Aftermath: Star Wars

by Chuck Wendig

  Why…you venomous canyon adder…

  Esmelle’s wife, Shirene, steps in. She secures Esmelle’s elbow with her own, giving the woman a kiss on the cheek. “Esme, how about a hot tea? I’ve left the thermajug on the stovetop in the kitchen.”

  “Yes. Yes, that sounds good. I’ll…I’ll get tea.” Esmelle offers a stiff smile, then fritters off as she is wont to do.

  Shirene sighs. Shirene is the opposite of Esmelle in many ways—Esmelle is thin, reedy, pale as a ghost. Shirene is rounded, pillowy, skin as dark as a handful of overturned soil. Her hair is short and curly and close to the scalp; Esmelle’s is long, a silver cascade down her back.

  “Shirene, you don’t need to step into the middle of this—”

  Shirene clucks her tongue. “Please, Norra. I’m in this. I have skin in this game. I love Temmin like my own son. But what I need you to realize is that he isn’t our son.” Norra starts to protest, but Shirene shushes her—and somehow, Shirene has the magical ability to make that shushing feel gentle and welcome, soft and necessary. “Don’t misunderstand me. I just mean that we were never ready for this. For him. He’s got your spark in him. Yours and Brentin’s. He’s challenging because he’s smart as a whip-snake, savvy as a sail-bird. Forgive Esmelle. Forgive me. We just weren’t ready. And you were gone, so what choice did we have?”

  “I had to go. I had to fight.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry you never found Brentin.”

  Norra winces at that. It’s like being slapped. Shirene doesn’t mean it that way—the look on her face tells Norra that the thought is a sincere one, and not a barbed lash. But it stings just the same. “He wasn’t a criminal.”

  “I know. And Esmelle knows it, too.”

  Outside, the sky splits with a close clap of thunder. Rain batters the side of the house. Normal for this time of year—the mausim-storms have already come and gone and ushered in the wet season.

  “Here’s the stars’ own truth,” Shirene says. “Temmin takes care of us more than we take care of him. He helps pay for things. Shows up at the start of the week with a basket of fruits and bread, sometimes some wyrg-jerky or some of that spicy arguez sausage. If our evaporator or our flood-pump breaks, he shows up with the parts and the tools and he fixes it. We’re a couple of old cluckers, and he takes care of us good. We’ll miss him.”

  “You can come with us. That offer is still on the table—”

  “Pssh. Norra, better or worse, we put down roots. We’re as grown into this hill as the orchard up the road, as settled as the bones in the dirt. You take your boy, though, and get him somewhere better.”

  Norra sighs. “It’s not like he wants to go.”

  “Well, he’s built up a life here. That shop of his—”

  That shop of his.

  It hits Norra like a beam of light.

  “That’s where he went,” she says, scowling. “Temmin was never planning to come here. He went back to his shop.” I never should’ve taken him away from there in the first place.

  “Well, that’s probably all right—”

  “It’s not all right. Those criminals I mentioned? They’ll be looking for him. Damnit! I’m too caught up in everything—I didn’t even see it. The stormtroopers didn’t get him. He just bailed.” She sighs, presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. Hard enough that she sees stars streaking and melting across the black behind her lids. “I need to borrow your bala-bala.”

  Shirene offers a sad smile. “Of course, Norra. Anything you need.”

  —

  Damn this rain! Temmin thinks. He lies on his belly on the rooftop of Master Hyor-ka’s dao-ben steamed bun shop that sits across the alley from his own—and though he sits under a tarp, he’s still soaked through like a red-eyed silt-rat that drowned in a cistern. The rain pins him there like a divine hand.

  He again lifts the macrobinoculars to his eyes. Flicks them over to night vision.

  Two of Surat Nuat’s lackeys—a potbellied Rodian and that oil-skinned Herglic—continue to do what they’ve been doing for the last hour. They pitch junk from Temmin’s shop into the street with a clang, clatter, and splash. And then the same pair of Kowakian monkey-lizards descend from the nearby rooftop and canopy to pick through the shiniest bits before fleeing once more, cackling like tiny wizened lunatics.

