Chapter Twenty-Three The Mistake
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Mistake
Stranded.
A strange tightness constricted my chest. I’d never been this far from the ship before. I’d never been this far from home—
With no way back.
“I’m sure someone can help us out,” he went on, rubbing the back of his neck, not quite convinced himself. “I don’t know anyone, but if we ask around…”
I didn’t need help. What I needed was a time machine.
What I needed was some way to go back a few hours so I could comm my dad and tell him about the droids.
If I’d done that—told him about the Jawas—then things would’ve turned out differently, I was sure.
I just…I’d thought I could handle it. It had been my mess to begin with.
And now the ship was gone. Without me.
“Well, at least Captain Quay has to come back,” VB-35 said, “to pick up the lander—”
“Starstall!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “We can use Starstall to contact the ship!”
Veebee shook her head. “Did you forget that’s why it’s in the shop? The long-range communicator is malfunctioning again.”
My shoulders drooped. “Oh. Right. Dad will know we’re missing and come back soon. He can’t ignore that we’re all missing, right?”
Waiting here was the right answer. If I just stayed where I was last seen, then they’d come back to find me. But how had he left in the first place without knowing we weren’t on the ship? Then again, the droids never left the ship, and Dad probably trusted that I wouldn’t leave, either.
It was a perfect series of unfortunate events.
But that had me thinking…I turned back to the droids. “How did you get caught by those Jawas anyway?”
The droids exchanged looks. Then Entoo beeped.
“Sadly,” Veebee agreed, and heaved a sigh. “And here I thought we were worth more. Apparently not.”
I couldn’t believe it. “No, Val wouldn’t do that.”
“Yet he did,” Veebee pointed out, and tried to fit her arm back on her shoulder, but it was good and broken and flopped to the ground.
The wires were severed, and I’d have to solder it back on with tools I didn’t have.
She looked down at her arm but didn’t bother to pick it up. “He traded us for a blaster pistol.”
“What would he want with that?” I mumbled, perplexed.
Sian said, a little distractedly as he eyed a group of men loitering down the street, “Seems like your brother knew the droids would follow him, or he’d already planned to trade them.”
“Val wouldn’t do that,” I insisted again, doing a terrible job of convincing either of us. I watched the men, too, wondering if they had one of those lovely wanted holopucks, possibly tucked into one of their pockets by Val, but then the group wandered off.
Sian let down his guard, turning his attention back to the matter at hand. “He wouldn’t? You’re sure?”
No—no, I wasn’t sure. Not anymore.
Between our fight in my room, his stealing my master key, and his selling the droids—I wasn’t very sure of anything right now except that I needed to get back to the ship to tell Dad. Something was wrong, and it was bigger than just a stowaway.
“We’re taking the lander and we’re going after the ship,” I said.
The three of them all looked at me like I’d just suggested we shoot through an exhaust vent to make a Death Star explode.
I went on: “I know the itinerary like the back of my hand, and I know the hyperspace lanes we use. I’ve done this route a thousand times. The Starfarer has a slow hyperdrive, and Starstall is a little faster. We can catch up to them I think.”
Veebee said, “Do we get a vote on this?”
“No,” I said.
The droid sighed and picked her arm off the ground. “All right. Let’s go fly the unreliable, broken, run-down lander back home.”
It didn’t take much convincing to get the mechanic to release our lander. She had more than enough work to do anyway, and one less thing on her plate for a customer who didn’t pay particularly well was one less thing she had to worry about.
I took the pilot seat and started the ignition procedure. The coils had to heat up for a few moments. Starstall was older than I was and just as finicky as an ornery old widow. You had to boot up the systems in the correct order and talk to it just right before it decided to run properly.
“That’s a good girl,” I muttered as the console lights flared to life, mostly green systems and mostly ready to go.
I punched the coordinates into the ship’s navicomputer. Long distances often required multiple hyperspace lanes, so onboard computers—or droids hooked into the system—calculated accurate jump points to prevent crashing into planetary bodies, space stations, other ships….
I checked the calculations half a dozen times before I keyed them in.
Mom could have closed her eyes and felt how to get home with her wayfinding skills. I wondered if I would ever be brave enough—or lucky enough—to try that. Probably not.
Things were done a certain way for a reason.
The next stop on the tour itinerary was Geonosis, which was fairly close, all things considered, though we had to take three separate hyperspace lanes to get there.
The Starfarer always made good time, but I hoped we could catch up to them before they took the Corellian Run to the Hydian Way to Yavin 4.
