BY CHUCK WENDIG 2 страница

It’s their bounty. She sees their faces. Her son’s face among them.

“You conniving little bilge-bug, ” Barell seethes. “I trusted you. ”

“No, you didn’t, ” Jas says. “And you shouldn’t have. I’m going to do very well with this. Not only is Gedde paying me for alerting him to the attempt to capture him, the Vorlaggn here is going to pay me a twenty percent finder’s fee—”

“Slussen said fifteen. ”

“Well. A girl can try. A fifteen percent finder’s fee for your bounty. ”

“Jas, don’t do this, ” Norra pleads.

Sadness crosses Jas Emari’s face. “I’m sorry. But I have bills to pay. Bills that are coming due, and the Republic just isn’t keeping me flush. ” Then she gives a flip little salute and says: “It was fun while it lasted. ”

Jas exits the room.

Gedde laughs. “Let’s get you into some cages, shall we? ”

—

Sinjir is not fond of cages. Especially ones that dangle over an open precipice, regardless of whether it’s here on Vorlag or back on Akiva in Surat Nuat’s dungeon. These cages are boxy things like caskets stood on their end, hanging from black rock outcroppings not far from the gateway to the hroth-beast feeding room. Mist gathers. Fungal light crosses beneath them in sharp, bright lines.

“Still feeling good about your friend? ” Jom calls. His cage hangs from another overhang about ten meters away. “Still think I should trust her? ”

“I do, ” Sinjir says, thrusting his chin out defiantly.

And that surprises him more than a little.

He doesn’t trust anyone. And yet here he is, certain as the stars that this is all part of some secret plan, one the others just don’t see.

A little voice tells him it’s because he’s so very good at reading body language. It’s his job to dissect people with but a glance, cutting them down to all their treacherous little atoms. And another competing voice warns him that maybe, just maybe, he missed something about Jas Emari.

But that doubt is drowned in a washtub of his own confidence, and he feels oddly sure about her. So he says as much to them: “She’ll get us out of this yet, wait and see. ”

Jom grunts. “Keep dreaming, Imperial. ”

“Whether she’s playing us or playing them, we can’t count on her to save us, ” Norra says. Her cage hangs on the other side of Sinjir’s and she wraps her fingers around the iron. “We have to get out of here ourselves. They’re going to sell us to the Empire. We can’t let that happen. ”

“I think we already let that happen, ” Jom grouses. Then he leans forward against the cage, staring out. “What even is the Empire anymore? Who controls it? Who will pay for us? ”

That is a question Sinjir has been asking himself. At first, it surprised him how swiftly the Imperial forces crumbled. Though over time it puzzled him less and less. The unity of the Empire existed because all its chains and threads were held fast in a singular grip: the hand of the Emperor. With the Emperor gone, who was to hold it all together? Rumor said Vader had been taken out, too. So who then? The admirals? The moffs? They were always rats kept in line by the cats, and now there are no cats.

No clear chain of succession was evident. Palpatine had no family of which to speak, at least as far as anyone knew. Vader didn’t have family, either (and for all Sinjir knows, wasn’t even human anymore). And with two Death Stars gone, a significant portion of the Empire’s best and brightest were snuffed out, too. The New Republic seized that opportunity. The Rebellion was gone, and a new government grew swiftly—if clumsily—in its place.

That left the Empire scrambling in survival mode. No clear leadership because, most likely, they were fighting over it. And day by day, the Imperial forces peel away—defeated, destroyed, abandoned, or stolen.

Sinjir imagines that the Empire as a whole was not all that different from how he himself was on the forest moon of Endor that fateful day—dizzied, bloodied, surrounded by bodies. Unsure of where to go next or what to do or what by all the stars even to believe in anymore.

A crisis of faith and purpose. That’s what it is.

Sinjir still suffers his crisis. The New Republic has not been an answer. This team has been an answer, somewhat, though now with his friend’s betrayal he feels back on the edge of things. The question of faith and purpose is left hanging. And no answer is easily seen.

The Empire will need its answer, too—and if it doesn’t find one in time, it will be destroyed. Deservedly, he decides.

I need a drink, he also decides.

