35.1.1034
The Viridian, Hyperspace

After almost a week after the occupation started, the Mandalorians weren't showing any signs of leaving. Really no one had any idea why they were hanging around so long. Maybe the Lorridian's were putting up a fight somewhere after all. But really, our little group ceased to care any more. We stopped moving some time during the fifth day and settled in. Everyone was so hungry all they wanted to do is rest. Marno kept taking trips out and looking for another way past the Mandos, but he always comes back, saying nothing. He doesn't lose hope, though. Even Tarrin stopped asking to go along.

Yesterday morning, Veea suddenly got that determined look in her eyes and stood up. She was this awful gray-green color that she gets when she's really sick, but the way she walked right up to Marno when he got back from his scouting and asked him, in Basic, to relate everything he knew about the Mandalorian's guard posts, I knew she had decided that she wasn't going to just sit here and die. Rodians are fighters, and she has it in her blood. Marno was pretty shocked to hear her speak such clear Basic, but he told her everything. I didn't get a chance to ask her what she was on about before she slipped out of our hiding place and disappeared.

I think it was four hours later when she finally came back. She ignored Marno and the rest of the people and came straight for me. "Are you strong enough for a climb, Blondie?" she asked me right away in Rodian, "I think I found us a way past the Mandalorian guards."

"How are we going to get all these people past them?" I asked, "I would have thought Marno would have found a way by now if it was at all possible."

"Marno didn't grow up climbing in the jungles of Rodia like you and I," Veea replied, "No, Kionee, it's just going to be the two of us."

That was when the argument started. I was really glad that none of the others understood Rodian. All the same, they recognized an argument when I started raising my voice and they all started to stare, in that exhausted, sleepy way.

"We can't just leave these people here to starve!" I exclaimed.

"Yes we can," Veea snapped, "Unless you want to sit here and starve with them. That's our only other option right now, and you know it. Either we leave for the Viridian right now, or we starve to death, and personally, I don't like the idea of just sitting around and waiting to die."

I didn't like it, but I didn't like the idea of dying either. I had just kept on hoping that the Mandalorians would pick up and leave and this nightmare would end. So far, it hadn't, and it was getting to be too dangerous. I bit my lip. "If we can get past the Mandalorians, and if my ship is still there, and if we can get off-planet, then we can go get help," I said, but it seemed like an awful lot of if's.

"I'd rather die trying than die waiting for help that isn't going to come," Veea replied.

I took a deep breath, suddenly doubting it all, then told everyone our plan. I told them where to find the Relems' estate, if they could sneak past the Mandalorian guards too, and that I would leave my whole cargo there for them, or whatever was still left of it. Some people looked mad that we were trying to leave them and go out on our own, but most of them were too weary to care.

So Veea took me near the edge of the station. I nearly fainted when I first got up and started walking, but then I got used to that light-headed dizzy feeling. Veea showed me what she had found. There was a slim ladder built into the wall for ceiling maintenance just before the station. Although it was a good ten meters off, she pointed out that there was a narrow ledge, only a few centimeters wide, above the sliding station doors. We would have to repel from light fixtures and pipes in the ceiling from the ladder to the first of the doors, and then swing on the pipes between each door ledge, and be completely silent about it. The whole stretch of climbing was almost hundred meters long, the length of a train.

Just looking at it made me dizzy, but I couldn't argue with Veea. This was our only chance. I let her go first, watching her every move. Veea, as a Rodian, is a natural climber, but even she looked strained. Still, I saw how she did it, and I know waiting any longer wouldn't help, so I climbed up after her. It was hard, probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. My hands got sweaty and it was hard to keep a good grasp on the cold pipes. I was already light-headed, and the heights and swinging only made it worse. I started to shake so badly that a couple of times I just had to stop and cling to the wall, breathing hard, for five minutes at a time until the shaking stopped. I was so scared that I was going to slip and fall. If the fall didn't kill me, the Mandalorians sure would, and then they'd start looking for our friends to kill too. I have never been so glad I spent all those years as a kid goofing around in the Rodian jungle with all the other kids.

Somewhere near the middle, the pipe I swung on didn't like all of my weight and made this terrible grating, screeching noise. I almost let go of it right there, I was so startled. I almost screamed too. Good thing I was too out of breath to scream. I heard the Mandalorians debate what that sound was, and I heard their footsteps come closer. I desperately leaned into the wall above the doors and held my breath, but that only made me dizzier. My heart was pounding so loud, I was afraid they would hear that too. Luck or the Force must have been on our side. They came to the tracks and poked their heads out, shining their lights up and down the tunnel, but they didn't look at the ceiling. They talked for a while, standing practically right under me, and then the went away again. It took me a couple more minutes before I was feeling ready to start moving again.

