where you came from.”
“The Empire? I think that job prospect is soon on its way to extinction. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”
“I’m done fighting the Empire.”
“Perhaps you are. But Jas is not.”
Jas.
“Jas can do what she wants,” Jom grumbles.
“That much is abundantly clear. She did you, after all.” That last bit spoken with trademark Sinjir cheek. Jom should punch him. But every time he moves, his head feels like an aquarium whose glass is being rapped by a bratty child. “And yet Jas needs your help.”
“Then she should’ve come here herself.”
“Maybe she would have, oh, I don’t know, if she wasn’t trapped on Jakku with no hope of rescue.”
Jakku. That name bubbles up out of the septic murk that is presently his memory. He cares little to follow the news, but some news is so big it follows you—and you couldn’t go anywhere nowadays without hearing how the Empire is there on Jakku, could you?
Wait. Jas is on Jakku?
“Why? Why is she there?”
“She and Norra…ahem, took an unscheduled escape pod ride down to the surface, and now we have no way to extract them.”
Jom lurches to his feet. He kicks around the trash on his floor looking for a shirt, or pants, or something. “Then what are we doing standing around—” He suddenly urps into his hand, choking back vomit. “Standing around here? Find me my blaster. And some clothes. Let’s go get her.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Jom turns on him and thrusts a callused finger up into the ex-Imperial’s face. “It is that easy. It’s always that easy.”
“Not this time,” Sinjir says, his tone dire. “Surrounding that planet is the entire Imperial remnant. One imagines it’s like Akiva—a total occupation. Except this is ten times worse than Akiva. A hundred times. Jom, we don’t even know if Jas and Norra are alive down there. What we do know is, if we have any shot here, that means hitting the Empire hard as we can. And to do that, we need a resolution to engage them. We need to finish this war.”
“I’m afraid that’s above my pay grade, Sinjir.”
“But it isn’t. I have a plan.”
Jom scratches his unshorn face—the mustache and chops he used to keep neatly trimmed have grown into a scraggly shrub on his cheeks and chin. “You have a plan. This ought to be rich.”
“It is. You work for the Senate now, correct?”
“Nngh. I work the security pool, yeah.”
“Good. How do you feel about Nakadia this time of year?”
Senator Tolwar Wartol’s yacht is a Ganoidian tri-deck cruiser. Spare in its design, it is far from a luxury craft. Everything is hard angles and flat surfaces. The front end of the ship looks like a set of steps. Most of the vessel is boxy in some parts, knife-like in others. Presently it sits docked at the Senate hangar—it is one of the last ships remaining, the rest already having gone on to Nakadia, where the Senate will now convene. The cruiser’s engines are cycling, and harbor crew perform all the proper cross-checks. A droid disconnects a fueling hose from the tail port.
Wartol does not expect her, and so it is the perfect time to strike. Before the ramp can be raised, Mon Mothma marches forward—a diligent woman of purpose flanked by two plume-helmeted guards—and storms right on board the ship. Wartol’s own guards, all Orishen, attempt to stand in her way, crossing pikes in front of her. She sneers at them, undaunted.
“Do you think that’s wise? One suspects the senator will be disappointed to learn that his guards cost him a measure of popularity because they turned the chancello
r of the New Republic away through the threat of violence.” Frankly, she suspects that at this point turning her away might earn him a bump in popularity. But the bluff works—their nose-slits twitch and pucker as they pull their pikes away.
She steps aboard.
Wartol stands nearby in a sitting area, and it gives her a bit of joy to find him startled by her presence. He turns quickly away from the viewport, like a naughty child caught spying on a neighbor. He regains his composure a moment later, and the victory is small, but right now Mon Mothma takes whatever edge she can get.
“Chancellor,” he says. His voice is a booming drum in the well of his chest. It has a rich vibrato to it, a doomed music. “Apologies, I was lost in thought. And I did not expect you.”
“Odd, given that I have been trying to pin you to a meeting for the last week.” She smiles stiffly.
“Things, as you know, have been rather busy.”
