Chapter Text
The first shot comes lancing up from beneath.
There’s barely time to glance out the cockpit before he’s yawing hard aside. A chill flickers at the back of his neck, a warning. A second bolt streaks past, a near miss.
Green. Fired from behind and above.
The third makes contact—a glancing strike on the trailing edge of his wing, and the Aethersprite shudders beneath him. Sky and city flash past, the glint of sun on glass and steel. His hands grasp bloodlessly at the controls.
That dark chill digs into his spine, leaking down his nerves. Something is wrong.
Red lights flash on the cockpit display and his heartbeat thunders inside his head. Time slows to a muddy, pressured crawl. He throws his senses out into the Force, looking for an answer or at least a warning but it’s gone cold—there’s nothing but choking Darkness in the pallid watery sunlight of Cato Neimoidia.
Cockpit alarms shrill distantly. Another hit. His HUD flickers and dies.
He wrenches the Aethersprite down into the chasm between skyscrapers. He needs to land, or at least somewhere to eject—but where?
The Darkness spreads, a terrible emptiness yawning open inside him. Across the city, the bright lights of his men flicker and dim to smoldering coals. And there’s a snapping in the distance, of threads stretched taut giving way one by one.
Across the galaxy, bright stars begin to die.
There’s an open space ahead among the towers. A skybridge, at the edge of the city plateau, and a gap between the towers, just wide enough to slip through.
Green flashes off his right flank. The next shot blows half his wing off. There’s a thump, and heat fills the cockpit. Warning sirens shriek.
He wrenches the ship left—away, away—but one wing isn’t enough. The Aethersprite clips the side of a shining tower at not quite four hundred klicks an hour and the world vanishes into a whirl of blue sky and shadow and flame.
Dying is easy, after that.