Aftermath: Star Wars

by Chuck Wendig

  She watches with inevitability as Sloane steps over to the droid. She draws her blaster and fires round after round into the machine’s head.

  After the sixth shot, it pops off and spins away, smoking.

  The droid’s limbs go still, clunking to the ground.

  Temmin weeps.

  “As was our deal, you may go,” Sloane says to the boy. To the stormtroopers holding him, “Escort him out of the palace. By way of the roof, if you please.”

  No!

  Norra launches herself up and starts to run toward Temmin.

  A flash of white behind her as a stormtrooper steps in and clubs her in the back with the butt of his blaster rifle. She goes down amid broken droid parts. Sinjir lies nearby—she cries out as they carry Temmin away, the boy kicking and screaming and calling for his mother.

  What have I done?

  That thought runs on an endless loop inside Temmin’s head. Guilt cuts through him like the vibroblade at the end of Mister Bones’s arm—the memory of the droid’s destruction joins his guilty thought. That, his mother crying for him, the look on the faces of Jas and Sinjir…

  At the time, it seemed like the right move. He knew he never wanted to leave Myrra, but that meant making peace with Surat or finding his own tongue cut out of his head. So he went and made a call to Surat—and the Sullustan gangster took the deal. Temmin excused it that the ex-Imperial and the bounty hunter would do the same. They’d sell his skin soon as someone offered enough credits—he said to himself, They don’t have any scruples. They don’t have a code.

  But it turns out he was the one without scruples.

  Temmin is the one without a code.

  He hoped against hope that it would all fall apart and he wouldn’t have to go through with it—that it would all work itself out and the snare he’d tied around his own stupid leg would just…untie itself, the knots going loose as the whole situation resolved itself without his plan coming to fruition, but now here he is—dragged up steps by a pair of stormtroopers. His heels kicking against the hard stairs, his hand trying to catch ahold of something, anything—a railing, a light fixture, a door handle.

  Ahead, another staircase—

  Temmin darts his hand out, catches the lip of a small fountain pressed into the wall. He curls his fingers around the stone and pulls himself free. Both stormtroopers cry out in alarm and come after him.

  He stabs out a kick, catches one in the chest.

  The stormtrooper oofs—but captures his foot. Then the Imperial pistons a fist into Temmin’s stomach. The air goes out of him. An ache runs through him—down his legs, up his arms.

  Again they pick him up. Carrying him up the second set of steps and through a set of red doors—out onto the roof. Temmin coughs, blinking back tears. He hears it now: the sound of chanting. Yelling. The crowd.

  “No, no, please,” he pleads with them as they haul him toward the roof’s edge. The two stormtroopers lift Temmin over their heads. He can see the crowd now. Massive. They’re streaming in from all directions. Signs. Effigies. Rocks, bricks, bottles thrown. Akivans. Protesting the satrapy. Protesting the Empire. Temmin missed it. He thought everyone just wanted to keep their heads down. Like him. I’m on the wrong side of this thing.

  Mom, I’m so sorry.

  “Time to join your friends,” one of the stormtroopers says. He doesn’t even know which one. All he knows is he screams as they pitch him over the edge of the roof. Temmin falls.

  —

  The yacht floats in the heat haze above the satrap’s palace. Its front end hangs forward like a falcon’s beak dipped in bronze; black windows between bony pipes of red and gold; two wings that angle down and lift upward at the end, appearing like the hands of a plaintive, supplicant monk. The yacht drifts so that it faces its side toward the palace, getting close to the corner of the rooftop as its gangplank extends out horizontally, dropping only at the last minute toward the roof to form a ramp.

  From the street, a few rocks fruitlessly pelt the underside of the ship.

  Stormtroopers move to the edge and fire their blasters down indiscriminately into the crowd.

  Norra thinks: You only dig the Empire’s grave with actions like that. Because everyone sees. The Empire is a thug, a bully. It’s no better than Surat Nuat, or Black Sun, or the syndicate of Hutts. The Empire pretends it’s about law and order, but at the end of the day, it’s about dressing up oppression in the costume of justice.

