“She’s got a point, too,” Solo says.
The boy’s face tightens into a stubborn mask. He wants this and he wants it now. Sinjir can’t blame him. The boy—really, a young man at this point—has been through considerable trauma. The events on Akiva, on Kashyyyk, and here on Chandrila with his own father? Sinjir considers himself a bulwark of unsentimentality (Conder…), but even that would rattle his cage. Temmin wants this. Temmin needs this.
And Sinjir needs it, too.
He misses Jas.
Sinjir fits with her. Like a painting ripped in half, then taped back together again. When he first saw her on the Endor moon, her about to retreat, him covered in Endor dirt and the blood of his fellow Imperials, he saw something in her eyes that just made sense. Absurd, beautiful sense. It’s not romantic, of course. It’s something far deeper. Something in their bones. It’s not that they’re all that alike, either. Maybe it’s better because they’re not all that alike.
He’d do anything for her.
Including run an Imperial blockade in a rickety, rag-dog freighter.
He tells them as much: “I fear you won’t dissuade us, Princess. Our destiny is a fixed point. We are going to Jakku. Will you stop us?”
Leia sighs. “Officially, I have to try.”
Blast it.
“But,” she adds, “if you have not noticed, I am very, very pregnant. I don’t think I realized you could be this pregnant. As such, I consider it entirely possible—likely, even!—that tomorrow morning I won’t be up early because tonight will be characteristically sleepless. Which means if you try to escape in the Falcon before dawn, I might miss the chance to stand in your way. Which would be a shame. So please, do me the favor and leave later in the day?”
Sinjir grins at her. Message received, Your Highness.
But the bigger smile comes from Solo. His face is damn near cut in half by the grin that spreads. It’s like he’s proud of her.
He leans in and kisses her cheek.
And that, Sinjir decides, is that. In the morning: Jakku calls.
—
Temmin pushes along a couple of crates on a grav-lift. Up over the landing platform he spies the edge of the sea and the searing laser line of morning sunlight burning along it. From the other side of the platform comes a familiar face: Sinjir. The ex-Imperial crosses the platform, walking in long, sleepy strides and yawning as he does.
They join up and walk side by side toward Hangar 34.
Sinjir yawns again. “It’s disgustingly early.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“If by sleep you mean sat up in bed, reading a book and sipping tea? Then yes, I slept.”
Temmin gives him a look. “And by tea you mean rum.”
“Pssh. No. I’m out of rum. This was proper Chandrilan raava.”
“You always find something new to drink, don’t you?”
“Variety is a vital component of a happy life.”
“Are you drunk right now?”
“I am a professional. I do not get ‘drunk.’ I get ‘pickled.’?”
Temmin gives him another look—this one so fierce he likes to imagine blaster bolts coming from his eyes and knocking that smug look off Sinjir’s face.
The onetime loyalty officer rolls his eyes. “Come now, I stopped partaking around midnight. Then I gathered supplies and…” His words drift.
“And what?”
“And we have company.”
Ahead, the hangar bay awaits. In it, a ship hides under a massive blue tarp, a ship shaped a good bit like the Millennium Falcon. Crossing in front of that ship are two Senate Guards. Red helmets. White plumage.
Batons at their side, hands waiting—as if ready to draw them.
More footsteps reach Temmin’s ears. He looks left and right—
More guards. Two coming up on each side.
“What is going on?” Temmin asks in a low voice.
“Just keep walking,” Sinjir says.
“Leia send these guys?”
“I hope not. Or we miscalculated in trusting her. Hand on your hip.”
He means: hand on your blaster. Temmin has a small pistol hanging there under the hem of his shirt. His fingers feel along the holster, drifting to the grip. These are Senate Guards and he hopes this is all aboveboard, but everything seemed okay on Liberation Day, too. Until it wasn’t.
“Stop there, sir,” one of the guards ahead says, one hand out peacefully—but the other idly fingering that baton at his hip.
It’s a threat. Subtle. But a threat just the same.
“Do you know who we are?” Sinjir asks, chin up, nose down. He has engaged full-bore haughty-prig mode. “Well. Do you?”
“You are Sinjir Rath Velus and that is Temmin Wexley.”
“Oh.” The ex-Imperial looks like someone popped his bubble. “Yes, that’s us, then. What is this all about?”
The lead guard stares out over a smashed-flat nose with steely eyes. “You’re to turn around and return to your quarters.”
“We have business with our ship,” Temmin says. “So move.”