Bones is up again, cartwheeling away from the AT-ST’s cannons—it tracks him, but its head is too slow, and the droid too fast. Temmin’s mechanical bodyguard returns to the place it landed, scurrying up the side of the walker’s leg, metal clicking on metal, until it reaches the top once more.
The droid struggles, his servos grinding and his pneumos whining as he wrenches the top off the AT-ST, flinging the hatch behind him. Feetfirst, Bones silently slips into the cockpit of the chicken walker.
Thus commences a bang and a rattle. The walker rocks back and forth just slightly. It takes ten seconds, no more, before Bones pops back out wearing one of the drivers’ open-face helmets, a pair of black-lens goggles hanging off in front of the B1’s own ocular lenses.
“HELLO, MASTER TEMMIN.”
Temmin falls to his knees, relieved. “Bones. I missed you, buddy.”
“I MISSED YOU. I PERFORMED VIO—”
Suddenly the top of the walker erupts in fire and shrapnel, exploding. Temmin is knocked backward, the breath knocked from his lungs in a thunderclap of air. He waves smoke out of his face and wipes sand from his eyes, and when it clears he sees the walker standing there—
It’s just two legs, now. The cockpit is peeled back like a blooming metal flower, its durasteel petals burned and charred.
Bones is nowhere to be found.
Bones. No, Bones, no…
He cries out, wondering what happened—did it detonate all on its own? Was there something the droid did to cause it to explode?
But then a pair of A-wings appear overhead, roaring past.
It was them. They shot the walker.
And Bones along with it.
Temmin crawls on his hands and knees, looking for parts of his droid—he finds seared, melted limbs. He finds rivets and scrap. But he sees nothing else. No skull. No program motherboard. He draws sand into his hands, but it slips through his fingers with nothing to show for it. Bones saved his life and now is gone. His best friend is slag.
Temmin presses his forehead to the hot sand and weeps.
“You don’t have to do this,” Conder says.
Sinjir huffs a lamentable sigh. “Apparently I do. Job’s a job and—oh, gods, I just started a new job. What is wrong with me?”
The two of them stand before Senator Tolwar Wartol’s Ganoidian cruiser. Thankfully, it’s here on Chandrila again and didn’t require them to take a quick hop to Blah Blah Boring Farmworld, Nakadia—or, worse, to the asteroid archipelago above Orish that Wartol and his like call home. Sinjir cares little why he’s back on Chandrila; the convenience of it suits him, and he is nothing if not a man who appreciates ease.
Conder makes that face—a little pouty, a lot dubious. One eyebrow up, a twist to his lips, a cockiness to his hips. “I don’t mean this specifically. I mean the whole package. The job, Chandrila, me.”
“You? I don’t follow.”
“You don’t have to be with me. Fate put us together again and—it’s just, we don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, but we do.” Sinjir cups the man’s beardy cheek first with a gentle caress and then with a sharp tap-tap-slap. “Dearest foolheart, all my time away was spent thinking about how much I hated you, and I hated you because I liked you so much. Too much, really. It’s gross the way I feel about you. It’s like—” Sinjir makes a face as if he just sucked on a dirty thumb. “It’s really not natural to me. But I learned that I don’t know what the precious hell I’m talking about. My mind is an idiot. My heart knows all. I want what I want. What I want is a beach view, a cold glass of something very drunk-making, and you. You, you, you, you noble, fuzzy-faced fool. So, if that means becoming just a hair respectable and entering into the service of our most estimable chancellor, then that is what will be done.”
“You aren’t the ‘settling down’ type.”
Sinjir rolls his eyes so hard he fears they might tumble out of his head. “Bah. Who says I’m ‘settling’? Settling is such a passive affair. Settling is how a Hutt-slug sits down. I’ve been settling since Endor. Settling for whatever comes my way. Usually a barstool, if we’re being honest. You, this job, this life—it’s all a mountain. And I intend quite fully to climb it.”
Conder smirks. Sinjir destroys that smirk with a hard kiss—hands behind the head, drawing the man’s face to his.
“Well, then,” Conder says.
“Well, then.” Sinjir turns back toward the cruiser. “I suppose I should do this.” At his feet sits the basket of pta fruit; looking at it again reminds him how much he admires the chancellor. Not for all her leadership and governance, which is fine, whatever, but for the potent venom she quite plainly conceals inside that boring, white-robed fa?ade. She’s a vicious twig, a veritable whipping branch of a human being, and he thinks they could have a long and fascinating professional relationship.
“I still think Tolwar is dirty.”
“I cannot speak to his cleanliness.”
“No, I mean—I think he’s corrupt.”
Sinjir shrugs. “Of course he’s corrupt. He’s a politician.”