by Chuck Wendig
And here, Malakili’s spirits sink. He is not useful to anyone. He admits as much, his dry eyes going suddenly wet with tears. “I have no value to you. Kill me. My creature, Pateesa, is dead. All my beasts are gone—”
The Twi’lek says, “You a beastmaster?”
Master. If only he deserved such a word. But he gives an uncertain nod. “I train beasts. Yes.”
The two share a look. Vanth chuckles: a dry sound like rocks rolling together down the side of a cliff. “We got a couple unruly rontos that could use a steady hand. Can you handle that? There’d be payment. And a homestead for you if you care to claim it.”
His sinking spirits are suddenly buoyant. Purpose dawns inside his heart bringing light to darkness once more. “I…can.”
“There’s something else,” Issa-Or says.
“Should we tell him?”
“Why not? If anybody can help…”
Cobb leans in close and as he helps Malakili up, the man says in a low voice as if the sand might be listening: “You know much about Hutts?”
“I know quite a bit.”
“You think you could train one?”
“I…they are sentient beings, not pets.”
“Fine. Teach one, then.”
“I could. I believe. But why?”
Issa-Or grins. “Because we have one at Freetown.”
“A baby,” Cobb says, scratching his jaw. “Seems that Red Key was trying to sneak one in, install it onto the palace dais. We interrupted that little plan, and now we got this…slug, and not sure what to do with it. If you can help us with the rontos, maybe the Hutt, you’ve got a place at Freetown. How’s that sound, friend?”
“It sounds…” Like purpose. “Most excellent. Thank you.”
“You can thank me by doing your job.”
“Let’s go,” Issa-Or says. “Leave the corpses for the others to find. Let them see that law, true law, is spreading across the land.”
Sinjir assured Norra that a glass of the korva would do it, and he was right. As soon as she eases the glass under Solo’s nose, the vapor hits him. The smuggler’s eyes bolt open and he stares back with a turbolaser intensity.
“Wuzza what the,” he says, suddenly scrambling to stand. “Leia?”
“No,” Norra says. She’s alone with him in the main hold of the Halo. “It’s Lieu…it’s Norra Wexley. We’re on Irudiru. Remember?”
He winces. His hand moves to rub the lump forming under his hairline. “Attacked by a droid. A…” He scrunches up his face in disbelief. “An old Clone Wars battle droid of all things. I must be hallucin…”
Movement from behind her. Mister Bones leans around the corner, poking his vulture’s-skull droid head out. Han paws at his side for one of his blasters, but Norra holds his wrist and moves to block the view of the droid.
“Go away,” she spits at Bones. “Go! Shoo, you bag of bones.”
“ROGER-ROGER, TEMMIN’S MOM.”
The droid recedes.
Han growls: “That droid is yours?”
“My son’s.”
“Damn thing knocked me out cold! You bring that rickety clanker back here. I want to shoot its arms off. Then I want to beat it with its own arms. Then I want to take its head—”
Norra eases him back into the chair. “I apologize for the droid. We looked at your head—the injury is superficial.”
“Great. Thanks, Doc. Now do as I said: Get out of here and let me get back to work. You’re slowing me down.”
“We want to help.”
“I don’t need your help, lady.”
“You’re alone out here. I think you do.”
He scowls at her and sits forward. “Why? Why help me? I don’t know you. I didn’t do anything for you. And I’m tired of owing people.”
“We owe you.”
“Not according to my tally,” he says, tapping his temple. “I keep the ledgers up here and your name’s not in it, honey.”
“We could’ve just shipped you back to Chandrila, you know. Tied you to a chair. But you’re a hero of the galaxy. You and your friends. You saved us all. This is how we pay you back.” She stiffens. “Also, please don’t call me honey.”
He stands up.
“I can do this by myself.”
No, you can’t. But she placates him anyway. “I’m sure you could.”
“I work alone.”
“Obviously.”
His eyes pinch and his hand idly scratches at the beard growth along his jaw. “But I do need Chewie back.”
