Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [48]
She heard a loud bang and the heavy, staccato pounding of branches striking the exterior of the hull as the Star-Wake plowed through a thin layer of branches en route to her chosen destination on the surface. A second later the ship rocked hard to one side, deflecting off a tree trunk too thick to smash through. Next came a series of heavy, jarring thumps as the ship skipped and skidded across the ground before finally coming to a stop.
Shaken but uninjured, Zannah undid her safety harness and opened the exit hatch. As she descended the vessel’s loading ramp, she noticed she was on one end of a large clearing that had been carved from the forest to create a circle nearly two hundred meters in diameter. Much to her surprise, someone was in the middle of the clearing waving her over.
“Whoever’s flying that ship of yours must be the worst pilot in the galaxy,” the man said, eyeing her up and down as she approached him and stopped a few meters away.
He looked to be in his late twenties, though it was hard to tell because of his scrawny and somewhat scraggly appearance. His long copper-colored hair was full of mats and tangles, and his red beard was patchy and uneven across his grimy face. He wore loose pants and a torn shirt that might have been white beneath the mud and other unidentifiable stains. Over the shirt he wore a short leather vest that was fraying at the edges, and a pair of heavily scuffed boots. He gave off a sour odor.
“What’s the matter, girlie?” he asked. “You don’t speak Basic? I said whoever’s flying your ship is the worst pilot I ever saw.”
“Nobody’s flying it,” Zannah answered carefully, glancing back at the ship that was now a good thirty meters behind her. “She was set on auto.”
“That explains it,” he said with a nod. “Auto’s only good at landing on a permacrete runway. Not worth bantha poodoo out here.”
The man took a step toward her, and Zannah instinctively took a step back. There was something very wrong about finding this man waiting for her at the heart of a clearing in the middle of the forest. But she wasn’t worried about the strangeness of the situation. Instead her mind was desperately trying to think of a way to keep him from discovering the bodies in the Star-Wake’s cargo hold.
“Why you using the autopilot out here, girlie? You don’t got a pilot on that ship with you?”
Zannah shook her head. “No. There’s nobody else on board. Just me.”
“Just you?” he said with an arched eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
“I stole it,” she said defiantly. Maybe if she could convince him she had been alone on the vessel, he wouldn’t go in and find the bodies.
The man let out a low chuckle. “Stole it, you say?” Then, in a louder voice he called out, “Looks like we got ourselves a thief!”
A dozen men and women stepped out from the thick trees on the edges of the wide clearing the Star-Wake had landed in. They were all human, and most of them seemed to be about the same age as the redhead Zannah had first spoken with. Like him, they were clad in a motley assortment of soiled, ragged clothing. Several of the new arrivals had appeared from behind the redhead, but more than a few had emerged from the trees on the other side of the clearing behind Zannah, effectively cutting her off from her ship. And, unlike the man who had first greeted her, the newcomers were all armed with vibroblades or blaster rifles.
“How … how did you find me?” she demanded, glancing from side to side as she began to realize she was surrounded.
“Scouts saw your ship flying over our territory,” the redhead answered. “Figured if you were looking for a place to touch down, you’d end up here on our landing pad.”
“Landing pad?” Zannah repeated in surprise, momentarily distracted from her dangerous situation. “You made this place so ships could land here?”
“Who said anything about ships?” the man answered with a sly grin. He put two fingers to his lips and gave a sharp whistle so loud and shrill it made Zannah wince.
The air above was filled with the sound of a great roaring wind, and a dark shadow blotted out the sun.