Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(106)
“Engine five just went dark!” an ensign yells.
“Now sub-engines three through six!” an engineering officer cries.
The Concord is trying to drag us down to Jakku. The nerve. “Fire all weapons at that Starhawk—”
“Sir,” Pierson responds, “the weapon systems will cycle in two minutes. We already hit them with everything we had on your orders.”
“Then send TIEs after it!”
“But they’re protecting our flank. The engines!”
Again the ship shakes. Worse this time. And when it does, it’s like trying to move something heavy and failing until it suddenly gives way—the Ravager slides and dips downward so hard, Randd’s jaw snaps tight, teeth closing hard on his tongue. He tastes blood and curses.
“The atmosphere,” Pierson says. “We’re entering atmo, sir.”
“Bolster the engines! Bolster the repulsors! Bolster everything!”
But in his head, Randd knows the score: It is too late. The Ravager is done for. He has squandered his chance and now, hope is lost. The greatest weapon in the Empire’s arsenal is lost because of him. A flagging fear nags him: It should be Rae Sloane in this chair, not me.
The one thing about Randd is that he is not a sycophant. He is no zealot. He admires Rax. He trusted him. But he will not be crucified for this.
In the chaos of the moment—the flickering lights, the shaking ship, the flurry of movement going on across the bridge—Randd sneaks quietly away, boards an escape pod, and jettisons himself into space.
—
The Concord has leashed the larger ship with its powerful tractor beam and draws it down toward atmosphere. New Republic starfighters hit the engines of the Ravager, one after the other, again and again, a returning loop of fire while a pair of CR90s keep the TIEs off their backs. The Unity, the last remaining Starhawk, has pulled back to a safe distance and is using its considerable weapons load to provide the Concord with cover, peppering the nearby Star Destroyers with as much fire as it can muster.
And then the Starhawk dips considerably as the atmosphere kisses it, the underside of the ship glowing with the sudden heat of reentry.
Blade Squadron reports that the last of the Ravager’s main engines are out. Only the sub-engines remain, and they won’t save it.
The dreadnought’s front end is the first to follow the Starhawk, carving a line across the top of the sky where the black goes to blue like a fading bruise—an aura of fire begins to glow around the Ravager’s fore.
Ackbar watches the two titans fall.
The Concord goes first. Agate likely remains on board. She won’t answer his comms, but a scan of the Starhawk shows that not a single pod remains undamaged, and the fighter bays are empty or destroyed. She has no way off that ship, and it is too late and too risky for a rescue.
As the Starhawk drops, it drags the Ravager with it. Like a rider pulling its beast mount toward the edge of a waterfall, closer, closer—
Until both plunge through space and into sky. Until the gravity throttles each and draws them ineluctably downward.
Ackbar grabs the comm and warns those below: “Soldiers and pilots of the New Republic! The dreadnought Ravager is down—it falls to Jakku! Beware debris and take cover!”
All around him are the cheers of those on the bridge of the Home One as they watch the titanic vessel go faster and faster toward Jakku. But Ackbar does not cheer. He nods quietly and mutters a small entreaty to the Force, asking it to protect those down below, underneath these falling giants, and further, to accept Kyrsta Agate as one of its own.
—
I’m really getting the hang of this.
On Akiva, they have these bugs that fly over still water—polywings, they’re called—and they flit over the surface, changing course like the snap of one’s fingers. They move this way and that, snagging smaller flies out of the air and eating them on the go, chomp.
Temmin wants to be like those polywings. That’s how he sees his X-wing. He pivots the starfighter fast as lightning, moving erratically so that the TIEs don’t see him coming. His heart is going so fast in his chest he fears it’s going to punch its way out. His blood roars like a river in his ears. An effervescent thrill elevates him to almost giddy heights. He’s buoyed, too, by knowing that his mother is still alive. And that Bones is protecting her.
This is a good day, he thinks. The New Republic is going to win this war. My mother is alive. My best friend is here. And I’m in an X-wing! And I’m not dead! He cackles like Koko with his radio mike on. Koko cackles right back as the two of them cross in front of the other, slaloming around each other, spitting lasers at escaping TIEs.
One forms up on Wedge’s tail, and Temmin bites his lip to repress the grin that threatens to split his whole face. “Phantom Leader, you’ve got a bug on your back. Lemme swat him for you.” Wedge brings the X-wing low over a dry red ravine, past a squadron of New Republic soldiers taking cover there in the shadows afforded by the gulley. The TIE whips through the space behind Phantom Leader’s X-wing, and Temmin thinks to come in at an odd angle—otherwise, he risks accidentally hitting Wedge with laserfire. He swoops left then turns the nose of his ship right again—
The TIE lines up in his sights. But Temmin doesn’t need screens. He fires, and the four cannons on his open-foil wings throw spears of plasma—