“My sister, Puwanini,” Pacer said by way of introduction as they strode toward Shriv.
“Call me Puwan,” she said quickly.
“Call me Shriv,” he said. “A thousand thank-yous for the assist. Now how do we get out of here?”
She holstered the bowcaster in a contraption on her back. “Well, the First Order knows you’re here now. I expect reinforcements to show up any minute. Probably on the next train.”
“Which gives us how much time?”
She glanced skyward as she did the math in her head. “They run every fifteen minutes, and one just pulled out, so I’m guessing you’ve got more like twelve or thirteen minutes, tops.”
That was more than he had expected. “We can work with that. Just show us which way to those ships.”
Puwan’s thick black eyebrows rose. “You still want to try to lift some New Republic scrap?” She looked pointedly behind Shriv.
Shriv glanced back over his shoulder where Wesson lay sprawled and panting on the ground a few meters away, Raidah hunched over her, hands pressed to her injured side. Wesson was silent, but tears leaked down her cheeks and through Raidah’s fingers, he could see burned flesh. Hell, he could smell it. Wesson noticed Shriv watching her and she lifted her chin.
“We complete the mission,” she said through gritted teeth.
Shriv sighed. He hated this, truly. Soldiers got injured. Sometimes, lots of times, they died. That’s just how it went. Especially when the soldiers in question were fighting for the side he was on. So he said the only thing he could say.
“We complete the mission.”
Puwan braced her gloved hands on her hips. “Okay, but no use trying to sneak them out now. Best way is to cross at the nearest entrance. You can power over to the open scrap platform. I tried to pick one out that I thought a bunch of Resistance pilots would appreciate, but I wasn’t sure.”
That was thoughtful of her and he said so.
She shrugged. “Anything for my little brother.”
“What about Wesson?” Stronghammer asked as he joined them. He was limping badly. Shriv held back a wince. The big man’s leg was a mangled mess below the knee. That he was standing at all was a miracle.
“Don’t you worry about her,” Raidah said. “I’ve got her.”
“If we get those ships, it’s all worth it,” Pacer said. “Wesson’s sacrifice will be worth it.”
“She’s not dead, you ass,” Raidah growled.
Shriv whacked Pacer on the back, pointing him down the hall. “Go!”
Pacer shrugged and joined his sister, who was scouting their path down the hallway. “Kids,” Shriv said to Raidah, trying to make light of it as he helped her pull Wesson to her feet. As of now, Dross Squadron was down to two fighters, two injured, and a hotheaded kid. Not the way he would have wanted it, but he would find a way.
Their progress was slow. Too slow. Shriv had offered to relieve Raidah and carry Wesson’s weight, but the woman had waved him off. “It’s my fault we got caught,” she said, voice shattered. “It’s my fault Wesson and Stronghammer are shot up. So I’ll do it.”
Shriv didn’t argue. He knew how those things went, what they meant to a soldier. What it must mean to Raidah. But it was slowing them down, and Shriv was sure that blasterfire would break out from behind them at any moment. Blessedly, they reached the end of the corridor faster than expected. It dead-ended into the open air. Puwan made a beeline for a row of lockers tucked in an alcove to the right and Shriv, against his better judgment, toed to the edge of the platform to look out. He immediately wished he hadn’t.
Below him spread the giant jaws of the Ibdis Maw. This mouth was even bigger than the one he’d spied earlier, and it occurred to him that either there were multiple creatures or multiple mouths on a single continent-sized creature—and neither option was comforting.
He watched in horrible fascination as, far in the distance, probably eight hundred meters across the expanse, a great ship tumbled into the creature’s jaws. There was a groaning shriek and then a crunch and the whole platform rumbled beneath their feet. He hurriedly backed up, feeling much too close to the edge.
“How do we get across?” he asked, hastily joining the others at the lockers. They were strapping on what looked suspiciously like jetpacks. Shriv’s stomach dropped to his feet. “Don’t tell me we’re going to fly across.”
