Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(12)

Above his head, a light blinks on. Yellow, then green.

It’s a signal.

One of the escape pods just went active.

Oh, no.

She’s doing it again.

—

There. The clack-and-clatter of someone grabbing a gun off one of the rack mounts along the hallway reaches Jas’s ears—she turns toward the sound, sees Norra moving past. Blaster rifle in hand. Leather go-bag over her shoulder.

“What is going on?” Jas asks—just as the ship takes a hit and she staggers hard into the wall. Pain blooms in her shoulder, but she shakes it off and hurries after Norra.

“The Empire. They’re here.”

“Who? Sloane?”

“All of them.”

Norra jabs her heel into a metal button—a door slides open with a plume of steam. It’s one of the escape pods.

“What are you doing? We’re not abandoning ship. Are we abandoning ship? Norra, hold on—”

Norra starts buckling herself into the escape pod. “Keep them safe. Temmin especially. That’s on you.”

Norra’s leaving. Doesn’t take a scientist to figure that out. The burden of it all has pressed Norra down so far it’s broken her. Now she thinks to go at this all by herself: a rogue element. Like you, Jas.

Jas can handle that life. But the same life will get Norra killed.

As soon as the pod door starts to close, Jas jabs her hand against the button and it reopens. The ship takes another hard hit from laserfire, causing Jas to tumble into the pod itself, crashing bodily into Norra. A tangle of limbs. Scrabbling, struggling. Norra elbows her in the side. “Get out!” she seethes in Jas’s ear. “Get back to the ship. That’s an order.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“I’m your commander! Or whatever!”

Jas’s fingers fumble for Norra’s straps and she furiously starts to undo them. The plan is to haul Norra out by whatever part the bounty hunter can grab: neck, ears, ankle, doesn’t matter.

Problem, though: Norra’s stronger than Jas realizes. She’s lean and she’s tough and she’s not just some soft-around-the-middle pilot content to stay buckled into a flight chair. Norra’s hard like a stone, and she roots herself to the pod, kneeing the other woman in the stomach.

Norra grits her teeth, and Jas sees a grim determination take hold in the woman’s eyes. “I’m going down there. I’m going for Sloane. You can either get out of this pod or you can stay in and take the ride.”

For Jas, the choice is no choice at all. No hesitation marks the moment. She reaches back and slaps the red button to the right of the door.

“I’m with you, Norra.”

The lights dim. The door starts to close. The escape pod rocks free of the Moth, jettisoning itself into space, carrying the two of them through chaos toward the planet’s surface.

—

She’s leaving me behind again, she’s going off by herself and this time she’s going to get herself killed. Temmin frantically works to get himself up out of the chair—even as he sees the hyperspace computer furiously conjuring a navigational path one digit at a time, even as a trio of torpedoes zero in on their position.

The light above his head goes red.

The pod is gone.

It shows on his scopes—a faint blurry line. Just a blip in a screen full of red. He cries out, a wordless sound.

Sinjir growls at him: “Sit down! We’re about to leap.”

Furiously, Temmin reaches to the hyperspace navigation system, tries to turn it off—but it’s locked. Damnit, Mom. She did that on purpose, and he doesn’t know the passcode to get it to stop. Wait. A new idea hits him. There’s a second pod. If he could make it fast enough, if he could run through the ship and launch…

But Sinjir can’t fly this ship. Bones can’t, either.

Every cell inside his body wants to abandon this ship and go after his mother. But his mind is clear and he knows the score: Someone has to get back to Chandrila. Someone has to tell Leia: The Empire is here.

Temmin punches the back of the seat and slides back into it. He grabs the flight stick with one hand and brings his other to his mouth, yelling into his comlink: “Bones! Can you get to the second pod?”

The droid’s distorted voice crackles over the link.

“ROGER-ROGER, MASTER TEMMIN.”

“Go. Now. I’ll buy us a minute,” Temmin says. Sinjir gives him a look, but Temmin keeps talking to his droid over his wrist comm: “Launch and get to Jakku. Find Mom. Protect Mom. At any cost!”

“ROGER-ROGER. NONE SHALL HARM HER OR THEY WILL BE CONVERTED TO A PLEASING BLOOD MIST.”

“Go!”

Temmin grits his teeth so hard he’s pretty sure they start to crack. He whips the freighter back and forth even as his bewildered ex-Imperial gunner fires fruitlessly at the swooping TIEs. New alarms start kicking off, the sounds coming faster and faster, indicating that the torpedoes are closing in—sizzling blue arrows of vicious energy aiming to blow the Moth clean in half. And they might if I can’t manage some fancy flying.

He looks at the light above his head.

Still dark. Still dark…

One of the torpedoes is on them, roaring up from behind. Temmin yells, “Hold on!” and does a hard inverted roll, bringing the ship up and back in a gut-churning loop. The torpedo passes by, and scanners show it and one of the TIEs going dark. One torpedo down, but two more are coming in heavy, and he sees them screwing through space right toward the Moth.