BY CHUCK WENDIG 7 страница

It catches the incoming terrorist in the face, and they spin and tumble. But Sloane is too slow and outnumbered. Someone tackles her from the side, and her shoulder crashes hard against the plastocrete. The breath blasts from her lungs as she scrambles against the ground.

Something presses hard against the side of her head.

A blaster.

“Don’t move, ” comes a shaky, uncertain voice. That same voice calls out: “We got one. Imperial. Pilot by the look of her. ”

Sloane goes through a new set of calculations. She could fight back. But if they take her, will she play the role of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, or will she instead aim to be Dasha Bowen, harmless pilot? The former has value, the latter almost none. What will serve her best?

Someone else moves in—a big man, half his face hidden behind a swaddling of blue-and-gold fabric. He reaches down with a wide paw and flips her so she’s staring up. Sloane shows her hands. The woman with the blaster stands and stares, her face sooty, her eyes deeply set. “Get her up. We’ll take her in. Garris will know what to do with her. ”

“We could just deal with her here, ” the big guy says. Others start to gather in behind them. Men, women, young and old. Half a dozen.

“Deal with her? ”

“Yeah. Deal with her. ”

“That’s not who we are. ”

“Maybe it’s who we need to be. ”

Someone else from behind them, a gruff voice: “We’re not soldiers. We’re just taking back our home. ”

The blaster pointed at Sloane’s nose wavers.

A new figure joins the group. Someone tall, thin. Arms extended out—a pair of batons held in hand. Hard to see anything but the cut of his silhouette. The batons twirl in his grip.

“What’ve we got here? ” he asks.

“Caught us a fish, ” the big guy says.

But then someone asks: “Wait, who are—”

The new arrival moves like a cyclone. He ducks and spins, jabbing each baton into a different insurgent. The batons bang like slugthrowers going off, and it’s a giveaway—those are concussive batons. And they are the signature weapon of someone Sloane has come to work with, recently:

The bounty hunter, Mercurial Swift.

The woman pulls her blaster out of Sloane’s face to concentrate on the new attacker—and it’s a mistake. Sloane gets up behind her and locks her arm tight around the woman’s throat. Tighter, tighter, until the woman slides to the ground.

Swift, meanwhile, is up and down like a puppet on yanking strings, the batons jamming under chins and against ribs. Each time this happens, the baton cracks like localized thunder, and another enemy drops.

Until the only two left standing are Sloane and Swift.

“You, ” Sloane seethes. “You followed me. ”

“Do we have the time to discuss this right now? ” The bounty hunter twirls his batons and clips them back on his utility belt. “I don’t think we do. We need to go, Admiral. Unless you want to run into more of your friends? ”

She does not. “You can get me out of here? ” she asks.

Swift grins and licks his teeth. “It would be my pleasure. ”

—

The speeder skims the tops of the buildings along the Verity District, hugging it so close, Sloane is afraid Mercurial is going to scrape bottom and scrap the craft in a plume of fire. But he assures her—this makes them hard to see and, more important, hard to hit.

She smells burning ozone. And smoke. And hears blasterfire from somewhere behind them. Coruscant is a war zone. Has the Verity District fallen to the local resistance? Or is this just another random act of violence?

In the distance, the Imperial Palace. A massive, jagged thing. Like a mountain swallowed up by bruise-colored light. Spotlight spires shining up into the sky, painting the bands of dark clouds hanging far overhead with swatches of white. Suddenly two TIE fighters scream above them.

“You can tell your people that the resistance fighters are using the old cargo tunnels, the ones that run parallel to the subgrav tunnels. ” He glances at her, waiting for her reply.

What, though, could her reply be? The most pointed one, the one that sticks in her mind like a nail, is that these are not her “people. ” That is a thought that thickens and chills her blood, because what it means is that there does not exist one Empire anymore. There are several—fragments of the mirror broken. All reflecting something similar, but broken apart…

And, she worries, impossible to repair.

All Sloane can say in reply is, “Thank you. ” Two words that sound hollow. The bounty hunter must detect how little she means it.

“You seem not to care very much that I just saved your hide. ”

“I care. I also care that you have been following me. ”

“You summoned me, didn’t you? ” He flashes his white-toothed smile.