  Inside, he hears more banging. Drilling. Yelling.

  They’re trying to find out how to get into the sub-layer. They want what he stole from Surat.

  Not that he knows what exactly it is that he stole from Surat.

  A weapon, he figures. Has to be.

  And whatever it is, it’s his now. Not that Sullustan frag-head’s.

  When they have the door open, he can see just inside—and there, he sees the familiar pointed feet of his own personal B1 battle droid bodyguard: Mister Bones. The feet are still. They look collapsed against the legs, which means the rickety droid is collapsed and in storage mode. Worse, Temmin can see a slight blue glow around the metal.

  That, he suspects, is the glow from an ion lock. It explains why Mister Bones hasn’t been responding to his comlink. They’ve got the droid locked up and shut down in an ion field.

  Smart move.

  And it leaves Temmin with one less option than before. In fact, Bones was his best chance to reclaim the shop quickly (if temporarily): Send the refurbed, modded B1 droid in to whip everybody’s tail so that Temmin could sneak in and get back into the sub-layer to secure his stuff.

  With that option off the table, it means the longer, more arduous path awaits: He has to go find one of the bolt-holes into the old catacombs beneath the city, then wend his way back to his own shop. He knows the way, but it won’t be fast. Better to get to it, then. And hope he gets there before Surat’s entourage of space-brains figure out how to gain entry.

  Temmin starts to put his binocs away—

  But then, off to his right? A shrill cackle.

  He knows that sound.

  Suddenly a flash of movement—a darting shape moves toward him, and one of the monkey-lizards has seized his binocs. The little demon hisses and spits at him, then pecks at his hands when he starts playing tug-of-war with it.

  “Get! Off!” he growls.

  But then something cannonballs into the small of his back.

  The second monkey-lizard.

  That one begins clawing at his ears and biting tufts of hair off his scalp. Laughing all the while. It’s enough of a distraction. The binocs slip from his grip and the monkey-lizard gambols about, delighting in its prize.

  Temmin lurches to his feet, lunging for it—

  And the second one drops to the ground and darts in front of him.

  His ankle catches on the creature’s body—its tail around his thigh, giving a hard tug. Next thing he knows, Temmin is going tail-over-teakettle as he tumbles over the edge of the roof. He hits the awning over the dao-ben shop and rolls off it, landing in a deep puddle. Splash.

  He splutters and spits, lifting himself up. Water streaming down in a small dirty waterfall, his hair now in his eyes. Temmin wipes locks away—

  And the curled tip of a giant ax blade hooks just inside his nostril and tugs his head up. Ow, ow, ow! The Herglic stands there, its mouth twisted into a sinister grin—rows and rows of serrated teeth sliding together with the sound of a rasp running across wood.

  The Herglic cries: “It’s the kid! We got the kid!”

  Above, the monkey-lizards chant and cackle.

  —

  He staggers through the forest. The burning forest. Bits of brush smoldering. A stormtrooper helmet nearby, charred and half melted. A small fire burns nearby. In the distance, the skeleton of an AT-AT walker. Its top blown open in the blast, peeled open like a metal flower. That burns, too.

  Bodies all around.

  Some of them are faceless, nameless. To him, at least. But others, he knows. Or knew. There—the fresh-faced officer, Cerk Lormin. Good kid. Eager to please. Joined the Empire because it’s what you d
id. Not a true believer, not by a long stretch. Not far from him: Captain Blevins. Definitely a true believer. A froth-mouthed braggart and bully, too. His face is a mask of blood. Sinjir is glad that one is dead. Nearby, a young woman: He knows her face from the mess, but not her name, and the insignia rank on her chest has been covered in blood. Whoever she was, she’s nobody now. Mulch for the forest. Food for the native Ewoks. Just stardust and nothing.

  We’re all stardust and nothing, he thinks.

  An absurd thought. But no less absurd than the one that follows:

  We did this to ourselves.

  He should blame them. The rebels. Even now he can hear them applauding. Firing blasters into the air. Hicks and yokels. Farm boy warriors and pipe-fitter pilots.

  Good for them.

  They deserve their celebration.

  Just as we deserve our graves.

