Embers flew everywhere. They peppered Daion’s face, making his eyes water and his throat dry. Through a blur of tears he watched his house burn to the ground, lost in the blaze that was his village. Several times, feet hit the ground just outside his hiding place, some of them the white-armored uniform boots of Imperial stormtroopers, but most of them the dirty, worn footwear of villagers as they fled the soldiers. Daion didn’t understand why they were burning his village; they were only a forest farming village, after all. They weren’t dangerous.

Crammed in his narrow ventilation conduit, breathing shallowly from the pressure of his knees against his chest, Daion rubbed an itch silently. He felt that the slightest noise he made would bring whole stormtrooper squads running, even though all around him roiled a thunderous storm of blaster shots, Human and Wookiee cries, collapsing buildings, and marking time to it all the metallic clomping of the big stilt-legged walkers that had first appeared through the trees. Even now he could still hear their snap-screeching shots being flung about —

One smashed right into the wall above his hiding place, shaking him violently. Flaming planks of silverwood rained all around him, but by some miracle none landed in front of the opening. The sound of clattering wood and stomping metal feet went away at the same time.

Daion risked a look out the mouth of the conduit. There wasn’t anyone in sight. Daion pulled himself out and cautiously started to make his way to the mountain, the place where the villagers kept their transport, into which everyone must be piling right now, seeking to make a quick escape from the stormtroopers’ unprovoked attack. He slid along the stone wall, looking constantly about for soldiers, but the blazing village seemed completely deserted. He was almost out when a crash behind him, followed by a screeching howl, spun him around. A young Wookiee, red-black fur matted with blood and limping badly on his left leg, shot out from between two blackened walls and ran in his direction. Three stormtroopers were after him.

“Hey, you!”

Now they were after Daion, too. He ran.

The Wookiee, with his slightly longer legs, overtook him quickly despite his limp — but he didn’t get far. Daion heard blaster shots, saw the scarlet beams flash past, saw one strike the Wookiee hard on the shoulder. The Wookiee screamed hoarsely and dropped to the ground.

Almost immediately Daion twisted in pain as another blaster shot found its mark — almost. His hand went instinctively to his side, where the shot had scorched a bite of flesh and cloth from his ribs. The pain blurred his eyes with tears. But even through the haze, Daion saw that blast rip past him and straight into a silverwood tree, an old one with a trunk as wide as three men. The scarlet shot superheated the heartwood inside the old tree, disintegrating it in a muffled detonation. It blew out the bark, weakened where the blaster shot had punched in, revealing a ragged hole gouged out of the wood. The old tree groaned under its own weight, thunderous cracks ripping a splintered girdle around it. Daion saw the tree begin to fall, ran away, and ran back. The Wookiee was almost under the falling trunk. Daion managed to roll him just barely out of the way before the giant tree boomed against the ground, crushing one or two footsoldiers and trapping others in its thick foliage.

Daion almost couldn’t see. His side hurt more with every heartbeat and already blaster shots were lancing helter-skelter out of the fallen tree’s crown. It was just as he was straining to heft the unconscious Wookiee over his shoulders that he saw the majestic green-gray ship lift from its mountain niche and start to rise … and the higher it rose, the lower Daion’s heart dropped. He shook his head in frantic denial: how could they leave them here? didn’t they notice they were missing? His wide-eyed stare followed the rising Toombar as it turned, letting loose a shower of thin lightning-blue bolts from its nose toward the ground. There was a bright explosion that sent shredded pieces of hull metal high into the air, startling Daion from his hollow thoughts of abandonment … and then the green-gray ship was lost in the blue. A smoking piece of durasteel smashed to the ground several meters away on the far side of the fallen tree’s stump.

It was marked with the Imperial Forces logo. The Toombar had blown up the stormtroopers’ transport! Jolted from his mortification by their brave act, he immediately started to think of ways to rendezvous with the ship — and came up with a solution almost right away. But he had to take the Wookiee with him!

Daion heaved. The Wookiee was too heavy to lift. Daion instead shook him awake, growing more desperate by the second.

“Hey, Wookiee, wake up! We gotta get out of here! They’re leaving without us!” Daion grabbed handfuls of thick coarse fur and shook some more. “Come on, Wookiee!”