“You’re not busy now. I will join you on your trip to Nakadia. We can enjoy the journey together, Senator. Does that sound all right?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Her icy smile is unswerving. “Not an easy one.”
With a gesture of his long-fingered hand, his own guards disappear from the room. She dismisses her own protectors accordingly.
The sitting room is spare: Everything is as boxy inside the ship as it is outside. The chairs are hard enamel. The viewports are tall and topped with telescoping steel shutters. The floor is cold. The room contains no fabric, no softness, nothing to endear you to it. It is as unwelcoming as a brick.
Like Wartol, in a way.
Still, she sits when he offers her a chair. It isn’t comfortable, exactly, but she admits that the rigidity of it suits her.
Wartol takes his seat across from her. He lifts a bowl off a nearby table—as he hands it to her, hard, osseous little sockets rattle around inside it. They look like knucklebones. In each is a bit of yellow flesh, dried and dusted. It’s food…she thinks.
“Nektods,” he says. “Little pod-creatures that form on the sides of our ships, filtering in whatever micro-fauna they can eat. They survive the vacuum of space. They are quite tough, but you marinate them and roast them slowly over low heat, and they become a snack.”
Mon has politely eaten the food of countless species—decorum demands it, and she does not disappoint here, either. She takes one of the bony bits and turns it over in her hand again and again. He instructs her to place it to her lips and suck the meat out of its center, which she does. She expects it to taste…well, bad. Fishy or mealy or fungal. But it is oddly refreshing. A citrus tang and salty wave hit her tongue.
He eats one, too. Wartol does not look at his food as he eats, though. The X-shaped irises of his deep-set eyes stare at Mon, as if dissecting her. The corneas drift and pulse. It’s almost hypnotizing. His regal, deep voice and his kaleidoscopic eyes give her a sense of why he’s so popular. That, and he carries the invisible mantle of leadership. It fits him well.
He could win this thing, you know…What would you do if he did? Where would you go? What role would you serve, Mon?
Outside: The clang of the fueling hose decoupled from the ship jars her from her poisonous thoughts.
The engines hum to life and the ship begins to lift.
“I cannot imagine this is a pleasure visit,” Wartol says.
“It is not.”
“It’s certainly unorthodox.”
“I don’t think so. Is it strange for a chancellor to want to speak to one of her senators?”
“A senator who opposes her in the election, you mean?”
She smiles. “Surely despite the election, we have shared interests. We both want the best for the galaxy, do we not?”
The Orishen’s lower jaw splits and his tapered pink tongue licks along the serrated teeth on each side. “There’s no audience here, Chancellor. We’re not in the Senate house. Jettison this masquerade and speak plainly—what is it you want and why are you here?”
“The resolution to attack the Empire’s fleet on Jakku.”
“The one that failed, you mean?”
“The vote failed to pass by five votes. Just five.”
He discards an empty nektod shell into the bowl. The ship shudders as it enters atmosphere, and soon thereafter all of space and time seem to slide out from under them as the ship launches into hyperspace.
Wartol shrugs. “That’s how it happens sometimes, as you know. Votes fail, sometimes by one, sometimes by one thousand. Not that the Senate is that big yet to have a thousand votes, but it will be. When I am chancellor, new worlds will return to us.”
“As you say, there’s no audience here, so you don’t need to sell me on your candidacy. I want to talk about those five senators. Senators Ashmin Ek, Rethalow, Dor Wieedo, Grelka Sorka, and Nim Tar. Five senators, all of whom have voted with you in the past. Five senators who have worked with you across various councils and caucuses. And yet, while you voted for intervention with the Empire, they did not.”
He frowns. “They’re not automatons.”
“No. But they do take their cues from you.”
“They did not this time, it seems.”
“And yet you have not gone out of your way to convince them. The re-vote is tomorrow.” She’s fortunate—present rules allow for her to plead her case anew, further allowing for a re-vote. That is due to the fact that the margin of failure was particularly narrow: under ten votes separating the outcomes allows for the mechanism of a re-vote to trigger automatically. After this, no such mechanism will save her. No such re-vote will come into play. Which means she needs to nullify those five votes. “Why would you stand in the way of the progress you so desire, exactly? Why not chase it down? You have sway with these senators. Use it.”
