by Chuck Wendig
“You did it,” the smuggler says.
“Aram? I know.”
“He gave us everything we needed.” Solo has a ragged, feral grin. He’s excited. Raring to go like a hound straining at its leash.
“Very glad to have been of service.”
“You’re Imperial.”
“Ex.”
“I don’t like Imperials.”
“Join the club. Even Imperials don’t like Imperials.”
“You did good. Get yourself cleaned up. Me and Norra are going to head into Kai Pompos, do a quick supply run. Then we’re off to the races.”
Sinjir offers a weak thumbs-up. Yay.
Solo is gone. Soon replaced by Jas as she comes off the ship, bantering with Jom Barell—oh, joy, he’s back. The two of them came down off the plateau last night just as he was about to be overrun by a pack of commando droids. Ones apparently set to cook off like fireworks. Jas and Jom saved him. Sinjir supposes he should be grateful. And he is. Maybe.
Eventually, Jas gives him a wink. “You okay?” she asks.
“Golden,” he responds, summoning a liar’s smile.
Then she and Barell are gone. Off to do whatever it is they do. Probably thump like engine pistons.
“Hey, Sinjir,” says Temmin, coming up from behind him.
“Hello, boy.”
“You don’t look so hot.”
“That’s rude.”
“No, I mean—” Temmin laughs, nervously. “You seem like something’s bothering you.”
“Something’s always bothering me. The sun. The air. Other people. Nosy younglings who pop by with rude questions.”
“I don’t know what crawled up your exhaust port and died, but fine, I’m outta here. See ya, Sinjir.”
“Wait.”
The boy pauses and looks back. “What?”
“Back on Chandrila. Looking in on Yupe Tashu. That bothered you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Woulda bothered anybody.”
“Mm-mm, I don’t buy that answer. It hit you like a fast little meteorite fragment—pop, right between the eyes.”
Temmin kicks a few stones, then says: “Okay. You tell me what’s bothering you, I’ll tell you what bothered me.”
“A little tit for tat, hm? Fine. I don’t want to be who I am anymore. I want to be someone different.”
“You are. You’re one of the good guys now.”
“And, as one of those good guys, I just threatened another sentient being with the act of sticking an antenna through his ear and into his brain.”
“So why’d you do it, then?”
Sinjir scowls like he’s tasting something foul. “Because history demands distasteful things be done to preserve it. Because being good sometimes means still being bad. Because it’s who I am and if I didn’t do it, we’d probably still be sitting here scratching ourselves wondering whatever could we do? I am here for a reason. I am a tool that fulfills a very exclusive function. What good am I if I don’t fill it?”
“You’re good in a lot of ways.”
“Such as?”
“Uhh.”
“Right. Your turn.”
“No, wait, I feel bad, you’re really good at—”
“Too late. Buzzer is buzzing. Alarm is alarming. Your turn, I said. You. Me. Yupe Tashu. You were upset. Why?”
“Because.”
“Because is not an answer. It’s an empty word.”
“Because of my father!”
Sinjir cocks an eyebrow. “What about him?”
“He’s…maybe out there, too. In a cell just like that one. I think, who knows what happened to him? What happened to his mind? It made me worry that he might be broken, too. And if I ever find him, maybe he won’t even recognize me. Maybe even if we find him, he’ll still be lost. Y’know?”
“I do know. Quite profound, actually.”
“It is?”
“For a nosy youngling.”
“For the record, you’re good at this kind of stuff. Talking to people.”
“Oh, gross. I’d rather be good at torturing them.”
“Jerk.”
“Twit.”
Temmin laughs. “Thanks, Sinjir. I feel better.”
For a time, so does Sinjir. He’d never say as much out loud, of course. He tries to enjoy the respite from his own foul mood, because he wonders: What comes now?
The Falcon slices through hyperspace.
“You look nervous,” Han says to Norra, sitting in the copilot’s chair—a chair that has a very deep seat and is lower to the floor than the other. A chair worn most often by a much bigger individual.