  —

  A pebble wakes him up. Pock! It beans off his head—a head that feels like its been stepped on by the crushing leg of a passing Imperial walker—and lands next to his face. Clattering into a small pile of other pebbles.

  Sinjir groans and tries to stand.

  The ground beneath him shifts and swings—and he feels suddenly like he’s falling, even though he’s not. Vertigo assails him.

  He blinks. Tries to get his bearings.

  He’s in a cage. Iron. Rusted. Shaped like a birdcage, except person-sized, though only barely. It dangles from a thick, heavy-gauge chain. A chain that ascends through the jagged, dripping rock above into a long, dark well. Below him—

  Is nothing.

  A massive rift, a black chasm between craggy, wet walls. Walls barely lit by braziers of light along a far wall—a wall that sports a narrow metal walkway bolted into the glistening rock.

  A figure walks along that path. A Sakiyan, by his hairless scalp and ink-black skin. The guard has in his hand the end of a leash, the leash wound up around his wrist all the way to the elbow. At the other end of the rope? A long, red-eyed beast. Skin as rough and ragged as the wall it passes. A narrow maw with many teeth. A sallow belly dragging along the ground.

  “You’re awake” comes a voice from behind him.

  Sinjir startles. It causes his own cage to swing, which in turn makes his head pound harder. He idly considers throwing up.

  There, behind him: another half dozen cages like his.

  Only two of them are occupied.

  In one: a skeleton. Not human, though humanoid. Something with a horn on its head. What little skin is left on those bones looks like tattered rags and strips of rotten leather.

  In the other: It’s her. The Zabrak bounty hunter.

  Thankfully, it’s she who spoke. Not the skeleton. Because…gross.

  “You,” he groans. “You were throwing pebbles at me.”

  “Yes. Me. The one you tried to buy.”

  “Not like that. Not like you think.”

  “Then like how?”

  He leans his forehead against the cool iron. Water drips down on his head, runs down to the end of his nose (a bead of blood hangs there until he sneezes it away: a returning memory that hits him like a seismic wave). “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

  “I do not.”

  Disappointment pulls him down like quicksand. “I thought we shared a special moment.”

  “Clearly, we did not.”

  “Endor,” he says. “After everything. After the rebels secured their victory, I…we saw each other.”

  She hesitates. “Oh. Right.”

  “So, you remember.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, come now. Don’t you think that’s something? A moment of cosmic significance? The galaxy trying to tell us something? I mean, what are the chances?”

  She sniffs. “I don’t have a droid around to tell me.”

  “Let’s just assume astronomical, then.”

  “And that means what?”

  “I…I don’t know, I just expect it means something.” Suddenly, a pebble appears out of the half darkness and thwacks him in the head again. “Ow! Do you have to keep doing that? I’m awake.”

  “Everything means something, but not every something matters. I don’t believe in cosmic significance. I don’t care for magic or the Force or kissing a chit and throwing it into a fountain for good luck. I care about what I can see, taste, smell, and—most important—what I can do. You mean nothing to me until you do. You’re a rebel?”

  He chews on his lip. “Yes?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I came to see Surat to find a way off this damp, jungly rock. Incidentally, did you see what happened to my friend? The tail-head?”

  “They carried his body out after they dragged yours away.”

  “Is he…?”

  “Dead, yes.”

  Sinjir shuts his eyes. Says a small, meaningless prayer for the eager-eyed fool. What was his name? Orgadomie, Orlagummo, Orgie-Borgie, whoever you are, you didn’t deserve that.

  “Why are you here?” he asks.

  But the Zabrak ignores the question. She cranes her neck, staring out.

  He follows her gaze. On the walkway, the guard and the leashed creature disappear into a tunnel and are gone.

  “I’m planning on getting out of here,” she says.

  “Ah, well. Good for you. Can I come?”

  She reaches up, fidgets with her scalp. He watches as her fingers drift along the barbed horns that form a thorny crown on her head—she grimaces as she breaks one of them off with a loud snap.

  He says, “That looks like it hurt.”

  “It didn’t. It’s fake.” She teases something out of the horn—something metal. Like a key. She begins to use it on the lock at the door.

