BY CHUCK WENDIG 21 страница

“The terrorists have won, Admiral Orlan. The inhibitors are down. The animals are…” His voice slurs when he says this next bit. “Escaping the zoo. Bomb it all. Burn it to a cinder. Uploading authorizuh…authorization code now. Begin orbital campaign. ”

The voice cuts out.

She takes a moment to process.

Han did it.

He must have. If anyone could cause an overreaction like bomb the whole planet into bits, it’d be him.

But now what? An orbital bombardment will be a nasty, protracted campaign. It won’t stop until most of that world is dead. And that means Han and the others cannot escape. They could die there.

This is it. This has to stop now.

The course of action she decided upon after her meeting with Mon Mothma can no longer wait until after Liberation Day. Even though the celebration is tomorrow, every moment counts. She must not waste them.

“Thank you, ” she says. “I’ll have the credits transferred to your account immediately. ”

“Nah, ” he says, waving it off. “Let’s call this one a freebie. ”

“I owe you credits, Conder. ”

“Slate’s clean. You can pay next time. ”

“Thank you. ”

“Mind if I ask: What are you going to do, Your Highness? ”

“I am going to do what every wife must do now and again, ” she says. “I am going to go rescue my husband. ”

—

Grand Admiral Sloane cannot sleep.

Tomorrow is the first day of the peace talks. Worry threatens to eat her up from the inside like beetles chewing the rotten middle of an old tree. She knows her role in the peace talks, and that role is not to reach any kind of accord with the conspirators of the New Republic, but rather to distract them from the attack that’s coming—and then to help marshal that attack from the ground. Rax said to her: “You will be a hero. It will cement your role as Emperor—or whatever you wish to call yourself. The galaxy will see you on all the screens. The HoloNet will broadcast your valor. ”

She asked him, But won’t I be in danger? It seems strange, after all, to put someone of her value right in the heart of battle. She reminded him that Palpatine was notoriously reclusive. Rarely did he appear unless he already controlled the environment he was entering.

“We will control the environment, ” Rax said. “You’ll see. You won’t be in meaningful danger. They won’t kill you. Besides, the attack will give you plenty of opportunity to make your way clear. ”

This could be a trap. Or one of his tests.

Even if it is, the chance to attack Chandrila—it’s tantalizing. It would grant them dominance. They would show their military might to the galaxy once more. Revealing the secret fleets hiding in the various nebulae…

That thought brings chills of delight.

For now, though, she needs her sleep.

She tries listening to some potboiler phono-play about a droid detective with an artificial intelligence inside his head named ADAM, but the droid is not really a detective but rather, an assassin? She tries connecting with it, but her mind keeps wandering. Then she gets up and paces her chamber, pulling up a galactic star map to behold the present state of Imperial assets—that, however, only depresses her. They’ve lost so much, so fast. Kuat is gone. G5-623 is falling—though Rax purposefully let that one loose, and she’s quietly pleased to see it go. Slavery has never been part of the perfect Empire that lives inside her head. It may have been necessary for a time, but now the galaxy should be made to see the Empire’s glory—and you can’t teach them of its splendor through slavery. Slavery is not strength; it is weakness. Citizens should serve the Empire because it is right to do so. Why would any choose otherwise?

All of this is just a distraction, too.

Sleep. I need to sleep. I need to be fresh and ready and aware.

Instead, she puts on one of Rax’s favorite operas: The Cantata of Cora Vessora. This version that he gave her has no words, only music.

At first, she finds it as distracting as everything else—music to her is just noise. Meaningless piffle meant to lull idiots to sleep.

But soon she realizes that she, too, is lulled by it. The strings and the drums. The hisses and the thrum. Her eyelids flutter. Her mind goes blank.

Perhaps I am just such an idiot.

The music draws her into it. Like a gentle wave carrying her away from shore, out to sea. It haunts her with its ethereal beauty.

It does not give her cause to sleep. But it lets her rest her mind for a while. Maybe she should trust Rax more often. Tomorrow is a big day. She will know soon enough if that trust is deserved—

Or if she has been a fool.