We made it to the other side without any other trouble, Veea glared at me for making so much noise, but I think she knew that I was doing my best. I can't even say how glad I was to have solid ground beneath my feet again and give my sore arms and hands a break. I was still shaking pretty badly as we crept away and down the tunnel. I don't think I made it more than ten steps to safety when I practically collapsed against the wall. Without saying a word, Veea found the closest maintenance closet and helped me there step by step. I know she was annoyed and anxious to get on, but she knows just how much easier humans get tired out than Rodians do. I fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the floor.

Veea only let me sleep for a couple of hours before she got me up and going again. I know she feared that the longer we sat around and rested, the harder it would be to get going again. The next two stations were much easier. There was only one guard at each, and we just had to wait until his back was turned to duck below the level of the doors and sneak by.

The last station was more of a problem. This time, we had to get up to the surface, and walking right past the Mandalorian guard to the lift wasn't an option. Veea found one of the maintenance shafts near the station. I hid in that dark closet, resting, while Veea climbed all the way up that ladder tube. For once, this one's exit wasn't blocked and it opened up in a street that wasn't heavily guarded. Veea said that when she peeked out, she didn't see any Mandalorian boots at all. All the same, we decided to wait until after dark to make our move.

Once Veea said that the coast was clear, we pushed off the man-hole cover and climbed out. It was cloudy and gray; that kind of not-quite-dark right before dawn. It was cold, but the whole stillness of it all made me shiver. Cities shouldn't be that still, even in the early morning.

Now I'm even more glad we took a cab to the palace. We had come out on the main street that we drove down on our first day here. Thank goodness for Rodian sense of direction (and I've got some of that trained into me too). We snuck down those icy streets as fast and quietly as we could. I was always afraid of Veea's green skin or my bright blue jacket catching someone's eye, but there was no one to see us.

Neither of us felt comfortable traveling on the main street, even if that was the easiest way back. We wound up cutting through a maze of icy back porches and alleyways, always trying to keep parallel to the main street.

When we were a little over half way there, there was a screeching roar in the sky. It sounded like some terrible bird—on a rocket. Veea went head-first into the snow bank, but it took me a second to react. By then, I was gaping up at the narrow band of sky between the buildings, watching one of those Mandalorian war droids blast through the sky over us. It was so low, it was a wonder that it wasn't melting the icy facades of the buildings with its engines.

Other than that ringing in my ears, there was no sound in the city. When Veea got up, I was still staring frozen at the sky. She slapped me and chewed me out in an angry whisper that I might have been seen. She dragged me down another side alley and we buried ourselves in a snow bank and waited, but no one came looking for us. I guess I hadn't been seen after all.

After maybe half an hour of that, my fingers were turning blue and I convinced Veea to get moving again. The sun was beginning to come up and we'd be more easily spotted in daylight. The closer we got to the Relems' house, we heard more patrols on the main street. We heard the war droids pass over not too far away a few more times. Through those times, Veea insisted we keep moving faster.

We skirted way around the main shopping street and were finally in the right neighborhood. The roads were wider and there were fewer places to hide. There was no one else on the street. We ran two blocks at full tilt, zig-gagging between speeders and snow sculptures for cover.

Less than a hundred meters away from the Relems' house, we ducked panting beneath a big delivery speeder. We couldn't go straight for the front door. That left us too exposed. I wracked my brain for another way in, trying to remember the layout of their house from our brief stay before, but ti was like wading through a fog of my hunger, cold, and exhaustion-inflicted dizziness. Laying there on my belly beneath that speeder, all I wanted to do was sleep—or die. Veea was hardly doing any better, but we were both pretending hard to each other that were okay. Suddenly, out of that delirious haze, it occurred to me that there was a back entrance for foot traffic into their private hangar in the hillside. Mrs. Relem did say that she would leave it unlocked in case we got back late that night. I hoped it was still unlocked then.

It would be another mad dash across exposed ground into who knows what on the other side of the hill, but ti seemed like a good idea at the time. Crazier still, Veea thought it was a good idea too.

We crawled out from under that speeder and ran. We were so close I didn't want to worry about cover any more. I think I must have slipped and fell once or twice on the icy ground—I have a bruise on my leg I can't explain—but it was all a blur.

Suddenly, we were leaning on the sheltered door frame to the hangar, panting and grinning. For only a second, I thought the pounding in my ears was the sound of Mandalorians following us. When I realized it wasn't, I almost laughed out loud.

I did laugh when the door opened up, still unlocked, then I broke down and cried, collapsing right there on the duracrete hangar floor, when I saw my Viridian again. MT-412 was clanking down the loading ramp almost immediately. He would have been crying too, if he had the facilities, he was so relieved to see us. I think I gave him a hug. I forgot about being tired or hungry or being stuck on Lorrd. I was so happy just to be back and feeling safe.

