by Chuck Wendig
“The yacht?” Rae asks her, ignoring the shouts of vitriol from the rest of the room.
“Had to stop for fuel one system over. But in hyperspace now. Will land soon after. Expected within the hour.”
Rae tenses up. “That’s longer than expected. I don’t know if I can keep these animals at bay until then.” They might tear my head off, too. “Any chance Crassus is delaying it behind our backs?”
“Possible, but can’t see why. He’s eager to leave. Truth is, those big ugly barges are—” Here Adea winces in a bit of pain and shifts her weight. “They guzzle fuel like it’s free drinks at the Death Star Commissary.” Sloane spent plenty of nights drinking at the commissary with her comrades. A pang of nostalgia plucks her strings.
Rae turns to the room. She makes her voice louder than everyone else’s. “Shale. How long before we can expect a rebel fleet?”
The woman scrunches up her face and frowns. “Hard to say, Admiral. They’ll send something, probably soon. One suspects it’ll be a reasonably sized fleet. Expect them within the hour if they’re feeling aggressive. Three if cautious.”
That’s cutting it awfully close. “Our own Star Destroyers. It’s time to call them back. Our ruse is over.”
Shale objects: “Admiral, if we bring them back, we have no guarantee that those three Destroyers will survive the ensuing battle—”
“Caution I admire. Cowardice I do not. Though our TIE regiment is reduced somewhat, our Destroyers are more than capable of cutting down a rebel fleet. Especially if we are ready for the fight. I don’t want to make our escape into space just as the rebel scum come dropping out of hyperspace.” To Adea, she says: “Call them back. Now.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Adea leans in. “Also, you have a call.”
Sloane mouths the question: Who?
She tilts her screen toward the admiral so that the rest of the room won’t be able to see it.
Rae sees a face she recognizes, though it belongs to someone to whom she has never been introduced.
The Sullustan gangster, Surat Nuat.
But why?
Time, broken out into the moments between trigger pulls. Jas drops to her knee and faces the coming horde as the others flee. The long rifle in her hand. Eye against its scope. Down there, toward the entrance, they pour out.
A flash of corroded metal. Piston legs. Dented chest plates. Long, gangly, many-jointed limbs. Droids, she thinks. Mad, lunatic droids. Each different from the last. Glowing eyes. Mechanized wails.
They rush down the passageway. Some thirty meters off. Surging forward like feral things, like the bristle-backed boarwolves of Endor. Running on all fours. Up the walls. Skittering along the crumbling ceiling like spiders.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The slugthrower launches round after round.
They drop, one by one. She takes the legs out from the first—it crashes down, neck breaking as it hits. A spark as a shot punches through the metal skull of one, and it tumbles into another of its swarm. They shriek and screech. She fires again, and one of their skulls pops off, clanging against the wall with a loud echo—
That’s when she sees.
They’re not droids. They’re something else. Creatures. Black-eyed things, noseless. Mouths open, showcasing a pincushion of wild needle-teeth. The thing that loses its skull plate dashes to the side, grabs it, and reaffixes it before joining the rushing throng anew.
Twenty-five meters.
Boom.
Twenty. Eighteen.
Closer, closer.
There’s too many, she thinks. A dozen here, and more pouring out of the factory. A whole tribe of these things. A hive. But she has the slugs. She can do this. But there, Aunt Sugi’s voice whispering inside her ear:
You have to know when to run, girl.
That, a message to Jas only weeks before Jas took her advice. Maybe how Sugi meant it, maybe not. But she ran away from her home planet. A terrible place. A strange place, Iridonia. Brutal and unforgiving.
Fifteen meters.
Both her hearts beat fast in tandem, outracing the speed with which she can pull the trigger.
Twelve meters.
Boom.
They shriek and click and swarm.
A hand at her shoulder—a voice, numb and almost lost underneath the ringing of her ears. It’s the boy.
“We have to go,” he’s saying. “There’s too many.”
“I can do this!” she roars.
But she can’t. She knows she can’t.
You have to know when to run, girl.
Now is the time to run.
