by Chuck Wendig
What little color he has in his face drains.
“As you wish, Admiral.”
—
Steam rises like stirred specters off the surface of the Moth—the rain has stopped and now the sun is out. Bright and hot. The air thick with humidity. Already Norra feels her hair—normally straight and silver as the waterfall they just passed under only an hour before—starting to curl at the edges, the hairs snarling together. An odd thought: Have I brought a brush? Did she even bring the right clothes? What will Temmin think of her?
She hasn’t seen her son in…too long now. Three standard years? At that, she winces.
“You are one wild pilot,” Owerto says, coming around the side. He slaps the ship: whong, whong, whong. “I’m man enough to admit that you maybe saved the Moth’s bacon out there.”
She offers a terse smile. “Well. I had a good moment.”
“Flying like that isn’t luck. It’s skill. You’re a rebel pilot, right?”
“Right.”
“Seems you’re on the winning team, then.”
Not yet, she thinks. But all she says is, “One hopes.”
“They really gone? The Emperor? That machine-man, Vader? Whole Death Star blown to little bitty bits all over again?”
“It was. I was there. I was…inside it, actually.”
He whistles low and slow. “That explains the fancy flying.”
“Maybe.”
“Congratulations. You’re a hero. Must’ve been something.”
“It was something, all right.” Even now, thinking of it, a cold shiver ratchets up her spine despite the oppressive heat. Others may have felt exhilarated during that battle. But for her: It lives on in her nightmares. Watching good pilots spiral into the surface of that massive base. Hearing their screams over the comm. “Your money,” she says, abruptly. She pulls a small sack out of her duffel. Tosses it to him. “Ten K on arrival, as promised. Thanks. Sorry about your ship.”
“I’ll get it fixed up. Good luck with your family.”
“My son, mostly. I’m here to get him and get back out.”
He arches an eyebrow over his one good eye. “That’s gonna be some tricky business what with the blockade. You figured a way offplanet yet?”
“No. Are you offering?”
“Pay me the same and promise to fly the ship again if the chips are down, and you got yourself a deal.”
She offers a hand. They shake on it.
“Oh,” he adds as he walks away. “Welcome home, Norra Wexley.”
Akiva has always had Imperials. Just not occupying ones. As with many of the worlds on the Outer Rim—wheeling on their axes at the edges of known space—Imperials used the planet but could never, or perhaps would never, stake an official claim. These exoplanets were beasts too rough, too wild, too strange to ever be brought under the Galactic Empire’s yoke. When the Imperials came here, it was for reasons often personal: the drink, the spice, the smoke, the gambling, the black-market goods. Or maybe just to sightsee the wild faces and unmet aliens that cross paths at this outpost of miscreants and deviants.
That, all of that, is what brought him here.
Sinjir Rath Velus. Imperial loyalty officer.
Well. Ex-Imperial loyalty officer.
The galactic tides swept him here and washed him up on this planet of wild jungles and jagged mountains, this place of black volcanoes and glass-sand beaches. Here he sits. Same seat at the same bar, in the same back-alley quadrant of Myrra, with the same Mon Calamari bartender pushing drinks across the oka-wood bar top.
Nursing a sashin-leaf mead—golden, sweet, tastes like a cross between a jybbuk-fruit and oi-ois, those little red berries his mother used to pick. This is his third of the day, and the sun’s only been up a few hours. Already his head is like a fly in a sticky spider’s web, struggling and trying to fly free before ultimately failing and giving in to fatal torpor.
His head feels gummy, swimmy, boggy.
Sinjir holds up the drink and regards it the way one might regard a lover. With passion and fervor he says to it, “You can count on me. I’m all in.” Then he quits nursing it and slams it back. It goes down easy. He shudders with pleasure. Then he taps the bottom of the glass on the wood. “Bartender. Drink-keeper. Peddler of strange liqueurs! Another, please.”
The Mon Calamari, named Pok, trundles up. He’s old, this Mon Cal—his chin tentacles, or whatever they are, have grown long and thick, a fringed beard of red skin, twitching suckers, and glistening barnacles. His one arm is gone, replaced instead with the gleaming silver limb of a protocol droid. A hasty, ill-fitting job—the wires plugged unceremoniously into the blistering flesh of his red shoulder. An unappetizing thing to look at, but Sinjir cares little at this point. He deserves nothing better than this.
