by Chuck Wendig
Mercurial raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“We don’t really like you.”
The old bounty hunter clubs Swift in the side of the head with his blaster. The pretty boy collapses next to her, but he’s not content to go down quietly, oh, no—Swift moves fast, getting behind her and pulling his forearm against her windpipe. With the back of his heel, he kicks out and opens the side of the shuttle—the wall lifts, the ramp descends, and the brightness of the Jakku sun fills the cabin, nearly blinding them all.
He backs Jas toward the door, using her as cover.
“You could’ve all been rich,” he seethes.
Dengar has his rifle pointed but can’t get a shot. Embo stands but seems casually disinterested in the events. She knows that look. It’s not disinterest she sees. Rather, it’s a look that says he trusts her to handle this.
“You…forgot…one thing…” she says as Swift’s arm tightens.
“I forgot nothing,” he snarls in her ear.
You forgot that I didn’t remove all my horns, idiot.
With a hard grunt, she slams her head backward into his face. Her thorn-shaped horns dig into the meat of his other cheek and Swift howls—and for the hair’s breadth of a moment he relaxes his grip on her throat.
Jas moves fast. She slides free like a man slipping a noose, then ducks quickly and kicks out with a hard foot—
It catches Swift right in the middle.
And the bounty hunter sails out the now open door of the shuttle.
Panting, Jas slams her heel against the button, and again the ramp ascends as the door closes. She rubs her eyes and collapses against the wall, weary. Dengar is looking at her with both surprise and satisfaction on his face. He gives her a curt nod. “Nicely done, Jazzy.”
Embo nods, too. In Kyuzo: “I am glad it turned out this way.”
The Rodian—whose name she doesn’t even yet know—calls back: “What’s going on back there?”
Jas winces. “She loyal?”
“Who, Jeeta? Pssh. Not to Swift, she isn’t.”
“Then I guess I have a new crew,” Jas says.
Dengar offers a sloppy smile and a wink. “Guess you do, love.”
“Lobot, we’re home.” Lando lifts a dubious eyebrow as he looks around, exasperated. “Guess the Empire didn’t keep up with housekeeping.”
This is the Casino level. Game machines line the smooth blue alactite floors far as the eye can see. Sabacc tables, too. And pazaak. And jubilee wheels. Along the far wall are banks of holoprojectors meant to show the latest swoop race down on the track-tubes piped through Bespin’s toxic Red Zone atmosphere. Once, this was a shining pillar of gambling excess: classy and bright with light coming in through windows looking out over the sun-kissed clouds. Now it’s wrecked. Trash drifts and tumbles. Machines have been turned over, their credits cut from inside like food from a beast’s belly. The windows are covered over with metal. The holoprojectors are dark.
Lobot steps up alongside Lando. The computer forming a half-moon around the back of the man’s bald head blinks and pulses, and at Lando’s wrist is a communication from his friend and cohort:
I’ll look into rehiring staff immediately.
“Do that,” Lando says. Then he thrusts up a finger. “Ah. But make sure we’re hiring some refugees, will you?” The galaxy’s like a cup that’s been knocked over, and now everything’s spilling out. Whole worlds have been displaced by the war. Lando can’t let Cloud City turn from being a city of luxury to being a tent city of expats and evacuees, but he can damn sure give those people jobs. That’s his favorite kind of arrangement: the kind where everybody gets something for their trouble. They win. He wins. The ideal for how everything should work.
Cloud City was always that, for Calrissian. It was a respite—a refuge from the Empire while at the same time not existing to spite the Empire, either. He thought, Hey, everybody can be happy, baby. The Empire didn’t have to care. The rebels didn’t need to care. Cloud City could hang in the air above Bespin, separate from all the chaos, from all the strife. Come here, taste a little luxury. Meanwhile, he could mine the Tibanna gas, sell it to whatever starship manufacturer wanted it (the stuff was perfect for making hyperdrives, because with Tibanna, a little went a long way). Meanwhile, Lando could sit back, have a drink, roll some dice, find a lady or three.
Yeah. It didn’t work out that way.
