by Chuck Wendig
A symbol he can shoot down right here, right now.
His thumb hovers over the button.
Then the shuttle’s ramp begins to descend. In midair. What the—? Maybe whoever’s in there is trying to jump out. But why? The front end of that thing is its escape pod—just detach and go.
A droid makes its way down the ramp. It holds on to the pneumatic piston from which the ramp descends.
His droid waves at him.
Oh gods, is that—
“Bones?”
Over the comm comes the droid’s mechanized voice:
“I THOUGHT THAT MIGHT BE YOU, MASTER TEMMIN. PLEASE HOLD.”
“Please hold? What are you—? Bones? Bones?”
Moments later, a crackle as his mother’s voice comes from his wrist comlink: “Temmin? Temmin?”
—
At first, she doesn’t even understand it. It all seems so absurd. The droid drops back down into his chair with a rattle and tilts his head toward her, then says: “YOU SHOULD SPEAK TO MASTER TEMMIN NOW.”
She does not say her son’s name so much as it spills out of her.
And broadcast from the droid’s own speaker comes her son’s voice—how? Bones has a proximity sensor, doesn’t he? He must’ve turned it on when he landed on Jakku. Soon as Temmin was close, the comms connected automatically. It fills her with light and life when her son says: “Mom?”
Mom. That one word. She’s missed hearing it so bad.
“Kiddo,” she says, her eyes burning hot with the threat of tears. “I’ve missed you, kiddo. Where are you? Are you—are you in that X-wing?”
“I’m so sorry, Mom, I didn’t know—I almost shot you down, please forgive me. Wait. What are you doing in an Imperial shuttle?”
“I…” But what does she tell him? Does she say that she found his father? The family reunion she longs to have is so close. They could rescue him together. And yet this is dangerous territory. She’s heading right into the heart of the Empire’s occupation. She knows it seems awfully headstrong, but if she does this alone, maybe Temmin won’t follow and won’t get hurt. At least in that X-wing he’s got control plus other pilots covering his tail. “Is Wedge with you?”
“He is.” Thank the lucky stars. “I can patch us over—”
“No. I can’t be on radio chatter. If the Empire picks up what I’m doing, Tem—”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve got a lead on Sloane. And…” In that moment, she decides not to tell him about his father. She knows she may regret it later, but once he hears about Brentin, Temmin will start acting with his heart and not his head. “I’ve…stolen a shuttle. I’ve got clearance codes. I’m headed to the Imperial base past something called the Sinking Fields.”
“We’ll escort you in.”
“No can do, kiddo. They see you on the scopes, they’ll cut you to pieces. And maybe me, too.” It pains her to say this, but she does: “You stay out here. Stay with Wedge. He’ll keep you safe! Let him know I’m okay.”
“Are you okay? Mom?”
“I am. I promise. I’ve got Bones with me. You did good with him. He already saved my life out here once.”
“Land the shuttle, Mom. We can figure this out.”
“It’s a war zone, Tem. I can’t land here. Neither can you.” Ahead, she sees that the defensive line of the Empire’s forces awaits. “You need to turn around. They have turrets. Turbolasers. Mortars. Walkers, TIEs, everything. Who-knows-what else. You don’t wanna get close to the base defenses. They see you, they might figure out who I am, too. Then we’re both dead.” She blinks back tears and pleads with him. “Please. Turn around.”
“Mom, wait—”
“Temmin, please. Go!”
“Promise I’ll see you again.”
“You’ll see me again.” It’s a promise she doesn’t know how she’ll keep. She’s not even sure she believes it herself. “We’ll be a family again soon. Okay? I love you, kiddo. Stay safe.”
“Bones! You take good care of her!”
“ROGER-ROGER, MASTER TEMMIN.”
“I love you, Mom. Get Sloane. See you on the other side.”
And with that, the blip disappears from her screen as her son pulls away from his pursuit of her shuttle.
“No.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sinjir asks.
“I said no, Sinjir,” the chancellor says.