Pok gurgles and grunts at him in whatever tongue the Mon Cals speak. They have the same conversation every time:
Pok makes his sounds.
Sinjir asks, then demands, that the bartender speak Basic.
Pok says, in Basic, “I don’t speak Basic,” before going back to gabbling in his alien way.
And then Sinjir makes his request and Pok fills the glass.
At the end of that exchange, Sinjir makes a new request: “I’ll take…by all the stars in all the skies it’s hot, isn’t it? I’ll take something refreshing? What’s refreshing, my squid-faced friend? Give me that.”
The bartender shrugs, his gelatinous frog-egg eyes quivering, before fetching a wooden cup with a couple of ice cubes rattling around in the bottom. Pok grabs a dingy bottle from the shelf: something with a non-Basic script scrawled across it. Just as he cannot understand the Mon Cal’s words, Sinjir cannot translate the language on the bottle. The Empire had little interest in learning the ways and tongues of other cultures. They didn’t even want their people to learn on their own time.
(Sinjir is reminded of the time he found the young officer studying Ithorese, of all things. That young, fresh-faced fellow, sitting cross-legged on his cot, a long index finger scanning lines of the alien script. Sinjir broke that finger for him. Said it was better than any administrative punishment—and faster, too.)
(Sinjir is also reminded: I am a terrible person. Guilt and shame duel in his gut like a pair of hissing Loth-cats.)
Pok pours from the bottle.
Sinjir gives it a swirl. The smell coming off it could strip the black from a TIE pilot’s helmet. He tastes it, expecting it to set his tongue and throat on fire, but it’s quite the opposite. Not sweet. Floral. A taste that fails to match the smell. Fascinating.
He sighs.
“Hey,” someone next to him whispers.
Sinjir ignores it. Takes a long, noisy sip of his strange brew.
“Hey.”
They’re speaking to him, aren’t they? Ugh. He tilts his head and arches both eyebrows expectantly, only to see some Twi’lek sitting there. Skin pink like a newborn baby’s. One of the tail-head’s head-tails comes off the top of his too-tall forehead and winds around his shoulder and underarm the way a worker might carry a coil of rope or hose.
“Buddy,” the Twi’lek says. “Hey.”
“No,” Sinjir says quite crisply. “That’s not—no. I don’t talk to people. I’m not here to talk. I’m here for this.” He holds up the wooden cup, gives it a little swirl so that the ice makes noise. “Not for this.” He gesticulates, waggling fingers in the general area of the Twi’lek.
“You seen the holovid?” the Twi’lek asks, indicating that he’s one of those brash, belligerent types who only understand social cues when they’re delivered at the end of a fist or at the tip of a blaster rifle.
Still. Holovid? He’s curious. “No. What is it?”
The Twi’lek looks left, looks right, then pulls out a little disk—bigger than his palm, smaller than a proper dinner plate. Metal ring. Blue glass center. The alien licks his sharp little teeth then hits a button.
An image appears hovering over the disk.
A woman. Reg
al bearing. Chin lifted high and even in the fuzzy hologram, he can tell her eyes are bright, flickering with keen intelligence. Of course, maybe it’s because he already knows who she is:
Princess Leia Organa. Once of Alderaan. Now: one of the heroes and leaders of the Rebel Alliance.
The recorded image of the princess speaks:
“This is Leia Organa, last princess of Alderaan, former member of the Galactic Senate, and a leader in the Alliance to Restore the Republic. I have a message for the galaxy. The grip of the Galactic Empire on our galaxy and its citizens is relinquished. The Death Star outside the forest moon of Endor is gone, and with it the Imperial leadership.”
Here the hologram changes to a sight all too familiar to Sinjir:
The Death Star exploding in the sky above Endor.
He knows because he was there. He saw the great flash, the pulse of fire, the bulging clouds like brains knocked out of some fool’s cracked head. All the bits of it up there, still, floating like so much detritus. The image flickers. Then it’s back to Leia.
