Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(62)
None of it is untoward. It’s all entirely aboveboard.
That worries Sinjir. Because right now, they’re looking for something that may not be there. The simplest answer is almost always the truest, and here the simplest answer is that the five senators who voted against Mon Mothma’s resolution did so because they are politicians. They have agendas and those agendas needn’t line up with the safety of the galaxy. Oh, sure, it’s lovely to believe everyone has the best interests of the greater good at heart, but to seek power—to want a hand helping steer the galaxy’s fate!—is an act of ultimate ego. It is an act of self no matter how selfless one portrays it. Which means there is likely no conspiracy here except the all-too-common conspiracy of aggressive self-interest.
As Sinjir slowly orbits Senator Ek, winding his way surreptitiously through the crowd of (shudder) politicians, he spies a familiar face across the uppermost patio: Conder.
Conder smirks. Coy, boyish, playful. That monster.
Sinjir ignores him. Or tries to.
He leans back against the bar and gently speaks into the comlink at his wrist: “No good news to report.”
“I got good news,” Solo says through Sinjir’s earpiece. Han isn’t here—he’s at the northernmost spaceport just outside Quarrow, where Senator Dor Wieedo from Rodia remains in his ship. Solo’s enough of a known quantity in the New Republic that putting him somewhere too public like Izzik’s is a good way to gum up the works. Everyone would be stopping the “hero of the Rebellion,” fawning over him, asking him about Luke, about Leia, about that damn Kessel Run he likes to go on about. “Mon’s plan worked. I just heard it from one of the stevedores on break: Wartol’s ship is being held out of queue in quarantine while they wait for an inspection crew to come aboard. It’ll be a while, but I don’t know that it buys us much time. Twelve hours at best, and I never like to expect the best.”
“We’re not going to find anything,” Sinjir says.
Jom’s turn to talk: “We need to kriffing find something.” He’s watching Rethalow of Frong at one of the poma-clubs. “I still don’t understand why we can’t just go up, knock these traitors on the head, and ask them what they’re up to. Sinjir, you can do that. Tell them to vote how we like or they’ll have to listen to you drone on about whatever it is you like to drone on about. That’d be real torture.”
A laugh over the comlink. Conder.
Conder’s here at Izzik’s watching Nim Tar, the bobble-headed Quermian. That long-necked senator sits off in the far corner, nervously nursing some kind of fruit drink and looking like he doesn’t want to be here at all. “Patience,” Conder says. “Night’s still young.”
“I’m still young, too,” Temmin says. He’s the last of them, and he’s across from the Senate house on a balcony, keeping an eye on Grelka Sorka, the senator from Askaj. She’s already busy working, running some committee about—well, Sinjir forgets what. Probably a committee designated to give themselves pay raises. Or a committee designed to design other committees. Temmin groans. “I’m young now but I feel myself getting older by the minute. This sucks vapor. I hate it.”
Sinjir wants to chide the boy—It is necessary, Temmin—but that’s a line he’s not sure even he buys. He wants to do what they all want to do: grab the Falcon, fly to Jakku, blow up the Empire single-handedly, and save Norra and Jas as an epic, heroic gesture. Except they can’t. They’ll get killed. Or start a galactic incident and end up getting Wartol elected anyway. So here they wait. Watching senators in the hope that at least one of them is visibly corrupt in a way to provide them with enough leverage to win the vote.
—
Hours pass.
Nothing happens. At least, nothing interesting. At Izzik’s, the Torphlusian tentacle-pile is still “singing.” Two Verpine advisers got into a loud argument at a table, chittering and rubbing their saw-blade arms together (the resultant sound made Sinjir want to puncture both of his eardrums with a toothpick), and now those same two Verpine are leaning over a different table, lustily rubbing their mouthparts together. Otherwise, it’s the same glad-handing, back-scratching crowd of politicos.
Ashmin Ek is tireless. Other senators have gone, their numbers replenished as the night goes on, but not Ek—the senator from Anthan Prime remains, the same plastic smile on his face, the same half-full drink in his hand, the same time spent whirling about.
The others aren’t having any luck, either. Dor Wieedo remains in his ship. Rethalow remains inside its poma-club dep tank. Temmin reports that Grelka Sorka is no longer in committee and is now outside the Senate house, just milling about. Nim Tar has loosened up a little bit and has left the safety of her corner table, moving one table over to talk to the young Ryloth emissary, Yendor. (Sinjir spies Conder hovering about in that direction. Every time he catches that glimpse, his heart rate picks up, his mouth goes wet, his throat gets tight. He tells himself it’s because he’s bored, or anxious, or not properly drunk enough. Which is to say, not drunk at all—a heinous mistake if ever there was one.) Night drifts toward the cliff’s edge of morning.
And then Solo says:
“I got something here.”
A flurry of questions: What? Who? Where?
“Couple of Nikto. Plus a Klatooinian. They’re headed toward Wieedo’s ship. They’re not armed, but they sure don’t look like they’re from Nakadia, and neither could be senators. I know scum when I see it.”