Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (2 page)

Mumma’s smile could make Ciena feel like she’d stepped into a patch of sunshine. “All right.”

It didn’t matter when they
finished climbing. The Empire would always, always be waiting for her.

As Mumma had promised, they reached the paddock in plenty of time. But as her parents were paying for a day’s corralling and feed, Ciena heard the laughter.

“They rode that filthy muunyak to the Imperial ceremony!” yelled a teenage second-wave boy. The livid red of his cloak reminded Ciena of an open sore. “They’re
going to
stink up the entire place.”

Ciena felt her cheeks flush warm, but she refused to look at the kids taunting her any longer. Instead she patted the muunyak’s side; it blinked at her, patient as ever. “We’ll
come back for you later,” she promised. “Don’t be lonely.” No taunts from some stupid big kids could make her ashamed of the beast. She loved it
and
its smell. Stupid
second-wavers
didn’t understand what it meant to be close to your animals, or to the land.

Yet now that she saw hundreds of second-wave folk in their long silken cloaks and richly quilted clothing, Ciena looked down at her light brown dress and felt shabby. Always, before, she had
liked this dress, because the fabric was only slightly paler than her skin, and she liked that they matched. Now she noticed
the ragged hem and the loose threads at the sleeves.

“Don’t let them affect you.” Her father’s face had become tense, pinched. “Their day is over, and they know it.”

“Paron,”
whispered Ciena’s mother as she clutched her husband’s arm. “Keep your voice down.”

He continued with more discretion but even greater pride. “The Empire respects hard work. Absolute loyalty. Their values are
like ours. Those second-wave folk—they don’t think
about anything but lining their own pockets.”

That meant making money. Ciena knew this because her father said it often, always about the second-wavers who lived in the highest mountains. She didn’t see what was so bad about making
money, really. But other things were more important…especially honor.

Ciena and every other resident
of the Jelucan valleys were descended from loyalists cast out of their homeworld after the overthrow of their king. One and all, their people had chosen exile
rather than betray their allegiance to their leader. Hard as life on Jelucan was, unceasing as their labor and poverty had been ever since, the people of the valleys still took pride in their
ancestors’ choice. Like every other child in
her village, Ciena had been raised knowing that her word was her bond and her honor the only possession that could ever truly matter.

Let the second-wavers strut around in their new coats and shiny jewelry. Ciena’s plain cloak had been woven by her mother, the wool spun from their muunyak’s fur; her leather
bracelet was rebraided and expanded as she grew so it would remain on her wrist her
entire life. She owned little, but everything she had—everything she did—contained meaning and value.
People from the mountains couldn’t understand that.

As if he could read his daughter’s thoughts, Paron Ree continued, “We’ll have different opportunities now. Better ones. We’ve already seen that, haven’t
we?”

Ciena’s mother smiled as she wrapped her pale gray scarf more tightly around
her hair. Just three days before, she’d been offered a supervisory position at the nearby mine—the
kind of authority the second-wavers tended to save for their own. But the Empire was in charge now. Everything would change.

“You’ll have more choices, Ciena. You have the chance to do more. To be more.” Paron Ree smiled down at his daughter with stern but unmistakable pride. “The Force is
guiding this.”

So far as Ciena could tell from the few holos she’d ever been able to watch, most people in the galaxy no longer believed in the Force, the energy that allowed people to become one with
the universe. Even she sometimes wondered whether there could ever have been such a thing as a Jedi Knight. The amazing tales the elders told of valiant heroes with lightsabers, who could
bend
minds, levitate objects—surely those were only stories.

But the Force had to be real, because it had brought the Empire to Jelucan to change all their futures, forever.

“People of Jelucan, today represents both an ending and a beginning,” said the senior Imperial official at the celebration, a man called Grand Moff Tarkin.

(Ciena knew that was his title and his name, but she
wasn’t sure whether his title was Grand Moff and his name Tarkin—or whether his name was Moff Tarkin and he was very grand
indeed. She’d ask later, when no second-wavers were around to mock her for not knowing.)

Tarkin continued: “On this day ends your isolation from the greater galaxy. Instead, Jelucan begins a new and glorious future by assuming its rightful place within the Empire!”

