Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (23 page)

Even then, he didn’t consider returning to
Jelucan. He had no reason. Every once in a while he’d watch news holos from home, but never out of a sense of nostalgia, only to make
himself even happier he’d never have to go back. His family was no doubt glad to be rid of him, and Ciena—he had to close his eyes for a moment when he thought of her—she
wouldn’t be there, either. Not given the intensifying war between the Empire and the Rebel
Alliance. He doubted Ciena had gotten more than three days’ leave in a row since they’d
said good-bye.

If Thane ever went back to Jelucan, he would imagine Ciena as a little girl in any of the small fliers darting through the skies. The mountain trails would remind him of how they had explored
together as children and had found the cave that became the Fortress. And Valentia would never
be only a city to him; it would always be the place where they’d come together for one
night—and where they had parted forever.

It’s been a while now,
he told himself.
You ought to be over it.

That was a lie. You didn’t get over losing your first love, your best friend. But Thane had thought it wouldn’t always hurt as badly as it had that last terrible morning in
Valentia.

So far
he had been wrong.

Zeitooine was a cold world—not one of the ones trapped in perpetual winter but chilly enough that Thane and his crewmates stepped out into a hard frost. The spaceport
stood at the edge of the city, so in the distance he could see tall deciduous trees, all bare of their leaves. His breath made clouds in the air.

“Times like this, it’s good to have fur,” said Brill,
their Tarsunt engineer, who had dyed her long-haired pelt shocking pink. “Don’t know how you humans do
it.”

“Sometimes I wonder myself.” Thane turned up the collar of his coat. “Let’s just get this job done, okay?”

That was met with a thumping purr of agreement from Methwat Tann, the Ithorian maintenance officer. His enormous curved head and neck were wrapped in a scarf specially knitted
for him by
Lohgarra, but he, too, was shivering.

Their job on Zeitooine was simple enough: delivery of several constructor droids. Thane helped Methwat and Brill unload, then hurried deeper into the spaceport to locate a vendor of secondhand
parts. Usually you could find one or two hanging around. After a few minutes without any luck, he finally dared to ask someone, who told him the nearest
place was ten minutes’ walk away. He
frowned, checked his chrono, and decided to go for it. Better to run a little late and get chewed out for it than to work with that damned antiquated power cell any longer.

So he cut through the town, going as quickly as he could, until he came to a crowded town square—and stopped. Nobody was walking, or even moving, and then he saw why.

“You’re under
arrest,” a stormtrooper captain said in a bored voice as at least a dozen of his men stood around, using their blasters to keep everyone back from the scene as
people were dragged out of a nearby house.
A family,
Thane realized with a jolt. The daughter couldn’t have been more than thirteen, and she wept as a stormtrooper pulled her after him
so fast she could barely walk; his fist was clenched
in her hair.

“Please,” the mother said, on her knees in front of the captain. “Please. We’ll pay the fines—you can sell our house, all our possessions—”

The stormtrooper captain sounded bored. “Repeated violations of the prohibition against independent publications are punished with imprisonment without term.”

Another stormtrooper brought out an even younger girl, perhaps only five,
small enough to be tucked under his arm. This girl didn’t cry; she was too terrified for that. Instead her wide
eyes stared into the crowd, as if looking for someone to help them.

Nobody made a move. The stormtroopers’ blasters saw to that.

Less than a year ago, I stood by while slaves were beaten,
Thane realized. Once again he remembered prowling the sky in his TIE fighter, all so the
people of Kerev Doi would be
afraid.

The mother continued begging. “Not the children. My husband and I, we did this. The children are innocent. Why should they—”

Her words choked off as the captain smashed the butt of his rifle into her face. She fell to the ground, crying, as another stormtrooper bent down to cuff her.

Do something!
But Thane was powerless. He couldn’t act against
that many armed men. He couldn’t even speak up. By deserting the Imperial Starfleet, he had put himself in a
position where he could never draw attention to himself or step out of line again. The invisible cage around him was of his own making.

Sickened, he turned away and headed back to the spaceport. As he walked toward the
Moa
, Brill caught sight of him. “Hey! Where’s that new power cell?”

Thane snapped, “They didn’t have anything in our price range. Okay?”

Behind him he could hear her mutter, “Sorry I asked.”

That wasn’t how you made friends with your new shipmates. But Thane didn’t want to make friends. He wanted to lock himself in his bunk, turn off the lights, and try to forget
everything he’d seen, or been.

Ciena stared at the scene before her on the planet
Ivarujar and thought that this could only be hell.

In the distance, the volcano continued to spew ash into the air, so far up that no one on this world would be able to see the sky for years. Lava glowed orange and ominous on the horizon;
already the capital city had been completely overrun. When Ciena looked through her quadnoculars, she could see yet more buildings blackening as they crumbled
to ash from the heat alone.

As the closest ship in the sector, the
Devastator
had dispatched several troop transports to evacuate the Imperial garrisons on Ivarujar. Their own ships had been badly damaged in the
original eruption, so they were trapped—and, if she didn’t reach them soon, doomed. Ciena had been put in charge of the transport flying closest to the volcano itself. Hazardous
duty,
but she found herself energized by the experience. It wasn’t that she didn’t like working on the bridge of a Star Destroyer…but she’d been overdue to get her boots on the
ground.

“Lieutenant Commander Ree, we have visual,” said the stormtrooper pilot. She turned back from the transport window to see the screen image of stormtroopers atop a building. They
stood in formation, rigid
and motionless as they awaited rescue, though by then the heat had to have been unbearable.

