by Chuck Wendig
“Oh. Hm. A rebel, you say?” Her enemy pauses to think, and she watches him come to some silent conclusion. “I can use him, too.” To the troopers, Rax says: “Get them on board. We’ll take them back to base.”
The troopers gather her arms behind her and shove her forward, past Gallius. As she passes, she spits on his uniform—summoning that much moisture is a nearly heroic effort, but the result is as desired: Her saliva is laced with the filth of this planet and it stains the white accordingly.
He says: “This world has transformed us all, it seems.”
“You have no idea,” she says as they push her toward the shuttle.
“Welcome to Jakku, Rae Sloane. Welcome to Jakku.”
Already the morning sun is a searing presence, oppressive, like a boot on the back of the neck. Jas watches Norra stalk the wreckage—she moves through the debris of the caravan like a ghost. Her wailing is done. She spent that time last night, howling and raging. Now she’s a gutted thing. Probably thought it couldn’t get any worse. Then they saw Brentin.
And then they saw Brentin taken away again.
Jas has no idea what any of that means. Mysteries persist. Why is Sloane in scavenger robes? Why did they capture her and Brentin as if they are enemies to the Empire? Why was Brentin here at all? Why did Niima go along with it—and why is the Hutt now dead?
“Nothing here,” Norra says. Two words she’s said already half a dozen times. Her raw, red eyes search the wreckage, looking for any answer to those questions Jas keeps in the back of her head.
“We should go,” Jas says.
“Yes,” Norra says, but she continues wandering. She kicks over the smoldering wreckage from a wheel-bike. She nudges the elbow of a dust-blown Hutt-slave corpse. Jas tries to summon her back again, warning her that those turbolasers are off, now—but no telling if they’ll remain so.
“Norra.”
“I know.”
“We have to go.”
“I know.”
“We can get him back. Him and Sloane.”
“How?” Norra asks, that one word spoken louder than all the others—the word rough-edged with sorrow, desperation, and anger. “We don’t know where they went. Or why. We don’t have anything, Jas. We were close. We were so close. And then just…” She holds up her hand and closes it on open air. Fresh tears threaten to leave new tracks down her dirt-stained cheeks.
Jas doesn’t know how to answer.
She wants to offer hope, but that’s not really her thing. Jas doesn’t want to lie. Losing Sloane and Brentin like that means hope is fading fast.
Then—
A gassy belch erupts as the Hutt carcass rolls over. Norra cries out. So does Jas, startled as she staggers backward, hissing an old Iridonian curse. She raises her rifle, pointing it at the slug.
Niima paws at the ground, struggling to get up. Dark blood oozes from holes in her body in gummy runnels and rivulets. She gurgles in some old form of Huttese—“Uba, Zabrak! Nolaya bayunko.” The body rights itself, then slithers over the carcasses of her slaves. Every movement draws a grunt of anguish from the slithering worm.
Norra throws Jas a panicked look. In it, the message: What do we do?
Jas gives an alarmed shrug. Let’s let this play out.
Finally, the Hutt seems to find what she’s looking for. She scoops up a black box off the ground. It looks to be a translator device. With a leathery mitt, Niima slaps the box against her chest—it sticks to the dry, slimy blood.
Again she bellows in Huttese, but this time the box offers a staticky, grinding translation: “YOU. THE ZABRAK. YOU WERE IN MY DUNGEON.”
Jas keeps the rifle pointed. “That’s right.”
“AND YET NOW YOU ARE HERE.”
“That’s…also true.”
“I SHOULD KILL AND EAT YOU.”
The Hutt’s black tongue slides along her slitted mouth. Her one eye winks reflexively as a little river of fresh blood trickles into it.
“I don’t think you’re in much of a position for that.”
The slug regards herself. Then she looks to the corpses around her. Her wormbody visibly slumps in a noncommittal shrug. “YES. YOU MAY BE RIGHT. YOU HELP ME AND I WILL HELP YOU.”
Jas and Norra consult in an unspoken look. Norra gives Jas a small nod. Okay, then. Jas injects a little deference into her voice when she says: “What do you need, O great-and-powerful Niima?”