The Wookiee’s sea-blue eyes and black-lipped mouth opened at the same time, and Daion heard a weak moan. His hand grasped at Daion’s shoulder. Daion caught it in his own and hauled the Wookiee to his feet, wrapping the furry arm around his shoulders. He could just barely take the Wookiee’s weight, but he stumbled as fast as he could along the outside of the village wall, at right angles to his previous direction.

His cousins had given him a slightly used Incom S-12 Streek for his tenth birthday. For the following four years he had used it as many times a day as he could. He loved the sleek little thing, with its feather-touch controls, lightning-fast response time, and snug little canopy. He knew it upside down and backward — he’d put the Streek through its paces in those positions countless times — and now it was going to save their lives.

Behind him he heard buzzy voices. “Stop!” — “You there!” — “Blast him!” Shots began to fly past again. Daion shoved himself and the Wookiee through a screen of vines, behind which squatted his Streek. He left the Wookiee leaning on the cold metal side while he popped the canopy, then helped the Wookiee into the copilot’s seat. Daion slid in himself, started the liftoff sequence, and immediately broke out in a cold sweat.

The Streek’s repulsorlifts had chosen precisely that moment to cut out completely. There had been only one time before, when he had flown the Streek at top speed across the Hara Plains, that the repulsorlifts had cut out unexpectedly. Sure, they’d then cut back in just as suddenly, keeping him from making a furrow in the ground by twenty centimeters or so, but he decided that a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour was not the best speed to use finicky repulsorlifts, especially with no previous flight experience. Daion had tuned and repaired the Streek with loving care ever since then. Just yesterday he had checked the couplings and had been satisfied they were tight. Now the repulsorlifts wouldn’t start at all; the twin motivators sang shrilly as they struggled to power the repulsorlift pods, but the little ship refused to budge.

Three soldiers burst through the screen of vines. Two of them aimed at the Streek, but the third one stopped them, motioning them forward. The menacing white breathing mask came towards Daion, who was desperately coaxing the engine to kick in. The soldier raised the butt of his pistol, clearly intending to smash the cockpit window.

The pistol came down.

It struck a glancing blow, then flew altogether out of the black-gloved hands, for at the swing Daion’s literal knee-jerk reaction had been to duck. His knee had rammed the underside of the control panel and, thanks to that freak luck that seems to govern most electronic components, the Streek rose straight up into the air. Fast. The soldier’s helmet struck a wing with a solid thud underscored, Daion thought, by a faint crunch.

Blaster shots struck the thick durasteel skin for the first few seconds. Daion winced at every splatter of energy, praying the hull would hold. But what he was worrying about most was that Streeks were low-atmosphere airspeeders, not deep space cruisers. Well, no way out of this one, he thought. He lowered the air pressure a little, turned down the temperature regulators, and diverted power from as many systems as he could lay his hands on to the thrusters. His Streek shot straight up into the sky. The polarized windows showed darkening blue, then diamond-studded purple. The thrusters coughed. Daion caressed the controls, spreading the power so thin it was threatening to sputter out.

The Streek yawed abruptly as a bright explosion went off under one wing. Daion gasped, taking up precious oxygen. Below him, a Howlrunner was rising up in pursuit, turbolasers already firing even at its awkward angle. Daion’s terror grew. His hand spasmed on the steering column, maneuvering the little speeder around the Howlrunner’s scarlet shots. The sky turned, with excruciating slowness, starry black; if Daion stretched a little he could see the glowing curve of Desgand far below, but not the Howlrunner itself. Shadows lay starkly across the nose, slicing the ship into light and black sections. Where two shots had grazed him, the hull was blackened almost to the color of shadows. One hand flying over the controls, Daion found just enough power somewhere to divert to the comlink; the moment he had a signal he gasped into it, “S-12 Streek to Toombar. Respond please. Streek to Toombar. Come in — this is an emergency!”

The comlink hissed. “Toombar to Streek. Go ahead.”

“I’m under attack — “ Daion replied. “Please, help me!”

“Transmit coordinates,” came the voice, its tightness coming through even with the sputtering transmission. The comm system was losing power.

“Coordinates unknown,” Daion said softly. It was getting hard to breathe. “Holding altitude at — “ he checked a readout — “ninety kilometers.” Ninety was ridiculous. Streeks never went higher than thirty or forty.

