Chapter Twenty-Five The Ones Left Behind
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Ones Left Behind
Geonosis was a sight for sore eyes.
Floating in the distance, the size of a ripe fruit, was the red planet in question, spinning with a skirt of yellow and orange rings. And we’d arrived without running into a single pirate or mercenary or First Order ship, and right on time. Finally, something had gone according to plan.
I had been half afraid I was cursed.
Behind me, in the engineering seat, I heard VB-35 make a noise of relief. “Oh, thank the stars. We did not get lost.”
Of course we hadn’t gotten lost. I was, in fact, good at a few things.
I pushed the lander faster, searching the rings for a glint of silver and blue, for a familiar shape among the debris. Where was the Starfarer? I looked at the radar, but none of the ships were mine.
“Dad, where are you?” I muttered, because I knew the itinerary.
The ship should’ve been here by now, halfway through its night cycle and well on its way to an early breakfast before touring the battlegrounds of Geonosis.
It was one of Dad’s favorite spots because a famous battle of the Clone Wars had taken place there, and the Civil War Buffs, though it was before their favorite war, would’ve been loath to miss it.
Sian leaned against the copilot console, toward the viewport, squinting out at the planet’s rings. His eyes reflected the golden glow of the planet, which turned the white specks yellow. He caught sight of something and jabbed a finger toward it. “Found her.”
I followed the direction of his finger, and—there, hidden in the rings.
The Starfarer.
Home.
Relief flooded through me. The scanners hadn’t picked it up, but I pushed the worry aside as I scooted to the edge of my seat. “Veebee!” I told the droid. “The short-range comms!”
Veebee, from her seat, punched herself into the communication terminal and activated their short-range transceiver. “Go ahead,” she said.
I pressed the button for comms and leaned into the microphone. “Captain? This is Starstall.”
“Tell him I said there is a rack of shaak defrosting that needs to be put back in the cooler or cooked—” Vee started, but I threw her a look.
“I am not doing that.”
“Shaak is expensive! And it might already be—oh, what are they doing?” Veebee asked in horror, watching the Starfarer’s engines flash brightly.
I gave a start. “That’s the hyperdrive!”
The crackly comms parted, and my dad’s voice rang out in the cockpit. “Ardent, love?”
I scrambled to the transceiver. “Dad! We caught up to you. Let us dock and—”
“Run,” he said, sounding urgent and desperate. There was a loud noise, something that fizzled. Then static rushed through the link.
I ordered Vee to radio them again, but the communication went unanswered. Fear clawed up my throat as I grabbed the controls, ready to push the lander back to the ship as quick as I could. The Starfarer’s engines flared brighter. “No,” I whispered. “No, no, no—”
And in a spark of white, the ship was gone.
Again.
It was gone.
The fear that had crawled into my throat turned into a lump, and I forced myself back into my chair. My hands were shaking, so I clenched them into fists and pressed them still on my thighs.
Veebee looked at me. “Did the captain tell us to run?”
Entoo blooped in confirmation.
He wouldn’t do that unless—
I spun back to the navicomputer. “If I know anything, it’s that there’s only a few routes the Starfarer is already preprogrammed to take without a new calculation, and the most likely is Yavin 4—”
“Maybe we should listen to him,” Sian advised, interrupting me.
I shot him a look of betrayal. “Seriously? Something is wrong and you want me to—to just run away?”
“Yeah, actually,” he replied. He looked paler than usual. “That’s what your dad told you to do.”
“No! No, I’m tired of doing what I’m told! I can get us to Yavin 4. I know the way and…”
Veebee gently placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed it comfortingly, but it was Sian who spoke. “We don’t have the fuel, Starlight.”
My gaze fell on the orange fuel light. Oh.
My hands slipped off the controls. The panic in me had turned numb.
I…I didn’t know what to do.
“If we take the lander down, I’m sure we can find an outpost with some fuel,” Veebee said, looking at a map of Geonosis as she waited for my response. “Then we can find somewhere with long-range comms and call someone who can actually help.”
We couldn’t do anything else. Starstall’s long-range comms were junk, and it wasn’t like this lander was equipped for anything other than ferrying passengers. There were no guns on it. No armaments. Not enough water to get us through a single week.
I stared down at my fingers. Maybe if we just waited here, the ship would come back?
That’s silly, Ardent, I told myself, and I knew it was, but it sounded so much more likely than…
“Arie?” Veebee said.