Not far away, the familiar buzz of the laser gate suddenly goes silent—leaving everything eerily quiet. But only for a few moments.

Soon a new sound arises: chuffing snorts and moist gibbers. Out of the yawning mountainside opening, gobbets of meat launch out into the mist.

Hroth-beasts follow fast. Red, leathery creatures with long wings and a dozen legs leap into the void, chasing the falling offal. Ducking and diving. Their faces are hardly faces at all: just squirming, eyeless piles of polyps and tubules. A fleshy mass that looks more like fungus and less like anything you’d find attached to an animal. Out there, a trio of the things swoop and roll, catching meat thrown to them. And then soon, the meat stops.

But nobody brings the beasts back inside.

The hroth-beasts soar higher. Still hungry, maybe.

Or worse, Sinjir thinks: They’re bored.

And we may make very good playthings.

As if on cue, one swoops down right toward Sinjir’s cage—and wham, it slams into it with the weight of a flung vaporator. The beast clings to the side of the cage, pressing its tentacular mess through the grate. Sinjir has just enough room to stab out with his foot—and the tendrils grab his boot and suck it right off his foot. The beast makes greedy nursing noises as it tries to…eat the boot? Disgruntled, the creature mewls and gurgles, flinging its head to the side. The boot sails into the vapor.

Jom yells through cupped hands: “Don’t let it touch you. Those things on its face are full of stingers. You’ll go numb. ”

Blast. Sinjir presses himself against the back of the cage as the thing probes and bangs its head and fore-claws against the metal.

As its teeming masses of tendrils push through the grates like worms, Sinjir spies something shiny under its neck. Something hanging there by a chain. It looks like—

A key. A dark metal octagonal key. Just like the one used to lock them in here in the first place.

Well, that’s curious.

Suddenly the creature flies away, sailing once more into the mist.

No, no, no!

That key—

Certainly Slussen’s men didn’t put it there, did they? They don’t seem smart enough for such cruel games. Which means the key is secret, but intentional. Which means the key is from someone who wants them free.

“Jas, ” Sinjir whispers under his breath, suddenly giddy. It’s just like in Surat Nuat’s dungeon—him trapped and her acting as the one to free him yet again. An oddly comforting pattern, that. A classic move! Sinjir moves to the front of the cage and presses his hands through the tight spaces—his arms will fit through up to the elbow, and he waves his appendages around like an animal in distress. “Hey! Hey! You flying sacks of slime! Here, here! Don’t I look delicious? Mmm. Don’t I look like a tasty—”

Whonnnng. The same one swoops up from below, unseen. Tubules gather around his left arm, and it’s like being electrocuted—the limb tingles at first and then suddenly feels like a thousand little pins are pricking it all at once. Sinjir screams, but maintains. With his free hand, he darts out and snatches the key from around the thing’s neck with pinching fingers, then wrenches his hand out of that writhing mass of tentacles.

Whining through gritted teeth, he quickly peels back the now ragged tatters of his sleeve—the arm is red, blistering, swelling up.

And, as Jom predicted, totally numb. He shakes it, trying to urge feeling back into the limb.

Sinjir resists the desire to immediately unlock the cage and—

Well, then what, exactly?

Leap into the void?

Jump onto one of these things and try to ride it?

Those sound like very good ways to die. And Sinjir is all about not dying. He’s not entirely sure what he’s living for, not yet, but not dying is a very fine start. He whispers to himself: “Patience, old boy. Patience. ”

He waits. The beasts harass Norra and Jom, too, slamming into the cages, the metal banging against the mountainside behind them. Sinjir wants to yell to the others to check for keys—but Slussen’s guards, the beast-keepers, could be listening. Eventually, the hroth-beasts tire of trying to eat the wriggling meat inside the unyielding metal exoskeletons, and soon the beast-keepers offer a shrill whistle. The beasts leap and swoop back into the cave from whence they came.

And then the familiar buzz of the laser gate returns.

Now is the time.

Sinjir thrusts his one good arm outside the cage, the key held firm in his grip. It takes a bit of fumbling, but he manages to spin the key around and get it in the lock—a quick turn and the door springs open.

Its hinges squeak as the cage hangs in open air. Now what?

