Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(74)

Solo looks disappointed. “Why didn’t they take me?” He pouts. “They threw me away like I was trash.”

“They didn’t take you because you’re too high-profile. They take the venerable Han Solo and they risk his old friend Luke cutting them all to bits with his fancy laser blade.” Sinjir thinks but does not say: They didn’t take me because I’m ex-Imperial and they couldn’t risk the lack of sympathy. Oh, well, it’s just Sinjir. Nobody will miss him. “If they want to use him as a slicer, they’d need a building near the Senate house with some digital pipe—some cabling. That might stand out here. Nakadia isn’t well connected.”

“Still means doing a ground search,” Han says. “We don’t have the time for those kinds of—”

Their comlinks suddenly crackle to life in unison.

From the static comes Conder’s voice:

Kkksssh. “—ere am I?”

Sinjir’s heart leaps in his chest like a hare over a puddle. He speaks into the comm: “Conder? Where are you? Are you all right?”

But the slicer doesn’t answer. At least, he doesn’t answer Sinjir, but he does keep talking. “When my friends get here, you’ll be sorry.”

“He’s broadcasting,” Solo says. “Somehow.”

C’mon, Conder. Tell us something. Anything.

The slicer continues: “Don’t think I don’t see that Red Key mark on your biceps. I know who owns you. And you there. Black Sun?”

A muffled sound: someone speaking back to Conder. But Sinjir can’t make out the other person’s words. We already know it’s Red Key, Conder. And Black Sun. Keep going. Keep telling us information.

“Looks like a—” A burst of static eats the word, but it resurfaces through the crackle: “—rehouse. Red roof. Two story—”

The other person says something. Sounds like Shut up.

Then: bam. The comlinks blast a dull thud and a loud high-pitched shriek before going dead once more. “Conder? Conder?”

Jom and Temmin poke their heads into the cockpit.

“You hear that?” Jom asks.

“I think he said warehouse,” Temmin says.

Sinjir grips the back of the copilot’s chair so hard he’s afraid he’s about to rip it out of its mooring. “We need to—”

“On it.”

Solo’s already leaning on the thrusters. The Falcon jumps forward—and in moments the ship is shaking as it burns through the atmosphere, the black void of space giving way to the daytime sky of Nakadia.

We’re coming, Conder. We’re coming.

—

The chancellor moves slowly, faking a limp as she steps off the ramp of the Ganoidian cruiser. She waves to those gathered—it seems their time trapped in space caused a bit of a stir, a little drama, and now Nakadians have gathered to watch it end. Cams hover nearby, broadcasting. She spies a familiar face at the margins: Tracene Kane, of HoloNet News.

As she hobbles forward, Wartol steps next to her. He’s smiling, waving at the crowd, but his low-spoken words to her betray any mirth he broadcasts on his face. “Quit. Limping.”

“I seem to have injured my ankle a touch. I’ll get along.”

“Another ploy.”

“Hardly,” she lies. “My good friend Ackbar has had me on a rather strict exercise regimen ever since the attack left me in critical care, and I fear I’ve overexerted myself just a touch. How does the saying go? Slow and steady wins the race?” She emphasizes those last three words: wins the race.

“It shows how pathetic you are that you’re resorting to cheap stunts such as this one. It only delays the inevitable, Chancellor.” He nods at a nearby cam in an avuncular way before returning to hiss in her ear: “You’ll still lose. You’ll lose everything. No ruse of yours will stop that.”

Over their heads roar the engines of a familiar freighter—

The Millennium Falcon.

Hope is a small ember, but with the sight of that, it burns brighter. Mon prays they have found something, anything, to give her an edge.

—

Two streets over from the Senate house sits an agricultural warehouse with a red roof. Behind it are docking platforms meant for harvesters and agri-droids, but one of them is occupied with a different ship: Dor Wieedo’s Tyrusian sky-sloop.

That’s it. Sinjir knows it. He has to hope they’re not too late. They have little time to discuss a plan. What they know is this: Summoning the Senate Guard or the Nakadian peace officers won’t work. The common problem: no time.

They think to intercept the four other bribed and blackmailed senators inside the Senate house, but that, too, is an impossible task—security there will be tight, and trying to bust in with guns blazing will only get them shot.

They could attempt to stop the vote. But the vote needs to happen. If any of this comes to light, the result will almost certainly be a vote delayed by an investigation—which could take weeks to resolve. Weeks when Jas and Norra are left on an Imperial-occupied world.

And those plans also leave Conder on the hook.

That leaves them with one avenue of action and not a lot of time to plan out their assault. Solo finds no safe place to put the Falcon—no nearby docking bay, no hangar, no platform.

He grins, then. That scandalous, boomerang grin.