—

They work together long after dark. Temmin and Brentin, and Tem pretends that it’s just like it used to be. Nothing different. Everything the same. But when he asks for the arc-driver for the fourth time, and Brentin just stares off at an unfixed point, Temmin has to admit:

Things are broken.

In front of them on the workbench is the valachord Tem bought—he had the bright idea to make it self-playing, so that Dad could enjoy the music without feeling pressured to play it himself. And Brentin agreed, to Temmin’s surprise—but all the while, his father’s been disconnected from it all. Like he’s only partly here.

“Dad, is something wrong? ”

“Nothing, ” Brentin says. The smile on his face is small and forced. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long day. ”

“Oh. O…kay. ”

Brentin stands up suddenly. “I’m…going to take a walk. ”

Sure. Of course he is. All these walks of his.

Dad leaves.

And Temmin follows. As Brentin winds his way through Hanna City, so too does Temmin. It’s almost time here in the capital—the tents are set up, as are the food stalls and the generators. The celebration of Liberation Day starts in the morning with a parade, and then Sloane arrives. Peace talks go on while Liberation Day events are ongoing—distracting people, Temmin thinks. Giving them a show while that monster Sloane tries to talk her way out of a war crimes trial. It makes him angry that they’re giving her any time at all to plead her case. (Temmin has a lot of anger these days. ) He follows his father out of the residential district, down through the gardens and the theaters, through the now quiet Old Hannatown Market, past the pakarna stands down by the sea. That’s where Temmin loses him—he turns the corner and, poof, Brentin is gone. He wishes suddenly that he hadn’t told Bones to stay back at the apartment. The droid could run a scan looking for Dad’s life-signature—

Wait. There. He sees a shape gone off the Barbican Road and down onto the pebbled beach toward the water. Temmin hurries after.

The wind turns and comes up over the sea—its fingers ruffle Temmin’s hair. It brings with it the smell of fish—he realizes now that down there are the docks, and by the docks is the fishery. There, droids process the day’s catches, hauling in skor-fin and marmal-fish, starlegs and pearlshells. Right now, the fishery is quiet and dark. The piers beyond extend out into the sea like long, dark shadows. At the end of one, he sees Brentin.

And Brentin is not alone.

But who is the other person? Just some angler, maybe. The old salts who used to make a living bringing in the day’s catch—before it was all automated—still like to sit out there before the sun is up. Brentin just ran into one and there they stand, having a conversation. Right? It makes sense.

Temmin gets closer.

And yet, he stays quiet. He tells himself that’s just so he doesn’t startle them, but all the same, it’s hard to ignore the doubt creeping into the back of his mind like a sneaking thief looking to steal trust away one bit at a time.

He ducks around the side of the fishery. In through the windows, he sees the skeletal shadows of the droids powered down for the night, standing over the conveyor lines like frozen sentinels. Now he’s glad he didn’t bring Bones—if Bones is bad at one thing, it’s keeping quiet.

Temmin darts along the far side of the fishery, coming up at the edge of the docks. He ducks behind a small mountain of fish crates.

Now he can see more in the moonlight.

Dad is standing there with—

A guardsman. Chandrilan. Doesn’t Temmin recognize him?

He realizes that indeed he does. The man was the one guarding Yupe Tashu’s cell. There’s that same cresting wave of blond hair. And he can’t see it from here, but he bets the man also has a chin scar and pale eyes.

Stupid, Temmin thinks. Dad’s just talking to a guard. Maybe about tomorrow: Mom and Dad are both scheduled to be there on the dais for Liberation Day, alongside the chancellor and Leia and most of the other returned captives. Surely it relates to the events to come.

And he was worried! Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Temmin stands up and jogs down the pier, waving. “Dad. Hey! ”

The two men turn toward him.

It’s then he gets that bad old feeling. Something’s wrong. Brentin doesn’t wave. The guardsman braces with tension.

“Tem, ” Brentin says.

Temmin slows his jog, and then walks slowly.

“Dad, I don’t…I just wanted to say hi and get away from Mom. ”

The guardsman scowls. “Deal with this, or I will. ”

Brentin nods.