“Ah. I see. We must be having a communication problem. I’m not Chandrilan and though I believe we share the same crispness of wit, there must be some crucial language barrier I’m coming up against. I have to assume that because of my very good deeds rendered in service to the New Republic that surely, surely when I ask if I can go to Jakku to help my friends your only answer would be an unqualified Yes, Sinjir, absolutely, Sinjir, please take this medal and also this bag of money, Sinjir.”
Mon Mothma sits across from him. Her hands are steepled, though clearly the one is not functioning as well. It looks palsied the way it droops next to the other. She smiles over the bridge of her fingers, though, as if unfazed by it. Also as if unfazed by him.
“Mister Rath Velus,” she says, “I appreciate your consternation—”
“Do you? Truly?”
“—but I cannot approve your journey to Jakku. You are not a soldier. Or a pilot. Or an officer. You want your friends back, that I recognize. It is a noble desire. But one I cannot help you fulfill, I’m afraid.”
Politics, he thinks. The only thing worse than politics is politicians.
He leans over, knowing full well he’s not only crossing a boundary here but frankly leaping over it like a punted gizka. “You listen here, Chancellor. I risked my neck and every other part of me for you. It took me a day just to get this meeting and—”
“If you want to go to Jakku, just go to Jakku.”
“What?”
“I can’t stop you. Find a ship. Get on it. Fly it to that miserable war-torn desert world. You will drop right into madness and probably be swatted like a pesty fly, but that’s your trouble, not mine.”
“Fine. Yes. Good. I will do exactly this.”
She nods her head gently. “May the stars speed your journey.” He starts to get up, and she holds a finger in the air. “One more thing, though.”
“Hm?”
“If you perish above Jakku—or on it, or anywhere near it—then you won’t be able to take the job I’m offering you.”
What heinous caper is this? He narrows his gaze to suspicious, reptilian slits. “Job? I don’t know anything about that.”
“Yes, because you haven’t heard me offer it, yet.”
“I’m sorry? Am I short-circuiting like a wet droid? What are we talking about here, exactly?”
With her weaker hand, she gently gestures toward the chair. The message is clear: Sit and hear the offer, or go and do not.
“Bloody hell, fine.” He sits down in the chair like an insolent schoolboy, slumping back, feigning disdain. “What’s this job, then?”
“I need an adviser.”
“And you want me to find you one?”
“I want you to be one.”
He brays with laughter. “What? Seriously?” But he sees on her face she is serious. Deadly so. He sits up straight, oddly embarrassed. “Oh. You actually mean it. For the galaxy’s sake, why?”
“Because you’re very good at getting people to do what you want.”
“Frequently by bending their fingers back so far they break. That’s not a good look for a pacifist of your stature.”
Her gaze matches his own. It’s only now he realizes how properly intense she can be. He doesn’t really know what the Force is or how it even works, except that she must possess it given the way her gaze feels like a pair of tweezers picking him apart, atom by atom.
She flexes her palsied hand as if to exercise it. “Yes, your reputation in that regard precedes you, Sinjir. But another reputation is beginning to form and grow: You are even more incisive with your tongue t
han you are with your violence. You can be alarmingly convincing, as evidenced by what you said to Senator Rethalow. And further how you manipulated those senators into giving me their vote. I need someone like that. Auxi is a most excellent adviser in matters political, but I need a cynic. Someone who distrusts the system—who maybe even despises it. And I also need someone who can play the game and get me what I want. That someone is you.”
“This is a joke, right? A bit of a poke-and-tickle? I say yes and then from that potted plant and under this chair, a chorus of onlookers leap out and laugh? Because surely you aren’t considering hiring an ex-Imperial torture agent to advise you on running the entire civilized galaxy.”
“No joke. I don’t have a very good sense of humor anyway.”
He sneers. “I hate politics.”
“So do I.”
“I hate politicians.”
“Good. So you can manipulate them to do your bidding.”
He leans back, crossing his arms. One eyebrow up so far it’s damn near in orbit, he says, “I get paid?”
“Handsomely.”
“I’ll be on Nakadia or here, on Chandrila?”
