He handed Veebee back her arm, and she clutched it tightly. “Could we make it back to Tatooine?”
I doubted it, but I tried the calculations anyway on the navicomputer. It beeped angrily at me. “No. We’ll run out of fuel halfway there, and all we have is a short-range transceiver, so it would not be a good idea to get stranded in the middle of nowhere.”
But if there wasn’t fuelhere, what other options were there? I knew all the well-traveled lanes. They were imprinted in my memory like lifelines on my palms, and none of them could get us to theStarfarerwith the fuel we currently had.
“Wait.” Sian suddenly sat up straight, as if remembering something. “Can’t you do that wayfinding thing you were talking about? Get us a shorter route?”
He sounded so hopeful, and that sound curdled in my ears. “No,” I said. “I can’t.”
“But you said—”
“I’ve never tried. I don’t know how.”
He sank into quiet again, and then pulled up a map of the galaxy.
I held tight to the controls as the ship rattled one last time in atmo and then, with a sigh, broke into space. “I wish I could, Sian. I can’t make hyperspace routes out of thin air.”
“Technically,” Veebee said, “neither could your mom. She found the lane, the clear path safe from the noise and chaos of the galaxy, by wayfinding.”
“Not helping, Vee,” I mumbled. “We can’t go anywhere with the fuel we have. We’re stranded, and once the fuel goes out, the power goes out, and then the oxygen recycler goes out, and we die.”
“Well, that is quite dark,” said Veebee, and N2-0 agreed.
Sian mumbled something to the map and then asked, “Do we have enough fuel to make one jump? A small one?”
“How small?”
“Small.Here,” and he motioned for me to come over and look, so I engaged autopilot. He enlarged the map of where we were and pointed to a planet I hadn’t heard of. “Alakor. The planet’s deserted, but I remember there being an old research facility there. Maybe also some fuel and a long-distance transceiver…? But I’m not sure.” He sighed in frustration. “It’s a gamble.”
Veebee considered it. “And if you’re wrong, we become stranded in space. Where there is a hundred percent chance you two will suffocate and die and I will waste away my life’s potential alone.”
N2-0 gave an accusing bloop.
Veebee said, “I’mnotdiscounting you. I’m just being realistic. You’re old, I’m young, they’re fleshy. Besides, how do we know this Alakor isn’t picked clean like all the outposts on Geonosis?”
“I’m sure we’ll find at least fuel,” he insisted. “The research facility was basically untouched.”
It was either be stranded here on Geonosis or somewhere else. At leastthereflickered a spark of hope. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “I don’t particularly have a death wish, Starlight.”
I took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. Punch in the coordinates. Let’s go to thisAlakor.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Lost
When I was little, I had a lot of nightmares. Even before Mom died, they plagued me more often than not. My parents said I had an overactive imagination, and maybe I did. But often, when I’d wake up from one, I’d run to the bridge, snot dribbling down my face, to find my parents. Dad would snatch me up in his big arms and hold me tightly and tell me that nothing in my dreams was real.
There was one night, however, when I ran to get comfort from my parents and I found Mom at the helm. Dad had snatched me up, like he always did, and put a finger to his lips. “Shhh, watch,” he said in a secretive whisper, his eyes glittering. “You’ll see magic.”
The viewport was so bright it rendered her in complete shadow, her curling auburn hair catching the light of a thousand stars in strands of silver. She sat perfectly still at the helm, eyes closed, mouth buttoned, as sheferried the ship between worlds faster than the speed of light.
“Isn’t she impossible?” Dad had said in wonder.
She was.
Impossible in the way the galaxy always tended to be—impossible moments strung together by impossible people doing impossible things.
