Read Online Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars by Claudia Gray, Phil Noto - Free Book Online Page A

Dardanellian locusts—but as soon as she was free from the building, she pulled back, tempering her speed so as few people as
possible would see her flight path and realize her plan. While most of the other speeder bikes rushed toward the nearest hoop, Ciena turned and spun away, heading toward the farthest target at top
speed.

    She wasn’t completely alone, though. Maybe a half dozen other cadets had adopted this strategy—and of course one of them was Thane. As he leaned down over his handlebars, he caught
her looking at him and grinned before swerving away.
    Ciena laughed out loud. They were back to normal, and this was going to be
fun
.
    The tricky thing about the course wasn’t handling the speeder bike, alight craft that responded well to its pilot’s movements. Instead the challenge came from choosing the best
flight path. For adequate balance, speeder bikes needed to be within twenty meters of the ground, or at least a flat surface such as a larger craft, a machine—or a building. She slid over to
the nearest mammoth structure and balanced her bike against its shiny surface, flying perpendicularto the ground at such speed that gravity no longer seemed to apply. Glowing windows rushed by
“beneath” her with a ripple like sunlight on water.
    Shift!
Ciena put the speeder bike in a spiral, zooming upward and over the tunnel-laced chasm below—until she was within a few meters of another, taller building, which she used as
her new balance. That let her fly higher, faster, the wind stingingher face.
Thank goodness for the goggles,
she thought—
    —then cursed mentally as she saw another bike beside her, which of course was Thane’s.
    He shouted at her, voice only barely audible over the rushing air and humming engines: “This is going to be tight!”
    “Too tight for you!” she shouted, then laughed as she took the top edge of the building at a sharp angle. The first hoop glowedin front of her, brilliant yellow, levitating slightly
above the roof. Ciena accelerated, aimed straight for the center of the hoop—and then gasped as her bike and Thane’s bumped.
    He wouldn’t have meant to do that. Neither had she. They had each been so intensely focused on the goal that they’d forgotten to watch each other. The bump alone wasn’t a big
deal—speeder bikes were built totake that kind of punishment and worse—but to her horror, Ciena realized the front directional vanes of their bikes were locked together.
    “Pull!” Thane shouted, desperately jerking his bike to the right. She tried to yank left, but all they managed to do was wobble. Their speeder bikes couldn’t be separated in
flight. They’d have to stop, land, and forfeit.
    Ciena gasped as she realizedhow close they were to the Reitgen Hoop. Too close to swerve away—they were on the verge of a crash even the repulsor field couldn’t save them from.
    Instinctively, she aimed for the very center of the hoop; next to her, Thane did the exact same thing, at the exact same moment. They whooshed through the hoop with less than half a meter on
either side of them.
    Her first thought was thatthey were lucky to be alive. But then she realized that, while locked directional vanes made steering difficult, balance and speed were unaffected.
    If she’d gotten into this situation with any other cadet, Ciena would have powered down and forced the forfeit. With Thane, though—she knew what a good pilot he was, understood how
he flew. Did they dare try it?
    She shouted, “Let’s do thisthing!”
    “What, like
this
?” Thane put one hand near the power controls, but then paused as the idea sank in. Once again she saw him grin. “All right, here we go!”
    Ciena plunged toward the next hoop, just as Thane did. They accelerated at the same time, simultaneously shifted direction and pitch. If they’d practiced this together, they couldn’t
have done it any more efficiently. The twospeeder bikes seemed to have become one.
    The second hoop