Temmin is about to ask: Deal with what?

But he never gets the chance.

His father wheels on him, a blaster in his hand.

Brentin pulls the trigger.

Everything shakes and rumbles. Kashyyyk is caught in the throes of tectonic spasms—above their heads, the packed-dirt ceiling gives way one stream of soil at a time. Clumps of moss fall and the massive twisting roots around them writhe just so, like serpents stirred from a restive sleep.

Jas waits, back pressed against the tunnel wall, as Wookiees pass her in droves. They shuffle past, growling and ululating to one another. She cannot parse their tongue—Shyriiwook is a guttural, glottal language that when you listen very closely has a bewildering complexity. She may not know what they’re saying, but she can hear how they sound.

They sound just as she herself feels:

Worried, anxious, and sad.

They’re so close.

So close. Right up against the edge of freeing a world and a species. Of doing the right thing for the right reasons.

And yet—

For all their efforts, it has led to this. The Empire—if those ships above even claim to be that, anymore—is now attempting to bomb this planet to oblivion. Already she knows how this will go: Many of the newly freed Wookiees are only peripherally free. Most are still trapped in settlements. Which means killing them will be as easy as firing a blaster into a bucket of frogs.

Here, at least, they have the excavated root systems of the wroshyr tree above Camp Sardo. Together they had time—precious little but just enough—to get most of the freed Wookiees underground before one of the Destroyers appeared in the sky above to hammer them into mud, blood, splinters, and fur.

Jas thinks: I should’ve stuck to bounty hunting. All this trying to do the right thing isn’t her speed. Nobody should’ve let her have this responsibility. It overwhelms her. It feels like a crushing weight on her shoulders, pushing, pressing, grinding her down into a greasy paste.

The Wookiees are dying. Jom has lost an eye—and maybe more than that when all this is over. They’ve failed.

Someone jostles into her—it’s Solo. The half dark of the root tunnel makes it hard to see.

“Solo, ” she says, and she hears the frantic sound in her voice and she fears she’s about to start blathering and, yes, indeed, it turns out she is: “We screwed this all up. This job was too big for us. We’re just bugs under their feet now. You and me, we’re scum, a couple of lowlifes who tried to turn away from what we are—just a smuggler and a bounty hunter and—”

“Hey, ” he says.

“And all we did was step on the dragon’s tail and now it’s turning around to bite—”

“Hey. Take it down a notch. We ain’t out of this yet. You’re tired, Emari, and you haven’t had enough to eat. I get it. But I need you clear for this next part. ”

“Next part? ”

“That’s right. You and me, we are a couple of lowlifes. So we’re gonna act the way the galaxy made us: like a smuggler and a bounty hunter. ”

“I don’t follow you. ”

He grins. “I got a plan. ”

“It’s not a real plan, is it? ”

“Not a complete one. But yeah, it’s a plan. Mostly. ”

“So, what is this ‘plan’? ”

“What are we good at, you and me? ”

She frowns. “Lying. Cheating. Stealing. ” The last one, she hesitates to say because it is a truth she doesn’t want to admit. Finally, she lets it slip: “Killing. ”

“Bull’s-eye. So—we lie, cheat, and steal. ”

“And that last part? Killing? ”

“Well, let’s see if we do the first three right, and we go from there. ”

Then Han tells her his plan.

It’s not a perfect plan. It’s damn sure not a complete plan.

But maybe, just maybe, it’ll work.

Across the hangar awaits a woman so tall and so blond they could use her as a coastal beacon here on Chandrila. Leia hurries toward her, a gray robe pulled tight with a hood over her head so her face is hidden.

“You can take the hood off, ” the woman says. “We’re alone. ”

Leia draws back the hood.

She can’t help but smile. “Evaan Verlaine, ” she says.

