“I don’t know how the authorities will take this,” Herdis said as they reached the car. “Best avoid complications.”

It was a humble, old thing; the kind of vehicle one might rent in a town that saw little traffic. The driver’s pit was open to the sky and so was the cargo area. Ayna leapt up into the latter, while Bers and Herdis got into the former.

“They coming?” Bers asked as Herdis started the car.

“Not yet,” Ayna replied.

The engine came to life and the four wheels spun them away. Herdis took the shortest route to the road they were now so familiar with, rattling Ayna with rough terrain.

“So you... have everything planned out?” Ayna said, shouting a bit to be heard over the bumps.

“Evaluate, plan, act,” Herdis said. “I have a road map. We’ll drive nonstop until we reach that other town. Then we’ll reassess.”

Ayna noticed the packs she was sitting next to.

“Well done,” she said.

They reached the road and headed uphill. Ayna kept looking back, just in case, avoiding the uncomfortably glaring headlights. That was why it came as such a surprise when Herdis suddenly slammed the brakes.

“Whoa, what?!” Ayna exclaimed as she picked herself up.

Bathed in the lights, difficult for a Dwyyk to look at, stood Saketa. Herdis lifted her rifle with one hand, but Ayna reached over and grabbed it.

“No, wait! This... I-”

The woman walked over to the driver’s door.

“Trouble?” she said to them.

Bers said something in that odd language.

“Pirates,” Herdis said, still not relaxing.

Saketa nodded curtly and looked towards the town.

“I’ll come along.”

“What?” Herdis said.

“I’ll come along,” the woman repeated.

Without further ado she walked over to the cargo platform and leapt on board.

“Good,” Bers said, and patted Herdis’s shoulder to prod her back into driving.

She did set off again. Ayna tried to make eye contact with her new seatmate, but the woman stared off into the distance, towards the town.

“So, what’s this?” she asked as the distant lights began to vanish from view.

“You are in trouble, are you not?” Saketa replied absent-mindedly.

“Well, yes,” Ayna admitted. “We-”

The town had just vanished behind the landscape when a light took off, up into the sky.

“I think we really are,” Ayna finished. “Herdis! Ship!”

The woman turned her head, and Ayna felt she surely had to see the moving lights at the very least. She sped the car up to the maximum that Ayna herself would have dared, considering the road, then shot right past that and kept on going. The massage of the uneven road turned into a savage beating

The ship vanished from sight as they rounded a small hill, and for a moment Ayna allowed herself to hope that the pirates had had enough and were flying off.

But no. The ship came back into view, heading their way.

“They are coming,” Saketa said.

“Maybe the growth?!” Ayna suggested to Herdis. “Ditch the car and go on foot?!”

“If they have halfway decent equipment it won’t make any difference,” Herdis said.

They reached a stretch of straight road. Herdis slowed down a bit before setting the car to auto. Then she took her rifle and started clambering over to join Saketa and Ayna.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Bers, take over!” she said, and started fiddling with the settings of her gun.

“Rifle too weak!” the man protested even as he shifted over into the driver’s seat.

“I might get lucky,” Herdis said.

Luck really did seem like their only hope, given how much the car was rattling.

The ship drew closer. It was an older model, much repaired and its repulsors were set on the ends of large wings. The gun was mounted on the front and the ship dipped low to glide above the road, aiming it their way.

Herdis fired. The ship fired back. The blast hit a few metres behind the car, blasting smoke, earth and scorching heat up in an explosion. Sheer terror gripped Ayna and she had to fight an instinct to leap to the side of the road. The car was going too fast.

Bers took them through a bend in the road, around a cliff. The whine of the ship became a bit louder and it came around at a slightly different angle. Ayna tried telling herself that it was all just scare tactics; the pirates wanted them alive for questioning. Then she remembered that Herdis and Bers had killed several of their compatriots.

Revenge.

Herdis kept firing and Bers steered the car wildly, keeping up a random pattern. The next blast went by, scorching and blasting a chunk of the growth, sending hot ashes and sparks over everyone in the car. The sheer helplessness threatened to drown Ayna’s wits out entirely.