I’d never been this far away from home before, this far away from my Starfarer. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never had to think about anything outside of the ship, not really. And now…
Now…
Run, my dad had said. There had been fear in his voice.
What was happening on that ship?
“I think Veebee has a good idea,” Sian said for me, pointing to one of the outposts on the map. “Let’s try that outpost. With any luck, it might also have a subspace communicator and we can flag the ship down that way.”
N2-0 bleeped in agreement.
“What do you think, Arie?” Veebee waited a moment longer for my opinion, but when I didn’t give one, the droid switched the pilot controls to herself and moved the shuttle through the rings and into the atmosphere.
I was useless, anyway.
We went to three different outposts on Geonosis, but every one of them had been gutted and picked clean by scavengers.
At the third one, we began to lose hope and had even less fuel than when we’d first landed.
The air was dry and dusty like on Tatooine, but somehow the planet was even more desolate-looking, the surface peppered with mesas and buttes.
From the ground, even the sky looked red, making it almost impossible to tell the difference between the harsh arid landscape and the stars.
Husks of buildings left to decay, vast abandoned droid factories squeezed between pillars of orange rock, half-buried speeders, smears of civilization left to rot.
The third outpost was on one of those outcroppings of rock, nestled so snugly into it that we almost flew right past. At a glance, it was clear that the place had been abandoned a long time ago, too.
Still, it was worth a shot to get out and look around.
“We shouldn’t stay here long,” Sian said, beginning to fidget. He seemed to have a habit of biting his bottom lip when he worried, so much so that he’d almost bitten it raw by then. “Geonosis is never a good place to end up.”
“The Imperials are long gone,” Veebee said, dismissing him with a wave. “The New Republic weeded them out. Again.”
“I don’t just mean people, Vee.”
“Alas, I have heard that some of the best honey comes from Geonosian hives. Imagine if I could use it in my cuisine….”
N2-0 bleeped, whirling around to her.
VB-35 put her hands on her hips. “Well, that’s rude. I know I can’t taste it, but that’s why I have him here.” And she jabbed a finger at Sian.
He sighed. “The things I live to regret…”
“I hope you don’t mean my cooking.”
“Never, chef.”
Veebee narrowed her eyes at him.
I barely listened as I took a walk through the abandoned outpost. All the technology was picked clean, the wiring and the vent grates.
It was just a husk of a building made out of sandstone and dust. On the floor in the main operations room, bleached-white bones were scattered across the ground.
Person or animal, I didn’t want to look too closely, and the place was too quiet for my nerves.
I kept picking at my nails, digging into my cuticles as I tried to think of something—anything. I didn’t notice that Sian had come into the outpost after me until he grabbed my hands, separating my worrying fingers and stilling them.
A knot formed in my throat. My mouth wobbled. “I’m sorry, I’m just scared.”
He squeezed my hands tightly. He didn’t offer consolations. He didn’t tell me it was silly to be scared, that being scared was useless. He simply let me feel it and gave me quiet comfort, and in turn I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his chest and listened to him breathe.
In and out.
In and out.
It didn’t dampen the worry in my head, which was terrible for morale, but at least I pulled myself back together enough to finally draw away from him. “Thank you.”
He nodded and led me back out into the afternoon. The sand in the wind stung my skin, and I winced against the sharpness of it.
The reality was, Dad had told us to run, but I couldn’t. Run where? Getting back to the Starfarer was the only option. The galaxy was too wide, and my home was small enough to get lost in it, I finally realized.
“Okay,” I said to Sian and the droids, “anyone got another plan?”
The droids exchanged looks. Veebee shrugged. “I guess another outpost?”
“I’m sure they will all be like this—chess ko!” Sian yelped as Noola scrambled up his pant leg and dug under his jacket, hiding herself there. “What the—what’s wrong, girl?” He paused suddenly, glanced around. His eyes widened. “Get back to the ship.”
I didn’t understand. “What?”
“Now!” he cried urgently, grabbing my and Veebee’s arms. “Back to the ship!”
We barely got two steps before a hulking shadow darted out from behind one of the outcroppings of rock between us and Starstall. It shook itself out, crouching on all fours, its many black eyes glittering in the shade.
It prowled forward, shaking its head.
Veebee said, “I believe that is a massiff.”
Sian reeled back, quickly pulling his arm up to block me. “Isn’t this place supposed to be sterilized?”