“Hello, Last Princess of Alderaan. ”

“I don’t go by that anymore. ”

Evaan tilts her head and gives Leia a bemused look. “To me, it’s who you are. You carry the torch for our world. For our home. Don’t ever set it down. ”

“I know. And I do. It’s actually why I’m here today. ”

Evaan Verlaine has been a friend and a cohort—and occasionally a co-conspirator—of Leia’s since not long after the Death Star took their homeworld from them. Verlaine helped lead the charge to bring the diaspora of Alderaan refugees together. She’s been vital in that effort, and as a result Leia hasn’t seen much of her in a few years. (To her shame. )

The pilot knows Leia well enough. Evaan plants her fists on her hips and gives a playfully distrustful look. “I see that gleam in your eyes. ”

“What gleam would that be? ”

“You’re about to go rogue. ”

It wouldn’t be the first time, but Leia plays coy. “Me? Never. ”

“Please, Leia. I hear people whisper, I don’t know what Her Highness sees in that scoundrel. And I always respond: She’s a lot more scoundrel than you think. Maybe even more than he is. So, spit it out: What do you need from me? ”

“I need a pilot. ”

Evaan smirks. “I assumed that much. I didn’t think you wanted droid repair. And where would this pilot take you? ”

“To the Kashyyyk system. ”

That gives Evaan pause. “That is under Imperial control. ”

“Yes, I realize. And you’re free to say no—I understand you have duties here in the New Republic now, and I also understand that with Liberation Day ramping up in…well, a few hours, you may be needed. But say so now, because I need to be off Chandrila before it all begins. ”

“I am a pilot for the New Republic, yes. But I am an Alderaanian first and a Republic pilot second. You command me and I will comply, Princess. ”

“I won’t command you. I’m asking as a friend. ”

“And I’m saying yes as a friend and a loyal subject. But as a friend and a loyal subject, I feel the need to utter the disclaimer: This is likely to be dangerous, and it’s surely foolish, and we could instead not go to Kashyyyk and stay here and watch the festivities unfold. ” Leia’s about to speak, but Evaan gives her little chance. “And yet, I know you, and I know you wouldn’t ask me without a very good reason, so—the cruiser’s in the next hangar. You ready to go? Of course you are. Let’s go flying, Your Highness. ”

“Actually, ” Leia says, “we’re not going to take the cruiser. ”

“Do you have a ship in mind? ”

She grins. “I do. And we won’t be alone out there. At least, I hope not. Now let’s go steal the Millennium Falcon. ”

The garrison is a dead place.

Yendor and the others come up out of the caves spoiling for a fight—as Dardama says, Stocked, locked, time to shock. There’s half a dozen of the Twi’lek soldiers, each armed to the teeth with blaster rifles, detonators, and kurr-claw knives. They know opposition will be fierce up here. Even this small garrison has a trio of AT-STs and a squadron of well-armed troopers. The goal isn’t to wipe them out, but to do some damage. Take out a chicken walker, maybe. Knock over a few bucketheads. Then retreat to the caves once more. The Imperial probe droids can’t navigate the tangled spaces beneath the surface very well, and if they were lucky enough to draw the stormtroopers down into the caverns, the rebel traps would make short work of the those trespassers.

And yet, when they get there—

The garrison is abandoned.

In the distance, the wind howls through the red rock towers.

“I don’t understand, ” Dardama says. “This is still Ryloth, yeah? We didn’t come out on some other planet? ”

Yendor says to her and the others, “Careful, this might still be some kind of trap. ” He lifts two fingers, signaling those with him to stick close and follow behind. Worry tingles in the tips of his head-tails—he’s a pilot, he told them, not a soldier, and certainly not any kind of general. But they said he’d been to war. They said they needed him.

So, here he is.

He darts along the edge of the gray-walled garrison. Two of the three walkers are ahead and he flinches, ready for them to attack.

But the wind blows a stream of dust and dirt through the walker’s legs. Up on top of it, a can-cell sits perched, wings twitching.

The walkers, too, are abandoned.

His demolition expert, Tormo, comes up, scratching at the space between his head-tails. “Uh. You want me to blow these, or—you know, because if you ask me, we take them. We use them ourselves. ”

“Take them, ” comes a rough voice.

