Page 2 of New World

“No,” Shep whispered.

Kalna bolted, sprinting down the hill.

“No! Stop!” Dorane hissed, but it was too late. Two more children followed, rushing toward their families.

They didn’t make it.

Blaster fire cut through the air, bright streaks against the backdrop of rising smoke. Kalna jerked mid-step, her body hitting the ground in a heap. The others fell a second later.

Dorane’s heart pounded in his chest. He grabbed Shep’s arm and pulled on him.

“Run,” he rasped.

Shep didn’t move. His face was ashen, frozen in shock. Dorane wrenched at him, dragging him back, but a new sound filled the air—a screeching roar as fighter skids swept over the landscape, their engines flaring as they turned toward the hill.

“They see us,” Tiev breathed.

Dorane shoved Shep, his voice raw. “Run! Now!”

The others scrambled away, vanishing into the rocky outcroppings. But Shep wouldn’t move.

Dorane had no choice.

He let go.

Shep lay on the ground, out in the open, unmoving. He just stared blankly down at the devastation below. Dorane didn’t look back. He ran—down the opposite side of the hill, away from the carnage, away from the screams, away from everything he had known.

Weaving between the rocks, he dove beneath a boulder wedged between two cliffs and pressed his shaking body into the tight, dark space. His hands scrabbled at the loose rocks, pulling them in front of him, covering himself as best he could.

The ground trembled as the skids screamed overhead. Dust rained down around him, stinging his eyes, choking his throat. The sounds of more blasters screeched through the air. He covered his ears with his dirty hands and closed his eyes.

He curled into himself.

And he waited.

Two days later, the silence was worse than the noise. Dorane crawled out from beneath the boulder, blinking against the harsh sunlight. His body ached, his throat burned, his stomach twisted with hunger—but he barely noticed.

His feet carried him over the ridge, back toward the village. Shep lay in the same place that Dorane had left him. His friend looked almost as if he had fallen asleep there—if it hadn’t been for the stain of blood and the scorch mark across his back. Dorane wanted to turn his eyes away as he stumbled past, but he couldn’t.

The wind howled through the corridor lined with huts, stirring ashes where homes once stood. The dome huts were crumbling, some reduced to skeletal remains of what they had been. Scorch marks blackened the ground.

Bodies lay where they had fallen.

Dorane walked forward in a daze, his eyes hollow, his mind blank. His parents’ bodies remained in the dirt where they had been left, their hands inches apart, almost touching.

He staggered past them, toward his home. Inside, the air was thick, stale. He stepped over the threshold and froze.

His younger sister and brother lay on the floor, their small forms still and lifeless.

A sound tore from his throat—raw, broken. He dropped to his knees, his arms wrapping around his thin legs as his body shook. The light faded outside as he sat there, shivering, locked in grief and shock, before fatigue finally pulled him into a fitful sleep.

A low buzzing sound woke Dorane. Rolling to his feet, he released a low, feral growl when he saw the flies around his little sister. Scrambling over to the couch on his knees, he ripped the cover his mother had made off of it and rose on shaky feet to cover Saffin’s petite body.

Grief tore through him, but he was too dehydrated for any tears to fall. Instead, he murmured a low prayer to give him strength. Stumbling through the doorway, he looked at the devastation surrounding him. He would not leave his people to rot out in the open. They would not become food for the scavengers who lived among the rocks. They deserved better than that.

Dorane rounded the house to the small shed that contained his father’s tools. The Legion soldiers had ransacked it, just like they had ransacked the inside of his house.

He pulled a shovel from under the discarded debris. Over the course of the day, he dug two graves in the center of their garden where the dirt had been tilled. Dorane ignored the blisters that formed and the blood that dripped from his fingers. He continued until the graves were deep enough to hold his parents and his little brother and sister.

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