There was a silence. Hiss — “Daion, is that you? Daion, wait, we’re coming for you. I’ve got you on scanner. Hold on.” The new voice was Robaw’s, chief elder of the village and captain of the ship. Daion had met him only once. He wheezed:

“Acknowledged. Will hold. I have a passenger … Over and out.” Comlink power went immediately to thrusters. The Howlrunner was closing fast. Daion shut down temp-reg altogether, saving power for life support, and concentrated on dodging laser bolts. It wasn’t much different from flying through the forest, dodging trees — except now he never knew where the next ‘tree’ was going to be! The Streek abruptly bucked with a muffled blam from directly below, jerking Daion against his crash webbing, stretching it enough to make him smack his head against the canopy. A moment later he realized that his Streek — though still whole — had no thrusters at all: the Howlrunner had blown them out from under him! Several interminable seconds squeezed past while the Howlrunner rose to catch up with him, no longer firing. Without thrusters, the Streek was in freefall, only their harnesses keeping him and the Wookiee pressed to their seats. Clearly the pilot knew he had them dead in space and was just enjoying teasing them before blowing them to particles. The Howlrunner slewed about to bear its cannons on them … and never had a chance to fire. Instead, it spontaneously detonated. Daion stared at the expanding cloud of debris, for a moment unable to figure out what had happened — then the Toombar hove into view, and Daion realized he did remember the quick blue flash skewering the Howlrunner just before it exploded. A few moments later he felt the shudder and jolt of the Toombar’s tractor beam latching onto his Streek, shoving him into his seat as if he had been dropped into it. Daion shut down the now useless thrusters and put some power back into life support. Suddenly he was gasping for air as if he had been held underwater, and he realized he had cut down too much on oxygen. He twisted around to check on the Wookiee, and was relieved to see him take a shuddering breath.

Then the Streek’s loading hatch latched onto the transport, and the little speeder was still. Daion unstrapped himself and the Wookiee, then reached up and undid the pressure seal. The Wookiee was awake again, and Daion helped him out from the cockpit and into the arms of his waiting father. His cousins Rial and Lryssia rushed forward to catch him up between them. “You’re safe, you’re safe!” they cried.

I’m safe, Daion agreed with a somewhat goofy grin, soot streaking his skin and blood seeping from his side, and blacked out.

He woke up in a clean white medical cubicle, his head throbbing painfully. He must have been out for quite a while, he guessed, since he was now clean, a synthflesh patch had been applied to his ribs and his temple, and he was wrapped in a thick, soft terrycloth cloak. He heard a 2-1B droid beeping quietly to itself off to his left.

He meant to roll over on his side and moaned instead. The pain in his head ballooned into a million red-hot shards of shrapnel at the slightest motion, so he held still. The 2-1B droid heard and came over, fussing over him. “Do you feel well?” it queried in a buzzing tone.

“My head hurts,” Daion mumbled. It hurt even to talk. The droid moved a few of its arms, pressed a hypospray to Daion’s shoulder, and went on fussing over him until Daion fell asleep again.

The next time he woke up he felt considerably better. He found he could sit up without much trouble, and had to persuade the 2-1B droid to leave him alone when it rushed up, ticking in concern. He finally told the droid to get him some water and got a minute to himself while it left and returned. Then Daion made a point of sipping his water slowly, so slowly that even the droid grew impatient and went off to do something else. Daion finished his water and simply sat there, tired, for a while. He nearly didn’t notice when he almost fell asleep right as he was, but just then the door to the cubicle hissed open to admit the young Wookiee he’d brought back. His chest and shoulder were heavily bandaged, but his eyes were bright and when Daion croaked “Hello,” the Wookiee grinned broadly and wrapped both arms around him in an energetic hug.

“Hey, hey!” Daion protested. “What’s all this about?”

The Wookiee barked something happily. Daion smiled back, nodding. “I’m Daion,” he reciprocated, “and you’re more than welcome, Chanrrisak. Are you all right?”

Chanrrisak agreed enthusiastically, caught up Daion’s hand in both his paws, and started chittering something too fast to follow. “Wait, wait, slow down. You’re making no sense.” Chanrrisak repeated himself only a little more slowly. Daion listened, his eyes growing wider and wider.

“You can’t be serious,” he said faintly. But the Wookiee was.

Daion shook his head again. “Really,” he protested weakly, “I’m not ready to accept a life debt!”