“As you note, I voted for your resolution, Chancellor. I want this over with as much as you do. The Empire must fall.”
“So, I ask for your help to convince those senators,” Mon says.
“Help you? Liberation Day really did rattle your head, didn’t it?”
She leans forward. “And here I thought you said you wanted this over with as much as I do. Apparently not. You’re quite the politician. Happy to cast away your principles in favor of a victory.”
“If you say so.”
“Let me paint a picture,” she begins coldly. “You know that my resolution failing to pass is a mark against me. It reflects a failure of leadership on my part. And so you convince five senators to vote against the resolution while you protect yourself by voting in favor of it—that way, I cannot easily call you out, lest I look conspiratorial.”
“Conspiratorial, indeed.”
“You’ve laid your principles on an altar and sacrificed them.”
Now Wartol brings the heat to his voice. His jaw bisects and his tongue ripples. “You do not get to speak to me about sacrifice, Chancellor. Orish knows sacrifice. Orish knows what it is to poison ourselves so that the Empire may not consume us and our world. What do you know of it? The Empire never quite made its way to Chandrila, did it?”
“Yes, but I made my way to the Empire. I fought them. I lost people.”
“But you didn’t lose your world. You had the privilege of pursuing this fight. My people had no such privilege. The fight came to us. They enslaved us. I watched them shackle us. And beat us. And begin strip-mining our world, pilfering its resources. Our place, our people, all held under the Empire’s thumb. Until we found a way to wriggle free.”
“And I would never dismiss the perseverance of your people.”
“Dismiss it? No. You’d simply squander it. You don’t know what it takes. I and the other Orishen are masters of sacrifice. We know its value. We know how to wield it.”
“Is that what this is, then? Sacrifice?” Mon asks. “You will throw our war efforts away for your own conquest of the New Republic? The sacrifice of oneself can be noble, Senator. But the sacrifice of the safety of a whole galaxy? That is an attack on us all and I cannot
abide it!”
He stands up, looming over her. She tries not to show that she feels the threat of his presence—he could crush her quite easily. She could be dead, jettisoned into space, and that would be that.
“You don’t get to tell me that. You don’t have the right. Perhaps the truth of the thing is that I feel a Republic with you at its helm is the greatest concern,” he seethes. “You are weak. Your leadership is spineless and indulgent. Liberation Day shows the truth of that.”
“You did do it. You sabotaged the vote.”
Wartol does not sit back down so much as he falls backward against the chair. He looks away from her as he says, almost dismissively: “I admit to nothing. I will not give life to your conspiratorial fancies.”
“Then let me try a new conspiracy.” She opens her hand and lets a small device clatter across it. The device has a pinhole mike at its top, and from its bottom, a squid-tangle of severed wires.
He barely glances at it. “What is that?”
“You know what it is. It is a listening device. A bug.”
“So you say.”
“You planted it.”
“That is a heady accusation. I assume it comes with proof?” He waves her off, his hand then closing into a fist. “Oh, no, it doesn’t. Just another baseless allegation from the besieged Mon Mothma.”
“You knew. You knew that the Empire was at Jakku. You knew that two of our own were going to take the Millennium Falcon to that world, and you stopped them. Oh, the guards wouldn’t admit it was you, and they tried to claim it was me who stopped the Falcon. But they listen to you. You have authority. You have your little feelers everywhere, don’t you?”
“You can prove none of that.”
“That is correct. I cannot. So I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: by beating you to a bloody pulp.” Her eyes flash with mischief. “In the election, I mean.”
“Ho, ho, good luck with that, Chancellor. Your precious re-vote is in the morning. Less than twelve hours away. We land soon—I hope you scramble the votes you need. But time is ever-dwindling.”
She smiles. “If only there were some way to delay the vote.”