“Not exactly,” Puwan said. She had drawn her bowcaster again and tapped a hand against the barrel. “I’ll shoot you a line, and you can attach your rigging to the cable. The thrusters are just for momentum and direction. They’ll probably slow your fall, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it. And if you come off the cable…” She shrugged. “You saw what the drop does to you.”
Lands you in the mouth of a monster, thought Shriv. “Great!” he said brightly. “So glad I thought of this plan.”
Pacer snorted, and Shriv almost grinned. The boy had a sense of humor after all.
Puwan clapped a hand to her ear, and Shriv noticed for the first time she was wearing a communications device. “Time to go,” she said grimly. “Stormtroopers are on their way.”
Shriv shrugged into the heavy reinforced vest the Scrapper handed him and watched as she attached thrusters to the belt at his hips. She showed him how to control them through the gloves that he slipped onto his hands, and then did the same for Raidah. Raidah attached the belt and thrusters to Wesson, who bit down in pain on her lip so hard that it welled with blood. Pacer was already geared up. But when she got to Stronghammer, she paused. The big man was having none of it.
“Go without me!” he shouted through teeth gritted in pain. “I’m not going out on that wire, and those tiny thrusters won’t hold a man as powerful as me. I’d rather die here on solid ground, fighting, than in the mouth of a monster.”
“Didn’t you hear me say the stormtroopers are on their way?” Puwan said.
“Let them come!” he roared. “Give me a weapon and I’ll make them pay before I go.”
Puwan threw up her hands and stepped away. “He’s your problem,” she grumbled. “You talk to him. I’m going to set the cables.” Shriv watched her stomp over to the edge of the platform, take aim out across the stretch of what he had fondly begun to think of as the Chomping Abyss of Death, and line up a shot.
Raidah was bent down, whispering furiously with Stronghammer, and he left her to it for the moment, hurrying over to Puwan.
“Where are you aiming?” he asked.
“Platform thirty-three G. That’s the one I thought you’d appreciate.”
He scanned the dozen or so platforms visible from their spot. Thirty-three G was by far the farthest from them. He could just make out the telltale cruciform wing shape of two of the ships there, patiently waiting consumption by the Ibdis Maw, and another that he was pretty sure was an A-wing.
“Can you get us there?”
“It’s far,” she admitted, “but I’ve got the wire. Not enough to double it up, so you’ll be solo out there with no redundancy, but no risk, no reward, right?”
“That’s a terrible saying,” he muttered.
She grinned and then turned back to her target. She aimed her crossbow and with an exhale let the arrow fly. They watched the cable trail like a ribbon on the end of a kite. It sailed across the Chomping Abyss of Death and finally, after what felt like a lifetime to Shriv, the arrow struck true.
Puwan grinned and let out a whoop. “See!” she said. “Knew I could do it.”
“Fine, you stubborn ass!” came Raidah’s frustrated voice behind him. “Stay here and die.”
Shriv turned back to his other problem. “What’s going on, Stronghammer?” he asked, but he didn’t need to. He’d already guessed that there was no way the man was going to make it across the Ibdis Maw attached to that wire, ruined leg or not.
“A man
should get to choose how he dies,” he said, and Shriv could see sweat coating his pate like a spring rain. “This is how I choose to die.”
“No martyrs,” Wesson said, anguished. “Isn’t that what you said on the ship, Shriv? No martyrs on this mission.”
Shriv nodded. He had said that.
Stronghammer dragged himself to his feet, a tremendous effort. Shriv could see there was a hole clean through the meat of his calf. He swallowed. “Does it hurt?”
“Like the fires of my homeworld are trying to consume me,” Stronghammer said. “But I am not afraid.”
“Sanrec…” he started, but the time for words was over. “I’m sorry.”
Stronghammer laughed, his joy cutting off with a sharp inhale. “You are not a great leader, Shriv Suurgav,” the big man said with a grimace. “Only mediocre. But maybe in time you will be great.” He shrugged.
