Avon made herself a bit more comfortable, lying down. She wasn’t sure why his sudden despair made her feel so out of sorts. Maybe because he was certain he could go home, while Avon knew she couldn’t. What would it feel like to know your family missed you and would welcome you with open arms? Avon hadn’t had a holo from her mother in almost a month. Most days it didn’t bother her because she had so many things to occupy her time, but that day it felt like she’d been sent out to the edge of the galaxy and immediately forgotten about. Did her mother even know about the destruction of the Steady Wing? Did anyone?
But just because she was sad did not mean that Honesty shouldn’t be hopeful, and from the expression on his face at J-6’s comment he was feeling a bit deflated.
“Don’t let Jay-Six’s predictions dash your hopes. She can only run her calculations based on the information she has, and we can change those variables. We can build a better emergency beacon, or maybe even find a way to cannibalize other parts of the shuttle to rebuild the comms unit. Who knows until we try? But for now you’re trapped on Wevo with the rest of us, which isn’t all bad. Luckily we have plenty of joppa stew.” She gave Honesty a bright smile, but the boy’s expression was still very much crestfallen, and Avon had no idea how to fix that.
She sighed. “Try to get some sleep, Honesty. We can figure it out in the morning.”
And then Avon fell into a fitful sleep filled with dreams of far worse times.
Honesty startled awake. His first thought, of all possible things, was My father is dead. He ached with it. He remembered the first time he’d lost a molar in the back of his mouth. The tooth had fallen out, the same as most of his milk teeth, but the space left behind had been bigger, more noticeable. Knowing that his father was gone was like that, like sticking the tip of his tongue into that space where there should have been something, but instead there was only emptiness.
The comparison was weak but fit all the same.
He shouldn’t have argued with him. That last night, standing in front of the mirror and getting dressed. Honesty should have respected his father and told him how much he loved him, how happy he was to have him around. But he hadn’t, and now he never would. Tears pricked his eyes at the thought and he ducked his head. He’d spent the entire night crying quietly to himself. He would not let everyone else see his sadness, as well.
But then a tear was sliding down his nose and it was too late.
“Hey.”
Honesty dashed away his errant tears and looked up to find Imri sitting next to him. He held a water capsule, one of the few that had been aboard the maintenance shuttle.
“Are you thirsty?”
Honesty nodded and took the proffered capsule, biting into it so the stale water filled his mouth.
“There aren’t many of these, so I wanted to make sure you got one,” Imri said. There was no worry in his expression; as far as Honesty could tell, nothing bothered the Jedi very much, which was in itself a little annoying. Sure, the day before Imri had been just as upset as Honesty, but now that storm of emotion had passed, leaving the boy smiling once more. It seemed unnatural to be so steadfast and constant, even though Honesty’s instructors back on Dalna had often said that a cool head was the key to survival.
A cool head will help you prevail even in the most desperate of times. That hadn’t been advice from Honesty’s survival instructor, but from his father. Honesty squeezed his eyes shut and then reopened them.
Ambassador Weft had been correct, though. Honesty had to keep a cool head and assess the problem using everything he’d learned. He couldn’t save his father now—that had never been an option—but he could survive and pass on all that he had learned from his father. So far he’d been afraid to speak up. Vernestra was a Jedi Knight, after all, but it was clear that even though the Jedi were capable, they didn’t have any fieldcraft. Not like he did. He could help. It would give him something besides the loss of his father to think about.
The most obvious problem, besides how to get a message out, was the short-term care of themselves. There were precious few water supplies. And although they were fine with regard to food, they would feel the lack of drinkable water much, much sooner.
And the water on Wevo was toxic.
As he drank, Honesty looked out at the jungle beyond the cave, refusing to give in to the hopeless despair that tried to poke at him. The rain had stopped, and as he watched, the green undergrowth, which had been fried by the rainstorm the night before, grew rapidly.
“Whoa, do you see that?” Honesty asked, his previous malaise falling away in wonder. He climbed to his feet and walked to the entrance of the cave to watch as vines twirled up and around the trunks of the trees, growing many times faster than anything back on Dalna.
“Yeah, it seems that even though the rain here destroys a lot of the plant life the moon has a way to recover. Balance,” Imri said with a smile. A shadow flickered across his face before the smile brightened. “Look, even those funny little primates survived.”
The bright-colored creatures flitted from branch to branch, picking giant blue fruits that hung off the trees, heavy and round.
“Those weren’t there yesterday, right?” Honesty asked.
Imri frowned. “The fruit? No, I don’t think they were.”
Honesty drank the rest of his water capsule and handed it back to Imri while he considered the fieldcraft he’d been taught. In his survival classes he’d learned that on some planets the ecosystem relied on cycles for the survival of certain species. The rain on Wevo was caustic, and the little furred primates might be able to drink the toxic water.
Or they might be reliant on another resource entirely.
Honesty sprinted out of the cave toward the trees, ignoring Imri’s shout. If his theory was correct, they wouldn’t have to worry about going thirsty. He ran to the nearest tree, tugging at the lowest fruit and pulling it off the branch. A red-furred primate with six arms and an incredibly long tail chittered at him angrily, but Honesty turned and ran back to the cave before the little creature could do anything more than yell.