Norra understands—he’s trying to ask for help, but he’s too callused, too gruff-and-tumble to really ask. She offers it again: “So, let us help. We can offer extra hands, extra guns. We’ll follow your lead.”
“That might make it easier.” He sizes her up with his eyes. “Might. But like you said: You need to follow my lead.”
“Done.”
“Fine. You can help me get Aram.”
Norra stands up, too, offering her hand. “We’ll help you get Chewie back, too.”
“Well, then. In for a credit, in for a crate.” He takes her hand. “Welcome to Team Solo. Hope you can keep up, Norra.”
Everything’s going according to plan.
That thrills Jas in no small way. The plan is everything. Designing one is like making a clock: all these little parts working together, turning, tugging, ticking. And at the end of the day, it either tells time or it doesn’t.
And this plan, it’s going along like clockwork.
She got to take out the pulse mines first—Jas took up the same place on the plateau overlooking Golas Aram’s compound, and she used the scope on her slugthrower to identify the electronic signatures from each of the mines. Then it was the simple act of pointing the gun, emptying herself of breath, and pulling the trigger.
The first one did what it was supposed to do:
It went bang.
And that sound was a signal to get the rest of the plan going.
Kilometers away, Temmin and Bones got to work on cutting the conduit from the wind farm that Solo had identified. That knocked out the fence and the turrets. And it’s allowed Sinjir to head down under the cover of night to Aram’s compound. She spies his shadow darting through the fence now.
To keep him on his toes, Jas pops off more mines ahead of him—the pulse mines detonate with buzzing explosions, leaving behind small craters and a crackling haze of ozone smoke in their wake.
He’s closing in on the compound—
Suddenly, from all around, shutters and doors open up. New shadows emerge, shapes that seem human but move with an inhuman stutter-step. Droids, she thinks, and that’s confirmed the moment they ignite fire-red vibroblades from their hands. She sees a dozen of these droids. Maybe more.
Advancing on Sinjir’s position.
And now, the clock is threatening to break.
Down there, outside the compound, the darkness is lit up by strange, glowing vibroblades. They draw glowing arcs through the air as they advance toward Sinjir—the ex-Imperial dashes behind an old motor-vator tiller, peeling off shots from his pistol. But it’s not enough.
That is where Jas comes in. Her slugthrower kicks and barks as she takes out one droid after the next. Hard to see in the dark, but she does her best. The droids offer a satisfying rain of sparks every time she peels the skull off one with a hot tanium-jacketed projectile.
She thinks: I got this.
Confidence, or rather overconfidence, is a blinding force. And it doesn’t help that she’s got one open eye pressed against the ring of the rifle scope. Which means she hears what’s coming one second too late.
Soon as the thirstgrass shakes and whispers, Jas quick rolls over onto her back and points her rifle up—but a thrumming vibroblade ignites in the darkness above her, whipping forward and slicing through the barrel of her slugthrower. It gets stuck there, buzzing and grinding, sparks flying, and the weight of the commando droid presses down against her.
She tries kicking the
thing off her, but it’s like trying to kick an astromech with its legs grav-bolted to the floor. As she struggles uselessly, the droid’s second vibroblade lights up and plunges toward her.
Jas jerks her head to the side just as the blade sticks into the hardscrabble ground. Dust and debris sting her cheek.
The droid starts to spasm.
And glow.
Its mouthpiece offers a loud announcement:
“DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ENGAGED.”
Oh, slag.
The commando droid shines like magma through a broken mantle of stone, and it’s vibrating so hard now that Jas feels like she, too, will rattle to pieces. She struggles to shove the thing off before it detonates—surely taking her with it, leaving her little more than a red streak in a smoking crater. In the distance, she hears Sinjir yelling for her.
I have my own problems, she thinks.
If she can just pivot the gun…
The barrel is broken, the vibroblade still stuck in it—but firing a round out will still make a mess of the droid, maybe. But she needs to aim it toward the thing’s head. Her muscles scream as she willfully turns the gun centimeter by miserable centimeter…
“DESTRUCTING IN THREE…”
She grits her teeth, turning the weapon—so close, so close.