“Uhh, ” he says, clearing his throat. “Some help here? ”

Jom and Norra both turn, mouths agape.

“Is your cage open? ” Jom asks.

“Obviously, it is, ” Sinjir snarks. “It’s not exactly a hallucination. ” Under his breath he adds: “I hope. ”

“How? ” Norra asks.

“A key. Jas left me a key. Wound around the neck of one of those…awful flying things. It, uhh, it was helpful, but…” He leans out of the cage, holding on with his one good arm. The other remains without any feeling at all—that limb hangs at his side like a broken branch still dangling from its tree. “Well, let’s just say my next steps are a bit up in the air. ”

“We don’t know it was her, ” Jom barks. “Coulda been one of the slaves. They have a vested interest in getting free. ”

Yes, Sinjir thinks, but that’s not precisely our task here, is it? Perhaps it should be, but it’s not.

Plucking the key from the lock, he places it between his teeth and bites down hard. Then Sinjir reaches up and grabs the top of the cage. He uses the bands of the metal cage like ladder steps and clambers to the top. The cage swings beneath him and he almost loses his footing—but he reaches up and balances himself against the rock from which the cage dangles. Up above that rock is a ledge just narrow enough for one. That ledge is how they got down here in the first place: Two of Slussen’s guards shimmied the cage along, hooked it to the chain, then dropped it down—a plunging fall that for Sinjir at least resulted in the feeling of his teeth cracking together and his innards launching up into his throat.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Imperial fitness mandates kept him in pretty good shape. But after going AWOL, he…admittedly let himself go a bit. Got a bit thinner, let his muscles go slack. And it’s not like the New Republic demands much—they’ve no regimen in place. They don’t have much in place, yet.

“You can do it, ” Norra says. Ever the cheerleader. Ever the group’s collective mother. Funny thing is: It works. He believes her.

I can do this.

He reaches up to the rock above and palms around until he finds a viable handhold. There. He swings his dead arm up just in case it somehow stirs the damn thing to life—but it’s for naught. Upside: Feeling is coming back into that arm. Downside: That feeling is a fiery, prickling pain.

He must do it with the one arm then. Sinjir pulls himself up, feet scrambling fruitlessly against the chain…already his arm aches—it burns at the socket, feeling like the whole thing is gonna rip out. Like he’s a doll being played with by an overenthusiastic child.

And then half his torso is up. He shimmies his way up. Panting.

The ledge isn’t far—it only requires a step up. Easy enough for one with long limbs such as he.

“C’mon, c’mon, ” Jom growls.

If Sinjir weren’t gasping for air with a key locked between his teeth, he’d say: Sass me again, you gruff thug, and I’ll leave you here for the Empire. Instead he manages to offer up a three-fingered gesture that he has been assured is offensive on many Outer Rim worlds. Something about one’s mother and a gravity well.

To spite Jom—and because it’s sensible—he goes to free Norra first. Sinjir creeps along and reaches down, letting the key dangle in his hand.

Norra reaches up and grabs it.

In a few minutes, she’s got her cage open and she’s up on the ledge with Sinjir. Then it’s Jom’s turn—and soon Sinjir’s least favorite person in all the galaxy is also free, joining them on the ledge.

“Now what? ” Sinjir asks, idly poking at his less numb, now hurting arm. “If I recall, there is a crisscrossing laser portcullis that is quite likely to turn us all into bloody cubes. ”

Jom thinks. “Look, c’mere, look. ” He gets to the edge of the ledge, which takes them right up to the border of the crackling gate. “Usually these things are a closed-loop system. The beams emerge from these emitters—” He points at the rusted emitters bolted to the dark mountainside. They look like the tips of blasters, almost. “I need a rock. ”

Norra searches around, finds one by her feet. “Here. ”

Jom palms it, reaches out, and bashes it against the emitter. Nothing happens. He hits it again, and again, and then really seems to put his all into it, roaring as he slams the rock down—and then the rock rebounds out of his hand and plummets into nowhere.

It seems like he’s failed. Sinjir sighs and both he and Norra start looking around for another rock, finding none…but then the emitter suddenly sparks and swings loose, hanging by one bolt.

The laser gate fizzles and goes dead.