“What are you doing?” Imri asked, eyes wide. “You have to be careful. Who knows what those little things can do.”
“I think it was just mad that I stole this,” Honesty said, hefting the fruit. It was heavier than it looked, reminding him of the summer melon some of the farmers grew back on Dalna.
“What’s going on?” Vernestra asked, walking over to where Honesty and Imri stood in the entrance of the cave. Avon followed close behind, the goggles for the scout droid holding back her curly hair, which seemed to be growing just like the underbrush outside.
“I think Honesty has an idea,” Imri said.
Honesty nodded. “Back on Dalna, in preparation for our Metamorphosis, we have to take certain classes. I trained in fieldcraft—that’s stuff about surviving in different climates—and one of the things my teacher told me about was how in some places you have to get water from sources other than a stream or river.”
“You think that the potable water on Wevo is in the fruits?” Avon asked, frowning as she considered it. “That would make sense. Those trees have adapted to this environment in other ways.”
“And those tiny animals have been eating and drinking the fruit all morning,” Vernestra said. “But we don’t want to accidentally poison ourselves by eating that to test a theory.”
“We don’t have to,” Avon said with a grin. “Jay-Six has nanny programming. She should be able to sample it and see if it’s safe for us to consume. The language program shouldn’t interfere with that.”
Vernestra crossed her arms and gave Avon a disapproving look. “So you did do something to her programming.”
“I just relaxed some of her imperatives, giving her a greater measure of autonomy. Relax, Vern, Jay-Six is fine, just able to self-actualize a little better.”
Vernestra looked doubtful and Imri looked confused, but Honesty was impressed despite himself. He always thought it see
med unfair that droids had no say in their lives, that they were forced to live in a way that made them subservient to the organics they lived with instead of partners. Honesty thought it was good if they could decide a little bit of what kind of lives they wanted to live.
Avon gestured to Honesty to follow her, and they walked over to where J-6 stood in the back of the cave. She hadn’t moved all night, just stood in a corner contemplating whatever it was she’d refused to tell them the night before. Avon cleared her throat as they stood before the droid, as though she were a bit afraid to ask about the fruit.
“Yes, Avon. Did you have some other astronomical question you need addressed?” J-6 said, her photoreceptors a little too perceptive for Honesty’s liking. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe a fully self-aware droid was less interesting and more terrifying.
“No, but is your food safety program still functioning? We wanted to know if this would be safe for our biology to eat,” Avon said, pointing to the fruit Honesty still held.
J-6 sighed, which was amazing because droids didn’t even breathe, before suddenly taking the fruit from Honesty’s hands and crushing it with her own. Honesty jumped backward and Avon screamed as purple flesh and juice splattered all over her.
“Yes, this should be safe for you to eat,” J-6 said, dropping the remnants of the fruit as Imri and Vernestra walked over.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Avon said, picking bits of the blue fruit out of her hair. She took a piece of the flesh off of her shoulder and put it in her mouth, chewing slowly. “Tastes like mamba melon but a little tangier.”
“Well, at least we know that we won’t go thirsty,” Imri said, giving Avon a sympathetic look.
“Good job, Honesty,” Vernestra said. “That was a really good catch. We should get out there and pick a bunch of these fruits before the rain sets in. Didn’t you say that there was a twenty percent chance of rain, Jay-Six?”
“Did I? Perhaps. The information for this moon states that the rains come daily in the evenings, right before the night falls heaviest. So as long as the suns shine brightly you should be fine. Unless, of course, the information I have is completely wrong, but I suppose you will all be melted piles of goo by the time you realize that.” J-6 shrugged as a person might, and no one said anything for a very long time until Avon suddenly reached out and embraced J-6, a wide grin splitting her dark face.
“I love you so much,” she whispered.
Honesty decided right then and there that if he wanted to survive he was going to stay as far away as possible from both the genius tech girl and her moody droid, no matter how much the strange, smart girl intrigued him.
Vernestra leaned against her pack and ate one of the many fruits they’d gathered before the rain had returned. The taste was somewhere between melon and frostberry, and there was a pleasurable tang at the end that made her want to smack her lips in appreciation. Honesty’s instinct to try the fruit had been a good one, and Vernestra sighed happily at such good fortune.
The Force truly did provide.
It had been a busy day. No one had wanted to take a chance on the rain returning before they’d stockpiled the fruits, which were mostly juice. So the four of them had focused on picking as many as possible, grabbing the lower fruit before the chirping, chittering primates could chase them away. Imri had discovered that the curious creatures would jump on a person’s head if they were careless, and they’d all shared a laugh as the boy had tried to escape a rather tenacious orange critter. Avon had taken to calling the small animals handsies because of their numerous hands, and by the end of the day the name had stuck. Imri’s handsy friend had even decided that it liked Imri more than its tree, and the cute creature had spent the rest of the day riding around on Imri’s shoulders, using the tall boy to leap into the trees and get the fruit on the highest branches.
“Are you going to name him?” Honesty had asked, the boy unable to hide his smile as the handsy tried to chew on Imri’s Padawan braid.