“…TWO…”
Her finger searches for the trigger.
“…ONE…”
No. I’m too late—
A laser lances through the air, cutting clean through its steel neck. The droid’s head tumbles off its shoulders. Searing metal bits seem to burn holes in the air as the mechanical skull rolls away into the grass.
The commando droid’s body slumps to the side.
That wasn’t the culmination of a self-destruct sequence.
Someone did that. Someone who steps up to Jas, standing over her and offering a hand. The rich baritone of Jom Barell’s voice reaches her:
“You know, Emari, I leave you alone for a second and you go make sweet with a droid. You’re lucky I’m the jealous type.”
“Shut it, Barell. Fall in line—Sinjir needs our help.” She pretends like it’s nothing at all that he’s come back—that he’s chosen loyalty to their little team. She’ll never tell him about the flutter in her chest at hearing his voice again. She’ll hardly acknowledge it herself, even though it feels like she has a flock of birds trapped inside her rib cage.
—
Inside the house, now. Inside Aram’s compound.
Outside in the dark lie the sparking bodies of Aram’s droids, and the smoldering craters of where the mines were.
Inside, though, there’s nothing.
Or, rather, no one.
“Blast it,” Sinjir says, coming back through the house.
Jas warns him: “Be careful. We don’t know that he didn’t trap this place.”
“Is he here or not?” Jom Barell asks.
To which Sinjir responds: “No, he’s not here, and by the way, when the hell did you show up?”
Barell grunts and shrugs.
“He’s gone,” Sinjir says. “Half his computer systems are fried. His droid docks are empty—either we met the clanking monstrosities that were in there, or he’s got a whole gaggle of them marching with him somewhere.”
“Where’d he go?” Jom asks.
“I don’t exactly know, do I? My job is to ask questions, and it’s bloody hard asking questions of someone who isn’t here.”
Jas says, “We know he has tunnels dug under this place.” Han and Norra went down to intercept him in case he made it that far. She pulls up her comlink. “Solo?” Nothing but a crackle. “Solo. Report in.”
“Nnnn,” comes a voice.
Sounds like the smuggler. And he doesn’t sound good.
“What happened?” she asks.
“That…big-headed freak surprised me. Was…” Over the comm come more groans, followed by a fit of coughing. “Was riding a hoverchair, and the damn thing shocked the hell out of me when I reached for him.”
“What happened to Norra?”
“I don’t know where she is. Before Aram came through she said she was going to check something out and then—then I got suckered.”
She has to remind herself: Aram really isn’t their mission. He’s Solo’s problem. And if Solo let him go, well, that’s that. Jas will tell Temmin to have Mister Bones bag and tag the smuggler, they’ll toss him in the back of the Halo and fly him back to Chandrila.
Just the same: Where is Norra?
As if on cue, another crackle as Norra’s voice comes over the comm: “I got him.”
“You got who? Aram?”
“I did.”
“How?”
“I followed one of the subtunnels out. It ended up at a small solar shuttle prepped on a platform. The nav computer was already loaded with a destination: Seems Aram has family on Saleucami. I hid. Aram hopped in, tried to take off. I stunned him. He’s heavy, though—I could use a fly-by. Bring the Halo in to pick up the prize?”
Jas grins ear-to-ear. “You got it, boss.”
The prime operator within all Imperial ranks was the human being. “Aliens” were by and large unwelcome within its labyrinthine order because aliens were seen as different. They were serfs and slaves or, at best, obstacles. They needed to be tamed, removed, or ignored.
At least, so spoke the propaganda.
Sinjir felt the tug of that prejudice himself from time to time, for it was so programmed into them that even near-humans were to receive a measure of distrust. Palpatine and his propaganda machine worked to drive that nail of bigotry deeper by demonstrating how the old Jedi thugs and the scumfroth rebels consisted of many more nonhumans than humans. You could trust a human, the Empire said; aliens would always betray you.