Applause and cheers filled the air, and Ciena clapped along with all the rest. But her sharp eyes picked out a few people who remained silent—elders, mostly, who would have been alive
since before the Clone Wars. They stood there, still and grave, more like mourners at a funeral or witnesses to public dishonor. One silver-haired, pale-skinned woman bowed her head, and a tear ran
down her
cheek. Ciena wondered if perhaps she’d had a son or daughter who died in the wars and seeing all these soldiers had reminded her of the loss and made her sad on such a happy day.

Because there were
so many
soldiers—officers in crisp black or gray uniforms and stormtroopers in gleaming white armor. And there seemed to be nearly as many ships as troops:
hard-cornered TIE fighters black as
obsidian, assault cruisers the same gray as mountain granite, and high above in orbit, twinkling like the south star at morning, a few specks that she knew were
actually Star Destroyers. Each and every Star Destroyer was bigger than the entire city of Valentia, they said, two or three times over.

Just the thought of it made Ciena’s heart swell with pride. Now she had become part of the Empire—not
only her planet but she herself, too. The Empire governed the whole galaxy. The
Imperial fleet’s power exceeded that of any other fighting force in all of history. Seeing the ships fly overhead in precise formation, never deviating from their prescribed paths, thrilled
her to the bone.

This was strength, grandeur, majesty. This was the kind of honor and discipline she’d been raised to
value, but taken to heights of which she’d never dreamed. Nothing could be more
beautiful than this, she thought.

Unless someday she could actually fly one of those ships herself.

Grand Moff Tarkin kept speaking, saying something about Separatist worlds that made everybody seem uncomfortable for a moment, but then he went back to how great the Empire was and how proud
everyone had
to be. Ciena cheered when the others did, but by then she was wholly focused on the nearest ship, a shuttle just like the one she thought she’d seen in the sky. If only she could
get a closer look…

Maybe after the ceremony she could.

When the speeches and music ended, the Kyrells had a private reception to attend with Very Important Officials, and they told Dalven to keep an eye on Thane.
As they said the
words, Thane silently estimated how long it would be before Dalven ditched him to go hang out with friends.
Five minutes,
he thought.
Five or six.

For once, he’d overestimated Dalven, who’d abandoned his little brother after only three minutes.

But Thane could take care of himself. More important, he could get a lot closer to the Imperial hangar on his own.

Although
most of the Imperial ships had already zoomed back to their Star Destroyers, or to one of the new facilities being built on the southern plateaus, a few remained in the Imperial hangar.
The nearest was a
Lambda
-class shuttle, just like the one Thane was certain he’d seen in the sky earlier.

Sure, the signs said to stay back. But sometimes people assumed little kids couldn’t read signs. Thane
figured he was still young enough to get away with that excuse if anybody caught
him.

All he wanted to do was look at the ship up close—maybe touch it, just once.

So he crept around to the back of the raised stage erected for the day’s speeches, then ducked under it. Although Thane had to keep his head low, he could run beneath it all the way to the
hangar itself. When he emerged,
he smiled with pride, then saw to his disappointment that he wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea. Several other kids he knew from his school had
gathered nearby, too—slightly older boys, ones he’d never liked—and one other, a skinny girl dressed in shabby clothes that marked her as someone from the valleys. Next to the
brilliant crimson and gold of the boys’ robes, her brown dress reminded
Thane of an autumn leaf about to fall.

“What are you doing here, valley scum?” said Mothar Drik, the grin on his broad face nastier than usual.

The awestruck smile faded from the girl’s face as she looked from the shuttlecraft toward her new tormentors. “I just wanted to see the ship. Same as you.”

Mothar made an obscene gesture. “Go back to your sty and slop out the dung. That’s where
you belong.”

The girl didn’t budge. Instead she balled her hands into fists. “If I were slopping out dung, I’d have to start with you.”

Thane laughed out loud. A few of the other boys saw him, then. One of them said, “Hey, Thane. Going to help take out the trash?”

They meant that they were going to beat up the girl from the valleys. Six of them, one of her: Those were the kind of odds
that only appealed to a bully.

