Aftermath: Star Wars Read Free Page B

He protests, but she gives him a look—a look she’s practiced, a look where her face hardens like cooling steel, the look of a raptor before it takes your eyes. The smuggler gives a barely perceptible nod, and it’s good that he does. Because as soon as she’s down in the chair and grabbing the stick and throttle, she sees a pair of TIE fighters coming up fast from the front—
    Her teeth clamp down so hard she thinks her jaw might break. Lasers like demon fire score the sky ahead, coming right for them.
    She pulls back on the stick. The
Moth
ceases its dive toward the planet’s surface—the lasers just miss, passing under the hind end of the freighter, continuing on—
    Boom.
    They take out two of the TIE fighters that had been following close behind. And even as she continues hauling back on the stick, her stomach and heart trading places, the blood roaring in her ears, she loopty-loops the ship just in time to see the remaining two TIEs clip each other. Vertical wing panels smashing together, prying apart—each of the short-range Imperial fighters suddenly spinning away, pirouetting wildly through space like a pair of Republic Day firecracker pinwheels.
    “We got more incoming!” Owerto hollers from somewhere behind her—and then she hears the gears of the
Moth
’s twin cannons grinding as the turret spins into place and begins barking fire.
    Clouds whip past.
    The ship bangs and judders as it kicks a hole in the atmosphere.
    This is my home,
she thinks. Or was. She grew up on Akiva. More important, Norra then was like Norra now: She doesn’t much care for people. She went off on her own a lot. Explored the wilds outside the capital city of Myrra—the old temples, the cave systems, the rivers, the canyons.
    She knows those places. Every switchback, every bend, every nook and cranny. Again she thinks,
This is my home,
and with that mantra set to repeat, she stills her shaking hands and banks hard to starboard, corkscrewing the ship as laserfire blasts past.
    The planet’s surface comes up fast. Too fast, but she tells herself that she knows what she’s doing. Down there, the rise of lush hills and slick-faced cliffs give way to the Canyon of Akar—a winding serpentine valley, and it’s there she takes the
Moth.
Into the rain-forested channel. Drizzle speckling her view, streaking away. The wings of the freighter clip branches, tearing up a flurry of leaves as she jukes left and jerks right, making the
Moth
one helluva hard target to hit.
    Laserfire sears the canopy ahead.
    Then: a bank of fog.
    She pushes down on the stick, takes the freighter even lower. Here, the canyon is tighter. Trees stretching out like selfish hands, thrust up from rocky outcroppings. Norra deliberately clips these—again on the left, then on the right. The
Moth
’s turrets belt out cannon fire and suddenly a TIE comes tumbling end-over-end like a flung boulder—she has to bank the ship hard to dodge it. It smashes into a tree. A belching fireball.
    The freighter shudders.
    More sparks. The cabin goes dark. Owerto: “We’ve lost the turrets!”
    Norra thinks:
We don’t need them.
    Because she knows what’s coming. One of the oldest temple complexes—abandoned, an artifact of architecture from a time long, long ago, when the Ahia-Ko people dwelled here still. But before that: a cascading waterfall, a silver churn of water leaping over a cliff’s edge. A cliff they call the Witch’s Finger for the way it looks like a bent and accusing digit. There’s a space underneath that bridge of stone, a narrow channel.
Too narrow,
she thinks. But maybe not. Especially not with the turret gone. Too late to do differently now—
    She turns the freighter to its side—
    Ahead, the gap under the rock. Waterfall on one side. Jagged cliff face on the other. Norra stills her breathing. Opens her eyes wide.
    That mantra comes one last time, spoken aloud:
    “This is my home.”
    The freighter passes through the channel.
    It shakes like an old