Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(50)

Rax steps into the room. The knife is light, but feels heavy. Its blade is nocked with teeth.

Rax closes in on the bound man, speaking as he does. “You told me that children were best when they were seen and not heard. You said that children were meant to be quiet and to serve. To kneel and to suffer and to not ask for a life of any merit, for service is reward enough.”

“I did say those things. I believe them.”

Rax leans in. His voice lowers to a whisper. “You believe lies. It is not our job to suffer. It is not our lot to simply serve. My destiny was greater than that. If I had listened to you, I’d still be here on this rock. Kneeling for you. Praying for you. Listening to your bone-chimes ring. Doing the chores you demanded I do. But I have only one chore here today.”

He thrusts the blade into the man’s middle. He works it deeper. His hand grows warm and wet.

“Galli…”

“Gallius Rax, you mean. No more children will be swept aside by your hand. No more will be made to serve the anchorites.”

The man smiles, a grim, red smile. “I told you all of life was suffering. And for you, the suffering is just…beginning. You are hunted, Galli. All your plans will…unravel…” He slumps backward, the blade freed with a faint sucking sound as he falls away, dead.

It is done.

Rax feels a great weight lifted from him. A hand on his shoulder eases him back. Tashu says quietly in his ear: “A necessary sacrifice. The dark side is stronger. Our mission here is blessed, now.”

Yes, it is. The true mission, at least. He nods and goes along with what Tashu says—though the man has knowledge greater than most, even still, he is a madman. An ardent believer in the black-edged side of the Force, and Rax cares nothing for such mysticism. But if it appeases Tashu, then the illusion that he, too, is a believer may commence.

He’ll need Tashu, after all.

Now Tashu says: “I do not wish to rush the sacrifice. I want to gift you the time to revel, but time is narrow and you have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“Yes. Come.”

—

They go deeper into the underground, around a bundling of power cables, past a coupling of ion panels, into a pitch-black hallway.

The lights come on. There, at the end, is a figure in a red cloak.

Rax knows who, or what, it is. He steps forward, suddenly concerned. “What is there to report?” He knows it must be something, and it must be important. A visit from a sentinel like this does not come lightly.

The figure in the cloak turns.

The face of Emperor Sheev Palpatine looks back upon him. That face flickers across the glass bulge of the droid’s mask. It is artifice, but even as a proxy it is close enough to the real thing to haunt him. Other sentinels were merely messengers: They appeared, gave commands, and were gone. But these, the ones reserved for Rax and their master plan, are smarter. They’re sentient. Though none truly match Palpatine’s strategic brilliance and his dark, terrible mind, they approximate it enough.

The voice, too, is close enough to curdle his blood. The droid sentinel speaks in Palpatine’s voice: “The farthest perimeter has been breached.”

“Show me.”

From the sleeve of the red cloak, the droid’s black metal hand emerges. In the center of its skeletal palm is a projector, and now that circle beams a holographic image into the air, gently turning.

The three-dimensional image shows a caravan traveling across the valley floor: wheel-cars and beast mounts and wanderers. At the end of it all is a raised platform held aloft on hover-rails, eased along by men holding heavy-gauge chains. And on that platform is a Hutt.

Niima.

The droid’s thumb flicks reflexively—like a spasm, but one that has a function. With every twitch, the image changes. It shows the caravan from different angles—sometimes at a distance, sometimes close. The valley is littered with cams, long hidden under the sand and dust or embedded in the rock. All part of a network that’s been in place for nearly three decades, now. The image suddenly zooms in on the platform, and Rax gasps.

The image shows a woman. Her black hair is pulled back under a winding of ratty ribbon. Her eyes are concealed behind thick goggles. Her skin is dark.

He knows her. He would know Grand Admiral Rae Sloane anywhere.

“She lives,” he says.

“And,” Tashu says, “she closes in on the Observatory.”

“How soon?”

It is the sentinel who answers: “Given rate of movement, three days.”

Three days. Good. That is plenty of time to end their journey.

To the droid, Rax says: “Arm the defenses.”

Sloane, I admire your tenacity. But I have to finish this.





Slow, slow, like a belly-slit-worm-struggling-through-a-rut slow. Rae Sloane walks alongside a massive platform—a stage, really, a dais on rusted hover-rails chugging and buzzing. It’s drawn forward by Hutt-slaves pulling on fat chains draped over their bony shoulders. On the stage sits Niima the Hutt, coiled in a nest of ratty pillows under a massive leather tent.

The Hutt sleeps. Snorting and snoring, bubbles of mucus burping up through her nose-slits. The occasional wind comes and tousles the filthy red ribbons tied around her many nodules and protuberances.

This is the rear of the caravan, but the stage and its riders are far from the sum of it; ahead walk dozens of Hutt-slaves. Others ride wheel-bikes or old speeders whose grav-lifts have broken and are now mounted atop rolling platforms, their engines converted from clean turbines to growling, smoke-belching loco-motors. Some ride leathery, reptilian beasts whose bodies are fitted with metal plates and crude bionetic enhancements like telescoping eyes or pneumatic jaws. All of it churns and trundles along through a sun-scoured, wind-whipped valley—and on each side of them stand spires of red stone and anvil-shaped plateaus. Like the guardians of a forbidden place.