by Chuck Wendig
“You craven, sniveling, soft-bellied—”
“We will use Crassus’s yacht to escape,” Rae says, disrupting the tired argument between the moff and the general. “That is our way out.”
“What?” Crassus says. His face goes red as anger rises to his cheeks. “What did you say? I will support no such thing. That is my precious ship—the Golden Harp. I do not consent to this.”
“And I do not care. You are not a true Imperial. You are a moneylender. A banker. There are others like you. And it would take only an Imperial writ to drain your accounts of their gold the way a swarm of redjacket wasps would drain the blood from their prey. Stand in my way, Arsin, and I will execute you myself.”
Pandion whistles. “Look who has found her teeth.”
Crassus pales, the blood draining from his face. “I…you wouldn’t.”
“I would. I will.” She draws her blaster, points it. “Do you consent?”
“I…” She fires the blaster. Just above his head. He flinches, hands up and gesticulating wildly as he babbles: “Yes! Yes. By the stars, yes.”
“Good. Make the call. Summon your Golden Harp.”
Crassus nods, swallowing hard. And with that, the rest of the room goes back to tearing into one another. Pandion, though, for his part, gives Sloane a small, curious smile. She cannot dissect it. What lies behind that little grin, Sloane cannot say. Is he proud? Proud of her for asserting her authority, or proud of himself for pushing her to this point? Is he simply amused at her efforts? That smile worries her more than a scowl.
Adea leans up, whispers in her ear:
“We have a new problem.”
Rae thinks: Not another one. “What now?” she asks in a low voice.
“You should see for yourself.”
Stars stretched into spears, spears flung through the open black past the Millennium Falcon as it punches a hole through hyperspace.
Han Solo scratches at the weeks-long beard growth that’s come up over his cheeks. It itches even still, and he makes faces as he scratches.
Chewie growls at him and points.
“Yeah, yeah, now I really am some scruffy scoundrel. I grow this face pelt long enough, maybe they’ll think I’m you.” He gives the Wookiee a smirk, and Chewie rumbles a response. “Okay, relax, big guy, nobody’s going to confuse me with you. You’re like a walking tree covered in hair.”
Chewie leans back in the copilot seat, and the streaking starlines reflect in his eyes. He’s bored. And a bored Wookiee is a dangerous thing. Last system they were in—Ord Mantell out here in the Mid Rim—Chewie got to messing around with the Falcon’s navigation system, trying to chase down a glitch that had been screwing up the hyperspace drive. He fixed it, so great. But then the guns stopped working—which, of course, they only discovered when they were ambushed by a trio of Krish marauder-ships. They got some serious char on their vector plates and hoverpads—almost didn’t get out of there.
Still. It’s nice, in a way, being out here with just Chewie. He misses Leia and Luke—even Lando, though he’d never say that out loud—something fierce, but being out here with his old pal reminds him of his younger days. Him, the Wookiee, and the Falcon. No responsibilities besides protecting their own tails—and, of course, getting rich. (Which, a small voice reminds him, never happened.)
“All right, coming up out of hyperspace,” he says, reaching for the throttle to disengage. And as he eases it back, the starlines shorten and there’s that dizzying moment. The one that’s never gone away no matter how many jumps they’ve made, the one that makes him feel like his brain has been hurled through space while his guts are a dozen parsecs behind. Then the planet swells into view ahead of them:
Dasoor.
Another on the list of lawless places: an unruly world thick with thieves, run by gangs (who are in turn run by a crime cartel), and powered by slaves.
Too vile even for Solo in his younger days. Thieves he can truck with. Slaves—well, that sets the coals in his stomach to a hot, volcanic burn.