  The admiral must understand it, too. She catches up to the stormtroopers and pulls them back, rebuking them loudly.

  Ahead of Norra, the other esteemed guests of the Empire—their targets, the ones they hoped and failed to stop—board the ship. The fox-faced man, the one she believes is Moff Pandion, gives them a dismissive look. As if they’re greasy swamp clay stuck to the underside of his boot. A mess that must be scraped off and flung away.

  Then he, too, ascends the ramp.

  Norra looks to Jas and Sinjir. Both of them standing there, hands bound behind their back. Each hedged in by stormtroopers so that there’s no way to run and nowhere to go if they did.

  Then the door opens again, and Norra finally sees:

  It’s Captain Antilles. Her heart breaks. His injuries have him in their grip. His hair is spackled to his forehead with sweat. His pallor is the color of fireplace ash. He’s strapped down to a hovering table ushered forward by a pair of stormtroopers and a 2-1B medical droid.

  As he passes, his eyes flutter open and he sees her. “Pilot,” he says.

  “Captain,” she responds.

  He gives her a weak smile as they push him onto the yacht.

  Norra looks to Sinjir. “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Well.” The ex-Imperial sighs. “I will probably stand trial. Jas will probably die. You, I cannot say. Prison. Execution. Perhaps you’ll join your rebel friend and be part of a peace settlement.”

  “I’m sorry about all of this.”

  “Not your fault,” Jas says.

  “He was her son,” Sinjir notes, staring at them with his one good eye. The other remains swollen shut. “Her blood in his veins. I can reserve a little bit of judgment for her. I think I’ve earned that luxury.”

  Jas starts to protest, but Norra interrupts: “He’s right. You can lay the blame at my feet. I just hope, despite it all, my son is okay.”

  Sinjir smirks. “Norra, I don’t think any of us is okay.”

  “Norra, Temmin is a survivor,” Jas says. “He has what it takes. If anybody will make it out of this alive, it will be him.”

  —

  Temmin is dead.

  He’s sure of it. He could not have survived. And now, this feeling, this strange and impossible feeling—he’s floating. Drifting across what feels like the calm waters of Farsigo Bay in the south. He and his mother and father used to go there sometimes on vacation. There they’d fish or sail spray-boats or try to scare up some of those gleaming korlappii shells—the ones that caught the sun just right and gave off a rainbow of light.

  He doesn’t hear the water. Or smell its brine.

  And Temmin doesn’t much believe in an afterlife anyway.

  The boy opens his eyes.

  He is floating. Buoyed. Carried on the hands of the crowd.

  They caught him. By all the stars and all the satellites, they caught me. He laughs: a mad cackle that sounds not unlike that of his crazy droid.

  Then he remembers: his mother. And Jas. And Sinjir.

  He doesn’t have much time.

  He lifts his head and rolls off the carpet of hands that’s been carrying him, and he drops down into the crowd itself. For a moment, he’s lost—it’s hard to get his bearings in this sea of people. The throng overwhelms. But then he spins and sees the massive palace walls rising up.

  I have to get back up there.

  He starts to push his way through the crowd.

  Rocks pelt the walls and rebound. He sees people trying to climb up—a Rodian scales the wall and dang
les from a balcony. A pair of humans try to help each other up. And Temmin thinks: That’s my way.

  He hasn’t played with his friends in a while. Hasn’t been the street rat urchin for a few years now. But he still knows how to shimmy up a drainpipe, or clamber up a wire-mesh grate, or find handholds where none seem to exist. He doesn’t have time to figure out the best way up.

  Instead, all he can do is climb with the others.

  —

  As they load the final passengers—the prisoners taken from the catacombs beneath the palace—the satrap catches up and drops to his knees. “Please, please, please. You must take me with you. I am besieged! They are climbing the walls like monkey-lizards. They will tear me asunder.”

  Sloane puts her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done the Empire a great service, Satrap Isstra.”

  The smile on his face spreads like butter. He believes he is being saved. His chest rises and sinks with relief. “Thank you. Thank you, Admiral. You are too kind.”

