—
When the storm has passed, Temmin once again reopens the cockpit and emerges—though the wave has dissipated, dust still hangs gauzy in the air, and he coughs and blinks it away as he drops to the ground and staggers through the sand. What passes next are a few moments of almost eerie silence: the world gone still in the aftermath of the impact.
Then, somewhere far away, an explosion goes off—from the Ravager’s wreckage, no less. Above the dreadnought, black specters of smoke rise, and those dark clouds pulse with a flickering fire glow. A stink of burning metal and spent fuel stings his nose. After that, the sounds of war return: Blaster shrieks and fighter engines roaring overhead, concussive pulses and grenade detonations. Soldiers screaming. The silence is over. Again he coughs, wincing. In the distance, he spies a contingent of New Republic commandos dug in behind the sand furrow kicked up by a wrecked transport. Troopers advance on them. Temmin thinks, I should do something. I should help.
From close by come the pneumatic piston sound and pounding footsteps of something all too familiar: an AT-ST walker. He sees its brutal cockpit crest the nearest dune, the cannons tracking in his direction—Temmin knows he can’t take that thing down, so he draws his blaster and runs in the other direction, feet carrying him over one dune and down the other, even as the thing’s cannons surely track his movement—
And then, he’s running full-throttle into a trio of desert troopers, their armor scarred, the grooves and joints caked with dust.
They raise their blasters and he skids to a halt, holding his in the air.
The troopers don’t say anything at first. Already that makes his hackles rise—Imperial soldiers are about protocol. They have a pattern. They warn you. Tell you to drop it. Like they’re on a program.
But this time, they follow no protocol. They remain silent.
Behind him, the AT-ST tromps up the dune toward them. Its shadow falls across Temmin, a shadow so damning it’s as if it has its own weight. Temmin swallows hard, feeling sweat run down his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. “I…”
“Shut your mouth,” the middle trooper says. That one’s helmet has a hard dent in the plastoid surface. He’s got a pauldron over the right shoulder, red and dark as a hot coal. He’s the leader. “Rebel scum.”
“Let’s have some fun with this one,” says the trooper on the right—the face of the helmet painted with finger-streaks of gray ash.
The one on the left takes off his helmet. A jowly, scruff-cheeked man’s face is underneath, lit up with rage. He points the blaster. “We shoot bits off him. One by one. Hands. Ears. Each knee. See how long we keep him alive. Then the AT-ST can finish him off. Scatter his atoms.”
The one in the pauldrons says: “We should do it quickly. Get back to the battle.”
“Battle’s over,” Ash-Streak says. “Might as well have fun.”
Nobody’s listening to the leader.
Nobody’s listening to anybody.
I’m going to die.
Scruff-Cheek looks up. “Hey, what the—”
Whong.
Temmin whirls around to see something land, crablike, on top of the AT-ST’s cockpit skull. That something lifts its head, feral and red, showing off a set of hand-cut sawteeth.
Bones!
The troopers open fire, but Bones is fast. Too fast for them. The droid grabs the rail at the edge of the AT-ST, swinging down like a monkey-lizard before flinging himself to the sand, landing in a crouch. Blasterfire riddles the space where he just was as he pivots, pirouettes, and begins handspringing across the sand—plasma cooking the air as he dances around each lance of searing light. Arms snap back. Blades stick out.
Bones goes to work. He gets under the pauldroned leader, sticking a vibroblade up underneath the chin of the helmet with a dull crunch. The man’s body twitches as his blaster drops. The modified B1 droid whirls around the still-standing corpse like it’s a pole, kicking out with one clawed foot and knocking Ash-Streak back. As that trooper falls to the ground, Bones pounces on his chest and—wham, wham, wham—perforates the armor again and again with the blades. The man’s heels kick the ground.
Scruff-Cheek bellows for the AT-ST to fire, and fire it does—loud blasts from its cannons biff through the sand, just missing Bones but knocking the droid back, limbs akimbo. The scruffy trooper raises his own rifle to fire on Bones, and Temmin launches himself at the man. His attack is clumsy and broadcast a kilometer away, but the helmetless stormtrooper isn’t paying attention—Temmin clubs the soldier in the temple with his own blaster and the man topples like a tree. Unnff.