“TAKE ME TO MY TEMPLE.”
“And what do we get out of the exchange?”
“I CAN GET YOU CLEARANCE CODES.”
“We have codes already.”
“NOT TO THE IMPERIAL BASE, YOU DON’T.”
Well. That answers that.
Jas nods. “Norra, go get the shuttle. Let’s take Niima home.”
“Conder!” Sinjir cries out, gasping as he lifts his face from the hard, cobbled stone of the alleyway. His chin peels away, sticky with blood. He gasps, tasting that wet copper tang. A hand waves in front of him.
His vision resolves and there stands Temmin.
He growls as he takes the hand. The young man helps him stand.
“What…” Sinjir coughs. “What happened?”
“I…don’t know,” Temmin says. “Grelka ducked away and I tried to follow. But something was blocking my comm.”
“The others,” Sinjir says. He looks up, sees that the sky is blushing lavender. It’s morning. How long was he out? “Where are they?”
“I don’t know that, either. I can’t get anybody on the comlink. I came around the side here and found you, facedown in the alley.”
Not the first time that’s happened, Sinjir thinks.
The memory of last night resolves: waiting around Izzik’s, losing sight of Ashmin Ek, seeing Ek and Nim Tar in the alleyway before someone clobbered him in the back of the old braincage, forcing him to stop and take a long dirt-nap. That proves something’s up. But what?
—
They find Solo in a trash bin behind the landing bay where Dor Wieedo’s ship was (but is no longer) parked. He is alive. It doesn’t take much to bring him back to consciousness—a few light slaps to the cheek does the trick. He clambers out, snarling.
“Why do I always end up in the trash?” he asks. When nobody says anything, he asks: “What? Nobody has anything funny to say about that?”
“I have no witty retort,” Sinjir says. His nerves roil like storm clouds. Worry corrodes him from the inside as he envisions Conder caught in a panoply of bad situations. “Just…tell us what happened.”
“Enh,” Solo says, brushing some half-rotten leafy greens out of his hair. “I followed the thugs. Was gonna sneak onto the ship. But there was a fourth one and he snuck up on me and—” He claps his hands together. “Stun blast to the back. And then they threw me away with yesterday’s garbage.”
Temmin picks some kind of noodle off Solo’s left shoulder.
Sinjir’s about to say something—
When his comlink crackles.
Conder.
But it’s Jom. “—ello? I’ve—” More static. “—gone and done something—” Hiss, crackle. “—aboard the Falc—”
“Sounds like we better get to the Falcon,” Solo says.
—
Jom awaits them on the Millennium Falcon. And he’s not alone.
Sitting next to him by the holo-chess board is Senator Rethalow of Frong. The Frong’s forearms—long and blue and lined with contracting suckers—are bound up with what looks like some kind of electrical cabling. The Frong’s face-tubules tremble and twitch, and its big black glossy eyes contract as they approach. Jom sits, one arm around the senator. The onetime commando’s hair is mussed. Everything about him screams that he’s on edge—sparking like a frayed wire. Sinjir thinks: I can relate to that. And he understands the source of it, too: We have people we care about caught in bad situations. We’d burn down the world to save them, wouldn’t we?
“Jom,” Sinjir says slowly, as if talking to a child. “What did you do?”
“Not a thing,” he says, waving it off. “Okay, fine. Maybe I caused a minor intergalactic incident. Maybe. Nothing that can’t be forgiven and forgotten, I’m sure.”
“Jom.”
“Fine, fine. I broke open the dep chamber and dragged the esteemed Senator Rethalow here out kicking and screaming. Busted my comlink, too, the fat-bellied little traitor. But after that, the senator told me some real interesting things, figured you might all want to hear.”
All eyes fall to Rethalow.
The Frong remains quiet. Jom drives an elbow into the senator’s side. “Go on, barnacle. Tell them what you told me.”
“Our votes were bought,” the Frong says in Basic, the words coming out so quickly that at first it barely registers with Sinjir. “Three of us, anyway. Me, Ek, and Wieedo.”
“We know Ek and Wieedo got payouts,” Solo says. Admittedly, they didn’t know that, but now the assumption is a safe one. “What did you get?”
