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The astromech tweetled an affirmative noise, and lines of text popped up on one of the Y-wing’s cockpit displays:

HEAVY ORBITAL TRAIL INDICATES ONE OR MORE VEHICLES IN SPECIFIC ORBIT FOR CONSIDERABLE TIME. VEHICLE(S) LEFT ORBIT APPROXIMATELY EIGHT STANDARD HOURS AGO AND MADE PLANETARY DESCENT.

The cockpit sensor display switched from a live sensor feed to a diagram of the planet’s surface, with dotted lines showing the abandoned orbit and the descent path.

Ben felt a wash of relief. Of course, Ziost was a dead world, in terms of planetary civilization. Few vehicles ever arrived here, and thruster trails would be distinct for a longer time. That changed the prospect of finding a single vehicle in an area the size of a planetary surface from “crazy” to “possible.”

He switched the R2 unit’s data over to his navigation computer and plotted his own descent.

From an altitude of a few kilometers, traveling slowly enough that the Y-wing would neither cause sonic booms nor pull contrails visible from the ground, Ben studied the vehicle that must have brought Faskus back to Ziost.

It was a Corellian YT-2400 light transport—disk-shaped, like Uncle Han’s venerable Millennium Falcon, but with its cockpit at the end of a starboard-side outrigger-style projection.

At least it had once been a YT-2400. Now it was a scorched heap of buckled durasteel, blackened in numerous places by fire; smoke still curled up into the sky from spots where the hull had ruptured. The cockpit and its access tube had separated from the transport’s main body and had rolled, or been hurled, down a gentle incline, putting them twenty meters from the main hull. A light snowfall drifted down across the two main portions of the destroyed craft.

Had it crash-landed? Ben increased the magnification on his visual display and shook his head. No, the scorch patterns on portions of the hull showed clear sign of turbolaser strafing. The transport had been fired upon multiple times, and then had burned.

Ben quickly switched back to primary sensors, but there was no sign of other air traffic in this area. The attacker was long gone.

Ben spiraled down to a landing in the same clearing Faskus had chosen. He set the Y-wing down well clear of the burned wreckage, then investigated on foot.

Portions of the transport were cool enough to approach, and he was even able to enter one or two places where hatches had been blown off or the hull had gapped open wide enough to admit him. There was nothing within but lingering smoke and the smell of burned plastics and pseudo-leathers.

Seeking more clues, he opened himself up to the Force…and shivered. The sensation of being stared at was stronger here than it had been in orbit. He tried to set that sensation aside, to feel around and beyond it, and he could detect no hint of death. He didn’t think the pilot had died in the transport.

Where was he then? Ben wasn’t an accomplished tracker. He didn’t think he could follow a target—particularly one who had recently been fired upon, and was probably cautious and deceptive—through heavy forest.

And then he felt it, just at the periphery of his Force-senses, a little hint of wicked glee, just as he’d felt it at the display case on Drewwa.

That glee remained steady, if distant, as he returned to his Y-wing. “Shaker, I’m going extravehicular for a while. Maybe days,” he told the astromech.

Shaker offered him a musical interrogative. Ben didn’t need to pull out his datapad and read the transmitted text to understand. What do you want me to do?

He thought about it. On this hostile world, an R2 unit’s sensors, tools, and other capabilities could be very useful, assuming the little droid didn’t become stuck in a bog or something. But Ben didn’t have the winch needed to remove Shaker from his housing on the Y-wing. Some astromechs had modifications that would let them climb free and make a safe descent, but Shaker seemed to be a stock model, with no mods of any consequence.

Still, Ben did have the Force available to him.