Chapter Twenty-Five The Ones Left Behind #2
“Apparently they were wr—incoming!” VB-35 cried as the hulking creature jumped toward us.
We ducked, scattering away as it clambered onto a rock, lips parting on its long canine muzzle.
There were dozens of spines along its back, some chipped, its leathery hide turning gray with age.
It opened its mouth wide, a smile filled with long daggerlike teeth.
We backed toward the ship. The creature lowered into another crouch.
We froze.
I heard something behind us, too. Which was odd, because the only thing behind us was the ship, and no one was on the ship.
A part of me didn’t want to look, but I did anyway.
Something slithered out from underneath our ship and into the sunlight.
It didn’t look like it had a front or a back, and after a moment of looking at the mass of flesh, I realized the creature’s eyes and mouth were in the center of its long body. Which was so, so gross.
“That,” Veebee said, “is a sand worm.”
The massiff bared its teeth.
The sand worm coiled tightly as if preparing to strike.
“Do they want to eat us or eat each other?” I wondered aloud. My back met Sian’s, and we pressed together tightly, hands finding each other—something to hold on to. On one side was the massiff, on the other the sand worm. The two droids were at our sides.
“I think they want to eat us, but they don’t want to share,” Sian replied. “The dog’s about to pounce.”
“So is the worm,” I relayed. I began to wonder which one I would rather be eaten by—the weird worm or the canine? They both sounded like terrible options.
“Okay, when I tell you to run, you run, yeah?” He slowly reached into his jacket and pulled out that stun blaster I had seen him use back on Coruscant.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Okay.”
Suddenly, the massiff lunged. Sian aimed his stun blaster and fired off two shots. They hit the creature square in the chest, and with a yelp it bit the dirt. The sand worm dove for it, terrifying mouth open, and bit into its hide, wrapping its body around it.
“Run!” Sian cried, pushing N2-0 to go faster. We made a break for Starstall. I grabbed N2-0’s other side, and we hauled them up the ramp quickly. Veebee followed, stumbling.
“Everyone in?” I called as she came up the ramp, and went to hit the close button.
Veebee gave an anguished yelp. “My arm! It fell off!” She jabbed a finger down the ramp at her arm lying in the sun. Just a few meters away from it, the sand worm was trying to constrict the massiff in a mesh of popping bones and painful yelps.
Sian cursed under his breath and sprinted back down the ramp. He snagged the arm.
The massiff kicked, throwing itself to the ground—right between Sian and the ship.
The sand worm constricted tighter, and the massiff howled and tore at its belly with its teeth, exposing organs.
The worm sagged against it. Then the canine saw Sian.
He held up his hands and slowly began to back away.
The massiff prowled toward him, the worm sloughing off like unwanted clothes.
Sian raised his gaze to me. Noola poked out of his jacket, and he hugged her tightly. Go, he mouthed to me, and raised Veebee’s arm like a weapon.
The creature snapped at him. He thwacked it with Veebee’s hand. He wouldn’t be able to fend it off for long.
But I had an idea.
Not even bothering to close the ramp, I raced to the cockpit, where I forwent every preflight check and started the engine. The ship rattled, controls jolting, but I kept a tight grip on them, pushing the ship into the air.
Then I turned it around.
Outside the viewport, the creature had backed Sian up against the abandoned outpost, Veebee’s arm in its mouth.
Don’t move, I thought to Sian.
The predator dropped the metal arm and lunged at Sian—
I landed the ship on top of it. The front landing leg smashed it with a sharp crack. Dust and debris flew into the air as Sian threw his arms over his face to protect it, then looked up at me in the cockpit with wide, wondering eyes.
I buzzed down over the intercom, “No one gets left behind on Hyperlight Tours.”
He was about to shout something back when a howl came from nearby, and he quickly abandoned whatever banter he’d thought up to snatch Veebee’s arm from the ground and hurry up the ramp and into the ship.
Once I got the signal that he was inside and the ramp was closed, I took the ship into the sky again, just as half a dozen more massiffs slinked out from the outcropping of rock.
