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 t o 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. He just wasn’t sure he could manage a precise feat of telekinesis with something as heavy as an R2 unit.
“Hold on a moment, little guy.” Ben closed his eyes and concentrated.
Through the Force, he could feel the looming mass of the Y-wing, even trace its contours. And there was Shaker, too, but he couldn’t separate the droid in his mind from the starfighter. He didn’t want to pick up the whole starfighter, couldn’t even want to try.
Then Shaker made a noise of curiosity, and suddenly the droid was distinct from the starfighter, its own lines clearly defined. Ben grinned and focused on the astromech.
He gently pulled upward, as if trying to extract a plug from an engine. The plug proved to be stubborn, so he Pulled harder.
Shaker’s sudden squawk of alarm almost broke Ben’s concentration, but he frowned and kept at it, and could sense the astromech rising into the air and floating free of the Y-wing. Ben gestured laterally, and Shaker drifted to one side.
Carefully, Ben brought the droid down to the ground and opened his eyes. Swaying a little, tired from his effort, he said, “I guess you’re coming with me.” The droid chirped, its tones suggesting relief.
Heading westward, the direction in which Ben felt the distant glee, they plunged into the forest of Ziost.
It was a cold day. Though Ben had felt comfortable out in the clearing, in the cloud-muted sunlight, here the forest canopy cut off most of the sunlight, and Ben felt a chill. The massive, dark, twisting tree trunks, looking like painracked bodies flash-frozen and preserved in their agonies, added to his unease. He pulled his Jedi cloak from his backpack and donned it, grateful for both its warmth and the symbolic protection it offered.
There were no trails through this forest, just dense undergrowth. Shaker’s limitations in the environment-the droid could move briskly on its wheels on flat, hard surfaces, but had to waddle slowly on legs on uneven terrain-kept their progress slow. But in the first hour of travel, Ben did not feel the glee he was pursuing become more distant. If anything, he and Shaker seemed to be closing, very slowly, on his quarry.
Then he heard sounds from the direction they’d come. The sounds were far away, muffled by distance and the oppressive forest, but Ben thought he recognized the scream of ion engines, the thoom of laserfire.
Shaker began tweetling a complicated message. With a sinking feeling, Ben pulled out his datapad and opened it. A series of diagnostic reports scrolled by on the screen too fast to read, but then the message scrolled to a stop.