“My primary office will remain on Chandrila for now, though I will have a proper desk on Nakadia, too.”
A job offer. From the chancellor. He has to chew that one a good bit. Of course he doesn’t want it. Bah. Pfft. The political realm is a grotesque circus, an erratic carousel drunkenly turning like a blindfolded child wielding a stick at his nativity party. Sinjir’s opinion of the whole charade: Tear it all down. Burn it up. Dance among the ashes while swilling a bottle of something good. That’s his take. But then again…
Maybe he ought to give another go at this stability thing.
If he and Conder are trying again…
If the war is truly almost over and the crew is finally done…
What place does he have in the galaxy? He confesses, his only option right now is to sashay his narrow hind over to some distant cantina and see if he can’t find himself a quiet corner in which to plant himself as the resident barfly. But he admires Conder. There’s a man who wants to work. Who wants to do the right thing, and do it with skill and aplomb and a smile bridging those fuzzy adorable cheeks. He deserves to be as impressed by me as I am by him. Maybe this is how I accomplish that.
“I need time to think about it,” he says.
“You have thirty seconds.”
“I—what?”
“Decide now. I have to move quickly on this. Having a vacancy among my advisory duo has already hampered my ability to perform as chancellor, and I do not want to wait. So the clock is ticking.”
“Chancellor—”
“Twenty seconds, now.”
“Well—”
“Let’s call it ten.”
“It’s not ten. You’re speeding up the clock. That’s cheating!”
“It is, but I’m allowed. Tell you what, Sinjir. I’ll offer a bonus. I have two tasks at hand, and if you say yes right now, you get to choose which one you do and which one goes to my other adviser, Auxi.”
“What are these tasks?”
She waggles a metronome finger. “Ah-ah-ah. Not until you say yes.”
“Mm. Fine. Yes.”
Her small smile grows by one, maybe two microns and Mon Mothma says, “Splendid. The first task is: shopping.”
“Shopping? Did I hear you right?”
“Yes. Do you know what to buy for a newborn baby? After all, our dear friend Leia is expecting.”
Sinjir makes a face like he just sniffed a diaper. “Whiskey?”
“That would be better for the mother and father, I suspect. No, not whiskey. Perhaps you shouldn’t be buying baby gifts.”
He puckers his lips. “And maybe you should not relegate this personal, intimate task to a mere adviser.”
“Yes, well. Let’s try the second task. I need someone to deliver a gift to the senator from Orish, Tolwar Wartol. An apology of sorts.”
“An apology? Stars forfend, why?”
The chancellor sighs. “He apparently wasn’t malevolently opposing my vote and manipulating senators directly…”
“Yes, he just failed to help the gears of democracy turn. And he’s running against you. He’s your opponent, Chancellor!”
“One does not blame a tooka for toying with the mouse. He is who he is, and so I thought it necessary to deliver a small gift to apologize for my little ploy on his ship.”
“Gift delivery does not sound advisory to me, Chancellor.”
“Don’t you even want to see the gift?”
He says nothing, offering instead a dubious countenance. Mon clears her throat and lifts a small basket covered with a soft, lavender cloth. She tells him to go on, have a look, and he does.
It is a fruit basket. Full of one kind of fruit: the pta fruit.
He cannot deny the smug smirk that tugs at his lips. “Oh, Chancellor. And here I thought you said you had no sense of humor.”
“Perhaps there’s a glimmer of one, there. As you say: We share a crispness of wit, do we not?”
“I think we do.”
“So you’ll deliver it?”
“I will.”
“Enjoy. And welcome to politics, Sinjir Rath Velus.”
Jas Emari’s world lights up. Her teeth clamp against each other. Her jaw muscles are so tight she fears they’ll strain and snap. Then it’s over again, the wave of pain and light receding once more. She’s left panting and wheezing on the floor of the Corellian shuttle as Mercurial Swift once again pulls the sparking baton away. He gives it a twirl.
“You skag,” he hisses. His face, scratched from her attack in Niima’s temple by her head spurs, looms over her own. Behind him, Dengar lazes. Embo is at the other end of the shuttle’s hold, sitting up straight and regarding the proceedings with all the interest and emotion of a coatrack.