  “But we no longer require your aid.”

  “Wh…what?” Bewilderment crosses his face. He doesn’t know if he’s being punished, rewarded, put out to pasture, or what. “I don’t—”

  She gives a nod. Two stormtroopers grab Isstra and drag him back toward the doorway. He kicks and yells like a petulant child.

  “You cannot do this!” he cries, froth forming at the corners of his mouth like so much flotsam. “I have been good to you! Guards! Guards!”

  Two of his palace guardsmen come rushing through the door.

  They are cut down by the stormtroopers’ blaster rifles. Dead before they even had the chance to protect their erstwhile leader.

  The satrap bleats like a throat-cut stock animal. The troopers toss him to the ground and he crawls between the corpses of his guards, weeping.

  Sloane steps aboard the yacht.

  —

  The crowd roars. Temmin’s fingers barely hold on, crammed into a tight crack running up the palace wall. His muscles ache. He hasn’t done this for a while. He lifts himself up—

  Just as the crowd surges. They pull back from the walls. Someone lobs something against the palace doors.

  What was that—

  The building rocks. A thermal detonator blast buckles the doors. The fingers on Temmin’s left hand slip out of their mooring—

  He dangles, one arm straining, his feet scrambling to find any kind of ledge to bolster himself.

  The crowd surges again. They swarm against the injured door. Pushing in. Some four-armed Besalisk comes bounding through the mob with a massive forge hammer, and charges the door.

  No time to worry about that.

  Temmin screams through clamped teeth as he reaches up and regains his handhold. The boy continues his ascent.

  —

  Morna sits in the captain’s chair of the yacht. Rae enters, sits next to her. “Cushy,” she tells the pilot.

  Morna nods. “No kidding, Admiral. Everything gleams. And these chairs…I feel like I’m still sinking into them.”

  “Don’t get used to them. Comfort is not an Imperial priority.” At that, Rae offers a faint smile. “Any problems with Crassus’s pilot?”

  “He fought me, but I made him recognize the Empire’s authority and I assured him he would still be paid for his time.”

  “He’s locked up, isn’t he?”

  “In one of the bedrooms, yes.”

  Adea, too, is in one of the bedrooms. Rae exhorted her assistant to go lie down, for stars’ sake: The woman has been impeccable in her aid, and brave in her defense of the Empire. Rae told her to rest up. She put her in one of the cabins next to Captain Antilles and his guard.

  “Excellent. Are we ready to depart this execrable planet?”

  “We are, Admiral. And I just got the report that the Star Destroyers have returned to orbit from hyperspace. We have coverage from the Vigilance, the Vanquish, and the Ascent.”

  “Then let’s bid farewell to this sweat-slick steam bath.”

  Morna nods. She powers the engines up.

  The yacht begins to move.

  —

  The yacht begins to move.

  Temmin scrambles over the edge of the palace roof and sees the gangplank pulling back and the yacht easing away from the edge.

  I’m too late.

  He looks around, eyes darting quickly.

  There.

  The satrap. Blubbering between the bodies of two of his own guard retinue. Their vibro-pikes lie off to the side.

  This is stupid, Temmin thinks, hurrying over and kicking one of the pikes up into his hands. This is the worst idea, he thinks as he turns and runs full-tilt toward the edge of the roof. I am a laser-brained moon-calf who is going to die, he decides as he plants the tip of the pike down hard and uses it to launch himself off the palace roof.

  I’m dead.

  I can’t make this.

  I have made a huge mistake.

  The pike is out of his hands. Temmin’s arms pinwheel through open air as the yacht drifts. The side of the ship comes up fast—

  He slams into it. Wham.

  His hands reach for a hold. But they don’t find one. He hears the pathetic squeak as he paws at the metal and starts to fall.

  But then—

  He stops falling.

  His hand catches one of the decorated pipes outlining one of the windows. Temmin clutches it tight, and brings his other hand up and pulls himself up. There’s a moment of triumph—a flutter in his chest as he thinks, I made it! I totally made it!

