Free Aftermath: Star Wars by Chuck Wendig

names she knows. But their defeat over Endor, plus the New Republic making deals with governors and sector heads left and right in order to scoop up Imperial naval ships? Not to mention the threat of internal schism. It’s left her reeling. Grasping for details she once found vital. Details that can no longer be important.
    Behind her: the archivist, the little man who will take notes on the meeting, inscribing the results of the summit so that the history of the Imperial resurgence is neatly writ and officially recorded. Next to him, her assistant on this mission, a bright-eyed young Corellian woman named Adea Rite. Then a half squadron of stormtroopers. Those with the best test scores, taken from the rosters of the
Vigilance.
They stand guard over her new prisoner: Captain Wedge Antilles. The rebel lies on a floating medical table, unconscious from the drugs pumping into his arm. The medical droid hovers over him, checking vitals, securing the tubing.
    A fly in the ointment, that one.
    A dangerous one. The rebels will come looking.
    And then what?
    Pressure lives in the hinge of her jaw. This has to work. All of it. The meeting must yield results. The future of the Empire—and the stability of the galaxy—is counting on that.
    The meeting wasn’t her idea alone, though those gathered think it is. All the more reason for this to play out according to her design and without any further hitches.
If this falls apart, they’ll blame me.
    Below, the city of Myrra. A sprawling, choked mess. Strange-angled buildings pushing up out of the jungle, though not without the jungle trying to fight back: vines like cruel fingers draped over the walls and clay-tile rooftops as if they’re trying to pull apart the city in slow motion. Between the buildings are pathways too narrow to be called roads—just alleyways, really, and one of the things that makes Imperial occupation here tricky. Those “streets” are too narrow for any of their transports with the exception of speeder bikes, and even then the corners are too sharp for those speeders to turn.
    It won’t matter,
she tells herself.
This is temporary.
The meeting cannot last forever (though she’s sure it will feel like it, at times).
    The shuttle pivots hard, swooping low over the city. Dead ahead, the palace of their ally, the Satrap Isstra Dirus, an execrable sycophant, though she reminds herself that his particular brand is a necessary one sometimes—the machine only works when all the parts agree. The palace itself is a pompous affair: an old city temple repurposed to fit the satrapy’s opulence. Quartzine walls shot through with bright vermilion—walls tipped with useless golden pikes, windows so multifaceted and crystalline that while they look beautiful, they fail to maintain the characteristic that windows are meant to demonstrate: transparency. She far prefers the stern, uncompromising design of the—
    Ahead, movement.
    Someone is zip-lining across from a nearby comm tower—a tower that looks to long have been out of use, once part of a capitol building that has failed to maintain proper government since the satrapy seized total power out here (not coincidentally when the Empire seized the Galactic Senate). Rae taps a button, spins a dial—
    A portion of the HUD captures the image of the zip-lining interloper, zooming in. Zabrak, by the looks of the horns on the head. Female. Rifle on her back. A long rifle, too—a sniper.
    Bounty hunter.
    Rae Sloane growls, springs up out of her chair and to the chair and console behind her—the gunnery station. Whoever that Zabrak is, Rae has neither the time nor the patience to figure it out—and while it’s likely gauche for an admiral to man the guns, it is what it is.
    Let them worry.
    She pulls up the controls and begins to fire.
    —
    Jas prays the cable she fired from this tower to the roof far across the way will hold her. It’s long and the tower it’s moored to is weak. Even now she hears it groaning behind