The cold blanket of space wrapped around the fighter and filled the cockpit with millions of bright dots. Most were distant stars but the remainder belonged to the fleet of ships that floated between the Black Widow and the large temperate agricultural planet below.

All around me, white mists shot out of the underbelly of the Widow as her escape pods were jettisoned as countermeasures to hide my fighter’s own escape.

I floated along at first, gliding out of the shuttle bay into the battlefield, and then all at once, the auto-programming took over and I shot forth into the fray of enemy fire.

Flashes of light streaked toward me, fired from the Galactic Republic ships—well, some from the capital ships themselves and others from the fighters that had been scrambled to engage any smaller, more nimble threats that may have erupted from the Black Widow’s holds.

My breath caught in my throat as I braced for impact with any of the multitude of energy beams that were fired my way, but they shot past me as the ship danced and twirled through the minefield of enemy fire. It was almost as though the fighter moved with the same agility and grace as the Empress herself.

And then, all at once, I was through the field of fire and into the gaps between the capital ships. Behind the fleet, I could see the large blue-green glow of the planet below.

The next few moments are a little fuzzy for me. I suspect it was a hit from a laser cannon, but it may well have been a collision with some debris that the sensors failed to detect and avoid. Regardless of the source of the concussion, I blacked out several times, awakening to the blaring alarms of a crashing ship and the smell of burning electrical equipment and failing engines.

Black out.

The red-hot glare of the atmosphere pressed against the canopy of the cockpit burned just inches from my face as my body pressed back into the seat behind me. The internal dampener’s must be damag—

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Black out.

The ground raced up to meet me. Collision with the planet below was imminent. I gripped the Empress’s data drive tightly in my fist and braced for impact, and then I felt the ship’s repulsor engines kick on. Thank god, something still works on this thing! But the counterforce was too great and I—

Black out.

I woke to smoke and yelling voices. My vision flashed in and out, a blurry smear of faces, as hands grabbed at my body and lifted me out.

I was being dragged across the grainy sand when my vision cleared and I saw the wreckage of the fighter that had borne me down from the battle above.

My thoughts went immediately to the Empress and I looked skyward to see a frightening sight. Streaks of fire filled the sky, like hundreds of shooting stars.

“What happened?” I stammered, still dazed, trying to make sense of the last several minutes of my life.

A middle-aged man, one of the ones helping to drag me away from the burning ship, bent over me, his face appearing upside down. “There was a big explosion. We were working in the fields and saw your ship on fire, streaking through the sky. The earth shook and we found you inside. We thought you were dead.”

My heart sank. The amount of debris raining down on the planet could only be from a ship the size of the Black Widow. Multiple scenarios ran through my head, trying to come up with a plausible way that it might not be the Empress’s ship. Perhaps she found a way to destroy one of the GR’s ships instead, but no—the Black Widow’s shields were depleted, her weapons and engines disabled. She was dead in the water, which is why the Empress sent me away.

Tears streaked down my face, leaving tracks in the soot that covered me from head to toe. I sank into my grief and barely registered the people around me as they poked and prodded me, asking questions which I did not—could not—answer.

Time seemed to skip from there, maybe from the injuries I sustained in the crash, maybe from the grief that had swallowed me whole.

I can’t recall if I walked or was carried, but the next time I came to a state that resembled normal consciousness, I was in a bed, covered in blankets and I hurt everywhere you could imagine, both inside and out.