—
The stories were true, Temmin realizes—from a certain point of view. What came spilling out of that old droid factory weren’t ghosts. The place wasn’t haunted by specters or Force wraiths.
And it isn’t haunted by old, malfunctioning droids, either.
It’s the Uugteen.
When he goes back to get Jas, he sees one—what they thought were droids were just the Uugteen wearing droid parts like armor. The pale, feral things—near-humans, but far enough to still be monsters—usually keep to the jungles and canyons. Sometimes, though, they find caves to live in. The catacombs beneath Myrra aren’t just caves, he realizes.
They’re a whole cave system. Maybe they connect out elsewhere—to the Canyon of Akar, or even all the way to the coastline far south. This pack has been living down here for a long time, hasn’t it? It doesn’t even matter now. Because he and his friends are besieged. Chased. And the monsters are gaining ground fast.
Jas turns suddenly—she fires a shot at a half-collapsed stone beam hanging above the passageway. One shot, it cracks. Starts to splinter. Two shots, those cracks spread. But the pack is almost upon them. Gibbering and screaming like men on fire. Again Temmin tries to pull her along—
But she takes one last shot. The beam crashes down. Water streams along with it. It crushes the front line of the monsters.
It slows them down.
For a moment.
They run once more, rounding a corner. Here it goes up—and he knows that they’re nearing the ground underneath the Royal District. Another half-hour walk and they’ll be at—or beneath—the satrap’s palace.
Mister Bones skids to a halt. He sets down the box of detonators. His astromech arm spins up, blurring the air. His other arm snaps back, revealing the vibroblade. Bones makes sounds like the Uugteen—threatening howls, barks, gargled blasts of mechanical distortion.
Temmin yells at him, tells the droid now isn’t the time.
But Bones is programmed to protect Temmin. That is the programming that overrides all else. Fierce, loyal, psychotic.
The Uugteen swarm up over the broken beam.
Temmin hears his mother calling for him. He tries to tell Bones to move—even pulling on the battle droid’s arm. But he doesn’t budge.
Then he looks down. Near the droid’s feet. The box of detonators.
The box of detonators.
“I’ve got a plan!” he yells at Bones. “Come on, come on!”
He grabs one of the detonators out of the box. Just one. Then he pops it open, spins the top to its shortest fuse, and flings it back into the box from whence it came. Then he yells: “Run! Everybody run!”
Temmin bolts forward, his legs straining—all parts of him tensing up as he waves everyone away. Bones sprints alongside of him, the droid’s feet smashing hard into the brick. The battle droid yells:
“ALL WILL GO BOOM.”
Six seconds. The Uugteen swarm.
Five seconds. Norra waves her son and the others on.
Four seconds. The droid-clad monsters rush up to the box.
Three seconds. Jas pivots, fires her rifle over Temmin’s shoulder.
Two seconds. Bones cackles.
One second. Temmin winces and dives to the ground as—
—
He lifts his face from the ground. His head pulses like the engine of an idling speeder bike. Temmin pushes himself
up on his hands, dust and rocky bits raining down from his hair. He flinches just in time to see Jas leap forward and jam the butt of her gun into the faceplate of one of the Uugteen—a protocol droid face painted in what looks like blood, the mask rent in half with a jagged rip so it looks to be some nightmarish mouth—and the thing pinwheels and goes down. Bones stomps on it again and again.
Temmin thinks, It didn’t work. The plan didn’t work,
But then he braces himself against the wall and pulls himself up. Jas offers him a hand and he takes it. Two of the Uugteen lie on the broken floor—here the floor is crooked, sporadic tile. All of it shattered.
The tunnel is sealed.
“Stragglers,” Jas says, gesturing toward the two monsters. Up close, he can see their pale flesh underneath the armor—revealed between the joints, like the flesh of a krillcrab when you turn it over to get at its meat. “You okay?”
He nods, numbly.
“That was a good idea,” Jas says, and then she quick-steps out of the way as Norra launches herself at Temmin, wrapping her arms around him.
