by Cavan Scott
Even as she spoke, the shuttle accelerated at a blistering rate. One moment it was there—and the next it was simply gone.
“They’ve jumped to lightspeed,” CR-8R reported.
“That’s it, then,” Lina said, slumping in the pilot’s seat. “We’ve lost them.”
Morq let out a sorrowful whimper, but Milo wasn’t about to quit so easily.
“Don’t say that, Sis. You didn’t give up when Crater got stuck or we were trapped in the caves. We can find them. I know we can.”
Lina turned in her chair and met her brother’s gaze.
“You’re right,” she said, a determined smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Crater, how are you doing decoding Mom’s transmission?”
CR-8R cocked his head before replying. “Package at 1.979 percent decryption.”
“Then keep working. In the meantime, set a course for Thune.”
“Thune?” Milo asked, leaning on the back of her chair. “Shouldn’t we head toward the Core worlds? That’s probably where Korda’s taking Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah, but Mom and Dad have friends on Thune. If we’re ever going to see them again, we’ll need help and we’ll need it fast.”
“The Graf kids against the Empire, eh?” Milo asked.
Lina watched as the coordinates scrolled across her monitor. “Looks like it. And there I was thinking that the Imperials were the good guys.”
“Didn’t we all,” CR-8R mumbled from the nav-controls. “And what do we do when we finally catch up with this Korda individual?”
“That’s easy,” said Milo, ruffling Morq’s hair. “We improvise. Right, Sis?”
“Right, Lo-Bro. Let’s go.”
Lina punched the hyperdrive, and the Whisper Bird leapt forward into the stars.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
STAR WARS
ADVENTURES IN WILD SPACE
Book One: THE SNARE
THE WHISPER BIRD was in trouble and Lina Graf knew it. As soon as she’d brought the ship out of hyperspace it had started jerking around like a bucking bantha.
“Lina, what are you doing?” her younger brother Milo complained as he was almost thrown out of his seat at the rear of the cramped cockpit.
“Trying to fly straight,” she snapped back as she flicked some switches on the main console. Warning lights flashed on and off, and no matter how hard Lina tried, she couldn’t get the control stick to turn.
The ship shook violently, tossing both children around in their seats.
“You call that straight?” Milo shouted.
“Master Milo, please!” the droid CR-8R yelled. He was sitting to the right of Lina, linked directly into the navicomputer. “Mistress Lina is trying her best.”
“But what if her best isn’t good enough?” Milo grumbled under his breath.
“Then you being a backseat pilot isn’t helping!” CR-8R shouted.
CR-8R, or Crater to his friends, was a patchwork droid cobbled together by Lina and Milo’s mother from a bunch of different parts. He had an astromech’s casing as his body, which was connected to a hovering probot base. He had manipulator arms that spun around in the air as he spoke. He was overbearing, argumentative, and very annoying, but right now, he was also all Milo and Lina had.
Their parents were gone. Auric and Rhyssa Graf were explorers who had been mapping the unknown reaches of Wild Space when they were captured by an Imperial Navy officer named Captain Korda. Lina had always believed that the Empire was a force for good that spread peace and order across the galaxy. How wrong could she have been? Korda had stolen their maps, taken their parents, and tried to blow up the Whisper Bird with Lina and Milo inside. Now they were alone, with only cranky CR-8R and Morq, Milo’s pet Kowakian monkey-lizard, for company. Lina couldn’t admit it to her younger brother, but she was terrified. And even though Milo was trying to put on a brave face, she knew he felt the same way.
But for now, they had bigger problems. The Whisper Bird had sustained considerable damage when they escaped Korda’s explosive blasts. The ship had only just barely held together during the jump to hyperspace.
“We’re approaching Thune,” CR-8R reported.
Lina glanced up through the cockpit’s canopy and spotted a small brown-and-blue planet up ahead of them.
“Are we going to make it?” Milo asked. He hung on to his seat as Morq clung to him, wailing pitifully.
“Of course we are,” said Lina. “Just as long as we don’t fall apart first.”
“And how likely is that?” Milo replied.
Just then, there was a sharp crack from above, and sparks exploded from the console’s power indicators.
“More likely by the second!” she admitted, waving the smoke away from her face with her hand. “Crater, what’s happening?”
The droid consulted the Whisper Bird’s fault locators. “Where do you want me to start? Systems are shutting down all over the ship. The thrusters are overheating and life support systems are in critical condition!”
“What is working?” Milo asked.
