Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(96)

As the smoke clears, he sees the Imperial men and women in there, hands on their heads, blasters at their feet. Lando laughs and urges them out of the Bolo Tanga room. They look scared. And tired. Each of them thin-cheeked with dry lips and bloodshot eyes. “C’mon, let’s go. It’s okay. It’s over. You made the right choice.”

A few dozen of them come out, taken into custody by the Wing Guard. The New Republic soldiers stand back. Then Gladstone says: “Baron Administrator, sir.” A note of worry in his voice. He gestures into the room.

Lando steps in, blaster still at his hip.

One holdout remains inside the Bolo Tanga room, all the way on the other side of the card table, where the dealer would normally stand. It’s a broad-chested fellow with only two pieces of armor on: a black chest plate, and a white trooper helmet. He’s standing up against the back wall. A rifle is in his hand. The barrel of the rifle is pointed at the ground.

Which either means he’s not sure what to do yet—

Or he’s been waiting for this moment.

“Let me guess,” Lando says. “You’re the commander.”

A pause before the man says, “Sergeant.”

“The last sergeant, Sergeant. Everyone else has surrendered or died. Adelhard’s out. And the Empire isn’t looking good as an option anywhere, big fella. So that’s the deal. You surrender. Or it goes the other way.”

The rifle hangs. The man doesn’t put it down.

And his hand isn’t shaking.

It’s gonna go the other way.

It happens fast.

“Long live the Empire—!”

The Imperial swings the rifle up—

It never fires.

The sergeant drops as a single shot from Lando’s Vitiator punctures his armor and pierces his heart. The rifle never leaves the soldier’s hand—his body just slumps atop it.

Lando tucks the blaster back in its holster. His heart pulses in his chest. A mad thrill goes through him as he thinks, I still got it. And that fool was betting that Lando was too slow, and his weapon wouldn’t clear the holster—and couldn’t punch through that armor if it did.

Wrong on both counts.

“Win some, lose some,” Lando says, clucking his tongue. He saunters over to the dead man, grabs the black-lensed helmet from underneath, and pries it off. The sergeant is a square-jawed man with a brow like a rocky outcropping. Tough mug.

But not tough enough.

“Hey now,” Lando says, spinning the helmet in his hand. He looks to Lobot. “I got an idea. Every kid needs a lamp, right? Like a nightlight? Can we get the engineers to turn this into a lamp? It’d be something special, don’t you think?”

Lobot signals across the communicator: No.

“Yeah, okay, that’s a compelling argument,” Lando says, chuckling. He stands up, tossing the helmet from hand to hand before dropping it to the ground. “Still, kid’s gotta see what his parents fought for. And I suspect given his parents, he’s gonna do some fighting himself.”

That’s when Lando gets an idea.

He again draws the blaster, gives it a spin in his hand.

“Kid’s gonna get into trouble one day.” Every kid does, but with the blood of a scoundrel and a princess in his veins, his defiance will shake the stars. “He’s gonna need some help. And that’s where Uncle Lando comes in.” Lando holds up the weapon, admiring it.

At his wrist, Lobot protests: We are not giving a blaster to the boy. Children should not play with blasters. Lobot’s face is stern.

“No, not for now. For later. When the time is right. Tell you what. I’ll write a note, kind of a…Hey, kid, it’s me, Uncle Lando, you ever need help and don’t wanna call your father, come find me, we’ll sort it out. Put that in with the blaster, then secure it on a locker here on Cloud City, and give Han the key. Don’t tell him what’s in it—he’ll pitch a fit if he sees it. It’ll be for the boy when he’s older.”

That fails to provide them with a gift now, Lando.

He tosses the blaster to Lobot, who catches it awkwardly then returns a dour look. Lando rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine, send them something else, too. What do we have? Oh, I know. We got that Vantillian catamaran in the western skipdock—give them that ship, they can take it out on, hey, I dunno, family cruises or something.”

Lobot nods. One word across the communicator: Acceptable.

“Can you believe it?” Lando asks. “Han and Leia. A family. Times are changing. You think I should start a family?”

One more word: No.

He laughs. “Once again, my friend, we agree. Let’s go get a drink.”

I don’t drink.

Lando puts his arm around Lobot’s stiff shoulders. “I know. It’s all right. I’ll have two to make it equitable. That way, we both win.”





Rae Sloane has given up and given in. Gallius Rax has left her here with a front-row seat for what may very well be the last battle of this war—because even if the Empire wins Jakku, then what? The Empire that this world has borne is not her Empire at all. It is a warped and twisted thing, sand-scoured and gone to scrap.

So, she kneels. The burning in her legs has dimmed to a dull, numb ache. Her shoulders feel it, too. Her hips. Her neck. Everything hurts. Her lips are dry. Her eyes feel like fruits left out too long in the sun. Worse, her side aches—right where that damn woman, the pilot, popped her one back on Chandrila. Every time she bothers to take a breath it’s like someone is slowly sawing a knife in and out of her ribs.