From the cockpit, the Rodian yells: “Swift. It’s too dangerous. It’s everywhere. Empire. The Republic. Nowhere to go.”
The disappointment on Swift’s face is palpable. “Fine. Set us down somewhere in the canyon.”
Jas rolls over. Every part of her feels like it’s been stretched out so far it won’t go back to its original shape. Being electrocuted a handful of times is good at making you feel that way, as it turns out. She gasps and manages to squeak out the words, “So, what’s…your plan, Swift?”
“Shut. Up.”
“No, really.” She groans. “What’s the score? Clearance codes won’t keep you safe in the middle of a war zone. Somebody will take a shot at us.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“No,” Dengar interjects, “but you might wanna explain it to us. You know, your crew? You got a plan here, boss?”
The way the barrel-chested Corellian says that last word, boss, she can tell it’s not a term of great endearment. Interesting.
Swift heels on the old bounty hunter, like he’s about to lay into him. But he seems to cool down a little. “We’ll park it for a while. Look for an opportunity to hit orbit and take our quarry back to Boss Gyuti on Nar Shaddaa. We just need to be patient.”
“He’ll screw you all over,” Jas says.
Swift turns fast and drops a fist into her gut. She curls up into herself like a bug. “Be quiet. Nothing’s stopping me from taking you to Gyuti in five different sacks.”
“He’s just mad ’cuz you ruined his pretty looks,” Dengar says.
“Shut it, Dengar.”
“Don’t you…” Jas winces as she sits up, her voice a keening wheeze. “Want to know what I’m doing here on Jakku? I could cut you in—”
Bzzt. Another jam of the shock baton, this time against the side of her neck. Her skull is a nest of stinging insects. She tries not to scream but the scream comes anyway, a living thing that will not be contained. Then it’s gone. Jas topples over, whimpering.
“I wanna hear what she has to say,” Dengar notes.
“I said, shut it, Dengar.”
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Jas blinks, and in the time it takes to do that, she hears the clatter-clack of a blaster being cocked. When her vision returns, she sees Dengar has his rifle up over his knee and pointed right at Swift’s middle.
“I don’t feel like shuttin’ it, you smug git. I got a right to talk to the girl. Me and her auntie knew each other. I owe her a convo. Go on, Jazzy.”
“I—nggh. I’m hunting someone here.”
“Whozat, now?”
“Rae Sloane.”
“She’s nobody,” Swift says. “Sloane was the top of the food chain but that day is over. Now she’s nothing.”
Jas offers a halfhearted shrug. “Not to the…New Republic. They want her bad, and they’re willing to pay for her served up to them on a plate. She knows things. She’s the key. Or so they believe. I don’t even care if they’re right—what I care is what they’re paying me, and it’s a lot.”
All that is a lie. But despite the glib saying, the truth will most certainly not set her free.
“How much are they paying?”
That question, asked by Embo. Spoken in the Kyuzo tongue.
She hates to lie to him. Really, she does.
But she does it anyway. “A million.”
Eyes go big as battle stations. Dengar whistles. “Lot of money for one girl. Still, working for the New Republic ain’t exactly cozy-making, izzit?”
“It is when they offer you full pardons.”
And that is the statement that vacuums the air from the cabin. They’re all left in shock by that offer. A pardon has meaning. They each have a list of criminal sins longer than a Hutt-slug’s tail. And with the galaxy shifting as it is toward the New Republic—the day will come sooner than later when bounty hunters are forced to flee to the fringes if they don’t want to get swept up and locked away. The tension in the ship rises. Jas seizes it.
She goes on: “You work with me, I cut you in. You all get full pardons. Embo, Dengar. You both worked with Sugi. Maybe there’s something to be said for a little tradition, isn’t there?”
“They won’t leave me,” Swift protests with a vulpine stare. “They know their place. Won’t do them any good to betray Gyuti and make enemies of Black Sun. They’ll stay with me.”
“You forgot one part,” Dengar says.
