Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(89)

Great. Flying into a war zone with a malfunctioning battle droid. In a stolen Imperial command shuttle, no less.

Ahead, the raging battle is like a storm. It has margins. It contains darkness. And she flies right into the heart of it.

Soldiers march below. Blasterfire pocks the underside of the shuttle—because those are Republic soldiers and she’s in an enemy shuttle. Of course they’ll take their shots. She eases back on the stick, lifting her ship higher in the air, away from the ground forces.

It’s about five hundred klicks yet to the base—

Her screens flash red. Two ships drop down from below and form up fast on her tail. Two Republic starfighters. The galaxy apparently thinks she enjoys irony, because the two ships it serves up are Y-wings, just like the one she used to pilot.

The shuttle shakes as they fire on her.

Her options are few, and none of them are good. She could try to signal them, but at best they won’t believe her, and at worst she risks the Empire picking up her transmission and realizing she’s stolen their ship. She could try to take them on, but the last thing she wants on her conscience is a pair of downed allies who had to die just so she could keep her cover. The one option she has is just to outfly them, which isn’t easy in this bucket-belly shuttle. A shuttle is an easy target.

But maybe they don’t want an easy target.

What if she gives them a better target?

There, ahead: just over those mounding dunes, one massive AT-AT walker marching over the surface of Jakku. It’s not alone: A pair of two-legged AT-ST chicken walkers strut on either side of it, firing cannons at a wave of advancing Republic soldiers.

There. That’ll give the Y-wings something to deal with. The Y-wing is a better bomber than it is a dogfighter—and that AT-AT will make a tantalizing target. Norra grits her teeth and brings the shuttle in low, aiming right for the stooping cockpit head of that big walker. The Y-wings just need to see that they have a better bull’s-eye and—

As she closes in—close! too close!—Norra pulls up on the shuttle hard. It shudders as it hits a patch of turbulence—she cuts the engines so the shuttle moves into a stall.

Beneath her, the Y-wings blast past. On toward the walker.

Did it. Now to get this ship out of its stall—

The engines rev but don’t fire.

No, no, no, c’mon, you old piece of Imperial scrap, c’mon—

The shuttle crests atop a pillow of air…and starts to fall back toward Jakku. Back toward the walkers, the soldiers, toward the unforgiving sand and stone. The ship spirals. Norra roars in frustration as she struggles with the controls, trying to get the engines to fire…

—

Down here it feels like he can breathe. Space is dizzying, but the planet’s surface as an entity separate from the blue sky gives Temmin his bearings. And with his bearings comes his confidence.

He snaps his fingers, cracks his knuckles, and grips the flight stick. He brings his fighter in and follows the rest of Phantom Squadron—Wedge calls for them to break formation over the battlefield and take out any TIEs or troop carriers they see. Temmin moves the X-wing down over the rolling hills of sand, and now, now he’s starting to feel it. The ship feels less like a machine in which he sits and more like a part of him—like a limb, like a set of wings, like an extension of his mind. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Ahead, a transport catches air over a dune, and he scissors his wings open and opens fire with all four laser cannons—the wings spit burning light, and he doesn’t even need to scan his scopes. Every blast hits the transport, and the front end of it craters in, dipping down into the sand and flipping its back end over its front. Whoom.

Koko’s mad hoot fills his ears as he pulls up on the stick. “You’re like a surgeon with that thing, Snap!”

Damn yeah I am.

Not far to port, a TIE striker pinwheels through the air, smashing into the sand thanks to Wedge, who crosses his T-65 in front of Temmin’s. In the distance, Temmin can see a walker stomping across the sand, firing at a pair of Y-wings that circle it like starving vultures.

Over the comm, Wedge says, “Let’s give the Yellow Aces some love, help them out with that walker.”

Phantom Squadron whips toward the walkers. Temmin thinks to engage the AT-STs—

But a better target presents itself—an Imperial command shuttle spiraling down toward the ground. He thinks to let it be, because that ship is about to be scrap and vapor. And yet, suddenly, the engines glow blue as they refire, and the shuttle pulls out of its tailspin just moments before impact. It catches air, the one wing nearly drawing a line in the sand before righting itself and heading in the other direction.

It’s a command shuttle. That means officers are on board.

Officers are high-value targets. That he knows from his days hunting Imperials with Mom and the others. Officers are their ones with faces on the pazaak cards—when you’re fighting a monster, you cut off the head and the hands. And that’s what he’s going to do here. He radios to Wedge: “See that Imperial shuttle, Phantom Leader? It’s fleeing, but I’m going after it.”

“All right. Good hunting, Snap. Don’t range too far.”

“You bet, Phantom Leader.”

Temmin grins, and guns the starfighter toward his new target.

—

Just as Norra rights the shuttle and points its nose toward the locational reticule of the distant Imperial base, a new blip appears on her scopes, blinking a warning.