Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars Read Online Free Page A

tomorrow morning!” CZ-1 called as Thane dashed out the door.
    His family had a private hangar, but—as with most people on Jelucan—their territory ran more vertically than horizontally. Their gold-tiled home stretched almost the entirewidth of
their property, mostly because his parents had insisted that people of their stature needed a home grander than the neighbors’. The snobbery annoyed Thane less than the fact that this meant
his hangar was three hundred meters away—downhill.
    At least he’d figured out a solution. With a grin, Thane slid on his flight goggles and ran for the far ridge. The handlebars were in positionand ready, so all he had to do was grab them
tightly, release the brake, and jump.
    Immediately, he was zooming along the cable that led from his home to his hangar, dangling from the handlebars as he sped down the long ridge of stone. Cold mountain air whipped around him as he
looked down into the valley far below. It wasn’t as good as flying, but it came close.
    He reactivated thebrake as he slid toward the end post, but only gradually, because he liked to have some velocity left at the end. Just before he would’ve crashed into the post, Thane
let go and leaped to the ground, laughing out loud.
    Then he heard, “You know, someday you’re going to break your face on that thing.”
    Thane turned to see Ciena standing there next to her family’s clunky old ridgecrawler.She looked even shorter and skinnier than she was in that oversize flight suit, and her face still
appeared younger than her age, with its rounded cheeks and snub nose. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was trying to look stern, but he could see the smile hiding in her dark brown
eyes.
    He righted himself and clapped his hands together to clean his gloves. “You’re just jealousbecause I never let you do it.”
    Ciena stuck her tongue out at him. “I
could
do it, you know.”
    Of course she could; Thane never doubted that. But the line started at his house, and his parents hated her even more than her parents hated him. The few times they’d met, his family had
treated Ciena so rudely that it made Thane almost sick with shame. Ciena was no more eager to encounter theKyrells again than they were to see her.
    However, the two of them always pretended there was no reason they shouldn’t spend time together. It was easier than talking about how their families wanted them apart.
    “Here I was worried about running late,” Ciena continued, “and I beat you here.”
    “Trigonometry.” Thane grimaced, an expression Ciena matched. “Come on, let’s get started. Lizard-toad-snakefor pilot?” They each silently counted to three and held
out their hands. Thane had gone for the snake, but Ciena chose lizard, and lizard ate snake. She beamed, and he gestured toward the V-171’s hatch. “Pilots first.”
    He didn’t actually mind being copilot/gunner; cadets had to be expert at flying in both positions if they wanted to get into the academy. But sitting backward in the cockpitwas never
quite as much fun.
    Technically, the V-171 was Dalven’s. When he’d left for the academy, he’d given strict instructions that nobody was to fly it while he was gone.
    Yeah, right.
    Thane never passed up an opportunity to fly—or to get a little revenge on his older brother.
    (Dalven was always ruder about Ciena than anyone else in the Kyrell family. Not long before Dalvenhad left for the academy, he’d sneered and said that there was only one reason to pick up
some girl from the valleys—and if that was what Thane was after, he ought to get one who had breasts already. Thane had split Dalven’s lip before their parents pulled them apart.)
    “Hey,” Ciena said. Thane realized he was just standing on the ladder instead of climbing inside the cockpit. “Still withme?”
    “Yeah.” Thane slid into the ship while determinedly not looking at the front of Ciena’s flight suit. “Sorry. Let’s go.”
    They slid on