Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(34)

“You mean like, oh, say, Kashyyyk?” It’s a barb, Sinjir knows, but he means for it to sting. He grows weary of double standards. As weary as he grows of politics. And of nearly everything at this point.

“Don’t look at me. I say you still go.”

“Han,” Leia cautions.

“I know, I know. But it’s what I’d do. And what you’d do, too.”

Sinjir groans and takes a long, stiff sniff of the caf underneath his nose. “None of this explains who sent those guards to meet us at the platform, does it? And who told the Orishen senator about all this?”

“It wasn’t you, was it?” Leia asks. She’s serious.

He retorts the same way she did: “Do you truly believe me so duplicitous, Princess?” Before she can answer, he cuts in: “Never mind. Don’t answer that. No. Of course not. It was not me, nor was it Temmin.” He declines to remind everyone here that once upon a time, Temmin did betray them at the Akivan palace, and he is young and a bit of a firebrand…but no! That’s impossible. “We had an answer. We had a way to Jakku. There was no need to complicate the solution we already had for our problem.”

Then it hits him.

It wasn’t just that Senator Wartol knew something he shouldn’t. It was that someone knew everything that went on here.

Which means—

Oh, drat.

Sinjir says with a vicious scowl, “The walls have ears.”

“Huh?” Han asks.

But Leia understands. Her eyes go as big as battle stations and she thrusts a finger to her lips before offering a gentle nod to Sinjir.

“I’ll be back,” Sinjir says. “Time to pay our mutual slicer friend a visit.” His heart races as he exits the apartment, one name waiting on the back of his tongue, unwilling to be spoken but present just the same.

Conder…

—

Chancellor Mon Mothma is bone-weary already, and the day is young. With her one good hand, she smooths the fabric of her white gown.

“Are we good?” she asks the woman nearby.

That woman—Tracene Kane from HoloNet News—stands at the fore of the platform. She looks to a chubby Sullustan nearby who clucks in Sullustese as he crouches down, connecting cables from the hovering cam to the holoprojector platform. Mon has elected not to speak in front of a crowd—stars forbid that someone out there boo her or harangue her from the audience, only furthering the assured descent in her approval numbers. Better here, where she can control the environment. And HNN likes the exclusive, especially in an age when they will no longer be the only player. Other networks have begun springing up to compete. Which is the earmark of a healthy democracy, Mon believes.

Many voices competing, not one voice dominating.

Though, she wonders, if Wartol wins the chancellorship, then what? Will it be his voice that dominates? Or is she demonizing her opponent too much? Surely he wants the best for the galaxy, even as they disagree on how best to accomplish that uneasy feat.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Mon says.

“My pleasure,” Tracene answers. “I was…out in the field for a while. Covering the war.”

“Why did you return to cover politics?”

The journalist hesitates. “I couldn’t look at war any longer.”

“You and me both.” Mon sighs. “It feels like we’ve always been at war. I aim to stop that, but to do so…well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that means the only way out is through. We must end the Empire to bring peace. And to end the Empire, first we must endure politics.” Suddenly, she smirks. “Be cautious, Miss Kane: War may seem like a pleasant dream when you look too long into the abyssal eye of the political machine.”

“Noted,” Kane says, returning her own small smile. “Birt, are we ready?”

The Sullustan cam operator grunts as he stands, then gives a thumbs-up. His face flaps lift to show a gummy grin.

With that, Mon Mothma steps into the circle.

Moments pass. She steadies herself, and tries very hard to stop her left hand from shaking. The platform glows blue around the edges.

Tracene gives her a gentle nod.

Words spring up in front of her, the words of her speech in a slow-moving crawl—it is a speech too hastily written, she knows. Usually, she would take as much time as she could on any speech that goes out this far and this wide. But time is a luxury now, and she has to get ahead of this thing before it becomes a scandal hung around her neck like a heavy weight.

“Yesterday, I became aware of the possibility that the Galactic Empire had retreated to a planet in the Inner Rim, near the Unknown Regions: a planet of relative insignificance known as Jakku.” Already she curses herself; should she be saying that about any system in the galaxy? ‘Insignificant’? A bloom of embarrassment rises to her cheeks, and it only confirms that she is off her game and has been off her game since coming out of critical care here on Chandrila. She pushes past her doubts, because what choice does she have? Keep talking, Mon.

“Our military has already begun efforts to confirm this information. We have launched a ship, the Oculus, under the command of Ensign Ardin Deltura, an expert who similarly helped us discover the threat on Akiva. We believe his efforts will confirm what our initial scouting showed: that much of the Imperial fleet is now in space above the planet Jakku. It remains to be seen, however, if this also includes a ground occupation of the planet or is something else that is not wholly understood.”