Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(54)

Addar opens his eyes and it’s gone.

Together they stare at Uggorda’s dead body—until she sits up suddenly, slick with her own blood. Addar wonders if she came back from the dead somehow or if she was just not injured as badly as he thought. Uggorda wheezes, “Let us keep moving. Those three will just be the first. They claim this forest as territory—when we are free of the trees, we are free of the Kyaddak.”

They do as Uggorda says, helping her along.

On the ninth day, they are out of the forest. Here the rocky ground gives way to crystal beneath: slippery and smooth, a thousand facets on which to lose one’s footing.

That night, they sit around the fire again. Mabo tends to Uggorda’s wounds with a surprising tenderness—delicate despite the droid’s massive box-lifting limbs.

Around the fire, Addar says to Jumon: “I want to ask you something.”

“Ask,” Jumon purrs.

“When did you become a believer?”

Jumon shrugs like it’s no big thing. “I had an experience. A vision called to me three years ago. It showed me a path through a wilderness not far from my home. I followed it and there I found Brin, injured after having fallen into a crevasse. I helped him, and he told me it was destiny that we met. That what guided me was the Force.”

“You’re lying. The Force is only for the Jedi.”

“No!” Jumon says, not angry so much as he is incredulous. “They wield it, but the Force is in all living things. It is what gives us our intuition, our drive, it’s what connects us to one another. We are all one with the Force.”

“The Force, the Force, the Force! Everything the Force.” Addar is frustrated and afraid. He has no faith in this, or in Izisca. Just because his mother helped found the church doesn’t mean he has to be a believer, too. Does it? This is a fool’s mission. A death parade. One of the so-called pilgrims is already dead, another has almost perished. He whispers: “How many more of us have to die to carry this burden? We didn’t steal these things. The Empire did. They should be the ones performing penance.”

“We all carry the burden. We all pay the penance. Because—”

“Yes, yes, I know, because we are all children of the Force.”

“You should watch more of Izisca’s holoform.”

“I don’t want to.”

But after the others are asleep, that’s exactly what Addar does. He watches a vid of Brin reading from the Journal of the Whills:


“The truth in our soul,

Is that nothing is true.

The question of life

Is what then do we do?

The burden is ours

To penance, we hew.

The Force binds us all

From a certain point of view.”



Addar fails to understand what it means, but he admits: He enjoys listening to Brin. He falls asleep wondering who the man really is—no one seems to know much about him. He and many of the patrons and matrons of the Church are mysterious.

On the tenth day, they walk underneath an outcropping of crystal-encrusted rock, and a jagged stalactite of midnight glass breaks off. It spears Uggorda through the top of her head, and with that she is truly gone.

Then they are three.

On the twelfth day, they are hungry. They have food, of course, but all that’s left are protein packets and nutro-pills, and though such grim victuals keep them going, it’s hardly satisfying.

As night falls on that day, Mabo missteps across weak ground, and the crystalline mantle cracks hard beneath him. There is a moment when everyone realizes what is happening—the droid clings to the shelf, his telescoping eyes glowing white with panic— Addar leaps for the crate, and catches the handle.

Mabo lets go, because surely the droid understands that Addar cannot hold both the machine and the crate. (And also, as Jumon will soon point out: “Mabo had faith. He was a believer, a pilgrim like us. And a friend.” But Addar must ask himself, is he really a pilgrim? Or did the droid have more faith than he?) Addar saves the crate, even as the droid falls through the open gap.

“Brin would be proud,” Jumon says, grinning a feral, vulpine grin. “You made a leap of faith. And the Force rewarded you. The Force rewarded us all.” He smirks. “I have something to confess.”

“So confess.”

“The vision I had. I still believe in it but…” His voice trails off.

“But what?”

“I was drunk at the time.”

“Let’s just get this done,” Addar says, rolling his eyes. “We’re almost there.” He and his friend both carry the crate—it’s heavy, so they share the load.

And on the thirteenth day, the Kyaddak return. They come fast, limbs clicking and clacking as they swarm from above and from below, pouring out like liquid shadow. They shriek and stab, and Jumon tells Addar to go, go, keep going. Jumon takes out his staff, spins it, and begins whipping it about. It connects with one Kyaddak, then another, and the bug-fiends are flung against the wall, screeching in pain—

But there are too many. They swarm Jumon.

Addar hugs the heavy crate to his chest and runs.

His calves burn. His knees feel like they’re going to pop. Everything hurts but he continues on— A locator at his wrist beeps. This is it. This is where the crystals belong. Smooth boreholes litter the walls—here the crystal isn’t faceted but rather sculpted like wind-shaped glass. It’s just like in Brin’s drawings. He rushes forward, nearly tripping on a berm of argonite poking up through the quartzine mantle, but he manages to stay on his feet as he ducks into the darkness of this new passageway. Deeper, deeper he runs. Grunting in pain. Holding back tears. Ducking spears of crystal. Slipping on smooth ground. I’ve lost them. I’ve lost the Kyaddak.