“I stole my first escape pod when I was six, while with my mom on a diplomatic trip to Mon Cala. Trust me, I know how to fly.” Avon grinned. The smile did not erase the way her hands shook or the perspiration sparkling along her hairline. Imri could sense her fear but admired that it did not stop her from doing what needed to be done. They were all scared—watching a ship break apart and leave only the stars beyond was not normal—but they were all dealing with it in their own ways.
“I do recommend buckling up, though,” J-6 said, lowering herself into one of the seats along the wall and clicking restraining straps into place.
Vernestra sat in the copilot’s seat next to Avon. Imri strapped in across from J-6 while Honesty sat next to him. Imri smiled at the younger boy.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“It’s already not okay,” Honesty said, and there was so much conviction in his words that Imri just looked down at his hands.
“Everything seems operable, but I’m getting an error with the shielding,” Avon called from the front. “There’s going to be a lot of debris as we detach,” she said gravely. “So hold on to your butts.”
Imri swallowed hard. Without shields a random piece of the Steady Wing could spell their doom. They weren’t out of danger yet.
“I can help with that,” Vernestra said. “Um, the debris. Not the holding of butts.”
Avon laughed. “Well, yay for the Force.”
There was a jolt as the shuttle detached, and then they were speeding away from the slowly destructing Steady Wing and into the darkness of space. Imri closed his eyes and tried to send an emotion through the Force to his master, to let the man know everything he had meant to him as a teacher. He concentrated, shaking with the effort of reaching out.
But the Jedi, and the rest of the Dalnan delegation, was already gone.
Avon gripped the yoke harder than necessary as she piloted the maintenance shuttle away from the much larger ship. She should’ve let Vernestra fly. Everyone knew that the Jedi were expert pilots, the Force giving them an edge over most everyone else. At least, that’s what the stories said. And after living with Vernestra at Port Haileap, Avon had learned that the stories about the Jedi should be believed. Especially after that maneuver in the dining room. Who but a Jedi would let themselves be pulled out toward space to close a bulkhead? No one Avon knew.
Avon should have let Vernestra fly, but when J-6 had pointed out the lone functioning shuttle, Avon had run into it and jumped into the pilot’s seat because it was something to do besides thinking about disintegrating ships and Jedi Masters using the Force to save her life.
Poor Douglas. Avon had liked him. He’d called her clever once and handed her a sour berry sweet from his pocket. It seemed desperately unfair that he would meet his end in such a completely random, illogical way. What were the chances of a ship breaking apart in straight space? Hyperspace lanes could be risky, especially the closer one got to the Outer Rim. But they were mostly safe as long as everyone followed the rules.
There was no logical explanation for this, and that was what Avon hated the most.
Next to her Vernestra jumped, and in the back Imri let out a moan. Avon twisted around in her seat to look at the Padawan before turning to the Jedi next to her.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“The ship, it’s gone,” Vernestra said. Avon wondered what she meant, and then the proximity sensors began to scream. Through the viewport chunks of debris went whizzing past, and there was only one explanation Avon could think of for such a phenomenon.
The Steady Wing had exploded.
Avon’s heart clenched at the knowledge Master Douglas was gone forever. It wasn’t fair. If the Force was really guiding everything, how could good people like Master Douglas die so stupidly?
“Are you okay?” Vernestra asked, startling the younger girl. She watched Avon with wide-eyed concern, and Avon dashed away the tears that had managed to spring free.
“I’m great. Are you ready?” Vernestra raised an eyebrow, and Avon blew out an impatient breath. “Vern, you said you were going to use the Force to keep us safe. The shields on this model are not very strong, and we have to get through that, which seems to be getting worse by the minute.” Through the viewport the way before them was littered with pieces of the ship, and other things besides. Avon tried not to look at the debris too closely. She was afraid if she did, the random bits of trash would resolve into people and recognizable things.
Avon pushed the image aside. Focus on the now. Control your impulses, Avon. The voice in her head was her mother’s. Senator Ghirra Starros had never met a problem she couldn’t solve, and even if Avon worked very hard to be nothing like her mother, it was still a valuable trait to have.
“One foot in front of the other,” she muttered.
The proximity alarms continued to blare, the sound pulling Avon from her wayward thoughts. She had really had enough of alarms for one day.
The shuttle shuddered, jostling everyone aboard. Behind Avon, Imri and the Dalnan boy, Honesty, shifted. “Is that supposed to happen?” called Imri.
“No, this is just our day getting worse,” Avon said. “The shields don’t seem to be working at all.”
“I can handle it,” Vernestra said, closing her eyes and leaning back in the seat.
Avon took a deep breath and let it out, and then the maintenance shuttle was deep in the debris field.
Avon had been obsessed with theoretical disaster for years. Every time she and her mother had traveled on official Republic business, Avon had taken great joy in relaying the facts and risks associated with long-haul space travel and hyperspace to anyone who would listen. There were hundreds of logs about what happened when a ship began to break apart in space, most recently with the Legacy Run. As reports came in Avon had been fascinated with them, not because of the loss of life, which was terrible, but because of wanting to understand how the disaster had happened and learn to prevent others like it. Avon believed that tech held the answer to most every problem, and even if it seemed like she was just looking for trouble, she was actually looking for answers.
The answer for the debris field caused by a rapidly disintegrating ship was proximity alarms, which was why every craft was supposed to have them, even maintenance shuttles that usually stayed near the larger vessels they were used to maintain. But warning systems were only half the equation, and without any kind of shielding, the ship would be vulnerable to breach. Avon’s heart pounded with worry. Vernestra looked tired, her closed eyes and steady breathing not able to erase the lines of fatigue around her eyes. Hopefully, she would be able to help them get past the worst of the danger.
Avon took another deep breath and accelerated.
The first bit of debris swirled around them, moving away and to the side as they sped past. Some of the tightness in Avon’s chest loosened. Everything was fine; they’d avoided the worst of the catastrophe.
But then a screeching came from the top of the shuttle, the sound of something big scraping along the outside hull. Avon flicked her eyes over to Vernestra, whose green skin was liberally dotted with perspiration. “Sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes were squeezed shut with concentration, scrunched so hard that the tiny diamonds tattooed around the outside of each eye had nearly disappeared.