He knows now: In a war like this one, you don’t get to be in the middle. You can’t play both sides. He’d lived his whole life shooting right down the middle, never taking up a cause except the one meant to support his own empty pockets. Those days are over and so is his love of sweet neutrality. When Vader came here, everything changed. He lost Han, for a time. He lost Lobot and Cloud City. He lost nearly everything.
But he gained a little perspective.
And he picked a damn side. Because sometimes, you want to win, you gotta bet big. You gotta put your stack of chits in one place.
It paid off. The Empire is gone. And now he’s a hero of the Rebellion (and oh, you can be sure he used that to con more than his fair share of free drinks, not to mention the attention of beautiful admirers). But all he wants is his city back. After Endor, he thought he would just be able to sweep in here like a handsome king retaking his throne in the sky—but then that son-of-a-slug Governor Adelhard formed the Iron Blockade. He kept the people here trapped not only by a well-organized Imperial remnant, but also by a grand lie: that Palpatine was not dead. And Lando knows that old shriveled cenobite is dead—because he’s the one who took out the Death Star’s reactor core. And because Luke said the monster was dead. Can you believe it? Palpatine and Vader. Both gone. Two scourges, scoured from the galaxy.
Suddenly he had a second war to fight. Here he thought the Empire was done for and Cloud City was once again his. What an eager fool. Nothing’s ever that simple, is it? It took months and months. He had to stage an uprising. Had to interface with Lobot on the inside. Had to cash in favors with a handful of scoundrels—like Kars Tal-Korla, that pirate. All because the New Republic wouldn’t commit a military action to retaking the city. He respects it, he understands it, and Leia put it best when she said, “The Rebellion was easy, Lando. Governing’s harder.” The chancellor was just trying to hold on to whatever advantage she had—and then with the Liberation Day attack on Chandrila…
Well. All that is over and done. No need to dwell.
Cloud City is his once again. Lando starved out Adelhard. Most of the Imperials surrendered. It’s over. Thank the lucky stars.
He steps forward into the Casino level, and he and Lobot aren’t alone. He’s got a ragtag force with him: some of his Wing Guard security forces, but some New Republic soldiers, too. It’s just enough to perform cleanup on those who linger behind, clinging to the illusion they can still win this thing.
Together they march forward through the wreckage of the Casino level. He asks Lobot: “The holdouts are ahead?”
Yes. In the Bolo Tanga room.
“Fine, fine, let’s get this over with and evict our final tenants.”
As they walk, Lobot looks over at him as a new communication flashes across his wrist: I am told to remind you that the princess will soon give birth and you have not yet procured for them the standard natal gift.
“What? That’s impossible. She was just—I swear they just got married—didn’t I just get them a nuptial gift?”
It has been the proper biological time. You just do not realize how much time has passed. We have been busy.
“So have they, I guess.”
Also, you never got them a nuptial gift.
He sighs. “Okay, okay. Buying gifts for a kid. Can we get him a cute little cape and a mustache so he looks like old Uncle Lando?”
Lobot doesn’t respond, offering only a humorless stare.
“Fine, fine, I’ll think about it.” His mind drifts briefly to Han and Leia. Han, one of his oldest and greatest friends. And sure, one of his greatest riva
ls, too. He misses that old reprobate. The crazy times they had!
Good times even when they were bad. And now, Han is with Leia. Hoo, boy. Those two are a pair of rocket boosters firing full-bore. Lando just hopes those two engines are both firing in the same direction—because if they’re ever pointed at each other, they’ll burn each other up.
We’re here.
That, from Lobot. Ahead waits the door to the Bolo Tanga room. Lando can see it’s been sealed with mag-alloy. He turns to Captain Gladstone of the Wing Guard. “We got imaging?”
Gladstone nods. “They’re holed up in there. They’ve broken through to the beam outtake shaft, which in theory would lead them to the engineering sublayer—”
“But the fumes coming up through the shaft will kill them if they try.”
“That’s exactly it, Baron Administrator.”
“So they’re trapped.”
“Like crete-bugs in a beetle-bag.”
“All right, let’s open it up—no, you know, wait. Can they hear me through that door?”
“They can, if you get close.”