Chewie warbles and growls, and Han answers him: “Plan’s the same as it’s been.” Same as it was on Ord Mantell, Ando Prime, Kara-bin, and all the rest. He affixes the cybernetic implant over his eye—a telescoping heliodor lens that, in fact, doesn’t work and is totally fake. That plus the scruff and the ugly aviator cap he dons seem like enough of a disguise to make sure the people down there don’t know him at first glance. When Chewie roars in protest, he nods. “I know, pal, I know. I’d rather have you there with me, too, but if there’s one thing that’s gonna give us away, it’s a smuggler walking around with one of the few dozen liberated Wookiees. But we gotta find the Empire’s supply lines, and that means me going down there all by my lonesome and kicking up some dust and seeing what it smells like. You just…stay close in the Falcon in case things go to garbage.”
The most recent whispers are that the Empire—after losing some of its traditional supply lines and ships over the last couple of months—has been tightening ranks around some of the criminal organizations they quietly supported during the last decades. Han’s been going down, asking questions, getting into the occasional (fine, more than occasional) bar fight, and seeing if anything shakes out.
So far, it hasn’t.
Chewie barks a sharp yip and Han agrees: “Yeah, I hope Wedge is having a better time with his mission, too. Let’s get planetside and—”
The comm crackles. Above it, a shimmering blue hologram appears.
Han laughs and Chewie waves.
“Well,” he says. “Look what’s come crawling up out of the space waves.”
The woman projected by hologram puts a cocky tilt to her hips. “Hey there, you old scoundrel.”
“Old?” He feigns distaste. “Imra, that hurts me. That hurts me right in my heart.” He puts on that winning smile. “I’ll never get old.”
“Think Leia will feel the same way?”
“Now, that’s a low blow.”
“You could ditch the princess, you know. Shake off the costume of a law-abiding, upstanding citizen and come back to the rogue’s life.”
“Imra, did you call just to taunt me, or you got something for me?”
“We’ve got an opportunity with a very small window.”
Chewie gurgles and Han agrees: “Imra, like you said: I’m out of that life, so whatever it is you’re bringing to me—”
She disappears and a new holo-image pops up: a planet.
Chewie, agitated, stands and roars, shaking his fists and knocking loose the stabilizer bar above his head—the Falcon suddenly shakes and shudders, and Han has to quickly reach up and reset the stabilizers. He’s about to tell his old friend to calm down, relax, whatever it is that has the big fella worked up is—
Then it hits him.
The planet.
It’s Kashyyyk.
It’s Chewie’s home.
A planet whose Wookiees are still in thrall to the Empire. Chewbacca was once a slave like the others: shackled, half-starved and half-mad, his fur matted, he’d worked to cut down the beautiful wroshyr trees for lumber and farm food that was once theirs, in order to feed the Imperial army. Wookiees were used across the galaxy, too, shipped away to serve as slave labor in mines and in building structures like the Death Stars. Sometimes, they even used the poor furballs as science experiments: ripping them open to test out medicines and weapons.
“Chewie, it’s all right, pal, it’s all right.” Han pats his friend on the shoulder, helps him back into the chair. The Wookiee’s muscles ripple under his fur, and his lips curl back to reveal his teeth. His breath comes in ragged gasps. To Imra, Han says: “Whaddya mean, a window of opportunity?”
“The Wookiee planet’s still on lockdown. The Empire doesn’t want to give it up, but their ranks are cut. Normally, ships come in and come out and they trade stormtroopers and officers, but the actual weight of their presence never changes. Except now, for a time, it’s gonna change.”
“I don’t follow.
”
“They’re gonna do…who can say? A changing of the guards or something. Or they need ships for some other planet or some other—I really don’t know, Solo. The details are fuzzy, but what we do know is, the ships that are leaving won’t immediately be replaced. Which means we have a few days.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Chewie raises his head back and howls.
“Now?” Han leans forward in his chair, suddenly agitated. “Like, today?”
“Almost. Clock is about to start ticking in the next day-cycle.”
“The Alliance—the New Republic, whatever they are—they got me on this thing. I’ve got a responsibility. I can’t just change the plan and go off half-cocked….”And he knows what the New Republic will say. They have a strategy. They won’t divert attention to Kashyyyk, not yet. He’s asked. More than once.
Chewie is giving him this look. Not even making a sound. The Wookiee’s chest is rising and falling.
