Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(121)

She drags herself off Brentin, crawling like a common cur toward her retreating foe. It’s then that her hand bumps into something…

The blaster.

He doesn’t have it. She does.

Gritting her teeth together so hard she fears they might grind down to powder, she raises the pistol from her position on the floor—

Her hand dips and swerves. Her vision smears. Everything is made worse by the shaking. The ground buckles underneath her.

Then a shape moves past her. It’s Sloane. The other woman is up on her feet, pursuing Rax now. Through Norra’s double—now triple—vision, she watches the two Imperials clash once more, each clumsily brutalizing the other with fists and kicks. Norra points the pistol at one, then the other, then feels her hand weakening. She doesn’t even know if she has the strength to pull the trigger. Sloane cries out, thrown against the wall as Rax uses the wall to pull himself up the steps…

She speaks a word. A name.

“Sloane.”

The woman turns toward her.

Norra, with the last measure of her strength, spins the blaster across the floor toward the other woman. And unconsciousness takes her away like a swift river.





Security speeders hover in the space around the Senate tower. Strobing lights throb against the white. Down below, a crowd has gathered, and Sinjir steps into it, pushing past, driven by the dueling forces of grief and anger. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for or what he hopes to accomplish—once security forces came and took away Tolwar Wartol, Sinjir had to come here and see it for himself. Perhaps for a vigil. Perhaps as a detective. Perhaps simply as a witness to it all.

It reminds him again of Endor. After it had all happened, with the battle ending and his comrades strewn about, bloodied and defeated—he felt the same sense of dislocation. Like he was no longer connected to anything—a man untethered. Takask wallask ti dan. Man without a star.

But now he has a star. Or had, until this.

Ahead, he finds someone joining him—

“Leia,” he says.

She cradles her stomach, but it doesn’t slow her down. “I should’ve known they’d make a second attempt on her. They hate her. I should’ve seen it—how she was at the center of it all.” To the crowd, Leia barks, “Move. Move out of my way!” A murmur of awe in her wake.

Ahead, through the crowd, Sinjir sees something impossible.

A specter, surely. A wraith summoned by his own guilt.

He sees her for only a moment, when the security forces around her part—Chancellor Mon Mothma, shrugging a blanket off her shoulders, denying its comfort. No. It can’t be. Can it? The crowd closes around her again and Sinjir can’t see. He thinks to get ahead of Leia to help her part the crowd, but the princess is doing a fine enough job of that on her own, the volume of her voice rising to express her natural gift of command. As everyone moves aside, Sinjir leaps into Leia’s wake to follow her. A guard steps in front of him, separating Sinjir from the princess, a sparking baton thrusting toward him—Leia reaches back and twists it from the man’s grip. The baton clatters. Two guards move into the fray when— “Stop!”

Her voice. One word. Tolling like a bell, clear and crisp.

The chancellor steps forward, easing herself between the security peace officer and Sinjir. “He is my adviser,” she says, coolly.

“Chancellor. I…” Sinjir gasps. “You’re alive.”

“I am.” Her face is a stern, grim mask.

Leia gasps, “Mon.” And the two of them melt together in a crushing hug. Leia’s head falls to the chancellor’s shoulder, and Mon lifts her head back, eyes closed, seeming to savor the moment.

When they pull away from each other, Sinjir asks, “But how? That blast—”

“I wasn’t in it. I wasn’t here.” She must see the confusion on his face, so she answers it: “You made me feel guilty for not buying my own baby gift for a dear friend, remember?” With that, she gives a knowing look to Leia. “I went out on my own. I left Auxi in my place…”

That last sentence is a struggle for her to get out. Sadness crosses her face like the shadow from a passing cloud.

“Auxi,” Leia asks. “Is she—”

She nods. “Auxi is gone.”

Mon says: “That leaves you as my only adviser, Sinjir. And your counsel is needed swiftly.” To Leia: “Yours as well, my friend.”

Sinjir assures her: “We will find whoever did this, starting now.”

“No. Not that. Something else.”

“What could possibly be more important?”

She clasps his hands and holds them tight. “Mas Amedda has come out of hiding and wants to sign a cease-fire. He wants to end it. All of it. The Empire is surrendering, and I need the both of you.”





The ground is shaking now hard enough that Rae Sloane is sure the Observatory is going to collapse into the ground, a consumptive fissure swallowing them all. Sloane isn’t sure she can do anything about it, but she has to try—she’s here, trapped on this world, and what else can be done but try to save it? Woozy, bloodied, and beaten, she follows Rax up the steps.

Blaster in hand.

He looks over his shoulder, a craven fear crossing his face as the mask of confidence falls away. “Get away,” he seethes, batting at the air with a bloody hand. Sloane shoots him in the back of his right leg.