“It was a good idea,” Norra says. She kisses his brow. Idly he thinks, Even though I’m dirty. That’s what a mother does.
“Thanks,” he says, that high-pitched tone still moving from ear to ear, his head still pounding like heavy rain on an old fuel drum.
Sinjir steps up, dusting off his officer’s uniform. “Let’s not all crack open a case of fizzy drinks just yet. I’ll casually remind you all that the boy just detonated our key into the satrap’s palace.”
Yes, Temmin thinks. Now we’ll have to turn back around. And everything will be fine again.
“We can’t go back,” Jas says.
“Guess it’s over,” Temmin says with a shrug. He tries not to play it too eagerly. “This’ll all…it’ll all shake out. We’ll find a way back up to the surface, and—”
Sinjir lifts his head. “Way up to the surface? Can you find us a way out nearby?”
“Absofragginglutely,” Temmin says.
“Language,” his mother says.
“Sorry. But yeah, um, hold on…” He unrolls the map, his heart beating a kilometer a minute in his chest. We’re in the clear. His second thoughts about everything no longer matter. “Here. Close by. Five minutes and we’re there—should take us up right into the old Banking Clan building.”
“Not us,” Sinjir says. “Me.”
That earns him some quizzical looks.
“I’m dressed for the occasion of duplicity,” he says, demonstrating his officer’s uniform with an open-handed gesture. “I’ll find a way up and out. I’ll contact the Imperials at the palace—I should be able to find the frequency, because, oh, that’s right, I was an Imperial with high-level clearance. And then I’ll get them to open the door for us.”
Jas frowns. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“That is the brilliant part. I’ll tell them the tunnels are their one safe way out of the palace.”
Jawas stink.
That’s something Adwin Charu didn’t expect. Most of this planet has that hot sand scent to it—like the inside of his mother’s clay oven before she put dough into it. Like everything’s baking. But soon as he stepped inside this sandcrawler, the odor hit him like a fist. A musky, animal smell. And suddenly he’s forced to wonder if each Jawa is just a fraternity of wet rats gathering together under brown robes and a black face veil.
They hiss and jabber at him. And he tells them again, like he’s been telling them for the last half hour: “I don’t want any of this. This—” He sweeps his arms in a broad gesture, indicating the dimly lit heaps of junk all around him. “—is all worthless to me and my company. I need to see the real goods.” He enunciates words like he’s speaking to someone hard of hearing. As if it’s doing any good at all—these stubborn little stink monsters don’t seem to hear him, or understand him, or maybe they just don’t care. But he knows the stories: They sell the dross to the rubes, but every sandcrawler has a real collection, too. Valuable goods to those in the know.
Adwin has a job here. And it’s not to come back to his boss with an armload of malfunctioning garbage.
The Jawas click and whisper.
“I need droids, weapons, mining tools. I know these sandcrawlers are old mining vehicles. You stole them. Least you could do is—”
From behind him, someone clears his throat.
Adwin glances back, sees a man standing there. Angular fellow. Leathery skin. Pinched eyes. Amused smile.
“Ahoy there,” the man says.
“Uh-huh,” Adwin answers. “Fine. If you’ll excuse me?” Irritated, he adds: “I hope to be done here soon, provided these things comply.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man says, still grinning like he knows something. He steps in out of the bright desert sun, brushes some dust off his long jacket. “Not a local.”
“No. How did you know?”
The man chuckles: a rheumy, growly laugh. “You’re too clean, for starters. Spend some time here, you get dust all up in your fingernails and nose hairs. Sand in your boots. But the other thing is, you gotta know how to handle the Jawas. These little scavengers, they work on rapport. You buy something now, something small, then you come back and then you buy bigger. And eventually, after a dozen or so visits, you start to see what they really have on offer. The real goods.”
Adwin scowls. He doesn’t have the patience for this. “I don’t have the luxury of time. My boss won’t allow it.” He sighs. This is worthless, then. “I suppose I’ll have to take my chances in…what’s that town? Behind us?”
“Mos Pelgo,” the man says.