Lando nods, pulling his blaster—it’s a fancy-looking piece of work from back when they put a little art into their design. It’s a Rossmoyne Vitiator pistol, a bolt-thrower from a more elegant age. (Lando won it recently in a game of Six-Card Gizka Limit from a spice-drunk Aybarian diplomat.) Every Rossmoyne that came off the line was engraved by hand with scrollwork by artisans from the original family. The grip in particular shows these wonderful whorls and curves—like a spiraling maze you could follow with a blind fingertip. Maybe with the Empire gone, craftsbeings will return to the galaxy. And with it, their beauty.
That’s later. For now—
He taps on the door with the Vitiator.
“Hello, this is Lando Calrissian,” he says loudly so they can hear him. “I’m baron administrator of Cloud City, not to mention hero of the Rebellion. I suspect you’ve heard of me. Can you hear me all right? Tap on the door if you can.”
Nothing. But then—
Three taps. Good enough. He keeps talking, putting a little extra smooth in his voice to keep them calm, to keep them listening—
“Here’s how this is going to go. I’m a gambling man, and so I’m gonna bet that you’re in there, hungry and scared and feeling like people without a country—and you are, because by now I’m sure you heard, Adelhard’s story about Palpatine being alive was a big old nasty lie. I’m gonna take that bet and I’m gonna say you’d be fine, just fine, with dropping your weapons so we can open up this door, escort you out, and get you a hot meal and a warm bed. I’m not interested in prosecuting you. Not gonna throw you into some New Republic dungeon. I’ll even put my blaster away so when I walk inside, you know how serious I am about this. Tap if you hear me.”
Tap, tap, tap.
“Good.” He steps away, tucking his blaster into the holster at his hip. Lando signals to Gladstone. “Unseal it.”
The Wing Guard engineers get to work, crouching on each side of it, blast masks over their eyes as they ignite plasma lances to burn through the line of puffy metal alloy sealing the door. Sparks sear lines in the air.
And then it’s done. Two engineers stand by the door, one on each side. They use the lever ends of their lances to jack the door.
It falls hard in Lando’s direction, and he gently steps aside as it hits the floor. Wham. A puff of smoke and a whirl of embers follow. Lando knows that a hail of lasers might come sizzling out of that doorway and cut him to pieces—but he also knows that whoever is in there realizes they’ll get cut to pieces in return.
No hot meal. No warm bed. Just body bags for each of them.
As the smoke clears, he sees the Imperial men and women in there, hands on their heads, blasters at their feet. Lando laughs and urges them out of the Bolo Tanga room. They look scared. And tired. Each of them thin-cheeked with dry lips and bloodshot eyes. “C’mon, let’s go. It’s okay. It’s over. You made the right choice.”
A few dozen of them come out, taken into custody by the Wing Guard. The New Republic soldiers stand back. Then Gladstone says: “Baron Administrator, sir.” A note of worry in his voice. He gestures into the room.
Lando steps in, blaster still at his hip.
One holdout remains inside the Bolo Tanga room, all the way on the other side of the card table, where the dealer would normally stand. It’s a broad-chested fellow with only two pieces of armor on: a black chest plate, and a white trooper helmet. He’s standing up against the back wall. A rifle is in his hand. The barrel of the rifle is pointed at the ground.
Which either means he’s not sure what to do yet—
Or he’s been waiting for this moment.
“Let me guess,” Lando says. “You’re the commander.”
A pause before the man says, “Sergeant.”
“The last sergeant, Sergeant. Everyone else has surrendered or died. Adelhard’s out. And the Empire isn’t looking good as an option anywhere, big fella. So that’s the deal. You surrender. Or it goes the other way.”
The rifle hangs. The man doesn’t put it down.
And his hand isn’t shaking.
It’s gonna go the other way.
It happens fast.
“Long live the Empire—!”
The Imperial swings the rifle up—
It never fires.
The sergeant drops as a single shot from Lando’s Vitiator punctures his armor and pierces his heart. The rifle never leaves the soldier’s hand—his body just slumps atop it.
