Chapter Twenty-Six The Lost
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Lost
When I was little, I had a lot of nightmares.
Even before Mom died, they plagued me more often than not.
My parents said I had an overactive imagination, and maybe I did.
But often, when I’d wake up from one, I’d run to the bridge, snot dribbling down my face, to find my parents.
Dad would snatch me up in his big arms and hold me tightly and tell me that nothing in my dreams was real.
There was one night, however, when I ran to get comfort from my parents and I found Mom at the helm. Dad had snatched me up, like he always did, and put a finger to his lips. “Shhh, watch,” he said in a secretive whisper, his eyes glittering. “You’ll see magic.”
The viewport was so bright it rendered her in complete shadow, her curling auburn hair catching the light of a thousand stars in strands of silver. She sat perfectly still at the helm, eyes closed, mouth buttoned, as she ferried the ship between worlds faster than the speed of light.
“Isn’t she impossible?” Dad had said in wonder.
She was.
Impossible in the way the galaxy always tended to be—impossible moments strung together by impossible people doing impossible things.
I feared I would never be impossible.
Hyperspace was quiet, but the anxiety in my head was so loud as I watched the fuel gauge get emptier and emptier. My palms were sweating, and my palms never sweated. What if I’d done the calculations wrong?
And what if this planet didn’t have the fuel we desperately needed?
I had a lot of time to worry, since Sian had excused himself to take a short shower in the refresher and get the massiff off himself and his clothes. I should’ve washed the dust off, but I told myself I’d do it after we made it to this uncharted planet.
Veebee asked if I wanted to play a game of cards with her, but how could I concentrate on anything other than flying right now? Besides, too many things were bouncing around in my head.
What if we failed to get home and something bad did happen to the Starfarer?
Something we could’ve stopped? I couldn’t ignore the very real possibility that Val had something to do with it.
There were only a few reasons why he would need a blaster on the Starfarer, and that coupled with his adamant search for Sian and my dad’s warning…
What if he hadn’t been concerned with Sian being a stowaway? I had figured the wanted holopuck had tipped Val off about Sian, because it wasn’t like the guy was subtle in his meanderings around the ship.
But maybe I was wrong.
What if he was looking for the lightsaber, too? Though, if he knew about the lightsaber, I was aware of only one other group who knew about that.
Beneath my fingers, the flight controls jerked.
Then—alarms. Everywhere. Lighting up every panel on the dash. Loud, screeching, they tore me out of my thoughts. I knew those alarms. They were connected to sensors warning of close celestial bodies. And if they were going haywire, then that meant—
“Sungrazers,” I whispered like a curse, and pulled the lever to shut down the hyperdrive.
Starstall careened out of hyperspace like a pebble from a slingshot hitting water.
It slammed into realspace with enough force to knock the wind out of me.
I barely had time to brace myself and prevent my face being imprinted in the console.
While Veebee was strapped in, Entoo wasn’t so lucky, their restraints snapping as they were flung toward the front of the ship and rebounded off the bulkhead with an anguished cry.
I hadn’t even thought to look out for meteor showers. They were rare, anyway, and most were tracked with navigation systems. Others, however, were sporadic like solar flares.
Of course this was our luck. Of course it was.
I scrambled to wrestle back control.
Suddenly, something loud and large slammed into the side of the ship, spinning it sideways. I grappled with the controls again, panicked and clumsy. We should’ve stayed on Tatooine. We should’ve waited. We should’ve—
A warm hand enveloped mine on the controls, and Sian, hair still dripping wet from the shower, squeezed it tightly. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
His steady gaze was enough.
It grounded me.
Then he sat down in the copilot’s chair and buckled himself in.
Behind us, Veebee tried to reroute power from the damaged section. “We need to get out of here!”
Didn’t need to tell me twice.
I snapped back to my senses, planting my feet, Sian’s hand squeezing mine on the controls again. He glanced at me, and I nodded back. I was okay. I had this. Starstall whined as I forced it out of its spin. “Veebee, how much power do we have?”
“Enough!”
That was all I needed to know. I slammed my fist on the button to stop the alarms and shouted, “Hang on!”
Then I throttled it.
The ship whipped around, dodging another asteroid, and ducked under the next one. It was a small field of sungrazers—I could already see the end of them. Easy, I told myself.
This was easy.
Veebee shouted, “Ahead of us!”
“I see it!”
“Left! Go left! Port!” The droid went on. “And there’s one on your right! Go faster!”
I snapped, “Stop backseat flying!”
Entoo blooped, but Veebee shot back, “You are a worse flier, trust me!”
Which was quite a low bar.
Another meteor sailed toward us, and I spun away from it. Then another, popping between the celestial bodies like a skipping stone.
If I drove a speeder well, I flew a ship better.
“Do you have this?” Sian asked tightly.
“Just watch,” I whispered. My heartbeat slowed. My muscles relaxed.
There were few things I excelled in more, and even with this tragic bout of luck, I wasn’t going to die here.
Sian never once took his eyes off me. Not for all the things racing toward us, spiraling in bright clumps of stone. Not for all the near-death misses, or the saves. He never once looked away. Like there was nothing else in the galaxy more impossible.
I didn’t see any of that at the time, though.
I was simply making sure we didn’t explode into the side of a sungrazer.
I concentrated on the feel of the ship. It was a little too sensitive when banking, and the thrusters reacted way too slowly.
I cursed myself for not getting better acquainted with the controls when we first left Tatooine.
Then again, I hadn’t thought we’d run into an asteroid field.
It was fine.
We were almost out of it.
By the radar, the big ones were behind us, and it was fine if some of the smaller bits of debris plinked off the exterior of the lander. The ship had gone through worse.
When we were finally free of the asteroids, space went silent again. I gently pried my fingers off the controls, finally beginning to realize what I’d just done: pulled us out of hyperspace, stranded us somewhere in the galaxy, and—
I quickly pulled up the fuel levels, and my stomach dropped into my toes.
Red, all the way across. Almost on empty. And certainly too low to make another jump.
No, I thought, panic eating at my edges, no, no, no—
“There!” Sian cried in relief. “See? I told you it was there.”
I glanced up, eyes watery.
And just as he’d said, in the distance was a planet.