“Yes. Well. There or Espa, I suppose.” Adwin sighs. He begins to push past the man. The man extends the flat of his hand—he doesn’t touch Adwin, but does block his way out.
“Now, hold on, friend. I happen to have the rapport you need with these little fellas. I’d be happy to vouch for you.”
Adwin narrows his eyes. “You would?”
“Sure thing.”
“And why would you do that?” He squints harder, suspicion twisting his face into an uncertain sneer. “What’s the price?”
The man laughs again. “No price, no price. Just hospitality.”
This planet: back-end water-farming bumpkins. Fine. Adwin can use that. He’s comfortable exploiting the naïveté of others. “Yes. Yes. That would be excellent. Thank you—ahh? Your name?”
“Cobb Vanth.”
“Mister Vanth—”
“Cobb, please.”
“Ah. Cobb. Shall we, then?”
The man steps forward, scratching at his stubbled face. He starts talking to the Jawas. They gabble at him in their rat-tongue and he says, “Uh-huh, no, I know, but I come bearing credits and so does he.” Cobb turns to Adwin and gives a wink. The Jawas whisper and babble. “Okay, then.
“Come on,” Cobb says, and they follow a pair of the little hooded weirdos to another door in the back next to an upside-down gonk droid. The door hisses open, then shuts again behind them. Lights click on. Brighter here than in the other room. And sure enough: These are the goods.
A protocol droid. A pair of astromechs. A rack of weapons—Imperial-issue, by the looks of it. Against the far wall: a series of panels from what looks like a Hutt sail barge, plus a few other Huttese artifacts—some charred, others twisted. All of it, wreckage.
“Perfect, perfect, perfect,” Adwin says, clapping his hands. He immediately heads over to a shelf and starts looking through bins, boxes, wire crates. Cobb pokes around, too, though Adwin mostly loses track of him until Cobb says:
“You’re with that new mining company.”
Adwin turns. “Hm? Oh. Yes.”
“The Red Key Company, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one. How’d you know?”
“I have a way of sussing things out. I know that things are changing. Not just in the galaxy, but here at home, too. The Hutts still haven’t shaken out who’s next
up to fill Jabba’s throne—if you can call that flat slab of his a throne. Seems like this might be a new day for Tatooine.”
“Yes, we certainly hope so,” Adwin idly responds, mostly ignoring the man’s small-talk prattle. He’s happy Cobb got him in here but now wishes the man would just leave him alone.
Adwin spies a large, long box on the floor. He whips off the ratty cloth that’s covering it and—
Oh, my.
From the box, he withdraws a helmet. Pitted and pocked, as if with some kind of acid. But still—he raps his knuckles on it. The Mandalorians knew how to make armor, didn’t they? “Look at this,” he says, holding it up. “Mandalorian battle armor. Whole box. Complete set, by the looks of it. Been through hell and back. I think my boss will appreciate this.”
“I actually think I might take that home with me,” Cobb says.
“I think not,” Adwin says, turning around, the helmet tucked under his arm. The blaster at his hip suddenly feels heavy, pendulous. Eager to be drawn. A strange sensation, that. Adwin feels like he’s really getting into the spirit of this planet. He’s never had to shoot a man before.
Maybe that day is today. An exhilarating feeling, oddly.
Cobb grins, crosses his arms. “What are you thinking, company man? See, I could really use that armor. I figure being a newly appointed lawman—”
“Self-appointed, I think,” Adwin says.
But Cobb doesn’t take the bait. “Being a lawman, I could use some protection against those corrupt types who might think to seize the opportunity here on my planet. That armor is mine.”
Adwin smirks. He takes his thumb and pulls back his tunic, revealing the blaster. “Cobb—”
“Sheriff Vance, to you.”
“Oh.” Adwin laughs. “Sheriff, I’d hate to have to draw this blaster—”
Cobb Vance’s hand is up in a flash—there’s the shriek from his own blaster, and it punches a cauterized hole clean through Adwin’s shoulder on his right side. His hand goes limp, lifeless. The helmet clatters out of his other hand. He backs against the shelf, terror-struck.