And like that, the way is clear.

One by one, they make their way back into the only room of the fortress they’ve managed to see—the hroth-beast feeding room. The stink again assaults them. Sinjir tries very hard not to heave.

“So now what? ” he says, his voice nasal as he smashes his own nose flat with the back of his good hand. “Do we have a plan? Jas is still here, somewhere, and that means—”

“It means nothing, ” Jom says. “We don’t know it was her. So we do what the plan always entailed: We go up the lava tube, get Gedde, and—”

“I can’t go up that tube. My arm is dead. I’m tired. ”

“You need to be in better shape, Rath Velus. ”

“I’m sorry, do we or do we not live in a universe where I just saved your brutish mug? Because—oh, I’m sorry, I assumed you would be kissing my one uncovered foot right now, and yet here you are, giving me grief. ”

Norra steps in between them. “Sinjir, you hunt around for a comm. They took ours, so we don’t have any way to call Temmin or Jas or—well, anybody. We’ll come back this way and—”

From outside the room, voices and footsteps. Jom says: “We got incoming. And we don’t have any weapons—”

With the voices comes another familiar sound:

Grunts, barks, gibbers.

Hroth-beasts. Damn.

The animals are followed by Slussen’s guards—drawn here presumably by the noise. Or maybe they somehow learned the gate was down. Either way, they come hard-charging in, blasters up, hroth-beasts on long leather leashes. Their tendrils search the air.

But Norra thinks fast—and moves fast, too. She’s already over by the bins of rotting meat, and Sinjir watches in awe (and disgust) as she starts throwing it. One by one she pelts the guards with rotten meat, their blasterfire going astray as rancid flesh hits them in the face, chest, and arms.

The stink of the meat is too tantalizing to resist.

Brilliant, Sinjir thinks as the beasts turn on their owners. The monsters attack, slathering their screaming keepers with their wet tendrils in a desperate search for gobbets of rank meat.

“Move! ” Jom calls, and they hurry past the scene of carnage.

—

The lava tube is tight, but not so tight they don’t have a little room to move. The tube itself is ridged and scalloped, giving them handholds and toeholds as they climb. Norra and Jom easily brace themselves and shimmy up the long channel. Slowly but surely.

Below them, far down, glows a pinprick of bright-orange light.

Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall, she repeats to herself like a mantra. That fall would not be a pleasant one. A slide down the porous volcanic stone would scrape half her skin off just in time for her to plunge into a searing-hot magma bath. Cooking her raw. Scorching her dead.

These tubes are how Slussen heats his fortress, it seems—the air coming up is like hot breath from a hellish monster. Sometimes they find adjacent tubes branching off at perpendicular angles. And when they pass, they hear the sounds of distress going through Slussen Canker’s palace—voices raised, an alarm called. We don’t have long.

Up, up, up. Her arms and legs aching. Jom telling her to keep moving—she wants to tell him, I’m not cut out for this, but she has to be. It’s too late to be anything else, and so she pushes, and when her hands finally reach the lip of the last branching tube—it feels like forever has passed. She pulls herself up and slides out, stone abrading her stomach as she lands in a lavish (and hideous) room, panting.

Norra looks up. Black walls are decorated with gaudy golds and borzite mirrors. A statue of Slussen stands in the corner, carved out of fire-red kwarz crystal. The bed is octagonal, like the key that unlocked their cages—and it’s piled with animal skins and pillows of red leather. Such wealth is alien to Norra. And in a place like this, it has clearly gone to waste.

“Good, you’re here. ”

Norra’s heart about hops out of her throat as she hears Jas’s voice from the corner of the room, out of sight. She turns and sees the bounty hunter sitting there in a high-back chair, legs crossed, arms crossed, and one Imperial vice admiral lying at her feet. Gedde’s hands are bound behind him with wire. His mouth is gagged with what looks to be a pillowcase, wadded and rolled and knotted behind his head.

From the lava tube, Jom emerges. He instantly sees the Zabrak and, once on his feet, marches toward her, growling in rage.