Like, say, a Wookiee.
“I’m not nervous,” she says.
She’s nervous.
It’s hard not to be. She’s admired this ship a great deal from afar—how could she not? This should be a clunky, junky freighter. But she’s seen it move. The way it whips and dips through the chaos of battle is a thing to behold—performance like that steals your breath just watching it. She in her Y-wing followed the Falcon—then piloted by Calrissian and his Sullustan copilot—into the mazelike innards of the second Death Star. It was a thing to marvel. A sight she will never forget.
That’s from the outside.
On the inside? She’s surprised this thing holds together. It’s got the structural integrity of a sack of spare parts. Nothing matches. Things dangle. Wires lie exposed. Panels don’t match their moorings. The console doesn’t even look original to the ship—it’s like her son built it in his workshop back on Akiva. Bits sit welded to other bits or, worse, are stuck together with wound-up wads of bonding tape and shellacked over with shiny epox.
Norra is afraid this thing might break into pieces right here in the middle of rocketing through hyperspace.
Solo, for his part, seems like he’s embraced the chaos of it. Sometimes an alarm goes off, or part of the dash goes dark—and then he pounds it with the side of his fist or jiggles the wires hanging underneath. Then it all comes back online. He smirks and winks.
Norra, in order to not talk about the orbital garbage fire in which they are currently traveling, says: “We sure Aram gave us good info?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we? If his codes don’t check out, we’re going to have to get out of there fast as a blaster.” He closes his eyes and pinches the flesh at the center of his brow. “You know what? It’ll work. It has to work.” Because, she knows, this is their only shot.
Kashyyyk is a prison planet. A worldwide labor camp. The Empire, in its xenophobic monstrousness, saw fit to imprison and enslave the Wookiees there not because they offered a meaningful threat to the Emperor’s ascendancy—but because they were different, and because their massive, robust physiology would allow them to work long and hard in extreme conditions. Probably took rather epic effort to work a Wookiee to death. Not that the Empire wouldn’t try, she wagers.
At that, she fails to repress a shudder.
“It’ll work,” she says. Because it has to work.
Solo reaches above him, sets the stabilizers with a few flips of a few switches. “We’re coming up on it. You ready for this?”
No. “Yes.”
“Dropping out of lightspeed.”
He gives a quick tap to the nav computer screen, then eases back on the throttle. The long light-lines go from streaks to stars.
And there, ahead, is their destination.
Kashyyyk. A green, verdant planet. She spies snowcapped mountains and snaking rivers leading to oceans of dark water. But above all else are the forests. Even from here, the forests pop. The clouds swirling above the atmosphere have to swirl around and through the trees.
But look closer, and you see devastation: Patches of forest gone dark and gray. Rivers stemmed to a trickle. Black dots across the seas: Imperial undersea mining platforms, she guesses. White clouds swirl into hurricanes of black smoke. If she can see the destruction from all the way out here, in space, how bad is it on the g
round? What have they done to this world?
All around the planet hangs the Imperial blockade. Dozens of ships: a pair of Star Destroyers, a handful of battleships, plus shuttle traffic and patrols of TIE starfighters.
“We should’ve come in an Imperial ship,” she says.
Behind them, a blip on the scanners. Another craft dropping out of hyperspace. Her heart tightens in her chest even though she knows that ship: It’s the Halo, following behind. Jas is piloting it. The rest of the crew is with her, leaving Norra to accompany the smuggler.
“I said, it’ll be fine,” Solo says. “We didn’t have time, anyway.”
“Surely they know your ship.”
“They do, but we got Aram’s Imperial codes, remember? Besides, they think the Falcon is destroyed.”
“How’s that?”
“After I lost Chewie, I hired a slicer to hack the Empire’s networks, see if I could find out anything. While in there, she did me a favor and ‘updated’ their records on me and the Falcon. I’m listed as dead, and this ship is listed as having gone kaboom.”
