Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (24 page)

Eighteen Months After the Battle of Yavin

T
HE
MOA
’S CARGO holds were filled with medical supplies for the far southern peninsula of Oulanne’s single megacontinent.
A
month before, a massive earthquake had struck, devastating virtually every structure over a vast radius. However, the Empire had sent no medical aid—an economically unimportant planet
didn’t merit such attention. A few wealthier Oulannists who lived on other worlds had offered what they had. The medical supplies the freighter carried were only a fraction of what was
needed, but
they would help. Thane strongly suspected Lohgarra had agreed to do the run for free.

As they came in through the very highest levels of the atmosphere, Thane checked the climatological sensors and whistled. “Not good.”

Lohgarra wanted to know what they were in for.

“We’re looking at a massive storm. A megahurricane, covering a good quarter of the land area.”

JJH2 confirmed this,
beeping in alarm. Methwat made a vibrato sound of dismay.

“Like these people haven’t got enough trouble already,” Brill said, shaking her furry pink head.

Thane added, “And now we’ve got trouble, too.” Normally storms weren’t an issue for spacecraft; anything that could take the ravages of space could handle a little rain
and lightning. However, a cargo ship as overladen as the
Moa
currently
was could become unwieldy in the atmosphere, and winds this extreme would have the power to overwhelm their
stabilizers. (Only for a few minutes—but that was more than long enough to plow a ship into the dirt.)

They could simply have headed to the nearest safe port. In this case, though, that meant being thousands of kilometers away from the disaster. The medical supplies were probably needed
now more
than ever.

So when Lohgarra asked Thane if he could land in those conditions, he said, “Damn right I can.”

Methwat turned toward Thane with a worried look on his face; he was too polite to question anyone outright, but it was clear he didn’t like the look of this.

“Trust me,” Thane said. With that he strapped into his chair and took the ship in.

The blackness of space
brightened into sky—still blue but not for much longer. Beneath them swirled the storm, the ominous spiral cloud sprawled out like the tentacles of some vast ocean
creature. As the winds began buffeting the ship, the hull shuddered around them.

Lohgarra growled for all crew members to brace themselves. JJH2 swiftly fed Thane’s station all the atmospheric data it could handle.

Brill muttered,
“Hope you know what you’re doing, Kyrell.”

“That makes two of us.”

He dived into the eye of the storm—the calm patch at the center of any cyclone. As the broad white wings of the
Moa
stretched over the churning sea, the viewscreen displayed the
surreal image: sunlight on the water as they sped toward black clouds and sheets of rain so thick they blinded Thane to the world beyond.

The sensors would tell him all he needed to know. He aligned the ship, decreased speed, and took them so low they could make out the whitecaps on the restless waves—and then the debris
strewn on the rocky shore below.

The entire ship tilted hard, as if it had been punched by a giant fist.
Damn!
The wind shear was even worse than Thane had thought. “Come on,” he whispered as he steered them
into the angle where that current could work for them instead of sinking them. “We can do this.”

“Are you talking to the ship or to me?” Brill said.

Instead of answering, Thane asked, “Did you lock the system on to the hangar coordinates?”

Brill’s pink hair stood on end. “You want to take this in on autonav?” From her captain’s chair, Lohgarra growled her disbelief, and JJH2 whistled
the high note of droid
panic.

“Not just autonav!” By then the
Moa
was shuddering so strongly that Thane had to shout to be heard above the rattling and groaning of the hull. “This boat’s so old
we’ve cribbed its systems from a dozen different spacecraft. So turning on the autonav doesn’t deactivate the manual navigation. We’re going to use them both at the same
time.”

Brill’s fingers
tapped on the controls, doing what Thane asked. “You realize if you can’t sync your movements with the autonav, you’ll rip us in two.”

“I’ve got it.”

Thane felt the autonav kick in. It was a bit like having another pilot try to wrench the controls away from him.

But he’d spent most of his childhood learning how to fly with a partner. You didn’t fight for control; you built it together.

The autonav remained locked on its target, oblivious to severe wind conditions; that made it Thane’s job to tilt and steer the ship in ways that would fight that wind while they stayed the
course. At one point the disconnect between the two jerked the ship hard, shaking everyone violently enough that even mild-mannered Methwat yelped. But Thane got them back in sync within a few
moments.