Growing up with Oris Kyrell as a father had taught Thane many things. It had taught him how strictly and harshly rules could be enforced. Taught him that his brother responded to their
father’s cruelty by being equally cruel to Thane, if not worse. Taught him that it didn’t matter who was really right or wrong—because the rules were set by whoever held the
cane.

Above all, it had taught him to
hate
bullies.

“Yeah,” Thane said. “I’ll take out the trash.” With that, he charged straight at Mothar.

The idiot never saw it coming; his breath went out in a
whuff
of surprise as he landed on his back, hard. Thane got in a couple of punches before someone towed him off Mothar, and when he
saw another of the boys reaching for his collar, he
prepared for the inevitable fist to the face—but the skinny girl flung herself onto his attacker, pulling the boy’s arm back.
“You let him go!” she yelled.

Two against six still wasn’t great odds, but the girl fought hard. Thane knew he did, too, mostly because, thanks to Dalven, he’d already learned how to take a hit and keep going.
Still, the two of them were getting herded toward a
corner, Thane already had a bloody lip, and this wasn’t going to end well—

“What’s going on here?”

Everyone froze. Only five meters away stood Grand Moff Tarkin, surrounded by Imperial officers and white-armored stormtroopers. At the sight of them, Mothar fled, his toadies at his heels. That
left Thane and the girl standing there alone.

“Well?” Tarkin said, strolling closer. His
face could have been etched in a quartz crystal, with its hard, pale lines.

The girl stepped forward. “It’s my fault,” she said. “The other boys were going to beat me up, and he tried to stop them.”

“Very silly of you,” Tarkin said to Thane. He seemed amused. “To fling yourself into a fight you would have lost? Never go up against superior forces, lad. It doesn’t end
well.”

Thane
thought fast. “It did today, because of you.”

Tarkin chuckled. “You realized an even stronger force would be along shortly, then? Excellent strategic thinking. Well done, my boy.”

They were off the hook now, but the girl from the valleys didn’t seem to know it. “I wasn’t supposed to be in the hangar,” she said, head bowed. “I broke a rule.
But I didn’t mean to do anything dishonorable.
I only wanted to see the ships.”

“Of course you did,” Tarkin said, leaning down a bit closer to them. “That tells me you’re curious about the galaxy beyond Jelucan. And you two stayed when the other
children ran. That tells me you’re brave. Now I want to see if you’re intelligent. What kind of ship do we have here?”

“A
Lambda
-class shuttle!” they said in unison, then looked at each other.
Slowly the girl began to smile, and Thane did, too.

“Very good.” Tarkin held out one hand toward the ship. “Would you like to look inside?”

Did he mean it? He did. Thane could hardly believe his luck as one of the stormtroopers opened the hatch for them. He and the girl ran inside, where everything was black and shiny and lit up
with a hundred small lights. They were shown into the cockpit
and even got to sit in the pilots’ seats. Grand Moff Tarkin stood just behind, rigid as a flagpole, his boots gleaming as
brightly as the polished metal surrounding them.

“Show me the altitude control,” he said. They both pointed to it instantly. “Excellent. And the docking guide? You know that one as well. Yes, you’re both very bright.
What are your names?”

“I’m Thane Kyrell.” He
wondered if Grand Moff Tarkin would recognize his last name; his parents insisted that the Imperial authorities would know them well. But Tarkin’s
face remained only vaguely curious.

The little girl said, “I’m Ciena Ree, sir.”

Sir.
He should’ve thought to call Tarkin sir, too. At least Tarkin didn’t seem to mind. “Wouldn’t you like to serve the Emperor someday, and fly ships like these?
Then you might become Captain Kyrell and Captain Ree. What would you think of that?”

Thane’s chest swelled with pride. “That would be the best thing ever. Sir.”

Tarkin laughed softly as he turned to one of the junior officers standing just behind him. “You see, Piett? We should never hesitate to use the lash, when necessary—but there are
moments when the lure is even more effective.”

Thane had no idea what that meant, and he didn’t care, either. All he knew was that he could no longer imagine any fate more glorious than becoming an officer in the Imperial fleet. From
the grin on Ciena’s face, he could tell she felt the same way.