She turns and with a sudden surge of rage says: “When I summon you, I expect you to come as your name suggests: swiftly. Not skulk after me like a tooka waiting for a taste of milk. ”

They pass over the end of the Verity District and into the Federal—where the lights are still on. None will dare to breach this region, she suspects, lest they meet the full force of the Imperial Security Bureau. But then again: At the end of time, all mountains crumble and fall. They become hills and then dust and then the winds of change take them away. Most mountains erode slowly, but sometimes a tectonic shift can speed up its inevitable destruction. The galaxy is undergoing just such a shift.

“You have a job for me? ” he asks. “Last one went fine. Our friend, the vice admiral, found that his addiction was just too much to bear. Nasty habit, that spice. ”

“I need you to find someone. ”

“I assumed that. ” He looks like he’s about to say more—some snide or narcissistic remark. Even he is smart enough to know not to push the perceived head of the Empire too far. He clears his throat. “Who and where? ”

“Brendol Hux. He’s on Arkanis, at the Academy. ”

“Arkanis. Didn’t the New Republic take that? ”

“Not yet, but soon. It’s under siege. ”

“You need him done in before then. Understood. ”

“No, not understood. I don’t need him ‘done in. ’ This one, I need brought back alive. And with good care. ”

He barks a laugh. “You want me to guarantee safe passage to someone on a war-torn planet? I’m a bounty hunter, not a nanny. ”

“Then you’ll be disappointed to learn that he has a son, and you are to retrieve the child as well. ” The Empire needs children… and with that, her mind flashes to the image seen back in the archives: a young boy on the cusp of manhood, standing there in an ill-fitting suit next to Palpatine himself.

“I’ll need more credits. ”

“I can double the usual fee, ” Sloane says.

“Triple it. ”

“Or I could turn all the resources of the Empire against you. You would run and we could chase you. You would find no safe haven, and none would dare hire you for fear that the black miasma around you would capture and choke them, too. ”

“Bit of an empty threat, isn’t it? ”

“Is it? Do you not fear a resurgent Empire with me at its head? ”

Moments pass.

“Double it is, then, ” he says.

“Good. Get me to the Imperial Palace. Then contact me when the job is done, and payment will be arranged. ”

Eleodie stands on the bridge, regarding their target.

It must be quite a surprise, zhe thinks, watching the Corellian CR90 ahead of them buck and shudder as the tractor beam lashes it. Poor fools don’t know what’s coming. They think it’s the Empire. And why wouldn’t they? A Super Star Destroyer cuts through space like a sword tip, its shadow falling over your ship—well, traditionally, that meant one thing. You were getting boarded. You were now guests of the Empire. You are no longer free people. Zhe knows that sensation. Eleodie belonged to the Empire once. In a way.

But those days are gone.

And we are not the Empire. Forming an empire is quite different from the Empire, after all.

Eleodie looks over at her second: an Omwati, Shi Shu, his splindly fingers running through the crown of feathers atop his head. Zhe asks him, “Remind me again what we’re looking at, hmm? ”

“The Starfall, ” he says. “Senatorial ambassador onboard—Tia’dor Emshwa. ”

Eleodie hums. “And also remind me why we are picking a fight with the New Republic so soon. ” The pirate’s head is full of details and data, rife with debts and assets, thick with the names of those who betrayed zher. Eleodie is trying to seize an opportunity here—the slow death of the Empire and the rise of the revivified Republic leaves pirates and criminals such as zherself scrambling for a foothold. But Eleodie doesn’t just want a foothold. Zhe wants the whole mountain. “This seems…unwise, and one hopes that here the juice is worth the squeeze? ”

“It is, ” Shi Shu says, nodding. “They are on a mission to Ithor, hoping to, ahh, seduce them into joining the New Republic. As part of the seduction, they bring with them a ship full of wonders: reclaimed Ithorian artifacts, but also food, meds, and a bounty of tech. It would give our flotilla quite the edge. Even here, we stole this ship, but we still need to keep it stocked…”

“Good, good. And the ship is properly subdued? ”

“It is. ”

“Comm array? ”

“Fried like ksharra bread. ”

“No mistakes. Not like last time. The Rangs almost had us because someone forgot to seal the breaching airlock—”

“It is all handled. ”

“Then let us plunder. ”

The destroyer draws the corvette into its belly. Eleodie moves into place along with the others—they move to breach, and zhe stands just behind a pair of Weequay pirates with arc-lancers. As they burn a searing line around the edges of the door, Eleodie does a few vocal exercises and practices the speech in zher head. Zhe pops her knuckles and rolls zher neck.

