A Test of Courage

by Justina Ireland

  “When I was your age I was still trying to figure out the Third Cadence, Vern. You’re an amazing Jedi, and I’m proud to get a chance to work with you before you end up on the Council,” he’d said with a belly laugh that had made Vernestra feel warm and welcomed.

  And now he was gone.

  “Imri,” Vernestra said, turning around. The Padawan’s grief tinged the air around him, leaching into the Force and pulling Vernestra from her seat and to his side. She was no empath—Imri was far more sensitive to the emotions of others than she was—but it was impossible to ignore his pain in the small space of the shuttle.

  “I’m sorry, did I wake you?” he said, looking up as Vernestra sat to his left.

  “No, I was done resting. How are you?”

  “Awful,” he said, a tear falling down his cheek and then another following. “But I can feel him a little when I reach for the Force, and that makes it a bit better.”

  Vernestra put her arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulled Imri in for a hug. “When I was a youngling, one of our older masters died while in the middle of meditation. Most of us felt him pass, and while we still missed him, it helped to know that he had gone peacefully and happily. I hope you feel the same when you reach for Douglas.”

  Imri looked up to meet Vernestra’s gaze directly. “Do you think he went peacefully?”

  Vernestra grimaced. She could still feel the echo and fear of the ship exploding, the lives lost in that moment of disaster. “No, but I do think he went knowing he had saved us. He died doing what a Jedi should always do: put the will of the Force, the protection of all life, beyond ourselves.”

  Imri nodded, tears still sliding down his pale cheeks. Honesty Weft sat on his right, dry-eyed and solemn. The boy’s sadness seemed like a feeble thing in comparison with the Padawan’s grief. But everyone mourned in their own way, and perhaps it hadn’t yet sunk in that his father and the rest of the Dalnan delegation were gone. Vernestra did not know the boy well enough to do much more than reach out and squeeze his hand, and even that caused him to startle in surprise.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” she said, voice soft.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled, and even though she wanted to do more, she decided it was best to leave it alone for now.

  “Hey, Vern,” called Avon. “Could you come here real quick?”

  Vernestra climbed to her feet and returned to the cockpit, which was all of a couple of steps away from the passenger area. “What’s going on?”

  “Okay, so, you know how I said that the shuttle didn’t have any shields? Well, that isn’t all. I’ve been trying to bring the comms up since we cleared the debris field, and I’ve got nothing, not even static.”

  Vernestra frowned. “Even a maintenance shuttle should have the bare necessities. Navigation, comms, maybe even a hyperdrive.”

  “We have half a hyperdrive,” called J-6 from the back.

  Vernestra crossed the shuttle to where J-6 perched over a hole in the floor. The droid had opened up the engine maintenance hatch and was tut-tutting over the various components that made the shuttle go.

  “What are you doing?”

  The droid pointed to what looked to be a smashed bit of machinery. “Investigating. It’s part of my central programming, though I usually only use it when trying to track down Avon.”

  “Jay-Six is a repurposed bodyguard droid,” Avon called from the front. “My mom thinks nanny droids are a waste of credits, because you outgrow them so quickly.”

  “Your mom gave you a bodyguard droid as a nanny?” Honesty asked in disbelief.

  Avon sighed. “When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

  “Back to the shuttle,” Vernestra said.

  “Right,” Avon said while J-6 continued to scan the engine and other systems. “We also don’t have any navigation or maps or, well, anything that we would need to actually figure out a place to go.”

  “And this hyperdrive won’t be able to be brought online,” J-6 said finally, shutting the hatch and straightening. “It looks like someone purposely sabotaged this. It is only by sheer luck that this shuttle is even able to fly.”

  “That is not encouraging,” Honesty muttered.

  “I’m not sure hyperspace is safe, no matter what Master Douglas thought,” Vernestra said with a frown. “There’s still the chance we could run into an Emergence.” She pushed back a lock of dark hair that had come loose from her fastener and sat in the copilot’s chair once more. “How could everything be offline?”