When the hangar appeared on the horizon, Thane finally felt like he could breathe again. Dampers—slow thrust, hover down—and the
Moa
settled safely onto the ground.

As Brill and Methwat began to applaud, Thane folded his arms behind his head like he hadn’t been worried at all. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m
good.”

“You’re lucky!” Brill insisted, but with a huge grin.

“All right,
I’m lucky. Whatever works.”

You wouldn’t have believed it if you’d been there,
he imagined saying to Ciena.
Then again, if you’d been there, you would’ve insisted on taking the controls
instead of me—and probably would’ve brought us in for an even smoother landing.

Thane kept storing up anecdotes to tell her someday, even though he knew that day would never come. He’d tried to stop,
but he couldn’t help it.

Lohgarra told Thane she was very, very proud of him and wrapped her huge furry arms around him in a hug. Then she showed the highest form of praise and affection, for a Wookiee: she started
grooming him.

Thane sighed as she got to work on his hair in earnest. This wasn’t how they did things in the Empire.

The next day, the storm had moved along far enough
that they could start distributing their supplies. To Thane’s surprise, another group of pilots had landed a few days
before with a substantial haul of medical gear and emergency rations, so they wound up working side by side.

“You brought that ship in yesterday?” said their leader, a black-haired man a few years older than Thane. “That was a nice piece of flying.”

“Thanks.”

“You
do a lot of hauls like this? To worlds in trouble?”

“Sometimes. Lohgarra gets the credit for that,” Thane said as the two of them unloaded crates. “But I like that she does it.”

“Less money in it for you.”

“Never cared much about money.”

“What other runs have you been on?”

Thane hesitated before answering. If he was suspected of disloyalty to the Empire, he could be reported…but
there was no way to talk honestly about his experiences of the last several
months without making his feelings clear.

He’d known the Empire was rotten, but he hadn’t realized how deep the rot went. The plight of the Bodach’i had disturbed him deeply, and yet now he knew they were only one of
hundreds of entire species the Empire had subjugated for labor. He’d flown the
Mighty Oak
to worlds
mined so savagely that new seas had been carved into what were once cities and
farmlands. He’d looked down at cities strafed to rubble and ash by Imperial laser cannons as punishment for even mild defiance.

“Zeitooine,” Thane said. “And Dinwa Prime, and Arieli. More recently, Ivera X.” He spoke evenly but was aware what he’d said was in effect a list of the
Empire’s war crimes.

The
other man met his eyes evenly. “Then you’ve seen a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“When we get done here, you and I should have a chat. I’ve been to several of those worlds. Good to hear what other people believe should be done.”

Is he thinking about reporting me?
Thane knew it was possible, but his gut told him no. Slowly, he nodded. “Sure. We’ll talk. I’m Thane Kyrell, by the way.”

The black-haired
man smiled and held out his hand to shake. “Wedge Antilles.”

They wound up sharing a couple of ration trays just inside the hangar doors. The worst of the hurricane had passed through by that time. Heavy, silvery sheets of rain still fell, but the winds
had died down until the palms and jungle trees merely swayed. The sound of rustling leaves and raindrops on the metal roof remained loud
enough to drown out their conversation if anyone attempted
to listen.

“You showed courage,” Wedge said. “Leaving like that.”

Thane shrugged. “I laundered my credits and sneaked away. Not the bravest thing anyone’s ever done.”

“You defied the Empire alone. You gave up the life and career you’d built rather than violate your principles. I’d call that brave.”

“Stop trying to get
on my good side and say what you’re trying to say.”

This was met with a sharp look—apparently Wedge Antilles wasn’t used to not being taken at his word. Maybe Thane was being unfair, but so what? He had to be careful about whom he
chose to trust. Lohgarra and the rest of the
Moa
crew had earned that; Ciena would always have his loyalty to some degree, even if he never saw her again.

But this guy? He needed to come out with it already.

Evenly, Wedge said, “We could use pilots like you in the Rebel Alliance.”

The rebels? Here? Thane wouldn’t have dreamed they’d dare show themselves only to help a planet in distress. But he knew Wedge was telling the truth. “No. Sorry.”

