Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(57)

He gasps and sits up. His clothes, his sheets, everything pickled in sour sweat. But still he can’t breathe, and he grabs at his face and finds something there—a wet cloth. He flings it away like it’s vermin.

Someone is standing by the bed. Jom grunts and throws a punch— But the trespasser handily sidesteps it.

He glares through one bleary, sleep-pebbled eye at his intruder. Jom knows the cut of that jib: a shadow long and lean, skin the color of sakai-wood, everything sharp as a pair of snip-shears.

“Sinjir,” Jom snarls. “How nice of you to pay me a visit and…” He picks up the washcloth. Water drips from its corners. “And drape a wet washrag over my face as I slept.”

“A small torment in an attempt to wake you up,” the ex-Imperial says.

“You could’ve tried, oh, Hey, wake up, Jom. Or how about a nudge? Maybe a little tickle.” His voice sounds like gravel grinding in his lungs.

“I don’t go right to simulated drowning, you old gill-goat. Don’t you military types sleep light? I tried the sweet-talking and the gentle shake-shake-shake, but as it turns out you sleep like you’re temporarily dead. I yelled, nothing. I kicked your bed and…nothing. That’s when I turned to torture, when everything else I tried failed.” Sinjir hms. “The story of my life, really.”

Jom drapes his legs over the bed. He feels around nearby for his eyepatch, which he pops on over his head and missing eye. They offered to do something better for him—a fake one or, even better, some kind of ocular implant—but he told them to shove it. A proper old eyepatch it would be.

“What do you want, Rath Velus?”

“God, you stink. You were drinking, you naughty lad.”

“And I’ll be drinking again as soon as you leave me alone.”

Things have been tough for Jom. (A small voice reminds him: You made them tougher, though, didn’t you?) After Kashyyyk, he felt lost. Publicly they gave him a medal, but privately he’d abandoned life as a commando. They chastised him for abandoning his role and breaking rank. He didn’t know if they’d take him back…

He never asked.

He just…didn’t have it in him. Didn’t have anything in him, it seemed. Like he was a cup tipped over, his contents spilled out.

It had (and has) nothing to do with Jas, he reminds himself daily, nightly, hourly, every-waking-momently. It’s definitely not that he loves her and misses her and feels lost without her—because no, hell no, that would make him a fool. A starry-eyed, gas-brained fool.

(Fine, maybe it’s that he misses her.)

But he also misses work. Proper work. He’s out of SpecForces. That, thanks to Kashyyyk. He went astray there, committing himself to an unsanctioned—meaning, illegal—military action. Of course, it was a military action that went well, and brought success to the New Republic at a time it needed it. Which means his discharge was an honorable one.

But he’s still out.

So, he drifts. He takes jobs where he can. Recently, he washed up on the shores of the Senate, working as a bodyguard in the pool of freelancers the Republic is using to provide extra protection for its politicians. (Their first vote after Liberation Day was to give themselves extra security. Which was probably smart, but to Jom reeks of overindulgent self-protection.) He’s assigned to whatever senator requests protection. It’s dull work. He’d rather be back with his fellow commandos, dropping down out of orbit, into atmo, locked and loaded with his mates at his back.

Those days, he fears, are done.

These days, he works for the Senate when they need him. The rest of the time, he sleeps. He drinks. He showers—occasionally.

Sinjir says, “And here I thought I had a problem. At least I don’t wake up smelling like I’ve been brining in my own grief-sweat for three days. I mean, I think we need to face the delicious irony that right now, I am sober as a vicar and you’re the one sauced to the gills.”

“Go back to where you came from.”

“The Empire? I think that job prospect is soon on its way to extinction. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”

“I’m done fighting the Empire.”

“Perhaps you are. But Jas is not.”

Jas.

“Jas can do what she wants,” Jom grumbles.

“That much is abundantly clear. She did you, after all.” That last bit spoken with trademark Sinjir cheek. Jom should punch him. But every time he moves, his head feels like an aquarium whose glass is being rapped by a bratty child. “And yet Jas needs your help.”

“Then she should’ve come here herself.”

“Maybe she would have, oh, I don’t know, if she wasn’t trapped on Jakku with no hope of rescue.”

Jakku. That name bubbles up out of the septic murk that is presently his memory. He cares little to follow the news, but some news is so big it follows you—and you couldn’t go anywhere nowadays without hearing how the Empire is there on Jakku, could you?

Wait. Jas is on Jakku?

“Why? Why is she there?”

“She and Norra…ahem, took an unscheduled escape pod ride down to the surface, and now we have no way to extract them.”

Jom lurches to his feet. He kicks around the trash on his floor looking for a shirt, or pants, or something. “Then what are we doing standing around—” He suddenly urps into his hand, choking back vomit. “Standing around here? Find me my blaster. And some clothes. Let’s go get her.”