Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(128)

“No. I mean because of Jom.”

Jom. That name sucker-punches her. They’ve been saying it all night, and it gut-kicks her every time. “Jom and I were never ever going to have a real thing. But we had something foolish and incomplete going on and I was good with that. He was…” She tries not to break. She holds it together, if barely. “He was an idiot who liked me more than I liked him and that got him killed.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“No. It’s not. It’s his. But I still feel bad about it, and I feel worse because there’s nothing I can do to balance those scales. That is a debt I can never pay back because there is no one to pay it to.”

“Life isn’t all about debts.”

“Life is only about debts. You accumulate them. You pay them out. Others gather debts to you and you try to collect in return.”

“Your whole life is a ledger?”

“More or less.”

He hugs her close. “Your cynicism gives me life, dear Jas.”

“The feeling is reciprocal. Regrettably—I have to go.”

“We’ll see each other again, won’t we?”

“I don’t know,” she answers, and it’s an honest answer.

“Fair enough.”

He kisses her temple. She holds him for a little while longer, lingering on the cliff as the sea rolls in, bashing against the rocks. And then she goes her way, and he goes his.

—

“We’ll see them again,” Temmin says.

“I know.”

“I miss Dad. I miss Bones. They should’ve been here.”

“I know. I miss them, too.” She looks to her son. Even now, it’s strange to see how he’s grown up in this short time since she returned to Akiva. His cheeks are rounder. Hair, bushier. His eyes are a bit darker now, too. Temmin’s filled out in his shoulders—when he was a baby, she marveled as he transformed into a toddling thing, and later was floored by the swift transition to the boy he became. Then boy to teenager, and now a teenager to a proper young man. So many changes.

It saddens her at the same time it thrills her.

“We’re going to be okay,” he says, patting her hand as if sensing her distress. He has a good head on him. Maybe it took a little while to screw it on, no thanks to her. Leaving him on Akiva? Throwing him into a war? I’m basically the worst mother ever, she thinks. But they’re both alive. And she decides to forgive herself, then, for all the things that happened. Justice and revenge are two warring forces, but for her, she rejects them both. No need anymore to get revenge on herself for what she did, or seek justice and recompense for the kind of mother she’s been. Forgiveness for herself comes blooming inside her, bright as a star and warm as the noonday sun. Maybe it’s the drink. Maybe it’s a night out with friends. But it feels like a great deal of ugliness in her is suddenly washing out to sea. Gone away, goodbye.

“Love you, kiddo,” she says to her son.

“Love you, Mom.”

“It’s past your bedtime, Snap.”

He snaps his fingers, to demonstrate. “Or we could just stay up all night and watch the boats go out to catch fish in the morning.”

“Just this once. Then we gotta pack. The Corellian Academy calls.”

They stand and they go, not sure whether their adventures have ended or have only just begun.





Traveling the abyss beyond the known galaxy takes months.

The months for Sloane are hard and lonely. The Imperialis is a cold, impeccably designed ship, and she shares it with a pack of wild children and the haggard, haunted remnant of the man named Brendol Hux. The early days of the trip were spent worrying about whether or not one day Hux would rally his vicious orphans to slay her while sleeping. But once she saw that the children listened to Hux’s own son—a pale slip of a boy with a tousle of red hair—she went to him and asked young Armitage to make a deal with her. She said to Armitage: “If you’re willing to keep me safe from the children, then I will keep you safe from your father. Do we have an accord?”

The boy nodded and said that they did.

And then she found Brendol Hux in his room, and she showed him a swatch of Rax’s bloody cape and the data spike containing the map coordinates. She said that she knew Brendol always hated her, and that the feeling was mutual, but if they are to carry forth the banner of the Empire, then they are to be allies, however reluctant.

The oaf made a mistake, then: he came at her. His hands reached for her throat. Even beaten and bruised as she was, it took her no time to hyperextend his knee with a hard kick. As he doubled over, mewling, she grabbed a hank of his messy hair, and she began to beat him. She hit him, punching and kicking the man until he was on the floor, on his knees, whimpering. Sloane told him: “If you ever cross me, I will visit this same violence upon you a hundredfold. Whatever waits for us out here, you’re with me. You will not betray me. You will not question me. Do you understand?”

He nodded. Smiling through tears. Blubbering that he was her man.

Then she added, “Your son. Armitage. I know you don’t like him. I suspect you hurt him—psychologically or physically, I don’t know, and I don’t care. You will leave him alone. And you will teach the boy everything that you know. Are we clear?”