MT took us staring to Mr. And Mrs. Relem. They were hiding in their basement with only a small glow light to see by. There were more tears and hugs. They had taken us for dead after all this time. They gave us some food and water and blanked, at then we told each other what we knew of the invasion.

The Mandalorians had knocked out all the residential power and imposed a lock-down. Everyone was to stay in their home or "face the consequences." Already, the cold was starting to get to them and they were starting to run out of food.

MT apologized for giving them some of our stock for free, but that is exactly what I'd hoped he'd done.

When I told them of my plan to get off planet and get help, they thought I was joking at first, but when they realized I wasn't, Mrs. Relem tried to convince me not to go. Her husband realized that if I was willing and wanting to help them, they should help me. He convinced me to rest, recover, and wait until just before dawn the next morning with the light was flattest.

I thought waiting a whole day would feel impossible, but I conked right out and was asleep for most of it. By the time I woke up, after dark, MT had off-loaded all off our produce to give away, as I had asked, and Mr. Relem had planned out the best route for me to follow. I was to go west along the ground and away from the city so I could run away from the dawn and any cities or mines where the Mandalorians might be.

For the last hour or so before we left, we all sat together around the glow lamp in their dark basement talking about nothing: fruit business, our families, the Coruscant vs. Nubia sphereball game last week, and then it was finally time to go. Suddenly both of the Relems had tons of advice. Just how to fly, where to go, when to leave surface flying and climb up to the atmosphere. I really don't remember much of it. It was right about then that everything started feeling unreal.

Veea, MT, and I loaded onto the Viridian, they opened the hangar doors and waved us off. I engages the lifts, then the engines, and we were off. As soon as we were out in the open air, out in the gray darkness, I wanted to turn around, but one thought of all those people hiding in the subway tunnels, basements, or wherever and starving made me keep going.

We flew west along the route Mr. Relem gave us, stay low to the ground. In minutes, we were away from the suburbs and flying over open snowfields. With any luck, the silver Viridian would blend in to the snow from above. We swerved northward, away from a set of mines the Mandalorians might be occupying, slowly approaching our escape zone. Veea said nothing the whole while, just fine tuning our calculations and keeping her ear on open chanel com chatter, just in case. MT sometimes said something hopeful, then shuffled back out of the cockpit again.

I was too focused to be scared. It occurred to me every once in a while that if the Mandalorians spotted us, we were toast. The Viridian had atmospheric head shields, but nothing that could hold out against repeated laser fire, and our single drop-down blaster turret below the cockpit couldn't hurt anything larger than a speeder. For that hour-long ground-hugging flight, I willed myself not to think about it.

A huge white mountain range rose up before us out of the cloudy haze. That was our escape. I rose with the ground into the foothills, then to the craggy mountains. As we broke into the clouds, I gave the stony peaks more space and turned the Viridian's nose upward, giving the thrusters as much power as was still safe. We rocketed out of the clouds and into the inky black, star-spattered sky faster than I had ever pushed the Viridian into the atmosphere before. All of my attention was on the controls. Veea was supposed to be watching for Mandalorian ships. My tension grew, but she didn't say anything.

The Viridian started to hum and rattle as we cut through the atmosphere. It didn't like the noises my ship was making, but I didn't dare slow down. When I thought I couldn't bear it any more, we were out, but I couldn't breath easily yet. We still had to get out of Lorrd's gravity well without Mandalorians blasting us out of the sky.

Suddenly Veea was sitting stiffly, antennae twitching. "Two ships coming in fast from the southeast," she reported, "I'd be they are Mandalorian war droids."

For a second, I froze. "How fast?" I asked.

"Too fast," she answered.

"Have those hyperspace calculations ready," I ordered, then yelled for MT, "MT, get us all the power you can to the thrusters. Cut the power to the refrigeration units, the climate control, and the cabin lights, whatever. Just get me more power!"

Veea as right, I could see two specks of silver coming around the planet's horizon way too quickly. They would be in range too soon. I leaned on the throttle harder, but it didn't help. I yelled form MT to hurry, then suddenly, the ship gave a lurch and lunged into a faster climb. The lights flickered out and the air started to feel stale, but we were moving.

I twas beginning to be able to see blue suited Mandalorians on their silver droids in the distance when Veea yelled, "Hyperdrive, now!"

I punched the lever forward and we were out. For a second, I didn't believe it. It wasn't until Veea started spouting her muttered relief in rapid Rodian profanities that I realized we were safe. I think I screamed out of relief.

We made a brief course correction stop once we were out of system. There, we transmitted messages to our families that we were alive and going for help before we set a course for Mgren Station and jumped to hyperspace again.

We still have about forty-five minutes before we arrive there. I don't know what I'll say when we get there, but they have to know about Lorrd.