The ship rose a bit higher, and the next blast hit the road in front. Bers had no time at all to stop. The car ploughed into the crater, coming to a smashing stop. The world spun as Ayna flew through the air to the sound of crushed metal. She shifted herself before hitting the ground, rolling in a relatively controlled manner. It was still a brutal landing, and it took her a moment to realise that not only had she stopped but all four limbs were essentially intact.

She also realised that the ship had passed over them and then turned back around. It was coming, swooping down towards all of them. Ayna dumbly fumbled for her pistol, as if it would make any difference.

Saketa then stepped into her view. The woman looked not only unhurt, but calm. Ayna tried to say something; she didn’t even know what, and nothing emerged anyway. The woman’s face was set in intense focus.

The pirate ship dipped further down and Ayna turned her head just in time to see the frontal gun shift its aim slightly.

This is it.

Saketa thrust her palm out in a quick, strong motion. About two hundred metres away the ship’s left wing was torn off with a loud rending noise.

The ship spun out of control, the blast went wide, and the pirates passed overhead with a whoosh. They scraped the growth for a second or two before vanishing from sight. Then came the sound of the crash.

Silence took over. Saketa took a deep breath and turned to look in the ship’s direction. She still looked unbothered.

“I have not entirely lost myself,” she stated softly.

Ayna blinked, trying to understand what she’d just seen and whether she had indeed seen it. She sat up with a groan, replaying it all.

The wing HAD come off, as if the ship had hit an invisible cliff. How much did that big, protruding piece of metal weigh? Twenty tons?

“Can you stand?” Saketa asked, and Ayna realised the woman had turned her attention her way. She was holding her hand out, and Ayna took it.

“Yee... eees?” Ayna heard herself say as she painfully rose.

She remembered the other two, and prioritised checking on them. Herdis was getting up by herself, obviously in pain, but managing. The woman gave Ayna a quick look-over, taking in her condition, then staggered to the car.

Bers was still in the driver’s seat. Apparently he’d had the wherewithal to put on the safety harness. Nonetheless, he was in a partially destroyed part of a vehicle and was bleeding from his head. The amount was rather distressing to see, but Ayna reminded herself that head injuries always oozed heavily.

Ayna limped after Herdis, followed by Saketa.

“We sh... we should keep moving,” Herdis said as she examined the dazed man. “The pirates area done for, but we are still close to town.”

“The car is done for too,” Ayna pointed out as Herdis made Bers follow her finger as she moved it around.

“I know, but we need to move all the same.”

“Fine,” Bers said as he began climbing out of the wreck without prompting. “I’m fine.”

“Save me from tough patients...” Herdis mused. “It looks like your vest spread the effects of the harness. But I see the way you’re holding your arm.”

“Not first beating,” the man said dismissively, and still showed no real signs of pain even though Ayna now noticed that he was indeed favouring his left arm. He looked at Saketa and smiled in an odd way.

Herdis went into her medical bag and stemmed the blood flow from his head, and slipped a simple cast over his wrist. Meanwhile, Ayna stood silent, at a loss for words. Her gaze tended to drift upwards, remembering the whoosh of the ship as it went down. The wing had landed somewhere on the other side of the road, hidden by the growth. Occasionally her gaze would drift to the side, to Saketa.

The woman offered nothing, in word nor expression.

Herdis kept up her professional persona, striding over to Ayna and giving her a quick examination, asking her to move all her joints, before handing over a pill and insisting she swallow it.

“Now we need to go to the ship,” Herdis said. “Saketa, can you lead the way through the growth?” she added and indicated the woman’s blades.

“That ship is not getting up again,” Ayna pointed out. “Nor are the people on board.”

“No, but they will have rations. And water. We’ll need both for our hike.”

Herdis gave everyone a quick look.

“The other pirate ship will come back, with at least one more. We need to be well away when that happens. I have a map that will get us across the wilderness to that other town. We’ll hunker down there, keep our comms open, and wait for the Addax. If opportunities to take other flights offworld arise, we’ll look into it. Any questions?”