  “Sabotage,” J-6 said, her words causing a long silence as everyone mulled that over.

  “It’s really the only answer that correlates to what we saw. There were explosions, one right after another,” Avon said. “If it was an Emergence we wouldn’t have had a chance to escape. The ship would have gone all at once, just kablooey.”

  Vernestra took a deep breath and let it out. Avon was right, even if kablooey was not the most sensitive way to describe a ship being destroyed.

  “You think someone may have planned the attack on the Steady Wing?” Imri asked, blond brows pulled together in a frown.

  “The odds of a collision with an unknown object while traveling through realspace are very low given the current level of ships’ systems designed to prevent such an occurrence, and the chances of several systems on any given shuttle failing all at once are even lower,” the droid said dryly. “I can show you the math if you’d like. How are you at Gherillian theoretical proofs?”

  Vernestra glanced at Avon, who looked entirely too happy at the bad news. But as soon as she noticed Vernestra watching her, Avon’s delighted expression smoothed into something closer to concern. Avon was not the type to delight in harm. Vernestra had a sneaking suspicion the girl really had altered the protocol droid’s basic commands.

  “Jay-Six is right,” Avon said. “But that’s not the problem right now. I don’t have a place to go, and I have no way of knowing how to get there. We don’t have an infinite amount of fuel. The atmospheric levels are good for now, assuming there are some basic supplies in those cabinets. After about another day of flying, things will be . . . not good.”

  “Our options are simple,” J-6 said. “We know what planets exist in the Haileap system. Since we did not jump, it stands to reason we did not travel far. We can either try for Haileap or see if there is something closer. My almanac indicates that there are a few habitable options, although none that will be ideal.”

  “Without navigation, any guess is as good as another,” Avon said with a shrug.

  “I could maybe try wayfinding,” Imri said, voice hesitant. “Through the Force. Master Douglas was showing me how it is done.” Seeing Avon and Honesty’s confused expressions, the boy elaborated. “I, um, should be able to detect someplace that has a lot of life, and if there are creatures living there on the planet it should be safe enough for us, as long as I have a good idea of what I am looking for. Right, Vern?”

  “Yes,” Vernestra said, nodding. “Good idea.” It was a long shot. She had only heard a few stories of wayfinding. It was something mostly done by seasoned Jedi Masters who had practiced the skill their entire lives. But she hoped giving the boy a task would help him break through some of the despair of losing his master. Sometimes distractions were helpful.

  “Okay, since the nav unit is out, I guess I can just turn the ship until we’re pointed in the right direction?” Avon said, doubt lacing her words.

  Imri nodded. “Yes, that should work.” He closed his eyes and began to breathe evenly, meditating the way all younglings were taught in their first weeks at the temple. Momentous tasks like reaching across great distances always worked better when a Force user was calm and centered, and after the events of the past few hours they were all understandably on edge.

  There was still a jangling in Vernestra’s head that made her think it was not a good idea for her to try to use the Force right now, not unless she wanted another unscheduled nap. She still felt wrung out from her
earlier efforts.

  Imri closed his eyes and reached through the Force. But there was something off about his technique, and Vernestra walked back to where Imri sat and took his hand.

  “Imri, focus,” she said, closing her eyes and reaching out to him through the Force. This kind of connection was mostly passive; joining with the Force was natural and right. They were all part of the living Force, as well as the cosmic Force, and reaching out to the living energy actually quieted some of Vernestra’s exhaustion. It could sometimes be too easy for Jedi to get lost in the great possibilities of the Force, and younglings were often taught to remember their own body’s needs as a way to anchor their thoughts. Spending too long in the Force could feel luminous, but bodies were crude matter that needed care and feeding, and those physical needs had to be kept in mind to tether the Jedi to their forms.