We could make it. I believed we could.
Sian hovered in the doorway to the cockpit.
“Here to say goodbye?” I guessed, rechecking the coordinates again.
Sian shifted on his feet. “Yeah, actually.”
Disappointment tasted tinny in my mouth, but I tried not to think about it. I had figured he would be leaving now, but I was still a little afraid to do this without him. “Thank you. For your help with the droids. Did you manage to get your ticket back?”
He shrugged. “I’ll get another one.”
“They must be expensive.”
“Maybe I’ll just stow away again. It worked so well the first time,” he replied with a bashful grin.
“Yeah. It didn’t work out too terribly,” I replied jokingly. “Stay safe?”
“Pff, skrunee,” he said, and then translated: “Don’t count on it.” He turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said, and he turned back around. Did he look like he hoped I’d say something?
Did I hope I’d say something?
But…what else was there to say? I didn’t have the words, and neither did he. So he simply smiled and said, “See you around, Starlight.”
Will I? I wondered.
Or was this the last time I’d ever see him, walking out of Starstall and down the ramp, his back to me?
It couldn’t be helped, I told myself as I turned back to the cockpit console. There really wasn’t another way for this to go, was there? He had somewhere to be, and I was tethered to the Starfarer. Not only that, but the longer I thought about Val on that ship, the deeper the stone in my gut sank.
I didn’t have time to waste on goodbyes.
Besides, I was used to endings like this. I was just a footnote in people’s lives anyway. It was childish to wish this were any different.
The short-range communication relay crackled, and the spaceport’s mechanic asked, “You expecting company, Quay?”
Company? I replied through the console microphone, “No?”
“Well, you got it.”
I glanced up at the viewport. Sian hadn’t left the landing pad.
Was that who the mechanic was referring to?
Why was he just standing there, though? I was about to buzz down to him to ask why he wasn’t leaving—the poor spaceport mechanic was probably all shades of confused—when I saw the actual company in question standing in the mouth of the docking bay.
Four Jawas. And about a dozen friends.
And they did not look happy.
Their leader pointed to Sian.
I pressed the ship’s intercom. “Get in,” I instructed.
He didn’t have to be told twice and backtracked into the lander, pulling up the ramp as he retreated. The Jawas and their friends had come with blasters.
I did not have time for this.
My fingers flew through the start-up procedure.
Primary systems were good, life support sufficient, power supply charged.
The thrusters hummed to life, rattling the bulkheads.
VB-35 flipped down one of the engineer seats—there were two, and obviously she chose the one closest to the emergency exit—and fastened herself in.
N2-0 rolled themself into a little locking contraption for traveling astromechs, near the back of the cockpit, and buckled in dutifully.
A blaster bolt pinged off the front of the shuttle, leaving a smoldering scorch mark.
“They are not happy,” said Sian, coming into the cockpit to buckle himself in.
I tapped the gauge slowly filling, waiting to ignite the thrusters. The entire ship shook. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.
He shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t leave now anyway. I’m too invested.”
Was he being genuine? Did I care as long as he helped? “Thank you,” I said.
He winked. “I’m just hitching a ride to the next stop, Starlight. But, uh, we should probably leave now.”
“Almost.”
“We don’t have almost.”
“Almooooost,” I sang. Another blaster bolt pinged off the viewport. I initiated the sequence to start up the engine and called back to the droids, “You two buckled in?”
Veebee replied, “Regrettably.”
Entoo blooped.
Sian swallowed thickly. “What does she mean? Regrettably? You can fly this, right? She’s done it before, right?” he added, looking back at the droids, but when neither of them answered, he whirled his attention to me. “Right?”
I sucked in a breath between my teeth and looked at the console panel in mock confusion. “Oh, stars, how do I take off again?”
Through the shuttle comm, the port master said, “Starstall, you’re not clear to take off yet. Maintain position.”
I buzzed back. “No can do, sorry!”
Veebee told Entoo, “We’ve had a good run, old friend. I am glad you were my partner.”
“Bloop,” Entoo agreed.
Sian shook his head. “No, no—no!”
Or at least I thought he said no, but I really couldn’t tell if it was that or a scream, because at the same moment, the lights on the console blinked green.
Our Jawa friends were way too close for comfort, and if I put another scratch on the lander, then Dad was really going to kill me, so I took hold of the controls and pulled Starstall off the ground.
The ship banked into the air, quick and sharp, toward the impossibly wide sky.