And then, it is done. The door is opened. The way is clear.

Eleodie gives the nod.

The two pirates storm in, flinging flash grenades. They go off, filling the channel ahead with pulsing white light. Zhe stands aside as more of zher crew rushes in. From the entranceway come the sounds of yelling, crying, another flash detonator going off. Eleodie hums a song in tune with the universe, hands behind zher back, eyes shut tight. Waiting. Meditating.

The pirate ruler does not know how long this lasts.

Eventually, though, Vinthar gently pats zher arm. “It is time, ” the reptilian says. “The captives are secure. The ship is at peace. Your presence is required. ” He hands Eleodie a long, baroque staff. Zhe also takes from him a vocoder, which zhe secures around her throat like a choker necklace.

It is time, indeed, zhe thinks.

Vinthar steps onto the ship.

From back here, Eleodie hears his speech, a speech zhe wrote:

“Greetings! ” he says, his voice deep and resonant—as if the reptilian creature is stepping out onto a stage to address an eager audience. The lizard announces: “I am Vinthar the Sarkan of Egg-Brood Xazin’nizar, and I welcome you to this unscheduled boarding, friends of the spaceship designated: Starfall. I envy you today for the blessing you are about to receive as you are poised ineluctably to meet his highness, her glory, his wonder, her luminous magnificence—the picaroon! The plunderer! The pirate ruler of Wild Space! The glorious knave, Eleodie Maracavanya! ”

Showtime.

As Vinthar presses himself against the hallway wall with a deferential swoop, Eleodie strolls onto the ship with a long-legged stride. Chin up. Eyes down. Project confidence. You will one day rule this galaxy.

Zhe eases zher shoulder forward and a cape of chromatic scales falls over half zher front—shimmering as a wave of colors sweep across it like a turning tide. Eleodie takes the staff zhe’s holding and taps it twice against the ground, thump thump—

A swooping scythe blade snaps open. The blade thrums and crackles with threads of blue energy. An electro-scythe.

Zhe regards those bound before zher with golden eyes. These people are frightened of what is happening. Good. They should be.

Now it is time to soothe their fear. A balm to salve the sting.

The vocoder mutates zher voice as zhe speaks: Zher words are loud and alive, vibrating with a deep intensity. The voice that emerges is velvety and rich, and Eleodie can feel it all the way down at the ends of zher fingertips. Zhe hopes they can, too.

“I am Eleodie Maracavanya, child of Nar Shaddaa and captain of the Super Star Destroyer Annihilator. ” Though here, zhe pauses and looks up to the ceiling, as if reconsidering. “I don’t anticipate keeping that name. The Annihilator. Too final. Too murdery. Not really my flavor. ” The pirate’s hand fritters in the air like a fluttering moth. “As such, you may relax: If none of you try to kill me today, I will kill none of you. Such is our bargain. I will be taking your ship to join my fleet—our sovereignty requires vessels like this and the cargo it carries. But I am no murderer, and certainly no slaver, and so you are free to step to the nearest escape pod and be gone. ”

Vinthar steps in front and thrusts a claw-tipped finger in the air. “But! ” he announces.

“But, ” Eleodie continues, “while I will not press any of you into service, I will make the offer: join me. Come aboard our stolen destroyer. Live the life of a pirate. Enjoy a life of spoils and riches. Be greedy. Be self-interested. Life is far too short for all this…” Zhe makes a sour face. “New Republic nonsense. Do you really believe your precious foundling government will save the galaxy? Please. I think not. I am a precious realist, and what you get in this lifetime is purely the result of what you take. Come with me. Come to my nation. Become part of my fleet. Join my sovereign space. Enjoy the freedom that comes with taking whatever you want, whatever you can get, whenever the chance. Anyone? Anyone at all? ”

Someone will take the offer.