  Imri settled, and Vernestra felt him searching for a way to call out to any nearby life. She didn’t try to guide him but rather watched as her master might have when she first became a Padawan, letting Imri figure it out. She could sense the moment he began to quest for life, each living being illuminated by its connection to the Force. Honesty and Avon glowed brightly, but beyond that was only darkness, except for a few faint flickering images on the far edges of what they could sense.

  Imri turned back the way they had come, toward where the Steady Wing had been destroyed. Vernestra wanted to point him away from the site of the catastrophe, but she sensed that he’d turned that way many times before and she gave him the opportunity to look one last time at the remnants of the ship.

  There was no sign of life.

  There were no other shuttles, either, and Imri ranged out farther and farther. There was nothing, none of that heat and emotion, hunger and gladness, exhaustion and fear that characterized life throughout the galaxy. Imri began to despair as he tested the limits of how far he could reach and found not a single spark of life.

  “Just a little more,” Vernestra said. She loaned Imri some of her strength, the same way she had added her abilities to Douglas’s back in the dining room on the Steady Wing. No, don’t think of the Steady Wing, she thought. Focus on life and moving forward.

  But there was nothing.

  Vernestra opened her eyes to find Avon and Honesty watching them. J-6 seemed otherwise occupied, looking for a port to charge herself. Avon tilted her head, her full lips pressed into a thin line.

  “No luck?”

  Vernestra shook her head, and Imri sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “But there’s nothing out there. We’re all alone.”

  Vernestra patted his hand. “It isn’t your fault, Imri. We’re still moving, and we can try again later.”

  “Not too much later,” Avon muttered. At Vernestra’s look she jumped out of her seat. “Vern’s right. There’s always a chance something will show up as we get further out into space. We should eat and try to get some rest while we can. It’s been a terrible day, but hopefully there are some good meals in here.”

  Honesty stood and walked over to the nearest cupboard, pulling out food packets. “It looks like everything in here is something called joppa stew.”

  J-6 made a noise that sounded like something between a snort and a laugh. Vernestra frowned. Did droids laugh? She’d never met a droid with any kind of sense of humor. “What’s the matter, Jay-Six?”

  “Avon hates joppa stew,” the droid said. “She ate it for a month straight when we were on Mon Cala during a summit. It was the only thing I was programmed to prepare at the time.”

  “She’s right,” Avon said with a heavy sigh. “This stinks.”

  “Are all adventures supposed to be like this?” Honesty asked, looking at the food packages suspiciously.

  “If they were,” said Avon, “no one would ever leave home.”

  Imri sat in the copilot’s seat and let his mind drift. He had no idea how to fly. He and Douglas were supposed to start taking short flights after they’d returned from the Starlight Beacon dedication, but now that would never happen. A lump formed in his throat, the same way it did whenever he thought of his master. Douglas had returned to the Force a hero, but that did not make his loss ache any less.

  Imri watched the controls while Avon and Honesty snored in the back. The younger kids had fallen asleep right after eating, their bodies exhausted from surviving the tragedy. There had been a single bright moment watching Avon try to choke down the joppa stew. She had made a big to-do so everyone could laugh at her plight, but now Imri was lost once more to his grief. There had been various instructors at the temple when he was a youngling, but he had spent the past two years with Douglas. The Jedi’s loss hurt more than Imri could have imagined it would. He knew if he were in better control of his emotions he wouldn’t feel the loss so deeply. But he just couldn’t help it.

  Imri, no wallowing! A Jedi never flounders. He simply looks at the problem before him, takes a deep breath, and believes in the Force to guide him through. The voice was not actually Douglas’s, but the memory of his affable advice was too perfect to be ignored.

  Imri took a deep breath and let it out. Next to him Vernestra slept in the pilot’s chair, ready to wake if any of the alerts were triggered. Even in the midst of one crisis after another Vernestra had been cool, calm, and collected. She was barely two years older than him and already a Jedi Knight. Watching her work had made Imri feel anxious and much younger than he was, like he was still a youngling and not a full Padawan.

  You cannot judge yourself by others, Imri. You can only judge yourself by your own efforts.