Shriv couldn’t argue with that. “I told you not to expect a lot when this started.”
“Commander Dameron said a person must make choices to do better. I do not regret my choice to follow you.” He tempered the words with a half smile, but it didn’t make Shriv feel any less like a failure. He should have never let them put him in this position. Two of Dross Squadron down, and nothing but empty hands to show for it so far.
In the distance they could hear shouting, the sound of dozens of feet coming their way.
“We’re out of time,” Puwan said. “Now or never if we all want to get across.”
“Go,” Shriv said. “You and Pacer first. Then Wesson and Raidah. I’ll bring up the rear.”
The Scrapper didn’t argue. Just attached the carabiner on her harness to the wire she had laid out earlier and leapt off the edge of the platform. Pacer moved to follow her. Raidah attached Wesson and pressed the buttons on her gloves to send her partner into open air; then, with one last look back at Stronghammer, Raidah did the same.
“I wanted to fly one last time,” the big man said to Shriv, his voice heavy. “But I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Take those ships back to the Resistance,” Stronghammer added. “And when you fly that big bird through the atmosphere and reach space, you look back down here and you think of me, eh?”
“I can do that.”
“There!” came a shout from the corridor, and then Stronghammer was bellowing and firing the rifle he had claimed from a dead stormtrooper, and Shriv was running for the wire. He hooked himself in, hands feeling clumsy in his navigational gloves, and launched himself off the edge. Blasterfire echoed through the hall he left behind.
He flexed his fingers in his gloves and activated the thrusters attached to his rig, accelerating out over the abyss. He kept his eyes focused on his destination, the platform with the X-wings almost a kilometer ahead. He did not look down at the ocean of teeth below him. And he did not wet himself, as he so desperately wanted to do.
But when the cable above him suddenly went slack, sagging as if it had broken loose from its mooring, and Shriv started the slide backward and down, quickly accelerating into a free fall, he did scream.
WHEN SHRIV WAS A child, he got into a nest of bluebarb wasps. He was stung so badly that his face swelled up, big as a Cardekkia cheese wheel. The medic had dosed him with so much antivenin that he had felt like he was melting, flesh dripping off bone to puddle like wax at his feet. Not exactly that bone-crushing feeling of stepping onto a high-gravity planet for the first time unsuspecting, but the drag and the pull and the pain…that was the same.
That’s how he felt now, as his free fall into the Ibdis Maw was abruptly cut short when someone or something slammed against him, hurtling him into the solid beams of the metal tower just below the edge of the platform that had been his target. His head struck first, a solid hit to his temple, and he grunted at the impact. His body quickly followed, and only the reinforced ribbing in the vest Puwan had made him wear kept his insides from being crushed. His breath rushed out in an agonized grunt.
“I’ve got you,” a distant voice shouted. He felt the vibration of the sound, the kiss of spittle and breath against his ear, but the voice seemed so far away. Concussion, he thought to himself. Head injury. And I can’t hear so well.
The voice was shouting other things, things that sounded like “cut cable” and “close call” and “monster’s meal,” but he couldn’t be sure. Rough hands shook him, and he finally pried his eyes open.
Pacer Agoyo was close to his face, looking concerned.
“You okay?” the boy asked.
Shriv wasn’t sure, but he knew he wasn’t dead because the pain in his head was worse than any afterlife could have dreamed up, even in his warped imagination.
“I think something’s broken,” he finally managed.
Pacer touched his head, surprisingly gentle, turning it this way and that. “Naw, you’re fine. But you got your bell rung but good!”
“I can’t hear.” Which wasn’t entirely true. It just sounded like everything was down at the opposite end of a deep well.
A sudden breeze scraped across the top of Shriv’s head, making him shiver. Another cable like the one they had used to zipline dropped from an open panel above him. He looked up, and through the trapdoor in the platform floor he saw Raidah and Puwan. Puwan waved.