She hesitates. “And our gunship?”
“Like I said, your gunship is an SS-54. Fortunately for us, Imperial bureaucracy is an immovable object. Once upon a time, the Empire classified that ship as a ‘light freighter.’ Would take mountains of paperwork and official approvals to get it redesignated in their databases, so? They don’t see a gunship. They see a freighter.”
“That keeps our story, then.”
“Sure does, lady. Sure does.”
That story: They’re bringing parts and a repair crew down to the surface of Kashyyyk to do repairs on the prison known as Ashmead’s Lock at the behest of the prison’s designer, Golas Aram. Simple. Clean.
As if on cue, the comm crackles:
“This is Star Destroyer Dominion. You are in illegal approach of Imperial territory G5-623. Identify yourselves and transmit clearance codes or you will be marked as a trespasser and in violation of Galactic Code.”
Han clears his throat and gives a nervous smile to Norra—possibly meant to reassure her?—before speaking. “This is light freighter Conveyance, accompanied by light freighter, uhh, the Swan. Stand by for code transmission.”
He gives the nod, and Norra uploads the codes.
Silence on the other end.
“They’re not buying it,” she says.
“They’re buying it.”
More silence.
“They’re not buying it.”
“They haven’t charged up their weapons—”
A burst of static across the comm, then: “What is your purpose on the surface of Imperial territory G5-623, Conveyance?”
“We’re, ahh, we were sent to do repairs on an old prison. We were sent by Golas Aram at the request of the Empire. We have technical parts and the crew to install them. Uh. Sir.”
More silence. Norra hears only the blood rushing in her ears.
“Not today,” returns the voice. “Turn your ships around and please exit Imperial space.”
Han’s brow furrows with frustration. He gets back on the comm: “I apologize, I don’t understand, sir. The code clearance—”
“The planet is on lockdown, freighter Conveyance. No one in, no one out, by order of Emperor Palpatine himself.”
Palpatine. Norra sits forward in her pilot’s seat. Chills run roughshod over her skin, and she can’t shake them off. Could he be alive? After all this?
Solo whispers to her: “He’s dead. Relax.” Then, back on the comm: “Sir, I apologize. I was to understand that the Emperor did not survive.”
“Then you understand poorly. The Emperor is alive and well. Imperial territory G5-623 is under quarantine. I repeat: Turn around or we will be forced to open fire.”
Panic traps both of them in its grip. Han and Norra look at each other. His eyes are wild. He’s like a caged animal desperate to chew its way through the enclosure. He reaches for the weapons systems—
Norra catches his hand. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing? We’re gonna blast our way through this. You know. The old-fashioned way of doing things.”
“They’ve got two Star Destroyers there.”
“Oh, hey, thanks for that update. By the way, the Falcon’s punched its way through a lot worse. We’ll make it to the surface.”
“And what then?”
“Then we head to the coordinates Aram gave us.”
“With half the Empire on our tails!”
“I don’t mind those odds, sister!”
She grabs for the comm and speaks into it, desperate for a solution—except it’s not the Imperials she hails. Instead, she routes her comm through to the Halo. Jas answers.
“Norra, I don’t think they’re interested.”
“I know. Get Sinjir.”
The shuffling of fabric, then Sinjir’s voice crackles over the dash. “You called?”
“I need something. A code. Imperial. Emergency, um, high ranking, something, anything, that will get us planetside.”
“Oh. Ahh. Damn, it’s been a while—oh! Tell them it’s a triple-9, 327. That’s a classified work order code.”
She flips the comm back.
“Star Destroyer Dominion,” she says. “This is the Conveyance. I’m told to try one last time, sir—we are here at the demand of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and Imperial Adviser Yupe Tashu.” It’s a wild shot in the dark—her plucking two names of powerful people, two of whom she has personally encountered, and hoping those names have enough power. “We are here to service Ashmead’s Lock, a prison that contains high-value prisoners. Prisoners assigned to this prison by the Emperor himself. Sir. We have a work order. Triple-9, 327.” She repeats it.