“The tyrant Palpatine is dead. But the fight isn’t over. The war goes on even as the Empire’s power diminishes. But we are here for you. Know that wherever you are, no matter how far out into the Outer Rim you dwell, the New Republic is coming to help. Already we’ve captured dozens of Imperial capital ships and Destroyers—” Now the image becomes three-dimensional footage of Imperials being led off a ship’s ramp in cuffs. “And in the months since the destruction of the Empire’s dread battle station, we have already liberated countless planets in the name of the Alliance.” A new image: rebels being greeted as saviors and liberators by a cheering crowd of—where is that? Naboo? Could be Naboo. Back to Leia: “Be patient. Be strong. Fight back where you can. The Imperial war machine falls apart one gear, one gun, one stormtrooper at a time. The New Republic is coming. And we want your help to finish the fight.”
One last flickering image:
Alliance fighters with fireworks exploding in their wake.
Another sight familiar to him—he watched the victorious rebels shooting off their fireworks far above the tops of the massive Endorian trees. Those strange rat-bear creatures cheering and hooting and chirping in the distance as Sinjir hunkered down, cold and alone and cowardly, in the brush.
“It’s a new day,” the Twi’lek says, smiling big and broad with those tiny pointy teeth lined up in crooked, serrated rows.
“One conqueror replaces another,” Sinjir says, lip tugged up in a characteristic sneer. But the look on his face fails to match the feeling in his heart, much the way the drink in front of him has a smell that doesn’t jive with its taste. In his heart, he feels a swell of…hope? Really? Hope and happiness and new promise? How disgusting. He licks his lips and says, “Still, let’s see it again, shall we?”
The Twi’lek gives a giddy nod and goes to tap the button.
A scuff of boots behind them. Pok, the bartender, grunts in alarm.
A creaky black glove falls on Sinjir’s shoulder. Another lands on the Twi’lek’s shoulder, giving it a painful squeeze.
Sinjir smells the oiled leather, the crisp linen, the official-issue detergent. The smell of Imperial cleanliness.
“What have we here?” comes a brutish growl of a voice—a guttural-tongued officer that Sinjir turns to find looks rather sloppy. Got a gut pushing out the belly of his gray uniform, so far out that one of the buttons has gone undone. His face is unshorn. Hair a bit of a muss.
The other one next to him is considerably better kept—firm jaw, clear eyes, uniform pressed and washed. Smug grin—a smugness that isn’t practiced but (as Sinjir knows well) comes naturally.
Behind them, a pair of stormtroopers.
Now, that’s something. Stormtroopers. Here, on Akiva?
Akiva has always had its Imperials, yes, but never stormtroopers. Those white-armored soldiers are for war and occupation. They don’t come here to drink and dance and disappear.
Something has changed. Sinjir doesn’t yet know what. But curiosity scratches at the back of his head like a mole looking for grubs.
“Me and my tail-headed friend here are just watching a little propaganda,” Sinjir says. “Nothing to cause anyone any alarm at all.”
The Twi’lek sticks out his chin. Fear shines in his eyes, but something else, too—something Sinjir has seen in those he has tormented and tortured, those who think they won’t break: courage.
Courage. What a foolish thing.
“Your time is done,” the Twi’lek growls in a shaky voice. “The Empire is over. The New Republic is coming and—”
The oafish officer gives a hard, straight punch to the Twi’lek’s throat—the tail-head gurgles, clutching at his windpipe. The other one, the smug one, puts a steadying hand on Sinjir’s shoulder. A warning, unspoken but clear just the same: Move and you join your friend.
Someone barks—behind the bar, Pok grumbles and makes some mushy-mouthed warning of his own while pointing to a sign above his head. That sign, in Basic, reads: NO IMPERIALS.
It’s actually that sign that has kept Sinjir here day and night for the last week. First because it means no one from the Empire will come here—which means no one will recognize him. Second, he just likes the irony of it.
The oaf grins at the Mon Calamari bartender. “Times are changing, squid-beard. You might want to reconsider that sign.” He gives a sharp nod to the stormtroopers and the pair of them step forward, blasters raised and pointed right at Pok. “We’re here to stay.”
