Free Star Wars: Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka Page A

switched it off, then reconfigured the controls for atmospheric flight. Devi was watching her, grinning the same as ever. Strunk had moved to stand behindDevi’s seat and was holding on to the back of it so tightly Rey saw the color had gone out of his knuckles.
    “First flight?” she asked him.
    He nodded.
    “Mine, too,” Rey said.
    She cut the brakes and brought up the power on the repulsors, the way she had thousands of times before in simulations. The ship moved, rising in an almost perfectly straight line, and Rey felt Jakku trying to pull herback down, her and Devi and Strunk and the ship, too, as if afraid to let them go. She felt the ship wobble slightly as she held the yoke, felt the nose dip as she came off the pedals and directed the repulsor field to propel them forward. The little freighter hesitated, as if uncertain of its relationship with gravity. Rey’s stomach dropped, and Strunk made a noise that sounded like a whimper anda moan combined. Rey teased the power and fed more to the repulsors, and all at once they were sliding forward into the late afternoon sky.
    They were flying.
    “So amazing,” Devi whispered.
    Rey had to agree. According to the instruments, they were only fifty meters up and coasting at a sedate one-tenth acceleration, but the ship was alive in her hands and the world outside was changed becauseof it. The graveyard, the Crackle, the Spike, everything was recognizable yet entirely different seen from that new position. She could make out Niima on the horizon, the tiny specks of its huts and few buildings. She could see a lone Teedo and luggabeast traversing the desert away from the setting sun. She could see the sky changing colors, growing richer and deeper than it had ever looked fromthe ground.
    “It works,” Devi said. “It scorchin’ well works, Rey!”
    “It works,” Rey said softly. All the repairs seemed to be holding. A few warning lights were flashing, but they were all nonessential systems, at least for the moment. The engines were still in synch and at full power.
    “I’m glad it works,” Strunk said. “Can we land again, please?”
    Devi turned in her chair to look at him. “Youbig baby.”
    “No, he’s right,” Rey said. “We don’t want to be seen, not yet.”
    “Right, yeah.”
    Rey banked the ship, the maneuver graceful and effortless, and circled back to where they’d lifted off. The sense of movement, the response of the freighter to her commands, had her smiling again. Her flight sim, for all its wonder and entertainment, had never captured that, and how could it? How couldit have ever synthesized the reality of that freedom and power?
    She set down the ship as gently as it had lifted off, powered down the engines in sequence, then put the main batteries back into standby mode. The sky had turned to dusk.
    Devi got out of the copilot’s seat and clapped Rey on the shoulder again. “Mechanic
and
pilot, you do it all! C’mon, Strunk, let’s go home. See you tomorrow,Rey. We’re gonna find that conversion chamber for the hyperdrive for you. We get that,
then
we’re in business!”
    Without a word, Rey watched them disembark down the boarding ramp.
    She couldn’t sleep.
    Within the walls of the walker, Rey lay on her pile of blankets and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the soft moan of the wind as it caught in the cracks of the hull. She’d shut off her powerfor the night, and it was very dark. She was tired, but she couldn’t keep her mind from racing. Questions and thoughts, memories long buried and fresh. When she held her breath, she could still feel the freighter coming alive in her hands, the elation of the flight. It had been extraordinary, better than she’d ever imagined.
    It wasn’t only that. The sense of accomplishment was profound. She hadfound a spacecraft that had lain in the sand for years—decades, even—and nursed it back to health. She had, with her hands and her smarts, taken it into the air once more. That was