“How…?” she asks.
“Who can say? I am called and conjured. I’m here to rescue you. My, my, we do find ourselves in cages, don’t we? And I don’t mean that as a thematic conceit, either, I mean—well. Look around you. Metal cage. Imprisoned once again. Naughty business, this Empire.”
“Well, get me out of here!” she says.
A hand falls on her shoulder. She startles, crying out, raising a fist to whoever would grab her—
“Whoa,” Temmin says, holding up both hands. “Hey, relax. It’s okay. It’s me. It’s your son. We’re getting you out of here. Me and Wedge. Just sit tight.”
Her son. He’s here. He came back for her. And there behind him is Wedge Antilles, and he’s got that boyish smile and those dark, warm eyes, for a moment the pulse in her neck quickens…
And yet how are they here in the cage with her? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Suddenly she’s doubling over, her middle clenching up as waves of heat and cold take turns crashing into her. Sweat slicks her brow even as her lips go dry. She tries to say her son’s name, but all she can manage is a sad mewling, like a rodent caught in the teeth of a trap.
She looks up to him, but he’s gone.
So, too, is Sinjir.
They were never here at all, were they?
No. Just illusions pressed upon her by the heat. Suddenly she understands Gomm—the sun and dust have blasted his sanity away, like a coat of paint scoured free. And she wonders if sanity is really just that—something to be worn off, a veneer that with enough pressure and effort can be stripped away. Civilization, too, can fail the same way, can’t it? Scraped down to nothing, leaving only the raw metal of anarchy and oppression behind. And madness. That is the Empire. That is what it has done to her and to the galaxy. A corrosive force, eating away at everyone and everything.
A new illusion seizes her. This hallucination reaches her ears before her eyes, and she hears the mechanized voice of her son’s droid, Mister Bones. Trails of sand slither along on a sudden wind like snakes, and they carry those familiar words of his, “ROGER-ROGER,” distorted and broken by static. And sure enough, the hallucination completes itself as it reaches her eyes, too. Norra lifts her head (no small effort) and glances over her shoulder to see Bones trotting along through the camp, pushed along by a stormtrooper whose mask shows the carvings of endless jagged spirals.
The trooper says to a nearby officer, “Found this out by the steppe. It was poking around another escape pod.”
“Look at this old thing,” the officer says, sitting under a small tent pitched in the dirt. It’s the same pock-cheeked prig who brought her here. Effney, she thinks his name is. How kind of him to participate in my hallucination, she thinks, and laughs out loud at the absurdity of it. He lifts the saw-toothed beak of the old droid with one hand while using the other to dab his brow with a wet sponge. “This old clanker has seen some modifications since the Clone Wars. Probably belongs to some nomad or spacer.”
“I fitted it with a restraining bolt,” the trooper says. “What do you want me to do with it?”
Effney pulverizes the sponge in his fist, and a stream of water spatters his outstretched tongue. Norra knows the droid is just a vision, but that water isn’t. It’s real. So real she can almost taste it. Water…
The officer, done drinking, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and answers: “I don’t care one way or the other. Destroy it. Wait. No. Send it on the next transport ship heading back to the Ravager. The Old Man is up there, and I’m sure Borrum would find it a fascinating piece of antiquity—maybe he’ll pull for us to get some more portions down here.”
“Yes, sir.” To the droid, the trooper says: “Move along, B1.”
“ROGER-ROGER.”
Norra pushes her forehead against the scabby metal of her prison. She watches Bones march away, his servos whining, his joints crunching as this world’s grit grinds between them.
This hallucination is quite the persistent one. Unless…
Poking around another escape pod…
What if…? Could it be?
What if Temmin sent Bones? Before the Moth hit hyperspace, what if he ejected the droid? Or himself? The heat once more is pushed away from her, this time not from feverish chills but from the cold realization that this is no phantasm. That mirage is no mirage: It’s Mister Bones. It’s really him.
I fitted it with a restraining bolt…
Send it up on the next transport ship…
No. She needs that droid. Bones can save her.
Norra has no plan. Not that there’s any time for one. Suddenly she calls out: “That’s my droid!”
The trooper halts. So does the officer.
Bones keeps walking, until the trooper grabs him with a rough glove and yanks him back. The officer and the trooper share a look, and with the hook of a finger Effney gestures them forward.
The officer stands in front of her.