Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(4)

It feels good to have caught Mercurial Swift in their little trap—he’s the one bounty hunter known to interface exclusively with Sloane. But it’s bitter candy, because they have bigger prey. He’s just one rung in the ladder.

Please, Norra thinks. Let it be the final rung.

She’s tired, and she’s coasting on the fumes of anger. It’s burning her out, stripping her down, leaving her feeling raw inside her heart.

But at least they have him.

Mercurial Swift hangs from a bent pipe here in the old munitions factory, his arms extended above him, his wrists cuffed. Night has fallen on Taris. Outside, vapor lightning colors the dark clouds ocher, while down below snorting scutjumpers click and scurry amid the wreckage of this world, hunting for bugs to eat.

“I hate him,” Sinjir Rath Velus says, leaning in and staring at their prey. His nose wrinkles as if he’s smelling something foul. “Even unconscious the man looks so bloody smug. And trust me: I know smugness well.”

Jas twirls one of Swift’s batons in her hand. She jabs it in the air. “He’s smug but crafty. These batons are practically art. One end is concussive. The other end, electric. Kill or stun. And the second baton can be modified with a hypoinjector for poison.”

“Let’s wake him up,” Norra says, suddenly impatient. “I want answers and I’m tired of waiting.”

“We’ve waited this long,” Jas says. “We can wait a little longer.”

“I want Sloane. I want justice.”

“You want revenge,” Jas says. It’s a conversation they’ve had before. Many times, as a matter of fact. Round and round they go. Sinjir just sighs and shakes his head as Norra responds:

“Revenge and justice are two sides of the same coin.”

“I don’t know if you would’ve said that before Chandrila.”

“It’s a little galling that you’re the one judging me,” Norra snaps.

Jas holds up surrendering hands. “No judgment. I far prefer revenge as a motive. Justice is a jumping bull’s-eye. Revenge sits still right here.” She taps the center of her chest. “I admire revenge. It’s pure. It also happens to be the thing that pays me most of the time. I just think it’s valuable to know which one is which, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

She’s wrong, Norra thinks. That day on Chandrila was a nightmare: her own husband joining the rest of the mind-controlled captives from Kashyyyk to sweep across the stage and plaza in a wave of assassinations. The funerals went on for days. The mourning still continues, months later. This is one of those times when the needs of justice and the urge for vengeance line up neatly, like the metal sights at the end of a scatterblaster. And isn’t justice really just a name for institutional revenge? Commit a crime, pay for the crime. Castigation arrives regardless of whether it’s at the hand of a governmental body or a lone soldier.

At least, that’s what Norra tells herself. And she’s about to tell them all the same thing when Sinjir moans and interjects: “Both of you, please stop droning on about this. It’s giving me a brain-ache. Let us wake up our new friend, if only so I can stop listening to you and start listening to him.”

With that, Sinjir reaches up and plunges the tips of two fingers into the unconscious bounty hunter’s nostrils. He tugs upward, hard. Mercurial’s eyes jolt open and he sucks in a hissing breath.

“Wakey-wakey,” Sinjir says all too cheerfully. “Time to move and time to shake-y.” As an aside, he says: “My mother used to say that. Sweet woman. If I didn’t get out of bed fast enough, her sweetness turned rather sour, though, and she would whip me with a broom.” Now, back to Mercurial: “I don’t need to hit you with a broom, do I? Are we awake?”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” the bounty hunter says, wrenching his head away from Sinjir’s nose-probing fingers. His eyes focus on Jas. “You.”

“Hello, Mercurial.”

He laughs, a small, sad sound.

“What’s funny?” Jas asks.

“Something someone said to me once. Dengar, actually.” He flashes a smile. “He said the day would come. ‘Bounties on the bounty hunters.’ Seems today is that day, hm?”

“Dengar,” she says, the words sounding to Norra like they’re spoken around a mouthful of something spoiled, something foul. “I hate to admit it, but that slovenly lump of congealed sweat could be right: I have a bounty on me, after all.”

“That’s right. I remember Rynscar saying Boss Gyuti had put a number on your head. That number doubled, recently, didn’t it?”

“Tripled,” Jas says. Like she’s proud. Maybe she is. “It’s a big bounty. You, however, are surprisingly without one.”

His eyebrow arches sharply. “Then why am I here?”

“Because we have questions,” Norra says.

“Is this about that mess on Vorlag? I thought I recognized you up on the foundry roof. Gedde was all too easy, you know.”

Jas says, “I knew that had to be your handiwork. The mycotoxin gave you away.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“We don’t care about Vorlag,” Norra says. Extracting Gedde—only to have him die in their care thanks to a slow-acting poison hidden in his spice—feels like a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then. “We care about the one who paid you to take him out. We care about Sloane. Grand admiral of the Galactic Empire, and now—out there somewhere. In the wind. In the stars.”