Someone always takes the offer.

This time, the taker surprises Eleodie.

There, against the wall, is a young woman. A girl, really. Plain as dirt, plain as space, nothing exceptional but for the fire in her eyes. She stands up, pulling away from a woman who Eleodie suspects is the girl’s mother, or at least her guardian—

The woman cries out: “Kartessa! Sit down—”

“I hate Chandrila, ” the girl snaps. Her voice shakes, but there’s metal in there. It warms Eleodie. The confidence. The selfishness. Good. “It’s dull. I want adventure. I want a life. I don’t want to be cloistered anymore. ”

Yes, girl. That’s it. Be who you want to be. Eleodie’s growing pirate kingdom out there in Wild Space is all about the sovereignty of the self.

The woman pleads, of course: “No, Kartessa—”

But Eleodie shushes the woman. “Shhh. Let her be, woman. Are you her mother? ”

Reluctantly, with spite shining in her eyes, the woman nods. “Yes. ”

“The girl has made her decision. Respect it. ”

The woman swallows. “Then…I will come, too. ”

“Mom! ” Kartessa says. Eleodie pulls the girl close.

“Let her come. But she will govern you no more, Kartessa. The mother will find her way, and the daughter will find hers. Anyone else? ”

No takers.

“Anyone at all? ”

Fine.

Eleodie grins and says: “Then enjoy your intrepid escape-pod journey one and all. Thank you for the ship and your supplies. I have been Eleodie Maracavanya. It has been your pleasure. ” With a flourish of the cape, zhe turns and heads back through the airlock.

The girl, Kartessa, follows close behind. A small smile tugs at her cheeks even as her mother weeps.

Eleodie’s own empire grows once more.

As the sunrise burns the edge of the Silver Sea, the team shuffles one by one into the belly of the Halo, gathering in the main hold. Jas comes up last. Everyone is talking—Temmin mumbling about how he doesn’t want to miss X-wing practice, Jom chastising the boy because it’s called training and not practice, Sinjir saying something about how he forgot to grab that bottle of tsiraki and hey does anyone have an extra bottle of tsiraki because tsiraki, that’s why.

It’s all background noise to the bounty hunter.

The noise in the foreground is the static of her own thoughts, crackling and snapping right at the front of her mind. Her skin tingles with an unusual kind of anxiety, one she’s not used to, one that is born of a division inside her—a fissure she cannot seem to close, an injury that won’t heal. At her core, Jas feels like two different people.

She has always told herself that everything she does is for her ownself. I am not here to make friends being an oft-repeated phrase—anytime some weapons trader or bartender or client wants to do more than talk about the business at hand, that’s the line she drops in their laps. Not friends. Don’t need them. Sorry, thank you, goodbye.

And she’s never had much of a cause to carry, either—the only purpose she possesses is to pay her debts. Debts that actually aren’t really her own at all, are they? They’re her aunt’s. Sugi’s.

Damn you, Sugi.

Jas loved her aunt. Loved her more than words can say. And all the while she watched the woman fritter away her contracts. She’d bail on jobs if they violated her “honor. ” Or she’d do them her own way and burn the client in the process. Or she’d side with her team, or she’d take on rinky-dink low-pay (or no-pay) work to protect some new group of underdogs or slaves or pathetic deviants, or, or, or.

In the end, it all added up to one thing:

Sugi owed more than she took in.

Those debts mounted.

And now those debts belong to Jas.

She always told herself: I’ll never be like Aunt Sugi. This job is a merciless one, and it requires rather extreme moral calisthenics. You go where the credits flow. You take the target out however you have to. She doesn’t have to be friendly, but she damn sure has to be fast, and she has to be good. That’s how you earn a name. That’s how you get the next job.

Even still, she tells herself that she’s here because right now, the New Republic is the winning side. They don’t have the whole galaxy pinned down and buttoned up all nice and neat yet, no, but the stars are drifting in that direction. One by one, systems shake free the yoke of the Empire’s oppression and move to independence—and the chaos of that independence drives them inevitably to the New Republic. A single banner. One government. A new galactic order.

Whatever.