It isn’t one of their own. It’s one of them: an Imperial. The Twi’leks wheel on the stormtrooper standing there at the garrison gate. His helmet is off, cradled under his hand. The armor on his left arm is peeled off, too, and that arm is swollen up underneath a swaddling of fluid-stained gauze. Even from here, Yendor can see the man is sick: sweat beading along his brow, his face red, his eyes and nose crusted with a white rime.

“Identify yourself, ” Yendor says.

“I’m LD-22…” But his voice trails off. “Sod it. My name is Chorn. ” His arm goes slack and the helmet clatters. The sound is a surprise enough that Yendor almost fires on the man but thankfully, training keeps him from doing so. The others are in control, too, and don’t shoot.

“You don’t look so good, Chorn. ”

“I don’t feel very good. ” With his head he gamely gestures toward his wrapped arm. “Got a scratch on the arm while out on patrol—some of us had our armor off because it was damn hot that day and…” He sighs and slumps against the side of the gate. “Got infected. ”

“Where are your men? ”

“Gone. ” He whistles like a rocket and points to the sky. “They left. ”

“Why? ”

“Why stay? We’re done. We lost. ”

“You abandoned your post? ”

“I didn’t. ” The man laughs, and then that laugh dissolves into a fit of racking coughs. “I would have, though, but I can’t go far. I’m told most of the troops are gone. Or going. ”

The Twi’leks all share looks. Could it be true?

If it is true, that means their planet just regained its independence through an act of despair and cowardice. Not the way Yendor expected it to come, but he won’t turn away such a gift no matter how inelegant the wrapping. One thing he knows for sure: War is a very strange animal.

“What will you do to me? ” the man asks. “Can’t take me with you. What’s the point? You don’t want to waste resources on me. This garrison is my grave—”

Yendor is about to tell the trooper that they will waste the resources—food, medical, whatever—if only to have someone to stand trial. But also because it’s the compassionate thing to do. The right thing to do.

But then, a blaster shot sizzles the air and the man falls, dead.

Dardama lowers her rifle. “You heard him. The garrison is his grave. ”

Yendor thinks to chastise her, but maybe she’s right. Maybe that was the most compassionate thing to do. Or maybe they just wanted to shoot at something today. Just to feel like they earned this victory.

Either way, it is what it is.

The planet, it seems, is theirs.

Later, back in the caves, as reports come in confirming that the garrisons are gone and that the Imperial reign of Ryloth is over, the old man Tekku Aylay said to Yendor as the other Twi’leks packed up their subterranean camps, “We are a free world now. Thanks to the Twi’lek resistance. Thanks to Cham Syndulla. And thanks to the likes of you, too. ”

“It seems so. ”

“We will need the Republic to help ensure that this never happens again. Which means we will need an ambassador to represent us. ”

“Who are you thinking, Tekku? ”

Tekku just smiles.

“Oh, no, ” Yendor says.

“Oh, yes. ”

Grand Admiral Rae Sloane once ran away from home. She did this because her family was not wealthy, and because her world, Ganthel, was a way station to other worlds—richer worlds, greener worlds. So she did as many children wish to do (and some even accomplish): She escaped out her window while her parents slept and made her way to the nearest ship dock in the hope of sneaking on board a freighter and traveling the galaxy.

She, also as many children do, chickened out. But before she did, young Rae Sloane made it all the way to the ship dock, hiding between two crates of kelerium scheduled for shipment offworld. It was there she decided that this whole running-away thing was not really in her blood. And as she turned to go home, she found her escape from between the two containers blocked by a pair of thugs from a local gang: the Kotaska, spicers and slavers who wore metal masks cut into the shapes of skulls. The two men chuckled behind their skull plates and came for her—she ran the other way, and found that way blocked by two more of the Kotaska gang.

Sloane had no way out. They grabbed her and put a bag over her head. It was then she knew she was a goner. She would not run away. Rather, she would be stolen—abducted and carried off not to adventure or wealth but to a life of toil and, most likely, horror.

Thankfully, a nearby astromech saw what was happening and set himself off as an alarm: sirens and strobing lights that summoned the nearest dock constable to chase off the Kotaska. She was free, and the moment her heels hit steel, she bolted home. Her parents never found out. (Later, the Empire would come to Ganthel and clear out the scum on her world. That was when she first began to regard Imperial control as a heroic, necessary presence in an otherwise chaotic galaxy. )

Right now, as her command shuttle descends out of lightspeed, she feels the same feeling she felt then when caught between those crates.