Even as she speaks the words, she knows how little a chance it gives them. So, what then? Blast their way through, apparently.
Which she is pretty sure will be a death sentence.
“Hold,” comes the voice.
Han gives her a look. “They’re not gonna buy it.”
“I know.”
“When they don’t buy it, I’m gonna blast our way onto that planet.”
“I know that, too.”
“Better buckle up, then. It’s about to get—”
Crackle. “Conveyance, this is Dominion. You are clear to land.”
The breath that leaves Norra’s chest leaves her shaking. “You were saying, Captain Solo? About to get what?”
“Don’t get cocky, lady. Nobody likes a preening peacock. Let’s get planetside before they change their mind.”
—
The call comes across her holoscreen in the middle of a meeting with the Shadow Council—Brendol Hux is at one end of the table bellowing at Randd, the former red-cheeked and with a vein throbbing across his brow, the latter standing stiff as a flagpole and looking rather bored.
Sloane’s device pings with the call from a Star Destroyer—
The Dominion, in the Kashyyyk system.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, and the men all stop and give her a quizzical, irritated look. Idiots. She steps out of the room and into one of the Ravager’s austere steel hallways.
She takes the call.
On her screen, Rear Admiral Urian Orlan appears. He’s a plastic-cheeked, bird-nosed little man. She never much cared for him. He was a hesitant commander, one of the weakest she knew, and yet he accelerated past her in years previous—ironically given command of a Star Destroyer named Dominion. Orlan has dominion over very little except his hair, which is so perfectly placed against his brow she suspects it’s fake.
“This is a courtesy call,” he says.
“Not courteous enough to defer to my authority,” she says. “Here, let me help you: Greetings, Grand Admiral Sloane. It is my most distinct pleasure to be speaking to you today, sir. Try that on for size, Urian.”
He licks his lips and says: “Yes. Of course, Grand Admiral. It is a pleasure.” The truth is, G5-623 is one of those Imperial ter
ritories that has not yet properly fallen in line with the rest. Like Anoat, they’re still telling the myth that Palpatine is alive and well—that he’s not merely some demonic ghost commanding an Empire from beyond the grave, but he escaped the exploding Death Star by improbable, even miraculous means. They remain fairly self-sufficient—so much so that this remnant has holed up there, protecting itself overmuch from outside influence.
“What is it, Urian?”
“I was wondering about the prison.”
“What prison would that be?”
“Ashmead’s Lock. Here on G5-623.”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
His nose twitches. “Are you quite sure?”
“Do you think me a fool or a liar?”
“I do not. Of course. It’s just—we had two ships. We turned them away, but they insisted they had code clearance from, well, you.”
“Describe these ships to me.”
He does, sending rudimentary schematics to her screen.
Two light freighters—a YT-1300, and an SS-54. The latter is really a gunship misdiagnosed as a freighter. It’s not for carrying parts.
She’s dealt with two ships of those models before. It’s an unusual combination—too unlikely to be a coincidence.
Could it be? The Millennium Falcon and the ship belonging to the bounty hunter—the Halo, is it? That’s the same crew that slipped from her grip on Akiva. The same crew, in fact, that’s been hunting down Imperials, often getting to them before she could. (At least Mercurial dispatched that last one right out from under them.) And the Falcon belongs to General Solo. Robbing the New Republic of someone like him isn’t militarily significant, but the damage it would do to their morale…though, it could also provoke them into a fight for which they aren’t yet ready.
Whatever the case, the incursion cannot stand.
“Sir?” Admiral Orlan asks.
“Send a team to investigate,” she tells him. “Report back.”
He hesitates. The chain of command is no longer what it used to be. Orlan is a man of different masters. Why even call her, then? Perhaps to stay just enough on her good side in case he’s forced to make a choice.
“I’ll have to check with Grand Moff Tolruck. If he approves—”
“Tell him he will approve or he will see a visit from me.”