“You almost got us killed—”

“I got us all saved and paid and I’m getting the job done. We can talk about this later—” She grabs the comm at her belt and speaks into it. “Temmin, we need an extraction. Still in the tower. You’ll know the sign. ” When she puts the comm back on her hip, she asks: “Where’s Sinjir? ”

“Downstairs looking for a comm, ” Norra says.

Jas makes a face like that personally wounds her. “That…is a complication. I’ll go find him and meet you at the feeding room. ”

From outside the room, the rumble of footsteps. The door to this chamber is a round, gilded portal sealed with an electrical panel—a panel that has been torn out, its wires dangling and still sparking. Someone pounds on the door. From the other side, a muffled voice:

“Slussen wants to know: Is Gedde in there? ”

Gedde doesn’t even seem to hear. His eyes are bloodshot. The pupils are big and fat and he doesn’t even blink. From behind his gag, the Imperial makes faint cooing and gurgling noises. Norra realizes: He’s high. Nearby sits a small tin—once again, octagonal in shape—of dark spice.

From the other side of the door: “Slussen commands this door to open. ” The whine of a drill rises. They’re going to take the door off.

“How are we getting out of here? ” Norra asks. “The tube? ”

“That’s the way I’m going, ” Jas says. “But the two of you are going out that way. ” When she says that way, she points to the massive bow window at the far side of the room.

Norra is about to protest but to her surprise, Barell says:

“I like that. Let’s get it open. ”

Jas says, “The Halo should be incoming. See you soon. ” And without further word, she slips back down the lava tube.

Barell and Norra head to the window. Jom feels along, looking for hinges, a latch, something, anything. Norra tells him she can’t find any and he agrees—and then goes to pick up the chair Jas had been sitting in only moments before. Without further comment, he flings it through the window.

Kssh!

The chair punches a hole through the glass, then is gone.

He kicks out the rest of the glass, framing it with his boot.

Out there, above the fog and near the peaks of other dark mountains, Norra spies a ship—an SS-54 gunship. The Halo.

Temmin.

“Tell Vice Admiral Gedde his ride has arrived, ” Norra says. Then she makes the mistake of looking down. Vertigo assails her. “And tell him I hope he’s not afraid of heights. ”

—

The Halo bangs and rattles as it skips across the mists of Vorlag. The ion engines on each side are spun horizontal, screaming loud as the gunship—classified by its manufacturer, Botajef Shipyards, as a light freighter in order to avoid regulations—punches forward. Ahead, the volcanic fortress of Slussen Canker rises out of the fog, its bent and twisting towers like charred fingers reaching for the heavens as if to pull them down.

Temmin sits at the controls, the flight sticks pushed all the way forward. This ship isn’t as fast as an X-wing, but it has power—especially given the modifications that Temmin made to the engines. The thing moves with weight and purpose, and it has his blood pounding in his temples like Akivan drums. He cracks his knuckles and snaps his fingers: a nervous habit picked up from his father.

“You ready? ” he asks his copilot.

“ROGER-ROGER, ” chimes the B1 battle droid, Mister Bones: a bodyguard and pal who has seen more than a few “special modifications” all his own. The droid, painted in red and black, has the cut of a human skeleton topped with the skull of a rock-vulture—and Temmin has only worked to make the droid more intimidating as time has gone on. Jagged metal cut out of the front to look like teeth. Hands sharpened into claws. His frame now features half a dozen extra joints to allow the droid a degree of contortion unseen in the already collapsible B1s. Gone are the little bones that decorated him—their mission these days necessitates stealth, and Jas said the wind-chime rattle of those bits would be a problem. Temmin was reluctant, but he listened. He likes Jas. He trusts her. If she said stealth matters—

Then stealth matters.

Of course, right now, stealth is about ten klicks back, isn’t it?

“I AM EAGER TO ERADICATE OUR ADVERSARIES, ” Bones says, his voice warped and warbling. “I HOPE TO TURN THEM INTO A FINE RED MIST. JUST SAY THE WORD, MASTER TEMMIN. ” The droid has his claws wrapped around the gun controls. The Halo packs a wallop: twin-mounted ZX7 laser cannons hanging below the well-armored front cockpit, and at the top, a quad cannon rail-thrower mounted to a jury-rigged turret. Right now, though, the mission is extraction, not chewing the landscape apart with weapons fire, so Temmin tells his pal to cool down.