“Good work,” she said. “Bring us in.”

The pilot hesitated, then double-checked his instruments. Ciena understood why he was uncertain; the intense heat was starting fires, creating backdrafts, and whipping up winds that could
destabilize a larger craft than their transport.

You got strange
winds up in the mountains, sometimes.

“Here. I’ll take the helm.” Ciena motioned him out of the chair.

“Ma’am—I’m capable of the flight—”

“I know you are. But you have the strength to carry any injured men onto the craft and I don’t.” Well, not more than one or two.

Assured he wouldn’t be reported for cowardice, the pilot joined the other stormtroopers in the back. Ciena took the
transport in low, through urban canyons where lava ran over what had
recently been streets. The hellish red light from below contrasted with the black sky. Although it was a bumpy ride, she could stabilize them well enough.

Clunky thing,
she thought, wishing briefly for a ship with some agility to it. Still, the transport could endure the heat, and nothing else mattered.

She set the
transport down on the roof of the garrison building, and as soon as they’d opened the doors, the troops began crowding in. Their armor had gone gray from volcanic ash, and
several of them coughed and stumbled. Within another half hour or so, they would have passed out, or died. Ciena remembered them standing in formation—holding true to discipline to the
last—and felt such pride her heart could
have burst.

“All right,” she said, and she was about to utter the words
Moving out
when she saw another building farther away. People had huddled on that roof, too—Ivarujarian
citizens who must have failed to make it to the civilian transports in time. Or maybe there hadn’t been enough room for everyone.…

“Lieutenant Commander?” The pilot had returned to the cockpit. “Are we ready for
takeoff?”

“Yes,” she said. “We’re going to make one stop before returning to the
Devastator
.”

“A…stop?”

No orders had told her she could rescue civilians, but no orders had told her she couldn’t. “Make as much room back there as you can. We’re picking up more
passengers.”

When Ciena took off again, she could feel the unsteadiness of the air currents around her. Biting her lower
lip, she took the transport higher up so they’d have to dive into the worst of
it only at the very end. The volcano rumbled again so loudly that the sound vibrated through the entire ship; they’d been given warnings about a potential secondary eruption, which seemed as
if it could happen at any minute.

You don’t have the right to risk the lives you’re responsible for to save those you
aren’t,
she thought, her old academy training kicking in. After a moment, though,
Ciena shook it off. Lives were lives—and besides, she could do this.

Once again she alighted on the corner of a building, and then she left the cockpit to help civilians on board. They were coughing even harder than the stormtroopers, since they hadn’t been
wearing helmets with ventilation masks; a few of
them were only semiconscious. Ciena held her arms out for a small child, lifted him into the ship, then put her hand out to help the father in, too.
Around her, the stormtroopers did the same, following their commanding officer’s lead as always.

By the time the last person had been pulled on board, the ship was filled to capacity and then some. Ciena had to push her way back through to the
cockpit, where the pilot was no longer even
attempting to fly. He stood aside, saying, “At this weight, I don’t know if we can—”

“We can and we will,” Ciena said, with more confidence than she felt. The transport was capable of carrying that much weight, but its maneuverability would be compromised—a
serious risk when dealing with superheated gale-force winds.

She took the engines
to full power and soared into the air. At first the transport rocked beneath her, so violently that she nearly fell from her chair; she could hear the rescued Ivarujarians
crying out in fear from the hold. By then buildings were flaring into flame like struck matches. In another moment, it would become a true firestorm—and her ship could be caught in the middle
of it.

Ciena pointed the
nose straight up. They were ascending more slowly than they should, but they were moving.…

On the horizon she saw flames whip up higher, then higher, then begin to swirl in a cyclonic current. If the transport got caught in one of those, they were dead.

But she remained steady, fighting the terrible winds every centimeter of the way, until at last they were out of danger. Ciena breathed
out with relief, and from the back of the transport she
heard cheers.

If she couldn’t resist a smile—who could blame her?

The answer turned out to be “Captain Ronnadam.”

“You were tasked with retrieving the soldiers in that garrison,” he said, pacing the length of his office while she stood at attention, still in her soot-grimed uniform. “Not
with a civilian rescue.”

“My orders
did not forbid me from doing so, sir.”

Ronnadam’s eyes narrowed. “Looking for loopholes, Ree? A dangerous trait.”

“No, sir! I mean—I reacted instinctively and saw no obstacle to doing so.”

“You reacted
instinctively
,” he sneered. “In other words, you failed to clear your plans through your superior officers!”

We had no time,
she wanted to protest, but she knew better. “I’m sorry,
sir. I should have cleared my mission before undertaking it. I won’t make that mistake
again.”

“See that you don’t.” Ronnadam stared her up and down before adding stiffly, “You have no other demerits on your record, so your punishment will be lenient—only
five weeks of double-duty shifts. Next time, however, we will not be so merciful.”

“There won’t be a next time, sir.” And five weeks
of extra duty was a small price for forty lives.

As she walked out of his office, Ciena breathed out in relief. At first she’d been angry that they planned to reprimand her for saving lives—but now she understood that they were
displeased only because she’d subverted the chain of command. It wasn’t as if she had actually done something wrong, rescuing those people. The Empire would never
object to that.

Besides, that was some of the best flying she’d done in her life. If only she could talk to Thane about it. In Ciena’s mind she could see his face as she told him about the cyclonic
fire. He would have been
so jealous
he didn’t get to fly in that himself.

Even the things she was proudest of felt hollow without Thane to tell them to.