“A…a trade deal,” the Frong stammers.
A trade deal?
Sinjir leans in. “And the other two? Nim Tar and Sorka? What did they get for their vote?”
“Threatened. Th-they were threatened. Nim Tar’s child was taken. And Senator Sorka’s jerba, too.”
Sinjir throws a look to the others. “Jerba? Help me out, please.”
It’s Solo who answers. “Kind of a…smooth-haired animal. You can ride ’em, milk ’em, eat ’em. There’s a whole subculture of breeders—I once smuggled a mated pair off Tatooine for a private seller. Personally, I think they’re uglier than the back end of a shaved bantha, but that’s me.”
Sorka gave up her vote because her prize animal was taken, Sinjir thinks. How charming. Democracy is well and truly fragile, isn’t it?
Sinjir asks Rethalow, “Who did this, Senator?”
“I…mustn’t say.”
Jom looks like he’s about to drive another elbow into the Frong’s ribs, but Sinjir leans in and stops him with a gentle hand and a shake of his head. Then he kneels down in front of Rethalow.
“Senator,” Sinjir says, his voice calm and slow even though his mind is a hurricane whipped with fears over Conder. “I need your help here. A friend of mine remains missing and I believe whoever has solicited your vote is responsible. They offered you a trade deal?”
Hesitantly, the Frong nods. Its tubules curl inward with fear. “Th-the New Republic hasn’t yet secured the Outer Rim. Frong is v-vulnerable. By giving my vote, I’m earning protection for my planet and my people. You see? Do you see? The New Republic c-can’t afford to extend its protection to us, not yet, not yet, and until then we have no navy, no fleet…!”
It’s not a trade deal. It’s a protection scheme.
That means—
“Criminals,” Sinjir says. “You’ve given your vote over to criminals.”
“Y-yes.”
“Who?”
“I…”
Still it withholds. And why wouldn’t the senator? The Frong knows who has the power here. Sinjir needs power. He needs leverage.
So, he lies. A little.
“I’m close with the chancellor. I am an adviser of hers. I can assure you that we will extend New Republic protections to your world immediately. We won’t leave you to the darkness. That is, if you comply. If you give me what I need to know, we will help you. If you fail, this is the end. You will no longer be a member of the Senate. Your world will be fed to the monsters and we will offer little more than a sad wave goodbye. You will be shamed for how you failed them. Which is not your fault. But this situation cannot go unrectified, and so either you help us, or that’s it. The door closes and we have nothing but exile for you.”
It’s all calculated. Sinjir doesn’t know a great deal about the Frong—their world is in a fringe system with a dim star and they have little to offer the galaxy except some fruit, some spice, and clean water. But he does know that the Frong are insular and clannish. They are tight-knit, coming from practically incestuous bloodlines. When he says words like shame and exile—those are concepts the Frong know intimately. And it registers on Rethalow’s face, too: Its eyes dilate tighter as Sinjir speaks.
“I’ll…tell you.”
“Who did this, Senator? And where are they?”
“I don’t know where. I don’t! But I know who. Black Sun and the Red Key Company have formed an alliance. They’ve…partnered.”
Two syndicates. Venerable Black Sun and the upstart Red Key. If the two of them are allying, it’s a sign of things to come. Sensible, in a way. If the New Republic wins a final victory, then it behooves the syndicates to shore up their assets and form alliances against the looming threat of a government that will not tolerate their illicit activities.
Then it hits him. Sinjir understands. If the New Republic wins a final victory at Jakku, the Empire is done. The longer the war rages, the better the chances that the syndicates will survive—they can feed on the chaos and use that time to bolster their efforts. That’s what this is. The vote to delay the war isn’t about politics at all. It’s about the syndicates staying in the game.
He stands up. “Thank you, Senator. Let’s get you to safety.” He means it, too. If the Black Sun and Red Key guess that one of their senators is compromised, they’ll put a laser bolt through one of his eyes. His mind races—the others are talking to him, saying who-knows-what, but he’s not listening. He’s trying to think of a way to find Conder, to find Nim Tar’s child and Sorka’s stupid show-jerba. Would their abductors remain here on Nakadia? They would remain close, surely. Both to watch the vote and to ensure that the Senators vote the way they’re supposed to. Which means they’d be on the planet’s surface or out in space—
In a ship.