Bones nods and hums to himself, skull moving in time with the tune.

“Here we go, ” Temmin says, and he eases the engines, then pivots them vertical, letting the Halo hover. There he spies the second-tallest tower in the fortress—its window busted open.

His mother—looking nervous and agitated—waves him forward.

He gives an okay and then slides the gunship sideways so that the access ramp is pointed toward the tower. “Bones, go help. I’ll keep us steady. ” The droid springs up, does a handspring over the seat, and then whirls out of the cockpit and into the belly of the Halo.

Temmin flips the screen to the access cam, and he extends the ramp—the side of the ship peels away and becomes an entry hatch. Bones helps Norra carry their prisoner on board. Jom takes his own running leap and clears the space easily.

But then something hits the side of the ship, rocking it.

What the—?

He glances at the cam again and sees chaos: a shape scrambling against the access ramp. Some kind of creature. Its face is just a sloppy pile of something that looks like soft, searching fingers. Bones pirouettes, his claw snapping back as the concealed vibroblade along the long metal bone of his forearm springs forward. He slices it upward, cutting through the tangle of tendrils before punting the thing out of the ship.

Two more appear where the first one fell.

And then the Halo’s scanner beeps as something pings it.

Four red blips. Coming in from aft.

He checks the signatures—one Imperial shuttle and a trio of TIEs. He yells back: “Who invited the Empire to the party? ”

His mother answers as she sidles into the cockpit: “Slussen Canker did. And Gedde, hoping to buy his way out of whatever punishment awaits an AWOL vice admiral. ” Then she explains to him where Jas and Sinjir are. “We need to go pick them up. ”

“And if they’re not there? ”

“Then we wait. ”

Suddenly there’s Jom’s head through the door—and he’s scowling and sneering and Temmin knows what he’s going to say. He’s going to say, We leave them behind, they aren’t the mission, because that’s how he is. Everything is the mission. And he sure doesn’t like Jas and Sinjir, does he?

So that’s why it’s a surprise when he says: “No one left behind. ”

Temmin grins. “Not even an Imperial and a bounty hunter? ”

“Not when it’s our Imperial and our bounty hunter. Let’s go. ”

Temmin banks the ship away from the fortress. The scanner shows the shuttle and TIEs incoming fast on his tail.

He has an idea. He boosts the ship forward, giving it a hard kick from the engines before putting it back to hover again. His mother protests: “Temmin, don’t stop. Keep this ship moving! ”

“I know what I’m doing, ” he says, spinning the Halo around 180 degrees.

“Temmin. Temmin! ”

Ahead, the TIE fighters shriek forward, cutting the air like razors—they start to swoop in low toward Slussen’s fortress. Already the air is peppered with laserfire, and the blasts pock the front of the Halo.

Now, Temmin thinks.

He takes control of the guns with a flip of a switch, then turns the rail-throwers forward and up—his fingers squeeze the triggers. Thin, nanofiber rail-tubes rattle off, the cannon firing them at hundreds of rounds per second. They chew through the black rock tower. Stone coughs up in chips and splinters.

The tower, like a notched tree, begins to fall.

And it falls right onto two of the TIE fighters. It takes one out clean—crushing it in midair, leaving nothing but a burning streak across Temmin’s vision. The other catches debris against its wing panel, and suddenly the thing spirals downward like a bird with its wing sliced off.

Jom claps the boy on the shoulder. “Quick thinking, kid. Let’s go get our people and get the hell out of here. ”

—

What has my son become?

That question sticks in Norra’s belly like a knife. Her thoughts, her awareness, sit separate from her actions—almost like she’s two different people. Like one of her is the internal version, this sudden bundle of fear and worry. The other is Norra the soldier, Norra the pilot, Norra who retakes control of the weapons system and peppers the fortress with laserfire.

Inside, she’s a tumult of feelings, all of them fighting for supremacy like whole planetary systems desperate to dominate one another. Her son is doing exactly what he’s supposed to do. He’s fighting for the New Republic. The Empire is their enemy. What he did was smart, sharp, and demonstrative of his capability—meaning that now he is both soldier and pilot, too.

Is that what she wanted for him?