Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath, #1)

by Chuck Wendig

He knows how war goes. It’s not many wars, but just one, drawn out again and again, cut up into slices so it seems more manageable.

Her heart is beating like a pulsar star before it goes dark.

How is that nobody talks about these wild metaphors of Wendig's that are always on the shining, razor thin line between the ridiculous and the grim?

“We want you to fly with us,” Captain Antilles says. She objects, of course—she’s been working for the rebels for years now, since before the destruction of the first Death Star, but as a freighter pilot. Carrying message droids, or smuggling weapons, or just shuttling people from planet to planet and base to base. “And that doesn’t change the kind of pilot you are,” he says. “You outran a Star Destroyer. You forced two TIE interceptors to crash into each other. You’ve always been a great pilot. And we need you now for when General Solo gets those shield generators down.” He asks her again: Is she in? Will she fly with the red and the gold? Yes. She says yes. Because of course she does—how could she say otherwise?

Once upon a time, he crashed an A-wing at the lip of a volcano—one of his first runs out as a pilot for the then-burgeoning Rebel Alliance, at the urging of a friend—a rebel agent known only as Fulcrum.

Unless you're a Rebels fan, you might not know the identities of the people who went by that moniker. First it was the former padawan of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano. Then when her cover was blown entirely, the mantle was taken up by rogue Imperial Security Bureau Agent Alexsandr Kallus.

Whatever the case, he’s pretty sure the leg isn’t busted. But it sure hurts from his jump out of the back of that Starhopper—moments before he set the torpedoes to blow.

Wedge isn’t a killer. He’s a pilot, and taking down other pilots means ending the lives of combatants. Comm officers aren’t soldiers, aren’t pilots. They’re just people. Wedge thinks: That’s a lesson we could stand to learn. Imperials are just like us.

Wedge zeros in on the emergency channel, then draws the mike out of the console, the metal cold in his hand. Into it he starts to speak: “This is Captain Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. Repeat: This is Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. I am trapped on the Star Destroyer Vigilance in the space above Akiva, and I am in—” A bright light. The bark of a blaster. He cries out in pain as a laser bolt burns a hole through his shoulder. His hand reflexively opens—the microphone clatters away. He paws at his hip for his own blaster, but another shot and the weapon that hung there is quickly spun to slag and knocked off his belt. Wedge, breathing deep, gritting his teeth against the pain, wheels on his attacker. He expects to meet some stormtrooper, or ironically a comm officer who is just returning from a meal. But no. The woman standing there is in a crisp admiral’s uniform. She’s dark-skinned, with cold brown eyes to match. In her hand, a long-barreled pistol—a unique blaster of elegant, mirrored chrome. “Please,” he says, clutching his shoulder, favoring his leg. She takes three steps into the room. “I cannot have you complicating what’s about to happen. The future of the Empire—of the whole galaxy—is at stake.” And then, a flash of surprising empathy. “I’m sorry.” “Wait. Let’s talk this out.” He swallows hard, wincing. “It’s over. You know it’s over. We can negotiate a surrender, a meaningful surrender. Right here, right now, you and I can—” Behind her, a small squadron of...

Hedging her bets that she might need him to negotiate that surrender after all? She had to have known all along that she wasn't going to get much useful information out of torturing Wedge. Or is it that in "Sloane's Empire", such an escalation as shooting a prisoner of war outright isn't condoned?

The charter of Chancellor maintains the emergency powers granted by Palpatine, and they can persist no longer. They are a poison to democracy. They undercut my role.”

“Democracy is not in need of defense. People are. And it’s why we’ll keep that ten percent. A peacekeeping force. The rest of our efforts will go toward training the militaries of other worlds. We will be a true Galactic alliance, and not a false one with an authoritarian sun at its center.”

Hostis scowls. Gravely he says: “Then we shall see only endless war, Chancellor. Smaller armies just means smaller civil wars all across the galaxy. It means oppression will grow like weeds and we won’t have the eyes or the control to stop it. In this time of upheaval, the galaxy will need law and order and you will grant it only chaos. It is that vulnerability that caused the rise of the Empire in the first place. The people of the galaxy reaching out, looking for a central authority, desperate for protection…”

“My mind is made up. It’s why I brought you both here. I need you to see the bodies. The waste. The tragedy of war. I need you to see why we need to end it. I cannot ask our people to fight for this again and again. Not once the Empire is truly diminished.”

In one breath she dismisses the war powers of her office as.chancellor. in the next she decides unilaterally the fate of the galaxy? trying to decide if the words of dismay at the cost of war sound fake because of my own cynicism...or the author's. This is a set up.

Surat stands over her, hands clasped in front of him. He seethes: “The New Republic will make no room for the likes of me. I will not face extinction at the hands of a choir of overly moralistic do-gooders. The Empire allows me to work, and so the Empire remains my friend. And now, as it turns out, I have a new gift for my friend.”

He decided that gambling was never about the credits. It was always about the risk. The risk, and the thrill it brings. Sinjir has no love of that thrill.

“This isn’t some kind of inspirational story. Some scrappy, ragtag underdog tale, some pugilistic match where we’re the goodhearted gladiator who brings down the oppressive regime that put him in the arena. They get to have that narrative. We are the ones who enslaved whole worlds full of alien inhabitants. We are the ones who built something called a Death Star under the leadership of a decrepit old goblin who believed in the ‘dark side’ of some ancient, insane religion.”

The reason I’m telling you this is that you think you’re my enemy, and that’s not true, not at all. The Empire is my enemy. The Empire has always been my enemy. I hunted my own kind. I hurt them. I was made to doubt them, to see the weakness in them. And I saw so much weakness and ruination. In them.” And in myself. “They were my enemy then and remain my enemy now. I’ve just scrapped the uniform.”

“Thanks, Darth Obvious. Or is it Emperor Palpable?

Cobb says: “Next time you wanna pretend to be a gunfighter, best to shoot first, talk later. Bye now.”

“A-kee a’ tolo, fah-roo kah.”

Temmin excused it that the ex-Imperial and the bounty hunter would do the same. They’d sell his skin soon as someone offered enough credits—he said to himself, They don’t have any scruples. They don’t have a code. But it turns out he was the one without scruples. Temmin is the one without a code.

The Empire pretends it’s about law and order, but at the end of the day, it’s about dressing up oppression in the costume of justice.

But failure cannot be the end of it. Failure has to be illuminating: an instruction manual written in scar tissue.

Jas doesn’t know what’s going on. But chaos has sunk its teeth into the situation. And in chaos, there lurks opportunity.

“Linara!” he cries. “Linara, save me!” But his girlfriend merely looks down at him the way a disappointed mother looks down at her troublemaker child. She asks Kars: “Is there anything I can do?” The pirate chuckles, then tosses her a roll of bonding tape. “Why not close up that gassy vent of his he calls a mouth?” Borgin protests: “Linara, I’ve been good to you. We love each other. Don’t you do this to me. I’ll punish you! I’ll punish your whole family! I’ll end their loans and stack debtors against them and—” She slaps the tape against his mouth. And she doesn’t stop there. She winds it around his head once, twice, a third time. It looks like she’s enjoying it. “Mmph! Mmph.” Translation: The Emperor will have your heads for this.

Jintar once more kneels down. “You’re on the wrong side of history, Bor. You never did understand that the galaxy was more than one man.”

“You’ll pay for this.” “No,” she says. “We’ll get paid for this.”

“If you only have one thing, then why ask me what I’m having?” The bartender shrugs and snorts. “People like the illusion of choice. Gives them comfort in these strange times.”