And if that breaks apart and falls away, as it could? Then Jas tells herself: I’ll flip. She can swing like a monkey-lizard from a broken branch to a safe one. From the Republic back to the Empire—or to a Separatist system, instead. Could be she’ll tuck herself into the pocket of some credit-flush crime lord (long as it’s not the Hutts, as Sugi never had luck with those treacherous piles of humid guano). Certainly there will be a number of ex-Imperial bankers striking out on their own. They’ll need enforcers. They’ll need someone to go secure their loans—break some legs, twist some tentacles, blacken an eye or another sensory organ.

She has always told herself: pragmatism above ideals. Self above others. The mind over the heart.

The job above all else.

This is that, right?

And yet…and yet.

Here she is. With a team, ugh. Sinjir looks over, gives her a wink even as she tries to remind herself You’re not here to make friends. And across the table is Jom, who has this look in his eye, this hungry look like he wants to reach across the table and gobble her right up and may the stars help her she feels a rising heat and by all the gods of the great beyond, what happened to her?

Is this who she really is? Soft like Sugi? Maybe her aunt hides within her like a ghost, summoned to the flesh when she got soft. Or maybe Sugi knew something special all along. Something Jas is only just learning.

She doesn’t like it. Burn it out with fire, she thinks.

Norra stands there—Norra! Whom Jas feels warmly toward, which makes her wonder suddenly if her brain has been taken by some kind of parasite, like that Neimoidian tick larva that makes you crave blood? —and spreads out a special deck of pazaak cards.

(Jas is thankful for the sudden distraction. )

These are not your standard cards. These are the New Republic’s MOST WANTED. On each, a face and a name, listing the Imperials the New Republic wants captured. Some of them are big players presently operating within the known Empire. Others have gone AWOL, like Gedde.

Speaking of Gedde, Norra grabs that card and hands it to her son. “Tem, if you would? ”

He nods and takes it over to a board hanging from the wall, next to the oxygen recycler. Temmin takes a little blob of tacky goo from a can, dabs it to the back of the card, and sticks it up there alongside nearly a dozen others. Among them: the targets from Akiva (Pandion, Tashu, Shale, Crassus), and those they’ve taken since (Commandant Stradd, Prefect Kosh, Moffs Keong and Nyall, Vice General Adambo, and ex-ISB minister Venn Eowelt).

Norra says what Jas already knows: “Gedde was poisoned. Likely the poison hidden in his spice. ” Jas asks if it was the fungus, and Norra confirms. As if there were any doubt, Jas thinks.

“I know who did it, ” Jas says.

Eyes turn toward her, expectantly.

“A bounty hunter, like me. Mercurial Swift. He loves poisons. And that mycotoxin is one of his signature favorites. ”

Jom grunts. Though he saves half a moment to pin his gaze on her. He smiles. She tries not to smile back, and fails. Damnit. “That means, what? ” he asks. “The Empire is sending killers after their own? ”

“We don’t know the Empire engineered the killing, ” Norra says.

“But it makes sense, right? ” Temmin asks. “I mean, c’mon. Gedde left the Empire and if we picked him up, maybe he’d flip on others. ”

“Good, ” Jom says. “That’s easy, then. We suss out which ones are AWOL, and we concentrate on the others instead. Let the Empire eject its own garbage. Saves us the effort. ”

“Robs us of the credits, too, ” Jas says, her brow knitted.

“We’re not doing this for the credits. ”

“You’re not doing this for the credits. Me? It’s the only reason. ”

“You don’t care about the galaxy at all? Don’t care about doing justice for the people and kicking the Empire out the air lock? ”

She shrugs, even though inside that war between her two halves goes from a cold war to a very hot one. “No. I don’t care. I care about the Me who is on this adventure. And besides, if all of you cared so much about the people of the galaxy, why did our last job concentrate on taking out Gedde instead of Canker? Gedde was just sitting there. High on spice, hurting mostly nobody. But Canker runs a slave network. We didn’t take him out. We didn’t free any slaves. What good did we do? ”

“We had orders! ” Barell protests.

“Spoken like a true Imperial, ” Jas snaps back. She’s revving his engine, now, she knows that. But past the sharp teeth of her sarcasm lies a real question: What good are they doing?

