The Art of Broken Pieces

82 Porgs

Approaching the liquid planet, Rey took the controls in hand and began their approach. She'd snagged the pilot's seat the moment she woke, determined to control at least part of this operation. She would be bringing them into the atmosphere and landing them on this planet—it wasn't much control, but it was something.

Ben had entered the cockpit just as they slid past the first satellite and lowered himself silently into the copilot's chair. He wore something new, clearly purchased on Toland's lunar base along with his ship parts—an ash gray shirt with dark trousers tucked into his much-abused boots. At least it wasn't all black.

The planet was called Ve'Lutt and, according to the spare data available on her data screen, home to an indigenous species of sentient serpents. The pale blue arc of atmosphere veiling the planet refracted a million rainbows from the planet's liquid surface. The atmosphere burned around the Falcon's hull on entry, lighting up in tongues of flame that showed green and whites and blues.

"This atmosphere had better be breathable," she said, taking them lower.

The floating cities weren't so much cities as factories, moored on vast drills that plunged into the planet's crust, miles beneath the water's surface. Something white and crystalline gathered on the Falcon's viewport, and as they dove closer to the iron mountain of the mining city, she saw drifts of it piling on the water.

"It isn't water..." she breathed, peering down at the glossy, viscous swells beyond the snowstorm. It was thick as honey, moving with a syrupy kind of surface tension that water didn't have. As they swooped low over spiked pier, she saw a group of humanoid creatures carving up a fish the size of a speeder. They hurled chunks of it into the ocean.

When the pieces hit, the liquid's surface went solid as permacrete, shattering the meat. Then, the surface relaxed, and the meat sank slowly, like something being coated in amber, or sinking through the surface of glass.

Ben's hands were easing toward the copilot's controls, and Rey jerked her attention back to her landing sequence. They'd scrambled the Falcon's identifier, using one of the many smuggling names Han had programmed into the system, and assumed the captain and co-pilot's names.

Rey shrugged on one of the parkas loaded into the holding bay's lockers. Ben did the same, and they descended the gangplank together.

After checking in with the dock master and negotiating a fuel-up, they made their way across a steel bridge to the Big Island. A cluster of dull steel buildings reached like nubby fingers toward the green-gray sky.

"Where's our meeting place?" She shouted, feeling her words ripped away by the howling sleet. Wind buffeted them both, and if she hadn't been using the Force to plant her steps, Rey would have been ripped right off the bridge by the next gust. Her boots did not have the right kind of traction for the crust of ice making slippery ferns across the latticed steel bridge. Rey didn't swim well, but even if she had, she wasn't sure anything could swim in that thick ocean. How did anyone live here without the Force?

"Near the warehouses along the eastern wall." Ben yelled back, feeling the freezing air tear at his throat as he pointed vaguely in the right direction. The thick fur that lined their coats managed to insulate them from most of the biting wind, but even so he could see Rey shivering as they made their slow way across the bridge. On the other side the rising steel city around them cut down slightly on the icy blast, and Ben straightened as his balance returned to something more akin to normal. Face stinging from the sleet, he lifted gloved hands to his cheeks and tried to rub some feeling back into them.

"These people are insane!" He complained loudly, trying to get his bearings. All the drab, rectangular buildings looked the same, stark and uninviting. Most were windowless, though Ben supposed that if these storms were the planet's norm, there wasn't much of a view to bother with.