“We’ll get you up there, boss,” Pacer said, already attaching the new line to Shriv’s carabiner. And within seconds he was being hauled unceremoniously up and through the hole. Hands pulled him the final few meters, and he found himself lying flat on his back against the warm metal platform.
“You okay?” Puwan asked, grinning wildly. “Because that was something else. Troopers back on the train station cut your cord and I thought for sure you were a goner. But Pacer launched himself over the edge and caught you. Never seen anything like it.” She was beaming. “My brother is a natural Rigger.”
“That’s great,” Shriv said. His head was still pounding and he still couldn’t hear, but at least he was alive. And he owed it all to the kid. “Great,” he repeated.
“They’re up to something over there,” Raidah said, hand over her eyes as she squinted back at where they’d come from. “Looks like they might be setting up some kind of weapon. A repeater cannon or something.”
Pacer’s head popped out of the hole next to Shriv. He pulled the rest of his body through, grinning. Puwan hugged her brother, talking breathlessly about his daredevil save.
“You got that sighter, Puwan?” Raidah asked, voice tense.
She handed Raidah what looked like a monoccular. The pilot held it to one eye. She sucked in a harsh breath. “Cannon,” she confirmed. “If we’re going, we’d better go.”
The woman held out a hand and hauled Shriv to his feet. He looked around. The payload on the platform was even more spectacular than he could have hoped for. A whole freaking platform of X-wings. Four T-70s just like he used to fly himself, an older model, T-65B, and one T-85 looking way too new to scrap for parts.
“Sweet buttered biscuits,” Shriv murmured. “Dross Squadron’s got starfighters.”
“But only two of them will fly,” Raidah said. “The T-70s are all missing an alluvial damper. I did get the T-85 to power up, though.” She strode purposefully toward the ship in question, talking to Shriv over her shoulder. “It would have been easier with an astromech, but I think we can at least get them in the air. Not sure about weapons systems or hyperdrives, but they haven’t been completely stripped for scrap.”
“Can we tow them?”
“How?”
“Salvage all that cable, and we’ll link them up. We’ll fly the ones that we can get airborne and tow the rest.”
Puwan, who had been listening, scratched thoughtfully at her chin. “Cable’s strong,” she acknowledged, “but I don’t know if it’s that strong.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Shriv’s eyes wandered back
to the T-70s. He headed over to the one that looked to be in the best shape. “You try to start this one?” he asked over his shoulder.
“It looks like it’s missing its alluvial damper, just like the others. I didn’t bother.”
Shriv ran a hand across the metal hull, thinking. He’d hotwired his own ship enough times in the past to know how to bypass an alluvial damper. Of course, back then he’d had tools and an astromech to help, but it shouldn’t be impossible.
“Start rigging up the tows,” he commanded. “I’m going to see if I can power this baby up.” He gazed across the abyss. “How’s that First Order cannon coming along?”
Raidah raised Puwan’s eyepiece again. “Still setting it up,” she said, after a minute. “I think we’re too far away or something. Looks like they’re trying to rig something to compensate for distance.”
“Well, let’s do what we can before they figure it out.”
They did, hauling up cable and fashioning hitches. They were almost done when the world below their feet started to slide sideways.
At first Shriv thought it was his head injury acting up, but as the others cried out and they all leaned forward, he realized what it was. He’d seen the way the platform with the big ships had tilted almost vertical to dump its load into the Ibdis Maw.
“Took them longer than I thought it would to find the tilt command,” Puwan said, knees bent and arms wrapped around the landing gear of one of the X-wings. “But it was inevitable.”
Shriv wanted to ask her why she hadn’t bothered to mention it to him if it was inevitable, but he supposed it didn’t matter now. “That’s our signal to fly,” he said through gritted teeth. “Lock and load.”
Wesson, who had been sitting under the shade of an X-wing sweating and looking green around the edges, gave him a grin. She had blood between her teeth.
Shriv returned the smile.
Resistance Reborn (Star Wars) Page 25
