Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(88)

Phantom Squadron leapt out of lightspeed late to the battle, and like a massive beast it swallowed him whole.

TIEs roar past. He’s separated from the others. Ahead, Star Destroyers loom in space that turns with a kaleidoscopic twist. A Corellian corvette plunges through open space in front of him, its back end breaking apart in plumes of fire that go from red to green to gold as different gases and fuels vent into the black. Temmin screams, pulling back on the flight stick and trying to right the old X-wing he pilots—but he doesn’t know which way is up, down, left, right. Use the screens. Use the console. He looks, finds the stabilizer display, then looks up again and—

Alarms go off.

I’m about to crash into the side of a New Republic frigate. The side of that ship looms large, coming up fast like a wall crashing down—

Another scream as Temmin turns the X-wing starboard, spiraling through the battle zone so fast he feels like he’s about to puke in his helmet.

The ship rocks with laserfire coming from behind. His astromech—a hexagonal-domed droid with designation R3-W5—whistles, and his screen fills with warnings. His scopes show he’s not alone—a pair of TIEs are on him like a set of blackflies on a nerf’s haunches, except he doesn’t have a tail with which to swish them away. And he just can’t shake them. They sense the stink of sickness on him—he’s like the weak one in the pack, the one a predator knows instinctively to hunt. Blast it all to hell, c’mon, Temmin, get your head out of your hind end and stay alive—

Boom. One of the TIE fighters explodes, turning into a fiery cannonball alongside him. It tumbles away, destroyed. Koko’s voice fills his comms with a whoop and a holler. The Narquois cackles and says: “One down, the whole damn Empire to go!” The fuzzy blue pilot whistles and belches into the mike just before his X-wing whips past.

Next it’s Jethpur, the Quarren: He says something in Quarrenese, but Temmin has no idea what it is. Yarra fills in the details: “Jeth is right. Snap, you’re like a sparking wire out there.” The Twi’lek comes out alongside him as her Y-wing blasts through the second of the TIEs sticking to him like a burr.

Wedge’s X-wing pulls out in front. “Everyone form up on me. Snap, you good? You want to set coordinates home, nobody would blame you.”

“I’d blame you!” Koko barks, then belches again.

“No,” Temmin says, even though he wants to say Yes, yes, yeah, I totally made a mistake, I need to go home, I didn’t think this through. But then he thinks of his mother. She’s here. So is he. “I’m good. I’ll stick with you. But I gotta be honest, it’s crazy up here.”

And it is. Even forming up behind Wedge and having someone to follow—the sheer amount of visual information is about to give him a nosebleed. Streaking lines of plasma. Torpedoes corkscrewing in the distance between capital ships. Fighters everywhere, and fire, and debris, not to mention that ring of Star Destroyers protecting the dreadnought from the encroaching New Republic capital ships…

“Kid’s right,” Yarra says. “It’s a little too hot here. Could use some room to breathe.” Above them, an A-wing shears through the vacuum. “Got ideas?”

It’s Temmin who has one: “Maybe we head down below. We can punch a hole in their air-to-space defenses, get some clearance for our ground forces.” It’s a dumb idea, he knows it is. And a selfish one—he just wants to get the hell out of here. And he wants to be as close to Jakku as possible. That’s where his mother, his droid, and his friend Jas are.

So it surprises him when Wedge agrees. “Snap, that’s a fine idea. All right, Phantom Squadron. Let’s get a closer look at Jakku. Take out as many of the bad guys as you can on the way.”

Koko whoops.

Temmin takes a deep breath and pushes down on the flight stick, following Wedge and the others through the chaos. I’m coming, Mom.

—

Black pillars of smoke rise above the horizon as Norra pulls the Imperial shuttle over the last canyon ridge and back down over the dunes. Above, she sees the two fleets in orbit. The skies flash and pulse with the lightning of ship-to-ship artillery. Down here, fighters already swarm. The New Republic is establishing landing zones a hundred klicks east, toward Cratertown—she sees the U-wings swooping in like fat birds, disgorging commandos. Already she’s starting to see the sands littered with debris: skeletal husks and bent beams smoldering in the hellish Jakku sun. Her eyes follow movement and she sees a larger ship—a corvette, by the looks of it—streaking down toward the surface of faraway mountains. The way it moves, it’s like slow motion—fire and smoke trailing as bits fall away, catching the light. Like a firework falling back to ground. It would be beautiful if she didn’t know there were lives at stake. Those inside may already be dead. If not now, then soon, when it hits. (A sad reality of every downed ship: Not everyone makes it to an escape pod.)

“I got a bad feeling about this,” she tells Bones, who sits dutifully next to her. Servos whine as the droid turns his head toward her.

“PREPARE TO FIRE ALL CANNONS,” Bones says—his voice warping so that it has a strange, hard-angle accent to it. “COMMENTARY: I SAY WE BLAST THE MEATBAG AND SAVE YOU THE TROUBLE, MASTER.”

“Bones, are you all right?”

The droid seizes up for a moment, then relaxes once more. “SORRY, MASTER TEMMIN’S MOM.” The droid shrugs. “GLITCH.”