  A lock pick.

  Clever.

  “You can come with me if you’re useful,” she says.

  “I’m very useful. A very useful rebel, indeed.”

  The lock pops, and her door clangs open.

  “I’m not hearing much in evidence of that.”

  She jumps out of the cage backward, catching the lip of it with her hands. The whole thing swings back and forth. The Zabrak swings a few good times, then bends her back in a way that Sinjir is fairly certain would shatter his spine like a falling icicle. Her legs swing all the way up, her feet closing around the top of the cage. Her hands let go.

  Her legs swing her upper torso back up.

  “You’re…limber,” he says.

  “And you appear useless. Condolences.”

  She quickly climbs the chain above her cage, disappearing into the hollow space. No, no, no! She’s his one chance! He’s in this cage because he tried to save her!

  “Wait!” he calls. “I’m not a rebel! I’m an Imperial!” He shouts louder: “An ex-Imperial loyalty officer! I stole a rebel’s clothes on Endor! And his…” But she’s gone. Her cage has already stopped swinging. “Identity.” And his life and his ship and apparently his moral center.

  Well then.

  He groans. Again considers puking.

  But then: His cage shudders.

  And the Zabrak’s upside-down face appears level with his own.

  She scowls. “A loyalty officer. You just became interesting. And useful.” The bounty hunter holds up her lock pick. “You’re going to help me catch my quarry. That’s the deal. Take it and I open this door. Leave it, and Surat will likely sell you to the Empire. They don’t care much for deserters, I hear. Once, there might have been a tribunal, but these days they will shoot you in the street like a lowly cur.”

  “I’ll take the deal, as long as you help me get off this planet after.”

  She considers it. “Done.”

  As the Zabrak goes to work on the lock, she says: “I’m Jas Emari.”

  “Sinjir Rath Velus.”

  “A pleasure. If you try to frag me over, I’ll gut you where you stand.”

  “Noted.”

  The door pops open and she offers a hand. “Let’s go.”


  —

  Toomata Wree—aka Tooms—pokes around the boy’s junk shop. The others have gone. Once the boy himself showed up, all the digging and messing around in here stopped. Surat said they’ll get the information from the kid proper-like, because while the kid’s a punk, he’s just that. He’ll fold like a bad gambler and tell them how to get into the down-below of this joint, so they can steal back Surat’s prize and any other goodies they find.

  Tooms fishes in his pocket, pulls out some numbspray. He gives his bruised face a couple of good mistings—psst psst psst—and instantly the pain subsides underneath a carpet of sweet anesthesia.

  That battle droid did a number on him.

  A battle droid, of all things.

  Kid might be a punk, but kid’s also got talent.

  Whatever. Right now, Tooms looks around the shop. Maybe he’ll find something here for his girl, Looda. He’s on the outs with her (the same rigmarole: You work too much, Toomata, you do not care about me, if you like Surat Nuat so much why do you not make him your lover), so a little prize might go a long way. But all this stuff? Droid parts and conduits and pieces blown off spaceships. Over there are evaporator parts. Below them: vaporator parts. Then circuit boards in a half-rotten box. Then a box full of wonky thermal detonators—paperweight duds.

  Then he sees something:

  The head of a translator droid. Tarnished up, but still shiny. Looda, she likes shiny things. Maybe he could do something with it. Put a couple blood orchids in it, or hammer open the head and use it as a…a dish.

  He reaches up for it, his fingers grabbing for the eyes—

  The head doesn’t budge off the shelf. It’s bolted down.

  He pulls harder—

  And the eyes suddenly sink into the droid’s skull with a whir-click.

  A door opens up. A small wind kicks up through the open space and the Rodian sees a set of steps down. This is it. This is it. This is the way into the basement! Into Temmin Wexley’s special stash. Tooms grabs for the comlink at his belt but then pauses. Maybe he should go down there, take a quick look for himself. You know. For Looda.

  He chuckles, then steps toward the door.

  Behind him, a voice: “Where is my son?” A woman’s voice.

  The Rodian purses his cracked, split lips—then he moves fast, spinning around, reaching to draw the blaster at his side—