“I think I’m going to call him Chiri,” Imri said.
“Because it rhymes? That’s smart,” Avon said with a nod. “Imri and Chiri. You’re like a wild fruit picking team.”
The small creatures had tried to climb into Vernestra’s tunic, as well, but she’d very carefully kept them from getting too comfortable, taking them and returning them to the trees. She wondered if they were Force-sensitive, especially since they did not try to cuddle up to Avon or Honesty, neither of whom seemed to mind.
Night had fallen, and outside the cave the water streamed down again, once more burning away the underbrush while the handsies hid in their hidey-holes. All except for Chiri, who had decided to curl up inside Imri’s tunic, where the creature now slept, making the occasional sleepy chirp. The next day the vines and low ferns would return once again, just as they had earlier that morning, the fruit would grow once more, and the handsies would feast.
It was proof of the Force’s perfect balance, the harmony apparent in the galaxy, and it gave Vernestra an overwhelming sense of peace as she closed her eyes and fell into the rhythms of the moon.
Death. Destruction. Desolation.
Vernestra’s eyes snapped open at the twang of dissonance among the otherwise soothing symphony of life on Wevo. She sat up and found Imri doing the same across the way.
“Did you feel that?” Imri said, jumping to his feet. Vernestra nodded.
“Feel what?” Honesty asked, sitting up straight next to Avon, who was explaining something to him by way of an equation drawn in the soft sand of the cave.
“It’s the Force. There’s something wrong,” Imri said with a frown. “Something that does not belong.”
“Is there someone else on Wevo with us?” Honesty asked.
Vernestra frowned. She could not parse the disturbance in the Force as clearly as Imri could, but she could not fathom another group of people landing on such a remote, out-of-the-way moon. Surely there was something else amiss.
Imri shook his head. “There is so much life that I can’t tell. It’s far enough away that it just feels . . . wrong.”
“And the rain didn’t? It melted Honesty’s sleeve!” Avon said.
Vernestra shook her head. “The rain is a part of this place. You see how the animals and plants have adapted to deal with it. This is something completely different.”
“I thought I saw someone the first day we were here,” Honesty said. “But I wasn’t sure. Maybe there are other survivors from the Steady Wing, after all.”
The look of hope on the boy’s face made Vernestra’s heart clench painfully, because she knew that no one had survived the end of that ship. She had felt it. But she did not want to dash his hopes without more evidence.
“If there are people here, why didn’t you sense them the first night?” Avon asked with a frown.
“It could be they were somewhere else,” Imri said.
“We also weren’t really in balance with Wevo before. It takes a moment to learn and get to know a place,” Vernestra said, unbothered. She stood and stretched before turning to look at Imri. “We should go check it out.”
Imri nodded and put his lightsaber back together before sliding it into the holster on his hip. Chiri squeaked in annoyance but stayed in Imri’s tunic. Apparently the creature had decided that the disturbance was a small price to pay for such a great place to nap.
Vernestra turned back to the younger kids before they left. “Stay here. We’ll be right back.”
Outside of the cave the rain pelted the landscape, clearing away the underbrush and making it easy to travel through the jungle. Vernestra used her lightsaber to hack free a broad leaf to provide cover, and used the Force to levitate it over her head to keep dry. Imri did the same. As they walked, the water streaming across the ground diverted away from their path, pushed along by Vernestra, so they remained mostly dry. In any other place, with regular rain, Vernestra would’ve saved her energy and let the rain do what it would, but that was not an option on Wevo.
“Which way?” Vernestra asked. She could have figured out the direction of the disturbance on her own, but after their uneasy conversation the day before, Vernestra wanted Imri to do the work. She could sense the unmoored feelings Imri was trying to ignore, all of them directly related to losing his master. He needed to reestablish his faith in not only the Force but his abilities. And the best way for him to do that was by using his gift.
“I think it’s coming from back toward the floodplain,” Imri said with a frown.
“We’ll have to be careful. With all of this rain there might be a river there now,” Vernestra said. And then the two of them set off down the hill, back toward the path they’d taken the first day.
As they walked, the rain pelted the surrounding trees and the leaves over their heads, covering the sound of their passage. Vernestra felt gazes on them and looked to see the handsies tucked into hidey-holes carved into the trunks of the trees. There was very little ambient light, and Vernestra realized too late that they should have brought a lantern to see by. Only the regular flashes of lightning provided any kind of relief to the unrelenting darkness. Both she and Imri could navigate using the Force, avoiding trees and other living things, but after a while fatigue would set in, and that’s when things could get dangerous. If they waited too long to head back they would be at the mercy of the rain just like anyone else.
“This way,” Imri said suddenly, veering right down a steep incline. Something had gone through that area, felling trees and clearing out a haphazard route, and Vernestra recognized the boulder from their cave at the bottom of the hill. But beyond that was something bright.
It was a ship. A cargo hauler that was crushed on one side by none other than the boulder Imri had pulled from the mountainside. Maintenance lights lit the area, revealing the extent of the damage. Vernestra felt a bit guilty seeing that her hasty deflection of the massive rock had terrible consequences for someone else.
“There are other people here,” Vernestra said.
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