  Imri took another deep breath and let it out before closing his eyes. If he tried, he could see Douglas smiling at him, encouraging him to attempt levitating once more or explaining how to reassemble his lightsaber for the hundredth time. But even as Douglas had given Imri endless encouragement, there had always been a certainty that Imri could accomplish anything he needed to. Back at the temple, the other younglings had laughed and chided Imri when he couldn’t complete a lesson as quickly as they did, even if pride was discouraged among the Jedi. But Douglas never sighed, never got impatient. He would just chuckle and show Imri the exercise again and again until the Padawan got it.

  Douglas had always believed in him, even if Imri secretly did not believe he could one day be a great Jedi. Douglas had made him feel brave when he was anything but.

  And now the Jedi Master was gone. What was Imri supposed to do?

  With his eyes closed and the memories of Douglas in his mind, Imri reached out once more. Out into the inky darkness of space, toward stars and moons and the mysteries that should have been revealed by a functioning navigational system. And as he reached for a place of life, a safe place for them to land the shuttle, he was warmed by the memories of his master, so that he felt strong and confident. Douglas had been brave and unflinching even in the face of his end.

  Imri could be the same.

  That was when he felt it. It was like poking a qwizer hive: loud and sudden, full of hidden life swarming about.

  Imri gasped and fell back into his body with a start, and next to him Vernestra sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I think, I think I found a planet. But not just any planet, one full of life.”

  She smiled at him and nodded. “Can you show me?”

  Imri nodded and reached for the Force, hesitantly at first. But then he took a deep breath and grabbed hold, ranging through the connection toward the place he’d felt before, his soul remembering the way. Vernestra followed him along the path, and with her help he could actually see the planet in his mind.

  It was a lush jungle of a place, with ancient trees covered in vines that hung off of everything. The sharp sounds of animal calls pierced the air, which was hot and humid. Just as Imri began to sweat from the temperatures, which were much hotter than those within the shuttle, he landed back in his body.

  “Imri! You did it,” Vernestra said. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder as she leaned f
orward and began to flip switches, adding power to the engines. “I can definitely steer us in that direction, and it seems like it isn’t too far away. We must have been pointed toward it this whole time, but without you we never would have known it.” She paused and turned to Imri with a wide smile. “Good job, Padawan.”

  Imri flushed with happiness, his cheeks heating. Maybe he could still be a Jedi. He could do this. “Thanks,” he said. “So, what do we do now?”

  Vernestra finished flipping switches and poking buttons, and then she sat back with a wide yawn. “Now, we wait.”

  Avon woke to find Imri sitting in the copilot’s chair and Vernestra quietly explaining the various switches and knobs to him. Across from her on the other bench, Honesty was on his back snoring, his mouth hanging open in a way that would have made Avon laugh if she didn’t feel so sorry for him. He was strange, but Avon couldn’t tell if that was because all Dalnans were a little bit strange, what with their plain clothing and distrust of outsiders, or because his grief had made him tense and unapproachable. She was trying not to judge, but that was what a scientific mind did: judge, assess, analyze. J-6 used to always chastise her for the way she talked about etiquette: “It is not necessary for you to analyze why the Mon Calamari find it offensive to sneeze loudly, you just have to know that is the way they feel. Not everything needs investigation, Avon.”

  But what J-6 did not quite understand was that everything did. Avon burned to understand the why of things just as much as she wanted to understand the how, and when there were no answers, a keen sense of frustration drove her to do irrational things to find the answers. It was why her mother had exiled her to Port Haileap.

  “Maybe on the edge of the galaxy you’ll find what you’re looking for, darling,” Ghirra Starros had said with exasperation as she’d packed her only daughter off. “I have tried teaching you diplomacy, and it is clear you are only interested in this heedless pursuit of science. Port Haileap has a provisional lab, and Professor Glenna Kip shares some of your same questions about the Force and life in general. It will be good for you to have a mentor who has more in common with you.”