Voices. They float through the passageways—and instantly she recognizes one of them: Mercurial Swift.
Jas waves them forward, whispering for Bones to be quiet. The droid’s legs bend inward and he eases forth on the tips of his skeletal toes. Together they gather around the bend just before the passageway empties out into the smooth, sculpted cavern mouth where the shuttle is parked. And it’s there they see Swift.
He’s not alone. With him are three others: a broad-shouldered Kyuzo, a round-bellied human with a filthy head swaddling, and a tall Rodian with antennae so long they almost droop over her bulbous blue-black eyes.
They stand before Niima. The shuttle waits just beyond them.
Which means the path is blocked.
Mercurial is saying to Niima: “I know she’s here, Hutt. We saw our ship land. Point us to the Zabrak and we go in peace.”
“AND IF NOT?” the Hutt asks.
It’s the man in the head-swaddle who answers: He points a long-barreled rifle and growls, “Then you go in pieces.”
“IT IS UNWISE TO THREATEN A HUTT.”
“That’s Dengar,” Jas whispers in a hushed voice.
Mercurial leans in, his chin up and out. “And it’s unwise to disappoint me. I’m on Black Sun’s payroll, slug. I matter. You’re just some backwater worm with no power in the galaxy. It looks like somebody already shot you up good and I’m happy to finish the—”
Niima’s hand darts out, catching him by the throat. She lifts him up high. His legs dangle as his cheeks bloom red, then purple.
“Grrk!” is the sound he makes.
“YOU INSIGNIFICANT SPECK OF INSECT WASTE—”
Dengar thrusts his rifle up into Niima’s face. The barrel presses hard against her nose-slits. “Careful, love. I don’t much like Swift, either, but I’m going to have to ask you to set him gently down. I’d hate to spray your head-slime all over the pretty rock, hm?”
Norra’s heart sinks. She hoped that Niima would be able to handle this. But the Hutt does as commanded—she drops Mercurial.
“I have a plan,” Jas whispers.
“I’m all ears.”
“I’ll distract them. You and Bones take the ship and go.”
“What? You must’ve given yourself a concussion when you broke those spikes off your head, Jas. I’m not leaving you behind.”
Jas eases Norra back and gets in close, nose-to-nose. “Listen, Norra. Those bounty hunters are skilled. If we leave them alive, they’ll alert the Empire that we’re coming and our cover will be blown.”
“Bones can handle them.”
The rattletrap B1 nods furiously at that.
“You’ll need him,” Jas says. “We can’t risk it. They want me. So they’ll get me. I’ll catch up later.”
“Jas, wait—”
But it’s too late. She goes back the way she came.
Damnit, Emari.
Next thing she knows, it’s happening. Jas yells from somewhere deeper in the passageways, and with that, the bounty hunters turn toward the noise—and true to the plan, they bolt in her direction. The sound of blasterfire fills the temple, echoing through the chambers.
Norra wants to wait and help. She wants to use Bones and take out the hunters. But Jas is right. She can’t risk it.
Brentin. Sloane. The Imperial base. That’s the goal. The stakes are huge and she can’t risk them on this.
Gritting her teeth, Norra tells Bones to hurry, and together they run for the shuttle.
At a distance, the tactics of combat are about the battlespace, or the arena one is given in which to fight. The battlespace above Jakku is nearly limitless—its moons orbit far enough away not to enter the fray, there exists no debris fields as yet, and the only object forming a boundary to the assault is the planet itself.
That gives the New Republic the advantage of coming at the arena from all angles except below.
But the advantage of the Empire is that the fleet is neatly compressed—it has created a nearly perfect defensive perimeter formed of its own Destroyers, with the Ravager at the heart of it. That dreadnought has the chance to fire its considerable armament from relative safety, but its angle of attack is limited by the ships that form a sphere of perimeter. It cannot fire wantonly and without regard for its own ships.
That is war. It is the placement of ships. It is the advantages and disadvantages of those placements. It’s about how you move, how you fire, what weapons you bring. Every piece fits into the larger whole: ammunition in a blaster, blaster in a pilot’s hand, pilot inside a starfighter or frigate. Everything is a resource. How do you expend them? In what direction? At a distance, war is a game, however deadly—usher this ship there, that ship here, converge, fire, dominate, defend.