Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(119)

“What do you want to do, Brentin? Go in after her?”

“She needs our help. She’s not as bad as you think she is.”

“And she’s still not any good.”

“There’s a greater evil in there—”

“Then let her fight it by herself.”

—

Anger and hatred are blinding. Sloane realizes that too late. When she unleashed them, it was like a white flash. It was satisfying and warm. But it blinded her. Rax took the hit and went down, but it was way too easy. Soon as she’s on top of him, she sees that glint in his eyes—clever and wary—and she knows she’s just been lured into making yet another mistake.

His fist pistons into her side. Right where the ribs never healed, right where Norra shot her back on Chandrila. And the fist—it doesn’t hit like a set of hard knuckles. It has a peak to it. A sharpness. Pain hits her there like a lightning strike and she howls. Her eyes are closed for half a second—

And then her head rocks backward as he lurches upward, slamming his forehead into her lower jaw, bam. Her teeth dig into her lip. Blood fills her mouth and she falls off him. Stars dance and light smears across her vision. She gags on her own fluids as she crab-walks backward, anguish washing over her like a tide of acid.

Rax is back on his feet and marching toward her. Sloane tries to stand but he drives the nose of his boot into her side. The same side. Something gives way. A bone. A rib. She cries out and slumps.

He has something in his hand. Rax gives it a little twirl—

A carving of some kind. A hooded figure.

He moves it back to the palm of his hand, letting the top of it poke through the gap between his knuckles. Playfully, he stabs at the air with that fist, swish, and now she knows what hurt so bad when he hit her.

“A piece from a Shah-tezh board,” Rax says, his words dripping with satisfaction. He’s like someone preening in the mirror. “Hurts, I wager. I saw you favoring that side back at the base, by the way. Seems my instincts were right to hit you there.” His haughty smile is suddenly empty of mirth and falls slack on his face. “I really am disappointed it ended this way. You should’ve been with me now as an ally.” Something crosses his face that looks like an epiphany. “You were an outcast, too, in a way. Weren’t you? Held at arm’s length by an Empire that did not want to know you—”

The ground rumbles. A crack suddenly splits the floor.

“What is happening?” she asks.

“The end of all things,” Rax says with a theatrical pout.

She kicks out with a foot, hoping to surprise him and catch him in the knee—he’s close now, tantalizingly so, and if she can drop him—

Rax catches her foot and swings her sideways with surprising strength. Her body crashes into one of the pillars. More pain radiates through her in concentric ripples.

“You think I can’t fight?” he says with a hook-lipped sneer. His eyes are alive with a mania she has never seen in him before. “As you said, I was an orphan on this world. I was a child when I killed my first man, a scavenger who came upon this place and thought he’d found a treasure. I crushed his throat with my bare hands. I killed men, beasts, other children. You boxed to win trophies. I fought to save my life and serve my Emperor.”

Through a bubble of spit and blood, she says: “I don’t serve the Emperor. I serve the Empire.”

“Your Empire is gone. I have killed it.” He tilts his head as if he’s listening for something. “You have friends. You aren’t alone. Let’s call them to us, shall we?”

He drops on top of her, grabbing for her left hand. She struggles to pry it away, but he presses down with his knee, pushing her shoulder to the floor. He grips her smallest finger on that hand and—

Snap. He levers it backward until it quickly breaks.

Sloane screams.

“Yes. Cry out. The bleat of an animal summoning its pack.” He grabs the next finger in. “Again!”

He breaks that one, next.

He hums a song, one swallowed by her pair of screams. Only later will she recognize it for what it is:

The Cantata of Cora Vessora.

—

Sloane’s scream reaches their ears.

The percentage on the holoscreen is down to 33. The walls have begun to split. The floor, too. The tremors do not come erratically—now they are constant, a low-grade rumbling as dust streams down around them.

The war is ongoing inside Norra’s heart. Rebels versus Imperials. Freedom versus oppression. But it’s more complicated than that. Now there’s a war between her and her own husband. Who is he? What has he become? Can they ever be the same again? And then there’s the battle over Sloane. Norra wants to leave that woman to her business. Let her win or let her die. Whatever is going on beyond that door is not her business, she tells herself. Let them scrap it out and whoever emerges will either find themselves dragged before a New Republic tribunal, or meet her blaster. (Even that is a war of grave indecision. Again the confrontation of the old dichotomy: justice versus revenge. Justice is of the mind. Revenge is of the heart. Which wins out? Which deserves to win?)

Sloane has seized upon revenge. Norra saw that in her.

If she lets her be in there alone, isn’t she doing the same?

Doesn’t that make her no different from Sloane?

Then: a second scream. Alive with pain.