Aftermath: Star Wars by Chuck Wendig

Author:Chuck Wendig
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: LucasBooks
Published: 2015-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

The transport buckles and bounces along the cloud tops of Akiva. The sun forms a hot line over the swirling curls of white, looking like melting steel. Down below, the barely seen city of Myrra. Hidden behind the clouds, and when sight of it emerges, it remains garbed in a gauzy pink haze.

Sergeant Major Jom Barell of New Republic Special Forces (SpecForces) looks to the five men and women standing to the right of him at the open door. On their torsos sit carbon-lace armor, the shoulders marked with the sigil of the New Republic: the Alliance starbird, now inside a sunburst. The symbol of a changed day, a new dawn. The phoenix, truly reborn.

The soldiers standing here with him: Corporals Kason, Stromm, Gahee’abee, Polnichk, and Durs. He knows which is which, even though their faces are concealed behind the orbital drop masks.

He gives the nod. “Drop!”

One by one, they unclip and leap into the clouds. Slugthrowers on their backs. Arms stretched out, as if trying to reach for the sun.

His turn.

Barell hates jumping. Give him anything else. Anything. Creeping through some Naboo swamp. Freezing his tail off in some ice-walled snow base. One time, they had to fly a gunship through an electrical superstorm over Geonosis to root out some Imperials that had gotten it in their heads to start up the old Geonosian droid factories again—the storm was all lightning and heavy winds and hale peppering the side of the craft so hard it left little dents in the metal. He was pretty sure they were dead before they even landed. And that was still better than jumping out of a ship.

Especially a suborbital drop.

Well, it is what it is.

Barell jumps after Durs, the last in the line. It feels like it always does—his guts sucking out through his hind end, his heart left somewhere behind in the sky above him, the panic, the terror. And then—

The air rocks. A concussive wave hits him. His body spins like a spun top and above him he sees it—the side of the transport, blown open, black smoke bellowing as flames flash and sparks shower. The ship lists and starts to tilt as it goes down—

He tries to comm, but it’s no good, he knows that. There’s a comm blackout. Nothing he says is going to go anywhere.

Best he can do now is drop and try not to die.

But that’s a far trickier task than he expected—because below him, he sees Corporal Kason at the front of the line disappear in a flash. Something comes up from the ground: the blinding streak from a turbolaser. One minute, there’s Kason, and the next he’s just a red spray and a torn-up tatter of carbon-lace armor spiraling through the clouds.

We’re dead, Barell thinks.

Another blast and Stromm is next—a flash and he’s gone. Barell dives down through the space where Stromm was just two seconds before.

Barell signals the others: “We’re pigeons to hunt up here. We need to be falcons—engage para-wings.” It’s too soon, they’re too high up.

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