Lando tucks the blaster back in its holster. His heart pulses in his chest. A mad thrill goes through him as he thinks, I still got it. And that fool was betting that Lando was too slow, and his weapon wouldn’t clear the holster—and couldn’t punch through that armor if it did.
Wrong on both counts.
“Win some, lose some,” Lando says, clucking his tongue. He saunters over to the dead man, grabs the black-lensed helmet from underneath, and pries it off. The sergeant is a square-jawed man with a brow like a rocky outcropping. Tough mug.
But not tough enough.
“Hey now,” Lando says, spinning the helmet in his hand. He looks to Lobot. “I got an idea. Every kid needs a lamp, right? Like a nightlight? Can we get the engineers to turn this into a lamp? It’d be something special, don’t you think?”
Lobot signals across the communicator: No.
“Yeah, okay, that’s a compelling argument,” Lando says, chuckling. He stands up, tossing the helmet from hand to hand before dropping it to the ground. “Still, kid’s gotta see what his parents fought for. And I suspect given his parents, he’s gonna do some fighting himself.”
That’s when Lando gets an idea.
He again draws the blaster, gives it a spin in his hand.
“Kid’s gonna get into trouble one day.” Every kid does, but with the blood of a scoundrel and a princess in his veins, his defiance will shake the stars. “He’s gonna need some help. And that’s where Uncle Lando comes in.” Lando holds up the weapon, admiring it.
At his wrist, Lobot protests: We are not giving a blaster to the boy. Children should not play with blasters. Lobot’s face is stern.
“No, not for now. For later. When the time is right. Tell you what. I’ll write a note, kind of a…Hey, kid, it’s me, Uncle Lando, you ever need help and don’t wanna call your father, come find me, we’ll sort it out. Put that in with the blaster, then secure it on a locker here on Cloud City, and give Han the key. Don’t tell him what’s in it—he’ll pitch a fit if he sees it. It’ll be for the boy when he’s older.”
That fails to provide them with a gift now, Lando.
He tosses the blaster to Lobot, who catches it awkwardly then returns a dour look. Lando rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine, send them something else, too. What do we have? Oh, I know. We got that Vantillian catamaran in the western skipdock—give them that ship, they can take it out on, hey, I dunno, family cruises or something.”
Lobot nods. One
word across the communicator: Acceptable.
“Can you believe it?” Lando asks. “Han and Leia. A family. Times are changing. You think I should start a family?”
One more word: No.
He laughs. “Once again, my friend, we agree. Let’s go get a drink.”
I don’t drink.
Lando puts his arm around Lobot’s stiff shoulders. “I know. It’s all right. I’ll have two to make it equitable. That way, we both win.”
Rae Sloane has given up and given in. Gallius Rax has left her here with a front-row seat for what may very well be the last battle of this war—because even if the Empire wins Jakku, then what? The Empire that this world has borne is not her Empire at all. It is a warped and twisted thing, sand-scoured and gone to scrap.
So, she kneels. The burning in her legs has dimmed to a dull, numb ache. Her shoulders feel it, too. Her hips. Her neck. Everything hurts. Her lips are dry. Her eyes feel like fruits left out too long in the sun. Worse, her side aches—right where that damn woman, the pilot, popped her one back on Chandrila. Every time she bothers to take a breath it’s like someone is slowly sawing a knife in and out of her ribs.
She can’t go anywhere. She and Brentin are on the roof—she pondered crawling to the edge of it and rolling off, if only to fall far enough to break her neck and end the misery. Meanwhile, Brentin is curled in upon himself, moaning and rolling around. Clearly he’s lost to madness.
All the while she watches the battle creep ever closer to the base. The Empire’s line isn’t breaking, but it’s falling back. In the distance she spies a mushroom plume of fire erupt from the top of a walker before it tortuously topples over. Not far from that, an X-wing—so far away it looks almost like a child’s toy whipping about—clips its wing on a spire of rock and crashes into a DF.9 turret placement. Trooper bodies fly.
In the sky, the two fleets rage against each other. It’s hard to tell much of what’s happening—the sun is so bright it feels like it’s about to set her corneas on fire. Best she can see is that the Imperial fleet is holding firm. The Republic ships aren’t making a dent. Not yet. But she fears they will.
