Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(30)

She stops when she sees them. With a sigh, she says, “I should’ve known a conspiracy would bloom in my wake.”

“Hey,” Han says, laughing. “Don’t blame me.”

“I always blame you.”

He says to Sinjir and Temmin, sotto voce: “She really does.”

The princess comes and sits down next to her husband. It’s fascinating to watch, because usually, Leia was all about the formality: Dealing with her sometimes felt icily mechanical, like you were meeting an assassin droid who, quite frankly, had precisely zero increments of time for your foolish human nonsense. Now, though, they’re seeing her in the midst of her humanity—at home, tired and pregnant, the airs of her royalty put aside for a time. Either that, or they’re really becoming friends.

Leia sits and her hands move to encircle her belly, settling on the underside. It must be quite a weight. She’s getting…full, Sinjir thinks. He decides that it must be a horrid thing, to carry a child. It’s a parasite, basically. Amazing that humans are willing to procreate when this is the burden that results.

He’s glad he doesn’t have to worry about any of that.

“You’re back early,” Han says to her.

“I have the kind of heartburn that would drop a tauntaun faster than a Hoth winter,” she explains. “Mon is with Auxi, now. And Ackbar, too. They’ll be fine.”

“Here,” Solo says, hurrying to his feet. “Lemme get you a glass of ioxin powder, that’ll settle your chest.”

“No,” she says, waving him off. “Let me just sit. Besides, that stuff tastes like I’m sucking on an Imperial credit.” Her dubious, laserlike glare suddenly turns to Temmin and Sinjir. The both of them look to each other, like vermin fixed by the stare of a nearby raptor. “I assume you’re all cooking up a plan to go to Jakku and rescue Norra and Jas.”

“Uhh,” Temmin says, obviously unsure how to answer.

Sinjir shrugs. “Well, we’re not forming a boys’ choir.”

“You’re not thinking of going along.” That, directed at Solo with a thrusting, accusatory finger. It’s not a question; it’s a command.

“Me?” Solo says, smirking nervously and offering up both palms in a kind of ha-ha surrender. “I’d never! You can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m here with you and the little bandit.”

To Sinjir and Temmin, Leia says: “You could wait, you know. In fact, I’m advising you to wait. The chancellor will try to move quickly with this, I suspect. Let it play out.”

“No,” Temmin says—the word is sharp and abrupt. He’s upset by the idea, that much is clear. “That battle could go on forever. It’ll be like a siege! And what if the New Republic doesn’t win?”

“Thanks for your confidence,” Leia says, eyebrows arched.

Solo sits back down. “Kid’s right.”

“And just the same, flying through a blockade will be a lot easier when you’re not the only ship trying to do it.”

“She’s got a point, too,” Solo says.

The boy’s face tightens into a stubborn mask. He wants this and he wants it now. Sinjir can’t blame him. The boy—really, a young man at this point—has been through considerable trauma. The events on Akiva, on Kashyyyk, and here on Chandrila with his own father? Sinjir considers himself a bulwark of unsentimentality (Conder…), but even that would rattle his cage. Temmin wants this. Temmin needs this.

And Sinjir needs it, too.

He misses Jas.

Sinjir fits with her. Like a painting ripped in half, then taped back together again. When he first saw her on the Endor moon, her about to retreat, him covered in Endor dirt and the blood of his fellow Imperials, he saw something in her eyes that just made sense. Absurd, beautiful sense. It’s not romantic, of course. It’s something far deeper. Something in their bones. It’s not that they’re all that alike, either. Maybe it’s better because they’re not all that alike.

He’d do anything for her.

Including run an Imperial blockade in a rickety, rag-dog freighter.

He tells them as much: “I fear you won’t dissuade us, Princess. Our destiny is a fixed point. We are going to Jakku. Will you stop us?”

Leia sighs. “Officially, I have to try.”

Blast it.

“But,” she adds, “if you have not noticed, I am very, very pregnant. I don’t think I realized you could be this pregnant. As such, I consider it entirely possible—likely, even!—that tomorrow morning I won’t be up early because tonight will be characteristically sleepless. Which means if you try to escape in the Falcon before dawn, I might miss the chance to stand in your way. Which would be a shame. So please, do me the favor and leave later in the day?”

Sinjir grins at her. Message received, Your Highness.

But the bigger smile comes from Solo. His face is damn near cut in half by the grin that spreads. It’s like he’s proud of her.

He leans in and kisses her cheek.

And that, Sinjir decides, is that. In the morning: Jakku calls.

—

Temmin pushes along a couple of crates on a grav-lift. Up over the landing platform he spies the edge of the sea and the searing laser line of morning sunlight burning along it. From the other side of the platform comes a familiar face: Sinjir. The ex-Imperial crosses the platform, walking in long, sleepy strides and yawning as he does.