The command shuttle took to the sky.
From the communicator tucked into my jacket, I heard Lady Sosha yell,“We’ll hold them off while you go! Go!”
Val wordlessly turned back to face us. There was a terrible dark shadow across his face. His hand still gripped the blaster, finger on the trigger. “You ruin everything,” he snarled, storming toward me, stepping over the corpse of my friend. “You—”
Suddenly, he was pulled to the ground. He whirled back to see what it was—
Veebee’s hand gripped his ankle. Half her face was melted, and her remaining eye flickered with life, but as she silently turned her gaze to me, I knew she wouldn’t let him go. What had that Rodian said an eternity ago?Always check for a pulse.
We were still alive. Our deaths weren’t foregone conclusions—not until we stopped fighting.
The hyperdrive engines weren’t primed. The navicomputer wasn’t programmed. It would take too long forDad to get theStarfarerinto hyperspace before that terrible big ship above us shot us down.
But I wasn’t Dad.
And this wasn’t a normal ship.
This wasmyship.
“Get on the ship!” I shouted, shoving myself to my feet. My stomach heaved. My entire body hurt. I couldn’t think about that. “Hurry—Sian! Hurry!” I cried, sprinting up the ramp and through the cargo hold, glancing back to make sure everyone was making their way inside. They just had to get to the ramp. That was it.
Val struggled to get to his feet, having dropped his blaster, but Veebee kept her hold.
She was giving us a gift. I better not squander it.
I raced onto the bridge and fell into the pilot’s seat, firing up the hyperspace engines. They yelled in warning, but I ignored them. The light for the airlock turned off a moment later and then—
“Everyone’s inside,”Dad reported from a comm station by the door.“Except…”
“I know, Dad. But he’s…”
“I know, love. We have a responsibility.”
We did.
I didn’t have time to boot up the navicomputer. I didn’t have time to run any preflight checks. I hoped everything worked. The ship had never failed me yet.Warning lights flashed as the First Order’s capital ship locked on to its target, but Sian dismissed them as he sat down beside me in the copilot’s chair. I didn’t know where to go, where we would besafe—
The three fighters banked toward the First Order’s capital ship, swirling around it like gnats.
I flipped on the thrusters and pulled the ship off the ground. I had to at least get to the atmosphere before we jumped. I had to find a lane. I had to figure out where togo—
Through the communicator, Lady Sosha said,“We’ll meet you back at Endor,Starfarer.”
Endor it was.
Sian took my hand and squeezed it tightly. “Trust yourself, Starlight.”
Glaring red lights lit up the console, alarms whirred, and then—
Trust yourself, I thought, and squeezed my eyes tightly closed.
I slammed down the hyperspace lever. The stars blurred. The thrusters glowed white. And suddenly I found myself in the space between spaces, where time swirled around us instead of sitting still. My wrists tilted the controls—nudged them, ever so slightly—left and then right and then left again. I couldn’tseethe celestial bodies we passed, the ships in the lanes around us, butI could feel them. I understood them. Where they were going. Where they’d been.
Mom was right: Wayfinding was as easy as breathing.
The universe unfurled in front of me like a tapestry of lanes not yet taken, impossibly wide and beautiful, and I understood now—
I understood why my Mom had loved this so much.
