Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(68)

“I heard a rumor once.” Brentin sits up with a groan, his back scraping up the side of the rock. “Working pirate radio for the rebels meant not only getting propaganda out to the galaxy, but also intercepting communications from the Empire. I worked with guys who knew how to slice those frequencies, how to tap into feeds and transmissions—they even figured out how to hack hyperspace drives to snatch those frequencies right out of far space. This one Abednedo I worked with, Awls Ooteek, he said they caught a snippet that came from some far-off system. Adumar, I think. In Wild Space. The transmission said something about a…laboratory, a hidden facility. We sent scouts to look for it but nothing ever came of it, and it’s not like we could devote a lot of attention to that endeavor. The Alliance had to be careful how it allocated its people. But I wonder if something was out there. And I wonder if what’s here is like that.”

Something the Emperor himself set up? That could be. Sloane’s mind flashes to that image she saw in the Imperial archives: Palpatine, Yularen, Mas Amedda, and the young Gallius Rax. Rax was a hero of the Empire, but his record remains clouded behind layers of classification. How close was he to Palpatine? What was his true role?

What if what’s out there was like the secret facilities that helped to develop and design the Death Star? Or what if it’s something far stranger?

Whatever it is, Rax cannot be allowed to control it. He’s not to be trusted.

In her belly, there’s a twinge as that thought repeats itself: He’s not to be trusted with my Empire. New purpose burns like lava in her marrow. Maybe Brentin Wexley is right. Could be that she requires a purpose beyond merely cutting out Gallius Rax’s heart.

Maybe she can reclaim the Empire. Maybe she can save it.

And maybe whatever he’s protecting and hiding will help her to do just that. Which means they have to find a way past those turbolasers and—

“Look,” Brentin says.

Sloane is jarred loose from her momentary reverie and follows his pointing finger. There, up on the ridge, she spies movement.

A ship. A shuttle.

It lifts up and points toward them.

Sloane’s mouth spreads into a wicked grin. “Get ready.”

“For what?”

“We’re going to take that ship.”

—

Jas says that Norra should pilot the shuttle down to the surface, and Jas will be the one to hit the sand and grab Sloane. That fulfills each of their roles. They are each trained accordingly—Norra is a sly pilot, one of the best the Rebellion had. And Jas is a bounty hunter. She knows how to fight. She knows how to subdue.

But Norra’s not having any of that. Her jaw locks tight. Her eyes are open and intense. When she says through trapped teeth that she wants—no, needs—to be the one to take in Sloane, Jas agrees. The bounty hunter knows this is a fight she can’t win. So she acquiesces.

They’re in the shuttle now. The ship rises fast off the ridge, and Jas plots the vector—swoop west and come in from an oblique angle. The plateaus will block any meaningful fire from the turbolasers. Norra waits on the ramp with Bones, ready for what’s to come. If she fails to grab Sloane, the droid will be able to do the job, and at the very least he’ll defend Norra from the admiral and whoever she’s with. Jas will do a looping slalom through the valley plateaus, then return to pick up Norra and Sloane.

Easy. Or so Jas hopes.

But it’s never easy, is it?

As Jas swings west, she turns the ship toward Sloane’s position.

And that’s when her screens light up with incoming ships.

—

Norra has no intention of “taking in” Sloane. Already her heart is telling her that in the battle between justice and revenge, she knows what has to be done. As they get closer and closer, her urge to see that woman pay for what she’s done grows like an infection. If she has a shot, she’s going to take it. There will be no need to bring her aboard the shuttle. Jakku will take her body after Norra does what must be done.

The wind whips across Norra as she hangs on to the pneumatic piston that allows the ramp to hang open even as the Corellian shuttle darts and dips back toward the valley. Bones is behind her, hanging from the other piston like it’s a streetlight from which he dances—one arm and one leg out as if he just finished a magic trick, ta-da.

With her free hand, Norra brings the quadnocs to her eyes once again. She points them toward Sloane’s position. The blurry image grows clearer as they approach—fat pixels resolve into small ones, and she sees Sloane standing up, pointing right at the incoming shuttle. Her heart burns with the need to see this woman defeated.

Good. Know that I’m coming for you, Rae Sloane.

Then the man hiding there stands, too.

The ’nocs focus on him and his face clarifies…

No. It can’t be.

It’s like being dropped into the airless nowhere of space. The void consumes her, sucking all the oxygen out of her lungs as she realizes: It’s Brentin.

It’s her husband.

She almost loses her grip on the piston as her head goes swimmy—the quadnocs do drop from her hand, but Bones is fast and snatches them with a snapping claw before they fall into the void.

“Brentin,” Norra says, but her voice is swallowed by the roar of the shuttle’s engines and she can only hear the name spoken inside her own head…