The High Republic: Out of the Shadows by Justina Ireland

Author:Justina Ireland [Ireland, Justina]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2021-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Nan stood in the control room of the Gravity’s Heart and fumed. The Strikes she’d sent to Tiikae had one job. Just one. And they had botched it terribly.

“It was a family of Ugnaughts,” Nan said, smoothing her dark hair behind her ears. “How hard could it have been?”

“There were Jedi,” cried out the Weequay who had led the mission. He was small of stature and had a way of clicking his teeth as he spoke that set Nan’s already frayed nerves on edge.

“Jedi can die just like anyone else,” Nan snarled. “How is it you survived when the rest of your Strike is now carrion on Tiikae? Where is your sense of courage?” She was taking her fear out on the lone survivor of the Strike, and for good reason. At some point she and the Oracle would return to the Gaze Electric, once they’d finished their work on the Gravity’s Heart, and when she did, what would she tell Marchion Ro about his missing box? That she’d lost it? That she’d been distracted and a family of Ugnaughts had snuck onto the Whisperkill and robbed her? And now they were all dead and she had nothing to show for it. She looked weak and stupid, and she was neither.

Nan drew her blaster and shot the Weequay in the chest. He fell over, and as she holstered her weapon, she turned on her heel and strode into the laboratory where the Oracle was being kept.

There the scientist, Chancey Yarrow, stood with a small tablet, speaking to the Oracle in a low voice. As far as Nan could tell, the elderly woman was still unconscious, but the scientist, a dark-skinned human woman with long hair twisted into a multitude of tiny braids, laughed before patting the tank, as though the two were in the middle of a conversation. The woman was like no Nihil Nan had ever met. She wore billowy, free-flowing dresses that seemed better suited to a farming community than to raiding, and she was barefoot, her feet tattooed in a swirling pattern that meant nothing to Nan. The woman seemed younger than she was, and her conversations with the mostly dead Oracle made Nan more than a little nervous. She was one of those people Nan had trouble reading, and the younger girl decided she disliked the scientist on principle alone.

When the older woman turned and saw Nan, her mirth faded away. The dislike was mutual.

“Did I just hear a blaster?” Chancey Yarrow asked.

“Yes. The Strike returned, without the item I sent them after,” Nan said.

“So, you shot one of my people without asking me and without my permission?” the woman asked, her eyes still on her tablet.

Nan shrugged and knew immediately that she’d made a mistake. One moment she was opening her mouth to tell the scientist that she was a Nihil and she did as she pleased, and the next she was flat on her back, the woman’s bare foot pressing into her windpipe.

“You do not kill my people.

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