  And then the yacht starts to lift up and he realizes:

  Why did I do this? I’m going to die!

  The ground beneath starts to shrink as the yacht ascends.

  —

  So close, Rae thinks, easing back into the copilot’s chair. Almost there.

  This entire trip has been a failure. She realizes that now. But failure cannot be the end of it. Failure has to be illuminating: an instruction manual written in scar tissue. What, then, are the lessons of this? What has been learned and what can be built from the wreckage?

  One: Consensus will not be easy. And it may in fact be difficult enough that it is not worth pursuing.

  Two: The Empire is fractured. That is not new information, but it has been clarified here. And a new dimension is revealed to her, as a result: Many inside the Empire do not want to heal those fractures but rather, want to use the division for their own designs.

  Three: If the Empire is to survive, then they must—

  A red blip on Morna’s screen. The pilot frowns.

  “What is it?” Rae asks.

  “Could be a bird,” the pilot says. “Though, if it is, it’s a very big bird.” She shakes her head and clarifies: “Something’s on the hull.”

  Rae nods. “I’ll send some men to look into it.”

  —

  Sinjir kneels next to the others. His face feels like pounded dough. There they wait in this opulent room toward the back of the yacht, kneeling like slaves in a plush room of couches and tables. The fat banker, Crassus, sits in the corner, smoking spice out of a long obsidian pipe. His slave women in their beastly masks buff and trim the nails of his plump, desiccated feet, cutting the calluses off his awful toes.

  On the one side of Crassus sits Jylia Shale. A general. Sinjir knows her—or, rather, knows of her. Depending on who you talk to inside the Empire, she’s either a legend or a traitor. A conqueror or a cur. She has a pair of red-cloaked Imperial Guardsmen with her.

  On the other side of Crassus: the purple-robed adviser. Sinjir doesn’t remember that one’s name, though he’s fairly sure Jas told him. One of Palpatine’s inner circle, most likely. An acolyte of the Sith side of the Force, though certainly not a proper practitioner of it. Essentially, a cultist.

  Across from Sinjir:

  Pandion sits, stock-straight.

  Staring at them.

  No. Staring at him, at Sinjir.

  “I know I’m handsome,” Sinjir says—an unint
entional growl in the back of his throat as he speaks. A rattle from injury, not rage.

  Pandion only chuckles—it looks like he’s about to say something, but then a small contingent of stormtroopers hurries past, toward the middle of the ship. They look alarmed. Pandion tries not to flinch, but it happens.

  Sinjir says with a smirk: “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “Still your lips, traitor, or I’ll cut them off.”

  —

  Gonna die, gonna die, gonna die. Temmin holds on with every ounce of willpower he can. Already wisps of clouds are passing by. The air grows cold. The ship starts to shudder with turbulence. He starts to think: Maybe I can crawl down underneath the ship. Use my multitool to pop a maintenance hatch, climb into the belly of the ship and—

  The window above him pops open with a hiss.

  A stormtrooper’s head pokes out.

  “Hey!”

  That’s as good an invitation as Temmin’s going to get.

  He reaches up, hooks his hand behind the stormtrooper’s helmet, and yanks the Imperial soldier out through the open space.

  The trooper’s scream is loud at first, and then fades as he falls.

  Temmin crawls up inside the open window.

  He belly-flops to the floor, panting. He shakes the blood flow back into his arms. He’s in a hallway full of doors. Cabins for the yacht. He stands up, dusts himself off. Then someone taps him on the shoulder.

  Uh-oh.

  He turns. There stand two more stormtroopers, rifles up.

  And behind them come a pair of red-helmeted Imperial Guards. Their cloaks sweeping the floor behind them.

  “Hey, guys,” Temmin says, giving a fake laugh. “Is this not the twelve thirty space-bus to the Ordwallian Cluster Casino? No? Ooh. Awkward!”

  He turns and runs.

  —

  “Fragging frag it!” Jom Barell snarls, his face red. Nothing he’s done has made this thing work, and now his target is fleeing toward orbit.

  He stands for a few moments. Chest rising and falling.