Lords of the Sith Read Online Free Page B

to breathe.
    There was only Vader’s respiration, regular as a pendulum. Loud. Ominous.
    Cham finally got ahold of himself and exhaled, thinking of Pok, the awful gasps that had been the last sounds his friend had made.
    “Your allies are dead,” Vader said, and the words made Cham wince.
    Isval slammed her hand on the comm, cutting it short.
    Silence.
    “Cham, we should go,” she said. “Right now.”
    But Cham knew it was already too late. If they tried to flee the system now, they’d end up exactly as had Pok and his crew: pursued, caught, and executed.
    When he made no reply, Isval said to the helm, “Take us out of here.”
    That brought Cham around. “Belay that!” To Isval, he said softly, “It’s too late for that. They’ll see us.”
    “The V-wings are spreading out, sir,” the engineer reported. “They look like they’re starting a sweep. Another ship is coming into the system. A Star Destroyer.”
    The air went out of everyone all at once. All eyes fell on Cham. They were waiting for orders, waiting for salvation. Pok was gone, the spell was broken, and Cham did not hesitate.
    “Take us deep in the rings. Make us a rock, helm. Minimal life support. Take everything else down. We float.”
    “If we go dark, we won’t be able to run if they detect us,” Isval said. “By the time we get the engines back online—”
    “There’s no running, Isval,” Cham said matter-of-factly. “We hide or we die. Do it, helm.”
    The helm nodded and did as she was ordered. The ship descended deep into the rings, and the viewscreen filled with pockmarked, irregular blocks of ice and stone, all spinning and whirling.
    “Power us down,” Cham ordered.
    “Aye, sir,” the engineer said, and the bridge lights and viewscreen went dark.
    Dim, auxiliary lights cast the bridge in a faint orange glow. The shadowed faces of the crew looked at one another, at the ceiling, the bulkheads.
    Bits of ice and rock ticked against the hull. With life support at minimum, the temperature started to drop quickly. But it wouldn’t get life threatening, merely uncomfortable.
    Cham was more worried about the ship taking a high-speed impact from one of the larger rocks or ice chunks. The hull could take a beating, but it wasn’t impregnable, and if the ship started bouncing around in the rings, he’d have no choice but to fire up the engines.
    “Steady now, people,” he said.
    Some of the crew bowed their heads; others stared at the blank viewscreen. The tension was worse than the cold. Within a few minutes Cham could see his breath in the air. He tried not to shiver. He walked from crewperson to crewperson, touching shoulders, backs, whispering for them to be at ease. He eventually circled back to Isval and spoke to her quietly.
    “I should’ve cut that comm sooner. I put us at risk.”
    Isval did him the credit of not denying his error. “Let’s hope you get a chance to do so again.”
    “That was…hard to hear.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “This is the last time we hide from Vader,” Cham told her.
    She looked him full in the face and nodded agreement.
    An impact shook the ship and the crew exclaimed as one. The helm nearly lost her seat, but used her instrument panel to stay at her station. There were no follow-up impacts.
    “That was just a rock,” Isval said. “Steady, people. If that Star Destroyer picks us up, it’ll be over before we feel anything.”
    “That ought to cheer them,” Cham said, and Isval gave him one of her half smiles, or maybe a quarter smile.
    They sat in silence for a long while, hope rising with each passing minute. Soon the crew was breathing easily again.
    “I think that’s long enough,” said Cham. “Power us up, helm.”
    Despite the time that had passed, the crew grew palpably tense as the systems came back online. If any Imperial ships were nearby and scanning, the freighter would light up on their sensors immediately. The lights and viewscreen returned, the engines engaged, and