“I see it!”
“Left! Go left!Port!” The droid went on. “And there’s one on your right! Gofaster!”
I snapped, “Stop backseat flying!”
Entoo blooped, but Veebee shot back, “Youare 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, Iwasn’tgoing 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 reactedwaytoo 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 anasteroid 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.
ALAKOR
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Fuel
The planet was a pink-and-green marble, no bigger than a moon, in a dense black pocket of space.
I checked the map, searching for anything else nearby, but it reallywasin the middle of nowhere.
Veebee noted, “It is smaller than I would have imagined.”
Sian shifted to the edge of his seat, looking out the viewport at the strange-colored marble. “It hasn’t changed,” he said hesitantly, as if the place were a mirage and could disappear at any moment. “Take us down over there, toward the middle of the continent. There will be a ravine with a river cutting through the middle. The research outpost should be on the west side.”
