Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(124)

After the ceremony is complete, Mon Mothma thanks Sinjir with a bottle of something very expensive: a lachrymead from before the birth of the Empire. Inside the bottle, the liquid—which, if we’re being honest, is really just the fermented tears of the sentient bees of the Nem-hive—has a golden glow, like sunlight on the sea. When you shake it, the glow strengthens. “Hope through agitation,” Mon Mothma explains. “The light glows stronger when we struggle.”

“From before the Empire, you say?” he asks.

“From a better day, yes.”

He thanks her. She asks him if he’ll drink it.

“No,” he says, to his own surprise. “Not today, at least. This feels somehow too special to violate with my crass tongue.”

“You’ve matured,” she tells him.

“Just like this wine,” he says, with a wink.

—

The war ends, the Empire dies, but the battle goes on.

Though the cease-fire is signed, the Battle of Jakku still rages. Its forces there refuse to surrender. They fight past the point of sanity. For weeks. Then months. The shattered Imperial remnant has no strategy. Their base is overtaken. The captains of the lingering Imperial fleet use more dramatic and desperate tactics as the battle rages, many trying to mimic the tractor beam snare that served as Agate’s final maneuver in this life. A few of those captains, utilizing mysterious coordinates, jump into Unknown Space. It is assumed that their disappearance is tantamount to suicide.

This remnant is like a parasite with its head sunk in the meat of its own certainty, teeth biting tight. It takes months for the fighting to truly end, months for the New Republic soldiers to round up the captives and count the dead, all that time for the Empire’s ghost to catch up with the death of its body and realize that the fight is well and truly over.

Even then, it doesn’t stop across the galaxy. Remnants remain. Some hide out, waiting for some savior to come save them. Others go out with spectacular flare-ups of violence and viciousness. But these remnants are few. Gallius Rax did the work of destroying the demesne properly. Those that linger cannot stay long. The rest are prisoners, so many that the New Republic has no idea what to do with them.

On Jakku, the war leaves behind a world of wreckage. Scavengers feast upon the remains. Niima the Hutt emerges even before the fighting is truly over to begin hoarding what she and her people can find. Already a black market forms around the junk and debris—weapons and computers and engines, all littering the sand like the markets of a massive graveyard. Niima sits at the center of this black market like a fat, throbbing tumor diverting blood flow to itself.

The galaxy heals.

The people do, too.

But a grievous injury such as the one caused by the Empire cannot heal without leaving scars behind as a reminder.

—

Akiva.

The jungle is thick, though the air is thicker. The funeral traditions of the world are many, but this is the one that Norra and her family cleave to: Brentin Wexley’s body is wrapped in a gauzy cloth. Friends and family heap him with garlands of hai-ka flowers, which are as orange and as soft as the tail feathers of a firebird. Then they sing songs and tell stories over him before sinking him in the salt marsh. The salt will eat the body over a short time, and it will claim him. He may return to Akiva as a child of Akiva—from water they arise, to water they return. Atoms to atoms.

But before the body sinks down, Temmin rushes up to his father and places across him a different honorific—

A metal arm. A droid arm. It belonged to Bones, and is the only part of his mechanical friend he was able to rescue from the sands of Jakku. Temmin, trying desperately not to cry, whispers: “Bones, you watch over my dad, okay? Keep him safe.” Then he hugs both of them together.

The salt mire takes the body.

Norra falls to the ground, crying, and Temmin holds her for a time as his aunts stand by. When all the others have gone, he helps her stand. They spend a few days with the aunts, and then it’s time to go home.

—

Thanks to a friend who is now apparently a high-ranking adviser to the chancellor of the New Republic, Jas Emari not only gets Dengar, Embo, and Jeeta full pardons, she actually manages to get them some money from the New Republic. Not as much as she promised, no. But it’s enough to stop them from killing her—and enough to convince them to remain formed up as a new crew. Dengar seems particularly pleased by this turn of events. “Times, they are a-changing, my little gompers. We’re gonna need to watch each other’s backs, eh?”

Even still, she takes some time on Chandrila to herself. She tells her new crew she’ll track them down when the time is right.

For now, she says, she has to find somebody else.

The story made its way to her that Jom Barell went to Jakku to save her. Laughable, really, because what? He’s going to save her? Oh, so she can’t take care of herself? Jas feels she’s proven very well that she has, and so her plan is to go to his apartment, look him dead in the eye (the one eye, since the other is gone), give him a stern lecture on her ability to save herself thank-you-very-much, and then kiss him until he can’t breathe. But when she gets there, he’s not at home.

Someone else is there. A woman. A commando, by the uniform. Jas feels embarrassed, and she stammers an apology—

The woman just says she’s here to collect Jom’s things.