With that, the big oaf starts whaling away on the tail-head again.
The Twi’lek man bleats in pain.
This is not how it’s all supposed to go. Not at all. Sinjir makes a decision, then, and it’s a decision to simply stand up and walk out, putting all of this behind him. No need to make trouble. No need to become a blip on anybody’s radar screen. Walk off. Find another watering hole.
That’s what he decides to do.
It is, quite puzzlingly, not what he actually does.
What he does, instead, is stand up hard and fast. And when Officer Smugface tries to push him back to his chair, Sinjir reaches back, grabs the man’s hand, and pries two fingers up with a sharp motion. He goes the distance, ratcheting them back so far that they snap—
The man screams. As he should. Sinjir knows how to deliver pain.
This causes some concern among the officer’s cohorts, of course. The oaf flings the tail-head to the ground and goes for his pistol. The two stormtroopers pivot on their heels, swinging their rifles around to him—
Sinjir’s drunk. Or, drunk-ish. That should be a problem but to his surprise, it really isn’t—it’s as if the warm wash of strange liqueur has worn away any second thoughts, any pesky critical analysis that might give him pause, and instead he moves swiftly and without hesitation. (If a bit inelegantly.)
He spins behind the wailing, smug-faced officer. Lifts his arm like the lever on a Corellian slot machine, and with his other hand stabs out and plucks the officer’s pistol from his holster.
Already, the oaf is firing his blaster. His own blaster (well, the smug one’s blaster) spins out of his hand, sparking. Damnit.
Sinjir tightens his profile and turns the smug one to meet the attack—lasers sear holes in his chest and he screams before going limp. Then, with a quick plant of his foot and hard throw, he launches the slack body toward the pair of stormtroopers—neither of whom is ready for the attack.
And both of whom fall backward, crashing into tables.
The oaf cries out, lifts his pistol again—
Sinjir dissects the man’s defenses. Hand under wrist. Pistol launches up, fires toward the ceiling—dust streaming down on their heads. He stabs out with a boot, catching the man in the shin, knee, upper thigh. The Imperial’s thick body crumples like a table with its leg broken, but Sinjir won’t let him fall—he holds him up by the wrist, and with his free hand strikes at vulnerable points. Nose. Eye. Windpipe. Breadbasket. Then back to the no
se, where he hooks the oaf’s nostrils with a pair of cruel fingers, forcing him to the ground. The man weeps and blubbers and bleeds.
The stormtroopers are not down for the count.
They scramble to stand. Blasters again up—
Someone rises up next to the trooper on the right and swings a chair upward in a hard, merciless arc. The chair gets right under the soldier’s white helmet and spins it around. That trooper flails just as a bottle of liquor spirals through the air, cracking the second one in the helmet. A bottle flung from the droid arm of the Mon Cal behind the bar.
For good measure, Sinjir twists the oaf’s wrist so that the pistol drops from the Imperial’s grip and into his own. Then he twirls it and fires two shots. One in the center of each of their helmets.
The stormtroopers fall. This time, they won’t be getting back up.
Sinjir plants himself over the oaf. He again grabs the man’s nose and gives it a twist. “Wonderful thing about the nose is how it’s tied to all these sensitive nerve endings behind the face. This fleshy protuberance—yours like a hog’s snout, if I’m being honest—is why, right now, your head is filling with mucus and your eyes are filling with tears.”
“You rebel scum,” the oaf gargles.
“That’s funny. Really, very funny.” You idiot. You think I’m one of them when really, I’m one of you. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is that the Empire is here and you’re—”
He twists. The man screams. “Spare me the sales pitch. Details. Why are you here? With stormtroopers, no less.”
“I don’t know—”
Another twist. Another scream.
“I swear I don’t know! Something’s going on, though. It’s ramped up fast. I…we came down off of the Vigilance and then the comms blackout and the blockade—”
Sinjir gives a look to Pok. “You know anything about comms being out? Or a blockade?”
The bartender shrugs.
Sinjir sighs, then jams a fist in the oaf’s face.