Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(40)

The trooper says to a nearby officer, “Found this out by the steppe. It was poking around another escape pod.”

“Look at this old thing,” the officer says, sitting under a small tent pitched in the dirt. It’s the same pock-cheeked prig who brought her here. Effney, she thinks his name is. How kind of him to participate in my hallucination, she thinks, and laughs out loud at the absurdity of it. He lifts the saw-toothed beak of the old droid with one hand while using the other to dab his brow with a wet sponge. “This old clanker has seen some modifications since the Clone Wars. Probably belongs to some nomad or spacer.”

“I fitted it with a restraining bolt,” the trooper says. “What do you want me to do with it?”

Effney pulverizes the sponge in his fist, and a stream of water spatters his outstretched tongue. Norra knows the droid is just a vision, but that water isn’t. It’s real. So real she can almost taste it. Water…

The officer, done drinking, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and answers: “I don’t care one way or the other. Destroy it. Wait. No. Send it on the next transport ship heading back to the Ravager. The Old Man is up there, and I’m sure Borrum would find it a fascinating piece of antiquity—maybe he’ll pull for us to get some more portions down here.”

“Yes, sir.” To the droid, the trooper says: “Move along, B1.”

“ROGER-ROGER.”

Norra pushes her forehead against the scabby metal of her prison. She watches Bones march away, his servos whining, his joints crunching as this world’s grit grinds between them.

This hallucination is quite the persistent one. Unless…

Poking around another escape pod…

What if…? Could it be?

What if Temmin sent Bones? Before the Moth hit hyperspace, what if he ejected the droid? Or himself? The heat once more is pushed away from her, this time not from feverish chills but from the cold realization that this is no phantasm. That mirage is no mirage: It’s Mister Bones. It’s really him.

I fitted it with a restraining bolt…

Send it up on the next transport ship…

No. She needs that droid. Bones can save her.

Norra has no plan. Not that there’s any time for one. Suddenly she calls out: “That’s my droid!”

The trooper halts. So does the officer.

Bones keeps walking, until the trooper grabs him with a rough glove and yanks him back. The officer and the trooper share a look, and with the hook of a finger Effney gestures them forward.

The officer stands in front of her.

“You,” he says. “What did you say?”

“I said that’s my droid.” Her voice is raw, as if her vocal cords have been dragged behind a speeder over volcanic stone. She bares her teeth. “I want him back. Now.”

The trooper stands there, looking from her to the droid. The officer just laughs. Bones, for his part, seems to pay no attention to any of this. In the center of his narrow, rib-cage-like chest sits a black restraining bolt.

“You’re telling me you own this droid?” the officer asks.

“I am. You let him go. And me too. Or you’re in deep spit.”

“Hm.” The officer grabs the stormtrooper’s blaster rifle. “This droid?”

He points the blaster and fires. The droid’s arm spins away, detached from the body. The shoulder socket sparks as the arm hits the ground.

“No!” she cries out. “Wait. Please—”

“Are you sure you mean this droid?” Effney says through a venomous scowl and slams the droid up against the cage. Clang. She reaches for Bones through the metal, but suddenly the air lights up with blasterfire. She can’t see the officer, not at first, because Bones’s frame blocks her view—but as laserfire tears bits of the droid off, piece by piece, so does her view of that officer become more complete. His face is a mask of rage, and again she has that image of sanity being scrubbed away, revealing something altogether more monstrous underneath.

Bones stands there. And takes it. Parts of him, shot off by the blaster rifle, limbs and bits banging against the cage before hitting the ground.

Until he has been broken apart into a pile of constituent pieces.

Until Effney is standing there, sweating, panting, leering.

Until she, too, is broken, collapsing backward. She sobs, though again no tears come out. She turns and throws up, but it’s just dry-heaving. Norra curls up on her side and gazes into the eyes of her son’s droid—eyes that flicker before finally going dead and dark.

Effney offers a dismissive sniff. He tosses the blaster rifle back to the trooper, who barely manages to catch it. “Sorry, scum. It seems this droid is malfunctioning.” To the trooper, he says: “I suppose Borrum won’t get to see this curious antiquity after all.”

“Should I clean it up?” the trooper asks.

“No. Let her look upon the wreckage of this mutant machine.” He gasps, suddenly. “Gods, it’s hot. I need water, let’s go.”

They walk away. Bones remains in pieces. Norra curls up into herself.





A patch of blood decorates the stone wall of her cell.

It’s dry now. Dry for days, maybe. And once Mercurial catches sight of her, it’s easy enough to see what happened: She fought back, and Niima’s blank-eyed slave-boys roughed her up. The side of the Zabrak’s head is scuffed raw and scabbed over. Her hair—normally thrust up like the feathers of a proud bird—flops over that side of her head, matted there with blood. The blood’s dried in purple streaks down the deep-sea blue of her skin, forming new tattoos all the way to her jawline, framing that famously vicious grimace of hers.