And it hits Han: The words coming out of his mouth don’t sound like him. Being out here, though, with Chewie, it’s made him feel like he used to. They’d just go places. Do whatever they wanted. Follow their noses to drink and contraband and stacks of credits and whatever good or bad deeds came along.
A fire lights in Han’s belly.
It’s time to do this. He tells Imra: “You owe me big, you remember that?” From that time he pulled that Star Destroyer off her tail (and got himself raided in the process). “Don’t say you don’t remember—”
“I remember, I remember, it’s why I’m here. You said if I ever heard anything about Wookiee-world to tell you. Here I am, telling you.”
“That’s not enough,” he growls. “You gotta do more.”
She hesitates. “How much more?”
“Get everybody. Every right-thinking scamp, scoundrel, slicer, smuggler—anybody who owes me a favor. Anybody who hates the Empire like we do.”
“That’s not as long a list as you’d like.”
“Fine. Offer them immunity. If they want their records clear, let ’em know the New Republic is adding names to a list. Full pardons.”
“Is that true?”
“Sure is,” he lies. It’s not true. He’s never heard it. But he’ll make it true. Somehow. He turns to Chewbacca: “Hey, pal. You still know how to contact the other refugees? Roshyk, Hrrgn, Kirratha, and them?” Group of a half-dozen Wookiees who escaped Kessel and got away from the Empire when nobody else could. Group of the meanest, hairiest brutes. They’re mercenaries now, and they don’t have much care in them when it comes to the politics of the New Republic, but they damn sure will care about liberating their home.
Chewie nods and growls in assent.
“Good. Get ’em together. And, Imra, you get the rest. Tell them to meet us outside Warrin Station. Like, now. Hell, yesterday. We don’t need the Alliance or the Republic. We do this our way.”
The Wookiee pumps his long arms in triumph.
Imra gives her word, and then she’s gone.
“We don’t have any plan, pal,” he says.
The Wookiee growls.
“We’re making this up as we go.”
Chewie nods and ululates.
“Good. It’s like the old days, buddy.”
Chewie grabs him with those big arms and shakes him like a cup of dice.
Han grins and laughs and tries not to get crushed. “C’mon, Chewie. Set new coordinates. It’s time to get you home.”
Wedge staggers down the hallway of the satrap’s palace. Pain pulls at him like heavy chains. Fatigue is sucking at him, and no matter how fast his heart is beating, no matter how much adrenaline he feels coursing through him, his bones still tell him one thing: Give up, lie down, give in.
The power failed only minutes ago—and when it did, his shackles fell off like they were a child’s toys. Now he’s free.
Or close to it.
Voices nearby. Alarmed voices. Followed by the sound of marching, clattering feet. Stormtroopers. Wedge winces and tucks himself into the nearest alcove—a narrow space with a ceramic pot that serves as home to one of the planet’s jungle orchids. He squeezes in next to the pot and tries to still his breathing.
Footsteps closer, closer.
The chatter of troopers: “The admiral thinks it was some kind of distraction.”
The other: “Or maybe they just don’t want us to leave.”
“Who is they?”
“Does it even matter?”
Their voices, louder now. Until they’re walking past.
Walking past, until they stop. And they stop right by the alcove. Only a handful of steps away from Wedge hiding in the shadows of this interstitial space. He tenses his muscles. Readies himself for the attack—
No. It won’t work. He’s too hurt. On any other day, if he were healthy, he could take out a pair of these bucketheads. Slam their helmets together, grab one of their blaster rifles, head for the door. But they’ll overpower him in this state. They’ll put the hurt on him.
Instead, he remains. Quiet as the stars.
The stormtroopers look around. They comm in: “Nothing on the third floor. Moving to the fourth.”
They keep on walking.
Wedge lets out a gentle sigh of relief as their footsteps recede.
His muscles ache. His leg almost gives out—his knee buckling suddenly, and when it snaps back per reflex, he nudges the ceramic pot.
It rattles and wobbles. Echoing in the hall.
The footsteps stop.
No, no, no.
One of the troopers asks the other: “You hear something?”
“Back there.”
