She rolls over onto her bottom and sees the pod sitting askew in the mounding sand. Its door is open and off its fixture, and standing there, braced in the doorway with splayed-out arms and legs, is Jas Emari. A trail of blood snakes its way between her head horns, her lip is split, and her sneering mouth shows teeth wet with smears of red.
Norra starts to say something—some stammered greeting, some breathless entreaty about how she’s glad Jas is okay—but the bounty hunter has only one response, and that’s to pick Norra up out of the sand and slam her hard against the pod. Hard enough that Norra sees stars. Hard enough that the pod rocks on its axis, sending up a cloud of dust and scree.
“Why?” Jas asks. Her voice is raw and rough like it was run over coarse stone.
“We were under attack—the Empire—I had no time.”
“No time,” Jas says, repeating those words. She says them again and again, each time the phrase dissolving further into a mad cackle. “No time. No time! You keep saying those words, Norra Wexley. Like a mimic-bird, No time, no time, raaaaawk, no time. I had no time, either. No time to get my slugthrower. Or quadnocs. Or a damn procarb bar! No time but to fall into an escape pod with you and plunge to a planet—this planet! This dead place about which we know absolutely nothing.” Her fist rears back and she pounds the side of the pod; the metal gongs like a bell. Then she slumps forward, her head pressing against the pod, her chin on Norra’s shoulder.
The fight has left her. Norra pushes her away.
“I’m not sorry,” Norra says.
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m sorry you got dragged into it.”
Jas sighs. “Save your half-hearted sorry for when I’m dead in the hot sand.”
Norra’s voice breaks as she says: “Liberation Day. My husband. I fought Sloane and…I have to do this.”
“Fine,” Jas says. “So let’s do this. Where do we start?”
“You’re hurt.” She reaches for her friend, and after a gentle touch her fingers come away with blood. “The fall—”
“I’m fine.”
“The pod has a kit. A medkit. I can—”
Jas pulls away. She says more sternly, and in her voice is the admonishment of a child to a parent, the way Temmin would say it: “I’m fine.”
Norra’s mind goes to Temmin. I hope he made it out okay…that thought chased by another: I’ve gone and abandoned him again, haven’t I?
Norra cranes her head back. Up there, in the broad blue, she sees the faint shapes of the Star Destroyers hanging in orbit. Diaphanous, almost as if they’re not really there. Hallucinations. Or a vengeful ghost fleet, come to wreak their revenge.
“Looks like we found the Empire,” Jas says, licking blood from her lip and scowling at the taste.
“But why? Why here?”
“That, I don’t know. Hiding, maybe. We’re pretty far from anything anyone would consider civilization. Far from any trading routes. Far from the known worlds. Close to the edge of the Unknown Regions. Maybe they’re here, licking their wounds, hoping the NR won’t notice.”
“They’ll notice now.” If Temmin made it away, that is…
“What’s the plan, Commander?” Jas throws her hands up. “I ask again, where do we start?”
“What?”
“You came down intending to be all by your lonesome, but now you have me. You’re in charge of this little expedition. Do you have a plan?”
Norra sighs. All the anger she felt, all the panic—the noise has dulled now to a dim susurrus, and mostly she just wants to crawl back inside the pod and go to sleep. For days. For weeks. For all of forever.
“I don’t have a plan,” she confesses.
“Let me guess: no time to make one up?”
Norra barks a grim laugh. “Yeah. Well. I reckon the Empire will be looking for us before too long. TIE patrols, probably.” Norra rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “We collect our gear. Then we walk.”
“Any particular direction?”
“Just spin around, point your finger, and away we go.”
“You got it, boss.”
Here on the slopes of Mount Arayakyak, the Cultivating Talon, the jungles once served as a rain-forest orchard, providing the Wookiees with an array of fruits, the shi-shok being most prized because its utility was wide—the pulpy fruit was delicious and vital, the hull was hard enough to withstand nearly any impact, and the vines of the tree made for the strongest binding and climbing ropes known.
But the child that lopes through the jungle now does not know these things. He does not know the world’s history, for he barely even knows his own. He does not know that this rain forest was once lush and once gave his people life. All he knows now is that it is a scarred, carved-up place. Many trees are broken and collapsed against one another like campfire kindling. Others are sickened from the roots up—a poisonous black mold has taken them, rotting them, turning their fruits into hard, shriveled pods.