“The food synthesizer is operational,” CR-8R replied dryly.
“Great. Anyone hungry for a snack?” Milo said sarcastically.
Just then, a small explosion echoed through the Whisper Bird.
“Never mind,” CR-8R reported. “The food synthesizer just blew up!”
Lina wanted to bang her head against the control console.
“We need to make planetfall for repairs,” she said, trying to hold herself together.
“Did you have to use the word fall?” Milo said.
“Why not?” Lina snapped. “Because if the repulsors give out that’s exactly what we will be doing!”
“The life support systems are in critical condition,” CR-8R repeated.
“Will you just shut up!” Lina shouted.
“Don’t blast the messenger,” CR-8R snapped. “It’s not my fault the ship is falling apart around our audio sensors.”
Lina hopped out of the pilot’s chair and checked the readouts on the rear console.
“There’s the problem,” she announced as she brought up a holographic display of the Whisper Bird’s engines. “The main generator is failing, which is knocking out all the other systems.”
“Can you fix it?” Milo asked nervously. His voice shook, betraying how scared he was.
Lina had always been good with machines. When she was little, she had loved taking apart her toys to see how they worked, instead of playing with them. Of course, the Whisper Bird was a lot more complex than her childhood toys, but she could do it. She had to. She was the older sibling. With her parents gone, she was in charge now.
Lina gave Milo’s shoulder what she hoped was a comforting squeeze. “If you help me, I can,” she said.
Milo grinned and gave Lina a mock salute. “Aye-aye, Captain,” he joked.
Lina laughed and turned to the droid. “Crater, you steer the ship,” she instructed. “Just keep us moving forward, okay? Toward Thune.”
“Forward won’t be a problem,” CR-8R replied. “If we have to turn in any other direction, then we may have a problem.”
“You can do it,” Lina said encouragingly. She opened the cockpit doors and started running toward the ship’s engineering system.
“Oh, you think so? How kind of you to say,” CR-8R replied sarcastically as Milo followed his sister, with Morq wrapped around his shoulders. “I mean, I’ve only been flying starships since, let me see, BEFORE YOU WERE BORN!”
While CR-8R continued to grumble under his breath, Lina reached the main hold, with Milo on her heels. She ran over to a ladder on the far wall and started climbing toward an access hatch on the ceiling.
“I can get into the core through here,” she called down to her brother. “Even if I can’t get it working correctly agai
n, I can trip the backup generators. They should be able to supply enough power to get us down.”
“To get us down safely?” Milo shouted up. “You forgot to say safely.”
“I can’t promise that,” she said as she reached the hatch. “But we’ll be in one piece. Probably.”
“I am not a fan of probably,” Milo muttered, prompting a whimper of agreement from Morq. Above them, Lina pressed a control and waited for the hatch to slide open.
But nothing happened.
She pressed it again, but the small door still didn’t move. Trying not to panic, she hit the manual override and tried to pull the hatch aside herself.
“What’s wrong?” Milo called up.
“It won’t budge,” she replied through gritted teeth. “The mechanism must be jammed.”
“Is there another way in?” Milo asked.
Lina felt her heart sink. “Yeah, there is.”
She quickly climbed down the rungs.
“So where is it?” Milo asked. “How do we get in?”
“We don’t,” Lina said. “I do.”
Milo looked at his sister, confused. “What do you mean?”
Lina moved over to a computer screen and activated a hologram. It showed a blueprint of the Whisper Bird.
“The generator is here,” she said, pointing at a flashing red light at the center of the ship. “And the jammed hatch is there.”
“Okay, so how do you get past it?” Milo asked.
Lina swallowed nervously. “You use the external hatch, here.” She pointed toward a small doorway on top of the ship.
“External, as in outside?” Milo replied, stunned.
Lina tried to keep the fear from her voice. “That’s right.”
“Lina, we’re in space,” he cried. “You can’t go outside the ship while we’re in space!”
“What do you think spacesuits are for?” Lina responded. “Besides, if I don’t, we’ll never land safely.”
Before Milo could reply, CR-8R’s voice crackled over the comms-system. “Mistress Lina, whatever you’re going to do, may I suggest you do it quickly? The retro-thrusters have failed. We can’t slow down.”
Lina slammed her hand against a nearby comms-unit in frustration. “Change course then. Fly us away from Thune.”
“I can’t. The controls aren’t responding,” CR-8R said. “If we don’t change course very soon, I’m afraid the Whisper Bird is going to crash directly into the planet….”