I have no way out.

I am trapped.

I need to run.

Ahead sits the beautiful blue-green world of Chandrila. A world she fears suddenly will become her pretty, pretty tomb.

Chandrila is ringed by New Republic ships: ships born of the allegiance of worlds. Mon Cala cruisers, old Alderaanian frigates, Sullustan ring-ships, not to mention a trio of new battleships: Nadiri Starhawks. All these are craft representative of worlds spurned by the Empire.

The people on board those ships hate her.

She has no preternatural sense for it. Sloane does not possess the Force; she cannot feel the hate coming off them in waves. It is simply an estimate that they hate her. But why wouldn’t they? She represents the blunt, brute fist of the Empire they despise. Their greatest desire, she imagines, would be to cut that fist off and leave it cooling on the floor at their feet.

They hate her and she does not know why their first response is not to immediately fire upon her with all their weapons. For this reason she already has her hyperspace drive sending fresh calculations back to the Ravager.

The shuttle’s pilot, Ensign Damascus, says: “They are sending escorts. Stand by. ” Ahead, a quadrangle formation of starfighters—Y-wings—descends upon her. Here they come, she thinks. Weapons hot.

But they never fire.

Instead, they do as the pilot suggests:

They escort her down to the surface of Chandrila. For peace talks. Or, at least, the illusion of them.

—

Out the window of her apartment, Norra spies the ships streaking across the powder-blue sky above Hanna City. An Imperial shuttle sits alone in the midst of four Y-wings—

Sloane is on that ship.

Last she saw of Admiral Sloane, Norra was chasing Sloane’s shuttle in a stolen TIE fighter. The TIE’s cannons thinned the shuttle’s shields until she scored a vital, direct hit, and then the shuttle detonated, catching Norra in the explosion. She survived that, to her surprise.

Apparently, Sloane did, too.

It takes a surprising amount of sheer will not to go darting out of her apartment and into the cockpit of whatever ship she can find to finish the job she began there in orbit above Akiva. Take down Sloane.

And yet, she doesn’t.

Instead she quakes and she simmers and she wills herself to look away from the window and again at herself in the floor-length mirror—her standing there in her naval dress uniform. She didn’t even know the New Republic had naval dress. This is a uniform that echoes her old pilot flight suit but in a formal way. It’s stiff and itchy. She hates how she looks in it. She tried to tell them, I’m not even with the New Republic anymore. I renounced that. And they told her that would be a conversation for later. She received a handwritten invitation from the chancellor herself to come on stage with Brentin and Temmin. That, in order to herald the celebration of Liberation Day—with her as one of the liberators, married to one of the liberated. The chancellor’s note said at the bottom:

Yours is a crucial narrative, Norra Wexley. One we must tell to ourselves and to the Empire. We are lucky to have you. Will you join us?

Now, if only she actually had her son and her husband with her, maybe she could do what the chancellor wanted.

But they’re nowhere to be—

Behind her, the door to the room slides open.

There stands Brentin. The light of the morning meets him through the window, and the doorway frames him in just such a way—

For a moment, he’s her Brentin again. Boyish cheeks and wise eyes. A wry twist to his face. Hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Hey, ” she says, her voice quieter than she means.

“Hey, ” he says.

Then a cloud passes in front of the sun, and a shadow moves into the room and then he’s gone. Returned is the Brentin of now: He’s thinner, his eyes are set back more, and that wry twist becomes a dark line.

“I’m late, ” he says. And he is.

“Yes, you are. So is your son. Have you seen him? ”

Brentin twitches at that—a fog seems to fall upon him. “I…no. ”

She has no time to try to shine a light through that muddle, and even if she did have the time, it might not matter. Brentin sometimes seems like he’s dozens of parsecs away. Like he’s still in that prison pod. All she can do now is lay out his clothes—a simple, formal white suit given to her by the chancellor’s people—and help him get into it.