Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka

Author:Greg Rucka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group

The ship was exactly as Rey had left it, undisturbed and silent. She slid the speeder into cover at the aft end of the ship, then stopped and listened to the silence of the desert. There was no wind. There was no sound but her own breathing. She shivered, rubbed her aching, cold hands together, heard the sand whispering beneath her feet as she walked to the loading ramp and keyed the passcode. The ramp lowered on its hydraulics, the noise of it sudden and all the louder in the stillness of the night.

Rey climbed aboard, then shut and locked the ramp behind her. It was dark in the main compartment, lit by only the faint glow of starlight creeping in from the cockpit corridor. She followed the light into the cockpit and lowered herself into the pilot’s seat. She pulled her goggles down so they hung at her neck and laid her staff across her thighs.

She felt foolish. She’d been so certain that she would arrive to find the ship already gone or, if she was lucky, Devi and Strunk in the process of trying to steal it. She had ridden through the Graveyard and across the Crackle and risked gnaw-jaws and frostbite and crashing all because she couldn’t bring herself to trust them. She wondered if the situation had been reversed, if Devi and Strunk had been the ones to discover the ship and Rey had stumbled on it later, would they have felt the same? Would Rey have done to them what she was certain they planned to do to her?

She was so tired.

She shut her eyes. She felt sleep tugging at her, pulling her down. She half-dreamt of being warm, of being small, lost memories trying to swim their way to the surface. She opened her eyes, and it was still night. The stars shimmered, limitless in the sky. She closed her eyes again, then opened them. At the lip of the dune ahead of her, she saw shadows moving.

Rey started awake, one hand tightening around her staff. She wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t been dreaming. She slid forward in the pilot’s seat, almost onto her knees on the cockpit floor, using the flight console to conceal herself.

The shadows moved again. Two figures were descending the dune toward the ship. She couldn’t quite make them out, and then she saw two more shapes cresting the dune, leading luggabeasts.

Four Teedos coming toward her.

As they drew closer, Rey could make out details. All the Teedos were armed, most of them with staves but one had a rifle. She couldn’t see their markings in the darkness, but she didn’t need to. They had come either to take the ship or to destroy it. It didn’t matter. Either way, Rey wouldn’t let them.

The Ghtroc was armed with a fore-mounted dual laser cannon, but the gun was nonoperative. Rey had restored the wiring and firing controls as best she could, but the Tibanna gas required to charge the weapons had long before leaked into the atmosphere and was impossible to replenish.

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