Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [100]
In terms of destinations, I allowed myself to be guided by what I heard or overheard in spaceports, cantinas, tapcafs, and the like— wherever professional spacers exchanged information or gossip. I admit to having taken a private delight in their mistaking me for a pirate, smuggler, or bounty hunter, based on nothing more than the rough-and-ready look of the Falcon, with her formidable-looking laser cannon—even though it wasn't capable of firing. If anyone had put me to the test they would have recognized instantly that as a pilot I was not up to the measure of the ship, and could do little more than get myself from place to place.
It was at some cantina on Roost that I learned about Hijado, which is way out the Hydian Way, halfway to Bonadan. An old spacer told me that if any world was going to be in need of relief aid, it was Hijado. Though he refused to say why, the reason became obvious the moment the Falcon reverted from hyperspace in the Hijado system and the sensors alerted me to a convoy of Imperial ships that was departing the planet. What I first took to be atmospheric storms turned out to be smoke billowing from dozens of northern hemisphere population centers. As I drew closer, the Falcon's long-range scanners treated my eyes to the sight of squadrons of TIE fighters returning to their Star Destroyers on the completion of their strafing runs, and of small Hijadoan ships being obliterated on attempting to flee the destruction.
I had heard of recent attacks on the Imperial shipyards at Ord Trasi or Bilbringi—I don't remember which—and my first thought was that the Imperials had discovered a Rebel Alliance base. But Hijado seemed too remote to host a base, and chatter on the comm suggested other reasons for the assault. The chatter was coming from medical frigates waiting for Imperial permission to approach Hijado. It was typical of the Imperial commanders to do this: permit relief ships access once the damage had been done.
Medical teams aboard the frigates updated me on the scope of the devastation and the general plan for providing aid. While the Imperials hadn't leveled Hijado, many cities were beyond help and many areas were going to remain hot for years to come. The rescue teams had been denied permission to evacuate survivors, and medical facilities located in the secondary targets were already mobilizing. Regardless, with power stations and tech centers annihilated, the native civilizations had been set back several hundred years. Worse, the Imperials were installing a base downside to discourage attempts by insurgents to come looking for converts and enlistees.
Once the frigates had been granted permission to insert into orbit, I took the Falcon down into the roiling atmosphere. I scanned for distress signals originating from remote targets but found none, and so relied on visual data and on the Falcon herself to guide me to a place where I might be of some use—since she evinced an atmospheric tendency to pull to starboard.
I spied an area that looked to have been a victim of collateral rather than deliberate damage and put down in a denuded patch of ground, in hot, teeming rain. All around me buildings and houses were engulfed in flames—the fires energized by whatever fuels the indigenous human population used. Everywhere I looked I saw bodies being pulled from raging torrents of water or cascades of thick mud. As I emerged from the ship, a human of perhaps forty standard years disengaged from a group of others in the process of collecting bodies and approached