They start to approach once more.
Looks like I have no choice. It’s fight or get found. Survive at any cost or get thrown back into shackles. He tenses up, planting his feet in the best fighting stance he can manage—and his foot presses back on that pot again. The pot slides back, the grinding of stone against stone.
And when it does, the wall in the alcove behind him opens up.
A thin, narrow door. A secret passage.
It’s now or never. Wedge slides past the pot into the darkness of the open space. The footsteps come closer and on the other side, Wedge sees a stone button jutting from the wall. He slams it with the heel of his hand and the door closes behind him—just as he catches a glimpse of white armor.
—
Temmin sits, shaking. He feels woozy. Clammy and gut-sick. He tries to keep it together when Jas tells him that his mother’s TIE fighter—the one that saved his life only an hour before—crashed into the satrap’s palace.
They try to console him. Even Bones puts a metal claw on his shoulder. But he brushes them all off. Tells them he’ll be fine.
He blinks back tears and turns away so they can’t see. He faces the wall, jaw locked tight, hands trembling underneath the table.
The thing is, he’s always known this day was coming. His mother, out there in the galaxy somewhere. Fighting for the rebels. Making supply runs through Imperial territory. Every day he didn’t speak to her (which was most days) was a day he knew she might be dead. Her ship, floating out there. Her body, still strapped into the seat of whatever hunkajunk scrap-boat the rebels had sitting in some dingy hangar. That thought sometimes came to him as nightmares. Her chasing after him, her eyes dead, her mouth hanging open. Or Imperials coming to his door to tell him they’d killed her. Or a coffin showing up at his door one day with her in it.
And now that day is come. Just after they’d made contact once more.
As Jas goes on about how the mission isn’t scrapped, about how they still have to do the job, all Temmin can do is navigate the all-too-familiar feelings churning inside him like a storm-tossed sea.
Anger is the king of those seas. Anger at her for leaving him and giving herself to a cause that was always more important than him. And anger at himself for being so selfish, and for not making better use of the time he had with her when she was here.
Anger for everybody, in fact: anger at Sinjir and Jas for dragging them both into this, anger at Surat for being Surat, anger for the New Republic and the Galactic Empire and—
The sound of chair legs skidding against the floor.
He turns as the others gasp.
A woman sits down at the chair at the end of the table, and pulls back the veil that obscures her face.
“Mom,” he says, his voice small, so small.
Her side is scraped up—and her face is dirty and a little bloody, too.
“You…crashed,” Jas says.
Norra shrugs. “Turns out, TIE fighters have an ejector seat after all.”
Temmin scrambles up over the table, knocking Sinjir’s plooey-sap bottle to the ground. He barely notices. All he cares about right now is throwing his arms around his mother. She returns the hug.
It lasts a long while, though he suddenly realizes not long enough.
—
The power outage, Rae thinks. When the TIE fighter slammed into the palace, taking out their shuttles, the power flickered on and off for a few seconds. And apparently, that’s all it took.
Because now, their prisoner is gone. Wedge Antilles is loose in the palace. The magnacuffs securing him failed when the power did. And an old building like this doesn’t have backup reserves. No off-site battery, no supplementary generator.
“This is not good,” Rae says, stating the obvious.
“We’ll find him,” Adea says, though her voice does not convey confidence. “I’ll put the troops on it.”
“Good,” Rae says. Adea leaves the room and the admiral picks up the head of the medical droid. Dispatched by Antilles, probably.
This adds up to one more problem. A big one. This entire summit has been problems coupling with other problems to beget whole new problems. A mating tangle of errors and cock-ups. Fragged from sundown to sunup.
She was told that this was a bad idea. But Rae insisted. She cleaved to that idea, the one oft spoken by Count Denetrius Vidian: Forget the old way. She embraced that idea time and time again, because the old way had earned the Empire nothing but its unintended obsolescence. A new way forward, she decided, was what would heal the Empire and save the galaxy. That’s what would secure a proper peace before chaos grew, renewed, from the seeds cast about by the destruction of the second Death Star.