Of course, over time Sinjir learned the foolishness of that, because as it turned out human beings were fairly horrible. Full of treachery! Just brimming with the stuff. He came to believe that the Empire’s corruption was precisely because it was xenophobic. It afforded no one any other voice, and so man and machine ruled the Empire together while the rest of the galaxy—despite being predominantly nonhuman in origin—suffered, powerless while under the twisting heel of the Imperial boot.
Whatever the case, Sinjir’s training as a loyalty officer gave him little opportunity to, ahem, extract information from nonhumans. He was acutely aware of the physiological pain points of the human animal.
Aliens, not so much.
And so when presented with a Siniteen, it took him some time.
The Siniteen frame is similar to that of most human beings, with the exception of the cranium. There, the alien’s head is large. Twice that of the average person’s skull, and, well, squishy. The human head is protected by that precious mantle of bone, but the Siniteen head seems like little more than a leather sack full of meat. The creature’s brain is so immense that it literally strains against the inside of the wrinkling skin.
No way to know then if Golas Aram’s attitude was typical of the species, but the Siniteen cared little for the sanctity of his body. Sinjir threatened to pull the alien apart like a warm sweet roll, but Aram was not forthcoming. The threat failed to land. Aram’s legs were already ruined, and he traveled around on a hovering repulsor chair.
Sinjir decided to go back to his own instincts, then. This he learned from practice and not the ISB Loyalty Manual, but sometimes it was valuable just to let someone talk. And so he talked at some length with Aram. About the droids. His compound. His ship. The planet Irudiru. Anything and everything. Aram didn’t want to talk and remained belligerent the whole way. He infused even the stiffest rebuke with alarming ego.
My droids are custom-built, hand-programmed in a way that no one else in the galaxy could duplicate.
My compound was designed to be impenetrable! You primates were beneficiaries of luck is all that it was.
Irudiru? Better here than anywhere else in the galaxy—seems every other system is choking on the fat and stupidity o
f a torpid, indolent population. Fools, fools, everywhere!
Golas Aram thought very little of the rest of the galaxy.
And quite a lot of himself. In particular, his intellect. He cared very little about his body, true. But he cared a great deal about his mind.
That, then, is the approach Sinjir takes. He tells Aram: “I wonder, Golas, what would happen if I took, say, a knife—or something long and sharp like this bit here?” He snatches a small antenna off the top of one of Temmin’s crates of random parts here in the main hold of the Halo. He twirls it about, then tap-tap-taps it against the Siniteen’s head. “And I wonder, what if I pressed it through the folds? Or inserted it through one of your earholes? An urgent push and then a pop as it sticks into your brain.”
He teases it around the Siniteen’s earhole. Working it just inside.
“What? What are you doing? You ape. Stop it!”
Sinjir slides the antenna deeper. Pushing. Aram cries out.
“It would be a terrible thing. I’m just some clumsy, graceless primate, right? I would have no idea what I was even accomplishing. One wonders if it would have a deleterious effect on your own intelligence, hm? I might even suggest it could turn you as lack-witted as someone like me. All that genius stored up—if I popped that balloon, would it come leaking out?”
There. Fear in his eyes. Bright and alive like light reflecting off rippling water. Every person is a lock, and Sinjir is adept at finding the key—the one that undoes them, unbundles them, opens them up so that all within is fresh for the taking.
It is a moment that has in the past given him great joy.
Not this time.
Instead, he pushes out of the hold and steps out of the ship. To the others gathered in the morning light of Irudiru he says: “He’s ready. Go ask him whatever.” Then he staggers forward through the thirstgrass, failing to feel the pain of its blades.
—
The sun is over the horizon now. Gone are its gilded fingers splaying across the grass; it’s just a throbbing white ball in the sky. Sinjir sits outside on a stack of boxes, staring off at nothing.
Someone blots out the sun. It’s Solo.