by Cavan Scott
© & TM 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.
ISBN 978-1-368-00892-1
Cover art by Lucy Ruth Cummins
Interior art by David Buisán
Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1: Power Failure
Chapter 2: Space Crawl
Chapter 3: Planetfall
Chapter 4: Nazgorigan
Chapter 5: Thune City
Chapter 6: Dil Pexton
Chapter 7: An Unwanted Message
Chapter 8: Clear the Bridge
Chapter 9: Swarmed
Chapter 10: Canal Chase
Chapter 11: Blast Off!
Chapter 12: Nowhere Left to Run
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 again, 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 ma
nual 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….”
THUNE WAS GETTING BIGGER by the second.
Milo sat in the pilot’s seat with Morq perched behind him. Nervously, Milo glanced over to the screen showing the interior of the Bird’s rear airlock. Lina was inside, wearing one of the family’s bright yellow spacesuits and holding a round helmet beneath her arm.
“Mistress Lina,” CR-8R said into the comms-unit. “For the last time, this is a really bad idea.”
“It’s the only one we have, Crater,” Lina reply.
“Let me go out there instead,” the droid insisted. “I can fix the power cell.”
“The hatch is too narrow. You’ll never make it through,” Lina said. “Besides, I need you to steer.”
“I can steer!” Milo chipped in.
“Lo-Bro, you crash speeder bikes when they’re not even moving!” Lina replied. “Trust me, I’m the only one who can do this.”
Milo usually hated it when Lina used his nickname, Lo-Bro, but he was too worried to care right now. He just wanted his sister to be safe.
Milo watched on the screen as Lina lowered the helmet over her head and locked it into place.
“Very well,” CR-8R sighed. “If you’re determined to follow this crazy plan…”
“I am,” Lina replied, her voice trembling slightly.
“Let’s run through it one more time,” Crater insisted.
“We can’t wait any longer, Crater,” Lina said.
The droid ignored her. “We’ll open the airlock and you’ll climb to the top of the Whisper Bird. The magna-pads on the palms of your hands and your knees will keep you magnetically attached to the hull.”
“Got it,” Lina replied.
“Once you’ve opened the hatch,” Crater continued, “don’t worry about the main core. That will take too much time.”
“Instead, divert power to the secondary systems,” Lina said from the airlock. “The retro-thrusters should unlock and you’ll be able to take the ship down.”
“Only when you’re back inside,” Milo pointed out.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hang out up there,” Lina said.
“In the meantime, I’m going to try to override the repulsors and stabilize the acceleration compensator,” CR-8R said. “Otherwise this is going to be a very bumpy ride.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Lina said, but Milo didn’t believe her. None of this was okay at all. He wished he could go in her place, but he knew that wouldn’t help. While Lina loved machines, Milo loved nature. He was happiest exploring the swamp and discovering new species, not rerouting power generators.
Some help he was.
“Just be careful, okay, Sis?” he said, trying to sound positive. “Who am I going to annoy if you’re not around?”
“You annoy me,” CR-8R pointed out, only to be whacked by Morq’s tail.
“Don’t worry, Milo,” Lina said. “I can do this. Crater, open the airlock.”
Milo wondered if she was trying to convince him or herself. In the copilot’s seat, the droid fussed with some controls before announcing: “Airlock, opening in five, four, three, two…ONE!”
Lina held her breath as the air hissed out of the airlock and the large door in front of her started to open, revealing stars as far as the eye could see. Her stomach turned and she almost yelled that it was all a big mistake and she had changed her mind.
The door was wide open now. Only a magnetic field protected her from the vacuum of space. She swallowed hard and pressed a switch on a control panel sewn into her spacesuit’s sleeve.
“Turning off airlock artificial gravity now,” Lina said.
There was a beep and Lina floated up from the floor. When they were little, their mom used to switch off the artificial gravity in the main hold so Milo and Lina could play in the zero gravity. They would cheer with glee as they swam through the air. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so fun anymore.
“Lower the magnetic field,” she commanded.
“Magnetic field deactivated,” CR-8R responded over the comms. A sudden burst of blue static crackled across the open door, and then there was nothing stopping her from floating out into space.
Lina imagined her mom telling her that she could do this, and she pushed herself forward. She grabbed the edge of the open door and flipped herself up onto the Whisper Bird’s hull.
This was it. She was outside the ship.
Her stomach churned, and she thought for a second that she was going to throw up in her helmet. Not a good idea, Lina. Not at all. She tried to remember what CR-8R had recited to her from his large databank of knowledge.
“When performing a spacewalk, focus on the ship, not the stars. Look up and you will be overwhelmed by the largeness of space. Look down and you will see the hull, which is solid and dependable. Take it one step at time and don’t rush. The last thing you want to do is slip and lose your grip.”
He was right, that was the last thing she wanted to do. For an annoying droid, he made a lot of sense sometimes.
Still clutching the edge of the door, Lina pressed another control on her sleeve. The magna-pads on her knees and gloves activated and her knees stuck to the hull.
“It’s working,” she said.
“You’re doing great, Sis!” Milo encouraged her.
“Yes,” CR-8R agreed. “But I for one would appreciate it if you could go a bit faster.”
“What happened to not rushing?” Lina asked.
“Sorry, I should have said: ‘Don’t rush, unless you’re about to smash into the side of a planet.’”
Lina sighed. “Okay, you just concentrate on getting those repulsors operational.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” was the droid’s reply.
Lina didn’t answer. Instead she paused for a second to orient herself before she started the long crawl to the top of the ship. The Whisper Bird’s wings stretched to either side, and she was all too aware of the planet looming in front of them. Thune looked huge now, and she could see tiny dots circling the large sphere. Ships in orbit. Maybe even space stations.
Another wave of nausea swept over her. Head down, she thought, focus on the hull.
One step at a time.
As the ship roared forward, she pulled herself along. The magna-pads clung tightly, releasing as she lifted her hands and knees only to kick back in when she slapped them back down again. She could feel the ship shuddering beneath her touch, the vibrations from the failing engines flowing through her body.
“Almost there,” she murmured, looking ahead. But before Milo or CR-8R could reply, the Whisper Bird shook violently. She slipped and the magna-pads came loose. All at once, she was falling back into space as the Bird shot forward. She screamed, flailing her arms. Her outstretched palm brushed against the metal, skidding across the hull, until the magna-pad stuck. She jolted to a halt, the sudden stop nearly pulling her arm out of its socket.
“Lina, are you all right?” Milo called. “LINA?”
“I’m fine,” she gasped, her heart hammering loudly in her ears. “What was that?”
“The repulsors have fused,” CR-8R replied. “The power cell is about to go critical. You have to move, Mistress Lina. Go!”
Lina didn’t need to be told twice. She hauled herself forward, her eyes on the hatch. Her muscles burned and her head was pounding, but she didn’t care. She needed to do this, for all of them.
When she reached the hatch, she found the controls and entered a code on the keypad. The hatch opened and the emergency lighting flashed on and off in the narrow shaft below.
“I’m in,” she cheered, looking at the short ladder that led down to the generator.
“That’s great, Sis. Hurry though. We’ve got another problem. Actually, make that two problems.”
“What are you talking about?” Lina asked just as she noticed something moving out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a pair of starfighters racing after the Whisper Bird.
“THEY’RE COMING IN FAST,” Milo said, checking the rear sensors.
“Too fast!” CR-8R agreed.
“Try being out here with them!” Lina shouted over the comms.
“Get into the engineering section, Sis,” Milo suggested. “Perhaps they won’t—”
The fighters roared over the top of the Whisper Bird, zooming past the ship.