There must have been a cave nearby with a den.
Sian limped into the cockpit, clutching Veebee’s arm. “That was a close one,” he said haggardly, and painfully lowered himself into the copilot’s seat.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
And then I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.
“We almost died!” I cried, tears coming to my eyes. I pushed them back as the ship rose through the sky. “Oh, my stars, did you see that worm? It was so gross!”
“I think I have some of the massiff in my hair.” He giggled, pulling his hand through a dark spot at his temple, raking out a bit of gristle.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “But you’re okay, right?”
He looked down at the blood on his jacket. “Yeah, this isn’t mine. I can’t believe we survived that,” he added, his laughter finally dying.
Mine did, too. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that sound out of my head.”
“At least it’s not all over you,” he replied.
I winced.
“Not that I’m complaining! I’d rather smell like a corpse than actually be one,” he added, and Noola finally poked her head out of his jacket and chirped. “She agrees.”
“I’ve never killed anything before,” I realized as I brought Starstall up through the atmo toward space. There was nothing left on Geonosis anyway, and I really didn’t feel like dealing with more wildlife somewhere else. “I hated it.”
“But I’d be dead if it weren’t for you,” he replied, and nodded to the droids as they finally made their way into the cockpit. Veebee sat in her seat and buckled in, and Entoo went to their docking station.
“We might be dead anyway.” I tapped the almost-empty fuel gauge.
He handed Veebee back her arm, and she clutched it tightly. “Could we make it back to Tatooine?”
I doubted it, but I tried the calculations anyway on the navicomputer. It beeped angrily at me. “No. We’ll run out of fuel halfway there, and all we have is a short-range transceiver, so it would not be a good idea to get stranded in the middle of nowhere.”
But if there wasn’t fuel here, what other options were there? I knew all the well-traveled lanes. They were imprinted in my memory like lifelines on my palms, and none of them could get us to the Starfarer with the fuel we currently had.
“Wait.” Sian suddenly sat up straight, as if remembering something. “Can’t you do that wayfinding thing you were talking about? Get us a shorter route?”
He sounded so hopeful, and that sound curdled in my ears. “No,” I said. “I can’t.”
“But you said—”
“I’ve never tried. I don’t know how.”
He sank into quiet again, and then pulled up a map of the galaxy.
I held tight to the controls as the ship rattled one last time in atmo and then, with a sigh, broke into space. “I wish I could, Sian. I can’t make hyperspace routes out of thin air.”
“Technically,” Veebee said, “neither could your mom. She found the lane, the clear path safe from the noise and chaos of the galaxy, by wayfinding.”
“Not helping, Vee,” I mumbled. “We can’t go anywhere with the fuel we have. We’re stranded, and once the fuel goes out, the power goes out, and then the oxygen recycler goes out, and we die.”
“Well, that is quite dark,” said Veebee, and N2-0 agreed.
Sian mumbled something to the map and then asked, “Do we have enough fuel to make one jump? A small one?”
“How small?”
“Small. Here,” and he motioned for me to come over and look, so I engaged autopilot.
He enlarged the map of where we were and pointed to a planet I hadn’t heard of.
“Alakor. The planet’s deserted, but I remember there being an old research facility there.
Maybe also some fuel and a long-distance transceiver…
? But I’m not sure.” He sighed in frustration. “It’s a gamble.”
Veebee considered it. “And if you’re wrong, we become stranded in space. Where there is a hundred percent chance you two will suffocate and die and I will waste away my life’s potential alone.”
N2-0 gave an accusing bloop.
Veebee said, “I’m not discounting you. I’m just being realistic. You’re old, I’m young, they’re fleshy. Besides, how do we know this Alakor isn’t picked clean like all the outposts on Geonosis?”
“I’m sure we’ll find at least fuel,” he insisted. “The research facility was basically untouched.”
It was either be stranded here on Geonosis or somewhere else. At least there flickered a spark of hope. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “I don’t particularly have a death wish, Starlight.”
I took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. Punch in the coordinates. Let’s go to this Alakor.”