Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(71)
Norra throws Jas a panicked look. In it, the message: What do we do?
Jas gives an alarmed shrug. Let’s let this play out.
Finally, the Hutt seems to find what she’s looking for. She scoops up a black box off the ground. It looks to be a translator device. With a leathery mitt, Niima slaps the box against her chest—it sticks to the dry, slimy blood.
Again she bellows in Huttese, but this time the box offers a staticky, grinding translation: “YOU. THE ZABRAK. YOU WERE IN MY DUNGEON.”
Jas keeps the rifle pointed. “That’s right.”
“AND YET NOW YOU ARE HERE.”
“That’s…also true.”
“I SHOULD KILL AND EAT YOU.”
The Hutt’s black tongue slides along her slitted mouth. Her one eye winks reflexively as a little river of fresh blood trickles into it.
“I don’t think you’re in much of a position for that.”
The slug regards herself. Then she looks to the corpses around her. Her wormbody visibly slumps in a noncommittal shrug. “YES. YOU MAY BE RIGHT. YOU HELP ME AND I WILL HELP YOU.”
Jas and Norra consult in an unspoken look. Norra gives Jas a small nod. Okay, then. Jas injects a little deference into her voice when she says: “What do you need, O great-and-powerful Niima?”
“TAKE ME TO MY TEMPLE.”
“And what do we get out of the exchange?”
“I CAN GET YOU CLEARANCE CODES.”
“We have codes already.”
“NOT TO THE IMPERIAL BASE, YOU DON’T.”
Well. That answers that.
Jas nods. “Norra, go get the shuttle. Let’s take Niima home.”
“Conder!” Sinjir cries out, gasping as he lifts his face from the hard, cobbled stone of the alleyway. His chin peels away, sticky with blood. He gasps, tasting that wet copper tang. A hand waves in front of him.
His vision resolves and there stands Temmin.
He growls as he takes the hand. The young man helps him stand.
“What…” Sinjir coughs. “What happened?”
“I…don’t know,” Temmin says. “Grelka ducked away and I tried to follow. But something was blocking my comm.”
“The others,” Sinjir says. He looks up, sees that the sky is blushing lavender. It’s morning. How long was he out? “Where are they?”
“I don’t know that, either. I can’t get anybody on the comlink. I came around the side here and found you, facedown in the alley.”
Not the first time that’s happened, Sinjir thinks.
The memory of last night resolves: waiting around Izzik’s, losing sight of Ashmin Ek, seeing Ek and Nim Tar in the alleyway before someone clobbered him in the back of the old braincage, forcing him to stop and take a long dirt-nap. That proves something’s up. But what?
—
They find Solo in a trash bin behind the landing bay where Dor Wieedo’s ship was (but is no longer) parked. He is alive. It doesn’t take much to bring him back to consciousness—a few light slaps to the cheek does the trick. He clambers out, snarling.
“Why do I always end up in the trash?” he asks. When nobody says anything, he asks: “What? Nobody has anything funny to say about that?”
“I have no witty retort,” Sinjir says. His nerves roil like storm clouds. Worry corrodes him from the inside as he envisions Conder caught in a panoply of bad situations. “Just…tell us what happened.”
“Enh,” Solo says, brushing some half-rotten leafy greens out of his hair. “I followed the thugs. Was gonna sneak onto the ship. But there was a fourth one and he snuck up on me and—” He claps his hands together. “Stun blast to the back. And then they threw me away with yesterday’s garbage.”
Temmin picks some kind of noodle off Solo’s left shoulder.
Sinjir’s about to say something—
When his comlink crackles.
Conder.
But it’s Jom. “—ello? I’ve—” More static. “—gone and done something—” Hiss, crackle. “—aboard the Falc—”
“Sounds like we better get to the Falcon,” Solo says.
—
Jom awaits them on the Millennium Falcon. And he’s not alone.
Sitting next to him by the holo-chess board is Senator Rethalow of Frong. The Frong’s forearms—long and blue and lined with contracting suckers—are bound up with what looks like some kind of electrical cabling. The Frong’s face-tubules tremble and twitch, and its big black glossy eyes contract as they approach. Jom sits, one arm around the senator. The onetime commando’s hair is mussed. Everything about him screams that he’s on edge—sparking like a frayed wire. Sinjir thinks: I can relate to that. And he understands the source of it, too: We have people we care about caught in bad situations. We’d burn down the world to save them, wouldn’t we?
“Jom,” Sinjir says slowly, as if talking to a child. “What did you do?”
“Not a thing,” he says, waving it off. “Okay, fine. Maybe I caused a minor intergalactic incident. Maybe. Nothing that can’t be forgiven and forgotten, I’m sure.”
“Jom.”
“Fine, fine. I broke open the dep chamber and dragged the esteemed Senator Rethalow here out kicking and screaming. Busted my comlink, too, the fat-bellied little traitor. But after that, the senator told me some real interesting things, figured you might all want to hear.”