“You hate the Empire. After what you’ve seen, you couldn’t help it.”

“True,” Thane admitted.
“But I don’t care much for your rebellion either.”

“We’re fighting to free the galaxy—”

“You started a war, and a lot of people are going to die because of it.”

Wedge’s dark eyes blazed with intensity. “Palpatine began the war. We’re going to end it.”

The strength of the man’s belief was slightly unnerving. “Against the Empire? I’ll grant you this much—you’re brave. But you’re
fooling yourselves if you
think you can take on a force like the Imperial fleet and win.”

“We destroyed the Death Star, didn’t we? With a handful of single-pilot fighters! I flew on that mission, and I’m still here. A lot of Imperial officers can’t say the
same.”

“Including some friends of mine,” Thane said quietly. He hadn’t been that close to Jude Edivon, but he remembered how kind
she’d been, how bright. She’d deserved a
longer life than that, and a better death. And the fellow officers he’d just begun to know, young guys like him who were starting their careers together—sometimes their faces flashed
through Thane’s head at night when he was trying to sleep. “Listen, I get why you did it. I know the Death Star had to be stopped. But don’t fool yourself. That was bloody
work.”

“I know,” Wedge said quietly. “It’s like you said: the Death Star had to be stopped. Just as the Empire must be destroyed. If that’s going to happen, some of us
have to get blood on our hands. We have to be willing to kill, and willing to die. It’s not easy and it never will be. But I can tell you this much, Kyrell. It’s easier than standing by
and doing nothing.”

Thane remembered
that day on Zeitooine and the family he’d seen dragged away to prison. He’d felt so useless, so powerless. As long as he remained a refugee from the Empire, he would
never again be able to act on his beliefs. He would never be able to stand up for anyone again.

Unless he did not stand alone.

Late that night—after hours of work, hours more of talking with Wedge, and a couple of Corellian
ales—Thane returned to the
Moa
. He walked toward his bunk
quietly, knowing both Methwat and Brill would be asleep, but Lohgarra sat in the galley, munching on an enormous slab of cheese.

“Hey,” he said. “Can’t sleep?”

Lohgarra admitted she’d woken up hungry, then said Thane looked worried.

“‘Worried’ isn’t exactly the word.” The number of people he trusted enough to share this with
could have been counted on one hand, with fingers left over—but
Lohgarra was among them. “Lieutenant Commander Antilles, from the, uh, unaffiliated group earlier today? He wants me to fly with them.”

That earned a roar of indignation. How dare that man try to steal her best pilot? Taking advantage of a crisis like that was unthinkable. She’d see to it that Thane got a raise, if that
was
what it took to keep him—

“No, no, Lohgarra, you don’t understand.” Thane lowered his voice. “They’re with the Rebellion.”

She fell silent. Was that shock or disapproval?

He leaned forward, trying to put his thoughts into words not only for her sake but also for his. “I never thought about joining the Rebellion. You know, I understood the Empire was
corrupt, but I thought so was
the Old Republic by the end. So would be whatever other government might follow. I told myself it was all the same. But what I’ve seen these past several
months—it goes beyond corruption. The Empire wrecks worlds and enslaves entire species and doesn’t give a damn about anyone under its rule. I mean, as rich as Coruscant is, they
couldn’t send any humanitarian aid here?”

Lohgarra quietly
said the need on Oulanne was great.

“Exactly. The Empire didn’t come here, but the rebels did. These guys are fighting a war, always on the run, and they still shared their supplies.” None of it made sense to
Thane. Most people didn’t do the right thing even when they weren’t in danger—

—but he’d learned from Ciena that there were actually a few idealists out there.

He continued,
“Ci—This girl I knew believed the Empire would never destroy another world once the Rebellion had been defeated, but that’s because she’s so good she
can’t even recognize evil when it’s staring her in the face. I mean, why would the Empire go to the trouble of building a space station that could destroy planets if it wasn’t
going to use it? And if the Empire would do that, there’s nothing it
wouldn’t
do.” Thane straightened and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what comes after the
Empire. I can’t say that whoever gets power next will be any better—but it can’t get any worse. That’s not possible. If there’s even a chance I can do something that
helps take the Empire down, I feel like I have to do it.”