He blurts it out: “They could be in a ship.”
He watches the realization cross Solo’s face. “Right. Right! Dor Wieedo’s ship was gone from the docking bay.”
“That’s where they are. But they must be close. In orbit.”
Solo grins. “Let’s take the Falcon for a spin.”
—
Tolwar Wartol spends his time ricocheting between periods of brooding, simmering silence and moments of rage against her. In those latter times he stands and marches about and threatens to destroy her in the media for what he calls her “nasty tricks,” playing games as she does with the political process.
Mon simply sits still and quiet, occasionally reminding Wartol that he is free to talk to the media if he so chooses. “I’m sure HoloNet would be very interested in a story where your entire political mechanism was held hostage by one woman and a small fruit.”
He rages, then sits, then goes quiet once more.
On the outside, she is a calm façade—an undisturbed Chandrilan lake, placid and unbroken. Inside she is tumult and tumble. She knows time is fast escaping. Her delay will not work forever.
The Nakadian inspectors come aboard, clothed in thick bubble-suits with aerator masks. They do a slow and steady sweep of the ship, both outside and inside. Wartol, to his credit, is polite even if his anger ripples just beneath the surface. He does not berate them; he does not chide them to hurry. The inspectors sweep handheld scanners across all the nooks and crannies of the cruiser—an emerald beam searching for further contaminants. The chief inspector, a woman named Rekya, explains to them in great detail how Nakadia is a protected environment that takes great care to balance its ecosystem and keep out invasive species—and she reminds them, if a bit testily, how all the Senate should have received messages in their personal digital folders reminding them of exactly this. “Democracy grinds to a halt when protocol is broken,” Rekya tells them. “And believe me when I tell you, protocol has been broken.”
All the while, Mon nods and smiles, listening carefully while hoping the delay is worth it. Leia’s agents on the ground must find something, and soon. Because when the inspectors leave, the ship begins to move once more toward landing on Nakadia. Wartol says, “There. Your nasty tricks have bought yo
u little time.” He informs his guards that he and the chancellor will be heading directly to the Senate chambers immediately upon docking. “No more delays,” he says. “It is time to face your failure, Chancellor.”
—
The Falcon perches in empty space. Most of the ships above Nakadia have gone and landed, now—the Senate vote was scheduled for an hour ago, which means all of the voting body should be present down below for when the delay (caused by the chancellor herself in a plan that was of Leia’s design) is finally rectified.
There, through the viewport, hangs Wartol’s cruiser.
They watch as a pair of Nakadian ships—each a talon-shaped cruiser, four-person, small and nimble—drifts away from the Ganoidian-made tri-deck vessel. Those ships reenter atmosphere with a hot burn.
And Wartol’s ship begins to move toward the surface, as well.
Sinjir curses. “We’re nearly out of time.” And we’ve found nothing. Dor Wieedo’s ship isn’t up here. Which means it either leapt into hyperspace and is gone, or is simply somewhere else on the surface of Nakadia. The former doesn’t make much sense, though—Wieedo and the others will need to be present to vote. That means they’re back on the surface. “Coming up here was a waste of time. It was a mistake. I made a mistake.”
He’s talking directly to Solo, who sits in the pilot’s seat, staring out.
“Solo?” he asks again.
“Yeah, I hear you.” The man’s voice is quiet, like he’s far away even though he’s sitting right there. It takes little effort to see what’s happening. Solo thinks he’s good at being the tough-talking, rough-skinned scoundrel—he’s always got his shields up, ready to defend with swagger and bluster.
But Sinjir sees how the man keeps looking over in this direction. At the console. At the copilot’s seat. He really does miss that Wookiee. At first, that made little to no sense to Sinjir. Because, really. It’s a Wookiee. Chewbacca is lovely and all, but he’s a gargantuan pillar of hair who smells not unlike a moist gundark’s undercarriage. And all that nonsensical growling? And the hugging?
