A cold sweat chilled my spine. “What do you mean?”
“I have gotten into a bit of a—”The staticky voices of other people interrupted her. I froze. It was the unmistakable chatter of Jawa Trade Talk.
I quickly asked, “Veebee, where are you?”
Above the din in the background, N2-0 gave a pitiful bloop.
“I tried offering them credits, Entoo,”Veebee stated,“but the only currency they want is my body. My gloriously rare—wait, unhand me! Get your hands off! Entoo! Resist!”
N2-0 shrieked a war cry.
Uh-oh.
“Where are you?” I insisted. “What’s happening? How did—”
The communicator went dead. I tried to reach them again, but the call went unanswered. Oh, no. Oh,no.I had sent them on a recon mission, and they had somehow ended up being kidnapped by Jawas. I just gotridof trouble. I didn’t need more. With a groan, I scrubbed my face with my free hand.
Think.
How the heck had Veebee crossedJawa traders? Everyone knew they operated on Tatooine, so Dad had always been insistent that neither of the droids leave the ship. But I’d asked them to follow Val, and now—
Val.
This was my fault.
Maz tapped her finger to her chin thoughtfully. “Trouble afoot?”
“I’ll be back. I’m so sorry to cut this short!” I popped to my feet, careful not to jostle the holochess table. My head was scrambled. I didn’t know what to do, where to go—wait. I did. Maz wordlessly held up my satchel, and I took it, digging out my datapad. We’d put a tracker in Entoo a few years ago when their directional programming got damaged and they’d been losing themself in weird places on the ship. We’d fixed them, but I’d never taken out the trackerjust in case. I still had their locationcode, so I found it and memorized the readings. Though once I had, I realized I didn’t know what to do with them.
It wasn’t like I carried a compass with me.
Maz hummed to herself as she dug into her vest pockets and pulled out a small square. “Here. Catch!” She tossed it to me.
I fumbled to catch it. The square was about the size of my palm. It was a compass. The arrow on the dial spun and settled due north.
“It won’t point you to the coordinates, but it should help.”
“Thank you,” I said earnestly, slinging my satchel over my shoulder. “If my dad comes asking where I am, tell him I’ll be back soon?”
Maz made a gentle shooing motion. “You should get going. And, Ardent?”
I was already halfway out of the mess hall, but I spun back to her frantically. “Yeah?”
“Your mother always trusted herself,” she said softly, slowly blinking her eyes behind her goggles. “She’d tell you to do the same.”
“Right,” I whispered, then turned and ran out of the mess hall. My droids were in trouble, and it was my fault.
I was sure my mother would’ve never done something so careless.
I hurried down the ramp of theStarfarerand out intothe market, using the compass to guide me. I cut down streets and squeezed past stalls and shoved through groups of people, all the while trying not to get trampled or hit by speeders.
By the time I hit the edge of town, gasping for breath, I realized they were long gone. I put my hands on my knees. I had thought at least I would see the Jawa caravan leaving, but there was nothing but dusty roads and traffic cresting the hill in the distance. This was the only main road into the town from this direction—or at least that was what my map said.
And there was no sign of them anywhere.
“Crap,”I murmured, trying to catch my breath. “If I were Jawas, where would I go?”
“That way.”