The better question being: Why does she care?

Jom stands, his nostrils flaring. She’s happy to have made him mad. It thrills her, inexplicably. She’s tempted to drag him into the bunkroom for another, ahem, sparring match, but Norra suddenly raises her voice to say:

“None of this is relevant right now. We can talk about the hows and whys of what we do later. Right now, we’ve been asked—quietly, very quietly—to look into someone who has gone missing. ”

“Who is it? ” Jas asks.

Temmin whistles. “I bet it’s either Skywalker or Solo. ”

That earns him some looks—including a jaw-dropper from Norra—but Jas can buy it. She says, “That tracks. Two heroes of the Battle of Endor, and I haven’t seen Solo around here in months. Skywalker for even longer. ”

The look on Norra’s face tells the tale true—it’s one of those two. She pinches the bridge of her nose and nods. “Yes. Han Solo is missing. ”

“General Solo, ” Barell corrects.

And Norra corrects him in turn. “He resigned his commission. ”

“Then he’s just a smuggler and not our concern. ”

“I say he’s our concern, ” Norra says. “Besides, this comes from on high, from a source very high up in the New Republic—”

“Leia, ” Jas says.

“That’s Princess Leia to you, ” Norra says. “And how did you know that? Did you bug my chambers? ”

“No. I know because I’m a professional. And because scuttlebutt says the two of them have been a thing since Endor or before. Makes sense that he goes missing and she’s the one who wants him found. Understandable she’d come to us. Smart credits say she’s using Wedge as an intermediary. ”

“I heard they got married, ” Temmin says.

“Wedge and Princess Leia? ” Jom asks, incredulous.

“Solo and Princess Leia. ”

“Oh. ”

Sinjir claps his hands. “Bonus trivia: She’s pregnant. ”

A chorus of retorts and refutations rise in response. But Sinjir crosses his arms and jeers at them. “What? Don’t look at me like I’m some malfunctioning protocol droid spitting babble. Whatever your jobs are, mine is to read people like they’re a menu at the local automat. The way she dresses? The way she carries herself? The rosy flush to her cheeks? Her hands drifting unconsciously to her stomach? Preg-nant. ” That last word he says in a sing-songy way.

“PREEEEG-NAAAANT, ” Mister Bones echoes, also singing—except his song is a disharmonic glitch ballad. Everyone winces.

“Stop, ” Sinjir tells the droid.

“ROGER-ROGER. ”

All of this is melodramatic and insignificant, Jas thinks. “Do we have anything on Solo? Any leads at all? ”

“We have one, ” Norra answers. “Leia sent over the Falcon’s movements. Solo was trying to single-handedly liberate Kashyyyk, but something went wrong and his copilot, Chewbacca the Wookiee, went missing. We have a pattern representing his search. ” Norra pulls up a holomap. It fills the air around them with orbs representing glittering systems, each linked by a shining, shimmering hyperspace route. Norra focuses in on a region near Wild Space. “He could be in one of a dozen systems. ”

“It’s a start, ” Jom says.

Sinjir thrusts a long, pointy finger down on the table. He hops it from card to card. “Maybe some of our erstwhile Imperial guests have some information. I’ll canvass our captives. ”

“I can check with some of my contacts in the underworld, ” Jas says. “If Solo’s truly desperate, he may have been clumsy enough to have drawn attention to himself. ”

“Good, ” Norra says. “I’ll dust off the Moth and fly it out to where Chewbacca was taken by the Empire. Maybe if we can find a clue there as to where Solo’s copilot ended up, it’ll help us narrow down our options. ”

Jom nods. “Let’s get to work, then. ”

—

They each know their job. Jas heads out—willfully getting ahead of Jom to make sure that he and the rest of the crew know she’s no heart-swollen star-calf, no moon-eyed waif, no lust-struck fool. But again, that war of thoughts within her: Why do you care what they think? Aren’t you protesting overmuch? Admit it, right now you’d climb him like a ladder.

It makes her grouchy.

Outside, Sinjir awaits to make her even grouchier.

He’s grinning big and broad with the puckishness of a boy who hid his mother’s creditspurse.

“What? ” she asks, defensive.